Breaking News

Yaesu splits from Motorola!!

At least all the Amateur radio division comes back to the original owner. The news goes around the world. I paste here from RRRL pages the following:

“After four years under the Motorola umbrella, Yaesu has split from that company. According to Vertex Standard President and Chief Executive Officer Jun Hasegawa, effective January1, 2012, Motorola will keep the Vertex Standard Land-Mobile Division, while the amateur, marine and air-band will be under the Yaesu Musen banner. The new company will be known as Yaesu USA here in the US.

“This reorganization will allow us to concentrate in amateur, marine and air-band business, which will better leverage and align the strengths of our entire business operation,” Hasegawa said in a press release dated December 27. “We believe that there is an exciting opportunity to evolve our organization to meet the needs of the Amateur Radio, Marine equipment and air band telecommunication industries by continuing to provide specialized services and the highest quality products.”

Hasegawa explained that the new company’s name will be Yaesu Musen, “a name our business partners have been familiar with for over 50 years. We are delighted to bring you the legacy of trust, quality and solid customer service that has always been associated with the Yaesu Musen company name.”

While Yaesu Musen will have a new Japanese address, the address and phone numbers -- as well as the US operations and sales organization -- for Yaesu USA will not change. Dennis Motschenbacher, K7BV, will remain in charge of Yaesu USA’s sales division.”

2012 will be a different year for sure…..

MD200 DUAL CORE

This is my MD 200 microphone recently modified by SV8YM, adding a new  FET electret mic element to it, suggested by W2ENY. (You can see in the picture the small element installed on the top of the original one). So in the same microphone I have two options now. The only thing I have to do now is to change position on the small switch located on the base of MD 200A8X in order to have modulation A or B. The tests of new element are very promising, delivering a very decent audio. The whole modification is quite easy and inexpensive. I have to give my compliments to YAESU that had this nice idea in the first place adding this option to their top quality microphone.

Have a Happy and prosperous dx New Year.

Running CQ WW SSB 2011

It was a really busy week end. The propagation was extremely good, especially on the upper bands. But the 40 meters gave us good openings too. So we enjoyed a very interesting contest, recalling the good old times. The 10 meters was my favorite band, where many exotic calls were heard. Till the next meeting, I wish to all contest community to have a nice time.

Here is a picture of my shack just before the contest began…

*Update: After running already two CQ WW contests with FTDX 5000D I do not regret at all the money I spent on it.

Here comes the sun…

The end of September is always marked by the CQ WW RTTY contest. It is a test that I usually participate. This year we enjoy  an excellent propagation condition with the SFI up to 190. The 10m band was open all day long. I was lucky to work many exotic call signs. At last our star delivers enough energy to have descent propagation. Yesterday I worked NH7O on 28450 ssb!

As we just passed the fall solstice, the 6m band is alive again for long distance TEP contacts. I worked several stations from Africa like 5N7M (Ivan), TR8CA (Alain) and ZS6CCY (Bill). Bill is actually a beacon to me. I hear him every TEP season. You can hear him too.

As the summer goes bye…

Summer  means for me mostly 6 meters. It is almost traditional to participate every year in the 6m Marathon. This year I worked 71 entities which is a slightly better result than my previous attempts. Here is a graph showing my year by year progress.

I was happy of course that my friend Spiros (SV8CS) took the first place worldwide with 111 countries! Next year we will try again.

Btw I spent the last week of august in London.It was really very refreshing. Take a look at the video. It is taken from the upper deck of a traditional English bus in Bayswater rd, central London.

The fall is coming and so do many major expeditions. Enjoy!

Update: Here is Spiros diploma for 8th Marathon on six meters.

Slick and efficient

Most of the members of FT group had commented the lack of a remote control program for FT5000, such one that FT2000 already had. It seams that Yaesu was working upon it and today released it. Even though there were several third party options to control the rig from your PC, a native solution is always more interesting.

My first impressions, after playing with it a few hours, are very positive. It is really beautiful and easy to get familiar with. Every button  is working just as the real one on the transceiver. The s-meter is readable in every function. You can use  your right or left click on your mouse to rotate every nob on both directions. Even the menu is accessible remotely.

P.S. You can download it from Yaesu official page. Well done YAESU!!!

A great day…

29 of June 2011! Today happened something  I could only dream. A real SSB Japanese pileup on 6m. I shared this experience with my friend Spiros SV8CS who was also in the frequency. It will be something to remember in the years to come.

