Worked All States Type Nets

Nets like OMISS, the 3905 Century Club and NATA are a popular and relaxing way to work your way to WAS.  The addition of networked logging and online chat makes these a real social way to spend some time on the air but I often see the same mistakes made repeatedly so here’s my simple guide to being a successful participant.

Listen to Net Control and only speak when spoken to.  That means don’t try to check in when they aren’t asking for check-ins, don’t relay unless asked, etc.

Be an active participant during the net even when you aren’t transmitting.  If you check into the net you are making a social commitment to be at the radio and paying attention to what is going on.  So with the exception of Handihams and mobile stations follow these rules:

Follow the list and know whose turn it is.  Be ready to relay even if you aren’t called upon to do so.  Write down or enter a report for everybody on the list as you hear them (NetLogger makes this really easy).  Know who you’ve already worked.

If somebody goes up for grabs and you haven’t worked them say your call sign once phonetically and then listen.  If you don’t really need to work the station delay a bit and if others respond don’t bother but if nobody does go ahead and work them, it’s not fun to go up for grabs and have nobody come back.

If somebody calls you don’t be the station that delays the net by needing to be woken up.  There will be times when a weak station calls and you aren’t sure who they are calling in which case it’s OK to be silent and wait until NCS lets you know you’re being called but if you can hear that you are being called be ready.

When you get a call repeat their call sign and the report they gave you, then state your call sign and give them their report.

Don’t change the report once you give it, conditions are always changing but reports are only approximate at best so stick with the first one.  One exception to this is when you call somebody that was really weak when you heard them (usually on check-in) so you give them the low report off your list but when they come back to you they give you a 59 and are strong (59 or better) in which case it’s normal to update the report but don’t do it if they are now weaker just stick with what ever you gave them.

If they didn’t give you a report repeat both call signs give them their report and then say something like “How Copy?” or “And what’s my report?”  Then when they give you a report simply repeat the report like “thanks copy five-nine.”

When it’s your turn to make a call you should already know who you want to call, if you are following the list this should be easy.  Don’t wait until your turn to hunt through the list for a state you need.  If you aren’t sure who to call always go up for grabs, never take a pass as there may be somebody on the net that needs you.

When it’s your turn you are the control station so make your call remembering to repeat the report you received and when you’re done say “back to net.”  Don’t leave it hanging.  It’s OK to call a station you haven’t heard and give them a “report on the over” but be sure to do it and give them a chance to repeat it.  Once they confirm it say “back to net.”

If the station you are trying to call doesn’t respond you can ask NCS for help, if it still doesn’t work you can try another station but try not to hold up the net while you fish around for somebody, either go up for grabs or say “no joy, back to net.”

Going up for grabs:  If you decide to go up for grabs make sure the last thing you say is “up for grabs” because once you do stations will start calling.  So, say your call sign, state and “up for grabs.”  Go back to the first call sign you copy with their call sign and a report.

Don’t try to exchange other information on the air during the net, with the exception of real emergency traffic which is rare but still happens.  It’s rude to hold up the net to ask what part of town somebody is in because you grew up there, etc.  If somebody asks you questions that aren’t related to the net you should give a short answer and say we really need to keep the net moving.

Final rule, it’s supposed to be fun, don’t ruin anybody’s fun.  If NCS skips your turn remember he’s human and running a net isn’t always easy.  If there’s a reason to break any of these rules then break them but you may feel bad afterward.

73 and God bless

How to use an antenna tuner

Way back when I first passed my Tech-Plus license exams and was waiting for my ticket to come in the mail.  It was back before the internet so you had to wait for the license to come in the mail to find out what your call sign was and get on the air.  I bought a couple of QST magazines at a bookstore (before the internet there were stores that sold books and magazines) and researched which radio to buy and how to setup an antenna.  There was an article that described a 3-band antenna made and fed with ladder line.  So I ordered 200’ of ladder line, an MFJ antenna tuner, an Astron power supply, a bencher paddle/keyer combo and a Yaesu FT-840, all of which put me over budget and arrived before I got my license in the mail.

