Making the Connection

In the aftermath of the very fun ARRL VHF-UHF 2009 Sweepstakes, I am in the process of trying to upgrade my VHF-UHF capabilities. I've got a number of antenna projects planned—yagis, halos, all the good stuff—and, of course, putting more antennas in the air means that you've got to run feedline and make a connection to your rig.

In the past, I would have rather blindly figured that, since they put an SO-239 connector on the back of my rig (even for 2 meter and 70 cm connections) it must be just fine to use that for VHF-UHF stuff. Well, I'm finding out that that is an incredibly naive view.

Many of you may already know this, but the PL-259/SO-239 combination does not maintain a constant impedance as the frequency increases. So down in the HF range, you're probably fine. But as the frequency increases into the VHF and certainly in the UHF range, the connector itself can start giving you an impedance mismatch and the mounting signal losses that go with such mismatches. N connectors maintain a constant impedence at much higher frequencies, hence their usefulness in VHF and especially UHF and microwave applications.

Here's what Chris, KF9OP my microwave guru has to say about the matter:

When I think PL259, I think vacuum tubes, the Ed Sullivan show and the 1950's.

Then there's the post-hippie 1970's BNC option for less than 50 watts and less than 250 MHz. However, BNC was only designed for less than 500 MHz, and its main benefit is ease of connection. If this isn't of value, then I would only use it because of cost/availability.

The 1980's man, uses N for more than 50 watts, SMA for less than 50 watts.

The 1990's man doesn't use connectors, since the 1 dB per connector hit is too great. He solders directly to the PCB ;)

The millennial man doesn't use coax at all! He integrates his radio into his antenna and runs his power/data up the tower. ;)

Now Chris is way out of whack with his estimate of 1 dB per connector; a properly installed connector, of the correct type for the frequency used should be more like 0.1 dB. But that last point is something that Chris and I have discussed a lot. Especially as you go up, up, up in frequency it makes less and less sense to spend big $$$ to try and corral that RF as it goes through a feedline. If you put the transmitter at the antenna you save all that expense and path loss. But since that's not always practical, one does sometimes need to run feedline.

So, back to connectors, there was a good article on the installation of N connectors last year in QST magazine, "Those Type N Coax Connectors," in the April 2008 issue. Unfortunately, it's not on-line yet. But there is a diagram on this here. And there's an interesting exchange about the relative merits of the N connectors in ham radio applications over on EHam.net.

73 DE W9HQ

In Honor of Richard David (SK), the Original W9HQ

When I upgraded to an Extra class license and changed my call sign to W9HQ, I wondered about the man who had held this call sign before me. I did some initial searching back then, but came up empty on any specifics. Then the pressing details of life pushed that search out of the way. Early this year, I began searching again in order to put some information about him on this blog. Alas, I found the news that Mr. Davis had died just a few days before. I had missed the opportunity to correspond with him.

I believe that it is crucial to remember those radio amateurs who have gone before us. I am honored to have the call sign W9HQ and I want to make sure that I pay proper tribute to the man who held it before me. So far I have only been able to secure the published obituary and a beautiful tribute to Mr. Davis from a woman who stayed with that family as a foreign exchange student. He sounds like a wonderful person. I will be adding more information about his professional life and his ham radio activities as I am able to learn about them.

I would also like to ask all to pray for the repose of his soul.

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.

(Eternal rest grant him, O Lord, and perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.)

A Tribute to Richard Davis, by Ms. Gilly Simpson

Richard Davis, Obituary

SOUTH BEND -- Richard A. "Dick" Davis, 93, of South Bend, died at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday (Jan. 13, 2009) in The Sunset House of Mishawaka.

He was born Sept. 27, 1915, in LaPorte to Arthur S. and Louise (Wendt) Davis. On April 8, 1938, he married Marie E. Spromberg in South Bend.

She survives in Mishawaka along with two daughters, Kathryn L. (Gary) Wilson of Markle and Liese M. (Tom) Kreiser of Elkhart; one son, Dr. Timothy E. (Sandy) Davis of Elkhart; one adopted daughter, Gilly Simpson of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

One brother, William Davis, and one granddaughter, Megan Wilson, preceded him in death.

Mr. Davis was a 1933 graduate of Central High School, South Bend. He began working at Bendix Corp. as a mail clerk and delivered the mail around the plant on roller skates. He retired in 1979 as supervisor of the aerospace division after more than 40 years of service. He had been active in the Boy Scouts, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout.

