The title says it all really - it’s been a bit quiet this past 6 months or so at amateur radio station G0RIF. No particular reason but contributory factors do include a diminished passion for the hobby.
Don’t get me wrong, I do still retain the fascination for radio communications and I do still enjoy chasing DX and making DX contacts. Where I struggle is with day-to-day operating. I seem to have so many other things that I want to do these days.
I’ll see how it goes over the next few months before deciding what to do. For now I’ll just say ‘Happy Christmas one and all!’ and wish everyone all the very best for 2011.
Dean Amateur Radio, Life... G0RIF
One mans DX is another mans chip-shot. Your equipment, conditions, the frequency in use and any number of other factors all contribute to making certain contacts worthy of the term ‘DX’.
Case in point my attempt at a 2m SSB contact with Simon (2E0HTS) some 87 miles north of me. How hard could it be? After all, I’m a HF DX’er and I regularly work stations thousands of miles away. This should be easy, right? Wrong!
I embarked on this little exercise because I’m interested in working a bit of 2m SSB up into Burton-on-Trent where I’m getting to know a few of the locals through the Burton Amateur Radio Club. To that end Simon and I arranged a sked (a pre-arranged contact for all you non-hams out there) to see if we could establish a contact on 2m SSB.
We agreed that he would call me as he was likely to have the ‘bigger’ signal (50 watts into a homebrew IO loop beam he uses for working amateur satellites with great success). I waited and listened…and waited…and waited. At times I could tell he was there, down in the noise, but it just wasn’t readable at all. If I wasn’t hearing his 50 watts he was never going to hear my puny 8 watts into a simple 3 element beam!
We gave it our best shot but it wasn’t to be. We moved to 80m and had a quick chat (which was nice…thanks Simon!) and I’ll look forward to chatting with him again soon. For now though it seems that 87 miles on 2m, for us at least, was ‘DX too far’. I’m certainly gaining a new found respect for all the VHF/UHF (and beyond) DX’ers out there. I’ve also learned that DX need not be the other side of the world. Sometimes it isn’t even the other side of the country! It’s all relative.
Dean Amateur Radio 2E0HTS, antenna, DX, G0RIF, SSB
It’s true. Twenty days into the month of July and nothing in the log since the last week of June…save for 4 RTTY contacts a few days ago. So far this month I’ve just been busy doing other things and getting on the bands has taken a bit of a back seat.
The 4 RTTY contacts I mentioned were on 20 and 30m a few nights previous when I called CQ for a while to see what was out there. ‘Not very much’ was the answer! Having said that though, one of the stations worked was A61E in the United Arab Emirates for which I still need a QSL card so I’ll be sending my card to his Spanish QSL manager in the next few days.
I do keep telling myself I really should try to get back into some late night PSK31 and as 20m is often crowded with signals I may well give 30m a try. I’ll be hoping I can do that before the end of the month!
Dean Amateur Radio, Blog, Totally random A61E, G0RIF, QRT, QSL, RTTY
The YI9PSE QSL card
|
 |
Here we have the very nice YI9PSE QSL card confirming my two QSO’s, 20m and 40m CW. It was a challenge getting them in the log. It’s sometimes more of a challenge to get the confirmation afterwards.
Fortunately some of the larger Dxpeditions do all they can to make it easy to get their card, as was the case here.
Thanks to all of the YI9PSE team for giving me this chance at a new one and thanks for the contacts!
The large version of the YI9PSE QSL card can be seen in the DXpedition QSL gallery linked from the menu above.
This now makes it 178 DXCC entities worked with 162 of them confirmed by card. I have 125 LoTW confirmations and 164 in total (by either card or LoTW). |
Dean Amateur Radio CW, G0RIF, QSL, YI9PSE
Following on from my ST2AR contact on Friday night (all time new one #172) I worked another new one on Sunday evening, this time it was Tajikistan in central Asia worked on 40m CW. Two new ones in three days but two very different situations.
The Republic of Tajikistan in central Asia
|
|
Further to my previous comments about pile-ups - this was very much the calling until blue in the face type scenario rather than the ‘getting lucky’ type scenario (see below, ST2AR recently worked).
Ken (K4ZW) is in Tajikistan for a little over two weeks and operations commenced on the 27th so it’s no real surprise that the pile-up was pretty intense last night (it being Day 1 of Ken’s operations as EY8/K4ZW).
Signals were up and down but he was peaking over S9 with me and working stations at a good rate at the bottom end of 40m, listening 1-2KHz up (more at times if you believe some of the DX cluster spots - pinch of salt works for me). |
Having listened up the band to see where other stations were calling I found what seemed to be a relatively quiet spot and started calling, commencing about 22:20 UTC. Ken had a good rhythm and he did seem to be tuning up the band repeatedly working stations before dipping back down to his stated UP 1 listen frequency. I spent a while at +1.5KHz and heard him work many stations close to my frequency but for whatever reason he wasn’t hearing me - either too weak or just overwhelmed by bigger signals.
At times I tried my luck just below the pile, around 950Hz up but this was also unsuccessful. As time wore on he did at times ask EU and Asian stations to stand by while he worked a run of NA & SA stations and I could again hear stations being worked but nothing below his stated 1KHz up.
