VP9KF Blog

You can take this both ways. In the 1970s the best were 1S1A (Spratly Islands), which have since become very political with China 🙁 However, my best has to be VU7GV (Andoman Is.) which was extremely rare back then [before becoming a place to visit as a tourist]. I received these cards, but don’t still have them, but I wish I had kept them.

EURAO is an independent set of clubs and ‘societies’ which claim to be representing everyone, including CB and SWLs. One has to hope that they don’t fool national administrations, such as Ofcom (UK) and ComReg (Eire) into thinking they are an official channel. The future of amateur radio rests in the larger, safer hands of the members of IARU (Regions 1, 2 & 3), such as RSGB, ARRL, IRTS, etc. I can appreciate that many are not personal members of these Societies and may disagree with the way they organise themselves. However, the bigger picture is what’s needed and that bigger picture IS IARU.

Well, the title says it all. After nine years of forever building these lists, this marks a major milestone. The last 5,000 have certainly been a struggle, despite people joining clubs during SARS-CoV-2.

All sorts of groups.io groups and others don’t seem to get the important single number. The meaningless ‘Group’ numbers say nothing. What serial numbers are out the door? It’s simple when you track comments on serial numbers.

Yes, rates are up, but the current rate is about 5.7 units per WEEK. There was a little confusion brought about by block buys by dealers in the UK and Switzerland.

Let’s be bold. My guess is they have backorders of in excess of 1,000 units (lowered expectation from previously). It’s going to take a while (2.5 years?) to have in-stock units and 2-4 years to get the software spec to match the ‘day-one’ claimed features and ‘wish-list’. FlexRadio took nearly 5 years and they weren’t re-building and recruiting to take a company from mostly analogue to fully digital (ignore the hardware, it’s simpler and cheaper than the likes of a K3S). It seems nearly all units are K4Ds and not any K4s. Graph and number will update as required.

The increased number of received units are bringing out the bugs at an alarming rate. You have to remember that every release of firmware so far has been tagged ‘beta’. Unplugging headphones and having to wait 4 s for speaker audio to emerge, the 6 dB mismatch between Main and Sub receivers, the ‘lost’ preamp settings per rx per band, along with other such faux-pas is plain ridiculous! Each ‘release’ is clearly not tested, leaving the owners (poor devils) to be ‘testers-in chief’!!! Disgraceful. Don’t you believe in ATE, Elecraft?

A well known CW operator has lambasted the K4 for having too low a sidetone (at max volume), clicks and thumps with keying that don’t change with monitor level or audio level and a capability of about 30 wpm, when it was ‘on record’ as doing 40+ wpm. This seems like more than just software issues.

The bets are now on when the HD module will ‘arrive’ and cost. It was hinted at $999. With quality crystals being rare (one of the ultimate demise issues of the K3S and sloppy passband performance), I’d say that it could be at $1499+

Well, the supply chain has forced management at all the transceiver and SWL radio manufacturers to kill off the good old analogue radios. One major part seems to be the inability to source crystals to make crystal filters (hence the late-day CW filter mushiness in the K3S – they couldn’t get decent crystals and couldn’t tune their filters to satisfaction). In fact, most of the IF parts have disappeared in a flash. The following rigs are discontinued or about to be:

IC-7100 (long backorder), IC-7851 (obsolete), IC-718 (obsolete), K3S/P3 (obsolete nearly 2 years), FT-450 (obsolete), FT-2000 (obsolete), FT-3000 (obsolete), TS-590SG (long backorder), FT-5000 (obsolete).

My bet: the TS-990 will go obsolete (they can’t shift inventory anyway), the IC-7100 and TS-590SG will perhaps never come back into stock. The TS-890 will probably drop 20-30% in price and a two receiver SDR will replace the top end of the Kenwood range.

A whole raft of new manufacturers are springing up and making SDR only rigs and were never in the analogue world at all.

If you want a very good receiver now’s the time to scan the used adverts for the best of the analogues and it’s a good time to sell some before their official death is announced by manufacturers or dealers with no stock. The two are very often NOT in step!

It goes to prove that 100 W HF rigs are now in a narrow tunnel with very little light at the end. They’re all using FPGAs from one of two sources, ADCs from essentially one source, DSPs from essentially one source and likewise their PA FET devices. If any of these dominoes fall, good night Suzy!

Metal box and die-casting production seems alive and well in Japan. Metal boxes and higher power components mean a world-wide shortage of SMPSUs (nearly all made in Taiwan) at 13.8V and 25 A and above (you may get your new SDR rig, but having enough ‘umph’ in the PSU when both ADC channels are running and you transmit hard between may be tough). The BIG downside of SDR rigs is that they take much more power in receive and twice as much if the second rx is on. 2-3 A at 13 VDC is pretty hefty. Without lithium battery technology the likes of the IC-705 wouldn’t be very practical at all.

Welcome to digital radio and the killer blow of SARS-Cov-2!

Here’s a summary. I’ll update it when rigs get killed off…. or occasionally added:

Note, however, that there are a lot of barely used (2-3 months) SDR rigs on the used market. This smacks of new owners either being dissatisfied with performance and/or over-complexity (I suspect the latter).

The former IARU Radiosport contest, which I won for England/Zone/Europe in the 1980s on CW with a 500′ wire Vee Beam, has become the “Chase the HQ stations” contest. It’s not run by IARU, but ARRL. They seem to have dragged it in the wrong direction. Time for a re-visit. Please. Somebody in IARU?

Can it be any more complicated?!

http://www.arrl.org/field-day-rules

Surely it’s time to simplify this whole thing so that clubs can make a go of it without being tied up in the enormous red tape? Reading and re-reading this really makes no sense to me. I was going to work a few, but I have no idea what to send to them as an exchange. What?

Quite a few local clubs seem to have given up. I can’t blame them from trying figure this whole thing out!

VP9KF will be active from 2-16 November, 2021. CW only. Hope condx pick up. I’ll be looking for JA around sunset (greyline) time on 14MHz and maybe above if sunspot cycle improves.

Diversity reception can only be done correctly if the count of components from antenna socket to conversion is the same (such as filters, tuners, etc. often in the signal path) to both receive channels. The only way is to have amplitude and phase knobs to adjust them to the setting you want/need.

No rig does this except the new Anan ANDROMEDA 100W HF & 6M SDR Transceiver. The Elecraft K3(S) and K4 certainly do NOT and the claimed diversity mode doesn’t work in the way in which it should. Simple as that.

All of the news about semiconductors being in short supply has inferred that it’s the complex processor chips. Not so. It’s a lot wider than that. I’ve been monitoring the supply of things like cross-needle power meters, PSUs, etc. They are all sold out or very, very close. When MFJ has ZERO power supplies of any sort in stock and their dealers have sold everything, you know that it’s perhaps discrete LF switching transistors and larger electrolytic capacitors that are in the mix. These PSUs are made in Taiwan. I’ll dig deeper and see if it’s limited to just there, but I doubt it.