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Readers who follow this blog regularly (all five of you in straight jackets) have probably noticed that I haven't blogged much recently.  I'm still alive, in good health, and pumping RF into the atmosphere.  In fact, I've emitted more RF into the atmosphere these last few weeks than I have in quite awhile.  Six meters has been hopping and I re-joined the local amateur radio club to participate in Field Day.  I think I may be getting my radio artisan mojo back that I thought I was losing much of the previous year.

In my Blogger drafts area I have 98 articles that I've started but haven't completed or I've completed but just haven't felt like they should see the light of day.  Some are just titles of quick, fleeting ideas I had for an article but just haven't had the time or inclination to further develop.  Several are April Fool's joke articles.  And then there are the rant or soapbox articles.  I hope to polish some of these draft articles in the coming weeks and months and slim down my drafts area.  Hopefully I don't release any clunker articles in the process.

The web animation I did a few weeks ago with virtual radio artisans Bob and Jane was done on a bit of a whim.  I'm working on a second web animation on a different topic with most of the dialog again coming from online amateur radio forums.  I'm entitling this series of web animations Off Frequency.  I intend to add more characters and other sources of dialog, focusing on this strange hobby we all love and the often strange people within in. We'll see where this goes.

On an aside, I have to give a shout out to KE9V for his Cornbread Road podcast.  I'm hooked on the story and I'm impressed with the production quality of the podcast, and I'm not much of a podcast aficionado.  If you haven't been following Cornbread Road, I strongly suggest you check it out.

Here's a web animation clip of Bob and Jane, two virtual amateur radio operators.  Jane is suffering from ARRL Derangement Syndrome.  Bob tries to set Jane straight, but doesn't have much luck.



Several of the lines in this animation are paraphrased from actual web forum postings.  Any resemblances to radio amateurs alive or deceased is strictly intentional.

As others have reported in the radio artisan blogosphere, France has ruled that D-STAR is illegal.  The reasons in a nutshell are: A) it can connect radios to the Internet, B) cryptography, and C) patents.  I can't comment on the laws in France as I have neither the time nor inclination to research them.  Regardless, I think "A" is goofy, "B" is a stretch, and "C" is half right and is somewhat close to the reason D-STAR should be banned in France and the US.  However, patents aren't the real issue, it's the closed and proprietary nature of the vocoder.  Patent it all you like, the encoding technique needs to be published in order to be in compliance with US FCC rules, a fact that escapes the FCC and ARRL.  But release a mode that's MFSK on crack and carelessly call it spread spectrum and for some reason the FCC will ban it in a heartbeat and ARRL will follow suit and declare it verboten.  I don't get it.

I'm sure Internet forum and 80 meter evening roundtable hamdom in the US is going to be confused over which side to take as many of the older crusty hams in our ranks hate D-STAR but also have a disdain for France, to the point of wanting to change the name of  French Fries to Freedom Fries.  It should make for some interesting conversations.  But I digress.

Obligatory disclaimer: I don't hate D-STAR, I just have issues with the proprietary vocoder, and rest assured that the FCC has not declared D-STAR illegal in the US.

About four years ago I bought an SG-211 QRP autotuner on eBay.  The unit worked OK for about a year, though it was often dumber than a bag of rocks.  It always had difficulty finding a match on 80 meters and many times it had difficulty matching the simplest antennas.  It could load up the proverbial bedsprings for an antenna, but place a 50 ohm dummy load on it and the unit couldn't find a match to save its life.  Also, it would often retune for no reason in the middle of a QSO, despite already matching the antenna.  (This would require religious use of the tuner "lock" switch.)

After using the tuner for about year, one camping trip it stopped tuning altogether.  I popped it open and the PIC chip was hot and the tuner was down for the count.  In disgust I tossed the SG-211 in a closet for a year and forgot about it.  I decided to give the tuner another chance and sent it to SGC to have it repaired for the flat $55 rate.  Reading online reviews, I figured the unit might tune better with new firmware which was probably updated since this unit was manufactured.  I got the SG-211 back about two months later; the tech said the PIC was bad and they ended up replacing the whole circuit board with a reworked board.  Upon getting it back I tested it with the FT-817 and it couldn't find a match on any band with any antenna.  The "reworked" board was a mess.  You could tell someone spent a lot of time messing with this board when they were repairing it; it looked like it had been through a war.  There were cold solder joints on the antenna terminals and on many of the matching network capacitors.  I sent the unit back to SGC again and in a few more weeks it was repaired.  The tech said a relay was burnt, probably from high power.  I never had the unit connected to anything other than the FT-817 which runs only five watts.  I got the unit back and it worked, though it still can't tune its way out of paper bag when connected to a 50 ohm load and it takes forever to find a match on several bands.

