There are a number of interesting and great websites/blogs that are local to Minnesota and the Twin Cities area, so I’m going to give a shoutout to my favorites. I’ll be putting a list together on the favorite websites page.
To start: Twin Cities APRS. This blog is maintained by Todd (KD0TLS) and has a wealth of information on the state of the APRS scene in Minnesota. He maintains it regularly with APRS updates for the local area, as well as APRS updates as well. I’ve only dipped my toe in APRS but his blog makes me more interested.
I recently decided to drop the money for an ATAS-120A, and so far I have been impressed. I’m using it with my FT-857D, and on the 3rd brake light mount. On the first try it tuned up successfully on every band from 6m to 40m, and I had FT8 QSOs on 10m – 30m easily. I even had DX contacts with Czech Republic (17m), France (20m), Netherlands (12m), and Spain (17m). Not bad for 5 watts.
It was easy to find the correct menu settings on the radio to enable the antenna, and the only weird part was when I first activated it and INIT showed on the screen for a couple of minutes. I cancelled it a few times thinking something was wrong with connections but everything looked good. I finally let it run for a couple of minutes while I googled it, and then it eventually switched to ATAS. It seems this is a one-time thing, every time after that it is ready to go when I power on the radio.
Tuning is so easy, I’ve never had any kind of automatic tuning ever. In the past there was plenty of putzing with the antenna analyzer, adjusting, repeating. I’ve found that whenever I make any aspect of setting up easier that I end up on the air even more. When I put the FT-857D in a Pelican case (I should probably take some pics and detail here…), I didn’t have to hook everything up whenever I wanted to setup, I just had to add power and an antenna. Now the antenna step is even faster, I can just hook up the radio, tune in at most a minute, and it’s time to go.
So today I did my first POTA rove, I had a side gig near Sioux Falls, SD and decided to hit up a park or two on the way home. After looking at the map, I could easily get to a park in SD that was close to the hotel, and then just down the road was an Iowa park. Then I looked at the Minnesota State Parks on the map on the way home, and decided to try to hit 5 parks.
Mission accomplished:
K-8156: Beaver Creek State Natural Area (SD)
K-5730: Blood Run State Historic Site (IA)
K-2471: Blue Mounds State Park (MN)
K-2498: Kilen Woods State Park (MN)
K-2510: Minneopa State Park (MN)
The antenna did perfectly fine driving between all these parks, I stayed off the interstate in case something broke, but had no issues with the antenna with high speeds. It is on a NMO to UHF converter mount, and that is sturdy as well. I got to the next park, and was on the air immediately. Looks like I’ll be on the air even more this summer.
One last thing, 10 meters was one of those really weird days when most of my QSOs were DX, and almost no NA stations were picking me up. I had QSOs with Serbia (x2), Ukraine, and Estonia, and 1 NA contact. PSK Reporter showed this too:
Over the summer an unexpected hailstorm did just enough damage to total my car. I had used a Diamond hatchback mount on it and had a NR72BNMO with it. It worked perfectly, the only drag was that the car was a stick shift so trying to talk into a mic and shift at the same time was a little too much. Ultimately I never got on the radio much.
Fast forward to now, and I decided to try a Bulletproof Diesel 3rd brake light mount. Certainly not ideal if you ask those looking for ham radio perfection, but I can get 2 NMO mounts on a very sturdy mount. Plus the new car has an automatic transmission, so in theory I can operate when mobile more often.
First things first: the product itself is solid. I’m about to talk in a second about the challenges it brought, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the mount itself. I got the version with the dual antenna mount, and to be honest the price is on the higher end, but the quality is worth it. It comes with 2 NMO mounts with coax from DX Engineering. The instructions are clear, the quality of the product is solid, and after I had it installed it felt sturdy. A great job by the teams that designed it and built it.
So on to the challenges. The antennas I used before were suited to being on the corner of the car. With this mount, it is about 1/3 from the edge of the car. It rendered my NR72BNMO useless on 2 meters, despite the mount being grounded. SWR was just above 2:1 across the 2 meter band. I tried the Compactenna that I have, and similar results with 2 meters and 220. That antenna wasn’t designed to be placed there.
I next tried my Comet UHV-6 next, and SWR for 6 meters, 2 meters, 70 centimeters were all solid. On 2 meters it is a 1/2 wave and a double-stacked 5/8 wave on 70 centimeters, so in other words, not picky about ground plane. 6 meters is a quarter wave, and had no issues with SWR below 2 across the band (I’ll get more specific metrics in a later post).
On the UHV-6, all HF bands with a coil are also a 1/4 wave. I put the 20 meter coil on top, and was able to get 14.074 to 1.2:1 SWR without issue. A quick FT8 session later, and I was having wild success with only 5 watts. 383 reception reports, and a DX contact with the Dominican Republic (HI8ML) in just under 2 hours.
