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While he may have been channeling his inner Nashville self, those are the exact words KJ4VU used to describe his tool to facilitate use of the Elgato Streak Deck in your ham shack. Telling attendees at last Saturday’s Cycle 25 Tribe Zoom meeting about his macro.exe software tool, George KJ4VU aptly described the engineering design of his latest tool for the Stream Deck. The reference was to sending a command out of the serial port, in case you were wondering.

“macro.exe allows the user to send serial control commands to radios and other station accessories in
multiple data formats, baud rates, destination addresses and com ports. Commands are triggered by
invoking the program and sending a set of parameters on the command line. A command can be simple
individual command like set my radio to CW mode or it can trigger a sequence of commands called
macros.“

OK. So how’s this different than the famous Hello, World! thing in most programming languages? Actually, it may be a big deal.

One of the steps along the way to organizing the Stream Deck’s built-in functions to automate amateur radio software is to engage the existing software that controls rig devices on the PC. He’s building out some of the CAT commands for Icom and Yaesu radios initially as shown on his blog page.

The structure of the macro.exe program is to take conventionally stated options to the program as illustrated below, as taken from the PDF guide by George.

When the mac program is invoked, the parameters on the command line are parsed and executed.

Command line options include:
-t Define data format type
-p Com port number
-b Baud rate
-d Device address
-m Macro name
-c Command string to be sent
-w Wait for x seconds

In most cases, not all parameters are used. Some parameters have default values if they are left off and
default values are loaded from the macro.env configuration file.

Most experienced computer users will follow this flow and control lingo easily. There’s a lot more here for stacking multiple commands to, say, set up a given rig for CW operation with one button and so forth.

Those who like turning knobs, winnowing down through stacked menus (Yaesu lovers: I’m talking to you, lol!), and generally playing Mr. Fixit while operating their radios won’t be interested in automating mundane tasks so they can focus on direct operation fun. That’s ok. There is a big tent in amateur radio. But for those who do want to automate things (like making sure your amp is on the right band when that DX entity pops up on your monitor and you’re too excited to notice), you might follow George’s blog at the Ham Radio Workbench website.

From there, you too can just take this command and shove it...out of the serial port!

Managing your ham radio station has become increasingly complex, to say the least. We have more complex transceivers with so many features that Computer Aided Transceivers (CAT) are the norm in many circles. With this, both computer-based logging of QSOs with CAT control makes a PC de rigueur for many, many hams. 

But therein lies the details. Or the Devil, if you prefer. Multiple operating systems (OSes) make the choice of PC platform an additional challenge, especially if the PC in question has non-amateur radio uses too. Heck, I have two Dell Precision 1700 workstations in my ham shack. And another Dell Precision 7910 there in my office for “normal” work. The two in my shack run Windows 10 while the one on my desk where I’m writing this uses Linux. Throw in my iPad and iPhone with my wife’s Macbook Pro and you have the not unusual computer sausage that comprises a middle class household. (There is another Dell PC out in my workbench room off of the garage, running Windows 10 and several more doing other things, like monitoring a GPSDO.) Then, there are two laptops, one a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon for personal writing and another Thinkpad T420s for portable ham radio use. Both are Windows 10 machines. I would like to use any of them—except my wife’s Macbook—to access either of the two shack PCs to check on things when I’m out of the shack. Remote access ramps up the relative complexity. But hopefully you get the emerging point. It gets complicated.

There have been several attempts to “automate” shack management. Some expensive. Some relatively cheap. But all involving relative increases in the Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance…er, fooling with settings until they’re “just right” and so forth. This has been done in bespoke terms, even by KJ6VU. On his blog, George has built a cool set of buttons in a portable palm-sized case-of-buttons that automates multi-stroke menu choices on his new Icom IC-705 (see below). This stack of four PCBs is another ingenius invention by George as he’s done time and again on the Ham Radio Workbench podcast. But it is largely tied to a specific radio and menu system although it could be later modded to fit another rig. But what if we didn’t have to have a box of buttons like this tied to a specific radio or set of menu buttons? What if we could, like a dry-erase marker board, wipe it clean if we sell or replace the radio and insert another set of controls? And, if we wanted to automate several radios in our shack or in our portable stations? Or…well, you get the point. 

But there’s a development that is largely the brainchild of George KJ6VU, co-host of the highly popular Ham Radio Workbench podcast, that could indeed streamline a lot of these operations. All at the push of a button! He already has a lot of them for his shack. But you can too. Here’s how.

Take a look below, first at the interface of the Elgato Stream Deck and the buttons themselves. Note that Stream Deck software is directly available on Windows and Mac via Elgato’s website and on Linux at this website. In addition, there is a smartphone app for iOS and Android. Plus Elgato has a key creator to make custom icons for the buttons. While there are other commercial products that do similar things like the Elgato product, Stream Deck may well be the most mature and accessible product in its class.

