AmateurRadio.com

Here’s the top 5 blog postings for 2013 on the K0NR Blog, based on number of views.

1. The Updated Incomplete List of Ham Radio iPhone Apps – my short list of preferred iPhone apps for ham radio use

2. Digital Voice at Pacificon – a report on a few of the presentations at the Pacificon ham radio convention in Santa Clara

3. Yet Another HT From China (Baofeng UV-B5) - a look at one of the best low cost HTs from China

4. A Great Bag for the FT-817 – description of a really good bag for the Yaesu portable QRP rig

5. When All Else Fails or SHTF? – a discussion of “preppers” getting interested in amateur radio for emergency use

Also, these articles continue to get a large number of hits, even though they are a bit older:

FM/VHF Operating Guide – a guide to ham radio activity on 2m FM and other bands

Choose Your 2m Frequency Wisely – an explanation of the 2 meter band plan with Colorado emphasis

— 73, Bob K0NR

Ham Radio Two-Day License Class

Monument, Colorado
Sat April 12 and Sat April 19 (8 AM to 5 PM) 2014

Location: Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Station 1

 The Technician license is your gateway to the world-wide excitement of Amateur Radio …

• Earn your ham radio Technician class radio privileges
• Pass your FCC amateur radio license exam right in class on the second day
• Multiple-choice exam, No Morse Code Required
• Live equipment demonstrations
• Learn to operate on the ham bands, 10 Meters and higher
• Learn to use the many VHF/UHF FM repeaters in Colorado
• Find out how to participate in emergency communications

There is a $25 registration fee for the class.

In addition, students must have the required study guide:

HamRadioSchool.com Technician License Course $19.95

Advance registration is required (no later than one week before the first session, earlier is better!)

To register for the class, contact: Bob Witte KØNR

Email: [email protected]  or Phone: 719 659-3727

Sponsored by the Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Radio Association

For more information on amateur (ham) radio visit www.arrl.org  or www.wedothat-radio.org

Another “dead trees” publication is coming to an end. CQ VHF Magazine is ceasing publication, with some content being rolled into a new online publication.

From the ARRL web site:

CQ Communications Inc has announced plans to realign its publications lineup and to launch a new online supplement to its flagship magazine, CQ Amateur Radio.

“The hobby radio market is changing,” said CQ Communications President and Publisher Dick Ross, K2MGA, “and we are changing what we do and how we do it in order to continue providing leadership to all segments of the radio hobby.”

Effective with the February 2014 issue of CQ, said Ross, content from the magazine’s three sister publications — Popular Communications, CQ VHF and WorldRadio Online — will be incorporated into CQ’s digital edition as a supplement to be called CQ Plus. The print editions of Popular Communications and CQ VHF will be phased out, and WorldRadio Online will no longer exist as a separate online publication. Current Popular Communications, CQ VHF and WorldRadio Online subscribers will be converted to CQ subscribers and receive CQ Plus at no additional charge. Details will be posted on each magazine’s website.

As the name implies, CQ VHF was focused on amateur radio activities above 50 MHz, which was well aligned with my interests.  I’ve been writing the FM column for CQ VHF magazine since the summer of 2005 (wow, has it really been eight years?).  I have really enjoyed this opportunity and found the four-times-a-year schedule to be just about right for me as an author.

All good things come to an end and it was not a surprise that CQ VHF would cease publication. Clearly, print media is struggling in most markets and a niche publication like CQ VHF was feeling the pressure. My thanks go to Joe Lynch N6CL for his leadership as editor and also to my fellow authors for the great content they produced over many years. I am going to miss having the magazine around but it is time to move on.

73, Bob K0NR

Update Jan 2, 2014: See this information at cq-vhf.com

Here’s another update of interesting important stuff spewing forth from the internet.

The Ham Hijinks crew continues to pound out some provocative ham radio reporting.  I can really relate to this story: Man Climbs Tower, Won’t Come Down Until Family Leaves. It was great to hear about this breakthrough: World Issues Solved On Local 2m Repeater. This one is destined to be a Christmas classic: Ham Op Gets CB Radio Christmas Gift Again  Warning: Do not take these guys seriously.

