Hexbeam

I'm sad to report that when I awoke on Christmas morning there was no Hexbeam waiting for me under the tree. Not even a note from Santa saying that I'd been bad and didn't deserve one. Nothing.

But wouldn't you know it, Santa's sleigh must've been full when he headed for our house on Christmas Eve because he pulled up on Saturday morning in a FedEx truck and left a package he'd forgotten to deliver. And wonder of wonders, it was my Hexbeam! My daughter said it was because it was too big for Santa to fit down our chimney. I told her she was probably right. I didn't bother to tell her that our chimney is actually a fake, that we have gas logs. But she'll learn soon enough, I'm afraid.

Anyway, figuring that Santa might realize he'd forgotten to leave it, I spent Christmas day attaching a 40 foot telescoping mast to our back deck. Now, let me digress here for a moment. Do you all know how hard it is to find these things anymore? And before you say, "Radio Shack and Lowe's carries them", let me interject, "Not anymore, they don't."

Actually, it ISN'T that you CAN'T find them - they're out there (True Value, Ace, and Tessco carry them for online orders), it's that it'll cost you a fortune to have them shipped to you because they have to go freight due to their length. So an $85 mast will cost you another $150. Can't see it. So I did a little research and made some phone calls and found some in the Richmond, VA, area. Lo and behold, wouldn't you know that I had a reason to go right through Richmond a couple of weeks ago. Guess what I did? In case anyone on the East Coast needs one of these, I can recommend a great place to get one. The fellow even knocked 25% off when he realized how far I'd come (I neglected to mention that I HAD to come through there anyway, oh well).

Anyway, back to the hexbeam. After doing considerable research, I...er, I mean, Santa decided that the best and most affordable option was a multi-band hexbeam from WI4USA, Thom, instead of the Traffie Technology offering. I'm sure the Traffie Hexbeam is all that it is cracked up to be, but in the end I figured that I saved about $500 when I factor in shipping. On top of it, I spoke with Thom by telephone before placing the order and he asked if I planned to use 6 meters at all. When I told him that I didn't, he knocked about $50 off the cost and left the 6 meter wires off.

Thom was able to build, prepare, disassemble, and ship my antenna in about 2 weeks. More importantly, he was able to do so over the Christmas holidays, which was ultimately the determining factor, since I had the week after Christmas off from work. The packaging was first-class and the instructions (available for anyone off his website) were easy to follow - although being the bonehead that I am I still managed to screw up (an easy fix thankfully).

So, here's a few shots of the antenna installed. Unfortunately it was a really cloudy day when I shot these. The mast is not yet fully extended, I will be able to go up another 20 feet above the current height which I think will dramatically improve things. Nevertheless, so far, so good and I'll be posting some more observations shortly.

CQ - Contest reflector

For the past 6 or 7 months I've subscribed to the CQ-Contest email reflector.  My hope was to gain a better insight to the contesting scene, pick up a few tips, read some suggestions, and find out other people's opinions.  Not gain secrets, mind you, I didn't expect that, but to simply get a better understanding of contesting.

I've been greatly disappointed.

Instead of finding a welcoming venue with encouragement for budding constesters like myself (albeit still very much a little pistol), I've found a mostly closed society that seems intent on bickering amongst themselves over issues that apparently have swirled within the contesting realm for years.  Quite frankly it's a shame because there seems to be several level-headed contributors, like K1TTT and K5ZD (and many others that I'm not bothering to mention).  Unfortunately the words of these hams are offset by many others who seem hell-bent on taking the opposite side of any argument.

Not that the aforementioned hams are always right in their viewpoints, in many cases there's not a 'right or wrong'.  But to read the constant back and forth has become taxing and certainly isn't enjoyable.  And I believe in self-policing and self-regulation, as well as freedom of speech, but it's gotten ridiculous.  The latest big argument is over making submitted logs public and whether operators can gain an unfair advantage by scrutinizing the logs of stations that are competitors.  While I can understand that this may be crucial to some, I've come to the realization that I've got better things to do.

I've also concluded that I simply don't want to take contesting (or ham radio for that matter) as serious as some seem to.  It IS a hobby, after all.  It should be something that you enjoy and don't argue over relentlessly.  I've also realized that I'm out of my league when it comes to all the issues surrounding contesting.

