QRSS Success -- Signals Visible in Online Grabbers

Shortly after recording SolderSmoke 86 (in which I shared my tale of QRSS woe), I solved my calibration problem. IK3NWX has a CW beacon on 10141800 Hz. I fired up the Spectran soundcard program, and put the output of my Drake 2-B into the line in connector. With the 2B's bandpass wide, I tuned NWX's beacon to the top of the display. I then adjusted the trimmer cap on my oscillator to put me 1750 Hz below NWX. Eccolo! That put me in the 100Hz wide QRSS band. Almost immediately I could "see myself" on some of the on-line "grabbers." Vic, G3GKI, sent a screen shot (above) You can see some chirp on my signal. I might fix that, but I might leave it as is to make the signal more easily recognizable.

Eddie, G3ZJO, also sent a screen shot. I think this one is from an online grabber located in Northern Italy. You can see Eddie's far more sophisticated signal higher up in the display. My more rudimentary effort appears below. You can make out my call.

The online grabbers are a real hoot. My favorite is that of Johan, ON5EX. Check it out and see if you can see my 200 milliwatts reaching out across Europe. look for me around 10140020. Johan's page updates every minute or so:

http://www.on5ex.be/grabber/grabber.html

SOLDERSMOKE 86

June 22, 2008

http://www.soldersmoke.com

Maritime Mobile on Lake Bracciano.
Jean Shepherd loses girlfriend due to THE KNACK.
30 Meter transmitter self-constructs (almost).
QRSS Woes.
Do CW signals have sidebands?
Freq Counter down for the count.
Dial Parallax: Drake 2B jumps 3 kc from eyeball to eyeball.
Radio Shack: Count your blessings!
Nice wire from old computers.
Good luck on Field Day.
MAILBAG: VU3RDD NEW HARMONIC!
Frank on analog scopes,
PE1OIT on si570 chips,
KG4ENB on 179 kc LOWFERS,
M0NJP on how XYL's can deal with THE KNACK,
K7JM on SolderSnow,
W8OAJ SolderSmoke as Knack Therapy,
Jonathan 7J1AWL "from commuter train in Tokyo"

Jason, the Argonauts, and QRP

You don't often find beauty in software read-me files, but I found some in those of I2PHD and IK2CZL. Take a look at this. It is from the read-me file for a Slow Speed CW program:
----------------------------

ARGO -- A QRSS Viewer by I2PHD & IK2CZL

Argo is program for viewing QRSS signals, i.e. very
slow CW, or DFCW signals, i.e. slow CW where dots and
dashes are of the same length, but offset in frequency
by a few Hertz, or even a fraction of an Hertz.

The name Argo is taken from that mythical ship which,
with the Argonauts on board, headed to Colchis,
in the quest for the Golden Fleece, much like the LF
Hams are in search of that fraction of dB of S/N which
will allow them to make that elusive QSO.

--------------------------

Here is where you can get the Argo software.
Free!  And lots of other good programs
(check out Spectran):

http://www.weaksignals.com/

Bravo Alberto! Grazie!

QRSs QRPp

I blame Hans Summers for this. His articles in SPRAT on very slow speed, very low power CW on 30 meters have caused me to develop a new set of Knack symptoms. I now listen intently to CW that is so slow that by the time I get to the end of a letter, I've forgotten if it started with a dit or a dah. I've become intimately familiar with the refresh rates of strange web sites known as "Grabbers" (I'd never heard of them before. See above for a sample.) And for the first time in my life as a radio amateur, using crystal control is no guarantee that I'm "in the band."

My 30 meter QRSs 200 mw "MEPT" beacon is on the air, but no one has heard me yet. This is almost certainly due to the fact that I'm probably outside the QRSs "band." This band is only 100 HERTZ wide! I'm using a 10.140 Mhz crystal, but the circuit values of my oscillator could easily put me out of that band. And Murphy struck: Just days before I started all this, my frequency counter died. My trusty Drake 2B is of little help in measuring frequency to this accuracy: The dial increments are 10 KILOhertz! And the 2B suffers from a problem totally unfamiliar to those who have grown up with glowing numerals: DIAL PARALAX! (It sounds like Knack-related disease, doesn't it? "I'm sorry m'am, your son Dilbert also has a bad case of DIAL PARALAX!!!")

Wish me luck. Don't blame me if you succumb to QRSs madness. Remember: it is all Hans Summers' fault.

DUGA-3 aka STEEL YARD aka WOODPECKER

Mama mia! Now that's an antenna! Put your HW-8 on that one and you'd be in business!
Here are some more shots of the Woodpecker antenna complex:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1200861

Jean Shepherd: KNACK VICTIM!

