K2 - Day Twenty

Our weather has become cool and rainy, snowy, and ice covered rather early this fall.
It appears that I am already visiting in the inside work bench a little more and a
little earlier than usual. (Not that inside projects are bad.)

I took today as a PTO day at work (burning up time before the end of the year.) I
decided to spend the majority of the day working my Elecraft K2 project. Looking
at my blog it appears that last time that I worked on the kit was June 20 which is
about 5 months ago... wow that is a long time.

I spent about 6 hours today working on the project. Today's focus was installing the
last batch of capacitors, resistors, and then winding cores and transformers. Tonight
at 8:30 I got the PA transistors installed and the case put back on the radio. The
next big step is the Phase 3 alignment.

This next chunk of testing and alignment will validate that I installed all of the
proper pieces in the proper spots. So far I have had minor issues with each phase
largely due to dumb things on my part. Each of them was resolved with some troubleshooting,
emails, and the occasional phone call to the support folks.

I am not sure if I will get back to the project this week as the calendar is looking
pretty full. Worst case... I have another day of PTO planned for next week.    I
would like to get the basic QRP CW rig finished and checked out. I still have the
Tuner and SSB option kits to install to finish out the basic rig.

My goal is to be able to finish the radio with the above options and then be able
to order, build, and validate the transverter option kit prior to the January VHF
contest. (Ok... my first goal was to have the radio ready for the 2008 Field Day weekend...
I kind of missed that goal... life got in the way again.)

BNSF pictures

Ben, Joe, and I spent a couple of hours Saturday afternoon cruising around west of
Willmar, MN taking pictures of trains.

/gallery/2008-10-04/

2008 ARRL September VHF Contest

Summary:


I was scrambling to swap out my Kenwood TR-751 as the IF rig for the transverters
with an older Kenwood TR-9130. I was messing with getting the power levels tweaked,
the 6 pin mic connector, and the discovery that it has a PTT-High interface. Once
the TR-9130 was in place I had to adjust the TX & RX levels within the transverter.
It appears that my 1296 transverter may only be putting out 4-5watts instead of the
15-18watts that it is rated for.



The weather was poor with rain & drizzle pretty much all weekend. I could hear
the rain approaching 10 minutes before it hit as the noise level on 6m & 2m would
increase from S0 to S6.




The activity level was extremely low. I was surprised at how quiet it was for the
contest. The voice & CW keyer ran un-answered for large portions of the contest.
Finally Sunday evening around 7:00pm I pulled the plug on the contest and decide to
work on homework with my kids, clean my office/shack, and watch part of a movie.



My log is about 60% lighter than I would have expected for this contest.

Highlights:


I worked N0UY in EN18, N0PB in EM39 and then briefly into EN50, EN51, and EN52

Thanks to KC0IYT/R and W0ZQ/R for their efforts to put on a limited rove this weekend.
Without you it have been a really quiet event.

Grids Worked on 50MHz

Grids Worked on 144MHz

Grids Worked on 222MHz

Grids Worked on 432MHz

Grids Worked on 902MHz

Grids Worked on 1296MHz

Radio, Mic, Key switch box

I need one of these:

http://www.ncsradio.com/m_switch.html

2008 ARRL August UHF Contest

Summary:

This was the first August UHF contest from this house. (We built it 3 years ago.) I
thought that conditions on Saturday afternoon were kind of average or poor. Once the
sun went down and the relative humidity went up it seemed like some of the paths
started to open up. On Sunday it seemed like conditions were decent but the activity
level was kind of low. During the last 2 hours of the contest I had a thunderstorm
sit a couple of miles away. I had to disconnect the coax and rotor cables do the nearby
lightning activity.

Highlights:

• 
  Working W0ZQ/R and W9FZ/R through a bunch of grids. (Many of them new for me.)
  
• 
  Working N0PB in EM39
  
• 
  Working K2YAZ in EN74
  
• 
  Working N0GZ in EN31
  
• 
  Working W0FLS in EN21
  
• 
  Working N9LR in EN50
  
• 
  First contest with the 902 antenna on the tower. (Thanks to W0AMT for the transverter)
  
• 
  First contest with the IF switch box and transverters relocated to our utility room

Wish was better:

• 
  More activity (the rovers were awesome... but we need the fixed stations to be active
  as well.)
  
• 
  Thunderstorm during the last two hours of the contest
  
• 
  My 902/1296 IF rig is slightly deaf compared to my backup IF rig.
  
• 
  Need to get a microphone for the backup IF rig so that I can migrate to this radio.
  
• 
  Better band conditions.
  
• 
  Some missed 902/1296 opportunities with K0AWU, K2DRH, etc.
  
• 
  EN25 is not quite on people's radar so I sometimes struggle getting people to look
  my way.

Future Plans:

• 
  I would like to get a 2304 system on the air some point on the VHF/UHF tower.
  
• 
  I would like to get a 10GHz system up on my HF tower. (I need more bands!)
  
• 
  My Elecraft K2 will be driving more of the lower band transverters as time progresses.

Grids works on 222mhz

Grids works on 432mhz

Grids works on 902mhz

Grids works on 1296mhz

Thunderstorms at the end of the contest

Prison Blues

Neal Pattman


Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Cootie Stark

From the 10 Days Out Project by Keeny Wayne
Shepherd

Have some Cake from 1996

I am listening to Cake - Fashion Nugget from 1996 right now. Great album!



Don't ask why I am listening to this right now in my office... no real reason. But
I had forgotten how much I like this Album. I am not sure if there is a bad song on
this album.

I find that I listen to a lot more music when it is on my home network and I can listen
from any of our computers in the house vs. having to run upstairs... find the
CD in the CD rack... oh wait is that one still in the box from when we moved three
years ago.... arghhhh.



About the only music that I listen to directly from CD is in my car or truck on a
trip. Once in a while I hear a song on the radio that will prompt me stop
at store and pick up a CD.

Off Center Fed Dipole Day 2

After a couple of
hours of cutting... then walking up to the deck to take measurements... then
doing it all over again.... it appears that 3 bands is it for this particular design.
I started out with 71' of wire at ~25 of elevation fed at 80% from the end. 
I am now at something like 13.75 + 50.25.

 

10m = 2.5:1 @ 28.1
mhz  (best @ 29.1)

15m = 1.6:1 @ 21.05
mhz (best @ 21.2.)

20m = 2.2:1 @ 14.05
mhz (best @ 13.7)

40m = 16:1 @ 7.05
(doesn't happen)

 

There is a model
for that will work for this OFCD to cover the four bands with a little bit of tuning...
but it is not going to happen today. It appears that
I will need to make a second dipole just cut for 40m.




My two Field Day 2008 antennas will be an OCFD (for 10m, 15m, and 20m)  +
a 40m wire dipole.

ISP Speed Tests

It is funny... for one place that I test my ISP speed... I am only seeing about 1m/1m
best case.



From another size I am seeing 2.4m/1m but that test only goes as far as the Minneapolis
area which is not a great real world test. (Image below.)

It will be interesting to see the new rate packages that should come out over the
next couple of days/weeks with my rural ISP. I am interested in a 2m or 3m package
if I can actually see that level of performance and the price point is right. We will
see what the packages look like shortly.

JPG vs. PNG

I think that I need to start using PNG as my standard image format. Or at least for
when I am doing screen captures. The above example is the same basic image captured
in JPG and PNG.

The PNG looks better and is smaller. I will have to see how this plays out over time.
My initial impress was that PNG's were slightly larger for more complex images. Maybe
that is not correct and needs to be revalidated.