Eugene

Code practice oscillator enclosure

The mini-breadboard version of the NT7S code practice oscillator along with 9V battery fits perfectly into an Altoids tin (the preferred enclosure of tinkerers everywhere). This evening I spent some time wiring up the board to the jacks and power switch.

When I plugged in the headphones and my straight key, I was greeted with a continuous tone, and nothing happened when I tapped the key. Crap, I must have a short somewhere. After a bit of looking around on the board, I went back into the house to grab the schematic, and then realized I had plugged things into the wrong jacks. Swapped the headphones and key and got nice sounding tones when I tapped the key, just as expected. Works great and everything sits in the tin nice and securely. The battery slides around a tiny bit, but that’s not a big deal.

NT7S code practice oscillator in an enclosure

Now I can bundle up my straight key and some headphones and practice wherever I want.

NAQP 2014

Spent about 4 hours playing in the North America QSO Party yesterday. Was just doing some casual tuning around, working a few stations and listening to some of the pileups. Spent most of my time tuning around 20m and 40m. Wasn’t hearing much of anything up on 10m or 15m by the time I got on the radio.

While I was tuning around I also managed to find and work W1AW/5 (OK) on 20m and W100AW/4 in AL on 40m. That was the first W100AW station I had found.

My stats from last night, according to N1MM. Not a whole lot of contacts, but managed a a couple of good ones into OR and CA on 20m.

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec   Mt2
     7      15      15   11    0
    14       9      9    7    0
 Total      24      24   18    0
Score: 432

SC QSO Party 2013 results

Saw that the SC QSO Party results for 2013 were posted a little while ago. A record year for logs submitted, QSOs made and counties activated (all but 2 SC counties were activated).

My 30 contacts and 360 points were good enough to get me 3rd place in the single-op low power category. Woohoo!

The 2014 SC QSO party happens during the weekend I’m back in Edmonton, so I’ll be missing it this year. Next time though.

Cystic Fibrosis Cycle for Life support

One of the items brought up at this evening’s CARS meeting was providing communications support for the Charleston Cystic Fibrosis Cycle for Life event, coming up on October 4, 2014.

CARS members provided some support for the event last year, but I wasn’t able to make it. This year, I signed up to help out. I’m told there’s a 30 mile course, and a 60 mile course out in the Megget/Hollywood area where there isn’t a lot of cell phone coverage, so amateur radio comm support comes in very handy.

This will be the second event I’ve helped out with, and I’m looking forward to it.

If you’d like to help out with comm support, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

Operating days on the USS Yorktown

To make better use of the CARS club room on the USS Yorktown, Jim/KK4REM has taken on the task of organizing monthly operating days open to any club members. Being on the Charleston Harbour and with an HF antenna at a pretty decent height over salt water, the ship is usually a pretty good place to operate from.

There are several purposes for the operating days:

Teach new hams proper operating procedures
Let people who might not normally use HF experience HF operations
Put the club equipment to use

I was able to make it to today’s operating day, and with the club’s laptops, the plan was to do some digital work as well. By the time I arrived at the club room, there were a few people already playing on the radio making some contacts on 20m. One of the contacts even included someone who served on the USS Yorktown back in the 50s.

Operating in the WA4USN club room on the USS Yorktown

After a few contacts, the Signalink was hooked up and a couple people were introduced to some of the digital modes. Did a little bit of PSK and some RTTY. I was busy with other things so I don’t know if any contacts were made.

While they were playing radio, I was showing my sound card interface to Rick/N8BKN and discussing the possibility of maybe making it a build project for the club. Bryce/K4LXF showed up a little later and from him I learned a little more about the repeaters that the club maintains.

I also got the opportunity to see the WA4USN repeater room., located a couple decks below the top of the Yorktown’s island. There’s not too much in there: the 2m repeater, a repeater controller and the WA4USN-5 APRS digipeater.

WA4USN digipeater — WA4USN APRS digipeater

One of these days I might have to help maintain these repeaters.