DXCC

Well here it is, and this is also a good opportunity to thank the ARRL for offering the award, the LoTW for making is so much easier and cheaper than dealing with cards, which I still like, but they are slow coming in.

Of course I'd like to thank all the stations that answered my call. I do not have a huge big gun station, but use a rather modest 100w at the low end of the solar cycle. My antenna pales next to a SteppIR but evidently it is adequate enough for now.

I will continue chasing the DX as I'm not done with it and would like to get as high up as I can, maybe now being the right time to add some power to the station.

Thanks to all that made it possible!

Me thinks I'm King Kong!

Yesterday I was in NYC on some business. I opted to walk down 34th Street, window shopping and it was good exercise. I had my Oregon 400i with me and decided to save a partial track. Satellite reception was OK, not stellar (I should have saved screen dumps but thought about it only now), about 35ft accuracy. WAAS was off. I was receiving about 8 satellites 4 of which were not full bars.

New Yorkers need not worry, I was walking on the north side of the street, did not cross it till I got to 9th avenue (the B&H stoire, a shrine for gadget freaks like me). I did NOT, repeat NOT climb up any building, or swing wildly from skyscraper to skyscraper...

So why did the GPS show that? I guess the signal was bouncing between those buildings just like King Kong in the movie. Thus the reception was degraded and so was the result.

What is interesting though is that the most of the inaccuracy was on the N-S axis not on the E-W one.

In any case that would have made things quite difficult if I had been in a vehicle.
Before I'm asked, the GPS was on lock on road, so that is not why I had these errors. Sampling was either on 10yards or 5 yards, not that it is relevant.

I like testing my equipment and finding its limitations. The urban canyon certainly showed it struggled there.

My Field Day 2009

Well I planned on camping with the motorhome at the Ontario County Park at Gannett Hill, some 2000 feet up, operating my Iconm 706MKIIG with a Buddipole, either on battery power or on regular power.

We arrived there, I set the motorhome up, we had lunch, my wife was comfy, reading her book then taking a nap and I was setting up the Buddipole when I saw water leaking out to the motorhome. The site did not have water, so I was depending on the water tank and it was leaking. I decided that the safest think for us to do, was to return home. Which we did.

By then, it was past dinner time and I was tired and hungry. We fed our seven dogs (who were with us in the motorhome) and had dinner. I was too tired to do anything with radios, so it was up to bed.

Turned out that this was Radar's (my 9-11 SAR dog) last camping trip with us too. I did not know it at the time, but I'm glad he managed to be again at a place he really liked. And Chip, my first SAR dog also had his last camping trip at Ontario County Park, a place he loved too, so while not planned, these two dogs really followed each other's footsteps.


On Sunday, I decided to just operate my home station, I was really not in the mood to do much of anything, so I worked some stations on RTTY, BPSK-31 and phone, 40m, 20m and even 15m. Nothing to howl about. I was just trying to take it easy and have some fun, no pressure to compete or get any major results. I took many breaks, my wife and I also did some planning for our coming summer trip, so it was not a total wash of a day, but that leak sure put a damper on my Field Day.

I also finally made the decision that the Buddipole antenna is not for me. I learned a lot using it and it was fun. It is a very well made product but I need something that is easier to set up and just as efficient if not more. So I ordered a TransWorld Backpacker antenna and will give it a try as soon as it gets here. I hope to be using it on our trip. Since we'll be staying in some places just overnight, a quick setup time is of utter importance and so is the changing of bands. It seems that the TransWorld Backpacker will do just that for me. I can't wait till its here. And next year, I hope to use it on Field Day!

DXCC progress

May 20th, 2009

The mail just came and with it a QSL card from Niger, my 39th DX QSL card. Adding to that 61 other LoTW DX entities, I now qualify for the DXCC award! All I have to do is sort the cards, fill-in the paperwork and mail it and the cards to the ARRL and wait for their approval etc. I hope the wait will not be too long.

Guess what, I could not wait any further and applied on line to have the 61 LoTW credited, sorted my cards, printed out my application and mailed the whole kit and kaboodle via Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation to the ARRL.


May 22nd, 2009

I just saw that my letter with the DXCC application and 39 cards has arrived this morning at the ARRL offices in Newington CT. Delivery Confirmation is a great service for such matters. Now I have to hope I sorted the cards right and that everything else will be ok.

June 10th, 2009

Checking on the ARRL's website it looks as if I have an 8 weeks wait at least. As of now, they are working on the applications received by April 10th. Nothing else to do but wait patiently. Meanwhile more LoTW came in and they are more than welcomed of course. The DXCC is just one goal almost achieved, but eventually, I have my sights on the Honor Roll.

Birds visiting our feeders

Thanks Kim, Olivia and Steve for the new bird feeders that have attracted so many beautiful birds to our deck!

