My first love

I re-found my first love! I was 13 when I met here and spend hours playing with her. Than when I was 16 I lost her again…..

Since this is a radio amateur blog you probably guessed I was talking about something to do with transmitters… ;-)

I was browsing around ebay and found the first transmitter I ever had. It was an Amroh CB-007; 22 channel FM, 0.5 watt CB transmitter. I think the Amroh brand is a Dutch brand and the transmitter was, in hindsight, not the greatest looking rig. But it was my first transmitter and although the specifications were not great, it was my biggest treasure then. 

After a few years I lost interest and I think I sold the Amroh then. 

So now I again found the first transmitter I ever had and bought it. It was only 60 euros for two (!) of them so the price was right I guess! ;-) This included postage and packing(!)

I can remember paying 200 euros for it so the price did change a lot but I guess that’s the faith of all electronics. 

I must say I’m very happy to have this CB radio again. I will not use it because the specs are so bad, compared to my current transmitters, that I cannot do much with it. 

But maybe I can just look at it now and then and remember the time when I was 13! 

I got the contesting bug!

I just keep learning with this radio amateur hobby and what better way to learn than by doing things! I have done 6 contests already in the last 6 weeks.

I started with the CQ World Wide DX Contest, the biggest of the year. After that the Ukranian DX Contest and the Worked All Europe RTTY DX Contest (my first RTTY contest).

The 4th one was the LZ DX Contest (from Bulgaria) followed by the Tara RTTY Melee and the EPC Ukraine DX Contest (BPSK63 digital mode).

Of all the contests I did 3 SSB (voice) ones and 3 digital ones (2 times RTTY and once BPSK63).

Until now it was all just trying out the equipment but I think the time now has come to start doing the contests for real. I need to prepare a bit better for this and really work most of the 24 hours or 48 hours of the contest!

My first RTTY experience

I have a lot of first experiences lately. After my first contest, getting my first tube linear I tried another new thing.

I had my first RTTY (Radio Tele TYpe) experience, also known as Telex! I also decided to jump into the deep end and enter the german Worked All Europe DX Contest (WAEDC) and do some RTTY there right away. Mind you, it was mostly a possibility for me to try out the equipment and software to do RTTY. I didn’t really try to win but doing a contest pushed me a bit more to do everything the right way.

I used my Yaesu FT-950 transmitter, with “only” 100 Watt, the SignaLink USB interface and Digital Master 780 as RTTY / Digital Software. All worked ok, although for some reason I could’t use the RTTY mode on my transmitter, it just didn’t work. Instead I had to use SSB, which worked also ok. I just don’t know why the mode that should work best in this case didn’t work. Another thing I’m not so happy with is the software. Digital Master 780 works very well for regular communications but I don’t think it works good for contests. I guess it could be just a case of RTFM (which I didn’t do of course ;-) ) but I think I would prefer a Mac OSX program for this. I think RUMped will work also RTTY but I just didn’t have time before the contest to try it out.

All in all, it was nice to do my first RTTY (Telex) QSO and contest. It really is very easy to learn and because the bandwidth is very small you can get very far with (relatively) low power! The bandwidth is only 250 Hz which is less than 10% of the bandwidth of SSB. Without any problems I talked (or should I say RTTY-ed) with the USA, some 8000km away!

Up to my next first HAM Radio experience. I wonder what that will be!

My new Christmas tree!

I got my new Christmas tree! Well, not really of course but it comes close.

I opened up my new Ameritron Linear just to see what those 4 tubes look like when the thing is turned on. It lights up the room and looks rather cozy! There is also a lot of heat coming from it so perfect for those cold winter evenings!

I had to override the safety switch to open it though. Ameritron puts one in so when you open the linear power it is disconnected from power. I found the safety switch and pushed it while taking the pics. I guess this is why the pics are a bit blurry; I made them with one (shaky) hand! ;-)

Of course this is one of those situations where I should say (and am saying!); don't try this at home! There is 1700 volt generated in there!

I do think the open linear looks like a work of art but I guess that's just my radio amateur way of looking at things.

All blown up!!

I took my next step in this great Radio Amateur hobby of ours! I blew something up! ☺

Recently I bought a Diamond SX-100 power meter to use with the Ameritron Linear I bought.

