One stop daily Amatuer radio news update!

While surfing the net last week I came across two great sites if you want Amateur radio news at a glance with the opportunity to look into each story more in-depth via a link. In the past I have visited Southgate, Eham and ARRL for up to date ham radio news. These websites bring bring it  all together in one easy to navigate site. They are updated daily to keep you informed on what’s going on in the radio world. Check them out a lot of work and time goes into each  and in my humble opinion it’s a nice jumping place to keep up to date. The first info site is called Ham Radio update, it's updated daily and you are greeted with a headline some brief info. If the news item interests you then you can click on the link and read further.  Ham radio new is easy to navigate and you can be brought up to speed on Amateur radio news quickly. The other site is called Ham Radio Daily, this site is more in depth with not only news item but YouTube, DX Cluster, Top HF spots and propagation just to mention a few.   Here are the links and let me know what you think............Ham Radio Update and 

Ham Radio Daily

UTC time on the desktop

My new UTC clock on the PC desktop

I have Friday off today and got my running around out of the way this morning, so I decided to flip the radio switch and see what was happening. I was going from band to band around 1600 UTC and there was just stations here and there most U.S stations. Then at 1700 UTC I was listening on 20m and on the Elecraft P3 the lower end of 20m came alive! From only hearing U.S stations to hearing LOTS of  European stations and at first I could not tell if it was a contest or not but it had to be.  I went to WA7BNM contest site and looked things over to see what contest it was while at the same time listening to the contest to see what the exchange was. To be honest I did not have to much luck with either, I really could not make out the exchanges and the web site was not really clear what contest this could had been. As I was attempting to ferret out the contest an old issue came back to me....UTC time! I have an app on my Iphone that gives local and UTC time but more often than not the Iphone is not close by when I need to reference UTC time. The same issue comes up when logging a contact on paper temporally until logging it on the PC. I was going to purchase the MFJ 108B dual LED clock but it was good I held off. It occurred to me to get online and search for something that was a free download on the internet!! I found a neat little program that sits on your desktop. You can resize it, move it around, when you restart your PC it comes alive in the last place it was left when you turned your PC off and best of all it's free!  Have a look at it and see what you think and by all means if you are using another program let me know what it is and I will check it out.

Supermoon photos

 Julie and I were out this evening taking pictures of the Supermoon. These were taken over Lake Ontario with Toronto peeking through the center photo. The camera was the Nikon D800 and the lenses were the 70-200mm with a 2.0 tele converter and 24-70mm lens. Not really a ham radio post but a great way to spend an August evening.

Time for some shack cleaning and putting items up for sale.

As I am doing my operating from the condo there are a number if items in the shack that have just been gather dust. My feeling is if Im not using it someone else can! So the following items are up for sale…….
1. Balun designs balun model 1110cu it's called a QRP balun but is rated at 300 watts. It's a 1:1 isolation balun I did use them at my old place to make sure not unwanted RF was radiating from the coax. Since I only have one antenna now I no long require one.
The price is 25.00 including shipping within North America.

2. Elecraft N-Gen this is a kit that I put together myself and works great. It is very good for many RF and IF alignment tasks. The price including shipping is 50.00.

3. LDG AT200pro antenna tuner I am no longer in need of a tuner as my K3 and KX3 all have on board ATU's this unit works and looks great. Price is 150.00 shipping included.

4 Hendricks 41dB step attenuator, I put this unit together myself and works great. Price is 50.00 including shipping.

The selling of these items will both clean up the shack and give me some ham bucks to clutter things up again!

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!

Getting old and ham radio..........

Keeping it simple

I'm only 54 years old but over the past few years it's either my age or the growing of the hobby both technically and gadget wise that has given me some senior moments!! I really can't blame just the hobby as I have had times when heading to the car to only stop and wondering where is was I was heading too and for what! I'm comforted from online reading that says this is from having lots on the go and nothing to do with loosing your memory.  How does this relate to ham radio you say...........The rigs I have are the Elecraft K3 and KX3 both are menu driven as are many other rigs on the market are. I find myself going to the user manual or as I call it sometimes the "useless manual" to relearn a function that was just used the week before. I have had my ego get the best of me at times and refused to hit the books as I "knew" how to do this silly function command!! After going through several unknown menu's and not knowing how I got there, what I have done to the rig and better yet how to get the hell out! Oh and don't get me started on passwords that a whole other blog post!

