NDØTS

My Thoughts on the ARRL Technician Enhancement Proposal

If you haven’t heard, the FCC is considering expanding HF privileges for Technician License holders. More information can be found here and here. From what I have seen in various discussions, online, there are quite a few individuals that are very “vocal” in opposition to the changes.

The basic changes involve expanding phone (SSB, AM, etc.) privileges for current and future Tech license holders. They would be allowed to operate on 3.900 to 4.000 MHz, 7.225 to 7.300 MHz, and 21.350 to 21.450 MHz. They would also be given digital privileges (RTTY, FT8, etc.) on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters. They are currently allowed to use those, but only for CW.

My initial thoughts on this were actually in opposition of the changes. I almost went as far as filing a comment with the FCC on the changes. After taking a few deep breaths and actually thinking through what effect the changes would have, I have changed my mind, and I now believe that the changes would have a positive effect on the future of ham radio.

My further explanation: I am currently an Extra Class license holder. I have access to all of the amateur bands and modes. With this ticket, I can do anything that an amateur radio operator can do. While I have done a lot of experimenting, there are still many things in this hobby that I haven’t even tried. The fact that I had to take three different tests in order to get to this level made the proposed changes seem like they were going to make the second two tests that I took seem worthless.

I had also read the various discussions, online, and many people are saying that this is a move by the ARRL to be able to collect more $49 annual dues. I completely disagree with that opinion. If this is about money, it is not about the ARRL wanting money… it would actually be about radio manufacturers wanting to make money.

We can all agree that the Chinese radio invasion has completely taken hold, and while I don’t have “any” numbers to support it, the majority of them are probably being purchased by new Technicians. I own a few, myself, so this is definitely not limited to new Techs, but I am quite sure that this has caused some “loss of sales” for the other radio manufacturers.

Because the Chinese radios can be used on amateur bands that Technicians can use, there is no real need for them to “upgrade” to another radio. This is where I think that the drive for the rule changes is actually coming from the radio manufacturers that make HF radios (and possibly makers of antennas and other HF equipment).

If Technicians are given a slice of 80 meters, 40 meters, and 15 meters, they will be more apt to buy radios and antennas that will operate on those frequencies. Essentially opening up a pretty hefty market for HF radio manufacturers.

Now that I’ve got my opinion about where I think the idea for these changes came from, I’ll explain why I think this will actually be a good thing, in the end.

This is actually quite a large chunk of spectrum that they would be giving to Techs. As I say that, though, there is much more spectrum that would be available, if they were to upgrade to General or Extra. In my mind, this is like giving them a small taste of HF while still giving them the upgrade option to get even more. Once they’ve already got the radio and antennas to do it, the “barrier to upgrade” will seem much lower. And “since” they’ve already got the radio and antennas, the drive to upgrade would be that much higher.

There are, of course, many options that individuals will take when putting up antennas for the new “HF Tech” frequencies. I can imagine that there will be a lot of them that will put up multi-band antennas that are made to work with other bands that they won’t be able to use until they upgrade. For example, an 80 meter OCFD will work on 8 different bands. Three of those bands, they would only be able to listen to, and the other five, they would only be able to transmit in a pretty small portion.

If I was stuck in that position, I would be trying to upgrade my license as quick as I could. Not being able to use 20 meters would be a “huge” drive. Also, not being able to transmit in the DX windows would be really frustrating.

Anyway… those are my thoughts. In the end (if this “passes”), I believe that the whole hobby will be better off. Once people get a good taste of HF, they will want to taste even more.

Wisconsin QSO Party

UPDATED: For not trying too hard in this QSO Party, I managed to have this sent to me on August 1, 2019:

For such bad conditions on the HF bands, I was really surprised by what I was able to accomplish in the WI QSO Party, yesterday. I was able to get a total of 35 contacts in 25 different counties. Most of the contacts were on 40 meters, and a couple of them were on 80 meters.

Maybe next year, I will be able to get my brother to become licensed, so I can actually talk to him, more often. We’ll see.

During this QSO Party, I wasn’t really “trying” too hard. I did have the day off, though, so in between all the other things I was doing, I would spin the dial a bit, and see who was out there.

I also took part in the OK and ID QSO Parties, this weekend, but wasn’t able to make too many contacts in those. The conditions on Saturday were super terrible. I submitted my logs for all of them, anyway.

