The forecast is for the low temperature over the 24 hours of the event to hit 27F.  Hopefully I'm prepared enough to stay warm!  To let you in on a little secret, I actually started writing this post on Friday, the 29th - mainly so that I could have the template laid out, and then just start sticking pictures in as I do my setup.  Depending on the speed of the contacts, I might even throw in some "during" pictures.  There's a good chance of that, because I am by no means a big gun, and I take part in contests mostly for fun.  Hopefully you enjoy looking at these pictures, and my setup, as much as I plan on enjoying the event!
     Between last weekend and this weekend, some of our snow melted, but not much - you might be able to tell by the difference between the pic I posted last week, and the pics of the day of the event. 

     Brrrrr..... Field day in winter - who came up with that idea?  These guys! I think its great, and I'll be operating in the 1O category.  Basically that means I'll be a single operator, operating outdoors.  Once next weekend comes,  I'll post some pictures of my setup. When I have it ready to go, and I am waiting for the official start of the contest I'll need something to do, so I might as well snap some pictures and post them to my blog.  I don't want to give away too much ahead of time, but here's what I am willing to give away:
     1) I'll be running on battery power
     2) I'll have a tent
     3) I'll be operating primarily voice and digital modes
     We did just get a record snowfall for our area this weekend - a couple feet, so unless it gets crazy warm this week there will probably still be some snow on the ground for me to deal with.  Because I have a brand new son (only 2 weeks old!) my outdoor operation is going to be in my backyard, so that my YL can summon me in to help with baby stuff if needed.  Since I will be operating from my backyard, I did take one liberty today while I was shoveling - I cleared the spot where I am planning on pitching my tent, next to the fire pit at the back of my yard.
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     In the spirit of the event, it is encouraged that station setup doesn't begin until the morning of the event.  Since this took me about an hour, I'll wait an extra hour the morning of the contest before I start setting up, just to call it even.  (besides, that will give me time to have a hot breakfast in the house before I head out and start trying to bang tent stakes into the frozen ground!)
     At this point I can only guess what my neighbors must have thought....."Why on earth is he shoveling in his back yard?!"

​     I guess it's because I'm fairly young (30-40ish) and I grew up in the 80's and 90's, but I can't hear the word "transformers" without following it up by singing in a somewhat robotic voice - "robots in disguise" (Here is link to a sound clip from the opening credits of the cartoon if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
     As far as HAM radio goes, I'm actually talking about RF transformers, not the robots.  The one I recently bought looks almost as cool (maybe?) as a robot.

     I ended up buying the unun transformer MFJ makes.  I mounted it under the parcel shelf in the trunk of the car, so now it is a simple matter of reaching under and twisting the knob to the location I identified during tuning of the antenna, along with popping on the corrosponding Hamstick.  While I was messing around back there, I also finally put the ferrite beads on the choke that is wound right where the antenna enters the car.  Here are some pictures of what I did:

     The only antenna that I had time to tune up (so far) with the the new unun in place was the 40 meter Hamstick.  Before, the lowest SWR I could get with this antenna was about 1.9:1 which meant I could only use it on the one frequency I tuned it to - not much fun.  Now with the unun in place, the lowest SWR is just over 1:1, and I can cover a pretty decent chunk of the voice portion of 40 meters - yay!  
     I did notice something interesting though - the directions that come from MFJ tell you to tune the antenna for lowest SWR with the unun out of the line first, then put the unun in the line, and switch through the settings until the lowest SWR is found.  My gut told me to do something different, but I followed their directions.  Without the unun in place, I tuned the antenna to the lowest SWR I could get, at about the center of the voice part of the band (7.212).  This was my 1.9:1 SWR.  I then put the unun in line, but the lowest SWR I could find switching through was about 3:1.  Luckily, my antenna analyzer (the RigExpert AA-50) does a graphic sweep, so I could see that there was an SWR dip down to about 1:1 just slightly higher in frequency.  Once I retuned the antenna again, I was all set.  This led me to believe that the directions that come with this unit (the MFJ-907) should follow this format:
 
   1) Tune antenna for lowest SWR without the unun in the line
     2) Put the unun in line, and switch through the settings until you find the new lowest SWR
     3) Re-Tune the antenna for lowest SWR at the desired frequency

     With all that being said, here was my though - before I put the unun in line, should I really be tuning my antenna for lowest SWR, or should I be tuning it for resonance (X=0)?  With my 40 meter Hamstick, lowest SWR and resonance are actaully pretty far from each other.  I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but at 1.9:1 lowest SWR, the reactive part of the impedance was relatively high.  When I scan up and down in frequency on the analyzer looking for the point where the load is all resistance (maybe not all resistance, but as close as can be expected), there was a point higher in frequency that was something over 100 Ohms, pure resistance (so higher than 2:1 SWR) and there was a point much lower in frequency that was about 8 Ohms pure resistance ( higher than 6:1 SWR).
     So now I look to the Elmer's of the world....should I play around a little, and re-tune based on resonance, and then put the unun in line, or should I just be happy that I now have an antenna that "works" on 40 meters in my car?  If I do re-tune based on resonance, should I start from the 6:1 SWR point, where the antenna is longer, or should I start from the just over 2:1 point where the antenna is shorter?
     Even if I don't get answers to my questions, I'll probably play around with all the options, and just see what it does.  I might even download the data from my antenna analyzer and share it here, so that everyone can look at it with me.  Right now thought, it's COLD outside, and I can't really tune a tall HF antenna with the car in my garage, so it might have to wait for a warmer day - at least one above freezing.

