The count keeps going up. At 14,002 as of this afternoon:
At the end of last year I was at 12,000 QSOs, so that’s +2,000 in a half year (my goal was 1,500 for the year). Much of that is due to participation in the CWTs, which are held at 1300Z, 1900Z, and 0300Z on Wednesdays local time.
Since taking CWops CW Academy, I continue to try to participate in as many “CWT” mini CW contests as possible. The 1900Z one today was my 30th for the year (I was also on in the morning at 1300Z, but only for 30 min). I came so close to a goal of making 1 QSO per minute as a Search & Pounce station today – I finished with 59 Qs in a hour). I have to try running sometime as that should double my rate.
I’m hoping I can finish 50 more contests by year’s end (there are 26 more Wednesdays left in the year and 3 opportunities a day, so 78 remaining). We shall see!
I was only able to attend part of Sunday. During that time I worked 3 CW and 5 PHONE Satellite contacts for the bonus, ran the alternative power QSOS for the bonus, and assisted my friend Ryan KC1KUF for his 2-hour SSB session.
Despite baking heat back at my home, it was about 12 degrees cooler at Glen Park.
I also used Winlink VHF to send email messages to friends and updated my Twitter feed while I was at the park.
IC-7300 feeding Arrow Crossed Beam (3×7) and a Toughbook CF-31 running SatPC32
Although I didn’t mention it yesterday, in the process of upgrading my IC-9700 firmware to version 1.30 (in an attempt to get Winlink TX audio working – nothing to do with satellites), it unknowingly cleared the CI-V USB Echo Back setting to OFF. SATPC32 requires this to be ON. Without that setting, it will not set uplink or downlink frequencies, which will remain at whatever value they were initially set to when the Doppler correction begins.
Because that was an issue that had me hung for an hour or more a year or two back, I remembered it immediately, as I noticed that the TONE was popping up correctly, but not the frequency. Easy fix, turn Echo Back ON.
Since yesterday I’ve added an XW-2A QSO (thank you KN2K) and a bunch on AO-91 (N2FYA, KC1MEB, KE8RJU, N8HI, and KB1HY). Everything is freshly calibrated except CAS-4A and 4B, which won’t come into play during my Field Day operation on Sunday. So I’m good to go.
I should be on the air from Glen Park here in Rhode Island FN41 by 0930 local time on Sunday June 27th as NE1RI, 2A RI (Newport County Radio Club). XW-2A, AO-91, ARISS, SO-50, and RS-44 passes should be workable, with XW-2A, AO-91, and ARISS between 10:30 and 11:05 AM local time all having great passes.
For a variety of reasons, I’ve been off the satellites since last year. With Field Day back on, one of my jobs is to make a Satellite contact for the Newport County Radio Club, NE1RI. That means dusting off the equipment, calibrating uplinks, and generally making sure everything is good to go.
Sadly, several of the birds I can usually depend on are no longer operating (or have issues). But a new cross band repeater is active aboard the ISS.
I was able to make two FM contacts today with Ray KN2K in VA and John WV8DOH in WV today. These were the first contacts I’ve made thru the ISS repeater, and it was amazing how strong the downlink was. I can’t imagine how difficult it will be during Field Day, as it was busy enough today.
ISS Repeater: 437.800 Down, and 145.990 Up with a 67.0 Hz Tone
Being my first QSO, I am assuming that the correct Satellite Name is ARISS (since the Cross Band Repeater is part of the ARISS operation), and Paul N8HM was nice enough to confirm.
After the ISS pass, I worked a station on RS-44 (CW) and two stations on SO-50. I also recalibrated the uplink for AO-73, XW-2B, and XW-2F. I still need to calibrate for CAS-4A, CAS-4B, and XW-2A.
Ed 6/23: I did catch CAS-4A, CAS-4B, and XW-2A passes and have made QSOs on all three. So everything has been recently calibrated. Should be spot on for Field Day.
I’ve made some progress on my goal list for 2021.
2021 Goals Completed:
2021 Goals Underway:
I suspect I may fail my goal on the last two. I spent most of my spare time in Jan/Feb/Mar working POTA (rather than 160m contacts). And many of my needed DXCC contacts depended on DXpeditions, mostly canceled due to COVID.
In March, I decided to sign up for the CW Academy and spent April/May working on that about 10 hours a week. That allowed me to add 2 new goals:
I finally had enough downtime to move my WB4SON-10 Winlink Gateway over to its full-time hardware:
Power measurements of the entire system indicates it pulls 22 watts from the AC mains. Of course that load is on 24/7, and that works out to about $3 a month in electricity.
