ARRL Centennial Convention This Week – Come Join Us In Hartford!

July 16, 2014 by fkemmerer

ARRL Centennial

Anita (AB1QB) and I will be attending the ARRL Centennial Convention in Hartford Connecticut, USA this coming weekend. We are looking forward to seeing the vendor exhibits, Contest University and the many fine forum presentations which are scheduled.

Station Design Presentation

I will be doing a presentation on the design, construction and operation of our station at the ARRL Centennial event. My presentation is scheduled for Saturday, July 19th at 11 am in Room 27 at the Connecticut Convention Center. I will be presenting the complete story of our station from planning and design, through construction and finally how the station operates and performs. The presentation will include lots of high-resolution pictures and video including material on our shack, tower and antennas.

Updated Station Tour

The presentation will include lots of new material covering all of our recent projects as well as an updated virtual station tour.

Latest Antenna Projects

Some new topics will include our latest antenna projects and some information on our recently completed LEO Satellite System.

Station Automation Overview

The presentation will also include information on our recently installed Station Automation System from microHAM.

Current Station Performance

We plan to talk about how our station is performing against our original design goals and we’ll have some updated video too!

For those who are attending the ARRL Centennial Convention in Hartford Connecticut, I hope you stop by and say hello to Anita and me. We’re anxious to meet as many of our readers as we can at the event. For those who cannot make the trip, we will be taking lots of pictures and we plan to post a summary of what we saw here after the event.

– Fred (AB1OC)

Station Building Presentation At YCCC

April 7, 2014 by fkemmerer

Yankee Clipper Contest Club Logo

Anita (AB1QB) and I are members of the Yankee Clipper Contest Club (YCCC) and we had the opportunity to give a presentation Station Design and Building at the YCCC Meeting this past weekend. The meeting also included two other excellent presentations:

“How to be a better single operator” by Randy Thompson, K5ZD
“Field Day from a Sailboat” by Chet Slabinski, N8RA

Our presentation was well received and the YCCC is a great group of contesters who are quite technically advanced in our hobby. We’ve updated our Station Building Series to include some of the latest information on these topics as well as the latest version of our presentation which may be found here.

– Fred (AB1OC)

Station Automation Part 3 – Antenna Cutover And Final Integration

April 3, 2014 by fkemmerer

AB1QB Operating Position

The final article in our microHAM installation series will be about our station’s cut-over, configuration, and integration testing. The first step was to bring the second radio in Anita’s (AB1QB) position into the microHAM system. We also added a PR 781 microphone and boom from Heil Sound to her setup at the same time.

AB1QB Position Design

Anita’s second radio is an Icom IC-7610, and its integration into the system went very smoothly. We also integrated the control of our Power Amplifiers (a combination of Icom PW-1s and an Elecraft KPA500) into the microHAM system. As you can see from the diagram above, the amplifiers are dedicated to specific radios and can be controlled directly by each radio’s Station Master Deluxe (SMD). We used microHAM-supplied amplifier control cables for the PW-1, and I built a custom control cable for the Elecraft KPA500 (this was not difficult – both microHAM and Elecraft provide good documentation for the interfaces involved).

Bandpass Filter Control

I also built custom cables to allow our SMDs to control and automate the switching of our Bandpass Filter Units from Array Solutions.

Bandpass Filter Configuration

With the cabling done, I configured the SMDs to correctly set the control leads to switch the Amplifier and Bandpass filter bands based on the Transmit (Tx) frequency of the associated transceiver. The picture above shows the configuration for the bandpass filters. The configuration for the amplifiers is similar.

Control Box Configuration

The next step in the process was to add some microHAM Control Boxes to the uLink bus and configure their addresses. The picture above shows the control interfaces in our system, including the four SMDs. The addressing convention we use in our station has 40-series control boxes that control our 4×10 antenna switching matrix, 50-series control boxes that control our Tx antennas, and 60-series control boxes that control our Receive (Rx) antennas and associated equipment. The picture above also illustrates some of the Units we’ve defined on our Control Boxes to create interfaces to amplifiers, filters, antenna switching, and other controls.

Palstar Dummy Load

The first step in the cutover of our antennas was to connect the antennas and devices, which did not require complex control. This included our OCF Dipole and our Palstar High-Power Dummy Load. As each antenna was connected, the associated path was configured in the system and tested to ensure everything worked as expected.

Dummy Load Modification

I modified the Dummy Load to allow its lamp to be switched on when one of the radios in the shack selects it. This involved adding a couple of binding posts to the device and running the lamp bulb circuit through the binding posts. The posts are connected to a RELAY6 control box, and the microHAM system is configured to close the associated relay whenever a radio selects the Dummy Load. This makes it easy to see that the Dummy Load is selected and extends the life of the bulb.

Transmit Antenna Controls

The next step in the cutover process was to move all of our transmit antennas and rotators to the system one at a time and test them. This required constructing and testing some RS-232 serial cables to connect our three SteppIR Antennas and our Green Heron RT-21D Rotator Controllers to their associated DATA Control Boxes (top row in the picture above).

SteppIR DB36 Control

The picture above shows the configuration for one of our SteppIR Antennas – The Upper DB36 Yagi. This particular configuration step involved assigning the antenna to a DATA Control Box as well as telling the system the type of control protocol to use to control the antenna. The microHAM system “knows” about a wide array of serial and other controllable devices and implements the necessary protocols.

