Nov 06 2015
The raw scores from last months CQ-WW-DX SSB-contest are availlable. Tough I was operator at PI4AMF I also spend some hours making QSO’s from home. In total 200, QRP-assisted.
Seems to be enough to make it till the 1st place in the Netherlands if you rely on the RAW scores (search for PH4X).
Nov 01 2015
No. The map below is not the map with the route asilum seekers are taking from Syria towards rich country in Western Europe. It’s a real-time map showing tropo ducts on VHF. This data is bases on APRS stations transmitting there GPS-position on 144.800 MHz. You should save it on your bookmarks is active on VHF and UHF! The URL: aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us.
Oct 29 2015
A few months back I switched from a magnetic loop antenna to a vertical one. There were two main reasons to do so. The first one is the ability to be able to remotely tune the antenna. With the I3VHF-loop I wasn’t able to. The second reason was to have support for the 80 (and soon to be released) 60-meter band. If 160 would work this would be a great benefit.
Using a 12-meter high SpiderBeam fiber pole, without the last section, a wire goes 10,5 meters up and 3,5 meters to the side, with a total length of 14 meters. This length is chosen because the wire was already in stock and isn’t resonating on any of the ham bands. The CG-3000 tuner will tune the wire to all bands, including 160-meters. But the topband isn’t really workable with S9 noise.
Last week I made about 200 QSO’s during the CQ-WW-DX SSB-contest to test the antenna. Lower bands in particular perform much, much better with the new set-up comparing to the I3VHF loop. On the 40-meter band, local QSO’s are quite impossible (No more ‘noise’ from 7077 kHz a.k.a. ‘CB channel 14’ in the Netherlands) and distances 1000 miles away are better. I’ve worked D4C in Cape Verde, Kuwait, a US West coast stations, Canada and Barbados in the Caribbean.
Last week I had some time to do tests in JT65 on the 80-meter band. I hoped to get outside of Europe on this band, but did not expect to have QSO’s with the US and Canada (6.000 km) and Australia (18.000 km). The original goal is still set: 100 DXCC on both 160 and 80 (maybe even 60) meters together before the end of this year. To achieve that, I have to run a night during next month’s CQ-WW-DX CW-contest.
Sep 15 2015
The last post has been a while now. I was busy preparing the annual Balloonfoxhunt and helping Mischa (PA1OKZ) out with expanding the PI2NOS repeater system. Last week a package arrived from Hamshop, the distributor for the DV4mini USB stick in the Netherlands and Belgium. Time to start playing around…
The DV4mini is an micro transceiver for several digimodes. In it’s current version, D-Star, DMR and System Fusion are supported. The developers are working on support for ACPO P25 in the next v1.6 version but since P25 isn’t widely used throughout Europe and I don’t have the gear to test it, no reason to test the released v1.6 beta-software. The latest supported production version is version 1.4 available here. The USB stick should have build in drivers for Windows 7 and upwards. The radio has 10 milliWatts of output power and works on UHF only.
According the manual, drivers for Windows 7 will be automatically installed. Unfortunately for me that was not the case. And since drivers for Windows 7 (x64) are not available as download, I had to use the XP version and ignore some errors forcing the driver to install. And yes, the Visual Studio 2013 runtime was installed as 32 bit version before… After installing the driver, the program would start up and recognise the stick.
Not tested, yet
To start this test, first thing I have to mention is that the USB stick transmits on TimeSlot 2, Group 9, simplex only. So be sure to program your terminal according. I tested with the Hytera PD785G portable radio. Second thing to say is that the WorldWide (TS1-1) and domestic (TS1-204) network are not supported (yet). At this moment, only the DMRplus reflectors are supported. This had to do with the DMR backbone infrastructure where every country runs his own master server(s). You do not want every ham to connect to this network. That would bring instability to the repeaters throughout the country. Maybe later on, the Dutch DMR-master administrator is setting up a 2nd master server dedicated for DV4mini users. He’s more than willing to, but it needs to be supported by the DV4mini software to.
Unfortunately I don’t own any Yaesu equipment supporting the C4FM System Fusion protocol. I might borrow some from one of the fellow hams at the local club to do some tests later on…
Apr 29 2015
Today I noticed I’m half way the DXCC-challenge with 500 band-points. Now that I have access to the 80-meter and (limited) 160-meter band, I hope to achieve 50 band-points on these together before next year. Meanwhile, a worked-indicator in the Logbook shows me new countries per band. I’m still very limited with my antenne set-up (Magnetic Loop before, now Inverted-L) but it’s called the DXCC-Challenge so let the challenge come. 🙂
Meanwhile I continue to build my portable VHF – UHF set-up to be more active on 2-meter, 70-centimeter and 23-centimeters, be it a semi-portable operation from the car on top of a hill (location still to be scouted) during the bigger contests in Europe. Not much band-points to get over here, neither easy band-points but very challenging it is!
Apr 20 2015
I’m busy building an inverted L antenna. Going about 10 meters up and 10 meters horizontal. This gives me the possibility to work on the 80-meter and 160-meter band, using a CG-3000 tuner. I’m currently using about 2x 12 meters of wire as counterpose. This will be a bit more in the near future, but yesterday I wanted to finish quickly. First QSO’s in CW and JT65 are made on 160-meters and 80-meters.
