Oct 19 2011

I should have kept my big mouth shut.

Since getting on HF, I’ve dabbled a bit in contesting. Not seriously, of course. There’s only so much I can do on 100 watts and with only a 20 meter antenna. But I try to work the stations I can by tuning up and down the band, and send in my Cabrillo file afterward to get credit.

This past August was the first time I participated in the Hawaii QSO Party. That weekend on Saturday, I paid the QTH of Randy KH6IB a visit, where members of the Emergency Amateur Radio Club were hanging out for the next band opening. I got on the mic for a little while and worked a few stations for KH6CE, so I got credit as an operator. Then once conditions started improving, I headed back home, fired up fldigi, and got ready to work some stations that afternoon. As you probably know, I’m a big fan of PSK31, and have made most of my contacts that way.  And the HQP is one of the relatively rare contests that not only allow PSK31, but actively encourage it by giving you triple the QSO points.

All told, I got 13 PSK31 contacts and 4 SSB contacts, 688 points total. Of course, I didn’t believe that I would win anything with that measly amount. The stereotypical contester puts out a kilowatt of power so just about anyone around the world can hear him. So was I surprised when Joe AH0A gave me this at the last meeting:

3rd place certificate for Honolulu County

Yep, third place in Honolulu County for single operator low power (less than 150 W). The first place op had around 17,000 points, and the second place op had 2,000 points. So I was about two orders of magnitude below them. Still, third place is third place.

In a way, though, I’m kicking myself a bit about those four SSB contacts so I could get the multipliers for Kauai and Ford Island. Without them I would have lost just four QSO points and two multipliers, leaving me with 546 points. That still would have been the best performance on PSK31 statewide. D’oh!

Still, I had a lot of fun at the HQP. Any contest that allows PSK gets a gold star in my book. Next year at the Hawaii QSO Party, I think I’ll keep my big mouth shut and let my fingers do the talking. :)

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Aug 25 2011

Five hams to activate Kalawao County on DX-pedition

It’s hard to get there. There’s a very small airport, and the only other way in by land is a mule trail down sheer sea cliffs. Access to the peninsula, strictly controlled by the Hawaii Department of Health, is possible only via invitation, special arrangement, or by organized tour. It’s also one of the hardest places to reach by radio waves. But five amateur radio operators from Honolulu plan, for a weekend at least, to put Kalawao County on the map.

Kalawao County, Hawaii, home to the former Hansen’s disease settlement on Kalaupapa, is one of the smallest counties in the United States, both by population and by land area – according to the 2010 census, only 90 people live on the 13 square miles on the northern tip of Molokai. There are only eleven patients left in the settlement and about 25 staff members living there as well. The small population also makes the county one of the most sought-after spots in the United States. Until very recently there were no hams in Kalawao County (two new Technicians passed their exam about a month ago), and there have been no hams capable of doing HF (shortwave) communications since the 1960s.

Five amateur radio operators are now in Kalaupapa preparing to work other stations around the United States and abroad as part of the Hawaii QSO Party this weekend. (QSO is amateur radio speak for a two-way radio contact.) These operators are Joe Speroni (AH0A), Jim Yuen (WH6GS), Bev Yuen (AH6NF), Kimo Chun (KH7U), and Ron Hashiro (AH6RH).

For more information on the Kalawao County DX-pedition, visit Ron Hashiro’s page.

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Jul 30 2011

A time to be brief, a time to be polite…

So there I was, on a lazy summer afternoon at home in Hawaii, surfing the ionosphere for PSK31 contacts. One of the first things I say on my waterfall was a very strong booming signal:

CQ CQ CQ de <other guy> <other guy> <other guy> k

I’m not picky about who I work on PSK31, so I responded using my macro:

<other guy> <other guy> de WH7GG WH7GG WH7GG kn

The response caught me off guard a bit:

WH7GG DE <other guy> UR 599 k

Normally at this point one would see a bunch of pleasantries in addition to the signal report: the station’s QTH, his name, his grid. And usually it’s via a macro on the digital software that automatically sends this info, and one would respond in kind. Still, this response in this situation came across like walking up to someone at a party and saying, “Hi, whatever-your-name-is, I hear you.”

I had to check for a minute. There are no PSK31 contests I know of, not that I’ve seen on the waterfall. This guy is not on a DXpedition or working a special event sign. Still, I sorta got the message that he wanted just the REAL basics, so I responded, free-typing:

<other guy> de WH7GG ur 599 in Hawaii also k

Then came his response back.

WH7GG TU QSO <other guy> QRZ? k

Ummmm…OK, so you don’t care about my name or where I’m from. In fact, I’m not even a human to you. All I am to you is a call and a signal report. I got the message, loud and clear.

I later looked up his info on QRZ.com, and saw this note at the bottom:

Quick note : sorry guys looking for a ragchew etc (especially digital modes) I just need call and report (min. required for a valid QSO)

I am always doing other stuff when on the radio (working on the side), unless when I’m contesting.

