K9OZ ham radio blog

I've been battling very bad line noise, and made the jump to buying a noise reduction device from Timewave, the model ANC-4. It uses a second antenna, picks up the noise, moves it 180 degrees out of phase, and removes the noise before it hits your radio. It sounded too good to be true, but it does work. It's not simple, and not 100 percent. After reading reviews, I saw a lot of positive, but also saw people who said it did nothing and they returned it. For the first couple days I was in the did nothing category, but I kept experimenting with different receive antennas, until I found a combination that worked. If you aren't picking up the noise on the second antenna, you can't use it to phase out the other noise. So that's the key. Now I'm using the dipole as my main antenna, and the vertical as the noise antenna. I have it set up so I can switch antennas quickly, using the vertical as main and dipole as receive. Meanwhile, my noise has gotten worse, so this is t...

For years my goal has been to complete a clean sweep in the CW ARRL Sweepstakes. A clean sweep is working all 80 sections in the US and Canada, which includes Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Several years I've been close with 78 or 79 sections, but I never managed to get the Northwest Territory in Canada. This year I was fighting high line noise, and wondered whether to even take part. But I started out and started getting some of the rare sections -- North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota -- right off, so I got hooked. The contest started at 4 p.m. local time, and by the time I went to bed at 1 a.m. I was close to 400 contacts and had 76 sections. I was missing Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Newfoundland and Northwest Territory. So I thought I had a real chance for the sweep. On Sunday, I started out with a good run on 40 meters, and after it got light moved to 20 and 15 to look for my three missing multipliers. I didn't spend full time at the radio, just checking the s...