Still, more troublesome was the unwillingness to welcome new posters, offer encouragement, and the tendency to point out the lack of knowledge of someone just getting started in contesting.  I don't see the purpose in tearing someone down in order to make yourself look smarter or more capable.  I should add, I never posted there, but I witnessed this behavior several times over the last few months.

So with that, I'm pulling the plug on the CQ-Contest emailing list.  I'll keep contesting, of course, but definitely with a different perspective now.

There's been a growing amount of chatter on many blogs concerning the 'Future of Ham Radio' and what we, collectively, can do to shape that and encourage more younger operators.  Well, here's a suggestion.  When you go to form the committee, don't invite those guys.  You'll just end up arguing and they certainly won't roll out the welcome wagon.

What kind of ham radio goodies is Santa bringing you?

I hope Santa is good to me this year, but I have a feeling that he might leave my wife and daughter presents and a note for me saying that he'll catch me next Christmas, that the economy is slow and he had to cut back somewhere. Nevertheless, I have made out my Christmas Wish List, in hopes that he'll find enough good cheer and didn't have to lay too many elves off in order to leave me something.

In fact, I've made it easy on him, there's only one item on my list. A multi-band HexBeam. And, Santa, if you bring me that HexBeam, I promise, I mean I really really PROMISE that I'll guy it properly, give it a good mast, put a good-looking rotor on it, and I'll keep it away from any mean ol' electrical wires. Please??

Whether he brings it or not, I've made up my mind that the HexBeam is my best option, given my location, my neighbors, and it'll give me the best bang for my buck. My neighborhood, actually just a cul-de-sac, has no restrictions about antennas and such (thank heavens), but I'm confident that I can mount it in a manner that it'll hardly be visible from the street, certainly not when someone is looking directly at the front of our house. And while I have the 'right' to put up anything I want, I aspire to be a good neighbor. Let's face it, ham antennas are only beautiful in the eye's of another ham.

I've already fielded questions as to why do I have a 50 foot pole in the back yard and do I work for the CIA? So the less conspicuous I can be, the better. To my eyes the HexBeam resembles an upside-down old fashioned clothes line, only much bigger.

I've never had any sort of a beam before, not even a compact beam. While I know there's trade-offs and compromises in using a less-than-full-size beam, I'm willing to accept whatever those are in order to keep the neighborhood off my back and hopefully improve my signal and listening ability on 10-20 meters.

So, if Santa is so kind as to grant my wish, I'll be sure and post pictures of the installation and how it performs in the sunspot lull.

Merry Christmas!

Ed N4EMG

American Express...bah humbug

I checked my credit report this week.  I try to do it about once a year.  Yeah, I could go the free route, the one you're entitled to each year, but I've found it to be so difficult that I just go ahead and pay a fee and get all three reports at once.

The reason I checked it is because I'd received a new, replacement American Express Optima card in the mail and I needed to activate it.  I've been a customer of American Express since 1989.  I've never missed a payment in nearly 20 years.  I had a small balance on the Optima card because I'd purchased some - surprise - ham equipment recently and was waiting to put some older equipment on eBay.  Once it sold, I planned on putting the proceeds towards the balance.

After I activated the card, it dawned on me that I probably ought to go ahead and pay on the bill, since it was due in a couple of days.  So, I logged on to their website, entered my username and password, paid my bill, and then sat there slackjawed for about 5 minutes.

After I came to, I gave them a call.  On the part where it lists 'available credit' I was seeing $170.  $170 freaking dollars!?!  Now wait a second, I have a $11,000 credit limit on this card.  Frantically I looked at the statement...nothing odd, nothing to indicate any fraudulent charges.

The man I spoke with was very polite...and apologetic.  He said - and I know they record these calls - "I work for these guys and they've lowered my credit too.  In fact, I've had people calling in with $50,000 credit limits that have been reduced to $500."  He went on to say that it was due to the economy and that they've cut many accounts across the board.

I stammered something about how come I hadn't received a letter and he said that I should've received one already, but he'd have another sent out.  He apologized at least 5 times.  He asked if I wanted to speak with his supervisor, but I just said goodbye.