Downy woodpecker (male)

Rose-breasted grossbeak (male)

Hairy woodpecker (male)

Brown-headed cowbird (female)

Red-bellied woodpecker (male)

Yellow finch (male)

Brown-headed cowbird (male)

Downy woodpecker (male)

Purple finch (male)

ARRL Field Day

Some interesting ham videos

Herman Munster Calling CQ


This is not exactly me but at least he's using phone, and a radio far more advanced than the one below:


Spark Gap Transmitter - Ham Radio


Holy smokes, you could very well say that as the fumes of ozone can be quite overbearing.

Cushcraft MA5B back up

Well, it took some time, for the weather to break and for me to get all the parts I needed, have a plan on how to get the antenna back up, prepared all I thought I needed to do then have Steve up here to give me a hand, well I think he did most and I gave him a hand. Anyhow. it all went according to plan till one small part snapped... But between both of us, we overcame that difficulty and even strengthened the mast by inserting parts of the old one into the new one. The mast went up and then the antenna. By then winds had picked up. Well I live near the top of a hill... Finally all got done and off the roof we went.

Back down there, I took out my trusty Brunton SAR compass and checked the antenna alignment. I could not do that accurately from the garage roof as I was too close. Well on the lawn I found that we were off by about 2 degrees on a +/- 2 degrees compass. I believe that this will not be a problem at all. Heck, my rotator program is not that accurate either...

Well, down to my shack where I tried the Cushcraft. Well, it works just as good as before. Even got a new one, Cyprus, almost immediately.

What makes a ham very happy? A good antenna working up there sure does!

QSO with LU4GW from Trelew Argentina

Sometimes a short QSO in a contest becomes much more meaningful than a few more points or a multiplier. This happened to me with the short contest QSO with LU4GW, Jorge Omar Gallego from Trelew, Argentina. This was not my first QSO with Argentina, but it rang a bell. Trelew, I remember the name of that town! Why? As a child, been raised in France, I read books by Antoine de Saint Exupery and especially my favorite, Vol de Nuit or Night Flight in English. And Saint Ex wrote about Trelew in this book, a wonderful passage that I believe inspired me in becoming an amateur radio operator, years later, many years later. It is just after that LU4GW QSO that it all came into perspective. I found this passage on the web, did not like the English translation they had so I translated it on my own.

==================

Commodorio Rivadavia doesn't hear a thing anymore, but a thousand kilometers from there and twenty minutes later, Bahia Blanca catches a second message.
"-descending... Entering clouds".
followed by two words in an undecipherable text arriving at the post of Trelew:
"-Seeing nothing..."
That's shortwave. You hear it over there, but here we remain deaf. And then, for no reason, everything changes.
This crew whose location is unknown, already appears to the living as out space and time and the blank sheets of the radios logs seem to have already been written by ghosts.
Have they run out of fuel or does the pilot play his last hand to the breakdown: finding the ground without crashing?
The voice from Bahia Blanca orders Trelew:
"-Ask him"

The wireless radio listening post looks like a laboratory with nickel, copper, gauges and a network of wires. The night watch operators in white shirts are silently bend like over a simple experiment. With their dainty fingers they touch the controls and search the magnetic sky like dowsers of a gold-lode.
-"No answer?"
-"No answer!"
Perhaps they are going to pick up a sound that might be a sign of life. If the aircraft and its running lights climbed towards the stars they could possibly hear the chant of that star. Seconds pass, really flowing like blood. Are they still flying? Every second reduces the chance. The flow of of time seems to becomes destructive. Just as twenty centuries, affect a temple, make its mark in the granite and transform the temple into dust and here, centuries of usage conglomerate in each second to threaten the crew.
Every second takes something away. Fabien's voice, Fabien's laughter, his smile. The silence is gaining ground. An increasingly deep silence, falling on this crew like the weight of a sea. Then somebody notices: "One hour forty. Last drop of fuel; it's impossible that they are still flying".

And peace sets...

A taste of bitterness and insipidity surges to the lips, like the end of a journey. Something comes to an end, of which we know nothing, something rather distasteful. And the same gloominess that hangs in closed factories can be felt among the nickel and copper veins. All this equipment seems heavy, useless and abandoned: the weight of dead branches.
All that's left is waiting for dawn.
In several hours all of Argentina will emerge in daylight and these people remain here like on a shore with a net that is pulled, ... slowly pulled, and nobody knows what the catch will be.

