Guitar Tune Up

Ben is going to start guitar lessons tomorrow


He is planning on taking my Kramer 300ST for the lessons. So on Friday we went and bought a new hard case for the guitar. Today we spent about 90 minutes removing the strings, cleaning the guitar, restringing it, and then a good tune-up.



I think that we have it setup adequately for the lessons. At some point I should take it into someplace like Guitar Center for a tune-up with a real guitar tech.  The Kramer is probably 23 years old and due for a real tune-up.

Red Rooster Days in Dassel, MN

It is the big weekend in Dassel, MN

People line up several hundred deep (and out of the picture) to wait for the BBQ chicken dinner.


They cook thousands of chicken halves.  They start prepping around 6am and then they are ready to serve meals starting at 10:30am.


It is a pretty nice meal consisting of a half chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, white/wheat bread, milk/water/coffee for $8.  The meal is big enough that it will feed two people per plate which is what we do with our kids.


After the meal there is plenty activities for folks to do. Here Jacob and Ben and jousting over in the kids area.


They also have a nice classic car and street rod display at the baseball field.


It was a nice way to spend part of the day with the local community in our area.

Saturdays are for tower work

On Saturday I drove over to Green Isle, MN to help work on a tower project.

Here is the 55 foot lift that we used for the project.


Here is a picture of Don, KC0QNA about about 48 feet in the air. This is Don's tower at Don's QTH so it is only fitting that he should be the guy climbing the tower.


Here is the picture of the 56 foot tall tower from the ground.





I was the guy riding up and down most of the day in the bucket of the lift. I have some experience doing tower work using a cherry picker like this so I was happy to help out.

The project went pretty well, the weather was nice, and the company was pleasant. It nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon in late summer.

73 de NG0R

Camping at Leech Lake

We spent 4 days camping up at a Army Corp of Eng campground at Leech Lake. It is the first time that we have tried one of the federal campsites as we normally use the Minnesota State Park system. We pleasantly surprised at how nice this facility is.  For having so many electric sites (and some with water + sewer) the sites were fairly large.


Some dogs & brats were cooked along with several games of chess at the picnic table.


We went for a 19 miles bike trip. Wild man Joe (7) rode the whole thing like a trooper.


Jacob (11) made the whole loop as well.


Ben (9) rode about 5 miles but had to turn back a bit early. He was sick all weekend and the ride was more than he could handle.


The ride was all asphalt through the woods around Pike bay near Cass Lake.


I did manage to find a little time to fire up the radios as well. I primarily operated PSK31 on 20m and 40m. I had a 40m wire dipole up in the trees. (Ubuntu 10.4 + FLDigi)




Overall I did not spend a lot of time on the radio so there were not that many QSOs in the log... but several of them were longer and more than just running the macros in PSK. I was fun to have some actual QSOs.

Overall it was a nice trip. I would suspect that we will visit this campground again at some point.

73 de NG0R

Elecraft Transverters

I decided to stop my tweaking and take some measurements in a slightly more scientific format.  --aka... I was stumped and needed to noodle through my data and step away for a little bit.

• I went back to each transverter and reset the PA bias to 20mV.
  
• I did not adjust any of the filters...  good or bad... measured As-Is
  
• I measured each transverter with three different R22 values Full Counter Clockwise, Centered, and Full Clockwise. (R22 is a variable attenuator for the IF input.)
  

The fields below that are yellow indicate that I don't trust the results of my oscilloscope. (It is an old slow 60 MHz scope so I am pushing my luck measuring the LO and Mixed values on the 222 and 432 transverters.)

All oscope values are with the probe @ x10  -  K2 drive from the K2 display



Good news: The 2m transverter (XV144) is working good. I am seeing what I expect for power levels and it should be near it's final form.

Bad news: The 222 and 432 transverters need some help. I am not sure of the exact problem but I have two ideas to investigate:

1. Go back thru the filter adjustments. I think that I need more signal going into U6.
2. U6 - is it bad or not getting enough signal to do much real work?

73 de NG0R


PS... I need to go back to remeasure the power out of the XV144. I thought that I had a 50w slug in the bird 43... but I think that I actually had the 10w slug in there. --That will mean that my power is still pretty low but at least it is measurable.  :-(  

PPS... C53 in the bandpass filter was acting weird on the XV222. I found it while poking around with the oscope. I top soldered the joint and resolved that little issue.

PPPS... I tweaked up the power level on the XV222. It is still running less than QrpP levels. I am going to take a break for the evening and ponder this some more.

PPPPS... After some pondering and discussion with N0FP I think that I have a plan of next attack to diagnosis this issue. Notes to follow once I have time to revisit the work bench.

APRS RF vs Cell

I was out running some errands so I decided to compare APRS on an RF path vs on my Crackberry.

