Thanks to all of you

Thanks to all of you who called and tried to contact 5H3NP. I tried to make as many contacts as possible, but with my teaching, visiting and such it was a challenge. I made over 1050 contacts to 102 countries by last count. Hopefully, I can confirm all of those countries and make a nice DXCC out of it.

Cards will go out in January when things settle down a little. I will write a more complete summary of the trip and certainly get to talk to some of you about running a DXpedition like this. My basic advice is:

• Make contact with a local ham, get advice from them
• Get one of the logging programs figured out quickly
• Bring or acquire batteries -- local power is very unreliable
• Pray for good conditions
• Be ready to use CW for many contacts unless you can build a very high powered station
• Be ready for rude and insolent stations to interrupt your QSO's. Ignore them.
• Bring a very reliable computer and radio.
• Bring a G5RV and a MJF tuner
• Have a great time.

Last day effort

Will be on 15 and 10 BPSK as time allows on Saturday. Will be on later in the day frm about 1100 Z to 1300 Z then after 1800 Z if there is anything left of the band.

Getting to the end

Unfortunately, I am getting near the end of my stay. We depart Monday 17 December. I have 102 countries with the addition of Columbia last night. I have tried to communicate with a Tanzanian station, 5H3HO but no luck on either 15 or 20 last night. Will try again tonight.

I am operating 15 and 20 BPSK from about 1000 Z to 1300 Z and then usually 20 m from about 1800 Z to 2100 Z if I can stay away. For the last few nights the bands have died about 2000 Z and the only stations I hear are South Africa and those around the Indian Ocean.

We have entered the rainy season and it rains for a few hours every few days. We have had only one all-day rain, but it looks like that will start to be the case as it has started a nice steady rain today.

Keep trying and I will keep listening. 73

100 Countries

Saturday I finished the 100th country -- Norway. Conditions have been very bad for the past week or so. 20 is open in the morning but closes by about 0600 Z. Then 15 opens up from then until about 1400 Z and it is back to 20. I even made a BPSK contact on 40 m last night at 2000 Z with IK5FKB in Italy. Noise has been fairly strong on 20 and 40 so only the strong European stations are heard.

We have had fairly reliable power for the past week. Unfortunately, the water was off for Monday and Tuesday -- they are installing new mains along the street. When the pressure returned it clogged some valve in our system and we had no water pressure in our bathrooms. Saturday the plumber arrived and he finally tracked down the clog.

Will do some casual operating on 20 and 15 today. Hopefully, I can get a few more folks contact with Tanzania before we depart.

Trying JT65

Yesterday in frustration over very poor HF conditions, I downloaded JT-65 software and started using it. I immediately got HS0ZIO in Thailand to make country 94. Conditions here have been very poor and I have had only two BPSK-32 QSO's: one with P43RR in Aruba for country 95.

Today there are a couple of PSK contests going on: one for Ukraine stations and another for EPIC stations. I really don't need any more U's or R's as I have over 100 stations from up there. I am watching the DX spots for things like ZL's and such but can only hear the stations calling them. I am now on JT-65 again and will see what comes up. I see come good DX but their levels are -27 and -28. I find that levels less than about -20 just don't make it. I will keep listening.

I have received a number of e-mails saying they heard my JT-65 CQ and now want a schedule. I hope to figure out good times to North America and Germany so that I can make these schedules work. The only real frustration with JT-65 is that a QSO takes about 5 minutes at least.
CQ from me
Answer from DX station with their report
Answer from me with my report
RRR from DX station
73 from me
73 from DX

Each of the above steps takes one minute of transmitting or receiving. I can do my e-mail while waiting but it is very slow. I now hear some BPSK-63 stations moving up in the 14.076 region of 20 meters. They are drowning out the JT-65 stations, so I guess I will have to wait until that contest is over.

90 and counting

By my latest count, I have 90 DXCC countries. The DXCC list that the ARRL publishes is rather confusing in that some of the sub countries (Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man) are listed with separate entries, but some country's alternate calls (Saudi Arabia's 7Z) are not. I finally figured out how the list is constructed and have 90 countries. I got Isle of Man and Scotland yesterday as 15 was finally open to the north.

