Thursday, June 22, 2017

What a month eh?

What can I say?  The first week of May my employer announced that we had been sold and would soon be merged with a competitor.  With all the legal stuff having to happen before the new outfit could be formed, we were told to expect consummation of the deal sometime near October.  Then we got no more info to speak of.  This saddened me greatly, as I really LOVE working here and the folks I work with are awesome and super cool.  I have been through a couple of these and in my experience if your name isn't on the company door when the smoke clears, you lost.  To say I was nervous about it is putting it lightly.  I'm not 25 years old. 

Long story short, one of my old customers, contacted one of my old employers and asked if they knew if I might be available.  They contacted me and and I contacted them and we met and we talked and a week later I got an acceptable offer.  Tomorrow is my last day, and Monday I start my new job.  That's right, the Monday after Field Day!  I am stoked.

So in my log for June I have made exactly two contacts so far on the HW-8.  One of them being this evening with Steve KE4OH down in Knoxville TN.  Steve was communicating with his old Tempo One at 100w and I was killing it with 2w from the HW-8...it was a tough one though as the QSB was very bad tonight...he'd go from 599+ to almost noise floor about every 3 minutes...so I can only imagine how I sounded down there.  As a QRPer I always say thank you for every contact, I totally get it that the receiving station MIGHT be working harder than me to make the QSO happen. 

This month I also worked in the reconstructed radio room of the USS Indianapolis.  The museum ships on the air event was this month and I was there running CW and made 43 contacts in about 2 hours.  Ivin W9ILF and Steve W9BRI were there as well and between us I think we put in about 150 contacts combined CW and SSB.  400 Watts into an antenna 110 feet up makes things work a little better.  Check it out.  The USS Indianapolis Radio Room

No new QSL cards...go out and have a blast on Field Day this weekend and make sure to listen for W8PIG on CW and SSB running 2 Battery QRP from Morgan County Indiana!! 

Best 73 de KB9BVN

Sunday, June 11, 2017

The Cookie Crumble

The Cookie Crumble Contest is a fun QRP contest inspired by the popularity of Emily Saldana’s – KB3VVE – chocolate-chip cookies during the 2016 ARRL – National Parks On The Air (NPOTA) event. Emily, for the rest of time, will be known as the Cookie Queen – a moniker given to her by one of the NPOTA participants. 

Today June 11 is Cookie Crumble day!

Visit Cookie Crumble Contest site for all the details!

I am Cookie 255 and I will be on the air this afternoon. 

73 de KB9BVN

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Sometimes Shack Work is no Radio...

In the continuing saga of my logging laptop replacement, I have decided to try using my Raspberry Pi 3B to become my logger with the CQRlog software from OK7AN.  I have managed to get CQRlog version 2.0.4 to install and run on my Pi3B.  I have not imported the logs I will be moving from N3FJP's AC Log program but I plan on doing that tonight. 

I downloaded the latest Raspian Jessie 8 with Pixel from the Raspberry Pi website.  I then installed that on a 16GB Micro SD card (you want to use a Type 10) and booted the Pi with it plugged into my network switch.   Once it finished booting I ran the following to update and upgrade the packages on it.

sudo apt-get update 

then 

sudo apt-get upgrade

Now that will take about 20 mins to download all the updates and get them installed. 

Once that is done you will need to install MySQL server and MySQL client.   This is accomplished by using the package installer. 























Then you need to find and download a file called:

cqrlog_2.0.4-1_armhf.deb

Once it is downloaded, right click and have it install. 

























So I haven't started using it on a daily basis but I am hoping I can get it all configured and working well by Field Day.  The Raspberry Pi 3B is SO RF quite, it's pretty awesome. 

On another note...The QRPian podcast #3 is now online.  You can listen to it here on this blog or you can go to Spreaker and hear it.  Mike and I have fun making these monthly podcasts and we hope you enjoy listening in to our conversation. 

Best 73 de KB9BVN