QST de N7GMT

Funk- — of or relating to radio.
Vergnügung — enjoyment, pleasure.
Funkvergnügung would therefore be something akin to operating pleasure.

Ahh — the K3/100 is here! All unpacked, assembled, (troubleshot, sent back, repaired, aligned, reshipped, and re-unpacked,) antennified, and energized.

Operating the K3 — Funkvergnügung!

The first weekend I had it (all healthy and whole) was the CQWW-SSB contest. This is 48 hours of pure DXer heaven — well, for those of us who don’t do CW well enough anyway. Stations from all over the world are on, trying to contact everyone else they can. I only had 58 Qs (QSOs: contacts) in the few hours I had to operate. Many were from Argentina and Brazil, with a few other South American contacts, a few Hawaii and Mexico stations, and a solid contact with a station in Spain!

The crazy thing, for me, was how wonderfully selective the K3 was, as compared to my IC-706MKIIG, and even my K2. Admittedly, I do have some nice roofing filters in the K3, but being able to tune up and down the band and have stations copyable despite the closeness to other stations … sometimes they were less than 1-kHz apart, but still workable, where all of my other radios want the more standard 2.5- to 3-kHz spacing between stations if you want to reliably understand what they’re saying.

Simply amazing.

I love my new K3. I had a chance to do some A/B testing with an IC-756 ProIII at another club-member’s home, and while there were strong similarities in capabilities between the radios, and even though his had some nice features — like the band-scope, being sexier to look at — I’ll keep my K3, and be very satisfied with it.

Thank you, Elecraft, for designing and producing such a nice radio. Not for everyone, admittedly, but I’m one happy camper — erm, ham-mer.

For those interested in the problem:
There was an intermittent solder short from the factory on one of the boards which caused one of the many micro-controllers to fail. Gary, on their tech support staff, was very good to work with, and helped me narrow the problem down over several days (email exchanges being what they are). Elecraft made good on it though, and did all the repair work. They even aligned the radio once everything was working. They want to make sure that all the parts are not just working, but working together in the system as well as they can make it work. That meant I had to be a little patient again, but that’s OK. This radio’s a joy to own and operate!

The last full weekend in June is ARRL’s Field Day 2008 (yes, I’m just that slow posting). This year my boys and I joined UDXA in their FD outing up on Skyline Drive near Fairview, UT. They boys aren’t yet licensed but I figured this would be a good year to have them work on the GOTA station. This station is specifically meant to let folks get acquainted with Amateur Radio … and hopefully to get them bitten by the Ham bug!

Warming up in the sun while eating breakfast.

The boys had a blast! They each made about twenty-five contacts with folks from all over the States. One YL had already worked our station, but wanted to work us again, just because we had young folk on the radio. My boys are nine and six.

My nine year-old, the Gamer, was working stations almost without prompting from the get-go. He is my Ham buddy and has worked a contest or six with me before. He’s getting quite good, actually. Once he has listened to me give a contest exchange several times, and has done a couple of them himself, he settles right down and works like a veteran. Several of the UDXAers commented on how well he did and how impressed they were with his operating skills. We <cough>I</cough> need to get him going on getting his license so he can join me more regularly.

This was the first serious radio event for my six year-old, the Etymologist. He was a bit nervous and a bit shy at first, what with everyone wanting to help him. Once he warmed up, he did really well, though — especially once he got his “outside” voice going. (Not his real outside voice, which he occasionally uses on a festering, ingrown sibling, but his normal voice with enough punch behind it to bust a pile up! I was very proud of him.) He turned out to be the darling of the GOTA tent; every shutterbug in camp wanted their turn to get pics of him with the headset and boom mic on.

The night before, my boys and I wrangled ourselves some radio time over on one of the rigs just to see if maybe we could make a few contacts for fun. Thanks to Hal, WA6ZHK up in Roseville near Sacramento, CA; and to Craig, N7CAL, up in Custer, Montanna. The boys were especially excited to talk to Craig: he lives and works on a spread up there in big sky country, where they ride four-wheelers and horse to help run about 900 head of cattle. To a couple of suburbanite boys, that sounded like heaven! (Craig was going to be having a different kind of field day; he was expecting a “water turn.” Having cousins who had to herd cattle and help with the water turns, I know it can be fun — for about one day, then fun it is&nbsp;&hellip; not quite so much. Brought back fond memories though. Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Craig!)

Sunrise behind the SSB tower.

The club was running 3A — which means three full-time stations running on generator power. We had a dedicated CW station (operating Morse code), a dedicated SSB station for voice contacts, and a “mixed” station for working either CW or SSB on whatever band seemed to be hopping and would help us get the most points. This group is incredible; they had two huge towers up there on Skyline Drive. Oh, and they call it Skyline for a reason. the horizon up there is (at or lower than) straight out pretty much in all directions. It’s a beautiful area. There were virtually no flying critters (we saw a few ’skeeters and a fly or three) and the temperature was pretty mild at 9100 ft. (2770 m) ASL. There were lots of ants and old mole trails, but that was just for effect.

Cereal at 9100 feet ASL.

