I've been fiddling with a couple antenna things because I want to get some more permanent options in the air while I work on the home shack (you can get up to speed on that project by starting here and following the links at the end of each post.) and eventual tower project. As I was messing around, it dawned on me that the desk I am sitting right now, faces a window that looks over the top of our addition and into the back yard.  The addition has a metal roof.  Why not throw a random-wire end-fed into the trees across the back yard, and use the metal roof as a counterpoise?

     End-fed antenna's usually need an unun to transform the high impedance of the end of the wire into something that the radio or tuner will be happy with.  This usually means that a 9:1 unun is just the ticket.  With that thought, when I should have been going to bed, I was making this little number out of scraps of wire and hardware from my garage, along with a couple bits from the electronics stash:

     If you do a search on that internet thing for "9:1 unun" you'll find all kinds of diagrams, far better than what I could draw for you.  I mostly wanted to share this because I was pleased with how I was able to make myself a "mini" 9:1 unun.  I managed to squeeze the whole thing into a 3x2x1 project box. It won't handle high power, but for 100 watts or less here at home, or as another piece of ammo in the portable kit, I think it will be just the ticket!

     Once I had the thing built, I threw a 650k resistor across the terminals (because that's what I had handy), and then put the antenna analyzer on it just to make sure I had the winding correct and had it wired correctly.  It read at something in the neighborhood of 1.5:1 across the entire HF spectrum, so I'm gonna take that as a good sign!  All that will be left to do is to attach an appropriately random length of wire to it, connect the counterpoise terminal to the roof, and hook it up to the rig to see what happens when it actually has some power applied.

     Just for fun, here's a couple more pics of my handy-work as I threw it together:

I can't really say I was surprised this week, but I have found myself being "curiouser and curiouser" about ham radio satellites!

It seems like everyone is talking sats and amsat at the moment. I follow several folks on Twitter who are into satellites, the crew at ICQ Podcast keeps mentioning them, and I just read through the Winter Field Day rules again, and was looking at those satellite bonus points...

To see if this was an itch I wanted to scratch I downloaded GoSatWatch at the recommendation of NJ4Y and KX9X. They were right- this is a great app! Using it I went and stood in the field behind my house (in the mud...) And listened for the first time to a satellite pass as SO-50 went overhead. Think about it - signals from space! How is that not freekin' awesome! I know, most people aren't impressed because they think of satellites as a way to get their TV, but none of them can talk back to the satellite, so I still think it's awesome!

In addition to listening to SO-50 passes, I also listened to the ISS pass a couple times during last several days. For one of those passes I actually hooked my HT up to my AnnaLink Interface (Remember when I made that? Whodathunk it would be useful for satellite stuff too!) I then used the audio modem in the PocketPacket app to snag a packet sent through the digipeater on the ISS. Fun stuff!

Anyway, I think I have a new project in the queue, to add to all the other ones - building an antenna for satellite work (you should know me by now - I wouldn't be happy just buying one!) So, once I have the time to tackle it, I'll share here. I suspect however, that I'll end up using scraps from my garage, and maybe some of the stuff from this section of Lowe's:

Bye for now!

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!

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!

I made something that I want to share with you!

If you've stumbled on my blog, or ever talked to me on the air, you probably know that I do quite a bit of portable and mobile operating (actually, because of the current state of my shack project, ALL of my operating is portable and mobile at the moment.) 

As I thought about it however, I really didn't feel like removing body panels, rolling back carpet, and all that business, so I didn't get around to it.  While I was stewing on this, I got to thinking about the times I did do CW from the front seat.  The Yeasu 857d (and probably the other Yeasu rigs as well) has a feature called "MICKEY."  This feature lets you do Morse Code by using the mic as a weird sort of paddle.  With this feature turned on, the down button acts like the dah, and the up button acts like the dit.  It works, but to be honest it is a pain, so I started avoiding it.  

The realization I had was this - those are just buttons.  I can probably make an interface that plugs into the mic jack, and just uses the lines for those buttons, so that I can plug a key into the mic jack.  The wheels started spinning.

