Almost world wide propagation on 6m

 

I wished for a few new on band ones. But it didn't happen. You can't have it all! The DX was almost world wide.

NTCQP July

 

    The Netherlands Telegraphy Club QSO party was on yesterday evening. 1 hour of CW fun. Completely different from the mainstream big contests since you need at least to give report, name and ntc number (or NM if no member). The fun is that there are 2 categories. Automatic (paddle with keyer or computer) and Mechanical (bugs, straightkey, cootie). Till now I'm doing automatic but I want to try mechanical one of the next QPs as well. I was only active on 40m this time and almost only running and listening. Actually I didn't hear much S&P so only running was an option. I used N1MM as logger and some of the names were already in it, but worked also some that were not in the system yet. I had some trouble decoding SM7GVF and did correct it in the log later. Same for OK1LZ for the name. I saw PE2V spotted in hamspots so I quickly found Vincent en made the QSO. Rene PA3GPX was worked in the last minute of the contest.

I'm getting better in this. It's not a top score. Every new start is difficult. But I have fun. My keying though needs a bit more practice, it is really a mess sometimes. It's like I haven't got the (fast) motor skills for paddle use. So I also practice with a straight key and this goes a lot better in my opinion. I might do the mechanical keying category next time.

K6ARK ultra light endfed antenna

 After I finished the micro match I finally had some time to build the actual antenna. I took about 21m very thin insulated copperwire and fit a coil of 10 windings (coil form supplied with the kit) in on about 1,8m from the micro match. Everything is described on K6ARK's website. Then I cut the wire back till I had the best match on 7,1 Mhz, the center of the 40m band. This is the final product on the red cutting board, see picture on the right. I had to cut back about 1,5m in total. The black cable tie is a reusable one, I found it excellent to mount the wire to a low tree in my garden. Below some pictures of the SWR/R/X. Big surprise was the SWR in the CW part of the 10m band which is a surprise for me. I can now use this antenna on 4 bands without a tuner.

I had the idea to saw a antenna wire winder from the red cutting board. But it would be a lot of work on not nearly as effective and light as the UL antenna wire winder that can be 3D printed with the print files from K6ARK. But I haven't got a 3D printer! However I know another HAM (PC3EK Eddy) in my neighbourhood who builds his own 3D printers. So I asked him if he was able to print a UL wire winder for me. This was asked at 8:20 this morning and he delivered the printed product for free at my job 2 hours later. Wow, I was impressed and grateful for his help. The final final product is shown below.

Look at the incredible weight of this 4 band endfed. Only 93 grams. This is truly ultra light.

Now I need to test this antenna. Not sure if it will be at home or in the field. It will be a surprise.

IARU HF contest & WRTC 2026

 

   There was a time I did more contesting. But time changes and so am I. Anyway, because of the WRTC (World Radio Team Championship) it was interesting to chase the teams on the band, And so I did a few hours in this contest. I only did S&P this time. And in the end I worked 40 from the 50 teams active. And in total 72 bandslots from the 500. I certainly had fun. And listening to the MB team stations I really adored the skill most of them had. Even when I barely heard the station they could still pick me out even with 30 wpm keying. It amazed me. In between I watched the WRTC livestream with interesting interviews and a look inside the organisation. Next WRTC will be in 4 years.

50 years amateurradio, my radio life in chronological order

Not the exact model I had, but similair

    Well I started to write this post in 2016 (it was 40 years of radio for me) but never finished it since it takes a lot of time to get all the pictures and find en remember what to publish. So actually it already is year 50 of radio experimenting for me. It will be quite a long post since there is a lot to tell about the radio hobby which started for me in....

1976: Got my first transistor radio (Erres) from my dad. Listening to radio Luxemburg a lot. "The great 208"...I remember when I got it the telescopic antenna was broken. My dad and I went to a household utility repair (a shop called Musters) at the corner of the street to have it repaired. Had a lot of fun listening till far into the eighties with this small radio.

1979:  I saw the use of Walky Talkies in the Dutch TV series Q&Q in 1974. Since then the only thing I wished was a set of Walky Talkies on my birthday. It took years before I finally could get my parents that far to give it to me. I think I did drive them crazy about it. Remembering it was hard to get en they were very expensive. But finally we found a shop that sold them. I believe my dad payed over 100 dutch guilders for the pair which was an enormous amount of money at that time. My first encounter with radiotransmission.

