Life is too short for QRP...LOL

[timbo]

After looking at my Kenwood TL-922A HF amp languishing in it's carton since I moved to MO in October of 2021, I finally dragged it out, changed the mains transformer primary voltage to 120v and called it a day. I'm running it very conservatively, about 400-500 watts out but at least I can make contact with stations I hear now. First station worked today was a Chilean station (CE3QY) on my first call even with a pretty deep and raucus pile up. At this point, it's running off a dedicated 120v 20A circuit from the breaker panel.

I've been working on building a shop/shack in my barn but between absurd costs of building materials, bad back and a whole host of other issues, this is taking way longer than I was planning on. I'll have two 240VAC circuits in there for my amps as well as for running a split cooling/heating unit so I can live in there winter and summer.

Meanwhile, if the Bouvet DX-pedition ever comes to pass while I'm still set up in my front room in the house, I'll stand a chance of working them now. I think North Korea is the only other country that is rarer that Bouvet.

 

[ToddDubya]

What are you running that into to try and bust the inevitable pileups?

 

[timbo]

What are you running that into to try and bust the inevitable pileups?

I have two antennas here, an OCFD (80-10) up about 40' and a 248' dipole fed with open wire feed line that's about 60' high. I have a tribander yagi stashed in the barn but I don't have a tower yet to mount it on...hopefully this summer that will be bought and installed. Must get the shop/shack finished first. It should be interesting to see if I can bust the pileups. Gonna have to watch the greyline and pray for good conditions.

I also have a 6 element 6 meter beam still in the box that will go above the tribander but I doubt I'll be hearing Bouvet on 6 meters...lol.

 

[n1oty]

I have two antennas here, an OCFD (80-10) up about 40' and a 248' dipole fed with open wire feed line that's about 60' high. I have a tribander yagi stashed in the barn but I don't have a tower yet to mount it on...hopefully this summer that will be bought and installed. Must get the shop/shack finished first. It should be interesting to see if I can bust the pileups. Gonna have to watch the greyline and pray for good conditions.

I also have a 6 element 6 meter beam still in the box that will go above the tribander but I doubt I'll be hearing Bouvet on 6 meters...lol.

I'm waiting on Bouvet too, so I'll see you in the pile-ups. I also have an OCFD as one of my antennas. They make a great multi-band antenna and I prefer the OCFD to any of the end feds.

I recently acquired a Palstar solid state 1 kilowatt amp and took my recently re-tubed AL-80A out of service. I love the instant band-switching now, but I had to turn the heat up in my shack to compensate for the lower heat from a solid state amp.

 

[timbo]

So has anyone heard Bouvet, 3Y0J yet? They are on the island and I've seen a few spots on the DX-cluster but I've heard nothing yet on my end.

 

[n1oty]

I have not heard them yet myself, but I've also been busy working, so the radio has not been active here.

 

[timbo]

I have not heard them yet myself, but I've also been busy working, so the radio has not been active here.

I had to run a bunch of errands this morning. When I got back home around noon, I checked the cluster and they had already been on 15 meters SSB but had moved to the CW and FT8 sub-bands by the time the radio was on. As far as I know, I don't have to be anywhere tomorrow so will check as soon as I get up. They are 7 hours behind me CST.

 

[n1oty]

I had to run a bunch of errands this morning. When I got back home around noon, I checked the cluster and they had already been on 15 meters SSB but had moved to the CW and FT8 sub-bands by the time the radio was on. As far as I know, I don't have to be anywhere tomorrow so will check as soon as I get up. They are 7 hours behind me CST.

Supposedly, a storm at Bouvet will limit operations until Thursday or Friday. DX sources are saying 30 and 17 meters may be active for CW and FT8 during the storm at 100 watts. I emphasize the word "MAY".

 

[ToddDubya]

Supposedly, a storm at Bouvet will limit operations until Thursday or Friday. DX sources are saying 30 and 17 meters may be active for CW and FT8 during the storm at 100 watts. I emphasize the word "MAY".

A storm of lids is also limiting operations. A counter storm of lid police isn't helping, and neither is the storm of people telling the lid police to stop policing.

What a mess.

* Just what I've heard on the interwebs. I haven't tried to get through myself.

 

[timbo]

I'm sitting here and was thinking about buying a new pair of 3-500's (again) for my TL-922...I figured whatever I paid would probably never go down in price...hell, 3 years ago. a 3-500 was going for $135-150 each. I can remember when they were <$100 each. I just bought a pair from RF parts to the tune of $500 .

