And then there were three!

A big thanks to the gentlemen at the Yankee Clipper Contest club KI1G for sending me a QSL card from Rhode Island! I also want to thank Devin KB1OSI for sending me his QSL card from New Hampshire! This means I am down to three states before my WAS certificate is in hand. I need Misouri, Mississippi, and Delaware.

Other then that, I have been camped out on the SKCC SKED page and having nice ragchews with the good guys on that site.

That's it for now, stay warm! Joe N0NS

Gee, where did the time go?

It's been a while since my last post. I haven't been very active since last writing save a few occasions. The first was the SKCC Weekend Sprintathon. Have you heard of SKCC? If you like CW using a straight key, this is an excellent club that is free to join and offers a great opportunity to work other friendly hams using straight keys. The Sprintathon is a monthly contest where the goal is to contact other SKCC members and exchange information. This was my second contest and I made 22 contacts. That's not many compared to the big contests but this contest is definitely slower paced and a lot of fun.

Here are the results from the event I entered. I placed 92nd which is not bad considering the previous event, I had 3 QSO's!

My Score

The SKCC page is here: SKCC Page

After the SKCC Sprintathon, I kept it pretty low key. I did work a few SKCC members having some nice ragchews, but I was away for a week on vacation in Orlando, FL!

After getting back to Iowa, I did manage to work one QSO this past weekend. I worked KH6LC in Hawaii on 15 meters. I was on 15 because a SKCC friend in California needs Iowa for a SKCC WAS certificate and I was trying to listen for him. Well I ended up hearing Hawaii and Brazil and no California. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes!

No news on the WAS front. I still need DE, MO, MS, NH, and RI before I have my first piece of shiny wallpaper!

Well, on to wrapping up this week's assignment. I have three classes to go and I'll be finished with school! Yay!

73 all! Joe N0NS

And then there were five...

Needless to say, I have been pretty busy lately. I just wrapped up an Advanced UNIX class and rolled into a general elective class which has a lot of reading and writing.... For the few who do read my blog, thanks!

A big thanks goes out to James, N4EKZ... He sent me a QSL card from Georgia. That means I am down to five states before my Worked All States award is mine! Our QSO was fairly short. We both exchanged 569 on 40 CW. After we "volleyed" our name, QTH, and RST, the band dropped completely. 40 has done that to me a few times lately. A great signal goes to nothing within a couple of mintes. Regardless the contact was good and I have paper to proove it. James, if you read this, your card will be in the mail tomorrow.

Speaking of my card. If you get a card from me, the image is a picture looking out the window of an Airbus A320. I took the picture on a trip from Minneapolis back to Colorado Springs when I lived in Colorado Springs. The sunset made the coolest color effect on the clouds. If you QSL with me, you too can enjoy the view.

I have made a few PSK31 QSO's and even fewer CW QSO's lately. Some day I'll ramp my QSO rate up but I'm in no big hurry!

Well, I have to hit the books. 73 and take care all! Joe N0NS

And then, there were six...

Thanks to VE2PID operating portable/QRP in Vermont, I now have six states left before my WAS certificate is in hand!

Lately, I have been doing a lot of listening and not much transmitting. My class load has been a tad bit draining and when I'm done studying, I'm ready for bed.

Speaking of the bands, I believe we have definitely made a transition into the fall/winter mode of band condition. 20 and 30 are all but shut down when I turn the rig on at 9pm CST. 40 has been doing especially poor too. 80 has been open now which is nice to hear for once! I do have some local RFI interference on 80 meters which makes that band that much more challenging for me to use.

After the great RTTY run I posted about, I spent some time on the digital side. Out of 50+ CQ calls, I think I made 1 contact. I'm not sure if the conditions are bad or everyone is in bed, but that's how it goes sometimes!

