AmateurRadio.com

Picture from nextdayreprap.co.uk

Jason, NT7S has just posted an article entitled “3D Printed Enclosures” on his blog. As a ham with a drawer full of unboxed projects who has often spent hours searching for suitable enclosures for a project and only finding ones that are either a wee bit too small or miles too big, the idea of being able to make my own custom enclosures is very appealing.

I had heard about 3D printing before, but thought it was either an April Fool spoof gone wild or one of those blue sky ideas that never become reality. My (admittedly cursory) searching has so far failed to turn up any articles that explain how it works, who makes 3D printers or what they cost. (However the site from which the picture was taken, nextdayreprap.co.uk, looks like a good place to start.)

I left Faros running overnight. I needn’t have bothered: Nothing whatever was heard on the bands 14 – 28MHz from 1730 yesterday until 0730 this morning. Even now, the Finland beacon OH2B is the only one making much of a showing on the lower 3 bands, though there is a flicker of a signal from VK6RBP on 15m. I haven’t interrupted beacon monitoring to take a listen on 10m yet but prospects for the ARRL 10m contest don’t look very good.

I am going to have to interrupt beacon monitoring some time soon. I need to yank the shack computer out to install a spare 2-port RS232 board to give me two more real serial ports. I should have left it in instead of replacing it with the 4-port board whose four serial ports are now all used up (K2, K3, TM-D710 TNC for 2m APRS and TM-D710 Echolink control, since you ask.) I want to use my FT-817 for beacon monitoring as it is a bit of overkill to use my K3 for this, and the FT-817 CAT cable I have has a DB-9 for a real serial port. I could always use a USB to serial adapter of which I have three, or even make up a USB cable using a wire-ended USB-to-serial plug. But USB ports are in equally short supply, as you might imagine. Whilst the cover is off the computer I will take the opportunity to hoover out the inside which has an amazing ability to attract dust!

Being able to use the 817 for beacon monitoring won’t solve the conflict between monitoring and operating as I still have only one suitable antenna for both tasks. But it will allow me to give the K3 a rest!

For the time being I have put my IBP Beacon Monitor page back online. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is really something that needs to run 24/7 to be of most value. I note that I am not the only beacon monitor who states that monitoring runs only when not otherwise using the radio and antenna. So perhaps I will manage to keep it going for a bit longer than previously.

I updated the list of other beacon monitoring stations at the bottom of the page, deleting those that did not appear to be active. The official NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Project beacon monitors page has a lot of dead links on it.

It’s interesting to take a look and see what propagation is like in other parts of the world. It’s a pity there aren’t more beacon monitors in the USA. And is propagation really that good in VK-land?

I like the additions F4CWH has made to his beacon monitor pages. I wonder if he would share with me how he has done it? I would particularly like to indicate which beacons are off the air. Three of them. including the one on the east coast of the USA (New York) are not operating at the moment.

This post is nothing to do with ham radio. However it is about radio – or rather TV – and the internet, and I’m pretty sure some of my readers know more than I do about this subject.

Here’s the thing. A few days ago TalkTalk – our telecoms and broadband provider – sent us a letter offering a free YouView box as a sop for the tariff going up. If I understand correctly, a YouView box would provide us with two things that we don’t currently get from our plain old Freesat box: the ability to record programmes (our Freesat box isn’t one with a hard drive in it) and the ability to catch up on already broadcast programmes using things like BBC iPlayer.

If we want to watch programmes after they have been broadcast then we have to use iPlayer or whatever on our computers, of which we have about six in the house already, not counting the old Toshiba laptop I run DOS on to program Motorola radios or the other slightly less old Toshiba laptop that has a whole column of dead pixels in the middle of its display. I haven’t tried connecting one of the computers to the wide screen TV in the living room and watching BBC iPlayer that way. We watch it on the computer screen if we want to. If we want to record programs for later viewing we need to buy a newer more expensive version of our Humax Freesat box.

A YouView box would cost £299 so it’s quite an attractive deal to get one free. The question is: would we be able to use it without a lot of hassle?