===================

K9 work and visual mantracking assignment

We had a local search yesterday, about 2.3 miles from my home. It all started with an MVA early in the morning and the driver and passenger missing. The passenger was soon found near-by, the driver eluded LE. I got called at 0545 and was on the road at 0615. My first two assignments were K9 assignments, working Stryder, who did his regular thorough job. My first assignment was to check the south boundary of the local golf course, to see whether that perimeter had been breached. While not in the immediate PLS area, I like to know the subject is still contained in the search area so checking the golf course made sense to me, especially since I would have been able to see tracks on the frosty short lawn and Stryder was nosing the woods in the perimeter. I worked alone with Stryder,but safety was not a major concern as I had good communications and was within sight of houses, one of which was our son's...

My next assignment was to check an area close to the PLS. This time I worked with two firefighters and Stryder. Again, the area was empty but we found one house on the Seneca Turnpike that had a truck, keys in the ignition, in the driveway and the house and barn were open. Stryder did not indicate any more than he would in a normally inhabited area, so I had no reason to work inside a place that is actually lived-in, but the owners were not on location. I did report it to command and the decision was to have the house checked by LE.


I got the next assignment before I could debrief from the second one. A grid team found a track that they believed could be relevant to the search. It was urgent for me to see the track as it was in or on ice and the ice was melting fast. So off I went to see the find.

The team did a good job preserving the sign and once discovered, made as little damage as possible to facilitate my work. I saw the print, agreed that time-wise it fit the picture as it had been made while the ice was thick, overnight, and not during the day when it melted to almost nothing or nothing. That track did not contain any sole information to be drawn, but I could make my measurements and it fit what we had been told the missing person might be wearing. I then proceeded to find more tracks and found sign, setting my tracking stick to both shoe size and stride, then step-by-step, tying the first visible track to another one the grid team had found and flagged. Here too, the heel shape was visible but not the sole pattern. Simply, at night the ground surface had a hard freeze and patterns would not be left for me. Even what now was muddy and a beautiful track trap showed little, no patterns but breaking of twigs, coloration changes on sticks, soil transfer etc. were my friends.

Now I was working the ONLY clue that we had all day. No other trained mantrackers were present. The question of whether to work with others, untrained firefighters or by myself. Well, safety was not a concern I was close to houses and other teams. I also train for mantracking by myself and only occasionally do it with a team, so I decided that I would search as I train and not have the added burden of managing a team and teaching them on-the-job. I thought about Joel and how he did that in Australia, but first, I'm no Joel and second, in Oz Joel needed any help he could muster. At this time, I felt I was doing well by myself. I took quick but frequent eye-breaks to let my eyes last longer. When working in a team of three, you kind of do that on your own, while the two others are working, but here, I had only my two eyes and needed to make them last. Funny, every time I had trouble locating the next step, I could hear Joel's voice telling me the track has to be at the end of my stick, and there evidently it was! After working this sign for over an hour, the sheriff's helo decided to check me out, and hovered over me for a while. I took a break and thought that I'm not advancing the line of sight fast enough and could do better. Well, I flagged the last sign I had worked step-by-step (marked a waypoint on my GPS too) and now started looking a little farther ahead, three to five steps, hoping to see the sign. Having worked step-by-step for over an hour, I had now an idea of the rhythm the footsteps fell, the kind of sign to expect on wet areas as well as on drier ones etc. I could now relatively easily see the sign ahead and so I advanced to that sign and started all over again. This worked like sending a cutting team a little and at an angle, ahead of the team working the sign and I always could go back to where I had sure, step-by-step sign and do it over. I never strayed out of sight of the last known track. That method worked well for me and I worked 800 feet to 1000 feet, perhaps more as the track was quite a serpentine but the GPS did not show it as such. I may need to increase my setting for visual mantracking from a point every 5 yards to a point every yard.

The one problem with that track was that while I could say it was made by the same person, at the right time frame, I could not say it was our guy, as I had no way to tie the track to the footwear the missing person might be wearing (other than size, but that is not enough). Help was on the way though, in the form of a well trained trailing K9 Maya and her handler Kyle.

Kyle has collected a scent article and now Maya would be able to tell us whether the track I followed was the right one. Maya said no, wrong person, so I ended my assignment there. I believe the track lead to a near-by cabin, but since it is on private property, I probably will never know for sure.

Stryder, my air-scenting dog was with me for this entire assignment, as I did not want to leave him in the truck for that long. He adapted so well, waiting until I got almost out of sight, then I called him, stopped him before my last known track where he waited for me to call him again.

We also deployed an air scenting dog team ahead of my location, as I told command I would be able to discern between the fresh tracks and the older ones, ones made when the ground was frozen solid and one ons the fresh meltdown.

More maps for my Garmin GPS units

I have lately been experimenting with a slew of new maps for Garmin GPS units. The first one I added was the NY State Snowmobile trail map layer http://www.gpssledmaps.com/maps/ny.php . Here are two examples:

The layer is completely transparent and can be seen on top of any map. Snowmobile trails are very twisty and windy and in the field, you never know where they will lead you. Now with this layer, I know and this may be a real factor in some search in the future. Good to have and if distracting, the layer can always be turned off on the GPS.

