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2018 Grid Chase – Final

While I wasn’t working on becoming the highest scoring station during the 2018 Grid Chase, I actually got a higher score that I would have thought. Out of all the hams that participated, I got an overall score of 2204.

In the state of North Dakota, I came in “fourth place”. The three that placed above me from ND were Nancy Yoshida (KG0YL), Steven Lee (KD0CVZ), and Peter Pugliano (WC0G).

2018 Leaderboard - North Dakota stations.
2018 Leaderboard – North Dakota stations.

It looks like the Grid Chase was a 2018 “contest” only, and was not extended into 2019. Since I missed the first 3 months of the year, I feel like I didn’t do too bad. I was looking for some other kind of year-long event for 2019, but so far, nothing has been announced.

Winter Field Day Update

I added an update to the original post on November 27th that said “Just registered and added myself to the Winter Field Day map, this morning. At this time, I’m the northern-most (and probably coldest) spot on the map.” Well… The first part is still true. I’m still registered and on the map, but I am no longer the “northern-most” spot on there. I am, however, still the northern-most “outdoor” station on the map.

Since I posted the original post, I have come up with a “plan B”. I now have an 80 meter end-fed half wave antenna that I will be using. In fact, the EFHW will probably become the “plan A”, and I’ll let the Big Ear antenna be the plan B. I think that I have everything that I need to get it up into a tree and on the air. I may need to hit up a friend for a smaller piece of coax, though. Everything I have is much longer than I probably need, and if I don’t need to cut it up, I don’t want to.

The place where I’ll be running WFD from is all set up, and I’ve got the proper permission that I need. The only thing that I may have to worry about is if we get any kind of really bad weather during that time period. Getting in and out of there may be a little tricky if things get bad enough. I’ll hope for the best, but plan for the worst, though.

Speaking of planning, I was thinking that I would be using a small electric heater that I have, in order to keep the van warm. I pulled the space heater out, the other day and fired up the generator. I realized that the heater (on high) pulls 1500w. The generator that I have is capable of 2000w. This would leave me 500w (pushing it) for the radio and anything else that I connect. The radio pulls just under 200W at full power and the laptop that I use for logging would pull about 150w. That would leave me about 150 watts of wiggle room. I’m not comfortable with that, at all.

My solution is to put about a $130 initial investment into a propane tank and heater. It’s all locally available, so I don’t even need to order anything. This solution should work out much better, since I will be “saving” all of those watts, and the propane heater should do a much better job of heating the van. This really showed me that the planning is about 80% of this whole exercise.

The location that I chose is very ideal, since it is a relatively open area, but has a couple trees that I can get a wire antenna up about 40 feet in the air. When I looked at the distances that I needed, the location of the “station” set up puts the antenna(s) on one side of the van and the generator on the other side, behind a small brick building (which should do a good job at blocking any interference from it). Also, it should shield the generator from the weather and wind. I may need to come up with something to protect the “connection” side of the generator, so nothing gets wet, though.

I did purchase the full suite of N3FJP software, and have started using Amateur Contact Log as my main logging program. I plan to use his Winter Field Day Contest Log during WFD. My son (KE0MHY) also plans on helping me out, and he’s familiar with the N3FJP software, since he used it during last Field Day. This should make the logging the least of any of my worries about the whole event. There’s a lot of “extras” in his software that I wasn’t even aware of when I purchased it that I’m really happy about.

Since the last post, I have also talked to Shawn (AD0ND), and he told me that he does not plan on running an outdoor station, this year. In a way, I wish he would, but in another way, I’m kinda’ happy he isn’t, since this will give me a little better chance at getting higher in the results. Not that it will get me much more than bragging rights. but like he said, “it’s fun, but the bragging rights are even better”.

The only big thing that I have major concerns about is the BIG THING that will prevent me from getting even close to obtaining those bragging rights. The HF conditions, lately have been (to say the least) AWFUL. If you’ve been on HF over the past couple weeks, I’m sure you would agree. 100 watts and a wire can usually do a pretty good job, but if the propagation isn’t there, it makes things “really” difficult. I really hope that the conditions improve before the end of January. The only thing I have on my side, if they don’t improve, is that I am a member of OMISS and the 3905 net. Those two nets have done more for me to improve my radio “hearing” than anything else. Using headphones and training my ears to ignore the static has been essential for making a lot of contacts on those nets. I’m proud to say that I’ve become pretty good at it.

