KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Random thoughts and ideas: If I’d only…, embedded Python programming, get a free email.radio email address

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If I’d only kept my butt in the chair a little longer…

…I might have come in first in the QRP category for the 2023 Michigan QSO Party. I only operated for 7-1/2 hours, not all 12 hours.

Embedded Python programming resources

Python programming is popular for AI, web, and amateur radio applications, and it can also be used for embedded applications. Here’s a list of articles from electronic design on programming in Python:

Get a free email address from email.radio

The email.radio website says,

email.radio is dedicated to providing free email hosting for all licensed ham radio operators (globally). You will get a (free!) email @email.radio address, that is 1GB, which you can ask to expand later on.

Unlike the ARRL forwarding service this appears to be a real email account. I’ve just applied for an address, and I’ll post here with my experience once I’ve got it.

ICQ Podcast Episode 405 – CW Innovations

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In this episode, I joined Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT and Edmund Spicer M0MNG to discuss:

For this episode’s feature, I interviewed Glenn, W4YES, and Terri, KO4WFP, of CW Innovations. CW Innovations doesn’t teach Morse Code classes, but rather they offer classes that they say will teach you how to learn Morse Code. The key to CW Innovations’ method is that they focus on instant character recognition, which they say is to getting better at Morse Code. The feature starts at the 1:02:00 mark.

Operating Notes: 2023 Michigan QSO Party

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The 2023 Michigan QSO Party took place last Saturday, April 15. This year, I did something different. Instead of operating from home, where there are plenty of Washtenaw County stations, I decided to activate a less-populated county. Friends of my wife and I have a place near the beautiful Tawas Point State Park, and they graciously allowed us to use their place for the weekend. So, I packed up my KX-3 and headed “up north,” as we say here in Michigan.

The weather really cooperated. Like with most of the northern tier states, April weather can be hit and miss. Friday, it was sunny and in the 70s. On Saturday, it was bit cooler, but still sunny and nice.

We arrived in Tawas about 12:30 pm, stopped for lunch, and then headed over to the house. After unpacking the car, we put on some sunscreen and headed over to the beach. Being a weekday at the end of April, we had the beach all to ourselves. We walked around a bit, then unfolded our chairs and got an early start on our summer tans.

After heading back to the house, I set up my 66-ft. doublet antenna. My friend’s house has a couple of trees that were just about perfect for this. I was able to get the lines up about 20 feet with no problem at all. The wires drooped over the ends a bit, but that was OK.

Then, I set up the radio to check out the bands. The Friday afternoon edition of the K1USN SST was on, and 20-meter band conditions were pretty good, so I was able to make a number of contacts pretty easily.

Then, I decided to check out 15 meters, where I ran across N0GRA calling CQ. I answered his call, and we had a nice 25-minute ragchew, something that’s kind of unusual when you’re running low power.

After our QSO, I decided to set up the laptop that I brought with me (I  normally use the desktop computer in my shack, but hauling that up north wasn’t an option) and test it out with the keyer and KX-3. I had tested this setup at home, but Murphy has a way of screwing things up, doesn’t he? I didn’t want to be flailing around at noon Saturday, trying to get everything to work.

Sure enough, I ran into a snag. Without an internet connection, I couldn’t sign in to the Windows 10 computer, and the house didn’t have WiFi. Yikes! After doing a little Internet searching, I found out that I could use a program called netplwiz to disable the need to enter a password, but I still had to sign in to run that program. The solution was to use my wife’s iPhone as a hotspot, sign in to the computer, and then run netplwiz and disable the need for a password. There was a lot more flailing involved, but I’ll spare you that part of the story.

After getting the station all set up and running, Silvia and I spent the rest of the evening watching “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” using the iPhone to stream the video.

I woke up early the next morning to a beautiful sunrise over Lake Huron:

The sunrise at this time of year is even more spectacular than during the summer because the trees haven’t leafed out yet.

I ate some breakfast and read some until noon, when I fired up the rig and got on the air. I got permission to use our club call sign again, so I was operating as W8RP. I have used KB6NU in the past, but it’s really better to use an 8-land call sign in the Michigan QSO Party.

