Category: KD0INM

All things ham radio. I received my license on 20090731 and intend on journaling my adventures in the ARS.

Calling CQ

Calling CQ is still a weird thing for me. I mostly just spin the dial and hope to find someone else calling CQ; or even better someone calling CQ DX or CQ Contest. These are great because it’s a narrow set of conversational topics. You get an RST, you give an RST, you exchange QTH and probably a handle and maybe compare equipment. Then you move on.

For an introvert like me, this is tops because I get to make a contact and send off a QSL card (and hopefully get one back) without having to stumble through an open-ended conversation.

I’ve called CQ myself twice since the HF rig went on the air at the beginning of September. The first call resulted in a nice QSO with a ham in central Pennsylvania. A bit generic, but nice. And I was so frazzled at the end of that I dropped the frequency.

Tonight I called CQ and ended up making contact with KB1TUR in Northwest Maine. It was a great QSO where we talked about home and micro brews as well as the standard ham topics. At 11 minutes, that is by far my longest QSO. Unfortunately the band started shifting and we started losing each other in the noise.

At any rate it seems there is a standing offer to boil up some lobsters in Maine if I manage to find myself in the area with a trunk full of homebrew. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.

The real question—and one that wasn’t asked during the QSO—who has the better mustache?

A mustache to rival mine?
A mustache to rival mine?

Good DX

Was able to make two international contacts this evening and they couldn’t have been more different.

First was a gentleman in Brasil who runs a veritable QSO factory. When he taps you on the head it’s call sign, name, and signal report. If he’s feeling particularly generous he’ll give you his nickname. Dude makes at least 60 contacts an hour.

Then I’m tooling around the 40 meter band and hear one of the most enthusiastic voices nattering on to some gentleman in mixed Italian and English about a QRP <—> QRP QSO they made a while back. From the sounds of it, they managed to talk at 100 milliwatts between Italy and Wisconsin…and let’s just all agree to agree that this is an impressive feat without my need to natter on as to why this is so.

So they wrap it up and it takes me about two more QSOs he’s making with folks on the East Coast before I figure out his call sign. I got through on my very first attempt and we chatted for several minutes. I only wish I knew Italian other than how to order a loaf of penis (thanks, Elizabeth, for that instructional story). Not to worry, I didn’t try that one out on him. Still it was the funnest DX QSO I’ve made in the short time I’ve been on the air.

So tomorrow it’s off to the USPS to send a couple of cards out via airmail. Super excited to get my reply card from Stagno Lombardo. The card from Eusebio should prove nearly as exciting.

Patria y Libertad

Doubled the number of radials on the 43′ vertical out back and I think I’ve cut down the background noise from about a S6 to a S4.5. Quiet stations are now a bit easier to pick up.

Speaking of which…QSO with Cuba! 20 meters is truly the magic band. Sending this QSL card is going to prove interesting though.

Fustercluck

I spent lunch today bouncing around area Post Offices until someone could definitively tell me that, while the USPS honors International Reply Coupons [1], they do not sell them [2].

So now sending a SASE to Omsk involves finding an online market for these products, knowing someone in a country with a postal service with a more rational posture toward IRCs, trying to navigate a foreign country’s postal service web site, or just throwing US currency in with the envelope and hope the person on the receiving end has decent luck turning that into appropriate postage.

This was a problem solved in 1906 [3]. Why the Hell is it no longer solved?

A cursory glance at eBay shows stamps are going for about twice the face value with shipping & handling being yet another multiple of the nominal value of the stamp. Russian Post [4] feels a little intimidating although I think I’ve figured out I need to purchase ₽27,14 (68¢) worth of postage. I’m just not sure how to get that paid for and shipped to me.

As for shipping US currency—I’m not morally opposed to it. I just don’t know how convenient that is for someone living somewhere north of Kazakhstan to deal with. And, really, this is the biggest obstacle to getting the QSL card that I’m really into receiving. Judging by the guy’s signal [5] and looking at his online logging, the guy probably gets scores of cards a week. I want his sending a card this direction to be as painless and brainless as possible.

So any of my Canadian friends want to engage in a little international commerce? Tariff is negotiable.

