My DX40 and HR10 Era

Last time I wrote about my first rig. After I put the HR10 receiver together I used it with the homebrew transmitter for a while. Then one day I heard of a fellow in Montgomery, Alabama who had a DX40 for sale and I thought that would be great, I could run AM and CW on it and get out about 45 watts peak. That was lots of power for me. I bought the DX40 and was very very proud and happy bringing it home. Just sitting and looking at it was fun. I think the amount that I payed for it was $25 but that was lots for those days and especially lots for me because seemed like I was always short of money those days. The picture is my neice Pam sitting at my ham rig as I described it. I set the rig up at my parents house since I was doing lots of moving around trying to go to school and every other quarter working on the co-op plan. Fortunately, I was able to work for the FCC at the Powder Springs, Georgia monitoring station, which as I said was very influencial in my getting my license in the first place.
I installed a dipole up in the pecan tree in my parents back yard and made lots of qsos using that set up. Of course I did not work very much dx but every contact counted as dx for me then. Each one was a thrill and a new adventure. In those days the fight between SSB and AMers was just beginning. I remember hearing lots of the old timers calling SSB operators “slopbuckets” in those days. In that era of AM when you got into a group and your turn rolled around you just keyed your transmitter and talked till you got out of breath and then turned it over to the next fellow and he did the same and it went on around through the group. Very seldom did people use VOX.

My First Transmitter 6AG7 driving an 807

I started talking about building my first rig in the last post and said that my Elmer, Carl Wilson (W4IUD) helped me build my first transmitter, which was a 6ag7 tube driving an 807 tube, and it probably did good to get out 25 watts. After I got my ticket down in Atlanta Carl said, “Now that you got your license you need a rig to get on the air. Come on over to the house and we will see what we can do.” I went over to Carl’s house there in Marietta, Georgia the first free evening that I had. He had the schematic that I posted last time, but he really didn’t need a schematic because he had it all in his head. We rummaged through his junk box until we had enough parts to proceed to solder them together. We first made the chassis by taking an aluminum box and a Greenlee chassis punch and made the holes for the tube and coil sockets; we installed the solder lugs under the chassis and proceeded to assemble the transmitter. It was lot of fun and learning, but I’ll have to admit that Carl did most of the work. We put a metal cage over the top of the rig to keep the 807 from radiating until it got to the antenna. He also showed me a trick where you can use an incandescent light bulb for a dummy load and tune the rig up to get the brightest light out of the bulb as you dipped the plate. You would make adjustments on the grid and then dip the plate current till you got the maximum out that you were going to get. A 40 watt bulb was just right to do the tirck. Then theoretically it would be loaded for a 50 ohm antenna.
My first receiver to use with the transmitter was a Hallicrafters that was so broad that it would receive a whole band at one time, but it had a small bandspread knob on it, which would give a little separation but one could still hear several stations at one time. Later when I thought that I was wealthy I replaced the Hallicrafters with a Heathkit HR10 which I thought was a great improvement. I ordered a kit and watched the mail waiting for it to come. When It did arrive, I really had fun sorting and identifying all the parts, and then I soldered it together but when I had it all done I turned it on and heard nothing. I was very green at troubleshooting at the time. So I had a friend from church, actually my father’s age who worked in electronc repair. He was not a ham himself, although he worked in electronics repair. He was one of those people who are naturally good at doing things. He also liked to fish and building fishing boats. Well, he took the receiver, and right away he said, “you’ve got the B plus voltage shorted out.” In a jiffy, we fixed that and the receiver worked liked a charm that is if you didn’t go above 20 meters where the sensitivity was quite lacking.
I made my first qso on 40 meters with a station in Pensacola, Florida, which was quite thrilling. In fact, my hand was shacking on the key when I went back to him. But everything went well and I had made my first contact. However, my heart continued to race and my nerves jumping for a good long time every time I made a contact.

First Rig

This is a schematic of the first transmitter that I had with a 6ag7 driving an 807. It didn’t have much power out but it worked well.

Old Times in Hamming and Elmers

The band was quite get this morning but I do not work many people because it didn’t have too long to stay on the air. Ten meters was really hopping and many signals were on the air.

I was reminiscing this morning about the many people that have affected my life as a ham. There was the one that first introduced me to the thought of ham radio, Rex Bagwell. We were in high school, and we talked lots. He kept telling me about this new thing that he was into called Ham Radio. Well, it very soon caught my interest, and I started thinking about it, and I wanted to get in on the action also. However, I got mixed up about what he was talking about, and I read an article about Citizen’s Band Radio in a magazine, so I started finding out about that. At that time citizen’s banders built their own radios and experimented with them. This was before the era of “Smokey and the Bandet.” Well I read about it and pretty soon got caught up in other things and let radio go by the wayside. I almost sent off for a Citizen’s band license at that time. Then you had to have a license and call sign to transmit on the eleven meter band. I finally did send off for a license but never did anything about it. It is the way with teenagers that their attention is easily diverted into other things. I did not every get a radio or make a contact with that license. It was quite difficult to get on the CB band in that day and time.

As luck would have it after I started to college at Auburn University I joined the CoOp plan which is where one goes to school for a quarter and then works a quarter alternately. I just happened to be assigned to the FCC in Powder Springs, Georgia. There were several hams working and boy did I hear about amateur radio. One of the Hams kind of took me under his wings and began to encourage me to get my license. But I did not need much encouragement. I started studying and the technical part was fairly easy for me but the morse code gave me a bit of trouble. The hams at Powder Springs gave me lots of tips on how to learn it. One of these was to read road signs out in morse code as one rides down the road. Well for quite a while I translated every road sign that I could see into code. Know I sounded funny going down the road daying, “Dit, didah,dah,didah,didahdahdah,dahdahdah,dit,dididit.” I however perservered at it.

