This is a running blog of things I do to the station and some stuff done around the house that affects the station setup or contest operating. The 'TO DO' list is updated when I think of it with new projects I want/need to do. The Quick Index provides links to significant projects during the year. For previous year's blogs see the
History - Contest Scores and Stories page.
TO DO ListQuick Index:
1/1 Starting out better than last year... everything is working!
SARTG HNY Score1/2-3 While K1SFA/K1MK were running RTTY RU I cleaned up a whole pile of cables and adapters that had been piling up.
ARRL RTTY RU Score
1/7 Electrical part of generator installation was pretty well done today.
The generator after getting it off the truck and kind of leveled with some pea gravel from the bucket and trash can. The generator is a Kohler 18kw air cooled unit, it has an 80a 240v output breaker.
Where the wires are going in.
The automatic transfer panel before connecting it in to the meter or generator.
The main panel before wiring in the generator.
Generator with side panel off.
Transfer panel all wired in. The line service comes in the pipe from the meter on the right. The generator comes in the pipe from the bottom. The switched line to the inside panel is the cable going out the bottom. The meter box is a bit tight because the input is on the top and the load is on the bottom going out the pipe. to the left.
It looks better with the covers on.
In between the electrical work I also got a load of wood to finish up my bedroom walls and a long backordered shipment of ferrite toroids from Amidon.
1/8 Another busy day around the house. Rinnai service tech showed up at 8am, even though I had tried to move him to next week. Fortunately he was gone by the time the propane tech showed up to connect up the generator, that took a couple hours. Then the DirectTV tech showed up after lunch and spent an hour or so putting in a new dish and receiver. Finally around dinner time the electrician came back and we fired up the generator for a test run. It has no problem with the well pump, electric oven, dryer, or at least one amp. Will have to test with more amps later.
A little fancy plumbing to get a tap off the high pressure side of the house reducer for the generator. Wires and pipe will be buried in the spring, they are protected by some big boards and pallets for now. There are 3 cables to the generator, the big gray one for power to the panel, a small power line that runs the battery charger and carburetor heater, and a control cable from the transfer switch.
The electrician and propane plumber will be back in the spring to bury wires and create a gravel bed for the permanent placement. With the shack windows shut you can barely hear it even though its only 10' the other side of the wall. It shouldn't even be a problem if the windows were open, though mics would probably pick it up.
The after view of the main house panel. The big gray cable in the stud bay on the right is what comes in from the transfer box. In order to do this properly the transfer panel is now the 'main' panel. It has the neutral and ground tied together. The panel in the house is now a branch panel, so the electrician had to spend a couple hours putting in a separate ground bar and moving all the bare grounds from the old shared neutral/ground bus to the new separate ground bus. Now I have to clean up all the phone lines and close the wall back up. Fortunately I'll have some spare paneling as I just got the wood to finish putting tongue and groove on the last 2 walls of my bedroom, so one of the sheets I pull out of there will replace the pieces in the closet.
1/9 Put the closet back together around the electrical panel. Also cleaned up the old phone cables and connections. Set up for K1MK to do NAQP CW. Now its time to do the walls in my bedroom.
Jan NAQP CW Score1/10 Did tongue and groove on the last 2 walls of my bedroom. About 8 hours from taking down molding to putting it back up.
1/14 Ok, so this isn't exactly about radio... yet. Just wait for the first high power contest and it might be. It all started with a desire to get the local TV channels from DirectTV. After I gave up on doing it on the web site and 3 different customer service people poked at it the result was that my box couldn't handle it. So to change to a new package with the local channels they gave me a whole new system, HD-DVR and dish delivered and installed free. Plus after removing the networks I was paying for separately and the old Ultimate TV service it comes out to $10/mo less than what I was paying before... what a deal!
But my TV doesn't do HD, and its a 4:3 set, so all the HD channels are letterboxed which makes them smaller than before, and the little lump in the scan is not from the old box, its in the TV. Plus the DVD player doesn't do Blu-Ray and its display has been broken for a while. etc, etc, etc... so off to visit BestBuy today. And after one thing led to another I ended up coming home with a new Blu-Ray player, a receiver box (my old DVD included the receiver, now most of them don't), a new powered sub woofer since the receivers seem to assume that now and my old one is passive, and of course over priced HDMI cables to hook them all up since none of them come with cables. Oh, and the TV I wanted wasn't in stock and will be delivered next week... And they will take away the old monster, this could be fun to watch!