Receive Array Control And Sequencer

The integration of our 8-Circle Low-Band Receive Array involved some special steps at both the Hardware and Configuration levels. The connections on the RELAY10 control box above are used to “steer” the Rx array and enable or disable the shared Low-Noise pre-Amplifiers (LNAs). To protect this antenna from damage from nearby transmit antennas, power to the array must be removed a few milliseconds before transmission begins. This is normally done by a sequencer in a single radio station. Our station can have up to four radios transmitting on any of several different antennas on the low bands. To solve this problem, I used a RELAY6 control box to create a multi-radio sequencer. Each antenna that can transmit on the 160m – 60m bands has one of the relays on the RELAY6 shown above associated with it.

80m Delta Loop Sequencer

These relays are controlled via an optional SEQ control unit configured for each of the associated antennas. These relays are wired in series with the power lead for the 8-Circle Receive Array. Whenever any radio transmits on any band from 160m – 60m on one of the low-band Tx antennas, the associated relay is first opened (with appropriate delay) before Tx is enabled. This approach implements a multi-radio low-band sequencer across the four radios in our station. The control logic also powers down the array when it is not in use by any radio.

Virtual Rotator For 8-Circle Receive Array

The other “special” step involved in the integration of our 8-Circle Receive Array was the implementation of a “virtual rotator” for it. This involves creating a table in the system configuration which maps all possible headings to one of the eight available direction settings for this antenna. Once this is configured, the antenna behaves as if it had a conventional rotator associated with it. When it’s selected, loggers like the DXLab Suite and N1MM can automatically steer the antenna to the best possible direction selection to work a given station. The front panel rotator controls on the SMDs can also be used to turn the antenna just as if it had a “real” rotator.

Available Antenna Paths

With all of the antennas and other RF devices properly configured and interconnected in the configuration, the microHAM router software generates a list of available antenna paths, as shown above. The software automatically determines the path and associated control resource to connect a given antenna to a radio. Note that some of our antennas have multiple paths by which they can be reached. The software detects this and allows the alternative paths to be selected or, if configured as is the case with our 8-Circle Receive Array, be used by multiple radios at the same time. This table represents all of the possible antenna selections in our system.

Antenna Selection Configuration

The final step in the configuration process is to determine which antennas may be used by which radios on each of the available bands. The microHAM router software initially populates this table with all possible choices based on the “available antennas.” I edited the automatically generated configuration to remove a few choices which were not needed and to reorder the lists for each band so that the displays on the SMD would be the most logical for us to use. With these steps done, our configuration was complete.

Yagi Stack Control

The system is quite easy to use and provides easy-to-read and useful displays. The picture above shows the selection of our Stack of two SteppIR DB36 yagis on one of the radios. That radio (an Icom IC-7800) is currently on the 20m band tuned to 14.267 MHz for both transmit and receive. The two white squares show that both yagis are currently included in the stack. Options exist to use either antenna independently and to use them either in or out of phase in the stack. Both SteppIR DB36 antennas are pointed to 45 degrees (we can turn them independently), as can be determined from the numbers next to the white blocks and the direction of the arrow next to them. The row of buttons numbers 1 – 7 shows the available antenna selections for this radio on the 20m band.

80m Split Tx/Rx Antenna Selection

The picture above shows the SMD display for the same radio tuned to 3.658 MHz on the 80m band. Note that the antenna selections have changed to those available in our station for the 80m band. In this example, I am using different antennas for Tx (our 80m Delta Loop) and Rx (our 8-Circle Receive Array). The virtual rotator for the 8-Circle array is active, and you can see that this antenna is pointed toward 245 degrees (the virtual rotator input was 255 degrees, and the SMD picked the closed direction selection on the Rx antenna). Our 80m Delta Loop is vertically polarized and omnidirectional, which is indicated by the symbol next to it on the display.

Station Master Deluxe Keypad

In addition to the buttons and rotary controller on each of our SMDs, antennas can also be selected and steered via a keypad that is associated with each SMD. The keypads enable many functions, including direct entry of rotator headings, antenna selection, and setup for split Tx/Rx antenna operation.

MK2R+ Virtual COM Port Configuration

The microHAM platform (MK2R+ and SMDs) creates an interface to all our logging and control software on our PCs via a series of Virtual COM Ports. The ports for radio CAT interfaces, PTT and FSK (RTTY) keying, and control of the CW and Voice Keyers in the MK2R+ are created by the microHAM Router, as shown above. Each of the two radios at a given operating position has a unique set of ports for CAT and keying.

Station Master Deluxe Virtual COM Ports

In addition, the SMD associated with each radio creates additional virtual COM ports to allow software programs to control the rotator associated with the currently selected antenna(s) on that SMD. The control also includes any “virtual rotators” associated with antenna(s) that may be selected on a given SMD.

DXLab Radio Control

We use the DXLab Suite and the N1MM+ Logger at our station, which works well with the microHAM system. DXLab, including its Commander component (lower-right), is shown above, which provides the radio interface to the suite. If you look closely, you can see the Commander radio buttons, which select either of the two radios at this position. DXLab (and N1MM) know the microHAM control protocol and will automatically switch the associated MK2R+ to use the appropriate radio. This includes setting which radio is active to Tx, what audio is heard in the headphones/speakers, and what audio goes to the sound card for the associated MK2R+ and its radios. The appropriate routing of the shared microphone and CW paddles is also automatically configured.

DXLab and HRD Rotator Control

The picture above shows our rotator control software. We are using two programs here. In the upper left is DXLab’s DXView program, which will steer our antennas in the direction associated with the callsign currently entered into the logger. The other rotator controller is HRD Rotator (lower right) which displays a map of the world and a path. We can click on any location on HRD’s Rotator’s map, and the software will turn the currently selected antennas in that direction. The use of independent rotator control programs is made possible by the microHAM Router, which implements two separate Virtual COM Ports for the rotator(s) associated with each SMD’s selected antenna(s) for its associated radio.