He was a longtime ham radio operator with the call signal W9HQ, and a member of Community Congregational Church of South Bend, Bendix Retirees Club and the Izaak Walton League. Mr. Davis, aka the "Watchdog of Juday Creek," fought off developers and pollution sources to preserve the creek, one of Indiana's last naturally spring-fed waterways. He designed and built his own home and cabinets, built dollhouse furniture for his daughters and volunteered at the Clay Township branch of the South Bend Public Library after his retirement, where he devised a method of repairing the bindings of old books that was adopted by other area libraries.

Do It Yourself

A number of hams bemoan the fact that it is more and more difficult to build your own gear these days. What with the very powerful trend in electronics toward surface mount devices (SMDs) and unbelievably compact integration, it is indeed extremely hard to build anything that comes close to rivaling purchased gear, at least in terms of the radios themselves.

For this and other reasons, it is probably true that more hams than ever are "appliance operators", that is, they simply buy their gear off the shelf, plug it in, and start communicating. And frankly, in my opinion there's nothing wrong with that. Let's face it, if we are going to draw some imaginary line in the sand and say, "Ham radio as a hobby was ruined when [fill in arbitrary event here]", then there's really no reason why the line shouldn't be drawn at spark gap transmitters and crystal receivers.

But that is not what ham radio has ever been about. It is intrinsically a technical hobby. If somebody likes working with older radios and decades-old technology, fine. But the hobby itself has always been about technical innovation and advancement of the state-of-the-art. (Frankly, a lot of the technical innovation available to hams is on the software side of things and that's something I'd like to explore in a future posting.) And, as always, it's also about having fun. There is plenty of that to be had, even if one must needs fall short of homebrewing a complete modern transceiver. Those with a hardware bent can still build lots of interesting and useful devices. Any given edition of the The ARRL Handbook and most issues of QST magazine have projects of varying degrees of difficulty that are well within the reach of most hams.

Here's a simple one that I did, a rig control cable for my Icom IC-746. These things will set you back $15-25, depending on where you buy them, but they're dirt simple to build. I just cobbled mine together on a piece of perf board, using parts I scrounged from other bits of trashed electronics. My total cost was exactly $0.00. I used the G3VGR circuit found here:

http://www.qsl.net/g3vgr/civ.html

Super simple, super cheap, works great. (There's an even simpler circuit in the 2008 ARRL Handbook.) I have a similar interface for my Yaesu FT-897D. I control both rigs simultaneously from Ham Radio Deluxe. Cool.

I've also built computer-rig interfaces for digital modes like PSK-31.

Here's a list of stuff I'd like to build in the future:

• Remote antenna switch (I'm actually working on one right now)
• Battery charge controller for solar operation (I'm working on that now too)
  
• Balanced antenna tuner
• Audio break-out box
• Keying circuit for my Heathkit amplifier
• Active attenuator for foxhunting
• QRP CW transmitter (or perhaps even a transceiver)
• QRP antenna tuner
  
• ????
  

There's a few years of projects for a busy guy like me. And of course, this leaves aside for now the myriad interesting antennas that one can build.

I'll keep you posted.

73 DE W9HQ

The Vanity Call Sign Dilemma

I have decidedly mixed feelings about the whole vanity call sign system, despite being the holder of a really cool vanity call, W9HQ. My mixed feelings come from a clash between my traditional and nostalgic side, which loves things which are venerable, solid, tried and true versus my pragmatic side which hates to see a good thing go unused. (The call sign [not a vanity!] to the right is that of a ham who makes some really nice and reasonably priced wooden replications of your call. Check out his Web site. I've put this down on my "gift list", so maybe I'll get one from my wife.)

Let's start with the nostalgia. When I was a kid, you knew darn good and well that somebody who held a one by two call with a "W" in front was a venerable old-timer. You knew that he was an Extra class ham who had earned that license level by achieving a high level of Morse code proficiency (20 words per minute) and had mastered some pretty intense technical material in order to be able to take the FCC's highest level exam. You also knew that he had been in the hobby a pretty long time, because the FCC was only giving out 1x2 calls to hams who had been Extras for at least 25 years and they ran out of the one by two W calls well before I got into the hobby. They were, in a word, venerable.

Nowadays, with the new vanity system, a guy could very easily get an Extra class license after only a very short time as a ham, apply for a W#xy call, and look veritably ancient. I've been in the hobby quite a while (albeit with a pretty long hiatus in between periods of activity), but I really don't feel worthy of such a call. So there's a part of me that wants to keep those "golden oldie" call signs out of circulation, because of what they represent.

