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Mostly pretty much SSDD except for the following:
Thurs the 25th the Ham Radio Club I belong to (NMARES) had their annual picnic at the Allyn Waterfront Park. It went really well. About 30 people showed up; members and visitors from the “other” clubs. Burgers were great! I had to be there early to help set up, and stayed until the end to clean up, but it was a beautiful day so I didn’t mind. Besides, the President of the club should stay for it all.
Saturday I spent all day at the Allyn Waterfront Park providing emergency communications for the annual Rhapsody Bike Ride. Not just me! Hams from Kitsap through Mason back into Thurston Counties set up “command posts” and roving patrols to follow about 300 “bike” riders along the routes. It was fun and boring but nice and sunny and warm. Even got fed!
Did “work” South Korea the other night. That was cool!
Well, lots has been going on even if not much of it is even worth writing about. Things have been mostly SSDD around here even if the weather has been getting better. At least it isn’t raining constantly!
Radio “stuff” is going pretty good. Been talking to Australia & New Zealand, Canada and all over the US. Pskreporter.info even said my signal has been heard in Denmark a couple of times. (But I haven’t actually talked to anyone there. Yet.) This latest multiband antenna I built seems to be doing pretty good! Looks like a spider’s web over the house but it transmit great!
Been participating in our local “Nets” on Sunday thru Wednesday evenings. Trying to get my grand-daughter, Lexi, Interested in getting her ticket. She’s been too shy to talk on the radio so far. How to encourage her without discouraging her? (Or seeming pushy.)
Oh, still going to both Ham Radio clubs; the one here (NMARES) and the one in Shelton (MC-ARC). Still the Treasurer for MC-ARC. NMARES messed up and voted me their President for the coming year. Really! We’ll see how THAT goes! 
So I’ve been trying to get into that without being too pushy and working on the new web site for NMARES. It’s going well, so far. And the web site is starting to look good too.
There’s probably eight hundred and six thousand things I’ve forgotten about that I could probably post about; but I can’t remember them. Probably not very important. We lead pretty boring day-to-day lives around here.
Cause I haven’t yet found a decent blog program (for local writing and editing) since Post2Blog quit accepting input. I’ll delete this post later. IF it works…
Seems to be doing okay posting a picture…
Well, I’ve been really busy the past week and here we go…
Friday, 24 June: Beginning of the annual Ham Field Day. I took the water & chips I’d bought to the MC-ARC Field Day site just north of Shelton, Wa and dropped them off. Spent some time helping a couple of the guys set up for field day. Stringing antanna’s and such. Forgot I’d left my handheld in the truck and spent almost an hour searching for it in the bush. Man, did I ever feel the fool when I remembered I’d left it in the truck! Got home a lot later than I usually stay out.
Saturday, 25 June: Got up early and headed out for Green Mountain and the joint North Kitsap ARC & NMARES field day. Spent most of the day wandering among the different radio setups and made the first 5 contacts on the GOTA(?) station. Took a butt-ton of pictures and was interviewed by a reporter (none of it used except my picture (which I would have preferred not be used)) and generally had a great time just hanging around. We even had a bunch of Scouts come by and got them all to talk on the GOTA station.
Sunday, 26 June: Got up early and headed out to the MC-ARC field day site just north of Shelton, WA. Spent a few hours just hanging around shooting the bull with the guys that were left doing field day stuff. Only a couple of folks were left and it was kind of boring “radio wise”. Around noon we started to break everything down and then I came on home.
KE7PHU working a contact.
And that was my weekend. Next entry will be about the trip SWMBO took me on for my 59th Birthday!
Radio stuff is going okay. Re-built my dipole and added coax instead of the 300 ohm tv line. I was getting way too much RF back into the shack. It worked pretty good with me getting all over the USA. Then I switched the transmitting side from the western side of the house to the eastern. Now I get different places but still cover a lot of area. Yesterday I raised the transmitting end to near horizontal and didn’t seem to be getting out very well; but made a contact in Georgia that led to a contact in Australia! Too Cool! Me & VK4JD talked a good 20 minutes or so. I’ve been having WAY too much fun on the radio. I do mostly PSK31 and sometimes use EasyPal to send/receive pictures. Lots of fun!!!
