KE4KE

A friend instant messaged me the other night and told me that he had his new Yaesu FT-450 connected using Ham Radio Deluxe software. He then connected it to the internet. We tried to make connection, but could not make it work. Perhaps my friend had not opened the appropriate port on his router? Either way it inspired me to set up my station at work, a television transmitter site.

Today I installed a coax feed from the radio to outside and hung half of a dipole antenna. It may act very much like a G5RV? I went to a sporting goods store and purchased a new band for my slingshot. Then, next time I am at work I will finish the installation of the antenna.

I also ordered the Icom level converter interface from our local ham store. Once the antenna is up I can test it when I am at work. However I will not be able to use it remotely until the converter is installed. At that point I am hoping to be able to operate from here at home in our apartment. If it all works I will be prepared the next time the solar flux hits 150.

Tim

I have had a little bit of time recently to check the radio and noise levels.  There is still S7 of noise here at the home QTH. One reason might be what is on the other side of our living room wall.

So I checked the radio at work, a television transmitter site, and found the same noise. Today I decided to try something a little different. I hooked up the radio with a battery at the transmitter site and just laid the antenna on the floor. I was able to hear a couple good signals on twenty meters with considerably less than S7 noise. Now that I have had a little encouragement my next goal will be to try and set up a station somewhere on site and see how it goes.

Tim

Just thought that I would report that FD did not work out this year. Even though we recently moved I did set up an antenna, but for reasons I have yet to figure out could only hear one station in Arizona. Arizona is not bad, but it was the only station on the entire 20 meter band that I could hear. I was unable to pick up any station on the other bands. I even tried both the IC-703 and the Argonaut. Until that I was thinking that the problem might be operator error with the new radio. So I have plenty of time to work out the details and hopefully be prepared for next year.

Tim

It is time to start getting ready for Field Day 2010. Even though the tent is not in the best shape I almost feel like I need to use it one more year. This year unless something unexpected happens I will be operating /0 this year. We have been in the process of trying to move so the set up in the back yard as used the last two years is a thing of the past. The tent is already up north. We put down a deposit on an apartment so the current thinking is that I may operate from my work site. I have not had an HF rig turned on around a television transmitter site since the days of analog so I am not sure about how much noise I may hear. I have been told that things are quieter now so that sounds very positive.

In regard to HF rigs there is also something else new. I finally purchased an Icom IC703+ and have a few weeks to learn how to use the new radio. I took a trip to the local ham store to buy a new power supply. Taking into account my two meter SSB rig I plan to buy the Astron 12 amp supply with meters. It is on order one as they did not have one with meters in stock. Until I receive it I can’t practice with the new radio though. I need to buy a battery so that I can operate class 1B. So now I need to go back to all those articles I ignored for the last few years and figure out what size and type will work best for operating and keep rather portable.

By the way, I think that I am going to start participating in VHF/UHF contests as well. Unfortunately I will only have a 5 watt hand held, a Kenwood TH-F6A, another recent purchase, for the upcoming 12 June event. I may still see if I can make some contacts though.

Tim

I was so happy to see fifteen meters open this year. The solar flux had been at a disappointing sixty-seven all week so the expectation of any activity above twenty meters was not high. After the first few minutes of sitting in front of the radio and listening to twenty meters I decided to see if anyone was on fifteen. It took forty-one contacts over an hour and a half before the band weakened and it was time to try elsewhere. Even then I only worked one twenty meter contact before moving down to forty for most of the rest of the evening. There were a few contacts made on fifteen, twenty and eighty meters before I called it a night. Sunday morning I worked most of a page of twenty meter stations and then finished with twenty-nine contacts on fifteen. All one-hundred-and-twenty-one contacts, in 47 sections, were SSB with five watts, QRP. My attempt at CW was limited to the last hour of my contesting with no results.

After the contest I wanted to compare last year’s results. I was amazed at how few contacts were made last year. I thought, “What was I doing all that time?” What was different? Last year after five CW contacts I made 46 contacts, thirty-six sections total, mostly on twenty meters. Maybe it was just me getting back into the swing of things after a ten year break? Perhaps it was the two additional antennas that helped?