This may be the last update before WFD, but I will post an update after WFD, no matter what.

Let me know, in the comments, if you are also planning to participate in Winter Field Day, and what your plan is.

My First Air Mobile Contact

I’ve got four days off from work, this week, so this morning, I decided to make it my day to “sleep in”. Thankfully my wife let me sleep until 11:00am. I seem to need to do that, once in a while, just to “catch up” on sleep, I guess. She did wake me up, abruptly, though, and I am also thankful for that.

The reason why she woke me up is because she heard some traffic on the scanner that I left running in the ham shack/office. Any other night, I would have turned off the scanner (or anything else that makes noise in the shack), but I must have forgotten, last night… thank goodness.

When she woke me up, she said that it sounded like there was somebody in an airplane that she heard. Being half asleep, still, I wasn’t sure if I left the audio for the air traffic feed turned up. I hardly ever turn the audio on that one up, even though it’s running all the time. I soon realized that it was the amateur radio scanner that she had heard.

I had heard of individuals being aeronautical mobile, before, but it was the first time I had ever heard one, myself. I jumped on the mic as soon as W9AFB called QRZ on 146.520 MHz, and he heard me, right away. Perfect signal, though I turned down the squelch, just in case. We had a short QSO, and he got back to contacting others.

Since I also have an ADS-B antenna and “Orange” receiver, I also pulled up the map of the aircraft that I was picking up. I first thought that he was one of the other planes that I saw, but after confirming with him that it wasn’t, I looked closer at the MLAT data that I was receiving. It turns out that he was in a military aircraft designated as “TOPCT14”. I got back to him, a little bit later, and he confirmed that he was in that plane. They circled the region a few more times (training, I think), and then left the area, toward the south.

My XYL told me that she heard Lyle talking to him, before I came downstairs. I tried to get in touch with Jason and Michelle, but because it’s a Monday, both of them were working and weren’t able to get to their radios.

It was a really cool experience, and I enjoyed making the contact with Scott. I let him know that I would be sending him a QSL card, when I noticed that they were leaving, as they flew south past I-94. I filled out the card, right away, and realized, as I was completing the QSO information that my radio was set to only 5 watts of output power. I thought about cranking it up to 50 watts and trying to reach him again, as they flew past Brookings, SD, but I really didn’t want to be “that guy” that gets annoying.

Anyway… I hope to talk to him, again, if he comes this way in the future.

Here’s the audio (major timeshift – all “dead air” gaps removed) The full length was 1 hour & 19 minutes:

Doing Winter Field Day

UPDATE (Nov 27, 2018): Just registered and added myself to the Winter Field Day map, this morning. At this time, I’m the northern-most (and probably coldest) spot on the map.

Over the past couple days, I’ve been thinking about getting involved in Winter Field Day 2019. Obviously, it’s more comfortable sitting in a warm house with hot coffee (or cold beer) and not having to worry about everything that comes with setting up a portable HF station. The challenge of actually “doing it”, though is something I think I’d like to try.

Setting up a portable station is easy enough when the weather is nice. Finding the time to do it, last summer was my biggest obstacle. The hours that I was working just didn’t allow me to get out there as much as I had wanted to. I did manage to go portable three times (plus Field Day), last summer, but I would have loved to have traveled around a lot more.

My work schedule, in the cold months, is a lot less busy, but of course the downside of that is that it’s cold!!! If you’ve never been to North Dakota, but you’ve “heard” how bad the winters get up here, what you heard was probably true. Of course, some winters are better than others, but when it’s bad… it’s bad. It’s almost “always” warmer in Anchorage, AK than it is in North Dakota.

Temperatures of -20 to -30 are pretty normal in the dead of winter, then add the wind chill (which also blows A LOT in the winter) and also the snow and most people are content to remain indoors as much as possible. The thought of “camping” in the winter is something that most people don’t even think of. There are some people that go ice fishing, but even though I like to fish, the idea of sitting on a frozen lake in a little hut and sticking a line through a little hole always made me shake my head. Definitely not for me!

