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Well, apparently my signal gets out somewhere besides California. Today I had two contacts with Japanese amateurs. The second, in the area of Osaka, was a distance of about 5000 miles.

I'd say JT65a works for DX. Even with my sad sack dipole.

W00t!

Executive summary: After over 25 years of radio silence on the HF ham bands, I am back on the air!

= = =

Friday afternoon I got off work a little early and the weather was sunny and relatively warm for March, so I went out to the yard with a spool of wire and marked off how long I thought the antenna would be, cut the wire to length and created the radiating part of the antenna. Saturday I attached the feed line, started hoisting the assembly, and at that point I learned a few interesting things:

1. The antenna goes right through the Asian pear tree, and a couple of branches are very close to it. This is not a problem at the moment; I hope it does not become a problem during the next windstorm, or when the leaves appear on the tree. The tree isn't pushing down on the wire or anything, but it could hit the wire if the wind is blowing. (I have tried to put a little slack into the system with bungee cords on both ends of the antenna. We shall see.)

2. The layout of the fence I attached it to necessitates a 120° bend for the last few feet of the wire. This should not be a problem as long as the lengths of the two ends are equal (they are, or as close as I can measure).

3. The topography of the back yard is such that the antenna's height above ground varies from 20' at the house end to 6' at the fence end. Since the rule for antennas is "get as much wire as high in the air as possible," this could limit the range of the antenna, especially at lower frequencies. (See below) All antennas are compromises, though, and this was the compromise antenna I could get up on my own.

So this is not an ideal antenna, but since as I said all antennas are compromises, I can live with that. I got it up in the air, went inside the house and started checking it out. I got an acceptable match to the transmitter on all the bands 80 through 10 meters, and maybe 6 as well.

Now for the real test. Can I get a signal over the fence? I tuned up on 40 meters, listened for a clear spot, and called CQ on CW (Morse code). I took it rather slow; after 25 years I remember most of what I knew before, but the letters weren't coming as naturally as I would have liked. Do I sound like I'm sending with the wrong foot? Is anyone going to come back to me?

No answer.

I did this about three times and then heard:

STN CALLING CQ? DE **** ***  K

That isn't usual – most of the time the other station will respond with your call sign, "DE" (meaning "from") and their call sign, followed by "K" (go ahead). In my surprise I completely missed their call. Well, I decided, let's go for it.

QRZ? QRZ? DE WA7KPK WA7KPK K

"Who's calling me? From WA7KPK, go ahead."

WA7KPK WA7KPK de KA7PUN KA7PUN

My first HF QSO of the 21st century! KA7PUN was a bit hard to copy, but I managed to get most of what he said. His name is Dan, he lives in Benes, New Mexico, he's retired, and he likes flying ultralights and helping new hams get up to speed on Morse code. (More about that in another blog post.) He was quite a chatterbox – we were on the air for over an hour.

Sunday the antenna was still up, so I tried a couple more contacts, this time on a digital mode called PSK31. Without getting technical about it, it's a mode where you type your text into a computer window to send and watch the replies as they scroll across your screen. A little like connecting to a BBS. With a 300 baud modem. Yeah, ti's a bit slow, but so?

I had to cut the first PSK contact – with Bruce in California – short because the ham I was talking to was fading in and out. That had happened with Dan also, and I am hoping that's just atmospherics and not something that's happening because of the (lack of) height of the antenna. Not long after I found a nice strong signal, replied to it . . . and found myself talking to Zach in Lake Forest Park, a distance of about three miles. No wonder he was solid copy.

Later that night after I finished with my 2 meter FM nets I went back down and called CQ on PSK again, and got another strong signal. Great, I thought, we're making progress.

"Name is Creede," I sent, "[location] is Shoreline WA"

Geoff replied, "I am almost on top of you, I am down near 130th Street."

Heh. Geoff lives on Ashworth, which the street just to the west of my house, and maybe about 2 miles south.

So yesterday I made contacts totaling about 1000 miles, 995 of which were to California. :-)

I think the prospects are good for getting out of my back yard with solid readable copy. For one thing, there was the contact with Dan in New Mexico (the fading notwithstanding). For another, I was able to copy other conversations going on involving hams in places like Colorado, Wisconsin and Ohio, and copy them solidly with no fading.

