PODXS Ø7Ø Club

APE - August PSK31 Expeditions

2007 APE Tall Tales

W7PAQ, 1-4 August

I wrapped up operations 8/4 and headed home for a real shower.  The forest fires were all around us, but the 64 acre island was only getting ash when I left. MT has been in Stage 2 and we decided to close the camp and head home.

Here's the log of my PSK31 contacts from Melita Island BSA camp located in the Flathead Lake near Polson, MT. Polson is about 125 miles from my home in Missoula . I operated my TS570 with a simple dipole up the flagpole. I also passed 65 Scouts on their Radio Merit badge..

K9VIC, 3-6 August

My K9VIC APE attempt started out on the wrong foot, and ended up in sheer frustration. It was Friday, August 03 and the family and I got off to a late start due to poor planning and a house/dog sitter that was significantly later in arriving than planned. Not having the forethought to eat when we realized we were going to be late, we had to stop on the way. This set us back even more, and we were among the last to arrive.

We arrived at Lake Kegonsa State Park (about 20 miles south of Madison, WI) at about 5:00 p.m. This is a family reunion of sorts, and about 35 people showed up. As we were planning on having more than the 20 allowed at a group camp site, I'd made separate reservations for two other adjacent camp sites a short distance from the group site. I know the general lay-of-the-land at the camp ground, and had come up with a decent wire antenna for the additional sites. Operating there would be perfect - I'd have an antenna with gain, and the group wouldn't see me lurking in my tent for hours at a time (they'd just wonder were I was). Well, we were the last group to arrive, and being last, the additional sites had gone to another of my siblings. We had to proceed to the group site.

We made camp, and headed into Stoughton (the nearest town) to buy food for the trip. We got back around dusk, and I attempted to set up my alternate antenna system (mobile whips on a tripod with radials). I was unfazed by the change in plans. The mobile whips work well with a decent radial system, and did I come prepared for laying radials. The local hardware store had a close-out on 24 gauge brass wire, and I bought hundreds of feet of it. I got the tripod out, and cracked open the wire. I'm not sure what I was thinking, because I probably couldn't unroll this stuff on a good day in the light. Here it was getting pretty dark, I was under pressure (the TARA Grid Dip had started, and I figured it was a good chance to boost my QSO count) and I was being bitten by every sort of bug imaginable. My efforts managed to turn several hundred feet of wire into 3 or 4 knots, each as big as a basketball. Many cuss words were said, and some were even invented in the next hour or so. Unfortunately, my propensity at swearing far outweighs my knot detangling, and the radial system I managed to piece together was laughable. Sometimes laughable works, and sometimes it doesn't. This time it only teased me. After attempting to call KA9BHD numerous times on a pre-arranged schedule, AE5MM finally took pity on me (or got tired of seeing my trace) and called me to say things were working. All seemed to be well, but I didn't have another contact all night.

By Saturday's standards, Friday might have been a good day. It drizzled off and on most of the day. This drove the humidity in the tent sky high. My operating conditions were such that I could have either AC power via an inverter that probably puts out more RF than my QRP rig, or the radio. If I was in the tent for more than about 2 seconds, the fan was necessary and the radio was unusable. Somehow I managed to make 6 contacts over many, many hours. By Saturday night the wx had turned downright nasty, and everything went south. We got somewhere between 3 and 4 inches of rain overnight, and everything got wet. I spent the bulk of Sunday at the laundry-mat washing and/or drying things. The rest of the day was spent drying out my equipment. There was condensation (or rain) inside everything including the radio. I didn't want to fire anything up until I was sure it was dry.

At about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday I felt confident that things had dried out, and I fired up the rig. I managed to make two more contacts before the battery (75 Amp-Hour marine battery), now spent from running the fan most of the day, gave up the ghost. As far as the KC9IMR APE – it never came close to happening.

Final tally was only 8 contacts.

Stations I managed to work are:

AE5MM

N7UVH

KG4EFR

W7MRC

AA1IK/W8

KE7KFH

N6PRX

WG5T

070 members of the group have already received my Lake Kegonsa ‘07 qsl card, featuring pictures from both this year and last year (when it didn't rain).

