Remember yesterday when I mentioned the latest addition to my POTA setup, the Xiegu 5105 QRP rig….

Well this morning I decided to test it out and see how much work I would have to do with setting the parameters such as mic gain, processor, to make it sound like me… I was also testing out my EARCHI 9:1 unun with a 29.5 foot random wire to see how it would play with the built in AT of the 5105.

I figured I might as well do the testing at a POTA location just in case I was able to turn the test into an activation.

For this I chose Fort Frontenac POTA CA-5303. Its fairly easy to get there via the Kingston Transit system and its also close to downtown and all the amenities I might need. In the North East corner of the picture you will notice some white lines on the ground.

They are actually the walls of what’s left of that part of the Fort. Also the only parts of the Historic Site that is open to the public.

I leaned my MFJ 33 foot mast (supporting the 9:1 and wire in the vertical configuration) up against the tree.

And then ran the COAX over to the remains of the wall and set up my radio there and started operating.

My first contact was on 7.255 with the NCS of the ECARS net. He did hear me and considering I was QRP I was pleased. He did tell me that my audio seemed hot as if I was overdriving things. Lowering my voice seemed to help.

After that I looked at POTA Spots and managed to get W2IDG and VE3FI into the log from their parks and then finished up with the NCS of the MidCars net on 7.258.. All contacts were made on 40m SSB. I tried 20 SSB and was hearing lots of stations including a POTA Activation in VO1 but no luck breaking any of the pileups.

Then I figured it was time to get home and try to re configure the radio to my liking… I turned off the Speech Processor and lowered the Mic Gain from 60 to 40. Over the next few days I will get out again and see what else I have to do to get things sounding right.

Till then

73bob

More and more we are losing human interactions.

I can think of several examples: you ring up (almost any business) to be greeted with an AI message like "say in your own words what you want to talk about". With a poor voice I find it almost impossible to be understood. Many supermarkets are replacing checkouts that have humans with auto-tills where you just scan barcodes. You try to talk to your bank and get sent to a call centre on the far side of the planet where you are just a number. Most website chats are just AI bots, not humans.   It goes on and on.

Human beings like talking with human beings. 

For some lonely people it is the only human interaction they get. In my view we are going backwards as a society. Less and less we are able to speak with each other.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned the latest addition to my POTA setup, the Xiegu 5105 QRP rig….

Well this morning I decided to test it out and see how much work I would have to do with setting the parameters such as mic gain, processor, to make it sound like me… I was also testing out my EARCHI 9:1 unun with a 29.5 foot random wire to see how it would play with the built in AT of the 5105.

I figured I might as well do the testing at a POTA location just in case I was able to turn the test into an activation.

For this I chose Fort Frontenac POTA CA-5303. Its fairly easy to get there via the Kingston Transit system and its also close to downtown and all the amenities I might need. In the North East corner of the picture you will notice some white lines on the ground.

They are actually the walls of what’s left of that part of the Fort. Also the only parts of the Historic Site that is open to the public.

I leaned my MFJ 33 foot mast (supporting the 9:1 and wire in the vertical configuration) up against the tree.

And then ran the COAX over to the remains of the wall and set up my radio there and started operating.

My first contact was on 7.255 with the NCS of the ECARS net. He did hear me and considering I was QRP I was pleased. He did tell me that my audio seemed hot as if I was overdriving things. Lowering my voice seemed to help.

After that I looked at POTA Spots and managed to get W2IDG and VE3FI into the log from their parks and then finished up with the NCS of the MidCars net on 7.258.. All contacts were made on 40m SSB. I tried 20 SSB and was hearing lots of stations including a POTA Activation in VO1 but no luck breaking any of the pileups.

Then I figured it was time to get home and try to re configure the radio to my liking… I turned off the Speech Processor and lowered the Mic Gain from 60 to 40. Over the next few days I will get out again and see what else I have to do to get things sounding right.