After much study and worring I finally felt I was ready to go down to Atlanta and take my test. I will tell about the test next time.

73 Good luck and DX-W4TKI Kennon

Trying the New Digital Modes

2011-12-01-This is a frosty Thursday morning, and it feels rather invigorating. As I was going out to the ham shack, I saw the frost that almost looked like a snowfall. Propagation was about average today. There were a few Japanese as well as Australians and one from New Zealand. I could not work into Australia very well considering that I run merely 100 watts and from 100 to 1000 amounts to just a couple of S units. The only time one needs a high-power amplifier on most of the bands is when propagation in right on the edge of not being there. Maybe one needs a little more power on 160 and 80 meters, but I have worked just about all I wanted to on these bands using 100 watts.

I have been playing around with the WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter). The software for this mode was written by Joe Taylor W1JT. It uses a quite narrow bandwidth over a long time to pass a minimum of information under extremely weak signal and poor propagation conditions. I played with that mode a while, and then I got JT65, which is close kin to the WSPR. I have made a few QSOs on JT65 during this last week, and that was quite exciting trying out a brand-new mode. One thing on the digital side of things is that there are many modes to try and more coming out all the time. The drawback to this is that I am running out of space for wrinkles on my brain. But I like for my brain to stay active and people have said that it staves off dementia.

I sent out Christmas cards today and addressed them all on the computer. That probably took me longer than by hand because mail merge on Word is a very long learning curve for me. I have always had trouble with things like printing and mail merge.

73 and DX, Kenn W4TKI Gotta go out and work a couple more.

Musings After my Morning Hamming

2011 11 20- Musings After my Morning Hamming. The higher bands being open for the first time in a long time have provided for quite a few interesting QSOs in the last several days for me. I usually go out to the ham shack. Early in the morning just after I wake up to take advantage of the early propagation and I think a lot of it is associated with the gray line. Usually I go to the highest band that is real. So I can now take advantage of my low power, which seems to work better on the lower bands. This morning I worked the island of Malta first time in a long time. Probably since the last sunspot cycle. I talked to 9H1ET, and he had excellent signal, and he said that I had one also. I guess it’s not too hard to work Cyprus, but it seems like a more exotic place than Europe. Another very interesting QSOs that I had this morning was with HB9/KC9MOS. He was transmitting from near Zürich, Switzerland, and he was physically in Chicago Illinois. He was linking to his transmitter site on Skype. As time goes by I am beginning to see more and more of these types of links set up. We had a very nice long rag chew going from Alabama to Zurich to Chicago and back by the reverse path. I have also worked a couple of Australians to the relay stations in the Caribbean and was linking to them on the Internet. This is great and great fun, but it probably like it was when they changed the callsign rules and allowed people that have calls from other areas where they were not physically located. Well, that messed me up something fierce when it first happened because I would think I was talking to one place and actually be talking to another. Well, technology certainly allows us to do things which we have been doing before.

The day and I also had an interest QSO couple of stations on the island of Cyprus one whom I’d worked before in a different location. The first station was 5B4AIX and on the air with him was 5B4AIN. The stations were just a few miles apart on the island and that working people together. But people who have company on the frequency and they work several stations at one time. The first station was cooking dinner in the oven and had to go and check his oven with a qrx several times so as not to burn the dinner he was cooking for his guests. The other station whose name was Noz told me that we had worked in 2009 when he was in The Gambia in Africa. Space is call their watch C6DXC. So it is really a small world. Is the wonderful world of amateur radio. I do love every minute of it and I’ll couldn’t have a better hobby. 73 for now was the work of the DX  Whiskey 4 Ten Kilowatts Input

Chasing DX is Just Like Hunting Deer

2011 November 14 – Hello to my ham radio blog this morning. Most every morning I go out to the ham shack rig just as the gray line is coming up and see whom I can find on the bands. That’s a good time of the day to talk from here and on the low bands, you get good propagation going to the west and southwest into the Pacific. However, on the higher bands such as 10 and 12 m the propagation into Russia and Asia and Europe Russia and Asia starts first, and then moves across going to the West. I had some good contacts this morning, including a couple of Russians. Then I had some contacts in Europe, which is some pretty excellent DX. I tried to work some of the ones that had the pile ups and were rare but I did not have any luck. In any case, it’s fun being in the pile ups and pushing and shoving and trying to get in there and make myself heard even if one doesn’t work the rare DX. The chase is always fun exactly as and hunting you chase the game, but you don’t always get them. However, still I’m looking for more stations in Southeast Asia because that’s the area of the world where I am most lacking. I QSO’d many stations in parts of the world other than the Middle East. The Middle East seems to be a very difficult region for me to work into. Yesterday, I was listening to a station in Vietnam, but I was unable to work him, but he had a pretty good signal in here. Maybe someday I’ll be able to get in there and put him in the log. I still like to go after him even if I don’t get him. Well, I got a big bundle of QSLs on the QSL Bureau day before yesterday and I’m looking through them. It is almost like getting a Christmas present. Well, I am going to close out when I left my rig on whisper (WSPR), and I’ll try to see what I bag (log). From beautiful downtown Coffee Springs Alabama, I wisheverybody a great day.

73 good luck and DX,

W4TKI