The search for needed DX was a bust last night so I decided to pick off a handful of WWA stations. Seven contacts on two bands is good for 14 points. So far. I’d like to log at least twenty-five of them. This one will be a short run since the summer event only lasts a week while the winter version ran the entire month of January. I caught a note that Roger Smallwood, N8EKG became a silent key over the weekend. He was the President of Operations at R&L Electronics, a popular and longtime ham radio dealer in Hamilton, Ohio.
End of Month
We’ve arrived at the end of another month. Half the year has passed. If you consider the 4th of July as being halfway through the summer season, don’t blink, that’s coming up fast. I got back on the paddle this morning. Called CQ on 20 and 30 meters without getting a reply so I started looking for a few POTA stations. Snagged three of them, two on 40 and one on 20 meters. Will be on DX patrol later this evening. Band conditions are a little better, SSN:151 SFI:128 A:8 K:2 - but this perpetual pop-up thunderstorm season is keeping things noisy and I’m unhooking the cables whenever I leave the shack. Tired of that. C’mon autumn!
Field Day 2025
Well that was… different. CW for all occasions is typical at KE9V, so I sometimes use Field Day as an excuse to do phone. That’s how this year started, but just five contacts in I got bored and switched to digital. I was operating 1D from home, 100 watts, from the mains. I’ve never used the FT modes during this event. It was a first for me and I didn’t hate it once I figured out how to put the WSJT software into Field Day mode. I ended up putting fifty in the log in this configuration over a couple of hours when I decided to call it quits.
It's not the heat, it's the insanity
It’s been about a month since the windows have been opened. Hot and stuffy weather spent in retreat in the air conditioning does not make for a happy season. I think the brutal heatwave has passed, the high today is supposed to be 85F so the air conditioner will continue it’s work. No windows open today. But perhaps a little relief for those taking part in Field Day activities? I’ve made no specific plans, but normally do a little battery-powered QRP from the backyard. I’d be happy with 25 contacts. That would mean another year of participation plus I’ve been off the air the entire month of June. Back in the saddle again? Maybe.
Should Have Been Tweets
Field Day Weekend is upon us. Have fun. Be safe. And remember, it’s not a contest, but keep score anyway. Wink-Wink.
The motto of this year’s HAM RADIO in Friedrichshafen, “REMOTE RADIO - CONNECTING THE WORLD”, demonstrates in a unique way that amateur radio is on the pulse of the times. June 27-29.
LoTW will be shutdown today for upgrades.
The 13 Colonies Special Event runs from the 1st of July through to the 7th. Certificates are available at all levels of achievement. SWL and hunters outside the US are welcome. Operators will be using all modes on all HF bands except for 60 meters. Be listening as well on 2 and 6 meters.
Current Bouvet Island weather conditions - 21F and windy with 2-4 inches of snow expected over the weekend. Perhaps a donation for the 2026 3Y0K operation?
NEW: HackRF Pro from Great Scott Gadgets is a Software Defined Radio peripheral capable of transmission or reception of radio signals from 100 kHz to 6 GHz.
Tuvalu T2 gets even scarcer as nearly one-third of citizens in that Pacific nation seek a landmark climate visa to live in Australia as rising seas threaten their palm-fringed shores.
QSLs, LoTW, and AI
“Blogs are newsletters that don’t require subscriptions…”
There is a trend toward sending electronic QSL cards that seems to be driving a lot of hams batty, especially among the DX community. These are the result of software that makes sending an electronic image of a QSL card as easy as clicking a button. One particular vendor is responsible for most of those I’ve received and their service comes in the guise of providing you a map of all your QSOs. All you have to do is upload the ADIF from your logging program and presto you get a pretty QSO map! One more mouse click and the service will be happy to email QSL cards to all those you have contacted.
It’s easy to see why many consider this obtrusive. The email addresses are probably harvested from QRZ.com (?) causing some to consider it spam. Personally, I don’t mind getting them as they are easily deleted and I see it as a friendly gesture. I mean, it’s not as nice as an actual printed QSL card that arrives by postal mail. And unless it’s accompanied by an LoTW confirmation it’s worthless for ARRL award credit. I don’t participate in this practice, but do I despise receiving them as many seem to? Meh. Que Sera, Sera.