Anyway, to sum it up, the trip was awful, and I didn't make the APE cut, although it certainly wasn't for lack of trying.

I'd like to propose to the powers-that-be a suggestion for future years. While a failed APE certainly doesn't deserve a certificate, those that contact the APE wannabe certainly put forth the same effort whether the field operation succeeds or doesn't. Might there be a different attaboy for stations that contact the failed APE? Maybe a Short of Contacts Required for August PSK Expedition (SCRAPE)? Just a thought, and I don't even want to comment on potential pictures for the sticker.

73,

Eric, K9VIC

N6ERD, 12-13 August

The plan was to drive up to Mt. Laguna Sunday morning (aboout 1 hour drive, 5500 ft), set up and be running by 11am local time.  Sunday morning my XYL was wanting to do a few things and I didn't get started up until 11am after throwing pretty much everything I could find into my car!

When I got up there, (I'd scouted the area the morning before) I realized the one thing I had NOT brought was a battery, so I was going to be tied to my car instead of on a little observation platform (ALL Metal - can you say Counterpoise???).  I was now about 1.5 hours late getting started so I threw everything together and opened my 17" laptop (crowded) and things started out badly.  My elmer and friend WA6L had trouble hearing me - after about an hour I was finally on the air barely (but he is on the other side of the mountain) so I started calling - nothing - I responded to calls - nothing - finally I decided that the mobile antenna wasn't cutting it (in retrospect I think the problem was something else).  I grabbed my ball of twine and a 20M folded dipole (twinlead) and strung it between two trees in front of my car, hopped back in the car and tried tuning - but got some odd behavior which I figured out much later.  What I did see is MUCH stronger signals on the waterfall!

Now I started calling again and BINGO, I'm in business, only 1.5 hours before the posted time for my APE to end and 4.5 hours after it was to have started (sigh) - being a rookie has it's disadvantages :b.

From there on things went pretty smoothly - I called out to WA6L on a local repeater and asked him to post that I'd be staying later than the posted time.  It was about this time that I noticed that my car charger wasn't charging the laptop and I was down to 1/3 charge left.  Apparently my rig-blaster data-jack draws a bit more power  than I gave it credit for!  I found that if I unplugged the charger for 5-10 seconds, and plugged it in again, it would start charging.  Unfortunately, in the heat of making contacts I would forget, or would unplug it before transmitting and forget to plug it back in after finishing and twice I had the computer shut down into hibernate mode.  At the end I managed to squeeze out 7 more contacts by religiously unplugging, transmitting and plugging back in for the receive and managed to limp along at 7% power or so until the end when it was going to get dark and I didn't want to be running around on the sloped hillside in the dark to take down my dipole.

All in all I learned alot and did a LOT of dumb things which will not all be mentioned :)  In the end I made 27 very much appreciated contacts over 3.5 hours (22:30 to 02:10).  Thanks to all who spotted me on the reflector or I'd never have gotten to 20!

My station was:

Rig: FT-857D
Tuner: LDG-AT100-pro
Power Distribution: Rigrunner 40W input with a cable having power poles and    battery clips to the car battery

Antenna 20M dipole made from twin lead into a 4:1 balun outside the window connected to a short length of coax

Interface - Rigblaster data-jack (USB version of rigblaster)
Software MixW 1.8
Laptop HP Pavillion dv8309 running windows XP MCE (Large)

Lessons learned:

Lay out station at home (dry run) - harder for me since my portable station IS my base station, so I have to tear up my shack but still would have been worth the effort.  Also, I could have substituted paper or boxes for those components...

I do have the removable head on my rig but never thought to grab it - would have made life easier being able to see the display (knocked buttons at times and took time to figure out which since it was under the laptop).

bring plenty of antennas in case one doesn't work (this I did) you can try another.

Bring plenty of water, chair, shade (i didn't have otherwise I would have set up in  front of the car).

Bring plenty of coax - in my case a long piece of coax could have allowed me to still use the mounting point on the metal structure for a super-antenna or my mobile DV-7A.

and MOST of all, get started EARLY so you can set up, organize the station before anyone is going to be looking for you on the air.

That's about it - I learned a lot, would do a LOT of things differently next time (set up multiple antennas ahead of time and switch between them as needed) - an antenna switch would be a reasonable thing to bring.

Thanks for your support - I wanted to do this anyway, the APE program just got me moving to make it happen...  Perhaps I'll run a SPA (September PSK Adventure!) next month!

73 N6ERD
Dan

End date    UTC       RX kHz    Mode    Call     
--------------------  --------  ------  -------- 
12-Aug-2007 20:53:18   10142.0  BPSK31  WA6L     
12-Aug-2007 22:29:13   14070.9  BPSK31  WG5T     
12-Aug-2007 22:38:57   14070.8  BPSK31  N9WSQ    
12-Aug-2007 22:48:04   14070.8  BPSK31  KC7CWQ   
12-Aug-2007 22:54:26   14070.7  BPSK31  K5CFW    
12-Aug-2007 23:05:05   14070.6  BPSK31  KG5WR    
12-Aug-2007 23:11:42   14071.5  BPSK31  CO3CJ    
12-Aug-2007 23:39:06   10142.0  BPSK31  W6IZK/6  
12-Aug-2007 23:45:39   10141.4  BPSK31  VA7GEM   
12-Aug-2007 23:54:47   14070.7  BPSK31  AE5MM    
13-Aug-2007 00:02:56   14070.7  BPSK31  ND5MS    
13-Aug-2007 00:07:15   14070.7  BPSK31  K4OP     
13-Aug-2007 00:13:20   14070.7  BPSK31  N0LTM    
13-Aug-2007 00:27:55   14072.4  BPSK31  KA3ZVC/4 
13-Aug-2007 00:29:20   14071.6  BPSK31  WA5TLP   
13-Aug-2007 00:37:03   14070.4  BPSK31  WD8VN    
13-Aug-2007 01:09:41   14071.6  BPSK31  W3HF     
13-Aug-2007 01:16:06   14071.8  BPSK31  W8TTY    
13-Aug-2007 01:22:43   14071.8  BPSK31  KF3AA    
13-Aug-2007 01:26:02   14071.8  BPSK31  KB3JJV   
13-Aug-2007 01:31:04   14071.7  BPSK31  NZ9I     
13-Aug-2007 01:34:09   14071.7  BPSK31  W4KRN    
13-Aug-2007 01:42:29   14071.8  BPSK31  AG4QX    
13-Aug-2007 01:46:25   14071.8  BPSK31  N4MIO    
13-Aug-2007 02:06:01   14071.2  BPSK31  KE5PYV   
13-Aug-2007 02:10:34   14071.2  BPSK31  N8MNI    
13-Aug-2007 02:15:38   14071.2  BPSK31  AC5ZS    

K6NLX, 18-23 August

We arrived in Mammoth Lakes, CA in the afternoon of 8/18/07. Setup the station after a nice long nap. The site was Mammoth Lakes RV Park, just inside the town limits along highway 203. My site had full hook ups, lots of trees and friendly neighbors. I used my Yaesu FT-897, an MFJ 949E tuner and a portable wire dipole atop a fibreglass push-up flagpole. While the station had it's limitations, it performed quite well. I worked a bunch of stations in the US and Canada and was quite pleased to work Puerto Rico, Cuba, Argentina and Germany. The late afternoons were fair on 20 meters and 40 meters was fairly good in the evenings.

73,

Fred, K6NLX

Here are a few pictures of the trip. Some of the places we visited, My daughter's golden retriever and, The ham shack in the RV...

N7GVV, 19-28 August

I was unsure if I'd be able to operate this fall, but UPS came through and my SignaLink USB arrived on time so here's my report:

Jim Raisler, N7GVV, operated from ND (DN86at) about 10 miles south of Beach on my brother's farm. The 3rd highest peak in the state (pic attached)  is about 1 mile away from the farm house.  I operated from the laundry room in the basement (pic attached).

I operated as N7GVV/0 and made 33 contacts (log attached) using the following:

FT-817 Xceiver on battery power at 5 watts
SignaLink USB interface
HP Omni6000 laptop
ZM-2 ATU
20m half square antenna at 20 feet supported by windmill and a 20 foot plastic pipe.  I had to be at least 20 feet high so we could get the combine thru the yard at times.