3x5 life savers

For those of you who have the same memory melt downs at times as I do here are some helps that I use. In high school and University the good old 3x5 cards helped me learn (notice I said learn and not memorize very big difference) and pass many a test. The 3x5 helped me in the past and is doing so today, I write down step by step instructions for anything ham related items so I can refer to the card and not the Advil bottle. I cover over the card with clear tape so it will last for some time and the only thing I have to do is keep the cards in a place I can remember.....but maybe there is a card for that...:)). Just today I wanted to charge an external battery for my KX3 as I was going to do some hamming this weekend. I pulled out the battery and for the life of me I could not remember the setup to charge this darn battery. Thanks to a fellow blogger Larry W2LJ who has the same battery set me on the right path with an email. Now the instructions (simple as they may be) are taped on the side of the battery. 

The Rigol DS 1052E oscilloscope 50 mhz to 100 mhz

Rigol DS 1052E now DS 1102E scope

For some time now I have been in the market for an oscilloscope. Like most hams I don't want to break the bank but at the same time want good value for every buck that is spent. My travels lead me to the Rigol DS 1052E 50mhz  dual channel scope. The scope comes in at the low end  price but has had some very glowing reviews. Also one major plus was the ability to "hack" this scope up to a 100 mhz unit! This a a software hack so no need to get into the SMD nightmare. This may not be what is called a 100% ham blog posting but I do know that lots of hams and non hams are looking for a great scope as well info on how to hack this one to a 100 mhz unit. I am going to run down the process (and mistakes) I went through to finally jack the DS 1052E up to the DS 1102E 100 mhz scope.

A weekend of fun and then snow!!

It may look like rain on the window but it's very much snow

It has been a week of not  much radio time and one of where you just seem to be spinning your wheels and not getting to far. In the evenings once dinner is done I am just to tired to hit the radio. The weather last week was great very warm and showers only now and then. The temp's were in around 24C dinners were BBQ's each night and even turning on the A.C was being considered. That was short lived when this weekend came

Male Polar bear

around and the temp's dropped. When I say dropped I mean it has gone from 24C last week to snow falling today and frost warnings for this evening. My Saturday was spent with Julie at the Metro Toronto ZOO.    We are about an hour and 20 minutes away from the zoo but this place is amazing and well worth the drive.

Sumatran tiger...seeing us as dinner dinner

Julie and I were there for 9 hours and we still did not cover the entire property. There are over 5,000 animals, about 1.3 million people visit the zoo each year. There are both huge outdoor exhibits and very very well done indoor as well. Julie was able to take 1500 pictures (and now is editing them) if you ever come to visit Toronto this is a must see venue. Here are some of Julies ZOO shots from our amazing day.

White Lion not to camera shy

Jaguar having his say

Have you ever been listening to something that may not be there???

Thought it was time this evening to power up the K3 and see what was on the bands. The software  I use is DXLab and it comes with a spot collector as it's called. I noticed a spot for AX7GN on 20m so I double clicked on the spot and the K3 magically was there! So here I am listening for AX7GN and yes there is a station there calling what sounded like CQ....or did I want it to be a station calling CQ? Well I hoped it was not little voices in my head talking to me. I heard nothing so I just put my call out there....and listened just maybe a little to intently. I did hear what sounded like VE? VE? By this time the APF was on the RF gain was being adjusted and the filtering narrowed.  I gave the call again at a deafening 5 watts!! Between the static and the ringing sound from the APF  I thought AX7GN was giving out what  "KINDA" sounded like my call.....or was it those voices again!! I passed along a 559 but did not hear much in return. To be honest I am not sure what the heck happened.....did I want to hear my call so bad that the static kinda sounded like VE3WDM?? For a short time I listened to the band and low and behold AX7GN was there and answering some U.S calls! I'm not going to put this one in the books as I am just not 100 percent it was just not the DX voices playing games with me. Has this ever happen to you??

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)

Anonymous is getting very smart!