Left to right: Power supply with DR-135 on top, red box is the DRA-50, miniPC
When I was a newly upgraded ham in 1971, the only radio I had that would operate voice mode was a Heathkit “Sixer” — a small, 2 watt AM rig. I had a 6-m dipole antenna taped to the inside wall. Despite that, I recall chatting for hours with local friends, and outstanding DX that would pop up from time to time.
We are in the height of the Sporadic-E season, plus there is a VHF contest going on. I’ve worked about 8 new countries so far (a few have event confirmed – bet they needed RI). The waterfall is full of 6-m FT8 signals. I don’t even have a 6-m antenna; I’m just using my radio tuner to match my Inverted-L (resonant on 160-m).
A lifetime ago (in other words the year before the pandemic,), I purchased a FlexRadio Flex-6600M, along with a Maestro Control Console for remote operation. My first year of use was plagued with problems with things that seemed basic to me; like the internal tuner simply didn’t work (refused to find solutions to situations that presented a 3:1 SWR). The software was flaky, often requiring cold boots, and it corrupted an internal flash card several times. While certain parts of the radio fascinated me, it was so frustrating to use that I left it unused almost a year. That was very disappointing, as it was the only radio I was aware of that allowed for remote CW (although CW on a Flex is VERY glitchy).
A couple of months ago, Flex introduced a new firmware upgrade that fixed the tuner issue (after a year of complaints). It now works flawlessly, and appears to handle a 10:1 situation. In many ways, the radio seemed more stable, but after a few weeks of operation the radio would refuse to work on power-up. Flex service responded, saying the radio needed a cold reset (a rather long process). That restored operation, but it would fail again after a few days. A promised firmware update fixed that issue, and introduced other problems, which is typical of FlexRadio – a fix often results in other broken things.
So here is my dilemma, I really like the Flex6600M — it is a fantastically versatile receiver (multi-receiver, actually), and it has the best Noise Reduction I’ve ever used on 80 meters. I love being able to use it from an iPad or iPhone, remotely. And important to me, it is the only radio that I know of that allows for remote CW operation (my Yaesu FTDX-101MP with LAN adapter does not). However, Flex software updates tend to be buggy, and it appears that no one who understands a CW operator was involved in the development of the software (no ability to adjust weight, for example, and missing or shortened elements while in break-in).
The latest software update, to fix some latency issues, and hopefully to resolve the need for cold-resets, dropped a couple days ago. Updating the Flex6600M was fairly simple. Updating the remote Maestro Control Console was a major pain in the backside. The process took over four hours and requited user responses at least three of the times it applied a partial update. Flex blames it on Microsoft. That may be true, but sounds more like a poor design choice up front to me.
I still love it, and use it every week to participate in a late night CW contest. Like many things in life, it is a mix of good and bad. I just wish FlexRadio would get serious about their software development, and get it to the point where it was two steps forward and zero steps back.
There are two good reasons to use a dedicated miniPC for your RMS Packet station. The first is that the sysop user agreement you sign states that you will do you best to make sure the software runs on dedicated PC with power backup. The second is that traditional desktop computers are real power hogs (even laptops to a lesser extent).
I purchased a ACEPC AK2 miniPC for under $200. That box has 120 GB of SSD, 8 GB of RAM, and Windows 10 Pro installed. It has four USB ports, WiFi & Hardwired, and BLU4.2, running a quad core Celeron CPU (1.5 GHz/2.3 GHz). It also has room to grow as another internal SSD can be added.
As it turned out, setting the darned thing up took well over a day. Not the fault of the ACEPC, but due to Windows 10 updates which hung. As it turns out lots of different platform users complained of identical issues, which were due to a defect in Microsoft’s update procedures. The fix was to go to Microsoft’s website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10) and run the update from there. That process took almost 9 hours to complete, but once done, the ACEPC AK2 was running the latest OS version (May 2021).
The next issue was to convince myself that the miniPC was power efficient, and indeed it is! When sitting on the desktop idling, it pulls from 6 to 8 watts. The maximum I’ve seen it pull when running an active Winlink session is 12 watts. My only complaint is that the power-wart that comes with the unit (12.0 VDC out) has a pretty poor power factor, 0.52. A few pennies more put into the design would have a power factor of 0.98. Even so, compare 6 watts idling to a 30 watt laptop, or 120 watt desktop (a modern efficient one – older gaming PCs pull 400+ watts). Expect a power bill less than $10 per year to keep the gateway running.
ACEPC AK2 miniPC (5.5 x 5.5 x 2.0 inches) 120GB SSD, 8GB RAM Quad 1.5 GHz CPU, Win10 Pro
The miniPC supports auto boot on power up (A BIOS setting), and of course Windows can be configured to startup the RMS Packet software.