So for some reason or another, 2 meters on a quarter-wave antenna doesn’t seem to like it, and the Compactenna doesn’t either. Everything else so far does. Next up, I’ll be trying more HF coils, a few hamsticks, and the NR73BNMO I have.
It has really been since 2019 since I’ve posted on here. So I figured I’d just give a recap of what I’ve gotten into. Maybe I’ll get into posting more often, but I’m not making any promises.
Most of my HF activity has been in a public park. I’ve been able to succeed with a loop antenna in my apartment, but nothing replaces the lack of a noise floor in a park setting. I had heard that Parks on the Air was a thing after many contacts over the years, but never looked into how to participate. I thought maybe it was some exclusive club or something along those lines.
Once I looked into it I realized it was much more low-key. Just had to register, and then post logs of when I operated in a recognized park. The net result is I’ve found myself on the air more than I ever have. It’s been fun. I got a new antenna that worked on my car, and with the aid of a Mr. Heater propane heater I had something to do in the middle of the winter even if it meant sitting in my car.
One thing I added was the operating locations list in the event you want to see where I was during a QSO and what I was running with. I need to dig through some older paper logs for a few details, but otherwise will be keeping this updated going forward.
Upcoming things: – New car, new antenna mount. – I got an Arrow satellite antenna, now to try it on a satellite – Product reviews of the gear I own – Overview of my mobile setup – Posting here more (maybe…)
A few weekends ago I got out on my first camping trip of the year, so of course the radio came along with too. This time I ended up at Fort Ridgely State Park in Minnesota at one of the walk-in campsites. They should really be called climb-in sites as the hill to get there is steep… but after getting all my gear up the scenery was completely worth it. I also like the relative privacy the walk-in sites have over the regular campsites. The weather was perfect the whole weekend, sunny and about 60s. No rain until the last night, and even then it wasn’t much.
As usual the rig was the Yaesu FT-857D with the Buddipole, and I brought my laptop and Signalink USB. I setup the Buddipole in the vertical configuration on 40 meters and instantly had responses from all over the United States with 20 watts. I stated on the air for almost an hour until my campfire became more interesting.
The next day I setup a horizontal dipole on 17 meters and did some FT8. I did have some success but it didn’t seem too many people were on the band. I got one voice contact in for a special event station, then switched to 20 meters on the vertical configuration. There were many stations participating in the New England QSO Party so I stayed on 20 meter voice for a bit. It was the most HF voice I’ve done in awhile and it was good to make as many contacts as I did considering the bands are “dead.” Of course there weren’t many contacts to be made outside of the QSO party but it was still fun.
I did discover however that the Yaesu MH-59A8J that I bought recently has the RF problem many have discovered. My outgoing audio on 17 meters was nothing but a buzz. Once I replaced it with the stock microphone that came with the rig I got through with no problem. I had no problem with that mic on 2 meters or 70 centimeters however. Looks like I have some troubleshooting to do here. The keypad is so convenient to type in an exact frequency instead of spinning dials forever, now it just needs to work as a microphone.
Once the sun started going down I set up the 40 meter vertical again. From there I operated 3 hours straight on FT8 and again worked all around the United States. Unfortunately I didn’t have any DX contacts this time around, but I still walked away with 62 contacts over the 2 days which is huge for me.
Not sure when I will get out next but hopefully soon.
I just got a new batch of QSL cards in the mail with the new callsign, and it got me thinking, what is the rate of return comparing QSL cards vs. LOTW matches? For me there’s no motivation to obtain awards, but I do enjoy collecting QSL cards. Also it is good to be able to confirm contacts as it ensures people are who they say they are. I got into LOTW and after the necessary pains of the initial setups, it has been very efficient in confirming contacts.
Some stats from my logbook:
294 total contacts
77 unconfirmed
20 confirmed by QSL card alone
117 confirmed by LOTW alone
80 confirmed by both QSL and LOTW
When looking at the contacts confirmed only by QSL, that represents just under 7% of the contacts. If I stopped sending QSL cards completely it wouldn’t make a very large dent. However I still plan on sending them. I like seeing the individual styles of each person, and I like having a tangible record of the contact.
After much thought I decided to switch up my call sign. I didn’t originally plan to as there was some appeal to hanging on to my original call sign, plus the knowledge no one has ever had this call before.
I started looking at options and settled on W0JLT. I get to drop a letter, my initials are in the call, and no one has ever had W0JLT before. Ironically however, when using phonetics it is the same number of syllables as KD0ZLG.
I highly recommend AE7Q’s website as it walks through what the process is and also lists vanity call sign applications. There is even a predictor to determine the likelyhood of you receiveing the call you applied for. This is very helpful as the FCC application process is very drawn out. I applied on 10/30/2017 and the change is just effective today.
I recently got a Raspberry Pi and a few accessories to try digital modes with. So far, it has been an early success. I had played around with Arduinos before and had a lot of fun. I got the Pi 3 Model B and so far it has blown Arduino out of the water. I was able to install Raspbian onto an SD card easily and get it up and running.
