Up and Running in Guatemala

After an interruption in ham radio activities and blog entries, I am back on the air, more or less. The interruption was due to several months of planning and executing a move to Guatemala and then getting settled here in my new digs and setting up a basic radio shack. At the moment I am only using a 26 foot vertical wire supported by a tree so my signal is not very good but I'm out there on PSK and Hellschreiber. You can usually find me evening and nights from 7070 to 7074, signing TG9/KW2P. Give me a call.

Once I collect the materials I plan to put up a 270 foot vertical loop. I have some tall trees here that will support a vertically oriented 80m full wave loop. I've had both vertical and horizontal loops of that size and they worked great so I expect good results, especially in the tropics where QRN can be a problem. The loop should improve things drastically but getting the materials down here takes some doing.

73 de Phil, TG9/KW2P

Wednesday Night 40m Hellschreiber Net

Well, 40 meters was being very ornery tonight at net time of 9 PM EST. Here in West Virginia I had no copy, no signal at all on net control or anyone else except I had about a 50 percent copy on WB2HTO. I saw the name Leslie go by, and I believe I saw a QH in AL. At 9:35 PM EST I checked in again and the band had greatly improved. I had net control, about 90 percent copy on WB2HTO but work got in the way and I did not have time to check in.

I'll be there next week unless work overrides my plans. Thanks to W8LEW for running the net.

Dial + Audio Offset

Modern sound card digital modes have introduced a layer of ambiguity when it comes to citing an operating frequency. Some operators quote a single frequency which means their dial frequency and assume an audio offset of 1 kHz. Some operators quote a single frequency that means their actual RF emission frequency. Others specifically quote their dial and offset, such as 7070+1500.

It would be great to quote just one frequency--the actual emission frequency--but today there is confusion with this. If a digital operator quotes a single frequency and we do not know that operator personally and know his or her practice (their personal favorite audio offset), we cannot be sure what is meant. So the only sure-fire way to remove all doubt is to cite dial+offset. Then we know for sure what is meant. We know that an unstated audio offset is not being omitted.

40m Hellschreiber Net

Well that was fun. I checked into the Wednesday night 40m Hellschreiber Net, 7077 kHz +1000 Hz audio at 9:00 P.M. EST (0200z). Net control was Lou Wulfekuhler, W8LEW, in Lansing, Michigan. The net started out in Feld Hell but conditions were poor so we switched to FM245 and got much better results. There were checkins from Delaware, New Mexico, and Hawaii, although I could not copy the fellow in Hawaii. Thanks to Lou for running the net. I'll be there next week if I can.