QRV from Sweden

  We took our family vacation for 2 weeks visiting Sweden. First time we were in this country. We rented a house in Djupekas and so we had kind of a base to get back to. Advantage was that I could leave the antennas installed. Besides our daily trips exploring the south of Sweden I had some time for my radio hobby most time in the evening and some time in the morning. I made some skeds with hamradio friends in the Netherlands which went very well. Unfortunatly the setup was not really good for DX. When I packed my station I had just enough room in the backpack for my endfed. So I decided to take both the magnetic loop and the endfed in the end. I'm glad I did because the endfed was the antenna I operated most of the time. 

The focus was to do as much as possible CW. The (tr)uSDX is a real CW radio in my opinion. Although it does a nice job on SSB and digimodes as well. I was glad there is a CW decoder built in because I still have problems following a complete sentence. I do recognize some letters and words but there is no way I can figure out a complete sentence. Luckely the decoder helped me to figure out the complete text keyed. 

In the end I made about 98 QSOs with SSB, CW, FT8, FT4 and VARA on 20m, 30m, 40m and 60m, I also used JS8 but could't find a station to QSO with although my heartbeat has been responded to by many. I learned a lot about the (tr)uSDX functions and in the end I made 19 CW QSOs in total. I have to tell I made a lot of CW CQ calls but there were no stations answering most of the time. In that case I switched over to FT8/FT4 which always easily gives you a lot of contacts. The only DX I could make was with a station on the east-coast of the USA on 20m FT8. Not bad considering my setup. 

Experiments I did:

1. Using VarAC to send an e-mail. I wanted to know if I could send an e-mail with ths setup. It went well in the end but it took some effort to find a station that could hear me.

2. Work DX. As soon as I saw spots of myself on PSKreporter in the USA I tried several stations.  I finally worked W2HCB on 20m FT8 after a while.

3. Worked 60m with a double MLA configuration. I tried CW, did not get any response. I knew PA2S and PG0DX would be on early in the morning. Worked both of them on FT8. I also worked DB6LL who was also /P. And I worked SM0BRF who is near Stockholm,we did an e-mail exchange because he asked my location in Sweden and I was unable to answer that with FT8.

4. Try 80m with the double MLA configuration. I tried hard but could not find a sweet spot. I couldn't get the SWR better as 1:5 . I didn't want to risk a broken (tr)uSDX, So I did not operate 80m. I might think of another antenna setup to be able to do 80m next time.

Setup 60m early in the morning

The (tr)uSDX did a great job on a vacation like this. Although I did try it at home, when operating as my only rig I had to learn some thing. Like the use of of TXdelay. You need it when you work CW but when you switch to digital you need to switch it back off. Besides that the best volume for CW is at 11, at least for me. But on digital it is way to loud, best setting for me was 7. At the start I had a lot of problems with CAT control due to incorrect settings. But it went better when I used to setting as described above. Same counts for the laptop in use, at start it was empty withing 45 minutes. But I found there is a way to put it on battery save mode, which didn't affect digital operation. 

Station right after my CW QSO with PE2V.

The (tr)uSDX itself doesn't use much power. In about 12 days of operating it I only once needed to recharge my 12V powerbank which is holding about 5Ah.

The endfed was too low the first day. I couldn't get a good SWR on 40m. I bought a spool of  plastic laundry wire at the local supermarket to get the antenna higher into the nearest tree. I was lucky there were rocks all around so I attached on to the line and threw it over a high branch. It went easy actually. SWR on 40 was a lot better, 1:1,3 on 7100 KHz, The SWR meter in the (tr)uSDX is a great function. 

QSOs approx. made, some might miss.

Of course radio is not the only thing in life. We did a lot of sightseeing. And enjoyed the beautiful nature of Sweden. 

The baltic sea just 200m from the summerhouse.