Birthday Weekend Fun

 Playing Around With FT-8

So after my initial run with making contacts on Saturday, I went back out that night around sunset and spent more time making contacts.  This time via FT-8.  I have to jump through a few hoops to make this work but it works.  If anyone is interested in the specific on what pieces connected where and with what configurations let me know and I'll write it all up with pictures.  But high level, from my FT-840 I connect it to a Signalink device which then connects to my laptop.  I also have the CAT cable which goes from the FT-840 to my laptop.  Then I use a combination of tools.  flrig as it works best with the radio.  wsjtx to do the actual FT-8 communication, and then Power Logger to track my contacts.  

I jumped back and forth between 20m and 40m and spent about an hour last night and then another 2 1/2 hours or so this morning.  Last night I made about 3 FT-8 contacts one of which was out of Russia.

This screenshot also included the handful of SSB contacts I had made during that session.  Blue are 40m contacts and Green are 20m.   

This was this mornings session.  It's still the hot season here and I finally called it as I was sweating and I was putting the radio to work.   So I packed everything up.  This was a lot of fun figuring all of this out.  What worked, what didn't how to get everything to talk.  There were a couple contests going on like Route 66 on the Air, QSO Parties, and the ever present Parks on the Air.  

I'll be traveling this week for work.  I'll be out in Columbus.  I was going to bring my new portable right but I decided against it.  I really need to spend more time studying for my Extra exam so I'm going to just take a handheld.  I have a cheap Quansheng UV-K5 that I programmed up with the local repeaters there so I will still keep an ear out for activity while I'm there and maybe make a contact or two.  But my main focus during my downtime, and especially while on the flight, will be to study.  

Anyways, I'm sure there are like maybe 1 or 2 people who might look at this blog however if there is someone who stumbles across it and what I am doing is in line with what you are doing or want to do, let me know.  If there are things you want me to elaborate on try let me know.  I'm just having fun and learning as I go.  I think next weekend I'm going to try a different antenna configuration and see what the results are.  

73

Contact made

 First Contact

Well, first contact on HF.  Today there was a HIP get together here for the Be-HIP group I have been involved with.  I took out my gear and totally figured I'd do something and that I would not have everything I need even though I thought I did.  And I was definitely not prepared.   I didn't bring a chair which made it hard to be in the shade...shoot, I didn't bring shade either which I could do and will do in the future.   So I found a table that I figured would get some shade eventually and tried to set things up.  And as I progressed, I got hot...and so did my gear to the point where I wasn't feeling well and I called it.  I packed up my stuff and ended up just talking with the others for a bit more before heading home.

So what did I learn from that.  Bring more water, shade, and a chair.  The city parks are also more restrictive in what you can do.  An prime example is you can't put anything into the ground.  There are trees to use and depending on where we are I can easily make use of my antenna mast and run the wire across to a tree.  I have a tire flagpole stand to help with this.  I'm actually using this in the background for my mast right now.  You can put weight on it or just drive over it and let the weight of your car hold it in place.  So I think next time I'm going to bring shade that can go over the back of my car and beyond so I can sit and stay cooler if it is hot.  I also learned that I should finish getting my nanovna settings all setup and saved.  I have most of them there but I missed a couple and that slowed me down in the heat to figure out what needed to be changed where.  I also had not used the tuner before nor my FT-840 really so I was struggling to figure out how to test my antenna.

When I got home I went directly into my back yard and started setting things up there.   For this I didn't start with my home made antennas like I was trying to do earlier today, I started with my Xtenna EFHW.  I hung the balun from my tree and ran the wire out towards a trampoline we have.   I used the flagpole stand and slid it under the trampoline and I was off.  The next step was to test the SWR on my antenna and get the length where it needs to be.  When you get them, or even when you make them, you start long..it is easier to cut then to add.  So when I started it was off the chart.  I was looking at 20m as that is good day and night right now.   

