Amateur Radio – a hobby where people talk about their hobby using their hobby.
I completed a quick and easy addition to my IC-706MKIIG today using a great article from Phil, AD5X. The article describes how to add a 12v fan on the back of the IC-706’s heatsink to help keep the radio cool. Phil’s article describes how to use a Molex plug on the back of the 706 to power the fan. Everything went smooth and the fan is working great.
Check out more articles here.
Thanks Phil!
I spent some more time on Sunday improving my HF mobile install. After completely removing the rear interior panel of the cab and finding no grommet or any other easy method of passing the feedline into the cab I was able to find a nice sized grommet under the passenger seat. I was able to keep the feedline to a length of 10 feet, ran it through a plastic covering for protection, and then tied it off underneath the truck at multiple points using zip ties. For the antenna mount support, I found an L bracket at Home Depot that I was able to securely bolt to the bed of the truck near the cab. I ran a short length of braided grounding wire from the other side of the bolt (inside the bed frame) down to the frame of the vehicle underneath the cab. For the antenna mount, I’m using a 3/8 inch X 24 Radio Shack base fitting – standard for use with Hamstick, Hamstick knock-offs, and the Hustler varieties. The base fitting fit neatly through a pre-drilled hole through the top of the L bracket.
In the past when I operated portable HF from the truck I used one of the 12v convenience outlets (aka cigarette lighters). I have consistently failed to locate any easy access through the engine firewall for a power cable. Now with finding the grommet under the passenger’s seat, I decided to use that for the entrance for 12v power. I used 10 gauge wire from the truck’s battery terminals (both with in-line fuses), routed the cable around the engine and down the passenger side to the grommet. I terminated the line using Anderson PowerPoles and am using a Saratoga Amateur Power Panel for distribution.
I took advantage of the IC-706MKIIG’s detachable faceplate, using the mounting kit to attach it to a Belkin iPod/PDA holder that secures into a cup holder. This allows me to easily tune around the band with my right hand without any reaching. The handmike attaches to the faceplate.
I haven’t found a great place to actually secure the radio and auto tuner. Right now they’re tucked under the rear of the front passenger’s seat. The seat immediately behind the passenger’s seat folds up towards the front of the truck and provides protection (and shade) for the rig. If I can find a way to mount the radio that still allows me to quickly and easily remove it for portable use, I’ll do it.
For antennas I’m using a two Hamstick knock-offs made by a company called Workman. One is for 20M and the other is for 40M. They easily screw into the 3/8 inch X 24 base fitting. Both work well, the 20M tunes the entire band and the 40M tunes nicely below 7260. I also purchased a cross between a Hustler and a Hamstick antenna (also for 20M and 40M) made by a company called Opek at the Virginia FrostFest last month. The 20M antenna is worthless. It won’t tune anywhere in the 20M phone band. The 40M antenna does a nice job covering the 40M band and tunes up to 7290 without issue. I also have a 75M Hamstick (can’t remember where I bought it) – with a little trimming of the stinger I was able to get the stick to tune the upper portion of the 75M phone band. The tuneable bandwidth for the 75M stick will be narrow, no way around it. But I can cut a few different length stingers to provide coverage down into 80M.
I’ve had successful QSOs using the Workman 20M and 40M antennas as well as the 40M Opek antenna. This evening I had the 20M Workman antenna mounted and first had a QSO with PS7JS in Brazil. There were several stations calling, but PS7JS came back to me after my second call and gave me a 59 report. Ten minutes later I had a QSO with Pedro, XE1REM, operating from Mexico City. Pedro also gave me a FB 59 report. Earlier today I had a QSO with a station in Slovakia, receiving a 57.
A couple of notes on operating mobile:
(1) I need to get something to take notes with. I need to be able to jot down callsigns, freqs, and times.
(2) I have to remember to include “mobile” after my callsign.
Tonight I hooked up my IC-706MKIIG in my truck. Very temporary setup – I just wanted to see if everything would work. I mounted the antenna using an L bracket on the inside of the bed of the truck near the cab. I’m using single band antennas and used one cut for 40M for tonights test.