So no need for name, qth, antenna, pet’s name, grid, club number, favorite color, year when born, month when conceived, etc.etcetc I dont even read that

Thanks a bunch !!

That didn’t sit well with me. Of course, he does have the right to make contacts however he darn well pleases. And yes, during contests, DXpeditions, and such, brevity is key. The point of those is to make as many contacts as possible, bam bam bam bam bam. In the short time I’ve been on HF, I’ve worked contests before on voice and on PSK31, and know the drill. Exchange calls, signal reports (in a contest you’re always 59 to the other guy and vice versa), and your required other piece of info, and move on.

Still, not all of ham radio is a contest. Not all situations call for a QSO stripped down to its bare essentials. Especially on HF, where you’ll run into hams from all walks of life and all countries and cultures of the world, it’s good to be open.

And it is worth noting that there ARE humans on the other end.

Truth be told, even on voice I have yet to master the art of the ragchew. In my case it’s more of a rag-nibble. I’ll exchange signal report, name, QTH, maybe weather, maybe talk about my rig, maybe another comment or two, but then I’ll let the other station go. I’m not very talkative in real life, and ham radio is no different. Still, when I’m working someone, he or she has my full attention, as it should be even in face-to-face conversation. And I’m polite as I can possibly be. After all, I understand that his impression of me is based how I conduct myself on the air.

I often find that being from Hawaii and having a KH6-region call sign opens up a lot of conversation possibilities. On voice and PSK, I often find that saying I’m from Hawaii elicits fond memories of a visit here, or if not, a desire to do same. Similarly, say you’re from Oregon, and I’ll wax poetic about the natural beauty of the Northwest, my time at Lewis & Clark College, and my many trips since then.

I really wonder what this guy is like in person. I wonder what sort of impression people get of him when they work him on the air. Sure, he must be a contester extraordinaire, with skills as polished as that. But it must be REALLY boring to have a conversation with him, if his ham persona outside contesting reflects real life. Does he have a life outside ham radio? I wonder, too.

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Jul 20 2011

A chance encouter on the airwaves in PDX

Portland, Oregon, has been my second hometown for many years. More recently, it’s become my favorite vacation spot. Even more so since there’s a Ham Radio Outlet located there. I bought both of my base station rigs there – my FT-7800 in 2007, and my FT-857D in July 2010, and whenever I’m in town I pay them a visit.

Still, I find that, what with all the other things I do on vacation, sometimes I hardly touch the HT. Today is my last day in Portland for this trip, so I decided just to check out the bands on the HT. While scanning up and down the 2 meter band I happened across 146.70 (pl 100), and caught the tail end of a “YL net.” YL, in ham speak, means woman (“young lady”).

Yes, I know, I’m no YL, but when I heard two OMs (“old men”) check in, I figured it would be OK for this OM to check in. (In ham speak, men are always old regardless of age, and women are forever young.) So I called, “whiskey hotel seven golf golf, portable whiskey seven.”

I must have caught net control off guard since she asked for my call again. Maybe she was wondering why a 7 station is signing portable W7. I did get a nice warm welcome once I said that I was visiting from Hawaii.

Anyway, it was nice to be able to use the radio on vacation. I really should make it a habit to use it more often when I’m out and about on the mainland. Maybe next trip.

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Jul 8 2011

Having a Field Day

Most people are familiar with the phrase “to have a field day” in various contexts – in some cases meaning experiencing freedom from responsibility, in other contexts referring to criticism, but in all cases to appear to enjoy oneself doing it.

However, when ham radio operators in the United States and Canada have a Field Day, it actually has a more specific meaning. It refers to the ARRL and RAC Field Day, held every year on the last full weekend of June (June 25 and 26 in 2011). On that day, thousands of amateur radio operators get out from their home locations (hence the name – getting out “into the field”), set up stations running on emergency power, and operate for a 24 hour period. In its basic form it’s an emergency communication exercise – you never know where you’ll be setup in a communications emergency; you probably will not have commercial power readily available; and you want to be able to operate for as long as possible with the equipment you have.

But while Field Day serves an important role in preparation for emergencies, hams have a whole lot of fun as well. Here are some clips of the last Field Day the Emergency Amateur Radio Club had with their sister club, the Koolau Amateur Radio Club.

EARC/KARC Field Day 2011 on YouTube

 

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Apr 1 2011

Bill Orenstein, KH6QX (SK)

I was saddened to hear this morning of the recent passing of Bill Orenstein, KH6QX, after a long illness. Bill was a longtime member of the Emergency Amateur Radio Club and a regular participant in the nightly nets, and came to Hawaii after a long and storied career in broadcast audio engineering. He was one of the night owls on the 146.88 repeater, and I remember hearing him and Ed Watts KA6WVO (SK) in ragchew in the wee hours of the morning. I’ve always kept my radio off at night every since (my shack is in my bedroom – I do need to sleep).

You can read more on Bill’s career in his profile in the July 2007 issue of the EARC’s Wireless Dispatch.

We’ll miss you, King Henry Six Queen X-Ray. RIP.

