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Update 29/11/2024: I managed to remember the 5am local (03:00Z) CWT session yesterday, normally I only switch on towards the end of the one hour session but yesterday I worked the full hour. Band conditions on 40m were great with stations, many of them strong from one end of the CW portion of the band to the other end.

I did notice something strange especially towards the beginning of the session, the signals had a strong echo with the echo placed between the dots and dashes. This made it VERY difficult to read the CW especially as many stations participating send at speeds over 40wpm. This kept my QSO rate down quite a bit considering the strong signals as I had a problem getting the call signs correct. It slowly went away and was just about gone by the end of the session.

It was most likely caused by the great conditions, I was receiving the short path signal (directly from the USA) as well as the long path signal (going around the other side of the planed) at slight different times.

It is not often that 40m is so busy with CW signals.

I raised my mast to get the hex beam high for the 09:00Z CWT session but I could not hear a single signal on 20, 15 or 10m, seems like the good conditions did not last long.

My plans for the ARRL 10m contest are set, I am going to simply use the voice keyer in the radio (must still decide on the radio). I did try a few of the voice keyer apps on the internet but I was not impressed. AAVoice simply refuses to run on 3 different computers with an "access violation" error, even when run as administrator. At least 2 others do not have an option to select the sound card you want to use to send the audio to the radio. Seems like this is an area where some work needs to be done. I did (briefly) consider using N1MM+ again but to be honest I am tired of all the bugs!

So, unless I find something else that works in the next week, I will be using my trusty AALog in contest mode, I just need to check how it is going to handle the mode changes along with the generated QSO serial number. 

Update 28/11/2024: I had so much fun during the 2024 CQ WW CW contest that I have decided to compete in one more major contest this year so I am planning on entering the ARRL 10m contest. Unlike the other ARRL contests stations outside the USA can work any other station, not just US stations so that removes the major frustration of hearing rare DX stations you are not allowed to work!

For this contest you can decide if you want to do CW or SSB or even both(Mixed Mode)! Since it is a single band contest I know I will most likely run out of stations to work with my 5W so I am considering entering (for the first time ever in any contest) as a Mixed Mode station. This will allow me to work stations on CW and SSB. How many SSB contacts I will be able to make on 5W remains to be seen, I do not have high hopes....

Since I have not competed in a SSB contest for a very long time, I hate calling CQ on SSB, I need to sort out a few things first.

I made up the correct plugs this morning to allow me to use a headset with boom microphone and a foot switch for PTT. Since there is no time to order a nice Heil headset from the USA I decided to try one of my aviation headsets. Turns out it works well and a few chats on SSB to local stations on 40m gave me great audio reports. So one problem solved.

Next I need to decide how to automate the dreaded CQ calls. I can do it via the logging computer and a sound-card interface or I can do it directly from the radio. Directly from the radio might be the easiest but then I have to move a hand from the keyboard to the radio every time I want to call CQ so I am leaning towards doing it from the computer. I still have 2 weeks to play with this.

Depending on how I am going to handle the CQ calls might also effect the logging software I will use. Right now N1MM+ looks like the best solution but I am so used to AA logger (I use it for everyday QSO's and DX'ing, N1MM+ can get a bit messy/complicated plus it has so many updates and bug fixes it is worse than Microsoft!) I will miss it.

While updating my web page especially the contest reports I decided to create a dedicated page to list only the contest reports and results, not the general contest "rambling" as well. The new summery page can be found HERE.

I also found certificates for 2 ARRL contests I competed again that I have not seen before, here they are.

2023 ALL 10m contest, CW only.


2024 ARRL DX CW contest.

Seems like I am in "Contest Mode" right now, we will see how long it will last......

Update 27/11/2024: I have made quite a few updates to my contest pages, mostly the latest available results for ARRL and CQWW contests as well as the CQWW all time records. The contest main page can be found HERE.

Update 26/11/2024: I have now completed my report on the 2024 CQ WW CW contest, it can be found HERE.

I enjoyed the CQ WW CW contest so much I have decided to compete in the ARRL 10m contest on 14 and 15 December as well. I did enjoy the contest last year (unlike the ARRL DX contests where you can only work US stations during the 10m contest you can work the world) and had a reasonable result, second for CW QRP stations outside the USA.

I will most definitely run QRP again and CW, but I am wondering, maybe I should try SSB as well for a Mixed mode entry? I have not competed in a SSB contest for a VERY long time, I hate calling CQ for hours, but with modern radios it is easy to setup sound files for automated CQ's. In need to think about this! If I do decide to do it I need to setup headphones with a boom microphone to make life easier. It is too late to try and import something but I do have decent aviation headsets that could work, I just need to make an adapter to fit the radio I choose to use. I do have a food pedal I can use for PTT.

Could be fun!

Seems like the results of this contest has been released! I did not see any notice of this but when I was looking at the ARRL web page for information on the upcoming ARRL 10m contest I found the results. The results below shows the scores of the first 20 in the DX QRP category

I am reasonably happy with 8'th place. My hex beam antenna was really low, no more than 7m. This is not a contest I really like because non US stations can only work US stations so chances are I won't be entering again.

While I was checking results I also looked for the CQ WW contests "All time" records, specifically for CW QRP in Zone 38, Africa and South Africa, I found the records below.

CQ WW Zone 38 QRP records.


CQ WW Africa QRP records.


CQ WW South Africa QRP records.

It seems like I hold quite a few of them, also interesting that the 15m record has been standing since 2002.

Ok, enough of this contesting! Time to chase some DX again!

Update 25/11/2024: Well CQ WW CW 2024 is done and dusted! It was fun but also a bit frustrating.

I only started about 2 hours after the start of the contest, my logic was that the bands would be either closed or terrible at 2am local time. Well that turned out to be a mistake! When I switched on there were stations everywhere. I started on 40m, mostly due to the fact that I am really trying to add to my 40m totals. I quickly realized I had a technical issue, every time I transmitted for more than a few seconds my computer keyboard (USB) went crazy, opening browser tabs and even shutting down the computer. And this running 5W? It had never done that before!

I added a few clip-on ferrite chokes to the cable, that helped but it was still not perfect and it messed up/lost a few contacts. A quick check showed that the other bands were fine. I then replaced the USB keyboard with a Bluetooth one and all was fine. Then the fun started!

I will write a full report but to summarize conditions were great on all bands, the frustrating part was that conditions were almost too good! The bands were filled from end to end with strong stations. I managed to work many of them running "search and pounce", that was fun but with search and pounce the rates will always be low, to get high QSO numbers your need to call CQ. The problem was finding a spot to call CQ! Every time I found an open spot and called another, normally strong station, would start calling CQ right on top of me. He most likely could not hear me as it was usually an EU or US station and the bands on their side must have been hectic, they could simply not hear my little 5W signal!

The result was that I never managed to get a run going, this limited my QSO total to 455 contacts. At least I could pick and choose who I worked so I did manage to work 82 (133 band-slot countries) countries including adding a few new band-countries. As I am writing this I have already received QSL's for 3 new band counties including an all-time new one! This made it all worth it!

The hex beam on the new mast worked really well, I managed to work stations, even weak ones, a lot easier than in the past.

10m was the most productive band, I actually think I spent too much time on 10m, often I would run out of stations to work so the QSO rate dropped even further, I should have moved to 15 and 20m more often, lesson learned! 40m was quite productive as well, especially when you consider I only have a dipole on 40m, I managed to work quite a few "rare DX" stations on 40m, hopefully they will QSL to boost my (rather low) 40m totals. I did listen on 80m as well but this time of year (summer) 80m is so full of static that I quickly gave up and moved back to a more productive band.

QSO summery


My QSO distribution.

I have uploaded my log but I don't think I will do well though, way too many VERY strong "QRP" stations on the air, I am pretty sure at least 2 of them that I worked were running way more than 5W, I know what their signals sound like (I work them often) on high power and they sounded no different on 5W..... Sadly there is no real way to control this..... 

Other than the initial keyboard issue (computer logging is a must in a contest to check for duplicates!) everything else worked well. I was running N1MM+ logging software with my homebrew CW keying circuit, also had a CW paddle connected for extra information or repeats. I used my (now trusty after I mixed the firmware releases) Xiegu X6100. With the bands so busy I was worried that the X6100 receiver could be overloading or that it would not be selective enough so at one point I connected the antenna to my IC-7600 that happened to be on the desk. It turned out that if anything the CW filters on the X6100 was better than the IC-7600! So I continued using the X6100 for the rest of the contest.

I will post a link to the full article here when it is complete.

Update 22/11/2024: CQ WW CW time again!

Last year I struggled a bit, I still managed to win country, continent and zone and set new records for all of them but ended up only in 31'st place in the world. I realized that it is very difficult, if not impossible to compete, with QRP, against stations in Europe and North America or at least stations close to those concentrations of stations. When you are far away (at least 8000km) running 5W it is not easy to penetrate the high power "wall", the result is that you cannot really call CQ, the EU/USA stations do not hear you above their local noise so they call right on top of you. You loose your calling frequency very quickly. The result is that you can only really work stations with "Search and Pounce", this keeps your rates down and ultimately your final score.

With this in mind I have decided (at the last moment as usual!) to enter in the QRP all band section, this will allow me to have fun and hopefully add a few QRP DXCC entities to my totals. I decided to not really worry about number of contacts or contest placing and just enjoy it!

With my fixed hex beam up on my new mast and diploes for 80 and 40m at least I know I have reasonably decent antennas.

Let the fun begin!

Update 18/11/2024: I have not been on the air for weeks! We had a second storm soon after I fixed my hex beam, it not only damaged the antennas again but it also broke my mast. It was time to make a new plan. With the hectic winds we have lately I decided I needed a tower/mast that was easy to drop so when we have an incoming storm I can drop the antennas to protect them and the mast. Also if there is damage it would be easier to fix. With the old mast I needed at least 2 helpers to drop it and 2-3 to get it up again.

I managed to find a commercial/military pneumatic mast, it took a while to get to me and even longer to put it up as I could not decide on a way to support it and also where to put it. Well, it is finally up and the fixed hex beam as well as my dipoles are up in the air again!

This mast it taller than my previous one plus I moved it from the low side of our (sloping) property to the high side. The antenna is about 14m above the ground and also about an additional 3m higher due to the slope. With the old setup the hex beam was only about 7m above the ground. I think this is the highest my antennas have ever been!

It only takes a few minutes to drop or raise the antennas, pure luxury!

6 Band hex beam up at around 14m

Fortunately just in time for the CQWW CW contest that starts on 23 November. Now I just need to get my brain into CW gear again!

I will enter as a QRP station again, I have not decided if it will be a single band entry, the best way to do well and get a high placing, or an all band entry that will place me lower but will allow me to (hopefully) add a few band-slot entries to my DXCC totals. As this won't be an "all out" effort, more for fun, I will most likely take the all band option. Let's see what the band conditions will be like on the contest weekend!

Update 16/9/2024: DX conditions have been better the last few days with 10m even opening as early as 9am. Unfortunately activity levels during the week are quite low. My hex beam is still out of commission, my ribs are slowly healing after my fall so maybe I will feel up to it to lower the hex beam this week to fix it. At the moment I am using the EFHW for DX'ing with surprisingly good results. If a station is at least S1 or S2 on CW I can usually work him with 5W.

