CY9C

When CY9C began operations back on August 26, there were huge pileups. On 30-meter CW, the pileup was at least 5 kHz wide. One of the reasons for this, of course, is that St. Paul Island is part of Canada and not that far from most of the United States. That made it a lot more accessible to hams here in the U.S.

I waited, and on the evening of August 31, I actually heard them calling CQ on 30 meters managed to work them on the second call.

As it turns out, I probably could have skipped it entirely. I just checked Logbook of the World (LOTW) and see that I worked CY9C on August 21, 2016; CY9SS on July 5, 2005; ;and Cy9A on July 31, 2003.

VUs in the log

For some reason—maybe because I don’t really have a DX station—I had never managed to work anyone in India. Well, in the last  month or so, I’ve managed to work two Indians, VU2GSM and VU2TMP. VU2TMP has QSLed via LOTW, making my current DXCC count 174.

AllStarLink

And now for something completely different, as they used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus….

Several months ago, the University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club (UMARC) upgraded their repeater system (145.23-, 100Hz). As part of this upgrade, they became a node on the AllStarLink network, which they have been proudly announcing on their Sunday night net. 

After last Sunday’s net, I decided to find out how to access the network. The first thing I did was to take a look at the UMARC website, or I should say websites. UMARC actually has four different web pages. Unfortunately, none of them had any information on how to access the AllStarLink network.

Then, I asked one of the club’s advisors. He wasn’t really sure how to do it either, and advised me to search for the information on the web. I did this and found a Beginner’s Guide, but this isn’t really what I was looking for. The Beginner’s Guide directs someone on how to set up their own node, not really how to use the network.

I kept looking and found the page AllStarLink Standard Commands. This is exactly what I was looking for. This page describes the DTMF sequences a user needs to connect and disconnect from nodes. Fortunately, the UMARC repeater uses this standard command set.

Next, I had to find a repeater to connect to. That shouldn’t be so difficult, I reasoned, since the network boasts that they have 34,720 users and 35,345 nodes. I started with the AllStarLink Node List. I was able to connect to a couple of repeaters, but most of them seemed either offline or inaccessible for some reason. One of the active nodes that I was able to connect to was WW8GM, the General Motors Amateur Radio Club repeater in Detroit, but I got no reply to my call there.

So, I asked on /r/amateurradio if anyone had suggestions for active or interesting nodes.  I was directed to a list of “keyed nodes,” which I guess are nodes that are currently active. Currently, this page is showing 30-35 active nodes.

One of the nodes that looked promising was a repeater in Seattle. The page showed that it was connected to at least a dozen other repeaters. When I connected to that repeater, I heard a net with everyone giving weather reports! I didn’t find that very interesting, so I quickly disconnected.

I’m told that the UMARC repeater connects to a net of student stations on Saturday afternoon. I’ll be listening for that, but really would like to know of other interesting nets or nodes on the AllStarLink network. If you know of any, please comment below.

 

Question T3C07 in the Technician Class question pool reads:

What band is best suited for communicating via meteor scatter?

1. 33 centimeters
2. 6 meters
3. 2 meters
4. 70 centimeters

The answer, of course, is B. 6 meters.

I make a big deal out of this question when I teach my one-day Tech classes because I think meteor scatter is probably one of the coolest things that Techs can do. Have I ever done it? Well, no, at least not yet.

Two months ago, I came across this video:

After watching this video, I said to myself, “Hey, that looks simple enough that even I can do it.” Not only that, after looking around the shack, I realized that I had all the parts necessary to make it. I had a piece of PVC pipe that I bought for some other antenna project, and I had a terminal strip in my junk box to connect the loop to the coax.

I also had a bunch of 75Ω coax that was installed back in 1985 when the house was built to distribute cable TV to the living room, bedroom, etc. I’ve never had cable TV in the nearly 25 years I’ve lived here, so I just cut a length from one of the cable runs. So, not only did the antenna look easy to build, I wouldn’t have to spend a dime on it.

Today, I finally got around to putting it all together. As you can see from the photo below, I used the military surplus fiberglass mast to get it up off the ground.

The photo below shows how I connect the loop  to the matching stub using a terminal strip.

Troubleshooting the antenna

When I first connected my antenna analyzer to the antenna, I was a little dismayed that the SWR was 14:1! I hadn’t expected it to be perfect, but I did expect it to be a lot lower than that.

The first thing I did was make sure that the wires were connected to the terminal strips properly. When that proved not to be the problem, I thought that maybe it was too close to my other antennas, so I moved it to the other side of the yard. That didn’t change a thing, either.

My next guess was that perhaps the coax was bad somehow, so I disconnected the matching stub and measured the SWR again. At 50.1 MHz, the SWR was now a much better 1.76:1. Since the feed point impedance of just the loop is supposed to be about 100Ω, I knew the problem was the matching stub.

In another video, I’d seen the coax used for the matching stub coiled around a PVC pipe. The theory behind this is that not only the stub matching impedances, but also acting as a choke. I didn’t have any PVC pipe big enough, so I simply coiled the 75Ω coax and taped it together. WRONG! When I uncoiled the matching stub, the SWR came down dramatically, measuring about 1.1:1 at 52 MHz. Down at the bottom of the band, where I planned on playing, it was a bit higher, but it was still less than 1.5:1, and that is easily handled by my IC-7610’s antenna tuner.

Of course, now that I have the antenna, the band is just dead. I’ve been monitoring for the last hour or so, with nary a signal received. That’s just how it goes with 6 meters, I guess.

Meteor scatter here I come

I think that to be more successful on 6 meters, I’ll need to make some improvements to the antenna. For example, I’ll have to figure out a way to make the connections more robust and maybe add a little wire to the loop to bring the resonant frequency down a little. I probably should get the antenna up a little higher, too.

Building this antenna has been fun, and even though I still  haven’t made any contacts, I’m looking forward to operating 6 meters in the future. Maybe I’ll even get lucky and make some meteor scatter contacts. Then, when I cover that question in class, I can say that I’ve operated meteor scatter and it’s pretty cool.