50.115MHz	09:50	JF6TAC	SSB
50.115MHz	09:51	JH6CDI	SSB
50.115MHz	09:52	JA6TEW	SSB
50.115MHz	09:55	JH6DRH	SSB
50.115MHz	09:57	JA6UOU	SSB
50.115MHz	09:58	JA5AUC	SSB
50.115MHz	10:00	JH4IFF	SSB
50.115MHz	10:30	JH6NKZ	SSB
50.115MHz	1031	JA6WFM	SSB
50.115MHz	10:33	JI6QKM	SSB
50.115MHz	10:35	JRRAH	SSB

FTdx5000 digital filters part II

Here it is an other example, showing the  immense power of FTdx5000 DSP processors. Actually there is a very weak CW signal absolutely buried under noise. After engaging the Noise Blanker and Digital Noise Reduction filters, the SV3BSF beacon on 6 meters is emerged from nowhere!!!

FTdx5000 equalizer settings using MD200

I give you here some tentative settings to start with, using the audio equalizer of FTdx5000 and the MD200 microphone. Even this is a personal matter of course, I would like to share them with you, in case that someone is interested. These settings gave me a good audio clarity and enough talk power. I have to thank my friend Nick (SV7BVS) for his patience, listening every one of them and making corrections.

FTdx 5000	AUDIO	EQUALISER	FOR MD-200
MENU	VALUE 1	CODE	VALUE 2
104	200-2800	TX BPF	100-2900
151	100	EQ FRQ	200
152	5	EQ1 LVL	6
153	10	EQ1 BW	10
154	1300	EQ2 FRQ	1500
155	10	EQ2 LVL	4
156	7	EQ2 BW	3
157	3200	EQ3 FRQ	3200
158	5	EQ3 LVL	10
159	10	EQ3 BW	5
160	200	PE1 FRQ	300
161	5	PE1 LVL	3
162	10	PE1 BW	10
163	1400	PE FRQ	1500
164	7	PE2 LVL	9
165	8	PE2 BW	8
166	3200	PE3 FRQ	3200
167	5	PE3 LVL	5
168	10	PE3 BW	10
MIC GAIN	50		45
PROC	25		25

FTdx5000 digital filters efficiency

I have been playing with the FTdx-5000 almost 3 weeks now. What can I say about it? Just… WOW! I thought it would be a new toy in my collection but it is definitely quite more than that. It is really an excellent and efficient  instrument of dealing with noisy today’s bands. Watch the video to have an idea what this terrific rig is capable to do.

Speaking for dreams…

Sometimes so many, I wonder what people need to be happy.It depends on who you have in mind, it is an spontaneous answer… but let me tell you my theory about it. The happiest period of one’s life is obviously childhood.Why? Because they have no preoccupations and they have a lot of toys to play with. The adults we have a lot of preoccupations and no toys.  And what can we do to fix that? Just buy a toy from time to time.

That’s exactly what I did. I bought myself a toy!

SW8NAG on the top of the box. He looks in high moods as he reflects mine. It is the exciting moment before the unpacking. Soon the interior of this box will be sitting comfortably on the desk of my shack, promising to give me many happy hours of cooperation. It is going to continue Ft-1000 mkv’s legacy. Today it is really a special day as the annual Marathon of six meters begins. I will run it, using  this new weapon and I hope  getting better results t5his year.

And here it is, already installed! First QSO with SV3KH. Perfect!

And now I am anxious to find out why respectable reviewers called it “gold standard”. Something tells me that it will be an easy job.

And yet it moves…

There is no doubt that our Sun is finally got alive. There is no need to watch the charts or count the spots any more. The upper bands say everything. Especially the six meters is full of surprises. Magic band justified its nickname at last. Lots of TEP QSO with Africa stations it is a routine during March and April. So we reasonably expect  very good openings during sporadic E season as well. Please join the party.

Accordingly 10m band is in very good shape. Dxpeditions after many years are logging great numbers of QSOs in this band and finally we are hearing them. So everything is more exciting… Good news for our hobby that make us to forget a bit the unpleasant events around the world. 

But let’s focus….

The “gold standard” is obviously a dream. However, what maters is if this dream could  be true.But we must have dreams first, in order to expect to be true.

 

Well, there are some more steps to be done  to get this goal, but we are still walking, aren’t we?

Still going bad…

It seams that things are still  going wrong globally this year. Too many unpleasant events around the world. Most of them out of ham radio world, but severe ones to affect it. We are just sitting speechless waiting when things will get better.

A thing that kept me busy last days was the good TEP openings. Yes we are near the equinox and the sun is active enough to give us the opportunity to work again long distance stations on 6m. This is an example of how I caught ZS6CCY  on my 5 elements mono, a couple of days ago.

It is nice that whatever is happening, hams always have  a window to open in order to have fun.

Early 2011

This year started bad. The awaited DX0DX didn’t make it. That was a shame. On the other hand the VP8ORK turned out to be a complete disappointment.  Lack of propagation gave space for lot of complains. We had many expectations without fulfillment. My  sadness stirred up memories, some decades back, from a hobby of my youth. The picture gives a clue of my activities that time. I made this little boat by myself. She gave me lot of nice little trips around my island. I wish to all of you good winds through the rest of 2011.