I know things are bad, but to be a customer for 20 years and always be in good-standing, then suddenly, pfft, cut my credit to practically nothing...  On top of that, by lowering my limit, it now appears that my credit card is maxed out.  Thanks a lot.

My credit is excellent.  It'll probably take a hit because of being 'maxed out' now on my Optima card, but it'll remain excellent.

I'll pay the remaining balance off after Christmas or transfer the balance to another card, I haven't decided.  Depends on how expensive Christmas ends up, I guess.

I know better than to 'deactivate' or turn off credit cards - that produces a bad hit - but I'll never do business with them again.  Even if they raise my limit.

CQ WW CW

I had a really good time operating in the CQ WW CW contest this past weekend. I'm on the road this evening, so I don't have my official results handy, but I seem to recall having upwards of nearly 300 QSO's, and about 125 countries overall. I should probably take this moment to say that I'm really not interested (for the time being) in the number of contacts, but more in the country total. I had set a goal beforehand of trying to reach 100 countries, so I was very pleased to have made my goal. Now, one thing that I've not done yet is to examine just how many 'different' countries that added up to, since whenever I changed bands, the country count started over. I may be disappointed :)

Regardless of how my total turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

A couple of observations:

1. The contest started slowly for me. I could hear lots of Europeans when the contest began, but they were having trouble hearing me, even when the freq seemed somewhat clear or they called CQ again, presumably since they didn't hear anyone answer them. Persistence was the key and I really thank those that took the time to dig my call out of the muck. Things improved after about 3 or 4 hours, I started getting through more consistently. Saturday seemed a lot better, and Sunday seemed pretty good too.

2. I had some problems with RF and my WinKeyerUSB and my K2 on 20 meters. As soon as I would send one exchange, it would crap out. Nothing would make it through afterwards. This wasn't the case on any of the other bands. What this nuisance did, however, was force me to use my FT-1000MP instead of the K2 on Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons. Even though it did a fine job with the stock 500 Hz filter kicked in, I greatly missed my K2 during those periods. I'll need to work on a solution for this as some ferrite beads temporarily placed on the keying line didn't have any effect. Compounding the problem was that I had hastily rearranged the operating position, placing the Yaesu on the left of my monitors and the K2 on the right. That left my standby serial keyer cable too short to reach the K2 from the computer, which is also on the left. When I found a serial extension, I didn't have the right adapter to fit into the rear of the K2 while leaving the computer interface connected. Probably should have run to Radio Shack, huh?

3. The normally unflappable N1MM Logger crashed at least a half dozen times during the contest. I had made an exception for this contest by actually downloading and updating the country list and master callsign database PRIOR to starting the contest :) but I had decided against updating my version because it explicity stated on the N1MM website to avoid using the most recent update for this contest. Hmmm. I'll chalk it up to just a glitch, but I couldn't find any rhyme or reason to the crashes.

4. I've read some of the recent postings on the CQ-Contest email reflector regarding spotting errors. Several hams were complaining that their callsigns were spotted incorrectly and were lamenting that they might not receive credit for the contact. Without calling anyone out, I heard some of the folks on the air during the contest who were complaining and here's my comment...SLOW DOWN. QRS, in other words. Do you really need to go 50 WPM for an exchange that takes all of 5 to 7 seconds at 25 WPM? Gimme a break, I think most of them are their worst enemy. If I have to listen to your callsign 5 times to get it right, I'm moving on.

5. I'm very weak on 80 meters. I may need to add more radials to my vertical or consider putting up a full-size dipole. Switching over to the G5RV up about 45 feet wasn't any better, worse in fact.

But all in all, those were minor gripes in the big picture.

On the plus side, I worked a few new countries (sure hope they QSL via LOTW), reinforced my belief that persistence pays off more often than not, learned a few new tricks, and hopefully set a good example of operating. A couple of times I accidently found myself straying too close to the edges of my frequency allotments, I wasn't very proud of that and quickly QSY'd. That's a little too easy to do using the spots sometimes. I need to see if there's a way I can prevent that in the software before the next contest - probably is. I don't believe that I actually went too far, but no reason to push it, right?

I heard some activity and worked a few stations on 15 too. Maybe that is a sign of things to come in the near future?

73's,
Ed