So the Streak Deck comes in different sizes and the one above is the large (“XL”) version. There are a few more from Elgato and a mobile app. What is potentially revolutionary is that it is customizable using modifications of stock “profiles” from an existing repository, Moreover, there is a published API which is amenable to several common programming languages or no programming per se at all.

The profile creator/editor has an interface that is usable to the non-programmer. As shown below from the Elgato website, the user interface emulates the Streak Deck device on your desk attached via USB to your PC. You can select, modify and design graphic with text icons that are then represented on each button. Some actions are drag-and-drop. Animations via GIF are also usable (e.g., beam rotor is turning). A button can do a specific action or open up a “deck” of other related buttons (e.g., here are my Kenwood TS-590SG controls). So for each physical button on your Stream Deck, you can define a specific action for that button and give it a meaningful graphic that will be displayed on the button itself. No labels to make. No removing them to change their function. None of that. At all. (You might feel the need to wipe it off if you love Cheetos…)

To more fully illustrate the architecture of how the Stream Deck works, here’s a slide from Tim Pringle’s blog. The Stream Deck uses a Profile that can be selected on-the-fly if desired. But the management software uses “chunks” of programs called Plugins to do certain things, such as integrate external software on the PC or elsewhere into the button definitions in the Profile in use. It uses JSON file formats to communicate with Plugins. This could give hams who are knowledgeable of JSON and use it already in their operations could only need modifications to work with Stream Deck.

I’ll leave it to Elgato to give you further details in the video below but I’ll then weigh in on an amateur radio group project that’s beginning to emerge that could take ham radio to another level of automation. That’s where you come in. Or not. Either way, it’s a group sharing effort.

George KJ6VU has already created a “profile” for his ham radio shack. He’s very keen on automating his antenna switching to rigs, bands, and so forth. That’s not unusual. But he can add new rigs’ CAT commands with a minimum of effort. Such as the FT-857D he’s recently acquired to go with his Flex 6400. He uses the 857D mostly on CW, for intance, so just touching a button to set up the 857D to CW mode, say 40M band, and switching the right antenna to it is just that: ONE touch of a customized button that he created using the Profile Software plus a software program on his PC.

What if there was a collective effort to share Stream Deck profiles of CAT and other command-sets for the popular transceivers and other devices used by ham operators? What if a few hams with Javascript or C++ talent wrote some plugins for the Stream Deck device and shared them? And, what if hams had open access to them and made the type of improvements and potential innovations with them such as creating hooks to other software platforms like Node-Red? There is already a Stream Deck plugin that provides the basic link to a Node-Red server in the unofficial general repository for Stream Deck Plugins. Check out Mike Walker’s presentation on Node-Red on Youtube, linked below.

Several hams, George KJ6VU, Rod VA3ON, Michael VA3MW and I (K4FMH) are at the start of assembling a ham radio-oriented repository of such Stream Deck profiles, probably on GitHub. Stay tuned to the Ham Radio Workbench Podcast for details as well as the Cycle 25 Tribe’s Youtube Channel. I’ll announce details here on this blog as they materialize.

Mike VA3MW and George KJ6VU gave a recent talk on station automation that is shown below. It lays out a paradigm for station control that coincides with George’s early thoughts of the Stream Deck thinking expressed here. But the contribution of just a few third-party programmers who have built plugins that create bridges to both the Windows and others OS environments as well as independent machines like a Node-Red server (Raspberry Pi even), just sets the stage for the near future’s work. Here are some initial thought experiments for you.

How should your Stream Deck control box be organized?

If you’re a CW Op mostly, would a button that opens a stack of other related buttons (think deck of cards) that are all related to your station organization to operate CW mode be useful? How about one for CW, one for SSB and one for digital? How about one for “there’s lightning approaching” that shuts down stuff and sets other things to ground. How about, I’m leaving for a trip and here’s a button to organize things for remote access?

What is needed is a clear community discussion of how to meld the behavior of hams in their shack with their usual and customary control settings. And, to give some near range Blue Sky thoughts to how this concept can be grown for the least “cost” in terms of time and effort. That’s where community contributions are usually the most valuable.

Interested in getting involved? KJ6VU, VA3ON and I are good on QRZed. Drop us a line. This can really move the management of amateur radio shack’s forward over the next few months. It just takes the building of a community of interested hams who wish to help make it happen, each contributing just a little bit but in strategic ways. Stay tuned…

Don’t touch that dial…just touch a button!

We get all sentimental about the ARRL Founder, Hiram Percy Maxim. We probably should. But he’s only the titular leader of what became the amateur radio movement in the United States back in the early 1900’s. Did you know he didn’t found the ARRL by himself? Yea, and Joe Namath was not the only quarterback that the New York Jets drafted in 1965 either. Can you name the Heisman Trophy winner whom the Jets also drafted that year? Well, I taught a graduate course on the sociology of sport so I got a head start on you, perhaps. There was a co-founder of the American Radio Relay League. And there were many other early hams that gave life to this amazing hobby! I call them the Blue Collar Scholars who made the blue lightning pass the spark gap and set the foundation for ham radio to become what it is today.

