Sunday, April 06, 2025

The VG4 is up

 Finally got the new antenna, the VG4, up and running. Mostly, because the Imax has apparently opened up it's coil.  Gotta break that down and see what happened The poor thing is nigh on 30 years old, so, I did get my money's worth out of it.  Still like to know what happened, though.


Anyway, the new antenna is a Xingu VG4... ostensibly a four band trap antenna... designed to work on 40, 20,15, and 10m. Oddly enough, it works on 6 as well, as you'll see.  The thing is ideal for small lot installations, RV/POTA work, Field days and so on.  zI've got a very tiny back yard so this was ideal for me.

Here's the specs:

Use frequency band: 7/14/21/28MHz (40m/20m/15m/10m)
Axial length: about 7.8m | 25.6ft
Radial length: about 2.7m | 8.8ft
Maximum power handling: 1000W PEP (CW500W, RTTY300W)
Antenna impedance: 50Ω
VSWR:<1.5:1
Antenna bandwidth: 40m: 150kHz / 20m: 450kHz / 15m: 800kHz / 10m: 1000kHz
Rated wind speed: 35 m/s
Antenna interface type: SL16-K
Weight: about 7.0kg | 15.4lb
Package size: 13x13x120cm | 0.4x0.4x3.9ft
Erection height: the distance from the ground is more than 3m (10ft)

Mine is mounted on 15ft worth of Aluminum masting.

With three folks working it took about 2 hours, click to clunk. Everything is well marked. Antenna looks very strong indeed, and gives me some confidence that it will put up with the winds around here.

Didn't get a chance to do a sweep from the shack until the next day, and here's the results.

SWR sweep, 40m:

Freq:   7.001        7.100        7.2        7.3

SWR 1.0             2.6         3.6            5.5

Obviously, the 40m element will need to be shortened.   Just as obviously, the Q on this band is quite a bit higher on the others. The spec shows 15KHz.... though I suspect it's usable outside that once you get it trimmed up.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

The Contest Blues

 I dunno what exactly it is, but I always get a little discouraged on contest weekends. Actually, I take that back. I can't get on the air as much as I'd like.

Oh, with the audio I'm running, I can bust a pile with the best of them, and if I were able to spend the duration of the contest without annoying my family, or taking time off from work, I might do fairly well, despite my station's limitations. A prime example is the CQ SSB contest this weekend. More than once I've heard what sounded for all the world like one of those spy "numbers" stations. The voice on the signal was obviously computerized, and spliced together by the computer to serve the purpose. I can only assume a high degree of automation in the shack there for logging and other controls such as CAT.

Before you start,  I'm by no means objecting to using computers in the shack.  I've often argued for such use in the forums.  I'm sure some of the older hands consider me a PITA on the point. But when that computer voice announces less than 6 hours into the contest (at S9+25dB)  that their latest contact is number 1747, it strikes me as overkill.  What is a more casual operator to do?


Well,  the first obvious answer is you lose the contest. There's no way in the Lord's EM spectrum that someone not running full legal power feeding a beam or four stacked, and a multi-seat operator.... and a few computers, is going to win anything. I'd like to get a ragchew or, at least do some "grid bingo." No such luck, I'm afraid. You're not going to find a quiet frequency to establish yourself on, either.  

 

As an example,a few weeks ago with the 10m 'test we were seeing wall to wall operators, some over the top of each other, others a kc and a half off, ... from 28.3 to 28.7  

Yeah, I know, I could go to one of the WARC bands. Thing is, there's nobody there, because of... (You guessed it) ...the contest.  So, depending on my mood, I either get generous and pass out a few points to the big guns, (And if I'm lucky get a grid or entity I need)  or simply shut the rig down for another day. Usually, there's a contest going on that day, too.

 There doesn't seem to be much of an answer for this problem... and I can't help but think I'm not alone in observing it.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

It's not the callsign that denotes prestige, it's the operator



I was recently asked how I came by my 1*3 callsign. This came as a part of a discussion on one of the Ham radio forums, wherein an older gent complaining that there is little in the way of prestige  for callsigns anymore, since we're allowed vanity calls and not forced to change callsigns when we move to a different call zone, etc.  I'm not sure I buy either of those arguments.

