AmateurRadio.com

ARRL published an article, ARRL Calls for Timely, Visible, FCC Amateur Radio Enforcement , on April Fool’s Day.  Initially I was expecting it to be an April Fool’s joke, but it’s not.  I think ARRL is spot on.  Despite two recent cases that I can recall where amateurs relinquished their licenses or had significant fines imposed, FCC enforcement has been rather quiet since Riley Hollingsworth retired in 2009.  Remember who took his place?  I had to Google it to remember.  That’s not good.

About two months ago while I was on a business trip, my wife’s computer started to go on the fritz.  Immediately when she told me of the problem I knew what it was as her parents have the same model all-in-one Dell and it experienced the same problem six months ago.  They went through five service calls to get it fixed correctly.  The video display becomes bright and washed out, to the point where most text is unreadable and you can’t adjust the display to make it right.

For a few months I had casually been playing with a Macbook Air at work, mainly for a secondary computer.  I had vowed to family members that my days of supporting Windows for relatives is over due to the release of Windows 8 and my frustration with dealing with many of the same recurring problems of viruses and instability after 20 years of evolution of the product.  I decided to buy my wife an Apple iMac and go into uncharted territory.

We went to the Apple store Saturday morning after I got back from my trip.  We were greeted by a friendly sales guy, Steve.  He introduced himself and started getting to know us, what we do, where we live, and how much experience we had with computers.  The conversation turned to Steve Jobs and we talked about how much of a hand he had in the design of the store, right down to the selection of the floor tile and the front glass.  I usually despise conversations with salespeople at electronics stores, but this was actually quite enjoyable.

After I asked some questions about the models and capabilities, I told him the iMac model we’d like to get.  He made some taps on a little iPhone-like device and about 40 seconds later a girl popped out a hidden door in the back.  The stores are designed much like Mac laptops with hinges hidden so you can’t really tell where the door to the back area is.  She brought a box containing our iMac right where were standing.  I gave the sales guy my credit card and he used the same little device to scan the card.  “Would you like an email receipt, no paper?”  he asks.  “Sure” I reply.   I figure this is probably the end of the transaction and our visit, but he carried the computer box over to a table and stared taking it out.  This area is where customers get aquatinted and assisted with new purchases.  Steve hooked everything up and instructed us on various elements of the user interface and the major applications.  We stayed for awhile getting familiar with the iMac and after we were done, someone boxed up our machine, careful to pack it up just as it came from the factory.  We walked out the door with a box and a bag of accessories and surprisingly, no paperwork.  I’m actually sad to leave as I wanted to stay and play around with the machine more and perhaps buy some more stuff.

A few weeks passed.  My wife is doing fairly well with the iMac.  There are naturally some differences with the user interface when coming from Windows, but for the most part she’s getting through them.  I no longer hear complaints about slowness, locked applications, or how she had to do a periodic reboot again to clean things out.

I switched to a new Lenovo laptop last year after my Dell laptop display went bad.  I reformatted it entirely for Linux.  Linux was working well, and I was running Windows in a virtual machine to handle one contesting application and a few programs for my Kenwood TS-590 that only run on Windows.  The Lenovo was mediocre in my opinion.  The keyboard flexed when typing and the touchpad required way too much force to click, to the point where it fatigued my borderline carpal tunnel syndrome IT professional hands.  I struggled with wireless Linux drivers and USB operation was often an adventure.  I decided to bite the bullet and order a Macbook Pro.

The Macbook arrived about a week later.  The Retina display is amazing, though now when I look at other lower resolution displays I perceive pixels.  Transferring files over was fairly easy and I even copied the Windows virtual machine over from my old Linux box and ran it with no problems.  In full screen mode it’s funny because it runs quite nicely and acts like a native Windows operating system installation.  I later created another virtual machine and installed Linux Mint 15 on it so I could run CQRLog.  So, I have three operating systems in one.

As much as I wanted to blog about how I’ve been using Linux successfully for a year in my shack, I’m really pleased with the Mac and I think I’ve been permanently converted.  The beauty of the Mac operating system, OSX, is that it’s Unix under the hood.  It looks simple on the surface but you can dive down into the complexity if you like.  You can bring up a shell prompt, install packages, create cron jobs, etc., basically most of the stuff you do in Linux.  A lot of the open source software out there compiles for OSX.  I attempted to recompile CQRLog for OSX but was unsuccessful.  I think completing this will require some additional coding in Lazarus Object Pascal to customize a version for OSX, but it’s doable.  All in all I think you get the best of both worlds with a very user friendly interface and a Unix core.

