5252F or YX805

 No, these are not secret callsigns from spy stations. These are small LED driver ICs. Ingenious small cheap devices that feature a solar charger and a step up converter. Probably every solar light has them inside.

Totally unaware of these devices I had a broken solar light that had a good battery and good LEDs. The switch was alright but it didn't switch on. To buy a new LED driver IC is just too expensive (€0,39 + €6,95 for postage). Luckily I had another solar light with a bad battery and salvaged parts to repair our broken light. It was a matter of exchange the IC and the coil. 

 More inside info can be found here:

https://artists.scitoys.com/three_volts

If you click on the picture on the right you will have a larger one. The parts that I've exchanged are just near the second LED at the right.

We love solar lights in our garden!

My quest to learn CW (17)

 I'm now at the point I feel there is no progress. It might be there but I don't feel it.

I still practice every day. But not only the same LCWO lessons which got boring. With the help of PE2V Vincent I found the CWops fundamental homework/lessons. I made a spreadsheet list to keep track of my efforts which I started the 9th of this month.

I also practice the short stories on the Fundamental Practice files page. According to Vincent you should do head copy with these stories. But that's one step too far for me. I tried it several times and got frustrated because I can't remember the first part when decoding the second part and get confused. So I type it now. Best reliability is at 8 wpm, on 10 wpm I loose track when I make a fault. Hopefully this will improve within time.

I'm also trying to make QSOs, but further as R TU 599 K is not yet possible. My wish is to make a decent QSO but till now it still is not possible for me. I listen a lot on CW but all the QSOs are way too fast for me. Besides that I have to get used to abbreviations they use in a QSO. Well, at least I make some QSOs. Some are with the automatic keyer, some are with the paddle.  I keep on practicing the best I can and hope I will get it some time.

Manna/Chowhound Weekend

From the original post: https://ve7sar.blogspot.com/2025/04/tomorrow-starts-mannachowhound-weekend.html

Operations Manna and Chowhound were lifesaving food drops to Northwest Holland 80 years ago, just prior to the end of World War Two. Over 20,000 people had died from starvation and a colder than normal winter. Allied pilots and support staff from the UK, the US, Canada, Poland, and Australia dropped over 7,000 tons of food behind enemy lines. 

There are 10 special event stations operating in these countries Friday, April 25 through Sunday, April 27. If you contact 4 or more, a special event certificate will be issued. Check QRZ.com for any of the following callsigns or Manna80.radio on the web where the stations’ current operating frequencies are available via HamAlert.

Participating stations:

​

Netherlands

1. PH80MAN: Operating from drop zone Duindigt near The Hague.

The UK

2.  GB80MAN: International Bomber Command Centre

3. GB8MAN: Royal Air Force Station Binbrook

4. GB80CHO: 100th Bomb Group Museum in Thorpe Abbots


The United States

5. W4C: Boca Raton Amateur Radio Assn


Canada

6. VB7MAN: Surrey Amateur Radio Communications in Surrey, BC

7. VB6MAN: Calgary Amateur Radio Club at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta

8. VE1MAN: Pictou County ARC in Picton, Nova Scotia


Australia

9. VK80MAN: Bull Creek Aviation Heritage Centre Perth, Australia


Poland

10. SN80MAN: The SP5KAB Radio Club

We hope to make contact with you.

 ​

~ John VE7TI

Brunei Darussalam first ATNO 2025 worked

 I've been looking for V85 for over a year now. Had alerts in HamAlert but seldom saw him spotted and if so it was always on a time I was asleep. That was...till yesterday evening I got alerts he was spotted on 10m FT8. But we first had dinner and some chores to do. So I was on the radio too late, I didn't see Didier V85NPV on 10m FT8, only a few stations calling him. At a certain moment I got an alert from RBN he was spotted on 28.004 CW. Tuning there I heard a lot of stations calling and one station with a very distinctive CW keying who was S9+ here. Had a lot of problems to find out this was V85NPV Didier from Brunei Darussalam. Unfortunatly with my starting CW skills it was hard to understand what he was keying. You can hear this distinctive keying on one of his many videos on his youtube channel.

Anyway, I just tried to call him and to my surprise he came back to me. I was so overwhelmed I could just send a R TU 599 K report and probably he came back with his name or so, I could totally not decode it. The only thing I could decode was 73 dit dit. So I keyed R 73 dit dit. It might not be that good but given his signal I was sure it was a pirate station. So I wrote down the info and removed it from my (online) log. Didier has a live log online but I did not show up. However later that evening when I watched and listened to his CW on youtube I was not that sure anymore about any piracy, the CW I hear on youtube was the same I heard on the 10m contact. I checked the log again and....

How much more proof can you get. It is the first All Time New One of 2025 !

Experimental multiband halo rebuild (5)

  As promised and for archive purposes I analyzed the halo in wet conditions. It rained all day so the antenna was definitely very wet. What did it do with the resonance compared to dry weather conditions. Approx the same screendumps were made last month. Find them here.