This was my first attempt to work QRP for real and I was able to reach into the East coast easily.  With the FT-817 receiver I saw several signals that were limiting my chances. The receiver just couldn't handle the multibar folks!

I will input the log to e-QSL and LoTW. QSL via home call, N7GVV.

73,
Jim ..   PODXS 070 # 463

N3MK, 31 August

End date UTC RX kHz Mode Call RST R Name QTH Domain County
-------------------- -------- ------ -------- ----- ------- --------------------------------------------------------------------
31-Aug-2007 00:23:32 14071.0 BPSK31 KK5ID 599 Larry Dallas
31-Aug-2007 00:29:10 14071.0 BPSK31 CO2PO 599
31-Aug-2007 00:38:29 14071.0 BPSK31 CO8CML 599 Carlos Las Tunas
31-Aug-2007 00:48:43 14071.0 BPSK31 N5SPU 599 Dick Houston, TX
31-Aug-2007 01:00:53 14071.0 BPSK31 CO3CJ 599 Juan Guira de Melena
31-Aug-2007 01:25:55 14071.0 BPSK31 K0FCM 599 Clark Greely, CO
31-Aug-2007 01:37:05 14071.0 BPSK31 WG5T 599 Bill Norman, OK
31-Aug-2007 01:50:55 7070.0 BPSK31 KJ2U 579 Kenneth ALPINE, UT
31-Aug-2007 02:13:01 7071.0 BPSK31 K9VIC 599 Eric IL
31-Aug-2007 02:20:00 7071.0 BPSK31 AE5MM 599 Loyd Broken Arrow, OK
31-Aug-2007 02:24:06 7071.0 BPSK31 KC9IMR 599 Eric IL
31-Aug-2007 02:32:57 7071.0 BPSK31 W0KIT 599 Doug Colorado Springs, CO
31-Aug-2007 02:37:52 7071.0 BPSK31 K9FE 579 Mike Aurora, IL
31-Aug-2007 02:44:00 7071.0 BPSK31 WV0T 599 Philip Lawrence, KS
31-Aug-2007 02:47:29 7071.0 BPSK31 KB5UNX 599 Morrie TX
31-Aug-2007 02:51:40 7071.0 BPSK31 WA4EEZ 599 Leslie
31-Aug-2007 02:54:55 7071.0 BPSK31 KD7WPJ 599 Oleh St George, UT
31-Aug-2007 02:58:15 7071.0 BPSK31 K4OP 599 John VINE GROVE, KY
31-Aug-2007 03:07:09 7071.0 BPSK31 VE7NBQ 599 Peter Canada
31-Aug-2007 03:09:59 7071.0 BPSK31 VA6RE 599
31-Aug-2007 03:15:12 7071.0 BPSK31 KC9HEK 589 Brian New Berlin, WI
31-Aug-2007 03:18:52 7071.0 BPSK31 W4LSC 599 Donald Kingman, Az
31-Aug-2007 03:23:12 7071.0 BPSK31 KC9ICH 599 Robert Rockford, IL
31-Aug-2007 03:28:29 7071.0 BPSK31 K4NA 599 Tom Moulton, AL
31-Aug-2007 03:33:30 7071.0 BPSK31 AC5ZS 599 Bob Merritt Island, FL
31-Aug-2007 03:39:39 7071.0 BPSK31 N9GRG 599 George Schaumburg, IL
31-Aug-2007 03:45:45 7071.0 BPSK31 KD8BIN 599 John Toledo, OH
31-Aug-2007 03:51:46 7071.0 BPSK31 IV3NBA 599 Roberto Spilimbergo
31-Aug-2007 03:55:35 7071.0 BPSK31 F5GPE 599 Pierre Meylan
31-Aug-2007 04:02:27 7071.0 BPSK31 NZ9I 599 Larry Pewaukee, WI
31-Aug-2007 04:08:41 7071.0 BPSK31 N6ERD 599 Dan San Diego, Ca
