Field Day in EPA

The MURGAS ARC in Wilkes Barre, PA went out to Francis Slocum State Park near Dallas, PA this weekend for the ARRL's annual Field Day. Field Day is when various clubs and indviduals go out into the "wild" to operate portable stations, usually on emergency power, to ensure that the US and Canada have reliable stations and skilled operators in case a communication failure occurs. The club ran a class 3A station this year. In addition to the 3 main stations, a GOTA (Get on the Air) bonus station and VHF station were also on the air. There were three trailers for the main stations while the GOTA operated out of a tent. Two short towers were erected as well as a ground mounted vertical. The club had the ability to operate between 160 and 2 meters. Station was set up on the vertical and a tree mounted antenna. This enabled the station to operate 160, 80, and 40 meters on the vertical, and 20 and 15 meters on the tree antenna. This station operated primarily on the lower bands using CW. The rig was a TenTec Orion VII running 100 watts. Station 2 was for SSB on the higher HF bands and was working a 3-element trapped Yagi. This was the station I worked for about 30 minutes on 15 meters. It had a rotor and the rig was an Elkcraft K2 running about 80 watts out. The third station was running an older kenwood rig on a low 80 meter dipole that acted more like an NVIS antenna than anything else. In the same trailer the VHF rig was running 6 meters to a maxon antenna as well as a longer 2 meter yagi. The GOTA station was running a Icom 7200 to a buddypole. I had never seen a buddy pole in person before, but it seemed a reasonable antenna if a bit of a pain to tune with having to raise and lower the whole thing to tweak the elements. I was only at field day for a few hours on Saturday afternoon. 80 meters and the VHF bands were essentially closed, with modest acvity on 15 and 40 meters. When I worked the rig, the bean was heading west and I was able to work a good number of California stations as well as a few western stations. They seem to come in small bursts followed by long periods of silence. Not a full blown contest style FD by any means, but a good chance to check out what we can do in the field with compromise equipment and low power.

new batteries

About ten years ago my father bought me a portable power station for Christmas. It is a plastic box with a pair of cigarette lighter plugs as well as a set of lugs in the back connected to a 7 AH battery in the case. The power station offered a portable 12 V power supply that is effective to charge batteries for scanners and cell phones as well as antenna relays and TNC's. You could operate a low power radio for a bit of time, but with a 7 AH battery, it won't last too long, so I didn't use it for such purposes.

About a year later, a presentation at a local ham club showed a similar box, with the same internal battery, but this one was much more versitile. In addition to two cigarette lighter sockets, and lugs, a 100,000 candle power spotlight as well as a regular flashlight with blinker option and 9, 6 and 3 volt coax sockets are all included.

About a year ago the batteries started to die on me and I finally got around to buying new ones this month. I opened up the cases and replaced the cells. The power box with the light was easy as it was just plugged in with the lugs. The original box had soldered lugs which made life a bit more difficult.

The hardest part was actually getting the cases back together by getting the wires running through the tight spaces so that the cases could close again.

So after less than $20 of new parts, I have two fully-functional portable power supplies and auxillary lighting.

73

First steps to DXCC

While I have been a ham since 1997, and been active on HF since 2000, I have moved so many times that I've never officially earned my DXCC. I have worked well over 100 countries from various locations, and under various callsigns, but never enough from one place to earn my certificate.

So here I am in PA (W3 land) and I am starting all over again. I have ordered my new QSL cards and even put up a rather pathetic ground mounted screwdriver antenna with four radials to get me started.

I have been on a pactor kick lately, so went to the pactor watering hole on 20 meters, 14.111 CF. So I hooked up my SCS PTC-IIe to my Icom 746 and put out a rather pathetic 30 watts. As is normal with ARQ modes, you set the radio up to call CQ every minute or so and hope someone wants to chat and answers you. For my part, I swivel around in my chair and use another computer while calling and listen for connection noise in the form of the TX/RX relay in the rig to start clicking every few seconds.

I was watching a youtube video and this very thing happened. Imagine my surprise when I look at the screen and see not a US station, but one from across the Atlantic from England on my screen. G4APL was making a link and soon enough we were chatting amicably enough using pactor II. He was using a beam antenna and I was receiving good S8 signals. My signal, even with his beam was reaching him at S1 at best, so it was slow going at times. Still, even with repeats, with the 200 bps speed of Pactor 2 at it's most robust level, it was quite fast enough to have a keyboard to keyboard conversation.

A few days later I was at it again and this time I was able to work Peter OZ1PMX from Denmark, at first on pactor 2, and then on pactor 3. My signal was even worse into Denmark, so even the robust Pactor 2 was dropping the signal quite a bit. When we upshifted to pactor 3, we were able to maintain the link quite well.

So for DXCC, my first country was not the US, but England, and followed by Denmark. Last night I worked Brazil and the Maldera Islands for my third and fourth entities. One of these days I'll have to work the US. I am just hoping to get out there with a slightly better signal and finally get 100 countries from one place.

