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....

My new addition to the shack; the Ameritron 811HD

After getting my Full License I decided to buy myself a present. With my full license I can use 400 watt of power on most bands. My current transmitter only does 100 watt so I "needed" an amplifier.

After some searching I decided on the, widely used, Ameritron 811HD. This is a multi band HF amplifier with a max of 800 watt power. I will under drive it to only use the 400 watt allowed. Anything over this will anyway not be good because my antennas are in my shack. If I use 800 watt and touch my dipole antennas I will probably drop dead on the spot. Well ok, let's say I will get a nice shock, to say the least!

The thing I didn't think about was that, next to the linear I would need some other things. Next to the extra cables to drive it (Yaesu has their own cable which set me back 35 euros), I also need thicker coax cable. The one I'm using now is RG58, which is to thin for this kind of power. I guess I will get the thicker RG213, but I'm not sure yet what is the best thing to do. Maybe I will just try first what the RG58 will do. If it melts away I know to get better cable! ;-)

UPDATE (Oct 22, 2012): After getting some advice from a fellow Radio Amateur, and friend, I decided to go for the Aircell 7 coax instead. All reviews about this type are very positive! I already replaced all of my coax with this type.

Read more about this at my blogsite www.pa1ca.nl

Homebrew 70cm Quad Antenna

I made another antenna; a 70cm Quad antenna, and it works like a charm!

The "bad" thing about quads is that they are full wavelength antenna's, which in HF normally means; LONG ANTENNAS! The "good" thing in this case is that a full wavelength in the 70cm band means; a 70cm (27.6 inches) long antenna! :-) In a quad this means that every side is 17.5cm (6.9 inches) long, almost nothing!

I got some PVC pipe in a home repair shop. This set me back about 50 euro cents per 2 meter (which means about 0.65 USD for 6.6 feet). I needed 50 cm of pipe in this antenna (2 times 25 cm). Next to this I used 70cm of speaker wire I had laying around and a few tie raps to strap it all together.

I checked the SWR with the build in SWR meter of my FT-817. It was all 1:1.1 so perfect! Outside of the 70cm band the SWR got quickly bad but all over the 70cm band it was perfect!

After checking the SWR I tried it with my dual band handheld 5 watt, 2m/70cm Wouxun KG-UV2D and I right away was able to use the Rotterdam repeater from my home (near Utrecht). In general with a "rubber duck" antenna this would be difficult. With the new Quad it was easy! So in the end I got a great little antenna for almost no money, and also did some nice DIY! :-)

The thing to think about though is that the Quad is directional, so try it out a bit and make it "point" towards the repeater you want and keep it there. Also remember to keep the feed point to the left or right side, not top or bottom, if you want to use for the repeaters.

My next project will be either a 2 meter band version of this or a 3 element beam of this 70cm band Quad antenna. I need to think what I "need" more at the moment.

By the way, the 2 meter 3 element Quad homebrew version is described here very nicely.

Read more about this at my blogsite www.pa1ca.nl

My new call sign; PA1CA

I got my new call sign! After thinking a lot about it I chose PA1CA. There are a few reasons for this.

First of all; I'm used to the suffix; 1CA, because my old call sign was PD1CA. When trying to call someone in a pileup you often just repeat your suffix.... over and over again..... so I'm used to using this. By keeping the same suffix as I already had, I will make less mistakes in the future.

The PA as a prefix is recognizable all over the world as a prefix from the Netherlands. Most Radio Amateurs will also know that it's the prefix of the Full License and not of the Novice license (which is PD).

All in all, maybe it's not the most creative call sign (more or less what I already had) but it's the most practical one I think! :-)

I got my F (full) License!

After only studying for 2 months I decided to do the exam for the Full Radio Amateur License and I passed it!!!

This licence compares to the extra license in the USA and is just the highest license you can get when you're a radio amateur. Now I can use my license in even more countries than before. Also if we were to move to another country I could, in most cases, just get the full license in the country we're moving to.

I'm also looking forward to start using all the new bands that I'm allowed to use now. The novice (N) license I had, gave me rights to use the 10, 20 and 40 meter bands in HF and the 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands in VHF / UHF. Now I can use all the bands which is A LOT more! :-) Also the power I can use is a lot more; 25 watt with my old license and 400 watt with the new one.

It will take a week or 2 before the administration is done so until then I can think of what the new call sign will be. A novice license in the Netherlands starts with PD. For the full license I can not use this so I think I will make it start with PA, PC or PE, I'm not sure yet.

FT-950 Wideband mod

After buying my new (secondhand) Yaesu FT-950 base transceiver I knew I again wanted to do the wideband mod. This is the same mod I did for the Yaesu FT-817 some time ago (I wrote about it in my blog). Because the FT-950 is much larger than the FT-817 I thought it would be easier to do the mod and I was right!

