It's feedback time

On September 4th it's been one month doing the blog gig!! I'm having a blast and I find doing a blog keeps me accountable to myself regarding my hobby. What has amazed me is that my blog gets me out into cyberspace and reading about what is going on with fellow Amateur blogger's. Could you give me feedback on the structure, layout and flow of my blog? The topics thus far and how the reading of the posts have been? I am by no means going to  do this on a monthly basis. I decided to do it now as the blog is young and change is easy as habits have not been established.
Thank you very much in advance

My RFI adventure

RFI affected IMac

I was spending an enjoyable afternoon with my Elecraft KX1 I was using the 20 meter dipole located in the attic. Then the unthinkable happened, my door opened with my wife announcing "Are you on the radio" Now she is either really excited about becoming a ham (NOT) or there is RFI somewhere it shouldn't be!!!! Julie has a photography business and my CW was scrambling her IMac screen, with only 2 watts from my KX1 to boot. Here is what I did, I removed all USB controlled devices put a load of snap-on chokes on the AC line. I found the screen  to be fine and I slowly hooked up all USB devices after each device was connected I transmitted and all was good. Soon the IMac was loaded again with all devices and no RFI. I thought to my self  "that was easy......way too easy"

There is a new mouse in town

Julie and the IMac are happy

As Murphy would have it...it was too easy. Soon after the short lived RFI victory my door opened again with bad news. Well it boiled down to what seemed to me to be a very inconsistent RFI problem. It seemed to me anyway there was no rhyme or reason to how her IMac was picking up the RFI. I decided it was time to order out for help!!! I posted my problem on a forum called Nabble check out this site it is a fantastic resource for more than just Amateur radio. Well the emails started coming in and one common thread with the responses was that the IMac mouse is the problem. The emails explained  how

Possible impending death sentence

the mouse acts like an antenna, sometimes not until Julie touched the mouse. That made sense and had me understand how all seem to be well and it was not until she touched the mouse all hell broke loose with the IMac. So off came the snap-on chokes on the AC line and I swapped out the mouse and voila all was good. As for the the Mac mouse the jury is still out on whether he is doing a life of hard time or the death penalty.

Or condemned to hard time

CQ CQ...HEY someone is out there!!!!

Today I was at it again with the KX1 today it was raining very hard outside so I operated from my second floor radio room. The antenna for today was a long wire strung out the window and over the deck below. Sorry no pictures of the antenna I did not want to get my Nikon digital SLR wet. I was on the air at 2:10 pm local time and was calling CQ on 20 meters and nothing. The KX1's SWR was 1.7:1 and I was cranking out 1.7 watts.

A glass of Merlot and QRPing

 I moved around the band but it just was not happening so I moved up to 40 meters. It was there at 7009.00 mhz I heard KA1W calling CQ. Now on 40 meters the KX1's SWR was 2.2:1 and the output was less than a  watt but what the heck I gave it a go! To my surprise he came back to me with a report that went from 459 to 569. Dave is in Shelton Connecticut he was taken back that I was only running less than one watt into a long wire.  From my location it is about 450 miles to Dave's QTH, not big time DX but much better than yesterday when my count was "0" contacts. At 7032.07 W9ZN from Chicago was having a QSO he was booming in at this end but I ran out of time I had other commitments. So I will have to wait until next time for W9ZN.

Oliver banished to the rocker

Funny thing happen while I was calling CQ on 40 meters. My counterpoise was moving I had it stretched out in my radio room and down the hall. Our cat Oliver had seen it as a great toy to play with. Well RF and cats don't mix well so he was banished to the rocker. Not to thrilled to say the least about that. It was a good one hour on the KX1 snagged a contact with less than a watt on 40 meters so it was a very good day.....well not for Oliver.

CQ CQ........Is anyone out there???

 Elecraft KX1 setup

Close up view

It's Saturday afternoon and the back deck DXexpedition is over for another today. It was overcast all morning and threatening rain and at 11:20 local time the rain came.  I had to shut down but I had a blast and took some pictures to share on the blog. As you can see the setup is very simple but I have found in the past simple works wonders. I started at 10:40 local time on 14.060 mhz, the out put was 1.2 watts with an SWR of 1.2 into the Miracle Whip antenna.  It was very muggy outside with temp of about 88 degrees. At 10:55 local time I heard KW7D calling CQ but was unable to make contact. The conditions today were changing quickly and his signal was weak to

Epoxy repaired Miracle Whip

A DXepedtion to the back deck

I got my KX1 out, blew off the dust and am heading out to the deck Saturday morning and afternoon. Going to be thumbing the airwaves for a ride with my 2 watts on 20 meters. Never really gave the KX1 a good workout, I am looking forward to it and will be posting how it turns out.