Topo maps, 1:24ooo were not, so far available as Garmin GPS maps for NY State. No longert true. http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/111 Here is a sample and comparison:

While the contour lines are better than ever, and the road data is much more up-to-date, wetlands are missing. But then they are available on Topo 2008, so now I have both layers on my GPS. But you can only access one at a time. So I use whatever gives me what I need most where I currently am walking.

Road maps: Till now you had to shell a good sum for a mapset that was good for use only on a single GPS unit. Well go here http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/19/ and get yourself a road map set that is quite good. Some areas are not covered and do not expect turn-by-turn directions, but you can have quite a large area on your 2GB card.

Finally, if you want or need topo maps for Canada, here is a free source: http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/

Not all sets are complete and some are updated every so often, so check each site again from time to time. There are more free maps available for various purposes and locations. But this is just a sample of what is available and what might be useful if you are in NY State or the north east part of the US.

Here are directions on how to switch between maps on your Garmin 60CSx GPS
http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_mapset.html

Here are directions on how to load maps on your GPS:
http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-load-maps-on-my-garmin-gps-unit/

If you don't have a copy of Mapsource, go here:
http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-install-mapsource-if-it-didnt-come-with-your-gps/

Cushcraft MA5B down

Well, yesterday as I was about to go out with some family members, I looked at my Cushcraft MA5B and noticed it was about 20-30 degrees off the vertical. The damage must have been very recent as I did look at the antyenna the day before and it was fine. I went in the back of the house to have a better look at the problem and it was the mast that had suffered wind damage: metal fatigue somewhere above the last anchoring point. Luckily I had Steve, our son-in law around and we both climbed up on the garage roof and took the antenna down. It was also lucky that we had almost no snow on the roof, but for one corner, of course near the antenna. It was a windy day though and we could hear the wind gusts coming up our way. So between gusts, and with a good dose of luck we took the antenna down. No damage was caused to the antenna, but the mast will need to be replaced with a stronger thus heavier one. I will also need another anchoring point to make the entire system even stiffer. My anchoring points to the house showed no sighns of wear though and that is good. I do live near the top of the hill, by a gully where wind is coming up and is gusting so I'll need to take that into account.

I still have my Cobra-Ultra lite which I was using for 40-160 so now it will get used on all bands. It is not as good an antenna as the Cushcraft MA5B so I'll be looking for materials for the mast and putting it back up as soon as the weather allows. See you on the bands!

SAR K9 Training with Eagle Valley

Training with Eagle Valley is always interesting. Many different problems are offered. In this instance Stryder, coming back after a bout with an enlarged prostate and thus getting neutered, started working on three simple human remain problems and did an excellent job. Remarks that I got were that Stryder seemed in very good shape and was ever so happy to work. He had good finds and refind and was ready for more, which he soon got, as in a slightly larger area and again he excelled in all parts of the exercise. The last hide was cut short as I needed to go back to the classroom to get ready for my presentation on GPS, this time mostly forcussed on the Garmin 60CSx.

Later on Stryder had a building problem. We used the dorm building and trailers, all used and heated so the scent picture was quite complex and there was a lot of residual scent from a previous hide spreading around. Stryder showed some frustration but I could still read him as he did not have a strong source of scent, and in the trailer where I figured by his behavior the person was hiding, he even showed more frustration, as he could not find the exact location of the person hiding, so I took him out of the direct scent cone, then he went back and indicated, but he never saw Jana, the subject behind the shower curtain, the scent coming down along the wall, yet trusted his nose and he was right as it brought him within inches of the unseen subject. It was interesting for me to watch and see him work the problem out. Actually I now realize that Stryder has had very little previous building search experience and none in lived-in buildings, so for a first experience, it was indeed a very good performance.

While all that was going on, I also deployed my APRS system consisting of the Yaesu VX-8 and the Kenwood TH-D7ag and Garmin 60CSx GPS. THis was the first time this system was depolyed not at home and it worked well, although I was never too far from base. I did not activate my Kenwood TM-D700 to repeat the signals as there was no APRS digi within range. Hopefully one of these days I'll be in range of such a digi.

We ended the day by following an urban trail in the village of Hanckock. Long trail, with many curve balls thrown by the fickle nature of scent and conditions.

I skipped dinner with the team as I had to drive home and did not want to drive tired and late at night.

DXCC progress

Well, it was time to have a look at my logs as I noticed that I have 55 confirmed entities with ARRL's Log of the World (LoTW). In addition, I have QSL cards for another 20 entities, so I'm three quarters of the way there in confirmed entities.

Checking my logs, I found another 28 entities so now I'm busy printing envelopes and filling-in the cards so hopefully, I will get replies and will be able to submit my claim for the DXCC, award for contacts with one hundred different entities and/or countries in the world.