But then kicks in the pragmatic part of me. These are good call signs; what's wrong with keeping them in use? Indeed, although its parameters are much broader now than they used to be, the history of "vanity" call signs isn't quite as straightforward and restrictive as one might think:

As older hams became Silent Keys and the number of available 1x2 calls increased, the FCC instituted a program effective in 1968 whereby those licensed for 25 years and currently holding an Extra license would be eligible for a non-specific (sequential) 1x2 callsign. The length of time one needed to be an Extra was gradually reduced, until July 1977, when any Extra Class could apply for a 1x2 . . .

Effective July 1, 1976, any Extra class licensee who had been a licensed Amateur for 25 years or more could select one specific 1x2 call sign. This added the ability to pick a specific call, but did not change eligibility. . . .

Effective July 1, 1977, any Amateur Extra class licensee could select one specific 1x2 call sign. Effective March 30, 1978 this was all replaced by the strict "sequential" system until the advent of "vanity" call sign selection in March 24, 1995 (Amateur Radio History).

So it wasn't like these call signs remained ever out of circulation once the original holder died. They were recirculating them at least forty years ago. It's just that the rules are quite a bit looser now.

So where does that leave me in the end? In the end, I decided to upgrade from Advanced to Extra when my son took his Technician test, even though I'm not thrilled with the loosening of the requirements to do so. And although I was happy with my original call of N0CVR, I live in "9" land now so changing my call sign to a "9" designator made sense. When I looked into what was available on the FCC database in terms of vanity call signs, I saw that W9HQ was coming up very soon. The way the system is set up, that call sign isn't going to be set aside for posterity—somebody's going to get it. So nostalgia gives way to pragmatism and that somebody might as well be me.

But pragmatism has its limits and becomes truly noxious if it ends up rendering us oblivious and careless about the past. There are things that the holder of such a venerable call sign as mine can do to perpetuate its legacy and honor its original holder(s). And that is the subject of a soon-coming posting.

73 DE W9HQ

Microwaves: What's the Use?

I had an interesting exchange about microwaves and their usefulness with my friend and colleague, Chris Vanderkoy (KF9OP). Now just by way of background, Chris and I work for the same company, me as a lead test engineer for industrial controls products and Chris as the RF engineer in charge of designing the radio hardware for the company's wireless sensor and controls products (in the 2.4 GHz band.) So Chris is a die-hard microwave guy. In fact, he refers derisively to anything less than 500 MHz as "DC".

But that's just not me. I like HF a lot and am only just now getting turned on to VHF/UHF stuff. Some time ago I was asking Chris about feedlines. He stated:

I wouldn't buy LMR400 for less than 50mhz. At those frequencies, you can get by with a series of coat hangers for your feed line....(well, not really....)

His reply didn't exactly tick me off, but it did seem mighty uppity. So I shot back with a challenge:

Ya know, I realize that actually building the radios is more of a challenge, but the problem is that the darn microwaves don't do anything interesting. They don't bounce off anything in the ionosphere but they do get scattered by everything under the sun. They get sucked in by every water-bearing obstacle (spelled TREES) in their path. They don't even bend to give you just a teensy bit more than line-of-sight. So you have to build a 400 foot tower just to get out. What's the use?

I thought that would put an end to his smart alecky ways. But no, KF9OP shot back with a detailed list of 10 good reasons to look at microwaves Here you go:

Microwave's benefits.

1) Wide Bandwidth (lots of space for everybody)

2) Wide Bandwidth (hard for others to find you if they don't know where to look.)

3) Easy to build Hi gain antennas. (30dBi parabolic dish is reasonable)

4) Good for Satellite communications.

5) 1/f noise much less at these frequencies.

6) If you point your dish to the sky, you can get ultra low noise floors.

7) Awesome directivity (send the RF where you want it).

8) Can't moonbounce at HF.

9) Different freq's get absorbed by different gasses (this phenomenon is a benefit not a problem. CO2 sensors use this phenomenon to detect the gas.

10) You can use microwave energy to see through walls and penetrate concrete/earth/etc. (cool for discovery of underground caves, oil, etc...)

I guess I don't think of microwave frequencies as a place you call for CQ, but rather a frontier of research that has all kinds of gold nuggets waiting to be discovered.