Take care all... 73 Joe N0NS

RTTY For All

A few weeks ago I had a few hours to play amateur radio during the CQ RTTY contest.  I was very surprised to find the 20 meter band chock full of RTTY DX!  In a matter of two hours, I worked Poland, England, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Netherlands, France, Alaska, Spain, Italy, and a few others.  It was one of those days when you turn the radio on and all signals on the band are especially strong.  The interesting thing is I was using my 1/4 wave ground mounted vertical and about 75 watts of power.  It was a blast!

Since then, I decided to spend some more time on the digital portion of the bands.  I have worked a few guys on PSK31 but I really enjoy using any other mode besides PSK31.  Why?  Well for one, with a soundcard and free software, you can work a lot of different ditigal modes.  Each mode has a distinct flavor asscoiated with it.  It seems like PSK31 is used overwhelminly and I hope to change that.  I'll let you know how it goes!

73 for now de N0NS  Joe

A few pictures..

My two year old son is learning how to use the digital camera. here I am in front of my computer in the basement by the rig. I hope you like my cherished t-shirt!

This is why I love Iowa. The open county roads are everywhere here and there is hardly ever traffic.

Back on the air!

It's been a while! I have hardly had the radio on and my last QSO was 20 days ago, until tonight that is. I started a new class which is basically UNIX for administrators. It has been very computer intensive and I have been trying to get my old PC's converted over to Linux for the class. I had partial success but that took a lot of my radio time. I also took a RF design class down at Georgia Tech (Atlanta.) What a great class! It's pretty amazing to really start to get ahold of how microwave RF propagates through transmission lines! I also was 50 miles north of Minneapolis this weekend visiting our good family friends. All of this combined made for very little time with the rig on.

I decided to fire the radio up and see what was shakin!

For one, today is the start of Fall and it gets a lot darker a lot earlier in the evening. I figured that would have some affect on my typical HF evening propagation cycle. As far as I can tell, it did! The evening thunderstorms are greatly diminished as are the signals on 30 and 20 meters. It could be a temporary condition but I suspect we are just rolling into the winter HF conditions. This is not all bad because I really enjoy 40 meters and also like the close in joy that 80 has to offer.

Since the last posting, I worked a Canadian who happened to be in Vermont. This is one of the remaining states that I need for WAS. I'm not sure what it is but for me, I really love to receive QSL's but don't seem to get around to filling them out and mailing them in any haste. I hope this blog post will give me the energy to pick up the pen and finish my paperwork.

Oh, by the way, my QSO tonight was with a ham in Tucson, AZ. I was running 50 watts on 7.062. I called CQ once and the gentlemen answered me right back. 549 his way, 559 my way. Right after we started the QSO, we had SSB QRM. I suspect he gave up and left or the conditions changed because I lost him right after that. The good news is I sent some RF through my coax and out into the atmosphere!

73 all, Joe N0NS

Almost There!

Well, my WAS totals are getting closer by the day. I got a surprise QSL card from Maryland, a contact I simply forgot to log even though I had the QSO written down in my notebook! That same day, I was on the SKCC SKED page and saw a station from Wyoming. Five minutes later we were chatting on 40 meter CW. A few days before that, I met up with a nice ham from Minnesotta on 80 CW. Three states down in a matter of days! I will update my official state QSO count when the cards arrive but I suspect that will happen soon enough!

In the mean time, I built a dummy load. I used 20, 1K Ohm resistors in parallel. I used a pickle jar and filled it with mineral spirits. It works great and has a 1:1 match from 1.8-28MHz. I am going to add a circuit that will inidicate my peak voltage which will then allow me to calculate power. I'll try to get a picture of this and my station when I get around to it.

I received my crystals I ordered on eBay for 30 and 40 meter QRP. The only problem is I haven't gotten around to order the rest of my parts for my homebrew QRP transmitter. There just isn't enough time in the day!

Take care all, I'm going to try to work some CW. 73 Joe N0NS

The bands lately...

