E6AC Niue

Worked E6AC on Niue while waiting to hear H44GC in the Solomons.  I worked them on 40M and 30M with good signals on both bands

Niue is out in the South Pacific 

A video of E6AC on the 6700

73  W9OY

D66D Comoros

Satellite image of Comoros Is

Comoros is off the coast of Mozambique 

One call on my 6700/ALS 1300 and my dipole.  I was surprised my dipole was slightly better than my vertical.  He was peaking -97 dBm, good solid signal but the band was a little unstable

73  W9OY

ZP/ZP1P Albania

The True DXing Group is on from Albania

Worked them tonight on 40M while sipping some coffee: nice sigs, good ops, laid back pileup

73  W9OY

TO5FP Saint Pierre & Miquelon

Here is one I didn't know about, TO5FP Saint Pierre & Miquelon (FP).  It is an archipelago of 8 French islands off the coast of Canada.  They have a nice write up on QRZ.com

Big S9 signal, up 1, on 40M.  Good ops working everybody.  They are working 80-10 

73  W9OY

  

Antena interactions Flex 6700

There was a question on a forum about whether an antenna connected to antenna port 2 would somehow blow out the ADC while transmitting on antenna port 1.  The 2 antennas in question were physically close to each other but transmission on one was strong but reception was weak on that antenna and vis. versa

I set up the following experiment.  

Pan A (top) connected to RX1 and TX1 antenna port

Pan B (bottom) connected to RX2 and TX2 antenna port

port 1 connected to 1/2 wave end fed 40M vertical over 4kft of wire

port 2 connected to W5GI variant of G5RV at 50ft

Antennas separated by about 175ft

I used DDUTIL to readout S-Meter data on pan A & B, as well as transmitter power from my LP-100A watt meter 

Here is a video demonstrating my results.  The conclusion is my radio with this setup is 100% safe.  When in half duplex mode the ADC is isolated from the RX antenna, and in full duplex mode I was able to measure the signal on my ADC and it was well below any danger from my transmitter.

Also it's great to have a radio from which I can get accurate data and determine precisely if there is any danger without just guessing. 

73  W9OY

CY9C St Paul Is.

This is a close in DX pedition in Nova Scotia 

Worked him on 40 and 30 in only a couple calls.  Very good ops.  They are running 2 station sites on the island

Tidy pileup  I'm trying now for 160M  I do hear them but QSB is killer

73  W9OY

6700 Panadapter Hints

I was fooling around today on 40M and decided to add some macro controls to DDUTIL that controls the panadapter on my 6700 (also works on the 6500 and the 6300).  DDUTIL has a macro feature which allows one to access the radios API with simple code stored in a database

The code can be simple or complex to do one thing or several things simultaneously.  It is easy to write, just basically stringing some commands together 

9 DDTG19:083:084;

The above command allows me to toggle button 9 between memories 83 and 84

83 DD6PBW0:.019;DD6PCF0;

84 DD6PBW0:.011;DD6PCF0;

Programming is basically cut and paste with a little fine tuning to the command to make it do exactly what you want.  83 sets the first panadapter (A) to 19khz bandwidth and  centers the slice in the panadapter.  B sets the bandwidth to 11khz for a more zoomed in view

And button F9 in the DDUTIL macro box llows me to toggle between the 2

This is very powerful.  I have a macro that views 200khz of the band, 35khz, and 19khz and 11khz.  If I was a 6M guy (or any other band that covers up to 14mhz) I could write a macro that shows 50.0 to 54.0 mhz, the entire 6M band in a button press.  The waterfall acts as a memory that remembers something like 19 minutes of band data, so at 50-54 mhz I could look back at 19 minutes of history of the entire 6M band.  

I made a little video of some of the features of the panadapter demonstrating how useful, powerful and easy it is to use.

 

73  W9OY