Awoke to generally poor band conditions which makes LoTW being down less of an irritation. My local DX cluster is down again too. Plus, I worked a DX station who correctly pointed out that we had worked previously, a few years earlier, and he didn’t appreciate dupes in his log and asked me to never call him again.
Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed…
Thursday, January 16, 2025
The good news this morning was that when I tested my local DX cluster, it was back online following a couple weeks of downtime. Given it resides at Purdue University, the timing was right for it to have gone down while the students were on winter break and wasn’t recovered until they returned. I may never know what actually happened, I’m just glad it’s back online and serving up spots.
Ten meters has been so good lately I just know we are going to cry and moan when it goes back to being dead all the time. Until then, it’s very good. First worked this morning was Jaime, EA6NB north of Palma de Mallorca (Balearic Islands) some 4400 miles distant. Great signal and a nice QSO with a very good operator. Next up was Luca, IK3VUT just north of Venice near the Adriatic Sea. Another nice QSO with good signals all around.
There could be more (DX) later, but there’s a couple inches of snow that needs to be removed from the driveway and apparently that’s my fate today. Ciao!
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
I use Jekyll to manage my blog content. It’s been around a long time and is stable. It’s also highly configurable providing me with plenty of options. I selected it as my CMS because Wordpress and Blogger had become worn as an old toothbrush. Plus, everyone tends to use the free version which means adverts. I despise online ads even while acknowledging that’s how most web sites are funded.
Looking around at other blog feeds I follow, I only find one other maverick blogger – Koos van den Hout, PE4KH. His site, idefix.net appears home grown though there could be some underlying content engine. I’ll ask him about it as I work on a new article about how hams are rolling blogs these days. If you know of another ham radio blog NOT using WP or Blogger drop me a note (jeff@ke9v.net) and let me know.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Circumlocution seems the order of the day when it comes to bad-mouthing ARRL. Or more correctly, the ARRL Board of Directors. I have a solution that will go a long way toward fixing it. Never vote for an incumbent. Always vote for someone who is not currently a Director. You can’t change the BoD by re-electing the same people. If every single ARRL member would vote in their next election for someone not currently in that role, in a few years there would be a completely new slate of Directors. Maybe just as bad, maybe worse. But maybe better. It’s all you can do. Terminating your membership is ignorant if you believe that will help fix things.
You want to fix it, you have to be a member. If you’re not a member, STFU, you have no say in the matter. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.
My guess, few will choose this path. According to most polls 80% or more Americans believe their government is lousy. Yet they continue to re-elect the same politicians over and over. Your congressman could rape babies in Times Square yet you and most everyone in your district will vote for him again. About 90% of incumbents are re-elected, it’s their super power. Once they get in they rarely get out. No, voters in America believe every political problem is due to YOUR representatives, not THEIR representatives.
Same goes for ARRL Directors. Mine is good, yours is the turd in the punchbowl.
Why? People are basically stupid.
Monday, January 13, 2025
A fellow on one of the QRP mailing lists was asking if anyone had a TR-45L CW transceiver they would like to part with. This due to the fact that John, WA3RNC went QRT on radio production last year when he retired. You can’t buy them new from the factory anymore. I happen to have one that I purchased in April of 2024. Mine being the skinny version. One option for the standard version is a built-in tuner making it a little bigger.
I didn’t need the built-in tuner since I outsource all my auto-tuning in the field to a little Elecraft T1, don’t tell President MuskTrump!
I have another transceiver, the TR-25, from the same source and have been happy enough with it though now that I mention it, I haven’t seen it in awhile… Anyway, not long after getting the TR25 John announced the TR-45L and teased it out with a few photos of what would be coming “soon”. The retro look, all the controls on the front panel, the simplicity. Better still, no SDR. I’m genuinely sick of SDRs. Those tiny little transceivers that cover all bands and modes with even tinier displays that can’t be read in sunlight and is the only interface to the 2000+ functions buried deep in a labyrinth of touches, taps and long presses. And the more marvelous the SDR, the larger the market for specialty “how-to” manuals that are always an order of magnitude larger than the radio itself.
Seriously, if I was stranded on a Pacific island with only an SDR to call for help I’d just learn to love coconut and body surfing with the sharks.
So I ordered a TR-45L and when it arrived I used it to make a dozen or so contacts then promptly put it on the shelf with a collection of other QRP transceivers all begging to be used. So when I saw the email I thought maybe I would sell mine. I replied to the guy on the mailing list and turns out he really wanted a “fat” boy model. But he told me he would get back to me if he doesn’t find one. No problem, I’m in no hurry to move it out of here. Our email interaction did cause me to fire it up this morning, just to make sure all is still well with the little rig. Powered it up for the first time in months, set the power to five watts on 20 meters and used the CHA-MPAS Lite ground mounted vertical so no tuner required.