As you can probably tell from the articles in this series, the microHAM system is very powerful and can handle most any station’s setup, including those which are much more complicated than ours. While the construction and configuration work described here may seem a little complex, it’s not that difficult to create a good plan for your system at the outset (see the first post in this series). The documentation for the microHAM system is very good, and Jozef (OM7ZZ) and Joe (W4TV) at microHAM were very good about answering my questions and steering me in the right direction as I built and configured my system. There is also a good Yahoo! group for the microHAM system. You may want to look at the other articles in this series for more information as well:

I had the opportunity to use our new microHAM System as part of the 2014 CQ WPX SSB Contest this weekend, which helped me improve my score. For more on this, check out the article on the contest on this Blog.

We are considering the addition of legal limit solid-state amplifiers and high-power bandpass filters to our station, which will be integrated into the microHAM system when installed. I am also experimenting with the addition of a software-defined radio to the setup. I plan to provide additional articles here as those projects proceed.

– Fred, AB1OC

Station Automation Part 2 – Second Operating Position And Antenna Switching

March 18, 2014 by fkemmerer

microHAM Gear At Second Operating Position

microHAM Gear At Anita’s (AB1QB) Operating Position

We have continued our work on automating our station’s operation using microHAM equipment. I have integrated the second operating position into our station into the system via the installation of a second microHAM MK2R+ SO2R interface and two more Station Master Deluxe (SMD) antenna controllers. This position has a Yaesu FTdx5000 Transceiver and an Icom IC-7600 Transceiver. The integration of the FTdx5000 was straightforward and involved a cable hookup to the transceiver. I will add the Icom IC-7600 once the interface cable arrives here.

Current Antenna Control Stack

We’ve also begun to integrate the control of our antenna equipment into the microHAM system. I’ve moved our three SteppIR SDA100 controllers for our two SteppIR DB36 Yagis and our BigIR Vertical, as well as the two Green Heron RT-21 rotator controllers to a set of microHAM DATA control boxes (all of these devices have RS-232 interfaces). With these steps complete, any of our four radios can control the Rotators or provide frequency data to automatically tune our SteppIR antennas.

Antenna Switching Matrix

The biggest part of this project is the construction of a 4 x 10 antenna switching matrix. This element of the system allows any of our 4 radios to connect to any of up to 10 antennas. We built the Antenna Switching Matrix on a 4′ x 8′ board mounted on the wall outside our shack. As you can see from the picture above, this step required quite a few control cable connections as well as the construction of 40 coax interconnect cables (LMR400 Coax and crimp-on connectors were used here).

microHAM Ten Switch

Our Antenna Switching Matrix uses a set of microHAM Ten and 4+4 antenna switches along with multiple RELAY10 control boxes for control.

Antenna Switch Matrix SWR Test

It’s important to test an element like this as it is constructed to catch any errors and to ensure that the final system performance is as expected. I did a combination of continuity, voltage, and end-to-end SWR measurements on the Antenna Switching Matrix as it was built. The microHAM control boxes have a nice manual mode that is available via their front panel buttons which allowed me to configure each antenna switch manually to fully test all of the coax and control cabling in the system.

Receive Antenna Splitter And LNAs

Our antenna farm includes a steerable 8 Circle Vertical Receive Array for the low-bands, and we decided to create two separate appearances of this antenna on our switching matrix. This approach allows two different transceivers to use the receive antenna at the same time. This involves splitting the incoming signal from the receive antenna using a 2-port Splitter from DX Engineering. We also decided to include a pair of Low-Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) to boost the signals from the splitter before feeding the received signals to our antenna switching matrix. The Splitter and LNAs are 75-ohm devices. The signals are passed through a pair of 75-ohm to 50-ohm transformers from Wilson to match their 75-ohm impedance to our 50-ohm antenna switching system and feed lines. The SMD(s) control the LNAs, which have the associated receive antenna connection selected at any given time. This way, an operator can turn off the LNA at their SMD if they don’t need the extra amplification.

Antenna Matrix And Receive Antenna Control

All of this antenna switching requires quite a number of microHAM control boxes. We are also planning to terminate our 8 Circle Receive Antenna’s control lines at this point in our system. The receive antenna requires control leads to steer its direction and a sequencer capability to ensure it is not damaged by strong signals from other nearby transmit antennas. The microHAM system handles these functions easily via a combination of RELAY10 and RELAY6 control boxes, the units in the upper row in the picture above. These boxes also control the two receive LNAs.

With these steps done, we must complete the hookups of our Switchable Band Pass Filters and amplifiers to their associated SMDs. With that done, we can begin moving the feed lines for our antennas and radios over to the system. This will be the topic of our next article. For more information on our automation project, you might want to look at these articles:

– Fred, AB1OC

Station Automation Part 1 – microHAM SO2R And System Design

March 12, 2014 by fkemmerer

One Of Two SO2R Operating Positions In Our Shack (AB1OC)

As some of our readers probably know, it has been part of our plan from the beginning to setup our station for multi-SO2R operation . We took the first step in this direction some time back with the installation of a microHAM MK2R+ SO2R Controller (the box one top of the left radio in the picture above) at one of our two operating positions. The MK2R+ is a full-featured and powerful SO2R controller. It provides many capabilities across the two radios at its operating position. Some of its capabilities include:

Sharing a single microphone, set of CW paddles, speakers and headset between two radios
A built-in sound card interface for both radios
Integrated voice and CW keyer capability
Dual-foot pedal control for keying each radio in the SO2R setup
Sharing of SteppIR antenna control between two radios

MK2R+ Audio Routing

One of the most powerful capabilities of the MK2R+ is its sophisticated audio routing capabilities which are configurable via microHAM’s USB Device Router. The picture above shows the audio routing configuration options for the MK2R+. The operator can do things like listen to a mix of 4 VFOs from two radios at the same time. Hear one radio’s audio in one ear and the other radio’s audio in the other ear. The routing of audio can be automatically changed based upon which radio is selected for transmit, foot pedal presses, etc. These capabilities are very useful when operating in an SO2R configuration during contests.

