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Every now and then, there is a question on one of the e-mail lists or forums about traveling by air with radios and antennas.  In my experience, most travel headaches can be minimized by adhering to a couple of simple rules:

1. Make it easy for the security (and Customs, if international) inspectors. Pack everything neatly so it’s easy to search, even if you’re not present (checked baggage).  Label everything.  Include documentation and instructions on how to quickly disassemble things if needed.  Be courteous if searched.  This is not the time to “educate” inspectors about amateur radio.
2. Carry your radio and computer as hand luggage. I think everyone knows this by now.
3. Put antennas into a sensible container and check them. I’ve heard of golf club carriers, ski bags, fishing rod carriers, and cardboard boxes.  I use a 4-inch thin-wall PVC drain pipe that’s about 48 inches long.  It has a black rubber cap on one and a drain plug on the other.  This may have problems in the automatic baggage-handling systems of some airports like O’Hare.  The sporting equipment bags are better because the airlines know how to handle them.  It makes sense to use a carrier that might be similar to other baggage going to your destination.  But, in reality if you just call it your “ski bag” or “golf bag” at the counter, the agent will never ask what’s in it (aside from the usual security questions).  Also ensure that this bag is acceptable on all your flights, including island hoppers.
4. Keep as low a profile as possible, but don’t be weird or break the law. Practice moving fluidly with all of your gear.  Expect to be questioned and prepare for it.

If the trip is international, every country is different.  So, it’s helpful to have either a resourceful, intelligent local fixer or at least to discuss your plans with someone who has been there before.  However, most countries that receive a lot of tourists and have relatively easy reciprocal licensing requirements will not pose any problems.

The parts that I need for the Buddistick arrived via UPS yesterday. In addition to two new 22 inch antenna arms, I bought two of the heavy duty 10 foot whips. These do not collapse down small enough to fit into the nylon Buddistick carrying bag; but no matter. Using the longer whip should really help out on 40 Meters. From the tip of the painter's pole will be 44 inches worth of antenna arm, with the multi-band coil coming next. On top of that will be the 10 foot whip. That's close to 14 foot worth of vertical antenna perched atop a 12 foot (extended) painter's pole. My Buddistick will be almost as tall as my Butternut HF9V when all is said and done! Of course, only the top 14 feet will do any radiating; but is should be a more efficient antenna for 40 Meters than just the standard Buddistick configuration (22 inches worth of antenna arm and only 5 feet worth of whip).

In addition to the arms and whips, I bought the Buddipole book by Scott Andersen NE1RD of "100 Pound DXpedition" fame. Skimming through it, it looks like a great book and a good read - well worth the $15.00. Scott has taken his Buddipole all over the word on various mini-DXpeditions and it has performed wonderfully for him. It's always a good thing to be able to learn from other people's successes. A lot of the guess work in setting up a Buddipole or Buddistick is eliminated as Scott relates the actual set ups for each band. It seems to me that if Scott was able to use his Buddipole to make 1000s of QSOs from Montserrat, St. Lucia and other exciting locations; then I should be able to generate some decent FOBB contacts from my backyard, or the park, or wherever with my Buddistick.

Next month, when I get a little more cash saved, I think I am going to purchase the Buddipole "standard mast". Truthfully, it will extend to only about 10 feet (about 2 feet less than my painter's pole). But it does collapse down to 22 inches. The painter's pole collapses down to around 5 feet. Not the easiest thing to haul around, especially in the car. It's too long to lay down sideways in the back of the Ford, so I have to let it lay up the side. And this is a bother to the backseat passenger on whichever side that happens to be. But I do have to admit that it does make a decent walking stick!

Terrestrial weather forecast for Sunday: Partly sunny with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 90s. Chance of rain 30 percent.


72 de Larry W2LJ

I’ve never really been interested in scanner monitoring though I appreciate the technology behind it and I have dabbled with them a bit in the distant past. Up until 15 or so years ago it was a simple matter of plugging in frequencies for your local area in order to hear what’s out there.

Then municipalities started using trunked systems to allow sharing of frequencies among various users. Scanners were designed that could follow the various trunked system types, and their difficulty of programming ramped up progressively. Newer & more complex trunking systems were developed, PL and CTCSS tones were required – and the fun factor faded among many. It just wasn’t worth the effort required.

And if you travel to another area, all that programming has to be re-done.

A soon-to-be-released (October 1) new scanner from Uniden changes all that in a major way.

To program it, you just punch in your zip code. That’s it. If you’re on the road and have a GPS receiver in your car, hook the two together and the scanner’s freqs are updated as you travel through new areas.

All that confusing alphabet soup of trunking and modulation acronyms and parameters - P25, EDACS, talk groups, LTR, PL tones etc – are now transparent to the user.

It’s called the HomePatrol and it looks interesting, even to a non-scanner-type-but-interested-nonetheless guy like me.

