Latest news and comments 2022

Update 31/12/2022: Well, it seems like this is it for 2022! From an amateur radio point of view it was a quiet year, I am sure I did not make more than 200-300 contacts and those were scattered over the year mostly during a few contests. Conditions have been better than 2021 with some great openings but the last few weeks have been less than spectacular again.

At least I have firm plans for better antennas next year, I will have a directional antenna for the first time since middle 2019! I am hoping that, along with better conditions will inspire me to be more active. Hopefully some mobile/portable/field operation while on tour in 2023 will also add to the fun and result in some interesting contacts and renewed enthusiasm for the hobby.

On a non radio related note, most of my "hobby time" in 2022 was spent with photography and flying RC aircraft, it was fun! Hopefully amateur radio can regain it's rightful place in 2023 as my second oldest hobby.

See you next year!

Update 30/12/2022:  I have been listening out for FT8WW (Crozet Islands) the whole day. Apparently (as seen on the DX cluster) he spent most of the day on FT8 where it was chaos. Finally, at around 17:00 UTC he moved to 14.031 CW. Tonight I could actually hear him about S5! Unfortunately the same disgusting behavior soon started happing there as well. LIDs tuning up on his frequency, whistling, shouting insults, calling on his frequency, every second guy calling "up up"! The split also got out of hand, at one point it was more the 25KHz wide! Madness!

I listened to this lot a while, made a call or two but I was so disgusted that I ended up switching the radio off and left the shack to do something else. I truly hope this is not what has become of DX'ing and specifically CW DX'ing. If this happens more often maybe the time has come to say cheers to the hobby....

Update 30/12/2022:  Today was rotator service day! In preparation for the new antenna arriving (6 band hex beam) I decided I needed to setup a rotator. I had a choice of 3 "not in use" rotators, a Yaesu Kenpro KR-600, Ham IV and a Tailtwister. The Tailtwister would be a complete overkill so my first choice was the light KR-600. Unfortunately the controllers on these rotators have a weak point, they have a little rubber band/O-ring that connects the motor that drives the direction compass to the gears and these O-rings have a limited life. Before even connecting the rotator I had a look ad yes, the O-ring perished again. I can fix it but not today, far easier to just pick the Ham IV!

The Ham IV has given me stellar service and was up in the air for at least 22 years before it was taken down about 3 years ago. I decided to give it a service before putting it to use again, who knows how long it will be up this time.

A look inside showed that it seems to still be in a good condition so I just re-greased the gears and bearings before closing it up again. I have not tested it yet, need to sort out a long enough cable first, maybe tomorrow?

I tried to work FT8WW last night on 20m CW but I could hardly hear him, no way was I going to break the pile-up with 5W! Well, maybe tonight. Looking at the DX cluster the guys are really complaining that he is spending too much time on FT8, quit sad actually....

Update 29/12/2022:  With a bit luck my new hex beam antenna will be here end of next week, difficult to say with all the public holidays this time of the year! I am going to do my best to get it up quickly so that I can evaluate it, I am really hoping it will make a great field/expedition antenna, at least better than normal wire dipoles. If it works well it will travel with me on my road trips around Southern Africa that starts in 2023.

I managed to work a few stations during the CWT contest yesterday, was fun to do some high speed CW again, most of the contacts were from 40-45wp with bursts above 55wpm. I would love to work more stations at those speeds.

I am busy rotating through radios in the shack at the moment, sending at least a few days with every radio on the air, I do love the older radios but I have to admit using a radio that does not have a band-scope feels very limiting these days!

Update 27/12/2022:  Just a quick note this morning. I have now placed an order for a 6 band hex beam antenna that is locally produced. I was going to build one from scratch but it would take some time to source the materials, especially the long fiber glass spreaders, easier, and not that expensive, to just buy a kit!

