VP6DX - Ducie Island QSOs

I have VP6DX in my log 11 times in the past week.

• 
  I have heard them on 10m once or twice as they fade away.
  


• 
  I am also waiting for them to move from 17m RTTY pointed at the EU and start taking
  NA QSOs this morning (Sunday 02-24-2008)


• 
  30m has been very elusive for me. That bothers me as I expected that the power
  limits on that band would largely equalize it for everyone.

The folks operating VP6DX have some great ears. It is amazing to work them on 160m.
I hope to try to get a couple more bands/modes with them before they wrap up the operations
there.

Funny Huckabee Quote

I am eating lunch and watching CNN for a few minutes.




Mike Huckabee: "I am not a Wall Street Republican.... I am more of a Walmart
Republican."  (He is speaking live from Wichita, KS.)  I suppose
that is an appropriate quote given that he was governor of Arkansas. (Home of
Walmart.)

He is an decent speaker given his background. It is interesting listening to his stories
while I eat lunch.

K2 project has started

I melted solder tonight.

I spent about 30 minutes organizing the MISC and Control Board parts bags into my
parts bins to make things easier.

I then started building the Control Board for the K2. I have about 60 components
on the board so far which took about 90 minutes. I would guess that I am about 60-60%
complete on this board. Most of the remaining pieces are chips & sockets + a few
capacitors.



I will try to post some pictures later if time permits. So far my experience with
the Elecraft kits has been excellent. (My first kit was a XV222 transverter.)

The K2 Project Begins

Instead of watching the Super Bowl I cleaned off the top of my work bench to get ready
for a new project. I then spent an hour putting the errata notes into the instruction
manual.



I am getting ready to start building my Elecraft
K2.

It is almost time for dinner. I think that I feel like taking a nap instead of
watching the second half of the football game. 

2008 MNQP - Ben's first contest

Ben and I spent some time on Saturday working the Minnesota QSO Party. Ben is 7 years
old and this was his first time operating the radios for any period of time. He operated
SSB and I handled the logging and coaching duties in addition of a few CW contacts.

It is not a power house score... but we had a good time and enjoyed ourselves... it
is a hobby after all.  This was the first time that I had actually used the triband
beam, 40m dipole, and 80m shunt in the same contest. Overall I was pretty happy with
the antennas as they seemed to play fine.

Ben was pretty excited about using the radios... now I just need to work on getting
his brothers into the shack. I would like to try to setup a sched with someplace exotic
like the south pole weather/science station.

2008 ARRL JAN VHF Contest

This was my first VHF contest that I have worked from our new house in EN25. Overall
things worked pretty well. The band conditions were pretty brutal which is typical
of Jan in Minnesota.

This contest had a lot of firsts for me:

• 
  1296 transverter (from W0AMT's stash of gear.)


• 
  Elecraft 222 transverter replaced
  my old Microwave Modules until


• 
  Kenwood TR751 as the IF rig for the microwave bands


• 
  RF relay between the 144/432 line from the Icom 706MKIIG and the amplifiers


• 
  Band pass filters for 50 & 144MHz


• 
  PTT/Keyline distribution system


• 
  All the antennas are new... this is the first contest for the VHF tower


• 
  Serious station integration

Some things that I would like to add, change, improve for the next VHF contest:

• 
  Add a switch box to
  be able to use one microphone with all of the radios


• 
  My ability to decode CW by ear


• 
  Add a 902 antenna and transverter to the station


• 
  Use my Elecraft K2 (still
  unbuilt in the original kit box) as my IF for 222
  transverter (eventually for 144, 222, and 432)

Thanks to KC0IYT/R and W9FZ/R for the bands and grids... it would have been a much
slower contest without you.

Flip Romney

I have a new name and slogan for Mitt Romney.

Flip Romney - He
will tell you what ever you want to hear.

Current race observations:

• 
  Huckabee is leading Thompson in my mind. I wish Thompson would give me some reasons
  to get behind him.


• 
  Obama and Clinton all but drown out Kennedy.

I would like to see Kennedy vs. Huckabee or Thompson and that is not too realistic.
I would be really interested to hear some good debate among them on how to move the
country forward.

The Democrat's have a real dilemma:

• 
  Clinton is an old school Democrat but probably knows how to
  get things done. She represents an aging America full of baby boomers.
  


• 
  Obama could provide inspiration to a new generation. But there
  is a cross section of people that feel that he might be too dovish in a world that
  has conflict.
  

The Republican's have dilemma:

• 
  They are not the party of fiscal conservatism any longer.
  


• 
  They are divided between the social/religious right and a group
  of moderates.
  


• 
  

  
  Huckabee seems to be a new force within his party. McCain
  is likeable but his window came and went 8 years ago.
  

  
  

Tell’em where to put the pole

Ok... Huckabee's quote made me laugh about as hard as I have in a long time. 
I can understand why people might be upset with the confederate flag (I don't like
what it stands for.) I think that Huckabee has the perfect perspective on it:

”South Carolina people know true conservatism when they see it.You don’t like people
outside the state telling you how you ought to raise your kids, you don’t like people
from outside the state telling you what to do with the flag,” Huckabee said during
a rally at a Myrtle beach airport hangar. “In fact, if somebody came down
to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell’em where to put the
pole.”

from Fox
News + other media sources.

Vigilante Movies - Cleaning up the mean streets

Paul Kersey: "It's like killing roaches – you have to kill em all, otherwise,
what's the point?"

AMC is running the Death Wish movie series this week. Tonight (Monday) was the original
movie from 1974. The quote above is from the third movie. AMC has been using that
quote in all of the commercials. I have to say that it is a great quote.



I watched the second half of the movie with my sons tonight. I have to say that it
was entertaining to watch a good guy take out the bad guys. It is kind of hard
to not like the vigilante cleaning up the mean streets.

Big Weekend

Talk about a busy weekend!

Ben had a wrestling tournament on Sunday that consumed most of the day on Sunday.
He wrestled 3 times for a total of 18 minutes. He took third place in his weight/age
group. He had two very close matches that were within 2 or 3 points each.

I spent the rest of the weekend working on getting the VHF/UHF and microwave gear
integrated for the VHF contest next weekend. I now have 50, 144, 222,432, and 1296
integrated. I am still a pop gun station but I am hoping that EN25 will be a popular
grid once we get the contests where the rovers are move active. (Who can afford
to be a big gun during a recession?)




I am hoping to add 902 this spring. I also need to get the 10GHz system put together.
Getting the 10GHz system mounted on the HF tower (that is where I have spare wind
load available) this summer will take some design effort.

I am pretty excited to be able to get back on VHF/UHF and best of all it is from our
new QTH.  --Go forth and emit RF!