Ham radio is cool because it is cutting edge... 300GHz is definitely an edge.

So there you go. Microwave communication and experimentation might not be your cup of tea. But that's the great thing about ham radio. There are myriad facets of the hobby and you can almost always find some other folks who are interested in doing what you're doing. (But they had better be close if you want to talk to them with those puny microwaves ;o)

The bottom line is, I'm learning more and more to never say never. I didn't ever think I'd be all that enthusiastic about VHF/UHF weak signal stuff, but here I am reading and planning on how to significantly improve my station in that area. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll be as big a microwave aficionado as KF9OP.

73 DE W9HQ

KC9JTL in the 2009 VHF Sweepstakes

Well this past Saturday/ Sunday was the ARRL VHF Sweepstakes for 2009 and my son Christopher and I participated. This event was promoted locally by a gung-ho ham Todd Sprinkmann, KC9BQA and he succeeded in mobilizing quite a few locals to participate. It ended up being a real blast.

Of course, lots of obstacles had to get between us and the contest. Just about an hour before it started, a frozen water pipe burst in our house (thank goodness I was sitting in the shack and heard the snap! and then water gushing down into the basement!) But I got the water shut off, the mess cleaned up, ran to the hardware store, got what I needed to fix the pipe, and we got on the air a mere twenty minutes late. The problem was, the pipe had thwarted my intention to get our 10 element, 2 meter beam on a rotor prior to the start of the contest. We started without it, but it became apparent quickly that rotating that dude was going to be essential.

So in true ham spirit, Christopher and I got out there and did what needed to be done. Then we scampered back into the shack and started making more contacts. Now notice that this antenna is sitting just 15 feet off the ground. We have a ridgetop location, sure, but you can definitely play with a very modest antenna and it doesn't have to be miles in the air.

It was extremely great to hear so many local stations on. I really hope that this is a sign of good things to come in our area. The June contest should be even better, so mark it on your calendar (June 13-14, 2009). As KC9BQA has said, contests aren't any fun if nobody's on the bands.

This was my first VHF contest. We used Christopher's callsign, KC9JTL, throughout the contest, so we'll be entering our score as a multi-operator limited station. The "limited" means we could use no more than four bands. I had only intended to use three: 6 meters, 2 meters, and 70 cm. I don't have a rig for 1.25 meters......or do I? (More on that below.)

The highlights were:

• We caught a short opening on 6 meters Sunday morning that netted us one distant grid, FN42 in New Hampshire. It really surprised me that we didn't get any other contacts during this opening. K1TR was really strong into Wisconsin and I thought maybe we'd get a flood of signals from out east, but we called and called on 50.125 and didn't hear anybody else. Oh well, we were happy for any opening at all.

• On Sunday night we heard KB9C/R (a club call being operated by Bruce, W9FZ) booming into our place from his home QTH in Hillsboro, WI. We worked him first on 2 meters, then on 440, then on 6 meters. Suddenly it occurred to me that my Yaesu VX-6R HT has 220 MHz capability at 1.5 watts. KB9C/R was so loud that I thought we could probably make it, even with that low power. So I had my son coordinate the freqs and then, standing outside in the snow holding the VX-6R sideways (to get the horizontal polarization), worked him on 223.5 for our only 1.25 meter contact. So we got Bruce on four bands and gave him a unique grid on 1.25 meters. That's nice teamwork. Thanks Bruce for your patience!
  

• I worked seven CW contacts (that's Morse code, for you non-hams) and I got a unique grid on each one; so CW was our key to accumulating grids. The best distance on 2 meters was a 210 mile QSO with WO9S in Chicago. No way we'd have made that one on SSB.

The lowlights were:

• Not being able to be on the air as much as we would have liked throughout the contest. Maybe in June my wife and the girls can go visit someone and Christopher and I can do a marathon session.

• Hearing N9UHF in Illinois constantly throughout the contest, calling him about a hundred times, but never working him. I also heard K8EB nice and strong at one point, tried calling several times with no success, and then heard him fade away as he turned his beams away from me. Ahhh! That would have been a new grid and a 250 mile contact. Would have been.......
  

• Hearing N0IRS and WB0NQD in EM29 during the last few minutes of the contest, calling and having N0IRS say "I've got Kilo Charlie Nine.....what's the rest?", then QSB blew us away and we didn't finish the contact before the contest ended. Rats! One more grid square lost. Better luck next time. ;o) Our final tally looks to be as follows:

10 QSOs on 6 meters, 3 grids
33 QSOs on 2 meters, 15 grids
1 QSO on 1.25 meters, 1 grid
4 QSOs on 70 cm, 1 grid

So we had 48 contacts spanning 16 grids. I guess that's not too bad for the first time out of the chute.