It is 0000Z now and not much activity on the bands. 10 m was open to the western Hemisphere last night, but very quiet tonight. 10 and 15 stayed open last night to about 1800 Z and then died out. I was able to get arm-chair copy with many east coast stations and they were rather surprised that I could hear them on 10 as well as I could. Hopefully 10 m will be open like that again. 20 m has been open from about 0300 to about 0600 Z but I have to be at school most mornings so I don't know what happens to it from about 0600 to 1200 Z.

I have two pet peeves. One for stations where both stations have signed with "sk" and they continue to exchange "73 and best wishes". Folks, "sk" means I am done! The other is when I call a station (clearly with the other's callsign 3 times) and someone else jumps right in there calling me. Give the other station at least a fighting chance! My policy now is to just ignore the intruding station and not even call them back later. Maybe if some of these folks get the cold shoulder a few more times, they will be considerate and let me at least try to call the original station. I have started to make a daily list of stations that intrude and just ignore them for the day.

I have shifted to HRD almost exclusively. MixW is a nice program and its macros work very well, but the SuperSweep feature of HRD makes it nice to watch other stations and keep an eye out for new countries. The DX spot system is fun, but many of the DX stations don't appear on the spot until long after they have left the air. The agrivating part of HRD is that the screen freezes on transmit. Maybe I can turn that off, because I would like to make the QRZ.COM log entry while transmitting my station info.

Stuck at 65

I am sort of stuck at 65 countries. I am up early (0200Z) on 20 Meters but all of the stations I hear are either in Argentina or Reunion Island. Sort of strange that the same folks are up each morning. Conditions haven't been as good on 10 and 15 for the past few days and I am hoping that the sun starts to make some noise so I can use these other bands. It is amazing how electrically quiet it is here. I can hear many stations that come back to me with "qrm" ... who apparently cannot hear my 50 watt signal.

I am hoping for some more time on the air in the next few days as things have settled down a bit. I hope that the U.S. stations can get on over the Thanksgiving holiday for a bunch of contacts. I don't have Alaska yet but have Hawaii and many of the states.

We continue to have power problems. The power was out 10 hours on Friday, 6 hours on Saturday and on and off on Sunday (during dinner). It is hard to run the FT-897 on candle power. I have a small battery (from an emergency air compressor) but it only lasts a few minutes -- even at 20 watts.

Getting into a routine

I have found that 20 m BPSK is best from about 0300 Z to 0700 Z and then 15 m BPSK is best from 1300 Z to 1700 Z. You will find me at 14.072 Mhz in the morning and 21.072 in the afternoon (Eastern Africa Time).

Let me remind you of the DX code of conduct: DX Code of Conduct If you want to talk to 5H3NP either call CQ in a clear area or wait until the conversation with other stations has completed (sk both sides). And if I call JO3CPM and you are not JO3CPM don't answer. I write down the offending stations and will not contact those who barge in.

Added DXCC countries today on 15 and 20 m are Nepal, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Switzerland. I have also completed my log update on qrz.com. Please check QRZ.COM for your QSL. I do check eQSL.cc every few days but am not updating it with all contacts. BTW I cannot use LoTW since my certificate is only valid for WB0VGI and I am logging 5H3NP.

Thanks to all who are calling me and be patient, I will try to answer as many as I can.

73 5H3NP Noel

QSL!

I finally dove into the task of updating eqsl.cc and qsl.com with all of my contacts. I finished qsl.com and started on eqsl.cc. Hopefully, I will get some time to bring all of that up to date. Please send an e-mail if you have any questions about your qsl.

We counted up 47 countries contacted so far. Most of these contacts are on BPSK-31 on 10 and 15, but a few on 20 m in the morning 3 - 7 GMT. I learned that one should start off the log carefully on the very first day as some of my contacts were only scribbles as we set up the antenna. In addition, it would have been nice to have an automatic logging program up and running when making BPSK contacts. I will learn!

I also noticed that at the upper end of the 10 m PSK band were some strange signals. I surfed around and found they were BPSK-63 signals and tried a couple of those. Don't really know if that code is better or not but it is interesting to see that other digital modes are oozing into the band.

1000 what generator?

Touring the market area today in Iringa, I encountered some really interesting generators. The power is interrupted often here (as in right now the power in our part of the city is out and I am typing this by dork light -- LED headlight). I found these very interesting generators. I just wonder what sort of power they provide.