Till then

73bob

People who know me have heard me say that after all these years there are 3 radios I have sold that I actually regret selling. Well now there are only 2 radios that I regret selling…

.

Welcome the Xiegu X5105 back into my portable shack…

.

Between my FT991a and my FT891 there was a bit of a gap. The Yeasu FT891 Portable Station was a bit too heavy for my old bones. I needed something in a lighter backpack to make it easier to carry if I was to choose to activate one of the local POTA Parks here in Kingston.

The above pic shows my old X5105 with the Bandspringer attached

The Xiegu X5105 fills that gap. With the built in battery pack, the built in automatic antenna tuner along with the contest keyer and the built in CW Decoder it makes it a dream portable station.

My antennas are a 40m EFHW made with 28ga wire and a QRP AMAZON 49:1 unun. I also can use a 29foot end fed random wire using a QRP EARCHI 9:1 unun.

I also have the SOTABeams Bandspringer antenna that plugs right into the antenna input and uses the built in tuner to operate between 10m and 60m.

So what’s the other two radios you might ask?

Above is my first QRP setup. FT817, LDG QRP Autotuner.

If I could work a deal for a Yaesu FT817 and a Flex 1500 it would complete the list. However used rigs are pricy and it seems most hams think that radios seem to appreciate with age so like I mentioned above it has to be a good deal for both the seller and myself.

73bob

For Guglielmo Marconi, the great challenge was to transmit wireless signals across the Atlantic and to all the ships at sea. He built stations at Poldhu, England; Glace Bay, Nova Scotia; and Cape Cod, United States—all near the ocean.

Was this done with a knowledge of oceanside propagation, or was it because he was in the business of ship-to-shore communication?

Those of us blessed with a waterfront residence on the east or west coast have much stronger communications links across the Atlantic or the Pacific than people living in the middle of the continent. We’ve all heard stories of antenna farms on or near saltwater marshes that get much improved signals. I even heard one about a ham with both feet in the Atlantic operating a low-power backpack radio with a whip and having a QSO with a station in France.

The “saltwater amplifier” is the increased ground conductivity near the sea, leading to more antenna gain. Average soil has a conductivity of 0.005 Siemens per meter, saltwater averages 5.0 Siemens per meter—an improvement by a factor of 1,000.

Do the math and that’s roughly 10 dB of gain. Imagine turning your 10-watt QRP radio into the equivalent of 100 watts.

Medium Wave Beside the Waves

Early on, some AM stations in the metro New York City area learned that oceanside towers can produce big signals. For more than four decades, High Island had been home to two of the biggest New York City AM signals: WFAN (formerly WNBC) on 660 kHz and WCBS on 880 kHz.

CBS’s station was so powerful that it could be heard as far away as Florida and Chicago on good days. Typical coverage included daytime signals up the coast as far as Cape Cod and down to Cape May. Then as now, CBS was one of America’s principal broadcasters, and the company found the saltwater ground system of Long Island Sound ideal for carrying radio waves.

Broadcasters have sometimes found some advantage or necessity to locate transmitter sites on islands. These islands vary from the isolated home of KUHB on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea to the now defunct WMBL on “Radio Island” near Morehead City, North Carolina. It was the first radio station serving the area and was well known for its clear reception and surprisingly long range.

Gordo’s Ground Shootout

Gordon West, WB6NOA, once did a head-to-head comparison between a traditional copper-foil strip that went nearly all the way around his boat and a seawater ground. The results of his experiment were published in Sail Magazine. Using an Icom marine SSB/ham transceiver and Icom AT-130, he was careful to retune the antenna each time ground systems were switched for an accurate comparison.

While the copper foil capacitive ground did produce a usable signal, the seawater ground improved antenna power output considerably.

In addition, this configuration decreased the noise floor while receiving and increased sky wave signal strength. It also caused a four-foot fluorescent tube to glow brightly with modulation peaks.

He saw the light.

