PACC 2014: Preparations can not start early enough....

Wise men always say that you should not wait till the last moment to prepare for things....

Unfortunately i never ever prepare until the last moment... and i really mean the last possible moment...

Since yesterday i changed this....

Now what is the most important piece of equipment in your shack???...

your awesome tranciever ? your 2KW PA ???

WRONG !!!

it's your coffee machine !!! you can not make QSO's when you fall asleep!!!

So I bought myself a new espresso machine... to make sure i can keep awake during the upcomming PACC.

It's an Illy X7.....

This preparation is 3 months in advance.... should be ok to have time to learn how to make the best coffee with this machine. At least i'll stay awake during the PACC !

73's

Getting PACC chills allready...

Alex

PA1SBM

Electronics are getting smaller, so is my iron.....

As you might have figured out reading my blog... I am not afraid to open up stuff end put my soldering iron in it.Unfortunately times are changing and its not as easy.

PCB Evoluation....

Conventional PCB

SMD PCB

Now tools need to be adjusted for this evaluation.....
Last week i was at a HAM convention and i bought a small... very small new soldering iron.

No, It's not the yellow JBC (very nice iron as well) but the little black thingie next to it.

I Just hooked it up, and i'll try it sometime soon. The tip is really small... see for yourself....

It really is very small, even with the ruler next to it, you don't really see how small....






Well anyway, back to doing stuff....

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

Last man standing....

Ok , i have gone over this in my head for a long while.......
"Should i write about a TV show......"
And as i am writing this now, you can guess the answer was yes......
So why should i write about a TV show.... nothing HAM about that you might think....
Well you are wrong....

Anyone remember "Tool Time" ? the show Tim Allen made in his show "Home Improvement"?
Well i do , i liked the show a lot and i have probably seen every episode which was made....
And i probably seen them 2 or 3 times due to reruns.....
Was it a good show? well no.... it was not very technical , you did not learn stuff, but it was 30 minutes of easy watching... and you had a laughter or 2......
Well , if you liked this like me , you will like "Last man standing". It's almost the same format as Home Improvement.

So why should i write about this? Well.... not so much in the 1st series, but in series 2, we HAMS get a look in Mike Baxter's shack (played by Tim Allen) Mike has a REAL registered call sign... no shit..
His Call sign is KA0XTT. QRZ.com states that the suffix stands for eX Tim Taylor, which is the name of his character in Home Improvement. This is probably true, as a lot of the cast of Home Improvement has guests appearances on this show....

Now i am not going to spoil a lot , but if you look a bit on youtube... you will find a lot of stuff about the HAM influence in the series.... Sponsors of equipment are: Yeasu, Icom, Ameritron, Heil... an maybe some more i have not spotted yet... you will see several models, HF and VHF/UHF....
I personally have not seen a tv series with more HAM stuff in it... If you have, please let me know, it might be worth watching then :)

Youtube must see about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ggKcisR7CU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STdIG4M7QmA

Well... Just check this out... i hope you will enjoy it as much as i do....
And always good to see our hobby being promoted :)

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

HAM Radio !!! A real man's hobby....

Ok, let's not talk about technical stuff for a chance.....

In our hobby i often get the question if there are a lot of women involved in our hobby.....
And usually i answer "no not that much".....
Usually you don't realy think of ham radio being a women's/girl's hobby.....
I went to a technical school..... 500 guys, 3 girl's..... and the girl's were not like girly girl's... if you know what i mean.... Somehow i kinda had the same idea with our hobby.....
Off course i know there are exceptions to this... as in every case...

So this morning i was looking at some youtube movies of the PACC contest.... and i stumbled on a few movies about YL's who do HAM radio.....
And i have to say... i feel kinda proven wrong.... not only did the video's show a long list but the younger ladies did often look like they could be girly girls, but also the women... (and i know i'll get comments for this remark, but please notice that i am not trying to offend anyone, i just try to create an image) they did not look like the type of women you would stereo typically would expect in a lesbian bar.... (again , not trying to offend anyone here ;) )

So again , i feel proven wrong , and i am happy for it!
Which leads me to this question.... Obviously they are a lot of women in the HAM hobby , then why don't they come out more??.....

Here is one of the video's i stumbled upon....
Funny Fact, the girl you see on the youtube picture below is not a HAM but 1 of the cast of Tim Allen's "new" serie "Last man standing" , a serie supported with a lot of equipment by Yeasu, Icom, Heil and Acom.