So new its website isn’t even finished yet, but the owner’s manual is available for (free!) download. There is also a YouTube video that explains its most basic capabilities:

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Check out this blog for more/updated info.

Pretty groovy.

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One of the perpetual frustrations of being in a rare (in ham radio terms) location (or just having a big signal from an exotic location) is handling the ensuing “pile-up” of stations calling you, separating them so you can hear them and keeping them from interfering with your signal.  The sought-after (“DX”) operator must maintain control of the pile-up or pandemonium breaks loose.  A tried and true technique for controling a pile-up is to spread callers out in frequency above the DX operator’s frequency, which should remain clear, except when the DX is transmitting, of course.  This is called “working split” and on CW (Morse code mode), the DX operator indicates this condition by appending “UP” to his calls.

For unknown reasons, this concept is lost on some operators, who call repeatedly on the DX’s frequency much to the consternation of everyone else who is trying to make contact.  Sometimes, it’s an honest mistake and after some “helpful” operators send “UP UP UP UP” a few times (also on the DX’s frequency), the offender catches on.  But, in just about every pile-up these days, there’s always one or two operators at the shallow end of the pool of clue.  Tonight’s JT5DX pile-up on 20 CW (listening from the mobile on the way home from work) was no exception.

I’m never sure whether to laugh or hang my head in shame when this happens…but, now and then one of the other operators in the pile-up will answer the poor clueless soul impersonating the DX and give him a contact!  It shuts them right up and is usually good for a laugh.  I do feel a little bad every time I hear it…but, if they don’t get it when the pile-up police send “UP UP” and the DX sends “UP”, how can you explain it to them?!

When we got married, the Escort I was driving had gone to my parents in exchange for a larger vehicle with an automatic transmission and a 6-cylinder engine (all three points nods to Sarah, although I admit that it was a much better ride for the kind of driving we did).  With the transfer of the Escort, my HF mobiling days were on hold, although I kept the gear.

In order to finance a DSLR a couple of years ago, I sold-off some ham gear I wasn’t using, notably the HF mobile equipment.  I didn’t manage to sell the tri-magnet mount I borrowed from N8ET for the 2004 MnQP and a rather dismal attempt at WiQP.  This mount had an interesting life, which included being destroyed at 75 mph on I-94 north of the Wisconsin Dells.  I drop-shipped a replacement to N8ET, but had the good fortune of finding similar donut-shaped magnets and some heavy adhesive vinyl at Ax-Man Surplus.  So, with a little epoxy and elbow grease, I fixed the mount while I was still in Minnesota.  It lived to ride again in several QSO parties before my futile efforts to sell it.  I raised the requisite capital for the DSLR before the mount sold.  So, I kept it.

When we moved the DC area, it quickly became apparent that we were going to have to relinquish our delightful position as a one-car couple and the Escort returned to our lives, probably to the chagrin of my father and delight of my mother.  Dad later passed along a Yaesu FT-5100 and mag-mount VHF/UHF mobile antenna which I promptly installed.  But, I really longed for HF CW in the car like the good old days.  So, a few weeks ago, I plunked-down $30 for some knock-off Hamstick-type HF antennas for 20 and 40 and put the Yaesu FT-840 back in the car.  (Astute observers will note that I have a 100% Kenwood fixed station and a 100% Yaesu mobile station.  The IC-290H and the DJ-580T are anomalies that I permit to persist in my life for various reasons.)

There is nothing like listening to JAs via long-path on the way to work…and getting funny looks from the other commuters at the same time.  A car full of teenagers waved once.  Friends and relatives have called it everything from “a space ship” to “a hunk of junk” (thanks, Rachel).

Welcome to Handiham World:
A volunteer summer continues as Larry Huggins, KA0LSG, makes the cover of Worldradio

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

Today is the 41st anniversary of the Moon Landing. I was 12 years old and watched every minute of it that I could on CBS News. Those were the days, watching Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra as commentators.



My family gathered around the television and watched the TV late into that Sunday night as Houston decided to let Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin begin their EVA early. Those were heady times for a young boy of 12 with strong interests in science, astronomy and radio. I am very glad that I was alive during the era of the "space race". That was an exciting time that we will probably never see again.

72 de Larry W2LJ

I visit eHam on a regular basis. eHam is, as Forrest Gump's mama would say, "Like a box of chocolates". You never know what you're going to get there; and sometimes you have to delve through the crappy chocolates to get to the good ones.

Today, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the BEST chocolates right at the top of the box! A short story by Don Keith N4KC entitles "The Antenna Party". Please click on the title to go read the story. It is a gem.

For those of you not familiar with Don, he is a very talented, best selling author in addition to being a Ham. I have not had the good luck to ever meet him on the air; but hopefully someday ......

