Author: Tom Simpson

I Lost Half of 2024

The beginning of the year started out pretty good for me. I had 1,259 contacts at the start of the year until May 18th. This included may State QSO parties, WPX, NAQP, ARRL-DX, and SSB Sprint. Included in these were 235 DX stations, many in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

At the end of May, I turned off the radio, completely, and have not been on HF since. There were a couple factors that caused this to happen. The main reason is that I lost an employee at the hotel that I manage, and had been unable to find a replacement. I had been working nonstop, with no days off since the end of May. Needless to say, it didn’t leave any time for contesting, much less getting on the radio at all.

I had checked in a few times to our local 2 meter net, but definitely not regularly. Our local club participated in a few events, including Field Day and Jamboree on the Air, which I was unable to attend this year. I also missed our annual meeting because I was working.

The good news is that I think I have finally found an employee that will work out and I will soon be able to get some time off, once the training is done. I’m not sure when the trainee will be trained enough to work on their own, but at least there is some light at the end of the tunnel, now.

The other factor, though less important, was the fact that LotW was hacked. I know that I could have still kept logs, locally, until the issue was fixed, but combined with the issue of working all the time, I just did not have any ambition to get of the radio at all.

Now that there is some light at the end of the tunnel for me, I do plan to start getting back to radio. At least to participate in some of the contests that I am normally active in.

2023 is All About VotA

This year (2023) is all about VotA for me. I started the year with a total of 17,500 contacts listed on QRZ. I will be trying to increase that total by 50%, this year. That means 8,750 more contacts to reach a total of 26,250.

At the time of this blog post, I am well on my way to reaching that goal. I have 24,126 contacts as of April 6th, 2023. Only 2,124 to go. I have brought the average that I need per day down, considerably. I am keeping track of that on my QRZ profile page.

I have avoided as many duplicate contacts as possible, but there are a few. Some of the contests that I have participated in have made that unavoidable. While the majority of the contacts that I have made, this year, have been using FT8/4, I still try to get as many SSB contacts as I can. Like I once heard somebody say, “If I am stranded on a desert island and I am really, really craving a Coca-Cola, I am definitely not going to turn down a water”.

While it will not count toward my goal, I will also be operating as W1AW/0 during the North Dakota portable weeks. I really wish that we could get more North Dakota stations on the air, but I am not the one to try to stir that pot. I will be operating during the week of April 19-25 for a total of 50 hours. All of the other stations (6 others, so far) that have signed up to operate W1AW/0 during that time period will be operating for a combined time of 28 hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I really want to stir that pot, but since I work 50+ hours per week and am busy with other projects, I do not want to argue with anybody that may have more on their plates than I do. Even people that may be retired could be busier than me.

EDIT: It turns out that I may have been wrong about signing up for so many hours, right away. With one day left in North Dakota’s week, there are a total of 16 stations on the schedule. I had to adjust the bands that I was scheduled to work, due to the high K Index caused by the solar activity this week. Today (Monday) I wasn’t able to hear any stations on 15m or 10m, so I stuck to the lower bands. Waiting my have been a good idea. Still… only 16 stations in the whole state?

As of earlier today, the ARRL actually started giving VotA stations a “rank” on their leaderboard. Right now, I am #111 worldwide. I am hoping to only go up from there. I will also not stop making contacts once I reach my yearly goal. If I increase my total contacts by 50%, I will set another goal to increase it by 100%.

LiFePO4 Battery Received

After four months, I finally received the battery I ordered on October 7, 2021. I am currently running it through it paces and recording everything that I find.

I have connected the battery to my FT-991A at my QTH, and am treating it like an off-grid power source. So far, everything looks great, and it seems like it will work pretty closely to the way I predicted.

One of my next steps it to also build a “box” to put the battery into, and make it more versatile.

Updates will be coming, shortly.

LiFePO4 Update 1

There’s really not a whole lot to update at this time, since I did not actually receive the battery before Field Day. In fact, at this time, I am still waiting.

Apparently, Dakota Lithium has been overwhelmed with orders, and they are trying to fill those orders as fast as they can. Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the chance to test the battery out.

I will still post an update once that happens, but I can’t say that it will be a 24 hour test.

LiFePO4 Power Calculations

In the previous post, I gave the reasons “why” I wanted to go with LiFePO. In this post, I will try to give the details on the calculations that I’ve done, before reaching the decision to buy what I bought.

I ordered a 12V 54Ah Deep Cycle LiFePO4 Battery, a Folding Fast-Charge 12V Solar Panel, and a USB Phone Charger, Voltmeter, & Terminal Adapter Wiring Kit from Dakota Lithium on May 24th. As of May 29th, I have not had all of the items shipped to me, so what follows has not been tested in the real world. These are just my calculations.

Of course, before I start, I will say that I do understand that there are a lot of different factors that will effect these calculations, some of which I may have not even considered. Things like available sunlight, transmit power, transmit frequency (how often… not MHz), other devices connected, are all variable factors that I am aware of.

