Lesbos & Samos

Having spent one fantastic week on the island of Lesbos (near Molyvos), we are now on the island of Samos (Agios Konstantinos). The weather is super: blue skies, nice breeze about 30 deg. So it is beach time every day, and we are enjoying the great Greek hospitality and delicious food.

Jazz up the mind …

Phew, made it to the holidays. Being fed up with almost everything, I am glad to escape it all and go with my family to Greece. Lesbos and Samos will likely give us room to breathe fresh air and re-gain energy. Relaxing on the beaches and enjoying the good Greek food is certainly something to look forward to.

Downloaded tons of great jazz music from the fantastic Bending Corners podcast website, so my MP3 player will have to work overtime …

PACC 2007 results

Last weekend our national ham radio magazine hit the doormat. It contained the PACC 2007 results. Much to my delight it appeared that I was listed #1 in my category (CW, 100W). Hooray and time for a beer …

Congrats to the other category winners: PA5A, PA0IJM, PA4JJ, PA0CLN, PA0O, PA6W, PI4CC, PA1AT, NL9884, PB2GT and PD1DX.

The contest enjoyed a record number of entries (1162). Hope to see most of the winners at the “HF-dag” in Apeldoorn.

Looking forward to facing the (fierce) competition next year (right in the dip of the solar cycle: it’s going to be tough).

CW rules … also in the PACC contest !

Meeting with Bob, KK6EK and Kay

As said, I met Bob, KK6EK and his lovely wife Kay in Friedrichshafen. Bob and Kay met some time ago and got married last March. We got together in the Schöre restaurant. This is a typical South German countryside restaurant with a lot of atmosphere and a lot of hams that night … We shared a table with a.o. Curtis, MW0USK, Glynn, GW0ANA, Frank, DL4KQ and his wife … Great company, with great beers.

See this picture of Bob and myself (courtesy MW0USK).

More pictures to follow …

Mini Vector Network Analyzer (miniVNA)

Friedrichshafen 20-22 June 2007. Travelled together with Mark, PA5MW and Aurelio, PC5A, to visit this European “Dayton” event. Nice to see that our hobby is still alive and kicking.

Most important event for me was to meet Bob, KK6EK and his wife Kay. Easter Island, XR0Y, was an expedition organized by Bob to never forget.

Some pictures of our happy meeting will be posted here soon.

At the fair I bought a miniVNA network analyzer. This neat little box contains a real VNA using modern ICs (main building block are formed by a microprocessor, DDS and a directional coupler). See http://www.miniradiosolutions.com for more details.

After some tedious installing issues (too many USB devices with the same driver software on one PC …), I conducted some measurements on my homebrew 4-ele 50MHz beam which is currently in the garden. I put the beam on a 6m pole and started to measure it. Here are the results using Zplots+ by AC6LA (Zplots website).

This antenna uses a hairpin + 1:4 balun match (low Rs, rel. high capacitive reactance + hairpin => 200ohm + 1:4 coax balun => 50ohm unbalanced). As you see it behaves quite well over the intended band (50.0-50.250MHz). A quick check with my IC-706MKII confirmed this.

All in all a very neat little package with a lot of power to do measurement in the field using it together with a laptop.