The coming upgrade to LoTW is long overdue and is probably a “lesson learned” from the Great Hack of 2024. I’m no IT professional, just a retired old white dude who uses LoTW exclusively on a daily basis. Since any and all improvements are in my own self-interest, what I say here may just be the bleating of an old goat. But I believe it’s time for all users of LoTW to get behind this effort and make a donation to support the cause. Yeah, it’s a free service. For now. But I’ve uploaded more than 15,000 QSL records to LoTW and had that been QSL cards via postal mail it would come to a staggering sum of money. I’m not saying the two are equal, but this is the game we play and this is the service that makes it possible. Only a cheapskate would use LoTW and not be willing to toss them a few bucks.
Surely there are no freeloaders among the noble amateur radio fraternity?
I’m old, retired, and don’t have to pay attention to all the AI falderal. Honestly, I’m sick of hearing about it though it has become too pervasive to ignore completely. I believe it’s marketing hype driven by unrealistic hopes and expectations for endless corporate profit. It is interesting the way some see it as a replacement for human labor and maybe it is for certain tasks. Maybe.
But my wife and I were visiting another small town yesterday where we stopped at a Starbucks. It was nearly 100F as this oppressive dome of heat just won’t ease up. The ‘feels like’ temperature has been hovering around 110F. Brutal, right? So I’m sipping a latte inside the cool air-conditioned coffee shop when I noticed four guys working on the roof of a nearby gas station/convenience store. Obviously emergency A/C work given the weather at the moment. The roof was black pitch and I assume 50 degrees hotter up there than on the ground. I also assume that workers inside the station were complaining about the A/C being out in such miserable weather despite it being at least 50 degrees cooler where they were.
I asked my wife, do you suppose AI will one day put those guys out of work? Hell no. There is no AI coming that will replace them. In fact, I think they need to start asking for a thousand dollars or more an hour for what they do. Same goes for the plumber. Is AI gonna crawl under my kitchen sink and fix a leak? Hell no. Same goes for hundreds of other tasks that even Elon’s robot army won’t be capable of doing for a hundred years, if ever.
The eventual legacy of this silly AI moment should be higher labor costs for skilled work. I’m not talking about the ‘gee-whiz’ summarizing of your email messages. Or the falling cost of employing script kiddies. Certainly the cost of some software creation might go down, though the public won’t benefit from those reductions as corporations will hang on to every extra dime to offset the supernatural volumes of energy and new data centers this dystopian future demands.
I can, however, see the cost of real human labor becoming much higher than anyone ever thought possible. Imagine one day seeing woodworkers, plumbers, HVAC techs, auto mechanics, and other skilled crafts people in line with America’s oligarchs waiting to order their new yachts…
This, That, and the Other
The International DX Association recently coordinated multiple resources from around the world to help improve the only amateur radio station on Tristan da Cunha:
INDEXA does not normally support private stations. However, in this case we had the only licensed ham on a remote island entity whose population is around 250 people. ZD9 is #55 on the most wanted DXCC list (Club Log) even after some serious activity by ZD9W in 2023. In addition, we already had extraordinary support from ICOM, DX Engineering, WIMO and YASME.
NCDXF is pleased to announce an $8,000 grant to Michael, G7VJR for a hardware upgrade to Club Log:
Club Log is used by DXers and DXpeditioners all around the world. “Club Log is a free service operating at a global scale, supporting 130,000 callsigns and storing 1.25 billion QSOs. Every second of every day, a worldwide base of HF DXers rely on Club Log to enhance their enjoyment of the hobby. To many, Club Log’s features and tools and integral to their pursuit of DX. To operate at this scale, Club Log uses high-end servers of the kind you might find in a major internet company’s data centers. Paying for this has only been possible due to major foundations stepping in to give us the help needed. Our server equipment was last updated in 2019, and in the intervening time the use of data modes and our popular livestreams feature has expanded dramatically, putting higher and higher loads on our existing systems.