It is also important for us to understand the blue collar scholars and pioneers in that movement as much as it is the role of Mr. Maxim. We may never know who the original ham operator was or if there was a single first op. And where was that movement birthed? It’s often said (and I did in a couple of books I wrote) that time cannot be fully understood without a consideration of space. Historians and geographers make very good bedfellows! So where in the world was Waldo…uh, the first ham operators?

I’ve been digging into that ever since a club in my state claimed to be the “oldest” one in Mississippi. Since they said in a brochure to have been started in 1949, I really doubted that this was an accurate statement. I checked into the first experimental licenses given through online libraries containing what was then the Federal Radio Commission records. Mississippi A&M (Now MSU) and the University of Mississippi each had one and a club to go with it. So those darn historical facts get in the way of perfectly good bragging sometimes. That memory gave me the intellectual itch to examine what we can know about the earliest hams in the U.S.

We can get a firm glimpse of who those early ham operators were by looking at FCC and ARRL records. The first Blue Book published by the FCC was in 1909. And, when Mr. Maxim and his co-conspirator founded the League, they published Issue 1 of the modest magazine, QST. In it, they also published a list of amateur operators with call “letters” (signs). Gosh, where were these people located in the United States? Where was Maxim living at the time? He died in Colorado and is buried in Maryland. But did he light the “spark” (pun intended) to the spark gap in his neck of the woods? Was it a widely spreading thing due to the newfangled “radio” (they had to invent a name for it) being in the newspapers from coast to coast and in other continents?

It is written here that Maxim may have spent some of this life on Third Street near Smith Street in Brooklyn NY. Today that might carry him right by the Ugly Baby Takeout and the Hannah Senesh Community Day School (see map excerpt):

Over at my companion website, foxmikehotel.com, I’ve posted a reasonable set of answers to these questions. And, an interactive map to see not only where the earliest record of licensed hams (that I could find thus far) were located and just how big were their coils? Some of them are noted to be KW in their capacity. (I wonder if those were in California, giving an historical grounding to that contemporary phrase, California Kilowatt!) I’ve looked at all of them and just wonder what things were like back then when they were learning to communicate through the ether, the first wireless capacity being developed by the grass roots efforts of both kids and grown ups.

They weren’t all boys and men (see, among others, here). Miss Kathleen Parkin was on the cover of The Electrical Experimenter magazine. She was called “youngest successful female applicant for a radio license ever examined by the Government at that time,” or as The Mary Sue blog says, “Parkin began her hobby at age five with her brother, and was the first woman in California to pass the first-class radio license.” They labeled her “a total badass.” I don’t disagree. One bit. She and her own “apparatus” is shown on the right. She started the itch for radio at age five with her brother. She was reportedly the “first and youngest successful female applicant for a radio license ever examined by the Government at that time.”

There is a graphic on the home page at foxmikehotel.com with a link to the page with a fuller story under the Maps tab. It’s called The Lost Tribes of U.S. Radio Amateurs. Were any in your area where you live today? Are you perhaps related to any of the original license holders? Isn’t it as important to know who some of these lost tribe members were, the ones who persevered into the night experiencing the propagation vagaries that we now predict (well, try to) with software? Without them, Maxim may just be known as the guy who developed a gun silencer and a few mufflers for the motorized horse.

I may continue to look at this, adding additional years to track and estimate the diffusion of this most important innovation of the last century. But for now, give the interactive map a go. You can reach me at my email for thoughts or suggestions. I’m good on QRZed.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act, the United Kingdom amateur radio license regulator, Ofcom, has released counts of ham licenses by age group (see here). The ICQ Podcast covered this story in this week’s episode. They are simple counts but I’ve taken them and added UK population data for comparison. Using a graph from my recent NCJ article on aging in American radiosport, I also make general comparisons to the US ham population. How does the UK compare to the US in terms of the age distribution relative to the overall population? Are hams becoming more elderly? Is there an influx of younger people into amateur radio in these two countries? The results are concerning to anyone interested in the long term viability of amateur radio in either country.

The bar chart shows the three UK license classes—Foundation, Intermediate, and Full—with the corresponding total UK population by age group. These categories are what the Ofcom report contains so I was unable to reconfigure it for other groupings. The purple total population bar in comparison to any of the ham licenses illustrates the “aging” of the British ham population. This is especially the cast for Full licenses. As the age group enters mid-life (post-50), the imbalance becomes clear and gets more imbalanced as age increases.

The second bar chart is from my NCJ article on US hams. The ARRL membership data are proxies for the US FCC ULS license database. (The FCC stopped collecting birth year some decade or so ago.) The tan bar is the total population from the Census Bureau. The green bar is from an ARRL survey of current and previous NCJ subscribers and are a proxy for contest participants.

