On Saturday, I didn’t make a single contact–at least not any radio contacts. I had plenty of face-to-face contacts at the ARROW monthly breakfast, including a nice chat about getting back on the air and working CW with a guy whose call I forget now (sorry about that!).

One of the things that has helped me in finding speakers for club meetings is my experience as an editor with Test&Measurement World magazine. My job as an editor was to first figure out what topics the readers were interested in (or should be interested in) and then find someone to write the article. My job as club president is to come up with ideas for club meetings and then find guys willing to giva a presentation.

Last night, I had a great QSO with Don W2LID. Of course, we joked about his call, and I asked him how long he’d had it. As it turns out, he was issued the call in 1937 at the age of 15, so he’s been a LID for 67 years!

As I mentioned, it was a very nice QSO. Don is a real expert at how to conduct a QSO. One of the keys to a good QSO is to ask lots of questions. Practically before I could get a word in edgewise, he’d asked me about my work, why I had a 6 call in the 8 call district, and about the equipment I was running. Through his questioning, we found out that we had some common work experience, he working for Bell Labs, and me working for a competitor, Northern Telecom.

If anyone’s callsign can be a misnomer it’s W2LID. Don’s as far from being a lid as I can imagine.

One of my first blog entries was “Tips for the Casual Dxer.” Now, I have another tip:

The night before a major DX contest, get on the air and work the stations warming up for the next day’s events.

I did this exact thing yesterday. Tuning around 15m, I worked in quick succession:

• PY1NX, who was booming in with 20 dB over S9 signal;
• PJ4/KU8E; and
• V47Z, a new country for me.

I probably could have worked a bunch more, but I got a little tired of simply sending 599s. It was nice to work the

When guys in our club start to talk about A-indexes and K-indexes, I normally say that I don’t use either of those to predict propagation. When they’d ask what I do use, I reply, “I use the E-index.”

“What’s the E-index?” they ask.

“Well,” I joke, “E stands for ‘ear’ and if I can hear stations on a band then I figure that propagation is pretty good. If I don’t hear any stations, then it’s probably bad.” That usually get a chuckle out of them.

I may be changing my tune, however.

On the G4FQG Software page, R.J. Edwards says, “There ARE such things as free lunches,” and then goes on to prove that point by offering a bunch of “original, high-quality, radio engineering/modelling programs” for nothing.

There’s lots of good stuff here, including programs that will help you model and design:

loop antennas
helical antennas
loaded vertical antennas
toroids
transmission lines
impedance [...]

Last week, the ARRL QSL Bureau graciously sent me another pack of QSL cards. This time, they were all from Europe including several from France, three or four from the Czech Republic, two from Asiatic Russia (does that count as a separate country??), two from Hungary, and one from Portugal. The two most remarkable ones, however, were from OE2BZL in Austria

and GM4DZX in the Orkney Islands, which is a group of islands off Scotland.

The main ham radio activity this weeked at KB6NU was the FISTS Winter Sprint. It was really a blast. I did way better than the Fall Sprint, scoring 11,670 points on 79 QSOs and 30 multipliers. I followed pretty much the same strategy I did in the Fall Sprint. I operated just enough on 20m and 15m to add to the multiplier total and then banged away on 40m to roll up the QSOs. I didn’t work any DX this time, but I did increase my multipllier total from 21 to 30.

DefendAir Radio Shield paint is a product that seems intuitive, but I’ve never seen anything like it before. DefendAir Radio Shield is a flat interior paint designed to reduce the transmission of radio waves through walls, ceilings and doors, and the manufacturers are targeting companies that use wireless networks. They claim that the paint effectively shields RF transmissions below 5 GHz.

As I mentioned before, one of the reasons I bought the N0XAS PicoKeyer is that it had an MCW mode. In this mode, the RIG output instead of keying a CW transmitter is connected to the PTT input of a VHF/UHF rig to key it. This signal goes low once you start sending and stays low for two word spaces after you stop sending. The audio of the keyer is fed into the microphone input, and it’s this signal that’s actually turned on and off.

Of course, just because the keyer has this capability, doesn’t mean it’s actually easy to implement.