AA8IA Amateur Radio

If my lack of amateur radio activity in the past five months isn’t sign enough that there must be more important things in life than ham radio, my FT-950 is now dead.

I hadn’t played radio for what seemed like ages. Yesterday I noticed there was a firmware update out for my FT-950. After reading what the firmware updates offered, I decided that a firmware update wouldn’t benefit me in the least. But, being the idiot I am, I downloaded the firmware and attempted to update anyway.

I checked my serial # (9M330040) and the current firmware version (11.541.12) and made note of the fact that the main / dsp firmware updates from 3/2012 were indeed applicable to my radio. So I attempted to follow the directions.

The instructions said to remove DC power from the radio, either by unplugging the power cable from the back or turning the power supply off and waiting a minute for the capacitors to discharge. For whatever reason I chose the latter option, when the former would have been better. Then the instructions said to slide the program switch dipswitch (PGM-SW) on the back to the right [program mode]. I did that. Then I was to provide DC power to the radio again, so I turned the power supply on.

At this point it was time to start the flashing procedure. However, when I fired up PEP app to write the update, I had a communications error. No problem I figured. I probably had the wrong comport settings. I knew the baud rate in the radio was set for 38400, or at least something higher than 9600, and that the instructions suggested that the baud rate should be 9600. Furthermore, I couldn’t remember what comport on the computer was connected to the radio. I figured that once I got the right information I’d be good to go.

Well, in an attempt to go into the radio and set the baud rate to 9600, I was supposed to remove DC power again [and wait for cap discharge] and then switch PGM-SW back to the left. Then fire up the radio. No joy. The radio didnt fire up. No matter what i do, I can’t get the radio to turn on.

Inline fuses are good. Voltage is good through the cable. I’ve heard stories of people bricking the radio by not doing the firmware updates correctly, and I’m familiar with bricking devices during updates. I’ve also heard other stories about diodes and other components blowing if one doesn’t remove DC power and allow for cap discharge prior to switching PGM-SW.

I can only guess that I failed to follow instructions and blew something out inside. I get absolutely no sign that the radio is receiving voltage to its internals. It’s as if it’s not even plugged in.

I’ll fiddle around with it a little more, but I’m not hopeful. I’ll probably have to send it out. Incidentally, I called Yaesu tech support, but the lady told me there were no techs around because they all went to Dayton and for me to call back on Monday. She apologized, and I said goodbye.

Looks like I’ll need to send it back. You know, just two or three months ago my niece was moving and was looking for some boxes, so I told her to take my double-box yaesu shipping box. What a dumb move. Now I don’t have a box to ship it out in. If I did, I’d package it up right now and send it to one of the repair centers who is on the AC0C list of repair centers that will perform his mode. I’d get the radio fixed and have the NS roofing filter installed at the same time.

But, my heart isn’t in it. Too much trouble for too little gain. I haven’t been playing radio. I don’t have any decent antennas up. In fact, I don’t have any HF antennas up. So what’s the use, right? I think I’m just going to the shelve the radio. It’ll probably sit there until I pass away one day, and then some schmuck will come by the house and offer my family 1/100th of what it is worth as the ultimate smack in the face rofl.

I don’t think anyone will hear me on HF for the rest of the year, at least. This must be a sign that there is something more important that I need to be doing.

Have fun folks!

Christmas has come and gone. We had a great Christmas this year. It’s always great when the family gets together. I got a nice Christmas bonus from my employer, and I got an Amazon Kindle Fire from a friend / business client of mine for whom I maintain their mail system.

I haven’t worked any DX in a while. My inverted V is down right now. My winter hobby is scanner monitoring, and so I have a scanner antenna up on the mast. I still have my small dipole, but it doesn’t perform well enough for me to exert the effort trying to chase new DXCC entities with it. I really do need to get on though and try to work some of the DX that has been on.

I still have a batch of about 50 QSL cards that I need sent to the ARRL Outgoing Bureau. I also have about 20-25 QSL cards that I still need to fill out and send direct / via QSL Manager to various DX that I need DXCC confirmations for. I’m hoping I’ll get motivated to get these things taken care of by the end of the year. Hmm, that only gives me four days.

I’ve used OQRS to get confirmations for half a dozen DXpeditions. I haven’t received the actual cards for most of them yet, but I’ve received email confirmation that I’m in their log and will be getting a card.