MK2R+ Control Ports

The microHAM USB Router software runs on the PC controlling the associated SO2R operating position/MK2R+ and provides a unified set of interfaces to both radios in the SO2R setup via a set of virtual COM ports. The picture above shows how this is configured for my operating position. In addition to a full set of ports to control each radio, there are common interfaces for the integrated WinKey CW Keyer and for controlling the MK2R+ itself. Loggers like N1MM know the microHAM control protocol and can automatically switch audio, sound cards, the radio which has focus for Tx, etc. based upon what the operator does inside N1MM. Again, this is very useful when operating SO2R or SO2V in a contest.

Current Antenna Control Stack

The MK2R+ alone works great for a shack with a single SO2R position but it leaves the operator to manually control antenna switching, rotators, and other antenna-related functions. Up to now, we have managed our antennas via the stack of antenna and rotator control boxes shown above. Manual operation of this type is fine for DX’ing or for one person operating alone in a contest.

Current Manual Antenna Switching System

The problem of switching and controlling antennas becomes more complex in a multi-operator station like ours (we have two separate SO2R positions in our shack with a total of 4 radios). We currently use the custom-built manual antenna switching system shown above to assign our available transmit antennas to one of our 4 radios and to select which antenna a given radio is connected to. We must manually handle control of antenna rotators as well as manually setting the operating frequency of our three SteppIR antennas when they are not connected to the first of our two SO2R operating positions. This sort of manual operation works OK for DX’ing and casual operating with one person in the shack at a time. It is highly error prone with two operators working at once so we decided to expand our microHAM system to fully automate the control of our antennas and associated equipment.

microHAM Station Master Deluxe Antenna Controller

We are using microHAM’s Station Master Deluxe (SMD) antenna controllers to automate the control of our antenna systems. We are installing an SMD with each of our 4 radios in the shack. The SMD provides a number of antenna control automation capabilities including:

Band and frequency specific selection and configuration of available antennas
Routing of frequency and other control data to our two SteppIR DB36 Yagis and our SteppIR BigIR Vertical based upon which radio has selected these antennas
Control and routing of our two rotators on our tower based upon the radio which has an associated antenna selected. For example, if one position selects our upper DB36 Yagi and another selects the lower DB36 Yagi on our tower, each SMD will independently control the rotator associated with its selected antenna. If one radio has both antennas selected as a stack, then that radio’s SMD will control both rotators together.
Sharing and control of our 8-Circle Directional Receive Array including creating a “virtual rotator” for it which allows its direction to be set via the SMD’s rotary encoder or via a COM port by an external rotator control program or logger. We have also created a “scan” feature for this antenna which switches its direction clockwise by 45 degrees every few seconds. This is useful when one hears a weak station and needs to determine where to point the receive array for best reception.
Automatic transmit/receive antenna switching for each of the four radios in the setup. For example, a radio can transmit on one antenna and receive on a different one. When the associated radio is keyed, the controlling SMD automatically switches the radio between the selected transmit and receive antennas.
Automatic control of the four Switchable Bandpass Filters associated with our radios. These are essential for operating multiple transmitters in the station on different bands at the same time.
Automatic control of our power amplifiers
Automatic same band lockout between the radios in our shack.
Enforcement and sequencing of antennas to avoid simultaneous Tx/Rx on closely spaced antennas from different radios.

SMD Rotator Control Ports

The Antenna Rotator management capabilities of the SMD are very useful for switching and sharing antennas on rotators. Each SMD has a pair of Virtual COM Ports which are automatically associated with the active rotator for the currently selected Transmit and Receive antennas. This allows loggers and other software running on the host PC to control the direction of the current selected antennas no matter which antennas are in use. The SMDs can also create a COM port for the “Virtual Rotator” from devices that are steered via switches such as transmit and receive vertical arrays. These devices behave just like they had a conventional rotator when they are selected and can be controlled by software running on the host PC via the Rotator COM Ports for the controlling SMD.

Our HF-6m Antennas

The first step in this upgrade was to layout a complete design for the RF and control elements of our station. The picture above shows the Antenna switching and control elements of our design. The tan boxes are switches and other RF elements such as Low-Noise pre-Amplifiers (LNAs) that are part of our antenna system. The grey boxes are microHAM control boxes which provide relay or serial data interfaces to shared equipment in our station.

microHAM Control Boxes And Hub

The microHAM control boxes are all part of a shared serial bus (microHAM’s uLink bus) that interconnects all of the control boxes to the four SMDs in our shack. The picture above shows the uLink Hub where the four SMDs connect to the uLink bus (lower right), the serial control boxes (uLink DATA – upper row) which control our SteppIR antennas and Green Heron Rotator Controllers, and several uLink Relay control boxes (uLink RELAY 10 & RELAY 6 – lower row on the left side) which provide relay closures to control antenna switches, stack controllers and other equipment.

SteppIR DB36 w/80m Dipole and Stack Switching Design

The microHAM SMD system is quite flexible and one can control just about any RF device or antenna system that you can dream up. We have two challenging configuration situations our station. The first is a SteppIR DB36 Yagi antenna with the 80m Rotatable Dipole Option installed parallel to the boom. The Rotatable Dipole uses the same SteppIR SDA100 Controller as the associated DB36 Yagi but must be pointed with a 90 degree offset when its selected. I was able to configure this easily using a virtual switch and antenna combination that made the Dipole appear as an independent antenna which shares the SDA100 controller with its associated DB36 Yagi.