So maybe this antenna is a cloud warmer (an antenna that generates signals with a high takeoff angle, limiting the distance signals can travel), and maybe it's just fine and will let me work Bora Bora, and maybe it depends on the frequency and time of day. Doesn't matter. It's my antenna and I'm enjoying it greatly so far.

The real test will come tonight and Sunday morning. There are two nets I want to check into on 80 meters (the lowest band I can get the antenna to work on, and even then it's a bit iffy). We'll see if I can check into them.

In other news I am coming down the home stretch in practicing for Norwescon. I need to finish the song I'm working on.

Let me tell you how tired I was last night.

I was so tired that when my daughter offered to pay my way to a 9:10 showing of The Muppet Show, I declined.

I was asleep by 9:00.

At about 7 I got up, got showered and dressed, and hauled the various projects and tools out to the kitchen (the kitchen table is the only area with space enough to work on anything). I finally got the power supply up and working at about 11. (Here's a handy pro tip: Don't hook up the -12VDC line directly to ground, no matter how much the blue wire looks like a black wire in low light.) Closed it all up, and I think I got the battery successfully replaced in the old handheld without major damage to anything, including myself.

And then it arrived! My grandson was fascinated that I got a package that big, even though I assured him several times that it didn't have anything in it for him. Including the packing peanuts and bubble wrap. I got it unpacked, hauled it into the bedroom, hooked it up to the power supply, plugged everything in, and . . .

Nothing.

What the smeg? I know I checked everything. Well, it turns out there was one thing I forgot to check. Is the power strip it's plugged into switched on? Switched on the power strip, switched on the main power supply switch, threw the kill switch and the radio roared to life!

So off to the manual to figure out how to switch the radio to 2 meters, the band I operate on most. I put out a test call and my friend William in Woodinville answered.

"Hey, you've got a great signal today!" he said. "I could hear you on the repeater input." For you non-hams, that means I was getting a signal all the way from Shoreline to Woodinville without using a repeater. I have never been able to do that with my handheld.

So I am officially in business. Now I need to take a break, nap, clean up my messes, and do some banjo practice. Then it's off to see if we can put the antenna off the roof one of these next weekends.

Success!

. . . but not just any radio.

I have been a radio ham since I was 13. Since then I've been on and off the air, mostly off, but when I've been on I've thoroughly enjoyed it. For the last few years my activity has primarily been checking into local VHF nets. It's fun and I get to meet a great group of fellow hams, but I want more.

You see, the kind of radio I'm doing at the moment is mostly limited to line-of-sight communications. Other frequencies allow for longer distance communications, and one of the most fun things about ham radio for me is getting on the air and chatting with random strangers from far away, possibly in a country I only barely know exists and will likely never visit.

There's another reason for having long distance capability. I am volunteering as an emergency communications coordinator for my church. As I interpret it, this means that if things were ever to go seriously sideways around here I'd want to be able to get word out to the outside world. You can do some of that with line-of-sight VHF communications and relaying, but I want the capability of doing it directly, or at least being to use other frequencies and nets if necessary.

(Any radio hams who may by chance be reading this are probably going "Geez, why doesn't he just say he wants HF capability so he can check directly into traffic nets if there's an emergency?" Well that's exactly what I want, but it would take a while to explain that a traffic net isn't something car-eating aliens use to gather their lunch.)

So I'm in the market for a radio that will handle both HF and VHF/UHF and won't set me back a bunch of money I don't have. For a couple of reasons I've settled on the Yaesu FT-857. It will do every ham band below 500 MHz except for one I don't use and is small enough to pick up and travel with if necessary. Its big brother the FT-897 is a distant second. It looks more like a ham rig is supposed to look, but it's $100-$200 more expensive and from all the reviews I've read, the '857 has the same functionality as the '897. The only thing it lacks is built-in compartments for a battery and power supply. I can handle those on my own.

My third choice would be a good used HF only rig. The '857 would be better because it can do HF or VHF/UHF as the need arises, but my budget may force me to go with what I can afford.

So if you happen to know of anyone who has some amateur gear they're interested in selling, pass the word along. I'm already stalking eBay and Craigslist and checking some local sources, but sometimes nothing works better than saying, "Hey, I know a guy who might be interested in that."