I have worked 26 new DXCCs since October 2011, and at least half of them have already confirmed on Logbook of the World. Hopefully next year will be a productive year for working DX. I need to get above 200 DXCC confirmed.

Usually I post contest summaries after every contest. But, as you can see, I haven’t posted much at all lately. Blogging is a burden, especially if you don’t have anything of interest to post. I typically post my contest results for the sole purpose of having my own online record of the contests I have worked. However, the 3830 reflector does a better job of archiving that kind of information than I could ever hope to.

The contests I’ve operated in [since WAG 2011] are:

• 10/15/2011 Iowa QSO Party
• 10/15/2011 New York QSO Party
• 10/29/2011 CQ WW SSB
• 11/05/2011 ARRL Sweepstakes – CW
• 11/12/2011 Worked All Europe – RTTY
• 11/12/2011 Kentucky QSO Party
• 11/19/2011 ARRL Sweepstakes – SSB
• 11/26/2011 CQ WW DX – CW
• 12/03/2011 Tara RTTY Melee
• 12/03/2011 ARRL 160 Meter Contest
• 12/04/2011 10-Meter RTTY Contest
• 12/10/2011 ARRL 10-Meter Contest
• 12/17/2011 Croatian CW Contest
• 12/17/2011 RAC Winter Contest

I have submitted all of those to 3830 except for the Croatian CW Contest and the RAC Winter Contest. I submitted checklogs to the sponsors for those two. Why? I was in it just for fun and didn’t want to worry about what the rules said. I just worked what I heard.

Usually I post a summary for contests / QSO Parties I enter. If anybody actually reads my blog, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted anything for nearly a month and a half.

Typically I am absent from the airwaves from Thanksgiving to after New Years. This year I’ve been active, but I just haven’t been posting because it’s really not a fun thing to do.

I’ve been focusing on working DX, sending out QSLs to those who have requested them from me, and sending out QSLs for DX that I need for DXCC credit.

I played in the ARRL 160, 10-Meter RTTY, TARA RTTY Melee, CQWW DX CW, ARRL SS CW, ARRL SS SSB, Kentucky QSO Party, WAE RTTY, and one or two others but just haven’t posted a summary for them. They are all on 3830 though.

Logbook of the World seems to be back to normal now, and it appears as though a large number of DX and general contest ops have recently started using LoTW. I’ve gotten a lot of confirmations from countries that I had never expected to see using LoTW. Of course.

I’ve been hanging out on 10-meters and plan to be on this weekend for the ARRL 10-Meter Contest. Hopefully conditions are decent, because my antennas sure aren’t. Since I’ll have long periods of rest during nighttime hours, I’m really going to try to put in a lot of time during the daylight hours. I do like working the DX, not so much NA.

This isn’t my usual summary. I might post one later.

I just felt like making a post about an operator I listened to in SSCW this year. I won’t mention his name, location or callsign. That should provide him with undeserving anonymity. Suffice it to say, the guy is a well-known contester. According to his website, which isn’t up to date, he has been contesting for years from his current QTH and previous/other QTHs and is a regular in the major contests. Hell, I’ve worked him countless times in various contests.

Anyway, on to the meaty stuff. I came upon this a-hole [who prior to this event wasn't an a-hole in my mind] and was preparing to throw out my call after he finished working another station. He was asking the station for repeats or for specific information, and the other station wasn’t understanding that he needed a repeat of the check (ck) or precedence (prec). The other station kept sending him the wrong information. So the contester gets pissed / frustrated and sends out .-.. .. -.. (LID). The guy he was working may not have been a contester – he/she may have been some casual op passing by and wanting to give this contester a Q. The other op wasn’t intentionally giving the wrong info. I think the contester eventually got the exchange he wanted before demeaning the other op. There are LIDs and there are well-meaning people trying to increase your fun by being a point for you but who don’t necessarily know what you need. So that was strike #1 for the contester. Already I was highly disappointed at what “competition” does to a person.

I went on to listen since there were other callers, and one or two callers later apparently another op wasn’t giving this contester proper information, or the other contester wasn’t providing it in a timely fashion. At the end of that QSO the contester send the other op a ..-. ..- (FU).

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this picture? Sorry pal, but who is the real victor here? Cap’n Contester with his random bouts of Tourette Syndrome? Or the little guys who are there to give him the points he needs? Why must this guy resort to on-air tantrums?