Red: D700 2m @ 50w
Pink/Purple: Crackberry on AT&T EDGE network


Clearly the traditional RF path worked better today. To be fair the Crackberry client that I am running is an early Beta so it is possible that influenced the results.

Since I was looking at the data I decided to see what the longest path that my signal worked during my short trip. 100 to 200 miles on 2m FM is a pretty impressive path and not a normal APRS path.



Links:
APRS FI (for the Google Map + Data)

Crackberry APRS Client:
http://aprsbb.bluearray.net/

APRS IS Password Generator:
http://www.rimboy.com/rimdistro/rimigate/calculate/

73 de NG0R

Elecraft Transverters

My setup/troubleshooting quest continues.....

Showing the bandpass filters inside of the the transverters.



I was have a problem getting the full 1mW (0 dBm) of drive from the K2+K60XV into the transverters. I was never seeing more than about .50mw (-3dBm).  After some searching on the internet I saw a note that pointed me back to the Errata for the K60XV. Don the Elecraft mail list confirmed the detail.

R6 on the KAT6 board needs to be changed from a 47 ohm to 470 ohm resistor or the op-amp detection circuit may not give you the full 1mW of drive do to some interactions between the K60XV and KAT2 boards.

So I cracked open the K2...


I removed the top lid, the KIO2, K60XV, and KAT2 interfaces.


The KAT2 is actually made up of two boards so that need to be split apart to get good access to R6.

I had forgotten how much labor was invested inside the K2 case. It always makes me a little nervous popping the cover off as there are a lot of add-on modules in there some of which are attached to the top lid. The R6 change was very easy and the radio went back to together fine.

It appears that I am now able to get 1mW from the K2. So I am back to my original issue of figuring out why I can't get the proper power out of the transverters.  --arghhhhh.

73 de NG0R

Elecraft Transverters

A little bit of progress tonight.....


My transverters were not talking to my K2 as I trying to work through the initial alignment at the workbench. After some testing and a couple of emails with the Elecraft reflector it was pretty simple.

Dooh.... the plastic shell on the DB9 connection was not allowing the pins to go far enough into the connector on the radio.

It turns out that I needed to move the connector to the forward slightly in the DB9 case to a different notch. That slight tweak in the alignment solved the connection issue.

When time permits I will need to work through the alignment steps. With some luck maybe I can get them tested and on the air this weekend.

73 de NG0R

APRS: RF vs Blackberry

I had to run an errand over my lunch break so I decided to run an APRS experiment.

NG0R-9 : Kenwood D700 @ 50w transmitting every 3 minutes
NG0R-12 : Blackberry Bold running APRSBB sending every 45 seconds (the default)

There is an APRS receive gateway here in Kingston, MN so coverage should not be a problem. The trip today was a maximum of 12 miles in a straight path to the receive station.

Red is the RF beacon
Pink/Purple is the Blackberry


I was surprised at how much of my trip was missed or not received on the RF path. I expected to see more cell phone/data drop outs because there are numerous black holes in my area on the AT&T network.


The weird part is that I was heard by three stations ranging in distance from 12 miles away to 129 miles away. I would have expected the two closest sites to be able to hear my whole trip.

The table below show that with the D700 in my truck I have seen APRS paths as good as 200 miles over the past couple of weeks. Those are some pretty extreme distances as 20-40 miles is more common.


Links:
Blackberry APRS client:
http://aprsbb.bluearray.net/

APRS Maps & Data:
http://aprs.fi/info/NG0R-9

This data really surprised me as I figured that I would have better APRS coverage near my home since there is are two nearby receive sitez. It makes me want to do some more experimenting.

• Map out a regional trip and compare the APRS coverage of the RF path vs. cell path. (AT&T cell coverage gets pretty spotty as you move further west across rural Minnesota)
• Put up two receive stations at my QTH (attic and tower) and compare what I can hear direct at my QTH vs the nearby APRS receive nodes.
  

73 de NG0R

Kingston QTH in August

I took the point & shoot camera with on my afternoon laps around the block. It is a nice summer afternoon in Minnesota with the temperature around 80 degrees (F) and 54% humidity.

We got 2 inches of rain Thursday night & Friday morning. That should make the plants perk up a bit given how warm it has been recently.


The plants in this corner of the yard are going a little crazy.


We should have some grapes that are ready to be picked in the next couple of weeks. We made a lot of jelly last year and it appears that we will have a larger crop this season.


This shot gives you an idea how big a hill we live on. This is only about 1/2 the elevation of our yard... the rest of the drop is to the right of the image.


For the folks that are interesting amateur radio you can see the HF tower in the foreground and if you look carefully you can see the VHF tower in the background. (I am active on 160m-->23cm or 1.8MHz-->1.2GHz with a couple more bands likely in the future.)

73 de NG0R