ICQ Podcast Episode 423 – Canvey Island Rally 2024

In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB, Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwell (M0SGL), Frank Howell (K4FMH), Bill Barnes (WC3B) and Leslie Butterfields (G0CIB) to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and the episode's feature is Canvey Island Rally 2024.

We would like to thank an our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

  • Alabama Radio Station Owner Reports 200-Foot Tower Stolen
  • Two Arrested after Theft of Copper from Destroyed Radio Tower
  • The First Amateur Radio Station on the Moon, JS1YMG, is Now Transmitting
  • AMSAT Makes Plea to Keep Greencube in Service
  • New SOTA Group is Growing for West Malaysian Hams
  • An Update on the Amateur Radio Licence Exams UK
  • AO-92 Satellite Reaches end of Life
  • Raspberry Pi Net each Sunday on EchoLink and AllStarLink
  • New Challenge for British Science Week

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Joining the ARDC Board

Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a unique organization in the world of amateur radio. ARDC is organized as a foundation with two main roles: management of 44Net and a grants program. The foundation has assets a bit over $100M and funds grants roughly at the $5M level each year. (These are very rough numbers. For the specifics, take a look at the audited financial statements.)

I started out serving on the Grants Advisory Committee and told my ARDC story here:

What’s This ARDC Grant Thing?

I am honored to be asked to join the ARDC Board of Directors and I look forward to serving in that volunteer role. See the ARDC announcement here:

Bob Witte, K0NR, joins ARDC’s Board of Directors

I am new to the Board but have worked with them as a member of the Grants Advisory Committee. I can tell you that they are a great bunch of people, all motivated to do the best for amateur radio and digital communications. ARDC also has a small paid staff that makes things happen on a daily basis, all great folks to work with.

If you have feedback or suggestions for ARDC, my door (and inbox [email protected]) is always open. If you want to apply for a grant, working directly with the ARDC staff is best. The grant process is described well here.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Joining the ARDC Board appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.


Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 318

Amateur Radio Weekly

The first Amateur Radio station on the Moon is now transmitting
The JAXA Ham Radio Club (JHRC), JQ1ZVI, secured Amateur Radio license JS1YMG for LEV-1, which has been transmitting Morse code on 437.41 MHz.
ARRL

Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower
“We’re down here and the tower’s gone.”
AL.com

AMSAT CubeSatSim beta release
The official release of the new Beta CubeSatSim hardware and software is finally here.
AMSAT

Exploring SATNOG
A revolutionary approach to satellite ground stations.
N1JUR

Visiting VOA Site B
K4RLC tours the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station.
QRPer

Common CW abbreviations
A list of common abbreviations used in CW communications.
VE3IPS

FOSDEM 2024 videos now available
Synthetic aperture WiFi RADAR, GPU DSP acceleration, and more.
RTL-SDR

Will large satellite constellations affect Earth’s magnetic field?
It will coat the stratosphere and ionosphere with metal aerosols at levels never seen before.
Hackaday

Magic Band Revealed
Jim Wilson K5ND recently completed the third edition of the book Magic Band Revealed.
K0NR

Taking the hiss out of QO-100
Even though the signals are mostly 59-59+15dB the background hiss is very pronounced and gets very tiring after a while.
M0AWS

Those darn wall-wart power supplies
It takes some of the legal liability burden off manufacturers if their product is powered by one of these adapters that isolates the somewhat dangerous 120 VAC from their equipment.
Radio World

Video

Radio Interface Board – Sneak peek
A pre-production sample of the DigiPi Hat from ELEKITSORPARTS. This is the first solder-less way to hookup your dual-band rig to a Raspberry Pi.
KM6LYW

Ham Radio Magic Tarp Antenna
As stealth as they come.
HamJazz

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Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

Computer issue solved.

 


 

Last week I clicked on a desktop shortcut to open one of my radio programs and the arrow kept spinning and then disappeared and no program opened. I tried some other desktop shortcuts and some worked and some did not. 


Below is the road I travelled down to eventually fix the issue and it turns out that this could happen to any one of us. By outlining the path I followed I hope it helps others out there who may encounter the same issue. 


Before I begin by way of background my setup is as follows:
Win10 home 64bit
 Intel Core i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz  4.10 GHz
RAM 32GB 


My first step was simple and has helped in the past, to restart the PC and give the desktop shortcuts another try. That did not work.
 I then chose one desktop shortcut and it's program to investigate and try to get it working. 


Next, I turned off my Antivirus software (Bitdefender) for a period of 15 minutes and restarted my PC, checking to make sure the Antivirus was still off (it was). I tried the program again and it did not start. 


I then went into Bitdefender antivirus made an exception file for the sample program and restarted but that did not work either.
Next, I started the PC in safe mode and was going to try the programs there but once the PC started the programs I wanted to test were not there. 


I uninstalled the program using Revo uninstaller (great program by the way) I then restarted the PC went to the program's website and downloaded the program again with the antivirus turned off. After restarting the PC I tried the program and it did not work. 


I did not think it was a Windows update as I run a program called Windows Update Blocker (another great program) it blocks all updates until I get the all-clear from the Askwoody site. This is a great site and click on the link to check out lots of great information there. 