The second configuration challenge was related to my custom Stack Switch and Phasing System. I built this element around the DX Engineering ProStack PS-2B Stack Switch and added a custom-built Feedline Breakout Switch to allow us to pull the lower SteppIR DB36 Yagi out of the stack so it can be used independently by a second radio. This allows one operator to use one of the two SteppIR Yagis on one band while the other operator uses the other one on a different band. Again, the flexibility of the microHAM SMD system allowed me to control the combination of the DXE Switch and the Custom Breakout Switch as a Single Two into Two Stack switch with Both Out of Phase (BOP) capability.

Automated Antenna Switching Matrix

The next stage of the antenna switching system is a 10 x 4 antenna RF switching matrix which allows any of 10 antennas to be connected to any of the four radios in our shack. This part of the design is being executed using microHAM’s Ten Switches and 4+4 Switches as shown above. The 4 SMDs in the system all have access to this antenna switching matrix via the uLink bus and the associated uLink RELAY 10 control boxes so they can connect antennas to their radios. This matrix also provides switching between independent transmit and receive antennas for the 4 radios in our shack.

Operating Position Design (AB1OC)

The final element of the design is the two SO2R operating positions. The picture above shows my operating position. As you can see, the MK2R+ provides the interface to the two radios and exchanges radio frequency, PTT, inhibit and other information with the two SMDs associated with each to the radios at this position. The SMDs provide direct control of the Band-Pass Filters (BPFs) and amplifiers for their associated radios. They both interface to the uLink bus via the uLink Hub so that they can control all of the antennas and switches which are shared across the station as well as coordinate the utilization of shared resources between the four radios in the setup.

The microHAM system has tremendous flexibility and my early work with it has gone well. There is a learning curve involved but microHAM’s documentation is excellent and Jozef, OM7ZZ and Joe, W4TV at microHAM have been great about answering my questions and helping me to configure my system. There is also a microHAM Yahoo! group which has been quite helpful. Many stations will not have the complexity to warrant the installation of a full microHAM system such as ours. For simpler stations, the microHAM Keyers, USB Interfaces or an MK2R or MK2R+ can provide simplified sharing and control of equipment across two radios.

As you can probably tell, the construction of the antenna automation portion of our station is a significant project. I will cover the rest of the project and more about the configuration of the system in a series of future posts. Right now I have our uLink bus built and all of the control boxes installed and configured. Two of our four SMDs are installed and operating. The planned next steps include adding a second MK2R+ and a second pair of SMDs to integrate Anita’s operating position into the system, building the antenna switching matrix and beginning to cut over some of our antennas to the new system. You can read the other articles our series on station automation here:

– Fred (AB1OC)

2013 Amateur Radio Highlights

February 9, 2014 by fkemmerer

DXCCs Worked in 2013

Anita and I were quite active on the bands in 2013. Together we made 20,650+ contacts from a combination of our home and mobile stations and we worked a combined 259 DXCC Entities.

Combined 2013 QSOs By Band

We were active on all of the Amateur Bands available in the USA from 160m through 70cm except for the 60m and 1.25m bands. The picture above shows the distribution of our QSOs across the bands in 2013. Both of us participated in quite a few contests in 2013 and this resulted in the 5 major contest bands dominating our operating activity. I did quite a lot of work on the 160m band this year and I participated in several 160m contests to gain experience and to begin working towards a DXCC on this band. We worked a total of 50 DXCC Entities on 160m in 2013. Our 6m, 2m, and 440 MHz (70cm) contacts were made mostly during VHF/UHF contests that I participated in.

Combined 2013 QSOs By Mode

We like to operate using many different modes. Anita (AB1QB) does quite a bit of RTTY contesting and she accounted for the bulk of the activity in the digital modes from our station in 2013. I made it a point to become active using the CW mode this year and I made 1,550+ contacts using CW in 2013 including participation in several CW contests. Operations in SSB Phone mode dominated our activity this year mostly due to our operations in SSB Phone contests and as one of the New Hampshire Stations in the 2013 Colonies Special Event this year where we made a combined total of 6,200+ contacts.

QSL Cards Ready To Mail

We really enjoy sending and receiving QSL cards. We sent 5,800+ QSL cards this year, averaging approximately 110 cards sent each week. We also QSL’ed via eQSL and Logbook Of The World. I am often asked what percentage of our QSL requests are confirmed. For 2013, we received confirmations for 67% of our direct/bureau cards, 31% of the QSOs uploaded to eQSL, and 37% of the QSOs upload to LoTW. These numbers will undoubtedly rise a time goes by.

AB1OC Operating Awards

All of this operating allowed us to complete a number of operating awards this year. Fred completed his DXCC Challenge, 8-Band DXCC, and CQ WPX Award of Excellence Awards as well as a DXCC Awards in CW mode and a DXCC QRP (5 watts).

AB1QB Japan Century Cities Award

Anita has held a DXCC for some time and has been focusing on a number of JARL Awards. She completed her Japan Century Cities Award for confirming contacts with 100 cities in Japan in 2013.

AB1QB Operating In The BARTG RTTY Contest

Contesting was a big part of the operations from our station this year. I was active in several major SSB and CW contests this year and Anita was active in quite a few major RTTY and phone contests as well. We are both licensed for less that 3 years and have been competing in the Rookie or Novice categories in most contests and we have been doing quite well. Anita took 5th place in the world in the 2013 BARTG RTTY Contest and she has placed 1st in our call area in several of the 2013 ARRL Rookie Roundups in both SSB Phone and RTTY.

