T H E 6 T H F L O O R

Life in 6 Land

Monthly Archives: June 2008

Step Up Your Game

I remember a time about 7 months ago, when I would I hate coming to work. As I was told during training, “you just puke at the door and know you are going to get your ass kicked.” And a majority of the time that was the case, so much so it caused added pressure and stress on an already strenuous on the job training program.

Now, as we approach July, I have made great strides in my work ethic and performance. I am able to take on more responsibility, multitask as I once did at the airlines and be able to type and talk at the same time. But it has not been easy, as growing pains have taught valuable lessons, most of the time learning by my mistakes. Honestly, that has been the best way to learn, while causing the most problems, but it is all part of the job.

Sunday was one of those days, where your 80 minute rotation came and went and you noticed you had worked the entire system nonstop the entire time. This has been some of the best training, on the job, without the added pressure and stress I had during training. No extra eyes watching and scrutinizing your every decision and Monday morning quarterbacking every task.

As I was told, these are good days to work because you do have to “step your game” in order to keep up with the system or else it will eat you alive. While I was a step or two behind the system I was able to keep all my trains moving, but the amount of radio traffic was unbelievable. Trains in every part of the system making inquiries, requesting information or routes, reading back instructions. But I did a fine job and had the satisfaction of knowing I did a good job.

Just four and a half more years and I think I will be settled in to the position. LOL!

Honesty. The Best Policy?

I’ll admit it. I don’t pretend to know everything as it pertains to amateur radio. But when I upgraded to my General license I studied and took the time to LEARN what I was studying in preparation to gain access to the HF bands. I think this is what all General operators looked forward to. That was some years ago.

When I have questions, I will do some legwork through books and periodicals, consult ham related web sites as well post questions on sites like eham.net and QRZ.com. Case in point was my Hustler 6BTV that was causing all sorts of SWR issues and for the life of me I could not figure out why. Regardless, after a lot of reading, talking to those more knowledgeable than I and tweaking the antenna now has excellent SWR on all bands.

So just what I am I getting at? I’ll leave the ugly details out, but questions like, “How do I transmit?” or comments like, “I understand it’s odd that I’ve got an extra license but am pretty ignorant of quite basic things.” If you have an Extra ticket and do not know the “basics” or “how to transmit” then I suggest you stop right there and learn. In defense of this individual, they are exerting an effort to learn, but these questions seem rather absurd.

I know for a fact I did not get my General license, buy a rig, an antenna and then post on some ham forum asking, “Okay, what do I do next?” As they say, common sense is not so common. How about READ A MANUAL! It took me a few weeks to make a QSO. To date I have not made any SSB QSOs, they have all been using PSK31, regardless I knew some basics and was able to get my first station setup and running in order to enjoy this hobby.

So what makes this individual different than myself asking these same questions? Well this “Extra” happens to be a YL (female, YL meaning young lady). I think a fellow ham sums it up best, “I too am amused at the “patience” being shown here. Many of these “helpful hams” would, under other circumstances, be ridiculing a new Extra who would dare ask such fundamental questions.”

I’ll end my little rant with this, if you don’t know the basics there is a good chance you can be injured (burned by RF), possibly severely by your radio equipment. You could potentially burn you your rig, which would required more in repair or replacement costs. So don’t let that ignorance get the best of you just because you want to get on the air. Take your time, do it right and above all BE SAFE.

Extra! Extra!

After months of studying I took Element 4 tonight at our local amateur radio club [MDARC] meeting last night and passed. Unfortunately the VE’s do not allow you to see your exam or the questions you missed. I did have a handful of questions that I did not quite remember the answer.

I already see the OMs saying, “great here is another no code Extra” who memorized the answers. To some degree you are correct, in another respect you are wrong. Amateur radio for me is all about learning, the same can be said about life, “always keep learning, everyday.” So while I did read through the example book and consult a few other publications during my study for Element 4, I did learn quite a bit of material that I did not know before I took the exam.

I know the FCC dropped the Morse code requirement in order to get a amateur radio license. I was even more surprised when the past president of our club said they don’t even offer it any longer. That is unfortunate. I did not know they did not even allow clubs to offer the exam. While this won’t dampen my spirits for CW, I am starting (or continuing) my training to learn Morse code today. I am excited about the prospects of working more DX contacts.

I am also looking into the possibility of becoming an accredited VE so I can offer my services and help others get licensed in order to keep amateur radio alive.

1:1 SWR

Success! Now I wish I could just explain how it happened, but for some reason I really can’t. So at this point I don’t think I will be tinkering with the 6BTV much. As I posted yesterday I intended to go slide trap lengths in order to decrease the SWR on my vertical. Well much to my dismay I got all the gear I needed and headed out to the base of the 6BTV.

Previously I created a chart for each of the six bands and took readings from the low, middle and top of the band. I was going to break it down even further, but figured readings from three portions of each band would suffice. I was surprised when I dialed in 28.0MHz on the antenna bridge and a 1.8:1 came back, when previously it was about 2.7:1. This was just the beginning of good readings to come.

On 15m it was 1.1:1, while on 20m, where I have spent a majority of my time (14.070) the low reading was 1.3:1, while the middle (14.175) was 1.5:1 and the high end was 1.6:1. 40m was a bit higher, which was unusual because it had been my strongest (power output) band up until today. I recorded 1.7:1, 2.4:1 (7.150) and 3.7:1. I have not made any QSOs on 40m today but my Bird 43 Wattmeter shows about 25w going out. I also cut 75/80m for 3.600 with a 2.0:1 and a 1.4:1 on 3.580.

Overall I am excited about the new prospect my 6BTV holds. I have spent a considerable amount of time work with it in order to provide me something to call CQ with. I sit here now on 20m running Digipan and I am putting out a solid 25w and now talking to Ohio.

Clean up the 6BTV

I finally had some time to “play radio” this past week, after dropping my son off at preschool I decided to pull down my 6BTV and clean it up in hopes of better power output. I have been talking back and forth with DX Engineering, more specifically Rod and this time George. I have order additional hardware, such as the tilt base, radial plate and most recently the vertical feed current choke.

On DXE’s recommendation I pulled each tube apart and clean all the connections with steel wool and mineral spirits in order to assure a good, clean connection of aluminum. When I removed the trap covers on the 10m and 15m trap, they both had heavy oxidation on the connectors holding the coils for these bands. These are my prime suspects as to why 10m and 15m do not tune to an acceptable VSWR.

On the other end of the band, 40m has a VSWR of 1.5:1 and I get very good power output. I also added the 75/80m tip rod cut to 31″ of 3600MHz (PSK31 is 3580MHz). I measured the VSWR of nearly 1:1 on 75/80m, which made me very excited, unfortunately I was not able to have any luck with the other bands.

After cleaning I reassembled the vertical and measured each tube/trap to the factory default. Tomorrow I am going to attempt to slide the tubing in order to see if I can decrease the VSWR. I tried this same thing a month or so back while my father was in town and we did not have much luck on decreasing the VSWR.

Thankfully PSK31 is a low power mode and I can get away with 15w and have worked 40 QSOs on 20m and another 10 QSOs on 40m. I would like to have more output power in order to work SSB and hopefully RTTY and shortly CW.