After about 6 or 7 attempts where I cut a few feet off the wire I got it down to below 1.5 and since I was hot and raising and lowering the wire was a pain in the arse I asked google for validation and it came back and said it was fantastic.  (Don't trust Google, but it does help).   That was at about 1pm.  I pulled the NanoVNA from the wire and hooked the wire up to my tuner which was already connected to my radio.  I did the tune process which I think I did right and then I started hunting.  

I just started using a program called Ham2k Power Logger (Next).  I've had it installed on my phone but I watched a Youtube video yesterday talking about the new version and using it on a Mac.  So I fired that up after firing up flrig which I seem to need for this FT-840.  I also had wsjtx running didn't look at it.  

About 20 mins later I made my first contact.  I had been looking at different frequencies for a while.  Power Logger will show recent spottings so you can see that a specific callsign was just seen on a specific frequency.  It gives you a bunch more info like the POTA information.  You can click on it and it will automatically tune your radio (if you have all of that setup which I do).  So I was jumping around checking different spots.  I was able to hear a few different people in places like Montana, Washington, and Texas some of which were quite loud and clear.  But I was also seeing some of them fading in and out.    But this guy was one that was loud and clear coming out of Texas.  This guy was doing a POTA activation out of Austin State Park and I was able to make clear contact with him.  

I made a couple more contacts over the next 30 minutes give or take before deciding I was sweating too much and it was time to take a break.  I'll leave the antenna up for now so I can plug things in easily tonight and/or tomorrow.  Evening will open up 40m which will be interesting to see if I get anything.

For my testing I just used a tv tray stand and had my radio, tuner, and laptop on it with my battery on the ground.

The Xtenna balun is hanging in that tree.

And you can see my mast there. 

So that is it for now.  It's time to throw my trunks on and hop in the pool

Where my contacts were today.

Ivan

Day 1

 This is not really going to be Day 1, but it will be the first post.  I have been wanting to get my HAM license for decades.  As a teenager I worked at a Boy Scout summer camp out in California.  My first summer on staff, I bunked with someone who had their license.  Throughout the years, and I most recently caught up with him late last year, he has encouraged me to get my license.  

About 10 or so years ago, I was all ready to go to study and do it.  I bought a nice little handheld, a Yaesu VX-8DR.  I played around with it trying to find something to listen to.  I never really got out of the house with it and at the time I was living out in the sticks.  Rarely did I catch anything and I never truly found the energy to study properly.  This year I had friends who were planning on attending Defcon.  This is the annual Hacker convention in Las Vegas.  I hadn't been to it since around 2000 and had heard that it had changed quite a bit, least of which was the price..yikes!   Anyways, I hadn't seen these friends in like 10 years so I made the effort and went.  I found that they had a thriving HAM Village and one could take their exam there for any, or all,  of the currently 3 levels of licensing.  So I made the decision I was going to make that my priority outside of hanging with my friends.  And I successfully passed the Technician exam. 

I was legal to transmit on certain bands and frequencies...but now what?  Well, with all the studying and reading and listening, I learned about how people are using their licenses out there.  POTA, SOTA, Contests, all the digital stuff.  There were many things to explore.  I really want to do POTA (Parks on the Air).  It's an excuse to get out of the house and go to beautiful places and do technical stuff.  That's really what it is.  You go out to a State or National park.  There is a list of them that are port of this activity.  You setup your portable radio and antenna and you try to make a bunch of contacts with folks all over the place.   This sounded like fun.  Not a lot of small talk needed, just the initial contact, an exchange of signal and location information, and that is it.  An excuse to get out in different places and test out different antenna setups and make the electronics work in a rugged location.  So that was my goal to begin with.  Get setup and get out and participate in POTA.  I also want to do other things, but this was the big one besides getting my home setup figured out.

So, to do POTA, you just have to be able to make contact with others from out in the wilderness.  This means being able to get long distance.  The 10 meter privileges you get with the Technician might be able to do some of this, but that band is not the best right now.  If you really want to get out 20 or 40 meter is where you want to be from what folks are saying.  In order to talk on those you need a General license.  So I studied and last weekend I passed that exam.  And now I am studying for the Extra license becuase...why not?  The General license gives access to most of the frequencies available to amateurs so it really is all you need.