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

No news ??.... No... no news.....

Hello all.....

Just wanted to post a little thing here explaining why there has been no news about the vfo/pa of my bitx, or any other news to be honest....

Well , there are 2 main reasons......

1.
We have had some horrible weather lately.... the temperature refused to drop below 24c at night , and during the day temperatures exceeded 30c easily.... and i am not kidding you... we had an official heatwave.....
And to make my life a complete living hell..... this upcoming week there will be an even hotter heatwave.....

Now I can hear you guys think , but its 45c here and its fine..... yeah it would be if the humidity is LOW.....
Well not here in Holland.... humidity is high.... so you start sweating from places you never imagined you could sweat out off....

The average temperature in my shack has been around 35c all week.... No, I am not entering that room!!! TOO <fill in favourite swear word here> HOT......

Maybe a field day soon when temperatures drop a little...

2.
Reason 2 entered our house last tuesday.....
And her name is Myra......

She has a lot of energy and runs around 24/7...... she's 9 1/2 weeks old....
Alya , our 3 yrs old cat had a lot of adjusting to do , but as I am writing this post, just 4 full days after we got the little one , she seems to be doing OK , and slowly starts to play... or set hierarchy between them.... sometimes hard to see with the older one as she has no idea that playing wit an animal 1/4 of her weight should be a little more careful sometimes.....


Well....
I hope the temperature drops below 30 soon in my shack so i can post techy stuff again :)

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

Again a new toy in the shack... A LCR meter

Saturday my new gadget arrived in the mail....

A LCR meter......

It is a Vichy DM4070.... i never.... and i realy mean NEVER ever heard of this brand.....
Well until Hans, PD0AC told me to get this one....
It costs close to nothing..... The cheapest on eBay.com is $24.90 !!!

And i do understand why now.. looks and feels very rugged... And for accuracy ... the tolerance of a capacitor itself outweighs the tolerance of the DM4070...

I did not use it yet to see how it all works but that will not take too long, i'm sure....


for the techies... some shameless copy from ebay....

Technical data:   

Basic function	Range	Basic accuracy
Capacitance	200pF/2nF/20nF/200nF/2uF/20uF/200uF/ 2000uF	±(2.5%+5) ±(5.0%+5)
Inductance	200uH 2mH/20mH/200mH/2H 20H	±(3.0%+5) ±(2.0%+5) ±(5.0%+5)
Resistance	20 Ω 200 Ω/2k Ω/20k Ω/200k Ω 20M Ω	±(1.0%+5) ±(0.8%+2) ±(2.0%+5)

Special function	DM4070
Low battery indication	Approx. less than 7.5V
capacitor discharge protect	v
Auto power off	It will power down about 20 minutes if no any measure.
Function protect	v
Anti-shock protect	v
Sampling rate	0~ 5s
Operation way	Manual range
Max. display	1999
LCD size	65x41mm
Battery	9V (6F22)
Power dissipation	Quiescent current approx. 6mA

General characteristic:

Weight	0.65 LB (including battery)
Meter size	7-1/4" x 3-5/8" x 1-3/8"

untill the next post.....

Alex

PA1SBM

BITX20 - 23. VFO working !!!!

Hello all,

Sorry for not posting a while, i wanted to do a lot , but first my gf came down with the flu and a huge cold.... and after that off-course i had to get it too , and i am still not 100% better....

A few days back i received this email which made me forget my flu/cold/headache and made me wanna jump into my shack and start to fiddle around with my bitx20 vfo again.....




I can only say one thing.... Danny , you are awesome......

As you can see , the vf0+bfo is now at a proper frequency!

I still have a tine problem to get the bandwidth (14.000 to 14.350) set correctly but i guess this is because of the coil i made (and me not having read the manual properly how to set it) . It is not the correct wire , much too thick. needed to adjust the number of winding's slightly too.

I'll do some shopping on eBay tonight to get the proper gauge... because off course ... i did not have any.... nothing near it either.... murphy's law i guess....


Again Danny, thanx for the sollution you totally made my week !!
Succes at last !!! on to the next Bitx20 battle!


73's
Alex

PA1SBM

The person guilty of getting me excited for the BITX20... PA1ED.....

Some things you just have to share..... This one of them....

The BITX20 virus was given to me by this HAM amateur that was talking on PI3ZDM, the repeater i always use when driving from and to work....

