Playing on 10M SSB.

[TNFrank]

Quick video of some 10M SSB from this morning. Thanks for watching. 73

 

[RoadApple]

Hey TNFrank, thanks for sharing the video on 10m and tell your wife that the yard looks fine....

[TNFrank]

You're welcome. I just mainly wanted to make an HF video for my channel to show folks that even us "Lowly Technicians" can have some fun with HF on 10M SSB. Even with that limited slice of HF it's still possible to get QSO's from some pretty distant spots. 

I hope when I get my antenna up another 5 or 6 feet I'll get better range. I'd really like to get a QSO from Japan on my QRZ logbook. Maybe the End Fed Half Wave I'm going to rig up will get me Japan. 

A guy did comment that before I CQ I do need to see if the frequency is in use. My bad, I'm just learning this stuff so I'll do that from here on out. I'm mostly going to Hunt POTA to help them get some Activations. I think it's a lot of fun and more productive than just "rag chewing" about stuff. 

Anyway, appticate the comment. 73

[WRYZ926]

You shouldn't have any problems working Japan with a dipole, especially if you can get up in the air at least 15-16 feet.

[TNFrank]

I just did a test fit of my antenna on the new tripod I got. I can get all but one segment pulled out, otherwise it's TOO high. Extended minus 1 segment my stakes for the antenna wires are 22' apart and at that distance my wires are very close to 90 degrees which should be just about perfect for SWR purposes. I'm just surprised at how tall this tripod is.

It should work well with the EFHW I'm going to make up using some 14 gauge copper wire. Plus, since one end will be 8' high at the porch and the other 15+' at the far end the signal should get out pretty well AND I can move the tripod around to direct my signal too. 

This is so much fun, everyone should get an Amateur Radio License.  

[WRYZ926]

Try making longer guy ropes so that you can extend the tripod fully. 

I have that tripod saved in my wishlist as it can be handy for POTA setups.

[WRYS709]

I am hearing “CQ QRZ Contest” on 10 meters this morning 

[TNFrank]

44 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

I am hearing “CQ QRZ Contest” on 10 meters this morning 

There's some guy on there that sounds like he's half asleep who keeps calling "QRZ Contest" over and over and over.  I really want to make a QSO with the guy in Japan, that would be awesome to talk to someone that far away. 

[WRYS709]

10 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

There's some guy on there that sounds like he's half asleep who keeps calling "QRZ Contest" over and over and over.  I really want to make a QSO with the guy in Japan, that would be awesome to talk to someone that far away. 

Funny: your situation seems to be the opposite of mine. You hear stations that cannot hear you.

Other stations can hear me even though I can’t hear them on RF, so I use webSDRs to hear them and complete QSOs. 

[Northcutt114]

1 hour ago, WRYS709 said:

I am hearing “CQ QRZ Contest” on 10 meters this morning 

Probably this. 

[WRYS709]

48 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

Probably this. 

I put up my post to alert you to contest activity for better POTA activation results for YOU!  

[hxpx]

1 hour ago, TNFrank said:

There's some guy on there that sounds like he's half asleep who keeps calling "QRZ Contest" over and over and over.  I really want to make a QSO with the guy in Japan, that would be awesome to talk to someone that far away. 

I heard a Japanese station the other night on 40m! Grayline propagation, maybe? First time I heard one that far away.

Much closer, but I also pick up a dude in Toronto pretty regularly who's running a directional antenna and like 400W. Incredibly strong signal (peaked over S9) but he couldn't hear me with my gutter antenna. Might try again with a vertical just to log an international contact.

[Northcutt114]

22 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

I put up my post to alert you to contest activity for better POTA activation results for YOU!  

I'm about to head to my local park (not a POTA park) and play for a little bit this afternoon. Thanks!

 

[WRYS709]

23 minutes ago, hxpx said:

I heard a Japanese station the other night on 40m! Grayline propagation, maybe? First time I heard one that far away.

Much closer, but I also pick up a dude in Toronto pretty regularly who's running a directional antenna and like 400W. Incredibly strong signal (peaked over S9) but he couldn't hear me with my gutter antenna. Might try again with a vertical just to log an international contact.

Indiana?  What day/time/freq you be on 40 meters next?

[Northcutt114]

24 minutes ago, hxpx said:

I heard a Japanese station the other night on 40m! Grayline propagation, maybe? First time I heard one that far away.

I heard a guy the other night calling from Tokyo on 10m. I didn't even try to work him. But I heard him.

 

[hxpx]

3 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

Indiana?  What day/time/freq you be on 40 meters next?

Yeah. No schedule - If you want to try to make a QSO, let me know. Soonest I can be on is 9:30p-12a ET tonight. Wouldn’t take long to set up the vertical.

[WRYS709]

Can't commit at this time, but post when you are OTA and I will check it out!

