June 2013 Wrap-Up

DX - I worked just 28 countries from June 12 through June 30, giving me four new DXCC (BV, DU,YB, and ZD7) and three new CQ Zones (24, 27, and 28).

So with DXCC behind me Triple Play has become my short-term goal. Digital is done, all 50 states confirmed on LOTW. Thirteen states are needed on phone, I should be able to close that column out with a few contests. CW... OK, this will require real commitment.

DXCC count as of 05-July

CW - To this end, I've been working some DX on 20m CW, which is great since "TU 5NN 5NN 73 DE WW2PT" is about the extent of my CW vocabulary at the relativistic speeds typically found at the extreme low ends of the bands. I'm getting more comfortable venturing into that territory, however. I can copy my own call at ludicrous speed, and that's pretty much all that's needed 90% of the time.

I've also been listening a lot to the QRP guys up around 14060; they usually operate inside my 15-20 wpm comfort zone. Haven't worked any of them, mind you -- I seem to get paddle shy at the prospect of having someone starting an honest to God conversation, sending me into a panic spiral once the QSO strays from the signal report exchange. It's completely psychological; if I'm not working a station, I can comfortably copy a CW QSO at this speed. Only when it's my QSO does the brain meltdown occur. This too shall pass.

Flex 1500 - Loving the new toy, for the most part. Still messing around with the settings, trying to get the noise blankers set to best handle the electrical noise ever present at my QTH. Unless I'm just not finding the optimum settings, I have to say the noise blankers are no match for those in the K3. The filtering, on the other hand, is simply amazing. Clean sounding CW right down to 25 hz. At times some distortion of signals starts to occur, gradually increasing until I have to reduce the size of the audio and DSP buffers. This makes the distortion go away, but also limits the minimum passband width, apparently. Not sure why this is happening, since CPU usage doesn't seem to be excessive (usually hums along in the 15-25% range while running PowerSDR, Ham Radio Deluxe, and Chrome). It's a clean install of Windows 8 (yeah, I know...) with a minimum of junk installed. Hasn't happened in a while, however, so maybe operator retardation is to blame.

I've been unable to install the trial version of VAC, and I've not yet wired up cabling for audio I/O, so no digital ops with the Flex as of yet. Really was hoping to run both control and audio through a single USB cable just to simplify things. But VAC simply refuses to install (I forget the error message). Compatibility issue with Windoze 8?

Also ran into latency issues with the CW keyer. Messing again with the buffers fixed the problem at the time. I've since set all buffers back to max size and there no longer seems to be any issue with sending CW. So again, maybe something I did.

So I continue to play with the Flex. Some CW contacts, but haven't been able to work anyone on phone. Patience is not one of my virtues, so if I don't get through after 5 or 6 calls, I switch over to the K3 and almost always get through at 100 watts. I remind myself that I didn't buy the Flex 1500 to work DX on phone.

Hardware - When putting the shack back together I discovered three pieces of gear were not working: the MFJ-267 wattmeter/dummy load is now just a dummy load; the meter is completely inoperative, as it the meter's light. My KX1 appears to have gone belly-up on me; just a very faint "0" on the display and no audio output at all. And my NCS-3230 Multi-RX audio console had no audio output, even though it powered up just fine and the input peak lights would flash when I turned the volume up on the radios.

Getting this last issue sorted out was No. 1 priority because the Multi-RX is a central fixture of my station -- audio from all radios go through it and feed a single set of speakers -- so having it out of action was not good. I emailed NCS to ask about possible repair suggestions and got a response from Doug, K4SWJ who told me he sold the company and the new company no longer supports the ham equipment, but he did offer some ideas about the cause. Sure enough, it was an internal fuse on the input of the audio output amp chip.

Since the chip manufacturer later determined that there is no need for the fuse, Doug advised simply soldering a jumper wire across the blown fuse. I did just that, and everything is working again. Image below shows the location of the fuse, in case anyone stumbles upon this page while Googling about their deaf Multi-RX.

The dead KX1 is more troubling, I have no test equipment anymore other than a voltmeter and honestly don't even know where to start. I suppose I'll apply power and start measuring voltages to see if I can find something obvious. If not, I guess off to Elecraft it goes. I really was hoping to finally building and adding the 80/30m board that I've been sitting on for years. Oh well.

As for the MFJ-267... I'll deal with it later. The SWR-Wattmeter never really worked that well anyway, the dummy load still works, and I have a Daiwa 410 meter that I've been using in its stead. From what I've been able to discover online, I'm not the only one who has had issues with this unit.

And that's June in a nutshell.