Ham Radio Wallpaper from 2012 ARRL DX Contest

One year plus about a month's delay in our usual mail forwarding scheme it took for my ARRL DX CW award certificate to arrive! I'd been wondering if I was supposed to apply for the award beyond just submitting my log.

At that time, I'd racked up over 600 Q's and calculated a max score north of 96,000, all on 40 meters. I didn't learn until later that I needn't have busted my buns quite so hard, since it turned out I was the only participant in my category from Costa Rica! HI HI! A single QSO would have won me the certificate.

2012 ARRL DX Award for Single-Band (40M)

No regrets, there, however. It was an experience unlike any I'd had before, working pile-up after pile-up, which tested my endurance (and the patience of those whose calls I had trouble decoding) and improved my skills. Always room for more improvement, of course. One area might be to reduce dups as you can see there's quite a difference in points between my estimate and the 85K I actually received.

I might have tried my hand at it again this year, but the contest snuck up on me before I knew it, so I didn't have time to prepare. Plenty of other contests throughout the year, though, at which I'd like to dip my paddles into.

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WebSDR Server New and Improved Update

A few days ago, Pieter-Tjerk de Boer, PA3FWM, e-mailed an update to the WebSDR server code, and I installed it yesterday. It's now running on my Linux box for my 30 meter Softrock II Lite SDR at the usual place: http://ti2na7u.zapto.org:8080 *. It listens via the 125 meter skyloop antenna.

30 meter band on WebSDR server

Besides bug fixes, making the server more CPU-efficient, and a few sysop features, there are a number of new user features that you may like to try:

• FM demodulation (turned off in my server)
• Memory channels, so you can store your favorite freqs.
• Volume control (slider in HTML5 browser, otherwise text)
• Squelch, which responds to modulation, not signal level, so no threshold to set.
• Automatic notch filter for SSB
• Frequencies typed in the chatbox are now clickable
• Labels on the frequency axis can have a mode and are clickable
• Option to compact the display of other listeners, so the Chatbox
    is closer to the other controls
• Removed the Java version test applet, which reduces the number of Java popups
• Noiseblanker for strong local noise spikes (admin settable)
• View last 20 log entries is again included
• Support for RTL-SDRs: cheap USB DVB-T sticks used as general-purpose amateur SDRs
• There's an experimental feature to invoke an external program to decode and report WSPR signals. (contact PA3FWM for details).
• Support for 116 kHz samplerate (needed for one specific SDR).

Enjoy and 73!

* it's usually running on weekends, Fri-Sun.

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Costa Rica Once Again Has Ham Radio Regulations

Long-time readers of Cloud Warmer have read about the ongoing saga of ham radio regulation here in Costa Rice here, here, and here. Given what appeared to be little or no effort in formulating new regulations by SUTEL to replace the obsoleted regs under a previous agency, an e-mail from AA2UP caught me a bit by surprise.

 
TI7/AA2UP sent me the following link to the new "Radio Handbook" for amateur operators in Costa Rica. It's 125 pages, including a long section they snarfed out of the Panamanian handbook of radio theory. The link goes to a big PDF and it downloads rather slowly, so don't click it, especially if you don't read Spanish: 
sutel.go.cr/Medios/Descargar/3D176AE2A190D762CD223B1276F03C8078F96BF2

Of course, AA2UP, myself, and any other expat ham here who is using a prefixed call sign was hoping they'd allow us real Tico calls, but alas. There appears to be nothing specific in the new regulations concerning that situation. They cover Costa Rican license aspirants and "temporary" aspirants. The latter can now officially operate under reciprocal permission if their home country recognizes reciprocity for Costa Rican citizens. There is no specific mention of legal residents, conditional or permanent. 

In any case, all operators are to register via  a form with SUTEL. They also want a full description of all your equipment and its location, in writing. Below the fold are some rough translations of sections relevant to resident hams such as myself. I don't see any mention of fees, but you know that that's coming soon.

A Better Diagram for the 74HC240 QRPp TX

Another example (with clearer diagram) of the 74HC240 digital IC based QRP transmitter that  I posted about previously.

74HC240 IC CW Transmitter Puts Out 500 mW

 This one also has values for the VXO capacitors. I now have the parts for this, so perhaps it will show up on the work bench soon. I've added a link to this example on the Kits and Homebrew page.

By the way, there are some great on-line circuit simulators out there, such as CircuitLab, that are a great help for hands-on homebrewers, such as me, who are still learning about electronics.  For learn-by-example hams, these simulators reduce the amount of smoke on your work bench.

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Do You Read My "life in Costa Rica" Blog?

Thank you everyone! I won the gold award, which I now proudly display on my blog, A Dull Roar. Couldn't have done it without you loyal readers! 

If you do or don't, please consider stopping by my latest post on A Dull Roar, and follow the link to Expatsblog.com to add your review and rating of ADR. Each review until 1000 UTC on the 17th adds to my total points there. Whoever amongst C.R. bloggers gets the most reviews wins a Gold Award badge for display on their blog. A minor award, for sure, but I'd like to win it just the same! :)  73, Casey

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Progress with Ten-Tec Scout 555 Mobile Installation

Modified Hamstick temporarily mounted

The last couple of days I've progressed with the installation of the Ten-Tec Scout 555 in the GMC truck. As of today, it's ready to transmit, though not while actually in motion, yet. Most of my spare time had been spent on the green cargo rack for the truck as seen in the photo to the right.

Installing the rig in the truck

Once I got back to the rig, the first step was mounting the radio in the "cage" I'd installed previously. Believe it or not, that cage is fastened to the truck with a single stainless steel hose clamp, but it seems quite immoveable. I tapped into the cigarette lighter circuit, which I'd never use otherwise, for power, and ran a ground wire to the truck's frame.

One Data Gauge for Interest in Ham Radio

This graph is from Google Trends for the search term "ham radio". The trend is clear, but what does it mean? Here's a few ideas on interpretation, please feel free to add more ideas in the comments:

• Ham radio itself as an interest is in decline
• Ham radio web resources have stabilized, so less searching is needed over time (we've got more stuff bookmarked)
• Information about ham radio is coming to hams from other sources than Google (hard to swallow for me)

What do y'all think?

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Preparing To Go Mobile With The Ten-Tec Scout 555

The new GMC truck we acquired recently is back in the shop with a 4-wheel drive problem that is mystifying the mechanics so far. While it was still at home I started preparing a home in it for my Ten-Tec Scout so that I can once again work CW mobile as I used to do many years ago. There is so much room in the cab that the radio will hardly be noticed. I've completed the bracket (really a frame) to hold the radio and have power and ground hookups and a plan for how to run the antenna coax.

Meanwhile, I've been working on the antenna and a set of paddles (yes, home-brew paddles!). Four years ago I sold off a lot of radio gear, but still brought a lot down. I guess I wasn't planning on operating mobile again at that time as the only mobile antenna I still had was a 10-meter Hamstick (now a collector's item since Lakeview is defunct).  I was going to modify it for 20 meters only, but it was just a bit more work to make it multi-band. It now tunes 40 through 17 meters used a tapped coil. The full description is captured in a Hubpages article here. 

The other problem to solve was how to send CW. The only paddles I still have are my nice ones (GHD optical and a hand-crafted set from G4ZPY) and no way are they going into the truck. A cheap set of Bencher paddles would be fine, but they'd be twice the price including shipping to get down here. So, I took a crack at making my own using hacksaw blades, and although they are ugly as sin they actually work well with good action and a light feel. Those are also described in another Hubpages article. 

Here's hoping the truck gets back home this week so that I can start the installation of the radio and antenna line!  73!

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