But before getting into that, here's how I managed to come up with my chosen vanity call...

With the encouragement of some of the local "ham radio royalty" if you will in my neighborhood I applied for my 1x3 call sign when I had only been a technician for about a month.

(This gent, it should be noted,is a long time holder of an extra, and who retains the callsign he was originally assigned at random when he got his general back when Grok was hammering out licenses with a hammer and chisel in stone tablets. 😁😁😁)

I suppose there are those who would shake their head over that my getting the call so early in my Ham radio career, but my reasoning was that I wanted to print some QSL cards, and I didn't want to have to print a second batch when my call sign changed, which I was determined it was going to happen one way or the other, eventually. That thought was solidified by the oncoming policy changes which would have cost me $35, even assuming the call was available when I finally decided to pursue it.

As you've probably figured, the suffix on my call is my initials. I grabbed it when I did because I figured... with some convincing by the aforementioned local royalty, that the chances were pretty good that it wouldn't be available when I finally decided I was worthy of it. Thing is, I had that backwards.

After I attained this call, I actually did some research on the previous holder of the call, and best I can determine the holder of that call was an amateur from the Brooklyn New York area back in 1956.  I only found one rather vague reference to this call, and looking back as this is written, I can't find it, now, sadly.


Given that, it seems the safe assumption that the original holder of this call sign is SK by now. All I can do I suppose is to hope that I'm doing his call Justice. I say that because I figure the only prestige that my call sign indicates is the prestige that I bring to it with my operations.  

And that's going to be the thrust of my post, today.... I have found over the past few years,  I respectfully submit today, that the only thing that brings prestige to your operations, isn't your callsign, it's your operations themselves.   

Yes, it is true that often the holders of 1x2 calls, for example, often are very classy operators, but in my experience, there is no direct connection there. One call hold a 1x2 call (for example) and be a complete anus.  I've worked a few such people... something I suppose we've all run into at one time for another.  On the other hand, as an example of the opposite end of the band,  I consider the gent I mentioned earlier to be among the classiest  operators I know... and someone with whom I've enjoyed a wonderful friendship over the past few years.

I wanted the call I have because I thought it brought a personal touch.... and it was fairly easy to obtain.  But.... and I stress this, by repeating myself....the only prestige that my call sign indicates is the prestige that I bring to it with my operations. 

Think of it this way.... Your callsign, however derived, is your on-air name. It's how you identify yourself and your station. But... and I stress this....  what is at least equally... and probably more important is that your on air activities also identify you. They are what gives the reputation, and the prestige, not the call itself.  

Ham radio would be far better as a whole were we to keep that in mind when we activate that little red light. .

73,

de K2ENF

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Artificial intelligence?

 There is a lot of idle chatter and speculation about the supposed AI and it's uses in Ham radio on the Ham Radio forums, just now. I've become involved in one such discussion this week on QRZ.


I am reminded of Donald Fagens "IGY"...


The money lines from the tune, in this context, are these:


"Just machines will make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision.

We'll be clean when their work is done... We'll be eternally free and eternally Young."
That was the vision back in 1958, the so-called " international geophysical year".


Overly optimistic, certainly. But there is always a certain reality detachment attached to such optimism, if for no other reason than we don't fully understand what the reality ahead of us IS. but consider the context of the time: After the horrors and sacrifices of WWII, there hardly seemed to be anything we couldn't accomplish.  

And there's a subtle point nestled in those lyrics, written in 1981, with the added understanding that hindsight brings:  For the machine to be effective toward the stated goal, it needs to know know what's going on, what's good, what's bad, what's fact, what's fiction, etc, someone has to teach the machine.

Indeed, I hold that AI simply doesn't exist... not as such; That AI only knows what we tell it.  The very reason we usually don't put functional legs on computers is that they'll march off a cliff if we tell it to.... they know nothing at all beyond what we tell them. 