I suppose that means that I am a lot more interested in radio than fishing, since I am actually considering setting up a station on January 26th and getting on the air for 24 hours, straight.

I bought my current vehicle (a van) with the intention of converting it into something that would be comfortable to travel and sleep in. I still haven’t converted the electric system, added insulation, or anything else the way that I had planned, but it’s still a pretty comfortable van on the inside. I have a generator and a small electric heater which should do a good job at keeping the inside warm enough, even without any insulation. I’ll need to test that out before making the commitment for Winter Field Day, though. The generator is powerful enough to keep the heater, lights, and radio running. I just want to make sure it’s “enough” heat.

The antenna that I use when I’m portable is set up on a tripod, which I normally anchor straight down to the ground using a “dog tie-out” screw. That might not be possible, depending on how frozen the ground is. I’ll need to come up with a “plan B”, just in case, though. There’s bound to be a lot more wind at the end of January than there was last summer. I’m still working through the planning in my head, but overall, it’s something that I’m looking forward to.

The rules for Winter Field Day are almost the same as that other Field Day, with some slight changes and different exchanges. I plan on doing this as an individual (not with the club), so I will only be using one radio, off-grid. If I make at least one contact, I will (at least) be able to get 4,502 points.

Last year, Shawn (AD0ND) made 157 contacts from north of Valley City, and got 13,293 points. He had the highest score for a 1O station, and came in second for all of “zero-land” (the one in first was running 3 stations in MN). He was the ONLY one running and outdoor station in North Dakota. The only other ND station in the results was running a “home” station in Bismarck.

Shawn was running one of the stations are our club’s Field Day set up, last June. He did a great job, there, and we had a great time, but I think I want to give him a run for his money (there’s no money involved, by the way), and hopefully come close to his Winter Filed Day score or maybe even pass him. Honestly, I haven’t heard if he was going to do WFD again, this year, or not. Either way, I plan to be out there.

160 Meter Contacts

For a few months, now, I have been working, on and off, on 30 meters and I’m up to 46 states by using FT8. That’s not an exceptional thing, though, until you realize that the Buckmaster 7 band off center fed dipole (which is what I’m using) is not supposed to work on 30 meters. The power getting reflected back to the radio is a little high (3.1:1 SWR), but I keep the power turned down, and the effective radiated power out of the antenna is about 25 watts. With that, I have actually seen amazing results. Like I said, 46 states, so far, and the furthest DX contact on 30m has been southern Australia.

The only states that I need on 30 meters are AK, ME, ND, and SD. I have a feeling that AK may be the hardest to get, since I don’t recall ever hearing any stations from AK on 30m.

Tonight, I tried tuning over to 1.840 MHz, which is the 160 meter FT8 frequency. I heard a few stations, which is more than I think I had ever heard in the past, there. Partly due to interference, and probably mostly due to conditions and antenna. Even though my FT-991A will not tune to 160m using this Buckmaster 7 band OCFD, it will still allow me to transmit with an SWR of 3.1:1. I, of course, turned the power way down, and I am getting an effective radiated power of about 21 watts out of the antenna.

Amazingly, I got my first two contacts on 160 meters, tonight. One station in Texas and another in Wisconsin. Very surprisingly, I got an FT8 report of +12 from the Wisconsin station, even though I heard him at a -17.

After the two contacts were made, the band and all of the signals seemed to drop out. I made a few more CQ calls, but heard nothing more from anybody. It’s late, and I need to work, tomorrow, so I gave up.

I was so excited, though, that I needed to get this out there. I am not sure if I am more happy with the antenna or the radio (or the mode) at this point. Where I am located, there is absolutely no way for me to even think about putting up a legitimate 160 meter antenna, so the fact that I was able to even pull off those two contacts has me really excited.

Updated eQSL Card

Since I’ve been hanging out doing FT8 so much, lately, I’ve decided that I should actually update the design of my electronic QSL card. I don’t initiate sending out physical QSL cards for FT8 contacts, but if I receive one, I’ll return one.