The other accessories I got included a 7-inch touchscreen and a case. My goal is to be able to do digital modes while camping/mobile and running off of a battery. The biggest pain was hauling a laptop around to accomplish this, and being limited to the lifespan of the laptop’s battery. With the Pi, I will need to plug it into the same battery I’m transmitting from, so I’ll need to factor that in. However, to be able to do this from a small device will be perfect.
A test on FT8 was a moderate success. When the bands were on the slower side it kept right up and I was able to make a successful contact. However when there were multiple signals it had trouble decoding fast enough. If the band was crowded, it would take about 3-4 seconds into the next cycle before fully decoding. I’d imagine there’s a fix to this that some google-ing will solve. I’ll post more when I figure it out.
I’m also going to try getting a RTL-SDR setup, and try out some other modes as well. More to come.
I recently started toying with the idea of operating mobile. After doing a lot of research online it seems the absolute best way to do this is to drill a hole and have a NMO mount installed. Knowing this I started thinking about buying a 2nd vehicle just for this purpose. The car I have now I purchased new at the end of 2012 and it didn’t seem right to do this as I was concerned with water leaks or rusting. It turns out that a couple of shops around me that specialize in 2-way radio will install a NMO mount for reasonable price. Where I’m not willing to try on my own, I am willing to defer to the experts. I decided having a shop that specializes in this would be the way to go.
Before doing this however I decided it would be a good idea to do a prototype and see how things worked. Before committing to drilling a hole in my car I wanted to know it would be worthwhile. I bought a 5-inch mag mount and several of the MFJ hamsticks. W5TOM’s website was extremely helpful in understanding what would work for this. I put a the 20 meter antenna on the mag mount and hooked it up to my analyzer. (Keep in mind I was operating parked. I do not recommend a hamstick on a mag-mount while driving!) With nothing grounded but the mag mount it was resonant around 13.5 MHz, and at 14.074 it was in the 3.5:1 range for SWR. I hooked up my tuner and very crudely hooked up a ground strap. It was placed between a piece of plastic and the metal hook that the back hatch latches to. The plastic held it in place. With the tuner I was able to get everything in tune, and I hooked up my rig and my laptop to try some FT8.
What happened next blew my mind. I was at a local park where there isn’t any electricity and so there wouldn’t be the high noise floor I’m used to. I figured I would probably need to adjust the antenna since it had such a high SWR and mag mount and all that, but I figured let’s see what happens first. There was no noise floor, and before I knew it I had over 20 contacts and had added 3 countries to my list (Brazil, Argentina, and the Canary Islands). This blew my mind, I have a park not far from my place that I can get to most of the year, and with a far less than ideal antenna setup I just worked the world. The only limiting factor was my laptop and gel batteries, but I got over 2 hours of non-stop FT8.
Knowing this, the NMO mount is happening. I am going to contact a couple of shops around the Twin Cities and see what prices are. I’ve been looking at what mounting options to use and I’m excited to get it installed. I can’t wait to have a permanent install in my car.
Up until not very long ago I didn’t use any logging software. My log consisted of hand-written notes for SSB, and the log files from WSJT-X for digital. I then posted the contacts on here to keep track. It worked fine at first, but eventually I realized I had too many contacts to keep track of. On top of that I was using a spreadsheet to manage QSL cards. It worked, but it was very cumbersome to keep everything up to date.
Last week I started looking for electronic logging programs. I wanted something to use with Linux if at all possible, and I found CQRLOG. It took quite a while to get all my contacts loaded into the software but it was worth the time. Once I got everything entered, I quickly saw the advantage. I realized I’ve already had 160 contacts. Whoa. When I started looking at some of the stats, I realized I had already contacted 10 countries. Suddenly tracking QSL cards was way easier.
While I never used LOTW I decided this would be a good time. LOTW in Ubuntu was not easy to setup. The TQSL package in Ubuntu’s repositories for 16.04 were a joke, several versions out of date, and it crashed when attempting to update the configuration file to V11. My compiling skills are pretty much non-existent, and I ran into dependency errors that I have no clue how to resolve. I found some luck installing the Windows version of TQSL with Wine, however that would mean CQRLOG wouldn’t be able to find TQSL and I’d have to deal with manually moving files around. I finally found a compiled package, thanks to Kamal Mostafa’s launchpad (links at the end of this post). I added that PPA and quickly had TQSL up and running.
Once I had certificates figured out I started uploading to LOTW. I wasn’t expecting much based on the reviews I had read online, but out of the 160 contacts I have, 100+ were confirmed with LOTW in a matter of seconds. Compare that to 60 contacts that were confirmed via QSL. That also translated to 4 additional countries confirmed that I haven’t been able to confirm via QSL cards, getting my total confirmed countries up to 8.