Bottom line — I see this contester’s posts and summary’s often. He’s a cocky bastard, as some good [and not so good] contesters are, spreading his peacock feathers. He’s got a nice SO/SO2R station. But, he’s a piss poor representative of an amateur radio operator. He’s get an F in Sportsmanship. Whether or not he can make thousands of Qs per contest is irrelevant. His name is mud.

I fired up the radio today and decided to look for some DX. I just recently switched from using Ham Radio Deluxe for general logging to the DX Lab Suite, which includes DXKeeper.

One of the apps in the DX Lab Suite is SpotCollector, which will automatically QSY you to the spot frequency (and split) if you have the Commander app running as well.

I saw the spot for TX7M on 15m and clicked on it to QSY. RX VFO got set to 21.020 and TX freq got set +1 Khz to 21.021. I then decided against trying to work TX7M since I had worked them already on 15m CW. No sense wasting their time and likely adding to the QRM by keying up when they are already in the log.

I then saw a spot for JW5HPA on 21.305. I manually tuned to 21.305 with the radio dial, tuned up, and proceeded to throw out my call for 10 minutes. No joy. Eventually I realized I was still in “split” because I manually tuned from TX7M to JW5HPA rather than clicking on the spot in SpotCollector.

No harm, no foul, right? Well, I continued trying to snag JW5HPA to no avail. I then checked my email, and lo and behold a kind ham emailed me to let me know that I was QRMing the TX7M frequency with my SSB. Yep, that’s right, I was transmitting SSB on 21.021… probably for 10-15 minutes.

The person who emailed me went on to remind me of the DX Code of Conduct because I didn’t state my full call when I was chasing DX.

1. Calling JW5HPA on 21.021 SSB was a major fail. I plead guilty. Where is the wet noodle?

2. Throwing out a partial call when chasing DX? Well, I am going to have to plead innocent on that one. As a rule I don’t do that. Could it have happened? I guess so. I wasn’t recording it, so I can’t prove otherwise. But I would say it was highly unlikely I’d do this.

At any rate, #2 is simply not good etiquette. But #1 is a QRM issue and an actual violation of FCC rules. Where’s Riley when ya need him? I F’d up on that one. Hey, it happens. I’ll brush it off and move on. But I’ll certainly be more diligent when it comes to transmitting. That’s such a rookie mistake.

Thanks to the “Fun Club” for bringing these things to my attention. I’ll try not to let it happen again!

I’m beginning to feel sorry for myself. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it goes. It was about this time last year that I swore I’d make improvements in the coming year and learn to prepare better for contests. Nothing at all happened.

It’s now late October and the first big contest of the season is upon us this weekend, CQWW DX SSB. I still have the same shitty [there is no better word to describe them] dipoles up in the air. What I’ve got is a 100-foot long inverted-V parallel dipole with the apex at 35′ and a 42-foot long flattop parallel dipole with one end at 12′ and the other end at 30′. It’ll do okay for the up and coming ARRL Sweepstakes, but isn’t going to amount to anything as far as DX contests go.

I had high hopes of putting up some combination of a 40/80m inverted-L. A 160m vert is out of the question because I simply don’t have the real estate for a good radial system. Every week this summer I pondered what I should do, but that’s all I did was ponder.

I also thought about trying to find a way to get a Hexbeam at the top of a solid 40′ tree (it used to be much taller until I had the tree guys come and take off the top). But, alas I don’t know of anyone local to hire for such a job. And no, I wouldn’t think to ask other hams to assist. That’d only come back to bite me in the ass if they should fall or get electrocuted — I like my home and prefer to keep it.

I have had tons of time to record audio files to use for the SSB exchanges in N1MM, but I never did it. So I’ll lose my voice two hours into a contest and then be miserable for a few more hours until I decide to throw in the towel.

I’m still plagued by random RF that wipes out my CAT/digital interface. On 80m SSB if I use my Heil headset and handswitch my audio will sound horrible due to RF getting back into the audio chain. I end up having to use a stock mic and my Sennheiser headphones [I prefer them to be honest]. SSB contesting is tedious.

For six months I thought about purchasing the NS roofing filter from ACOC and then sending my radio off somewhere to have it installed, but I didn’t want to be without my radio for who knows how long.

I still haven’t got a proper hole cut through the block in order to bring cables in. So when it’s time to play radio I’m pulling the damned coaxes in from outside and through the sliding glass door. As you can imagine, the electric bill is higher because of this — and in the winter it gets chilly down in the basement with the wind blowing against the sliding glass door that isn’t fully closed.

