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These are the most useful ham-related websites I’ve found, so far ....

Quick links

  1. Clubs and societies that I belong to
  2. Radio friends with websites
  3. Ham software, DXcluster and digimodes - computers-in-ham-radio
  4. Construction and electronics including K2, K3 and QRP - constructor’s assistance
  5. TS850 information and modifications - Kenwood TS850 stuff
  6. QRO amplifiers, circuits and components - GS35b and other links
  7. Contesting and operating - tips
  8. Antennas, towers and earthing - aerial stuff
  9. Little bits at the bottom of my junk box - the leftovers

Clubs and societies

  • CDXC logo whiteCDXC is the “CHILTERN DX CLUB” for CQ contest entries, not the Clipperton DX Club! Read the CDXC brochure if you’re considering joining a great DX club with a growing international reputation and membership.  Membership also gives you access to a special members-only DXcluster and a DXers’ email reflector.
  • ZM2M is the East Coast Contest group based near Napier.  I’m their volunteer webmaster so blame me for the rather utilitarian site design (like this one).
  • ZL6QH is the club station for the infamous Quartz Hill contest group, formerly based on Quartz Hill just outside Wellington city.  This was a fabulous contest QTH on a windswept hilltop, so windy in fact that it was turned into a wind farm, creating so much QRM that the site was no longer suitable for DXing or contesting.  The station has been dismantled and is in safe store, while slowly in a quiet corner of the South Pacific, cunniKiwi DX logo 130ng plans are being hatched to rebuild the ZL6QH Mark II superstation ...
  • Kiwi DX Group is an email reflector for, errr, Kiwi DXers.
  • M6T (Martlesham DX and Contest Group) is the UK’s premier HF contest group and a great bunch of contest nutters like me.  The club is QRV again from a permanent QTH thanks to the generosity of Bob G4BAH.
  • G0FBB is the call of the Windmill Contest Group in Kent, a fine bunch of VHF/UHF contesters.
  • The Voodoo Contest Group activate different rare West African countries in CQ WW CW every year. Read about most of them in Contesting in Africa by my friend, keen DXpeditioner and mini-DXpeditioner, supreme CW DX op and contester G3SXW - Roger.
  • RSGB logoRSGB - The Radio Society of Great Britain is the UK's national radio society.  The site carries weekly-updated news (including DXpeditions), propagation info , contest info etc. including the text of the Sunday news bulletins.  And the RSGB publishes some of the best Amateur Radio books and maps available, including the definitive callsign/prefix guide edited by my pal Fred G4BWP.  The monthly Radio Communication magazine carries RSGB contest rules and results, Pat Hawker’s excellent Technical Topics scrapbook and a bunch of other trivia.  Oh and the RSGB HF Contest Guide I wrote a long time ago on behalf of the HF Contests Committee.
  • NZART - New Zealand Amateur Radio Transmitters is the NZ national society.  Their bi -monthly magazine Break-In publishes a few teOCDX logochnical and operating articles.
  • The Oceania Amateur Radio DX Group  sponsors and organises DXpeditions around the South Pacific, including our 2006 trip to Norfolk Island as VI9NI.
  • ARRL - Amateur Radio Relay League - the American national amateur radio society.  I have rejoined in order to get QST and a discount on my DXCC applications.  The ARRL’s antenna books, handbook and HF Contesting - Good Practices, Interpretations and Suggestions guide are all recommended.
  • The G-QRP-Club is QRV on the Web at last!  Despite having enjoyed QRP operating with my K2, PW Teme and other home-brew rigs over the years (including a whole year chasing DXCC on 9 bands CW and giving various G QRO stations a good run for their money!), I’m not really an out-and-out QRPer.  Still, the construction articles and operating tips in the club mag Sprat are well worth the QRP subscription.  And I’ll always do my best to pull QRP stations from the pileups (including those who sign /QRP, where it’s legal to do so).

Back to quick links

Radio friends

  • clublogHot one Michael G7VJR wrote and supports Clublog, an excellent facility for DXers to upload and analyze their ADIF logs.  It tells you which and how many DXCC countries you have worked and/or confirmed per band, your league position relative to other Clublog users and that kind of thing.  A lot of work goes into defining the rules to identify DXCC countries from ADIF logs submitted, and I’ve certainly appreciated finding errors in Logger32’s output (thank Alan 5B4AHJ and G7VJR).  Michael is also CDXC’s webmaster and a keen DXer and accomplished DXpeditioner himself.
  • G3TXF - Nigel is a well known DXer, QSLer, QSL collector, QSL manager, oh and DXpeditioner, often in cahoots with our mutual pal Roger, G3SXW.  Nigel’s website has searchable logs plus lots of radio photos from his DXpeditions and other jaunts.  Both gents upload their logs promptly to LoTW giving lots of us numerous “firsts”.  Cheers lads.
  • G0AFH - Ian is a pal from M6T and Windmill CG.  Check out Ian’s cracking pix of Windmill’s entry in VHF FD 2004 including my all-time favourite field day picture, a night shot of the 6m set-up done with a long exposure and torch illumination of the beams.  Clever stuff Ian.
  • G0MTN - Lee also belongs to M6T and the Voodudes.  His site has some great pictures of the West African hotel roof style typical Voodude set-ups.
  • Added Feb 12th I met G3ASG - Ray - for a lovely hand-keyed QSO on 20m one ZL evening and subsequently read a fascinating account of his WWII work as a Voluntary Interceptor, recording 5-letter groups for the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. 