The ARRL DX Century Club Program

Once I get enough cards back to complete 100 entities, I will have to take them to a Field Checker to continue the application process.

UPDATE

Well the cards are slowly coming in. Seven were waiting for me upon returning from the trip to Panama. Then three more came on different days, and today three came together. One of the card I got was a return, addressee not known, but upon checking with QRZ, it appeared there was a problem with the PO.Box, so this card is back on its way to San Marino.

So for April 2nd, I have now 56 entities on LoTW, and 31 cards in hand for a total of 87 entities. Thirteen more to go and seventeen cards sent out that have not come back yet.

Well we are now May 10th and the score has improved but not yet there. I currently have 59 LoTW entities and 38 cards in hand, for a total of 97 confirmed entities. Three more to go...

May 14th, I'm getting closer yet with one more LoTW entity, so now it is 60 LoTW and 38 cards in hand... I worked a Grenada station on RTTY and this one is a LoTW user so I was really hoping to get a QSL. Well, it worked and now whether the card I sent for a previous contact in Grenada ever comes back is more academic, although I'd like to have it anyhow.

Well, I'll be giving preference to LoTW users by using programs such as LUQ which identify them and they will become just as attractive as rare DX stations. While the DXCC is a goal I'm about to achieve, I see it now only as a stepping stone to things bigger and better.

May 20th. I just got another LoTW confirmation, this time for Kenya so now I stand at 61 LoTW and 38 cards in hand for a total of 99 confirmed DXCC entities. Oh the wait for number 100 is going to be long...

Made contact with K5D, DX expedition on Desecheo Island

February 13. 2009
Made contact with the K5D DX expedition over there.



Desecheo Island is located off Puerto Rico. It is a nature preserve and the Fish and Wildlife authorities don't allow people in there, so this DX expedition is a rare occasion to make contact with that particular location. It also gives me another entity towards my DXCC award given for confirmed contacts with at least 100 overseas entities and countries. Desecheo is the 6th most-needed DXCC entity world-wide! The 3rd most-needed DXCC entity in Europe! And the 2nd most-needed DXCC entity in Asia! So although it is not a very long distance call, 1,777 miles, it is an important contact for me. If you want to learn more about this DX expedition check out their webpage: http://www.kp5.us/

I worked my Icom 756ProIII, which is my main HF radio.


And here is a close up of the display.

Now the operator of the Desecheo Island station K5D was operating on a split frequency, meaning he was transmitting on 18.145 MHz but listening anywhere between 18.150 to18.160, or 5 to 10 up in the ham lingo. The trick is to find what frequency K5D is actually listening to so you can tranmit on that particular frequency and make the call. Of course you need to also listen to his transmit frequency. Most HF radios allow you to do that but the Icom 756ProIII not only has a split mode, it has a dual watch which allows me to listen to two frequencies at a time. Yes, it takes some getting used to figure it out in your head, but it is like fishing , you need patience and slowly move the dial to where the large mountain is, where there is a lot of transmissions. Then you need to find the match between the station calling and K5D answering to that station. Now all you can do is hope a stronger station with n amplifier and a huge antenna is not going to walk over your own transmission. Patience and luck do it! I was very lucky and got through almost immediately after I found the listening frequency.

On the display, the white line by the "m" in spectrum indicates the frequency K5D is transmitting one and the red line the frequency I am transmitting on. Each hump indicates activity on that part of the band.

And below is the log excerpt of K5D showing the contact that I made. Now I'll try to make additional contacts in different bands.

Kenwood TM-D700 digipeating my Yaesu VX-8

While I'm very happy with my new Yaesu VX-8, I have noticed that even with an antenna better than the OEM, I rarely get my APRS signal into the local digipeaters. Well, today, that problem got solved. I set my truck's Kenwood TM-D700 to digipeat the VX-8 and it worked perfectly. Yes, I had a little path duplication that is now taken care of, but now the signal flow nicely. Of course, the purists will see a runner going quite faster than humans can, but with today's weather (rain and wet snow), I simply used it from inside the truck.

I now have a working system for SAR or other purposes where my VX-8 signal is digipeated by my truck and can be picked up by my Kenwood TH-D7ag/Garmin CSx at base etc. I can even leave the D7 on its charging stand and not worry about batteries going down.

The next step? Connecting the D7 to my laptop.






I've also noticed that I prefer having the GPS affixed to my radio and not use the remote mike. The package is much more compact without the dangling mike, with the GPS in a place where sooner or later it will get banged hard. In addition, APRS needs to be supervised to look for messages, etc., so I have to look at the display anyhow. For now my VX-8 is configured as in the second picture.


