Monday, September 26, 2022

CQ WW CC members are enemies of Ham Radio and Contesting?

CQ WW CC members are enemies of Ham Radio and Contesting? This sentence appears below the activity announcement of V47T (by K5ZD) on DXnews.com. I added a questionmark at the title because I think it is not a fact but more a question. DXnews.com chief editor is 4L5A Al. He wrote in very bad grammatical english about the CQWW contests exclusion of Russia en Belarus. Of course it is his opinion and luckely he is able to write freely about it. You can read about it here:


It is hard to understand especially for those that read english not as their main language. However I think he wants to tell us that he doesn't agree with the rules. Why only punish Russian en Belarussian radioamateurs? There are more unfair politics going on in the world. Think about countries like China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and many many more....
4L5A writes: "HAM Radio need to stay away from politics.
CQ WW CC really start dirty game and their declaration that they supporting our Ukranian friends is wrong because such decision destroying relationship between people and HAM Radio was always bridge to build friendly relationship between people World Wide."

My opinion:
Well of course in other countries the politics are unfair but there is no war going on in those countries (yet). 

The CQWW contest committee has decided they want to make a point. They have a right to do so because it is their "game". If you don't like it don't participate.

Yes, HAM radio should stay away from politics. However we live in a free world and we can freely write about our opinions. Writing about opinions, political or otherwise, can be dangerous when you live in Russia/Belarus. Our opinions have a value, we should respect others opinions as well. I respect Al's opinion but my opinion is partly different.

Are the contest committee members our enemies? I'm shure the descision is made democratic probabely by voting. Some members probabely disagreed but most of the members agreed. I think this way it is a fair descision. I don't think we should call our fellow HAMs enemies, that is way too irrational.

I did not participate in the CQWW RTTY contest this year. Not because of all this but because my family is more important. What is most important in your life?

Sunday, September 18, 2022

Square halo SWR at rain and ATNO

  Reading some articles on the internet revealed that the halo (or cobwebb in general) could be sensitive for wet weather. I had to wait till we finally had some very wet weather. This evening I came back home and everything was very wet. Time to measure the SWR/resonance again.The prediction is that resonance frequency would shift downwards. The results:

12m best SWR 24.980MHz 1,1:1 R48 X3 shifted 20Khz down

15m best SWR 21.116MHz 1,8:1 R95 X0 shifted 4KHz down and SWR got worse

17m best SWR 17.840MHz 1,3:1 R60 X11 shifted 360KHz down

20m best SWR 14.272MHz 1,4:1 R60 X20 shifted 72KHz up!



The rain has a very good effect on 12m. But a dramatic effect on 17m and 15m. Strange enough best SWR on 20m shifted up. Next experiment would be installing the autotuner below the square halo to compensate for these SWR/resonance shifts. 

By the way the rain has also effect on my 4 element 10m band LFA. SWR/resonance shifts down about 100KHz.

After looking for ZL7 (Chatham Isl.) on 60m in the greyline without success this morning I decided to see if 10m would be open. At first I was already welcomed by solar panel QRM right at the bottom of 28.074 MHz the 10m FT8 frequency. Something that gets worse lately as more and more solarpanels showing up on the roofs of neighbouring homes.


Anyway turning the antenna away from the village towards Australia cleared things a little, It was just at the start of some extraordinary good propagation towards the east. Worked some Australian stations, Thailand, Egypt, Vietnam and much later Timor Leste on 28.088MHz FT8 F/H. I had to look for this country which is somewhere near Indonesia (in fact it was occupied by Indonesia till 2002). It is my first all band  ATNO of 2022.




Signal from 4W/JH2EUV was superstrong. I think a SSB QSO would certainly be possible. However the long callsign seems to give some issues in F/H mode. This is how the QSO went here:

4W/JH2EUV responded without the 4W/ prefix. Luckely JTDX still did understand it was the same station although displayed different. It responded automatically with the R -04 report. 4W/JH2EUV responded again without the 4W/ prefix and gave RR73 but also in the same sequence with another report and the complete 4W/JH4EUV call which was very confusing. Discussing the matter with DB6LL Hartmut did give me the confidence the QSO is valid. Though it seems to be a glitch in WSJT-X or in JTDX.