ARRL – Page 2 – AB4UG Radioblog

A collection of Handbooks

A collection of ARRL Handbooks from 1944, 1950, 1971, 1974, 1979, 1980, 1993, 2005, 2012, 2014

Somewhere along the way, I apparently thought it would be cool to have at least one ARRL Handbook from each decade. Over the past few years, I’ve managed to acquire a few Handbooks toward that goal. Some I found at hamfests, some through the annual ARRL Auction, and some through SK estates.

The most recent additions were the 1980 and 2005 Handbooks. They came from the collection of one of my ham friends, Willie/WB4SOG (SK), who died recently. Willie was a prominent member of the local amateur radio community, and he’ll be missed by many people. I actually met him several years before I became a ham through his wife who volunteered with the same lab retriever rescue that I did. His friend Bruce/KI4YST brought several boxes of books and QST magazines from Willie’s collection to the club meeting for club members to take. I’m glad to be able to give some of his books a new home in my collection.

Handbooks from the 1920s and 1930s would be a nice addition to the collection. I’m sure I could find them if I looked harder. They’ve shown up in the ARRL Auction in the past, and there’s a 1932 Handbook in this year’s edition of the ARRL auction. Bidding on that Handbook sent the price pretty high early on. Probably plenty of old Handbooks on eBay too.

I haven’t read them all yet, but I’ve looked through a few of them and they give a nice look at how amateur radio has evolved over the past century.

The Handbook I’m planning to get for the 2020s will be the 2023 edition, which will be the 100th edition of the ARRL Handbook.

Speaking of the ARRL Auction, it seems like the interest in older handbooks is a lot higher this year and there’s been a lot more bidding on them than in previous years. Past auctions I think also had more Handbooks up for bid if I recall correctly, so maybe that was a factor.

WA4USN Rookie Roundup 2015

CARS has set up an operating day at the club station, WA4USN, on board the USS Yorktown for this year’s ARRL Rookie Roundup (SSB). For Rookie Roundup purposes, a Rookie is someone who was licensed in the current year, or within the past 2 years (2013, 2014, or 2015). If you’re a rookie or new ham and want to experience the HF side of amateur radio or just want to operate from the club station (it’s a pretty neat place to play radio from), this is your chance!

The club room will be open starting at 1PM, April 19. Rookie Roundup starts at 2PM EDT and goes to 759PM EDT (1800 – 2359 UTC). If you’re interested, drop me a note and I’ll put you in touch with the proper people.

ARRL RTTY Roundup 2014

Spent a few hours on the radio this weekend playing in the ARRL RTTY Roundup. It’s my first digimode contest and it was an interesting experience.

I’ve found that with digital modes, I like to have the sound on so that I can hear (in addition to see) the activity in the passband. I started off on 20m and right off encountered a bunch of loud and overdriven signals. Some of the transmissions were so bad that they washed out the entire passband during the transmission. Here’s a brief sample of what some of the better transmissions looked like.

20m RTTY passband during the 2014 ARRL RTTY Roundup

I also found that fldigi’s decoding the RTTY signals seemed to be spottier than PSK decoding. I’m not sure if that was just because of the quality of the transmissions it was having to decode or just the nature of RTTY. I’ll have to try to find some non-contest RTTY to test with.

For most of the contest, I was running 30-35W which seemed to be pretty sufficient to get me heard reasonably far. I finished up with around 110 QSOs and decided to call it a day a few hours before the end of the contest because I was getting tired of sitting.

Highlight of the contest was a 20m contact with VK3TDX all the way in Austrailia. That sets the record for my longest QSO at over 16 000 km. Here’s the excerpt from the fldigi log

RX 14132540 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:34Z): cq test vk3dx vk3tx vk3tdx cqzw qzy
TX 14132544 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:34Z): ab4ug ab4ug k
RX 14132545 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:34Z): lieetpab4u ab4u 599 484 484 484 abfuvia
TX 14132540 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:34Z): vk3tdx 599 sc sc tu 73 ab4ug
RX 14132540 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:35Z): hvur call? ur call?”
TX 14132540 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:35Z): ab4ug ab4ug k
RX 14132540 : RTTY (2014-01-05 21:35Z): cciyxly l b4ug qsl 73 vk3tdx qrz w6oat w6oat

There’s some garbled decoding, but it looks like he got everything. Using 35W, I was very surprised he was even able to pick up my signal. I suppose it’s possible he was listening remotely using a station closer to me (with SDR and Internet connected radios, you can listen and potentially operate from anywhere in the world from the comfort of your computer desk). I’ll hang on to the thought that I just had some astoundingly good propagation.

(Sweet, just checked on LoTW and it’s confirmed there. Woohoo!)

At a couple points toward the end, my sound card interface started acting up and would rapidly switch PTT on and off. Not sure what was causing it, but both times it happened there were some really strong signals coming through the radio. Don’t know if it’s related or not, and this is the only time the interface has acted up like that.

After today, I haven’t quite decided if digimode contests are quite my thing. I think I’ll have to try a few more contests out.

2013 ARRL 10m contest

Spent a couple hours at the radio playing in the ARRL 10m contest today. Didn’t get to play as much as I wanted to, but managed to score 28 contacts for 1176 points. I’d have played longer, but the cold I managed to catch from somewhere put a damper on things. Managed to snag SD and ND though, both of which seem to be hard to get states. The ND contact is confirmed in LoTW, so hopefully the SD contact will confirm there at the end of the contest. I should be at least a couple states closer to WAS Basic after the weekend.

Playing RTTY radio

Spent a couple hours yesterday afternoon out at the club communications trailer for the ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY). Tom (AJ4UQ) set up one of the club radios, a Yaesu 897D and one of the laptops to run RTTY.

ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) 2013 from the CARS trailer

Radio set up for ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) 2013

There were two other rookies that came out, James (KK4REM) and Andrew (KF7YOX). We operated using my call sign this year and after Tom showed us the basics and helped set up some macros in fldigi, we were off and running.

ARRL Rookie Roundup (RTTY) from the CARS Trailer

The radios and laptop were initially set up to run off the batteries in the trailer, but after a few minutes, we noticed the voltages displayed by the radio were getting pretty low. A quick look revealed the batteries had gone dry for some reason despite having been topped up a couple of weeks ago. They were also unusually hot even after they were refilled with water. Some of the more knowledgable people suspected a problem with the charger not reducing the power once the batteries were charged. We managed to find a long extension cord and switched over to wall power.

This highlighted another purpose for these “contests”: it gives you a chance to exercise your equipment and discover problems, especially important for something intended to be used in emergency/public communications purposes.

After getting past that, we started hunting around the bands looking for other people playing in the Rookie Roundup. We wandered around several bands, learned how to adjust and tune the antenna (a Little Tarheel) and a bit about how to use the radio. We found a few people and made a handful of contacts, but it seemed like it was easier to hear them than to make contact with them. We decided that maybe the antenna didn’t have a good enough ground plane, and Tom thought that maybe some radials would help. That’ll be something else to try for later.

I think in the 3 hours or so that we were operating, we made about 5 or 6 contacts. More importantly, I think the three of us learned a little more about radio operating. I learned a little more about the inner workings of the trailer and a little more about the different digital modes. We got to hear several different types of digital modes, including some PSK signals.

Overall, even though we didn’t make a lot of contacts, I think it was still a pretty good time. Got outside to play radio, worked with a couple of the newer hams, all great fun.

Now I want to see if I can build my own interface so I can do digital modes at home.