Well, as of the past few days, there have been very few thunderstorms within 300 or so miles of my QTH and the bands have quieted down from a noise perspective. For a while there, I had a hard time contacting anyone.

Just over the past two nights, I worked Montana on 20 meters , Austrailia on 20 meters, Ohio on 30 meters running QRP, and Alabama on 40 meters, initially QRP then QRO for better communication.

I've been in a mode where I will be studying for my school homework and am sending CQ at the same time. Usually I am sending QRP or less then 50 watts so my hit rate has not been the greatest. The majority of my time I'm calling CQ on 20 meters even though the band sounds dead. Why? Well every time I've worked Austrailia or New Zeland the band seemed locked down tight but the DX would call me out of nowhere! That's a good enough reason for me!

I'm working on my SKCC "C" title which means I need to work 100 SKCC members. I'm up to 22 so far. I'm not in a rush but it's just another thing to log and slowly work towards!

73 for now... Joe N0NS

Hey, thank you Alaska!

Ah, the sweet victory of another state checked off my WAS totals! Thanks to Phil, KL8DX in Alaska for the confirmed QSL that my radio signals landed in the great state to the northwest.

It all started when I joined the SKCC club. This club was arranged for straight key enthusiasts to practice and use their straight keys on the air. Well, the SKCC club has a SKED page (http://www.obriensweb.com/sked/index.html) of which I linked up with Phil. For fun, I called Phil using QRP power and was pleased to find out he could copy me! Since that QSO, we have had several other QSO's and it goes to proove that amateur radio links people together all around the world/country.

As of today, I need QSL confirmations from the following states for my multi-mode WAS: DE, GA, MD, MN, MO, MS, NH, RI, VT, and WY. Of those, I have had QSO's with hams in MD, MO, MS, NH, and WY but have not received QSL confirmation. I believe I am over the major difficulty stage on WAS by nailing down ND, SD, AK, HI so now it's more a matter of trying to get more active to wrap this award up.

I have been doing a little CW here and there. Not as much as I would hope. School has been very exhaustive lately! I worked quite a few guys when they were running QRP power but lately it seems like the band are not doing well and I have a hard time getting responces from my CQ's at 100 watts. Part of the problem is my homework pushes my operating pretty late into the evening so I'm sure many hams are asleep when I am calling CQ.

I worked a QRP station in Canada, VE7SL Steve.. He was running a very neat homebrew copy of a WWII radio called a Paraset. Here is a description of his radio (http://imagenisp.com/jsm/PARASET.html) It was a very neat QSO and it will be a memorable QSO for a long time!

Take care all, Joe N0NS

HF-FAX

One thing in radio I have always wanted to do was to decode radio faxes. Basically they are just like your standard phone fax but broadcast over the HF airwaves. It is possible to also download the raw map data directly from the orbiting satellites, but HF Fax is much easier to receive with your standard HF rig. To receive HF-FAX, all you need is the ability to decode PSK31 using your radio/computer. From there, you can use a fax decoding program and you are set. I happen to use Multipsk which is a free program.

All of the HF-Fax transmissions I have come across originate from the NOAA. Essentially, they are weather maps for marine vessels out in the open ocean. If you think about it, if a vessel cannot afford to pay for satellite internet service, they can obtain free weather charts via HF fax. I am simply receiving these free faxes too even though I am sever thousand miles from the nearest ocean.

Attached is an example of a fax I received today. I still have some sound card tweaking to do which I believe is the cause for the phase shifting in the image. Let me know if you want more information and I can post some additional internet sites I have seen.

73 Joe N0NS

nubi78 {AT} yahoo dot com

Field Day 2008!

Field Day came and went. I must say, it was one of the best I have experienced and we had nice weather at only a few minor problems that we skated past. My friend Tom called me Friday at work to say we were not going to use my call sign for Field Day, but rather his because his vanity call came in that day. We went with it as his new call is W0EA, quite nice if you ask me both for CW and SSB!

