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! :-)