Clearly, the US amateur radio population compares favorably with those in the UK as represented in the Ofcom data release. There may be a slightly more aging pattern in the US data. It’s the post-60 year old category where the ham population surpasses the comparable share of the total population. As noted in my NCJ article, the contesting data show that this group is even more elderly than hams in general.

Ofcom is an evidence-based regulator, so market research is important to us. Many of our decisions are informed by research evidence, and our market research ensures that we have a thorough, robust and up-to-date understanding of consumers in the UK.

Source: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/about-ofcoms-research

These data released by Ofcom show a revealing, but not entirely surprising, picture of the amateur population in the United Kingdom. Most would agree that they “see” hams at rallys and elsewhere and most “look older” than “younger.” In these data, there are younger hams in the data but they are indeed smaller in number and share. But until we have actual data on all licensed hams (and even the Ofcom release warns about their under-coverage), it’s like building the proverbial dinosaur from some bones discovered in an archaeological dig from one site. We also do not know about how many “late-in-life” hams will emerge during their mid to later years (see here for survey estimates). By inference, the hypothesis that amateur radio is a cultural phenomenon mostly engaged in members of the the Western “Baby Boom” (see here) is not inconsistent with these data. Until we have data where longitudinal and age-cohort variables are measured will we even begin to be able to move beyond the ubiquitous: “well, the blokes at the rally…” or “in my club, I’m the youngest and I’m 50 years old”. Those comments may indeed be characteristics of the full ham population, but we simply do not know this for sure or with any precision.

Even though Ofcom says it’s an evidence-based regulator, until more data like this is released and analyzed, we won’t be able to really get a handle on social change in the hobby and public serve of ham radio. Age and cohort comparisons (e.g., Glenn, Cohort Analysis) are the standard to measure change like this. In the US, the FCC isn’t even in the ball game. Sad.

As part of my work with the ICQ Podcast, I have regularly interviewed the current CEO of the ARRL as a feature. On Episode 345 that will drop this Sunday (Feb 27, 2021 Central Time), I interview both the CEO, David Minster NA2AA, and the President, Rick Roderick K5UR. I heartily encourage you to listen to the interview as well as the full Episode.

In the past, I’ve had critical comments regarding how the League’s HQ “works” when I felt things needed calling out. This might have been from my own analysis or from the input of podcast listeners, fellow hams, and those who know that I’m a low-level flunky for the Delta Division as an Assistant Director. Most ALL of these criticisms have come from an sense that the management—whether elected, paid or volunteers—of League services was inward-looking rather than outward-looking at members’ needs. And, would-be members. One can see this culture in the often-heard (including from me) use of the descriptor, “not invented here,” about some position or action taken by the Board or CEO. It’s also a frequent reason that many say they are no longer members. It has led to a membership of about 150,000 of the more than 750,000 licensed amateurs in the United States. Moreover, it puts the “no” in innovation!

I want to reproduce one paragraph from David’s January 2021 Second Century column in QST as follows:

I read this as a direct attempt at change in the organizational culture in Newington. Clearly, David recognizes a fundamental limitation. Indeed, in my interview with both David and Rick, this is the clear directive that is being operationalized at HQ since David’s arrival. President Roderick is fully on board with this direction. He is a labor lawyer by day and former member of management in the business world so Rick is very aware of how an organization’s culture affects most every operation it conducts. From what I hear from Board members, most if not all of the Board sanctions this change, too.

As a Life Member, I can be really excited about the changes I’m already seeing in my interactions with League HQ. It’s a sign of things to come, I truly hope. I know, we’ve heard some of this before with two of the recent CEOs. But David NA2AA discloses some major new implementations in Newington that will further enhance interactions with members. The League’s some 150,000 members reflect an incredible array of skills and talents that, if identified, could be engaged to do things on behalf of the ARRL and the membership. Things that this modestly-capitalized non-profit organization could never afford to purchase. Just listen to Eric 4Z1UG’s QSO Today interviews of the many hams with amazing talents for just a smidgen of the talent pool.

The lack of both a mechanism to identify the talent among it’s membership and an internal culture that does not recognize what it can contribute, negate the hidden assets that are present in the volunteer-driven non-profit membership. And it saps the strength of what the staff in Newington alone can accomplish as they can become over-burdened with burn-out. That tends to always result in a culture of “no” as a go-to respite from the limits of a staff. Let’s just say it’s the equivalent of the “get off my lawn” response that we old geezers adopt some time when we don’t engage with our neighbors in positive ways. It’s a real thing in organizations and I believe that David gets it. Moreover, he’s doing something about it as he articulates in my interview.

As a sociologist who has studied both volunteer organizations and business operations as a consultant, these organizational changes make me optimistic about seeing them yielding a set of outcomes that reflect what a membership-oriented non-profit should be about. David’s statements about inclusion directly tie into the assets among the membership’s talent pool. Every request cannot result in a “Yes,” but making that the default setting is a fundamental shift in the right direction.

I hope you’ll join us for Episode 345 of the ICQ Podcast after it drops on Sunday. Listen for yourself and assess it on your end. The interview is less than 30 minutes in length but as our slogan reads: come for a moment, stay for an hour!

