Recently I began a project for a wire vertical antenna and it called for a 20 ft fiberglass or non-conducting pole/mast of some sort. Not to worry as I have a trusty 20 ft Jackite pole in a nice green color. I put the antenna together but the vertical wire was too long and so there was considerable slack wire swinging in the breeze. After some head scratching, I measured my 20 ft Jackite and found it was only 18 ft long!!! YIKES! Did it shrink?

Did it shrink? Nope, it is all good to go!

Thanks to the internet, I was able to send an email to Jackite products and ask if that was normal. In a short time, I received a very nice response from the Jackite vp and an offer that was over the top and way more than I was expecting. It was more than I could accept as I’ve been quite happy with the product otherwise. Turns out that it was a small quality control issue that I can tweak and correct personally.

I get no monetary or other gain out of this, but did want to give credit where credit is due. This level of customer support is often lacking in today’s busy world. I am glad to give a shout out to this company and its products! They do the job and the company stands behind them with good service. Outstanding job Jackite!

72,

Kelly K4UPG PB #173

Welcome to Handiham World!

In this edition:

• Still waiting for frequencies!

• Plain text frequency chart updated

• Split Rock on the air event

• Dip in the pool

• Operating skills: How to use beacons

• November events released

• Live ham radio broadcast from w5kub.com starts this morning!

• Remote base progress report

• Video feed of Mars Rover being outfitted

• Phone number for this podcast – call & listen if you don’t have access to a computer.

• This week at HQ

No feedback as to frequency for new 75 meter net

Hello, anyone out there? I’m still waiting for your feedback on frequencies you have listened on during the continuing search for a place to park our new 75 meter net. If you could get back to me with your suggestions for a clear frequency anywhere in the Extra, Advanced, or General portions of the band, I would really appreciate it. Our first choice would be a clear General frequency if possible, but if one is not available in the evening, which is when we will have the net, then we will go with an Advanced or Extra frequency. The 75 meter band DX window will not be used. It is 3.790-3.800 MHz. The AM calling frequency of 3.885 MHz is also reserved as is the SSTV frequency 3.845 MHz.

Please e-mail me this week with your frequency and time suggestions, frequency reports, and other suggestions about the net.

Welcome to Handiham World!

In this edition:

• New net will be on 75 m

• Band plan isn’t the same as frequency chart

• Dip in the pool

• NASA internships available for students with disabilities

• Launch date set for Discovery mission

• Putting in a speech module proves to be quite a chore

• K1RFD puts in a guest appearance on TIPSnet

• This week at HQ

It’s time for a new HF net – Part 3

Two weeks ago we said : We need at least consider moving our HF net to 160, 75, or 40 meters, and those bands are likely to be most useful in the evening. Because 160 requires a very long antenna, it is impractical for many users. 40 can get crowded, but requires the shortest antenna of the three. Of course we can consider reviving our 17 meter “non-net roundtable”, which was originally started by Alan, K2WS, but the sun will have to spit out a few more spots for that band to get where it needs to be. So what do you think? 160? 75? 40? Or something else? And what about the time and day?

Decision time is here! we really need to get moving on this new net, and the consensus seems to be building around 75 m as the best band. Therefore, we will proceed to the next step, which is choosing a net frequency. Most of the responses I have gotten indicate that users would prefer a frequency in the Extra or Advanced class portions of the phone band. We were reminded by one respondent about the “DX window” in the ARRL band plan, which is 3.790 to 3.800 MHz. The Extra portion of the band runs from 3.600 to 3.700 MHz. The Advanced portion runs from 3.700 to 3.800 MHz. The General portion runs from 3.800 MHz to the top of the band at 4.000 MHz. All General frequencies are available to Advanced and Extra licensees, of course.

So the next step is to start listening in the evening for clear frequencies. Please report the frequency and the time you listened along with the day of the week so that we can pick a mostly clear spot for a regular weekly net. By the way, the net does not have to be weekly – it could be daily, a couple of times a week, or whatever Handiham Radio Club members think is appropriate and reasonable. Send your reports to me over the coming week so that we can move on to the next step and get the word out about our new 75 m net.

By the way, there are no plans to make this a formal traffic net or anything like that. While I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of handling traffic, I think it would be fun to just have a nice social net on HF during the long winter evenings. As with the daily EchoLink net, we could enlist net control stations or simply have a more or less uncontrolled roundtable gathering. Maybe we will have some of both, depending on who shows up to join in the fun!

Please e-mail me this week with your frequency and time suggestions, frequency reports, and other suggestions about the net.

Yep, it is confirmed now for sure. Compulsive Antenna Disorder has haunted me since I was first licensed and ran a coax fed 80 meter dipole on multiple bands without a tuner.  The first time the symptoms were noticed by my family and friends was when I got a couple OO tickets for out of band harmonics. Hmmmm… what’s up with that? So a bit of reading and the antenna tweaking began and that’s when it all started.

Soon thereafter I tried to load up a nifty pin from my Junior Prom Boutonnière that reminded me of a triple stacked halo for 1296 Mc (MHz for the newer ones amongst us).  Then it was the handheld yagis for 432 Mc that we used with some military surplus gear that used dynamos so we could chase tornadoes. (We thought if it bounced off the moon, it should bounce off of a tornado!) The saucer sled that became a parabolic for listening to satellite telemetry and on it goes… Compulsive Antenna Disorder has had a firm grip on me for some time now.

Am I dreaming? Thanks wiki images!

As a QRP operator, I am always looking for more antenna power. I know that somewhere out there simply MUST be a silver bullet, that magic QRM and pileup busting antenna that makes my 2 watts output sound like a full gallon.

