So hang on to your wallet!
I spent yesterday morning at the Algonquin Amateur Radio Club’s flea market, held in a pair of cafeterias inside Marlborough Middle School in Marlborough, MA.
It’s the first major flea market/hamfest of the year up he-ah in Noo Englahnd. And while I did spent a few bucks on a nice set of headphones for the shack, it’s becoming clear as I get out to more of these that a big part of the draw is making eye contact with folks usually limited to RF contact.
A Vibroplex Original Standard, circa 1963. I picked up this bug off of eBay last year and finally got around to cleaning up a week or two ago. While the base shows some "antique" dings, the chrome still takes quite a shine! The "tail"? A pendulum extension with weights to s-l-o-w down the bug for us newbies.
My ham-radio Elmer, the late, great Jim Hatherly, WA1TBY, was a die-hard Morse-code man. He learned the art in the merchant marine during World War 2 and he only got better with age.
No electronic sending for him. Instead, he used a semi-automatic key, or bug, and could rip along at high speeds with the best of them
After several years using straight keys, I bought a used Vibroplex bug off of eBay to see what all the fuss might have been about.
I’m hooked.
Sending readable CW with a bug is not as hard as I thought it would be, and frankly, the combination of sending automatic dits and individually crafted dahs keeps a operator on his or her toes throughout a chat over the ether.
For the uninitiated, the operator moves the bug’s arm side to side via the paddles up front. Each dah must be made with individual motions. But the dits? Those come automatically, via a contact on a U-shaped leaf spring, attached to a spring-flexed pendulum. Move the arm in the dit direction and the dit contact bounces against its contact post until you’ve sent all the dits you need or the pendulum runs out of energy, whichever comes first.
Trust me. “All the dits you need” comes way first!
I’ll share my meager (so far) experience in the hope of encouraging more hams to give a bug a try…more than once!
What 5 watts through an attic dipole might get you on 17 meters from MA with a sunspot number of 39, courtesy of Ham CAP.
Who among the ranks of QRP operators hasn’t heard the question: Can you really get out with that?
We low-power enthusiasts nod, tell a few tales (including tales of the ones that got away if we’re really on the up and up), and reassure our inquisitor that, yes, you, too, can make enough contacts to keep yourself busy as an amateur-radio operator.
Even so, sometimes it’s useful, even inspiring, to take a broader look at what QRPers can accomplish when they know their gear and how to ride the (solar) winds to take advantage of the best path to that distant ham-radio station they are trying to reach. (I know, mangled metaphor and run-on sentence!)
Wonderful handcrafted tie, a Christmas present from my daughter Jessica. She said something about the need to honor the geek within. Would that I had a tower like that!
Chowdercon's pivot point: a fashionably late lunch at Geno's, where chowdah and lobstah rolls rock!
“Chowdercon, Chowdercon,
Please let me know wha-at bands you’re on.”
–With apologies to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice
The short take for yesterday’s Chowdercon 2011?
Good eats, great companions, 26 contacts for the log with a nice mix of US and DX stations, some chats with passers-by, including conversations with kids who tapped the Morse-code key, and one more park for Parks on the Air.
Oh yes, and a poor guy who, at the end of the day, wrapped up an otherwise relaxing hour of kite-flying with the loss of a $150 kite.
Last year, while some of us toodled off to lunch, others held down the fort during QRP Afield on Four Tree Island
Ok, ham-radio fun devils, here comes another chance to dust off the portable radio and take it to the streets, in an RF sort of way. It’s the New England QRP Club’s QRP Afield event, which runs this weekend from 1500 UTC Sept. 17 to 0300 UTC Sept. 18. And you don’t have to operate QRP to take part!
For a quick run-down of the rules, I’ve unashamedly cribbed from the NEQRP Club’s web site. Saves you an extra mouse click. Any typos here are mine!
Exchange:
NE-QRP members: RST, State/province/country, NE-QRP Number
Non members: RST, State/province/country, Power
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Bands and Modes:
160M, 80M, 40M, 20M, 15M, 10M.
Any mode (CW, SSB, AM, PSK, etc.); all count the same.
Only one contact per station per mode per band.
Standard QRP frequencies are recommended within each band (or generally accepted frequencies for those modes for which there are no specific QRP frequencies). But, please, let’s spread out a little — not everyone within a kilohertz of 14.060.
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Scoring:
Power/Location Multiplier:
All contacts must be made from a single power/location category (i.e., the category is to remain the same once selected).
Final score will be the total number of contacts multiplied by the power/location category multiplied by the SPC multiplier (see below).
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Multipliers:
Each S/P/C worked counts for one multiplier point and can be counted only ONCE PER BAND.