Don N4KC and Jeff KE9V are two of the best Amateur Radio short story authors that we have. I wish that I had a 100th of the talent that both of these gentlemen possess!

72 de Larry W2LJ

 Member polls have returned to the ARRL Web, but with a twist. Rather than a single weekly poll, the new QuickStats page at http://www.arrl.org/quickstats offers several polls at once with new questions every 30 days. The results will be published in QST beginning with the October issue.

Start by visiting the QuickStats page now. Be sure to bookmark it in your browser! Watch for poll results in ...

On July 19, the FCC announced via the Federal Register that the cost of an Amateur Radio vanity call sign will decrease 10 cents, from to $13.40 to $13.30. The new fees take effect 30 days after publication, making August 17, 2010, the first day the new fee is in effect. In FY2010, the FCC expects to grant 14,800 vanity call signs, bringing in $196,840 from the vanity call sign program. Earlier...

The National Scout Jamboree takes place July 26-August 4 at Fort AP Hill, Caroline County, Virginia. A myriad of exhibits and activities await the close to 40,000 Scouts, leaders and staff. Coming from all 50 states, territories and foreign countries, they will have the opportunity to live, work and play together in an atmosphere of Scouting fellowship. And just like the National Scout Jamboree...

The web is a great way to get information about subjects like ham radio that you might never find if you had to rely on books. Unfortunately it's also a good way to get wrong or obsolete information. For example, people looking for advice on how to make their first contacts via amateur satellites will find many articles that explain in great detail how to work through satellites that have long been defunct - even on the Amsat website!

There are numerous websites that explain about SSIDs used for APRS. (An SSID is the numeric suffix to the call, for example G4ILO-7, which is used to distinguish an operator's APRS devices and also to give an idea of what type of device it is.) They are all wrong! Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, the inventor and ultimate authority on APRS, released an updated set of recommendations on 9 June this year to provide more flexibility for current usage.

The new recommendations are:

-0 Your primary station, usually fixed and message capable.
-1 Additional station, digi, mobile, weather station etc.
-2 Additional station, digi, mobile, weather station etc.
-3 Additional station, digi, mobile, weather station etc.
-4 Additional station, digi, mobile, weather station etc.
-5 Network sources (smartphones etc.)
-6 Special activity, e.g. satellite operations, camping, 50MHz etc.
-7 Handheld radios and other human portables.
-8 Boats, RVs or second mobile.
-9 Primary mobile.
-10 Internet gateways, Echolink, Winlink, AVRS, APRN, etc.
-11 Balloons, aircraft, spacecraft, etc.
-12 APRStt, DTMF, RFID devices, trackers etc.
-13 Weather stations.
-14 Truckers or other full time drivers.
-15 Additional station, digi, mobile, weather station etc.

These are recommendations and not set in stone, but they are intended to help people know what type of device or application is being used, particularly in situations where someone doesn't have a graphical map display and can't see an icon.

Due to these recommendations I am now using G4ILO-5 for my Windows smartphone running APRSISCE. My VX-8GR remains G4ILO-7. My main 2m station is G4ILO-0 or just plain G4ILO, and my HF station is G4ILO-1.

Of course, this page could also become out of date in the future so I am including this link back to the original document in case Bob should make any further changes.

I am looking at the propagation box to the lower right and I am liking what I see! Flux is up around 80. While the SSN is only 12, conditions are looking better.

Can it hold out for the Flight of the Bumblebees this weekend? I certainly hope so!

My replacement Buddistick whips should arrive here on Wednesday. I am pumped and will be ready to go - even if it's only from my backyard (my wife is "on call" this weekend, so no traveling far from the house).

The extended forecast for Sunday is looking for clear, sunny skies with temperatures in the upper 80s. I can handle that!

72 de Larry W2LJ

Last night, I had the Wouxun in scan mode; and settled in on a conversation taking place on one of the local repeaters. As it closed upon 10:00 PM local time, the Hams in conversation were quite rudely interrupted by other Hams informing them (VERY impolitely) that the daily traffic was about to begin.

As long as I have been a Ham, this net has taken place religiously on that frequency at 10:00 PM. But that's a tradition and shouldn't be etched in stone. No one owns a frequency. The Hams in question could and SHOULD have been informed in a way more polite and friendly manner that a net was about to begin.

It's a bad reflection when someone comes on frequency without identifying themselves and starts shouting into the microphone, "Net, Net, NET!!!!"

I guess it just goes to show that we have more than our share of idiots, also.

72 de Larry W2LJ

The ARRL Board of Directors held its Second Meeting of 2010 July 16-17 in Windsor, Connecticut, under the chairmanship of President Kay Craigie, N3KN. The Board considered and acted on a number of organizational, regulatory and operating issues, including the following: Approved a campaign to celebrate the 75th anniversary of ARES® that is designed to promote and increase awareness of this valu...