2006 CQ WW DX Contest: It has been a learning experience so far. Much more intense than Field Day. It seems as if the bands are jam packed – nothing but “CQ Contest” from 80M to 10M. I started last night a had contacts mostly on 80M, but also a few on 40M – mainly South America and the Caribbean. Today contacts are about even between 15M and 20M… more Caribbean island stations, Africa, and Europe. Not much heard from the Pacific. I did hear a KH6 station on 15M buried in noise.
When I wasn’t on the radio I was finishing the QSL cards from the W4M special event station. I now consider my QSLing activities for W4M complete.
I’ve also been cleaning up my log. As of right now, I’ve logged 1069 QSOs since I upgraded to General in Nov 2005. Of those, 102 are CW QSOs (the first was back in DEC 2005). I need to go back and look up FISTS information and see if I’m close to their basic award. I’ve contacted a total of 86 DXCC entities – maybe I’ll be able to get 14 more during the remainder of the contest. The total towards the Worked All States award is 47. I’m missing Hawaii, Alaska, and Wyoming. I’m also probably close to the basic award for Worked All US Counties. The basic award is for 500 counties, I think.
Best news this weekend – I got the ICOM CT-17 working!. It’s quite slick, I can now click on a DX cluster spot in my logging program and my IC-706MKIIG automatically flips to that frequency. Or, if I’m hunting and pouncing, the log will automatically grab the freq and mode from the radio and place it in the log. I wish I had done this earlier.
I also had a short 30M QSO with Bill, WD8RTW over in WV. The QSO was going well, but then he disappeared. He came back briefly but we ended the QSO.
Had a nice 80M CW QSO last night with Tony, KN4VL. There was some QSB and QRM, but we hung in there for about an hour ragchew. Tony is a retired Marine and has children and grandchildren in the armed services. I think I’m slowly making progress on the CW front.
Yesterday after work I wanted to swap out the feedline on the Carolina Windom from RG-58 to RG-8X. My plan was to lower the matching unit which has an eyelet on top that I used to raise the matching unit up to ~50ft with some heavy duty line.
While I think the new feedline has helped improve my signal a bit, I’m still having problems on 17M, 15M, and 12M. 17M I’ve always had issues with and from what I read, it might be an issue with the radio itself. I’m usually able to work PSK31 and Phone on 17M without the tuner, but when I dip down in the CW portion the SWR is much too high. Both 15M and 12M will not tune. Also the SWR is too high to use without the tuner. On my inverted vee, both 15M and 12M are usable. So – I know I will need to play around a bit to get everything working.
This weekend is the 2006 CQ WW DX Contest (Phone). I want to use the contest as an opportunity to complete my initial DXCC requirements. The Carolina Windom is good to go for 80M, 40M, and 20M – so I should have plenty of opportunity to work those DX stations.
At lunch today I was tuning around 20M, 17M, and 15M – lots of activity…. lots of stations testing equipment in preparation for the contest.
I need to do two things before the contest kicks off:
(1) fix the power cable to the radio. When I did some shack clean up, I moved all the equipment onto a new Alinco DM-330MVT power supply using the RigRunner. But I was having some problems with the adapter that goes on the back of the IC-706. I need to pull the power cable off, recheck the PowerPole connectors, and the four pins that connect to the IC-706.
(2) setup the ICOM CT-17 so I can save little time by having my frequency automatically saved when I log QSOs on the computer.
…. the question is – can I get both of those done before the 2000 (local) kickoff of the contest?
Spent some time today reworking the shack…. still have a bit more to do.
(1) I was using two different power supplies – a PS-125 (25 amps) for the IC-706MKIIG and a different power supply for the FT-2800M (2M FM), and FT-1500M/KPC3+ (2M FM packet). I am now using the Alinco DM-330MVT (32 amps) to power the IC-706MKIIG and the FT-2800M. I’m now using the RigRunner 4010S for power distribution. I still need to make a power cable for the RigBlaster so I can get rid of the wallwart.
(2) I moved the FT-1500/KPC3+ and the other power supply out to the garage. My intent is to hook it up to the garage computer. I’ll be able to access the packet functions over the network.
(3) The weather station is down! I plan on getting that working off the garage computer as well.
(4) Heathkit SB-220 – now in the shack. But I’m still a long way from getting it operational. I need to make a list of everything I need to do to get it operational. Part of that will include putting my heavy duty MFJ tuner into action.