His callsign is PA1ED, and we all call him Ed.
By now he has build 3 Bitx20's i think.....
And like me he started a blog, so without typing to much here , if you wanna see some realy cool stuff... go look at his blog! It's realy worth it !

pa1ed.blogspot.com

Be warned though!! this site is highly contagious !! you will be building your own bitx20 in no time !

Don't say i did not warn you !

73's 

Alex

PA1SBM

Hello Linux, goodbye windows, please don't come back.....

I did it.... it took me a while..... had doubts.... was scared...

But yesterday evening i made backups of everything , and loaded the Debian 7 cd into the dvd drive...
I took 2 minutes of silence while Debian quickly and effectively killed my windows partitions and took over my system....

And after apt-getting a load of tools .....

Not sorry yet, do not think i will be..... the system performs like a amd64 4000+ with 8gb of ram again...
Not like an old slugish pentium2.

CQRlog is what you see running... in a few weeks i will write a post concerning installing and using this awesome tool.

Linux in your shack....

The title, "Linux in your shack" could/shoud have some other title's then this for what this post is going to be about....

• New competition for HRD
• Linux now good enough for all kinda HAM's
• CQRLOG... omg !

Let's start with some background about me... I am a IT consultant, and i do this for most platforms available today, window, Mac and most UX flavours. I even remember some OS/390 and mainframe from the days. The reason I made the choice not to be a windows only consultant is.... well i just don't like to use windows.... I love it because it makes sure I have a nice income and plenty of work.

So do i use windows in the shack.... Yes i do.... Do i like it... no not at all....
Then you all probably wonder why i did not throw windows out and installed Linux.
 Well for 1 reason... I use Ham Radio Deluxe 5.... Which is in my opinion the best all in one free (wel version 5 is) solution for a ham. Or isn't it....

There already was a really nice alternative on the MAC, being MacLoggerDX
The people at "dog park software ltd" made a realy nice piece of software.
But it will cost you 95USD (which is not bad tbh as HRD6 is 99.95 )

But now for linux...
I tried to find a good replacement for HRD for a long while now and i did not find anything near to HRD. This does not mean i did not find any good software on linux, just not 1 program (or set of programs that communicate together)  that will do everything. Until a few days back....
I stumbled on CQRLOG ,  don't ask me how, but i did...

Now.... CQRLOG.... this piece of software has been developed by 2 Czech Hams...
Petr, OK2CQR and Martin, OK1RR, and they made what I think is the 1st real alternative for HDR for when you want to swap to linux.
Now for screen shots look at their website. The screen shots  show a part of what the program can do.
User screen shots are there as well and look awesome

Yes, CQRLOG has (almost) all!! Log, cluster, rig and rotor control, QRZ and HAMQTH, LotW/eQSL, and the list goes on and on .....

Now, the main thing with linux.... installing niece software can be a pain in the a$$.
Is this the case with CQRLOG.... uhmmm yes and no.
I installed it on Debian Weezy (7) and all went fairly smooth until i started to do rig control.
I forgot to add my non root user to the dailout group. and the debian installer does not do this for you!
Now i imagine this is the same for ubuntu, but i don't use that.
So after smacking myself over the head (which did not help my headache) I added myself to the dailout group , and tried the whole install again..... and it worked immediately!

Now the last remark i am gonna make..... on their website you will find this piece of text....
 Anyway, CQRLOG is here and is for you. Try it out and if you decide to stay with this logger, we will be pleased. Of course, it will be very heartwarming if CQRLOG will became the reason to leave Windows and migrate to Linux.

Petr and Martin, if it is the reason to migrate to linux, i don't know... But with your piece of software, 1 main reason for me to stay on windows, just disappeared....

p.s. no they did not pay me or gave met shares in their compagny ;)

73's
Alex
 

I'm addicted to.... Kenwood....

For those who never really took a look at what i run in the shack....

I LOVE KENWOOD!!!!

So this week the local ham club had an auction to help the club financial funding.
Amateurs could have the stuff they did not want anymore put up for auction. the i think 10% would go to the club.... Next time they should raise that to 25% :) serves a good cause.

so what comes on for auction ... a Kenwood tr-7200g
And i cant help myself... it's old, its kenwood, i gotta have it ! so i got it...
for sure the best EUR 12.50 i ever spent.

I borrowed this pic from the internet, due to me having no time to make my own pics yet....
But its AWESOME! , and it works... now how cool is this....