[1] http://www.upu.int/en/activities/international-reply-coupons/about-international-reply-coupons.html
[2] http://pe.usps.com/text/Imm/immc3_020.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon
[4] http://www.russianpost.ru
[5] http://www.blackfez.com/2014/10/06/omsk-on-20-meters/

Omsk on 20 meters

It took about fifteen minutes of calling to get through but I finally made contact with UA9MA. Gena (short for Genaddij) had an incredible signal all across North America by the sounds of it. I captured the QSO although there it is obvious I need to do some tweaking of the audio in from my mic. I sound like an adult from Peanuts. Still, here’s a QSO with Omsk in Russia:

Competition

I was spinning around the 20 meter band this evening looking for entertainments and was not disappointed. The band is quirky this time of night (in my experience) and sometimes you find interesting signals.

Radio Havana Cuba [1] broadcasts in AM on 14.295mHz which is right in the thick of the internationally designated 20 meter band. It’s kind of a jerk move, but it is the official voice of the Cuban government [2], and so it is what it is. You certainly can’t fault the music selections which are truly lovely.

In slightly related news, I’ve wired the radio into my soundcard so I can do some recording as I come across things that intrigue me. So I captured a few snippets to share here. First is RHC‘s signal captured as AM radio [3] on 14.295mHz:

Tuning as AM, RHC’s signal is pretty copyable. However you can also hear a mush-mouthy male voice blah blah blahing all over the pretty music. It’s really difficult to copy the guy’s voice because he’s broadcasting an SSB signal, also on 14.295mHz.

Given the time of day, the 20 meter band is squirrelly like I mentioned earlier. One thing you’ll hear a lot is signals fading in and out (QSB). In the middle of this recording the ham radio QSO fades all the way out and only comes back right at the end.

But we’re ham radio operators and so it’s the QSO that most interest us. What’s kind of fun is turning the table, so to speak, and tuning 14.295mHz as SSB instead of AM [4]. In this snippet you can copy the QSO much more readily although RHC fades in and out:

You’ll also notice that you’re only hearing one side of the conversation now. The distant station isn’t rising above the background noise so we get a nice musical interlude in the middle of this snippet even though we’re not tuning AM. The station operator mentions the band dipping for him as well.

That contact ends shortly after I recorded the second snippet. And then, because it sounds wistful and a little lonely, here’s the station calling CQ [5] with the dulcet tones of RHC playing on in the background:

[1] http://www.rhc.cu/en
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Havana_Cuba
[3] http://www.blackfez.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20140922-RadioHavanaQSOonAM.mp3
[4] http://www.blackfez.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20140922-RadioHavanaQSOonSSB.mp3
[5] http://www.blackfez.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20140922-WW5DD.mp3

Hey, Mr. Postman

Just knocked out my first ever set of QSL cards for the Route 66 On the Air stations I managed to contact. All told I hit 9 of 21 which isn’t awesome by any stretch of the imagination but it was my first HF experience. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve written that much in longhand since I graduated.

MEMO TO SELF: break down and buy some ink for the printer and make with some mailing labels already.

FUD

I found the preppers’ net. Tuesday – Saturday at 0100UTC on 3.86000. Things that are going to bring down society in the near future:

  1. Ebola virus which is going to mutate to being communicable in airborne form
  2. The D86 virus making the rounds could mutate into something much more dangerous
  3. El Niño which is going to bring a colder, wetter than normal winter and disrupt energy supplies

They’re all super prepared! Are you??

Some choose to wear the minimum

So there is a bad ass solar flare [1] punking up the radio bands tonight. Everything is extra noisy and pulling in stations is proving difficult. Even so I found W6S (don’t forget Winona) on the 40 meter band and checked another station off the Route 66 On the Air event [2].

One benefit, I suppose, is that we might be in a prime location to see aurora borealis [3] even as far south as Western Iowa into north central Nebraska.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/an-extreme-solar-flare-is-blasting-its-way-to-our-pla-1633372360
[2] http://www.w6jbt.org/2013site/route-66-on-the-air/qsl-card-routing-and-station-website-addresses/
[3] http://www.accuweather.com/en/features/trend/northern_lights_viewing_condit/33834457