Spring cleaning time...............

My K400 mobile mount

Well the first day of spring just passed us by and up this way the snow is still here but soon brown grass will  been reveled. I have found that the winter months takes it's tole on the antenna's. For me there is only one out door antenna the rest are snuggled in the warm attic. The outdoor antenna at home is the High Seirra Sidekick. Having said that it has not been out for most if not all this winter. So as for antenna spring cleaning I thought I was in the clear until I tried to go mobile with my KX1. For mobile/portable operation I use the Elecraft KX1 along with the Diamond K400-3/8C mount and ProAm  mobile whips.  My Diamond mount had taken a beating over the winter months. The 3/8 bolt I insert into the mount when no antenna is being used was rusted in and not coming

HAM-EX.....over for another year

The parking lot was full Click for full size

Even with all the snow we had over the past week nothing says spring like a Hamfest!! Every year I head out to the Ham-ex hamfest. It is about 40 minutes from my home but is very well attended and lots of goodies to be had. I was up at 6:30 a.m. and off to Starbucks for a coffee and then on the road to the my first hamfest of 2011. This event is sponsored by two Amateur radio clubs, Peel ARC and Mississauga ARC. It is not hard

They did say it was spring.......right???

On the first day of spring I noticed the birds coming back from their winter migration, the grass was beginning turn green and even some brave flowers were starting to show themselves in the garden.

Then..........

yesterday a snow storm took all that was left of spring away.............

Backyard Click to enlarge

Backyard click to enlarge

Just before next wave hit

1/2 watt can get you 4154 miles

During the ARRL DX CW contest last month I was pounding away with my 5 watts and I had an idea "why not drop the power down to 3 watts. I was surprised how well it was working for me I then leaped to 1 watt and was not sure what was going to happen. I was impressed, I was making lots of DX contacts.

Here is a sample of some of the contacts with 1 watt

SO2O          Poland          4344 miles
DL6FBL      Germany       3833 miles
PJ2T           Caribbean     2261 miles

After making these contacts and with only having from time to time to repeat my exchange I then dropped the power to 1/2 watt!!! and to my amazement here are some of the contacts I was able to make.

 Here is a sample of some of the contacts with 1/2 watt 

 EI5DI          Ireland                              3249 miles

VQ5D          Turks and Caicos            1569 miles

TM6M          France                             3507 miles

G5W            England                           3594 miles

V48M          St Kitts                               2071 miles
OH8A          Finland                              3955 miles
DL0MM       Germany                           4154 miles

For some time now I had wanted to somehow get an outside antenna of some type as I thought I was just "stuck" with indoor attic antennas. But with these contacts with such little power my antenna envy has been put to rest.  Also it's time to put some paper on the wall as well, today I sent off my application for 1,000 mile per watt award. The contact I used was DL0MM as it was 4154 miles with but with only 1/2 a watt.

OH8A shack

PJ2T antenna setup

Elecraft EQP contest........done

I had heard of this contest in the past and to tell you the truth if I did not own multiple Elecraft radios I most likely would of pasted this contest by. I wanted this year to give it a go with my K3 at 5 watts and not use the macros that N1MM contest software offers but go LIVE CW!!! The contest by no means is a CQ WW CW caliber with thousands of stations competing for top spot. In a way it's kinda like the contests I dread to go into...the "sprint" contests. In these contests you have lots of information that has to be pasted along.
 For example an exchange in a sprint contest can be as follows:

You must send the following information...the other stations call, your call, your serial number, your name and location (state, province or country) 

A exchange can look like this  K7GM DE VE3WDM 146 MIKE ON K...this may not look to bad in written form but try it at about 25 or so WPM CW.

For me when you have lots of information to pass along and it's CW I experience the deer in headlight syndrome. The EQP contest helped me build up my confidence as there was not as much information as a sprint but but close. Also with this being a small contest if you just scan the band for contacts or search and pounce as it is called you get board very fast. So I plunged right into calling  CQ EQP there was no pileups but it does keep you hoping when two or three op's are waiting in line to contact you.
So for the short time I was in the contest here is the results

QSO's     Points    Sections  total points
13            610         8               4880

All but one contact was State side...my DX contact was F6HKA and it was not with out me asking for some repeats of the information. During the slow times I made some contacts in other contests that were going on over the weekend...point giving.

ELECRAFT QSO PARTY THIS WEEKEND

The Elecraft QSO Party is this weekend and runs from 1800UTC,  March 12th to 1800UTC, March 13th 2011. The rules can be found at the elecraft site. All can join in and it does not matter if your part of the Elecraft family or not....who knows after the contest you could be convinced to cross over to the DARK SIDE.

I will be listening for you.....CQ EQP DE VE3WDM

When all else fails read the manual

My WSPR problem on 30 meters has been solved and as I am composing this blog I am giving 30m WSPR a go. At this point I am decoding signals which in the past just did not happen. Soon I will find out if anyone hears me out there. At this point I am not shooting for DX just local....even around the corner would be great. For some background just before I share the solution I purchased a used pair of 30 meter mobile whip antennas configured them into a dipole configuration. That part went very smooth once I tried to actually work some WSPR signals absolutely nothing was happening!!

Something went wrong.......but what

LP-100 displaying the bad news

On Sunday before I fired up the K3 on 30 meters to try the new attic dipole on the air with WSPR. I double checked the SWR with my MFJ analyzer and it was 1.4  . I was very surprised to see the SWR went from the 1.4 yesterday to 2.4 when I tried to transmit with my K3!!!! I went up to the attic (AGAIN) to have a look at the antenna just to make sure something did not happen  over night. It looked very good so I then I hooked up the antenna analyzer to the antenna and low and behold the SWR was now 2.4. I checked the coax with an ohm meter and all was good. I then removed the balun out of the picture and it was still 2.4 SWR. I then ran a short piece of

30 meter WSPR up and running

New 30 meter dipole with MFJ Balun

I was able to purchase two used 30 meter Valor pro am mobile whip antennas (20.00 for both) they will be used for WSPR (also CW) and will be heading up into my already crowed attic antenna farm. I have a bracket that will allow me to configure the antennas as a dipole.  I first have to move my Diamond discone antenna to make room for the new dipole not sure where the discone  it is going to end up. The support for the new dipole will be the same as was made for my 40 meter mobile whip dipole. This time I  adjusted the whips for the lowest SWR while the antenna was on the main floor using my MFJ-259B analyzer. The 40 meter antenna was adjusted in the attic that was