NOVEMBER 3 VICTOR ECHO MIKE
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NOVEMBER 3 VICTOR ECHO MIKE

ham radio Projects and musings from a (Relatively) new operator

POTAwards

7/11/2018

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One of the things that I enjoy in life is doing things that make other people happy.  It's not out of some sense of altruism.  It's quite the opposite actually - it's self-serving because it brings me a lot of joy to see someone happy, grateful, or excited about something, and to know that I had a part in the reason for their happiness.
For me, this was the reason I decided to sponsor a plaque for the upcoming POTA "Support Your Parks" event.  In addition, Brian - K0ATZ decided to sponsor one as well, so there are a pair of plaques at stake - one for "Individual Activator" and one for "Individual Hunter" during this Summer's 2 day event!

  "Support Your Parks" is a seasonal event, which happens 4 times a year - Spring, Summer, Fall, & Winter - for 2 days.  The Summer 2018 event is on July 21st and 22nd (UTC).  The main purpose for these 2 day events each season is to encourage portable activity in state / federal / provincial parks.  The only "Rules" at play are the normal rules for the POTA program.  If you'd like to try and earn one of the plaques available for this Summer's event, you'll also need to be certain to be a registered POTA user/member, and activators will need to be certain to submit their logs with enough time for their regional coordinators to upload them before 23:59 UTC on August 5th (regional coordinator contact info is available on www.parksontheair.com.)
Have fun, and I hope to hear you in/from the parks!
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Pirates on 6 meters

6/1/2018

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     No no no, not radio pirates making illegal transmissions - I'm talking about peg-leg, eye-patch, hook-hand, swashbuckling pirates!

     Now that I have finally finished up my Information System degree, my evenings and weekends are (hopefully) just slightly less busy, so I'm actually going to be able to participate in Field Day this year.  The club I am a member of (well, usually a member, I think I still need to send in my dues for this year!) is the Red Rose Repeater Association in my home-town of Lancaster PA.  This year, Doug, W3COB, volunteered to coordinate things for us (thanks Doug!) After the emails bounced around about who had what equipment, and what types of stations we wanted to set up, we landed on that I would be using some of my equipment to set up a station to do 6m SSB.  The core of the station will be my Yeasu 857d, and my Buddie-Pole (configured as a 6m beam.)
     Am I planning on dressing like a pirate?  Certainly not (probably not?  maybe not? I might....) but I have found that with our club's callsign - W3RRR - I do end up sounding rather pirate-ish when trying to work fast.  Saying W-3-R-R-R during a contact often ends up sounding W-3-arrrrrrr in a contest-like environment:-)
     I know of at least one other pirate station out there(K3RRR).  Are there more?  Maybe we should start an HF net on Talk Like a Pirate Day...

​
Arrgh! See Ya Chum!
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WFD2017 Detailed Results

8/25/2017

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If you're anything like me you may have missed the fact that the Winter Field Day 2017 results were posted a while back.  The website breaks down the entrants into the 3 main categories for posting results:  Indoor, Home, and Outdoors.  To see those results check out the Winter Field Day 2017 Results Page.

Based on those categories,  I was in the "Outdoor" group, and I ended up in spot 77 out of 182.  Last year the categories were done slightly differently, and in the group I was in, I was about 33 out of 40.  I'd say I improved, considering that in the new groupings my score was up against all the multi-ops etc!   I was curious though, how I fared compared to the same group I was in last year (Single Operator, Outdoor) so I grabbed the data and worked some pivot magic with Excel.  In just the 1O group I was 41 out of 118 - a great improvement if you ask me!
 Anyway, enough about me - it dawned on me that others might be interested in some more detailed groupings, results, and data evaluation.  With that in mind, here are the results in some of the breakdowns that people might be interested in.  At the end of this post you can also find the Excel file that I used to generate these results, in case you are data nerd too and want to play around with it.  Lastly, I do have a typo on some of these, but it is just that - a typo, it doesn't actually change the scores or rankings, so I'm not going to bother fixing it, since it would take forever (I'm not even going to tell you what it is - we'll see if you catch it ;-) Enjoy!

Outdoor Categories

1O


2O


3O


4O


6O


Indoor Categories

1I


2I


3I


4I


5I


6I


7I


8I


Home Categories

1H


2H


3H


4H


6H


Results by Power Category

QRP Outdoor


QRP Indoor


QRP Home


100 Watts Outdoor


100 Watts Indoor


100 Watts Home


High Power Outdoor


High Power Indoor


High Power Home


Other Categories - just for fun!

