Hat's of to Palm Radio!

When I came home from work today there was a package in the mail for me, now this is not an unusual thing but I never ordered anything!! Holding the package and making my way back up to my condo apt I am old and do forget things but I was very sure I did not order anything. I opened the package and out came a very nice QSL card from DK7SN, DL9SCO and DL2BAT all hams from Palm Radio in Germany.  I have used their Palm paddle for years and without a doubt this is one of the best paddles I have ever used! I have used it with my Elecract KX1, K2 and KX3 radios and for those CW op's out there you understand when I say it's very smooth, adjustable to your fist and the dit's and dah's you ask of it are the only ones given to you….no more no less. Those of you out there that hit the trails (now that the summer is here) and are looking for not only a portable key but one that is compact and reliable the Palm needs to be seriously considered! It seems I have gone off on a tangent here and wondered away from the package I received.........it seems that the gents at Palm radio read my blog and read a comment I made about their cable that connects the Palm paddle to the rig. I said that it seemed it could become damaged easily and for that reason with my KX1 I made the cable attachment permanent. Well HAT'S OFF TO PALM RADIO the cable has been re-designed and  they sent me the new cable free of charge! What they improvements have been made you ask……..

Old cable on KX1

1. The new cable is thinner.
2. The new cable is more flexible.
3. The 3 pin connector ( the area of concern for me) now has an integrated strain relief.
4. The strain relief 3 pin plug is available on it's own so you can use your own cable to suit length.
5. A 3.5mm gold plated plug is added for a more reliable connection.

The new cable

All the new Palm Paddles I am informed now ship with this new cable. Julie and I on many occasions have had a conversation about success in business. Seems we have always come back to the same conclusion over and over again and that is CUSTOMER SERVICE! As hams we all know the companies that offer over the top customer service and those that fall short, it's not my place to mention those that fall short........Some of the companies that I have dealt with that offer fantastic customer service are Elecraft, DX engineering, N4PY software,Telepost, Alexloop, Begali keys and  A&A Engineering this is not an exhaustive list but the companies I have dealt with and had over the top service. Also added to the list is Palm paddles!




   

There is a good idea out there…….

Trying to find my way around

Each morning I catch up on my blog reading and on a few blogs that I read LED lighting seemed to be the order of the day for illuminating the shack. I have been up early the last few mornings to see what is on the air waves. I did not find much and decided to work on my contest code I use Morse Runner, this is a good program that adds a very nice contest atmosphere to the operator. A problem became very apparent as I was using the program and it had nothing to do with the program. My keyboard skills were rusty and the lighting in the morning  here at VE3WDM is very dim so cheating and trying to see the keyboard proved to be very frustrating. I really have no problem with the letters or the numbers but it was the F keys I was having problems with. The Morse Runner program uses the F keys for such functions as call repeat,

That's better

exchange repeat and so on. I was really messing up the F function keys because in the low light I just could not see my keyboard. I was getting very frustrated and on two mornings I just closed the program. Then remembering the blogs were I read about LED lighting I went out and purchased an LED lighting strip. It was super easy to install on the roll top desk and it seemed there was a spot just for the low profile LED strip to be placed. I was not sure if this was the ideal place for the lighting strip (lighting up the operating area and keyboard) It turns out that when the natural light went missing and the LED strip was powered up……all is well at VE3WDM and no QRM from it either.

This happens to everyone else but not me…….

