From the ARRL:  “Effective 12:00pm ET / 16:00 UTC we will be returning Logbook of The World® (LoTW®) to service.”  That is fantastic news!

Current Queue Status for LotW

I uploaded the logs that I had waiting since things went down in early May.  When I logged into my account today, this is what I saw:

When I synchronized DXKeeper and LotW, the most recent LotW confirmation was from May 9.  So we are a couple of months behind.  I was surprised there were only 47K logs in the queue (a 16 Hour delay), but I expect very few people know it is back on line.  Hopefully those May and June confirmations will eventually get uploaded.

I had a few tasks to carry out for my club, Newport County Radio Club, during Field Day 2024, which was hazy, hot, and humid (sounds familiar).

I was charged with making a satellite contact, something I had not done since 2020.  I spent two weeks before ensuring that I had calibrated all the satellites that were still in the air (and bemoning all the ones that were no longer available – CAS-x, XW-x, etc.).  My station is shown in the photo below (IC-9700, laptop running SATPC32, and a 3×11 Arrow antenna on a photo tripod).

The first available pass was for RS-44, and would be at the point of closest approach right at 1400 EDT.  With only about 8 minutes to make a contact at that point, I was pretty confident, but imagine my disappointment when I could barely hear any singlas on the satellite and couldn’t hear my downlink at all.  After that failed pass, I did some quick checking and discovered that the VHF and UHF coax cables had been attached to the wrong beam.  EEK!

There was a pass of AO-73 about a half hour later, and I had no trouble making 3 SSB contacts on it (I gave up trying CW as there were no responses other than folks going up and down the band to find themselves sending endless dots and dashes).  A couple of hours later there was a pass of AO-7, and I quickly made a SSB contact on that bird, just to pay homage to the little satellite that still does, 50 years later!

Another task was to pass a section manager message from our site at Glen Park (Portsmouth RI) through a VHF link to my home gateway (WB4SON-10 on 145.050 MHz).  Despite the 21 mile path and some terrain between the two locations, it was an easy S9+++ connection with a full speed data link.  This message was also part of the Winlink Thursday drill for the week before and after Field Day.

As I wrapped up the AO-7 contact, I felt a burst of cool air on my back, a 180 degree change of wind direction.  I suspected there was a downdraft nearby, so I quickly took my equipment apart, stuffed it in my car, and headed home.  A few minutes after I left, the skies opened with a deluge of rain.  I felt sorry for my buddies in various tents still at the site.

When I got home, I copied the W1AW CW bulletin.

My final task was to work the CW station for the final 2.5 hours of the contest on Sunday.  This year I decided to run Search/Pounce, and enjoyed contacts on 10, 15 and 20 meters.

As always, lots of fun

One of my goals for 2024 is to have confirmed contacts with at least 1,500 unique POTA parks.  As of Saturday June 22, I had 1,401 confirmed.

So 99 more parks to go.  Things have slowed down considerably as propagation during daylight hours no longer favors fairly productive areas, as well as the need to work a unique park.

Things have slowed down a bit.  I suspect Bill hasn’t been out in the early morning hours as often as he has in the past due to band conditions (the past month+ has seen very weak signals on most bands up here in New England).

Nevertheless, six weeks after the last Operator-to-Operator award, I received one for 450 park contacts with K4NYM today.  Thanks for always being there Bill!!!

The document attached has all the current FM and Linear Satellite passes during daylight hours for FN41 (Rhode Island)

Field Day 2024 Satellite Passes

2024 is my fourth year of participating in CWT contests, and the gold medal (participating in at least 120 CWT contest for the year) arrived yesterday.

I had been having some issues with SATPC32 and my iCOM IC-9700.  Whenever I was running SATPC32 and RS-44 was active, for some reason if I used the rig’s VFO knob to tune around the passband, it would sometimes caused the Doppler adjustments to stop working.  All the other satellites were just fine.

I went back to the recommended settings from the SATPC32 documentation and discovered I was twice their recommended baud rate.  So I lowered things to 57600 baud.  On my first test, that seemed to fix the problem with RS-44.

However, I also use that radio with WinLink and VARA FM.  I knew that I was using CAT for PTT, so I needed to drop the baud rate down on that as well.  Imagine my surprise at finding that 57600 baud didn’t exist as a valid value.

The fix was simple; change from PTT CAT control to COM control.  I used the same COM port as I had used for CAT control (COM4 in my case), and selected the PTT pin as RTS.  That worked just fine.

I haven’t made a satellite contact in a few years as another club member was nice enough to step up.  However, he had to back out this year, and I was left flat footed when everyone else took a step back; it looked like I had stepped forward to volunteer.

