Category: Radio

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.

Feeding Another Stream

This morning, I began streaming voice traffic for aircraft, in addition to the amateur radio stream that I’ve been providing for a while. I was approved for the additional feed by Broadcastify, last night, and saw the approval, this morning. The feed is “Jamestown Regional Airport (KJMS)“. Clicking on that link will open the page on Broadcastify, where you can listen to the feed.

If you are an Android user, take a look at the Scanner Radio Pro app. It will let you tune in to any feed that is provided to Broadcastify. There is also a “non-pro” app that is supported by advertisements. It’s still a good app, being free, but I recommend the Pro version.

I’ll have more information about the feeds on the “Local Audio Feeds” section of this site.

Another Hamfest

I went to West Fargo, to the RRRA Hamfest on Saturday. I went with my son and a friend. Had a great time, and picked up some pretty good deals while we were there.

I bought lots of coax and five receivers. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’ll be doing with all of these new radios, but I’m sure it won’t take too long to figure it out. I spent less than $50 for about 150′ of coax and the five analog scanners (along with a few other things). We also saw some great radios for sale, but they didn’t fit into the budget, even though they were priced right.

Can’t wait for the next hamfest, now.

A Little Tropo and Some Radar Vids

Had a little tropo event, today, but no contacts actually made. I was able to hit, and hear the IDs for Watertown, SD, Bismarck, and Fargo, as well as hear a conversation on the Sabin, MN repeater.

I came home to look at the radar, and saw that it looked a little strange. Some weird “beige” area around the Bismarck radar, which I have never sen before. Here’s what the Bismarck radar looked like. Both of these videos are “vertical”… sorry about that.

UPDATE: I’m thinking that this might possibly be due to the amount of smoke in the air, due to the fires in MT and ID. I inserted a screenshot at the bottom of this post.

I also saw what I describe as “fan lines” on the Upper Mississippi Valley image (below).

Below is a screenshot of the fire map.

Feeding Flights

Today, I received a package that I had been waiting for since last month. I had applied for a FlightFeeder from FlightAware. My request was approved pretty quickly, and it took a while to get it shipped out, but I finally received it, today. For no cost at all, they sent me a FlightFeeder Orange, an ADS-B antenna, filter, and coax. They did this because my geographical area had no coverage on their site, and I have a pretty good location. The nearest person that is feeding data to their site is 83 miles away.

As soon as I got home from work, today, I opened up the box and unpacked everything. since I already had my home brew 1090 MHz antenna mounted on the roof, I decided to just hook it up to that, and get it working. In under 30 minutes, I had it connected and talking to the FlightAware website. Super simple process!

Just in the past couple hours, my stats are rolling in. You can check the current stats out here. On August 17th & 18th, they actually tested the hardware, before sending it to me from Texas. That’s why you’ll see a spike for those days (if you view it within the next couple weeks).

I have the next couple days off from work, so I plan on trying the antenna that they sent, also. I’ll be installing a 10′ mast at the peak of my house, with the antenna they sent near the top. I’ll measure out the cable run, first, just so I don’t have to use anything other than the cable they sent. I have a feeling that I’ll be able to get it up that high without a problem, though.

I am able to get a live view, directly from the feeder, anywhere on my local network. The tracker on their site is slightly behind…. just by a minute or so. Since I am now feeding data, they also gave me a free Enterprise account. That, in itself, is worth about $90 per month (which is what they charge). Lots of little extras come with that.

It still amazes me how much air traffic is 25,000+feet overhead (and lots of others lower). Some days, after working 10 hours, I’d come home and have 200+ planes in the log.

Fun With SDR

A couple weeks ago, I got my first SDR (Software Defined Radio). I’ve been messing around with it, every chance I get, and I’m really liking some of the things it does. At first, I had it hooked up to a discone antenna on my lower roof, and it seemed to work really well.

Within the past week, I discovered ADS-B, which is basically data frames that are sent down from airplanes on 1090 MHz. The information sent includes altitude, location, speed, identification, and more. That information can be received by a program that decodes it, then another program will allow you to visually “see” the plane on a map. Even in the middle of nowhere, it’s amazing to see just how much flies over us.

I got into it so much that I wanted to build a better antenna, just for 1090 MHz, and put it in a better position on my roof. The other day, in under two hours, I had built a ground plane antenna for that frequency, and had it mounted and the wires ran to the SDR. It actually performs a lot better than the discone. Not sure if it’s because of the design or the location, though.

The antenna was built for receive only, so I wanted to see how it performed on other frequencies, too. Since there’s no transmitting, there’s no way I could hurt anything by listening. Amazingly, the antenna actually picks up the local 2 meter repeater better than the discone, too (which really makes me think it’s the mounting location difference).

Yesterday, I wanted to see if I could also pick up any satellites or the ISS with it. I fired up the ISS Detector app on my phone, and started switching through different satellites as they passed over. The only thing I was actually able to pick up was a couple of NOAA satellites. I really wanted to catch the ISS (which passed over, almost overhead at about 10:20pm), but I wasn’t able to hear anything. I’m sure I’ll try again, when I have some time.

In other updates, I have been making more contacts on 10 meters, and started logging them on LoTW. I also sent my very first physical QSL Card. Chad – KD9AXO – asked me if I send them, and I told him that I wanted to, but haven’t done too much HF, and was waiting. He gave me the kick I needed to get something designed and printed. It wasn’t real pretty and not on as heavy of card stock as I wanted, but hopefully he understands. The funny thing is, the first QSL Card that I sent was for a 400 mile contact on 2 meters during a beautiful Tropo event. He was running 5 watts through a vertical, and I was going through the repeater. IMO, it counts.

UPDATE: Chad actually sent me a QSL card, as well. I received it the day after I originally posted this. He sent his out before mine even reached him, so they crossed in the mail. Very nice surprise!

Small Update

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated, so I thought I should let you all know what’s been happening.

Back on April 29th, we attended the Optimist Club Respect for Law and Emergency Services Day which was held at the Buffalo Mall in Jamestown, ND. The attendance was not too bad, considering that the mall, itself, is becoming a lost cause. The local police, fire department, and other emergency services were all there, and all of the kids that came we treated to a movie and given a bicycle helmet.

We set up a trailer in the parking lot, as well as a “booth” inside the mall, and provided information about amateur radio.

KCØGCJ (Jason) and I had built a 10 meter inverted V antenna that was put up next to the trailer in the parking lot. No actual contacts were made, but not for the lack of trying. KCØLAC (Michelle) manned the inside booth for most of the event, and quite a few people showed interest in the hobby, and picked up flyers when they stopped by.

After the event, we had talked about planning for the upcoming Field Day. More on that, next!

Announcing: KEØKEC /AE

That’s right! In the past month, not only was I able to study hard enough to pass the General, I became good enough on the practice tests and studied for the Extra. This morning, I went to the Central Dakota Amateur Radio Club Hamfest in Bismarck for the “main” purpose of testing.

I was pretty confident about passing the General, since I was actually hitting 90% or higher on each practice test I took. Once they graded my General and let me know that I passed, I immediately started on the Extra Test. As I was taking the test, my youngest son was notified that he had passed his Technician test. Super proud!

Once they graded my General test, Bob (NoTC) told me that he had some “bad news” for me. Then he said that it looks like I’d be spending a lot more money, soon, and congratulated me on passing.

Now, it looks like I need to spend some more money. In the end, Bob was right.