My old Pentium notebook running Windows XP had out lived its ability to serve my needs. It was originally my work computer from 2004 which I took with me when I left my company in 2005. It had become slow to the point where it was extremely frustrating to use all the latest memory and processor intensive versions of the applications I run. The time had come to get a new computer.

I did a bunch of investigation on Windows 7 and support for the radio programs such as Ham Radio Deluxe/DM780 and N1MM/MMTTY. I also considered desktops vs notebooks and decided A notebook would again be the best choice. My old computer supported PCMCIA cards so I had a dual port serial card I used for rug control and the CW/FSK interfaces. I didn’t see any new notebooks with PCMCIA card support and a few with ExpressCard support but very sketchy info on serial card support with them and Windows 7. I got a suggestion from a great fellow contestor in WA5ZUP and John suggested checking out Digi EdgePort units. On eBay there were many used units for sale and I picked up an 8 port unit for only $40. It has a list price of $455 if purchased in the Digi site! Even if it didn’t work, it wasn’t a lot of money lost.

Later last week I saw a good deal come up on Amazon. I was glad because I had about $240 in Amazon gift certificates waiting to be used on something. I ended up purchasing an Acer Aspire AS7740-6656 17″ notebook running the new Intel i5 chip with 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, N wifi, webcam, etc. It was $700 and with my gift certificates it came to $460 and I signed up for Amazon Prime so for $3 it was sent overnight and I had it Fri when I got home from work.

I was up until 3:30am working on removing the software I didn’t want and installing software like HRD, N1MM, MMTTY, etc. Then came the big moment where I plugged in the EdgePort/8 and took a deep breathe. Windows 7 found the unit and then automagically went to Windows Update and found the Windows 7 drivers for it. It installed and started to work perfectly! I ran a couple quick tests with N1MM and MMTTY and it was sending/receiving fine. Whew! Time to call it a night.

On Saturday and Sunday I participated in the Mexico RTTY contest on the new computer setup and it worked flawlessly. 213 contacts and not a glitch!

Moving from a 5+ year old Pentium notebook to this new Acer is a huge improvement. The speed at which things open and run is fantastic. No waiting and no frustration. Windows 7 seems to be solid and it is just me finding where things are in the new interface that takes a little time. At least for an experienced Windows user, Windows 7 seems very natural.

Thanks again to WA5ZUP for his suggestion on the EdgePort unit and I would recommend them to anyone needing serial port support with Windows 7. Kudos to the developers of Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM and MMTTY for building applications that run well on Windows 7 especially if you install outside of the \Program Files\ directory which is something all Windows 7 users need to be aware of.

Now comes the long task of pulling off relevant data from the old notebook and reinstalling programs on the new computer.

73,
K2DSL

I was looking forward to some 10m contacts in a 10-10 contest but every time I checked I heard nothing. I didn’t hear a single 10m operator over the entire weekend contest. Other then the 10m contest I didn’t think I would do much else other then some random contacts but it didn’t work out that way.

I had purchased and received a brand new notebook Fri night and started working on that until 3:30am early Sat morning. Part of what I setup was Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM and MMTTY. It went surprisingly smoothly. I will write about it in a subsequent post.

I started out making some QSO Party contacts with Minnesota stations. Ended up with 21 SSB contacts. With the VT and DE QSO Parties I made a small number during Sat evening with 1 VT & 3 DE contacts.

What I spent most time on the air with this weekend was the Mexico RTTY contest. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t plan on participating in it but with 10m dead and what seemed like a good amount of activity, I jumped in. Saturday afternoon into the evening and then Sun morning I ended up making a total of 213 contacts across 4 bands with most contacts on 20m followed by 40m. Did mostly S&P but also had a couple of short runs including a nice DX run mid morning Sunday. There was a good amount of participation from the XE stations.

After the Mexico RTTY contest ended I popped over to SSB and worked 8 New Mexico stations in the NM QSO Party. So in total I worked 5 separate contests and 246 total contest contacts.

Next weekend is the CQ WPX RTTY contest so I will be in that one as much as possible over the weekend.

Here’s the score summary from the Mexico RTTY contest:

Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty  Sec
3.5      28      60    2    1
  7      50     124   11    5
 14     126     331   26   13
 21       9      23    4    1
Total   213     538   43   20

Score : 33,894


See you on the air!
K2DSL

I use an older Sony Pentium notebook for my computer for all needs including ham radio. It was my computer when I worked at Sony and I took it with me (legally) when I left Sony in 2005. It is 6-7 years old and ready to be retired.