We all have Elmers in this hobby through one medium or another. I’ve certainly been blessed with a number of them. I’ve tried to be an Elmer to a number of others, too. We get Elmering through other means besides in-person discussions, of course, as various social media platforms—especially Youtube—has exploded with how-to videos and such. Some Elmers are now charging for their premium educational services! But Elmering as an activity is rarely a monolithic endeavor as very few hams tend to “know it all,” although every reader can name a few on QRZ.com or eHam.net who seem to be legends in their own mind.

I’m talking here about one Elmer helping explain something about the hobby over a period of time where the learner becomes more competent in that subject matter within the scope of the hobby. It’s entirely likely that the learning ham can give back to specific Elmers on another aspect of the diverse hobby that is amateur radio. I’ve tried to do that in spots where it was clear that I could. Here is one recent example.

Thomas N5WDG is a local ham who is an RF network engineer at a three-letter cellular company. He holds the E.E. from Mississippi State University and an MBA from Millsaps College. We’ve been friends for almost a decade now, having many overlapping social network connections. He’s one of the go-to folks for repeaters in the Jackson MS area. I have learned a great deal from him about repeaters, installations, and RF testing in general. As I’ve been building my RF Lab, he’s been a constant source of information and advice. But when I recently built a small jig to simply hold two wires for my soldering platform, I thought I’d just build another for N5WDG, too. After texting him to blindly ask what he was using for a soldering position in his home workbench, he sent back a picture very familiar to most all hams who have ever attended a hamfest or visited Radio Shack back in the day.

He said it has served him well. I’m sure it has as it has me (cheap hamfest model with small magnifying glass) and thousands of other hams and makers over the decades. When I sent him a return text showing him a jig that I’d made and would give one to him soon, he make positive comments about the soldering platform in the background, something I built a few years ago. Hmm. Here’s a chance to give something back to one of my Elmers! And, there’s ice on the ground outside, I’m hold up at home, and I’ve got stuff in my junk-box.

Steel Soldering Platform

So over a few days, I built a version of a steel soldering platform that uses magnets for everything attached on top with four metal feet on the bottom. Instant heat sink for even a 500 watt soldering iron or gun job! The one on my workbench is a 12″ x 12″ square of thin steel but I only had an 8″ x 12″ remnant in my junk-box. The picture below illustrates the various aids I included on Thomas’ soldering platform.

All aids except the Aven circuit board holder have magnets on the bottom to put them where needed and removal entirely when desired.

Two of the two-wire jigs were included since we all lose one sooner or later, right? The medical clamps are mainly for temporary heat sinks. I’ve melted either insulation or plastic portions of switches so many times that I always attach one of these clamps near the solder joint so as to isolate the heat dispersal. Works better than I imagined!

There are four “helping hands” purchased from Quadhands.com (and on Amazon). I’ve homebrewed several aids like this but their price point is close enough to make it just worth going with theirs. They come in various lengths but these are the 12″ versions. In fact, I noticed when I bought these arms that Quadhands now actually makes a metal soldering platform with four of these helping hands for just over $50USD.

There is a knitting dowel on the upper left with a round magnet glued on the bottom. This is for winding toroids, except for the very small ones. Put the doughnut toroid on the top and let it find it’s own place on the pole. Wind your wire through by sliding the toroid up just enough to let the wire pass. I’ve not then had the wire move very much before I measure the toroid with an LC-meter or something. Then gently remove it for applying “Q dope” if you use that to hold the wire in place.

The small staging vice has four magnets glued on the bottom (using epoxy). I got these neat little (used) devices from Marlon P. Jones in Florida where I also bought various magnets used in the build. They are very useful to hold various parts like copper-clad board and other parts while soldering things to them.

There is a small rectangular magnet on the upper right (I’m right-handed) but it can be placed anywhere. It’s to hold down a round tin of soldering tip paste so that it doesn’t move around, a real nuisance when when you’re chasing it with a hot soldering iron!

The soldering jigs were made from a magnet bar from MPJ along with alligator clips from eBay and a metal screw. The magnet bar has a shallow steel U-shaped cover for the three Neodymium Rare Earth Magnet squares inside. This means that they stick lick heck to the steel platform! I matched a carbon steel drill to the hole in the magnet before using my drill press to drill through the steel on each end magnet. A Dremel tool with a cone shaped steel grinding bit was used to debur the hole on the steel case side and to enlarge it very slightly so that the fitting end of each alligator clip would slide snugly through the hole. I screwed in a Phillips-head metal screw from the magnet side into the alligator clip so that the screw would wedge the clip into the hole without allowing it to work it’s way out. Then, on to grinding off the screw’s head so that it would be flat on the steel platform surface. After doing that using the Dremel tool’s steel grinding bit, I put a bit of Gorilla tape over the magnet side and trimmed it with an Exacto knife so that the bottom of the steel case and magnets would not chip the paint on the steel platform.

