Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

Posted on October 16, 2024 by robert

This is seriously off topic, but there was good viewing of comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS about an hour after local sunset here in Rhode Island tonight.  It was fairly easy to find using a smartphone camera, but I had to wait a bit longer to see it with my naked eye.  The full moon rising, even though on the other side of the sky, was so bright that it eventually washed out the comet.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS gets its name from the facilities that first spotted it back in 2023: the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Tsuchinshan means Purple Mountain) and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).

Photo taken at 7:04 PM local time (23:04 UTC) looking almost due west from Exeter RI

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Spectacular Auroral Display

Posted on October 11, 2024 by robert

Solar Cycle 25 has been an exciting one for sure, with many X-level solar flares and a few excellent opportunities for those of us who live around 41 degrees latitude to see auroral activity.

This past week several notable flares corresponded with large Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that were Earth effective. One of those flares impacted earth and produced a Major G4 Geomagnetic storm (in fact, it was just a tick below the level of Extreme G5). The CME impacted earth after 1500z Oct 10, causing the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF/Bz) to point south, creating perfect conditions for aurora.

Here in RI, last light was around 6:45 PM local time and by 7:15 we were in a remote area with good views to the North, East, and West.  The display was stunningly bright to the naked eye.  At one point the red/pink color in the sky was so intense that I noticed the ground was reflecting the color.  The photos below were taken between 23:20 and 23:30 UTC.

The Geomagnetic storm continued for almost 12 hours as shown in the Space Weather Prediction Center graph below.

As always two wonderful sources for Amateur Radio operators interested in solar condition are:

Space Weather Prediction Center record of K Index showing severe conditions around October 10

Photo by author taken around 23:25 UTC in Exeter Rhode Island

Photo by author taken around 23:20 UTC in Exeter RI

 

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CWT #120 (Gold) Completed at 19:04Z

Posted on October 2, 2024 by robert

After making my first 10 contacts, I officially completed CWT #120 for 2024.

Completing CWT #120 was my last remaining goal for 2024.

  • Hunt 1500+ POTA parks
  • Do at least one activation with the Elecraft KH1 hand-held QRP rig
  • Give a radio club presentation on solar power/batteries
  • Compete in 120+ CWTs
  • Wildcard (like finish the QDX or some other ham related project)

Now I have to put some thought into goals for 2025!

Posted in CWops, CWT, Goals | Leave a comment

POTA Activation Silver Springs US-10547

Posted on October 1, 2024 by robert

Maybe it is the magic of a new month, or perhaps the cooler days, but today felt like an excellent day for an activation.  Silver Springs park is just a few miles from my home, and has a couple of nice spots to park near the pond.

With a light mist falling, I was on the air just before 4 PM local time.  I used my KH1 QRP rig, which puts out about 4 watts.  less than a half-hour later I had 14 contacts in the log.  The skies really opened up right as I was putting the antenna away (a mag-mounted 17′ quarter wave vertical).

Thanks to all the hunters who helped out!

Activation of Silver Springs Park US-10547 using a Elecraft KH1 handheld QRP rig (4 watts). A 17-foot quarter-wave vertical on a mag mount was used. HAMRS was used to log the contacts.

Posted in Activation, CW, POTA, QSL | Leave a comment

Activated a Hamshack Hotline Phone

Posted on October 1, 2024 by robert

There is a group of hams that have formed a global PBX called Hamshack Hotline, that allows hams to use VOIP phones to connect to each other.  The service is free (donations are encouraged).

After checking their website, it appeared that a Cisco SPA525G2 was especially easy to provision.  This phone is often available on the used market via eBay.  Prices seem to run from the $30 to $50 range (shop around for sure).  The provisioning process is simple: fill in a service ticket with a copy of your original license and a photo of MAC address of the phone.  The most difficult part was discovering the internal network address assigned by my router.  I expected it to identify it as Cisco, but it didn’t. In my case it began with the letters “spa” (the first three letters of the model name), and was followed by the MAC address.  Within a few minutes I had a desk phone (great speaker phone too) on the Hamshack Hotline network.

A Cisco SPA525G2 connected to Hamshack Hotline (chatting with W2DAN on the speaker phone)

I was surprised to find that Hamshack Hotline can connect to our club’s W1SYE repeater.

 

Posted in HSHL, VOIP | Leave a comment

Hunted K4NYM 500 Times

Posted on October 1, 2024 by robert

During the summer months, Bill Brown K4NYM, wasn’t on nearly as often as before – perhaps avoiding the heat, or dodging the many storms that Florida has endured.  Even so, Bill and I worked each other 500 times.  100 of those contacts were at a single park, Florida Trail US-4559.

 

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Yet another POTA Award

Posted on September 24, 2024 by robert

The Parks on the Air program really works hard to keep folks engaged.  One of the way they do this is by having an unbelievable array of different awards.  About a month ago, I earned my first “Eagles Nest Award”, for working a park in Florida 100 times.  Of course, this is because of Bill Brown K4NYM.  In fact I need to work him 4 more times to have an award for working him 500 times!