I jumped on the radio real quick last night before bed. After jumping around from 30M to 40M to 80M, I got an answer to my CQ from Tim, WD4GXD. Tim lives in Ruffin, a small town in the hills of western North Carolina, that I actually visited back in June of this year. We had a nice QSO, only wish it could have been longer. Tim was telling me that he had just picked up an IC-706 for mobile operations. He QRS’d so I was able to get almost 100% I hope to catch him again later for a longer ragchew.
I tried looking for a quick lunch time QSO, but had no luck. I think I might try and take the ARSIB out here to Fort Monroe and try to work a lunchtime QSO using a portable antenna. Might be fun.
Went up to the Yorktown Battlefield Saturday and linked up with Mark, N1LO. I got to see his portable setup. He was using a delta loop antenna made of speaker wire, maybe about 25′ per side. The speaker wire was in three sections, the sections were connected using fishing line lure links. The speaker wire was terminated using banana plugs and fed into a 1:1 balun. To support the legs of the delta loop, Mark used a combination of a painter’s pole and a fiberglass fishing rod secured by a 3′ picket easily driven into the ground about 8″.
Also been preparing for the upcoming RV DXpedition. I’ll be taking the ARSIB along with the vertical dipole, but was also thinking about taking a G5RV. I’m also going to try and use a 75M hamstick, we’ll see how that works out.
Scouts: received my Radio Merit Badge pamphlet in the mail today. Between the pamphlet and web resources, I want to put together a course package for the merit badge. One of the gentlemen I work with has a son who is interested in pursuing the Radio Merit Badge… so I need to get crackin’.
Army MARS: put in an application for Army MARS. The VA state rep told me it will be a couple weeks before I get my MARS callsign and initial training information.
US Army Amateur Radio Society: picked up a few more members. need to make contact with the Iraqi folks to check on the status of the pending YI9 applications.
DX: made contact with one of the newest DXCC entity… Montenegro! The YU6AO Montenegro DXpedition team now has a Web page at http://www.yu6ao.info/ and a log search at http://www.yu6ao.info/log.html … I’m in the log!
eBay: purchased an ASTATIC D-104 microphone. Should be a fun project adapting it for use with my IC-706MKIIG.
Local ham swap: made a deal to purchase a SB-220 Heathkit HF Linear Amplifier! This should give me a little more motivation to improve my antenna situation. Also need to acquire an antenna tuner.
Lighthouse QSL cards: finished my QSL cards for the Bodie Island Lighthouse (USA-062) and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse (USA-212) activations. Some of the Currituck Beach contacts are getting a North Carolina lighthouse key chain/compass/thermometer. Tried to get those to fellow ARLHS members.
W4M Special Event Station QSL cards/certificates: everyone who had sent me a SASE has been sent a QSL card (and certificate if they provided a large envelope).
SkyWarn Net: checked into the Chesapeake Amateur Radio Service (CARS) SkyWarn Net. They had made recent improvements to their repeater and have greatly expanded the coverage.
I had a good time. Putting together the Amateur Radio Station In a Box (ARSIB) was a good learning experience. I now have a functional, portable system that I can take anywhere to operate. The actual operation and contacts during field day was very enjoyable. Other than the lighthouse activations and the W4M special event station for Memorial Day, I don’t do a lot of phone. So all the phone contacts were good experience. No big DX and no new states (still missing Alaska, Hawaii, and Wyoming for WAS).
I wish I had tried setting up my homebrew vertical dipole to see how it did against my end fed inverted vee.
I’d also like to get one of the Heil Traveler headphone/boom mike devices that has a PTT switch. I think it would make operating easier having a boom mike than constantly picking up and setting down a hand mike. I’d also like to try to integrate some type of control software between the radio, the laptop, and the logging program. I’m going to give FT-817 Commander a try. I know there are similar applications for my IC-706MKIIG,
I need to take advantage of some of the easy way to get more points….:
– Message Origination to Section Manager: 100 bonus points for origination of a National Traffic System (NTS) style formal message to the ARRL Section Manager or Section Emergency Coordinator.
– Satellite QSO: 100 bonus points for successfully completing at least one QSO via an amateur radio satellite during the Field Day period.
– W1AW Bulletin: 100 bonus points for copying the special Field Day bulletin transmitted by W1AW.
For next year I would like to try and operate away from the house. Maybe combine it with a summer vacation trip.