Ham Radio Ireland

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Video: patience pays off and Brazilian special event call logged

I was listening to a Brazilian special event station, ZZ80PR, on 40 metres tonight. After the crazy European pile-up had died down, I noticed that he was a bit stronger on my Butternut vertical than on my 40m inverted v dipole. So I decided to sit tight and give him a call . . .

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Photo of the radio shack all lit up at night

Above is a photo of my radio shack at night, all lit up. I was prompted to do this by Tony EI4DIB who posted a similar photo of his shack in the dark on Facebook. I decided to do the same thing. It took a bit of setting up. The handheld 2m/70cm radios do not stay illuminated, so each of those needed to be lit up quickly before the shot was taken. Also included on the top right is my new digital SWR meter, which is nicely backlit in blue. There are a couple of mic keypads lit up in the photo too. There is some reflection on the computer keyboard from the IC-756PRO and also my Kent dual paddle is lit up by the screen of the Icom IC-746.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

CW touch keyer - demonstration and review

This is a video I made to review and demonstrate the CW Touch Keyer. This is a twin morse paddle, but not in the traditional sense in that it has no moving parts. It operates purely on the basis of touch. This video shows the unit in operation and I give it a bit of a review.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Will we ever work KH5K Kingman Reef again?

Kingman Reef (KH5K) pictured in 2003

A disturbing report from Dx-world.net suggests that most of Kingman Reef, an isolated reef in the Pacific Ocean and one of the rarest DXCC entities with the designator KH5K, is now almost completely submerged. The eighth most wanted DXCC is now mostly under water, and probably too dangerous to visit.

Quoting Rich KY6R and citing a report from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, DX-world.net reports that much of the reef is awash, and that the two land masses making up the reef lie only three feet above water level:

The U.S. F&W report suggests that Kingman Reef is now too dangerous to visit:

“The work site on the reef flat was very shallow with water depths of 1 to 7 feet at high tide, and just a few inches of water at low tide. The two small rubble islands that comprise the only land masses at Kingman Reef lie merely 3 feet above sea level. They are frequently awash by waves and offered no shelter during removal operations. The severe sea state and environmental conditions at Kingman Reef are unpredictable, and forecasts are relatively unreliable at the isolated central Pacific reef. Such uncertainty constrained safe operations, and the team determined that mobilizing the full shipwreck removal team and all floating assets, including the 185-foot barge and large crane, from Palmyra to be staged at the Kingman removal site, presented an unacceptable risk to crew and resources. Instead, a subset of the crew traveled to Kingman Reef from Palmyra Atoll on the tugboat Sarah C with a transport scow in tow.”

Rich told DX-world.net that he thinks it's now "time that DXAC seriously consider deleting Kingman Reef."
Kingman reef was last activated in the year 2000 by the K5K dxpedition. There is some doubt right now about whether it will ever be activated again.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

New video: a mini Russian single-lever morse paddle

In this video I demonstrate one of my miniature Russian single-lever morse paddles, which I purchased on eBay last year for around 20 euro apiece. These are light and dainty little keys, but very effective and easy to use. They would be quite transportable for SOTA or other portable or mobile activities.

Here is a link to the seller's page on eBay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/wwwww337

He often has them for sale and seems to have a stock of them. Well worth the small spend in my opinion!