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K1RA @ W4VA Field Day 2014

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I had the opportunity to participate in the ARRL Field Day 2014 event this past June. I joined members of the Fauquier Amateur Radio Assoc. to enter in the 2A emergency power category. We operated from Crockett Park in the county, near Germantown Lake. We provided a GOTA (Get-On-The-Air) station for the public to participate, as well as established V/UHF station, a Voice station and a CW station for our club members to operate. We had great weather and a good turnout. I took a number of pictures, video and even some aerial shots from my quadcopter. To see a photo collage and some video excerpts of the weekend event, please see my Youtube video by clicking here, or below.

You can also view the static photo album.

906 total views, 1 views today


K1RA @ K8GP Rover June VHF 2014

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This past June I again had the opportunity to rove with Terry W8ZN. We had last roved in the ARRL Jan. VHF SS contest and had a great time and scored very well. Since the K8GP Grid Pirates Contest Group were unable to host an operation from their multi-op, multi-trasnmitter contest site in FM19bb, the two of us opted to pull together another plan to enter the Classic Rover category. Rich N3UW was kind enough to allow us to again borrow his rover for this event. Terry and I spent some additional time improving and re-engineering the rover given what we learned in Jan. Read more about our preparations, route planning, contest weekend experience and post contest analysis by clicking here.


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K8GP / Rover - FM19AW (looking SSW) - ARRL June VHF 2014


1,207 total views, 5 views today

KW4VA WSPR Beacon

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With the solar flux rising again in the winter of 2014/15 I’ve finally got my Raspberry Pi microcontroller based WSPR beacon on the air. I’m generating RF on 160m, 80m, 40m, 30m at night and 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m during the day every 2 minutes using my club call sign KW4VA. The controller generates ~10 milliwatts of power to either a 40m horizontal full wave loop in my attic up ~25′ or ZS6BKW @ 50′ or 400+’ long wire in the back yard. I’d developed a script awhile back to pull data from WSPRnet and display who has been copying my 10mw signal. Below you will see a Google map on which I plot of the most distant stations who have received my signal over the last few months. The red 0 icon is my beacon location at the intersections of all the lines. The other blue icon #’s are placed over the 6 digit grid square or approximate latitude and longitude of the receiving station. Those blue # icons represent what band (in meters) my signal was received. Click on the icons to read more information about the receiving stations to include their call sign, grid, distance, beam heading, average signal to noise ratio, # of reports posted, frequency and first and last times I was spotted. The color of the lines represent received signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) in dB [red -10]. Click on the View Larger Map links below this map to see a larger interactive map with more specific band data for my running total of unique DX country spots.




View Large Map for all time unique DX countries

My beacon is running Jamesp6000 WsprryPi C++ code on a RPi microcontroller board.

4,338 total views, 4 views today

KW4VA VaQP 2015

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I organized a few fellow hams to help participate this year’s Virginia QSO Party. With the help of Terry W8ZN, Craig N4OHE and the gracious host of Jim W4RX we put the KW4VA VaQP call on the air from Jim’s shack for the weekend of Mar. 21-22. We set up a small multi-multi station with 2 HF (80-10m) stations running Elecraft K3’s and an Alpha and Heathkit amps and one V/UHF 146/223/446 FM station running a Kenwood TM-742A. Our antennas ranged from some low dipoles for 40 & 80m, to a tribander for 10/15/20m and several monobanders. An 80m wire beam, a 40m 3L rotatable beam, a 5L 20m beam, stacked 5L 15m beams and a 6L 10m beam. For the V/UHF station we ran a triband vertical antenna up 50′. Full time op’s included Terry W8ZN, Jason KJ4EOO and myself Andy K1RA as well as part time ops Bill N4SV, Rich N3UW and Mike N2NAR.

Check out my photo album or a video collage with some pictures and video snippets from over the weekend below.

Our final contest breakdown for stations and multipliers contacted is as follows:

Total QSOs = 2408

Mobile QSOs = 323 (3pts each) = 969 pts
CW QSOs = 404 (2pts each) = 808 pts
Digital QSOs = 0 (2pts each) = 0 pts
Phone QSOs = 1681 (1pt each) = 1681 pts

Bonus Pts = 500 (K4NVA QSO)

Total Points = 3458

Multipliers = 266

DX = 89
VA Counties/Cities = 119 (of 133)
States = 48 (of 49)
VE = 10 (of 13)

Final Score = 920,328 points

73 and thanks for all the contacts!

de KW4VA (K1RA, KJ4EOO, N2NAR, N3UW, N4OHE, N4SV, W8ZN)

756 total views, 5 views today

K8GP Rover June VHF 2016

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Please check out an article I posted on my time spent with Terry W8ZN as we roved in the ARRL June contest.  There you will find pictures, audio and video of our operations from various grids square in western PA and VA.  I have also published numerous maps and stats of the stations we contacted across the 50 MHz – 10 GHz bands.  Please click K1RA @ K8GP Rover ARRL June VHF 2016 to read more.