Back to quick links

Ham software, DXcluster & digimodes

  • If you suffer QRM from your computer gear, routers, TVs, toasters etc., read all you ever wanted to know (and then some) on RFI and how to cure it thanks to K9YC.
  • VE7CC’s cluster user software is neat: set up a local cluster on your PC with flexible filtering, LoTW indication and useful other options.  Read more here.  List of DXcluster nodes accessible via the Internet over Telnet.  Much more reliable than 2m packet cluster access!
  • Having completed a rigorous selection process, I chose K4CY’s Logger32 for my main station log and N1MM for contest logging.  Both programs are free and support the ADIF XML log standard, meaning that after a contest I can integrate my contest logs from N1MM easily into Logger32.  Read more about the fun I had getting QSL labels out of Logger32 and various bugs in the software here and read K5LAD’s page showing how the QSL label “fields” are defined in Logprint.
  • VE3NEA writes wonderful ham software, some of which is free of charge.  The DXatlas program lets the user draw beautiful high-resolution colour maps complete with overlays for CQ zones, country outlines, latitude & longitude or Maidenhead locator grid lines, capital cities, DXCC prefixes, grey lines, propagation prediction (with the associated IonoProbe program) and so on - pretty much anything a serious DXer could ever want from a map program.  Mercator projection or great circle projections are no longer confined to the shack wall: the software allows the user to interact with the maps.  The globe projection is great for those of us who don’t have the desk estate for an actual globe.  Morse Runner is an excellent free program for practicing CW pileups and contests.  The sound output is significantly better than those old fashioned CW practise programs - it includes realistic QRN QRM and all the usual crud you experience on a hot and busy shortwave band - including lids who CQ on “your” frequency.  Real-time feedback on the accuracy of your log as each QSO is committed to the record  is great for improving your contest logging techniques.  Its nearly as much fun as a real contest. Get it now, while it’s still freeware!
  • The Bozo’s guide to JT65 is responsible for persuading me to experiment with some digimodes.  Boy have things moved on since the noisy, smelly, oily days of Creed 444s!  I made my first JT65 QSO on 20m, holding the mike to the PC speaker on TX.  Thanks to some pals on CDXC reflector, I’ve discovered a German site with sound bytes of various types of data modulation.  Now I’m looking for software to decode the more exotic ones -  MultiPSK by F6CTE perhaps or something else from Utility Monitoring Central’s software links page.
  • Find out who else is using LoTW at HB9BZA’s site.  HB9BZA also provides RXCLUS software to integrate DXcluster spots from various sources (something VE7CC’s Cluster User software also does).  SpotCollector is another package in the same vein.

Back to quick links

Construction & electronics inc. K2, K3, QRP & SDR

  • Added Feb 28 Step-by-step instructions for making a transformer.
  • Added Feb 12 Lots of info on SDR from G4ZFQ, with many annotated links to the original sources.
  • Hot one Helpful list of Elecraft and user K2 mods maintained by LA3ZA, including those to bring older K2s up to current specs.
  • Hot one Cool wiki for the K3.
  • Added Feb 5th Vinyl lettering, cheap
  • Here’s a novel way to solder PL259s with screw-in reducers to RG58 or RG8X cable.
  • A good range of kits are available from the American QRP Club, including an antenna analyzer, memory keyers, PSK terminal unit and many more.
  • Peak hold meter adapter with delayed release - useful for tuning amps while transmitting CW or SSB normally using a peak-reading power meter.
  • I’ve used old Post Office straight Morse keys and homebrew paddles made from junk box parts including hacksaw blades and PCB strips in the past but for at least a decade I’ve been very happy with my Bencher paddle.  Happy, that is, until I spied the Begali Sculpture, a beautiful piece of modern engineering art in the shape of a Morse paddle.  I yearn for one.  I’d probably sell a kidney for one.  I’ll definitely have to save hard for one.
  • I stumbled across XQ2FOD Manfred’s website in connection with constructing quiet switch -mode supplies but his photo-essay on constructing a home in the middle of nowhere, powered by a water turbine fed from a mountain stream, is even more fascinating.
  • A Vector Network Analyser by N2PK looks like a useful tool for measuring antennas, tuners etc. - though my MFJ 259 box-o-trix works pretty well too.
  • Lots of constructor articles from AD5X.
  • Sandpiper in the UK supplies cheap, lightweight /P beams and verticals.  Some such as the VK2ABQ are true multiband designs, others have to be brought down and re-configured for different bands.  OK for a casual op in a portable situation maybe, but no use for contesting and not handy at home.  The SteppIR idea is looking attractive for full coverage of all the high bands but (according to several people tho have Steppirs)  long term reliability of the mechanism is an issue.  Log periodics have less gain for the size but no moving parts means more reliability.
  • Kicad is an open source/freeware electronics CAD system for drawing schematics and PCB designs.  It doesn’t do circuit analysis but others do ... I’m still looking.
  • Finger Dimples are, um, little round things you, err, stick to your knob.  Your tuning knob.  To make tuning easier, that is.  US website  UK website
  • Elecraft - designers, suppliers and supporters of the K1, K2 and K3, and other neat little kits.  The guys behind Elecraft provide a wonderful after-care service as well as producing one of the finest radio designs ever made.