If I understand correctly, in order to use a YouView box we would need two things that we don’t already have: a digital terrestrial TV antenna (we get all the TV channels we need on Freesat) and an Ethernet connection to our router accessible from where the TV is (because apparently YouView doesn’t have a wi-fi adapter.) Obtaining these would entail a fair amount of extra expense on hardware (i.e. the cost of having a TV aerial installed, and some kind of wi-fi adapter or a long and ugly piece of Ethernet cable.) Nor do I know whether YouView would need the same type of TV input already being used by the Freesat box, namely the HDMI input.

So my thinking is that it’s not worth the cost and hassle. Getting stuff like this to work usually results in my tearing my hair out – and it’s only just started growing back! But then I’m not the one who cares if we miss Strictly Come Dancing because we are out or some other show that clashes with something else we’re watching. Perhaps I shouldn’t look gift YouView boxes worth £300 in the mouth. Your thoughts, multimedia experts?

If you had wondered why there have been no posts for several days, the reason is that Olga and I have been away. That is not information I want to broadcast in advance. But I’m back now and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Actually it won’t as I am not doing WSPR at the moment. I’m running Faros and monitoring the IBP beacons. Unfortunately this is an activity that does not result in publishable output unless you run it 24 hours a day 7 days a week. My only suitable antenna is the multiband dipole. I can’t spare that 24/7 unless I never go on the air to make contacts so much as I’d like to restore the beacon reception reports I can’t.

The reason for my absence was that Olga and I went for a long weekend city break in Manchester. It was the first time we have been away since I became ill with the brain tumour. So it was good to be back resuming a normal life.

We went to three concerts at the Royal Northern College of Music, including the finals of the RNCM piano competition. We enjoyed them very much. I envy people who live in Manchester because the city has a full and lively cultural life. Between the RNCM, the Bridgewater Hall and the Lowry in Salford you could go to concerts every day of the week! Greater Manchester is home for several colleges and universities so there is a big student population and it is uplifting to see so many young people about. Here in Cockermouth we do have the Lake District but someone I know was not wide of the mark when he described it as “a cemetery with lights.”

We stayed at Roomzzz Aparthotel right in the centre of Manchester and we liked it very much. We had a studio apartment which was very, ahem, roomy with a huge bed and a double walk-in shower plus a kitchen with all mod cons including a dishwasher. There was a wide screen TV which was also the display for an in-room Apple Mac so I needn’t have bothered taking my Android Tablet. We thoroughly recommend this hotel and will certainly stay there again the next time we visit.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 26 November 2012

What this map doesn’t show is that all the spots are barely visible, -25 to -27dB, so propagation would not be good enough to support a regular communication mode.

The last day of the CQ WW DX CW contest. But nothing of interest to report. Sunday morning was one of those mornings when I didn’t seem to fully wake up. It was after 11am before I got into the shack.

My intention was to make some more contest contacts on 10m. Although I don’t compete seriously, I usually decide what category I am going to play in – single or multi-band, QRP or Low Power – and stick to it so that if I do make a decent number of contacts I can send an entry in. But this time my effort didn’t even justify sending in a check log.

I heard some interesting big gun stations such as in Africa (Gambia, Senegal) but I just could not be heard over the others calling. One Russian station seemed to be following me around and he wasn’t having much luck either. It was hard going even with the more run of the mill stations. I felt like I was running QRP. In fact, I’ve had better results when I did run QRP (such as for the CQ WW WPX back in May, when I used the KX3 ) than I was having this weekend.

It was obviously a mistake to limit myself to 10 metres. Not everyone was having such bad luck as me though. I heard a DX station who wasn’t hearing my calls working fellow blogger Tim G4VXE. So much for the magic dipole!

After I broke off for lunch I couldn’t be bothered to get back on the air again and so I spent the afternoon listening to a broadcast concert. I will draw a veil over my lamentable effort. (Those who are really interested to see the extent of my embarrassment can take a look at my contact log.)