WDØDXD

Like all Amateurs, I ran into a problem with RFI in the shack.  I have a 100′ Windom setup that is feed with dual RG6 coax that goes into a MFJ-962D antenna tunner.

For the most part the setup works pretty good.  I have never been able to tune 15m or 160m, but I could the rest of the bands.  I always got a little RFI on 40m, but not so much that I couldn’t work it.

Well something changed over the winter.  I don’t know if it has anything to do with the antenna, or the ham shack.  I just got done rack mounting my main rigs and I suppose that may have changed something.  When I ran psk on 40m and 80m, I would get RFI and the rig would pulsate output so bad it was unusable.

So this weekend, I tried a trick that Woody KCØWA told me about.  I took a 1000pf ceramic capacitor and soldered it from the shielding to the center conductor of an old piece of RG-8 that Gary NØSJM gave me on BOTH ends.  Then I connected one end to the ground in the shack and the other end to the ground rod just outside the shack.

It worked for the most part.  The plusing is gone and I can work 80m again.  On 40m, the pulsing is gone, but I still can’t eliminate the ALC when I try to run PSK.

So I am going to try one other thing over the memorial day weekend.  Then maybe I can be conpetative when the next contest rolls around.

Just got done participating in my first contest.  At least the first one that I made a real effort to participate in.  Not sure how well I did, but I did try.

I learned a few things along the way that I will share with you for better or worse the next few days.

First, logging.  From the 070 page I followed the link and downloaded GenLog from W3KM at http://www.qsl.net/w3km/gen_log.htm.  Pretty neat program.  It took me about 10 minutes to figure it out and get started.  I have to say that I am impressed at how he updates it for all of the contests.  I logged the contest and then uploaded the ADIF file to the KJ4IZW  Scoring Tool http://dwestbrook.net/projects/ham/scorer/ to create the file that I emailed in.  Then I imported the ADIF file to hrd and eqsl.  Worked well.

I learned a couple of things about my antenna setup also.  I will share with you what I did to fix the problems as I go along this week.

Been busy lately doing a web redesign on the Amateur Radio Association of Nebraska’a web site.  If you are interested, take a look at http://w0wwv.org.

I think it turned out pretty good.  Now on to getting ready for this years field day.

I stumbled a crossed this page this evening  on Space Today Online.

What an amazing history the Amateur Radio community has with space.  It is incredible what “non-professional” engineers can accomplish.  Maybe we just need to turn over the Manned Space program to the Amateur Radio community.  I have a pretty good feeling they wouldn’t throw away all the accomplishments and sacrifices made by the engineers at NASA over the last 5 decades.  Just Saying….

As president of the Amateur Radio Association of Nebraska the responsibility of rebuilding our Severe Weather Spotter Network partially falls on my shoulders.

Like most Amateur Radio groups over the past several years our members have aged and are less inclined to be available for these types of activities.   We have been working on bringing new younger members into the association for the past year, but that takes time.  While we have been successful in getting 5 -10 new licensees, we still don’t have enough to take on all of the Storm Spotting roles.

So I appointed a committee to contact hams in surrounding counties and identify the ones that are willing to help out.  Then the committee will appoint a team leader in each county that will be responsible to coordinate that counties spotters.

We will see how it goes.  If any of you have been through this and have any ideas for us, I would appreciate hearing from you.