2011 MNQP in the log

Ben (10) and I operated the Minnesota QSO Party today for about 2 1/2 hours.

We had a few other things going on today so our butt-in-the-chair-time was pretty short. We mainly operated SSB and Ben ran all of the QSOs while I was logging. He got spotted on the DX cluster a couple of times and did a good job "running" even with some nice size pile-ups.

A kids voice is like having another +6dB of power on the bands.





I always wish that I had more time to dedicate to this operating event. It is a fun event, it has a good participation level, it is only 10 hours long, and the exchange is fun.

73 de NG0R

LOTW

Last night I spent a few minutes to request my certificate to setup Logbook of the World. The request was pretty straight forward from my Ubuntu PC. Create the request & upload the file via the web. I should get a post card in the mail in a few days with my password to finish the process.

http://www.arrl.org/logbook-of-the-world

I am not sure if I am overly excited about this tool yet. I will reserve final judgment until I am fully integrated and can test it for a while.

73 de NG0R

Google Reader Stats

I did not realize until a few minutes ago that I could see my reading stats in Google Reader

From your 118 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,968 items, clicked 0 items, starred 0 items, shared 0 items, and emailed 0 items.

Since March 18, 2007 you have read a total of 22,747 items.

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The stats are interesting because I have used Google Reader intermittently over the past few years. I returned to it using it full time about a year ago or so. Now that there is a good Google Reader app for my DroidX I use my phone to read the majority of my blog related content.

Mad made me stop and laugh

I was walking through  a Barnes & Noble book store looking for something to read on the plane tomorrow afternoon. I saw the cover of Mad magazine and I thought that they did a good job of capturing the moment.

Kohl's Kiosk Crash

I was walking through a Kohl's department store today picking up a couple of items before I leave on my trip to California tomorrow. I walked past a kiosk and noticed a bunch of shoppers and an employee standing around it. It appears that kiosk is based upon Windows XP and it had crashed and was in the process of rebooting.

I get a chuckle out of seeing kiosks and ATMs that are still running Windows XP that have crashed in a public location and leave messages on the screen for everyone to see as they try to recover.

California trip about a week ago

Did I mention that I was in California 1/18 -1/21?

5 degrees F  Tuesday morning at MSP


Squeezing into the Airbus 319


I brought some reading material


It was 80 degrees F when we arrived in Irvine



Fast forward after a week of business meetings...

A lovely lunch at the Airport on Friday


Our Airbus getting ready to leave SNA


A nice sunset someplace over Utah


It was near 0F when we arrived back in MSP Friday night


Sorry for all the camera phone pictures but the size is right when you are on a business trip.

Most of the lower 48

It appears that I have visited 46 of the lower 48 states. How in the world did I miss Delaware during my various trips to the east coast and near DC?  I have not made it to Maine yet, but it is on my short list places to work into a family camping trip.

Nice mapping website:
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visited?region=usa

Great looking radio by W1JSB

http://www.w1jsb.com/sw80.htm

That is a great looking radio. Hanz did an incredible job on his customized SW-80.  Someone on the QRP conference tonight posted this link during the Sunday night round table.

73 de NG0R

At the range

Ben and I stopped at the archery range on the way to the grocery store. Ben was pretty excited to try out the compound bow that he got for x-mas. By the end of our time at the range today he had a couple of more accessories: wrist release, peep sight, and a pin sight.

After getting the bow sighted in he was shooting some tight patterns.

K2 SSB Testing

I have a challenge with my:
K2+KSB2+K160RX+KIO2+KAT2+K60XV+XV144+XV222+XV432+IMA rework module

Initially I was noticing that my CW power levels on my transverters was spot on but when I switched over to SSB that my power was really low. Don suggested that I should test K2 on 40m (forget the complexity of the tranverters for a minute to baseline the system.)  After I did that I noticed on 40m my LSB signal was about -3dB compared to my CW signal. I then send a note to Elecraft reflector to get some feedback.

Geoff GM4ESD made the suggestion to run the same test at 28mhz (IF freq for the transverters) and see if I had similar (linear) results.  I liked Geoff's suggestion so much that I decided to test all of the major bands and then graph it out. I ran the test twice. I used my Ubuntu laptop to generate an audio signal at a fixed frequency to help improve the reproducibility of the test.

The K2 is connected to a 20dB directional coupler then another 20dB then into my Booton microwatt meter. (My original test used my Booton meter and an oscope to confirm that SSB audio was low)

Test 1: I connected the audio out of the laptop into the radio with a patch cable

Test 2: I played the audio (very loud) over the speakers and placed an Icom HM-36 microphone near the amplified speaker at a fixed distance.

Both tests produced similar results.  I then normalized the results with the CW level being referenced to zero and built the graph above.

Initially I was thinking that maybe I had an issue with the microphone bias but I think that I have disproved that by using the audio out of the computer. --Still looking for answers.