My first on the 160M band. Confirmed via eQSL and LoTW.
No more tuning every 3 kHz like I had to do with the Magnetic Loops in the past. I’ll test this setup for some weeks and compare it – in particular receiving part – with the I3VHF Magnetic Loop to see how this is picking up noise from the environment I live in.
Apr 13 2015
Apr 11 2015
PI6ATS, a locat ATV repeater, has a new VHF-antenne. The operators used an old indoor horizontal loop / halo antenna for audio reception on 144.7625 MHz.
This wasn’t the best situation, since many people had a way stronger signal on 13cm then on VHF, if the repeater could receive a signal (1750 HZ tone) at all.
Next: HAMNET antenne beaming towards the PI2NOS tower in Hilversum so that there is internet for streaming (out or maybe even in) and/or a web-controlled audio- and video switch?
Good to see my old antenne is recycled and has a new life. I’d suggest all ham radio operators to think about their local repeaters by donating hardware or some money to keep things running.
Thanks operators, for keeping PI6ATS in/on the air.
Apr 11 2015
After cleaning the garage yesterday, I found the – after one year still boxed – MLA-T Magnetic Loop Antenna. Hope to have time this weekend to test things out. First thing to do is find a good point to fix the coupling loop, since this model has no gamma match like mentioned on the Wimo website.
I found a dip on the 40- and 80-meter band, but then it started to rain. Hope to find the dip for the 160-meter band later on today. Band-switching is done manually by adding or removing shunts. The tuner feeds the butterfly capacitor over coax, so a separate feeding line is not needed. The capacitor is able to handle about 100 Watt PEP. specified in the manual.
Tuning however, is done manually by pressing the up/down keys on the controller, which makes it a bit difficult to find the resonance point without tools. I’m lucky since I have a spectrum analyzer with tracking generator and VSWR-bridge, but simpler tools like a Rigexpert analyzer are also handy. Without these, it would be way more difficult.
Now, let’s smoke the soldering iron and build come cabling. If all goes planned, I’ll be QRV tonight when the low bands open. Let’s start with some JT65 and/or CW QSO’s. Hope to post some test results later on…
Click on the thumbnails to see larger pictures.
Feb 22 2015
Since yesterday, hamnet.nl is live. This website shows the building activities of a Dutch HAMNET.
Jan 17 2015
Most European DXCC’s are in. During the Christmas holiday I managed to work 1A0C, a new one for me. Today I’ve noticed the QSO was confirmed via LoTW. Big thanks to the operators for activate this not-so-common DXCC.
Dec 31 2014
Yesterday, Mischa (PA1OKZ) and I went to the tower in Hilversum to do some maintenance on PI2NOS. We took time to mount the first HAMNET-dish directing to PI1AMS / PI1RYS in Amsterdam-West (25km). The dish is located indoor behind a window about 110 meter HAAT. The Amsterdam site will be 55 meter HAAT. Line of Sight shoud not be a problem.
The Amsterdam site wlll be connected in the first week of januari 2015. We’re quite curious about the SNR-ratio’s. The link will be tested with 1 Watts EIRP in the ISM band until a license is in. Don’t mind the sticker on the dish. That was for identifying the different links in my lab set-up at home.
Update: The Amsterdam site is connected by Peter, PA3PM. We have a link over 29km distance. Still some improvements to make, but since we’re using Wifi in the ISM bands with the reduced ISM power-levels, it’s not bad at all. The received signal is -73 dBm (S9+20 dB!), using 5 dBm transmit power on a 27 dBi dish in Hilversum (1 Watt EIRP).
Dec 08 2014
Last week I’ve received the first hardware to do some comparisons between several wireless links we’re going to roll out in 2015 to create a HAMNET-backbone in the Netherlands. For testing I’ve ordered a Ubiquiti Nanobeam M5 with 40mm dish (25 dBi) and a Mikrotik SXT Lite5 set. Both operate on 5 GHz only and should be capable of using the 6cm (5650-5850 MHz) band depending on the country settings.
Dec 08 2014
Last week some Dutch hams (PA1OKZ, PA4TW, PE1CHL, PE1RJV and me, PH4X) moved over the 44.137.0.0/16 legacy IP-space to a gateway in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Formerly announces by the University of San Diego in California, ping-times were becoming problematic since more and more repeaters with real-time applications used this tunnel.
Moving over the IP-space from San Diego to Amsterdam, ping times dramatically lowered down from 350 milliseconds to less than 10 milliseconds. A big win for DMR, D-star and Echolink to name some real-time applications.
Preparations started with a kick-off meeting in June this year. We needed to plan the migration, find a provider to do the BGP-announcement, find a way to transport the IP-feed from the provider to our current systems, etc. Having a look back, things went quite smoothly. Dutch provider XS4ALL is announcing the IP-space and delivers this in a cabinet already in use by us in the DC2 datacenter. From there, a fiber optical connection transports the IP’s to Hilversum (PI2NOS) and Utrecht (PI3UTR). From there, we are rolling out wireless links throughout the country.
Next: roll out some wireless HAMNET-links and connect more repeaters.
Sep 23 2014
After the Hytera ‘hack’ to show the RSSI value, there is also a possibility to do this on Motorola MotoTRBO equipment. It’s quite easy. Press the left arrow 3 times followed by pressing the right arrow three times. That’s it.