All Participants by # of Contacts


All Participants by CW contacts


All Participants by Digital Contacts


Thats all folks!

Or, at least that's all the categories that I broke down - if you're a data nerd, you can probably think of even more ways to slice and dice this, but I figured this would cover the majority of what most people would want to see!  If you want to do some of your own slicing and dicing, the files below are free for the taking:  The first is a zip file of the PDF's of all of the tables above, and the second is the Microsoft Excel file that has the data and pivot table in it that you can feel free to play around with..enjoy!
wfd2017_results_charts.zip
File Size: 6693 kb
File Type: zip
Download File

wfd2017_results_table.xlsx
File Size: 92 kb
File Type: xlsx
Download File

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Give Me Liberty

6/6/2017

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WWFF Activation Report!

I haven't been out to do any portable operations for some time, primarily because I haven't had to do any work trips for a while. For me, the two things usually coincide.  I just had another work trip to do that took me to our New York City office, which meant I also had the opportunity to do another activation!  I'll warn you now - this post gets a touch sentimental at the end, but ham radio does that to me...
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Liberty State Park KFF-1623

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View from Liberty State Park, a couple days after the attacks in London.

​I used my normal bag of tricks when deciding which park to activate on this trip.  I've written in the past about my methodology for choosing a park to activate, so if you're into that kind of thing you can read about it here.  For some of my recent activations I have stayed inside of state parks, but for this trip I was staying at one of the standard chain hotels and driving in and out of the park in the evenings.
Since I wasn't going to be able to do one of my preferred portable setups, I did a little fiddling with my antennas.  I wanted to use something a little more than just the hamsticks that I use while mobile, but I was going to be limited with what I could do because of time and space constraints associated with driving in and out of the park.  The solution I ended up going with was to use parts of my Buddipole as a vertical antenna, in the ball mount on my car.  I've touched on this before when I wrote about how I love the standards (specifically, the fact that most of our antenna bits use 3/8-24 connectors!)  This time, I kept notes when I was fiddling around, in case someone wants to replicate it:
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20 Meters:  2 antenna arms, 1 coil, tapped 13 windings down, and 1 of the standard telescoping whip sections (extended just short of 5 full sections)
40 Meters (voice portion of band): 2 antenna arms, 1 coil (not tapped), 1 of the standard telescoping whip sections (extended 4 sections), and 1 additional detail - verticals on cars at this frequency often need some assistance making a match.  In my case I have an MFJ-907 unun installed the car (I talked about that here.) I also needed use that on it's "J" setting to match the antenna to the feed-line.


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So how did the activation go?  Awesome! The first evening I made 50 or so contacts, with a couple DX highlights: Portugal, and a Mobile in England.  
The second night I made a handful of additional contacts, but I also had an additional DX contact that deserves special attention - ON7NQ.  This was my very first DX contact on CW.  While that in itself is special, what really struck me when I made it back to my hotel for the evening was this:

For me this was awesome.  Not awesome they way we use it in every day language, but awesome in the sense of it's true definition - inspiring great admiration - because I feel like this contact represents the very heart of one of the purposes of ham radio, international goodwill.  Here's why:
   
​     I'm very new to CW.  I've only had my license since 2014, so I didn't have to learn code for my test, but I'm fascinated by it, and wanted to learn it.  I'm still a complete noob though, struggling through contacts at 5 wpm.  That's what makes this so fantastic.  It was obvious to me that Danny took his time, and slowed way down from what he was accustomed too, in order to make this contact with me.  He even worked through me sending the "?" character a couple times as I tried to work out his call.  After we finally made the contact he even followed up with encouraging words on FaceBook, which was just spectacular.  
Let's pause for a minute to reflect on this.  As a contrast, I was walking the streets of NYC earlier the same day, which is one of the most diverse places in the US.  Even in that diversity however, there isn't much goodwill happening.  People are in a hurry, they push, they shove, we crammed onto subway cars, and the friendliest thing I heard anyone say was "Get out of my way!"  With all the opportunity for interaction face to face, we often miss that chance.  But here, on ham radio, someone I don't know, from another culture, who probably speaks a language I don't know much of (Ich spreche ein bischen deutsch, aber es ist nicht so gut...) treated me with patience, kindness and encouragement.  Via ham radio, we are participating in international goodwill in a way that exceeds domestic goodwill.  I love that I participate in a hobby where this is an every day occurrence!  I can't say any more than that, so for now 73!
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Oleta River State Park KFF Activation

