I've been surrounded by Electronics my whole life. From long before I was born, my father had made friends around the world via Amateur or as it's otherwise known as... Ham Radio. He had talked with the radio operators on Admiral Birds Antarctic Expedition and there's a great web site on the Admiral Byrd Polar Research Center which is the premier research facility regarding South Polar research.
The 3905 Century Club, Inc. is an international Amateur Radio
Club. Its purpose is to assist hams both foreign and domestic in
obtaining Worked All States awards.
You'll find my Dad ( W1BML ) here just about every night. He absolutely
loves this Net and his group of friends he's shared with throughout the years.
Burghardt Amateur Radio Sales
This wonderful company has been around since 1937 As of 2002, Stan W0IT who started the
business, is still working there If that isn't called staying power, I don't know what is! My Dad used to build the majority of his equipment himself as did most hams since the beginning
I remember him wanting a 'store bought' Collins radio for the longest time
When the time came, his
beloved Collins receiver came from the Burghardt Amateur Center.
Their logo has been famous in the ARRL's QST* magazine since before I was born
Check them out for good prices and fine equipment.
I tried several other logging programs and found each of them to be effective in
their own way, kind of like a "one trick Pony" where each would do one or two things well
For some people that would be enough but I've discovered Logic (Now Logic 8) does everything
as well and usually better, yet provides more information and statistics on my QSO and operations
than I would have ever hoped and does it without my asking it to. One of the many fun aspects of Ham Radio is the numerous international as
well as national and regional contests that abound There are no monetary rewards, just
the great thrill of competition and seeing how you performed against others in
your class and skill level The logic software allows fabulously easy data entry and all the needed
features to add to your contesting pleasure One of the things I most like about Logic
is how thoroughly the program covers not only logging but does contesting so well
There
are many pre-made contest log screens already available which cover the majority of contests
You have a turn-key access to a simple, fast and accurate way of entering your data during
the contest so you don't make duplicate entries For example: In a contest you may be allowed to contact
a station only once per band If you spend 5 minutes trying to contact someone only to find later
you had worked them in the contest the day before, that was 5 minutes wasted where you
could have contacted someone else. OK, every contest software does that you might say True enough, indeed they
may One of the many big
differences is, in Logic all those contacts stay in your log and they remain a record for life
Take someone who collects contacts from every county in America With Logic there is
an entry field in the log to enter county information. Say 10 years later you discover you
want to apply for an "County Hunters Award" and you needed a contact from Fairfield County
in Connecticut, a New London CT County and an Iberia Parish Louisiana (county)
--- Lets say
you were in a contest in Sept of 1980 where county information was exchanged and you worked KA1DQG
You also worked KA1IC in Jan of 81 and KA1J in The summer of 1987 Well, that would have been me
and I was in all those places. That contest information would still be in the log and Logic
would find it instantly to give the report to submit for the "County Hunters Award".--- If in
one of those contests I gave my name to you, the next time we talked on the radio, my name
would be automatically carried over to the log screen as soon as you entered my call.
As you can see, I really love the program Heck, it allows you to control your computerized
radios from your computer, aims your beam antennas for you, Tells you where the sun is
falling anywhere in the world, where it's dark and where the dusk/dawn line is everywhere
all at the same time. Heh, it just about seems like if you entered in Logic, your
description of the ideal mate, it'd just about find that as well :) All kidding
aside, if it sounds interesting to you after reading this, go read their web
page and download their demo
Personal Database
Applications© You truly will be glad you did Thank me by buying
their program and then having all the more fun with our hobby because of it. My favorite type of contest's are the ones done in Morse code (Morse code is
also called CW for 'Continuous Wave) After so many years of preferring using
'code' over voice in the contests, I can understand 'copy' 45 wpm 'words per
minute' It's an incredible experience to hear the Morse code at that speed for
all you hear is the musical tone of the code at such a speed that you can't make
out the letters at all, you hear the whole words instead So what you hear is
just the tone of the CW and the words that form in your head at the speed of
conversational speech This is the closest thing to telepathy I believe I'll
ever experience and it's a gas!
My Station For many years I have only used TenTec equipment. It has
always been excellent for copying Morse Code. I was torn between staying with
TenTec, getting their new Orion II or jumping ship and getting the new Kit
Elecraft flagship, the K3 (Also comes pre-assembled if you wish). Both rigs are
made in the states and both companies have marvelous reputations. I always
wanted a smaller radio that was excellent for copy so the K3 won out.
Elecraft K3 One of the advantages of this radio is it is truly modular.