To do the mod you have to turn the radio up side down and remove all 18 (!) screws.

The jumpers that you have to change are on the front right corner.
The only thing you have to do is close jumper number 5, this is it!

Read more about this at my blogsite www.pa1ca.nl

My new toy; an FT-950!

So after I made my new antenna (described in the previous blogs) I found out that I can hear a lot more stations. With this there also are a lot of stations I don’t want to hear; these are the stations on the frequencies near you that are to strong or are just using to many watts!

So I decided that I need more filters and more tuning capabilities, so a base station! After some searching I got down to 2 choices; the Yaesu FT-990 and the FT-950. The FT-990 is an older model and has some very nice reviews. The FT-950 is one of the latest models and the reviews in general are good (not all of them).

In the end my choice was made mostly on looks; the FT-950 won! This rig just looks much newer and the display really looks very good and sharp.

Another reason why I bought the newer rig is a purely logical one; if the rig breaks down, the parts for a newer rig are easier to find and will be less expensive than for older models.

In the end I’m happy with the choice I made although I haven’t tried all the options yet, by far! I will let you know what I think after using it a bit more!

Antenna part 1.5

Just a quick follow up on my previous blog about a U shaped dipole I made and put up in my attic.

I decided to make it a “Fan Dipole”. This is a dipole which has one feed point for more than one dipole.

Because I’m mostly using the 20 meter band and the 10 meter band I wanted the dipole to be resonant on these 2 bands. So the two dipoles I wanted in my “Fan” were for 10m and 20m. If I could also have put up a third one for the 40 meter band it would have been nice but my attic is just not big enough!

In the end I put up the second, 10m band part of the antenna, and also put a bit more time into getting the 20m dipole a bit more resonant on 14mHz.

It turned out all my work wasn’t for nothing! I got the 10 meter band dipole quickly 1:1 and after cutting of part (30cm!) of the 20 meter band dipole I got it 1.3:1 !

Almost perfect, in my book, and I certainly will not touch it again because I can only make it worse! If I put a bit more power in the dipoles the SWR of course goes down but never more than 2:1 which I find acceptable!

Of course for the other bands I’m now and then using (40 meter and the 11 meter CB band) I still need to tune but that’s ok.

I’m very happy I got my “U shaped two dipoles in one” working! Did I just invent a new type of antenna? ;-)

UPDATE: Just spoke with N3C in Washington, a few hours after the work I did on the antenna. From my location to there is 6167KM and I used a bear foot FT-897 with poor propagation. I guess my new indoor, attic antenna is working! :-) Let's see what it can do when conditions improve!

Antennas part 1

The title of this blog is a bit misleading; I’m already way past part 1 of any antenna story I have to tell. Because this is the first time I’m actually writing about it I’m gonna call it “part 1” anyway!


I recently found out that, although I have a nice dipole for the 10m band and a Yaesu ATAS 120A mobile antenna for all bands I just didn’t get much further than Europe and a few countries outside of Europe. I wanted to “expand my horizon” so I started to think about putting up another antenna. I cannot put up a very high or large antenna because of my living situation so my thoughts went (again) towards a dipole. I have some room on the top floor in the attic so I decided to put it up there.


Because the band I’m using most is the 20 meter band it would have to be a 10 meter long wire dipole, but because the attic isn’t 10 meter long I needed to put it up as best as possible. I read that dipoles can be put up with some bends in it as long as you have some straight stretches around the feeding point. In the end I put it up on 3 walls of the attic near the ceiling, in a U shape. It isn’t the optimal situation I’m sure and I cannot get the SWR lower than 2.5:1 around the resonant point I wanted; 14.150 mhz but with a tuner it works ok! I can hear a lot more people and am going now beyond the edges of Europe in my QSO’s which is great! I heart brazil, Uruguay (couldn’t talk to them) and all parts of the mid / east of the USA and Canada (did talk to them)!


As I said it’s still far from optimal but it’s another step towards the “perfect” antenna! ;-)

My 1st mod; FT-817nd Wideband

After buying my new QRP transceiver, the Yaesu FT-817nd, I found out that not all the bands on it are available for transmitting, some are only available for receiving.

I thought that it would be possible to use some software (widebander.exe) to open all the bands for transmitting but I found out that this was only possible with the older models, not with the FT-817nd that I bought. ☹ Opening all the bands for transmission is called widebanding by the way.

After searching a bit on the internet I found out that it is possible to make a hardware modification (a mod) to open all bands. The information I found on internet is not all that clear and it seems that there are different versions of the 817nd around and some of them have different hardware settings. I decided to take the “average” of all the info I found and do the mod with the “most likely” settings. After gathering all the info I was ready for my first mod!

Just thinking about fiddling around with a soldering iron in my new transceiver made me sweat all over!

