QRS CW Net: 03-30-2013 07:00 PM - 07:30 PM

[KF7ORO]

I'm still going to be on 7.115 at 7:00 tonight. If anyone else can make it, maybe we can just have a roundtable.

Sorry for your loss Kurt.

[KE7KUS]

We're back in business for tonight...at least if 40m decides to cooperate. 0200Z on 7.115MHz...stop by for a visit.

73,
Kurt

[KE7KUS]

OK! Great net tonight on 40m. The band seemed to hold pretty steady...I had a few moments where QRN came blitzing through, but for the most part it was definitely workable. Most of the "usual suspects" on the net tonight...thanks to Brian, KF7ORO, and Marty, WB7X, for showing up. Signals at my place were great tonight. Everyone was at least 579 and sometimes just a tad higher when things were going smoothly. Just a little bit of QSB when Marty took his turn during the roundtable, but otherwise a solid night.

I was running about 70 watts into the loop tonight. I'm going to try to do some maintenance work on the loop in the coming weeks. I want to redo the feed point and gamma match and make them more robust and weather resistant. I'm also shopping around for a vacuum variable capacitor to see if I can't eliminate the need to change out tuning stubs when I want to switch bands. I also think all of these mods will cut down on some of the resistance in the loop and increase efficiency.

I recorded the net, and will upload it to the website in a bit if you're interested in hearing how your signal sounded at my place. There will also be a lot of QRM from some little people that were playing all around the house while I was trying to hold the net. If you want a little bit of a listening challenge you can retry to copy while listening to the recording...it'll be good practice!

Thanks again for showing up Brian and Marty. It was great to knock of a little rust and get the net back on the air. See you all next week, where I may be operating from a remote location in the mountains outside of Payson, AZ.

73,
Kurt
KE7KUS

[WB7X]

Great job Kurt. Glad to have you back to pick on.

Concur with Kurt on the QRN, plus some kind of Digi sig on and off.

I've got a buddy that lives at the airpark in Payson but haven't talked him into getting on the net yet. He's running an Alpha Delta wire and Hustler 6BTV with 40 radials.

Brian nice to hear you as well. Solid 599. Our after net contact has been uploaded to eQSL and LoTW for you.

[KF7ORO]

It was nice to be back on the net. Seems like a while since I've been able to check in.

Marty, you were really loud here. I had to turn the gain down when it was your turn. Thanks for uploading the contact.

[KE7KUS]

Great job tonight guys! At about 5 minutes till, I though we were going to be clobbered out of the band between QRN and all the contesters that were working the upper end of the CW portion of the band. Everything seemed to come together though, at least I thought so. I was running 75 watts tonight into the loop from the 897. Marty, WB7X, was about 559...with a little QSB...noticeably lighter than he usually is. Todd, KF7NLX, glad you made it in there tonight...booming signal...599+ over here. Marty, it sounded like you might be using the vertical?

Thanks for the head's up on the other station there at the end of the net, Marty. I could barely hear him at first, until I realized he was outside my filter passband (I was running the 250Hz filter to cut out a lot of the surrounding noise on the band). Once I tuned down a bit I could hear him, and concur...sounds like he was working another station.

I didn't hear Brian in there tonight, but I'm wondering how great the band was up to Vegas from here. I was picking up a lot of contesters from over in CA at about 6:30pm on the lower portion of 40m CW, but they seemed to fade out the closer it got to 7:00pm. Maybe that was just me. Thanks again everyone for making it out. I'll get the recording uploaded later tonight. See you next week!

[KF7ORO]

Sorry I didn't make it. My wife fell and hurt her back doing some landscaping work in the backyard. So we ended up being at the ER during net time. She's not allowed to pull up bushes for a few weeks so I should be there next week.

[WB7X]

Fine job Kurt. Nice to see Todd as well.

Don't know about my signal. Was running the dipole at 100W. I currently don't have the Butternut up.

Maybe the dipole likes having the vertical within about 10' of one end.

The mysteries of propagation. Kind of like the 6m band being a bust for the ARRL event this weekend.

[Todd KF7NLX]

Thanks guys. Nothing different here setup wise. Marty sounded really strong with minimal QSB and was fairly easy to copy.

Kurt however was QSB'ing in and out of the noise pretty heavy at times, but excellent adverse band condition (ABC) training for noobs like me.

Sorry to hear your wife hurt her back Brian and hope to hear you in there next week.

73
Todd

[KF7ORO]

That was weird.

Kurt, you were a little weak but very readable until just before 7:30. Right about the time you were starting to call for late check-ins you dropped right into the noise.

[Todd KF7NLX]

Brian - Good to hear you tonight! Your signal was absolutely booming in crystal clear down here in the North end of Glendale.

Marty, you sounded great as well.

Kurt, your signals were in and out and pretty deep in the noise further into the net as Brian stated. Good training all in all and thanks again for your net leadership.

73,
Todd

[WB7X]

Thanks Kurt and Brian.

That was freaky Kurt. Your sig dropped to S0-1. I thought I smoked something.

Brian you were still strong when you signed at the end.