Oh well, you only go around once and given that the amp is no good with bad tubes. The ones that came with the amp and still have in there now are Eimacs with an 80's day code and seem to be fine, at least at this point in time so I clicked on Buy Now. I chalked that painful moment up to waiting too long to do what I knew I was going to have to do eventually.

There are some brands that are not so good and the reviews show which ones they are. I think the RF Parts branded ones are Penta tubes made in the PRC (aren't they all anymore?). Penta tubes have a decent reputation.

Eimac no longer makes them and even with the good reputation Eimac received over the years, their quality started to decline the last 15 years years they were producing these tubes. They stopped producing them in the late 90's I believe.

Once I receive the tubes, I'll put them in my amp and run them. I don't use my amp that much but I'll have to use it a fair amount in the next few weeks to shake it down for any possible tube failures.

 

[timbo]

A storm of lids is also limiting operations. A counter storm of lid police isn't helping, and neither is the storm of people telling the lid police to stop policing.

What a mess.

* Just what I've heard on the interwebs. I haven't tried to get through myself.

No, what you heard on the interwebs was true...it was bad. And it wasn't just "Ugly Americans" either. Many of the VE Canadians were LIDS of the highest (lowest?) caliber as well as a whole slew of Euros. I thought maybe, just maybe I could make contact on FT-8 or CW. Nope...it really sucked.

 

[ToddDubya]

No, what you heard on the interwebs was true...it was bad. And it wasn't just "Ugly Americans" either. Many of the VE Canadians were LIDS of the highest (lowest?) caliber as well as a whole slew of Euros. I thought maybe, just maybe I could make contact on FT-8 or CW. Nope...it really sucked.

Hearing some recordings it just made me think of Antifa for radio. It sucks to see that. This isn't people who picked up a walkie talkie at Walmart; you need actual equipment, actual antennas, probably some power, and knowhow. Then just f*** it up for everyone else for what?

 

[ToddDubya]

Speaking of QRP, I've been reading a lot about QRP radio building. I've got a kit already that I plan to build soon, but it would be cool to build something from the ground up. We'll see how the kit build goes first

 

[timbo]

Speaking of QRP, I've been reading a lot about QRP radio building. I've got a kit already that I plan to build soon, but it would be cool to build something from the ground up. We'll see how the kit build goes first

I used to have a Heathkit HW-8 CW only QRP transceiver that I built wwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in the day...'76 I think. It was a blast to use. I loaned it to someone when I lived in San Diego, never to be seen again. I built it in a weekend and had a blast with it (while I had it ).

 

[timbo]

Hearing some recordings it just made me think of Antifa for radio. It sucks to see that. This isn't people who picked up a walkie talkie at Walmart; you need actual equipment, actual antennas, probably some power, and knowhow. Then just f*** it up for everyone else for what?

I really miss Gary Larson. He had a fairly sophisticated type of humor. One had to be somewhat educated to understand his brand of humor.

 

[ToddDubya]

I used to have a Heathkit HW-8 CW only transceiver that I built wwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in the day...'76 I think. It was a blast to use. I loaned it to someone when I lived in San Diego, never to be seen again. I built in a weekend and had a blast with it (while I had it ).

I remember hearing about my uncle building Heathkit projects and had no idea what it meant. It was stereo equipment; I think it was Heathkit. I missed out on that era unfortunately, not that this is a bad era. I miss the days of looking through catalogs and dreaming about the day I'd have enough money to buy whatever it was I was into at that time.

 

[timbo]

I remember hearing about my uncle building Heathkit projects and had no idea what it meant. It was stereo equipment; I think it was Heathkit. I missed out on that era unfortunately, not that this is a bad era. I miss the days of looking through catalogs and dreaming about the day I'd have enough money to buy whatever it was I was into at that time.

I built a number of Heathkits, mostly ham stuff. They did have an electric organ kit, color TV kit and like you said stereo stuff though I didn't build any of those. I bought a Heathkit keyboard/terminal and computer back in the day too but by the time I started building it, IBM 286 machines were coming out so I sold the partially built kit at a loss to buy the IBM.

I remember my grandfather who lived in Shrewsbury at the time taking me to a radio shack in Boston back in the early 70's and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. That's when they really sold radios, etc. I miss those kinds of stores nowadays.

 

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I have been running 10 watts on my POTA activations keeps the pileups down. But the reason I got the 891 is that I can bump it up if I want. Did that yesterday when hunting, what a difference. May try a few activations at 50W or more