Fast forward a year later.  I'm looking for a remote antenna tuner for a 100 watt setup so I can get rid of open ladder line coming into the shack.  I had been working on a homebrew remote balanced antenna tuner for some time, but it's obvious I'm not going to complete the project in the next decade, so I'm just going to break down and buy a commercial unit.  I look at Icom's remote tuner and it looks like you have to mate this with an Icom rig, so I shy away from it.  MFJ offers a unit, though from the reviews it sounds like one of their indoor autotuners thrown into an outdoor box.  I like MFJ to an extent, but you just never know what the solder job is going to look like inside any of their products and I don't want to risk it with an outdoor unit.  SGC offers the SG-237 which is in a nice package and gets good reviews.  After my experience with the SG-211, I'm not sure why I did it, but I went ahead and bought one.  Call me stupid, but I thought I would give a "Made in America" company a second chance.  The unit arrived and I hooked it up to my 60m dipole fed with ladder line.  It tunes most of the bands fairly well, but on 80 meters it can't find a match anywhere.  Grumble.  I mounted the tuner outside in an enclosure as its permanent home and shortened the ladder line.  Then it would match on the lower end of 80m, but it was still befuddled with the middle and high end.  I futzed around adding sections of ladder line and after several iterations it would begrudgingly match the entire band though it would often need coaxing from the bottom of the band up through to get a match on the top end.  So it worked "good enough".

Fast forward a week later.  I had been on a business trip for a week, and I came back and connect up the power to the remote tuner.  I key up on several bands and I can tell the remote tuner isn't trying to match at all.  Grumble.  I go outside to troubleshoot it.  Everything is connected correctly and the unit is getting power.  I disassembled the outdoor setup, brought it inside, connected it up on the bench and it indeed won't tune at all.  I popped the tuner open and it's definitely sensing RF but it doesn't sense any SWR, so it thinks everything is hunky-dorey, no need to tune.  No burn marks and nothing popped inside, so I've got a doorstop that lights an LED.

I contacted SGC over email and spent several days troubleshooting the unit.  After getting to the limit of what we could do over email they said to return it for repair or talk with AES where I bought it and see if they would exchange it.  Having experienced SGC's glacial repair speeds before, I called up AES and spoke to the service department.  The guy there didn't even ask for any details like my account or order number, he said just box it up, send it in and they'll get a new one out to me.  I did just that and AES shipped a new unit rather quickly.

The new SGC unit works, but I'm afraid to do much with it.  After such a bad experience with two different models, this unit is likely going to be used only for Field Day and other select outings, and I'll always have a backup manual tuner around.  I certainly won't put it into permanent use.

I have to give kudos to AES for their outstanding service over the years.  I've never been disappointed with them.

We're excited here at The K3NG Report to announce the creation of the Hosted Online Logbook Service or HOLeS.  Online logbooks have become quite popular over the years with services like eQSL and ARRL's Logbook of the World, and now QRZ.com entering the fray.  HOLeS supports this growing trend by allowing anyone to create their own online logbook service like eQSL or LOTW.  It will take only five minutes and a credit card number to start your own professional amateur radio online logbook service.

We're still finalizing our complete feature list and rate schedule, but here are the basic options and rates so far:

Base Packages:
Basic Service $99.99/month
Deluxe Service (your own URL like www.mydomain.com): $125/month

Options:
QSL Card Printing Capability: $25/month (Lets your users print out cards)
Awards Programs: $50/month  (Offer your own awards like WAS and DXCC)
RSA QSL Card Authentication: $25/month
Triple DES QSL Card Authentication: $50/month
Modern Logbook Program Uploading Capability: $75/month
DOS or CP/M Logbook Program Uploading Capability: $250/month
Logger32 Program Uploading Capability: $450/month (Support for Logger32)
Ham Blacklist Feature: $125/month (Lets you block select users)
Rare Country Shopping Cart: $200/month (Lets your users buy rare countries and you make $$$!)
HTML Frames and Notepad Support: $25/month (You can customize your site with Notepad and use frames)
Alternate Fonts: $85/month (Use fonts other than Times New Roman on your site)

As with LOTW, eQSL, and QRZ.com, all online logbook sites hosted on HOLeS will be totally incompatible with other online logbook services and will not interface with them to exchange QSL information.  This includes other online logbook services hosted on HOLeS.

Later this summer we're also going to offer a ground-breaking service called Logbook Uploader of the World or LUTW.  This service will manage multiple online logbook subscriptions for amateurs, giving them a one-stop-shop to upload and download their logs and QSLs.  Users will pay a LUTW subscription fee, and LUTW will pay subscription fees for all the online logbooks the user wants to manage through LUTW.  LUTW adds a 40% service fee per managed online logbook, but we feel this will be well worth it to manage tens or hundreds of online logbook subscriptions, potentially savings users hours of frustration uploading and downloading time and having to deal with logbook program compatibility issues.