You can buy the base radio which has a world class receiver and comes ready to
run 10 watts or less from 160 meters through 6 meters. You can also buy a 100
watt module for it, an optional automatic tuning unit, An optional I/O which
gives you a remote antenna option and transverter interface With this I/O
you also have the ability to transmit with as little as 100 milliwatts of power.
there is an optional .05 part per million oscillator which truly prevents your
radio from drifting even in the coldest weather. Another option is to have
general coverage of the receiver. While you can instruct the radio to go to a
given frequency directly from the front panel, there are necessary losses which
reduce the sensitivity in non Ham bands; the optional general coverage component
provides proper Bandpass filters to do this properly and with great ease. Also
available are a myriad of 5 and 8 pole filters to allow FM operation through
200Hz filtering. A DSP ability permits narrowing the bandwidth to 50 Hz without
ringing. It is a QSK radio which is most important to me as a CW operator. QSK
is explained a few paragraphs below*. One on the finest additions is that of a second receiver which
is truly the same as the primary receiver. This 2nd receiver is able to be
bypassed, used as a completely separate receiver (one receiver heard in the left
headphone and the other is heard on the right. Each receiver has its own
filters, noise blanker, General coverage option and is 100% the same as the
other board. It allows two separate antennae to be used for receive with only
one used for transmit. It also allows true diversity reception. Diversity is amazing! What that does is allow both receivers
to blend as one so you hear the signals from one antenna and the other in both
ears at the same time but it is stereo, not mono. It would be one thing to have
the separation between the two receivers as split and hearing both frequencies
at the same time and controlled by separate VFOs (which this does) but this
radio perfectly synchronizes each receiver with each other to the cycle and then
you are able to truly track using the advantages of two separate antennae
simultaneously. Just Awesome... If you have one antenna better for receiving horizontal
polarization and another better for vertical, you hear both signals at the same
time and the difference is amazing when it comes to hearing fading signals. It
adds a 3D kind of acoustic experience that is impossible to get with a radio
without this feature. It absolutely makes the difference between hearing a
signal and not hearing it. I leave diversity on 99% of the time and feel much
more satisfied with it on. * QSK means being able to hear between the dits and dahs that make up the sounds
that make the letters as you transmit. You can hear the background noise on
receive but with QSK enabled you can hear what is on the frequency during the spaces
between the sounds, just like the person listening hears. Ideally, there is no clicking sound from a
relay and the person "talking" can hear if the other person interrupts so they
can say something. If not for QSK, the person sending would not be able to hear
until they were done with what they were saying. Instead of being rude to interrupt, it's like two people having a
conversation and when one wants to say something they can do so without having
to wait and this allows you to have a very interactive conversation instead of
both people having to listen to monologues. The K3 offers a "Pin Diode" method of instantly switching
during QSK which uses no relays and it is truly as smooth as can be.
TenTec equipment is made in Eastern Tennessee and is
considered by many to be among the finest Ham Radio equipment available. My amplifier is a TenTec Titan 425. It's a beautiful match for
the K3 and it makes for an attractive station.
It amplifies the signal from my K3 many times using a pair of 3CPX800A7 electron
tubes from Eimac. Though the amplifier is capable of producing more power
than it is claimed
to operate at, it easily produces
the maximum legal limit of 1,500 watts of output power and has
reserve power left untapped. One of the things I love about it is it is also a QSK amplifier and interfaces perfectly
with the K3 to allow quiet and seamless QSK. It does not use the same kind of
"Pin Diode" as the K3 offers but uses instead a vacuum relay which although
perfect for the requirements, does create a click each time a CW character is
sent. As far as the Amplifier goes, I don't believe there is a better
functioning amplifier out
there than the TenTec Titan II. There are some with more bells and whistles that
automatically and instantly tune the amplifier to each band but none of them are
going to give a cleaner and more pure signal than this one. To be fair, there have been some other very fine amplifiers constructed through
the years and I would certainly be happy with one of those as well; Examples
such as the Commander built by Command
Technologies or the HF-2500DX built by QRO Technologies are amplifiers that are hand made
today in
the USA, just like the equipment made by TenTec) but I very much like this Titan 425 amplifier and am glad it too was
made in the USA as now-a-days so many things that were once made here are now outsourced and are
now imported. Regardless of the country you're from, you should support your
own country first. I dislike politics so back to Ham Radio: For years I operated on the Amateur Radio Frequencies with a TenTec Corsair II as seen
above. It's an older model made in the 80's but still considered one of the finest ham radios for
Morse Code sending and receiving. It also is especially well suited for hearing
faint radio signals. It produces roughly 90-100 watts of output power. I retired
this radio when I got the K3 but I'm keeping the Corsair it will be an
excellent backup if for some reason the K3 is occupied elsewhere. Transmatch lets move on to a device which makes the radio/amplifier happy with the
antenna and feed line, it's called a Transmatch. When you operate on a particular frequency, there is a specific length of
antenna that works with the radio so that all the power possible goes to the
antenna. For many reasons this does not happen often and if the length of the
antenna is less or greater than it should be for that given frequency, power
that should go out the antenna gets reflected back to the radio or amplifier and
that at the least means less power out and at the worst means the wasted energy
is given off as heat somewhere. Such a condition is bad news for for the
equipment and is a cause of component failure and likely to be an expensive
outcome. The Transmatch is a device which acts as an intermediary between the antenna
and the radio (or amplifier if the amplifier is being used). It does not make
the antenna itself act as the proper length but it does allow the radio or
amplifier to think the antenna is perfect and it prevents that reflected energy
from getting back into the components. Since the antenna is a fixed length and
the radio can go to many frequencies the Transmatch effectively is a mediator
whose goal is to make the radio happy. Some transmatches will tune about anything but do so inefficiently. The radio
will be happy but the Transmatch ends up absorbing the heat and components
in the Transmatch will likely fail. Some transmatches are incapable of adapting
well need a fairly correct antenna in the first place to work properly but are
efficient in their limited ranges. Yet other transmatches are capable of tuning
over a wide range of frequencies and are also very efficient. If you get one of
these with hefty components, you will get the maximum signal out to the antenna
and the Transmatch, amplifier radio will have no issues at all. Its important to know that all this tricking the equipment so it thinks all
is operating properly does not in any way tune the antenna nor the transmission
line in-between the Transmatch and the antenna. Excess energy with no place to
go can build up enough that the transmission line will become hot and deform
under high power (bad news for the equipment if this happens) . If the antenna
were the right length for the frequency this would be a non issue as all the
power would exit from the antenna itself. Because of this heating action from
captive energy in the transmission line and transmatch, it is not advisable to
run high power into an antenna that is not cut for the radio band you are on.