Here’s a word to the wise. I should have used a Dremel cutting bit to just but off the screw heads. That would have left just a minor grinding job to get the remaining screw tip flat with the magnet’s surface. But no! I had to grind them off. Remember that there are magnets? The shavings don’t just fall away but stick to the magnet. And if you absentmindedly just use your fingers to wipe the shards away, you get what’s in the picture below. Do not attempt to replicate this step, LOL! Use a cloth, work gloves or strong compressed air.

Finally, the Aven circuit board holder has some competitors but it’s fairly inexpensive on Amazon, works superbly, and the rubber feet tend to have some suction to them which holds things in place for the most part. I could have substituted magnets for the rubber feet but decided not to do that here.

Setup and Build Steps

Here’s the setup and build process. I’ve seen a number of other homebrew builds over the past few years so not much of this is my own invention. Perhaps the exact organization of the aids but that’s not anything to jump up and down about. They just reflect what I’ve found I can use to “do stuff” involving a soldering iron or gun on my workbench.

The 1/8″ steel base is 8″ x 12″ in size. I buy most of my metal materials like this from an eBay vendor with the ID of quality_metals out of Chicago. Good price but can be slow to ship on occasion. I rub any oil off of it which many sellers spray on to reduce rust. I always use a Dremel tool to round the corners just a bit so they don’t injure someone (me) in use. I debur the edges too. Dremel has so many fittings that I use for building. The metal grinding tools come in many, many different sizes and grades, especially for use in jewelry making. Once this step is done. I put down a paint drop cloth (old bed sheet usually) to prevent over-spray. I like Rust-oleum’s Hammered Spray Paint (I buy this at Lowes), applying a light coat on the top, letting it dry completely, and then one on the bottom. Once both are dry, I use a common heat gun on the low setting to “bake” the paint on a bit before applying a second coat. Drying and another bake session completes the job. This coating I’ve found makes the solder drips cool almost instantly without adhering to the steel platform, wiping off much like dust after a job is completed.

At this point, I mark the four corners on the bottom for attaching round metal feet. I’ve been using those in the picture below, cutting off the metal spike (nail) that is used to attach these feet to wood chair legs. After removing the spike, I outline the remaining rubber side that will be glued to the steel platform base. Using a Dremel tool, I remove the Rust-Oleum paint where the rubber side of the metal foot will attach and apply epoxy mixed on the spot of the metal. Then, clamps are applied to keep the foot and base together for the expoxy to cure overnight. (It took longer because of the sub-freezing temps in the area.) Rough up both the rubber on the foot and the metal circle where the epoxy will be applied for a better seal.

I’ve detailed how I built the two-wire soldering jigs above. I went with commercial products for the helping hands (instead of the mechanical arms I used on my platform earlier) and the circuit board holder (Aven, as I did on my own platform). The knitting dowel was purchased at a local art store and the magnet was glued on it’s wooden base using Gorilla glue. The medical clamps were bought a a pack of 12 on eBay a few years ago. They are widely available. This set of soldering aids can be used mix-and-match depending on the project or task. I keep the helping hands on mine all the time but store the Aven holder until there’s a circuit board in the project. While I have other tools used in soldering, stored on a metal magnet bar underneath the shelves above my workbench, this set is what I’ve found to be useful. The magnets make this very versatile. I prefer them instead of mounting the helping hands using nuts-and-bolts.

Thomas N5WDG seemed thrilled to receive this surprise gift. I was pleased that he was. The circuit of Elmering was complete. And perhaps Elmering in amateur radio should be more like that. To really learn something well, it’s said to teach it. Learning from an Elmer should inspire a ham to return the favor when it’s appropriate. I am happy to give back to one of mine.

Tradition and change are terrible bedfellows

It was an honor to have been invited to prepare what turned into a 2-article series in the ARRL’s National Contesting Journal on the aging demographics of hams who participate in the radio “sport” of contesting. These appeared in the July/August (Vol 48, No. 4) and Sept/Oct (Vol 48, No 5) issues. Dr. Scott Wright K0MD, Editor, asked me to assist with more fully analyzing the results of a survey conducted by the League office in Newington of their past and present subscriber list of NCJ recipients. I agreed but added some key data from four other sources. It particularly piqued my interest since amateur radio is a hobby. I spent part of my career studying the effects of sport participation and teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on the Sociology of Sports as a Professor. In future writing, I’ll compare amateur radio contesting to accepted definitions and elements of competitive sports.

In this Social Circuits column, there are several components. demography, the life course, vested interests and social capital. They are each valuable concepts to understand the Demographic Cliff facings U.S. contesting. But first, I’ll cover the additional data sources used in the two-part NCJ articles.