[Northcutt114]

Went to a different park, huge open field area. Only managed two QSO's before the sun went down but one was in Puerto Rico and the other was a POTA activator in Oregon. Both gave me a 59 and they sounded like they were sitting next to me. Compressor was on, mic gain at 10 so maybe the band was just bad the other day and it was better today.

I hunted a guy in Southern California. I could hear him but he couldn't hear me. And then, believe it or not, heard a POTA  activation from Hawaii. It was hard to pick out and way down in the noise, but I could hear it. Call signed matched the spot on the web page. I'm guessing he wasn't running QRP.

I'm having enough success now to be comfortable that my station is working. Moving from GMRS, where everything is very dependable, stable, and reliable, directly into HF, I've just had to modify my expectations. With GMRS, if I wasn't getting out, something was wrong with my gear. In HF, the gear can be just fine and you still can't make contact. Now that I understand that, the frustration floor is falling.

.

[SteveShannon]

2 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

With GMRS, if I wasn't getting out, something was wrong with my gear. In HF, the gear can be just fine and you still can't make contact. Now that I understand that, the frustration floor is falling.

.

But look at the difference in distances that you make contact!

[Northcutt114]

33 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

But look at the difference in distances that you make contact!

I mean, that seems obvious in retrospect, right? And this will put on display a little of my ignorance, but I thought "ham radio" was somehow "more powerful" than other services. And while I suppose that is "true," I had this idea that the radios themselves were, not so much the signals they sent. I guess I didn't realize that all HF relies on skip. I somehow thought that it was point to point, which is what mystified me about it. Now that I better understand how it works, I'm understanding why it doesn't sometimes. Simply put, I expected HF to be like GMRS in terms of reliability...which I when I type it out loud, looks absolutely ludicrous. But it's what I subconsciously thought. 

[WRYZ926]

@Northcutt114 I'm glad to hear things went better today for you. The G90 is one of the few radios that actually benefits from having compression turned on.

What antenna did you use today?

[SteveShannon]

2 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

I mean, that seems obvious in retrospect, right? And this will put on display a little of my ignorance, but I thought "ham radio" was somehow "more powerful" than other services. And while I suppose that is "true," I had this idea that the radios themselves were, not so much the signals they sent. I guess I didn't realize that all HF relies on skip. I somehow thought that it was point to point, which is what mystified me about it. Now that I better understand how it works, I'm understanding why it doesn't sometimes. Simply put, I expected HF to be like GMRS in terms of reliability...which I when I type it out loud, looks absolutely ludicrous. But it's what I subconsciously thought. 

Within a relatively short distance HF follows the surface of the earth. That’s referred to as ground-wave. Also within a short distance skywave doesn’t work well, so if your antenna is configured to make use of skywave you might not be able to speak to someone who is nearby, like 50 miles, even though you can easily speak with someone who is 500 miles away. 

[Northcutt114]

12 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

@Northcutt114 I'm glad to hear things went better today for you. The G90 is one of the few radios that actually benefits from having compression turned on.

What antenna did you use today?

The same and only one I have. JPC-12. I did however, do something today a little more intentional with it. The Chinglish instructions say to extend only "about half of sections" of the whip on 10m. There are nine sections so I have just been extending 4 and calling it good, after tuning it on the radio. Today I actually laid the antenna down on the ground and from the coax connection, I measured 8' 4"and extended the whip to that exact height. I found that it was only 3 full sections and about half of the fourth.

So prior to today, I had been running a 9' antenna...which would be too long on 10m and so I guess, even though the G90 "tuned it," I wasn't TXing at optimal efficiency. Although I find it hard to believe that 6" would give me that much trouble, but what do I know. I only realized last night why it was called 10m and why my antenna was called a 1/4 wave. It was like a light turned on in a very dusty room! 

[WRYZ926]

The G90 is nice that it will tune just about anything. And the builtin SWR sweep meter comes in very handy. As you have found out, a resonant antenna will perform better. Next thing to try is add more ground radials. More ground radials will improve things. 

I suggest getting the JPC-12 radial plate along with getting some 18 gauge silicon wire to make your own ground radials. You can easily add multiple 18 gauge wires to a 10-12 gauge ring terminal which will allow you to have a bunch of ground radials. 

The reason I suggest silicon wire is that it won't tangle up into a rat nest when you roll it up for storage.

I notices an improvement with my REZ antenna going from 4 long radials to 24 short radials. 

[Northcutt114]

17 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

Within a relatively short distance HF follows the surface of the earth. That’s referred to as ground-wave. Also within a short distance skywave doesn’t work well, so if your antenna is configured to make use of skywave you might not be able to speak to someone who is nearby, like 50 miles, even though you can easily speak with someone who is 500 miles away. 

Correct, although I know that you know this. As I understand it (which could be flawed), vertical antennas have a low take off angle which makes them great for DX. But because of that, they sometimes bounce over closer stations. Just today I heard the CA station talking to someone in Alabama that I couldn't hear at all.