All in all, it was a very pleasant weekend. We only stayed the one night and left about six hours into the actual operating event, but even that little bit was a bunch of fun. I certainly wouldn’t mind going up again next year; maybe this time we can stay long enough so my boys’ dad can get some operating time in himself.

Go Team!

We spent the weekend up at the in-laws. It was to be one of the last weeks of the open-house for the new LDS Temple in Rexburg (picture). The kids had an extra day off from school for Martin Luther King day, so it seemed like a good excuse to get out and visit family.

But there was a contest that weekend. Now, admittedly, I don’t normally make much of a fuss for Ham radio contests. I mean, I’m no contender, that’s for certain. But for some reason I decided that I was going to give it a go anyway. I couldn’t think of how I was going to get any kind of decent antenna up, and I certainly didn’t want to schlep my entire “shack” with.

With the hours-before-departure dwindling, I decided that I would take my modest collection of Hamstick-style antennas, my trusty Elecraft K2, and do my best. Oh, did I mention that Rexburg is about the coldest point in (habited) Idaho? I did take this into account as I prepared gear and clothing.

Shortly after the contest began, I bundled up and headed out to setup in the truck: trusty 12V gel-cell between my feet, K2 on my lap, 15-meter mobile whip whipping in the gentle Rexburg zephyr. After my feet started going numb from the cold, I decided that 15-meters needed some rest before I tried to find someone new. Well, lunch was calling, too. (Literally. My Sweetie called me on my cell to tell me they were eating. She wasn’t about to come out there in the cold to tell me, no sir.)

Tried to work a little 40-meter, but the band was just mish-mash from one end to the other. And no one could hear my pitiful 5W (yes, I was running frozen QRP on a mobile whip. Masochist, I know.) through the pile-ups.

Didn’t have a whip for 20-meters, but I brought along the trusty Radio Shack 102-inch stainless steel whip to see what I could do with it. I managed to get it to tune, with the help of the superb Elecraft T1 and made a surprising (to me) number of contacts.

Anyway, the total score was 20 total QSOs in 13 states (multiplier of 15 with three bands) for a grand score of 300 points. Pretty pathetic, score-wise, unless you take into account that it was QRP using a mobile whip, and I was freezing portions of my anatomy off—well, I would have been had I not taken precautions. (Hmm… seems to be pretty chilly here in the kitchen at, oh dear, 0320h local time). And if you scale my score to the 100W I would like to have been running, that would put me at 6,000 points, which isn’t at all bad. Maybe next year.

So this weekend was the ARRL Sweepstakes for SSB. Yes, terribly exciting, I know. I wasn’t sure I was going to have time to operate at all, because Saturday was looking really booked, what with The Holy Cow finishing up, and sneaking off to Salt Lake to pick up a new sofa I’d ordered to surprise my Sweetie with.

Anyway, with the two youngest under the weather, I had to stay home from church to watch ‘em. No radio time there. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble two little boys can get into if left to their own devices. (Well actually, I know of several of you who can, but that ruins the flow of the previous sentence, so let it slide, will ya?) And if you’re the only adult in the house, who do you think they come to when they want attention? Yeah, hard to guess that one, isn’t it.

After everyone else got home, had lunch and had settled into what I like to refer to as the Sunday Afternoon Fester I figured I could warm up the radio and see how many Qs I could pull off before someone noticed. I didn’t start until about one o’clock Sunday afternoon, and the contest was due to finish by eight that evening, local time. I was puttering along when I got a gentle prod from my DX-ing buddy, N7BAN; a text message “I heer u” [sic] and a response of “38″ when I asked how many Qs he had. Twice what I had at the time; time to kick it into gear … at least for a while.

I didn’t plan on getting in as many hours as I did, and probably would have knocked off early, but I got a special treat. My son, who has been kind-of interested in getting his license for some time, came over and sat down, watching me rack up a few points. I explained sections and multipliers, and we watched the score go cross 2,000 and continue to over 3,000. By then the excitement was building; he’s just a wee bit competitive. By the time I was over 5,000 points I could tell he was itching, so I had him share the headphones, handed him the mike, and showed him all the things he needed to say to complete an exchange. We got interrupted by dinner (bah, who needs food when there are Qs to be won?), and after dinner I set us up with a pair of head-phones each. That really got him going and helped us coordinate.
For those of you out there who slowed down, took special note, and gave precedence to a young voice answering to my call, Thank You! You really made his night, and mine. Seeing the light in his eyes as we “scored” an Alaska, or Hawaii, or Virginia station was worth it all to me. The last Q we had right before the contest went dark was with K7IR, up in Eastern Washington. Since the pressure was now off, we had a chance to have a quick chat. Turns out he has a son the same age, and complimented mine on doing a fine job with the exchange. Actually, several of you gave him compliments on his operating that brought out that goofy, snaggle-toothed grin of a young man caught between childhood and the age of teens. (Precious radio funds will soon have to be devoted to adjusting the worst of the snaggles. <sigh>)

To the 87 ops with whom I exchanged today, TNX es 73.

To those who gave special note to a gangly youth (and future ham radio op), VY TNX es 88 de N7GMT.