AB4UG Radioblog

Inspired by Alan/W2AEW's most recent video, Ham Radio call sign history, and my QSL card quest and some Twitter posts by W5RST and W0EA, I thought I'd dig into the past of my current call sign, AB4UG. I don't expect it to be as interesting or storied as some other call signs, but it will be interesting to see what I can find out.

I knew AB4UG had been used previously by someone else because of looking it up in the AE7Q database as well as the FCC ULS database. Both list only one previous user for AB4UG from KY, issued 1990-03-13 and expired in 2000-03-13. The AE7Q database suggests a pre-ULS history, but no further details.

A Google search for AB4UG shows mostly my stuff or references to me, but then a couple pages down is a page listing some SK's (silent keys) for the Southern Ohio Amateur Radio Association where the previous AB4UG is listed.

• Found a page where WN8F mentions helping the previous AB4UG holder get his license and elmering him.

Finally took the plunge and reworked the sound card interface. I wanted to make it a little more compact and try to put it into an enclosure.

v0.2 was built on another section of perfboard, but I messed it up and decided to build v0.3 on a piece of half sized Perma-Protoboard.

v0.3 currently half works. Getting sound through from the radio to the laptop seems to be working fine. Getting sound out from the laptop through to the radio doesn't seem to be working that well though. Seems like there's not enough voltage into the 2n4711 transistor to make the collector close the PTT line and make the radio transmit. Kind of wondering if I grabbed the wrong diodes that go before the transistor. I also seem to be getting some voltage loss in the 3.5mm connectors. Given how much they've been soldered and unsoldered, I should probably find new ones to replace them with.

Still some more hardware debugging to do on this latest iteration.

Update: Electronic devices are weird sometimes. You test them out and they don't work. Leave them alone for a while, and then they start working. Not sure what it was I did in the sound card settings or in fldigi, but the interface seems to be working now (at least it triggers the PTT when I put fldigi into transmit mode). Now to see if I can actually make a QSO with it.

Update: Successfully made two contacts with the interface! First one was PSK31 with an op in Belgium on 20m and the second one was the W1AW/7 portable station in Idaho on 20m RTTY. Yay!

Instead of mounting it inside a tin, I mounted the board onto another piece of 1x4 lumber with some rubber shelf liner glued to it. It's kind of neat to see it next to the laptop and imagine the currents flowing around in the circuit while I play.

This weekend was the ARRL DX contest. Spent a couple afternoons playing on the radio and managed 103 contacts and 47 countries. 10m was doing so well I decided to stay there for the entire contest.

According to N1MM Logger, my stats looked like

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty
    28     103     309   47
Score: 14,523

Managed to work a couple of stations in Hawaii and Alaska, something I don't hear too often here with the antenna. Also heard a station in Guam (KH2L), but he was pretty faint and had quite the pileup going that I wasn't able to break into.

Highlights included:

• Working a couple of stations in HI and AK
• Hearing Guam (KH2L)!
• Hearing Japan (JA7)!

Decided to call it quits about an hour before the contest ended because i got tired of sitting, and was getting hungry. Log submitted as single op, low power, single band (10m) entry.

Need to get that 10m Moxon up in the air...

Should be able to make a couple of decent dipole antennas with these center insulators

Maybe I'll take that 10m hamfest antenna and put it on one of these.

Came across the NC QSO party while tuning around a bit on 40m. Like the TN and SC QSO parties, all the activity I was able to hear was on 40m. Heard a few non-NC stations calling for NC contacts on 20m, but couldn't hear the stations they were working.

Tuning up and down 40m a few times over the course of the afternoon netted me 23 QSOs and 18 counties including the W1WD bonus station which, according to N1MM logger, was worth 882 points.

The LDG 4:1 balun I picked up at the Charleston Hamfest has definitely seen a fair bit of time out in the weather, it seems. There's a fair bit of corrosion on the terminals, and some copper oxidation on the wires around the toroid has popped the insulation off in a few places.

Don't know how the corrosion at the terminals affects things, but I measured DC resistances in the kΩ range between the center and shell of the SO-239 as well as between the two terminals on the balanced end. Looking at the way things are wired in there, I'd have expected it to be a lot lower.