Iphone meets truck

To begin this is a post that has NOTHING to do with ham radio!  Getting that out of the way here we go……. It was a normal day at work and things seemed to be going just fine. We had our job given to use and it was not an outside job. That was great considering it was -20C and with the windchill -30C or more. So being indoors was a bonus, the idea was to pickup some coffee and head to our location. Once at our work site and in a nice warm building I noticed my Iphone was not clipped to my inside pocket! The first thing that came to mind was I left it at the coffee shop where I had it out checking email. Going back out to our truck my partner greeted me with an apology and showed me my Iphone…….it had been run over by our truck!!! It seems my 650.00 Iphone fell out of my pocket lined itself up perfectly with the trucks real

Otterbox defender case

tandem wheels and was run over! The phone was in a carry case called the  Otterbox Defender (don't work for the place or do they throw any money my way) When buying the case I was told it protects the phone in almost all situations.  This sure was a test and when I was given the phone it sure did look like it failed BUT I am thrilled to say the phone once removed from the Otterbox was in perfect shape and I mean not even a scratch. For those of you out there who have a smart phone ( not just Iphone) it sure is worth investing in a case (like the Otterbox) to save your investment from a potential disaster.

The captcha has finally arrived!

Out with the old

In the past I have posted my frustration with the captcha and how it was so mind bending and hard to read. Well someone in captcha world has just figured out that numbers can be captcha's as well and not the CRAZY letters we had to wrap our heads around. I would say for the last month I have been thrilled to post on blogs to find captcha's that are all numbers!! The captcha gods have heard and listened.

In with the new and may it stay!

The Elecraft k3 stopped working

The K3 just stopped!

This weekend I hooked up the Elecraft k3 as it was all disconnected when we had the house painted as it had to be moved for safe keeping. I wanted to make sure it still worked with all the computer software and the Alexloop. Software can be a very funny thing in that you really don't have to do anything and for some strange reason it just stops working! I am happy to report that all between the PC and Elecraft K3 is working well. There was one heart stopping moment, it was during a tuning session of  the Alexloop and the rig. I tuned the Alexloop for max receive I then hit the tune button on the K3 with the power on 3 watts the SWR was around 3.1 to 1 so some fine tuning was needed. As I tuned the Alexloop the SWR did a sharp rise and the rig powered off!! I waited for a moment and tried to power the K3 on again and NOTHING! I then checked the incoming power and it was dead. Well I thought better the Astron 20 amp supply taking a hit than the K3. Looking at the Astron supply the lights were on and 13.8 volts was showing on the meter. As I narrowed things down it was a fuse on the power bar that the Astron feeds power to. The K3 was fused at 1 amp at the power bar and not 5 amps and the fuse on the power bar went. After the proper fuse was installed all was well again.

Blown fuse

Last week I was able to purchase for a GREAT price a used very large roll top desk and this is going to be the desk that I use for the radio setup when we move to the condo. Not sure what I am going to do with my 3 monitor setup as it's great having all three. There seems at this point to be room for one monitor and all the radio gear. Whats great about the roll top once  your done all the radio equipment hides away into a nice oak desk. At this point I am brain storming on how to incorporate the other two monitors???
As for radio time Saturday was spent getting the K3 setup and my heart restarted when it powered down. There was a contest going on so the band were very busy but it did give me a change to see how Skimmer works under a contest situation. I can see how this piece of software will give my limited size station some advantages. The picture below is what sold me on the desk, the keyboard tray and the two pull outs.

Dayton = NEW STUFF!!!!

This is a great idea from Ten-Tec which was introduced at Dayton....I give you the QRPer blog he has done a stellar preview. Check it out and get the grey matter excited!!

Time for a change,

The IMac and KX3

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog know that I run an Elecraft K3 along with Windows XP programs. I also have the Elecraft KX3 that runs on Mac programs. My eyes were sure opened up to the software programs out there for ham's running on Mac machines. I will admit for this long time Windows user getting the swing of Mac took some time.....and I am not done learning as of yet! My wife Julie is very much into photography she has a Mac pro laptop and did have the IMac desktop PC. Some months ago she felt it

Downsizing

was time to part with the IMac. I simply walked the IMac down the hall to my shack and hooked the KX3 up and thus began the Mac adventure. Julie since then has been taking some evening College course's in photography, this has put a flame to her picture taking!  As they say " to make a long story short" the IMac has found it's former home in Julie's office down the hall. I am now a strict Windows ham again! It sure was a fun ride and maybe in time the funds will come in to get a Mac of my own.