I got the antenna strung as high as I could up in some trees and got the ladder line run into the basement and got everything connected and was amazed that I could immediately hear strange sounding voices (I hadn’t yet learned how to tune in SSB signals).  And then my license finally arrived.

The fancy cross-needle meter on the little MFJ tuner was sweet and I had an electronics background so I knew I was supposed to get the reflected power as low as possible and the forward power as high as possible but I really didn’t have a procedure to follow and there were no instructions on how to do it.  So I really didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do but I picked a frequency from the chart that my license class was allowed to use and I fumbled around until I finally got a decent SWR.  Then hands shaking I used my paddles to send CQ, secretly hoping nobody would answer, but then W6DBB came back… Oh wait,  you wanted to know how to use an antenna tuner, I’ll write about my first QSO another time.

First, No-Coax!   You should be feeding your antenna with ladder line or even better directly from the tuner.  If you use ladder line resist the temptation to keep it flat all the way down from the antenna, it is best to twist it.  About one twist every couple of feet will keep it from oscillating in the wind and it will also reduce RF coupling with nearby metal objects like gutters.  Also, try to keep it away from metal objects, it’s not so bad if it crosses close to a gutter but you don’t want it parallel and it definitely shouldn’t touch.  So now you have your random length dipole or preferably a loop antenna hooked to the balanced output on the antenna tuner.  There might be a jumper required depending on the tuner (that info will usually be in the manual).

If the manual has recommended starting points for the different bands, use them.

Is it time to tune up yet?

Almost.  You have probably heard that you should find a frequency that’s not in use to tune up but I take it one step further.  Pick a band that is dead, for example 20, 15 and 10 Meters are daytime bands so they would be good if it’s night, likewise you would work on the lower bands (40, 80 & 160) during the day.  You still want to listen for a couple of minutes to make sure the frequency is not in use, remember your antenna isn’t tuned at this point so you can’t transmit to ask if it’s in use and you are not going to be receiving well yet so you need to listen carefully. Now have a pen and paper handy.

Now that you’ve found a frequency that your license allows you to transmit on and determined that it isn’t in use.  Write down the band and frequency.  If your tuner manual recommends settings for this band/frequency set the tuner controls to those settings, if not set the controls in the middle position.  If the meter has a power level switch put it on the lowest setting.  I’m assuming you will be using a cross needle meter, if not put the switch in the SWR position (you may have to switch back and forth if you need to see the power).  I’m also assuming a standard Capacitor-Inductor-Capacitor type tuner.

1. Turn the transmit power on your transmitter all the way down; refer to the manual on how to do this.
2. What you are going to do next is transmit a carrier for a second – use CW mode – watching the SWR meter.
3. If neither the power or SWR meter moves you will have to turn up the power a little bit just enough to get the meter to move enough to get a reading (refer to the manual that came with your tuner or meter on how to read it).
4. Stop transmitting and write down the position of the tuner controls and the meter reading just as they appear on the tuner from left to right.
5. Next change the Inductor setting, one click or one full turn to the left.
6. Again, transmit just long enough to take a meter reading.
7. Stop transmitting and right down the reading and control positions.
8. If the SWR went down (or stayed the same) you will adjust the inductor to the left again and repeat steps 6 and 7 until you find the setting that gives the lowest SWR reading but if it starts to go up you adjust the Inductor to the right until you find the setting that gives the lowest SWR reading.
9. Now that you’ve found the best setting for the Inductor (at least the best for the moment) you can start adjusting the capacitors.
10. At this point you will adjust the input (or left) capacitor for the lowest SWR reading by transmitting while sweeping the knob back and forth until the meter dips – if the meter reading was already very low you can turn up the power slightly to help find the best setting.  It should only take a second or two, don’t be too fussy at this point.
11. Write down the new capacitor setting.
12. Repeat steps 10 and 11 for the Output (or right) capacitor.
13. You are now getting close and can start to increase power to help fine tune the settings.
14. You can now go quickly between the two capacitors (and if your tuner has a roller inductor you can fine tune that as well) trying to find the overall best setting.
15. Remember to keep your transmissions short and write down your results often.
16. If your tuner has a switched Inductor and you can’t get a 1:1 SWR reading (where the reverse power or SWR meter doesn’t move at all) you can try adjusting the inductor one setting to the left or right.
17. Caution, don’t increase power too much (above 10 or at most 25 watts) if the SWR is above 2:1
18. Assuming you have gotten a low SWR reading and have increased the power to the desired level, usually 100 watts and gotten the best SWR reading possible write everything down.
19. These final readings are your new starting readings so next time you want to tune up on or near this frequency you will be able to do it very quickly because you will already be close.  You will still want to start with low power just in case something has changed, antennas do tend to fall or break, etc.
20. Now do the same thing for other frequencies and bands, it may take a couple of days since you will have to wait until the opposite set of bands will be open for your tuning experiments.
21. Now you have a good chart of starting positions for top, middle and bottom of every band your license allows you to use all you will need to do is fine tune just remember to find a clear frequency and keep your power low while tuning.

