Delighted to have a QSO with famous blogger Bas PE4BAS on 40m

I was delighted to have a QSO with the famous amateur radio blogger, Bas PE4BAS, on 40 metres on Monday. We had an 11-minute chat on lower side bands. Bas wasn't strong with me - a 53 maximum - and I had some local electrical noise (probably Christmas lights!) on the first QRG, 7.107, so we then moved to 7.110 where we had better luck.

Bas is blogging about ham radio longer than me and his blog has found worldwide fame. We worked in December 2009, when my call sign was EI8GHB. This latest QSO was our first conversation in over six years, and our first with my call EI2KC.

Bas PE4BAS in his station in The Netherlands.

In addition to being a great blogger and a passionate radio amateur, Bas is also a really lovely guy. A great ambassador for the hobby.  I'm already looking forward to our next QSO.

In the meantime, if you haven't seen it already, don't forget to visit Bas's blog here:

http://pe4bas.blogspot.com/

Video - 40 metres SSB pile-up as EJ7NET nears QRT time

What a phenomenal last evening on Gola. I sat at the radio after dinner with the last radio and antenna remaining and started working stations, slowly at first, many from the UK. But as the evening wore down the pile-up got bigger and bigger and bigger, until I eventually had to split. I'm not sure what the QSO count was but the conditions were fantastic. It sounded at times like all of Europe was calling.

This is me at my very best. I love SSB pile-ups. I like giving everyone the chance to get in the log. Sometimes this requires me to calm things down, when some stations are calling out of turn. But generally it was quite orderly and I hope that everyone that tried made it into the log. This is just a snippet of the action, from early in the pile-up. As you can hear, I struggled a bit with the German mobile station, but I made sure I got him 100% right before moving on . . .

EJ7NET Gola pile-up on 40 metres SSB

We spotted this video of last night's 40m SSB pile-up on YouTube. Thanks to the HAM RADIO channel.

DX chasing is not a pursuit that has regular hours!

DX chasers are a rare breed.  I mean the really serious ones. When all the rest of the world - hams and non hams - are tucked up in their beds nice and warm and snug, we are in the shack, at the rig, bleary-eyed and unkempt, chasing a slot with the latest "rare" one. And that's how it has become for me. I used to be able to hunt new ones and band slots during the day, but with 307 DXCC logged, the slots and bands and All-Time New Ones become rarer and rarer, and one has to migrate to the lower bands in order to nab these slots.

Nigel G3TXF in Cape Town bound for Tristan Da Cunha.

Here in Ireland, there are approximately 1,500 licenced radio amateurs. Of those, there are probably about 200 hams who operate on HF to any degree, whether it be every day or twice a year. Of that 200 (and that's only my own very rough estimate), there are only about 30 dedicated DX hunters. That's 30 Irish people out of four million who dedicate themselves to this unique pursuit. And I am one of them. Does that make me special? It certainly makes me weird, especially in the eyes of all my non-ham friends! The non-DXing hams, while not spending hours in pile-ups, at least understand what DX chasing is, and are forgiving towards the HF nuts. But the rest of the world is oblivious to our unique hobby.

Having got up at 6am yesterday morning to hunt DX, I was exhausted by the time 11pm came around. My duty for the weekend is to watch out for Nigel ZD9XF on CW on the low bands (40m and 80m) and to try to work him there. I didn't think I had much hope of getting up during the night if he did pop up. Nevertheless, I set up DXwatch to send me emails if he appeared on 80 or 40. And I left my phone volume up full so I might hear the alerts if they came. And come they did.

At around 01:27 local time I received email alerts to say he was on 80 metres, on 3.501. I managed to get up out of bed and come down to the shack. I switched on the equipment. I could hear nothing. I looked on the Reverse Beacon Network and could see that he had quickly gone back to 30 metres, where he had been for a while. Damn. 80m missed. I went back to bed.

At around 2am or so there were alerts for 40 metres. He was on 7.001. Back down to the shack in the darkness, exhausted, barely able to keep my eyes open. I could hear him! I listened to the split. There were people calling him 1 Khz up, and 2 Khz up, and even 3 Khz up. Damn. Big pile-up. I tried to find out where he was listening but it was too spread out. I called him 2 up and then 2.5 up. He was working north and south America mostly, although there were still plenty of other Europeans suffering from insomnia like me..... After a short while calling, and not being able to figure out any discernible pattern to his movements, I realised that the pile-up had become so big that there were people calling him 8 Khz up, on 7.009, and at that moment I was struck by a revelation:

"Murphy, what the hell are you doing here, at 2.30am, trying to work a country that you have worked already (albeit on other bands) when you could be in bed like all the normal people?" So I switched everything off and went to bed. It just wasn't worth the effort. I would be exhausted for the rest of the weekend.