Fun under the sun

Cycle 24 seems to be heating up after some false and no starts and it even looks like we are going to see some consistency in regards to the sun. Does flux (not the stuff used when soldering), K and A index's, solar wind, CME and sunspots sound like blah blah blah to you?? It did to me, but understanding propagation really has helped out my contesting and DXing. Understanding propagation....how you ask???? ARRL has a great online coarse. www.arrl.org/online-courses, and I did notice that on the ARRL site you have to be a member to register for the coarse. Even though they offer online courses to members (at a reduced cost) and non members,I have to ask the question how does a non member register when the site requires you to be a member???  New Years is still some time away, so take the time to make an Autumn resolution and investigate a new area of our hobby.....propagation. 
Here are some links I use
dx.qsl.net/propagation/
www.spaceweather.com/
www.solarcycle24.com/

CHECK THIS VIDEO OUT !!!!!
The VE2DXY DXpedition saw that HP was looking for unique stories of how HP computers are being used. Well the VE2DXY team thought ham radio was unique and a DXpedition more so. They contacted HP with the story and the video below was the outcome.



 Let us all take the challenge...... unique ways to get ham radio out there!! How about a commercial featuring  Ford or GMC using their 4x4 getting ham radio to remote and rare grid locations for VHF contests? Honda generators in times of natural disasters delivering reliably power to the ham radio life line? How cool would that be to see as a commercial during an NFL game?
Hats off to the VE2DXY team for getting ham radio out there.

NAQP CW contest

The North American Qso party was once again not a disappointment. In this contest the goal is to contact as many North American stations as possible in 10 hours. (12 hours if your a  multi-operator two transmitter category) The first time you contact each State and Canadian province it's called a multiplier.  The scoring goes like this, you multiply the total contacts by the sum of the number of multipliers worked. The highest score wins the race so multipliers are very important.  Your output power is limited to 100 watts and in this adventure my operator skills were put to the test by digging out weak signals and copying their code.

Well how did I do? I love the fact that this contest started at 2 p.m. local time. (Eastern daylight time), not having to get up early in the morning is a bonus. Wanting to try something different I entered single band QRP (low power) category at 5 watts output and started at 2 pm sharp. The antenna is a 20 meter dipole in the attic of my townhouse. Starting out the noise level was around S-2 which for me is great, there was lots of action on 20 meters as well. Search and pounce is my method and  works very well for me. The first two hours I was able to work many of the strong signals. I stopped for dinner at 4 pm. I was back at it at 5pm and 20 meters was still very busy but now the S-9 signals would drop to S-2 close to the noise floor. This made copying more of a challenge and  I missed out on lots of contacts as they would just fade into the noise. Making things more challenging was a lightning storm somewhere in our area, so this added static crashes that had to be dealt with. There was also the challenge of  pumping out 5 watts and being heard.
The contest for me ended at 10 pm which amounted to 6 hours of contesting along with dinner and breaks. As was stated earleir I chose QRP single band. Below is the breakdown of the contest.
                                                
                                    Band             QSOs            Multipliers         Points
                                      20                  71                      21              1540

By far,  this is not going to be the score that stands out in the contest but I accomplished my goals. The first being to enter single band QRP category and use my 20 meter dipole antenna in the attic and see how it performed in a contest situation.

Last but not least to have fun and enjoy contacting  fellow hams and not loose that fun with going over the top keeping track of multipliers.

It's PARTY time.....

One of my favorite contests in just over the horizon.....The NAQP CW. I love this contest it's local  if propagation is poor (and it has been) there is still lots of action.  It starts at 2 pm local time so you can get some stuff done around the house. The family is happy and your happy when the contest begins. The amplifier will be gathering dust on this one, output power is limited to 100 watts. As for me who needs 100 watts I'm going QRP at 5 watts with my 20 meter dipole in the attic. Will be posting how I do so stay tuned.