MFJ 1026 noise canceling unit...for today ham!

Things don't seem to work  when you really need them

I have been reading on many blogs of fellow hams who have had an increase in QRN due to many electrical sources and routers just to mention a few. The enjoyment of ham radio has been for many cut short due to devices blowing a hole in the spectrum!! Yes the companies are suppose to adhere to regulations regarding emissions. BUT both the adhering and the enforcement are very much lacking. We as hams are left to somehow deal with the hash that many modern items produce. I have this feeling it is not going to decrease as time goes on but increase. I have found this is were in my case the MFJ 1026 shines for me. I have a Plasma TV on the main floor and when Julie is cooking, surfing the net or relaxing the TV is on with some music playing in the background. I could go down and ask her to turn the TV off....but....I am a married man not a foolish man. Below is a YouTube video I did today showing how effective the MFJ 1026 is. It was done with my Iphone so some movement will be noticed. (note to self....get a proper recording device)

A snow day.........for some!

Only 2 hours worth of snow so far

 For the past few days the weather folks have been talking about a storm that's on it's way.....largest one in over 5 years!! In the past we have had similar forecasts and nothing has materialized. This time they were right and overnight the snow started and is still going strong. Yesterday I was able to book Friday off, the drive to work for me is 1 hour (one way) on the highway. We live out in the boonies and the roads can be very bad. I am not one to get into a car crash and  possibly ending up in the hospital to just get to work. 

Hey another crazy on the road!

Julie is not so lucky she does not work to far from home and her work is not so forgiving about taking the day off. I was up at the crack dawn to drive her to work. At this time it had only been snowing for a few hours and it seemed to be at the 6 inch mark already. The storm is supposed to continue all day so we will see what we end up with!

Time has come to drop some blogs..............

It was time for me to go over the blog and do something that is never very easy to do.....I have had to preform this function in past and never looked forward to it. The time came to look through the blogs on my blog list and remove the ones that have been dormant for some time. As I went through the blogs I had noticed that some were without any activity for more than a year. I felt these ones for one reason or another were no longer functioning. It ended up I only had to drop about 3 blogs but it gives me more room to add active blogs. I can understand how workloads, family and sometime health problems can lead to a blog going stagnate. One thing I am guilty of is not changing my blog layout now and then to give it a new and fresh look. I think in the 3 years the blog has been up and running it has had....maybe 2 makeovers!! I should pay more attention to this as well as adding and or refreshing up the pages as well.

Where does the money come from???

For some time now there has been a rumour of a new radio coming out from Kenwood.
In Japan Kenwood is anouning a new addition to the family of radios. They are saying the TS990S will be released Feb 2013.  It's a great radio with many features and great specs...but it comes with a very steep price tag.....9,138.78. I am just not sure how folks come up with the cash for rigs like this.

The Blue screen of DEATH!!!!

The Blue screen of death

Saturday afternoon started out in a very relaxed way on the computer looking at blogs and then the monitor went a blue colour with lots of geek mumbo jumbo on it......then the PC restarted. All seemed to be ok until it happened again and again turns out this is the "Blue screen of death" I had the bright idea of loading my Win XP CD and running the repair option.  From here it went downhill real fast as the repair process went on it's marry way I noticed it sure was taking along time. I then just happen to see that part way through the repair program the Blue screen of death showed up again. Seems even Win XP repair was caught up in the loop now. I was not able to get back to Windows after trying all kinds of back door options, it seemed my only option was to reformat my hard drive. The thing that bothered me was I was not able to get back into Windows to back up any of my MANY programs!!!! The hard drive formatted ok last night and now it's time to load drivers, programs and then to get them running and happy with my radios.  UPDATE......driver loading not going as planned for some reason the onboard video card can't be found.  In the process of updating to Win XP SP3 maybe that will do the trick.....oh and for those wondering how this blog was done and put up????? Im on my blessed MAC at the moment....:)
Merry Christmas to all my readers!!!

Tis the season...........