The card that I have at eQSL has been redesigned to match my physical card, more closely. The physical card still has a lot more information, since it’s printed on both sides.

I actually download all of the eQSL cards that I receive, but I don’t actually print most of them. If I get a card with a unique design, or more personally designed, or a country that I don’t have any for, I will print them. I realized that because of the card design I had, it most likely wasn’t getting printed by anybody.

There’s also a place to “vote” for card designs on the site (when you receive them), so we’ll see if my new one gets any votes, now.

Busy, Busy, Busy…

Apparently, somebody has noticed that I haven’t updated the posts on this page in a while. Well. I apologize. First of all, my full time job has been crazy. If you know me personally, you’ll understand. Between the yo-yo duties that I have as a general manager, I have also been covering actual shifts and doing the jobs of at least two or three other people. I’m not complaining, because I actually love my job, but sometimes it’s a “love-hate” relationship.

I also haven’t been monitoring the local repeater too much. Completely my fault, as I have the ability to listen to it, as well as do all of the HF stuff that I’ve been doing, lately. I plan to get better at having my other radio turned on, so I can jump in, if needed. It’s really not that hard… I just haven’t been doing it.

Quite a bit has happened since my last post. Field Day has come and gone. It was a huge success, in my opinion. I have also delved into the world of FT8, and became quite addicted, honestly. I now have over 1,000 contacts in my personal log, and 25 countries confirmed, according to LotW. I am one state away from having my Mixed WAS… that state being North Dakota, believe it or not.

As you can see from the following PDF file, I have been pretty active on FT8. This was just grabbed, a few minutes before posting, so some of them have not confirmed, yet. I’ve been working all of the bands, including 30 meters, which my antenna apparently isn’t supposed to be able to transmit or tune. I love this Buckmaster 7 band antenna. It’s actually a 9 band antenna, now.

My QRZ logbook as of this post

… Until next time…

Time For An Update

About a month ago, I finally put up the antenna for my HF radio. When I bought the FT-991A, I also purchased a Buckmaster 7-band off-center fed dipole (covers 80, 40, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, & 6). I know that’s 8 bands, but even though it’s not supposed to work on 15 meters, the FT-991A tunes it. Since I bought it all in the middle of winter, I needed to wait for the snow to clear off the roof, before I could get up there. For some reason, my wife and kids didn’t want me to be up there when it was a little slick, or something.

The antenna seems to work great. I get pretty good reports from most of the people I talk to. I’ve only had about 80 contacts in the past month, but they have been from coast to coast in the US. Up until last night, I didn’t have any contacts into Canada, and I was a little confused about that. The antenna was working from MA to WA, and all over to the south, very well. Last night, however, I was able to get a couple different contacts into AB and BC… finally.

The OCFD is oriented east-west, with the short end toward the east. It doesn’t seem to be directional, at all, except for the minimal contacts to the north. I’m pretty sure that has more to do with my actual location and the way it’s set up, though.

The reason for the slow updates, here, have a lot to do with me actually being on the radio, rather than on the computer. That, along with my current work schedule, has kept me from having the urge to write anything on here.

Our local ARC is getting ready for Field Day 2018. We still have some details to hammer out, but no matter what, it should be a great couple days. Last year, we were a 1A station, and this year we’re actually planning to be a 2A. That’s actually a pretty big achievement for an area with such a limited amount of amateurs. It looks like we’ll also have a Cub Scout troop visiting us on Saturday, June 23rd.

Watching Tiangong-1 Fall

And… It’s gone. Crashed into the Pacific Ocean, right here.

It’s coming down faster, every day. My estimate is that it will definitely not hit North America, at all, though. Also, I am predicting that it will not come down to Earth south of the equator.

Space.com article. | Space.com update at 10am EST on 3/31/18.

It will re-enter the atmosphere on a northeast trajectory, just north of the equator. Most of the ground footprint will be near the equator, and just to the north of it. Central America (including Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras), Ecuador, Columbia, Brazil, Nigeria, Central Africa, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Kenya, Singapore, Philippines, and Malaysia will be the most likely “targets”, if it hits land. However, there is a much higher chance that it will land in the water, from what I see.