My antenna mast is more portable than stationary. I can’t raise my dipole to 35′ if there if its windy. It’s not guyed well enough to withstand 30 mph sustained winds let alone 50 mph gusts.

10/15m had been great the past few weeks, but currently the conditions are mediocre on those bands and probably will remain so for CQWW DX SSB. I’ll be trying to make DX contacts against the overwhelming masses of tribanders, monobanders, kilowatt amps and true contest stations.

Really, sometimes I wonder why the hell I do it. I’m a masochist I guess. I’m a pawn on some contester’s chessboard to be sure.

Hope to work you this weekend!

Today I fired up the radio anticipating conditions on 10m / 12m / 15m to be as good as they have been for the past few weeks. Well, I was in for a rude awakening. There was very little to be heard. I even hooked up the second dipole to see if i’d hear anything on it that I couldn’t hear elsewhere.

The only exception was TX7M. When nothing else was to be heard, I’d find TX7M on the band. And, in a matter of less than 30 minutes I worked them on 10m / 15m / 17m / 20m CW. Yep, that’s right, four bands in less than 30 minutes. They were hardly strong, and I’m sure i was as weak as could be. But the TX7M guys appear to be on par with the T32C crew. They are all over the bands and have bionic ears.

I’ll jump back on the radio later this afternoon and see if anything has changed, but the A-index is 16 so I’m not counting on much. Things will likely be improving tomorrow.

The record-setting T32C crew are QRT as of 10-24-2011. On that last day I managed to get them into the log two more times, for a total of 12 band-mode combinations. Most of those I didn’t really have to try for. I was simply tuning around on the bands yesterday and found them.

They will be missed, by me at least. They are some fine DX ops. Even during the biggest pileups they seemed to keep it together and maintain their wits. They were omnipresent on the bands. I don’t think there was a time of day or night that a T32C couldn’t be found on the air on some band/mode.

They were excellent listeners, and they ID’s after each QSO [at least when I heard them] and always would indicate if they were listening up or down and if they were targetting a certain geographic area. Until the very end I rarely if ever heard them simplex. They stuck to their plans of operating split [sometimes a very wide split], and it appears that it worked out very well for them and for us [the DXers].

Every time I worked them they seemed calm, polite, and did not rush you to the point that you felt you had to end the QSO before being certain you were in the log. And, if you weren’t in the log, no problem — call them again later on. They’d work you once or 10 times on a band, didn’t matter.

Another bonus is that they will [eventually] be uploading all QSOs to Logbook of the World.

There isn’t much I can really say [that would be worth anything], but if someone where to ask me I’d give these guys the #1 position in my list of best executed DXpedition. From my perspective it was a great success. I thank all of the ops, who took devoted a lot of their personal time and expense and who were diligent in picking out callsigns and exchanges through QRM, QRN, and often deep QSB.

Weather conditions dictated that my main dipole be down, which would limit me to only having a low shortened dipole available this weekend. I made do with what I had. I intended on trying to make a few Qs in some contest this weekend, but I wasn’t sure which ones.

As it turns out, Saturday morning at the start of the WAG contest 10m was solid. Signals from Germany were strong, and there were tons of DLs on 10m CW. So, I worked a nice chunk of them. When I found no more, I tried 15m and then 20m to make a few quick Qs there. While I was on those bands, I managed a few Qs [a very few] for the IaQP and NyQP.

Sunday morning I jumped back on at 1400z for the last hour of the WAG Contest because I wanted to push my Q-count up above 100. I managed to do that.

The German operators are top notch. They send solid CW. They have bionic ears. And they don’t require repeats. From my experience, this actually seems to be typical of many if not most European countries — not just Germany. But, I give the DL ops credit because their ops are top notch!

I sure wish i could have had my other dipole up. If i could have, I would have tried to work 16-18 hours of this contest rather than 4 hours. Thanks to all of the German ops who provided me with one or more Qs!

Worked All Germany Contest
1500Z, Oct 15 to 1459Z, Oct 16

Call: AA8IA
Operator(s): AA8IA
Station: AA8IA

Class: SO Mixed LP
QTH: Toronto OH EN90ql
Operating Time (hrs): 3:47

Summary:
Band CW Qs SSB Qs Mults
—————————-
80: 0 0 0
40: 0 0 0
20: 15 0 10
15: 11 8 12
10: 74 2 20
—————————-
Total: 100 110 42 Total Score = 13,860

Club: Mad River Radio Club