CQ WW DX SSB 2011 @ VE7BFC

Acronym much? I took part in the CQWW SSB contest at BCIT last weekend and logged some QSO’s.

At the VE7BFC station we have an IC7600 with no amplifier, a TH7DX triband beam, and a wire antenna for 40/80. This was enough for me to make over 30k points in just a few hours.

Hear some random audio here:

Warning, the audio is over modulated when I transmit, so please listen with the speakers down low.

See my log here [LINK]

Cheers,
Bob Holowenko — VE7WNK

A QSO with Leo Laporte W6TWT

I had a chance to operate on 20meters with Leo Laporte W6TWT. Take a listen to this MP3, it says it all.

Most of us in the ham community are familiar with Heil Sound for exceptional products, headsets and microphones for ham radio applications, and even podcasts – infact this was recoded on a Heil PR40, next weekend I’ll have a heil headset on for CQ WW SSB.

Heil sounds’ founder Bob Heil is, unsurprisingly, a ham himself. For the last few months Bob has been running a Audio and Video podcast from Leo Laporte’s TWiT Brickhouse studios. Leo is a new ham and earlier this week Bob encouraged LEO W6TWT to sit down and operate on HF. Leo was sitting in petaluma and remotely controlling an IC7800 at K3LR (Western pensilvania) the world famous mega multi-multi station. Well, it just so happened that yours truely had a chance to work leo from my remote set up…here’s how it sounded on his site.

To see the video version of this site here.

An open letter to the amateur radio community

Found this via Twitter. A really good read!

Chris Seright KE5ZRT

Dear amateur radio community,

The following has been on my mind for quite some time, and recent events have pushed me over my tolerance limit and I must speak my mind.

Shortly after terra and I received our amateur radio licenses, while signing with my wife on the air I told her “88 babe”, and she replied, “back at ’cha”. Very shortly after that a ham addressed her in front of a group of other hams and said, “Don’t you ever use CB language on the air again.” She was embarrassed and heartbroken and didn’t get on the air for a couple of months. Someone once criticized me on the air for the way I pronounced “mobile”. I’ve heard people criticize others for the way they speak with the microphone too closely. I received an email complaining that net control for one of our nets yawns too much. We all have our quirks and idiosyncrasies.
The whole complaint about so-and-so is using …continued

Click Here to read the entire article.

Kodos to this op!

Using VoIP to check into the BCPSN

I have been using an VoIP phone lately to check into the BC Public Service net. When I check in I am connecting over the internet. To remote control the radio I log into the BCIT ARC computer and control it using VNC. The remote control is via the IC7600′s USB port. I use Ham Radio Deluxe in order to use the VFO and cause the radio to transmit. The radio also has a USB soundcard in it which allows me to operate the radio from the soft phone. My audio (SIP g911/g729) goes via the BCWARN network over the radio shot, not via the internet like the remote-control traffic. Using the BCWARN link I connect to the core network and can reach the SIP server at the main server location out at UBC.

The audio quality is great and no one knew that I was remote until I told them. The latency is also not an issue.


diagram


Here it is in video



ARRL VHF QSO Party 2011 VE7SCC Portable CO90

Me “operating” the contest when band was shifting. I typically call/run during contests but in this first video I am running around the band looking for others. In this video I end up working XE2K in DM22 Mexico which is a pretty damn good contact on 6 meters. I also worked WA7JTM in DM46 (Grand Canyon) who had a massive signal from his location.


In this video I am running up the contacts from inside the station. We set up a low power FM transmitter inside so that we could listen to the operating position from outside of the building. In the video you will see the other operators and the microwave site we camped out at.

All of the videos in this series are filmed by VE7HHS.