Parting with Old Faithful MFJ949D

I am about to ship my trusty MFJ949D to W5GTL in South Dakota. I had worked ARRL WAS Mixed Mode #55,400 and worked 48 states QRP and 73 DX entities with that tuner in a short span of 2 years. I have only been licensed as a General Class since April of 2009. My first contacts were SSB with the Kenwood TS830S. I probably worked 2/3 of the 50 states with that radio. I acquired a yaesu FT897D in March 2010 and proceeded to bag a fair number of states using PSK. In October of 2010 I started to use CW as my main operating mode and have been able to get the most difficult states SD and AK using that mode. Since then I operate mostly CW and got most of my DX entities and 48 states using CW and stateside - mostly at 5 watts. Good bye to the old MFJ manual tuner.

QRP WAS Update and Other Things

Picked up 4 new states during the North American QSO Party: Oklahoma, Utah, Montana, and Delaware. State count is now up to 48 worked and 40 confirmed by QSL cards. Only missing the usual suspects - AK and ND.

Did reasonably well during the NAQCC Sprint in July. I would have done much better if I had used a straight key with the 2X multiplier but I am so bad with a straight key

Did the Spartan Sprint in early August and submitted my results. The results are below. I placed second in the TUBBY category.

South Coast Amateur Radio Service

Checked into the South Coast Amateur Radio Service

Their URL is http://southcars.com/main/ncs_schedule

Membership Number is forthcoming

Ariel

IARU Worldwide DX Contest CW

I made about 50 contacts during the contest. The benefits for participating included two new additional states QRP - CA and NM plus a few more new DX contacts.

Case for the K2

See the K2 Project Page for details

K2 is Done!!!!!

Made three contacts so far KS4L - Huntsville AL AQP Contest; W4AN, Columbus GA, AQP Contest; and first ragchew on the K2 with KT4CW Scott in Brewton, AL.

CW Meetup tonight with KJ4YQK and W4DJW in the following frequencies:

3540 on 80 meters is primary
7030 on 40 meters is the alternate

TIME: Around 9 PM after net check-in

K2 is Practically Done

Except for a missing capacitor and an RF Choke which I broke while desoldering, the K2 is ready for the final alignment and test. Everything has worked out so far and knock on wood - I hope it will continue to do so. Accumulated time for the build has been 80 hours for the basic radio. The options I plan to install are as follows:

Noise Blanker
Single Side Band Module
Automatic Antenna Tuner
160 m receive and extra antenna receive jack
Audio filter
Internal 2900 mA-hr battery

All the modules are ready to build. The battery kit has already been finished

Added New Link for VK2DX K2 Project

This is by far the best photo-documentation of a K2 build I have ever seen and it is by VK2DX and the link is on http://www.vk1aa.com/K2/k2.html

K2 Project Started

Work has been really, really busy and I have just a little amount of time to dedicate to radio activities. But at least, I started the K2 project and did some soldering of the control board. There are not many pictures to share yet as I only have been able to solder a few components. I have added some new links related to building the K2 and these are really helpful. You can read my K2 page for a detailed update on the project.

Worldwide DX Contest and K2 Project

Two weeks ago or thereabouts was the worldwide DX contest - 2/19 and 2/20. I was able to add 30 new DX entities while working 82 DX stations.

I got Hawaii twice. Once was on 40m QRP and the other time was on 15m QRO.

I have not had too much HF operation of late. I have not even started building the K2. I built a work table on which to build the K2 on. The table is finished and now it is just the time commitment that is necessary.

Closing Out January

I have not posted in a while - 2 weeks. It does not look like I will get the K3Y/6 station as I had wanted. I had taken my rig to PA with a Buddistick Vertical and it appears totally deaf right now. I don't know if it is the snow cover, the atmospheric conditions or what but I could not hear anything. So I miss being on the air. I also missed the CW training net on Saturday mornings.

During the month long event, I have contacted 27 K3Y stations (some are duplicate) and got a bunch of region 7 at QRP power. I have contacted every region except for W6.

On 1/22 I heard WU0L calling CQ. He hails from SD so I was excited to get only my second SD contact. WU0L is vacationing in Weslaco TX so it is not to be a SD contact but a second TX contact with the same station.

On 1/22 I made a phone contact with J79XB1 - Seth Sjostrom (who hails from Sweden) from the DX entity Dominica near Guadeloupe in the Carribean Sea. On the same evening I called Peter Horvath HA8RM in Hungary also on phone. I was at QRO power levels for both at 100 watts.

I worked the NAQCC Sprint on 1/20 and was able to bag a couple more new states at QRP power AR and AL both in region 4. My exchanges were clumsy and inefficient and was only able to muster about 15 QSOs in 2 hours which is a little bit below middle of the pack after having reviewed the Sprint results. It was still a lot of fun though and was cited in the NAQCC newsletter as a first timer.