WSPR Test

Greg Lane, N4KGL, did a test comparing two identical verticals, one on the beach near the water and another inland, away from the beach. In addition, a low dipole was added to the mix to see if horizontal polarization made any significant difference. Only simultaneous spots were used for comparison.

Using a pair of identical WSPRlite transmitters on 20 meters, Lane first established a baseline with a WSPRlite attached to each vertical. Both were set up several hundred feet inland at the same distance from the ocean. Evaluating the 55 spots, all were similar in output and operation. Using a low-power wattmeter onsite showed no discernable difference in output.

Two trials were conducted with the saltwater vs. land antenna comparison. The first one had the antenna placed at the shore and the other 700 feet inland. The second trial had them placed 200 feet apart. Results showed the saltwater vertical always beat the inland vertical for any WSPR spot with an average 10.8 dB advantage. As expected, the closer the antenna to the water, the better the gain.

In the low dipole vs. saltwater vertical scenario, the saltwater vertical was better 32 times out of 33 spots, with nearly a 10 dB advantage. The only downside was higher radiation angles.

Overall, his observations appear to support the presence of a significant saltwater gain.

Radial Placement for Maximum Gain

The object of the saltwater effect is to improve the ground system for better efficiency. Rudy Severns, N6LF, reminds us when AC current (RF) flows in a conductor, the current tends to flow only near the surface. The ground current for a saltwater vertical antenna is restricted to a thin layer near the water surface (skin depth). This means radials need to be near the surface to take full advantage of the saltwater effect.  

Running a copper wire with a fishing weight (or several) to the edge of the surf would probably be sufficient for casual use at the beach. A floating radial on an anchored pool noodle would be a good solution in calm inlets and tidal pools.

Tides are a challenge. Local tides can range from a foot to more than 50 feet. That would significantly cover the radials and vertical element, changing the effective length of the antenna system. A workable long-term solution could be a floating dock or a float substantial enough to support the antenna. You don’t need a long radial—attaching a piece of sheet metal or screen several feet long to the bottom or side of the dock can provide a low-resistance ground without a trailing wire.

Several DXpeditions have used pairs of 1/4 wavelength elevated radials connected to vertical antennas directly over flooded reefs. The radials need to be kept well above the water surface, even at high tides, for best results.

Close Also Counts

The objective with a vertical monopole antenna is not just to have any ground connection, but to have a low-loss ground plane under the base of the antenna. Think of the ocean like a huge copper sheet, just not quite as conductive. Being within a few wavelengths of an ocean is the next best thing to having radials near or in the water. Walt, K4OGO, has some videos online that discuss antenna designs and setup for use on the beach.

Going mobile? When you park close to the sea, the radio waves go over the surface, reflect and bounce off into the atmosphere and skip, just like stones or pebbles across a pond.

Reflections on Saltwater Propagation

Seawater is too good of a conductor to pass radio waves—instead, it reflects them like a mirror off of its surface. Saltwater contains Na+ and Cl- ions. Saltwater is electrically conductive because these ions are free to move in solution.

You might argue that 10 dB is only a little more than 1.5 S-units, but it can mean the difference between “can’t hear a thing” and full copy.

This might be a good time to book that beach vacation to fish for some DX!

The post The Saltwater Amplifier Effect (& How it Impacts Your Amateur Radio Station Performance) appeared first on OnAllBands.

Today, August 14th, in the Catholic Church, is the Feast Day of St. Maximillian Kolbe, who was martyred this day in 1941 . 

He died in the Nazi concertation camp at Auschwitz. As the story goes, there was a successful prion break from the camp. In response, the Kommandant ordered that 10 men be executed as an example of what would happen to those who might attempt any further prison breaks  One of the 10 selected men begged that his life be spared as he had a wife and children. Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take his place. The 10 men were placed in a starvation bunker. Over the course of 10 days, the men perished leaving Fr. Max alone as the last surviving prisoner. The Kommandant ordered that Fr. Kolbe be given an injection of carbolic acid to stop his heart. 