​     A week or so ago I had a meeting at my company's main offices.  For those of you who know me, you know that this also means that I was very close to one of the Ham Radio Outlet stores.  Hooray!
​     If you look at my blog post titled "A Failed Experiment" from December 1st, you'll find out that I was not super thrilled with the receive audio in my mobile station.  I took advantage of the proximity to HRO on my recent business trip, to purchase a mobile speaker.  This one actually:

     All I can say is, I wish I had done that earlier.  In previous cars I just assumed that there was no way anything could sound better than the car's built-in audio system.  Now that I am using one of these speakers, I must say that it sounds waaaaay better.  I'm not an audiophile, so I don't know all the fancy terms, but I'm assuming that because this is a communications speaker, it does a better job with the frequencies specific to the spoken voice, when compared to the audio from the car, which is designed for music, AND had some less than optimal "conversions" of the audio to get it to the car in the first place.
     Anyway, since I blocked the access to the funny map pocket in the center console of my car, I stuck the speaker in that empty space.  It works well there, and sounds good, but I'm not sure yet if that will be the permanent location - this is mainly because I had planned on using that space differently in the upcoming "Phase 2" of my mobile shack.  
     Here's a pic of the speaker in its cubby-hole for the curious:

     While I was at HRO I also grabbed some ferrite beads that I needed for my coil of coax that is serving as a choke, à la the method described by KB0G that I referenced in my post back on 12/6/2015.  Maybe I'll be able to sneak some time this week to snap them on......

​Happy Hamming!

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     And the winner is.........Pofung, or as just about everyone else knows them - Baofeng!  They're known for their cheap HT radios, and I'll quickly admit that I own two.  They're awesome for throwing in my carry-on when I'm flying, without beings stressed about what happens if they get smashed while being jammed in an overhead, or under the seat.  Apparently the Chinese company that makes these decided that Baofeng was too hard to pronounce for its growing base of American customers, so they are supposedly attempting to rebrand their radios bound for the U.S. to Pofung.  I guess that's easier to say?  I also happen to own the Pofung 9500 mobile radio - UHF only.  I grabbed it because at my old job, I was looking for a small, cheap, radio that I could mount at my cubicle, which could hit the local UHF machine.  
    

      It was perfect for that.  Since I've changed jobs however, it has been sitting in a box in my garage, so I pulled it out and set it up on my desk home, because there are actually a couple of UHF machines that see some use, that I can reach from here.  As I pulled out the manual to refresh myself on how to program it, I remembered how amusing a read the manual was.  If Baofeng was really worried about accommodating their American customers, they would have probably been better off forgetting about rebranding, and using that money to hire a native English speaker to translate their manual.  The directions are definitely all English words, but I'm not sure they quite hit the mark....without further ado, here are some quotes straight from the manaul that warrant Baofeng (Pofung?) getting the "Good Try!" award......

• "Thank you for purchasing Amateur Portable Radio, which is a dual band/dual display radio” (I like this one, because, aside from the bad grammar {my grammar stinks too, but at least I get close}, the radio is neither dual band, nor dual display.)
• "Don't launch with high output power..."  (Huston, we have contact!)
• There is a 1/8" jack on the back of the radio - the manual calls it the "Adjustable measuring port" and its function is "Production of set parameters when special port” (??!!!?)
• "If use outside launch coverage area, walkie-talkie fault of a loud sound."  (I think they're trying to say that if you attempt to transmit outside of a certain frequency range, you'll hear a warning sound....)
• This next one is a personal favorite - I think they're trying to explain the CTCSS and DCS tone scanning function...."When CTCSS or DCS functions activation, walkie-talkie to stop on the busy frequency, and decoding the CTCSS or DCS signaling.  If CTCSS or match the DCS signaling, cancel the mute interphone."
• And lastly, is the entire section that I am completely baffled by.  I don't quite know what the directions are describing, and to make it worse, the whole section is titled "2. Trumpet playing the opening ceremony."  (Maybe there is supposed to be a fanfare when you turn on the radio???!)

     Oh well....for what the radio cost (practically nothing as far as radio's go) I guess I should go easy on their translation attempts......

See you goodbye till next typing!