Found that 20 m is open from about 0200Z to about 0500Z. Most of my contacts are to Europe and Asia with the majority of them in Russia and surrounding areas. About 0400Z 20 m opens a little to North and South America. Got Canada, VE3MPG, this morning at 0358 so if you want to talk on 14.070 Mhz try about that time.

10 and 15 are very quiet until about 0500Z and then they open to Europe. Right now (0600Z) I hear Germany, Russia, Bulgaria and Kazakstan on 15 and 10 M. When I get back this afternoon will try 10 and 15 M to see what opens up in the rest of the world.

One problem I am having is that when I send out a CQ there is an incredible pileup on BPSK. Since the decoder cannot filter out one signal and signals fade and return I can get very few callsigns out of that mess. I have resorted to just answering CQ's where ever I can find them.

Daily Schedule

Found that 20 m is open from about 0200Z to about 0500Z. Most of my contacts are to Europe and Asia with the majority of them in Russia and surrounding areas. About 0400Z 20 m opens a little to North and South America. Got Canada, VE3MPG, this morning at 0358 so if you want to talk on 14.070 Mhz try about that time.

10 and 15 are very quiet until about 0500Z and then they open to Europe. Right now (0600Z) I hear Germany, Russia, Bulgaria and Kazakstan on 15 and 10 M. When I get back this afternoon will try 10 and 15 M to see what opens up in the rest of the world.

One problem I am having is that when I send out a CQ there is an incredible pileup on BPSK. Since the decoder cannot filter out one signal and signals fade and return I can get very few callsigns out of that mess. I have resorted to just answering CQ's where ever I can find them.

Jamboree on the Air

A number of Tanzanian hams are getting together to operate for the annual Jamboree on the Air. This is a day when Boy Scouts (and others) are invited into ham shacks to learn ham radio and some of the science of radio communication.

Scout JOTA Web Site There are a number of designated frequencies for the event:

Band Phone CW
80 m 3.690 & 3.940 Mhz 3.570 Mhz
40 m 7.090 & 7.190 Mhz 7.030 Mhz
20 m 14.290 Mhz 14.060 Mhz
17 m 18.140 Mhz 18.060 Mhz
15 m 21.360 Mhz 21.140 Mhz
12 m 24.960 Mhz 24.910 Mhz
10 m 28.390 Mhz 28.180 Mhz
6 m 50.160 Mhz 50.160 Mhz

Unfortunately I have no privileges on 6 m and our band limits for 40 m are 7.000 Mhz to 7.100 Mhz. I will have to operate split if I operate SSB on 40 M because most hams' voice band is 7.125 Mhz to 7.300 Mhz and cannot use SSB on any of my allowed frequencies. I have been on 10 M BPSK at 28.120 Mhz for the past few days. Hopefully, there will be other scout groups there. With my 100 watts, SSB is not very successful. As an aside, I hear SSB 10 m from stateside every evening (from about 15 Z to 21 Z). I have had once successful contact with New Hampshire, but not much else. U.S. hams should be aware that if they would give it a try, the rest of the world can hear you pretty well at night. It is just that there are so many other high power stations out there that when the U.S. station calls CQ, little 5H3NP gets drowned out!

A cheap 12 VDC supply

We headed off this morning to find a 20 or 25 amp power supply for my FT-897D. I have this little battery booster/air compressor but its battery dies after about 1/2 hour of PSK time. I thought of buying a battery but that would be too heavy and I am sure the apartment owners don't need a big battery.

I found a battery quick charger for $135 but decided to keep looking. Then, after many shaking heads, I looked up on the shelf of a computer store and there was a 450 Watt power supply rated at 18 Amps at 12 Volts. That will work fine for my 50 watt BPSK signal from the Yaesu. I snapped it up for $28 and headed down the street.

Once back at the apartment, I had to figure out how the power control system of the computer supply works. Turns out you have to ground pin 8 (green) on the motherboard connector for the rest of the power supply and fan to turn on. Once I did that and merged all of the black (ground) and yellow (+12 VDC) cables I have a fine power supply for little cash.

I plugged it in and things lit up. Then immediately the power in the apartment went out. Turns out you have to go to the power company with a VIP card that comes with your power meter and bring cash. They give you a secret code to enter into the meter's keypad and you get some more kilowatt-hours.. Now if I can just figure out how many kw-hrs I have left so the power doesn't go out again.