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Submission of Results:
Email your scoresheet with a copy of the contest log and (please) any comments/photos concerning your setup, location, experiences, etc., no later than 20 October, to: K1CL@arrl.net
or mail your entry to:
Chuck Ludinsky, K1CL
6 Pracing Rd
Chelmsford MA 01824-1922
For printable summary sheet, click here.
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Multi-Club Stations:
Will not be permitted. That is, simultaneous operation of multiple transmitters (on the same or different bands) under a single call sign is not permitted. However, multi-operators per club call is fine, with one transmitter in operation at a time.
I’ll be out with members of the NEQRP club at Four Tree Island at Portsmouth, N.H., as W1PNS/1. Join us in the field and on the air, if not at the island!
Ah, a bowl of chowder, Four Tree Island, and thou, oh CW paddle!*
It’s b-a-a-ck! Chowdercon 2011 is 11 days away, and I can smell the ocean now. It sure beats musty socks!
To recap: Chowdercon is a breakfast-to-dinner affair with a heaping helping of QRP operating in between. This year, the date is Sept. 17. The event coincides with QRP Afield, a 12-hour operating event organized by the New England QRP Club. That’s where the operating comes in.
Chowdercon is about as sure a sign that fall is around the corner up here in New England as just about anything this side of migrating geese. You can pick up one ham’s recap of last year’s event here. This year promises to be even better. Why? Who knows? But it’s hard to beat the combination of friends and acquaintances, some fresh-air operating, and great eats.
And after last year’s sartorial surprise (one club member showed up in a kilt, aye, but nae pipes), you never quite know what you’re going to see.
The gig starts with breakfast at 8 a.m. EDT at the Golden Egg restaurant in Portsmouth. From there, folks meander to Four Tree Island in the Piscataqua River to set up and begin operating about 11, when QRP Afield starts, then break for lunch at Geno’s Chowder & Sandwich Shop, a short walk from the island.
And just where is that island? (in case you want to skip breakfast)?
View Larger Map
Four Tree Island, a municipal park, shuts down around 5 p.m., so folks typically pack up and head for the Kittery, Maine, side of the river for dinner at Warren’s Lobster House. For additional details, you can get in touch with Carl Achin, WA1ZCQ.
It’s a great way to spend a late-summer Saturday. And who knows? With all these smart phones proliferating, it should be easy to call up QRPSPOTS.com (no relation to Pete Spotts), and see who’s operating Summits and Parks on the Air that weekend. Snag some QRP Afield points and some SOTA points at the same time!
Sweet!
* Photo courtesy of PDPhoto.org.
The NEQRP Club's NEScaf audio filter, packaged for the road.
Traveling light with my FT-817ND or my KX1 is great fun. Both have nice, tight IF filters for use with stations sending Morse code. But I’ve learned through operations at home that the New England QPR Club’s NEScaf audio filter can bring out the best in those filters, and visa versa.
So off I sent for another kit — and an Altoids tin to house it — for portable operations. What, another chick magnet?? (See this post, paragraph 13-ish, for an explanation.)
If you’re familiar with the NEScaf filter you’ll notice that one control knob is missing. If you’re not familiar with these, I’ll give you a hint: One control knob is missing.
I’ve found that I rarely, nay, never change the center frequency, which is what the missing control does. At the same time, I’d read accounts from others who tried to pack the as-kitted filter into an Altoids tin. Once all the knobs and switches were installed, you needed truly thin fingers to operate the filter. Discouraged, these folks would remount the electronics in a large box.
How long will this 7.2 amp-hour battery really last?? Try the updated version of this battery-capacity estimator.
The “open sourced” battery-capacity estimator, a.k.a Stone Soup, has just received another tweak to improve its accuracy, thanks to Moe Riggins, AB8XA, Terry Fletcher, WA0ITP, and “an interested user of the spreadsheet,” whoever he or she may be. You can download the update here:
Battery-capacity_estimator_for_portable_ops
Many thanks to these contributors, who have taken the concept much farther than my newbie’s understanding of batteries allowed me to take it!
A pad and pen, a key and radio, and thou. My set-up for July 31's Flight of the Bumble Bees at King Street Memorial Playground in Franklin, MA.
Ah, the window has closed on Flight of the Bumble Bees 2011 — one of the most anticipated outdoor operating events for low-power enthusiasts during the year. Thanks for the contacts, folks!
For me, it was a low-intensity event. I set up at King Street Memorial Playground in Franklin, MA. It’s about two miles from home. A nice change after various excursions across the state to activate state parks for Parks on the Air.
I picked the site in large part because, aside from proximity to a shower, the park hosts trees with sufficient spacing that I could set up my Norcal doublet, instead of operating with a wire vertical antenna. Or so I thought.
