A teenage wasteland

I've never been a big VHF/UHF guy. I've always been a HF CW guy. And now I think I know why.

I recently have been checking into the Middlesex County Chat Group Net which meets every evening at 8:30 PM local time on local repeaters. It's a social net that was started and continues to be run by my friend Marv K2VHW. It started with the onset of COVID as a way for local Hams to keep in touch with each other and not go stir crazy.

This morning, I was listening to a daily morning net that's held on the W2LI repeater. Their group is down at the Twin Lights down in the Atlantic Highlands activating for International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend.

After listening to both of these nets, I have to wonder why I even bothered dusting my handhelds off and charging them up. The nets and the participants themselves are fine and fun to listen to. But what's with the juvenile QRM tactics? Throwing dead carriers, singing, moaning, wheezing, belching, snorting and varied other sound effects.

Seriously? Your life is so devoid of meaning that the only joy you get is to interfere with a bunch of people who are just trying to enjoy their hobby? That is so very sad.

Maybe it's just the proliferation of inexpensive radios. Maybe it's just an increase in mental illness. Whatever it is, it's extremely annoying. I've seen kindergarteners with better manners than these idiots who have nothing better to do with their lives.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

They'll do it every time!

 I'm sure most of you have seen this old comic. I think I may have even posted it before.

There was a time, when I was still living in East Brunswick with my parents that I encountered a similar situation. For years, I had only a Mor-Gain multi band dipole that I had put up during my Novice days. it was fairly inconspicuous. Sometime in the mid to late 80s I added a GAP Challenger vertical in the backyard. They were pretty new at the time.

I had a neighbor, two houses away who hated that antenna - and I mean HATED it, with a capital H-A-T-E-D! Every single time he saw me come out of the house, he'd start yelling at me that I was messing up his TV. Of course, he had to be the last person in the state of New Jersey without cable, but even so, I knew it was not me. I took a great amount of care in maintaining a clean signal. I had low-pass filters on the back of my radio (That's when I had my Icom IC-730 and I even performed the mod which allowed you to reduce power to as low as 100 milliWatts) and everything was grounded very well. I even offered to purchase hi-pass filters for the back of his TVs and would install them, gratis. Nope, as sure as God made little green apples, there was no way he was going to let me into his house.

My shack was in the converted garage that was my sister's art studio. After she got married, I was told I could move all my radio equipment from the house to there. It was great! I didn't have air conditioning and it got a bit warm in the summer, but a floor fan made it bearable. For the winters, baseboard heating left the space a bit on the chilly side, but comfortable, as long as you wore a sweater or a sweatshirt.

I had a small black and white portable TV (with rabbit ears) in there, and I invited Bob (the angry neighbor) to come watch that TV while I actually transmitted some CW at the same time. He came over and saw that there was nary a ripple, buzz, or rasp on the TV, even at 100 Watts. But of course, that didn't convince him, and probably just ticked him off all the more. His TV problems were all my fault, no doubt about it! In reality, I knew what the problem was. There was another Amateur Radio op who lived directly across the street from him and was actually closer to him than I was. He had a dipole in his attic, and he ran power while most of the time I was running my customary 5 Watts.. He was the one causing Bob's problem. I knew it, but wasn't about to rat out a fellow Ham. The fellow Ham knew it as well, but kept his lips closed tighter than the main vault at Fort Knox. He was fine with it that I was the scapegoat. Nice, huh?

The issue came to a head one day as I pulled into my driveway, in May of 1988. Bob was there as usual, leaning on the fence, both barrels loaded to pepper me with shotgun blasts of complaints before I was even able to enter the house. "You did it again! You messed up my TV so bad that I couldn't watch the Yankee game last night! I'm going to report you to the FCC!"

So I sighed, as I was dog tired, and asked him, quite calmly - "Bob, you said this happened last night? Are you absolutely sure? 100% positive?"

"I always know when you're on that #$&^! radio of yours!" Oh Geez, profanity this time!

So I answered, "Once again, I'm sorry for your interference problem, Bob. But I just drove home from Newark airport. I just spent the past two weeks in Switzerland getting factory training for the company that I work for. There's no way that was caused by me, I was 4,000 miles away, and my flight back just landed about two hours ago."

I rarely heard from him again. But I'm certain that he did the happy dance when I got married and moved to my present QTH ...... and I'm also quite sure that his interference problem continued on for a long time after I exited the scene. That fellow Ham with the tight lips and the dipole hidden in his attic became an SK only a couple of years ago.

In retrospect, I really have to thank cranky ol' Bob. Things always happen for a reason, and it was these incidents which changed me from a part time QRP dabbler into a full time QRP'er. I kind of made a vow to myself that I'd never let myself get into that kind mess again, and if flying under the radar (so to speak) was the way to do it - then so be it.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Filters

The last few Field Days, the South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club has been plagued by that perennial old bug-a-boo ........ stations interfering with each other.  Even QRP transmitters at close proximity can wreak havoc on each other! This year, I intend to do something about it. Since we typically run only two HF transmitters, I was thinking of building a set of these K4VX filters.

I've spoken with my good friend Bob W3BBO about this in the past, and he put the bug in my ear about using coaxial stub filters, instead. He has some experience using them and he told me they worked well for him.

I did some Googling and searching of the ARRL Web site last night and found this:

http://www.k1ttt.net/technote/k2trstub.html as well as this YouTube video:

As I'm going to be replacing the coax out to the Butternut as soon as the weather cooperates, I'll have a useful purpose for the old coax, instead of just tossing it.  It would end up being a lot cheaper than purchasing toroids and capacitors and enclosures and antenna sockets needed for the K4VX filters. All I need for the stub filters would be some PL259s (which I have) and a few T-connectors which I can get at a local hamfest.

If they don't work as well as I'm hoping, then maybe a combination of the K4VX filters along with the stubs can be used next year.  But it's already mid-April and time is growing short. Field Day will be here before you know it.  And even just the stub filters will be better than the nothing we've been using.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Rained out

I think good ol' Charlie Brown probably had a better day than I did.

The rain didn't come to an end here until 2:00 PM, an hour after FOBB began. I went with the plan of staying hive-bound, which didn't work out so well, either.  My wife Marianne decided to do some laundry, so I was not only fighting QSB on the bands, I was also fighting horrific washing machine QRM.  I could hear the "swish-swish" of the agitator in my ear buds.  Criminy!

I ended up making a paltry 15 QSOs.  W4MPS, Marc in North Carolina was by far the loudest signal I heard all day long. This is where the RBN skimers picked up my signals:

I am hoping and praying for better weather for the Skeeter Hunt.

The only bright side was that I was close to the snack drawer and the ice cold water in the refrigerator!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!