I’m using the linear with my two dipoles; the 15m one and the fan dipole for 10m and 20m. To switch between the dipoles I have a (manual) switch. Now as all radio amateurs know, you have to switch the linear to the band you wanna use it on. Of course I also need to put the antenna switch to the same band the linear is using.

Now guess what happens when the linear band is not equal to the band of the antenna you’re using….. Boom!!! and a funny plastic smell that tells you this is gonna cost you money! I’m sure the power meter should be able to handle this but it didn’t.

Because I do need a good power meter for the linear I looked on ebay quickly and found a second hand Ameritron AWM-30. This is a power meter from the same brand as my linear so I’m guessing it should be able to handle all the mistakes people can make with linears. The linear itself is also very forgiving; if the SWR is to high it jumps right away in error mode and you have to push the standby button to get it out of this mode. I’m expecting my power meter to do the same, or at least not blow up!

Oh well, just another one of the lessons I’m learning in my “new” hobby I guess! ☺

My 1st Contest; Doing the Contest

On the 27th and the 28th of October I worked my first ever radio amateur contest; the CQ World Wide DX contest 2012! On saturday I didn’t have the whole day free to do contesting but the whole Sunday was available for this. In theory I had enough time to make a great score, in practice this worked out differently…

I decided to work the contest on all bands with full legal power; which is 400W for me in The Netherlands with my Full license. To work the 160m and 80m bands I needed to get up pretty early because they are only really ok in the dark, when the D layer in the ionosphere isn’t there to screw things up. A problem was that I just didn’t have the right antenna for these bands. The one antenna (an endfed) I thought would maybe give me some QSO’s was in the end just an RFI creator. I think more power was on the coax cable then going into the antenna luckily I used only 100 watt! ;-)

The mistuned antenna even turned the TV on, downstairs (I was on the top floor). Hope I didn’t bother the neighbors to much with this TVI. ;-) Luckily this RFI everywhere was only in the few hours in the early morning when I was trying out the bad antenna. After this I used my dipoles which are perfectly tuned so they don’t give any problems with TVI.

I guess for me, my antenna’s are anyway a problem. With my license I can use all Radio Amateur bands but in the end I only have good antenna’s for the 10m, 15m and 20m HF bands (and for VHF / UHF of course). In the end I decided to focus on these 3 HF bands in this contest and jump from one to the other if propagation (or pileups) so demanded.

Now for me the contest really started. I decided to first do search and pounce and if the possibility arose I would also start doing some calling CQ contest for myself. In the end the search and pounce option was the only one possible for me. The bands were just to full for my relatively “limited” power and antenna’s. My signal would have been lost in the QRM of the Spanish, Italians and Ukrainers with their multi kilowatt amplifiers and high antenna towers!

Maybe next year I will have an antenna upgrade which will make me able to compete on a better level. I still think my legal limit (400 watt) is more than enough power if you use the right antenna. If you use more power than that you’re normally only bothering other amateurs, you’re not getting many more QSO’s. In the end to much power makes them hear you, but you will not hear them.

On the whole I enjoyed myself a lot in my first contest! I spent 4 hours contesting on saturday and also 4 hours on sunday, so in total 8 hours for my first contesting weekend. I think this was a nice first try! :-) My contest results in the end weren’t so impressive though. The real professional contesters work more than 1000 QSO’s per day, I did 179 in 2 days! One QSO every 3 minutes. Still as I said, it was more a trial; trying out my equipment and just to see what it is to do a contest. I also added some nice new countries to my collection like Gambia, Senegal and Kuwait and I worked a new radio amateur entity; Kosovo (Z60WW).

Now, finally, what you have all been waiting for of course; my contest statistics:

CQ WW DX Contest Score of PA1CA

My 1st Contest; CQ World Wide DX!

After buying the linear and optimizing my coax cables (I replaced all the RG58 with Aircell 7) I decided it is time for my first contest!

Every Radio Amateur knows that around this time of the year there is the CQ World Wide DX Contest! This is one of the most popular contest of the year, maybe even THE most popular one!

It will be my first contest so I'm a little bit nervous about how I will do in this, and if I will "screwup" in it somehow. I guess I have to start somewhere and maybe this very popular contest is just the right place to start! I will participate in the single operator category, all band, high power. This will give me a chance to try out all my gear and also enjoy my new Full license! :-)

More on how it went in one of  my next blogs....