K9XN

The bands are lousy today? What to do…

*Ugh* The band conditions today are lousy. It has been about a month or more since I have been active with HAM radio. Work of course has been keeping me busy, so not enough time to venture down into the shack. So today when I found myself with some extra time, I thought it would be fun to venture down to the shack for some radio fun. However the bands today are lousy! QRM, no propagation and just a few hand full of stations loud enough to hear. 😦

I think ill look for someone on VHF or read a book. It really sucks when you find time for your favorite hobby just to find out that the bands are not cooperating. Oh well, that’s sometimes how it goes I guess.

Until next time…

73s! de Nick N9SJA

Day of DX – My adventures on 20m with PSK-31

This afternoon I decided to come downstairs to the ham shack and fire up the radio. I had a ball on 14.070 MHz with PSK31. Lots of DX!!

Here is a list of a few of the contacts I made today. I would also like to thank each operator for dropping in and saying “Hi” to me!

US5CCO – Vladimir in Smela, Ukraine
F6BNM – Stefano in France.
DL3NTC – Harry in Germany.
TF2CT – Aegir in Iceland (yep ICELAND – how neat is that!?!?!)
ES1QV – Arvo in Tallinn, Estonia.
UA1ANR – Sergey in Russia.
SP3CFM – Zibi in Poland.
OE3AIS/AAW – Bert in Austria.
DL1JK – Michael in Germany.
OK1AUZ – Zdenek in Czech Republic.
MM0BSM – Stu in Scottland.
CO2EL – Ariel in Cuba.
G7OGX – Chris in West Sussex, England.
CU5AQ – Abilio in the Azores.

73! de Nick N9SJA

N9SJA – The new ham shack (ham shack 2.0)

Today I finished setting up my new shack down in the finished basement of my house. This space is awesome for my shack, with plenty of room a 60″ HDTV and couches to boot. This is my man cave, my headquarters, my refuge. I have some pics coming soon. Ill edit this post and put them up here as well.

iMorseU for iPhone

I found a really great app for the iPhone that works well as a morse (CW) trainer. It’s called “iMorseU Lite” and it’s available free from the iPhone Apple App store. It is actually an app for making morse ring tones, but works well as a practice oscellator. I’ve been hacking out “CQ CQ” on this thing constantly and it’s starting to work! I have allready memorized most of the alphabet and numerals!

73! de Nick N9SJA

Isle of Man

On Sunday, July 12, 2009 I had the chance to work a station on 20 meters from the Isle of Man. This small island is off the coast of Scottland in the UK.

MD/DK1SG (Gunter) was calling CQ on 14.070 Mhz using PSK31. I had a nice but albeit to brief QSO with Gunter. I would have liked to chat with him more about this interesting island, but as you can imagine, there were many stations clammering to contact him.

After looking up some information about this island, I found out some pretty interesting facts. The Isle of Man is not a part of the UK per-se. It is a self -governing Crown dependency according to Wikipedia.

It is located in the Irish sea and the head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen of England. Although the Isle of Man is not part of the UK, defense, foreign relations, and good-governance are the responsibilities of the government of the UK. Tourism is a very important aspect of the Isle of Man economy, and from the pictures that I have seen, it is a very beautiful place!

I wish I was able to chat with Gunter longer and learn a bit more about where he lives, but it was a privilege to make the contact anyway.

I worked this station on 14.070 MHz PSK31 mode with only 50 watts and a wire G5RV antenna. Oh so very cool!

QSL Cards update

Ok everyone. I believe I’m finally caught up on sending out QSL cards through June of 2009. Thanks for being patient with me. I have recieved a few cards back now from some of my contacts. I will scan them soon and post them. Thanks so much. I love exchanging QSL cards!

73! de Nick N9SJA

Tags: qsl

D-Day Aniversary – Special Event Station

On Sunday, June 7th it was my privledge to work station TM6JUN in Normandy, France. TM6JUN was transmiting from the Utah beach location using PSK31 as the mode. Reflecting back to the scarafices that US troops made on the faithful day of June 6, TM6JUN honored the men with their special event station. Although I was a day late (June 7th) they operated all day on the 6th and the 7th so that eager PSK31 Ops could get this great contact in their logs. A big thanks to TM6JUN and I cannot wait to post a copy of the awesome QSL card that I get from them!

73! de N9SJA SK

KB9JDW’s Awesome Shack

This is a picture of my buddy Coop (KB9JDW’s) awesome ham shack. He has one of the nicest shacks out there and is really designed well. Note the AWESOME Heil boom mic setup!

Some of his equipment:

Icom IC-756 Pro III
Icom IC-910H
Icom R75 Reciever
Heil Boom Mic

Great Shack Coop!!! 73! de N9SJA SK