APRS iGate Temporarily Offline

Recently I have noticed my TM-D700A, which I use for both voice and APRS, has had poor receive. After doing some investigating I found that the Ventenna I'm using seems to have failed. It use to be resonant in the 2-meter band but is now resonant in the air band, 118.5 MHz. I will be putting up a new antenna once some of the snow melts here and once this is done my local iGate will be back online.

7QP Stresses & Successes

7QP 2016 is now complete. The log has been submitted and uploaded to all of the online QSL sites I use. I would say the event was a success for me with 87 stations contacted.

The 7QP was not without stresses however. Having a new computer in the shack since the last contest I participated in I realized the I had not setup N1MM Logger for digital modes after reinstalling it. With a lot of review of the software's documentation I got the digital settings correct, the macros set for 7QP, and finally made some successful psk-31 contacts.

Successes came throughout the QSO party, which made the stresses fade from memory. My goal was to get 50 QSOs. After reaching that number in the early evening and with most of those on 20 meters I switched to 40 and 80 meters. The propagation on these bands improved throughout the evening until the end of the 7QP.

While most of my QSOs came from searching and pouncing, which worked very well, I did get a small run of stations in the last 20 minutes when I finally decided to find a frequency and just call CQ.

7QP 2016 was a success. Now it's time to start thinking about the next contest which, for me, may actually be 7QP 2017. 73!

Homebrew 20 Meter Vertical

Since many of the National Parks on the Air (NPOTA) stations have been on 20 meters I decided to build a dedicated vertical antenna for this band. My 80 meter dipole, fed with 450-ohm ladder line, is usable on all bands with my tuner. There were times that the stations I was listening to were near the noise floor and hard to pull out with the dipole.

In my "junk" (aka glorious pile of stuff I haven't figured out what to do with yet) I had an old Hygain CB base station antenna which measured about 21 feet tall. Using the standard 234/frequency I came up with about 16 feet 4 inches for the General section of 20 meters. After adjusting the height of the top section and securing it, I bypassed the CB loading  coil in the base by connecting the coax center conductor directly to the vertical element and the coax braid to the mount. The mount is isolated from the vertical element by plastic spacers. I then mounted the antenna to a fence post in the front yard.

After some trial and error I found I had really high SWR.  I added a single radial wire to the mount. The SWR came down to about 1.4:1 across the General portion of the band. I had hoped that mounting the antenna to the fence would create a good ground plane but it didn't.

Initial on air test shows it works very well. It tends to hear about one s-unit better than the dipole antenna. As a side note the dipole center is about 20-30 feet above ground with the ends at about 10 feet.

Now that I know the antenna is resonant I plan to put it on a 10 foot mast and add three more radials (for a total of four).

The best part about this project is that the entire building/modification, mounting, and testing took less than an hour! Along with that it didn't cost me anything as I had all of the pieces and parts already. Now to go chase some more NPOTA stations.

HRDLOG.net QSO Map

I was tinkering with HRDLOG.net tonight and uploaded all of my latest QSO's. I then found the QSO Map option and noticed it has a snapshot of where I am for DXCC. Pretty cool feature. If you use Ham Radio Deluxe check out HRDLOG.net. I keep all of my contacts backed up here as well as at LOTW and eQSL!

Far to long since my last post

It has been over a year since my last blog post; shame on me. I have been on and off the air while updating my ham shack, getting a better HF antenna up, and, in general, spending time with my family.

My ham shack setup doesn't include any new radios but the desk is now setup. The antenna pass through panel has also been sealed in the window so i can have multiple antennas without losing all of the heat in the shack.

Speaking of antennas I have taken down my non-resonant HF vertical and put up an 80 meter dipole fed with 450 ohm ladder line. This antenna is a great improvement even though it isn't very high off the ground.

This year I'm looking forward to chasing (and maybe even activating) the National Parks on the Air (#NPOTA) event stations. With the first weekend of #NPOTA in the books I was only able to get 3 NPS Units logged but it was fun none the less.