So, first I needed a pinout of the mic jack. Luckily a google image search for "Yeasu 857d mic pinout" brought up just what I needed.  If you look at the jack, flat side up, the connections are, from left to right:

With this information it seemed obvious to me that all I needed to do was make something that went to the appropriate pins.  I also wanted something that I could keep in my glove box, so that I could work CW on a moments notice.  With that goal, here's what I came up with:

Now, to make this work, the settings on the radio are important, because I am relying on the "Mickey" feature.  This means that I need to have these setting correct:

So, with the interface made, and the settings chosen, it's time to show you how it works!  Check out this short video I made to see it in action:

 
To wrap up, here's the parts list with links if you want to make your own.  Several of these things come in quantities greater than you'll need, but it never hurts to have spares, or build up your supply!
Project Box 4x2x1
RJ45 Feed-through
2 Buttons
Stereo Jack
RJ45 plug
network cable
​And, if you don't have these tools already, you might want to check them out as well.  I used mine in this project, and in A LOT of other projects as well:
RJ45/RJ11 crimp tool
​Dremel Tool

Bye for now!

No, that's not a typo...I actimated a park!
​ My daughter is now 6, but it wasn't that long ago that she was still trying out new words. The first time I heard her try to say "activate" I had just picked up my phone, and had accidentally held the home button down long enough to turn on Siri. My daughter promptly said "uh oh! You actimated Siri!" To this day, in our house we still use the word "actimate" quite regularly.

Anyway, enough about the nonsense that goes on in my house - I'm actually writing to update you on my second trip to Mashamoquet Brook State Park (You can read about the first trip here.)

This time around, I reserved the one camp site they have that has a power hook-up. Most of the camp-grounds I've gone to that had RV hookups had either 50 or 30 amp connections, plus a standard 15 or 20 amp outlet. I realized the first night of this trip however, that this site only has a 30 amp connection, so I ended up running off battery power for the first night anyway.

In spite of the power mishap, I had a good first night - my very first contact was actually with Jeff, KB3ZUK. Jeff is the North American Continental Representative, in addition to being the log manager for the call district I live in, for the WWFF program. It was fun to actually get a contact on the air with Jeff, after all these months of e-mails and such as I sent in my "actimation" logs!

After my contact with Jeff, I found a frequency of my own, and quickly racked up enough contacts to bring my total for this park past the 44 mark (the US awards only require 10 per park, but I like to shoot for 44 because that's where most of.the international awards kick in.)

Before evening number 2, I stopped at an RV center and picked up a couple adapters so that I could use the AC power at the campground:

in addition to this adapter, I also got one to go from 50 amp to 30 amp connections. This way I'm now covered for using AC power no matter what type of connection a place has. Of course, there is always the option to use batteries in places with no AC, but if it's available, why not make life easy?

With an easy power solution for the second evening, I was able to dive right in to making more contacts.  With the pressure off, I started out in CW.  This was a particularly exciting one for me, not because I made a lot of contacts, but because I upped my speed a little bit.  I leaned CW using the PC program Just Learn Morse Code, which uses the Koch/Farnsworth method.  As I practice I've been using faster character speeds, and faster word speeds, but on the air I've been hesitant, so prior to now I was keeping my keyer set at 5 wpm.  This time I decided to bump it up to 7 wpm, and I found it was actually easier for me to copy stations at this faster speed, because it's closer to what I've been practicing.  After  a few more like this I just might have to bump the speed up to 10 wpm and have a go!

Anyway, with plenty of SSB contacts, and a few more CW contacts under my belt, I was in good spirits as I packed up and headed out.  I don't know what park I'll end up at next, but I hope I have just as much fun as I did at Mashamoquet!

As a final note, if any of you are CW newbies like me (or seasoned pros for that matter) check out the ditdit.fm podcast - it's a new one, all about CW.  For me it has been a good resource for tips and hints from the CW pros.  It's also nice to hear the top notch operators talk about their experiences when they were in my shoes - great stuff!