Operator-to-Operator Award With AB9CA

Posted on December 11, 2024 by robert

Dave AB9CA is another one of those POTA operators who always seems to be on the road and on the air.  I usually hear him multiple times a day.  I finally completed a Operator-to-Operator award with Dave earlier this month.

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QRP Labs QMX+ Received

Posted on December 8, 2024 by robert

I’ve been very impressed with the evolution of QRP Labs and their fine single and multi-band QRP rigs.  I’ve built many of them.  Their latest venture is the QMX+, which is a 160m to 6m CW and Digital radio (they are talking of adding SSB in a future software revision).  They changed the form-factor this time, and rather than jam everything into a micro-sized box, they’ve opened things up, which makes assembly MUCH easier, and allows space for future features.

Posted in CW, Digital Mode, QMX+, QRP, QRP Labs | Leave a comment

Unbelievable 10-Meter Activity for CQ-WW Contest

Posted on November 24, 2024 by robert

This weekend is the CQ World Wide CW contest, one of the largest of the year.  When I woke up this morning, I checked out the waterfall display from my Flex6600M, and could not believe my eyes: 10-Meters was wall to wall CW signals from 28.000 to 28.200 MHz.

Zooming the display out so show the bottom 200 KHz of the band loses some of the fine details – pretty much every 200 Hz there is a CW signal.  In almost 55 years of ham radio, I’ve never experienced as much 10-Meter activity.

Posted in Contests, CW, Propagation, Solar Cycles | Leave a comment

What a Beautiful Sight!

Posted on October 23, 2024 by robert

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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.

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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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