A Good Blast on the Radio to Start off the morning

Just as Rick at the VK2GGC station said to me the other morning, "There's nothing like a good blast on the radio to start your day off."

I was able to work Japan this morning on 20m, JH3NGD Kazu, it was a great contact, very enjoyable to be able to communicate around the world directly with your own equipment.

Love a good blast on the radio.

30Mhz to 6Ghz HackRF

Well, I became a backer, I have a long wait at least 5 months until my HackRF peripheral shows up.  I'm a little nervous, but, I'm excited to play around with it and explore some of those microwave bands.  I will be sure to take lots of pictures and screen shots when it arrives.  Long Live SDR! 

Contesting Observation

You know, I notice this all the time, three or more stations piled on top of each other when there is plenty of room to spread out.  Why does this happen?  Don't have enough time to spread out far enough so that you can at least hear who's returning your call?  Wouldn't your rate increase if you had a clear section of bandwidth?  In the picture below you can see two instances of it on 20m.  Maybe they can't hear each other, that's always a possibility I guess.

Wasn't the DEXP

When I actually sat down in front of the F5K I could clearly see that it could not have been the DEXP that was clipping my audio, it was off.  Durp

So, I played a little more with the VOX, I turned the delay up from 250ms to 500ms, which I think is actually a little long, it should be maybe around 350, I'll try that, it's just hanging in there a bit too long, but doesn't cause any real problems.

I also lowered the VOX setting as well I had it about 140 and I've moved it down to about 100.  I want to be able to adjust the boom on my headset without having the noise of it key up the radio.

So, I think it's mostly fixed, just needs a little fine tuning.  I think my audio is a touch on the hot side right now, not terrible just a touch too hot.

Very good morning however, I came into work this AM and caught up with two Australian stations on the 20 meter band.  VK5CE/P and VK2GGC.  I recorded the QSO with VK2GGC Rick was the operator, nice little conversation.   I looked them up on QRZ afterward and I found that VK2GGC is the call sign of the Girl Guides Callemondah. They have a nice couple of YouTube videos up as well. I like this one a bunch:

Girl Guides Callemondah VK2GGC contest Video

Downward Compander

I think I have it set too high.  Listening to some of the recordings I noticed there was some clipping of my audio, no one has mentioned it, but maybe if I got into a little rag chew they would?  I thought it was probably that my VOX sensitivity was set too high, so today I lowered my VOX setting.  But, that did not help.  I had a little revelation, I think it might be the downward compander, I'll try turning it down tomorrow or the next day and see if that helps.

I've been having a little fun with recording QSO audio lately.  My brothers pointed me to soundcloud so I uploaded a few there today and added some soundcloud widgets to my blog.  I have to admit it's just a little creepy that my google log in get's me into all this stuff, does google own everything?

17m has been great lately, very open and lots of fun for such a narrow chunk of bandwidth.  I caught 9K2YM this evening on 17 just after he announced he was going QRT (ceasing transmission), I usually let them go, but I'd been calling and calling, so I thought, what the heck, I'll give it one more last shot.  And he came back to me, pretty cool.  He gave me a 5x9 IDK if that was a habbitual "five nine" or if it was a real report, I gave him a 5x7 because that's what he was, and then he really went off air.  

I love how each band we have has it's own unique personality, you get to know it, start learning it's little quirks, what it likes and doesn't like.   So much fun, I'd never really spent much time on 17 before, but I sure am liking it lately.