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Mar 23 2011

Interplanetary radio? Now that REALLY would be DX.

We hams pride ourselves on our ability to make contacts, across town, across the country, across the ocean. However, if intercontinental contacts get to be old hat, what about…interplanetary ones? if one wanted to get a message to another world, how would one do it?

An author at Gizmodo asked that question and came up with some possible ways to go about it:

A golden plaque or record has a kind of aesthetic appeal to it, and letting there be light can make one feel nice and biblical, but the best way to transmit messages is using radio waves. Visible light is energetic, but it has a very short wavelength. That short wavelength can get scrambled as it goes out through space. Though the universe is most famous for being a horrible, soul-shattering void, it’s also pretty dusty. Dust in space, or on the planet you’re trying to reach, scatters short wavelengths. Longer wavelengths move through dust clouds without getting splattered all over the place and made unnoticeable.

If you want to try transmitting messages at higher ends of the spectrum, try broadcasting at the frequency 1420 megahertz. This is the frequency at which hydrogen vibrates. Not every society is going to have a base ten number system. Not every civilization is going to use certain frequencies for cell phones, and not every song will sound the same through a different atmosphere. But it’s unlikely that whatever corner of the universe the signal ends up in will have a more basic atom than hydrogen. This is the way to get a civilization to notice you.

Unfortunately, 1420 MHz is not in the amateur bands, at least not in IARU Region 2. The closest you can get is the upper end of the 23 cm band (1240-1300 MHz).

Of course, hams can contact each other via moonbounce, and the article does mention one of the earliest attempts at EME transmission, Project Diana (3 kW at 111.5 MHz with a 24 dB gain antenna). It’s an interesting read nonetheless.

One thing I found interesting is that we may be transmitting less radio waves out into space:

Some astronomers have speculated that, as we move from radio waves to fiber optics and internet connections, we might be currently ‘going quiet’ to alien astronomers. What’s more, the radio waves we do send out are less powerful, because receivers are more accurate. As a planet, we’re shutting up. But at least this means you’ll have little competition.

So could a legal limit signal beamed up to the sky reach a faraway planet? Hey, who knows?

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Mar 5 2011

A QSO a day keeps the doctor away?

On the Internet, you’ll find many examples of people trying to do something every day over the course of the 365 days in a year. Probably the most common is to take a picture every day for 365 days, or to write a blog post every day over a year.

How about having a QSO (radio contact) with at least one person over 365 days? One ham in the UK (also named Keith, by the way), is attempting to do just that, by any means necessary. Good luck to you, Keith!

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Mar 3 2011

PSK31: Please Say “Kewl,” 31 times

OK, that’s a bit of a stretch in the title there, but I think it expresses my opinion of HF digital modes quite well. :)

Once I was up and running on 20 meters, I had been playing with PSK31 receive, by getting a PSK31 terminal program such as HamScope and hooking the laptop up to the radio with a simple mini-plug to mini-plug audio cable. Last Friday, I received my new RigBlaster Plug and Play from West Mountain Radio, and hooked it up to the laptop. There’s a bit of a learning curve there – besides hooking up the audio cables, you have to hook up the USB, find out where the virtual COM port went, then plug it into the PSK31 program for the PTT.

But after doing that, the contacts just kept rolling in. I got my first two-way contact that evening, with a special event station in Argentina, LT5D. Later, I worked ZL3TRR in Christchurch, New Zealand, and in the short contact we talked a bit about the quake that happened that week.

To give you an idea – I had been up and running for two weekends, and during that time I made about eight voice contacts. (Of those, I was only able to log five of them…the paper on which I wrote the details of the other three went missing.) But in one weekend, I was able to eight DX PSK31 contacts (two each from Russia and Japan; one each from Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia; and one mainland-side), and one more local contact.

And that wasn’t all – I made four more contacts this week as well – one each from Russia, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. So 12 total so far.

Didn’t have much luck tonight on PSK31 – for some reason I was having better luck on voice. Worked a DXpedition (T30AQ), and another station in Australia (VK4VN).

Will go into more detail on my new PSK31 setup in another article, but I’ve been having a great time on the HF bands lately. And the sunspots are on the upswing. Looks like I got into HF at just the right time.

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Feb 25 2011

He’s been a ham for longer than most people are alive

Via QRZ.com:

George Bollas, VK3LA of Melbourne, Australia has this year achieved a remarkable milestone. First licensed in April 1931 he has marked 2011 as his 80th year of continuous amateur radio operation. That is surprising in itself but as well, at 95 years of age, George is still regularly on the air and actively home constructing.

His latest project just completed was the building of a batch of three 23cm 2C39 valve amplifiers to compliment his already comprehensive home built ATV station. He can still be heard on 20M working his old friends overseas using his beloved Collins “S”-line. As always he is ready with advice and encouragement to younger hams both in club activities and individually. If ever a voice has echoed through the generations of amateur radio it is that of our friend George Bollas VK3LA. http://www.qrz.com/db/vk3la

 

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