Also, if there are any frequencies you use on a regular basis, for nets, scheds, etc., be sure to write down your tuner settings so you will be really close next time you want work on that frequency.

73

-jim

75 Meters… Not for the Faint-Hearted, really?

Or was the offended ham really the offending party?  A lot of bad things are said about the old timers who hang out on 75 meters and it wasn’t so long ago that I was guilty of saying some of it.  These are the folks who meet on the same frequency every night and talk about the same things; they are sometimes called cronies, ‘the residents’ and even ‘potato farmers.’  When I was a new ham I had similar experiences as the one Randy (KJ6JAJ) wrote about in his correspondence “75 Meters: Not for the Faint-Hearted“(QST December 2010 p. 24).   I came upon a group discussion, tried to join the group and it didn’t work; I felt rejected and a little bitter but it wasn’t them, it was me.  I was trying to fit in where I didn’t belong, if I saw the same group of men chewing the fat at a local hardware store I wouldn’t have approached them the same way (or at all) as I did on the radio.

If approached humbly these same people will try to help anybody who wants to become one of them do just that.  For example they want armchair copy, so to be one of them you have to run an amp.  Think about it they are older and can’t hear as well, in the hardware store they would be saying “speak up!”  They run horizontal antennas because they are all close together so NVIS is the mode of operation, vertical antennas just don’t work for this.

I could go on with why these clashes occur but now that I’ve been a ham longer I can ‘visit’ these groups without offense but I am careful about what I say and I am no longer offended that I don’t really fit in, it’s okay.  I understand now that their use of radio is just as valid as my own radio pursuits and if I let them bother me, it’s my problem.

I’m back on the air…

I took almost a year off to do some other things but now I got the radio bug again.  It was surprisingly easy to untangle the ends of my two loops and get them back to the hamshack window and they both worked well right away.  Interestingly when I looked at the big loop the back end of it had been taken down by a couple of fallen trees.  One snapped the wire and left one end up about 30 feet in a tree and the other tree was holding the wire on the ground.  I got the one off the ground and secured it about 8 feet up in a tree temporarily and now I can’t tune up on 160 meters.  I’ll fix the loop in a few days and see if that helps but in the meantime it works just fine on 80 and up.

I still have some intermittent S9 power line buzz that usually starts when rare dx is on the air or right after a contest starts and stops an hour before the utility truck comes to check it out.  I tracked it to the offending poll in 2010 but never got it fixed.

WAS pursuit – in 2010 I worked all fifty states on 40 and 80 meters but never managed to get AR and KY on 20 meters (although I worked KY a few nights ago) and lacked about 10 on 160.  I already had WAS on 20 meters from several years back but I can not find the paper log with the AR and KY contacts.