People often complain about the cost of Apple products, especially when comparing Android devices and iPhones, but I think what one really needs to focus on is value, quality, and user experience.  There’s a level of attention to detail with Apple that you just don’t often find in other products, especially when it comes to brown box computer purchases from your local retail outlet or mail order ecommerce vendor.  Of particular interest to radio artisans, the Macbook Pro has one thing you rarely find in laptops these days — an aluminum body.  I’m curious how well the laptop performs in a high RF environment as I had problems with the USB ports resetting on the Lenovo when running 100 watts on HF.

Considering Microsoft’s insistence on discontinuing support for Windows XP, its stopping shipments of 7, the issues with Windows 8, and the maturity and popularity of alternatives, it’s a good time to convert to Linux or Mac.

I’ve noticed two things in recent years, and I’m not sure if it’s just me or I’m really on to something different with American radio amateurs.  The first observation is that there seems to be more “homebrewing” or construction of equipment outside of the US.  This isn’t to say there isn’t homebrewing within the US, far from it.  Obviously there is an active and vibrant QRP community in the US.  But as a general trend, there seems to me to be more equipment construction and “rolling your own” in other countries.  I’ve noticed with the number of inquires and feedback emails I receive for my open source amateur radio hardware projects, foreign amateurs outnumber US amateurs by a ratio of 10 to 1.  Most are in Europe, however I’ve heard from amateurs in India, Japan, Australia, and other countries outside of Europe.  I think US amateurs spend a lot of money on the hobby, but there seems to be more of a buy it and operate mentality where DX amateurs tend to be more frugal and more apt to construct things.

My second observation is that US amateurs seem more down about the future of amateur radio, in general, than foreign counterparts.  US amateurs tend to complain about the state of the hobby, ARRL, the FCC, code tests, incentive licensing, young people, etc.  US amateurs tend to be more negative online.  They’re much more apt to bring up partisan politics in QSOs and online, and they often make mental leaps connecting the perceived decline of amateur radio and the social and political climate in the US.

These are just observations, and I have no scientific data to back this up.  I’m especially curious about what radio amateurs outside of the US observe with those in their countries. Is the US unique in some regard with attitudes about amateur radio?  Do you feel there’s more low-level technical experimentation outside the US?  Is this all just my perception and not reality?

There are dozens of QRP rig designs and new kits that pop up each year, the majority of which are reiterations of previous designs.  For the past ten years it seems we’ve been in a bit of a rut building NE602 based direct conversion and superhet rigs.  But once in awhile a groundbreaking design is released, and everyone follows.  Rigs like this are truly memorable, like the W7ZOI Ugly Weekender, the NEophyte, the Norcal 40, the 2N2/40, and the K2.  I think the Minima, a new transceiver designed by Ashhar Farhan is one such design.  The design has really impressive and innovative features:

• 1 to 30 Mhz coverage
• CW and SSB operation
• Si570 DDS local oscillator
• 20 Mhz IF
• KISS Mixer
• Arduino controlled, with open source software
• Other than a few ICs, most of the active components are general purpose NPN and PNP transistors
• A relatively simple and reproducible design

Looking at the schematic, you can see immediately how unique it is starting at the front end.  From the antenna jack, you go into a high pass or low pass filter and then hit a mixer with two FETs.  After that is an IF amplifier constructed from bipolar transistors, a BFO mixer and then the audio chain, again built from bipolar transistors.  The transmitter chain works essentially the same, in reverse, with the mixer as the final active stage and providing a one watt output.

I’ve been eager to build something ugly style on a sheet of copper clad PC board, and this is just the ticket.  And it’s Arduino controlled which is icing on the cake!

Last night after I had enough of writing software code I decided to turn on 160 meters.  There was a contest going on, the CQ 160 meter CW contest.  I like 160 meter contests for some reason.  There’s something just a bit different about them.  I have a decent, though modest antenna, an inverted L running about 30 feet vertically and 65 feet horizontally, with a six foot long loading coil on a piece of 1.5 inch PVC pipe.  I have only eight or so radials, short by this band’s standards, but the antenna works rather well.  My experiences with this antenna lead me to believe that a lot of people could do 160 meters if they just attempted to build an antenna like this, even on space-challenged lots. The antenna I have could fit in a quarter acre property.  But I digress.