Tis the season to become busy........here at VE3WDM lately the dust has been gathering on my ham equipment. Over the past week and a half I had good intentions of sitting down and getting some radio time in....BUT....it just has not come to be. There has been Christmas shopping, working late during weekdays and on weekends, putting the tree up and the list goes on. By the time I settle in getting on the radio feels more like a chore than hobby. On the happy side I do have 2 weeks off over Christmas and I made a list and checked it twice, there is no naughty on this list just some nice ham radio goals over the break.  This evening I found some time to get fire up the Elecraft K3. To my surprise I did not find the bands (20m, 30m and 40m) not in great shape. I didn't make any contacts but I did hear PY2CW from brazil and a few U.S stations but that was it.

Does the early bird get the DX...it's said he gets the worm.

Last Friday we had a "situation" at work that had me working until about 3 a.m. and when I got home I was still all pumped from work and was not ready to jump into bed. The thought came to me about getting on the radio and seeing what DX pileups were out there. I had heard of folks getting on in the wee hours of the morning and catching some rare DX. With great expectations  I turned the radio on....10m dead, 15m dead, 17 and 30 same thing!! Alas on 40m my Elecraft P3 showed some faint signals, I spun the dial to the frequency only to find it was some very weak State side stations. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it's kinda a let down when one is anticipating WILD DX!!!

Back up on my captcha soap box

Some time ago I blogged about the Captcha's one would have to deal with when trying to leave a comment on some blogs.  Over time Captcha's have changed and not for the better. I can remember when they were simple......a pain but still simple to solve. Then I guess cyber bots became smarter so the Captcha's  became harder!!  The new Captcha's had a "wave" to them along with upper and lower case letters. Then as fate would have it the dam bot's did it again became somehow smarter....the Captcha's then had an UNCOOL way of blending their letters together and burring them to boot, oh and lets add numbers now too.
So my latest Captcha rant is......this week I was going to post a comment on a blog and on the comment page it contained the Captcha  along with the comment box. There was the blur, the wave and numbers as usual so I filled in the maze and then added my comment. I proceeded to hit the post button I was then informed my Captcha attempt did not match....surprise surprise!! I was instructed to hit the back button and try again. To my surprise my comment was gone and I had to start all over again!!! Is this the NEW Capthca....mess up and your punishment is to start all over again. I guess from now on I am going to  have to add but another step to my comment process, highlight and copy the comment in case I am punished and have to start again and maybe again and again....you get the idea.
I am stepping off my soapbox now........thank you.

Did you ever have "one of those days"

It's now Sunday and it's not been "one of  those days" BUT one of those weekends!!! Now that it's Sunday the frustration factor for me is just about blowing it's way through the roof  here. Maybe if I vent my weekend on the blog it will help level the playing field for me....oh and thanks for listening. Well Friday started off like any other Friday. I woke up to celibate the TGIF feeling, the weekend was here. My work day went well but it was after work that things when a little funky. After going to the gym I got back in my car to head home only to find I had left my Iphone and company cell in the change room. So back I went and both phones were gone!! I looked around in the change room and nothing, I checked with the front desk and no one had turned anything in. It was back out to the car thinking maybe they were in my gym bag or in the car somewhere. I ended up going back to the front desk at the gym to call my cell to see if rang in the change room. I called the cell and low and behold it started to ring at the front desk!!!! It was turned in and the young lady at the desk within all of 5 minutes forgot it was turned in

Ham radio without the radio????