2013 CQ Worldwide WPX SSB Certificate

I placed 1st in North America/2nd in the World in the 2013 CQ WPX SSB Contest (Rookie High Power) and 1st in North America/2nd in the World in the 2013 CQ WPX CW Contest (Rookie High Power). Contests have provided us a great deal of operating experience and have contributed greatly to our completion of several operating awards.

Mobile Installation In Ford F-150

Station Building was a big part of our Amateur Radio experience again in 2013. We installed a mobile HF setup in our truck and did quite a bit of mobile HF operating. We made 165 contacts from our mobile station in 2013 and worked 41 DXCC entities.

WSJT EME QSO – Waterfall

I also made my first Earth-Moon-Earth Contacts on 2m in 2013. I made 30 contacts on 2m using the moon as a reflector, working a total of 16 DXCC Entities this way.

AB1QB Operating The Flex-3000 Software Defined Radio

We added a Flex-3000 Software Defined Radio (SDR) to our station in 2013 and have been using it to learn about this new technology. The performance and operating capabilities of SDR are making SDR a big part of the future of Amateur Radio in our opinion.

8-Circle Receive Array System Diagram

Antenna projects were also a part of our station building work in 2013. We installed an 8-Circle Receive Array System for 160m – 40m and this new antenna system helped us a great deal with DX’ing and contesting on 160m and 80m. We also began the reinstallation of our BigIR Vertical Antenna but the onset of winter here in New Hampshire caused us to delay the completion of this project until spring. Finally, we made the switch to the excellent DXLab logging and DX’ing software suite. DXLab helped us a great deal with QSL’ing and tracking our progress toward operating awards.

2013 Field Day CW Station Operations

We were part of the 2013 Field Day team at our local radio Club (PART in Westford, MA). We provided and managed the digital station as well as the setup of a portion of the antenna systems for our club’s field day operations.

ARRL At Dayton 2013

Anita and I attended the Dayton Hamvention again in 2013. The Dayton event is always a great opportunity to see the latest in Amateur Radio equipment. We attended the 2013 Contest University which was held as part of the Dayton Event and used the information that we learned there to continue to improve our contesting skills.

Fred Lloyd AA7BQ, Founder Of QRZ.com

The internet was a big part of our Amateur Radio experience again in 2013. We met Fred Lloyd, AA7BQ who visited us to do an article on QRZ.com on our station. We learned a great deal from Fred during the time that we spent with him as part of this project. We published 47 new articles here on our blog in 2013 and have received over 45,000 views from our readers in 152 countries around the world. We really appreciate the interest from the HAM community and we will continue to publish new articles here in 2014.

As you can tell from this article, 2013 has been a very active year for Anita and I. I’ve created the video above to give you some idea of the contacts that we have been fortunate enough to make around the world in 2013. We hope you enjoy it and we want to thank everyone who has taken the time to work us, to end us a QSL card or to read the articles that we have written here.

– Fred (AB1OC)

Receive Antenna For The Low Bands Part 2 – Second Shack Entry And Ground Point

October 11, 2013 by fkemmerer

Antenna Layout Plan

When I began construction of a dedicated 8-Circle Receive Array antenna system for the low bands (160m – 40m) some time ago (see part one in this series for details), I knew that I’d have to locate the new antenna system as far away from my tower and other transmitting antennas as possible to avoid overloading, pattern distortion and pickup of re-radiated noise by the new receive system. The picture above shows the antenna layout plan that I have been building to for some time now. My tower is in back of the house and the Low Band Receive Array System from DX Engineering that I am building is at the very front of our property. This provides the maximum separation between it and the transmitting antennas. The final element of my antenna build plan is to re-install our SteppIR BigIR Vertical Antenna at the side corner of our lot to separate it from the other antennas as well.

Second Shack Entry And Ground Point

Placing antennas on the other side of our house required me to build a second shack entry and grounding point. The picture above shows the new entry point ready to accept feedlines and control cables. The first step in its construction was to install 3″ PVC conduits to get the feedlines from the woods in front of our house to the shack entry point and then through the outside of the house.

Grounding System Overview

The next step was to construct the grounding system for the entry point. I again used one of the excellent Ground Bar Kits from Storm Copper. This was attached to the side of my house and it will provide grounding for the feedline for the SteppIR BigIR Vertical Antenna when it is re-installed. I installed a PolyPhaser Static Coax Lightening Protector on the Storm Ground Bar so that you can see how that element is mounted on the Ground Bar.

Grounding System Details

It is very important to have a good single point earth ground to provide lightning protection and a path for static electricity build up on your antennas to sink to the ground. I used a standard 5/8″ x 8 ft electrical ground rod driven into the soil about 7 ft to provide the earth ground for my second shack entry point. This ground rod is connected to the Storm Ground Bar via a heavy ground cable (right side of the ground rod) and a crimp-on lug. The heavy copper ground cable to the left of the rod bonds the second shack entry ground to our electrical service entrance ground and to the tower and antenna grounding systems at the back of our house. This cable runs around the outside perimeter of our house and terminates on an 8 ft electrical ground rod approximately every 10 ft. The bare copper bonding cable is also buried a few inches in the soil which hides it and lowers the system’s resistance to ground somewhat. Note the use of clamps and a crimped lug to make all of the connections in the pictures above. Using mechanical connections of these types is essential and you should never solder ground connections as a lightning hit will instantly vaporize soldered connections. The resulting interruption of the connection to ground is very dangerous.