I have done more tests, and made some modifications to the Bombastik vertical antenna. Results are still mixed, on the higher bands (20m and above) it does work reasonably well for DX but 90% of the time the EFHW is still better. On 80-30m it is still rather poor, maybe I need to look at more radials. Unfortunately it can be quite a pain to put out lots of radials as the want to tangle all the time. It then becomes quicker and easier to just put up a field mast and use the EFHW. The main reason I looked at the vertical was that I was hoping it would be quick and easy to put up in the field, that is not really the case!

The updated review of the Bombastik Vertical antenna can be seen HERE.

Had quite a bit of fun this weekend with the "SOTA weekend", lots of peaks were activated both locally and around the world. With reasonable conditions on the higher bands I managed to works lots of SOTA peaks.

I have decided to play with satellites again, not just QO-100 but also other LEO VHF/UHF satellites. I do have satellite antennas, a dual band 2m/70cm yagi as well as Omni directional base station antennas for 2m and 70cm. I will most likely use my old FT-847 or even the FT-726R with satellite module that I have had for many years but I have never used it. Thanks for the inspirations to get back on the sats Jeets!

Yaesu FT-726R ready for some satellite work.

Update 12/9/2024: Band conditions have been up and down recently, some days fantastic and some days just about dead, for DX contacts anyway. Locally 40m has been great and I have managed to keep my regular morning and evening skeds without any problems. I must say after decades of only chasing DX and competing in contests I have now found out that I really enjoy a good rag-chew with like-minded people.

I think this new found enjoyment of "chatting" on the radio is also the result of now living in a small town in a rural environment, I no longer have so many friends I see on a daily basis and I no longer go to the flying club on a weekend or the amateur radio club. So I now have more of a need to talk to people and there is no better way that chatting to friends on the radio as we at least have one common interest and more often that not more than one.

I find it quite fascinating how many radio amateurs are also interested in photography, astronomy, radio control aircraft and general electronics as well as hiking and the great outdoors, all things I enjoy!

With summer around the corner and the days getting longer I have noticed that the 40m band is opening to North America earlier and earlier again. Last Monday I worked a few stations on 40m CW during the MWT CW session. This morning I managed to get into the shack after my early morning chores (mostly cat related!) in time for the last 30 minutes of the 0300Z CWT session. The band was filled with CW signals and I managed to work a whole bunch of stations in 30 minutes, some stations I have worked many times as well as a few new ones, fantastic! I will make a point of it to be on the air for the full hour next week!

CWT fun on 20m!

I have now spent more time sorting out the problems with the Bombastik copy of the Wolf River Coils vertical antenna. Adjusting the coil for 80m to 30m is still a pain but it works. I have also tried the antenna on 20m to 10m without the coil. By adjusting the length of the whip it is easy to get a low SWR (around 1.2:1) on all the bands.

I did do direct comparisons between this antenna and my dipoles as well as my EFHW. In a few cases the vertical is just as good as the other antennas but most of the time signals are quite a bit weaker on the vertical. My full review can be seen HERE.

Update 8/9/2024: Other than my daily skeds I have not been very active recently. Band conditions have not been great for DX. I did hear the CY9C DX'pedition on 40m a few times but never stronger that S1 so unfortunately no QSO.

Some good news is that conditions are improving, over the last few days I have managed to make some good DX contacts on the higher bands running QRP. 40m is also opening earlier for DX in the mornings so for the first time since May I managed to work some stations during the Thursday morning CWOps CWT sessions on 40m. It was great to hear so many familiar US stations again and it was also great that quite a few of them welcomed me back, great bunch of people!

I have been following a few of the US POTA activators and quite a few of them are using the Wolf River Coil vertical antenna for 80 to 10m with good results. Most of their QSO's are local but I decided it would be worth investigating the antenna for potential POTA/SOTA and portable use. The main advantage I see compared to my current EFHW antenna that I use for these purposes is the fact that you do not need a mast, the antenna is ground mounted.

When you setup a station where there are trees this is not important but a lot of my "away from home" operation if from areas without trees.

I found a local company, "Bombastik" who sells a copy of the Wolf River Coil antenna so I ordered one. It arrived a few days ago but I only managed to set it up yesterday as part of my "back yard field station" for our local Field day contest.

I ordered the complete antenna consisting of the adjustable coil, telescopic whip antenna and radials. I also ordered a mounting bracket to allow me to attach the antenna to a peg driven into the ground as well as an attachment point for the radials and coax.

When I started setting it up I noticed a few issues. Firstly the antenna was not complete, there was no way to attach the whip to the coil, fortunately I had a spare male to male adaptor I could use.

Adapter needed between coil and telescopic antenna

I also found a few problems with the construction of the antenna.

The caps on the coil were both loose, the one so loose it kept on falling off, I had to epoxy it on.

The U-bolts supplied with the mounting bracket did not fit, the hole spacing on the plate was out by about 3mm to I had to enlarge the holes.

The coax fitting on the plate did not fit correctly, the way it was the radials would not actually be connected to the antenna! I again had to drill out a hole to make the fitting seat correctly so that the shield of the coax is actually connected to the plate.

The slide on the coil that is used to adjust the length is too tight, even when fully loosened you cannot slide it up all the way on the coil, the result is that the antenna cannot be tuned for 30m and if you want to use it on bands higher than 30m you have to actually remove the coil, a rather painful operation! The slide is to tight it actually dislodged some of the turns on the coil. when I tried to move it all the way to one end. I also found some glue on the coil making movement difficult. I still need to find a solution for this.

The telescopic whip is very difficult to extend, I could not extend the last section at all!

The radials have crimped connectors on them but the crimping is done do badly a few radials detached the first time I unrolled them! Some of the radials have been damaged during the assembly and crimping. The radials are also rather short and all the same length, fewer radials cut to different bands actually work better. As it arrived it was not possible to adjust for a SWR of better than 1.8:1 or 2:1 on most bands. As a quick test I cut extra radials of length 1/4 wave for 40m and 20m and then it was possible to get an SWR of 1.2:1 on both bands.

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The "less than perfect" radials.

I wonder if the production kit was ever actually assembled and tested?

Once I had solved most of the issues I used the antenna during the Field day, I also put up my usual EFHW antenna on a 8m portable mast to use as a comparison.

Conditions were not great and I ended up only working local stations on 40m and 20m with a few DX stations on 20m. Direct comparisons between the antennas showed that sometimes the vertical was close to the EFHW but in most cases the EFHW was between 1 and 2 S points better in receive and transmit. Maybe the vertical will do better on the higher bands for DX, when conditions allow I will test.

I am busy writing a full review on the antenna, once it is complete I will post the link here.

Overall I am not impressed with the antenna, the construction or performance, chances are that I will stick with my EFHW.

Other than playing with the antenna I had fun during the field day, even managed to work a few local CW stations and had quite a few nice rag-chew QSO's.

I tried a few different radios, the Xiegu X6100 (with brand new firmware), managed to get some really good reports on it even on SSB where more than one station mentioned the great audio! The second radio I used was the Xiegu G90, also a great radio but I do miss a decent noise reduction on it, wish it had the same DNR as the X6100!

The third and final radio I used was my trusty Yaesu FT-891, as always it performed well and the noise reduction as well as narrow CW filters are superb for a radio this size. I have only had the radio for a few months but I have already fallen in love with it.

The G90, FT-891 and ATU-100 tuner setup in the (very dry) garden, had lots of fun!

Update 3/9/2024: I have been playing with the Hermes Lite 2 again and I must say it is a great little radio. The receiver is great and the digital noise reduction is one of the best I have used. The software is also easy to use and seems 100% stable, something I cannot say about the Flex software.

Hermes Lite 2 on 40m CW.

I have recently noticed another SDR radio that looks great. It is the sBitx SDR from India. It comes complete with a 7" touch screen so it can be used stand-alone as it has a Raspberry Pi 4 inside as a computer. I did make local enquiries and found a dealer who is putting in an order from India. He did give me a price but when I asked about approximate delivery times I got no reply, will ask again but maybe I will just import directly, I am happy and keen to support local suppliers but I have been less than impressed by 3 of the local guys, and this guy is one of the 3, time will tell.

Update 27/8/2024: The bands have been up and down recently but yesterday conditions were great, I could already hear and work stations with 5W on 10m by 9am, that has not happened for years! By late afternoon the band suddenly closed but by then I had worked quite a few stations. I did not call CQ but hunted interesting stations and new band-slots. I did manage to add a new QRP CW country, Armenia, I was quite surprised as I though I already had Armenia but LoTW confirmed that it was a new one when I received the QSL this morning.

So that makes 2 new DXCC entity confirmations this week, the other one was CB0ZA, Juan Fernandez Isl. on 30m and 40m, worked them in February this year but only received the confirmation now.

CB0ZA confirmation.

I have been trying to work CY9C, St. Paul's Isl. the last 2 mornings on 40m but so far no luck. I can hear them for about 30 minutes around sunrise but never more than S3 with my noise level also S3. This combined with a huge pile-up and me only running 5W into a wire antenna makes for a very slim chance that I will work them. That is unless the band opens a bit more, will try again tomorrow!

CY9C pileup on 40m, and that is not even all of them it went up to 7.055

Something (bird?) hit my hexbeam the other night and broke all the elements other than 20m, very frustrating as getting it up and down is not easy. I decided to put up a permanent EFHW antenna at home as a backup for the hexbeam. That went well till I had to cut a branch from a tree to make space, the branch got caught on another branch as it fell and swung around knocking the ladder from under me. I ended up falling on the ladder cracking 2 ribs and getting a few bruises. Could have been worse.

Fortunately I managed to get the EFHW up before the pain got to me so I do have something for the higher bands. It is working quite well on 40, 20, 15 and 10m without a tuner and on 30, 17 and 12m with the radio's internal tuner. It is not as good as the hex beam, as expected, but I have already worked some good DX on it with 5W so I am happy.

As soon as my ribs are healed I will sort out the hexbeam.

The last week or so I changed radios again and used the Icom IC-7600 for my morning and evening skeds as well as a bit of DX. It really is a great radio, quality construction and ergonomics I love, should use it more often!

Icom IC-7600 during my morning CW sked.

I noticed that the ARRL finally managed to fix their contest web page so the full results of the ARRL 2023 10m CW contest is now available. I have already posted the results but here it is in a bit more detail. Interesting that I made fewer QSO's than stations who ended up below me in the ranking but my "search and pounce" technique for rare multipliers paid off. I do this not only to try and get a good contest result, my main reason was that I was hunting US states I have not worked before on 10m CW QRP.

ARRL 2024 10m CW contest, top 20 stations.

I have to be less active physically for a while to let me ribs heal, the positive side effect of that is that I will be on the air a bit more! Hopefully with better DX conditions I can add a few more DXCC band-slots.

Update 15/8/2024: Still no luck working the N5J Dx'pedition. I have only heard them once on 17m and the signal was really weak. The last 2 evenings I have heard their pile-up on 40m but could not hear them. Will keep on trying.

Decided to run my FTdx-5000MP yesterday, every time I use it I realize what an amazing radio it is! Every time I move it to the operating position I also remember how heavy it is! Sadly radios are no longer build like this. I did manage to work some DX with it despite the very bad band conditions, the superb receiver and great filters do help.

Yaesu FTdx-5000MP

While recently using the Yaesu FT-950 I decided to add band-scope capabilities to it again. I am saying again because I did have a basic band-scope working with it in the past but it was quite crude and not easy to use. This time I wanted to try the superb SDR Console software along with CAT control.