At exactly 7am, I received a phone call from Declan EI6FR. "Nigel is on 40 metres, I just worked him 3 up. He's on 7.001."

"Has he got a big pile?" I asked.

"No," was the reply.

"Right, thanks," I said, and the call ended.

Down to the shack again!

Sure enough, I could hear "ZD9XF Up" on 7.001 and decided I would try 7.003 as my transmit frequency. Within two minutes I could hear the magic code in the noise.... "EI2?"

I gave my call twice.

He came back "EI2KC 5NN".

I gave "RR EI2KC 5NN 5NN TU".

And, just like that, I was in his log. It seems that my decision to go back to bed in the middle of the night was well justified!!!

PS: As I write this, it's nearly 11am now and already my 40m QSO is in Nigel's online log:

The challenges of 80 metre operation from a small garden

Regular readers of this blog will already know that I operate from a small garden. You will all know that this hasn't prevented or deterred me from working DXCC on every band from 80 metres through 10 metres. My lowly Butternut HF6V, which is 26 feet tall, and ground mounted in a corner of the garden near the wall, has enabled me to operate in a limited capacity on 80m. Through last winter, especially as a result of my participation in the CQWW CW contest in late November, I was able to finally get 100 countries confirmed on that band on LoTW.

But I have never been able to enjoy good operation on 80m because the Butternut is too short and therefore limited in what it can hear. It gets out reasonably well for the DX stations, and the low angle of radiation definitely helps.

A photograph of my nested inverted vees, with labels.

Just this week, I decided to put back up the 80m inverted V, off the same feedpoint as the Vees on 30m and 40m. From previous experience, I knew this would involve some serious dog-legging. (For non amateurs, this means making the wire antenna "turn a corner", so to speak, because there isn't enough room for a straight run of wire that's 66 feet long on each leg. One leg - the "reflector" - is able to get a run down along the side of the house, as far as the gate pillar at the front, although about three feet of it still needs to be dog legged.

The other leg - the "transmit" leg - runs down above the back wall of the garden, and then dog-legs up the side wall of the garden to a point at the back wall of the house under the eave. From there, it is dog-legged again by about three feet and tied off. And the mast (insert word "pole" here!) is only 30 feet at the apex.

It's far from ideal, I know. I bet some of you are trying to picture this all in your head and wondering how I've managed to defy the laws of physics, and indeed the laws of effective radiation of RF fields. So how's it working?

The reflector leg of the 80m inverted v dipole runs down
between the houses and is tied off (dog-legged) at a gate pillar.

Here's a summary of the contacts made last night on CW using just 100 watts: PI4EME, US8UX, EI3HMB, HA5OV, IK6DIN, YU9CF, EI6IL, F5TVG/P, HB9FBA, EI7BA, S51FZ, GM3ZLC, EI2EO, UT8MM, G4LEM, PA1MUC and HB30OK. So it's getting out, as far as Ukraine. Hardly a comprehensive test of its abilities, but the reports coming back were generally 579 or 599 or 599 plus! The previous morning, I had worked N8NA on 100w on CW, so that wasn't bad either, but it's likely that he's got bigger antennas than me.

Time will tell if it's up to the job of making more distant contacts. I will run 400 watts when conditions improve and the band quietens a bit - the QRN here can be s9 at times.

Interestingly, the 80/40/30m nested V system also has some resonance on the lower portion of the 160m band. When I say "some", I mean about 3:1 at best, maybe 3.5:1. It might allow me a limited amount of operation on that band over the next couple of months. I may figure out a way to tune it better for 160m. We will see.

In the meantime, I will keep you posted as to the performance of this compromise antenna system.

First signals heard from EJ7NET on EU-006!!

This is the EJ7NET dxpedition on Inis Mór (IOTA EU-006) tonight on 40 metres CW. All going well, I will be joining this multi-national team tomorrow afternoon. Hope to be on the other end of the pile-ups tomorrow night!!

I am told there is mobile phone coverage plus broadband at the shack, so I would hope to update this blog regularly from the island over the next few days, with video, photos and of course words. So keep coming back folks!

Big signals on 40 metres from my old IC-735

This is Richard, MJ0UOO/P on Jersey Island with a huge pile-up on 40 metres SSB. I was listening to him on my old Icom IC-735 connected to a homwmade inverted v dipole resonant on 40m. About five minutes after this I called Richard and broke the pile-up with 100 watts.