Next week is the Virginia and Louisiana QSO Parties. I have Saturday off of work, so I may try to get a few contacts on those.

ARRL International DX Contest – SSB

On March 2nd & 3rd, I made a few contacts in the Int. DX Contest. I got a total of 43 contacts, with a total score of 3,870. I made contacts in a total of 22 different countries on 20, 40, & 80 meters. Nothing even close to “great”, but it was fun. Even though I had to work a shift while the contest was happening, I still feel pretty good about how I did.

I’ve already submitted my log, so now we just wait and see (for a while) where I show up. The results can take months.

One interesting thing that I found, today, was a contact that I made in Belize with Victor (V31VP). He records all of his QSOs, and they get uploaded. I typed my callsign into the tool that he has on his QRZ.com bio, and was able to listen. During the exchange, he asked me if I was able to do 80 meters (and I was), so we switched bands. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make it work on 80m.

Here’s the audio:

ND0TS de V31vp Audio

ADDED: Also made contact with him on March 30th, during the CQ WPX contest.

Air Traffic Feed Removed

Due to some trouble with equipment, I have decided to stop broadcasting the Air Traffic Feed. I will still be streaming the Amateur Radio Feed, however.

The Air Traffic Feed did not get a whole lot of listeners, anyway. Not that there was too much to listen to, either, but the decision was made to kill the feed, rather than spend any more time on trying to keep the feed up. Because I think the problem was actually from a problem with a USB sound card that was being used, I also did not want to spend any money to fix it.

If it was a more popular feed, I may have been more inclined to keep it going, but the popularity of listening to any air traffic isn’t real high.

Like I said, I am still streaming the Amateur Radio Feed. I am also still providing ADS-B data to FlightAware.

VP6D Card Arrived

Between October 23, 2018 an October 29, 2018n I was able to make six confirmed contacts with the Ducie Island DXpedition. Four FT8 contacts and two SSB contacts (on 15m & 17m) were made. Today, I received the QSL card, containing confirmation of all six of those contacts. Beautiful card.

I have a few different cards that I’m pretty proud of, and this is definitely one of them. More details about the DXpedition and a closer look at the card design can be seen here.

ISS Sent Me A Picture

On Saturday night, the International Space Station sent me a picture. They sent the picture to a bunch of other people, too, so it wasn’t personal. The big thing about this, is that it’s the first ever SSTV image that I’ve been able to receive from the ISS.

I know that it’s not the clearest image, by far, but the ISS was about 15 degrees above the horizon, in the southwest, when I received it.

The thing that I found really strange is that I started receiving their signal about 1:30 (one minute and thirty seconds) before it came over the horizon, and continued to hear it for about 1:30 after it went back below the horizon.

I hope to get some better images, in the future. Thanks to Jason (KC0GCG), the settings on the software that I use for tracking are now correct, and I won’t be missing most of the ISS passes.

Winter Field Day Wrap Up

Well, Winter Field Day 2019 has officially come to a close. We survived, but we also came to a conclusion, and made a decision. As long as we are in North Dakota, we will never again participate in WFD as an outdoor station. We had the experience. And once is all we needed.

We got up to the island (our WFD location) at about 10AM on Saturday morning. Taking care of first things, first, we fired up the generator and the portable heater. If those two things didn’t work for, for some reason, the whole event would have been called off, for us. They fired right up, though.

The next step was to get the antennas up in the air. Using a fishing pole and a 1 oz. weight, I got it over a 40′ tree on the second shot. Pulled the fishing line, pulled the Handy Hundred, then pulled up the end-fed antenna and tied it off. Stretched out the antenna, toward the van and mounted the end about a foot or two off the ground.

We tried to get the “corkscrew” that I use to hold down the Big-Ear antenna tripod into the ground, with no luck. The frozen ground wouldn’t allow it. We ended up using a bungee cord to “attach” the tripod and mast to a 4×4 that a sign was mounted on. It worked pretty well, since nothing ended up hitting the ground.

After running all the coax and extension cord, I tested out the antennas with the analyser. I had the Big-Ear set for 20m, and it tested at 1.15:1 SWR. The end-fed tested below 2:1 on all of the bands that we’d be using, except 75m. If I remember correctly, it was at 4.3:1 at around 3.800. It was better toward the bottom of the 80m band, at 3.600, but that wasn’t where I’d be using it. I decided to try to fix that problem “later”.