We're proud at The K3NG Report to support the needs of amateur radio operators and to be on the forefront of technology in this great hobby.  Stay tuned for more announcements!

With antennas, it's not about the feet and inches (or meters), think in terms of wavelength.

Don't worry about the orientation of a dipole when it's less than a half wavelength above ground.

In multi-multi contesting and big gun DXing it's often more a battle of bank accounts than operator skill.

You're going to go through several phases in your radio artisan career.  Don't spend too much money until you're sure you like the phase you're in.

Don't gauge your success by the number of awards you have on the wall.

Don't get your start on 2 meter repeaters.

Don't be nervous.

Your money is better spent in antennas than amplifiers.

There are good CBers and bad CBers.  More amateurs than you think got started on CB.

There are jackasses in amateur radio.  You cannot identify them by license class, age, years licensed, call area, operating mode, education, or income.

When the bands are open any goofy antenna will make contacts.  People will think this makes a goofy little antenna a good antenna.  Not so.

The perception of amateur radio that the general public holds is much different from the perception within amateur radio.  We're in a strange, esoteric and sometimes archaic hobby that most of the world doesn't understand.  Welcome to our secret society.

It's not that extra one or two dB that makes the difference, it's the first 50 dB that really matters.

Girls actually dig letters written in Morse code while you're dating.

Save your money and buy a crank up or tilt-down tower.

Six meters.

You can operate anywhere you live, no matter what the restrictions.  About any piece of metal can be loaded up with a tuner.

You buy an HF quad only once.

Low SWR doesn't mean it's a good antenna.

Ladder line.

Homebrew it, even if you're not some master electronics designer.  When building equipment, don't worry about not being a EE or building the perfect circuit.  Don't bother making printed circuit boards, you can build just about anything you want Manhattan style.  Experiment.  You will learn more from your building failures than your successes.

Don't fall in love with one brand of radio.

Don't limit yourself to one mode.

Join a club.  Do what is fun and what you want to do in the club.  As soon as others tell you what you should be doing, it's time to leave.  When being involved in a club feels more like a chore, get out.  If the club is on life support and you can't revive it in three years, pull the plug.  Move on.  Don't look back.

QRP isn't difficult.  It requires persistence and patience....and knowing when to go QRO or when to QSY.

If you are in a club you don't like and you want to leave that club to create a new or rival club, list on a piece of paper why you don't like that club.  This list is why you shouldn't start a new club.

Don't do CW because you want to impress others.

Get a ARRL life membership as soon as you can afford it.  Don't worry, you will get angry at ARRL at some point, but you'll save money on the magazine subscription.  And ARRL is about the only reason amateur radio is still around.

It's never what you don't know that bites you, it's what you don't know you don't know that gets you into trouble.

Walk away when you need to.

In amateur radio do what you like, like what you do.

You're in a great hobby for life.

Today the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for changes to the 60 meter (5 MHz) band allocations in the US.  These changes are based on a petition filled by ARRL.  Currently amateurs in the US are allocated five channels in the band in which only upper sideband can be used with a maximum power of 50 watts.  The channels are shared with government services and amateurs must not interfere with these primary licensees.

The proposed changes in a nutshell are:

• Swap one channel with another frequency due to federal licensee digital traffic which often on this channel
• Increase the power limit from 50 watts PEP to 100 watts PEP
• Allow CW, PSK31, and PACTOR-III modes

I'm on 40 meters doing some casual search and pounce this evening.  Between the ARI DX Contest, the New England QSO Party, the Indiana QSO Party, and the 7th Call Area QSO Party, it's rather busy and you have to listen real close to be sure who's operating what contest.  There seems to be some RTTY thing going on as well, but that goes without saying....

....but I placed first for the third year in a row competing in the QRP division in the Pennsylvania QSO Party.  It's the only contest I get excited about these days and it has reasonable hours that let you get some sleep between Saturday and Sunday operating.  And it helps that I actually live in Pennsylvania.... :-)

Lost another 2N2222 in the rig.  Looks like I have to ride to Radio Shack this weekend for another five pack of them...

A few days ago I received another one of those email requests to update one of my online QSL logbooks.  I receive these periodically and they're somewhat annoying, though I should probably just delete my online logs.  I've found online QSLing to be just more of a PITA than it's worth, especially Logbook of the World (LOTW).  As I've mentioned in previous blog articles, I think LOTW is over-engineered.  I know ARRL designed it the way they did in order to minimize forged QSLs, but it's still horribly easily to forge paper cards or game the QSL manager system to get cards for QSOs that never occurred.  Perhaps some folks who chase awards need to wrap some sort of security or authentication around the whole QSLing process in an attempt to give it more prestige or relevance, but to me it's rather pointless in the grand scheme of things.