But ok, I now and then use the 11 meter band and this was one of the bands that’s closed for transmitting in a new FT-817nd. All the Radio Amateur / HAM bands I am allowed to use with my license are already open for me on the 817. There are some HAM bands I’m not allowed to use that are not open but at the moment I can anyway not use them.

But ok, now for the technical part. There is a PDF made by Yaesu to open a few extra bands on the 817. It is not described how you can open ALL HAM / CB bands. This was the starting point for me in my search for info. In the PDF the following steps are described to open the rig and get to the part where you need to solder.



Please note that you are taking full responsibility for any damage caused to the transceiver during this modification. All normal precautions to protect against static electricity should be followed.

First remove the battery and disconnect the radio from any power source.

Next remove the top and bottom covers.

Looking at the front of the radio there are 2 clips on the top and 2 on the bottom.

Ease these clips free of the main body of the radio and slide the front panel off (don’t overstretch the ribbon cable).

Next unclip the ribbon cable from the main body of the radio.

Now the front panel should come free and you can then see the jumper positions.


If you look at the inside of the front panel you see 9 jumpers at the top. Some of the jumpers are soldered closed and some are still open.

To wideband the radio you have to change the configuration of these jumpers.

After closing the rig up again press and hold the "F" and "V/M" buttons and then press "power on" to reset the FT-817 and make the mod active.
So in the end it all looks simple enough. The challenge is in the fact that everything is in miniature. You need a magnifying glass and very small fingers to do this. The fact that my FT-817nd was brand new also didn’t make it easier for me but luckily all went well.

All HAM bands are now open as well as the CB band, so my first mod went great! ☺

Read more about this and see the pics at my blogsite www.pa1ca.nl

HAM radio!!

As some of you might know, I'm a freelance software developer with a big interest in iPhone and iPad development but lately I haven’t been doing a lot of software development in my spare time.

The reason for all of this can be found almost 30 years ago! When I was between 12 an 15 years old I used to be very much interested in CB radio (27 mc).

So, when previous October (2011) a friend of mine started to play around with CB radio, he got me quickly involved in this! After playing a bit around with the CB stuff, we started talking about getting the amateur radio license. My friend is canadian so it’s a bit difficult for him to take a (Dutch) license exam. For me it was a bit easier (because I'm Dutch), so the end of October I got the study material from the Veron (Radio Amateur Organization in the Netherlands) and studied several hours every day in November.

The 8th of december I took the official government N license exam and I had 0 mistakes; I aced it! The end of December I registered my call sign (PD1CA) with the Agentschap Telecom in the Netherlands. After this I made a quick website (this site) and started to make the airwaves “unsafe” with my Yaesu FT-817 and Yaesu FT-897D transceivers!!

There is still a lot to learn although I think the license study prepared me good for my start in the radio amateur / HAM radio world.

I started my quest for the perfect antenna, took my first steps in digital HAM radio (PSK31, RTTY etc..) and am making my first contacts around the world talking to a lot of people even with the limitations I have with my CEPT Novice license (N License).

The next step will be making iPad and iPhone software for HAM radio, and I’m looking forward to starting this.

Combining my new and my old hobby would be perfect!

Less software development, more HAM radio!

Lately I haven’t been doing a lot of iPhone and iPad development in my spare time, so I haven’t also been writing a lot of blogs about software development.

The reason for all of this can be found almost 30 years ago!

I used to be very much interested in CB radio (27 mc). For those of you that don’t know what this is, wikipedia describes it as; “a system of short-distance radio communications between individuals on a selection of 40 channels within the 27 mhz (11 m) band”. I used to play around with this when I was between 12 an 15 years old.

Previous October (2011) a friend of mine started to play around with CB radio and he got me also involved in this. After this we started talking about getting the amateur radio license. The license is like a grown up version of CB radio and is actually a lot of studying electronics, electronic circuits and the dynamics of electro magnetic fields, propagation, (types of) antennas and the inner workings of transceivers. My friend is canadian so it’s a bit difficult for him to take a (Dutch) license exam. For me it was a bit easier, so the end of October I got the study material from the Veron (Radio Amateur Organization in the Netherlands) and studied several hours every day in November.

The 8th of december I took the official government N license exam and I had 0 mistakes; I aced it! The end of December I registered my call sign (PD1CA) with the Agentschap Telecom in the Netherlands. After this I made a quick website ( www.pd1ca.nl) and started to make the airwaves “unsafe” with my second hand bought Yaesu FT-817 and Yaesu FT-897D transceivers!!

There is still a lot to learn although I think the license study prepared me good for my start in the radio amateur / HAM radio world.

I started my quest for the perfect antenna, took my first steps in digital HAM radio (PSK31, RTTY etc..) and am making my first contacts around the world talking to a lot of people even with the limitations I have with my CEPT Novice license (N License).

The next step will be making iPad and iPhone software for HAM radio, and I’m looking forward to starting this.

Combining my new and my old hobby would be perfect!