St. Max is the only canonized saint in the Catholic Church that we know held an Amateur Radio license. His homeland was Poland and his call sign was SP3RN. As far as we can tell, he spent his radio time spreading the Gospel. I highly and sincerely doubt that he viewed Amateur Radio in the same way we look upon it as a hobby or pastitme.

There is a weekly HF SSB net devoted to St. Maximillian Kolbe. I try to check into the Sunday evening 75 Meter net. There is also a 20 Meter net held earlier on Sunday afternoons.  For more information, you can go to:https://www.saintmaxnet.org/

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

I’m not a real fan of Las Vegas, but DEF CON is held in Las Vegas, so if I wanted to teach a one-day Tech class there, I just had to go. It was a fun, but tiring trip.

Getting there

I kinda made my travel arrangements last minute because the Ham Radio Village (HRV) folks weren’t sure that they were going to be able to secure a room for the class. That being the case, the only flight I was able to get was a late afternoon (4:50 pm) flight from Detroit. Same with the return. Instead of an early morning flight, I had to opt for the 1:15 pm flight, meaning that I wouldn’t get back to Detroit until after 8:00 pm. I managed to keep myself busy—there’s always something to do—but Wednesday and Sunday were mostly wasted.

I flew on Spirit. Enough said, I guess. It was packed. It was cheap, though, and the flight was direct to and from Detroit.

The flight out was fine. We even arrived about a half hour early. The return flight, however, was a real mess. We pushed back from the gate about 15 minutes late, but then, we sat on the tarmac for another hour and 45 minutes. I never did get a good explanation for what was happening. We arrived in Detroit an hour and a half late.

What a circus!

I stayed at Circus Circus because that’s what came up on booking.com as being close to the convention center. It was definitely close, but I really should have looked around some more. Circus Circus was built in the early 1960s, and it’s really showing its age. My room was clean enough, but the furniture was kind of banged up, there were spots where the wallpaper was peeling from the walls, and the air conditioner was very loud. Ugh.

There are many hotels around the convention center, and I think that if I shopped around more, I could have found a place with better rooms and a lower price. I took notes, and when I go back next year, I’ll be looking into those places as well.

Que rico!

Like everything in Las Vegas, the food is expensive. I lucked out, though, and found a place that was affordable, close to the Las Vegas Convention Center and my hotel, and delicious: Tacos El Gordo on Las Vegas Blvd.

The tacos at Tacos El Gorda are the real deal. They advertise that the tacos are made Tijuna style, and you’d be hard pressed to find better tacos there. They’re made with handmade corn tortillas and homemade guacamole and salsas that are made from scratch daily.

When you enter Tacos El Gorda, you get into one of six lines, depending on the type of taco you want. On my first visit, I opted for the pork (adobada) tacos. In some places, they call this type of of taco a taco al pastor. The meat is sliced from a rotating spit, much like gyros is made, directly onto a tortilla. It really was excellent and only cost $4.12 per taco.

My second visit I decided to get a little more adventurous. I got into the line featuring organ meats, and after waiting in line for about a half hour, I ordered one taco de suadero (beef brisket—not so adventurous), one taco de cabeza (beef head—a little more adventurous), and one taco de buche (pork stomach—really adventurous). I liked the suadero and cabeza, but the buche not so much.

I’’m not really a gambler, but…

I’m not really a gambler, and in 2022 and 2023, I didn’t gamble a single cent. Many years ago, though, I bought some blackjack books and learned some basic strategy. So, this year, when I found a couple of blackjack machines in the Circus Circus casino that would accept $1 bets, I decided to give it a go.

Friday night, I fed a $20 bill into the machine and started playing. This machine was a little complicated in that it had a lot of side bets that you could make, such as whether you were dealt a pair or dealt 19+. I lost three of these sucker bets at a buck a pop before I figured that out.