Then I called CQ…
No replies. Even spotted myself on QRPSpots, nada. But the RF was being pretty evenly distributed around North America. With nothing more to show for it than ReverseBeacon hits I went hunting POTA. Bingo! Three fast contacts bagged in no time. I expect to work ten today using the TR-45L.
This transceiver is really sweet and it would be okay by me if that guy lets me know he doesn’t want mine. There are worse things in life than owning a beautiful little CW transceiver. When I bought it I imagined using it out on a patio table on lazy, warm, summer days with pencil and paper for logging and a pitcher of ice-cold margaritas nearby. I can still see that.
After all, a retired guy has got to have a hobby, right?
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Last night, hours after local sundown, I decided to try to work a few stations in the NAQP. The juice had already drained from 20 meters and signals were right down in the noise. Slow-tuning, I heard an interesting call, just barely above the noise. You know how it is when the signal is copyable, yet so weak you just assume there’s no way he will hear you, but you call anyway and hear your own call sign come back to you. Maybe I’m amazed.
In this case it was Stan, AH6KO on the Big Island of Hawaii. This was the fifth time I’ve worked him, all CW. Checking to be certain, I found 61 other contacts with the Hawaiian Islands since 2014 so it’s not really rare, but it’s always magical. I imagine RF signals floating high above the ocean from my QTH to a Pacific paradise where palm trees sway.
It never gets old and never ceases to be amazing to me…
Saturday, January 11, 2025
While I made no specific resolutions for this New Year, I have made a few decisions that sure look like resolutions given their timing. For example, I’m quitting on a lot of memberships and subscriptions in the coming year. Been meaning to do that since I retired but haven’t been able to pull the trigger.
With regrets and regards to all the ham radio clubs and specialty publishers with whom I’ve maintained a paid connection. I’ll begin my third year of retirement next month (time does fly) and I figure it’s time for our budget to begin looking more like that of retirees.
Nothing is immune and everything requiring a renewal will be dropped.
The same goes for kits. I’m done. I have more than a dozen radio kits that I built over the years that haven’t seen use in decades, with another two dozen waiting to be built. I keep lying to myself that I will get around to building them one of these days, but after two years of retirement the stack of kits waiting to be built continues to grow. This is just more nutty behavior that needs to end.
So no resolutions for 2025, just a few promises.
Friday, January 10, 2025
I’ve had a Bluesky account since the service launched. I’ve been loathe to mention it here because having fled Twitter a few years ago, I really haven’t wanted much to do with social media. Creating a Bluesky presence was more “let’s see what this is like” than a commitment to a platform.
Initially, there was so little traffic I generally ignored it. But since the election there has been a noticeable uptick in activity, refugees from the fallout no doubt. Bluesky continues to grow and today there’s a vibrant amateur radio population beginning to build a village there.
Maybe you’re there too? Give me a follow if your interest is ham radio. I don’t do politics.
Bluesky is a decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation.
Bluesky is using an open source framework built in-house, the AT Protocol, meaning people outside of the company have transparency into how it is built and what is being developed.
Dorsey introduced the Bluesky project back in 2019 while he was still Twitter CEO. At the time, he said Twitter would be funding a “small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers,” charged with building a decentralized standard for social media, with the original goal that Twitter would adopt this standard itself. But that was before Elon Musk bought the platform, so Bluesky is completely divorced from X.
As of May 2024, Dorsey is no longer on Bluesky’s board. Bluesky is now an independent public benefit corporation led by CEO Jay Graber.
Thursday, January 09, 2025
Good morning. Here in the US, it’s a National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter, the first former president to live to 100. That means things won’t fully operate as normal today, and flags will fly at half-staff for the next 30 days.
NCDXF is pleased to announce its financial support for the February 2026 3Y0K Bouvet DXpedition. There will be two grants totaling up to $200,000. The first will be a downpayment of $100,000. The second will be a dollar for dollar match up to $100,000. The match will be a challenge to the clubs and hams that donate prior to the DXpedition.
The latest edition of the NCDXF newsletter (Winter 2024) is available for download and includes articles about: CY9C (St. Paul Is.); FT4GL (Glorioso Is.); XT2MD (Burkina Faso); 6O7T (Somaliland); A8OK (Liberia); “Better Low Band Reception” (AA7JV); and Cycle 25 Fund & Cycle 25 Society.
2,025,799,595 QSO records have been entered into the LoTW system.
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
Band conditions haven’t been great the last few days and my DX production has suffered because of it. Not helping is that my favorite DX cluster went down over the weekend, not a fatal problem, but another brick in the wall. I had things setup smooth as a perfect self-checkout transaction at the grocery for awhile here and now that’s gone wonky. Awww biscuits.
Still, I managed to work HH2K on 15 for another new one on CW. I have Haiti in the log a dozen times, all SSB and FT8, none via CW so I’ll take it. That was after I worked S01WS (Western Sahara) also on 15 CW, an ATNO. Huzzah!