I spent a few hours today updating my satellite laptop with all the latest Windoze stuff, and figuring out why my IC-9700 didn’t power up (12VDC power supply had a loose AC plug).  My next shock was that, for the most part, the birds I used a few years back were no longer active (bye bye CAS-x and XW-X).  AO-7 is still sort of working, as was RS-44.

I was able to adjust the transmitter calibration and hear myself on RS-44, but had no responses to a CQ.  That bird seemed to have very good doppler correction throughout the last half of the pass.

I also heard a few SSB calls on AO-73, so gave that a try.  As usual the transmit doppler correction was about 7000 Hz off.  I did make a partial SSB contact with N2FYA, but I don’t think he had the last letter of my call correct.  AO-73 has always been a challenge for me due to its unpredictable frequency offsets.

I need to setup FO-118, JO-97, HO-113 and XW-4, which are all new birds for me, then get the transmit uplink calibrated for them and AO-7.

Field Day 2024 rules are clear that multiple QSOs count now, but only one FM contact may be counted per FM bird:

7.3.7. Satellite QSO: 100 bonus points for successfully completing at least one QSO via an amateur radio satellite during the Field Day period. “General Rules for All ARRL Contests” (Rule 3.7.2.), (the no-repeater QSO stipulation) is waived for satellite QSOs. Groups are allowed one dedicated satellite transmitter station without increasing their entry category. Satellite QSOs also count for regular QSO credit. Show them listed separately on the summary sheet as a separate “band.” You do not receive an additional bonus for contacting different satellites, though the additional QSOs may be counted for QSO credit unless prohibited under Rule 7.3.7.1. The QSO must be between two Earth stations through a satellite. Available to Classes A, B, and F.

7.3.7.1 Stations are limited to one (1) completed QSO on any single channel FM satellite.

NOAA has announced a much greater than normal Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook with 17 to 25 named storms and 4-7 major ones.

With this in mind, are you ready for this year’s hurricane season?  Do you have a plan for protecting your home and family?  See this resource for planning help.

Are you currious about the data that backs up the forecast?  There is an excellent 15 minute long discussion about how the transition from El Nino to La Nina, water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic, and upper level winds all factor into the probability of hurricanes. 

Willy, W1LY, is a dear friend of mine.  He’s the sort of person who is always looking to help, and has serious skills to make things happen.  Here at casa WB4SON, for example, he launched a 160-meter Inverted-L antenna in the air.  That enabled me to complete WAS and DXCC on the 160-meter band, and is the only antenna I use on HF on all bands.

Willy was with me on my first POTA activation, and managed to get me hooked.  I was ecstatic yesterday when I received an Operator To Operator Award for hunting him during 50 of his park activations.  Most recently he has been logistics for his wife Linda during her bucket list hike of the Appalachian Trail.  She has completed the trail from its origin in Georgia through the Vermont border.  Many of his activations have been at various parks along the trail.

Thank you Willy!

Aurora watching turned into a thing when the largest Geomagnetic Storm in more than two decades gave us Earthlings a spectacular view of the power and majesty of our sun last night.  Sadly, Rhode Island weather wasn’t as cooperative as it could have been, as it was very cloudy until about 3:30 AM this morning.  But that didn’t stop my wife, daughter, and me from heading out at O’dark hundred to see the sights.

View to NW around 3:30 AM near Schartner Farms in Exeter RI

My wife and daughter can be seen on the shore of Barber Pond (POTA US-10548) around 4:00 AM enjoying the celestial display due west

This amazing global display of Auroral activity was spawned by the first few of a large series of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), impacting the Earth Friday afternoon.  This drove the Kp level up to 9 and generated a G5 storm.  While things tapered off a bit this morning, they are back up to a level 8, with several more CMEs due to impact us in the next day.  Those with clear weather may be lucky enough to see more displays tonight.

By the way, viewing the event through recent smartphones will reveal more colors and details than can be seen by the naked eye.  In the examples above, the Aurora was occurring over the West Coast thousands of miles away  Had the sky been clear around 10 PM, the display would have been on top of us.  Nevertheless we could still see the Aurora with our naked eyes, but mostly saw the whitish green colors of the shimmering curtains.

The Kp index reached a value of 8 today, after the planet was struck by one or more CMEs, pushing the planet into a Severe Geomagnetic Storm (G4), something we haven’t seen for 20 years.  Multiple additional CMEs are headed towards Earth.  Fortunately we aren’t expected to see a Kp of 9 (Extreme), but who knows.  Currently the storm will likely be producing auroral activity that may be visible as far south as Texas and Alabama.  (Sadly, New England weather is anticipated to be cloudy overnight).

I subscribe to the Auroral Alert program from SpaceWeather.com so my phone has been buzzing with SMS messages for days now as many X-level flares have been detected.  Sure enough, I observed the noise floor increase and the waterfall go dead about an hour after the CME impact.

Capture of Solar Data from SolarHam.com – showing today and tomorrow being a level 8 storm.