We set up six antennas, a 20 meter home brew vertical, a 10 meter vertical, and four dipoles of various lengths and band configurations. We had one antenna fail which prompted Chris and Tom to make a new dipole at 9PM local that Saturday night. Other then that, everything went off without a hitch.

We ran three radios, My TS450S, a Yaesu FT890S and a Icom 736, all on generator power for as close to 24 hours as we could handle. All rigs were running ~100 watts, on three different bands at the same time.

We operated almost the entire 24 hours save a few naps had by each of us.

In the end, we made about 640 QSO's, of which I made 299 of them, 241 of them on CW.

I was getting so good at CW that night, I would decide to camp on a fequency, call CQ and pick up the inbound stations with one go of their call. It was a major accomplishment in my "CW Skill" area and I felt very humbled to come this far using CW.

This was the first time my brother and sister-in-law operated my amateur gear. It made me happy to see because they were fighting to jump in and score points. They could not believe we were talking to stations out in New York and Maine like they were right next to us!

Here is the home brew 20 meter vert, on a 15' pole secured to the flag pole. The base of the vert is at the top of the flag, and I have four 1/4 wave ground radials extending out. This antenna worked *extremely* well for us and held up the entire time! Other dipoles and coax feeds can be seen if you click on the picture to get a bigger view.

Tom W0EA is the guy working the Dell "Apple" computer. I am sitting int the middle, Chris KC9GRF is sitting in the far end. My younger brother "Johnny" is standing watching me do my magic.

Here I am with my brother. Hopefully he will get his license sometime!

By the way, please leave me a comment if you have read any part of my blog. I would love to hear from you! My e-mail is nubi78 yahoo dot com

73 Joe N0NS

Field Day, Pileup, and more...

First off, I managed to pick up Arkansas and Alabama for my Worked All States award. This means I have less than 10 states to go before I have WAS knocked out. Not bad for spending a little over seven months working on it!

W0CXX Pileup. I recently joined the Collins Amateur Radio Club. It is our company club at Rockwell Collins where I work. We have a full array of Collins gear along with a IC-756Pro, several 1KW+ amplifiers and a TH7 beam. Earlier this week, a few of us Collins employees decided to go up and see what we could dig up on 20 meters. Within 15 minutes, we had a huge pileup. We estimated that we worked 120-150 contacts that evening and it was very exciting to be on that side of a pileup.

I walk past the club station on my way out of work, and sometimes I will go up and operate CW for a few minutes before leaving work. I really enjoy having such a nice station that is virtually vacant 99% of the time available for use.

Field Day is this weekend! I will be operating from my parent's house up in Waterloo, Iowa. Tentatively, we will be operating three transmitters off of battery power using an array of verticals, dipoles, and other random antennas. We are going to go for the maximum number of contacts and hope to operate 24 hours straight! Listen for our signals!

73 Joe N0NS

The Iowa Flood of 2008

The Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa created a major mess in my home town. The water peaked at the 500 year flood plane and many friends who do not own flood insurance (because they lived outside of the 100 year flood plane) were flooded. I drove across the only open bridge over the river (Interstate 380.) The other roads (as you can see in the pictures) are under water. Ironically, I drove over the 1st avenue bridge about four days ago and the water was high, but not this high!

Our drinking water supply is down to one active pump for the city because the other pumps were flooded out. This means that the city will be running out of water by this Monday or Tuesday. Our two neighbor cities, Hiawatha and Marion are pumping water from their cities via fire-truck into our city water grid. I spoke with one of the Marion Firemen who was pumping water, and he said that Marion was giving Cedar Rapids 4,000,000 gallons a day and it was not going to keep up with the demand. It sounded like the other pumps will not come online for at least three weeks. We are saving our "gray water" from the dehumidifier to flush toilets. Right now we use water very sparingly, but when the water is shut off, I'll tell you how it really feels to be in this situation.

