After trying out Dad’s 7610 and 7300 on a recent visit, I decided to pick up an Icom IC-7300 from R&L. Continue reading
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Icom 7300
WSPR You Say?
The other day I was Googling for antenna comparisons (HF vertical vs OCFD) and came across a Youtube video by K5ACL where he uses WSPR to compare his two antennas. I thought this made sense and spent the next morning setting up my Icom IC-718 and laptop to run WSPR.
I left the setup to run for several hours on 20m before I enabled transmitting from my side. Below is a screen capture of showing the map of my first transmission and where I was heard. This is running with only 1 watt of power into a G5RV Jr. antenna at a non-optimal height of about 25-ish feet.
Not bad for 1w
Grounding the ground rod
Way back in 2014 I documented installing a ground rod as part of fighting my RFI issues. I thought adding ground rod by itself was enough. Turns out after reading the book Grounding and Bonding for the Radio Amateur that I was quite wrong!
So I bought some 4 awg solid copper “wire” (thickest Home Depot had) and the clamps to connect the shack ground rod to the electrical service ground rod. Fortunately these two ground rods are not very far apart, about 9 feet with a corner of the house in the way.
NA1SS Downlink Reception
I spotted in my email a notice to my local club members that the ISS would be doing a direct contact today with the Museum of Innovation and Science (miSci) in Schenectady NY. Fortunately I spotted this about an hour before the scheduled contact was to be made.
I setup my base 2m rig to listen on both the primary and backup frequencies. Then I setup my new Zoom H5N audio recorder to capture anything that I could hear. Below is a edited (for time) recording of what I was able to copy of the exchange. My radio equipment included a Kenwood D710 and a Comet GP-1 in my attic.
From the ariss.org website:
“A direct contact via W2IR with the Museum of Innovation and Science (miSci) in Schenectady NY, is scheduled for Sat 2016-12-10 1019:49:54 UTC 85 deg. The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS. The scheduled astronaut is Shane Kimbrough, KE5HOD.”
New Radios
It seems I never got around to posting here on the site that I upgraded my HF radio to a Yaesu FTDX 3000. I’ve had the radio since the end of 2014. Sadly it hasn’t seen a lot of use since I got it, for a variety of reasons. But now that my telescoping mast and the OCFD antenna are back in place the radio is getting some regular use.
Recently I was visiting my Dad (WB4EHG) who let me know that he was planning to sell his Yaesu FT-857d. So it followed me home. It is an interesting radio and I plan on using it for operating in the field, preferably using a small solar+battery power source. The radio already has the SSB filter installed and it came with the RT Systems software and programming cable. And a copy of the Nifty Mini Manual!