On the picture one of the Yoko GW-128 talkies I still have. The other one is long gone. Bought around 1979 it is 47 years old but still working. It had one channel (14) with separate transmit and receive crystals. Later on I bought sets of crystals for channel 1 and 22 for both so we could talk more quietly. The distance it covers was only about 100 meters, not much but it was so much fun. I didn't have many friends that were interested so most of my talks and early experiments were with my dad.

Not mine, but at least it looked like this

1981: Bought a second hand Stentor FM transmitter for the 3m band  from a guy at school. It should transmit 5W but I think the powertransistor (MRF237?) was broken after all. I really did not know about SWR or an antenna and used an old car telescopic antenna. This one was used to get some (dutch language) music on the air, very populair and so illigal. Transmission was only a few 100 meters. At least my neighbour did hear me on the radio he told me personally ;-) When you are young everything that you did illigally was of course a thrill. As a teenager you had to find your boundaries...

1983: My first CB radio (Stabo XF2200) bought second hand for the amount of 75 dutch guilders (yes, before the euro). Lots of trouble speaking through the mike. I was afraid of talking to unknown people. So I listened out for a while. I saw one on the Jutberg radio rally years ago and I might buy one again in the future just for nostalgic reasons. Still have the original microphone though....Back in '83 a friend who was interested in CB actually talked for the first time with my radio and since he didn't know what to say when they asked something in CB lingo I took over the mike and gone was my fear...

1984: The DX virus hit me! The first time I actually heard French, German, Austrian and Italian stations on FM CB. At that time there were some serious stations in the neighbourhood talking to German stations on a regular basis. Listening to that I found it most intriguing, I wanted to do that myself. Took me some effort and a lot of errors before I could make a reasonable QSO. Difficult times I remember, sharing your adres over the air to exchange QSL, a miracle I've received so many over the years. Now it simply is a matter of sharing your e-mail adres and you can exchange report and even photos/video via the internet. The QSL card on the picture is my very first DX card, although the German island Juist is not that far away for me it was DX. The card itself doesn't mention the date but the poststamp on the envelope is at 13-2-1984.

1986: I bought my first serious SSB rig (Rystl CB4082). After having modified legal radios for twice the channels and 10 times the original power. Remember that it was not easy to obtain a SSB radio in those years. There was no internet and it was illigal for shops to sell these radios at that time. So you had to find someone that had taken this radios back from a trip to the USA. Other illigal AM/FM radios were a Montgomery Ward 680 and a Colt 444 (recently bought another one on a hamradio fair). SSB was used by several other stations around me especially from the island Schiermonnikoog to communicate over longer distances as normally could be done on the legal FM.

1987: My first real DX with the USA, something I always dreamed of. A contact with a american CBer, the CB inventor country. You read books, you see movies (Handle With Care, Smokey and the Bandit) but actually making a real first contact with the USA over the air with CB is a experience you'll never forget. At the time I used a Lafayette 1200FM and a 100W amplifier.

1988: My first directional antenna. A 3 element spitfire CB beam. Still it was difficult to make contacts with the USA. I used 12W SSB or less again because of interference caused at the  , but after all the spitfire might be not the most efficient antenna.....I found out a few years later. Fun story: I called Japan on a certain channel after I heard they had to be active there. There was one station replying, who was a real 59. It was a well known CB DXer from....New Zealand (41AT118 / ZL1AAO) Afterwards I made many contacts to New Zealand on their 40 channels in the 26MHz part of the 11m band.

Antennas around 1988

Originally the spitfire had a hairpin match which I changed myself to a gammamatch. It didn't make the antenna better.

1990: My first radio contest (The White Rhino international DX contest) on CB and it was not in 24 or 48 hours. This one lasts a whole month. During the first week of the contest my 3 element 11m spitfire beam was destroyed by a large storm. Luckely I just finished a HB9CV antenna for a good friend. We agreed I would try the antenna in the contest that month to see if it was working and afterwards we would fit it in his tower. The difference with the 3 element spitfire was huge. The HB9CV might be smaller but was much better on both DX and local contacts. I remember I had a 4 S-point signal increase at some stations. Actually I made several other HB9CVs for my CB buddies after the contest and kept a HB9CV in my mast for years after.

My 1990 DX-station with to the left of the radios a QSL card from Mozambique.