I have been thinking about what to do when replacing it. Should I get another notebook? Should I get a desktop? How will I handle serial ports? Does the software I need to use run on Win 7? All my friends that run Macs were pushing for me to get a Mac, but I’m a Windows guy. In addition, the Macs costs a significant premium over a similar sized/featured Windows machine.

Yesterday I saw a posting online about a very good price on a 17″ Acer notebook at Amazon. I was hoping to find something suitable at Amazon because I had $240 worth of gift certificates to apply to any purchase. I pulled the trigger and made the purchase. It’s an Acer Aspire AS7740-6656 notebook with a 17.3″ display. It runs the new Intel i5-430M processor, comes with 4GB of memory, 500GB HD, Win 7, CD/DVD burner, webcam, 802.11N wifi, media card reader, 4 USB ports and a HDMI port. Price was $700 and then I deducted my gift certificates so it was a good deal. And it should arrive today if someone is home to sign for it.

In anticipation of getting a new computer, on eBay I purchased an Edgeport 8 port USB to Serial box. Supposedly it is compatible with Win7 using Vista drivers and native Win7 drivers should be out soon from the vendor. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed that works and I don’t need to purchase USB to Serial cables for support of rig control and the CW/RTTY FSK interface and hope I get ones that work.

Now comes the daunting task of removing software from the computer I don’t want on it, installing software I do, configuring all the programs and hoping when something doesn’t work right (specifically around N1MM, MMTTY, Ham Radio Deluxe, etc) I can troubleshoot it and get it working. With a potential snow storm coming overnight, I’m hopeful I get the computer today (Friday) so I can start setting things up over the weekend.

I’m also hoping this weekend I can get on and make some QSO Party and 10-10 contacts. I checked 10m last night around 8:30pm ET (0130z) and didn’t hear anyone. Compared to the arm-chair copy of stations on Sun and Mon, the band was dead. But maybe everyone is resting for an active 10-10 two-day event starting tonight?

73,
K2DSL – David

I’ve been a licensed op since Aug 2007 and on HF since about June 2008. I’ve heard tales of 10m contacts on a few watts from a mobile radio all around the world, but I thought they were fairy tales. Since I’ve been operating, 10m has been pretty dead.  I had noticed on Sunday late in the afternoon and early in the evening that 10m was open a bit and I was able to make a couple contacts. This has happened just a few times that I’ve noticed so it was a nice treat.

We have a weekly net on 10m – 28.375 – Monday evening at 9:00pm ET (0200z) with my local radio club and maybe 8-12 local folks participate. Well something happened last night that I’ve never heard before. We had more check-ins from the midwest in “8 land” then we had from the locals checking in. There was literally a pileup of folks from what I recall as Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, etc. Quicker then our 10m net control op (K2ZO operating as K2BAR) could write, they were putting their call out there to check in. I could hear those stations louder coming in at 57 to 59+then I could hear some of the locals at 53 to 55.  It was really marvelous!!

I don’t know how long it will last, but I hope it’s here to stay for a bit. There’s a 10m contest this weekend and it would be nice if the band remained open for it. I only have my G5RV wire antenna but it tunes up fine on 10m so maybe I can work some of that contest this weekend.

And maybe all those tall tales of 10m contacts around the world isn’t as far fetched as they previously seemed to me. Maybe, just maybe, you might be able to work 10m from a mobile rig to a far off land. One can dream.

73,
K2DSL

Check out the KH7XS superstation which is for sale. Price seems very reasonable.

http://kh7xs.qth.com/

http://kh7xs.qth.com/main/page_photo_album.html

I know my wife wouldn’t mind a tower in her back yard if the front and sides had views like this house has!

In 10 more years, this might have been a perfect buy for me!

73 and still dreaming,
K2DSL

It’s been 4 days since the ARRL Jan VHF Contest ended and I’ve only received 2 QSLs on LoTW out of the 43 contacts. Now 43 isn’t a lot of contacts, but only 2 LoTW QSLs? That’s less then 5%. I’m only noticing this because I really had no logged VHF contacts before this so I was hoping to see some show up. The 2 contacts that are confirmed in LoTW are both 6m contacts with ops in CT and NY. Oh well, maybe 1 or 2 more will trickle in.

I also received a QSL card in the mail from WB2CUT who is in central NJ. When I work the VHF contests with my local club and we are using K2BAR as the call, WB2CUT is always one of the loudest signals we here. Thanks for the card and I’ve already mailed out my reply QSL.