1/16 Set up for NAQP SSB for WB2JSM M/2 operation.
1/17 Jan NAQP SSB Score1/21 Exciting week in radio land. Removed Aluminum foil hat from the old TV, the new Samsung HDTV should be delivered tomorrow morning.
1/22 New HDTV installed today. Set up for BARTG RTTY Sprint for tomorrow morning.
1/23 No discernible noise from the new TV setup found on any band yet.
1/24 BARTG RTTY Sprint Score1/25 Setup up 2 radios for 160m cw contest. Setup rest of station in SO2R for later.
1/29 Finish setup for CQWW 160m CW contest. I had been playing with some usb-vga adapters to use extra monitors for grayline maps, but those machines locked up randomly during BARTG RTTY. Pulled them out and put the 19" widescreen monitor I got by mistake (it really isn't very good for normal use since the height is only 768 pixels) on the skimmer server to run DXAtlas on. It works good for that since its best on a wide screen.
1/30 Found that the NW Beverage box output is dead. Ordered a new box and preamp to try out from DX Engineering. That way I can have a spare on hand in the future. Temporarily connected both wires to one input terminal so the SE output is bidirectional for now.
1/31 It was a nice day and NJ1F showed up but couldn't operate until near the end of the 160m contest so we took down and repaired the NW/SE Beverage box. There was a broken wire on one of the transformers, I soldered in
a short piece of wire and its working fine again. The replacement box will be kept as a spare when it arrives.
CQWW 160m CW Score
2/4 Setting up for FOC Marathon for N2KW. The first red tape of the winter... the top 40m ring is stuck. Inspection with telescope doesn't show any problems. But motor current is high, with my ear on the tower I can hear it trying. Best guess is that one of the motors is jammed. Have spare motor set to go if WX forecast holds I should have a couple hours in the morning without much wind.
Received DX Engineering spare Beverage box and preamp. The case style has changed a bit on the Beverage box, the top is now plastic but with a , but it still pretty hefty.
2/5 Went up tower at dawn before wind came up. Replaced one of the top ring rotor motors on the 40m tower.
What the well dressed tower climber is wearing this season... Lucky dog doesn't seem to care about the temperature. It was a relative heat wave at 16f with winds slowly rising to 5-10mph by the time I was coming down. I'm glad I didn't opt to tie up the hood before going up, it would have been too warm. I did take up 3 pairs of gloves, I only used the mid weight pair.
The motor taken down, autopsy to be performed later.
2/6 Motor taken down from top 40m ring works ok on ground. Sent back to TIC General anyway to have them check it out.
2/7 While N2KW was playing FOC Marathon I cleaned up and swapped tool cabinets so the bigger one is in the shack with the good stuff in it and the smaller one is now in the bedroom with all the little used stuff.
2/10 Setup SO2R RTTY for K1SFA for WPX RTTY.
2/13 Installed DX Engineering RPA-1 preamp and SDR-IQ on 160m Beverage line after the RIP-1. Found one of the annoying birdies at about 1843. It was actually 2 of the MM-3 keyers contributing to it... very stable clocks in those things from the traces on the SpectraVue waterfall. There is some other noise that is raspy and unstable that seems to be related to when the second radio amp is keyed on the SO2R station.
2/15 Started setup for ARRL DX CW.
WPX RTTY Score 2/18 more setup for ARRL DX CW.
2/19 finish setup for ARRL DX CW.
ARRL DX CW Score 2/25 Start setup for CQ 160m SSB for W1EQO S/O and NAQP RTTY for K1SFA M/2. Big snow yesterday, see full story at:
BIG Blizzard2/26 Broke snow blower gearbox trying to clean up big plow pile by mailbox. Set up for CQ 160m SSB. W1EQO gave up on trying to get up RT-9 because of snow/ice. Did a little playing around myself. He may come up Saturday and W2GB may be up then also.
2/27 Setting up for NAQP RTTY. 20m bottom ring rotor indicator pot appears open. Can still turn it by jumpering the indicator and watching position out the window. 10m bottom ring rotor motor appears open, is pointing East, it can just stay there till it warms up a bit.
Feb NAQP RTTY Score
CQ 160m SSB Score 3/5 Set up for ARRL DX SSB. Went skiing around Beverages, more small branches that have been hung up in the trees since last winter fell down but nothing big enough to do any damage.
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