Happy to be back from the vet's

First off  I took a vacation day from work as I  had to take Oliver (our cat) to the vet for a followup after dental surgery and by the way looking back on my career decisions I should had been a veterinary dental surgeon! They do say hind sight is 20/20. Oh and for those wondering Oliver had a great checkup, he was ecstatic  to get out of the veterinary clinic and home. Some of the other time today was spent on the radio TRYING to make contact with TX5K. On all the bands I had absolutely no problem hearing the pileup trying their luck at making contact but I could not even hear TX5K!! On Saturday my wife has a hair appointment and a trip to the dentist.....no surgery just a checkup....BUT  in ham radio lingo what does XYL at the salon and dentist spell........RADIO TIME!!! So I am going to give TX5K another go before the DXexpedition is over. So why did I entitle this post "Anonymous is getting very smart!" In the past I had

So what did and didn't happen in 2012.....

Over all it was a very good year as I and my family had good health (I did have a cancer scare but things turned out to be ok).

1.The year started out with me earning my way toward the  ARRL Diamond DXCC award, I wanted to do it QRP style and well I came up short with only 83 DXCCs for the year. BUT having said that I am very very happy with the results of 83 contacts and I am sure I can snag the others this year for a DXCC award in the QRP category.

2. A new radio arrived as well the Elecraft KX3 and that sure is some radio and I  have not yet been able to give it a real good workout.

3. I started out 2012 wanting to increase my CW coping speed for contests and the best way for me to do that was to get on the keyboard.  My keyboard skill is find expect for the numbers and where they were without looking. I have now accomplished that goal as well. I had used various CW programs to help me out with the speed and getting the numbers and keyboarding are now in harmony.

3. I wanted to clean up the shack of unused ham gear no sense it sitting there taking up space....that was done (my beloved KX1 included). I was very surprised at the amount of money that came in from stuff that I was not using......now I am looking at my K2 along with the external Elecraft tuner and amp (100 watt) and thinking of putting in up on the auction block. I have the Elecraft K3, KX3 and ordered another K2 to build and sell over the winter months when ham radio is slow.


4. I was able to work my first split contact which to me was pretty cool.

5. I starting posting videos on Youtube up to this point I have a total of 8 videos, 22 followers and 5,638 views to date. It was rough going at first trying to figure out how to upload, edit the video and getting my Iphone to do a half decent job of recording as that is all I have as of yet.

6. During the summer months I was able to pack up and use my Elecraft K2 for some short QRP CW contests. It was nice to get out in a local park and operate the rig.

7. I descovered the art of QRPp operations and was able to top my miles per watt award

8. My kit building was strong and included Qrpometer, Hendrick attenuator, KX3 (kinda a kit), starting a new Elecraft k2, Smart charger, adding a gell cell to my  K2 as well as some mod's to the Elecraft K3.

9. For some strange reason it was the first year I have not gone to  any ham radio flea markets.....not sure why that is?  Wait a minute I can think of one reason....lots of junk!!

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

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

Passwords and email address's

Please see Listening to my readers post for update on the social media scene at VE3WDM's QRPowers blog.  

Now that the blog is two years old and I have started to get the hang of posting, linking URL's, uploading pictures and changing the format of the blog around now and then. I felt it was time to move the blog (and me) along toward the social media arena. I have had a Facebook site (this link has been disabled due to possible virus threat) for some time now but have not really used it. I do have a Twitter (this link has been disabled due to possible virus threat) account as well and have been known to "tweet" now and then. I have not really been committed to either Facebook or Tweeter. It's not because I feel they were of no use it was just...no I had idea what I was doing!!!

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.

It has been a Captchas morning!!!

Its been one of those days

As those who read my blog on a regular basis I did have a post not to long ago about these DAM captchas that are used when you post a comment. After reading the post you may had gotten the idea that I was not really a fan of them....in fact I don't use them on my blog. I do get more spam now but I just delete them and move on. Well this weekend I have been trying to post a comment or two on blogs that use the captcha. For some reason I have not been able to crack the letter pattern. At first I thought it may had been my laptop and it being Linux and all......but not so. I have tried it on my XP OS, Mac OS and Windows 7 and on all the machines I am shut out from solving the captcha!!!!! Are the chaptcha gods raining their wrath down on me OR are others of you having troubles as well?? As a side note I thought maybe it was due to the fact my Linux OS was out of date and needed to upgrade. So I began the upgrade and for some reason Oliver my cat (for now anyway) walked across the keyboard. He must had "Pawed" in a keyboard combo and now I have to totally re-instal Linux and all the programs that were on the laptop are now gone.