So what can you learn about me through APRS? Well below is a Google map you can access through the links of this blog. It will not always be the same map, depending on where I went and if I turned the system on. But here it is. You may notice that the lines do not do right on the roads. This is simply because they join points taken at two minutes interval, if there was reception and do not show exactly where my truck went. Being a Google map, you can also flick it to the satellite picture, well the real think, not the screen dump I put here.

And finally, you can see the data, mainly the last coordinates, the date and time, first and last heard and the location details.

Try it, either on this blog or on my website.

The red track was taken with my Garmin 60CSx and the blue one with my Garmin Oregon 400i. I was walking my dog. He was off lead and stopped a few times, well, he's a boy and needs to leave his business cards around... So I did have to make a few about faces in motion, just to check on him. I think those about faces show better in the Oregon track, but while I walked at night without a light, I don't think I was as jittery as the blue track shows me to have been. OTOH, I don't think I was as smooth as the red track. I tried walking in the middle of the road. As you can see, both tracks show me a little to the side, both being equally wrong, but by how much? The scale bar shows 300 feet! This is a narrow road where two vehicles can pass, but with care. So we are talking about a few feet, maybe ten or so. To me, both tracks are acceptable. Both GPS units were tracking with the same setup, by distance, a point every

Antenna connectors and creme brulee

And when is a solder joint on a coax cable going to fail? Of course in the harshest period of winter, with at least a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures in single digits at mid-day!

And how do you solder a connector that can't be taken off the antenna without taking the entire antenna down? Well, I waited for a day that was not windy and no snow was in the forecast for that day either. I got my lightweight aluminum stepladder out on the deck, set after having cleared most of the snow climebed up but the connector was still out of reach. Luckily my mast is set so I can lower it, at least to some degree by just releasing a few clamps. Easier said than done in those temperatures. Well, now I can reach the connector, but how can I solder it? My soldering iron is 25w at most, and that certainly won't cut it in a single digits environment. And bringing it up with an extension cord, on an aluminum ladder set on snow remnants? Not too smart, electrically speaking.

Then came the idea! A few years ago, my wife made creme brulee and all that was needed was to caramelize the topping. Much to my wife's horror, I brought my blowtorch and did my deed, without putting the kitchen on fire, which was what my wife had feared then. Later on we were given a mini-blowtorch, to be used uniquely for creme brulee...

Soldering with a blowtorch is something I reserve for plumbing jobs, not for coax connectors. But the mini blow torch might perhaps do the job. I gave it a try and within seconds, I had a nice shiny solder connection made, SWR was back to normal and all was for the best! No apparent damage was done to the plastic shield. I guess the air temperature was working for me at that point.

So here it is, without the sweet smell of the creme brulee and without the acrid smell of burnt plastic too!

Comparing sensors in a Garmin Oregon 400i, a Garmin 60CSx and the Yaesu VX-8

My house temperature was 65-66 degrees when I turned on my VX-8 and the sensor registered 77 degrees. Later on it got to 82 degrees. Well, that's the temperature inside the VX-8 so I guess some energy is converted to heat, and I was not transmitting. So all I can say, the VX-8 would make a dismal rectal thermometer... But if you want to know how hot it is in the unit, well I guess the number is in the ballpark.

Altitude:
I compared three instruments, a Garmin 60CSx GPS, a Garmin Oregon 400i and the VX-8. I looked at both GPS and barometric altitudes.

	Barometric altitude	GPS altitude
Garmin 60CSx	1072	1069
Oregon 400i	1081	1079
Yeasu VX-8	1092	1030

Measurements were taken in a single location (my living room) at about the same time, meaning very little change in the GPS constellation. The Garmin units show consistency and a difference of 9-10 feet. The VX-8 is in the ballpark but the GPS altitude is not as good. According the the topo map the altitude is 1055. Since I was not in the basement, maybe I need to add 8-10 feet or so and the map contour lines definitely predate the house...

My conclusion is not to try to land a plane using any of these three instruments only... Otherwise, gosh, it is good enough for me.

I also checked the GPS' precision in location and here the news are excellent! The table below shows the decimal part of the minutes in both longitude and latitude numbers, all in WGS 84 datum.

Garmin Oregon 400i and 60CSx	Yaesu VX-8
,758	.765
.878	.874

Now, this is only anecdotal data, a single measurement in the comfort of my living room, not taken in any extreme type of weather and conditions. But for me it is good enough.

Balloons, balloons!

Balloons are fun! Fun to blow with the pump and fun to release!

Drew takes the lead!



Geoff, balloonist par excellence!



Olivia, the balloonist's apprentice!

Playing board games.

Well, all the family was here this weekend and this is first attempt at imbedding a video from youtube. Enjoy! I'll add more in the days to come, maybe also a slide show.