I added an IF tap, easy as the radio does make internal provision for IF access. The IF tap goes to a RTL SDR dongle that connects to the computer via a USB cable.

It was quite easy to setup the basic functionality, the IF output of the FT-950 is around 69.450 Mhz. I still need to add the CAT control capability but the way I am using it, using the controls on the radio and simply looking at the display on the computer works perfectly without CAT control. I can also listen directly on the computer and use the software based DSP filters on the computer. The CAT software would only be needed if I want to do everything from the computer and not touch the radio. I actually prefer using the controls on the radio, having to do things like scanning across a band or fine-tuning a signal via the computer is not fun, far easier to do it on the radio. This is one of the mayor disadvantages of the full DSR radios like my Flex or Hermes.

40m CW signal as displayed from the FT-950



Two SSB signals on 40m

The added band scope display capability on the FT-950 really makes this great radio even better, it now feels like modern radio but with the great build quality of older equipment.

Update 13/8/2024: I have still not managed to work N5J on 40m, this morning at around 04:30Z I could hear their pileup just above 7.025 but nothing from them, looks like this is not going to happen but I will keep on trying till they shut down their station.

I recently added a EFHW antenna to my collection of antennas at home. On 40m I have compared it to my "wire yagi" and inverted V antennas. Towards the North-West the wire yagi is the clear winner as expected. In all other directions the EFHW is as good as the other antennas and sometimes slightly better. This is great news, the performance on 40m added to the fact that it works well on 20, 15 and 10m makes it a winner as a no-tune multiband antenna at home but more importantly for field station/SOTA/POTA use. I have worked lots of DX on 15m and 10m running 5W from the bush using this antenna so it has now replaced my older fan-dipole for "away from home" use.

Last night and this morning I used my "new still in the box" Yaesu FT-950 for my regular skeds. It is really a great radio, combined with the SDR dongle based band scope it really is a winner, it combines the best of the older generation radios (lots of physical controls) with the ability of modern SDR's to see what is happening on the band and fast QSY'ing.

Yaesu FT-950

I like the fact that this radio, even at full power, runs very cool, I did not hear the fan run once during a 60 minute CW ragchew at full power and the radio still felt cool after the QSO. Most other radios will get quite warm after a session like that. 

Update 12/8/2024(B): Second post for today, more to say than what I posted below!
After all the fun on 15m yesterday I was keen to go chasing some DX today, well, looking at the band conditions it does not look like that is going to happen. A severe geomagnetic storm sure messed up things, oh well, will find something else to keep myself busy with today I suppose.

All HF bands "Poor"!

This morning I decided to change radios again for my early morning CW/SSB chat, still trying to give more radios in the collection some air time. Today I used my old Icom IC-756ProII. I used this radio for a year or two as my main DX'ing and contest radio way back so it felt like meeting an old friend again. Still a great radio!

Icom IC-756ProII on 40m, old but still great.

A couple of years ago I added band-scope capabilities to a few of my radios by using a RTL-SDR dongle. Recent software developments have resulted in more and better software packages to do this so I think I will re-setup my radios with the newer software. The first will most likely be the FT-2000D (It still has the internal RTL-SDR connected to an IF stage tap) or FT-950. So, there, I have found something to do today!

Update 12/8/2024: Yesterday we had some great weather so we ended up going for a short drive and then a slightly longer hike. I did not plan on taking any radio equipment along but at the last moment I grabbed my "field station" backpack. The hike went well so when we got back to the start of the hike where I parked I quickly setup a station.

I had the Yaesu FT-891 and ATU-100 in the backpack along with my favorite EFHW antenna. Since I did not bring one of my portable masts I just threw the antenna over a low tree. Despite being only around 6m high at the highest point it seemed to work well.

The WAE (Worked all Europe) was in full swing so I had many stations to work! I spent most of the time in "Search and Pounce" mode looking for interesting stations but I did call CQ and ended up with a pileup that lasted till I had enough and we needed to leave after about a hour of working the pileup. The higher bands, 10m and 15m were wide open! I was on the air for around 2 hours total and in that time I worked 288 European stations, all while running 5W on CW, I really had fun!

The Yaesu FT-891 doing it's thing.

The little FT-891 is really a great radio, the CW filters are sharp and the CW sounds really "smooth", the DSP noise cancelling is also superb. Combine that with a really well  made radio at a decent price and you have a real winner. It is definitely my radio of choice for SOTA/POTA activations where I do not have to walk far. For longer hikes where weight and size is important I still prefer the little Xiegu X6100.

Xiegu X6100, great little radio.

With spring around the corner I am looking forward to some POTA activations and hikes including some overnight hikes. Sitting next to a camp fire in front of your tent, far away from civilization while working stations around the world running 5W on CW is what got me interested in amateur radio in the beginning, and the magic is still there! 

Update 11/8/2024: A while ago I met John W7OE on a Facebook group. He expressed a wish to have a QSO so we set up a date and time on 20m. Conditions were not great but we managed to have a QSO. Unknown to me John made a recording of the QSO and posted it. Here is a link to the video clip.

W7OE in QSO with ZS2M

It is always great to hear what you sound like on the other side! Thanks for the QSO and the video clip John!

My regular evening CW ragchew with Andy ZS3ADY/ZS6ADY was interrupted for a while as he was moving but he is now settled again so yesterday we resumed our regular sked, great fun chatting for and hour plus just about every night, thanks Andy!

Update 10/8/2024: Still having fun working through my radio collection, giving every radio some "airtime" while enjoying the features of each. At the moment I am playing with the Yaesu FT-1000D and it's later version the FT-2000D. Two older but still superb radios. They don't build them like this anymore!

As much as I enjoy the modern radios and the full SDR radios I have to admit I still prefer a radio where all the controls are on the front panel. No need to go into menus or activate "sub functions" to get to a control. None of the current crop of top-end radios can compete with this.

Yaesu FT-2000D on top of the older FT-1000D

The sunspot number was up to 386 this morning, the highest I have ever seen. Unfortunately with so many solar flares and CME's propagation is actually not that great but I did managed to work some stations in the WAE contest but it was not that easy. Hoping things will improve soon.

Update 9/8/2024: Seems like band conditions have been a bit better recently. I have had some fun on the higher bands working DX mostly on 10m and 15m CW running 5W as usual. I see there is a DX'pedition on Jarvis island at the moment, think I must try and work them on 40m and maybe even 80m, would be nice additions to the DXCC totals!

I have been using the Hermes Lite 2 for most of my DX'ing recently. I must say it is working well, the DNR is exceptional and the CW filters are sharp and do not ring. The dual RX is also a bonus on a radio in this price class. I have also used it on SSB for some local contacts and have had great audio reports running a "computer style" desktop microphone, far better than what I expected.

I did have a look inside the Hermes, the build quality seems fine.

Hermes Lite 2

It seems like the solder work and layout is great, also nice to see that they are using decent Omron relays, not cheap Chinese components.

This morning I had a SSB QSO with a few locals (ZS2BIM and ZS6UT) using my now ancient TR-178 military man pack radio. The output is only 10W but it worked fine and there were no complains on the audio. I now just need to make a cable so that I can connect it to my CW paddle for some CW fun!

TR-178 military man pack radio.

The little 3D printed paddle that I have been using in the field for POTA activations have been working well but it does have a bit of internal play that is not ideal especially for higher speed CW. I do have the superb stainless steel CW paddle for portable use but I decided to print another CW paddle. It is not complete yet but the 3 basic components can be seen below.

3D printed CW paddle


Stainless steel CW paddle, robust with a very nice action.

I have been using a EFHW antenna in the field the last few months. It seems to work at least as well as a dipole and has the added advantage of being multi band. The one I use resonates on 10,15, 20, 40 and 80m. It is also easier to deploy in the field than a dipole. I have enjoyed this antenna so much that I have now installed a similar antenna permanently at home for general use. It seems to work well for both local QSO's and DX, seems like the antenna "farm" is growing....

Update 6/8/2024: Just a few photos and notes from the last 2-3 months that I have not gotten around to post. As per usual I have been playing around with radios in my collection, using them as well as making comparisons, fun especially if the bands are not that great!

Yaesu FTdx-5000MP hunting DX on 20m while listening to some locals on 40m using an Icom IC-7300.

The FTdx-5000MP still remains one of my favorite radios, a stunning receiver and filters with all the controls you need right on the front panel.

Icom IC-7610 compared to the IC-7300


Comparing the great Yaesu FTdx-10 to the Icom IC-7610

I love the IC-7610, the screen is great but I have to admit the build quality and the receiver is better on the FTdx-10, if only the FTdx-10 had dual receivers!

Hermes Lite 2 with AT-100 ATU on top, great combination.


Hermes Lite 2 screenshot, working some locals on 40m SSB.

The tiny Hermes Lite 2 is really a pleasant surprise, fantastic receiver, great filters and noise canceling. Also easy to operate anywhere on the LAN. I just need to make a plan to key the radio in CW mode when not in the shack. Working on a solution that uses a Raspberry Pi.

Update 5/8/2024: I have not posted recently, I have been active but between being busy, bad band conditions and a computer issue I have simply not gotten around to posting. The computer I have been using to edit/update this page died (thanks (not) Microsoft!!) so I had to re-install the software and restore the web page from a backup. So now I have no excuse to do a few updates!

Ok, so here goes, might be s slightly longer update than usual!

The bands have not been great, well, not great for this point in a solar cycle anyway. This is mostly the result of way more than usual CME's on the sun. In between these CME's the bands have been great with 10m allowing some really low power DX'ing.

The ARRL web page was recently "hacked", well, it was actually a ransom ware incident but the result was that LoTW was down for a while. The results of ARRL contests also disappeared, as I am writing this everything is still not sorted out. I did hear that the results of the 2023 ARRL 10m contest was released but it took me a long time to find these results. I did speak to the contest manager at the ARRL but he was not exactly helpful telling me the web page was down, well, I DID know that since I told him that. Anyway, I did manage to find a copy of the ARRL QST magazine that had a summary of the results.

The good news is that I managed to get second place in the CW QRP class, only beaten (by a large margin!) by a station in the Canary Islands, not easy to compete with them as they are a lot closer to the USA plus they only have open water between them and the hams in the USA.

Since I will most likely not compete in ARRL contest again, I find only being able to work US stations frustrating, this will have to be the result I have to settle on. I am quite happy with the result as I did not really try very hard to do well in this contest.

On the equipment front I have not done much but I did acquire a Xiegu G90 receiver to supplement my QRP radio collection. Everyone seems to really love this radio, well, I like it but I am actually not that impressed. If I compare it to the Xiegu X6100 it falls a bit short on a few points.

The X6100 has great DSP noise reduction, the G90 has none. The X6100 has a USB interface so it is easy to use digital modes, and very important to me, Winlink on it.

On the G90 you need to buy an extra interface and even then the functionality is marginal.

The X6100 has an internal battery, the G90 needs an external battery.

The X6100 is about 1/2 the size and weight of the G90.

The X6100 has a stunning screen, the G90's screen is so small they should provide you with a magnifying glass.

The G90 runs quite hot even at low power compared to the X6100.

The G90 does have one advantage, it can output 20W compared to the X6100's 10W, but since I only run 5W this makes no difference to me.

Xiegu G90

Both the radios have the same, superb, ATU, it is fast and can tune just about anything. Overall the G90 is great value for money, especially for the SSB operator but I think for CW the X6100 is simply better.

I have also just acquired a Hermes Lite 2 SDR radio. This is a tiny, 5W all band all mode "black box" SDR radio. The software I am using with it, Thesis, is almost identical to the software I use for my Flex 5000A. This software is superb and the noise cancelling is most likely the best in the business and better than any hardware based noise cancelling. A nice plus is that the radio connects to the computer via the network. Both hard wired Ethernet and Wi-Fi works well from the computer side as long as you connect speed is at least 150Mbs. Since the radio's Ethernet port supports 1Gbs that is easy.

This is a far better solution than the Fire wire connection needed for the Flex. The result is that the software seems 100% stable, unlike the Flex solution that can sometimes hang/crash because of Fire wire issues.

I really like this little radio. To get more than 5W (for SSB) I have paired it with the superb little PA50+ amplifier, this setup can be used like that or it can feed a larger amplifier to give you "legal limit" output if needed.

I think the time has finally come to sell the Flex, I have not used it for months. I will post a photo of the Hermes Lite 2 as soon as I get time to take one. 

Update 10/4/2024: I have been rather busy recently so I have not had time to update here but I have been very active on the air.

On 6 April I managed to active my second POTA park, Baviaans Kloof (ZA-0075). The weather was really miserable with wind and rain for 3 days so I ended up activating from a cabin in the park. Band conditions were not great and my antenna was just the EFHW thrown over the (rather wet) roof of the cabin.

I did manage to make a few local contacts on 40m SSB (and one local CW contact on 40m) but I had far better results on 10m and 12m. All the DX contacts were on CW running 5W. I managed to make contacts into the USA, Europe and even a few into South America. A notable contact was with KP4M in Puerto Rico! I am looking forward to the next activation!

On the DX front I have managed to add no less than 5 new (confirmed) DXCC entities to my QRP CW total! This is the best result I have had in years!

To top it of I managed to work A8OK (Liberia) this morning on 40m for another new one!

After recently having a problem with my hexbeam antenna, the mast fell down in a heavy wind when a guy rope broke, I managed to fix the loose clamp at the rotator and raise the mast again so the antenna is fully functional again, ready for some more DX!

Update 25/3/2024: Yesterday I ran a full charge - discharge - charge cycle on the "22Ah" Lithium battery I bought for POTA. Well, to my not so big surprise my suspicion was confirmed, the "22Ah" battery is actually a 12Ah battery! Seems like you cannot trust the specifications of stuff that is manufactured in China! Shame on you!

I opened up one of the two packs a have only to find a battery, shrink rapped, in the case that does not even fill half the case.

But all is not lost, I operated for more than 2 hours at mostly high power and used 5.2Ah so the pack would be good for at least 4-5 hours of high power use and more than double that for low power use. Perfect for POTA and SOTA use. That combined with the light weight, and maybe smaller size as I am considering removing the "real" battery from the pack to save space, still makes this a great POTA/SOTA battery, just a shame about the lies from the manufacturer (Ingle)!

The "22Ah" battery that is actually 12Ah.

I have registered a few more local parks, as people request new parks I check if they meet the criteria and if they do I register them. Now we just need a few more people activating!

I have not been actively hunting POTA parks, till now anyway, but I was pleasantly surprised to see on the POTA web page that I have already been awarded a certificate for working parks in 5 different DXCC entities!

5 Counties POTA award.

Seems like our autumn is still not here, the weather prediction still shows very hot weather for the next 10 days, I really want to do another activation but not in the heat, will watch the weather carefully.

Next weekend is unfortunately most likely not going to work anyway. It is CQWW WPX SSB weekend. I was not going to compete, it is SSB and not CW, but I have just received a personal invite from the organizers to compete so I think I will, but only a low key effort to hand out some points and multipliers.

Update 23/3/2024: I had fun activating POTA entity ZA-0078 (Suikerkop Hiking trail) yesterday afternoon. It was not an easy activation. Band conditions were down during the time I was activating, I could hear stations on 10 and 15m but they were way down. Eventually I did manage to make a few DX contacts but 2 weeks earlier same time of the day I worked over 100 DX stations from my field station.

There were also weather issues, it rained twice, hard enough and with lightning in the area that I took the antenna down twice and had to find a place to hide. After the second time I went back to my vehicle, fortunately it was parked at the start of the trail, within the 30m specified in the rules so I just completed the activation from inside the car while it was raining outside.

The Yaesu FT-891 worked perfectly, it will now become my field radio of choice unless I am planning a long hike.

The EFHW also worked well. I used the new Spiderbeam 12m fiberglass mast. It worked ok but it is far more flexible than I thought it would be. Even in a modest wind it bent so much that the antenna was no higher than it would have been on my far stiffer, and lighter, Comet 8m mast.

I need to decide on the mast, maybe if I use a dipole that is fixed at 2 ends it would be better but with the EFHW with only one side tied down it bends far more than what I would like even with modest tension on the antenna, the antenna was still sagging quite a bit so I could not put less tension on the antenna.

Look how far the mast bends with the EFHW, and the antenna is not even under much tension!

I am already planning the next activation, it will most likely be ZA-0075, Baviaans Kloof, as I was there during the SARL field day and it was a great location. Back then it was not a registered park but it is now. I will use the same setup but might go back to the Comet mast.

A more complete report on the ZA-0078 Suikerkop Hiking Trail activation can be found HERE.

Update 22/3/2024: Band conditions were not great today, maybe it was fortunate! I have been busy setting up the new radio for POTA, checking the capacity of the batteries and loading software on the new laptop that I want to use for POTA logging and Winlink email in the bush.

The new portable mast (Spiderbeam 12m) arrived today. It is really well made and it seems quite sturdy, I did not have time yet to fully extend it. The mast is really sturdy and long enough for a 40m 1/4 wave vertical antenna.

Unfortunately the mast is quite heavy (3.3kg), far heavier than my Comet mast! So I suppose it will only by usable for activations where there is no hiking involved. So for now when I want to do a bit of hiking in areas with no trees the Comet mast will have to be lugged along. this will limit the length of my hikes in the area where I live due to the lack of trees.

I have started work on the POTA side of this page, it is still very much "work in progress" but the first bits can be seen HERE.

It was an extremely hot day, 41C and even tonight it will be hot. If the temperature drops a bit by tomorrow as it is suppose to I want to activate POTA entity ZA-0078 tomorrow afternoon, let's hope for the best!

Update 21/3/2024: I have been quite busy with POTA (Parks On The Air) lately. After contacting the local represented to try to add a few parks, and getting no reaction, I contacted POTA in the USA. After a lot of discussion I am now happy to announce that I am now the official admin person for POTA South Africa.

After announcing this on a few local forums I immediately had requests to add new parks. So far I have added 5 and there will be lots more in the future. 2 Of the entities I added are Baviaans Kloof, where I was during the SARL field day recently, and the Suikerkop hiking trail, a hiking trail close to me.

Depending on the weather, we are suppose to have a few rainy days over the next week, I will be activating Suikerkop hiking trail soon. I would prefer to do this over a weekend to give the opportunity to as many locals as possible to work the POTA activation.

I have started a separate POTA log for future activations and updates, it can be found HERE.

On the POTA subject, the new radio that I am planning to use for SOTA and POTA, the Yaesu FT-891 has arrived from the USA. I will still using my smaller radios, the FT-817, R928+ and X6100 for activations where I need to do a lot of hiking and weight is really important but for normal POTA activations (and mobile use) the plan is to rather use the FT-891.

I will be running it at 5W on CW most of the time but if conditions are bad or I want to do an SSB activation (every activation will also include SSB so as to not exclude the majority of local, non CW, operators) I do have the option to run up to 100W. The radio is also surprisingly small and compact, I will have no issue to put it in a backpack for short to medium hikes.

First impressions of the radio are great. Build quality is simply so much better than the Chinese radios! The filters work really well and with a 3KHz roofing filter standard as well as IF DSP variable band with it is really a great CW (and SSB) radio. It also has a superb APF (Audio Peak Filter) that is simply amazing to dig out a weak CW signal, well done Yaesu!

First QSO's with the FT-891, the very first one was with a station in Qatar for a new one on 12m.

Once I had the radio unpacked and connected I spent some time getting to know it, first few contacts on 10 and 12m included a new band-slot, Qatar on 12m plus some other good DX. I also spent about 30 minutes in the evening (9pm to 10pm local time) CWT session and it performed perfectly.

A look inside the FT-891, top.


Bottom view.


Dual fans, the radio is running quite cool even at 100W.


Final amplifier section, very well made.

The construction and general layout of the radio is great, you can see Yaesu have been in the business for a very long time.

A few quick checks show that the radio draws around 700mA in receive, a bit more than the X6100 at 450mA but not enough to make a noticeable difference. Even at full power it only draws around 17.5A so that is great, running at 5W we are sitting at below 2A, far better than radios like the IC-7300 or my older FT-897.

Surprisingly the radio will produce over 120W on the few bands I checked, I will never use it at those levels but it is very different from many other radios that struggle to produce the 100W they are advertised as being capable of producing.

This morning I used it for the full 1 hour CWT session on 40m and I loved it, I can see that I will never wish I had a "decent" radio again when I am in the bush. After the initial test running on a power supply in the shack I connected the radio to one of the new Lithium battery packs I ordered for POTA and SOTA activities. The batteries are great, they are really compact and far lighter than expected. I now need to do a few tests to see how much operating time I can get out of them but after running the very busy 1 hour CWT session this morning rough calculations tell me that I will get more than 6 hours of operating time  (on high power) on a charge, and that is when I spend a lot of time transmitting.

The advertised capacity of the batteries are 22Ah, I must say I am a bit suspicious of that due to the light weight but I will run one down to its cut-off limit as set by the BMS, this is at 75% discharge, and then charge it with my Victron charger that will show me how much it put back into the battery.

A nice feature I have noticed on the Lithium packs are that they hold their voltage far better under load than the older lead acid batteries I used in the past when I needed more capacity than what my (model aircraft) LiPo packs could provide. Lead acid batteries dip below 12V under load very quickly but with the same load the Lithium packs sit at over 13V for hours.

Fun times! I am also expecting a light, portable composite 12m mast to be delivered over the next few days. It is both taller and much lighter than the 8m Comet mast I have been using so it should be far easier to carry on the longer hikes.

Update 14/3/2024: The results of the 2023 CQWW CW contest has now been released. As expected it did not go as well as I hoped. The extreme QRM that I had on the second day just as the bands started to open really hurt my results. Anyway, that is now history, you can read the full report on the contest, and the challenges I faced, HERE.

Here are the Results:

31'st Place in the world (As an indication of how bad things were, I have won this contest in the past)
First in Africa
First in South Africa
First Zone 38
New South African, African and Zone 38 records.

Certificate received

Well, hopefully things will be better next time, it was still fun!

On a different note, as I posted a while ago I have been looking for a Yaesu FT-891, for mobile and portable use, for quite a while. I got a lead on one in an estate a few days ago but it turns out it was not available. So I decided there is little change of finding one locally, the easy solution was to order one from the USA. Well I placed the order yesterday, it should be here 20 March, looking forward to taking it out on a POTA or SOTA activation soon.

Since I might want to run slightly higher power with this radio, specifically on SSB as 5W SSB on a low antenna does not really give great local results, I also need to look at the battery I will use with this setup. I have found a few options locally, a 18-22Ah Lithium pack seems to be the solution, will order something soon. I just need to look at the size, shape and weight of these packs to decide on one that will fit in my backpack best.

Update 11/3/2024: The day after Field day!

It was fun! The weather was great, not too hot with a light breeze to keep things cool. The 5km hike was fun, everything I needed for camping was in my normal backpack and I also carried a small "pouch" with my radio equipment. I ended up taking the Xiegu X6100 but I left the Micro PA50 amplifier behind, mostly due to the fact that I did not feel like carrying the extra batteries it would need, it turned put to be a good decision as I never felt I needed more than 5W, the X6100 can do up to 10W with an external battery so I did have some power (1/2 S point) in reserve.

Logging was done on an iPad. I actually wanted to do paper logging but forgot the paper and pen at home! Fortunately I had the iPad with me, I use it for navigation and to have something to read when I am in the tent at night.

The antenna I took was the (now well loved) 40m EFHW kept aloft with my 8m Comet mast. This is one thing I need to change, this mast is fantastic but simply too heavy and clumsy to carry. Time for a nice compact carbon fiber mast!

I found a nice spot to camp and put up my station below a wild prune tree/bush. It is supposed to be a tree but they never grow high in this area, there was just enough height to sit below it. It gave me great protection from the sun.

The view from my operation position. Yes, it is a very dry area!

I soon had the antenna up and the station on the air. My first contacts were with local Field day stations on 40m SSB. The setup was working well so soon I had everyone logged I could hear. I then had a nice long chat to a few friends, was fantastic to hear all the stations so strong, my noise level on 40m was below S1!

Late afternoon I moved to 10m CW and soon the DX was rolling in, there was a South American contest running, I seemed to have great propagation into South America so by the time my batteries were almost flat (I did not expect so many contacts so I miss calculated and did not bring enough batteries, lesson learned!) I had more than 100 DX qso's as well as a few nice DX chats in the log. Great fun!

My very basic station in action!

After a good night's sleep, complete with Owls and Jackals visiting, I managed to make a few more CW DX contacts on 40m before the radio complained about the batteries.

As it turned out I had the radio's "cut off" voltage level set a bit high, checking the batteries at home showed that they were still at around 60% charge level, another lesson learned.

It was great fun, the scenery, peace and quiet and the extremely low levels of noise on the bands made it special. I will be taking my radio hiking again soon!


Update 7/3/2024: With field day getting close now (in 2 days time) I was really happy to received a parcel this morning containing the radio I am hoping to take hiking with me for this field day.

I decided to get a Xiegu X6100 for a couple of reasons but the main ones are that it is nice and compact, it has an internal battery that allows you to operate 2 to 3 hours (or use an external battery) as well as an internal antenna tuner. The fact that it is a modern SDR and runs Linux (so you can modify the open source firmware) were also things that helped me make the decision.

First impressions are great, it feels like a well built solid radio and the receiver sounds great! I did not waste much time to get it connected and within minutes of having it on the air I had made a few DX contacts on 10 and 15m. running 5W CW I think I am going to like this one!

Solid feel, great (quiet) RX with a nice bright display.

Along with the order I also received the little Micro PA50, a 50W, auto PTT sensing and auto band switching amplifier. A perfect match for the small radios like the FT-817, R928+ and now the X6100 in my collection. 50W is perfect for that occasion when 5W is simply not enough and you MUST make the contact. 50W is only 1/2 of an S point below a100W radio so the small size and low current draw (measured at 7.8A for 55W output) makes it perfect for portable and hiking use. It will produce full output with only 2 to 3W of drive so it can be used with any small transceiver.

Micro PA50, displays output power, SWR, band, voltage and Final temperature.


X6100 with PA50 on the bench, also note new "Pico" 3D printed CW paddle, ready for the first hike!

Time to start packing for Field day! My plan is do an overnight hike into the Baviaans Nature conservation area. This is also WWFF entity ZSFF-0057 so I am planning on activating that as well. I did contact the local POTA representative to add Baviaans to the POTA list but after a week of no reply I gave up on POTA, seems like it is dead in South Africa? Maybe we just need someone else to run it?

Update 4/3/2024: I have not posted any updates for a while, that is mostly due to being rather busy but at least the busy includes amateur radio! I spend quite a bit of time on the air every day, mostly chasing DX but also chatting to friends.

On the DX front I finally, after a year, received my QSL confirmations for 2 contacts I made with 9U5R (Burundi) on 10 and 15m, this is a, all time new one on QRP CW so that was great!

9U5R QSL card

Another new one, but only on 15m, was 8Q7AM (Maldives), slowly the confirmations are coming in.

Update 27/2/2024: I recently received 2 QSL's from OX7AM, Alex in Kangerfussuaq Greenland, the 20m is not new but the 40m is, slowly but surely the 40m total is increasing, it is really not easy on 40m running 5W competing with the 1KW+ station but it is fun!

The OX7AM station in Greenland.

I also recently received a few QSL's from another Alex, this time CT8/VE3MA in the Azores, this included a new one on 20m CW QRP, quite surprising as I was sure I had worked Azores on all bands before, it just shows that when you hear a station work him, no loss if it is a duplicate.

The bands have been up and down, they will be really great with signals everywhere then suddenly we have a solar eruption and then all goes quiet, after a while, sometimes days, then weak signals appear again, they slowly build till the next eruption!

We have a local field day coming up on 9 and 10 March, I think it will be fun to do a full field day again so I have been looking for potential sites. On a drive this morning I think I found an ideal spot, it is on a bit of a hill and there is even a low tree/bush that can give some shade, something that can be really scarce around here!

Our seasons are turning with more cool days but we still have one or two really hot days every week, I am really hoping the 8'th and 9'th will be cool days else it won't be fun, shade or not, I have decided that if the predicted max temperature is much above 35C I will rather stay at home but I really hope that is not the case, I have already invested quite a bit to be ready for this field day.

I still need to decide on equipment to take, since the spot I have in mind will require a bit of a hike I do not want to carry too much equipment. Since the plan is to overnight I also need to carry a tent and sleeping bag as well as food and water. This pretty much rules out a larger 100W radio, even if I had the FT-891 already the 100W would require a large battery as I want the ability to stay on the air for the full 24 hours.

Even at reduced power levels 100W radios still draw more current than QRP radios at the same power. This is mostly due to the bias current requirements of transistors capable of 100W compared to transistors capable of 5-10W. The larger radios also draw far more power on receive than the smaller radios,

Since I want to power my field station with a few smaller (2.2Ah) batteries that I already have this rules out all my larger radios. With the R928+ "awaiting spares" (Chinese clone finals died) it leaves my with only the FT-817. I now it will work but I also know I will miss the decent CW filters and QRM/N fighting tools that I have been spoiled with recently. BTW, my field day will be mostly CW but I will also use SSB when the CW stations I can work run out.

This lead me to look for a modern (SDR?) QRP radio that would be available on short notice (less than 2 weeks till the field ay plus I need to get to know the radio first). The only radio that I could find that would seem to offer the performance I need, the light weight (800g including the internal 3Ah battery and auto tuner), low current consumption (around 350 mA in receive) AND is available is the cute little Xiegu X6100.

I have read many reviews and watched many videos on this radio, some guys love it and some hate it. The "problems" guys have seem to be mostly associated with BCI (broadcast band interference from powerful MW commercial stations). Since we no longer have stations like that in my part of the world it is simply not an issue.

There were also many complaints about missing features (that were advertised) and things not working as they should. Later videos and reviews show that these issues have been sorted out with firmware updates.  The radio is really interesting in that it actually runs Linux so you can do a lot with it and there is already a "third party, open source" firmware/OS available for it.

Those who know me well will know my long time involvement and love for Linux so this feature alone made the decision easy!

So I have a Xiegu X6100 on order and it will be shipped (from a local supplier) today, with a bit of luck I might have it by the weekend or just after the weekend.

I also ordered (another!) small paddle, what can I say, still searching for the ultimate tiny CW paddle.

Xiegu X6100

For the field station I will used the EFHW (End Fed Halve Wave) antenna kept aloft by my Comet 8m portable mast. After many years of using dipoles and fan dipoles for portable and field stations I have now fallen in love with the EFHW antenna! I like it so much I am planning on putting up a heavy duty version for 80/40/20/15/10m at home as a backup to my normal antennas.

Recent tests with a friend and some DX showed that on 40m at least the EFHW antenna, with it's  highest point at about 5m, works as well as my 40m dipole at 12m, plus it also covers other bands so it seems like the clear winner.

Update 19/2/2024: The day after the ARRL DX CW contest!

It was fun! But it was also frustrating, my usual complaint with the ARRL contests still stands, it is really frustrating, as a non North American station, that you can only work North American (US and Canada) stations, when you hear all these "rare DX" stations but you cannot work them it is not fun. The ARRL should consider a slight change, make all the US/Canadian states/provinces multipliers but still allow contacts between "non" stations, even if it is just 1 point (as apposed to 3) per contact.

Unless that change is made as suggested by many non US stations this will be my last ARRL contest.

I entered the single operator, non assisted, all band, QRP class. Since my R928+ has an issue, zero output and I really wanted to use a radio with a spectrum scope, I ended up using the IC-7300 turned down to 5W, antennas were a phased dipole (2 element wire yagi) on 40m and a Hex beam on 20m, 15m and 10m.

All the equipment worked well, other than the hexbeam that came loose again from the pipe connecting it to the rotator, this is the only weak point in an otherwise great antenna! This did not cause much trouble on Saturday as there was no wind but on Sunday the wind was howling so the antenna was turning all the time. Eventually I went outside and threw a rope over one of the legs so that I could prevent the swinging. This helped and my "QSB" immediately went away!

I am not going to write the full report here, if you are interested you can see more detail HERE.

A quick summary, running QRP I managed to work 415 stations, this makes this contest the second highest number of QSO's, by a small margin, of all QRP contests I have done. The top one still stands firm at over 1000 QSO's over a weekend.

Very basic setup for the ARRL DX CW contest.

On the DX front conditions have be good, I have worked quite a few DX stations the last few days. I have also received my QSLcard from TZ4AM (Mali) for a new one on 40m.

TZ4AM QSL

Not much new on the equipment front, I have not managed to find a Yaesu FT-891 locally so it looks like I will have to import. I want this compact radio for SOTA/POTA activations as well as mobile work. On that note, there is a chance that I might be involved in a DX'pedition to Malawi and maybe other countries in the region, if/when there are any developments I will post them here.

Update 14/2/2024: I have been active on the air every day since my last report but I have simply not gotten around to writing about it!

The bands have been up and down but good enough that everyday produced at least some DX. Recent QSL's include a new one from Saudi Arabia on 12m plus the normal bunch of QSL's from Europe and North America.

Interesting DX included CB0ZA from Juan Fernandez Isl. This is a new one for me! Yesterday morning I heard their pile-up on 30m, it took me a while to find them as they were very weak but eventually I manage to identify the station causing the pileup, they were around S1 often dropping below the noise floor but I was really happy to hear them.

It took me 25 minutes of careful listening to finally get a reply from them with my 5W into a dipole, I was REALLY happy to hear my call sign!

This morning I heard a pileup on 40m, when I finally found them they were even weaker, could only hear them every now and then as there was heavy QSB. Eventually, I was just about to give up as the band was closing, in fact I already got up from my chair, I gave one last call and they came back to me! A new DXCC entity on CW QRP plus 2 band slots!