2/18/2017

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Post Contains Affiliate Links
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     This past Wednesday I woke up at 3:00am, with temperatures just under 30 degrees Fahrenheit (-1 C) and made my way to the Harrisburg Airport in my home state of Pennsylvania.  By the end of the day I was setting up my radio equipment in Oleta River State Park for another WWFF-KFF activation just outside Miami, Florida, where temperatures were 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 C).  It's nice to experience some warm weather in February!
     For me, this was another one of my work trips that took me on the road.  Since I was visiting our Miami office, I looked around at the parks that were on the list at the KFF web site. The Oleta River State Park is a little gem, kind of hidden just at the edge of Miami - I'm sure that a lot of people pass right by it without ever realizing it is even there.  If you slow down to have a look, within just a few minutes of the hustle and bustle of both Miami and Ft. Lauderdale is this:
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     Another neat thing about this park is that for less than the price of most chain hotels, you can have a very unique experience staying in one of their small cabins:
     While these are neat little cabins, I will warn you that it is much more fun if you are an "earthy" person.  Creature comforts are limited to mattresses that have seen better days, the furniture you see on the porch in the picture above, picnic tables, and a communal bathhouse (with only 1 working shower in the men's room!)  Notable things that are missing if you are accustomed to standard hotel chains are things like bed linens, pillows, towels, toiletries etc.  Any time you stay in a lodge/cottage/cabin inside a state park, think of it more like camping where you need all the stuff you would need if you were camping, except for your tent.
     For those of us that don't mind a little grit however, this was an awesome place to set up and play radio!  The bunk beds quickly became the place where I threw my luggage.  There was a small, wall mounted table which immediately became my operating desk, and (after emptying it) one of my Pelican Storm Cases become my chair.  Operating position - check.
     While the less hardy folks out there might be worried about the rodent sized crack under the door, for me this made a simple, and perfect place to run coax out to my antenna!  Once again, I was confronted with a situation where I didn't have any decent size trees within reach of the amount of feedline I have, so I used my buddipole mast to support my Quick and Dirty Feedpoint that I used to feed 2 inverted V dipoles - one for 20 meters and one for 40 meters.  Because the soil here is a weird mix of sand / rock / coral I couldn't really use my ground screw that I normally use to anchor the center of my mast, so I made use of what was available - the picnic table!
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     So with that - antennas were up and ready to go, and I was able to start operating.  With conditions being what they are, and my antennas being so close to the ground, most of my contacts were domestic, but I did have 1 with Italy (on 40 meters, with an antenna only about 12 feet of the ground!), 1 with the Azores, and 1 with Puerto Rico.  The biggest highlight however, was my first ever CW contacts!  My first ever CW contact was with Richard - W0IS [ed.  Rick has his own blog! - www.onetuberadio.com check it out!] and my second came from Chuck - KO4SB.  Thanks guys!  Since I still didn't own a key (I just bought one today) I made those CW contacts using the Up and Down buttons on my mic via the "MicKey" option on my Yeasu 857d.  If anyone wants to know how to do that let me know, because it isn't intuitive, and you have to have the settings on the rig just right - I'm willing to share so you don't have to mess around trying to figure it out like I did!  

     Because I like to have some "lessons learned" every time I do something like this, here's a list of some of the things I took away from this activation, that might help you if you do something similar (of course, you might be a pro, and already knew these things...)
  • If you travel a lot make sure you buy non-aerosol bug spray (you can't take aerosol on the plane, even in checked bags.  I should have known this with all my traveling I do, but I guess never considered it before.)
  • Make a checklist of things you need, and keep it with your gear/traveling supplies so you don't forget anything.  I forgot a towel, so each day after my shower I had to dry myself with my shirt from the day before!  I also had to use a shoe to pound in my tent stakes that I use to tie off my dipole ends!
  • It's cheaper to fly with two 50lb pound bags (on AA $60), then it is to fly with a single overweight 70lb bag (on AA- $125.)  See my post about re-organizing my luggage.
  • If you think cats fighting make an awful sound, you've never heard a racoon fight.
  • There are some awesome little natural spaces hidden right in the middle of our populated areas - go look for them!  
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    - N3VEM -

         Welcome to my Ham Radio Blog!  This blog was started primarily to share my two concurrent shack builds - my mobile station and my home station.  Over time, this has grown to include sharing about my operations, and general radio-related thoughts that I have as a newer operator.  
         
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