Guys, stop what you are doing. Put down that soldering iron, or that cold Miller High Life ("the champagne of bottled beer") and click on the link below. You will be transported back to 1965, and will hear master story-teller Jean Shepherd (K2ORS) describing his teenage case of The Knack. He discusses his efforts to build a Heising modulated transmitter for 160 meters. He had trouble getting it working, and became obsessed with the problem, obsessed to the point that a girl he was dating concluded that there was "something wrong with him" and that his mother "should take him to a doctor."

This one is REALLY good. It takes him a few minutes to get to the radio stuff, but it is worth the wait. More to follow. EXCELSIOR! FLICK LIVES!

http://ia310115.us.archive.org/2/items/JeanShepherd1965Pt1/1965_01_29_Ham_Radio.mp3

SolderSmoke 85: Special QSO with WA6ARA

June 8, 2008 

Echo-QSO with WA6ARA! 
Phoenix lands on Mars.
Beacon operations.
Adrian Weiss, W0RSP. FB QRP Author.
Need correspondent for Flea at MIT.
Understanding balanced modulators.
Dan's accident (Dan's Small Parts).
Hendricks Cap Kit.
"Hot Iron"  Journal of The Constructor's Club
The Woodpecker.
MAILBAG (Return of the GONG!):
W6DWF
KC0PEI on "IP Telepathy"
Mark Z on a crank-up Pocket Pixie.
Ramakrishnan in Singapore.
Niels PE1OIT on Robert E. Pease.
Jerry NR5A: Cursed with Beacon Madness.
Echolink QSO with Mike, WA6ARA.

Download the SolderSmoke Podcast at
http://www.soldersmoke.com

The I-QRP Club Magazine

The Italian QRP Club (I-QRP) has a very nice quarterly bulletin. They have recently started to present a good portion of the articles in both Italian and English. The May 2008 edition is very FB, with many good articles, including one on impedance matching with broadband transformers.
Thanks to the I-QRP Club for making this available to hams around the world!

Here's the link:

http://www.arimontebelluna.it/i_qrp/bollettino.htm

Beacon Rig I0/N2CQR 28.240 MHz 1 Watt

Just a few shots of my new beacon rig. The first shows the Beacon Box on the shelf above the HW-8, attached to the battery. I've been running the beacon on solar power, using my two Volkswagen panels.

Here's a look under the hood: The larger board is a crystal controlled 1 watt transmitter (Dour DeMaw's ("Lil' Slugger"). The smaller board is K1EL's amazing keyer. I've left space for a 30 meter QRPp QRSS transmitter.

Finally, here is the "Sideswiper" aka "Cootie Keyer" I threw together in order to get my beacon message into the keyer. I discovered that I need a lot of practice on horizontal CW!

Adrian Weiss, W0RSP. Very FB!

I'm reading Chapter 11 ("Milliwatts and Miles") of the book "The History of QRP in the U.S.; 1924-1960" by Ade Weiss, W0RSP. What a gem this book is! I find it particularly inspirational that a book of this high technical level was written by someone with a PhD. in Renaissance Literature. Thanks Ade!

Parachuting on Mars

What a great shot! This is the Phoenix lander descending to the Martian surface by parachute. The photo was taken from Mars orbit by the MRO probe. You can even see the shroud lines!

Well done! Bravissimo!

(And Phoenix features solar panels and antennas, making it an entirely suitable subject for SolderSmoke News.)

Beacon Operations

On Saturday 24 May I connected my newly acquired K1EL keyer to a little homebrew 10 meter beacon transmitter that I'd built about 10 years ago. (The transmitter is based on the "Lil Slugger" design by Doug DeMaw -- about 1 watt out.) Ten meters seems pretty dead these days, so when I turned the thing on and put it on the air, I had the feeling that no one would hear me. It sort of felt like throwing a message-in-a-bottle into the ocean. I put my e-mail address in the beacon transmission. I've had the thing on the air very intermittently over the last few days.
Imagine my surprise when this morning my e-mail box contained a message from Andre in Germany. He'd heard the beacon in its first day on the air! Wow!

During daylight hours I can hear beacons from all over Europe on ten.

I have left space in my "beacon box" for a very QRPP 30 meter transmitter. The K1EL keyer will generate QRSS. Where is the best place to get a crystal for 10.140 Mhz?

See if you can hear my beacon on 28.240 MHz. I'll have it on during daylight hours (Italian daylight hours).

I'll post some pictures soon.