  • The Battery. 12.8 volts / 54Ah / 691.2Wh
    • Size – 9.01” x 5.43” x 8.38”
    • Weight – 17.6 pounds
    • Discharge – 50 A max continuous, 100 A max pulse 10 second pulse
    • Charge – 25 A max

I will just do the calculations for the battery and the radio, without the solar panel connected. The solar panel can be connected while the battery is being used, so I will just be using it as a way to keep the battery “up” for as long as possible. Without any load on the battery, the solar panel will charge the battery in about 19 1/2 hours. Not a lot of input, but enough to help make it through the night, I think. I may end up upgrading the solar part of this in the future, but we’ll see how it works out this way, for now.

  • The Radio. Yaesu FT-991A
    • Supply Voltage – 13.8 volts (+ or – 15%) – Calculations will be based on 12.8 volts, which is the battery voltage.
    • RX Power Consumption – 2.2 A
    • TX Power Consumption – 23 A (HF/50 at 100 watts)

Based on a 100 watt output (which is the full power of the radio), here is what I came up with:

Standby only battery run time = 24.54 Hours

Transmit only battery run time = 2.34 Hours – This is obviously an unreasonable number, since there is absolutely no way to transmit at 100 watts for that long. Even if I were to run FT8 or FT4 at a full 100 watts, the duty cycle would be 50%, meaning that I would be transmitting half the time and listening the other half. That would bring it to 4.68 Hours.

When operating portable and on Field Day, I normally use SSB (voice or phone). The duty cycle for SSB is actually much lower than 50%, since the radio is only transmitting while you’re talking. The calculations for this are a little trickier. Simply pressing the push-to-talk (PTT) button, without any talking, the radio consumes about 5 amps. Any time you talk, the radio will draw between 15 to 22 amps at 100 watts. For the sake of my calculations, I based the amperage draw at 20 amps at 100 watts.

Since I am a “search & pounce” type of operator, normally, I also based my transmit time to 20% (the other 80% of the time, I would be listening). I might be wrong on this, but if my “transmit only battery run time”, above, is correct (at 2.34 hours) then only transmitting 20% of the time would work out to about 5 times longer, or 11.7 Hours.

Of course, the other factors that are even harder to calculate (for me, anyway). The 80% of the time that I would be listening. The amount of power that the solar panel will put back into the battery. Any other devices that I connect to the battery (I’m going to try to stay away from doing that, this year). The voltage curve stays pretty flat until about 80% on the battery, too. Does that mean that all of my calculations are off by that much?

Another big thing that I have not figured in, at all is that I can just turn down the power on my radio. If I go to 75 watts, will the battery last 25% longer? If I run at 50 watts, will it last 50% longer? If that’s the case (which I actually doubt), I should be able to run 17.54 hours at 50 watts, even without the solar panel.

Since one of the main reasons for wanting this battery was for Field Day, since it is a 24 hour event, I wanted to have a battery that would last that long, by itself. I could have went with the 100 Ah battery, but for the price difference, I decided that the 54 Ah battery supplemented with solar would work just fine.

After I test all of this out in the real world, I will post an update.

LiFePO4 Battery Going in the HamVan

For quite a while, now, I had been thinking about getting a LiFePO battery for the van. There’s a few different reasons that I’ve wanted to, but the main reason is radio noise. The battery will have almost no interference, compared to the gas powered generator that I had been using. The one thing that really pushed my decision, recently, was when Jason and I went up to the fly-in car show at the airport on May 1, 2021. Jason set up his hambulance and I set up my big ear antenna and generator.

Because of the way the show was set up, I was not able to get the separation between the antenna and generator that I would normally get at a portable operation or Field Day. The generator was set up just in front of the vehicle, toward the driver’s side, and the antenna was set up just behind the passenger’s door. Normally, I set them up as far away from each other as possible (at least 100′ away from each other) to avoid as much noise from the generator getting into the antenna. Normally it works pretty good, but I still get noise (whether grounded or not).

What happened at the airport event was that I was able to operate on 40 meters, but 20 meters was mostly unusable. Since the timing of the event was during the day, it would have been great to be able to get on 20 meters. There were multiple QSO parties happening (7th Area, DE, IN, and New England), so I’m sure there was plenty of signals out there. I just couldn’t hear them on 20 meters (except for a few high powered stations).

On May 24th, I decided, with Field Day coming up, I wanted to get a different power setup, so I finally pulled out the CC and bought a few items from Dakota Lithium. As I write this on May 29th, I have not received everything that I ordered, but I just wanted to go through some of the calculations that I did, before deciding on what I wanted, and making the purchases.

First of all, I will point out that I have never been one for “running a frequency”. I am more of a “search and pounce” operator when it comes to any sort of contest or QSO party. The reason that I am throwing this out there is that depending on how much you transmit, you will use more or less power. I have done all sorts of calculations, and will include those in the next post. Secondly, I will add that they are just my calculations, and I have not yet put any of it to the test, in the real world. I will do an update after I’m able to spend some time testing things out.

I will definitely be getting more things to complete the project, but here is what I purchased, so far, from Dakota Lithium. I ordered a 12V 54Ah Deep Cycle LiFePO4 Battery, a Folding Fast-Charge 12V Solar Panel, and a USB Phone Charger, Voltmeter, & Terminal Adapter Wiring Kit.