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257 total views, no views today

K1RA SDR online

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Back during early 2016 I invested in a Kickstater project called KiwiSDR. This project was the development of an add-on cape to a small form factor, Linux computer known and the Beaglebone Black. This hardware allows for up to 4 simultaneous online users to tune in any part of the HF radio spectrum from 0-30 MHz, using several different modes, as well as providing visual feedback of signals and some demodulation of digital modes. The software employed in known as OpenWebRX and was originally written by HA7LIM, but was modified by KiwiSDR founder KF6VO to support some specific features of the new hardware. If there is an available slot on my SDR, located in Warrenton, VA grid FM18cr, you may tune in and listen for yourself by clicking on this link or picture below. If it is full you may try one of the many other KiwiSDR’s found listed at the OpenWebRX SDR list.

K1RA OpenWebRX KiwiSDR

305 total views, 1 views today

TS-930 Mode Switch Repair

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My friend Oliver WB3KLI had a Kenwood TS-930 in which the mode switch had failed.  Although it appears the mode switch is a rotary knob switch, it really turns a linkage that in turn pushes and pulls a slide switch.  Since the slide switch and the linkage failed and is no longer available I converted it to use a standard wafer, rotary switch.  I found several on eBay, but none had enough contact points.  I needed a 6P6T switch.  I ended up building my own switch from a combination of wafers from 2 separate switches.  You can see the photo album of my rebuild project here.  Or click on the picture below.

K1RA @ K8GP Rover Jan VHF SS 2014

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I’m celebrating 35 yrs since I made my first SSB/CW VHF contest QSOs back as a young WB1ALW and KA1GD back in CT.  This year I was fortunate enough to be able to rove with Terry W8ZN in this past ARRL January VHF SS contest. I assisted Terry in rebuilding the rover of Rich N3UW who graciously allowed us to take it out on a maiden voyage. I wrote an in depth article covering the preparation and contest weekend experience. I put together pictures, audio, video and some graphics and analysis maps covering our various grid stops. Check out the full article for more or click the picture below.

N3UW Rover used by K8GP Rover in the ARRL January VHF SS

N3UW Rover used by K8GP Rover in the ARRL January VHF SS

The post K1RA @ K8GP Rover Jan VHF SS 2014 appeared first on K1RA.


KW4VA/M in VaQP 2022

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Look for Terry W8ZN and I as we go mobile as a 2-op, 2-TX 80m thru 23cm CW, SSB & FM station this weekend running as KW4VA/M during the Virginia QSO Party 2022.  Our tentative stops and times can be seen at the Day # links below.  We will run from Staunton (STX) and north along Skyline Drive Sat.  hitting 14 counties and then No. VA (PRW) east and south on Sun. hitting another 14 counties.

Click Day 1

Click Day 2

You can track us in real-time as KW4VA-9 over the weekend on my VaQP APRS Tracker map here.  Read more about that map here.

 

73 and hope to work you many on many bands and modes from our many counties visited during the QSO Party!

The post KW4VA/M in VaQP 2022 appeared first on K1RA.

New VaQP APRS Tracker for 2023

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The 2023 VaQP APRS Tracker map is live!  This year I’ve added a textual callsign tracker view to the system. As well as displaying the usual real-time map, I’m offering a tabular, text view of VaQP station callsigns, their 3 letter county or independent city (C&IC), their time spent in the C&IC (C&IC AGE) and the age of their most recent GPS beacon spot (SPOT AGE).  All times are in minutes.  I’ve also added an automatic detection feature so there is no need to register your call with me. See info about adding VQP in your Beacon/Text message below.

Stations in a new C&IC less for less than 30 minutes are displayed in bold italic. Stations are sorted newest to oldest by their last GPS beacon time. Lines are color coded green, yellow, pink and red for ages  <1, <2, <3 and 3> hours according to the age of the GPS beacon message.  Calls are aged out if they haven’t generated a beacon in more than 4 hours.

For the new layout and some additional map features see:

https://k1ra.us/vaqp-aprs/

The map functions the same as prior years. Click on a color county or city (C&IC) for its name and 3-letter designator.  Click on a colored circle (green, yellow, orange, red) to zoom and expand a closely grouped set of APRS stations to reveal their individual callsigns.  Use the buttons on the left of the map to focus on a certain area of Virginia (N, SE, C, SW).

For mobiles or smartphone users looking for just the VaQP tracker station table data, check out the VaQP Mini Tracker URL here:

https://k1ra.us/vaqp-aprs-mini/

Stations using an Android phone, grab APRSDroid, free and tested from https://aprsdroid.org/download/ or Play Store (for pay). Any other APRS-IS compatible Android apps should work too.

iPhone users must purchase the APRS TX IOS app, which seems to be the least expensive app and supports APRS-IS.  NOTE APRS.FI app does NOT work directly with the APRS-IS network so it will not work with my VaQP APRS Tracker system.

App users be sure to get your APRS pass code at https://apps.magicbug.co.uk/passcode/ by entering just your call sign and retrieving the 4-5 digit code.  Enter the code into the smart phone APRS app so your location is sent through the APRS-IS network for my server to detect and plot your location.

Please email k1ra@k1ra.us with your VaQP plans for using APRS, for example what CALLSIGN-n you’ll be using so I can add you to the spotting list.  OR…

You may add VQP or VAQP (case insensitive) into your periodic APRS Beacon message or broadcast text my app will automatically add and start automatically tracking your location.

Email any comments, questions or suggestions to k1ra@k1ra.us

73

andyz – K1RA

p.s. – The Mini Tracker section of this project is based on a project developed by Rich K3FRG called arGeoDetector

The post New VaQP APRS Tracker for 2023 appeared first on K1RA.





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