The HamRadioSchool.com team has been busy as well. Check out Stu’s article: Introduction to UHF/VHF FM Repeaters and my article: Practical Signal Reports.

You may have heard about the ARRL petition (FCC RM-11708) to modernize how Part 97 regulates the bandwidth of digital signals.  I’ve reviewed the proceeding and filed brief comments in favor of it. As I read through the filed comments, I found that some hams think this rule change is a threat to everything good in ham radio. I don’t know where they get this idea and I wonder if they’ve actually read the petition before commenting. For more on this, see: ARRL’s “Symbol Rate” Petition Nears Top of FCC’s “Most Active Proceedings” List .

Sverre LA3ZA posted a nice piece comparing the low cost Baofeng handheld radios: The best of the Baofeng handhelds . I don’t agree with his conclusion though…I find the UV-B5 to be the best choice due to the improved receiver, better antenna, improved S meter and rotary dial. But his article does a great job of comparing the radios so you can make your own decision.

Merry Christmas and 73, Bob K0NR

A recent edition of the ARRL Contest Update highlighted the availability of this shirt with the number 73 on it. Since this shirt is offered by Think Geek, I figured it had to be ham radio related. After all, we own the number 73! See my previous posting on the topic.

Well, it turns out that this shirt is actually derived from The Big Bang Theory television show, when Sheldon explains that 73 is The Best Number.

Check out this video clip:

Well, it doesn’t stop there. Using my friend Google, I found a number of web pages on the topic of the number 73. Wikipedia even has a page dedicated to it. (Who edits a Wikipedia page about a number anyway?)

Here are some fun facts about 73:

• 73 is the 21st prime number
• Reversing the digits of 73, produces another prime number, 37, which means 73 is an Emirp
• The PT boat in the television show McHale’s Navy was PT-73.
• In Morse code, 73 is a palindrome

But to me, 73 is still just Best Regards.

73, Bob K0NR

After losing Rooster, the alleged brains of the WG0AT SOTA team, we have great news from Steve, WGØAT.

Two new goats have joined the herd, getting trained up for more Summits On The Air (SOTA) action.

Meet Acorn and Barley, or is it Barley and Acorn? Watch out, Peanut, you’ve got company.

A few weeks back, I had a Too Much Information meltdown, because I was being overrun with information spewing forth from various sources. To be specific, I regularly get communications from these feeds: email, SMS text, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus. The amount of “stuff” that was coming in was getting out of hand so I sprang into action.

First, I asked myself, how did I get into this mess? The general trend I see is that when I first start using a particular communications tool, my goal is to connect up with as many interesting feeds as possible. For old school email, this usually means subscribing to email lists, mostly via Yahoo Groups. For Twitter, this means Following other people that have interesting tweets. As more people engage in these media, the available stuff grows rapidly. Then Google Plus comes along, which tries to improve on Twitter but is somewhat redundant with the other social media. That is, I get Google Plus postings that are the same as ones from Twitter and Facebook.

The big trap I fell into is the fear of missing something. There’s so much interesting stuff out there, I wanted to grab it all. In reality, I was still missing stuff because I was being overrun with superfluous information. Ah! This is really the classic communication problem of signal-to-noise ratio. Some of these feeds have too much noise in them so I was losing the signal!

What constitutes noise? Lots of things: Foursquare check ins, Fitbit updates,  off topic posts in email lists, etc., etc. Of course, noise is in the eye of the beholder, so what is noise to me may be valuable information to you. Also, a few “noise bursts” are OK but lots of noise degrades the signal-to-noise ratio.

With signal-to-noise ratio as the primary measure, I ruthlessly slashed my collection of information sources. I dropped out of many of the Yahoo Groups (actually, I moved them to web only), I reduced the number of SMS text alerts, I pulled back on the number of Facebook friends, deleted less interesting RSS feeds. On Twitter, I started to pay attention to noisy tweets…if someone has a tendency to send noise and not so much signal, they are gone.

If I dropped you from Twitter or the other social media, please don’t take it personally. It’s just me unclogging my digital life.

Those are my thoughts…what are you doing to manage your digital life?

73, Bob K0NR