CB0ZA on Robinson Crusoe Isle, one of the islands in the Juan Fernandez group.


Great to see my 2 QSO's in their log!

My little "portable/SOTA/POTA" paddle arrived today from China. I must say I was worried about the quality (it was cheap!) but it is  actually a very nicely made paddle and I am sure it will last a very long time!

New paddle attached (via the magnets on the bottom) to my trusty FT-817.

Now we just need some cooler weather for a few SOTA/POTA activations!

On that note, I have been using the R928+ and sometimes the FT-817 for portable operations recently. Well, I have finally had enough of the R928+, it has had some issues in the past but now, suddenly, it has zero output, I assume the finals are gone. I will order new finals but I really do not trust this radio any longer, might use it "in the garden" but not going to take it to the bush only to have some problem with it.

I have decided to get a modern, reliable radio from one of the big 3 brands. Since Kenwood no longer makes mobile HF radios they are out of the picture. I did consider the Icom IC-705 but it is rather expensive and with the large screen not that robust. I have also decided I want a radio that can do 100W, that will make it usable as a mobile radio and when you are on a summit with poor propagation the 100W can save the day.

I have decided to get a Yaesu FT-891, it is solidly build (it is a Yaesu after all! No flimsy knobs!), it is not expensive and it has decent filters plus CW and SSB "call" memories, perfect for expedition and contest use in the field. It is also quite small and compact, smaller than for example an IC-705 plus an amplifier.

The only problem is where to find one, I have posted "Wanted" adverts locally but I do not have much hope so it looks like I will end up ordering it from the USA, I love this "Global village" world we are living in!  

Update 7/2/2024: I have been too busy lately to update this page but I have been quite active on the ham bands. I DX just about every morning as well as in the afternoon, that is in addition to my daily sked on 40m.

Band conditions have been good most of the time so there is always something to work, the only problem for me has been the heat in the shack, we have had some really hot weather recently, saw 45C a few days ago, since I do not have air-conditioning in the shack, and it is on the north-east corner of the house, always sun facing, it can get really hot. This has limited my operating times to early morning and evening. It is time to install air-conditioning in my shack!

I have been considering a new radio to use for portable setup, specifically for SOTA/HOTA/POTA use. In the past I used one of my QRP radios for this but to be honest this makes it quite hard to reach the required number of contacts to make it a valid activation. Sure, in the USA and Europe people do that all the time, but here in dark Africa we simply do not have enough guys on the air close enough to you for that to work. It is also not fair to the chasers who struggle to hear your weak signal especially if they live in the city with high QRM levels. I love QRP but there is a place for QRO as well, 100W and a wire can also be a challenge!

So I am really looking for a nice compact radio, that I can carry in a backpack, that does not draw too much current when only receiving, and can output from 5 to 100W when needed. A decent receiver with good CW filters will be a plus! This will be both a CW and SSB radio as we simply do not have enough local CW operators, who are active, to make CW only activations worth it.

I did consider the IC-706mk2G that I had in the past, I can find one locally at a reasonable price, but they are now old technology with a less than stellar receiver, no decent filters and they draw quite a bit of current (up to 2A) even when just receiving. They are also quite bulky by modern standards.

A radio that could well tick all the boxes is the Yaesu FT-891, it seems to be nice and compact, has been tested to only draw around 1A on receive, is well built and robust and has decent filters. Now I just need to find one!

Talking about a portable station, I have now received the 2 CW paddles that I considered for portable use. They are both fantastic but also larger and heavier that I would like. The Vibroplex Vibracube is stunning, but far too fragile and heavy for portable work! It has now found a permanent place in the shack.

Vibroplex Vibracube, stunning to use but heavy and bulky.

The little Kent single lever paddle is quite a bit smaller and more compact, but still quite heavy. I could use when I do not have to carry the equipment far, it has a beautiful action and even though I was worried that I would have to relearn how to use it because it is a single lever paddle it turns out to be no problem. Seems like I do not use the double lever "squeeze both at the same time" feature anyway. I simply love this paddle and I am sure I am going to use it often!

Kent single lever paddle, smooth as butter and a real pleasure to use!

So I am still waiting for my little stainless steel hand-held paddle from China, no idea when it will get here, till then I think I will simply 3D print a paddle again. I found a design that does not use a "pen spring", a point of failure for me in the past so I will print one before my next portable activation. I think it will be a while before that happens, it is simply too hot this time of the year to go hiking.

I have been listening on the CW segments of the bands a lot lately and I have noticed a few things that I want to bring to operators, mostly local and mostly new, attention, some things they do not know or were taught incorrectly and that have now become a (bad) habit. I was going to do it here but I think it warrants a separate article that I can submit to the local magazine as well. If/when I do that I will post the link here.

Update 1/2/2024: February already, time flies! The last few days band conditions have been great. Yesterday afternoon during the CWT session I managed to make 34 QSO's in 45 minutes on 10m, I have not heard that many stations on 10m for a very long time. This morning at 0300Z 40m was just as busy, I managed to work 39 stations in an hour, not bad for 5W and a wire antenna!

Lots of CW signals on 40m.

I am still waiting for my little "portable" CW paddle from China but I also found 2 nice compact paddles locally, both could be used in the shack or field and should be here long before the unit from China that is coming via the proverbial "Long boat from China".

Kent single paddle.


Vibroplex "Vibracube" with jewel bearings

I have never used a single paddle before but I am sure I will get used to it quickly.

The cable with the 10 pin mini DIN plug I ordered for the Yaesu FTdx-10 arrived this morning.

The plug is needed if you want to connect a linear to the radio or in my case connect a QRM Eliminator that needs a PTT signal from the radio. I have been using the radio without the QRM Eliminator with good results but I really want the ability to connect it if needed.

I can now also connect a linear amplifier for local SSB chats or when joining nets with people spread over a large area, often some people will have very high local noise and/or terrible antennas. Using an amplifier in these cases makes it easier for everyone.

Update 30/1/2024: The last few days I have only managed to work a few DX stations every day, in general only one band was open at any time with mostly weak signals. Well that changed today! I decided to do a quick scan across the bands at about 14:00Z, to my surprise I could hear and work strong stations from 20m to 10m with 12m producing the strongest signals.

I even managed to work a few stations on 17m, a band that I have always struggled with from this location due to high noise. I must say it is really nice to have a directional antenna that works on 12m and 17m, for more than 25 years I only had dipoles on those bands.

I have had a few nice QSL cards recently, a new one was Finland on 12m (still many new ones to work on 12m!) and Alaska on 40m. Slowly but surely the totals are growing, lots of fun especially when there are so many bands and DX stations to choose from.

I recently acquired a new solid state amplifier that I want to use for local nets and chatting to my buddies. In the past I have usually used a Kenwood TL-922 and it works well but we often jump around between bands to find the best propagation and with a tube amplifier that is a pain as you need to re-tune every time you change bands.

I did use my Metron T1000 amplifier for a while but it is a 12V amplifier so you need to provide it with 12V at 80A, not easy. The amplifier is also not fan cooled so with long overs it can get quite hot, and I dislike hot equipment!

Anyway, I found a Transworld TW500A amplifier, it is exactly the same amplifier as the Metron but this one has a 15V 100A switch mode power supply built-in and it is fan-cooled, just what I was looking for!

Transworld TW500A amplifier.

The amplifier produces a clean 600W when driven with 25 to 30W depending on the band. It also seems to be running nice and cool, looking forward to using it on SSB for some rag-chewing and our weekly AWA net.

This amplifier was upgraded for a heavy linear power supply to a nice and compact switching power supply reducing the weight by about 60%, a great idea that got me thinking, maybe I should do the same to my Transworld T1000 amplifier? That amplifier has a power supply problem at the moment, I can most likely fix it but it weighs around 60km so it is not fun to work on! It is so heavy because it is rated at 1Kw with 100% duty cycle on RTTY, was used in it's previous life for RTTY communication between an embassy and it's  home country.

The Metron T1000 will now be used for portable/field station use if high power is needed or maybe on the yacht.

Update 24/1/2024: I have been trying to work the Clipperton Island DX'pedition the last few days but so far no luck. I have heard them 2 mornings on 30m and 40m but they were extremely weak and they had huge pileups, on 30m this morning the pileup was nearly 40Khz wide.

Unfortunately I do not think there is much chance that I will work them, not with 5W and most likely not even 100W or more. Their operating schedule is such that they are on bands at times when we have little or no propagation on those bands. On all other bands other than 30m and 40m that they have been active on I have only been able to hear the pile-up and not them. This combined with the fact that they are "behind" South America from here, close to the USA and always calling "EU" shows that they have optimized their setup for the USA and EU. They have forgotten about Africa and the rest of the world.

Propagation prediction show that the best band to work them from here, when I take their operating schedule into account is 30m and even on 30m there is a "shadow" in the propagation behind South America from here.

Propagation towards Clipperton on 40m, you can see the propagation "shadow" if you look towards central America in the Pacific, that is where Clipperton is.


And the same on 30m

So that is just the way it is, would have loved to work them on CW QRP but not going to spend too much time trying unless they suddenly get loud.

I did receive QSL's for Cameroon (TJ9MD) on 10m and 40m, both new on CW QRP and also an all-time new one on CW QRP.

On a different note, after the issues I had with my small CW paddle, the one I use when in the field, I decided to look for something new. I wanted something compact but also robust. Well I found a very nice unit made from stainless steel. It uses magnets to attach to something like your radio and it also uses magnets to provide the "tension" so no more springs to break!

Small CW paddle.


Attached to a radio, you can also just hold it in your left hand like I am used to doing.

The only problem with this paddle is that the only shipping option was surface mail from China so it is going to take a while to get here. The spares I recently ordered from the same source for my QRM Eliminator too just over 2 weeks to get here, we will see.

I have been using a MFJ antenna analyzer for years and it works well but it has limitations, it is large and bulky, the one I have does not cover VHF and UHF and it can only really show you SWR and impedance. The new generation of nanoVNA's (VNA = Vector Network Analyzer) are really amazing, they can do so much, from basic SWR measurement all the way to Smith charts. They can also be used to test feed line and design and test coils and antenna traps.

I had an old nanoVNA but it was one of the first devices and quite crude, also not reliable as it often failed to boot and sometimes gave wild readings. So I decided to get a new one and it arrived yesterday.

What a beautiful piece of equipment! I had it going quickly and what a pleasure to use!

Nicely packaged, has the feel of "quality" that my old one never had, that was just an open PCB!


Complete with all accessories needed for calibration.


Nicely built.


Just using the simple SWR measurement, my 40m dipole, 1.094:1 SWR at 7.050MHz, perfect for CW.


My hex beam, dips nicely on all 6 bands!

With this nanoVNA I can now test my antennas far better and it is small and compact enough to be taken into the field as well. I can now also setup my new and as yet unused 2m/70cm yagi, the one I want to put up on the mast to try and get into the coastal repeater network.

Update 21/1/2024: Last night after my evening CW chat I had to help someone with a computer, while helping I had a bit too much coffee, well 2 cups that time of the day does not work well if I want to sleep, anyway, I ended up going back, quite late, to the shack after the guest left. To my amazement 40m was filled with DX stations and I could also hear a lot of signals on 20m.