There are a few exceptions to this depending on what antenna length and which
frequency you're on; for instance, a 40 meter antenna will work nicely on 15
meters but a 15 meter antenna will not work well on 40 meters where the number
of meters is the length of the radio wave and this general slice of frequencies is called a
"Band". All the power
lost in heating anything is power that did not get to the antenna. Using all metal transmission lines called "ladder Line" or a single long wire
attached to the Transmatch output will not have the problems of melting and the
transmission line itself actually becomes a functional part of the antenna and
helps radiate the signal. The coaxial cable does not belong as part of the
antenna and coax can melt with a mismatch of antenna, frequency and power. The
radio energy dispersed in the coaxial cable is lost to radio waves and that
means the coax becomes nothing but a heater with little radio signal reaching
the antenna itself. I no longer use a Transmatch as at this specific QTH (station
location) I have trimmed each antenna to work perfectly with my radio for the
limited range of frequencies I like to use. Because of this I do not need the
Transmatch. I would need it if I wanted to have access to all the frequencies
available to me with my K3. Below are photos of the Transmatch I used to use. I still have
it but it's now on the shelf. I suppose I should sell it so someone who needs it
can have it.
A Nye Viking Transmatch MB-V-A (Antenna Tuner) with the top removed so you
can see the inner workings. Mr. Nye bought the rights to the Johnson Viking line of ham radio equipment.
Making changes and inventing his own unique products his company name became Nye
Viking. After several changes to the new line of transmatches, his final
Transmatch was the MB-V-A seen above. One of the most artful of all transmatches, Mr. Nye built each one from
scratch. You'll notice no standard band switch and the switches that exist, he
designed. They are almost a Rube Goldberg in action cleverly designed to
withstand a lifetime of hard use. To really appreciate this piece of handmade
equipment, you need to see it in action. The inductor was hand made, the tuning
capacitor was hand made, the switches were hand made, the push buttons you see
on the front are the ends of the Delrin-like shafts you see on the inside and
they trip the handmade switch at the back of the unit. He was truly a "do it
yourselfer" in the art of home brewing on a commercial level. As I understand it; around 2004 Mr. Nye decided to retire and the large
equipment and Watt Meter end of his business ceased to have a maker and creator
of these parts. These Transmatches are no longer available new. As you can see
from the photo of mine, I'm missing a decorative aluminum plate from the
inductor's knob. I can't get one from the maker but I'll find one eventually and
if I can't find one then I'll just make one. Well... Make two, just to match them up... :) If you'd like to see more photos with much greater detail of the workings
click on this link but it's a few megs worth of photos but they're not
compressed so you can get a good close-up view if you wish. If you're on dial-up
you might want to do this while you go and make a few QSOs! Nye
Viking MB-V-A Photos - 5+ megs in size
Radio Call Sign Lookup At QRZ.com Both of these groups deserve your support *(to learn about QST, click on the ARRL logo above.)
The FCC's Universal Licensing System This link takes you to the FCC's web site for Amateur license renewal. SETI - Search for
ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence and the seti@home Project.
eHam is another one of the wonderful resources available to
hams worldwide. They have a fine series of discussion groups that are email
based as well as a series of forums to participate in. I belong to several of
the email lists and if you're looking to find evaluations of equipment before
buying, there's an area for reviews so you can get owners opinions of the
things you're looking for. Support your not so local DXpeditions!!!
So many things, so little time... 73 de KA1J Any pearls of wisdom are always appreciated.
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