31-Aug-2007 04:13:33 7071.0 BPSK31 AB0Z 599 David Houston, TX
31-Aug-2007 04:18:28 7071.0 BPSK31 AD5VC 469 Dana Baton Rouge, LA
31-Aug-2007 04:36:38 7071.0 BPSK31 W7TOD 599 Todd
31-Aug-2007 12:21:40 7040.0 BPSK31 K0YR 599 Tom North Mankato, MN
31-Aug-2007 12:52:51 7039.9 BPSK31 KD0CA 579 Jerry Washington, IA
31-Aug-2007 13:15:55 7039.9 BPSK31 N4LCC 459 Dave Houma, LA
31-Aug-2007 19:40:51 14070.9 BPSK31 WB7DBJ 579 Gene Whidbey Island, WA
31-Aug-2007 19:49:33 14070.9 BPSK31 N0YCY 599 Bill Wright City, MO
31-Aug-2007 19:55:19 14070.9 BPSK31 W7PAQ 579 Frank MT
31-Aug-2007 20:03:59 14070.9 BPSK31 WG7H 599 Larry Las Vegas, NV
31-Aug-2007 20:12:11 14070.9 BPSK31 NT3W 599 Ken Las Cruces, NM
31-Aug-2007 20:24:46 14070.9 BPSK31 K5RKS 599 Roger Oklahoma City, OK
31-Aug-2007 20:30:59 14070.9 BPSK31 SP7HQ 599 Andrzej
31-Aug-2007 20:38:29 14070.8 BPSK63 KE5PNA 599 Seth Arlington, TX
31-Aug-2007 20:48:47 14070.8 BPSK31 DF6RP 599 Pitt Muelheim and de Ruhr
31-Aug-2007 20:56:06 14070.8 BPSK31 RZ6BA 599 Nick
31-Aug-2007 21:00:06 14070.8 BPSK31 DB7HH 599 Hansi Seese
31-Aug-2007 21:05:11 14070.8 BPSK31 OM5MF 599 Gita Poruba
31-Aug-2007 21:09:31 14070.8 BPSK31 GM3MZX 579 Mario Scotland - u.k.
31-Aug-2007 21:14:29 14070.8 BPSK31 DK1MHW 599 Hans
31-Aug-2007 21:18:57 14070.8 BPSK31 GM4XAW 599 Peter Wigtown
31-Aug-2007 21:24:15 14070.8 BPSK31 SP7NJT 599 Jerzy Sieradz
31-Aug-2007 21:32:10 14070.8 BPSK31 DH8SA 559 Harry Guestro
31-Aug-2007 21:38:46 14070.8 BPSK31 JH4IFF 599 Mitsu
31-Aug-2007 21:44:14 14070.8 BPSK31 PA5RG 599 Bert Valthermond
31-Aug-2007 21:51:00 14070.8 BPSK31 PE1RYJ 599 Geert Netherlands
31-Aug-2007 21:56:44 14070.8 BPSK31 IW2NEF 599 Flavio Colico
31-Aug-2007 21:58:49 14070.8 BPSK31 OZ/DF8HS 599
31-Aug-2007 22:06:48 14070.8 BPSK31 DB2HG 599 Horst Norderstedt
31-Aug-2007 22:14:24 14070.9 BPSK31 OK1LH 599 Tom Klatovy
31-Aug-2007 22:18:15 14070.8 BPSK31 ON8PH 599 Patrick Maaeik
31-Aug-2007 22:22:38 14070.8 BPSK31 SP3IK 599 Wojtek Poznan
31-Aug-2007 22:31:30 14070.8 BPSK31 IK5ORQ 599 Ada Pietrasanta
31-Aug-2007 22:36:30 14070.8 BPSK31 DC9BM 599 Gerhard Germany
31-Aug-2007 22:47:35 14070.8 BPSK31 EI100SI 599
31-Aug-2007 23:20:25 7070.0 BPSK31 AB9MA 599 Jim
31-Aug-2007 23:32:23 7070.2 BPSK31 K1YAN 599 Gary Plymouth, MA
31-Aug-2007 23:39:14 7070.2 BPSK31 W3HF 599 Stephen
31-Aug-2007 23:44:09 7070.2 BPSK31 N3DQU 599 Jay new castle, pa
31-Aug-2007 23:48:31 7070.2 BPSK31 K1PGV 599 Peter Mont Vernon, NH

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