This was my first chance to use the FTdx-10 in crowded and noisy band conditions. It really performed well! It is when the band gets busy like this and you want to work weak signals close to strong signals that you really see the difference between a radio like the FTdx-10 and something like an IC-7300 or other older radio. I switched between the FTdx-10 and the IC-7300 a few times and the difference was really obvious on weak signals. When you want to work strong signals on a less crowded band it is easy to think the receivers are the same but they are NOT!

Working weak signals on 20m

In the image above you can see, on the AF-FFT display bottom right, 2 CW signals within the same narrow band-pass filter, right next to them but outside the filter is a strong carrier. The signals were both easy to copy and you could separate them with either a notch filter, you notch out the unwanted one, or by narrowing the filter to 50Hz, on the IC-7300 those signals sounded like one carrier that was un-readable plus they were very weak because the close carrier de-sensitized the receiver, I could simply not separate them or copy what they were sending, if I did not hear and see them on the FTdx-10 I would never have known there were 2 signals and that both were workable.

Please understand that I am not saying the IC-7300 radio is a bad radio! It is a great radio and also great value for money, 90% of hams will be more than happy with it, it is simply a case of the FTdx-10 being really special, as reported by the Sherwood Lab report. I am simply comparing these 2 radios as they are similar in size and price range. I think next time i find the band so busy I must compare the FTdx-10 to the IC-7610.

Now I am really starting to wonder how much better the FTdx-101MP will be than my much loved FTdx-5000MP.

This morning 40m was really busy again, a Hungarian contest and lots of other stations calling DX. It was fun to work a bunch of stations including a CX5 (Uruguay) station and a few in Europe plus the usual stations from the USA.

Early morning CW fun on 40m

Update 20/1/2024: I just got back from the bush after the SARL QRP contest. To be honest it was a total waste of time! The main problem was the timing of the contest, from 9:30 local time till 10:30 on 40m and then from 10:30 till 11:30 on 20m. The problem is 40m closes at around 8am in the morning and only opens again after 4pm, 20m only opens in the afternoon.

So whoever decided on using these time slots for a QRP contest is totally clueless as far as propagation goes!

Anyway, even though I only made 4 contacts I am happy with my station, everything worked well and it was easy to setup. The only thing that failed was my portable station CW paddle, the return spring broke but it had issues before so it is time to retire it. I really need a new compact CW paddle! Fortunately the FT-817 supports "microphone keying", you can use the up and down keys on the microphone to send dots and dashes, actually works quite well once you get used to it. It does limit my sending speed to around 22-25wpm but for local contests that is fine, I have never worked a local station at faster speeds than that anyway.

I did take a few photos of my portable station as I was planning a small report on the contest, now I am not so sure it is worth the effort so I might as well post a few photos here.

Ready for the contest, Yaesu FT-917, ATU-100 tuner (was not needed but you never know with a new antenna), feeding a EFHW antenna in an inverted L configuration kept aloft with a Comet 8m portable mast. Power provided by 2.2Ah 3S LiPo batteries, turned out that 1 was enough despite a LOT of CQ calling. Battery voltage monitored on a cell level.


Other than the mast everything fits into this small backpack.


Radio showing voltage after lots of calling, I would normally change the battery when it drops below 11.4V

The next round of this QRP contest is later during the day and in autumn so it might give better results. I will check propagation during the selected time slots closer to the contest before making a call if it would be worth the effort to compete or if it will be a waste of time again like this round.

Update 19/1/2024: Yesterday late afternoon a nice cool breeze came up so I decided to put up the EFHW antenna on the Comet mast in the garden. There is a local QRP contest on Saturday so I decided I might just enter and running a field or portable station is more fun so I needed to test the antenna.

It went up easy and a quick scan with the MFJ antenna analyzer showed that it was still a bit long, as expected but that the SWR on 40, 20 and 15m was fine. On 40m in the CW section it was 1.5:1 so I decided to try using the antenna for my evening 40m CW QSO. Initially I tested the antenna with the IC-7300 so that I could use the internal tuner but later I decided to run the R928+ to simulate the portable station running from the small 2.2Ah LiPo batteries.

Before it was time for my 40m QSO I managed to make a few DX contacts on 20m running 5W from the R928+ and the EFHW sitting under a tree in the garden, fun! Need to do this more often!

Testing the EFHW in the garden.

My 40m QSO went well (well other than a huge wind storm that came up and drove me back inside the house after an hour, I had to hold onto the radio to prevent it from blowing away plus it got really cold!) with signal strengths very similar to what I normally get on my 40m dipole that is quite a bit higher, this is great news so the decision was made to go and scout for a nice spot to put up my portable station for the contest.

I found a nice spot this morning, it is under a tree on a small hill, it requires a bit of hiking but not too much. Since I will be traveling light with only a small backpack and my 8m Comet mast it is not a problem.

The only problem is the predicted weather for Saturday, with a max temp of at least 41C getting up in the morning will be fine but by the time I need to go back, around lunch time, it is going to be VERY hot, will only make the final go/no-go decision in the morning. Hopefully I will have something interesting to report tomorrow.

Update 18/1/2024: I had fun during the CWT session this morning, the band I chose, 40m, was not quite open when we started but towards the end of the session signals were stronger. Again it was not that easy to work stations running 5W but by the end of the session I had 22 contacts in the log.

The FTdx-10 did well and I can see that it would be a great radio for "casual" contests where you do not need a second receiver. I am glad I decided to make up a temporary plug that fits the FTdx-10 for my "ALC power controller", this little device simply feeds a negative voltage of between 0V and -4V into the ALC port of any radio. Since the voltage is adjustable this allows you to control the output of the radio. In the case of the FTdx-10 that has a minimum output of 5W it allows you to drop the power even lower as I often want to drop the power below 5W to 1W for QRPp work.

It is amazing what you can work with only 1W and a decent antenna when the higher bands are open. I really need to get a few 10 pin mini DIN plugs so that I can run accessories on the FTdx-10, why Yaesu decided to used this obscure plug only they will know. None of the local electronic component suppliers list the 10 pin mini DIN plug.

Just after breakfast I received a message that my package containing the IC-7300 and the AH-4 tuner had arrived. Once in the shack I checked everything and all was well. The IC-7300 still has the plastic protection over the face. I switched it on to check the firmware, it has the latest. The future of this radio has not been decided, I might keep it or most likely sell it again, I do not really need 2 IC-7300's!

Then there were 2, old and new IC-7300

As I mentioned before the real reason for purchasing the package deal was to get the Icom AH-4 external tuner. I want to use this tuner on the yacht and it could also be used for a mobile installation with a standard 102" whip. I hope to test it soon.

Inside of the Icom AH-4 tuner.

I had planned to do a temporary install of my newly constructed EFLW antenna today but with the new  arrivals in the shack I did not get around to it. I want to use the antenna for field/portable stations but I first want to test it, when I get a chance, and it is not too hot like it is at the moment. I want to throw the antenna over a tree and then setup my portable station (Yaesu FT-817 or R928+) under the tree and make a few contacts. Might even have my daily 40m CW chat from under the tree in the garden!

The idea is to not only test the antenna but also the radio, tuner and power supply. The power will be provided by LiPo batteries that normally does service in my RC aircraft. I also want to test the little RF amplifier I assembled, it will do 55W with 2w of input while running at 11.4V from a 3S LiPo battery. I run 5W 99% of the time but sometimes you might just need a bit more power to chat comfortably, that is the thought behind using this compact little amplifier.

I am hoping to work some DX later this afternoon or early evening, let's hope the bands play along!

Update 17/1/2024: The Yaesu FTdx-10 arrived early this morning. I wasted no time getting it all connected, CAT for logging via the USB port and CW paddle as well as CW keying via N1MM+ was setup without any issues. By the time it was ready the bands were closed but I still managed to play with it a bit.

FTdx-10 with SP-30 speaker on 40m CW

First impressions were positive. The receiver sounds really great and the external SP-30 speaker really adds to the sound quality. The Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) was put to the test immediately as the 40m band at my QTH can be very noisy during the day. It performed exceptionally well, so well that I do not see the need for the external QRM Eliminator like the one I need to use on the IC-7300. This is great news!

Later in the afternoon a made a few SSB contacts and the audio reports were good, I have not setup the 3 band equalizer yet, maybe I will do it but for the limited SSB I do it might not be needed.

I used the radio early evening for some DX'ing and managed to work a few stations including TZ4AM in Mali on 12m. The signals were very weak but between the bandwidth filters, the roofing filter and the brilliant Audio Peak Filer (APF) I managed to pull out signals from the noise that would be difficult on most radios. You can narrow the band-width right down to 50Hz with amazing results.

Later in the evening I used the radio for my normal 90 minute CW rag-chew on 40m. It did really well with the noise reduction shining again on a band full of static. I also made a point of running high power, 100W to see how hot the radio would get but even after overs lasting 5 to 6 minutes each I could not detect ANY increase in temperature! I could also not hear the fan running, this is amazing! Most other radios would be very hot after a TX session like that! Well done Yaesu!

Chatting with ZS3ADY on 40m, lots of display options! You can see his nice clean signal on the oscilloscope.

After our sked and some tea I moved to 20m to see if I could hear any stations during the weekly CWT 19:00 session. The last few weeks I could hear nothing but for a change I could hear a few stations in the USA and Europe. Signal were weak but running 5W into my hex-beam I managed to work quite a few, most notable was E77DX in Bosnia - Herzegovina. Again the great noise reduction and APF helped.

So far I am enjoying the radio, I will comment on the ergonomics after I have used it for a while.

Update 14/1/2024: Last night I was listening on 40m for CW stations, I worked a few local stations but then decided to have a quick listen on 30m. I was pleasantly surprised to hear lots of DX!

I had fun working stations from Europe to Antarctica, great to hear so many CW stations! I really need to make a point of visiting 30m more often.

Worked RI1ANC on 30m CW


RI1ANC at Vostok station, Antarctica.


RI11ANC shack, note the 2 x FT-897 radios.

I have mentioned the strange QRM I have been seeing recently, I have seen it on 20m but more often on 40m. I have now identified it as Iranian "Over the Horizon RADAR" but the strange thing is that reports only shows it on the higher bands, not 40m. Maybe it is something else but the modulation looks and sounds exactly the same.

Suspected Over the Horizon RADAR signal to the left of my CW QSO.

Update 13/1/2024: The band conditions are still a bit up and down, often I hear almost nothing and then suddenly I hear strong signals. I have managed to work a few interesting stations along the way.

I managed to work OY1CT on 17m, I did not think much of it but he came back to me and said "new band!" so I had a look at my logbook. I see I worked him for the first time in 2000 and since them I have now worked him on all bands from 20-10m. I think I now need to work him on 30m and 40m!

QSO's with OY1CT since 2000

As I have posted here before I became a member of the CWOps group in October 2023, I have been enjoying the CWT test sessions and to my surprise I received a certificate for the 15 sessions I did work in 2023, thanks guys!

I have already worked a few sessions in 2024 but I think chances are that it will slow down a bit in the future, yes, it is great fun to work some really fantastic CW operators but I seem to work the same 20-30 US stations every week. That is fine but since my primary interest is DX I think that time, when the bands are open, could be spent more productively chasing DX. I will see, maybe as the seasons change and the solar cycle picks up propagation might change allowing me work CWOps members in other areas of the world. If that happens I will work more sessions.

My FTdx-10 was shipped this morning, I have a tracking number so I can keep an eye on it, should be here before next weekend.

