Mimosa-acacia

Today WX was very cold rain in AM and got some sun shine in PM but temperature was still low.
But thanks to the warm days last week, the mimosa-acacia tree in my garden has opened their vivid yellow followers.
It looks more beatiful and more cheerful under glaring spring sunshine. My XYL loves this flower.

According to the WX forecast, it will not so good WX next one week,
I'm planning to take my family to Nasu in Tochigi-pref. (about 150km north east from Tokyo) on coming March 5 & 6 though.

Rainbow Volatage Checker

This is one of my work made this weekend. :-)


I made battery voltage checker designed by JA1XRQ. LED color is changed according to the voltage variation.
And LED flicks >15V, alarm buzzer sounds <10V.
For more details are shown in JA1XRQ's webpage

[Addition on Feb/28]
I made mistake on selection of legs of color LED.
The connection of red leg and blue leg were reverse.
I fixed and put it in a small case.

WBL Paddle has come!

Today's WX was very warm. It was around 20C at noon and still 16C in the mid night now in Tokyo.
The WX forecast said "Haru-Ichi-Ban" or a spring gust may blow from this mid night to early tomorrow morning.
It was happy to hear such spring call today.
Another happy thing was, WBL V22 model paddle has been arrived from Steve, N6TT.
One week ago, we talked about key collections on the air, I said I have more than 10 keys then he said he has 100!! :-)
And he was kindly offered me to try his spare WBL paddle.
WBL model V22 is a vertical two lever two spring iambic paddle.
As soon as I connected it by stereo RCA cable with FT2KD and send some CQ on 7026KHz.

And as I expected Steve replied to my CQ then I could say my sincere thanks to him on the air.

For these few years I've been used to operate magnetic model but this spring model is still excellent and feel silky smooth.

Especially the original owner's callsign was sealed top of the paddle. It's KH7M. I surprised again to find that callsign. Because KH7M, Jim was my code buddy when I applied the code buddy program of FISTS club about 7 years ago.
According to my log, I worked with Jim 4 times on 15m band from Feb to Mar, 2003 as a code practice.
His signal was always decent but mine was not so strong then, we quited our sked soon.
I recalled that days by finding his call on the paddle!

Again I thank you, Steve for your generous offer. I'll love to use this fine instrument as one of favorite paddles.

CWcom has possiblity

CWcom is a kind of VoIP application to communicate by Morsecode through internet.

I visited CWcom after long interval form a week ago.
Interestingly, young peopole are accessed it.
I met 17-year-old ham in Wales, UK the other day.
And today I met 25-year-old guy in kansas, he has no radio license but he is interested in the radio since his father has been a radio operator at military service.

I've never thought CWcom is used by such a young peopole.
I'm very glad to know some young people still feel Morsecode is cool.
And hope they will be a ham and pound a brass and chat with them on the air in near future.

Sweet present!!

Sweet present has come!
Unfortunately it's not a valentine's present from girls but a lucky present donated by JG2AKR for A1 Club Wabun (Japanese Morsecode) QSO party.

The 3rd anniversal Wabun QSO Party has been held from year end of 2009 till new years day of 2010.
I could worked only 7 stations and more than 50 guys submitted their logs. So I did not expect any award this time.

So, it's very big surprise for me to get such a nice present.
Thank you Miyamoto-san for your sweet present!

Plum blossoms in Odawara

Today Feb-11 was Japanese national holday.
Although the weather was not so good, my family decided to visit Pulum groves in Soga, Odawara-city located south weatern part of Kanagawa-pref.
It was very cold with misty rain sometimes but plum blossoms (or Japanese Apricot) are almost in full bloom there.



Lovely! Smells good too!


Poyo (XYL) and me.


Yoko (Daughter)

CWops Mini-test FEB

On 10th of Feb, I rushed back to the home for the 2nd mini-test of CWops.
I managed to arrived at home just few minutes before starting time 8PM (1100Z).
So I fired up my FT2K without taking a meal.
After few nember exchange on 40m, I made supper break then get back to the radio. Total 9 exchanges have been made. Condition was better than the 1st time in Jan.
Since next day (FEB-11) is Japanese national holiday, I tried to get up for next session starting from 4AM (1900Z).
But, ooops! I woke up 4:30AM. Only 30min are left...
I directed my 40m HB9CV to Europe and searched CQ CWT stations.
Condition this time is not so good for my system but managed to work with 8 stations from Russia, Ukrine and Czech Republic.

KO6U QSL

I confirmed KO6U's QSL today! Thank you Nathan!

BTW,
Who is the nice guy "Ike-men" [イケメン] on the report side? (^^
I hope the band should improve in good shape so as to hook up with you again.

73! Atsu

CWops as of 2010-Feb-1

The first newsletter of CWops named "Solid Copy" has been published! [HERE]
The number of members reached nearly 650. Congratulations!
According to the member roster [HERE],
As of 2010-Feb-1,
No. of member: 644
No. of callsigns: 670
(because someone has 5 callsigns!)
Entities:54

Distribution in Continent: NA-478, EU-135, AS-35, SA-8, OC-8, AF-6


Top 10 Countries: W-448, G-31, U-14, UR-14, PA-14, JA-11, OH-10, 4X-9, SM-9, others-71

Snow Fall in Tokyo, 2010-Feb-1

====Additional photos took Feb-2 morning====



====End of addition===




Today after sunset, cold rain changed to snow, and now 11PM heavy snowing and ground is all white covered with abt 3cm of snow. Wx forecast said that it snows till around 3AM tomorrow and total depth will be 10-15cm.

My HB9CV for 40m band became very high SWR due to snow. HEXBEAM SWR for 20m band seems no problem.

I worry about trouble on the way to the office tomorrow morning,
Traffic infrastructure in Tokyo Met is very weak against snow.