Once I got that straight, I started playing plain old blackjack using the basic strategy. Using this strategy, your odds about 50-50, and that’s about how it played out. I pretty much broke even over the next half hour. Right at the end, I had a bit of a lucky streak, and when my total hit $20.80, I cashed out.

I say “cashed out,” but what the machine does is print out a ticket that you then have to take to a cashier to actually get cash. I thought that I might play a little again, so I just pocketed the ticket.

Saturday night, I did indeed decide to give it another go. There were only two machines that were working when I got to the casino, so I wandered around for a bit, visiting the circus stage and watching the hotel visitors try their luck at games on the midway. When I got back to the machines, one guy was just getting up, so I took his seat.

At first, I had a run of bad luck, and my total dropped to $15.30. But then, I got on a little bit of a roll, and built my total up to around $20 again. At that point, I played even with the machine for about 10-15 minutes. After a lucky streak bumped my total up to $25.50, I hit the cash out button again, and took the ticket to the cashier to collect my winnings.

My biggest class yet

The class went pretty well. Because we were only allowed to have 100 people in the room, HRV limited the pre-registration to 75. Despite the late start in publicizing the class, it filled up quickly. After getting all the pre-registered people in, they started accepting walk-ins, and we ended up with a class size of 90, making it the biggest class I’ve ever taught!

Since it was a bigger room than the one I taught in at HOPE, the setting wasn’t quite as intimate. The students had questions, but not as many as the HOPE class. Perhaps the size of the room had something to do with that. I’m not sure.

Unfortunately, we only had the room for seven hours, meaning that the students couldn’t test right away. Instead, they would have to take the test at DEF CON itself.

As a results, I’m not sure how many of the 90 students eventually passed the test. I know that over the course of the next couple of days I ran into several students who had passed the test. My guess is that a very high percentage did pass.

Mind-boggled

DEF CON is a truly amazing event. It’s a “hacking” conference, but the definition of hacking is about as broad as it can be. There were special interest groups, or “villages,” for a wide range of activities including hardware hacking, voting, lock picking (physical security), embedded systems, Internet of Things, and many more. And not only were there a couple of speaker tracks designed to appeal broadly, each village had their own series of talks. The enormity of it all just boggles my mind.

On Friday, I checked in at the Ham Radio Village and dropped off some of my No Nonsense business cards. I offered to help out, but they seemed to be all set, so I wandered off to experience the conference. I had a fun day attending talks, including a talk on open-source hardware for conference badges. I’ll be writing more about this later.

On Saturday, I updated my Ham Radio for Hackers slides and spoke on the topic in the Ham Radio Village. Like at HOPE, I had a really good turnout, and it was standing room only.

Immediately after, I went to hear a talk by Cory Doctorow in the main room, where he talked about the “enshittification” of the internet. If you haven’t’ heard this talk or read his articles about the subject, you should.

After that, I dropped in to the Women in Security and Privacy Village to make a “friendship bracelet” for my wife. I had been wracking my brain for something to bring home for her, and I knew the moment that I saw the program description that this was the right thing. Basically, the bracelets are simply a number of beads strung together on an elastic band. There were some letter beads, too, so I was able to spell out “SILVIA.” My wife loved it because as you can see, she spells her name a little differently than most Sylvias, and has always lamented the lack of things she could buy with her name on it. I scored a lot of points with Silvia when I got home, pulled it out of my bag, and slipped it on her wrist.

HRV Meetups?

After my talk on Saturday, a guy in his 30s (I’m guessing here) came up to me to talk about his experience with amateur radio. He had recently gone to a local amateur radio club meeting and was not received very warmly at all. He was so put off by the experience that he wasn’t sure whether to bother getting his license. Does that sound familiar?

I tried to explain that ham radio was a big hobby, and he unfortunately had just found the wrong crowd. I went on to say that not all hams were like that and encouraged him to get his ticket. Yesterday, I received an email from him that he had indeed passed the Tech test, and with the help of my study guide, also passed the General. That made me extremely happy.