Update 11/1/2024: Band conditions have been up and down the last few days, I have worked some DX on 12m as well as quite a few stations towards my west early morning on 40m.

A notable QSO was LA5ZO, Geir, on 12m, we had a nice long QSO and exchanged a lot more than just the usual signal reports. I have to admit that there was a time when I simply chased DX contacts and worked contests and I was happy with a simple signal report exchange but these days I am enjoying a bit of a chat as well. It is interesting to see that quite a few CW stations are more than happy to chat!

On the note of chatting, I am still having a regular sked in the evenings on 40m with Andy ZS3ADY, a few days ago I also worked Wolter, ZR6HAM, on 40m before my regular sked, what made this contact interesting was that I found out that I actually know Wolter from flying. He owned a Streak Shadow aircraft like I did and I actually test flew it for him years ago after he had some engine issues. It resulted in one rather rushed landing! We later went off on a cross country camping flight towards the north of South Africa, great memories.

Photo of the flying trip with Wolter, in the front my old Shadow that I sold to a friend, then my Bush Baby I was flying on the trip and in the background Wolter's Shadow, somewhere in the lowveld.

We also had 2 new guys join us on our 40m rag-chew session last night, really hoping we will hear them and others again in the future.

I was hoping to lower my Hex-beam antenna today for maintenance but it is raining lightly so I think I will postpone till tomorrow. I also want to add a 2m/70cm yagi, maybe I can make a few SSB/CW contacts on those bands. I am also hoping that I can get into the coastal repeater network using that antenna, time will tell.

I have had confirmation that due to work commitments from the widow of the estate I am buying the Yaesu FTdx-10 from, she will only ship the radio this coming Saturday, that is fine, I can understand why so I am looking forward to receiving it sometime next week.

Update 6/1/2024: After a few weeks of relatively bad propagation things are slowly getting better. Last night I managed to work a few stations on 15 and 20m. this morning I heard stations from areas in the world on 40m that I have not heard for a while. This includes the Caribbean, central and South America as well as a few stations from the Pacific. I also heard and worked a station from Rodriquez Isle on 20m, it was the only station I could hear but he was S9_30db!

Another nice surprise this morning was V31XX, Belize on 40m, not a new one but great fun to break the pile-up with 5W!

V31XX, Belize on 40m, nice antenna stack!

This afternoon there was quite a bit of activity on 12m and I had fun working stations from Europe. 10m was quiet, I think the MUF did not rise quite that high.

I received a QSL via LoTW for a QSO I had with a station in Eastern Malaysia on 17m in October last year, it is a new one on 17m so that is great.

A few days ago I reported a QSO with Doug, KR2Q on 30m that I enjoyed, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from him telling me it was his first confirmed 30m QSO with South Africa, love it!

I am also happy to report that there has been progress on the purchase of the new, still in the box, FTdx-10 from the estate of a friend. Hopefully it can now be shipped in the next few days so that I can be at home to receive it before my planned trip to Durban. I am really missing my yacht, can't wait to spend time on it again!

Update 3/1/2024: While testing the Flex 5000A yesterday I worked a few DX stations on various bands. This morning while looking at my latest QSO confirmations on LoTW I noticed that one of the stations I worked was 5H6PJ, Tanzania, turns out that he was a new band-spot for me on 15m! So 2024 has indeed started well, an all time new one on the first day and a new band-slot on the second day!

Unfortunately band conditions seem to be rather poor today, maybe late afternoon or early evening will produce better results.

I have now used the Flex 5000A for a few days and I am quite happy with the improvement the new Firewire interface card has brought. I have had no further latency issues. Yesterday I had, over a few hours of operation, 3 occasions where the DSP, and thus the received audio, crashed/froze for about a second, every time it did recover by itself. I have also had 2 occasions where the computer crashed completely forcing a hard reset while using the SDR software. On both occasions it happened just after booting the system and then opening the software, the moment you then try to change frequency or band the computer would crash. I did a few tests and if you wait for about 30 seconds after starting the computer before you run the software it does not happen.

I think it is most likely caused by the computer still being busy from the boot and then the SDR software running at "High priority" causes MS windows to crash. I am sure a faster computer will also prevent this.

On the subject of a faster computer, I have been doing some online research to see what is available and I have found a few options. I want to order but might wait till next week as many businesses are still closed and from experience I know that I have often had problems with orders place while companies are still closed for holidays. The orders are often missed/forgotten or they get them wrong.

Unfortunately there has also been no progress with the shipping of my Yaesu FTdx-10, I was hoping it would be possible to ship it no later than today but I am still waiting for information to finalize the deal and book the courier to pick up the radio. I think I will give it till the end of the week but if it does not happen I will simply cancel the deal and order directly from the USA, there would not be much of a price difference anyway. If I did that in the first place I would have had the radio already.

I was sitting in the shack yesterday afternoon sorting out some cables, while doing that I was listening on 40m to a few guys calling and chatting on CW. One thing that stood out was that there are a few great CW operators in South Africa, unfortunately it was also quite clear that quite a few guys, mostly newer operators, do not understand some of the operating practices. Sadly this includes at least one self proclaimed "expert".

Here are a few things that I noticed:

1) When calling CQ you should call like this "CQ
 de ZSxxx ZSxxx pse k" and not "CQ ZSxxx BK" or just "ZSxxx BK", BK is used to interrupt a QSO for a quick questions and has no place when calling CQ!
2) In general there seems to be a lack of understanding of how and when to use prosigns.
3) When you have replied to a CQ and you have worked the station you then move away from the frequency! You do NOT then start calling CQ on the frequency where the other guy called CQ, this is simply bad manners!
4) Do not try to send stylish/swanky CW by stretching some elements, often the last element of a character, this will simply get you classified as having a "bad fist" and being a LID.
5) When you reply to a CQ please try to at least get a reasonable "zero beat" with his signal, I often hear guys replying to a call but they are so far away from the frequency that they often fall outside the caller's narrow CW filter or they are so far way the caller thinks they are replying to someone else. It is simply bad operating practice to do that. Read up and understand how to "zero  beat" a CW station before replying.
6) Do not try to send CW faster than the speed you can actually send accurately at, you often end up sending CW that is not accurate. There is a local station that often ends up sending his call as ZS67xx or even Z67xxx, maybe record yourself and listen to your own CW.

I have enjoyed using the Flex 5000A the last few days but I have realized that it will never be a great contest radio, and this goes for all "full SDR, computer controlled radios". The problem is that when you are running in "search and pounce" mode, moving up and down the band it is rather slow to get to the calling stations frequency quickly to "zero beat" him. This is because you can see his signal on the waterfall and click on it, great, but that will seldom if ever get you on exactly the right frequency. Now you need to "fine tune" your frequency before you can reply.

With a conventional radio you simply use the VFO dial to do that, takes less than a second, on the computer controlled SDR you need to click on the displayed frequency, the correct digit, to set the level of fine tuning you need and the using the mouse wheel you can move up and down. You then often have to click on a lower value digit for the final fine tuning. This takes FAR too long!

I suppose it will be less of a problem when working with wide SSB signals but for CW and RTTY this is really not great! This way of operating is fine for rag-chewing or even DX'ing where you are not changing frequency all the time but for contesting it will be VERY frustrating! 

Update 2/1/2024: Some good news It seems like the Flex 5000A is behaving itself far better. I managed around 5 hours of operating with it yesterday and it worked well. I worked some DX on a few bands and I also used it for my evening CW torture test QSO. During that time the waterfall did twice briefly freeze for a second or so but it did recover by itself. I had no total software crashes and most importantly the latency is now low enough that it is no longer a problem on CW.

I am pretty sure the brief freezes were caused by an overloaded CPU on the laptop I am using as both times it happened while I was doing something else on the computer that pushed the CPU load up. It is an i7 dual core, 4 thread CPU so not fast compared to modern computers. I have decided to acquire a decent desktop computer with at least 4 or more cores, then I can also used the faster PCIE Firewire card. The computer will then become my dedicated amateur radio computer.

I would like to find something compact and most likely a "brand name" computer as I want something reliable that I do not have to "fiddle" with all the time. I have also found that certified (FCC and CE) brand name computers also cause a lot less interference that some of the no-name brands,

Flex 5000A in action, lots of noise on the band but the super filters cope with that easily.

I am really glad that I have managed to get acceptable results from the Flex, I must admit I was rather disappointed with it for a while and I almost sold it. With a bit of luck a decent computer will make it even better!

I think I will use the Flex for this week's CWT sessions, if it can handle that it might just convince me to consider a Flex 6700 in the future!

Another very pleasant surprise was the QSL that I received from V85A, Brunei, for a 40m contact we had recently. This is not only a new one on 40m it is also an all-time new one! Last time I had an all-time new one was beginning of last year when I worked Bouvet.

Nice QSL card from V85A in Brunei

Update 1/1/2024: So here we are in 2024 already! Happy New Year Everyone!

Let's hope this will be a "radio active" year with lots of fun on the air!

This year started of well, early this morning I was in the shack and decided to see if there was any life on the bands, I could not hear much but decided to call CQ on 30m, I very seldom listen on 30m so I mainly wanted to check my antenna and also wanted to see if my signal was picked up anywhere in the world on the reverse beacon network.

I sent a CQ and immediately I could see that I was being heard in the USA, to my surprise I also received a reply to my CQ from a station in the USA (WB3CQM), after having a nice chat to him, signals were 599 both ways I worked a few more stations before being called by my friend and fellow CWOps member Dough KR2Q, was a nice surprise to hear him on 30m. We ended up having a 2 way QRP contact when we both dropped to 5W. We had a nice long QSO great fun! Let's hope this is a sign of good things to come in 2024.

Doug, KR2Q, great CW operator and contester!

I recently acquired a new PCIE Firewire card for my laptop, actually I received it quite a while ago but since I was rather upset with my Flex 5000A and Flex Radio in general I did not feel like testing it and I was close to selling the Flex 5000A, it is a great radio and for a SSB only operator it will be fine but for CW it has been nothing but a frustration so far. Well this morning I decided to give it a quick test and so far so good. The latency seems to be a lot better, only problem is I have not used the laptop for quite a while so now Micro$oft wants to do a major update and that slows a computer down badly, not something you want to happen while you are running time critical software.

So after a few tests I decided I will leave the laptop to do it's update, once it is done I will disable all updates and then try to use the radio. If it works well I will try to use it for my evening CW QSO with Andy, ZS3ADY, if it can survive that long QSO without crashing or developing lots of latency like it did in the past I will try the radio for a while as my general DX and QSO radio. Let's hope for the best!

I am hoping I can do a bit of semi local traveling this year that will also include a few amateur field stations and maybe even some mobile operation. First opportunity will be my planned trip to Durban towards the end of the month to get some work done on my yacht.

I am hoping that my new Yaesu FTdx-10 will be shipped in the next 2 days, can't wait to get it on the air to see why everyone is so impressed with the new technology that Yaesu has incorporated in the FTdx-101 and the FTdx-10. I am hoping that it will replace the IC-7300 as my "low power consumption" compact radio in the shack and for field station use. I can then move the IC-7300 to the yacht permanently.

I do not really have major plans for other new radios this year. If the FTdx-10 really impresses me I might just add a FTdx-101MP to the shack as the new "main DX and contest" radio. I am also still looking for an IC-7800/7851 in a good condition and a great price. I have been offered a few 7800's but the prices were crazy, especially on the IC-7800 that is now an old radio with a less than spectacular receiver.

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