Made a few contacts but a pizza dinner called and we are Skyping tonight back home. Will be on the air by 15 Z on Sunday. 73

Radio Furaha -- off the air!

Walking along the street behind our apartment we passed by the Synod Office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, Iringa Diocese. We had no idea it was that close to where we were living. In that office complex is the studio for Radio Furaha FM 96.7 Mhz. This is a station that the Diocese office started a couple of years ago for education and evangelism in the Iringa area. See: http://www.radiofuraha.org.

When we stopped in the assistant manager, Amos, said that the manager was up at the transmitter site trying to determine why the transmitter was off the air. The site is a short drive up a rocky hill to a hilltop with many microwave (the way the country is linked together) and FM transmitter sites.

We found the Crown Transmitter system overheating and the power amp reducing to 130 watts (instead of its normal 2 kw). None of the fans were running. Not on the Crown PS2000 switching power supply nor on the Crown PA2000 FM amp...

After removing the tops of the power supply and amp, we found no obvious fault: all the fans worked on 24 VDC, all the fuses were good. It appeared that the fans ran thru a DB-9 connector from the power supply to the amp. Of course, we didn't have the manual, so trouble shooting was trace and guess. The technician guessed that a 5 pin regulator had something to do with the failure and unsoldered it. It of course had no markings so we packed the powers supply and amp down the hill to "Iringa Electronics"

Here is Protus, the Radio Furaha manger looking over the suspected circuit with the local satellite TV tech, who was a great help.

There the tech put the 5 terminal regulator back in the circuit and attempted to determine where its power came from. Eventually, they were able to trace the fault and as of 7 PM the transmitter was back on the air. With no back-up transmitter, this little radio station depends on this Crown unit. I don't know what I contributed to the effort, other than suggesting that since all of the fans were not running, it must be in the control of the fans and neither the fans, nor the power to the fans (which indicated just fine since the switching supply powered the amp for a few minutes until it overheated every time we turned it on).

A very interesting day which went nothing like expected, but I got to learn quite a bit about Crown amps and Radio Furaha. All of this done without ever refering to the Crown manual or giving them a call. Amazing!

15 meters BPSK31

Found that the best band here in the afternoon (13-20Z) is 15 meters on 21.070 Mhz BPSK. Listen for me there. I am using a battery from one of these little battery booster/air compressor/botox injector portable systems (just kidding about the air compressor). Its battery is not that good and I can only be on for about 30 minutes before it dies. I am going out in the morning to track down a 12 V power supply. Found a 10 amp supply at the computer store, but will look around for more amps if I can find them.

As an aside, I looked over the power strips and wiring here. They had one East African power strip and one European power strip connected together. The European one had no ground pin on the plug and it is wired with the Line (hot) wire on the opposite side of the plug from the E. African plug. Everything on the office desk was hot and you could feel it thru the case of the PC and printers. They have drawers full of adapters that even make the problem worse. I rewired the European power strip so that the Neutral and Line match the E. African configuration and put a 3 pronged plug on it so it really has a ground. I am surprised someone hasn't fried something with this. The only problem is that now the Neutral on the power strip has the overload protection so switching off the power strip still leaves the Line hot. It is much nicer to work on the office desk now!

The standard 3 prong plug here comes with an internal fuse like our christmas lights do in the U. S. There system is 240 VAC and the generic plugs come with 13 amp fuses. The little bedside lights with 15 watt CFLs have a 13 amp fuse. Really! I am going out in the morning to find 1 or 2 amp fuses. I am also rewiring the decorative lamps with real lamp cord because the stuff they use is about 28 gauge and easily broken by furniture--leaving a live 240 VAC wire sitting there.

My setup

Here is the G5RV strung between two apartment buildings.

I have a little table set up inside the master bedroom for the radio and MJF tuner.