The last few weeks here have been a couple of busy ones. As most of you know who read my blog the Elecraft KX3 arrived the other week. I have spent time putting the rig together as in good QRP spirit I ordered the kit and not the assembled unit. The assembly went very well....there were some bumps  I did encounter along the way. I made a 4 part video series giving updates of the KX3 assembly. This was another project that has kept me very busy and  keeping me away from the blog. Recording the video was the easy part the editing and getting it ready for the blog and YouTube was a long and drawn out process. The video series is very close to completion and it's really my first video series I have had to edit and play with so it's a little rough around the edges. I am planning to have the finished product up on my blog and YouTube this week.....well that is the plan anyway. Then there is the KX3 and my iMac computer...a new adventure for me in the Mac world. I ordered and paid for Macloggerdx, sure there are free programs out there but I opted to splurge for Macloggerdx.  This was but another learning curve for me, I have always used Windows for my rig control, logging and contesting so this is a new horizon for me. I have been "Macing" this week as well trying to get the KX3 to communicate with my Mac software (all is well in that dept now) also getting used to the Macloggerdx program. I am by far not a Mac geek at this point but I have been able to understand and use the KX3 in harmony with Mac!!! So with all this "stuff " that was going on in the shack I have not as of yet made one single contact on my new KX3!!!! Having said that I have not made any contacts with any of my rigs in the shack. I have been reading of band conditions that are up and down, I have heard of great 10m openings and then solar storms that has left a lot of the bands silent.
So this week my goals are....
1. To get the KX3 video up on my blog and YouTube.
2. Learn some more about the Macloggerdx program.
3. Go to the gym three times this week....(non related ham goal)
4. Oh and finally get on a radio and make contacts!!!!

Very embarrassing

The bands were very dead for DXCC's so I turned the radio off and decided to just do some web surfing and that soon became same old same old. I then had a brain storm that it has been just way to long since I had a good old fashioned QSO. Most of my time has been hunting for counties that I need for my ARRL Jubilee award. This meant for the past few weeks and maybe a month or so I have been just working the CW key with "599 73 TU" and that's it. I turned the K3 on and it just happen to be on 14.060 and KM4CU was calling CQ. I came back to him and the QRP to QRP conversation began..........so I thought!! Tom's code was great from Florida........my code..... not so much. I was absolutely embarrassed. I kept messing up his call, I could not even get passed "nice to meet you" it was like my mind went BLANK I was not able to figure out what to say and how to translate it to code!!!  Tom was very fast to send his 73's to me (it was like I was an ugly date). Once again I just struggled with the ending and once done ( which seemed like for ever) Tom was just gone........it was like a Morse code blind date that just went south very fast.......very embarrassing!!!! Tom if you read this blog I am very sorry for the code train wreak. LESSON LEARNED

Listening to my readers

My blog from the very beginning was intended to get ham radio and in particular QRP operating out there. I have gleaned the fruits of other blogs, the information, the challenges and the new understanding to certain areas of the hobby I never new existed. In my last post I floated the idea about linking social media to my blog. My intent was to increase the exposure of ham radio to even more readers. After numerous personal emails and comments on my AmateurRadion.com feed I have come to the understanding the only real exposure would be the strong possibility of Mal-ware being spread!! I have done some surfing of my own and it would seem social media on my site could be used by hackers to infect the site with Mal-ware . This Mal-ware could be spread to the readers of the blog by simply following a link on my site or social media sites.
I have listened to my readers and have taken down all social media anything from my blog. This blog is here for the readers to enjoy, grow in the hobby and share their information and learning curves with me and the other readers....It's NOT a place to spread computer virus's and to have readers who found the blog useful and entertaining at times to pack their I.P address and go elsewhere.
As of this posting VE3WDM'S QRPower blog is social media free. The readers have been heard and action has been taken.....continue to enjoy the blog. 

Two years of blogging............

It's hard to believe that I have been blogging for 2 years now!! I have had a great time learning about the hobby from other bloggers. I have been able to expose myself to new areas of ham radio. It's because of blogging I have dipped my toes into QRPp very low power operations. I was able to make a 45,686 miles per watt contact earlier this year. I have somewhat moved away from Windows as my only OS and invited Linux into the mix. That has turned out very well although it's been learning curve but a refreshing challenge. Also with reading many posts about outdoor QRP operations I have also started to do the same, operating from parks in the area as well as my car when the weather is not so inviting. I have taken on the challenge of the ARRL Jubilee award and hoping to complete it (as you only have one year to complete it) and doing it with QRP power.