HF Signals sBitx software Ver 5.2 is here!
Well today was an extra good day in the park as I had several things go really well for me today. I was able to activate with the HF Signals sBitx transceiver in FT8 as well as CW and I worked a new country! Turns out that a Russian DXpedition team is in the Republic of Burundi using the 9U1RU call and I was able to snag them with 15 watts today on 15 meters using FT8!
Speaking of FT8… The code has been reworked to have the following option actually work: FT8_AUTO (you can see in at the bottom of the photo) Now, when it is “ON” the radio will immediately start answering CQ calls that it sees in the populated display. You no longer have to click on the stations calling CQ to answer them. It will simply initiate the QSO straight away. This was mind blowing to me. I racked up a staggering 40 QSOs while activating! This has to be some sort of record for me as before I would have to watch the display and try to select a station from the list once my transmit cycle started. This was real hit or miss as a lot of the time, I would select the station next to the one I wanted since I would be rushing to get it. Also, the radio doesn’t know that I have preconceived notions about working certain DX entities and will happily call them oblivious to the fact that I am running only 15 watts on 15 meters today. (Battery voltage determines output power lower voltage=less watts). Because of this I was able to get 9U1RU into the log! I also got several other DX stations in the log today as well, but this one was a feather in my hat so to speak. The dev team also spruced up the screen some too, they new rounded buttons at the bottom are new and in CW the zero beat indicator looks better and also seems to work a lot better too.
Keep in mind that yesterday (report is below) we had a huge solar storm and this is what the space weather looked like… not today though. The K index was a 1 with good band openings up into 10 meters. I didn’t venture past 15 meters today as I ran out of time but 15 was booming today! I even worked a little CW while I was there. I was a good time.
I packed up the HF Signals sBitx and headed to US-2169 and setup at the Frisbee golf parking area on top of the mountain today. I also have a new vertical now as well. The old one that I bought at Orlando Hamcation met a terrible fate recently. I strung it up like you see here, but while I was at the campground, forgot it was still on the truck and proceeded to drive home like this. Needless to say, when it got home, it was bent beyond repair so I threw it in the scrap bin and ordered a new one from Amazon. Turns out that if you don’t pay close attention to the details of the item on the listing, you will get something other than what you actually want.
If you will look below at the close up of the antenna base, you will see that I was dancing with destruction today as I had only ONE thread holding the vertical in place. I was fortunate in that there was almost no wind today so I didn’t have any trouble with this little problem. I am going to make a custom QD mount that has the 10mm thread in it so I can use this antenna with a custom QD holder like the hamsticks and the old telescoping whip. I just tightened it as much as I could by hand and stuck it on the base…lol… and it worked. Lesson here is that I should have tested or built out the system prior to arrival at the park. Finding out that your antenna threads don’t work when you are setting up to activate is NOT the time to learn this information!
You will also notice that I have more radials today. This was a little experiment in seeing if just adding more would help with tuning the antenna…it didn’t. Seems it is more important to just have the radials the right length as opposed to having a bunch of wire spread out on the ground. tuning the radials is more important than you think if you want a radiator that needs no tuner to couple it to the radio. Also, the angle at which they are tensioned is also critical. I was able to correct the tune from 1.4:1 down to almost 1:1 by just playing with the angle of the radials. the looser and more vertical that they were, the lower to tuned frequency and for this antenna, the lower the SWR.
This was a new idea for an operating position in the truck. I usually locate everything to where I can sit in the truck and stay warm and dry in the winter, but today was really nice so I wanted to be out of the truck. I chose to flip it all around and work in like this. It was not as convenient as sitting in the seat and using the armrest as a table but it worked. I did struggle to send good code with the key not being stable on the storage case like it was, never the less I managed. Once again, logging was via the Dell Inspiron with Open Mandriva-Linux and HAMRS. This made for a really clean operating position since the radio holds the keyer memories inside it and I only need the key to plug into the radio. I am not showing CW mode in this photo…actually, I don’t think I got a single photo of the radio while in CW mode…suffice it to say, I love it though.
Operating today was a pleasure as the bands were really active as you can see in the photo below. FT8 was booming with ops. CW was a little slower on 15 meters but I did work several stations even though they were sparse. The nice thing for me and this system I have assembled is that 15 meters is a really long distance band for me. I don’t seem to hear much inside about 600 miles. Once past that 600 mile point though all sorts of stations start coming in. A lot of the DX stations I can hear, can not hear me though as they are running significantly more power than me so I am most likely in their noise floor. I do occasionally work some ops in Europe, South America and such. I also count Canada as DX even though some people don’t from what I hear and I could hear a good many of those northern ops today as well. Shoot, at times even the RTTY area would be full of signals! The bands were really open right after that storm! I even got PU2YFR from Brazil in the log today! It was crazy! For me, to get a lot of DX into my log is a special thing, I usually can’t hear them for the most part. Most likely this is due to my antennas being the biggest hindrance…
This is the power source for today. I could have plugged into the truck power, but there is something going on with that where I lose about 2 volts when I do so I get a significant power drop when I use the truck power over this battery. I was getting nearly 13 volts and this battery has been used a couple of times already. I do have a watt hour meter and I am going to use it to track the usage of this battery on the next few outings to see how long it runs compared to the stated 36Ah rating on the side of the battery. I have been taking this battery lately so that I can setup on the picnic tables and run wire antennas since it is cooling off and the bugs are hibernating. I am also starting to document things about my setup so that others can find some utility in these notes at some point. I don’t know how I will present these notes but I am capturing the information none the less so we will see.
All in all I got 12 CW contacts and 40 FT8 contacts in just a couple of hours on this super sketchy antenna setup and a battery with just a hand full of watts. So if you want to try your hand at POTA, don’t thing you have to have a big radio, generators and a beam to be heard, it really doesn’t take a lot to get out there. Just have fun.
73
WK4DS