On the wishlist for this summer is still a R5000 (recv) and a th-79e (ht)

73's
Alex
PA1SBM

BITX20 - 22. VFO ups and downs ....

Hello all....

It has been a long while since i wrote on my blog... sometimes live just gives you no chance at all do do hobby related stuff.....
I always try to put my gf 1st , then work, then the rest....
Unfortunately sometimes my work takes so much time that even the gf gets put back to 2nd place... and i have to make up for this... People who are finding them self in this same problem will know that it takes twice as much time to make the gf happy again then what is should have taken to keep her happy.

So back to tech stuff....
First of all, i had some people message me and talk to me on local repeater to help me fix my problem.
And one person with a question.

lets start with the first one....

john robertsApril 13, 2013 at 12:06 AM

Have you set up the IF offset on the frequency counter. from john GW0TBT

John... I so hoped this was the problem... :) unfortunately , it was neatly set to 0...

Then i received this question...

Вячеслав ВдовенкоApril 23, 2013 at 12:11 PM

hello
Сan you show how connect is new VFO (variable-capacitance diode) to the transceiver?
thanks

Not really sure how to type your name on my us-gb qwerty keyboard so i hope you can forgive me :)
I have not found this out myself.... as i am not at this point yet. I talked to PA1ED, and he said that it its really easy to see in the schematics.


So how about my VFO then....
Well it's still the same.... i went to a fair and i bought the stuff i needed and put that in. Still no proper frequency. At least now all parts are brand new and i can't blame those 2 trim capacitors anymore.
So now i really have to get into measuring every damn thing. This takes some time, and the 15 to 30 minutes i find these last few months will not give me enough time to really get this done.

I have a week off in a few weeks , and i hope to find a few hours to solve this.

As soon as i get stuff done, whatever the outcome i'll post it here off course :)

till then
Alex
PA1SBM

PACC 2013 "evaluation"

Today, the Monday after the PACC, I am still on something like a sugar rush.....
This PACC had e few memorable events for me....

First of all, i worked 2 of the most loyal followers of my blog.....

• PE4BAS, Bas. I worked him and i don't think he noticed i was that guy from the blog..... So Bas, your prediction came true, you did work me :)
• PA3GNZ, Tjeerd, Now i did not know it was him as he worked under a contest group call, but he was friendly enough to tell me his real call as well.

I am very happy i have worked them both :) I hope you guys did well in the contest....

So the other thing that happend......

On Saturday afternoon, i heard a small pile up on 20m and they were all yelling to HV5PUL.

This is a call from the vatican (a university). He was not working the PACC so i stopped PACC for a minute and called for a normal QSO to him, and i worked this station.(after he got annoyed from a few other dutch stations asking him for their number :) )

A nice adition to my own log, rare call, and a new dxcc for me. 

Then after diner on Saturday , i got this huge headache..... So i did not participate the whole Saturday evening night....

But !!!!

On Sunday morning i was back in action! And what action it turned out to be!

My first QSO on Sunday was............ VK2GWK !!!! 16.500KM !!!
This of course was a superb way to start the Sunday morning....

Now why am i so happy you might ask if you have like this huge beam etc.
I work with no amps (so 100w max) and i worked this on my Falcon OUT-250b, an antenna that a lot of people revere to as a dummy-load. (and so it shows it's far from that)
I of course put this in my personal log as well.... the QSO did not go easy, but it happend and i worked eastern Australia. I am well pleased with this.....

So looking back on the PACC... I did not make a huge number of QSO's... just 120....
But i had a great time, made contact with Bas and Tjeerd, worked the Vatican, and worked Aussie country!

For me it was all worth it.... i will be there next year... then with coffee, as i ran out of it saturday just befor the contest.....

I hope you all had a great PACC as well!
73's
Alex
PA1SBM

1st experiences fiddling around with my 1.8kHz filter

I have no audio clips yet, but i have been playing around with the different settings.
Some things did not  work the way i assumed they would be.

1. A filter screws up your audio quality...
   No, the DSP in the 480 has enough power to keep the signal sounding normal.
   The people do not sound nasal at all.
   just add/remove some high/low and the signal sounds like your used to.
2. You wont hear the nearby signals anymore....
   No, you will still hear then , just a lot, i mean A LOT less.....
   Especially with a strong signal, when you punch in the ATT you will really hear the difference.

These are for me 2 huge huge HUGE advantages.....

Also the overall feeling of the receiver becomes more calm, not really sure how to explain...