I turned on 160 and got my contest program going.  I did the usual search-and-pounce starting from the bottom of the band and worked my way up.  It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and I was starting to get bored with it.  What the heck, let’s park somewhere and call CQ.  I worked a few stations in the next 10 minutes and then it was like someone opened the floodgates.  I had three, four, or five guys calling me each round.  Amazingly I was able to pluck stations out of the pileup most of the time with no problem.  This was going on for what seemed like an eternity.  I started watching my rate meter and it hit 258 QSOs per hour at the peak and later settled down to around 150.  This went on for about 45 minutes.  I was in shock over the number of stations and how it was just relentless, but somehow I just went into overdrive and commanded the frequency.  I’m not rare DX and I don’t have a super big signal on this band, but it was like everyone wanted me.  The pileup started to subside and settled down to a few QSOs here and there and I was getting tired from a long day.  I wished I had planned to make a serious effort in this contest; it probably would have been fun to start rested up right at dark when the band opened and work the band until the wee hours of the morning, maybe even attempting to crank up the CW speed up a bit.

All in all, I was really pleased with my performance with this unexpected pileup.  Recently I have been training with Morse Runner while on business trips, mainly to break up the monotony of long flights.  I can tell this practice has made a difference in my ability to manage pileups, pick out stations from the chaos, and rack up the QSOs.  This could get interesting.

What blog wouldn’t be complete without the New Year’s resolutions?  Like everyone else in amateur radio blogademia, I’ve got some resolutions for 2014:

Get my contest CW speed up to 35 WPM.  I really wanted to make a resolution that I would do some ragchew CW QSOs in order to increase my overall speed, but I know that’s just not realistic.  Therefore I’m going to attempt to increase my contesting speed, mainly by operating more contests and practicing with Morse Runner when on business trips.

Not view QRZ or use it for callsign lookups each day in 2014.  A lot of radio amateurs do a QSO-a-day thing for a year.  Not me.  I travel too much and just can’t get on the air every day.  And I have a life outside of amateur radio.  So I’m doing something else to further my enjoyment of amateur radio, I’m not going to go to QRZ.com for 365 days and will use other services for callsign lookups.  Now that I’m using InoReader, I will depend on RSS feeds from numerous other sources for getting my amateur radio news fix.  I’m going to buck the “I’m Good on QRZ” trend.  Call it No-Zed-A-Day.  I’ll be tracking my progress on this blog, so check in periodically to see how I’m doing.  Wish me luck.

Make a serious effort with satellites.  Amateur radio satellites have been going through a bit of a renaissance or rebirth recently.  The old guard will bemoan the demise of the HEO or High Earth Orbit satellites of yesteryear.  LEOs or Low Earth Orbit satellites are where it’s at, as the recent launch of numerous cube satellites will attest.  They represent and benefit from favorable trends in amateur radio and technology: miniaturization, efficiency, cheap computing power, open source software, and an open and energetic community of volunteers, supporters, and followers.  I need to complete my Frankenrotator project and get my satellite station on the air.

Make the trek to Dayton.  I’ve never been to Dayton and I keep saying each year that I’m going.  I know I’m going to hate the facilities, dislike the hoards of people, and vow to never go again, but I feel I really need to do this once and get it off my bucket list, before Hara Arena crumbles into a pile of dust.  Expect blog posts about this and please bear with me while this passes through my system.

Organize some multi-operator events. There’s something I really enjoy about getting together with a group of amateurs to work a contest, climb a mountain, camp out, build something, or do all of these at once.  I vow to organize some events with local radio friends.

Organize a DXpedition for 2015.  I intend on getting my feet wet with DXpeditioning in 2015, and hopefully will organize or participate in a DXpedition every two years after that until I go to the big hamshack in the sky.  This DXpedition won’t be a big one like Amsterdam Island, but my goal is to eventually work my way up to some top 20 most wanted DX entity expeditions.

Continue doing cool stuff with Arduinos.  I’m still having fun developing software for Arduinos to do cool amateur radio stuff.  The Radio Artisan Group which supports my projects has almost reached 500 members.  Everyday I get email from people around the world asking about projects or bouncing ideas around.  We really do have a lot of innovative and creative people in amateur radio.

Those are my amateur radio resolutions for the year.  Happy New Year and 73!

I have published a page on my Frankenrotator project, a cheap homebrew azimuth and elevation rotation system using a Yaesu rotator mated with a Radio Shack TV rotator.  The brain of the unit is an Arduino Mega and complete schematics are provided.

The project illustrates how to build a power supply for both DC and AC rotators, replacing commercial rotator controllers.  The main control unit powers and controls both rotators and interfaces to a computer using the Arduino native USB port.  Logging and control programs command the system via Yaesu GS-232B emulation.  The project also demonstrates the use of a remote slave microcontroller.  A small waterproof box located at the rotator senses azimuth and elevation.  The remote microcontroller is periodically queried by the master unit via a serial link.

I still have to build some antennas to rotate with this system, which I hope to complete before winter sets in here in Pennsylvania.  Hopefully I’ll get to chase some satellites in between ice fishing!