I thought I’d start out on 20 meters, but unfortunately conditions weren’t as good as they were on Friday, and after 20 minutes, I’d only managed one contact with a station in Oregon. I could hear a bunch of DX stations, but they were all operating the CQMM DX Contest.

So, I switched to 40 meters. Normally, the antenna tuner in the KX-3 is able to achieve a 1:1 match on all the HF bands, but for some odd reason, the best it could do at this particular location was 1.6:1. I’m guessing that the problem was the metal flashing along the eaves. The way I’d hung the antenna it came pretty close to the eaves, and the metal was detuning the antenna on 40 meters. I’m normally one to try to get the SWR down as low as possible, but I wasn’t going to take down the antenna at this point and find another spot for it.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to. 40 meters was in decent shape, and with the skip being on the short side, I was able to work a bunch of Michigan counties, i.e. multipliers. I even worked some phone with my QRP rig, making a dozen phone contacts in all.

The phone contacts netted some multipliers that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. For example, just before 4 pm, I worked a station in Iron County, a small county in the Upper Penninsula, on the Wisconsin border. I joked with the operator that I was the only station in Iosco County, and he said that he was the only ham in Iron County.

After that contact, I decided to take a break. Silvia and I made some sandwiches and headed over to the state park. It was a little on the chilly side with the wind coming off the lake, but we enjoyed our dinner and the great views the park provided. We even noted that farther down the beach, there was a family, and the kids were in the water! Brrrrr.

I got back on the air about 6:30 pm and operated until 9 pm. The skip was still on the short side, and I was able to log more counties, including Benzie, Barry, Isabella, and Ontonagon Counties. I logged a few more states, too, including Rhode Island and Florida.

Overall, I made 130 contacts and had a total score of 15,960. This included contacts with 43 counties, or about half of the counties in Michigan. Activity seemed to be down overall, but I think that I had a decent score. The best thing, though, was to be able to combine a nice weekend on the lake with a little ham radio.

 

Operating notes: CW Open

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I’m not a big contester, but I am a member of CWops, and the CWops host a contest every year called the CW Open, and this contest takes place on Labor Day weekend. This year, I decided to take part.

My participation actually got started in a funny way. One of the things that I do for CWops is to manage the website. Just before the contest, there was some question as to whether the form used to submit teams rosters for the contest was working properly. So, to test the form, I submitted a team called Team Website, consisting of me and Theo, SV2BBK, who is also one of the website administrators.

When the list of teams was first published, Team Website was included in  the list. Theo mentioned this and suggested that Team Website be deleted. I thought about this for a second and suggested just the opposite. I thought that we should not only keep Team Website on the list, but recruit other CWops members who might also be casual contesters.

I’m happy to say that this was a big success. Theo and I had six other CWops join us on Team Website. I think that these folks had always wanted to be a member of a team, but didn’t want to feel obligated to operate the entire contest or who—like me—don’t have a fancy contest station. As I told the team members, we have no goals or expectations, so it’s very easy to meet them!

My score

The contest is split into three, four-hour sessions. I operated for about two hours, about a half hour in the first session and an hour and a half in the third session. I made 20 contacts in the first session and 95 contacts in the second session. I spent most that first 20 minutes getting used to using N1MM again and doing search and pounce.

I started out the second session doing search and pounce on 20 meters, where I made 20 contacts before the signals began to fade. Then, I switched to 40 meters, where the signals were quite strong. I still operated mostly search and pounce, but towards the end switched over to running a frequency.

That was and really upped my score. As you can see, I made a little more than one contact per minute in that final session. That’s pretty good for me.

Read the rules!

I could have made a couple more contacts had I read the rules beforehand. In most contests, you can only make contacts once per station per band. In the CW open, you can make contacts once per session per band.

So, what happened is that several stations called me during the third session who I’d already worked on 40 meters in the first session. N1MM flagged these contacts as dupes and I refused to log those contacts. This happened several times, so I decided to read the rules. That’s how I found out that I was doing it wrong. In fact, the CW Open web page says, “May contact for points only once per band, per session. Note: do not remove dupes from your log.”

Anyway, I had fun. I haven’t heard back from my other team members, but I hope they all had as much fun as I did.

