5630mi per watt!

The other day I had an amazing low power but long distance QRP/p PSK31 QSO between me (KK4JDO) and Michael (VE3NOO).  His QTH  in Canada is 1126.8mi (1813.4km) from mine here in central Florida.  At the start of the QSO I was running just a meager 0.2 watts.  That's right, less than a quarter of a watt!  He started out running around 35 watts, I believe, but when he heard what I was doing he lowered his power down to less than a watt also!  How cool is that?!  We had a fine QSO, 100% copy both directions, and it felt like the conditions were going to last forever.  We eventually said 73 ourselves well before the ionosphere did it for us.  The math on that works out to 5,630mi (9060.6km) per watt!  How cool is that?!

To give an example, using that kind of power for distance ratio, you could talk to the moon using mere 42.4 watts.  Now I know that ionospheric propagation doesn't work like that, but it does give a fine example of the kind of distances we're talking about.  :-)

I took a few pictures to commemorate what - to me at least - was a special event:

Here is a shot while receiving him, note the power setting and how sharp his signal is in the waterfall.

Here is a shot of my radio while transmitting, again, note the power level!  Woot!

Here is a screenscrape of his signal before he turned down his power.

And again after he turn down the juice to 1 watt.  He went lower with a lot of success but I didn't think to grab a screenshot.  I was too busy geeking out.  :-)

So all-in-all, it just goes to show that you don't need a lot of power to talk long distances.  Even chatting across the internet can't compare to the power levels used here.  We're talking less than the amount of power needed to light an LED!  And I was able to talk from Florida to Ontario with it!  Just the optics used to send signals around the world via the internet use more juice than that, let alone the hardware that supports said optics.  Talk about energy efficient!  Now if the ionosphere had the same reliability factor as the internet we'd be in good shape.  :-)

Anyhow, I just wanted to share something that I found absolutely amazing.  So if you have a RockMite or SoftRock, don't despair, you can make some long distance contacts as well!

Thanks and 73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Through the ether...errr....looking glass

Been suffering from the mother of all colds for the last seven days.  Finally feel up to posting anything.

I was working a little PSK31 at QRP power levels the other day, and was rewarded with an email containing a screenshot of my signal.  This is from Michael, CK3NOO, who has quite the interesting website here.  I love getting screenshots of my signal back during a QSO.  It is final proof that I have everything set up right and that I'm not splattering as you see some folks do.

It is really easy to get a screenshot if you are using DM780, all you need to do it hit Atl+PrntScrn and DM780 will save a copy of your screen to a "DigitalMaster780" folder under "My Pictures".

A few weeks before that I was tinkering around on SSTV during the Sunday night Reddit net.  One of the people on the net (I think it was Jeff, NT1K) was kind enough to post the image that I had sent via HF.

I'm not much into SSTV, but it was neat to be able to send this to him sans internet connection, and extra interesting to get to see it as he saw it.  Here is the original as I sent it (before adding callsign):

You can see that HF wasn't kind to it.  Someone else on that net received it in almost original condition and posted that, but it appears that I have lost that one.

Well, that's it for this post.  Time for more meds and sleep.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

PSK31 Ramblings

I'm working towards the eQSL.cc eWAS award.  If you're reading this you are probably already familiar with the WAS type awards, but on the off chance that you are not, WAS means "Worked All States" and the award is a certificate or plaque that you get if you have confirmed communications with all 50 US states.  In the case of eQSL, the communication needs to be with someone that has AG status.  This means that someone from QSL.cc has verified that they are who they say they are in order to stop cheating.

All that leads up to this.  I was sitting at my rig calling CQ trying to contact some specific states when this appeared on my waterfall display:

Two stations, one at 725Hz and one at 1460Hz that collectively spread across two thirds of the available waterfall.  I've looked into why this happens, and it seems that this occurs when someone pushes their rig into a non-linear state.  This can be done several ways, but the usual culprit appears to be either using voice processing and ALC, having the volume output of your soundcard set too high, or trying to push too much power for the given mode.  Given that PSK is a 100% duty cycle mode, some radios splatter when they are push too hard, in most cases that I've read about anything above about 40% power output pushed the rig into a non-linear state.  I'm a little fuzzy on what that means exactly, but I'm doing my best to figure it out.

That was all said to lead up to this.  If you ever see me on the waterfall, please send me a screenshot of what my signal looks like!  Hopefully it will be a nice pretty signal since I run around 40W, don't use "PROC", and have the audio output ratcheted down so that the ALC doesn't kick in!

That oughta be about enough ramblings for this evening.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Ham Radio can just look cool sometimes...

I had to switch out my PC in the shack, the old laptop just wasn't cutting it anymore.  Not that I was able to get a new PC, but I re-purposed one of two servers that I used to run networking labs at home.  I also swapped the monitors around a bit.  Since I was rebuilding my PC I decided to completely revisit DM780 and actually get it all setup properly instead of just limping along without macros.  I wanted to share a screenshot of it that I took last night, just because it looks cool:

I've made a few minor changes since I took the screenshot, but this is mostly what I'm using for digital modes right now.  It is so handy finally having macros set up, as well as being able to easily log the contacts and upload them to LoTW and eQSL.cc.  If you work PSK, give me a shout on 14.070MHz sometime!

On that note, I saw something this morning on the SuperSweeper tab that has me confused.  I noticed a station calling CQ in two places on the waterfall at the same time! Here is a shot of it:

And a close up:

If anyone out there knows how this happens, please drop me a line or post a comment!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO