Sunday 18 May 2014

What a good day,,..& Lids

What a good day today was.

A last minute decision to try a bit of portable work resulted me spending a nice afternoon in the baking sun on a disused aerodrome with only sheep and ponies for company.
I started off on 20m with only limited success with just a single contact into Poland. Still very happy with that though, with just 5 watts.
Then its over to 40m for a little UK working. Bonus..there seems to be a WAB contest on.
Now I don't really like contests for the simple reason that all the QSO's are lightening fast with very little interaction with the receiving station.
But today was different. I decided to just go with the flow and make as many contacts as possible. My trump card being that no matter how weak and feeble my 5w was with the receiving station they just had to persevere, not knowing what rare and unobtainable square I could be in.
As it was I think that I was maybe in quite a good square judging by the reactions that I got on completion of the overs. So no guilt there then...

Think I will have to investigate this WAB thingy..More cash to part with & something else to take up my time.. Ha Ho.....

A good day brought to a sudden halt when my sotapole decided to drop at lightening speed breaking the insulator on my linked dipole. Think the constant variations in wind direction and speed loosened the joint.



oopps...Think a trip to B&Q tomorrow for some Unibond Plastic Repair..

Now that summer is here I think more portable working is needed. Maybe a bash at activating some easy sota summits.

The morse practice is slow but sure with me joining a shiny new club @LIDS_CW "The less involved data society" All I need to do now now is make some cw contacts. LIDS



Monday 7 April 2014

Out and about /P


The sun was out a few days ago. I know, I cant quite believe it either.


I drove over to our local disused aerodrome and tried out my new 20m/40m  linked dipole from sotabeams together with my nice shinny new sotapole.

This was to be quite a test for me as I have quite bad Rheumatoid Arthritis slowly destroying my joints, especially in my hands.

On arrival I laid out the antenna and sota pole as instructed in the youtube video by sotabeams, that I had watched several times the previous evening.

Within a few mins the antenna was up and I was on the air with very little joint pain to show for it.
I was a little concerned when I first got the pole that I would not be able to "lock" the pole sections in place with my dodgy hands. But I need not have worried, it took surprisingly little force to twist the sections into place and taking it down was just as easy.

 The linked dipole was also a breeze to use. I am a little paranoid where SWR is concerned so was interested at what results I would obtain by just "throwing" the antenna up.
Again no problems, I had an extremely good match on 20m and 40m right across the bands.
Some good cw and phone contacts on 20m and 40m followed with my little Qrp set up.



On the whole a very good result and  great products to play with.
I shall be out and about a lot more during the summer. Weather permitting.




Wednesday 12 March 2014

LOTW

It's been a while since I have Blogged here. No excuse other that the weather has been rubbish so I have been mostly indoors watching Home and away.



It seems that the thing to be working towards at the moment is your DXCC award from the ARRL
Well I thought that I would investigate.
I loaded the ARRL website and took a look at the seemingly detailed list of what you have to do to open an account.
I downloaded the software as instructed and applied for a certificate
Well that was simple I thought.

About a week later nothing had appeared in my inbox so I looked again at the website and noticed that I needed to send a copy of my Amateur license and my driving license. So off I went to copy what was required.
Before I had  posted the envelope I had an e-mail saying that my application had been rejected. :-(

Then, before you could say "LID" I received another e-mail with a valid certificate attached... strange..
I still hadn't sent the docs off to the good old USA, which confused me no end.

Right I was off. Downloading the certificate was easy but there I came to a grinding halt. No one had mentioned that I needed a logging program to upload my logs.
Another hour spent trawling the internet, opening web pages that didn't exist any more and downloading huge files from smart looking sites that then failed.
Finally I found a logging program that looked like it would do the job.

I now have UCX LOG installed and have uploaded several pages from my log to LOTW.

Although they have tried very hard to make the process as simple as possible I can't help thinking that they would benefit from someone like me who doesn't have a clue, downloading the software for them and highlight where some clearer instructions are needed. (or am I just dim)

Also, when you are up and running, it isn't obvious where everything is. Some considerable exploring and downloading of PDF files is needed to find what you are looking for. My biggest problem was that I was expecting to see a nicely laid out log something like QRZ.com not a log that you had to search for.
I should imagine that the reason for this way of working will become apparent in the future. 

As of the time of writing I am still exploring the Logbook, finding new features all the time. I can't say that it will change the way I log completely as I still love to paper log. But it will be good for the awards. (eventually)