So the question then becomes this: Since computers especially large ones can make human mistakes with much greater speed and efficiency, the question must be raised, who do we trust to teach the machines, and who do we trust to monitor their output?

For example, do we trust the Chinese communists? Do we trust the Russians? A pertinent question, since both are heavily invested in software creation, and would certainly bend the facts there software is allowed to divulge to reflect their own worldview and will.

For that matter do we trust the American government? Any of those seems to me destined for immediate failure.. in the form of fact-checking on steroids. You want to talk about mind control, ultimately? That's what we're looking at here under those circumstances.

And look by no means am I playing the Luddite here. I'm not suggesting at all that we should shove the technology up on the shelf someplace and ignore it. It's here. We're not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.That forces us to consider the large number of philosophical and moral questions to address as this thing grows.
 

That said, there's a major difference between using AI to aid you in the shack, and using AI to run the world. So we don't have to worry about A HAL or a WOPPER launching all missiles just yet. 

Indeed, a lot of you are already using some form of AI in your chack if you have any degree of computer in your rack.  Those of you who are using grid tracker are already using AI of a sort when it predicts what the MUF is going to be for a given area of the world. You're already using AI of a sort when it spell checks you as you're (mis)-typing.



In the end, just about any computer operation, regardless what you call it,  is some level of AI which in turn is little more than a series of if/then statements.

I suppose we can argue about how much in the way of if /then constitutes what we now call AI.... at what point does the machine "wake up"... But in my view, AI has been coming for some time and growing.

Some of you will remember that I have already mentioned that I run a heavily computerized shack. I find it a very effective way to operate.

That said caution is advised. There's a limit to how far I plan on taking this.


Saturday, November 30, 2024

Ya gotta wonder, sometimes

I'm banging away on FT8 10 m this morning and I see a CQ SOTA coming from an N3 call. It usually takes a second for my system to resolve new calls as they come up. And this one resolved to Erie Pennsylvania.

Well, you can imagine the look on my face wondering how in the heck he managed to get up a mountain in the weather they've got down there, today, as evidenced by this pic I've included that was taken at Erie this morning.


Turns out he was out in California, as revealed by the SOTA website. That made a lot more sense on two levels. The band would have to be running awfully short to get 12 DB over the noise level from Erie from rochster, and Erie is up to their pips in snow and the West Coast was coming in pretty strong anyway.

But man....
it had me going for a minute.

Friday, November 29, 2024

The hole in the pattern



 What you see above, is where my signals have been heard, in the last 24 hours.
Not too bad. A litle disappointing, though, that there's such a large hole over China and India, etc.
More power, apprently, won'

t t solve the problem, because I'm not hearing any operators from these areas, despite there beinga  fair number of Ham operators in that area, particularly in India. Oh, well. You do what you can.

My FT* operations

I'll give you a quickie overview of my FT*  operations, in response to several questions on the topic.

My big shack computer is being rebuilt, so at the moment, I'm running a mini-PC, running Windows 10 with 2 screens.  This is the PC I have connected to my Yaesu FT991a.  Understand that the graphic below is actually a capture of both screens at once. This is the normal digital config I've been running for quite a while now. It's been quite effective for me.



On the far left, is the main screen for WSJT-X. To it's immediate right is  WIN4YEASU, which controls the radio itself via CAT.  It also makes available com port repeaters, so as to allow both WIN4YAESU and several other packages to run simultaneously.  As you can see, all the controls normally hidden on the 991's main screen are right up front on WIN4YAESU.... which is why I speak so highly of it.

Immediately below that, is the waterfall from WSJT-X.  That should be self explanatory to anyone who has run FT*.

Then we move to the right hand screen.

The biggest window is GridTracker's main screen.  This keeps updating with what the system is hearing and where you're being heard in real time.

Upper right is the current roster of active stations that you've not contacted yet.  The system uses a local copy of my QRZ logs to determine what is on that list,
 

 Below that is the station I'm currently working.

My bigger computer, once it's rebuild process is completed, will maintain 4 screens in pretty much the same basic config.
.