My Low Band Receive System uses a 75-ohm feedline and thus requires a 75-ohm Coaxial Lightning Protector which I got from DX Engineering. I also needed a means to provide static suppression for the control lines to the Receive System and to my BigIR Vertical. I used a Copper Ground Rod Clamp from Alpha-Delta to attach these items directly to the ground rod at the entry point. This required some minor modifications to the mounting brackets for the 75-ohm static suppressor and the Control Line Static Suppressor from ArraySolutions. Stainless steel hardware was used to fasten everything together to complete the installation. The resulting system worked out quite well is ready to accept the feedline and control cable from the receiving system which I hope to complete this coming weekend.

The following are additional posts covering other parts of the installation, integration, and testing of our new Low-Band Receive Array.

Fred (AB1OC)

A Visit From Fred Lloyd, President And Founder of QRZ.com

September 17, 2013 by fkemmerer

Fred Lloyd AA7BQ, President And Founder Of QRZ.com

We recently had the pleasure of a visit from Fred Lloyd, AA7BQ, the President and Founder of QRZ.com. Fred is doing a series articles titled “QRZ Featured Shacks” and he visited us to take photographs and gather background information on our station for a future Featured Shack article on QRZ.com.

Fred is very well-connected in the International Amateur Radio community and he shared a great deal of very interesting information about QRZ.com and Amateur Radio in general. The story around how QRZ.com came to be and the scope of its user community is a very interesting one! QRZ.com has approximately 500,000 registered users of which about 300,000 are active on the site a regular basis. The QRZ.com user community averages approximately 60,000 visits to the site a day. The QRZ.com website is currently hosted on Amazon Web Services S3 and serves approximately 600,000 pages a day or 18 million pages per month – quite a high-scale website! Fred has a number of interesting projects going to enhance the QRZ.com services including some pretty major enhancements to the QRZ.com logbook and related services.

George W9EVT’s Shack

One of the interesting stories that Fred shared with us was his experiences visiting George’s (W9EVT) station on Washington Island, WI. George has a collection of just about every Ham Radio ever made in his shack! You can read more about George’s station in Fred’s article titled “Washington Island’s HAM Radio Treasure” on QRZ.com.

Fred took many photographs and spent quite a bit of time learning about Anita’s (AB1QB) and my background, our Amateur Radio projects and experiences, and the design and construction of our station. He also took quite a few pictures as background for his upcoming article. Some of my favorites include a nice panoramic view of our shack:

Our Shack

and a great shot of our tower and antennas.

Our Tower And Antennas

He also took quite a few pictures of some of the details of our station including this one of me (AB1OC) standing at the base of our tower next to the hard-line coax cables used to feed our antennas.

AB1OC By The Tower

Anita and I really appreciate all of the time that Fred spent with us and the opportunity to have our shack be included in one of his upcoming articles on QRZ.com. I believe that the internet and websites like QRZ.com will continue to play an increasing important role in the evolution and growth of the Amateur Radio hobby.

– Fred (AB1OC)

Amateur Radio Station Design And Construction

March 19, 2013 by fkemmerer

Station Design And Construction

A little ways back, John (W1MBG) discovered our Blog and approached us about doing a presentation for the Nashua Area Radio Club (NARC) on the design, construction, and operation of our recently completed station. The NARC group invited us to their March meeting where we shared our presentation with the nice group of folks in the Club. I wanted to post an overview of what we shared as well as a link to the full presentation so that our readers can have a look at the material and hopefully benefit from the information that we have assembled. I have also used this post as an opportunity to create an index to all of the articles on this Blog related to the design, construction, and performance of our station.

Topics Covered

Our new station project involved both the construction of a dedicated room for a new shack and a tower-based antenna system. It took us about 1 1/2 years to build our station including the associated antenna system and we covered quite a number of areas during the project. Our presentation focused on some things that we did to plan and build our station that should be useful to many Hams building or upgrading anything from a simple station to an all-out effort to create a state of the art multi-op station.

Station Goals

I think that it’s important to begin a new or upgrade station project by thinking through and writing down the goals that you have for your new station prior to purchasing equipment or beginning construction. This step is important because it helps you to think through what you want to accomplish and serves as a high-level blueprint for making the design, equipment selection and construction decisions as you build your station.

Radio Shack Layout

We put considerable time and thought into the design of the room and operating area for our new shack including many rounds of drawings and some “human engineering” to arrive at the final room layout. While not every Ham will build a dedicated room for their shack, some careful thought put into the layout of the operating and storage areas for your shack and the associated support systems is an important design step.

Antenna System Planning

The other major element in the design of our station was a new tower-based antenna system. We had some pretty expansive goals for the band capabilities and associated performance of our new antenna system and the presentation explains how we went about developing and executing a plan to meet our goals.

Additional Antenna Construction

Since the initial installation of our tower antenna system, we added an 8-Circle Vertical Receive Array for the Low Bands and we’ve reinstalled our SteppIR BigIR Vertical Antenna. These new antenna systems provide important additional performance on the low bands and during contests. We’ve also added an Antenna System and Electronics for LEO Satellites.

Station Automation

We’ve also installed an SO2R and Station Automation System from microHAM. The microHAM system enables much smoother and less error-prone operation of our station and enables SO2R and Multi-two operation during contests.

Virtual Station Tour

Our presentation includes several slides that cover the construction of our new shack and tower as well as the feedline, antenna, power, and other supporting systems. The end result of all of this work is shown via a few slides that provide a “Virtual Tour” of our station.

Virtual Station Tour – Operational Videos

The “Virtual Station Tour” slides contain several videos. You can play these videos below.

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Other posts in this Blog contain more detailed information and many additional pictures and videos about our station. See the index of links at the end of this post to view more detail about the areas that interest you.

