WAØTDA Remote Base Ham Radio

Operate an amateur radio station from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Month: May 2020

Thunderstorm season begins

May 29, 2020 /

lightning

Thunderstorm season has begun!  Storms can pop up quickly, and when they do, the HF remote base stations may be shut down in order to allow the antennas to be disconnected so as to avoid lightning damage to the radios, host computers, and computer networks. 

There may be little or no warning, and the stations will return to service after the storms pass.  This is just an inconvenience we have to live with during the late spring and summer.  You can check the WX at the WA0TDA station to see what might be going on. High dewpoints (usually over 60 degrees F) are associated with unstable air and possible thunderstorms. 

Report a problem: wa0tda@arrl.net

W0ZSW returns to service after antenna change

May 25, 2020 /

 

The W0ZSW station with IC-7300 & LDG tuner

W0ZSW was offline for antenna maintenance and host PC updates.  It has returned to service with an inverted vee maypole antenna and has been tested on 160, 80, 40, and 20 meters. Antenna tuning may take longer than usual on frequencies that the LDG AT-1000 PRO tuner has not already memorized. Frequencies that it “knows” will tune almost instantly. Please let me know if you run into any problems with antenna tuning.

The old antenna system will be taken down soon and reconfigured later this summer.  It had suffered decreased performance after it had to be partially taken down and moved for tree trimming last year. Plagued by a high noise level, it was clearly underperforming on receive and would need to be relocated.  There is no particular timeline for this project, nor have I decided on exactly what will replace it.  However, the inverted vee maypole, formerly service the WA0TDA remote, is working very well and is much less noise-prone because it is well away from the house, fed with buried coax.  Users should notice quite an improvement.

The WA0TDA remote is still on the air with an enhanced Butternut HF9V vertical antenna, ground mounted with buried radials and fed with underground hard line. It is also an excellent antenna system, but users will notice the different characteristics of a vertical antenna.

Unfortunately, this means I have no antenna for my IC-706M2G digital station at the moment.

W0ZSW offline due to radio encoder failure

May 8, 2020 /

The VFO encoder on the W0ZSW IC-7200 has failed.  Although the VFO can of course be controlled by the remote software, unfortunately this is NOT the case with the audio input mode, which depends on the VFO encoder to “choose” the necessary USB input instead of MIC.  When the radio gets stuck in MIC mode, no audio can be transmitted.  Thus, except for CW operation, the radio is only useful as a receiver.

The only options at this point are to use the station as a CW only one or to go off the air until a replacement is found or a repair can be made.

At this time the station is off the air.

 

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