Back to quick links

 

TS850 info and mods

Back to quick links

GS35b/QRO HF amplifiers, circuits and components

Here’s a heap of amp construction links courtesy of a ZL QRO linear constructor, supplemented by hints from the great bunch of guys on Amps@contesting.com and links from other sites:

Back to quick links

Contesting & operating

  • Linked Feb 11 WA7BNM, Bruce, maintains the ultimate annual HF contest calendar with info on all the major contests of the year, and a few more minor ones.
  • Sun.exe puts a little sun in the corner of your desktop: hover your mouse over it to see the sunrise and sunset times today.  Alternatively, calculate SR/SS times for the whole month, print out the calendar sheet and you have no excuses for missing those greylines.
  • Find out a little about the mega-stations you seem to work in every contest in this database, and think about the immense dedication it takes to keep all that aluminium in the air and watts on the wire.
  • Hot one All of us should read and comply with the IARU Guide to Ethics and Operating Procedures for the Radio Amateur.
  • Find your Maidenhead locator easily using this Google page with a Google add-on written by Laurent F6FVY: fly to your QTH then click on the map - a pop-up tells you the coordinates and locator.  Neat!
  • Fly through cool 4D images of the ionosphere courtesy of NASA plus Google Earth.
  • How good is your knowledge of world geography?  Think you really know your DXCC entities?  Take the traveller IQ challenge.
  • Logbook of The World (LoTW) is the ARRL’s solution for electronic QSLing.  To use LoTW, you first need to apply for a digital certificate which authenticates you as a legitimate licensee.  Then you digitally sign your log using the certificate and upload it to the LoTW server (I upload my own log, or rather QSOs added since the previous upload, every few weeks).  The LoTW database then cross-matches QSOs between you and any of the ~24,000 other LoTW users and generates electronic confirmations that are accepted for DXCC credit.
  • SM3CER website has the best and most up-to-date contest diary plus lots of links.  An excellent resource for contesters!
  • Contesting.com has contest tips and links e.g. to the 3830 reflector for bragging about your claimed scores.
  • CQ World Wide is CQ Magazine’s official website for the biggest event in the contest calendar.  CQ Magazine’s website is separate.  I‘m proud to have been part of the GW8GT, M6T XT2DX and ZL6QH teams that hold various multi-multi and multi-single all-time CQ WW records on phone and CW, and I’ve held a 21 MHz CW record (albeit single-op at super-station GW8GT) for years.  I think I might have set a new Oceania record on CQ WW CW 80m QRO assisted in 2007 to add to the one I set on 40m in 2006.
  • NG3K’s DX and contesting site - an excellent set of useful resources for contesters.
  • HF beacon list - constantly maintained by G3USF.
  • 10-band CW table - John, G3WGV, maintained an annual table of DXCC countries worked on CW on 160 thru 6m during the year, for UK hams.  Michael G7VJR has implemented the league idea in Clublog.  CQ Magazine’s DX Marathon is a similar concept except that it is mixed mode and only gives credit for the first QSO with each DXCC/zone in the year regardless of band.  Finally, ARRL’s DXCC Challenge rewards QSOs with DXCC countries on each band but is forever, not annual.
  • Logsearch.de is a fast log search engine with a growing collection of DX station logs.  In the best amateur radio tradition, it is free to use.  I’m pleased to see big DXpeditions allowing near-real-time log searches - it cuts down on the need for additional ‘insurance’ QSOs and hence allows more of us to work the DX.