From the Space Weather Prediction Center showing the radio blackout when the CME hit around 10 AM EDT.

SWPC – Shows the high level of D layer absorption happing as the particles from the CME spread out into the Ionosphere 2 hours later. Note 35dB attenuation in the 20 meter band, and that is one way. In other words 35dB going up thru the D layer to the F layer, the 35dB coming down, for a total of 70dB  Nothing like a 12 S-unit reduction in signal strength!

A couple of new POTA awards came in this week – first was the Operator To Operator Award with Bill K4NYM.  Unsurprisingly another Bear Cave Award came is as well, this time for Green Swamp US-5330 in Florida (thank you Bill).

Ever since I got back on the air, I’ve had envelopes at the ARRL Incoming QSL Bureau.  Over the years I’ve received a few envelopes, perhaps 25 DX cards, and a couple dozen from the W1AW/x operations during the 100th anniversary.  I had used Forever stamps on the envelopes and had clipped extra stamps to each one.  But I hadn’t received any envelopes in years.  I just figured QSLing was a thing of the past.

About a week ago, I received an email from Paul W4FC, who informed me he had recently taken over the part of the bureau responsible for my call, and that he had received hundreds of pounds of cards that were unsorted when he took things over.  His preliminary sorting indicated that there were a few ounces of cards for me, and he wanted to know if I was interested in receiving them, or if he should just recycle them.  Of course I said yes, and we made arrangements to cover any shipping fees.

A few days ago, he emailed again and said he actually had almost two pounds of cards, and was sending them to me via Media Mail.  I was shocked when they showed up yesterday.  A quick count indicated there were over 250 cards!  Many dated back to 2012, about the time I started to get serious about DXing.

While I haven’t been able to verify everything yet, I did notice a card from Tasmania, Jim, VK7SM.  This is of significance because I have 55 of the required 60 WPX prefixes for Oceania, and with this card I now only need 4 more Oceania prefixes to qualify for the rare CQ WPX Award of Excellence.

I am absolutely stunned at how quickly Paul has handled all of this.  I can’t even imagine how many cards must have passed through his fingers!

My wife and I headed to our favorite park, Beavertail (US-2868) on Conanicut Island, RI,  to watch the Eclipse this afternoon.  We were too far to the east to enjoy totality, but we figured it would be fun to see 91% of the sun occluded.  The weather sort of cooperated, with thin high wispy clouds and a temperature in the low 50s.  But I didn’t quite plan on the stiff breeze blowing right off the water into our faces – I was shivering, especially my hands.

I figured that I could use this as an opportunity to try out my Elecraft KH1 and it’s built-in 41-inch whip antenna at a park.  Despite my trembling fingers, I managed to make ten QSOs between 2:15 and 3:09 PM, all of which were during part of the eclipse.  I was actually pleasantly surprised  that folks could even hear me, but they did with a few fills required and signal reports ranging from 539 to 599.  That completes another of my goals for 2024, by the way.

My view looking SSW from Beavertail – it was a nice early spring day but WINDY.

My Elecraft KH1 laying down on my chair. It was fairly easy to work 10 stations with the attached 41″ whip (and 13 foot counterpoise wire laying on the ground)

I was surprised to receive a QSL in the mail from Bill Brown, K4NYM, who has made over 190,000 QSOs from 388 parks.  I can’t imagine the number of QSL cards he must send out!  I can’t even imagine the amount of work required to log that many contacts and upload them.  THANK YOU BILL!!!

But in non-K4NYM news, I received a Repeat Offender Award for a park in Ohio.  So I do have contact with folks other than Bill.

Today, I finally got my QRP Labs QMX transceiver on the air, making my first contact with AB9CA, Dave, at park US-2259 in Indiana.

The QMX is a five-band QRP transceiver.  It supports CW, or single-tone digital modes (like FT8).  When running off a 10.8 volt battery pack, it produced 4.3 watts out on the 20 meter band.

The kit is priced at $95 for the 80/60/40/30/20 version (what I have), or $105 for the 20/17/15/12/10 version.  A very nice metal case sells for $20.

For those of you that dislike winding toroids (like me), be aware that this kit has a bunch since it is 5-bands.  There are 7 toroids to be wound, as well as two binocular cores.  Some of them are multi-tapped.  Plus this is a pretty tight assembly.  The good news is most of the components are surface mount and already installed.

The QMX is about the size of a pack of playing cards. It is hooked up to a dummy load and one of my paddles for testing.

Be aware that it does not have an internal tuner.  SWR protection has been added to recent versions to avoid blowing out the finals.  Because of this, I was unable to tune my Elecraft T1 Automatic Antenna Tuner, until I inserted a 6 dB attenuator in the output of the rig.  With that attenuator in place, the rig sees a SWR of less than 1.5:1 no matter what the load is.