One data source was age distribution data from the U. S. Bureau of the Census (a source where I’ve lived, breathed, and used incessantly over the years). A second was the Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A third was from the ARRL’s membership files on age of member. A fourth was from the 2011 and 2013 surveys I conducted for the four states in the Delta Division as Assistant Director. Properly assembled, these four sources gave a much more illuminating picture of the challenges facing radio sport in the next decade. No, contesting is not likely to “die,” as great pessimists are likely to say, but it is clearly facing significant and perhaps substantial social change in order to remain a prominent ham radio niche.

I won’t repeat the two articles but I want to place some strategic emphasis on a few elements of the results and their implications. They have clear and almost compelling evidence for leadership in amateur radio to shape their programmatic actions to be more strategically efficient (that’s you, ARRL, among other groups). By that, I mean like we hams often chide the owner of a new HF screwdriver antenna on a vehicle: Yea, what you’re doing will work. But it could be done differently to be much a much more efficient antenna system! Don’t we want the ARRL and other groups to be more efficient with monies invested in those organizations?

The often-heard phrase of “only grey beards” inhabiting amateur radio these days is…both factual and a canard. The observed facts are that hams participating in several public activities do sport grey hair (and beards whether they still have hair on top!). These include those who say they participate in contests as well as appear at ham fests. But we simply do not have adequate data to make reliable inferences to all 750,000 or so hams holding licenses. We just don’t. And it’s causing all of the efforts by the League and other organizations to shoot into the dark more often than not. (The ARRL often says it’s conducted research on a topic but the previous CEO Howard Michel would not release the data to members who are even more savvy in terms of statistical survey analysis. Oy!) And we won’t. Until the ARRL or another entity supports the conduct of a professional caliber random sample survey design of the licensed amateur radio operators in the U.S.

But the “modest” data I presented in the NCJ articles do show the results in the following graphic on the demographic cliff. US is the Census Bureau’s age data for the U.S; ARRL is the League’s membership as a proxy for all hams (best available); and the NCJ is from the ARRL survey of past and present NCJ subscribers.

Hams, as indicated by the proxy of ARRL membership and in the NCJ past and present subscriber data, are sorely under-represented in the pre-50 age ranges. It’s not a close comparison either. More observantly, contest participants are even older in the aggregate than the League’s membership at large. This doesn’t mean that there are not contesters in the younger age groups, just that they are smaller in number. Why? There are some sound demographic reasons that have little to do with amateur radio itself. It’s important to understand non-amateur radio factors about the life course—the trajectory in which modern societies are organized around age-graded activities, positions and transitions. Sounds like gobbledygook? But so does many of the subjects we hams pride ourselves in to the uninitiated. Let’s get up to speed here.

The American Time Use Survey, conducted regularly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a very high quality data series. It is the standard for measuring how teenagers to adults in the U.S. spend their time. The chart above captures a picture in 2018 for time use, reflecting time spent per day on each activity group. The data are compared by age groups. I have put a red box around a key category. Where does amateur radio as a hobby fall there? In Leisure and sports (note the use of radio “sport” by contest participants).

What is the general age pattern? Leisure pursuits are highest during youth and young adulthood but dramatically taper off about ages 25-34 until age 55 and over. This hollowing out of leisure and sport time is a predictable outcome of competing and more important activities. It has little to do with amateur radio per se outside of it being a leisure activity. Note that personal care (including sleep!) follows a similar age-graded pattern. A converse age pattern of increasing time spent is observed for work and related activities, moving from less time while young toward peeks at mid-career and a tapering off later in the life cycle. On average, age is linked to more household activities and fewer educational ones. So the conventional wisdom about “losing” hams after they enter middle age is all about doing things to keep them focused on the hobby within the context of these competing obligations. But is that both reasonable and consistent with the long-celebrated Amateur Radio Code? Should we really want hams to forsake family or work for a hobby?

BALANCED…Radio is a hobby, never interfering with duties owed to family, job, school or community.

The Radio Amateur’s Code

Let’s delve into another demographic pattern within the 6-8 hours per week spent on Leisure and Sports activities. From the TUS for everyone over age 15, here are sub-categories of leisure and sports activity. Of the weekly average of just over 5 hours, there is one clear time allocation: watching TV. It captures 60 percent (or about 3 hours) of all daily leisure/sport time. Socializing and communicating (ostensibly where amateur radio might fit in) is a pale second to television. (In the NCJ articles, I presented data from the Delta Division Surveys in 2011 and 2013 about time spent on the air per week.)

So what’s the demographic upshot of this? The main competitor to engagement of amateur radio operators to being on the air or at their workbench or (name your favorite ham activity) is…Television! This is not shocking to those social scientists who study time use. The Brookings Institution published a study on this using the Time Use Survey covering 2005-2015. They document how “free time became screen time” in the following trend chart, expressed as hours per week instead of day. About 2007, screen time (not just TV) surpassed other active leisure activities in average time spent. By 2015, the gap favoring screen time was over an hour, reflecting over 11 hours per week—on average with some much more and much less—of activity. Sound familiar in your household?