I think before the antenna gets here I need to service a rotator so that it is ready for use. Need to decide between a Ham IV, Tailtwister and a Yaesu rotator, I think the Ham IV will be fine. I might also add a 2m and 6m yagi below the hex beam. I do have a 6 element 6m yagi but I would need to build or buy a 2m antenna. I am hoping that I can get into some local 2m SSB nets with a decent antenna.

Update 25/12/2022:  I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

I have been spending a bit of time everyday on the radio, mostly just listening but also chatting to a few friends and making a few DX contacts. It is fun but I really need a new challenge in amateur radio. As I already mentioned the plan is to do some local (Southern African) traveling in 2023, I have already planned some operating from the motorhome/RV. I am looking at a dedicated radio for that, something really compact but it must still have a decent receiver and have good filters for CW.

I could just take my FT-817 or FT-897 but they are now getting a bit dated. I would also like a radio capable of 100W so that rules out the FT-817. On my "maybe" list I have the FT-710, seems like a good radio. On one of the CW forums I frequent the guys have been telling me if I like the FT-710 I might as well get the FTdx-10 as it is not much larger. I like what I read about the FTdx-10 but maybe I am drifting away from the "small and compact" plan again?

Another option would be a FT-891, it is compact but the RX might not be up there with the others?

On the same subject, I have been thinking of antennas to use while out in the field and potentially operating from a few spots that are one people's "wanted" list, maybe even a few local, less often activated, DXCC entities. For this I feel I need more than a dipole antenna.

After some research I have decided to get a 6 band hex beam. Looks like it would be easy to modify for quick deployment and easy transport. I will first run it at home to see how well it works. Hope to report back on that soon!

Roll on 2023, looking forward to some radio fun!
 
Update 27/11/2022:  It is CQWW CW time again! I am not really ready for a serious attempt, I have still not managed to get a tower up, other priorities and health issues got in the way (again!) so I am still stuck with a yagi on the ground and only wire antennas in the air! Anyway, all is not lost, at least a few hours on the air has, so far, produced a few nice contacts. Since I am trying to build my 40m CW QRP DXCC count most of my time was spent on 40m. Now I need to check if I have worked anything new. We still have dusk today to work a few more so I will wait till that is done before I integrated the contest log into the main log and upload to LoTW.

My plans for some local, Southern African, travel is progressing well. The plan is to combine exploration, photography, videography with some portable amateur operation. I am planning to activate some scarce grid squires as well as some SOTA/HOTA/POTA/xxxx activations. I am still looking at the FTdx-710 for this but I first need to see how much space I have in the (still to be decided on and acquired) vehicle. If space is a problem I might have to go to something smaller like a FT-857 but I hope not.

On another note, it looks like I have managed to get rid of most of the QRM my station was plagued with. I moved my antennas and re-did all the connections on the rather old cables. Not only is the QRM better the problems I had with intermittent high SWR also seems to be cured, even good solder joints can fail after 30 years of exposure to the elements!

Update 01/09/2022:  I recently saw an advert for the new Yaesu FTdx-710 and it looks like the perfect radio for my "mobile home" use! The receiver technology of the FTdx 101 in a compact radio, perfect! It also sounds like the price will be really competitive, well done Yaesu. I really hope I can get my hands on one soon.

The conditions are slowly improving with more sunspots every month. Unfortunately also a few solar storms but that is ok. With summer around the corner I am starting to think of some portable operation as well. I charged up the R928+ yesterday and had some fun. I really need to get out and try my new, as yet unused, 8m collapsible mast.

With conditions improving I am also looking at putting up my main yagi again, I still do not have a decent mast (despite a few promises...) so I need to sort that out soon. I also repaired my wire antennas, after a few winter storms I had to. While I was busy I re-soldered all the coax connectors on my feed lines, some of them were done more than 25 years ago and they were causing problems! Things seem a lot better now with SWR readings not jumping around while I am transmitting!

Update 18/04/2022: The bands did not have much activity today. I know there are only a few solar spots at the moment but a group is coming into sight that should help. I did hear a few weak signals on 10m but nothing interesting so I did not even try, with signals that weak chances are calling them with 5W would only be an exercise in frustration anyway.