I love the KISS approach VA7VV has created, where you can just go to his site and print out a QSL card.  I intend to take a similar approach soon, though not as "self-serve" as VA7VV has done, but migrating to a PDF format where I'll just email a QSL card to anyone who requests one.

But I was thinking the other day, why not just do over-the-air QSLing?  With public/private key encryption it's easy to take some text or data and create a key that can be used to authenticate the information back to the originator.  There could be a program or website to generate keys on the fly.  I'm wondering if a key could be shaved down to maybe 10 alphanumeric characters that could be exchanged over the air like: "Here ya go Bob, here's yer QSL key: Gulf Delta Charlie One Foxtrot Zed Five Nine Yankee Three.... Good DX and 73!"  You record that in your log and if someone wants to authenticate it back to the station, they can grab his public key off of the 'zed or at ARRL and plug it into the program or a website.  I'm not sure how many bits the encryption would have to be decreased to to make the QSL key exchanged over the air short enough or make the encryption a reasonable enough level to prevent most forgeries.

Ah....maybe it's more trouble than it's worth and I should stick with emailing QSLs...

Today on xkcd there was this comic on Twittering and earthquakes... This reminds me of the things we amateurs tend to do in natural disasters where making radio contact is more important than personal safety.  However, this comic really brings home the fact that readily available communications technology in the hands of many more people in the general public can supply more real-time information than a handful of amateur radio operators.  It's really only when this infrastructure that supports handheld wireless devices goes down, amateur radio emcomm can be useful.  But I digress. Coincidentally, National Public Radio (NPR), came out with this story today entitled Ham Radio Growing In The Age Of Twitter. Here's a quote from Allen Weiner at Gartner:

"If [amateur radio] creates its own experience, that's really what's key here," he says. "If it just emulates an experience that you can get online, it's not going to grow."

I'm sure the anti-Echolink/IRLP/ARoIP crowd will perk up, but this quote touches upon a key point that it's the unique experience we need to provide, and it's not necessarily about the technology.  We definitely shouldn't attempt to compete with the Internet or mobile wireless; that's a battle that is impossible to win and foolish to wage.  However, we can certainly augment the amateur radio experience with the Internet, even if it means not involving wireless at some point in some instances, for the sake of providing the amateur radio experience to some people.  The experience will lure new folks into amateur radio.

A QRP record was shattered this week when Bob Goblosovits, W9RJX, after making a contact on 40 meters with a homebrew QRP rig in a tunafish can using 1 watt into a dipole, exclaimed on the QRP-L reflector "QRP really works!".  This was the 239th time Goblosovits made the claim on a reflector, beating out Algernon Smith, WB2ACH, who previously held the record at 238 reflector messages in his ham career.  Smith unfortunately passed away last year after succumbing to a heart attack at his workbench while soldering a surface mount kit rig.

It's expected that Goblosovits will be nominated and inducted into the QRP Hall of Fame this year at Dayton.

Last year, through the efforts of a fried of mine, I was able to talk to Red Hot Chili Pepper's lead vocalist, Anthony Kiedis, and bassist Mike Balzary (better known as Flea) about Amateur Radio. It hasn't been reported often, but both Anthony and Flea are hams and in between tours operate out of their California homes. We stopped over at Flea's house. In the driveway he points out his self-supporting 200 foot tower.

"I've got it loaded up for 160...the whole tower. Radials all over the [expletive] place. Damn thing was hell to put up!" he said.

Kiedis and Flea laugh as we walk inside. Flea's living room filled with old tube gear of every kind and parts are lying everywhere on tables, shelves and the floor. Amid the mess, various Hallicrafters, Collins, and Drake rigs can be seen, though Flea's affinity for Johnson equipment is obvious as it dominates the landscape.

"I love AM. A bunch of wankers told me AM was old and too wide on the band. I told 'em to [expletive] off and I went to AM and never looked back."

Flea takes us into a back room. A four bay Gates AM transmitter graces the room which is amazingly spotless in contrast with the previous room. Flea flips on a huge breaker mounted to a piece of plywood on the wall and the beast comes to life and a deafening roar of fans and tube air blowers fills the room. We go into the next room which is soundproof and contains his operating position with a mixing board and a high-end Heil microphone on a boom.

Kiedes explains that he currently doesn't have a station, though he often comes over to Flea's shack on the weekend and operates while having a few beers and grilling steaks.

(This is a brief excerpt from my upcoming book, Unknown and Undercover Amateur Radio, due out in September from Simon & Shuster.. )