My new Yaesu VX-8R radio/APRS

This is my new Yaesu VX-8R radio, A small but rugged and waterproof handheld which has a built-in GPS chip in its speaker mike and not only displays my location (in lat/long, WGS 84) on its screen, but can also send it via APRS, to the entire world, given it can reach an internet gate (i-gate).

If its transmissions make it to an i-gate, my position can be checked on several websites including my own K9CHP. Just scroll down to the Where am I page.

But even if I am truly hiking in the boonies, my VX-8R can transmit my position to my truck where it will be kept both on the Kenwood TM-700a mobile radio and the Garmin 60CS GPS. The TM-700a is now out of production and has been replaced by the RC-D710

Another possibility is to use my Kenwood TH-D7AG handheld radio that can be connected to my Garmin 60CSx GPS. This is the seup shown below. I trd using it in the field but the radio is fragile and not waterproof, so you have to protect it a lot and the connecting cable not only tends to get snagged but disconnects quite often, so the entire setup is of questionable field value. But it can be left at base and now they can have a precise idea of my whereabouts and anybody elxe using APRS in that area.

I can also connect the TH-D7AG/60CSx to a laptop and have the locations appear on screen. But the software I use needs internet connection to work at its best, so it won't be functional everywhere. The TH-D7AG is now out of production.





And here you can see how my location looks like on the GPS screen. The blue flag is the last waypoint received. I did change the scale to a large display so the new waypoint will be distinct from the existing ones. But even if it is not clear enough on screen, find waypoints near current location will give the desired results.

I hope to put the system into use in SAR training with Eagle Valley Search Dogs. The nice thing is that the VX-8R can be used by a person without an Amateur Radio licence as it is a simple remote APRS beacon and I will be its control operator. The person carrying it will not have access to any function other than turning the unit off, if so requested on our SAR network.

K9 SAR training with Eagle Valley Search Dogs

January 10th counts as a winter day in my book. With a predicted winter storm coming from the west, I expected some wind at least at ground level. Nada, zip, nothing. Yes the winter storm came from the west and it snowed, enough to make driving next to impossible in the late afternoon/evening but at ground level, not even a flake was drifting, showing no significant air movement at ground level! Makes things kind of hard for the dogs to work as the scent cones do not develop much.

I gave my Kahtoola Microspikes a workout in the am and they worked like a charm. I did not slip once for lack of traction. Some teammates complained that they can ide up, so next time I'll use some show sheen on them and see if that helps. The snow we were on was on top of a layer of ice and snowshoes maybe would have prevented breaking through that ice, as it happened

In the pm, I used my snow shoes, but this time, the snow was not that deep, no ice under it and too many logs to block my way. I would have been better off with the Kahtoola Microspikes. Go figure!

My Oregon 400i GPS also caused some havoc as suddenly I could not see my topo map on the screen. For whatever reason, when I switched it perhaps back to the K9 SAR profile, it worked fine thereafter. There is also a possibility that I inadvertently switched the scale of the map, difficult to say, as the cold can cause butterfigeritis. Anyhow, I was happy to be able to solve the problem on the fly.

As for Stryder, he did ok. The hide Kyle had chosen was a bear, well almost a bear's den. The subject got inside that natural ledge so deep he could not be seen from outside. I got there by sheer luck as my search plan got shredded from the beginning, as the area I was given and the area I had on my GPS were not matching at all! So after I took Kyle's GPS and started working it and trusting it (that took me about 10 good minutes as I had to clear the mental picture I had built in my head and replace it with what that GPS was telling me). I got to the corner of my area and decided to do a pass in the middle of my area, mostly following contour lines. That's where I got close to the cache. I then saw the footprints. Stryder did not alert yet, he even poked his nose in the cache but did not indicate yet. He worked the scent, got on top of the rocks where scent was probably escaping up. Stryder now had his natural alert, came back towards me got under the ledge and did his refind, bumping my right hand.

Had I not seen the tracks, I am not sure Stryder would have gotten his subject, as we passed close to him a little higher and he did not show any scent acquisition, yet the scent was going up from the mini-cave at least at first. Would he have gotten scent farther below, where un-energized scent tends to go? How far would the scent have gone? These questions will remain unanswered.

Sonar SAR K9, like a cruise missile, fast and accurate

Sonar is working a scent source located towards the close end of the gutter. This is the way she indicated on sources that were up, beyond her reach.

Here is Sonar in an actual search, checking the shore of the Grasse River near Canton NY. Sonar was a superb search dog and cadaver dog. Unfortunately she blew an ACL in training in Montana, and despite surgery, she never recovered completely so I had to retire her. She is now enjoying the couch at home.

Radar, SAR K9 extraordinaire

This is Radar, sporting his New York State Senate Liberty Award he earned for his work in 9-11 at the recovery detail in Fresh Kills, Staten Island, NY.