I’ve been enjoying the OMISS nets, the YL System and some DX and am looking forward to the NAQP and YL QSO party contests although I wish they weren’t on the same weekend.

LOTW – I am not going to post to LOTW anymore.  Basically everytime I change computers it’s a royal hassle to get them to accept my uploads and then what’s the point of it, with eQSL it’s easy, all of the award certificates are free and it more closely resembles a real QSL card.  For example, if you are /m or /p and not logging you rely on getting a card from the station that is logging and then return one, with LOTW you don’t get a card you only get a confirmation if both stations upload a matching QSO.  Also, there’s no way to say PSE QSL on LOTW like with a paper card or even easier on eQSL since all they have to do is click confirmed.  QRZ’s logbook is OK but they don’t do anything to sort out dupes so if both parties upload their logs you get double entries but at least they are easy to deal with.

73 DE NY4JB

Antennas

I’ve been doing a bit of research as I plan to add a third antenna to my farm and have noticed that most published designs spend all their effort trying to get a good match (low SWR) rather than getting the antenna to be effective.  Of course you need a low SWR in order for the antenna to accept power (and to deliver a strong receive signal) but that is easily achieved using a transmatch.  The catch is not to use coax after the transmatch since the high SWR will cause high losses on the coax (why do they even have coax outputs on transmatches?).  This means either feeding the antenna directly, with ladder line or using a remote transmatch at the antenna feed point.  BTW I have a pair of high end MFJ transmatches that are quite nice but they’re a little expensive.  I also bought a homebrew transmatch that is well made for much less and it works quite well but I’ve realized since then that a good low loss transmatch can be built for very little money if you don’t care what it looks like (or you can add a nice cabinet and it will still be cheap).

My current antenna collection consists of two loops.  The first is fairly large (about 400 feet of wire) forming a horizontal circle and fed directly at the shack window.  Little effort was made to get it to be high, level or have a great shape but it works well on the low bands (160-40).  The second is a vertical loop, again fed directly at the shack window, with a peak at about 55 feet, the low end around 10 feet off the ground and about 250 feet of wire total.  Again, no effort in trying to make it resonant or any particular shape/height and it works well on 80 – 20.

So what antenna am I going to add?  Most likely another loop since the receive noise is much less on loops than dipoles/verticals.  Although I must admit the ease of putting up a random length dipole is appealing since with loops you end up having to thread the wire back around to where you started and I could throw up a dipole it minutes…

Since half the fun is trying different configurations I may have to stick up a dipole temporarily on some military surplus fiberglass masts and see how it does.  One thing I know for sure is whatever I put up won’t be fed with coax.

73 & God bless,

-jim

QSLing the word

I don’t normally send QSL cards and I honestly don’t know what to do with all the cards I get.  The idea of mailing a paper confirmation card when the EQSL can be there during the actual QSO just doesn’t make sense, times have changed.  However, in my quest to work all States I’ve been participating in the various WAS nets, many of which still require QSL cards and make the process easy by providing QSL bureaus so I send cards.  So as long as I’m sending out cards I should spread the Word, right?  I’ve started to include a message on the back of my cards, since you might want to do the same I’ll post it here as a sample:

Hi, Grandpa Brown Here, 
There’s something I want to share with you…
The bad “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” 
Romans 3:23 (ESV)
And the good “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” 
John 3:16 (ESV)
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me or visit my blog (http://ke4juh.wordpress.com/)
73 & God bless
-jim

WAS progress and QSOs to blog hits…

Just a quick update, four band WAS in 2010 is going well. I still need

160 AK, AZ, CO, HI, ID, LA, MT, NC, ND, NV, OR, SD, UT, VT, WA
80 AK, AR, AZ, FL, HI, KS, MI, MT, ND, NH, NV, SD, VT
40 AZ, CA, ID, ND, NM, NV, OR, RI, SD, UT, WY
20 AL, AR, DE, GA, IA, KY, LA, MO, NJ, OH, RI, TN

On a different front I noticed my blog stats track with my radio activity so when I get on the radio more people read my Christian blog and maybe some will get to know Christ and be saved as a result or I could just say, God is in control!