NASA Satellite That’s Been Dead for 57 Years Sends Mysterious Signal to Earth:
A little over a year ago, scientists in Australia picked up a brief burst of electromagnetic radiation. The pulse was so strong that it eclipsed all other signals coming from the sky, but its origins were unknown. After digging through the data, the team discovered that the source wasn’t a distant celestial object but rather a zombie satellite left to orbit Earth with no purpose.
LoTW Systems Upgrade
ARRL Announces Logbook of The World® Systems Upgrade:
ARRL’s Logbook of The World® (LoTW®) is the 2nd most popular benefit among members. It is also an extremely popular service internationally for non-members, as it is the primary means for providing confirmations for ARRL Awards, such as DXCC and Worked All States.
As a part of the ongoing modernization of the ARRL systems infrastructure, LoTW will be receiving major upgrades to the operating system it is running on, the relational database system it uses to store and access logbook and awards data, and server hosting, where it will be fully migrated to the cloud. These changes will, among other improvements, ensure LoTW performance needs can be better met based on user demand.
LoTW will be unavailable from June 27 to July 2, 2025, to complete these upgrades. We will bring LoTW back online if it is available sooner than July 2.
Perturbations
Long-time rivals Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds meet for the first time, have dinner. It is quite a surprise that the kingpins behind Windows and Linux never met previously. An extraordinary image has been shared on LinkedIn, capturing the first meeting between two legends of the tech world. In the center of the group photo, you can see Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds standing shoulder-to-shoulder - or actually they look more friendly than that.
Strategic Planning
I’ve been keeping a close eye on current solar activity as it pertains to HF propagation and my quest for DX. This has become a priority as each year I become more aware of the vagaries of mortality. After all, there are only so many eleven year solar cycles a DX chaser can expect to benefit from in one lifetime.
A little strategic planning can go a long way.
Reading between the lines is an inexact science, but there is something to be gleaned from this recent solar report from OK1HH:
“Most forecasts for future solar activity predict a continuing decline, but if we assume higher activity in the currently setting sunspot groups, we can expect an increase after their appearance on the north-eastern limb of the solar disc in July. Overall, calmer conditions can be expected during the coming Summer, although shortwave propagation conditions will continue to be slightly worse than would correspond to the level of solar activity.”
Reading these same kinds of tea leaves in 2022 caused me to focus on the higher bands as a way of padding my DXCC results. To that end I installed an R6000 20-6 meter vertical hoping to leverage its low-angle radiation properties with the then soon to arrive solar maximum. That plan paid dividends as I completed DXCC on 10, 12, 15, and 20 meters using that arrangement. But over these last few months I’ve watched propagation on 10 and 12 meters decline substantially. Opportunities still exist on 15, but even it has been less productive than it was a year ago.
Since I’m space-limited and don’t have a plethora of installed antennas to choose from, I’ve been thinking about new options for 80-30 meters that could fit on my lot. But I decided to hold off on that for one more year and go another direction. Knowing where we are in this current solar cycle, and where we’re headed, and what major DXpeditions lie on the horizon, I’ve decided to install a dipole for 20 meters and play on that single-band for the next twelve months. I will lose some of the advantages of the vertical, but my experience has been that horizontal antennas hear better at this frequency. I also know that 20 meters will continue to deliver global DX even as we approach solar minimum.
To that end, I’ve ordered a Diex Single-Band Full Size Rigid Rotatable Dipole DXFS20 for 20 meters. I plan to install it on a simple mast (40 feet) since it’s lightweight and adds little wind loading. With no baluns, coils, or anything else to typically fail, it should easily handle the full 1500 watts from my KPA1500.
If this works, I will be stranding myself on a single-band for the next year, however, I hope to enjoy continued DX success as Cycle 25 continues to wind down. My primary interest is getting the 2026 Bouvet Island operation in the log. What this won’t do is permit me to log them on several bands, but I figure that would be a long-shot anyway. My money is (now) on 20 meters to deliver the goods and if my DXCC Challenge numbers end up a little short due to the lack of frequency diversity, I can make those up on the downside of the cycle when I move on to the low-bands.
That should be easy pickings, I still need practically everything on 80-30 meters.