Should be pretty easy to rebuild. Something to add to the project box.

Spent some time playing in the North American QSO Party (RTTY) doing some casual search and pounce-ing (S&P). Made 90 contacts, including a couple operators in MS and one in RI on two bands. Hopefully they'll upload to LoTW and I can finish off my WAS(Basic).

Most of my contacts were on 20m, and went down to 40m towards the late evening. 54 contacts on 20m and 36 contacts on 40m. The N1MM logger tells me that my contacts were worth 4410 points.

Now that I've got another digimode contest under my belt, I think that when it comes to contesting, I think I prefer SSB over digital. The digital mode contesting just doesn't seem as challenging or entertaining as SSB is. That probably won't keep me from entering other digimode contests, but when it comes to deciding which ones to participate in, I'll probably won't make as much of an effort to participate in digital contests.

Continuing on with the previous set of experiments, I left the radio listening to 40m PSK at 7.040 MHz.

40m is a very noisy band here, with a lot of random static and noise bursts across the band that make decoding digimodes more difficult.

Activity during the day was pretty sparse, and most of the stations spotted were in the late afternoon/evening hours (local time). Perhaps not a good day for 40m propagation?

After a few hours of reading instructions, screwing and clamping things into place, then undoing it all and redoing it properly because I didn't read the instructions thoroughly enough, I got the 10m Moxon antenna assembled. The bent tubes were easy enough to straighten out, and the one tube that had 2cm broken off was still long enough to work with. I managed to lose a hose clamp somewhere along the way, but fortunately I was able to find another one that worked in one of my toolboxes. Ended up with a bunch of extra lock washers too that didn't seem to in the parts list in the manual.

Here's the feed point, which I'll probably zip tie (or some other tie) onto the beam.

It's a pretty big antenna, at right around 3.97m (12.4 feet) long. Here it is up against the car for some scale.

Now to figure out how I'm going to get it up into the air...

Finally got around to working on making a base for the straight key. I cut off a section of some 1x4 lumber, sanded it nice and smooth, beveled the edges and covered it with a few coats of clear gloss polyurethane.

A little bit of sanding after the polyurethane finished drying and on went the straight key.

For some grippiness so it doesn't slide around on the desk, I spray-glued a piece of some rubber shelf liner to the bottom.

It's not a heavy base, and I might decide to change it later on to something more interesting looking. For now, it looks reasonably decent and gives the key a slightly bigger footprint and elevates it a little bit for more comfortable use.

Managed to work another Australian station (VK6WB in Perth, Australia) tonight on 20m PSK using just 35W. According to qrz.com, it's 18525.7 km away. That's 1.9 mW/km!

I had to do a double take and wait until he called a couple times to make sure fldigi was decoding it properly. He was as loud as most of the other US stations on the waterfall.

This breaks my previous record for QSO distance (with VK3TDX) by a few thousand km.

Really loving this hobby now.

One of the bundles of wire I picked up at the Charleston Hamfest last weekend turned out to be a dipole cut for 10m, according to the paper tag that was tied to it.

Each leg of the dipole is about 2.8m (9.2 feet) long and there is what appears to be a trap near the end of each leg.

At the center is 6.9m (22.6 feet) of BNC terminated coax.

It appears to have seen a few seasons out in the elements, judging by the amount of oxidation on the wires and the condition of the coax. Still seems to work pretty decently. Using an old painter's pole and some of the extra rope tying off the current antenna, I was able to measure an SWR of 1.3 at 28.5 MHz with the center about 2m off the ground.

I didn't check to see if it was resonant anywhere else. Once I figure out how to suspend it a reasonable distance off the ground, I'll check it out a little more thoroughly. 

Like with my previous 10m experiment, I left the radio listening to 20m PSK (14.070 MHz) with fldigi sending the spots to pskreporter.info. Throughout the day, I grabbed screenshots of the map showing the spots at roughly 1-2 hour intervals. From about 2014-02-04 1100Z to 2014-02-05 0149Z (about 15 hours), these are all the stations that were spotted (click for the ginormous version).