Must be those darned F35s screwing with the ether.

[KF7ORO]

The band did the same thing last week here at about the same time. Kurt, you went from about S3 to nothing then. This week, with your new antenna, you went from S9 to S4 when the band dropped.

[Todd KF7NLX]

We had a wedding to attend earlier tonight, so no net for this aspiring CW geek.
Hopefully next weekend I can get in there.

73
Todd

[KE7KUS]

Great net tonight guys. Maybe not as QRS as we normally go, but great roundtable. We missed you Todd. Sigs started out fantastic at the start of the net. Brian and Marty both booming in...and it stayed that way until just before net closeout. Marty when you sent that my sig dropped, I started losing you in some very deep fades. Weird thing was that the 73's were strong across the board at the end of the net. Idk what it was, but weird.

Glad to get a new antenna on the air tonight. I have some serious work to do on the loop, it seems...need to spend a lot more time weatherproofing when I rebuild. I wasn't really thinking that, given that we live in the desert, but even a little bit of monsoon makes a big difference. That said, the EFHW seemed to work well, give I only had it about 5 feet off the ground. I wasn't joking on the net...when I first turned on the radio after hooking up the new antenna, I thought 40m was having some sort of magical opening. People across the Western Hemisphere were coming out of the woodwork as I tuned across the bands. The EFHW down low like that seems to work well for NVIS stuff...it's pretty much the same configuration that I was using when I ran the net QRP from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, except I was running 50W tonight. The antenna took about 3 minutes to set up...very convenient. I won't be getting any DXCC with it anytime soon, but for things like the Saturday night net, I love it. I may drop the coin and get an 80m EFHW and run it the same way...just to play around with as winter sets on.

I'll upload the recordings tomorrow. Thanks again, guys. I really enjoyed it!

[WB7X]

Wow, when the band goes, it goes. Must be the Haliburton Propagation Jamming Machine.

Kurt, you started at 57 to 59, Brian 55-57, and Todd at 59. I was hearing Kurt until about the time he turned it to me.

What I sent to you was that I thought I heard a weak "V" on your last QNI.

At about 2035 MST, Kurt went to S0 and while I could hear you faintly, it was only about 50%

Todd went to S2 on his turn.

Anyway, fun while it lasted.

See you at Marana next Saturday maybe.

Kurt you need to tell us how you were operating the home station from your campsite??

[KF7ORO]

That's 3 weeks in a row the band has dropped just like that at almost exactly the same time. Everyone was 59 until about 7:35 when everyone dropped to 55 and then right into the noise about 5 minutes later. Maybe we should start the net a little earlier?

Defintely tell us about your setup Kurt.

[Todd KF7NLX]

Yet another good IABC training night (inadvertant adverse band conditions). All of you guys started out strong and clear with very copyable sigs then the rough band conditions hit. Cool while it lasted though. Cool as the high mountain air... right Major K?

Good hearing you all tonight and a huge confidence booster for me being able to copy the word "Mogollon" with significant QSB / QRM going on.

73 OM's
Todd

[KE7KUS]

The end-of-net fade that has been occurring recently got me thinking that with the onset of winter, the band conditions might be changing up from what they have been all summer. I did a little homework at VOACAP and came up with this path analysis from my QTH here in Surprise up to Henderson, NV (click the thumbnail below for a larger version):
40m_fade.jpg
The red line in the graph represents the maximum usable frequency (MUF) for a given time of day. This represents the maximum frequency over the plotted path, below which HF signals will be returned to earth from a skywave bounce. Signals above the MUF will continue on into space. This frequency is significant because that skywave bounce is what makes NVIS propagation possible. It seems the MUF is falling below 7MHz right between about 0200Z and 0300Z, which is exactly what we've been seeing with the 0235Z signal fade the past couple weeks.

As suggested, we can mitigate the band fade on 40m by moving the net to earlier in the evening over the winter months. My guess is that moving back to 0130Z will probably give us enough opening to get around the table with the usual suspects. Our other option would be to keep the 0200Z time and try shifting the net down to 80m and trying it there. I'm not sure who's capable of working 80m and who's not, so shifting the time earlier might be the easiest option. If anyone has a particular preference one way or another, let me know.

I'm starting to like the round-table format the net has taken on. It's great to catch up with everyone, and I like listening to others send CW, rather than spend the whole time sending myself. Unless there's significant heartache with that, I think that will be the new net format. If you have announcements for the net, you can just pass those along with any other traffic when it comes your turn during the net.

Sorry I missed this past week...we got hung up at an event across town, and I didn't make it back to the radio in time. We should be on for this Saturday evening. I'll plan on 0200Z, unless I get a majority vote to slide back to 0130Z. If that's the case, I'll post up here so you know definitively when we'll kick off.

73,
Kurt
KE7KUS

[WB7X]

Didn't get back from the Hamfest until 10:15 PM myself.

Actually my nephew was TDY in El Paso and drove over to meet us for dinner. Been a long time so we had a 6 hour dinner discussion.

I think that 40M would be best at this point. Why not try earlier and if that doesn't work well, you can always do 80m (or 160 ).