I will be writing posts going into detail on the various components I am using or trying.  My successes and failures as I will be not just buying items but trying to make some.  For now, I'll just go through what I have and am playing with right now.  

One of the first things I did was to purchase a radio capable of doing the HF bands.  I don't have a ton of money to throw at this right now so I went to the used market and went for an older radio.  I found a Yaesu FT-840 that was within my budget and looked like it was in great condition.  I will do a post about the modifications I have done as this was mostly stock and there is a resistor modification that is pretty much a must to do.  But as of right now, I have not really used this radio.   The radio alone isn't enough but it will get me from 160m up to 10m on 100w.  It doesn't have all the fancy newer items like a waterfall display or digital mode (it was made in the 90's), but there are some things you can do to bridge the gap.  And ultimately, I was to primarily just make contacts.

You need power so I stuck with the Yaesu gear that was lined up with the FT-840 and got a used FP-800 power supply.  Again, great condition as far as I can tell.  I also got a MFJ-941E Versa Tuner II.  This is a manual tuner which makes it cheaper than the alternatives and more than sufficient for me to begin with.  Learn first, then get fancy and lazy later. heh

I've since also picked up a dummy load so I could test my radio without hooking up the antenna.  Speaking of antenna's.   Antennas are where things get complicated.  That actually gets easier when you get out into the wild, but for my home....  First i live in a HOA controlled area.  I can't just throw an antenna up on my house and be done with it.  I'll go into details on this as well later but for testing purposes, I'll be looking to do what I'll be doing to some degree when I go do POTA.  I bought a mast to be able to get the antenna wire up high, and I bought a End-Fed Half-Wave antenna, specifically I purchased a 100w Variable End Fed Half Wave Antenna from Xtenna.  This is going to be one of my POTA antenna's but it gives me a lot of flexibility initially.  For a mast I purchased the Explorer POTA33H Heavy Duty Portable 33 ft Telescopic Carbon Fiber POTA Mast from Gigaparts and a Messi and Paoloni PotaFlex 7 20' Coax Cable.  I'm not going to be making any 33' tall masts anytime soon and you need a quality cable and I'm not capable (yet) of making one.

So that is my initial setup.  I have a couple things that are accessories to help put all of that together, but I am hoping to put it all together this todnight/tomorrow if weather permits and get on the air for the first time with this rig.  I have been on 70cm with my VX-8DR a few times.  Just not enough power for transmitting out of my house so I'm getting a new VHF/UHF radio.  So I'll document that as well.

Before ending this post, I wanted to mention a few of the projects related to all of this I plan on documenting.  I am really enjoying watching reading what others are doing for home brew type setups.  The cheaper the better.  So, the first antenna I made I made twice and both were horrible.  It was a 2m/70cm antenna.  I plan on making a 3rd attempt once i get a few more things in line.  It requires precise measurements and the materials you use matter.  I have all the parts to make a 10m dipole making use of some pvc pieces.  I have all the material to make a bunch of counterpoises.  I plan on putting up a dipole or two in my attic space. I don't have a lot of space up there but I should be able to put up a 10m and 20 m dipole setup.  As it cools down here (I'm in Arizona), I plan on cleaning out my work area in the garage and making it livable.  There is a perfect place there for a shack so I'll be getting that all setup.  I'll be able to run cables up to the attic for those antennas and one or two outside.  I have figured out how to setup an outdoor antenna here that I think will be stealthy enough to not get me in trouble with the HOA.  Time will tell. 

I am far from an expert on any of this.  I'm still learning and that is the point.  I'm not going to have expensive gear unless that really is the only way to do things properly...and then I have to have the money to do that.  So expect this blog to cover me stumbling through this new adventure.  I'll also try to document the HAM related events I attend.  I have joined local groups and am starting to participate in various events.  It is another great way to learn all of this.  There are a lot of people with a ton of experience.  Your local HAM operators will have knowledge on things unique to the area you live.  

Anyways, if you happen to stumble across this blog and find any of this interesting or useful, let me know.  If you are on the air, keep a ear out for K7STY.  73