Operating Notes: 2022 Michigan QSO Party

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Michigan has 83 counties. I live in Washtenaw County (WASH) in Southeast Michigan.

The Michigan QSO Party was yesterday, and I had a really great time operating it. I even racked up my best score ever. Here’s my report to 3830scores.com:

Michigan QSO Party – 2022
Call: W8RP
Operator(s): KB6NU
Station: KB6NU
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Operating Time (hrs): 6.25
Summary:

Band CW Qs Ph Qs
40 194 158
20 50
Total: 244 158 CW Mults = 67 Ph Mults = 63 Total Score = 83,980

This is my best score ever in the MI QP. I started out on 20m just after 1600Z. Band conditions seemed OK, and I managed to make 50 contacts in about an hour, but then the band seemed to give out, so I switched to 40m. Fortunately, 40m was in great shape. And, just maybe, using the W8RP call sign had something to do with it!

W8RP was the call of Roy Purchase, proprietor of Purchase Radio here in Ann Arbor, MI. He passed shortly after I moved to Ann Arbor, but by all accounts, he was a really great guy. Maybe his spirit was watching over me yesterday.

Phone?

If you know me, you know I’m not a big phone operator. Even so, possibly the best choice I made yesterday was to work phone on 40m in the evening. Conditions were really great—for both in-state and out-of-state QSOs, and I picked up a bunch of multipliers that I probably wouldn’t have on CW. As you can see, I made almost 160 contacts on phone, and that took just over an hour and a half.

Also on phone, I worked a couple of guys who recognized the W8RP call sign. One fellow said that he knew Roy personally. The second said that he used to live in Michigan and regularly patronized Purchase Radio. That was fun.

I was going to go for 100,000 points, but about 0115Z I started getting tired. I exercised a little, intending to work some 80m CW when I finished around 0200Z, but I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to do so and settled for the 84,000 points.

From my inbox: State QSO parties in 2022, Japanese government supports amateur radio, FRN number suspicion

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I am on a lot of amateur radio email lists. Many of these contain tidbits that perhaps don’t warrant an entire blog post, but that I feel would be interesting to my readers. Here are three of them…

State QSO parties starting up again

This weekend, the Vermont and Minnesota QSO Parties will be the first QSO parties of the year. These contests also kick off the State QSO Party Challenge.

If you’re a fan of state QSO parties, as I am, then consider taking part in the challenge. Last year, my plan was to participate in all of the state QSO parties and earn a participation award. I started out strong, but flagged towards the end. I did participate in over half the QSO parties, but for many, I never submitted my scores. I hope to do better this year.

For last year’s participation, I did manage to qualify for a silver certificate.

I would love it if our FCC were as supportive.

Japan’s Ministry of Communications supports ham radio

In 2021 Japan’s Minister of Digital Agency, Dr. Karen Makishima (LDP Kanagawa), established an Advisory Board that aims to encourage youth into Amateur Radio

Historically the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) considered amateur radio should be treated in the same way as those professional radio services whose purpose is to ensure reliable communication, but since the essence of amateur radio is experimental and educational it should be treated differently to professional/commercial radio users.

In November 2021 the MIC produced the report “Radio Policy Council in the Age of Digital Transformation” which notes:

  • “The amateur radio population is declining, and we must continue to make amateurs through various efforts”
  • “Young people will lead the future”
  • “Consider creating an environment that makes it easier to start amateur radio”
  • “We will proceed with studies toward the realization of a system and environment that makes it easier to utilize amateur radio, such as the realization of an experimental/research environment”
  • “Speeding up the procedure from acquiring an amateur radio operator license to opening and operating radio stations”

Read the report at
https://www8.cao.go.jp/kisei-kaikaku/kisei/meeting/wg/econrev/211119/211119keizaikasseika_0402.pdf

The Advisory Board held their first meeting on January 26, 2022
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2022/january/advisory-board-aims-to-encourage-youth-into-ham-radio.htm

Suspicion of FRNs?

On the recently started, ARRL Education mailing list, someone wrote:

Is anyone having problems with parents not allowing their kids to get FRN’s?  I send home an information sheet with how to do it and why it’s needed.  This semester, so far, I’ve had 2 students that told me their parents would not allow them to get the FRN, even if it means not getting their license.  Any ideas?