On the Air--Finally

Finally, our guests from Minnesota have left for their trip back. We had a couple of hours this afternoon to scope things out, so we started to explore the possibility of putting up an antenna for my ham radio. I was also able to find a door in the bedroom with a large enough gap to get the coax through the closed and locked door. This is very important, because we need to keep the mosquitoes out. One side of the apartment is all screened windows and the screens are integral to the window frames. Short of drilling a hole in the window frame, there was no way to get out that side of the apartment. The other side had greater promise: two balconies with screen doors leading to the balconies and just enough gap at the side of the door to let coax through. Additionally all of the windows have heavy bars across them so we can use the bars to anchor one end of the antenna.I paced off the distance between our balcony and the next building and it was just about right to put up a wire antenna across the gap. We had to get a ladder and open a 100 lb hatch door on the adjacent building but got one end of the wire up on a vent pipe. The other end attaches to the balcony railing on our bedroom. We got all that up and what should pop up in the middle is a 20' tree. (Who put that there?) After much pulling from the ground and the balcony, Dale, Caleb and I got the antenna over the top of the tree. The mini-G5RV fits exactly between the two apartment buildings with 2 feet of clothesline at each end. I had to set up in the master bedroom but it doesn't really interfere with the rest of the room since there is already a chair and table at that end. I will put up pictures in a couple of days.

Now I needed a 12 volt power supply to power the radio. Low and behold, there in pantry was a combination car battery booster/air compressor. It has a small 12 battery that is trickle charged from 110 Volts. I clipped my power cables to the booster and voila we have a complete radio system using things we found in the pantry: 20 meters of clothes line and a battery booster. I made one voice contact with VU3WIJ in India and turned things off to charge the battery.

Unpacking

We had so many things planned for the first few days that I was only able to unpack the radio and tuner and see if anything was damaged. It all looks ok and now I have to figure out where to put an antenna. The buildings are about 10 yards apart but I don't know how to get access to the building across the street. I also need to track down a 12VDC 25A power supply but I am sure there is something like this here.

Preparations

Operating from Tanzania may be a dream, but I am going to give it a try. First, I decided to obtain the license ahead of my arrival by contacting the Tanzania Amateur Radio Club in Dar Es Salam. Mr Hidan Ricco (5H3HO) is the secretary of the organization and offered to do the leg work for the license. I tried to do a bank wire transfer to the club account, but there are so many constraints on banks transferring money, that is impossible. You can wire money through Western Union, but the recipient must go to WU and identify themselves to get the money. This done, I e-mailed an image of my passport and U.S. amateur license toe Mr. Ricco and off he went. I sent all of this off in April and heard nothing from Tanzania for couple of months. Finally on the 7th of September I received the e-mail that the license was ready. Turns Mr. Ricco was dragging his feet because all licenses expire on June 30th each year. Each ham must renew each year for about $10 fee to the Tanzanian Communication Regulatory Authority. Since I was arriving in September, there was no reason to get the license before 1 July and have to renew it immediately. It pays to have someone in the country coordinate the license like this. I decided to test some antenna configurations and came upon the G5RV mini dipole in hopes of running 10, 15 and 20 meters when conditions allow.. In addition, I found a MJF tuner at a hamfest and off we went. The G5RV is nice and compact, but doesn't tune the WARC bands well, so I may have to build a dipole for some of the WARC frequencies if that comes down to that. I am using the Yaesu FT-897D that seems very durable. It is in my suitcase so we will see what happens. I plan to purchase a car battery and charger. Since the power is interrupted often, running with the battery may give me an opportunity to run even when the lights are out. I got a donated HP laptop from Doug, N0NAS. He also gave me the parts for an audio interface. The donated HP will go to the Tanzania Radio Club and Mr. Ricco. I installed Ham Radio Deluxe and WXTrack on the computer and set up HRD to use CAT commands to the club's radios through the USB to serial connection or Serial connector on the back of the radio. I also installed the ARRL handbook and ARRL antenna handbook on the the laptop. My laptop is set to run the 897 through the USB to serial cable to the CAT connector on the radio. At first HRD would stop almost immediately when I issued CAT commands, but found that HRD had to be installed at the root of the C: disk. Once done, HRD worked well. I also tested MixW and some other digital software. All works well. I must say that HRD is far too complex for human consumption. There are so many options that it is hard to get them all coordinated to work. Once I figured how the various modules coordinate, things went smoothly. Don't play with HRD until you have lots of time to try all the options.. Finally, I disassembled all of this and bagged up the wires into two zip locks: one for the club and one for me. I brought some QSL cards along and set them in each of the zip locks so that if there any questions, they know who owns the radios. The antenna, tuner and radio are all packed away in my suitcases. So now let's see what happens when we get to Tanzania!