1991: Illigal transmissions attract radio police. My SSB equipment confiscated! I remember it well, I was home alone (still living with my parents at that time). The doorbell rang and when I opened 2 men identified themselves as police and special illigal radio detection. They confiscated my almost new President Jackson (black model). I could keep the mike and other things. When they asked if I had a license to use the Jackson of course I answered it was a stupid question as there is no license to use a multichannel CB SSB radio with 40W output in the Netherlands. Anyway, the fine was 250 dutch guilders (approx 100 euro equivalent) and for a student a lot of money. You can't compare it with todays fines which can get you a bill of several thousands of euros. What they didn't know I was on air again within a week using a borrowed Jackson from a school friend.

1991 DX-station with another Jackson.

1992: Continued with transmissions but this time on CB packetradio, legally. 2 stations on air on CB. Propagation was not that good anymore and I decided to not use SSB for a few years. The risk was too high and there were other things on my mind. A good alternative was packetradio which was just a upcoming thing on CB radio and getting very populair. It brought me a lot of fun and the first time I used a computer in the radioshack. Legal radios: Danita 640 and Midland Alan 48 amongst them. Antenna: Antron A-99. Packetmodem TNC2cNL 1200bd.

1987 QSL card from Odinn

1995: DX fever was there again. I moved out of my parents house and moved to a rented house. Still had a CB station up and running for packet radio and when I received some QRM from AM/SSB stations I decided to listen on the famous 555 with my Grundig short wave radio. The first station I heard was Odinn 27AT106. Wow, I spoke with Odinn already in 1987... Some people reading this will know him as TF1MSN (SK 2025) these days as he also obtained a HAM radio license just like me and was very active on the HAM bands. Of course we met several times on the HAM bands as well years later. Bought another SSB CB radio and worked another 100 DXCC. In total about 250 DXCC on CB.

PDL2 and a homemade 6 el. logcell yagi

1997: Another visit from the radio police, they just confiscated a illigal radio station in my street and were curious about the big antennas on my tower. I told them I was a SWL. They couldn't find any illigal equipment though (I was warned before by one of my neighbours) so nothing lost. I just bought some 900MHz CB illigal equipment that month which I quickly sold. It made me decide to get a license in case I would have expensive radio equipment at home. I was already saving for a IC-706 MK2G and didn't want to loose a very expensive HF transceiver.

1998 shack in another house.

1998: Hold the novice license PD1AKZ and was only active on UHF/VHF. Bought my first dualband VHF/UHF Alinco DJ-5G handheld which I still own. Experimenting a lot with RTTY, PSK, APRS, Packetradio including packetradio to (via) the ISS and working FM sats.

1999: Hold the tech license PE4BAS, active on 6m SSB as well. Bought my first HF set capable of doing 6m SSB as well, the Icom IC-706 MK II G. I remember some first 6m DX well, it was with JY9NX from Jordan on SSB. I also heard USA on SSB at that time but was not able to make a QSO.

2003: Access to HF, full license. HF DX started again now on the HF amateurbands. No antenna available at that time. I was off air actually for 3 years. Made some contacts on my dualband HT, but you can't call that really active. I moved again and bought a house across the street and got to know my wife. So other things were more important besides a radiohobby. One memorable activation was making contacts from a hotair balloon as PE4BAS/AM.

2006: First time on HF. First contest on the amateurbands (ARRL DX contest). I got married the year before. After we partly rebuild my first own(ed) house I finally had a tower and antenna ready. Using a Diamond CP-6 on 16m asl as a DX antenna. I also had the homemade 6 element logcell 10m/11m yagi in the tower in 2007/2008.

2008: Together with my wife we bought another house in another village (Roodeschool).  After moving I started this blog which became part of my hobby. My wife encouraged me to setup a emergency station till I had time to rebuilt the shack and tower (it would take 10 years!). Main antennas became a homemade multiband vertical at 9m asl and a 84m horizontal loop in winter. On 6m/10m I had a multiband vertical and HB9CV on a second emergency mast on 6m asl.

2008 radioshack

Lineair loaded vertical with 
CG3000 autotuner

2009: My first appearance on WSPR and JT65A. Little could I know that these digital modes would become a turning point in HAM radio for many.

2012: My first appearance on JT9. Many contacts worldwide were made. Most amazing to be heard on the other side of the world sometimes using only 5W from a Yaesu FT-817.

2013: After a lot of work I finally have a real radioshack again.

2015: First appearance on the 60m band. I became my favorite DX band for the next years...


2016: Worked 100DXCC within 79 days QRP 5 Watt only, a milestone...used the Yaesu FT-817 and horizontal loop.