Until next time, 73.

VE session

Here in the US amateur radio license exams are given by trained volunteer examiners (VE's). I am new to Northeast Penn, so was not connected in with the local examiners, but I am a member of the MURGAS club and when a cry came out for an Extra Class examiner in nearby Scranton, I took up the challenge. I have not participated in an exam session since 2006, so I thought I would be rusty. Fortunately it all came back to me fairly quickly.

We have four candidates show up for the exam. Three were trying to obtain their license (Tech class) and one was attempting to upgrade to Extra (hence the need for me).

I am happy to report the W3ATS aquired his Extra license with no problem, while the other four candidates were able to pass their tech exams and earned their licenses. I just wish that there were more young people looking to get licensed. None of the new licensees were younger than 30, and two were in their 60's and 70's. We need to figure out a way to get the youth more involved.

73
Jeremy N1ZZZ

VHF Packet QSO

Well I have my packet station up and running and even managed two packet keyboard QSO's. I haven't had a k-k packet QSO in about 12 years. The last one I remember was when I lived in Western MA in 2000.

Since I am currently operating in a valley and am talking to people over the hills from me I had to utilize a digipeater to get there from here.

While the text was 100% copy as to be expected from an ARQ mode, it was painfully slow. I was using 1200 baud and there was no other traffic through the node so I can't see that packet collision was a problem. Still by the time the packets went through the node on it's way to the other stations, I was staring at a blank screen for at least a minute between the sequential packets were displayed. I hate to say it, but HF digital has much faster net transfer of text over VHF packet through a single node.

I hope that the problem was just a poor connection between the other stations and the digipeater node I was using it. I saw very few NAK packets between my station and the node. I hope that my experience isn't indicative of the mode in general.

73 Jeremy

Packet Track

Well today I took one step forward and one step backward. The good news is that I was able to work the packet node KC3MN packet node in Scranton, PA from here in Wilkes Barre. Running 10W to a 5/8 wave on 2 meters allowed a connection to the PBBS but I was unable to work it as a Digipeater. I left a message for the Sysop and hopefully I will get a message in return. In the mean time I will continue to beacon and listen at both 1200 baud and 9600 baud on 145.010 MHz to see if I can't drum up some business, at least during the day when the wife is at work.

On the backwards step, N1ZZZ-9 APRS mobile station is down for a few days when the center pin of my UHF to SMA adapter broke off. Since that particular adapter isn't a locally stocked part, I had to order it off the Internet. I think this is strange as most H-t's tend to have SMA connectors over the more commonly available BNC cables.

Now I just have to get the club to work on getting the local club node up and running. I am hoping the article on packet that I'm writing will get at least a few people interested. Only time will tell.

Packet Radio

I have been spending the last week trying to get back on VHF packet radio. While I have been actively using APRS at the 1200 baud level (N1ZZZ-9 for mobile and N1ZZZ-7 for portable), the use of keyboard to keyboard chatting or Bulletin board systems (BBS and personal mailboxes) has been lacking in my radio activities since I lived in Florida.

Here in the Wilkes Barre area, there is a very good APRS network on 144.390, but the only listed packet node is dead and despite my question to the local club board, there seems to be no interest to fix the node, and little interest in the local hams to get involved in an active packet system. This is too bad because there is a lot more to do with packet than shoot out position and weather packets on an open network.

The real tragedy is that without some practice, no one in the area will be able to provide emergency email on the local level since they will have neither the skills nor the infrastructure to move data even within the valley. It would not take much effort to get the main node up and then have attached node to provide both local email through personal mailboxes and even to the greater Internet via an RMS node.

For my own efforts, I have been able to make connections on both 1200 and 9600 baud via a Kantronics 9612 attached to an Alinco DR-135 for one station and my Kenwood TH-7A which is an all-in-one packet station when you have a computer, as the other. The great thing about the Kantronic 9612 and Alinco is that with the right cables, you can have a 2 port packet station (1200 in one, and at least 9600 in the other), with one radio. While with one radio you can only connect through one port at a time, it give the attaching station the option to connect via either speed on the same frequency. Of course you can also monitor two frequencies with separate radios, with one speed each. This is frequently the way it works, with a 1200 baud port on 2 meters and 9600 on 70 cm.

I am currently running XPWare to run the modems. It took me a bit of time to get the settings on the modem set so that it would talk with my computer, but once that was set up, I was off to the races. XPWare is freeware at this point and works with a wide range of TNC's for both packet and HF modes. The program opens two windows with the 9612, one for each port, and a third window when you open the mailbox.

While the Internet is the easy way to do everything that packet can do, and more quickly. Still, being a radio geek, the way to get there is more important than the information transmitted, but also the idea of having a off-grid network is a good idea in the case when the main network goes down.

Once I get set up at home, I want to get an RMS winlink node set up, but I won't have the range to make it effective unless I can convince the local club to get the main node up. This is my next mission.