Thank you Parks on the Air!!!

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Updating MagTag WX for OpenWeatherMap API 3.0

Posted on September 9, 2024 by robert

A couple of years ago, I put an Adafruit MagTag Weather display together.  The MagTag was a fairly inexpensive CircuitPython device with an eInk display and built-in WiFi.  It used a free (at that time) service called OpenWeatherMap API

Within the past month, OpenWeatherMap changed their policy and now requires a credit card to validate the API key, but they still don’t charge for up to 1,000 API calls per day.  Their interface allows you to set restrictions on the maximum API calls per day (it defaults to 2,000).  In my case I set it down to 500, so I never have to worry about a software bug causing me to get billed.

The code.py program that Adafruit supplies currently, is out of date, as it uses the API 2.5, which has been replaced by API 3.0.  The change needed to the source file is trivial – simply change the line that has the 2.5 reference to 3.0 and you are all done.  Like this:

URL = “https://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0/onecall?exclude=minutely,hourly,alerts”

Note: I had edited the original bitmap background image to add my call on the top line.

Posted in Projects, Weather | Leave a comment

N5J Contact on 17m FT8

Posted on August 18, 2024 by robert

I’ve been casually looking for N5J on Jarvis Island for the past week or so.  I heard them once on 12m CW early on, and have seen many spots.  Since my operating time has mostly been between local noon and 6 PM, that simply wasn’t an optimal time.

This morning I happened to be awake right around sunrise (about 6 AM local time), and figured grey-line propagation might help.  So I checked the spotting network, and sure enough saw a number of spots on 18.095 FT8.  I didn’t want to wake the house stumbling downstairs to the basement, so I used my phone to connect to my FelxRadio 6600M.  That tiny display certainly wasn’t optimal, but I did see that N5J was on the air and quite strong, so I gave them a call.  A few minutes later, I had an answer

Data screen of SmartSDR on my iPhone showing NJ5 Contact

Waterfall display from SmartSDR showing strong N5J signal at RX frequency, and my TX offset

Solar position showing N5J location. The contact was made 26 minutes after local sunrise

About  10 hours later, N5J uploaded their log, and sure enough my contact was confirmed!  Jarvis happens to be an ATNO (All Time New One) for me. and should bring my DXCC count to 280.

{ED} A couple of days later I worked N5J on 20 and 15m CW.  Never heard them on SSB.

Thanks to the DXpedition for their hard work.  I understand they finished with over 100,000 QSOs, which is outstanding.

Posted in DX, FT8, Propagation | Leave a comment

First FT8 QSOs with QRPLabs QMX Transceiver

Posted on August 11, 2024 by robert

One of my goals for 2024 was an electronics “Wildcard” where I would finish my QDX transceiver kit or some other ham related project.  Today I will mark this one complete, as I finally got my QRPLabs QMX Multimode Transceiver on the air and completed a couple of FT8 contacts.

I did have a few glitches trying to get the rig on the air using WSJT-X (version 2.70 rc6).  The first had to do with the short USB-C cable that came with the kit.  When I tried using that, I received a pop-up message saying the USB device was unrecognized and had failed.  Several folks said they had issues until they changed the USB cable, which I did, and that appeared to work just fine – COM 6 came alive.

The next issue had to do with setting the rig in WSJT-X.  The manual suggested “TS-440”, which was a choice that appeared as “TS-440S”.  However that did not work, and returned a pretty long failure message when I tried to the Test CAT function.  The manual also suggested “TS-480”, which did appear as exactly that (no “S” at the end).  That fixed the issues and WSJT-X was now in control of the QMX.

A few minutes later at 1842 UTC I responded to CQ POTA N0WHA EM91 who was -04, and received a -15 in return.  At 18:48 UTC I responded to CQ POTA N4NR EM64, who was +04.  I did receive a -14 report and a 73 in return.  Both stations confirmed the contacts in their POTA Activator logs.  So the QMX is working.

In the photo below, you can see the QMX attached to an Elecraft T1 QRP Antenna Tuner, and if you look closely you can see a 3dB attenuator installed in line with the QMX.  The QMX lacks a tuner, and if it detects a high SWR, will immediately shut down the transmitter.  This quick response prevents the T1 from being able to do its job.  By inserting a 3dB attenuator, that guarantees no matter what the antenna load, the worst case SWR seen by the QMX is less than 3:1 – a value that no longer cuts out the transmitter.  When the T1 is tuned correctly, the 3dB attenuator can be removed.  If you leave it in, the 5 watt output of the QMX is reduced to 2.5 watts.  3dB of RX attenuation really doesn’t matter on the receive side.

In the photo below, you will see the exchanges with N4NR as well as the waterfall.

 

Posted in FT8, QMX, QRP, QRP Labs | Leave a comment