Bxhome

Dad and I participated together also in JART RTTY contest. It was great weekend. This contest was little bit different than CQ WW week ago for us. After while we worked many of stations on the band and callsign often highlighted in red colour – it mean station is in our log.

We changed by radio quite often, because of lack of new stations calling cq. When I was not by radio, I completed frequency counter which I ordered in summer.

In summer I saw in one global rss feed information from solder smoke website about counter kits from Doug N3ZI. I like it and I added it to favourites. After some time returned to Doug's website and decided ask him to some details which were not clear to me. He replied immediately and I ordered chip with frequency counter firmware with xtal and display – without PCB. I am used to do everything on “universal board”.

I have to say that Drupal, which we use for this webpages, is very complex system, more than just simple blog. There is huge list of 3rd party modules. I experienced that one idea can be realized more than one way. There is a lot of space modify existing solutions or help with to authors of 3rd modules with error reports.

I suggested to my father that we could contest both together. We could make one team instead be QRV each separetaly. My idea was accepted immediately and we decided for cq ww rtty contest.

Week ago we tested our station and our logbook control skills in rtty cis contest. We had removed our trx because of small local reconstructions and then suddenly did not work our home made optoisolated CI-V interface. There was no reason because we only reconnected all wires, finally additional capacity to RTS/DTR supply on computer side solved this issue !

Probably everyone who operate RTTY happened that numbers were typed as letters, 599 is then TOO. It happen because RTTY use only 5bits code. 5bits represents only 32 combinations which is not enough for all letters and numbers, so there are special characters which shift to letters or numbers. So, when you miss just this special character, numbers are written as letters and vice versa.

On Saturday 6th september 2008 father and I performed one day ham radio trip. First we visited Zdenek OK2VMJ and Franta at Karasin jn89dn (712m asl) who camped there and participated in VHF contest and on journay back home we said “hello” to OK5Z crew at Cyrilov jn89ak (662m asl).

I am reading Simon 2E0HTS blog and in his last spots impressed me video how Simon and his friend M1PAC working QSOs over low orbit satellite in FM mode. Followed information about IOio antenna documented by EA4CYQ. It looks quite simple and I decided to make this antenna – first step of satellite communication, I hope.

I was browsing LoTW site and found again ADI report of matched QSOs (QSLs). I realized that my la2.pl perl script could process it. I tested it imediatelly and it works excellent. Now are two tables in my stat.

Last weekend in August father and I visited international amatuer meeting in Holice. This year we decided to stay both days, Friday and Saturday and we stayed for night in Pardubice in our favourite hotel.

It is already over 2 years when I got my second callsign OK4BX and became more active on shortwaves. During that time I tried differents modes , bands, contests, transceivers, antennas. Now, I think, it is time to make little recapitulation.