Today a friend and I used his slingshot thingie to shoot some rope up a tall tree and ran about 250 feet of wire up for a longwire antenna. Was fun but frustrating when the slingshot didn’t work right. Finally got it up and strung and the coax attached. Now I can get the antenna tuned but get a lot of SWR so I think I’ll need to add a balun to it. I’ll experiment and see where it leads us.
And other than that not much going on around here.
Promise. Been busy. Too busy for a retired guy! Hang in there. I *WILL* be back!
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So, I built this Multi-Band G5RV Clone antenna that I found on dxzone . Uses 50 feet of 300 ohm feed wire and has two 33 feet long "legs". Got off my lazy butt today and tried putting it up in several different places hanging from my roof. It just wasn’t high enough in all the right places!
So I wound up hooking it to the 8 ft 2×4 I have my longwire antenna hooked through and the "legs" out at almost a perfect 45 degree angle and not touching the roof except in one place. Got back in the shack, tuned it to 20-meters and…
It is working fine! As you can see I am hitting more mid-East (what they call the mid-West) and more places on the East Coast. Cool! Even had a contact from Asiatic Russia. Had a nice QSO with W4FGA in Georgia (USA).
Not bad for a home made antenna if I do say so myself! It works REALLY good on 10 & 20 meters. I tuned in 40-meters but didn’t hear anyone. Will NOT tune in 80-meters to transmit. Guess I’m going to have to build a dedicated 80-meter antenna and get me one of those antenna switches. Was hoping not to have to do that. Ah well… Then I have to work on a 160-meter antenna. (Not to mention 6, 12, 15 & 30-meters!) Someone should develop a true ALL BANDS antenna…
Think I’ll leave the longwire up "just in case." You never know what will happen…
Got my new QSL Cards in today. Now I have to make one out for each of the contacts I’ve made and send them off. Oh Joy! 
But I did make a voice contact with Hawaii today. That was cool! Didn’t talk long as it was a DX contest; but it was still cool.
As you can see, I’m mostly doing PSK31. I really enjoy it. And I like the way you can map your contacts in Google Earth from HRD Logbook. Cool!
OTT, not much going on on the Radio front. No new equipment. Still thinking about building another antenna. Still making do with the one I have. But that’s sort of the way it is when you do Ham Radio on a shoestring…
Getting along just great. Maybe too good. I spent this last weekend, All Day, doing psk31 with various folks around the country. Made about 20 or so contacts with people as far away as Alaska, Texas, Asiatic Russia and Japan. Cool! Had only a couple of contacts that couldn’t really be established; and I won’t log those even if they send my call back to me. We have to exchange more than a couple of words.
And all on my longwire antenna. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well on any bands but 20-meter and 10-meter. Try transmitting on it on any of the other bands and it just doesn’t tune in right. So, I’m going to make myself a multi-band inverted "V" dipole. Or I just might buy me one of those W8AMZ G5RV dipoles from eBay. Even at $68 bucks and the wait for it to get here would be a LOT easier than me going out and buying everything and putting it together. More sure of it being right also. Hmmmm…. (I may have just talked myself into it…)
Finally made my first voice/ssb contact on 20-meters! NC7V (Marsh) lives about 50 miles from me and wanted me to try receiving a picture using EasyPal. So I tuned to 14.233.00, started EasyPal, and Marsh came on to make sure I had all the settings right. Cool! I know what you’re thinking: It was only 50 miles and with someone you know. Who cares! It was a voice contact and got logged as such. I even received the picture okay! And I received another picture W4UAT while SWMBO and I were out for dinner. Cool!
Keep trying to get my friend in Pa on psk31. Pskreporter.info reports that my signal can be heard all around him but never where he lives. Kind of frustrating. But my signal has been reported in Maine, Florida and China. Woo Woo!