I did hear some local CW activity on 40m, always glad to hear CW but unfortunately it is normally the same hand-full of stations you hear, wish we had a few more stations active locally, it is not that I do not want to talk to them but as they say "variety is the spice of life"..

I opened up the ATU-100 HF today to have a look inside. It seems to be well made with good soldering, you can see it is NOT "Made in China"! I took a few photos that I want to use in a mini review I am planning on doing on the ATU. I did notice something strange with the ATU the last few days. It would tune the antenna on a band but when you start transmitting it would sometimes suddenly retune, and on the next over re-tune again! It did that to me a few times yesterday while I was making a few contacts in a local contest and it was rather frustrating. I though maybe it was the antenna so I replaced the ATU-100 with my old Z-11Pro2 tuner and the old tuner did not retune all the time.

I need to investigate why it is doing this, if it persist it would be rather sad as that would make it rather useless. I did also notice it would sometimes tune and when done display a SWR of around 1.9:1 but the SWR meter in the radio would show close to 1:1. If the SWR sensing circuit in the tuner does over-read the SWR sometimes it would explain the unnecessary re-tuning every now and then. I need to dig deeper into the issue and also see if there are any similar reports on the tuner online. I hope it can be sorted as I really like the little tuner!  

Update 17/04/2022: Our weather has been a bit miserable the last few days, not fun if you want to do something outside but perfect for spending some time on the radio! I played a bit more with the R928+ and the ATU-100 HF auto tuner. The R928+ seems to be working fine with the RX quite selective. What I did notice was a rather high noise level even without an antenna connected. With the solar cycle picking up the higher bands are also starting to open up and I noticed a very large band of strong noise at the bottom, CW end, of the 10m band. I can only hear it on the R928+ so I can only assume it is internal to the radio. I need to look at the setup. Maybe I can get rid of it because as it is the radio is not really useable on 10m CW, even 12, and 15m has the same issue to a smaller extend.

I did notice that 10m opened this afternoon so I moved the R928+ to the shelve and connected the antenna to another radio. Signals were not strong, hardly moving the S meter but I did manage to work a few station running QRP (4.5W according to the ATU-100 tuner). It included a few nice ones like Zambia, British Virgin islands and French Guyana all on 10m CW. Also worked a few nice ones on 15m. Was so nice to work DX again with QRP and a wire antenna (G5RV)

Talking about the G5RV, I was listening to a local guy, a well known ham who has been on the air for a very long time, telling everyone what a terrible antenna the G5RV is and it is worse than a dummy load. I wonder what he would say if I told him I have confirmed more than 200 countries running QRP on the G5RV? Maybe the problem is with him and not the G5RV? Having said that I still miss my yagi and hope to sort out my tower problem soon and have the yagi back in action.

Update 15/04/2022: It seems like the R928+ is now relatively stable. It only locked up once today but I think that was related to the USB cable becoming disconnected while it was in use. It happened because one of my cats stepped on the connector, different kind of "CAT" control!

I have now upgraded the boot loader and the firmware on the radio. It adds a few features but to be quite honest nothing of importance to me. What is a bit annoying is that I have noticed that the touch screen is now no longer working but that might be a setting hidden somewhere in a menu, will have a look tomorrow.

Conditions are not great at the moment so QRP contacts are few and far between, maybe there will be more activity on the bands over the coming Easter weekend. We have some really cold weather forecasted so I am quite happy to stay at home and play with my radios!

Update 13/04/2022: The last few days I struggled with the little R928+ trying to get it to key CW via the USB port. I would like this to work for contesting as it allows logbook software to send reports during contests. Well, it was not simple, turns out that the radio does not support full RTS and DTR via the virtual com port. Most programs will only key the PTT but not generate a tone. Others will do both but then the radio will stay keyed after it should return to RX. While all the was happening the radio would sometimes freeze or suddenly refuse to TX at all, even if you push the PTT on the mike or the "tune" button.