The radio at my house has been very active. Almost no HF, all VHF and the Police scanner. The VHF amateur nets have been active constantly, but are showing signs of slowing down. Now that everyone has been rescued and are in shelters, there is not much to do besides wait for the water to go down. The Police lost their main trunking system and had to go to a backup. It was interesting to listen to the traffic but they did an excellent job dealing with the situation.

I had the 2 meter radio on doing homework and hear a call at midnight this week that they needed urgent sandbagging help at one of our local hospitals and they ran out of sandbag ties. I called in and said I had bailing twine and wire wraps. They told me where to go and in 10 minutes, I was throwing sandbags. I estimated I threw 300-500 bags, and at times was in water 2 1/2 feet deep. It felt very good to be able to help. They did evacuate the hospital which was very interesting to see. There were ambulances from all over Iowa that came to help with the patient move.

I had a very strange emotional event happen that night that I don't think ever happened to me before. The ambulances were waiting in a long line to pick up the patients for transport. While waiting, the paramedics were watching us throw sandbags. You could tell that they were a bit shocked at the sight, but at the same time, were amazed at all of the people helping out in the middle of the night. We, helping sandbag the hospital were reading all of the different hospital/city/county names painted on the ambulances and could only think that these people cared enough that they would drive from miles away to help those of us in need. I can only hope that the rest of you get to experience this kind of "love for your fellow man" yourself.



Notice the blue barrel floating down the river? The center buildings you see are our city government buildings. When there is not flood water, these building are on an island that is perhaps 15-20' above the river.

Yes, your cereal used to come from here. Quaker had to shut down because they were flooded.

My brother and I found a street that had the water recessed. I noticed this fresh spray paint, and it looks like it meant High Water point or something like that.

I helped to build this sandbag wall.

It's hard to see but there is a blue boat that is partially submerged.

QRN available for free!

QRN is the amateur radio's shorthand way to say natural interference, static or otherwise noise. This weekend in Iowa had a tremendous amount of QRN. The main culprit was a gigantic storm system that dumped a lot of rain. Many cities are flooded and the flood waters will hit Cedar Rapids on Wednesday. It is expected to be the highest river levels since the big flood of 1993.

So, back to radio. The QRN turned 80 meters and 40 meters into a pile of garbage. I can copy a weak CW signal, but when lightning is causing S9+10 in noise, the weak CW signal goes away. That being said, I managed to work a station on 30 meters who was at the noise floor. It took several tries and I finally got his information. I let him go after that because it was not fruitful to have a standard QSO with so much difficulty.

The neat thing was that I switched up to 20 meters and heard a guy call CQ not more then 3 minutes after the 30 meter QSO. 20 meters was open to California and I had a nice QSO with K6STA. The band was absolutely quite and he was 589 the entire 30+ minutes. We talked about old tube radios and the flooding in Iowa. Sure, since we were using morse code our speed was much slower then having a simple voice conversation, but it was almost more enjoyable because we were using a "foreign" language and were both perfectly fluent in it.

I also worked a few stations in the Alabama QSO party. Thank you guys! That is another state I need for my WAS certificate.

More to come, I am going to modify my picokeyer circuit and will post pictures and schematics. It's a really neat mod that the creater of the picokeyer suggested I try.

73 Joe N0NS

School and Radio

Well, I have been pretty busy this week. I am taking an online class at Regis University and have been really tied up in studying for a test and writing a paper about a microprocessor. That being said, I get lots and lots of time to listen to my radio, but not much time to transmit.

As of late I have been monitoring the digital modes and have made a few PSK31 contacts, and a Hellscriber contact. I built an interface box between my rig and my computer that will allow the serial port on my computer to control the TX on my radio. It is a huge improvement and it always feels good to build something that works and saves you $25 over the commercial version! I found the schematic and guide for this interface from N2UHC's website. Check it out here: http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc/interface.html If you need to order parts, the best place to go is Digikey. They will have your order to your door in a few days and they have hundreds of thousands of parts. In fact, I ordered everything for this kit at one time on Digikey and had it built in a long evening! Pictures to come soon.