Radar was raised and certified in the US, then both Radar and Chip went with me to Israel for a year and a half as I was taking care of my ailing mother. We also participated in a few searches in Israel, one particularly memorable as it was in the Judean Desert, near the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. That search did not have a good outcome as the victim was found deceased, about 10 miles out of that area.

We, Chip Radar and I, then returned to the US and were asked to participate in the mission to Australia with the 1st Special Response Group (1SRG).







That search in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia sure made headlines, especially when the subject was found after having spent forty days in the unforgiving desert! Other than 3 very skilled K9s, 1SRG also had, IMO the best visual mantracker there is in SAR, Joel Hardin. All these special skills in addition to the team's resourcefulness contributed greatly in the desired result.












This is a picture that not very many cas take. We were searching for a suicide victim in the gorge of the Genesee River in Letchworth State Park NY. We were give special permisssion to search the upper part of the river, where no visitors are allowed and had to cross the river not far from the falls in the background, to check a ledge with caves where the body could have been lodged in high waters. I worked both Chip and Radar, together, as I had trained them to work like that. They did well even in the canoe that transported us from place to place. The water was so shallow that we did not have to search it, just get the canoe through. But we stopped and searched areas that had been under water during the winter and early spring.









This picture was taken during Radar's water search certification. Radar was always meticulous in his alerts, precise till he jumped in, only in calm waters though, and the scent sourde was always there, where he indicated!






This was Radar's largest water search, off City Island, NY. There were four victims and despite two dogs giving trained indications the divers never found the bodies on the silty bottom. All four bodies were recovered later on as they re-floated. This search was a first as we used new technologies, search patterns planned on a laptop computer and transfered to GPS, then implemented. Alerts and trained indications were saved as waypoints then later analysed, on location, to see where the next effort should go.

Chip my first SAR dog

This is Chip or formally known as Can OTCh. Amir's Tollhouse Morsel Am. UDT, Search and Rescue K9, Super UD Award winner and many other titles.

Chip is the dog that started it all, who taught me so much and who had direct and indirect influence on my other SAR dogs, Radar, Sonar and Stryder.

Chip has always loved the water and water searching has perhaps been his favorite specialty. Chip here shows how accurate his nose was and how readable his alert had become over time.

Worked All States (WAS)

Working a two-way contact with each one of the fifty states of the Union was a goal I set to myself after I upgraded to General. Contacts seemed to be easy to make at first. Then came the realization that having made the contact is just part of the job and it needed to be followed up by a QSL card. Envelopes, stamps, return address stickers, address sticker in addition to filling the QSL card (I still prefer filling them manually to putting a sticker on them too), all that amounts to a lot of work that took me away from the radio itself. Then I discovered ARRL's Logbook of the World, LoTW. After sending in my full log, I was nicely suprized with quite a lot of confirmed QSLs. Then Stephen Genusa came up with Ham Radio Deluxe Utilities and that practically automated the process with my logging program, Simon Brown's Ham Radio Deluxe. Now I just had to make contacts and hope they will log it on LoTW. There were a few states that eluded me for some time, Alaska, till I got my new antenna, the Cushcraft MA5B. Then came some western states such as Nevada and the mid-west as in North and South Dakota. For whatever reason, the entire north east was never heard till the day of a contest where I got all these missing states, including Delaware and Rhode Island in one weekend! Now I knew I had contacts with all fifty states and just needed to wait for the confirmations. The mailcarrier brought some, LoTW brought most. I ended up with 33 LoTW contacts and 17 QSL cards. The last card, the one from Rhode Island, came in just a few days before Christmas. I was ready, applied for the LoTW part on line, made the payment, printed the forms, and mailed them and my cards the very same day. The ARRL Awards Desk was wonderful and I got my WAS certificate before the year was over! Talk about fast turnaround!

So here it is, now proudly hanging on my wall. And now it is turn to get serious on the DXCC, my first 100 contacts with distant entities.

From inverted V to plain ole W

Last winter, we had an ice storm and trees were covered with a nice layer of ice, well nice to the eye, but not to the tree, power lines etc. Fortunately the damage was minimal as we were lucky enough not to get too thick a layer. I use a Cobra Ultra-Lite antenna for HF and I took a few pictures of the change that occurred with the ice.

What normally is an inverted V shape, was now a plain ole W shape. Having never read about a W shaped antenna, I did not bother checking SWR nor attempted to operate with it in that shape. The counter weights I use to dampen the sway of my supporting trees did its job and the antenna survived the ordeal without problems and is still in use a year later. The picture shows only one leg of the W though. The antenna is 140 feet long, at about 35-40 feet high. It works fine in all bands, with a tuner of course. The internal tuner of my Icom 756ProIII does the job. Difficult to rotate though! It is currently used for 30-160 meters as my Cushcraft MA5B beam is doing a better job on 10-20 meters.