I finally managed to get N1MM+ software to work by using DTR to key CW and a CAT command to key the PTT. This seems reliable but the N1MM+ software keyer is very basic and so far I could not get it to generate CW prosigns, rather frustrating! I will try again tomorrow but at least I managed to make a few contacts in the configuration including a nice rag-chew. I did try to connect my usual keyer to the radio but that just solidly keys the TX, seems like even a few micro-amps leakage through a diode will key the radio!

As much as I like this radio it is really still quite buggy, I am not convinced I will trust it as my only radio for a field trip or contest, if it locks up and I have to reload firmware to get it to work like I had to do today it will most likely not return home in one piece......

Update 8/04/2022: I will be doing the odd equipment review in the future, please have a look HERE!

Update 8/04/2022: I spent some time on the air today but other than a few not very strong signals on 10m I did not hear much. I did work a few stations on CW running 5W but the pickings were slim. I also called CQ and managed to get a few replies but I think my G5RV leaves a lot to be desired, I need to get something better sorted out, maybe I will have time tomorrow.

Update 7/04/2022: I found some time today to listen on the bands. Late afternoon 10m was open, no strong signals but I decided to try to answer a few CQ's. Since I am running QRP it is not always easy to make contacts when signals are weak, most were around S1 to S2 with many not moving the needle, I was pleasantly surprised to work a few stations!

Later I decided to call CQ a few times, mostly to see where I can be heard via the reverse beacon network. To my surprise I had replies to my CQ. The stations worked included a bunch of US stations but also notable ones like a S5 and CX5. Not bad for 5W via a tuner into a G5RV at around 5m high with a VERY long feed line!

I uploaded, for the first time in 4 months, some QSO's into the LoTW database, nothing special but was a great feeling to be back on the air.

Later I listened on 40m and 80m, QRM was gone but static was still quite high, will be better during the coming winter but surprisingly I could hear a bunch of DX on 40m. I had other commitments so I did not have time to make contacts but hopefully I can make a few QSO's on 40m at night in the next few days.

Looks like the "new" solar cycle is going to be fun and if the latest predictions can be believed it might be a really good one! Will try my best to make the most of it as it might well be my last one.

A quick note on the QRM eliminator. I found that a small whip antenna in the shack, mounted on the back of the device, produced great results! Will play with antenna combinations but it is working really well at the moment.

Update 6/04/2022: My parcel arrived yesterday. I could not wait to try the QRM eliminator! I am happy to report that it is working well, dropping S9 noise from the solar power system to as low as S2. I think optimizing the "noise RX" antenna will make it work even better, at the moment I am just using a piece of wire out the window. I believe a slightly better antenna will help as the noise I am receiving on this antenna is not quite as strong as on the main antenna requiring me to run the "noise" gain at max most of the time.

It is working so well that I could clearly hear stations on 40m during the day where in the past it was just S9+ noise, a really magic device to have in the shack!

QRM Eliminator, a very welcome addition to my solar powered shack!

The second piece of new kit in my parcel was the little ATU-100 HF Auto tuner. I could not believe how small it is, it is tiny compared to my old Z-11Pro2 tuner, a device that I already thought was small.

It works really will, it will tune coax fed antennas a well as long wire or wire fed antennas. I  have only tried it on a coax fed antenna at this point, specifically a G5RV, it tunes very fast, it is quiet and it produces a great match. It also displays output power, SWR, match details like capacitance and inductance and antenna efficiency on the tiny but very bright screen. What a little jewel! It will become the preferred tuner for field station and portable use where even well matched antennas often have high SWR due to low height or objects close to them detuning them, cannot wait to try it in the field.

The little jewel of a tuner!

The last item in my parcel was a Comet CP-80L,a  8m long collapsible portable mast. It can carry loads of up to 20kg and it has provision to be guided in 2 places. It seems well made, will give it a try in the garden with my normal fan-dipole antenna soon. I think it will be a great addition to my portable setup. It is small and light enough to carry and 8m height is more than what I have ever had for my portable antennas.