There was the usual progression of a few EU stations during the early morning and then lots of US stations throughout the day, moving from east to west. West coast stations were starting to come in pretty well by the time i decided to turn things off. I can usually hear a lot of South American stations when I'm playing PSK, but I guess most of them weren't transmitting yesterday.

I was also pretty surprised to see that Austrailian station (VK2KM) in there as well (spotted around 2100Z). Wish I was home to try to work it.

You can check out the entire collection of spots over in my Radio Spots album on Google+.

I think these are interesting experiments to do. I think 40m will be the next one. Might also be interesting to let it run overnight to see if the radio hears anything.

Thanks to the amateurradio subreddit and K5WL and, I now have a 10m Moxon antenna (MFJ-1890).

According to K5WL, the antenna got blown down and sustained some damage, but nothing too severe from what I can see. A few of the aluminum tubes are bent a little bit, and one has about 2cm broken off. I think it should be easy enough to straighten the bent tubes and I could probably find a replacement for the shortened tube. If I have to, I'll see if MFJ will sell me some replacement parts.

Very excited to get working on this and get it on the air.

Had a really great time at this year's Charleston Hamfest. With a few more hamfests under my belt and a better idea of what I'm looking at, it was easier to be more targeted with my shopping/browsing.

I sat in on the ARRL forum, where an update on ARRL activities was provided by Jim Boehner/N2ZZ, the Roanoake Division vice-director. Not really a whole lot I hadn't already heard or read about on the ARRL website but still nice to hear the latest news. His update was followed by a very interesting behind-the-scenes look at the ARRL Lab given by Bob Allison/WB1GCM.

In the afternoon, I helped out with the CARS amateur radio licensing test session. Very good turnout for the testing session. Had 13 people in the room to take the test for upgrading or new license. Several new hams with Tech licenses left, and a few other hams walked out with new privileges. Very pleased to have been able to be part of that.

There were a lot of things that were very tempting to buy. One person had a lot of Morse code keys (mostly bugs and paddles), including a straight key that I was very tempted to buy (the one with the red knob in the lower left corner).

Instead of spending most of my hamfest budget on just one thing though, I decided to spend it on lots of little things, which turned out to be the better choice I think. I came back with a pretty good haul today.

There's a couple bags of diodes I picked up (I think I have a lifetime supply of 1N4148 diodes now...100 for $1 was a deal I couldn't pass up), some BNC and SO-239 panel connectors, a 4:1 balun, a couple of center insulators for making dipoles and a couple bundles of test leads.

From the "Free Stuff" table, I grabbed a couple of antennas (or bundles of wires that used to be antennas), some random pieces of RG-8 coax and some C battery holders.

I recall a while ago one of the local hams telling people to use these to make battery packs for HTs, because in an emergency situation AA and D cells are going to be the first thing stores run out of. I figure I can get some C batteries and put them to work as a power supply.

Someone had put an old Heathkit oscilloscope on the free stuff table, but by the time i went by for a second look, someone else had grabbed it. Note to self: If it's on the Free Stuff table and you think you might want it, grab it.

I also added a couple more Forrest Mims Engineering Notebooks to the bookshelf.

I think I have everything I need to build at least a couple dipole antennas. Now to build them, and find a place to put them up...

All in all, a very good hamfest, even though it is small.

This year, I hope to be able to visit some other hamfests in the SC area (within an hour or two drive) and see what they're like.

After a night of rain, sleet and ice build up, I was pleasantly surprised to see the antenna was still up in the tree. It was covered in ice which I think must have affected the performance of the antenna because the radio seemed to have a harder time tuning on some of the bands.

Still seemed to work ok, although I don't think I was able to melt any of the ice while I was playing radio today. I probably need moar watts.

As an experiment, I left fldigi running listening for PSK signals on 10m (28.120 MHz) for most of the day to see what could be heard. Fldigi can scan the passband and send the callsigns it finds to pskreporter.info, where it gets displayed on a map. Between about 07:30 and 20:30 (EST) today, this is what fldigi spotted through the antenna and radio

A total of 25 stations sending out PSK signals were spotted by fldigi. The European stations were picked up mostly during the day, with South American stations coming in later on in the afternoon and the smattering of stations out west late afternoon/early evening.

