PA0O ham radio

I might have to travel and the weather forecast is very bad. Tonight I  removed the Steppir elements for my peace of mind. Easy job.  It could be even easier if  Steppir  provided end caps to close the EHU when the elements are out now I use duck-tape. Have to look for caps that fit on 48mm tube.

 Sunday morning up for part 2  of the ARRL10  thought the band was pretty bad.. but receiving on the K9AY instead of the beam... oepss  I was not awake  a very weak UA9 was coming back I wondered why he could copy me so well.. Then finally I saw the RX-ANT  switch was on..   sorry that's why I screwed it up with ZL1BYZ. Band was as good as it can be in December.  A lot of backscatter echoes. About 11 local  Longpath  to Japan and China very strong over South America! Could work a few JA  9+ signals much stronger then morning direct path.  But not so many one would expect a pile? Since the weather was nice we decided to take a walk.  Good to have some fresh air and change the mind. At the cost of some JA BA and possible KH??  .. My final result Sunday evening at band close 18:00 local 19:00UT CW only with PA and still hi SWR..  worked 60 of  100 zones Mexico this year is c...

Yes!  tonight the rain and wind stopped So again lowered the beam and found the cable gave high SWR  on a dummy / power meter. The SWR  raised when tuning up to 29MHz  something was wrong. Now replaced  and SWR is 1:1.5  28   to 1:1.1 29  on the Steppir I could tune up the band with the Steppir  what I couldn't do before  in October in the high sunspots  and JA  XE  W in the FM part > 29MHz. Anyway I am a bit ready for the ARRL10    if the WX stays a bit quiet. The total cable loss  over 60m  ( 30m 50Ohm  26m 75Ohm  )   5W in  3.8W out   -1.19dB  28MHz I can live with that. also 50 to 75 Ohm  gives   SWR 1:1.5 in worst case  1/4 wave I believe Hard to prepare for the ARRL this way  hope for some breaks  Friday I have another 4 ele beam  or I could ad 2 extra directors as a DX...

KH2/N2NL   Nice propagation also to JA   in a storm noisy shack. Glad I had the 7ele beam windcatcher removed yesterday night.. And the first time this season  decoded VK7DIK at 80m  2011-12-07 18:40   VK7DIK   3.594044   -16   0   QE28sf   5   PA0O   JO33hg   16731   307   2011-12-07 18:44   PA0O   3.594151   -15   0   JO33hg   5   VK7DIK   QE28sf   16731   84  KH2/N2NL recorded  by Lutz,DM2LB Danke dir Lutz    das war das 2e QSO mit Dave dieses Jahr..( da waren kein andere anruffe an dem Moment)

BA7IO Vange 160m    Nice signal tonight  1822kHz up1 Tonight I removed the 50MHz yagi again. I wanted to see if any DX would slip through to the north  but it did not. The weather forecast is only storm and rain. Many decodes 6M WSPR of OZ7IT  PA0TBR M1DUD every day but noone else QRV at reasonable distance. No UA9 SWL  or any other Rusian at 6m  unfortunately.  summary   6M WSPR last 2 weeks    the first one is an Freudian misdecode..  2011-12-07 11:10   PA0O   50.294415   -17   -1   JO33hg   0.5   VK5ZRL   PF95gc   15771   81   2011-12-02 20:36   G6AVK   50.294416   -26   -1   JO01ho   5   PA0O   JO33hg   447   63   2011-12-04 09:38   OZ7IT   50.294482   -...

Last night just before another storm depression did hit  I could repair the problem.  It was the cable luckily not the STEPPIR itself.   Difficult to connect  it weatherproof to the EHU if it must be possible to disconnect easily. I forgot to use the "stekker SAFE" shell that protects cable joints nomal used to protect power cables outside. Just 1€50 at Horbach. Only used tape over the N-to-N joint but already there was water intruded. These shells are very good protecting connector joints as  it also fixes it. Self vulcanising tape plus the connector shell better of course.  

My Notepad W7 DELL420 clock was slowly drifting out of sync  second by second and WSPR 50MHz did not decode anymore. I use Symmtime, this program reported to synchronise the PC clock  to the selected timeserver  at the given interval 15minutes. But I was running 6 seconds  behind.  forcing synchronise did not chance the PC clock. I had windows internet time unchecked because Symmtime or Dimension 4 would take over that job?? Both did not! Dimension 4 did even report the how much the PC clock was adjusted  + or -  seconds  nice. But In real nothing was adjusted. Must have something to do with access right again. I did install not in the restricted  programs directory but in my own C:\ham\  and as  administrator  did not seem to cure it. I did re-check Windows:  synchronise with an internet time server again. Clicked sync now and instantly the PC clock was adjusted. Then I modified the default  time updat...