I'll try to make it more clear when i have the time to make some audio clips.

Especially when listening to the 40m band it's an awesome thing to have in your set. Stations become more distinct and clear.

Yes its expensive, but after 3 days i already forgot the price ;)

73's

Alex

BITX20 - 21. PA part 1... the start....

So i said that this weekend i would finish my PA for the Bitx.
That was some nice wishful thinking. I build the first part , and i stopped when i needed to wind a coil.

Two other reasons that i could not finish the PA were a) my work and b) 1 of the coils which were in the kit arrived broken :(

well , its build untill here.....

More soon to follow......

73's

Alex

A new toy for the TS-480...... a 1.8kHz filter..YF-107SN

Today i drove a long way down south to collect something i wanna use during the upcoming PACC contest.
I can tell you , its worth its weight in gold.it's small and its tiny :)

Yes, i finally got my 1.8kHz filter. The YF-107SN. It was a 80 minute drive getting to the store, and the same 80 minute drive back to where i live.

So how tint is this thing actually then.....Let's open the box...

Big box, small content....

Ok , i dont think the ppl who never have seen a filter, know exactly how small current filters are...
So i took a picture with a standard sized lighter and a standard 1/4 watt , 5% resistor.....'

Seriously, the lighter is not a big one , its a standard size :)

I forgot to take a few pics when I installed the filter sorry :(
So I will take them next time i put in an other option.

I listned to the audio with the small filter , and it does what i wanted it to do so that's a good thing.
Nearby stations (frequency wise, not distance) do get a lot softer to the point that they do not disrupt the station anymore which i am listening to. so hurray for that :)

I will see if I can get a few audio samples and upload them somehow, so you all can hear the difference.

73's

Alex
PA1SBM

Dutch PACC contest

I was wondering if i should put it up on my blog as i am not fond of contests at all.
Many amateurs become very ignorant, rude, and non ham like when they start to contest.
There for I never enter any contests. except for one.  (no offense intended to proper ham's who follow normal etticets)

The Dutch PACC contest is the only one i want to enter. the contest is to work as many dutch stations as possible. So that means that for dutch amateurs, there will be a good chance that they will make a lot of QSO's with stations they would otherwise not be able to work due to pile up.

Why is this you might ask?.... Well... Holland (or better and correct: The Netherlands) is a bit densely populated. therefor we have not that much room for huge antenna towers as some other countries.
Also the legal limit of 400wats pep is lower then a lot of other countries. So a lot of dutch ham's stick to the 100 or 200 watts that come out of their rigs.

So when a dutch station is calling out for a distant station, it becomes hard to get through the pileups when you have to compete with a lot of "big gun" stations.

Off course there are exceptions. In the Netherlands we have a lot of these "big gun" stations as well.
But we have a lot of simple stations as well. with onluy 1 vertical or a few wire antenna's. (like myself)

Anyway, last year i wanted to enter as well, but some thing came up and i could not join the fun.
This year i took the friday and Monday around the PACC weekend off as well, so i can properly try my best to make some nice QSO's.

Contest time/date: 12:00 UTC 09 Feb 2013 - 12:00 UTC 10 Feb 2013
Contest info: http://pacc.veron.nl/      


I'll see if i can post on my twitter account (@PA1SBM)  and here on what frequency i am operating.
But please bare with me if i get a pile up.... i am not a contest operator :) 

BITX20 - 20. VFO still not at the right frequency ....

This week, while i had the week off,  i have been busy mostly with rebuilding the attic. i bought my house 3 years ago, and the attic was one big room. It's now divided into a separate storage and a guest bedroom. but this is more for a different blog, back to tech stuff :)

I also had some time for fiddling around with the VFO again and i do not get the bloody thing on the frequency it should be at which is about 14.175 - 9.9953 = approx 4.180 MHz. My VFO is running at twice the frequency.

So somewhere there must be a weird thing i did wrong. I am very sure about that, but WHAT!?!?!?!
I started to check the components if i did not stick a wrong capacitor or resistor somewhere, but no luck so far. I also started to fiddle around with the windings on the coil, but the difference i get is too little for making up for the double frequency.

At this point i am staring blindly at this, so i have decided to give it a rest for a bit and start to build the amplifier section first. This again needs lots of coil winding, and oh my i love that so much.... not.... :)

So keep watching the blog. as that  section will be done be for the end of the upcoming week.... i hope :)

73's
Alex, PA1SBM