After putting up the tent I aimed my slingshot at the two trees used last year for the same G5RV from last year. The ends were a bit higher but the feed point was still at forty feet. I wanted to add a fifteen meter antenna just in case the band opened up so I put together a fifteen meter folded dipole. The antenna and feed line being both made with ladder line used a plastic handle from an old printer box to hold the center firmly together. It worked very well, but I should have bought some of the nice centers that Ten-Tec has when I was over there last year. I wanted this antenna as high as possible so I aimed at the single tallest tree in the center back of the yard. After three tries my last shot did not hit the tree and went through at about sixty-five feet making the center of the fifteen meter antenna at almost sixty feet. I also had an eighty meter dipole fed by ladder line. I sacrificed it’s height by stringing it at the end of the fifteen meter antenna and letting it slope down to a tree a hundred feet away. The center of the eighty meter dipole was about 25 feet up. If there had been time and more string the far end would have been up in a tree. Due to the addition of the fifteen meter antenna the feed line came out short for the eighty and I had to feed it with what I could find at the time. I used RG-6 out to a four-to-one current balun. I had some really nice RG-8 available, but it had N-connectors and I had no adapters and no time to do anything about it.

You can see that most of this was all put together last minute Saturday morning, but that does go along with the spirit of the event. I got on the air at two-thirty local time. Also in the spirit of a true emergency I had purchased a solar panel earlier this year. I pulled out the deep-cycle battery I used last year and started it on the solar panel Friday afternoon. The battery is retired from UPS use and is probably six years old now. It will be replaced before next year’s FD, but it did fairly well helped by the low power drain of the Argonaut 515. I ran without the dial light except for picture taking and never saw higher than 0.18 amps on receive.

-with dial light on-

I used a charge controller and watched the current and voltage with one of the great little in-line monitors from Powerwerx. I had seen one on a You Tube video and then finally spotted it in an ad in QST. It was pretty cool to be working contacts and watch the voltage on the battery rise when there was good sunshine on the panel. I will also get an extension cable for the solar panel for next year. It would have been in the direct sun light quite a bit more if I had ten feet more line. The lowest voltage I saw Saturday night was 12.7 volts. The next morning when I started the voltage was back over 13 volts, cool! That should be the fifteen meter antenna in the reflection of the solar panel in the picture below.

It was ninety-six degrees Saturday and if there had not been shade on the tent I would have been a 1E station instead of 1B. Thanks to the trees and our location, not too far from the edge of the hills as they head down into Nashville, there would have been no breeze either. You don’t have to go to far north to lose that nice breeze.

Over all it was a great Field Day. I found that my five watts could pretty much work anyone I could hear. I only really had problems sometimes when the station I was trying to work had a huge pile-up of people waiting to make a contact. I did leave the fifteen meter antenna up just in case I want to see how it works this weekend. I am looking forward to next year.

Tim

Recently I found out that the Ten-Tec Argonaut V (516) has been discontinued. I was considering purchasing one, but for a while the radio was unavailable, like the Jupiter is as I write this. When it did finally become available it was not the best time for me to purchase one. I did get to sit and tune around on one last year while visiting Ten-Tec. I only have my father’s 515 which I sent in last year and had it repaired. It worked great for field day.

I have always been a Ten-Tec fan. My first radio was the 509. Unfortunately I sold it when we learned we were moving to Alaska and purchased a Kenwood TS-140S. Even in Alaska though I made the ALC modification and ran the radio at 5 watts output as best I could. I sold the TS-140 last year as having a full power radio was just not as much fun as having a true QRP radio.

So what is available in the QRP radio department? I am leaving out kits as I just am not interested in building anything at this time. There are really only two radios that one can walk into a store and buy today and be on the air with tonight. One is the Yaesu FT817ND and the other the Icom 703 Plus. As part of my plan to buy an Argonaut I did check out the competition to see what was available last year. Although the Yaesu had some advantages I believe the Icom had the better specifications. Receiver sensitivity was one thing that caught my attention.

Sorry, but I have never really liked Yaesu. The display on the 817 is a bit small. I was going to complain about it covering so many different bands, but I guess that is pretty common now. The only Icom radio I have ever owned was my very first 2 meter rig, the Icom 22S. That radio did influence my DC power cabling. Every radio I own gets the same type of power connector on it as the IC-22s. I can plug any radio in anywhere car or home. Buying one of these radios though almost seems wrong since I like Ten-Tec so much.

So what do I do? I am not really wanting to buy a second hand rig. I should mention that I miss 30 meters. I like CW, but my code skill requires that I keep a microphone around for the rare contest.

It would have been cool if Ten-Tec had built the 516 into the same or very similar case as the 515. Probably the only thing I felt was a negative for the 516 was the case. It was not quite right for mobile or portable use, but a bit too small to comfortably use as a regular home desk top radio.

Tim