An update (10:00am CST on 3/31/18): The most recent prediction of the timeline for re-entry (by the European Space Agency and Aerospace Corp.) has moved it back by one day. They now say that it will be falling back to Earth on April 2. My updated prediction (which I actually thought through, yesterday) has the re-entry happening on April 3rd or 4th.Still no “exact” time, of course, but the rate of descent, no matter what the upper level atmosphere is like, looks to my like it will still be later than their predictions.

Another update (9:44am CST on 4/1/18): Looks like I was off. The latest orbit lost more altitude than I expected. Seems like the gravitational effects (and other factors) are just pulling it in faster, now. Although my timing may be a little off, the location that I predicted remains the same.

I’ve been watching the orbit, here. (at about 13:00 local time on 3/31, they changed the live tracking. It’s now in a small javascript image on the right side of the page.) I don’t watch it all the time, and the ones that I’ve recorded have some gaps between them. There are two bounces in altitude on each orbit. This will explain some consecutive highs on the table. The biggest dip in the low altitude seems to always occur on the “upswing” from the southern hemisphere, just as it crosses the equator.

The estimated re-entry altitude is about 120 km.

Date Local Time (CST) Altitude (km) Peak (high or low) / km from re-entry
03/28/2018 00:03 190.97 Low / 70.97
03/28/2018 08:52 189.46 Low / 69.46
03/28/2018 09:52  207.05 High / 87.05
03/28/2018 19:12 186.41 Low / 66.41
03/28/2018 19:41 201.86 High / 81.86
03/28/2018 20:11 206.00 High / 86.00
03/28/2018 20:40 186.09 Low / 66.09
03/29/2018 23:08 180.00 Low / 60.00
03/30/2018 09:52 188.18 High / 68.18
03/30/2018 10:25 195.93 High / 75.93
03/30/2018 10:53 176.55 Low / 56.55
03/30/2018 11:19 187.68 High /  67.68
03/30/2018 11:53 195.54 High /  75.54
03/30/2018 12:21 176.19 Low /  56.19
03/30/2018 23:37 190.27 High /  70.27
03/31/2018 00:05 172.09 Low /  52.09
03/31/2018 01:33 171.67 Low /  51.67
03/31/2018 10:50 183.06 High /  63.06
03/31/2018 11:48 165.48 Low /  45.48
04/01/2018 05:20 155.32 Low /  35.32
04/01/2018 06:20 171.86 High /  51.86
04/01/2018 06:48 154.60 Low /  34.60
04/01/2018 08:16 153.89 Low / 33.89
04/01/2018 09:42 147.60 Low / 27.60
04/01/2018 12:36 142.96 Low / 22.96
04/01/2018 14:03 140.67 Low / 20.67
04/01/2018 16:59 138.35 Low / 18.35
 04/01/2018 18:25 135.20 Low / 15.20

Interestingly, there is an app on the Google Play Store called “Tiangong-1?”. I have not tried it, but one of the comments in the reviews is classic:

“Terrance Huang
September 29, 2016
2 Likes
1 Star
crashes It just crashes. Android 6.”

Going to the Bismarck Hamfest… Again

Last year, My son and I went to the Bismarck Hamfest, where I took the test and earned my Extra license, and my son became a Technician. We drove out the night before and spent the night in a hotel, so we could get there as soon as things got started. Michelle and Jason (KCØLAC & KCØGCJ) were also there, and we had a really good time.

I am planning to go, again, this year (2018), as well. Since this is the hamfest that I earned my Extra licanse, I really have a special place in my heart for it. I didn’t actually spend any money on anything, last year, but this year, I have a little bit more incentive, so we’ll see what happens.

This year, the Bismarck Hamfest is on February 24th. Same times and same place as last year.

Once again, if anybody would like to ride out with us, please let me know. We will probably spend the night in a hotel, so that we can get there when if first opens, again (I don’t feel like driving out at 5AM). I’ll find the best deal on a hotel that I can… I’m an insider, so I know where to look.

If you want the countdown and more information, take a look at the CDARCND website.