In the next post, I will try to detail my calculations.

Tree Time Lapse

On May 19, 2021, my neighbor and I had a tree removal company come out and do their thing. We had a “huge” Elm tree that sat on our property line and was starting to really cause some damage to our roofs and my driveway. It was one of the tallest trees in the neighborhood and provided us with a lot of shade, but the damage that it was starting to cause was more than it was worth.

Here is an overhead view of my property, with the line drawn for my Off-Center Fed Dipole. The tree that was removed is shown on the left side of the picture, overhanging into the street.

As you can see, the tree was stretching itself out over the roof of my house and my neighbor’s house. What you can’t see is that my driveway (which runs along the north side of my house) was being lifted up at the end, because of the roots of the tree. We’ve owned the house for 25+ years, and each year the driveway was being lifted higher.

For an idea of how tall and how stretched out the tree was, below is a picture that I took, just before it was removed. This can also be seen in the time-lapse videos that I have linked, below.

What I’m not exactly sure about, yet, is how this will effect my propagation on HF and VHF. I suppose time will tell on that. I do already know that my ADS-B receiver (the antenna for it is on top of the mast on the left side of the previous picture) seems to be picking up signals much better to the northwest.

Below are some time-lapse videos of the tree removal. There are times in the videos where nothing seems to be happening. Those are the times where they either got a slow start or went to lunch, or something. Each of the links are set to open in a new tab, when clicked.

Front View – Part 1

Front View – Part 2

Driveway View – Part 1

Driveway View – Part 2

Now that the tree is gone, I can finally get started on replacing the roof on the house, without fear of it being torn up, right away. I will also need to work on getting the end of the driveway back to “normal”. I am really happy about the view of the sky to the northwest from my house, now. It’s also going to take some time for us to get used to the tree not being there. It’s a little weird.

Propagation Is Tough

I’m not sure what’s going on, exactly, but for the past few weeks, I have been having major trouble with propagation on HF. I know that there’s nothing wrong with my antenna, because I have made some good contacts, but they are very sporadic. QSB (the fading in and out of signals) has been really bad.

I’ve been trying to (at least) get involved in all of the QSO Parties that have come along, without a whole lot of luck. Even in the North Dakota QSO Party I only made two contacts. Part of that was because after I tried for 2 or 3 hours, I finally just gave up and went out to clean my garage. There wasn’t a whole lot of BIC time that Saturday.

As I write this, the Florida QSO Party is happening. It’s 2pm, and I have only been able to hear one station (N4K) on 20 meters. I still haven’t made the contact, but with the QSB the way it is, I’m just waiting until he pops up out of the noise, again.

… and just after I typed that, he popped up and I made the contact. Now, I can’t hear him at all, again. Urgh!

I am completely aware that nothing makes more of a difference in making contacts on HF than the conditions. As long as you have a decent antenna, you really can talk around the world with 5 watts. There are so many factors that go into having the right conditions, though, I really think that it’s more of an art than a science. Beyond that, depending on what the conditions are like on any given day (or hour, for that matter) I actually feel like it’s more of a gamble than anything.

The key (in my opinion) is persistence. Spinning the dial, rather than watching the spotting networks. Having a good set of headphones. Trying different bands at different times of day (sometimes, even when you don’t think it should work).

Another helpful thing that I have found is that when propagation really “is” bad at your location, is to just take a break from it. There is no good that can come from being frustrated. There’s always next time.

It’s Been Such A Long Year!

I just realized that I haven’t actually updated this site for almost a year! I do apologize.

What a year it’s been, though. I mean… seriously… 2020 has been so screwed up that there is no reason for me to go into any re-capping on what’s happened. Everybody knows, and everybody has had their own stories about it.

On that “own story” topic, I’ll just sum up what it’s been like for me, personally. My hotel has been shut down since March 28th, 2020. I had planned on opening it back up on July 15th. The owner (my boss) had different ideas, so we remain closed, for now.

Even though it has been closed, I have been at the hotel (almost) every day. All of the phone calls that come in to the hotel are being forwarded to my mobile phone. I have literally worked every day since March 28th, albeit, not a full 8 or 10 hour shift.

The worst part of this year was when we had to lay off all of our employees. I felt so bad during that time, that it was almost unbearable. After I realized that they would all be getting a nice bonus on their unemployment checks, I didn’t feel as bad. I did want to make sure that they were spending that extra money “like they had to pay it back”, though. At this time, it seems like most of them did.

There has actually been a lot that has happened in the past eight months, but rather than bore anybody with going over all of it, I will just say that I have learned that my wife loves me more than I might have realized. When I do get to go back to work for 10 hours per day, it will be a big adjustment for her. Even when I go to work for 2 or 3 hours, now, it’s hard. That being said, I think that 2020 has been great for making people realize what’s really important in life.

Meanwhile, now that North Dakota is the “hotspot” for COVID-19 in the world, I will wish anybody that reads this “good health” and an end to this thing (no matter what your thoughts are about it), as soon as possible.

Best 73, all.