Update 5/04/2022: My parcel containing the QRM eliminator and Comet 8m portable antenna pole shipped this morning, looking forward to trying them. I found a copy of the QRM eliminator manual on the web so I am ready to get it up and running the moment it arrives. Also in the package is a small auto-tuner, something a bit more compact to replace my well loved Z-11Pro2 tuner I use when running a portable station to ensure the SWR of my antennas is low even if they are not installed optimally. It is also useful to use antennas on bands other than what they were designed for, not ideal but it does provide some additional QSO's when conditions are good. It also incorporates a SWR meter and a power meter that will accurately measure power down to 100mW, with digital display, perfect for QRP. I had a hectic day shooting and editing a video for a client, hopefully I can get some time, and energy tonight to switch on a radio and look for some DX.

Update 4/04/2022: I managed to spend some time on the air yesterday, even though I only have a 40m dipole up about 5m I could hear CW signals on 40m to 10m, with the help of a tuner I managed to work stations on 28, 24 and 21Mhz. Signals were weak, never more than S2, most likely due to my antenna but I still managed to make a few QSO's and it was very satisfying. According to my logbook it was the first DX I worked in 4 months! I did order a "QRM eliminator" as well, from local reports it helps a lot with QRM. In the same order I also have a 8m collapsible pole that I am planning on using for some QRP field station work and later with the station in the motorhome.

I am thinking of a light, easy to transport directional antenna that I can use out in the field, maybe a hex beam or a spider beam. I need to do more research, it will be great to have something like that for portable and DX'pedition use rather than the normal fan-diploes I have used in the past.

Nice spot for a HF or VHF/UHF field station.

Time to head into the mountains for some SOTA and POTA fun!

It is great to see the solar cycle picking up and the higher bands opening, it has been a long solar minimum!

Update 2/04/2022:  I have been rather inactive the last year for various reasons. I have been rather busy with photography and specifically making photography related videos for YouTube. Conditions have also been rather bad most of the time. I did switch on a radio every now and then, mostly on a Sunday to listen to a few club bulletins and sometimes to make a few CW contacts or chat to someone local. About 4 months ago we installed solar panels, batteries and an inverter to go totally off-grid. It is working well BUT suddenly I had HUGE QRM on HF.

I tried things like putting ferrites on the cables and making sure everything is earthed but it did not make any difference. I must admit I was rather sad about this and thought that amateur radio would become something I would only do when out camping.

A few more tests showed that the interference was actually coming from the solar panels themselves (Canada Solar 545W units). Since the panels were right below the mast that carried my antennas that would explain the huge amount of QRM! Yesterday I decided to do a quick test, I made up a 40m dipole and pulled it up a large tree on the side of the house away from the solar panels. Like magic the QRM was a lot less and I could hear stations again! Great news! Since I di not have my permanent mast up yet it will now go to the other side of the house, no real issue other than slightly longer coax feeds but still shorter than what I had in the past.

Suddenly I am really interested in amateur radio again, so nice to hear stations again and conditions seem a lot better than the last time I could hear anything.

I am planning on a lot of local travel in the near future, to explore Southern Africa and also to take photos and shoot travel videos of our beautiful country. To make this easier, and to allow me to overnight close to spots where I want to be at sunset and sunrise to take photos and shoot videos I am planning on acquiring a motorhome soon. I will also setup a ham station in this motorhome. It will be fun to make contacts out in the field and it will allow me to activate parks (POTA) and some summits (SOTA) while exploring.

I have been playing with Winlink and VARA of a while now to send and receive email, this, along with my mobile setup in the motorhome will also give us email capabilities when away form Cell network coverage.

Sometime next year I hope to do some sailing again, the mobile home setup will be perfect for the yacht as well!

Hope to work you from home, out in the field or on the water soon!