73,
K2DSL

In November’s CQ WW CW contest I worked 9J3A located in the Kalue National Park in Zambia. This was my first contact with Zambia and I sent off for a QSL via S57S in Solvenia with $2 US and today I received the reply QSL. Thanks S53A for the contact as 9J3A and the new DXCC.

73 & Good DX,
K2DSL

On Saturday morning I participated in the BARTG RTTY Sprint. I was out on Sat afternoon and evening but thought on Sunday I would head over to our unofficial VHF club station at one of the ops houses for some VHF contesting. By the time I would have been able to head out it was after 3PM so I figured instead I would just get on and hand out a few FM contacts to nearby ops. I ended up doing a bit more then that.

My ‘antenna farm’ consists of a dual band vertical I use for FM repeaters and a G5RV wire antenna. It is certainly not a VHF superstation! So I got on 146.580 FM and made a contact with a local operator. I was trying to contact the op of the house I was going to go to but he wasn’t responding on that frequency. I then switched to 6m SSB and worked the same op I just worked on FM. I tuned around 6m a bit and made a couple more contacts. In this contest the op will typically ask if you have other bands and then switch to an open frequency on that other band. VHF contests sees comparably less activity then a HF contest as it is typically local contacts so there is plenty of room on the bands. So for the 1st time ever I tune my Kenwood TS-2000 to 144 SSB and make a contact. I am able to run 100w on 144 but 50w max on 430. We then try 430 and though ops have no problem hearing me, even the strongest ops are weak for me to hear. But in the end I worked 3 ops on 70cm SSB.

Over the next few hours I worked stations on and off on 6m and 2m SSB. I even called CQ on 6m for a short while and got a few ops that came back to me. All contacts were in NJ, NY, CT and PA. I heard a station in the Midwest and in Florida on 6m but they couldn’t hear me and were gone quickly.

As I am familiar with many ops and their call signs I work in HF contests, from operating a few VHF contests since I’ve been licensed I am familiar with the local VHF ‘big guns’ and I worked a bunch I had worked in previous VHF contests when operating under our club call of K2BAR. I was able to work the op of the house I was going to head over to on 6m, 2m and 70cm. I worked 2 other ops on all 3 bands and a few on 2 bands.

Though I had planned a little VHF work on Sunday and then it seemed like I might not be able to, I ended up very pleasantly surprised with what I was able to do. I am interested to see how the other club members I worked made out.

Here is the N1MM score summary for my time in the VHF contest:

  Band    QSOs  Pts  Grid
    50      23    23    7
   144       3     3    1
   144      14    14    3
   420       3     6    2
 Total      43    46   13

 Score : 598

I am looking forward to June’s VHF contest where we go to the top of a small mountain and setup some towers and operate with beams and some power. A VHF contest with my club was my first exposure to contesting and what got me excited about being on the radio.

See you on the air,
K2DSL

I knew I would only be able to put in a couple of hours out of this 24 hour contest because I was going to be out from Sat afternoon until very late. I got on the air a bit after the contest started (7am local time) and worked contacts intermittently throughout the morning and very early afternoon while I was getting ready for the remainder of the day. I stayed in S&P mode the entire contest  just because I was constantly needing to stop and do other things.

A few contacts were made on 40m at the onset and then I moved to 20m for the rest of the day. 20m was fine but not wall to wall and there was a lot of tuning around to find workable stations. I didn’t even try 15m. I ended up working 110 contacts before I needed to leave for the day which was around 1PM local time. When I got home, it was now 1:30AM local time and I told my wife I’d be on for just a few minutes. I spun around 40m and 80m and made another dozen contacts in 15 minutes before working everyone I could hear. I shut things off and went up to bed with 122 contacts logged which is fine with me.

Here is my N1MM score summary:

  Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty  Sec  Cnt
   3.5       8      8    0    2    0
     7       9      9    2    4    1
    14     105    105   30    6    3
 Total     122    122   32   12    4

 Score : 21,472

73,
K2DSL

Monday was a holiday for some in the US so I was off of work for the day.  I got on the air late in the day and worked ZS2Y in South Africa on 20m RTTY and then on 20m CW Z21BB in Zimbabwe and 5N50K from Nigeria. Z21BB in Zimbabwe was my first contact with that DXCC entity.  After the contact I looked and saw Fernando was a LoTW user and overnight he uploaded his logs and in less then 24 hours I had a new DXCC worked and confirmed.

I had a good copy on all the stations and especially the RTTY contact with ZS2Y was booming in.  Thanks for the contacts from Africa!

73 & good DX,
K2DSL