Once everything was connected and running, we had about 12 minutes to spare, before the event was set to begin. I was a little surprised that it took us that long, but between and in the middle of the steps involved in the setup, we took quite a few breaks, so we could warm up.

We started making contacts, almost right away. Ran a couple pileups (the first of them was my first experience at running a pileup, which lasted about an hour). We operated on 20m, 40m, and 75m. On 75m, we were very limited, and just barely got the contacts that we needed, to count for the multiplier for the extra band. We also had a lot of (generator?) noise on 75m, but managed to get IL, TN, and WI.

In the end, we wound up with 208 SSB contacts. We didn’t work any digital or CW. At 3:43AM, I got a notification that a Blizzard Warning had been issued. It was expected to move into the area at about 9AM. I decided, at that point, that we wouldn’t be staying until 1 in the afternoon, and we would start tearing things down at dawn. We actually started tearing down at about 8:45AM, and the wind and snow was already there. Luckily, the tear-down went a lot faster than the setup, and we were off the island by 9:30AM.

Things that I’ve learned by doing Winter Field Day, this year.

Never put yourself into an uncomfortable situation, if you don’t absolutely have to.
Conversion vans are definitely not as insulated as they might seem.
Heat rises (I actually knew this). Don’t sit on the floor.
9-10 hours is the amount of time it takes for the generator to go through a full tank of gas (it ran out at about 4AM)
Whenever I get a chance to work a pileup, do it! I need the practice.
“Foot Warmers” would have definitely helped.
No amount of “pre-sleeping” can prevent you from getting tired.
Get pictures. Sadly, this year, I did not get any pictures or video. It was the last thing on my mind, actually.

I want to send out a great big thank you to Jason Linz (ND0JL) for checking in on me via 146.52, every few hours, while he was awake. I really appreciate it!

There was one other thing that did happen, while we were up there. A county sheriff stopped up to see what we were up to. He told us that somebody had reported that it looked like somebody was living on the island. This happened just a few hours into the contest. We explained to him what we were doing, and that we had permission to be there, and everything was alright.

WFD Getting Close

About 8 days from the time that I’m writing this, Winter Field Day will begin. I’ve been watching the Facebook page that’s been set up for WFD, and making sure that I am ready to go get things set up on the morning on January 26th. Some others in the Facebook group have explained how they already have antennas set up on their fish houses, etc.

I am of the thought that this should be an exercise in actual preparedness, and how quickly I can respond, if needed. To put my “getting ready” process into perspective, I’ll explain it, a little bit.

The area where I’ll be setting up has been picked out. I have no “Plan B”, so if my first location won’t work out, I’ll need to come up with something else, quickly.
Nothing has been set up or installed, but most things are ready in the “go bag”.
I have a checklist of all the items that I’ll need, which will be completed about 3 hours before WFD starts.
The radio that I’ll be using is still connected at my home QTH.
Other needed items, such as tools, antennas, wire, heater, generator, fuel, flashlights, etc. are inside my hamshack (where they normally are), and will be loaded into the vehicle at the last minute.

In other words, when WFD comes, I will be grabbing everything that I need and double checking my checklist. The plan is to go from my normal operation at my home to operating in the field in under 2 hours (hopefully less). This is how I would normally do any portable operation, and is a major factor in the Winter Field Day operation. The statement on the front page of their website explains the importance of preparedness.

For Winter Field Day, I will be uploading my logs, live, to Contest Online ScoreBoard. I have a link to the WFD contest on the front page of my site. This is so you can follow along, if you’d like, and see where I’m at on the leaderboard.

I am also testing out what I’m calling a “Live Log”, which is linked in the right-hand column of the home page. That Live Log will NOT be updated during WFD, since I’ll be linked to the Contest Online ScoreBoard. It’s not that I “can’t” do it… I just don’t see the need to use any more bandwidth than I have to, while tethering during the event.

In the same respect to limiting bandwidth, I will also not be running any spotter network, either. Since I mostly plan on calling CQ, and not answering, I don’t see a real advantage in running it.

My QRZ page has been updated with the information about the fact that I will be participating in WFD, and all of the other information that I thought may be important. Since most people that I will talk to likely refer to my QRZ page, first, I thought that was important to put, there.

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.