K0SWE Blog

I'm very excited to announce that I passed the Element 4 exam to earn an Amateur Extra license! It took a bit of doing because most places in the US are still shut down due to COVID-19. However, I kept my ears open and found a completely remote session administered by GLAARG VEC . GLAARG has all of their remote exam sessions advertised through hamstudy.org . A few days ago I registered there and received a PIN and some instructions right off the bat, with a couple more emails to follow. I tried to read and follow all of the instructions as carefully as I could. In my case, the video conference would be done over Zoom. They had guidelines about choosing an uncluttered and quiet space, and making sure that nothing would distract or interrupt me during the exam. They also called for a clean desk, so I took my station apart to make sure there wouldn't be a last-minute scramble. This morning, I logged into Zoom about an hour before the exam. All of the test takers, all ~40 of ...

I've been following Dave Casler KE0OG 's YouTube videos since I started ham radio. (Which was only a year ago, but still...) I really appreciate his pacing and style: many hams on YouTube have developed a more flashy, fast-talking flair, but sometimes they feel like click-bait and can get overwhelming to watch. With Dave, it feels like I'm sitting in the shack learning something from my Elmer. On yesterday's live-stream, Dave answered my question about FT8! I noticed that the radio transmits much more power if I use an FT8 slot around 2,000 Hz than if I use 300 Hz, and Dave pointed out that the normal SSB audio bandwidth only accepts audio frequencies between around 400-2,500 Hz. He didn't say this, but it made me realize that I can change the dial frequency to effectively access those lower and higher FT8 slots, and that I really only have a little over 2 kHz of useful transmit bandwidth. Good advice, thank you!

I've been working quite a bit of FT8 on HF in the past few weeks. Without too much effort, I've already collected about 170 QSOs (contacts) with 110 QSLs (confirmed by the other side). Among those QSLs, I've worked 35 states and 4 countries beyond the US, which is pretty incredible to me! My humble HF station is far from ideal, but it's doing the job, at least operating FT8. I'm still operating the IC-718 and the EMCOMM II antenna with the IT-100 tuner, Signalink and CI-V interfaces. I've added an MFJ-822 power/SWR meter, which is actually giving me much different power numbers than the radio and I'm glad to have it. I've learned a lot about what works and doesn't work in this particular arrangement. For instance, in the first week or so of operating, I had frequent CI-V resets when raising my transmit power above 20W. Turns out, the EMCOMM II (as with many end-fed wire antennas) uses the feedline's coax as a counterpoise if there's nothi...

After setting up my HF station over the weekend, I've been dying to try digital modes with it. I'd heard of FT-8 from several sources as being a relatively easy and fun mode to get into, so I ordered the necessary cable to go with my SignaLink USB and got working. It was a little challenging to get everything set up. I already had a CI-V cable I used over the weekend, which can let the computer query and change the radio's parameters like frequency, mode, filters and noise reduction. However, I also needed the second connection with the SignaLink to receive and send audio. That's all a bit harder with Linux's idiosyncrasies with regard to multiple audio sources and sinks. Add to that the minor headache of compiling WSJT-X from source before realizing it was available pre-compiled in the Ubuntu APT repo. However, after much fiddling and tweaking, I was able to make my first HF digital mode contact over FT-8: K9IJ in Illinois, at a distance of 895 miles (1,441 k...