Station Performance

Our new station has been complete for several months now and we wanted to take some time to look at how it is performing against our original design goals. As you can see from the above slide, we are on a good track to meet or exceed all of the original goals that we set during the planning stage of our project.

What We Learned

Finally, we shared some additional information about what we learned during the project and a set of links to various sources of equipment and information that we used to complete our new station (see the full presentation). This Blog contains many more details (and pictures) about the design and construction of our station for those who are interested. Some good places to begin are categorized in the index of links below:

A Tour Of Our Shack

Shack Design and Construction:

Antenna and Tower Design:

Tower Construction:

Antenna Construction:

Tower Integration:

Station Integration:

Station Operation and Performance:

I hope that you can apply some of the ideas and information shared here to building or improving your station. We’d also like to extend a special thanks to John, W1MBG and the NARS Group for encouraging us to create and share this presentation. We are available to provide this presentation to other clubs or Ham gatherings. If your club or event is interested, please contact us at ab1oc@arrl.org.

Fred, AB1OC

Shack Construction – Part 4/4 (Final Setup Of Equipment)

August 25, 2012 by fkemmerer

Computers, Printer, Phone, and Antenna Switching

The final step in the construction of our new shack was to outfit it with all of the infrastructure for power, RF switching, computers and install the radios and related support systems. This post will outline what we did in this area. One of the first things we did was to get the LAN in the shack working and set up our computers (two Windows 7 PCs) and a local printer. We also installed stands to suspend two computer monitors by each of our operating positions and keyboard trays to allow our keyboards and mice to be stored under the desk when they were not in use. The monitor stands were a good idea as they allowed us to place our displays just above our radios at eye level – perfect for the computer-aided operating that we often do.

We also installed RF ground blocks by each operating position and terminated the ground connections from outside of our shack on the blocks. The ground blocks act as a convenient single point to connect the grounds for all of the devices in our station.

Ground Block

Desk space is usually at a premium in most shacks, and ours is going to be no exception. To best use the available space, we built dollies to place our 13.8V and 28V DC power supplies from Astron on the floor, along with the main unit for our power amplifier (an Icom PW-1). The amplifier has a small remote control and meter head that sits on our desktop and takes up almost no space.

Dolly's for Amplifier and Power Supplies

Dolly’s For The Amplifier And Power Supplies

The power supplies are terminated on RIGRunner power distribution panels by each of our operating positions as well as by the construction area. We have 13.8V and 28V DC power distribution blocks installed in these locations so that both voltages are readily available for distribution via Powerpole connections. Some of the 13.8V distribution panels have sensing capability so that when we turn on one accessory at each operating position, the distribution panel powers up all of the 13.8V gear in that location – a nice convenience feature. We also added AC power distribution strips at several locations around our operating desk as well as APC UPS Power Supplies on both computers. With this infrastructure in place, we were ready to move our radios and related equipment into the new shack and set it up.

DC Power Distribution

The next step in the equipment setup was to connect our antennas to the antenna switching consoles that were built as part of our shack. These devices were all grounded to the ground blocks for safety reasons. The switch panels allow us to assign our seven antennas to any of the four radios in the shack. This provides a great deal of flexibility when we are both operating at the same time. With the antenna cabling done, we set up both operating positions. Fred’s position is shown here. You can see the FilterMAX III switchable bandpass filtering systems on the right of Fred’s (AB1OC’s) position, which provides needed isolation when both of us are operating on different bands at the same time.

AB1OC Position

Here is Anita’s (AB1QB’s) operating position. Anita has a single radio installed but plans to add a second one soon. She has her own set of bandpass filters on the right of her operating position. The filtering and antenna switching matrix combination allows us to operate our station in a multi-SO2R configuration during contests.

AB1QB Position

We also set up all our construction and test equipment in the shack. It is a great convenience to have all of this equipment set up and ready for kit-building, making cables, and general test purposes whenever we need it.

Electronic equipment for equipment construction and test.

Construction Area

We took advantage of the storage space in our shack for all of the odds and ends that are handy to have close at hand. This area also provides a nice spot to display our operating awards.

Storage Area

Finally, we set up an A-V area with a TV, audio system, and remote control and integrated this equipment into our whole-house A-V network. This allows us to listen to music or watch videos when we are not operating in the shack.

A-V Area

Here is a picture of our completed shack. We were able to get it into operation in time to use it for the 13 Colonies Special Event in July 2012. This allowed both of us to operate simultaneously as K2K, one of the New Hampshire 13 Colonies Special Event Stations.

Our Shack

We are both really enjoying our new shack, and we find that we are operating much now that our equipment and the associated support system are properly set up. We are now working on a significant expansion of our Antenna Farm with the addition of a tower and several new antennas. We will continue to post as we progress on this next phase of our station construction project.

Are you interested in learning more about our shack design and construction? Here are some links with more information:

– Fred, AB1OC

Our HAM Station

Notes on the construction and operation of a multi-op Amateur Radio Station

Tag Archives: Shack Design and Construction

ARRL Centennial Convention This Week – Come Join Us In Hartford!

Station Building Presentation At YCCC

Station Automation Part 3 – Antenna Cutover And Final Integration

Station Automation Part 2 – Second Operating Position And Antenna Switching

Station Automation Part 1 – microHAM SO2R And System Design

2013 Amateur Radio Highlights

Receive Antenna For The Low Bands Part 2 – Second Shack Entry And Ground Point

A Visit From Fred Lloyd, President And Founder of QRZ.com

Amateur Radio Station Design And Construction

Shack Construction – Part 4/4 (Final Setup Of Equipment)

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