73

UPDATE 2010 July 25

Haven’t been on 160 recently as it is Summer but knocked off MI, NH & VT on 80 and making good progress on 20, only need AR & KY, and on 40 only need RI & UT

UPDATE 2010 August 28

Finished all 50 on 40 Meters about a week ago, still need AR & KY on 20 Meters and down to just 8 on 80 Meters.  With luck I’ll have 80 done in time for winter so I can knock out the last 15 on 160 Meters.

RF Gain Adjustment

The use of the RF Gain Control is very poorly documented in amateur radio literature and most owner’s manuals.  In most manuals, if there is any mention at all, it just says to start with the control fully CW and possibly turn it down if there is severe distortion.  If your goal is ear fatigue that is a good practice otherwise you might want to give this a try.

If your radio has an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) speed switch set it to ‘fast’.  After adjusting your transmatch on an unoccupied frequency, check the S-meter reading of the noise and if the meter is moving at all, reduce the RF Gain until the meter just stops moving.  (On some radios reducing the RF gain will cause the S-meter reading to rise, that’s OK what you are looking for is the point where the movement caused by the noise stops. So as an example on that type of radio, if the noise was peaking at S-5 you want to reduce gain until the meter reads a steady S-5.) 

You now have a good starting point and here’s why that is a good setting.  The AGC system in the radio is there to reduce the difference between weak and strong signals, or to prevent sudden loud signals from being deafening while still allowing weak signals to be heard.  It does this by reducing the RF and/or IF gain (depending on the radio) on signals that are louder than a certain threshold level.  The S-meter on most radios does not display the actual RF signal strength but displays the amount of gain reduction the AGC system is applying.  This is easily demonstrated by turning off the AGC on most radios which will cause the S-meter to stop working. 

So what we have done by reducing the RF Gain is to put the noise below the AGC’s threshold, so it is no longer trying to make the noise the same level as loud signals.  So why stop there, why not reduce the RF Gain until the noise is just barely audible?  The answer to that will depend on the particular radio and the band conditions.  For example, if you are working loud stations on 10 meters and the noise is low to begin with you can probably reduce the gain further but on 80 meters, where higher noise levels are the norm, reducing the gain too much might make all but the strongest stations too quiet to hear.

During contests and for copying stations that are highly processed (such as DX stations trying to get as much punch as possible) you may need to reduce the gain even further.  The reason for this is that processing and AGC are both forms of compression, which in moderate quantities makes it easier to copy a weak signal, however past a certain point further compression will make it increasingly difficult to copy, even if the signal is in the clear.  So it may be necessary to reduce the RF Gain a great deal more on some over-processed signals.

The reason for setting the AGC to ‘fast’ is simple, if you are trying to copy a weak to moderate station and there is a loud noise burst, you want the gain to recover as quickly as possible so you will not miss the words immediately after the noise burst.  With the AGC set to slow it will take several seconds before the gain will come back up to normal.

So in short (and less accurately), setting the RF Gain too high causes the AGC (automatic gain control) to raise the noise level to match the level of the desired signal.
73 and God bless,
de ny4jb
-jim

QRP

So, my first contact on the new call gave me the idea to add to my goal of 4 band WAS (Worked All States) in 2010 by adding QRP WAS (2 watts) with no time limit.  Since I lost my electronic log book in 2008 and had to recover it from eqsl which didn’t have the power field I am basically starting over so I may as well do QRP WAS on the new call.  49 States to go!

UPDATE: As of 2010-06-29 I’ve got 22 States – 28 to go…

KE4JUH is now NY4JB

I made my first contact under the new call from the parking lot at work today. Franklin, TN to Moose Island, Maine on two watts into a hamstick, not a bad start. To go with the new call is a new weblog devoted to Amateur Radio (with a Christian Perspective, of course). More to come soon… 73 DE NY4JB