Contesting is not everybody's cup of tea—in fact, some hams get downright surly about it—but I think it has some real upsides, especially on VHF/UHF. For one thing, you get to sharpen your operator skills and that's always a good thing. For another, with a lot of stations on the air from diverse areas, one starts to get a feel for just what is possible with a given rig/antenna combination on these frequencies. Finally, it's just plain good fun. And ultimately that's what ham radio is supposed to be about--enjoying radio and the people that you meet on the air.

Bottom line is that the activity levels locally were awesome and I do hope that this could start a trend for our area. I actually never knew how much fun VHF stuff could be. The propagation in June should be much better and I'm already thinking of how to improve the score.

73 DE W9HQ

VHF Contest School: Being a Smart Operator

(by Todd Sprinkmann, KC9BQA)

When VHF contesting, expect lots of weak signals. Embrace them. :) The weak one may very well be a station in a distant grid. Try to work everyone you can hear. Expect to be asked for repeats. Don't worry about it. Take your time. Speak clearly, use standard phonetics and get the Q in the log. If someone seems a bit impatient, explain to them that you are just gettingstarted. After a few contests, it all makes sense anyway. Gotta start somewhere. January contest is a good one to get your start in.

Use headphones. You're going to need them to hear the weak ones. Cans make a big difference. You should see me crossing two sets on my head, while I listen on 144 in one ear, and 6 meters in the other. Friends have, and they just smile and walk away. :-)

Turn your squelch down. You want to hear the light ones thru the hiss. Also, if you have your squelch too high, you may not hear light stations working each other, and then you may QRM them when you call CQ Contest. This happens anyway in a contest and hey, we all make honest mistakes. Nobody should jump down your throat over it. If it seems like maybe you made a boo-boo, don't stress over it. Just chalk it up to experience and move on. I've never heard a fight on the air in a VHF contest. Hardly ever irritation, either.

I know it's harder than heck for a new operator to feel comfortable calling CQ Contest into a dead band. But try it out anyway. LOL :-) Even if you feel foolish calling 3, 5, 8 times in a row and nobody comes back to you. Keep calling CQ. Sure you can tune around and respond to the ones you hear calling CQ. But if you hit a lull, that's a good time to put YOUR call out there.

When you're trying to find contacts in a contest, or if you're calling CQ Contest (which you should definitely do a lot, for best results), start on 144/146. And perhaps call some on 50/52 (6 meters) as well. And you can even squirt out a few calls on 222/223. But don't bother calling CQ on 432.100. I'll explain why.

In VHF contests, you find folks for an initial contact on the most popular bands, where everyone's hanging out. That's 2 meters and 6 meters. Once you've found a station, you then want to work them on as many bands as you have in common. This is called "running the bands". The more bands you work them on, the more contacts and points you score. Always ask a station if they have any other bands you can work them on.

So say you hear me calling on 144 and you respond with your callsign. I give my grid square, you give yours, we roger the info, put the time in our logs, and then I ask you if you have any other bands. You say you have 6 meters. I look at my 6 meter rig and try to find a frequency that is empty. I say to you, "OK, let's meet on 50.140 on 6 meters. If we have a problem, we'll come back right here where we are on 2, OK?"

So off you and I go to 50.140. If we make contact there, we exchange the calls and grids again, enter them in the log and I ask you again if you have any other bands. You say you have 223 or 432, and I am pleased. :) We check 223.5 to see if anyone's busy there, and it's open. We make contact on 223.5, enter the info in our logs, and then agree to meet on say 432.100 or 446.00, depending on your rigs and antennas. At this point, if all goes well, we've run 4 bands and I thank you very much and say 73, good luck in the contest, blahblah.

Then I go back to 2 meters or 6 meters and start looking for new contacts. I don't start calling for new ones on 432. At the most, I maybe ask if anyone else has followed us up to where we just were on 432. That sometimes happens and it's a neat coincidence when it does. You can work anyone on any band, in any order. That's OK. But... but... the custom with VHF contesting is to call CQ for initial contacts on 2 meters or 6 meters. If you spend all your time calling up on 70 cm or 223, you're going to be missing most of the action.

73,
Todd KC9BQA