2017: First appearance on FT8. Not as sensitive as JT9 and JT65 but much faster. Little did I know this mode still grows in popularity these days.

Finally have my tower up again. I took down the emergency masts. Various antennas have been mounted in the mast as well as using the mast as radiator. Main antenna is a so called doublet as inverted-V at 12m apex.

2019: Bought my second HF set capable of HF, 6m and 4m all mode. The Icom IC-7300.

2020: Built a 6m/4m dualband beam and my first appearance on 70MHz. Working more as 30 DXCC on 4m (70MHz) only that year.

2023: Seriously started to learn CW (morsecode). Because I believe you need to know it as a radioamateur. 

2025: Active in contests with a new call PA6G. Of course I keep my own call for "normal" QSOs.

2026: I finally crossed the 300 DXCC "mark" 

I might update this post in time...

K6ARK micro match

 I can't get enough of this video on YT from K6ARK Adam.

Since weight is always an issue when you bring a HF station with you. It should be like this. Light, versatile and fast deployable.

I already have the (tr)uSDX which did very well in Sweden last year. I will bring it with me on our next vacation to Denmark. So I was trying to find a similair matching unit Adam is using. Small, without a coax cable. Just simply connect it to the transceiver and be active. However you can't buy a ready to use K6ARK micro match anywhere, Adam is the only one selling these as far as I can find. And they are kits, you have to solder them yourself. So, I ordered the QRP 1:49 micro match a few weeks ago and it arrived quite fast. I finally had the time to look at it yesterday evening. Build instructions can be found on Adam's website here. I followed the instructions and was unaware there was a video about it which, after all troubles, would make it easier. So this is my building experience. 

Unpacking the package I already noticed the parts are small, very small. I already did read the building instructions and my biggest concern was the SMD capacitor. There once was a time I could actually see these things without glasses. But now, even with glasses, it is difficult to see such small components.

Of course I didn't read well and accidentically put solder on both solder islands on the small board. So I had difficulties to solder the capacitor horizontally. But in the end I managed to get it almost right, not my best ever soldering ;-). Should have read the instructions better. Wish I knew there was a video made by Adam about this. But you know how it goes, limited time and the need to finish it before dinner.

Winding the toroid went smootly and soldering it to the board was relatively easy. The instructions are very clear on that. 

I noticed of the 4 "legs" on the BNC connector broke at transport. Not something important as Adams noticed soldering only 2 legs is sufficient. However the "legs" and the center pin are too short. I've found that, when looking at the video today, Adam has one that has much longer "legs". With the small isolator between the board and the BNC connector the pins are barely reaching the holes because the antenne wire is in the way. I finally soldered everything but the board is not level to the BNC connector now. Not really important because the heat shrink covers everything :-).

To verify everything is working you can use the 2 supplied resistors in series which should form a 2453 ohm resistor. You can connect it between antennawire and ground and check with SWR meter or analyzer. It should read below 1:3 and on most bands 1:1. Mine showed 1:1,5 from 1,8-21 MHz and above it goes to max 1:2,4 on 30 MHz. I measured the resistors and the 2 Kohm was almost 2,2 Kohm. Total combined it was almost 2,7 Kohm, I guess this made the difference in read out. 2453/49 = 50. 2700/49 = 55. I know this is just an indicator and the micro match should be tested with a half wave wire. 

I never heard about Poly Stealth wire, which you should be using for antenna wire. It is very strong and very light. And of course difficult to get in Europe. Have to work that out. For now I will use normal electrical wire and hope it doesn't break too fast. I hope to report about the actual antenna in one of my next posts.

If you ever want to build this. Better look the video before and not after you build it like me ;-)

VDSL/TV problems after a thunderstorm

 

We seldom get thunderstorms here. Three in a year is many. But last weekend we were unlucky and had several thunderstorm from midnight till six in the morning. Unfortunately lighting did damage a VDSL (internet) cable in the neighbourhood and we discovered we had no TV on Sunday. After some modem resets our internet speed went down to only 4 Mbps. And after we called the internet provider who tested the cable remotely, we only had a speed of 2 Mbps. Right now the speed got down to 0,5 Mbps. Next week they will dig up the cable to fix the damage. 

I was not the only radio amateur that had problems. Koos PE4KH also reported problems. But this was quickly resolved. I know from 3 other people here in the street they have the same problem with VDSL and TV.

I was glad lightning didn't strike my antenna tower. I think I was really lucky...