During one of these NA/SA periods I found what appeared to be a relatively quiet spot around 1.25KHz up and waited. When next Ken started working any station I still seemed to be in a pretty clear spot so with fingers crossed (at was getting late and bedtime was looming) I began calling again and around 55 minutes after joining the pile I heard Ken come back to me with a G0RIF 599 - I replied with R TU 599 73 and that was that, another all time new one in the log.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures CW, DXCC, G0RIF, K4ZW, Tajikistan
I wrote back in June that I was making good progress toward working 100 countries since moving to Lichfield in September of 2008. Well I can now report that coming out of the CQWW CW contest this past weekend I have now reached that milestone - 100 countries worked from this location.
The details are 100 countries worked with 74 on CW, 66 on RTTY and 60 on SSB. This includes 8 all time new ones in the form of Anguilla, Desecheo Island, St. Maarten & St. Eustatius, Bermuda, United Arab Emirates, Alaska, Montserrat and the British Virgin Isles.
This brings the overall numbers to 170 worked with 119 on CW, 122 on data modes (RTTY & PSK31) and 111 on SSB. Here’s to the big push towards 200!
Dean Amateur Radio, Blog CW, DXCC, G0RIF, Lichfield, RTTY, SSB
It is always nice to receive QSL cards and the beauty of the bureau system is that you get a lot of cards delivered all at once. It’s great to then look back through the log and remember some of those contacts.
Many contacts can be short & sweet though - this is the case with contest or special event stations who are intent on logging as many contacts as possible as quickly as possible. The cards shown here from OE2008A and HB2008VC are from two such special event stations setup to celebrate the Euro 2008 football tournament co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland. There were many such stations and I received over 30 of their cards in my most recent delivery, a mix of Swiss and Austrian stations for SSB, CW and RTTY contacts.
a selection of the more colourful QSL cards received from the bureau
Here (bottom right) you can also see the card received from Peruvian station OA4WW, this means that of 168 countries logged I now have 151 of them confirmed by paper QSL (rather than some electronic form such as LOTW or eQSL).
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures bureau, CW, Euro 2008, G0RIF, LoTW, QSL, RTTY, SSB
Three envelopes containing some 80+ cards arrived at the G0RIF QTH over the weekend. It’s always a nice surprise when cards arrive from the bureau because it only happens about twice a year.
I’ll sift and sort and scan a few and upload a few pictures - there look to be some nice cards in this latest batch, including a new one confirmed in the form of OA4WW (40m CW) in Peru!
Dean Amateur Radio bureau, G0RIF, QSL
A trip the Barr Beacon this past weekend allowed me to trial and test a simple end-fed antenna comprising a 65ft wire and a 9:1 unbalanced-to-unbalanced (unun) transmission line transformer. According to the manufacturer “the 9:1 unun is a transformer bringing high [impedance] values such as 450 Ohms to a…more manageable 36 to 90 Ohms, thus allowing a much better match to coax feeder”.
9:1 unun
|
|
There are many who will sniff at this kind of device suggesting “it couldn’t possibly work” or suggesting “you’d be better off with a simple doublet fed with ladder line”.
Unfortunately I’m not able to deploy large centre fed antennas with unsightly feed lines. I need to keep my antenna discrete and low profile - this pretty much limits me to simple end fed wires. Furthermore, my policy is always to try this kind of thing and see if or how well it works before passing judgement, fully accepting that it is a compromise solution. |
For the Barr Beacon test the antenna was arranged in an inverted-L configuration, fed at the bottom, with no ground, radial or counterpoise wires (the SRC 9:1 unun used has no ground lug anyway). The 65ft wire was suspended on two fibreglass poles with a 30ft vertical section and a 35ft top section.
In use the antenna tuned on all bands 80m thru 10m (30m was not tested) and received signals were good. Contacts were made on 15m, 17m, 20m and 80m with most activity on 20m where I received good reports across Europe peaking at 59 +5 from Rudy (HB9CCL) in the eastern Alps with whom I had a good long chat. I also got through a minor pile-up to work Hans (JW4EU) on Svalbard.
Whatever it’s limitations the antenna does radiate and on 20m it seems to work just fine. Contest stations worked on a pretty quiet 15m band heard me first call, so it also works ok there. A few stations worked on 17m were a bit more difficult but there were other stations calling. The single 80m contact with GB1SS was difficult copy for him so for now I’ll reserve judgement on both 40m (yet to make a contact) and 80m.
Overall, given the simplicity and convenience of the unun device, and the possibilities if offers for a simple multiband antenna with either a 65ft or a 23ft wire (the latter giving only 40-10m coverage), I’m satisfied that it works well enough to warrant further experimentation. Having tried it with the 65ft wire I’m very interested to see how it performs with the shorter 23ft wire.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures 9:1, antenna, G0RIF, portable, unun
You may or may not have noticed that I’ve changed the title of my blog. It now makes it quite clear whose blog it is and what the content relates to.
I also thought it appropriate I highlight the amateur radio aspects because they did seem to be taking over anyway. Over half of all posts to date (38 of 67 at the time of writing) are amateur radio related!
Dean Amateur Radio, Blog blog, G0RIF