20m shifted down a little with a little higher SWR on the edges. A very tiny difference.

17m shifted down also a small amount. Almost not noticable.

Nothing happened with the 15m band.

Actually I'm very happy with the results. It shows the open structure of the loops are less affected by rain compared the the use of regular "speakerwire" in my first halo version.

#60m British Virgin Isl. worked

 

Took me one minute to work this one. Tnx to PB7Z who messaged me yesterday that this DX was on 60m. Unfortunately have not much time for radio at this moment in life. So this easy DX, new one on 60m, was welcome.

Repairing a CW minipaddle

 Type "CW minipaddle" and choose image at google and you find all kind of minipaddles. I found mine on one of the Chinese web stores on the net. Advertised as Mini Morse Code Key CW dual paddle with magnetic base. When it arrived and tried out I was disappointed because immediately a fault appeared. Touching the paddles the "dot" was alright but the "dash" was hesitating. I couldn't even key my own callsign. So I decided to see what I could do to track down the fault.

Luckily the magnetic base was something separate and not mounted yet. First thing I did was open the housing and spray everything with contact cleaner. It did not improve anything, I had to continue my search.

The construction is quite simple, may be too simple. This is not a begali key, you cannot even compare it :-)

I suspected a bad contact, this is the middle axle. I cleaned it but don't know why because the "dot" did well. I had to search for the fault on the "dash" side.

The contact on the "dash" side. I cleaned it because it did look dirty. You still see kind of a black spot in the center. Everything was mounted together and...... it even got worse. Measuring with the multimeter there was a large resistance when closing the contact. What the....

Next thing I measured was the wire between the contact and the plug to the "radio" key input. I measured a large resistance and when moving the wire it went to zero ohms. There had to be a break in the wire. So I soldered a new wire.

But after I mounted a new wire there was still a lot of resistance between the contact and the plug contact. After all the contact did not make good contact with the solder lug. I made the lug somewhat ticker with solder and pushed the small nut, in which the contact is screwed in, on the solder lug with force. I hot glued both nuts to the surface of the paddles to be sure this will not happen again. 

It was a long search for such a simple device but I finally have a nice mini paddle now which I will use for practice when downstairs in the living room. The nice thing is that it is very quiet and not annoying for others in the room.

I'm not shure if I will put the magnet on. I'm just holding it in my left hand and key with my right fingers. I see a lot of POTA activators doing the same thing.

#CQWPX SSB 2025 contest review

     Last year I was writing in the review of the 2024 WPX that my score of 1 million points that year would be hard to beat....

Contest: CQ WPX SSB 2025

Section: SO ALL LP

Radio: IC-7300 @100W

Antennas: Inverted-V 2x22m, 4 elem. LFA 10m, Gainmaster HW 24-29MHz, Experimental multiband halo V2.0.

Saturday was a slow start. not personally but propagation was just not there or not yet there. It had something to do with that big star that shines on us every day. Not that it kept me from working the DX but it was just not as good as Sunday.

Green=10m, Orange=20m. The rest of the colors are not matching since I worked some on multiple bands.

A lot of operating time was possible this weekend, from the statistics I was on the radio for 33 hours and 22 minutes. Lots of DX has been worked but my most memorable DX was with YJ0CA from Vanuatu. Without the 4 element LFA it would never happen. Imagine you turn your beam to almost north and then you hear a faint voice fading in and out from an exotic island in the Pacific. Then finally the pile up gets quiet and the voice becomes readable. You try and shout your call into the mike and surprisingly the QSO is made. You feel so glorious....this is what DX is all about. 

And this was not the only DX made, I worked lots of DX last weekend. The benefits of this worldwide contest with so many participants. Below a list of the 112 DXCC I worked:

There was no 160m antenna this time. Since I was busy with experimental halo rebuilt I had to remove the 160m inverted-L. By the way, the experimental halo did a really great job on 20m and 15m. It was actually no problem to work all the DX I heard on those bands. The nice thing of course is that it is omnidirectional and so I can work both short-, long- and skewed paths at the same time. The disadvantage is that you cannot turn away from QRM and you don't have that extra gain which a directional antenna has. But overall I did not have any problems with that. 

With the count of QSOs per hour at the left here you could say that Saturday was my better day with a higher amount of QSOs. But that's just because for me it is easy to make large 80m runs. 105 QSO in 1 hour doesn't look bad I think. Sunday had a lot of DX which gave me the big points. No real DX on 80m this year though, didn't hear USA or Canada on that band and can't remember if any were spotted here in Europe?

Most memorable happenings:

- Working a lot of Europe on 10m backscatter Saturday.

- Working YJ0CA Vanuatu on 10m

- Receiving HC8M Galapagos Isl. with 59+20dB on Sunday evening

- Working Regin OY1R again on both 80m/40m

Showing my antennatower again. You don't need to have big antennas and power to work 112 DXCC and 1000 QSOs in one weekend. Just be there, spend a lot of time and keep calling. I write again, like last year, this will be hard to beat. But so far I did beat last years score again. You never know what will happen in the future.