Of course, he still needs to find his people. As I sympathized with him, it occurred to me that we need to create a way for hams like him to find other hams like him. I’m thinking of something along the lines of the 2600 meetups that used to happen around the country before Covid. Maybe we could even piggyback on existing 2600 meetups. I’ll be blogging about this soon, so if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks to ARDC!

Thanks again to ARDC for funding this trip. The more I teach these classes, the more I’m convinced that we need to continue to reach out to this community. We need more people like the folks that attend DEF CON in amateur radio.

People who know me have heard me say that after all these years there are 3 radios I have sold that I actually regret selling. Well now there are only 2 radios that I regret selling…

.

Welcome the Xiegu X5105 back into my portable shack…

.

Between my FT991a and my FT891 there was a bit of a gap. The Yeasu FT891 Portable Station was a bit too heavy for my old bones. I needed something in a lighter backpack to make it easier to carry if I was to choose to activate one of the local POTA Parks here in Kingston.

The above pic shows my old X5105 with the Bandspringer attached

The Xiegu X5105 fills that gap. With the built in battery pack, the built in automatic antenna tuner along with the contest keyer and the built in CW Decoder it makes it a dream portable station.

My antennas are a 40m EFHW made with 28ga wire and a QRP AMAZON 49:1 unun. I also can use a 29foot end fed random wire using a QRP EARCHI 9:1 unun.

I also have the SOTABeams Bandspringer antenna that plugs right into the antenna input and uses the built in tuner to operate between 10m and 60m.

So what’s the other two radios you might ask?

Above is my first QRP setup. FT817, LDG QRP Autotuner.

If I could work a deal for a Yaesu FT817 and a Flex 1500 it would complete the list. However used rigs are pricy and it seems most hams think that radios seem to appreciate with age so like I mentioned above it has to be a good deal for both the seller and myself.

73bob

Today is expected to be very hot, so I don't want to speak too soon! The photo shows part of our garden this morning.

Last night around 9pm I was browsing Amazon and found the same 64:1 unun that I use with my 40m EFHW. This antenna is my primary antenna for my “Transportable/POTA” setup with my FT891.

I decided that the last one worked so well for me that it was time to see if the 1st one was the real deal or a fluke.

Around noon today I checked my front door and found the Amazon Fairy had magically made the new 64:1 unun appear sometime between 10am (last time I checked for it) and noon.

I had a spare 100 foot roll of Princess Auto 18ga insulated wire in the shack and as a bonus for my home environment is was even green.

I quickly measured out 64 feet and then did the connection things. As with most of Eastern North America it was a rather wet day.

Around 4pm locally the rain stopped and I was able to remove the old wire and install the new antenna, once again using the fir trees on the edge of my yard for camo as not draw attention to the antenna.

The SWR is pretty good especially for a wire hidden in the branches:

6m – 2.5:1, 10m – 1.7:1, 12m- 1.2:2, 15m – 1.6:1

20m – 2.0:1, 40m – 1.3:1, 80m – 3.0:1

The bands are not the best, but signal reports (90w output pwr) were fairly well (S7-S9+) with the stations that I was able to contact.

All in all for what it is…. I’m impressed and the best part is that using the built in auto tuner on my Yaesu FT991a I can easily bring it down to 1:1 on all the bands listed above.

The results are the same on my Yaesu FT891 with the same style of balun and a 64 foot length of quality (Red) Princess Auto 18 ga automotive wire. The only real difference is that as I use the 891 with no tuner I have to be careful on some of the bands.

As the new install gets more use I will let you know if there are any “issues” with its performance.

73bob

David Galletly, KM2O, has been appointed Vice Director of the ARRL Hudson Division. ARRL President Rick Roderick, K5UR, appointed Galletly to the remainder of the term ending in December, 2024, following the promotion of former Vice Director Ed Wilson, N2XDD, to Hudson Division Director.

Galletly has been active in amateur radio since 1998. An ARRL Life Member, he is a member and past President ...

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