Recent Contacts

Still Only 41 DX entities now,
33/50 states worked QRP - 5 more than last update
50/50 states worked - waiting QSL from SD - 49 confirmed

SKCC has the 5th Anniversary Special Event during the month of January and 89 operators are calling from all over the country. I made 13 contacts and got 9 out of 10 calling regions. I am only missing region 6 (CA) which would make a complete sweep. I used QRP power for most of the contacts unless QRM or poor band conditions warranted. I did get some hard states QRP - Wyoming and Washington - in the process.

I plan to work more region 7 and region 0 in the coming days to fill the QRP holes and I expect to work AK, HI, CO, UT, ID, NV and of course CA.

I did not work DX the last few days as I concentrated on SKCC special event QSO's

Recent Contacts

1/11/2011 update

Well the logbook is starting to fill out - 41 DX entities now,
28/50 states worked QRP (just sent a massive mailing of QSL cards)
50/50 states worked - waiting QSL from SD

S59A - Drago from Slovenia - only interested in low band DX - got him on 80m CW. Does not QSL unless specifically requested - think will send him one. He has an interesting QTH on a hilltop near the Austrian border. This one send either witha bug or a straight key as he really accentuates the dash in "A".

V5/DH2HD - German Michael Borsch sending from Namibia - broke into a phone pileup on 40m. he was booming in with his beam. Got so excited that he came back to me that I forgot to give him my state - just thanked him for the 59. Tried to chase him as he said he would change modes to RTTY - but could not break thru - not very experienced in RTTY and just did not have the macros to be effective. My PSK macros just would not cut it.

SV1ENG - Antonis from Greece - second contact with this station - both on 40m.

LZ2VU - Peter from Bulgaria and second Bulgarian contact, but Peter is the first on 40m.

YV5DRN - Venezuela and his name is Leandro - first CW contact with this DX 40m, the other 2 were 20m CW and 20m PSK

Worked a couple of K3Y/N special event stations for SKCC - and I got region 1 and region 7 stations - one in MA and the other in WA. There are 8 other stations for all 10 calling regions - if I can find all ten - I get an award from the SKCC.

From a couple of days ago 1/8/2011......

Z35T - Macedonia - his name is Ozren - 40m CW

IS0HQJ - Sardinia - Francesco is his name - 40m CW

EI9JF - Nicky from Ireland - 40m CW

OM1XQ - Patrik from Slovakia - 40m CW

VP9HW - Stephen from Bermuda - 40m CW

Last but not least - KB0KBJ - Steve Olson in South Dakota. This proved difficult but Steve and I were able to connect. First we tried phone - on both the 40 and 20 meter bands - no copy. We tried CW on 40 meters and after much effort we were able to hear very faint signals of each other - call signs and exchanged signal reports. SD is the last state for WAS for me.

Finally Worked Alaska

One day short of the end of the year - KL7J was calling CQ on 7.005. K4MLW sent me a txt message saying thus - dial flew to 7.005. Buttons were pushed to increase power from QRP to full barefoot power and called KL7J. He came back giving a 449 report while I gave him a 559. It was a feeding frenzy during the pile-up. KL7J was pretty quick in reponding to the stations in almost machine gun fashion. Now it is just South Dakota

Recent Contacts

Looking at the Logbook:

224 Log Entries
Worked 48 states Mixed Mode
Worked 21 states QRP (5 watts)
Worked 25 DX Entities (1 QRP Bulgaria)

Recent Contacts:

CO2UE from Havana, Cuba - Band 80m 12/29CW : He must have been putting out some power as he came in loud. He could not copy me very well at 5 watts. Got my call sign though and gave a 325 signal report. I increased power to 70 watts and gave me a 569. Short QSO just a brief exchange of pleasantries.

WA9VEE Wayne from Indiana - 12/29 - Band 40m CW: We exchanged reports then he dropped off when I said I was QRP. I found him later in 80m but did not bother to contact him again

LU7yZ - Alejandro from Argentina - 12/28 - Band 20m CW: This was a contest that I was able to sneak in on

HC6EP - Ernesto - Ecuador - 12/28 - Band 20m PSK:

LU5CAB - Juan - Argentina - 12/28 - Band 20m PSK:

KP4RY - Abimael - Puerto Rico - 12/28 - Band 20m PSK:

HP2SM - Santiago - Panama - 12/28 - Band 20m PSK:

W7GVE - Ed - Arizona - 12/28 Band 20m CW QRP:

ZS2CR - Collette - South Africa - 12/28 - band 20m PSK: This was a notable one in that it took a while for us to make the exchange. She is YL - QSL direct only - plenty of apologies for not doing eQSL or LOTW