The demographic picture presented here continues to illuminate our understanding of the dynamics of what is a social behavior—amateur radio operation. But there is a demonstrable demographic partition in the time use data, fostered by the social roles and responsibilities typically embedded in U.S. households. Gender, employment, and weekday vs. weekend days interact in sociologically predictable ways as shown in this chart, again from the TUS in daily averages.

The clearest differential among men and women is in TV watching and socializing/communicating. Whether it’s the weekday or weekend, men systematically spend more time watching TV than women who tend to communicate and socialize more than similar men. Hmm. Women tend to spend more time communicating. Isn’t that promising for amateur radio?

One can simply ask after seeing these data: So what? But here’s the deal. Traditional radio sport is facing a demographic cliff of aging ham contesters. Those highly invested in the status quo won’t be around (by becoming SKs) to experience the diminishing participants. They now have the political clout to direct strategic actions. Is this demographic cliff inevitable? It reminds me of the famous IBM-focused Macintosh announcement in 1984, followed up by the Lemmings video in Apple’s 1985 Super Bowl commercial to announce the Macintosh!

I don’t think so, as I stated in the NCJ article series. There are two clear actions that leading organizations can take, which do not suggest that other existing programs should be curtailed or stopped. But is there the political will among decision-makers to take such actions by stepping out of line among the Lemmings?

The ability to make group decisions that often fly in the face of individual power brokers’ individual interests is called social capital. Whether those actors who drive the organization and practice of amateur radio contesting are willing to share resources (e.g., allow newcomers into the circle) and identify as contesting new forms of such competition is how social capital would be manifested in amateur radio. Trust and reciprocity in the common good is the key element for this example.

Social capital, however, is more than simply having social connections and networks. Social capital is exhibited in individuals who have a well-developed sense of mutual trust and “give-and-take” or “reciprocity” in their social networks. Moreover, it is exhibited in individuals who are actively engaged in civic and political life. This trust, reciprocity, and civic and political engagement then enriches the communities where these individuals reside.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20190616154515/https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/instructors/icsc/background.jsp

One programmatic change is to actively invite change in the types of amateur radio contests so as to engage a wider variety of hams into contesting activities. This will upset the apple cart of the extant contest culture who currently are invested in the existing models of contesting. Sometimes, hundreds of thousands of dollars are invested. Competition over band frequencies and calendar space is legion as any reading of website such as eHam.net, QRZ.com, and others will reveal. Try launching a new contest for even more direct evidence! But strategic conflict is a necessary evil for social change in many, many cases. No group owns a frequency or calendar dates. We must share them—through active cooperative efforts. But it is also very clear that “tradition” begets a sense of ownership which is anathema to vibrant change for the greater good. Many of the power brokers in the contesting niche in amateur radio here in the U.S. are also significant donors to the ARRL. Some are seated on the Board of Directors. That adds to the ability to have sway over official efforts to move their cheese. Will enough members of that conventional contesting group be willing to change for the good of that part of the hobby? Perhaps not. Nonetheless, I’m optimistic in that the famous Lemmings commercial did have one member of the landed gentry who stopped short of the cliff’s edge to take off his blinders and see the future!

A second is to fish where the fish are and with the most effective bait, recognizing the demographics that shape the potential for recruitment. The ARRL and many local clubs have focused on getting amateur radio into schools. Like the screwdriver antenna example, if you can get the owner(s) to agree to mounting that antenna, it will work. It just won’t work as efficiently as some others. But it does work. I noted in the TUS results above that women spend more time socializing and communicating per week than do men, whether either are employed or whether it’s a weekday or weekend. While it’s not a large distinction, it bodes well for amateur radio educational outreach programs to fish where the fish are. Where are women (and youth)? I’ve written previously that the local public library is strategic.

The average 10.5 trips to the library U.S. adults report taking in 2019 exceeds their participation in eight other common leisure activities.…it’s the most common cultural activity Americans engage in, by far. [emphasis mine]Gallup Survey Organization

Don’t stop working schools for recruitment, if you can get into the increasingly burdened school day and night, but add public libraries as a new “served agency” for educational outreach. The Plant the Seed, Sow the Future initiative launched in the Delta Division by Director David Norris K5UZ is a model for doing so. Some other clubs around the U.S. have begun to practice that model already. Get radio sport as one strategic element to convey amateur radio to young people and women at public libraries. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, has short-circuited most libraries in the short run in terms of physical walk-in programs. But this model clearly has legs for the future, if the ARRL’s other Divisions and the League office itself view the data objectively and be willing to adopt something “not invented here” in Newington.

It is often attributed to the social thinker August Comte to have said, Demography is Destiny. But it does not have to be so. (see my talk to the Sutton & Cheam Society in London) It does require taking the blinders off of tradition and evaluate it for what it is today and what it means for the future. This almost always requires those in power to make such decisions to forsake their own vested interests in favor of change. Like the famous Lemmings advertisement by Apple, not everyone has to walk off this demographic cliff. We just have to take the blinders of tradition off our eyes, wake up, act for the common good, and smell the demographic coffee. Because it’s brewing…