FIELD DAY RADIO

ICOM IC-7400

I've been thinking that it'd be great to have a radio for "Field Day" events but I didn't want to spend a fortune on it, so I looked at a few different models including the FT857 and FT-897. My friend had an 897 for sale but it had the dreaded 'vertical lines' on the LCD display. So I looked at other 897's but there's just not that many around and I'd have to buy a tuner too.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I opted for the ICOM IC-7400 and started a search on eBay and found a few over-priced options mainly from dealers, so I decided to do my usual thing and saved a search.

It didn't take long before the perfect radio appeared and because of my saved search, I was notified the moment it appeared. Boom! I clicked that BuyNow and got the perfect radio at the perfect price.

The radio is described as "Mint Condition" but there's little other information about it. When people barely write anything in their eBay descriptions it always worries me, but I'm paying through PayPal so I've got a good degree of protection and if the radio arrives with any problems, I will just ship it straight back. To ignore this potential bargain would have been foolhardy.

The IC-7400 was a superb radio in its day and in addition to the HF and 6M it has 2m. All at 100W, so that's perfect for when I eventually upgrade my licence. And it will be a handy rig to have on Field Day events for any other club members to play with when I'm taking a break.

I love and adore my FT-818 - it's perfect when I'm on my own up in the hills with a lightweight resonant wire antenna, but if I take it on a Field Event, in a less than perfect location (as I did recently on our club's POTA day), it showed up some weaknesses with its 5W on HF and 2.5W on VHF. I think having my full 10W on both bands would have made all the difference.

Apparently, early models developed a TX fault and the LCD backlight failed. Fortunately, the radio I have bought is a late model which isn't affected. The rig is very well thought of by most operators on eHam and having spoken to people on the relevant forums, I was comfortable with my choice. No radio is perfect, but for £400 I think I may have got a real good buy.

I also like the look of the rig! I know that's silly, but to me it is one of the buying parameters. For example, I love the look of the FT-897D but couldn't live with an 857 even though it does all the same things in a smaller package. The IC-7400 is a nice, chunky looking thing and I much prefer having extra height to extra width in a field-radio.

The display just couldn't be better - it's big, bold and very clear! There's lots of traditional buttons and dials and it looks like the sort of thing that you can just 'get on with' straight away. It's also got a good ATU built-in which is very handy. Obviously it won't tune a piece of wet string, but it'll certainly be good enough to fine-tune the rough ends of the resonant dipoles and EFHW's that I use.

It's not very energy efficient, so it'll need mains or a good chunky battery in the field, but that's fine. I'm not going to be chucking it into a rucksack to go playing SOTA with it - it weighs 9kg, lol.

More when it arrives!

WSJT-X & FT8

FT8 AND THE YAESU FT-DX3000
Starting out with FT8

Today I decided to have a play with FT8. I didn't even know what it was, but I kept hearing about it, so I thought I should educate myself. If I spent a couple of hours learning about it and decided it wasn't for me, then at least I could comment on it with some knowledge of how it actually worked.

The first thing was to download the WSJT-X software which (at the time of writing) is at Version 2. With that installed, I needed to connect my Yaesu FT-DX3000 to my PC with a USB-B lead (after fitting ferrites at both ends).

Before plugging the USB Lead in, I had to make sure that I downloaded and installed the USB Driver from Yaesu's website.


Once I'd got the Yaesu driver and WSJT-X software installed, I had some issues getting the radio to communicate with the WSJT-X software. It took quite a long time to figure it out and I'll write about that tomorrow, but for now, let's just skip forward. It's worth pointing out that most people drop their power significantly when transmitting data for fear of overloading their equipment. I am limited to 10W anyway (Foundation Licence) so it doesn't effect me, but I've heard that it might be a good idea - as a maximum - to use the equivalent power that your radio is comfortable with when in AM mode (which is 25W on the FT-DX3000).

Remember - this is a weak signal mode, not QRP, so use what you feel is necessary.

With the software running, I could see stations being received in the left hand window and some were calling CQ (highlighted in green). I doubled-clicked one to respond and the right-hand window confirmed that. From that point on, the QSO is automated - the software spends 15 seconds receiving and then 15 seconds transmitting. Assuming the two stations can reach one another, the software automatically sends and receives signal reports, callsigns and locations, then asks you if you wish to log the confirmed call.

Sounds easy huh? Well it is! But you do have to do some work and there's no guarantee that you will make a contact at all. You can work virtually all the bands and it's good fun chasing rare contacts that appear briefly.

The program's Signal Reports confused me at first, but then I found a dB~RST conversion chart...

MORE LATER...

Okay, so it's day-2 and the first couple of QSL Cards arrived in my eqsl inbox. There'll no doubt be a lot more when I upload the Log file from WSJT to EQSL.

While I'm here I might as well write down the Yaesu FT-DX3000 Menu Settings for FT8 operation to make it easy for owners of that rig. It's also worth mentioning that my rig has a USB port and a soundcard built-in, so setting up was a whole lot simpler than if none were present.

FT-DX3000 MENU NUMBERS

011 - Meter Type Select : Bar
037 - Cat Select : USB
038 - Cat Rate : 38,400bps
040 - Cat RTS : Enable
065 - PC Keying : DTR
075 - Data In Select : USB
076 - Data Mic Gain : 25
077 - Data Out Level : 10
078 - Data Vox Gain : 30
103 - SSB Mic Select - USB

One thing I haven't checked since playing FT8 is whether or not I need to change Menu 103 back to "FRONT" for normal SSB operation. I suspect that I will have to do that. I'll report back. Update : yes you do need to change Menu-103 to "FRONT" if you want to use your normal microphone for rag-chewng.

I'm now looking forward to trying FT8 with other antennas.

BANDS ARE DEAD?

CALL CQ!!!

Almost every day I hear operators saying the bands are dead. Most of them have panadapters and waterfalls - either built into their radios or through a third party device such as an RSP1A. These operators look at their displays and see a virtual flatline and determine visually that there's nothing going on.

The truth is, the panadapter and waterfalls can be amazing tools for finding signals (or gaps between signals) and I use one myself all the time, but on many occasions, the display doesn't always reflect what's actually going on.

In the absence of strong, outstanding signals, all you might see is a 'flat line' but down there at grass level there's often an abundance of weak signals that can be pulled out if you search for them like in the old days when there was no such thing as SDR 😃

BUT MOST OF ALL, instead of whinging about dead bands, why not bring the bands to life with a few CQ CALLS??

If you put out a few CQ calls of your own, hopefully someone will receive you and startup a QSO. And your activity may well promote even more activity. At least give it a go! And with modern radios it's soooo easy to record a CQ message (speech or morse) and re-transmit it over and over at the push of a button!

So come on guys, let's stop talking about dead bands and start doing something to breathe life into it. 70cm is the perfect example of it - so many people mock the lack of activity on 70cm but never actually call out on it or schedule a QSO on it.

Many modern radios are dual-banders and can monitor 2M and 70cm, so try calling CQ on 70 now and again and hopefully, all those dual-band operators who have 433.500 monitoring in the background will respond. And instead of telling a friend to meet up for a chat on 2M later tonight, ask them to try 70cm instead (if you're within range). And if you're not within range of each other at UHF, try using a 70cm Repeater for a change.

Use it or lose it they say.

73

GREAT VIDEO FOR EFHW & UNUN

Unravels a few mysteries

This guy makes some great videos - especially for us newbies who don't quite grasp some of the things that we read in a book. Often times, a short video can take the place of a large book. In this video, End Fed Half Wave antennas are discussed and the construction of UNUN's. It's very interesting and well put together.

Skip to 4:50 to avoid the initial rant on contesting 😃

ATU - Antenna Tuners??

Antenna Tuners Don't Tune Antennas

All the old boys know that antenna tuners don't tune antennas, but I hear a lot of the newer operators (and even some intermediates) boasting about the effectiveness of their antennas once they've installed a good antenna tuner.

Well I know that's not the case and I know that my half-size G5RV is a pretty poor antenna even though my ATU can "tune" it on almost any band and give me a 1:1 SWR reading.

The fact that my radio (and ATU) are showing me figures indicating a near perfect match, makes no real difference to the actual resonance of my antenna - the antenna remains as good or as bad as it was before the ATU was installed. My radio 'thinks' it's putting out 10W and none is reflected, but in actual fact, MOST of it might be reflected and I might only be getting 1W out.

That's why I don't expect good results using my G5RV (which also happens to be located in a terrible position and height at my QTH). I use it (and the ATU) because I have no option. I cannot erect anything better, so I have to accept the limitations of the antenna and just do the best I can with it.

Sure, I have managed to get some great QRP results when the conditions have been exceptional. And the G5RV is in all fairness not that bad on 20 & 40 but it's all a compromise and I'm not fooling myself that having a 1.0:1 SWR reading through the tuner is turning my poor antenna into a good one.

The only way to get good and effective results is to use an antenna that is already resonant on the frequency you wish to operate on. For me, that means installing a temporary resonant antenna at weekends such as the SotaBeams 20/40 linked dipole on a telescopic mast in the back garden. The results are great, but at the end of the weekend (or holidays), it has to be dropped back down to avoid objections from the neighbours and landlord and I have to go back to using the G5RV and accept the fact that although I have a 1.0:1 reading, I am in some cases barely getting out!

So, if you're one of those new operators who doesn't quite understand this, take a look at this great video which explains it further.

73

PUBS ON THE AIR

PUBS ON THE AIR - WMRC

14th SEPTEMBER 2019
I forgot to post about this event! Mind you, there was some mix-up because our club had arranged the POTA event at a local pub and upon arrival, we realised the special event was actually supposed to be Churches On The Air! 😂

Ah well, we had a good time and spent a pleasant day playing radio.

REVERSE BEACON NET

Putting It Out There

I recently found out about the "Reverse Beacon Net" whereby a number of people across the world act as "Spotters", listening out for CW transmissions across the bands and then posting a Signal Report on a website which you can then access to see how far you got.  I thought that was a pretty fine idea, so I registered and then did some transmitting.

Oops! Hold on though - I haven't learned Morse Code (apart from my callsign) so what do I do? Well first of all I borrowed a key from a friend and made crude attempts to send "CQ CQ CQ, THIS IS QRP STATION M7MCQ"

Needless to say, that didn't work out too well, so I reduced it to "CQ TEST M7MCQ" and tried that. It still sounded attrocious even to my untrained ears, so I looked in the FT-DX3000 Owners Manual and found that I could type in up to five messages and have the radio do the sending for me!!

Not only does the radio send the message out in CW but it also allows you to decide the send-speed. Excellent!! So I tried it and got some responses on the RBN webpage within seconds.

Initially, I wasn't doing too well getting noticed (10W) so I decided to jump to the frequency of the most recent spot report and then I got responses, so there's a tip for you!

Give it a go - its fun.