It was now time to take things to the next level. I am a firm believer in backing up your PC for the just-in-case moments. The program I use for this is Macrium Reflect and with it, I make a clone and image file of my solid-state C hard drive. The backups are stored on separate internal HDs. One drive for the clone and one for the image. Click on clone or image if you are not sure what they are and you will be taken to a website that explains them. 


I decided to use an image of my C drive from an earlier date when I knew the desktop shortcuts and programs were working. Now you have to remember that anything on your PC after the date of the HD image date will be gone. If your image is from January 30th, 2024 anything on your PC after that date will not be there once you revert to that image. Now I know there is the Microsoft system restore as well but I have never had success with the program. I always get the message "System restore failed to restore to earlier image"
After Macrium Reflect did its magic and I was using an earlier image of my HD all programs were now working fine! So this thought.........
The next day I was on my PC and started the sample problem program and low and behold a spinning arrow and then the program did not start! 


I was doing some nosing around in Bitdefender and turned off the antivirus again, then under protection I turned off Online threat protection and did a restart still had the issue. I then did the same to firewall, ransomware, vulnerability protection and advanced threat protection. It was then I turned on advanced threat protection everything started to work just fine. 

Macrium Reflect restoring HD to earlier date


I then turned on each protection feature and checked the programs and there were no issues but once advanced threat protection was turned on programs would not start.
Within advanced threat protection in the settings, you had the option to set up exceptions but these exceptions had to include the "exe" program file within the file exception. (I found this out with lots of reading on the internet). As well all exe files from the program have to be included or the program will still be blocked from working.

Bitdefender Advanced threat exceptions

Once all this was done my problem of certain programs not starting was solved. I don't understand why only certain programs were affected....that is for later reading. Bitdefender is constantly performing updates in the background and I am guessing that something was added that marked some programs as a threat and stopped them from loading until an exception was made.



Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Magic Band Revealed

My ham radio pursuits have tended towards the VHF/UHF bands and the 6-meter band (50 MHz) has always been interesting to me. I like to think of 6 meters as a VHF band with some strong HF tendencies. Most of the time, propagation is local, certainly beyond line-of-sight, but also not long distance. When sporadic-e and F2 propagation show up, 6m tries its best to act like an HF band, skipping the signal off the ionosphere.

We call it the magic band because magical propagation occurs just when we least expect it. A more accurate name might be the fickle band because 6 meters provides short periods of random excitement followed by long periods of severe quiet. And that is why we like it so much.

Jim Wilson K5ND recently completed the third edition of the book Magic Band Revealed. Of course, I had to read it and I surely did enjoy this book. Jim hits all of the different operating and propagation modes that hams use on 50 MHz: sporadic-e, F2, TEP, meteor scatter, ionoscatter, etc. The WSJT-X modes have had a huge impact on what’s possible on the band, so Jim provides a good overview of the various options (FT8, FT4, MSK144, Q65). Jim also provides some helpful information on VHF contests and operating as a rover.

The best attribute of the book is that it is primarily written as a first-person account of K5ND’s operating experiences. Reading the book is just like having a friend tell you about what they’ve experienced on the band, along with some great operating tips. Great work, Jim!

The book is available as a free PDF download from Jim’s website or in print version via Amazon.
Go to https://k5nd.net/2023/11/magic-band-revealed/

73 Bob K0NR

The post Magic Band Revealed appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.


Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

LHS Episode #531: Tailscale Deep Dive

Hello and welcome to the 531st installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss an easy-to-use, secure and open source personal (or enterprise) VPN solution known as Tailscale. Topics include downloading and installation, preliminary configuration, VPN management, usage cases, advanced features and much more. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful week.

73 de The LHS Crew


Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 317

Amateur Radio Weekly

Neighborhood Watch utilizes GMRS
Sponsored by the Sand Canyon Volunteer Council and Tehachapi Valley CERT team in conjunction with the Tehachapi Amateur Radio Association.
Tehachapi News

DLARC preserves Ham Radio & More radio show
Ham Radio & More was a radio show about Amateur Radio that was broadcast from 1991 through 1997. More than 300 episodes of the program are now available online.
DLARC

FreeDV January update
Applying Machine Learning (ML) techniques to quantise Codec 2 features.
FreeDV

Radio Orienteering Cyber-Coach
The Cyber-Coach will answer any question related to Radio Orienteering.
Open ARDF

Amelia didn’t know radio
That Earhart and Fred Noonan failed to reach Howland Island on their 1937 around-the-world flight because of radio problems has been said before—but little has been written about the specifics.
U.S. Naval Institute

CATS Mobile Transceiver
70 cm CATS mobile transceiver, with integrated GPS.
cats.radio

114 digital voice nets (PDF)
Various nets taking place on EchoLink, AllStarLink, IRLP, and more.
ROC-HAM

YLISSB celebrates 61 years on the air
The YLISSB operates on 14.332 MHz every day of the year.
ARRL

Video

Quartzfest 2024
A comprehensive video playlist of events at Quartzfest 2024.
K7AGE

What went wrong when I elevated my fan dipole?
To my dismay, when I checked the fan dipole antenna again, the SWR had gone beyond the tunable range of my automatic antenna tuner.
Johnsons Techworld

The Origins of Silicon Valley: Roots in Ham Radio
This talk focuses on the contributions of Amateur Radio to the development of a climate of innovation and collaboration in what has become Silicon Valley.
KM6LH

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Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

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