Not as much 10m PSK as I thought I'd see. I know there was more PSK activity throughout the day, but either the radio wasn't hearing them or fldigi wasn't spotting them. I think I'll try this a few more days and see how things go.

Helping out with radio communication support during the Charleston Marathon was a lot of fun yesterday. The weather was on the chilly side with a breeze that didn't help much. At least it was a sunny day which helped a bit.

I was assigned to the 23 mile mark which, for the marathon course, was also the 17.5ish mark too. It was a while before I saw the first marathon runner come by, about an hour and 40 minutes into the race. There were a few runners trickling by, and then a pretty steady flow of runners over the couple hours going one way, then coming back the other way towards the finish.

The runner in the Superman Underoos outfit gave me a chuckle as he ran by. There was another person wearing a Spiderman shirt, and a woman wearing a 1800s period dress complete with parasol. Probably the most impressive were the two firefighters walking the course dressed in full gear.

Fortunately there were no major incidents (not that I heard over the radio anyway). Had to call for some assistance when a runner broke down at my location but that's about it. A few other runners broke down at other points in the course but nothing severe.

Just before 2:30PM, the net wrapped up operations and I secured my location. There were only a handful of stragglers walking the rest of the course by that point.

All in all, aside from the temperature, it was a lot of fun. I found out that my HT can reach the repeater on the Yorktown from 8 miles away and that even when broadcasting the time calling signal at max volume pretty much continuously for 4 hours, the battery held out for the entire time. Good things to know.

With the help of the M3 frequency counter Jason/NT7S sent me, I was able to set the transmit frequency for my two OpenBeacons. The 40m OpenBeacon I built is tuned to 7.0403 MHz while the 30m OpenBeacon from W2MDW is set for 10.139 MHz. Both of them transmit "AB4UG/B FM02AS" using QRSS with a 6 second dit.

I've had the 40m OpenBeacon on the air all night, but I'm not sure if anybody saw it. Most of the QRSS grabbers seem to be listening on 30m. There's one grabber listed that's on 40m, but it's listening around 7.0008 MHz. I'd have to replace the crystal in the OpenBeacon to get down that low. I should put some pin headers in the crystal spot so I can change frequencies by replacing the crystal.

I think I'll try the 30m OpenBeacon running today and see if it gets grabbed anywhere.

(Looks like I'll have to tweak the frequency of the 30m beacon...most of the grabbers seem to be listening on a fairly narrow 100-500 Hz band around 10.140).

Update: Tweaked the 30m OpenBeacon to transmit at 10.1399 MHz. If you happen to see it, let me know.

Coming up in a few weeks is the Charleston Hamfest and "Computer Show" (experienced hamfest goers will know the reason for "Computer Show").

The Hamfest is February 1 at the Armory Park Community Center in North Charleston, just off East Montague Ave. Admission to the hamfest is $5 and doors open at 8AM. I'll be helping out in the tailgating area this year. Hope the weather is a little warmer than last year and that there are more people tailgating this year than last year.

As with most hamfests, there are prize drawings: $400, $200 and $100 are the main prize drawings. There will also be other door prizes drawn as well. This year, one of the club members donated a Kenwood TM241 2m radio which will be given away as a door prize this year (I'm told you have to be present to win the radio and door prizes, but not the cash prizes).

VE testing will also be offered at the hamfest so if you've been thinking about getting your amateur radio license, start getting ready. Once you pass, there's a good chance you'll be able to buy everything you need to get on the air at the hamfest!

Charleston Hamfest is also looking for a forum presenter or two. If you feel like giving a presentation to a bunch of radio/electronics geeks drop a note and I'll put you in touch with the People In Charge.

Last year I scored a lighted magnifier for the workbench that I've been getting a lot of use out of. Probably the best $5 I've spent in a long time. Hopefully I'll find something equally good this year. I'll have to think about what I want to acquire. Maybe some supplies for building antennas and some cable adapters.