New wire for New QTH

Well, I learned something very important yesterday, if you want your neighbors to be happy about your antenna installation, just make sure you put it up on Thanksgiving weekend, loan out your air cannon for your neighbors to hang their Christmas light balls up in their trees and they will be very happy, even possibly forget what you were doing because they are so entertained with shooting lines up into the trees. :)

I put up a 132 foot dipole fed with balanced 450 ohm feedline yesterday, not without some struggling, I tried and tried to get it to pop up over this one branch, yet it is still stuck under it. Isn't there such a thing as a wire saw for cutting wood? If I could loop a rope over the branch and tie a wire saw into the middle section of the rope or paracord, then maybe I could cut that branch without ever leaving the ground, I am going to look for one of those.

The antenna works like a dream on 80m and 40m but not so fantastic on 20 and 10m, so I think I will follow this one up with a shorter dipole for the higher frequencies.

Also, I got a lot of my station set up yesterday, got the computer going, and a few of my certificates hung up, so that is pretty cool.

Still celebrating the arrival of the new cycle!

The 706 is much better.

A real vfo, some filtering and three times as much power makes the 10m opening much more fun!  I got my first ever qso to alaska today on 10m very cool!

10m has arrived.

Well, I've moved to a new QTH, long gone are the big antennas hanging high in the pine trees. Now my HF station at home is connected to a short 44ft doublet that is in the attic, and I have a tarheel II on my car. So, if your hearing me then it is most likely on one of those antennas. I'll tell you I really miss those big tall pine trees and all that open space at the old QTH. Hopefully one day before too long we'll get back to a home where we can have some space to operate from.

I've been operating VHF/UHF a lot since the station is so limited at home. Dstar has been fun, but there really is no replacement for HF.

Well, still enjoying Dstar very much. I've got to say it's spoiled me. Love the digital voice. I have been playing on HF from the mobile as well, Right now the little TDi is my only hamshack. I'm still using the DPRS tracker with my homebrew interface. The map to the right is packets reported to the AK4EG B repeater, these are packets reported to it in October only as of 10/16. The map on the left is Position reports recieved by the AK4EG C repeater during October 2010 as of 10/16.
Just above you see my personal position reports in the last seven days, these are all the reports from my mobile that simultaneously sends my position information with my voice audio. You can explore this more at APRS.FI

Cheers, 73 good DX and GL OM

AJ4TW

A week with DPRS

Well, it's been one week so far, and I've really made some tracks. It's actually quite impressive when you look at it graphically. One thing that strikes me when I see these plots of my Digital Position Reports is that every red dot represents a transmission in which I was received by a Dstar repeater, probably 95% have been the AK4EG B port, 444.8875, I have also been heard by the AK4EG C port, and the KI4WXS C port a few times. NC is blessed with some outstanding Dstar repeater systems, we have continuous Dstar coverage for almost the full length of I-85 through our state, in most places the corridor is covered by multiple systems. Here is a compilation of all of my reports for the past 7 days:

It is actually a little funny It looks as if I've been obsessively continuously transmitting in some areas, but really those dots all lined up are an accumulation that has happened over the past week of commuting and running errands, basically normal QSO's that I've been having on a daily basis anyway, but have just not been recorded until now.

Another thing that I've recently realized is that listening to the DV mode will spoil you. After having the ID-880 for a week in the car and using Dstar systems heavily I have become very accustomed to hearing clear clean audio coming from my radio. We switched around a bit this morning to some FM repeaters and it's just lost it's luster. I mean, I'm telling you the truth, try it! If you give Digital Voice a real chance you'll become attached to it as well, and you won't want to go back!

Here are my DPRS tracks from the first two days of having the GPS receiver mated with my ID-880. It works pretty well, and it's been lots of fun. What you see here are all hits heard by the AK4EG B port, that's UHF, repeater(444.8875). You can see that the repeater has a fairly large footprint. You can kinda build a bit of a coverage map for a repeater by looking at the repeater at www.aprs.fi and looking at all the reports gated through that entity, unfortunately the aprs.fi site only keeps one month at a time.

Here is a screen shot of the gated reports so far from 8/10:

Most of the Dstar radios do have DPRS (Digital Position reporting system) capabilities. It is fairly inexpensive to get yourself a GPS reciever and build an interface for the radio, can be done for under $100. It's been a lot of fun to play with so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of the Data from my commuting next week! You should try it too!

73

AJ4TW