The DX on CW has been very good lately. I managed to work a station in New Zeland, the Fiji islands, England, and a few others. Since I have had a lot of time to monitor while doing homework, I can park on an open frequency like 10.105MHz and listen. When DX pops up, I can work them within a few CQ's. Once the station gets on the dx cluster (DX Watch is my favorite) and other stations jump in, my dipoles don't stand much of a chance. The cool thing is my furthest QSO was something like 8,500 miles on a $15.00 home made dipole. Not bad!

Last night I worked a station in Fargo, ND on 30 meters (CW)... I have often heard how hard it is to work North Dakota and South Dakota on the HF bands because of the relative lack of hams in those two states. I personally have had very good luck working ND and SD, and have worked three or four from each state. If you are looking for ND or SD, stay encouraged, you will get them, they are out there!

See you on the air! Joe Paricka N0NS

NTS Traffic Handling Here I Come

Have you ever heard of the NTS Traffic Network? Did you know that you can send a message to anyone in the USA or Canada for free through Amateur Radio? I did but that's about where it ended for me. Over the 16 years of being a ham, I received two messages and always wanted to join in as a message handler.

Sure, I can email or pick up my cell phone and call anywhere in the US for "free" but there is something neat about having a message transfer over radio to someone you care about, all on a volunteer network. The main goal of the NTS system is to get information in and out of a disaster area when the internet and phone lines are down. The NTS operates nets all across the US and Canada every day passing messages. The overwhelming majority of the traffic is non-emergency related but it is done for the sake of practice.

I finally got organized and decided to figure out how to check in to a local net and start my "career" as a message handler. The Iowa Tall Corn Net operates at 6:30 and 10:00 PM local so I tuned into the 10PM net and checked in! There are a lot of new Q signals that are not normally heard during a CW QSO but I managed to get the basics down. The good news is it was successful and I broke the ice! More to come as I try to check in when I am down in the radio room studying. 73 Joe N0NS

Slow Speed To Texas

Well last night I was studying for my Computer Science degree. I have seven classes to go including the one I am currently taking. With work and family, I usually get to my books at around 9 PM and wrap it up around midnight. All the while, I have my radio on and am spinning through the bands listening for DX or occasionally a empty frequency to hear static and a possible CQ pop up. I heard a loud CQ on 7.052 from 5 land and decided to give the station a call. Since the band was quiet and there was practically no noise, I reduced power to 50 watts The Texas station heard me and we had a nice QSO. I like to crank my keyer speed down every now and then because even though I am not terribly fast and sending, there are plenty of stations that send slower then me. It was a nice end to the night and I still love hearing a station in some other part of the country/world come back with my call. 73 Joe N0NS

CQ CQ DE N0NS/P K

This Friday night, Tom (KC0PNH) and I decided to go portable. I brought my Kenwood 450S with a 1/4 wave ground mounted vertical. Tom brought his FT890 with a vertical dipole. All together we worked 20 stations in a few hours. We worked Ireland, Canada, NM, CA, MO, MI, WV, SC, WA, TX, CO, and a few other locationss I may have missed. We worked 40 SSB, 40 CW, 30 CW, and 20 SSB. It was a great practice to troubleshoot our Field Day setup.

Thank you all for answering our CQ's!

Zero Land Radio

Hello and welcome to Zero Land Radio. My name is Joe Paricka and my amateur call sign is N0NS.

This is a amateur radio blog that will document my station activities as time goes on. My primary operating activities are morse code (CW), PSK31 and SSB on HF.

I decided to start this blog because my friend Tom (KC0PNH) and I are going to operate portable tonight as a pre-field day event. It's only for fun but will be a good reason to get on the air with an improvised setup. I will try to post pictures after the event.

73's Joe Paricka N0NS