That parents would have this attitude is a real shame. Someone pointed out that the Boy Scouts require that they be given at least much personal information, but of course, that information is not made public. Someone else pointed out that these parents might also not let their kids join the Boy Scouts because of this.

The solution appears to be education. Perhaps if parents knew more about amateur radio, they wouldn’t be so hesitant to let their kids participate. Many years ago, I wrote A Parent’s Guide to Amateur Radio, but I now see that I have to update this brochure.

At any rate, I’d like to ask if you have ever run into this? If so, what did you do?

Contest University and Hamvention 2021 forums now on YouTube

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If you missed the Contest University 2021 on May 20th and the Hamvention Forums on May 21st, they are now available online. The complete program is about 8 hours and 15 minutes long. The presentations include (approximate times shown):

  • 0:00 am Welcome to CTU 2020 from W8CI and K3LR
  • 0:05 am WW2DX – “Cloud Contesting – Live Demonstration” moderators NN1C and W9KKN
  • 1:00 am W3LPL – “Preparing Your Station for Competition” moderators NN1C and W9KKN
  • 2:00 am M0DXR – “Contest Categories – Make the Most of Your Entry” moderators W2NAF and KM3T
  • 3:00 K1AR – Memorial reading of the Silent Keys for 2021
  • 3:30 DK6SP – “Youth – the Future of Contesters” moderators W2NAF and KM3T
  • 4:30 UA9BA – “Contesting from Russia” moderators K5TR and N5KO
  • 5:30 CT1BOH – “There is Nothing Magic About Propagation” moderators K5TR and N5KO
  • 6:30 NC0B – “Transceiver Performance for the HF DX and Contest Operator” moderators K1AR and N3RA
  • 7:30 Wrap up N9JA and K3LR
  • 7:35 K1AR – 2021 CQ Contest Hall of Fame Presentation

Operating notes: State QSO Parties, how do you decide who to call?

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My state QSO party challenge continues. On Saturday, April 17, I worked the Michigan QSO Party. That was a lot of fun, because, of course, I’m in Michigan and was one of the sought-out stations. I operated for about six hours total, and once I hit 20,000 points, about 9:30 pm, I quit.

My final totals were 161 CW QSOs, 6 phone QSOs, 56 CW multipliers, 6 phone multipliers, and a total score of 20,336. That’s not too bad, I’d say, considering that I was only on the air for half of the 12 hours. 3830scores.com has me at #8 in the single operator, low power category.

On Saturday, April 24, I worked the Florida QSO Party. I didn’t operate for very long, though, barely enough to qualify for participation in the State QSO Party Challenge. One thing that was odd is that I was often beaten out in the pileups by European stations. Someone on Twitter opined that the reason for that is because the Florida stations had their beams pointed towards Europe, and I was off the side of their antennas.

This Saturday, I worked the Indiana, Delaware, 7 States, and New England QSO Parties. Working all four was made much easier by the N1MM logging software. Instead of creating four separate logs, you could log all of your contacts with a single log.

There were lots of stations on the air, mostly from New England. Overall, I made 104 QSOs in about 3-1/2 hours of operating. Now, I have to figure out how to separate the QSOs and submit my logs.

How do you decide who to call?

The other night I called CQ on 40m, and immediately got two replies. The first station I heard was on the weak side, while the second was stronger. The first operator was sending slowly, while the second op was sending a bit faster.

I decided to call the first station because it was the first that I heard. I hadn’t copied the whole call sign, so I sent the part I did hear with a question mark. Even though he was weak, we still had a nice QSO.

The moral of the story is don’t always choose the stronger station. The weaker, slower station might be just starting or getting back on the air and your QSO would mean more to that op than to the stronger, more experienced ham.

Operating notes: Basic operating procedures, last weekend’s QSO parties, Maritime Radio Day

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I hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but I would like to again encourage all you new operators out there to learn basic standard operating procedures. They became standard operating procedures for a reason. They really do make contacts easier.