Back to quick links

Antennas, towers & earthing

  • Instructions for calibrating the MFJ259 antenna analyser by W8JI, one of the original product designers.
  • A YCCC article about using common mode chokes to block QRM from miscellanous QRM generators around the house mentions the Fair-Rite site for technical info on toroids and Lodestone Pacific as a cheap source for them (provided you already know exactly what you want).
  • An interesting idea for DXpedition masts comes from W0BNY who has constructed a mast to support a lightweight hexbeam using an extension ladder.  Ladders should be available almost anywhere there are builders ...
  • Walter Maxwell W2DU knows far more about antenna matching than I’ll ever know, and writes very well about things such as why SWR up to about 5 on coax is not A Terrible Thing, but common mode current on the coax shield is.  Well worth reading.
  • VK5BR designed a “single coil” ATU for balanced or unbalanced antennas on 80-10m, and then extended the design to include 160m and then a QRO version.  The “single coil” is actually three fixed coils - no plug-ins.
  • Antenna modelling on 160m Beverage antennas by W8WWV.
  • W6RVB describes his homebrew antenna matching units, baluns and traps along with various power distribution and measuring gizmos based on Powerpoles.
  • N6LF’s interesting experiments with verticals and radials.
  • G4VGO likes hoisting 160m wire antennas on kites and balloons.
  • LY4A’s site carries DX news including photos of some impressive antennas.
  • One way to improve the antenna’s earth system is to measure the RF current as you add elements and figure out when “the law of diminishing returns” has beaten your ability to keep adding wire.  I’ve used a peg RF ammeter before, constructed with a split ferrite toroid glued into a spring-loaded peg that is clipped over the earth connection.  A magnetometer design for 160m from Ham Radio magazine uses a plain ferrite bar but the principle is basically the same.
  • DK7ZB has info on home constructed Yagis, quads and HB9CVs, phasing lines, sloping vertical dipoles and more.
  • Info from a supplier on various conductive pastes for antenna and tower joints, plus an earth salting pipe to keep the ground conductive ‘even in a drought’ (they say).  [I have a friend who discovered how conductive his  urine really is by peeing on an electric fence.  It made his eyes water :-) ]
  • Large but barely-structured collection of antenna pages by XE1BEF.
  • W7IUV’s experimental work on 40m 4-squares draws the conclusion that a simple ‘parasitic’ phasing unit with 4 relays works almost as well as a more complicated tuned phaser.  He also says that a 40m 4-sq is easy to match on to 30m with a fifth relay and matching blob, and that the element spacing is not critical but using buried radials is. “A four element version spaced at 0.21 wavelength was consistently 6-8 dB better that the two element yagi at 80 feet”.  Nice!
  • The Granta contest group, based near Cambridge in G-land, has been busy building contest equipment including an innovative bayonet fitting for temporary antennas (e.g. for use on DXpeditions).  My school mentor Colin, G4CWH, is one of the members.
  • Ultra Beam is a new Italian supplier of stepper-moter-and-flexible-tape beams.  Ummmm.  If only there were a distributor in the South pacific region ...
  • Porn for hams - ’nuff said
  • I’m interested in directional LF antennas.  I’ve considered beverages and K9AY loops but I just came across this 4x EWE antenna receiving array for LF - looks easy enough to replicate in any 100ft square space. 
  • The entire 4th edition of ON4UN’s Low Band DXing book is online.  The hardcopy is easier to browse while sitting in the little “antenna planning” room though.
  • Read far more than you ever wanted to know about earthing for lightning protection and RF purposes in small 40 page pamphlet and a large US DOD manual (contains parts 1 and 2 in the same file).
  • A bunch of links of interest to those building hilltop VHF/UHF repeaters or antenna farms at home.

Back to quick links

Little leftover bits at the bottom of my junk box ...

  • At last!  A website clearly demonstrating simple knots suitable for guys and gals.
  • Find out here why parabolas need to be “tuned” to focus energy on the human body.  Personally I am astounded to find that if I draw a great circle line to any DX station I contact, a second great circle line to Stonehenge, and a third great circle line between the DX and Stonehenge, those three lines always form a triangle.  Spooky!  I call this the Principle of Sacred DXing, no doubt long since discovered by the ancients using Magic Crystal Sets.
  • Use a tin-foil hat when speaking on your cellphone.
  • For a different perspective on being a ham, see what Dilbert has to say.
  • And to understand various complicated engineering terms, read this.

Add URL: please let me know of other good amateur radio sites and do tell me if you link to this site - I will happily reciprocate!!

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Hawke’s Bay
North Island
New Zealand

39o 39’ South x 176o 37½’ East

Locator RF80HL

260m ASL

IOTA OC-036

CQ zone 32

ITU zone 60

 

Member of:
ARRL
CDXC
FOC
G0FBB
G-QRP-C
M6T
NZART
ZL6QH
ZM2M