I bring this up now because more and more I’m running across operators who don’t seem to know them or just ignore them. About a week ago, I worked a relative newcomer to amateur radio. He replied to my CQ by just sending his callsign one time. This was wrong on two counts:

Since he didn’t send my call sign, I didn’t know if he was replying to me or not.
Since he only sent my call sign once, I didn’t get it all. There was a burst of noise as he was sending his call, and I missed one of the letters in his suffix.
In this case, the standard operating procedure is to send the other station’s call three times, then “DE,” then your call three times. So, if your call is W1ABC and you’re replying to my CQ, send, “ KB6NU KB6NU KB6NU DE W1ABC W1ABC W1ABC.”

Last weekend’s QSO parties

Last weekend, I took part in four state QSO parties: Nebraska, New Mexico, Georgia, and North Dakota. I only managed to work one station in NE, but I did work at least two in the other contests. The Georgia QSO Party was by far the most active. I managed to work 35 Georgia stations in a couple hours of work.

This weekend, the Michigan and Ontario QSO Parties will take place. Listen for me on 20 meters, 40 meters, and 80 meters. I’ll most be on CW, but I’ll work some phone, too.

Maritime Radio Day

Last night, I had one of those great, unexpected experiences that sometime happens in amateur radio. At about 11:00 pm (0300Z), I was thinking about hitting the sack, but wasn’t quite tired enough yet. So, I decided to head down to the shack and see what was happening on 40 meters.

The band was fairly busy with stations working the CWops CWT, but I noticed a station on 7022 kHz calling “CQ MRD.” It wasn’t real strong, but workable, and when I heard the call sign—K6KPH—I decided that I had to work them. As it turns out, MRD stands for “Maritime Radio Day,” and it is held annually on April 14, the day that the Titanic sank in 1912.

For those of you that don’t know, K6KPH is the station of the Maritime Radio Historical Society. The station is located on the site of the the historic ex-RCA coast station KPH, which is now part of the Point Reyes National Seashore, part of the National Park Service. Here’s a cool video of the station.

After working K6KPH, I heard II3IQW calling CQ MRD on 7020 kHz. I was actually copying II3IQW better than I was copying K6KPH, so working them was easier. Ennio, the operator of II3IQX, was commemorating IQX, the coastal radio station at Trieste, Italy. There’s a short, but interesting history of this station on the II3IQX QRZ page.

Operating Notes: This weekend’s QSO Parties, A25RU in the log, Ohms and Voltas, but no Amperes

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There were two state QSO parties this weekend, the Louisiana QSO Party and the Mississippi QSO Party. The good news is that operations allowed me to qualify my participation for the State QSO Party Challenge, although just barely. The bad news is that there didn’t seem to be much activity from those states.

I made eight MS contacts, but only two LA contacts. I’m not sure if it was band conditions or maybe my antenna orientation, but there just didn’t seem to be that much activity.

Having said that, I hope that you will all consider operating the MI QSO Party, which is coming up in less than two weeks, on Saturday, April 17, from 1600Z – 0400Z. I’m still hoping to activate one of Michigan’s more sparsely-populated counties, but my plans aren’t settled yet.

A25RU in the log

When A25RU, the Russian DXpedition to Botswana, first got on the air, they created some pretty big pileups, big enough that I knew that I’d be calling for a long time with no guarantee of success. As I’ve noted before, I don’t really have the patience for that, so I passed on it.

A couple of days ago, though, I heard them on 40m CW. There didn’t seem to be a big pileup, so I joined the fray. Zooming in the panadapter on my Flex 6400, I could see where there were open spots in the pileup, and could see the stations that A25RU was replying to. This made it easy to find a frequency to call on, and I worked him on the tenth call. Wayyy before I lost patience.

Ohms, Amperes, and Voltas

After working the contests last night, I settled in for a little ragchewing. One of the hams I worked happened to have the surname Ohm. How appropriate I thought.

That got me curious as to how many Ohms are amateur radio operators. Searching the QRZ.Com database, I counted 18 Ohms. Next, it occurred to me to count the Amperes and the Voltas. I could find a single Ampere, but there were 45 Voltas!

The next name that came to mind was Marconi. There are lots of Marconi clubs and Marconi special event stations. In among all those call signs, I spotted 45 hams with the surname Marconi.