I can say one thing for sure, I know a lot of non-silver bullet antennas, as I have a box full of them.

But they still make a few QSO’s at times and I’m having fun along with a bit of frustration and disappointment as I deal with my CAD affliction.

I’m told that much like telegraph key collectivitis there is no known cure or relief. I share in your grief brothers and sisters…

72,

Kelly K4UPG PB #173

Welcome to Handiham World!

It’s time for a new HF net – Part 2

Last week we said : We need at least consider moving our HF net to 160, 75, or 40 meters, and those bands are likely to be most useful in the evening. Because 160 requires a very long antenna, it is impractical for many users. 40 can get crowded, but requires the shortest antenna of the three. Of course we can consider reviving our 17 meter “non-net roundtable”, which was originally started by Alan, K2WS, but the sun will have to spit out a few more spots for that band to get where it needs to be. So what do you think? 160? 75? 40? Or something else? And what about the time and day?

Interestingly enough, the 75 meter band seems to be favored so far. More than one respondent has suggested that we would have the best chance of success in the Extra Class segment of the band. The reason cited was that the General segment is crowded in the evening when the band is open to longer distance communications and thus most useful for our purposes.

I think we can agree that the 160 meter band is “out” because of the antenna requirements. 40 is a good alternative because of its propagation characteristics, but the phone portion of the band is less than half that available on 75 meters and there is no doubt that it will be difficult to find some open real estate for an evening net. Besides, we already have the CW net on 7.112 MHz.

So what do you think? A 75 meter net in the evening to be in the Extra portion of the band? Remember, only participants with Extra Class licenses would be able to transmit, but anyone could listen. We could initiate a “check in by email”, or some similar system, which I have heard on other nets, to accommodate those without transmit privileges. Another idea would be to have the Handiham Radio Club as the net sponsor. We do need regular HRC activities, aside from a single meeting at Radio Camp during the year.

Weigh in! I hope to hear from you about these suggestions soon. Please drop me an email, and I’ll share your thoughts with our readers and listeners.

QST Reviews Wouxun KG-UVD2 & KG-UVD1P Talking Handheld Radios

The Wouxun KG-UVD1 talking HT created quite a stir at Hamvention in May, both for its low price and for its built-in speech access for the blind. As I stated in a previous story, “Handiham volunteers Larry Huggins, KA0LSG, and Ken Silberman, KB3LLA, both found the new Wouxun 2m/70cm KG-UVD1P HT at Dayton, and Larry actually had his radio along to demonstrate to us at Handiham Radio Camp.”

We have had many questions about this radio, but details on its overall quality and functionality were mostly anecdotal. That has changed with a QST review of the latest versions of the KG-UVD2 & KG-UVD1P talking handheld radios by Bob Allison, WB1GCM, ARRL Test Engineer. Bob’s article appears in the November 2010 QST, which will be available to blind Handiham members in the upcoming Friday audio updates in the Members Only section of the Handiham website. QST is also produced in audio through the Library of Congress National Library Service and will be available for the new NLS digital players, available to those who qualify for services. The NLS version of QST is the complete magazine without advertising, but it takes some time to produce and is typically around a month later than the print mailing or Handiham digest version.

Nice weather and an open schedule allowed for some radio time this weekend. The QRP ARCI Fall QSO Party made some buzz so I loaded up the gear and headed out by the lake.  I put up an 88ft doublet in an inverted vee. I shoot a line over a tree limb at about 40ft and use that for the center and have two 17ft Crappie Poles that I use for end supports. That allows me to reorient the antenna to suit the conditions.

Ground Mount Closeup

One of the things I threw together is a simple mount for the crappie poles. I use a 2ft piece of PVC with a couple bolts inserted at right angles to one another at the base to keep the pole from going all the way through to the ground. The PVC is attached to a 3ft piece of aluminum angle iron that with 3 stainless steel hose clamps.

Crappie Pole End Supports

The poles are pretty limber and take a bit of a bend but do a good job of handling the 24 gauge teflon wire I use.  As you can see in the pictures, the mounts do the job and don’t cost as much as commercial counterparts.

So it was a good day and I made a few contacts, enjoyed the outdoors and had a nice picnic lunch with my XYL down by the lake between QSO’s.  The bands were pretty decent and I gave points to 20 of the more serious contestants out there.

72,

Kelly K4UPG PB #173

p.s. The Polar Bears will be out and on the air next weekend. Give a listen, hear?

Welcome to Handiham World!

It’s time for a new HF net.

When was the last time you thought about getting on 20 m and being part of the Handiham net? Don’t be embarrassed to admit that you haven’t thought about it for a long time. Neither have I, as a matter of fact, so you are not alone. The 20 m net died several years ago when our last regular net control volunteer Mike Knox, WA0KKE, finally had to throw in the towel.

What happened?

Like many things in our technologically-driven existence, there was no single cause for the demise of the Handiham net. A prime suspect certainly had to be the relentless, never-ending sunspot minimum that we are trying to claw our way out of with limited success, even now in 2010 when the sun should be really perking up. As most of you know, the higher solar activity associated with more sunspots creates ionospheric conditions that favor really good high-frequency radio propagation. In a really good solar maximum, the HF bands crackle with strong DX signals and one can “work the world” with just a few watts of power on bands like 10 and 15 m. Sad to say, it has been so long since we have seen those conditions that many operators have simply drifted away from regular HF operation, especially if they did not have room for wire antennas that would allow them to tune 160 through 40 m, bands that remain usable even during solar minimum conditions.

The 20 m band sits astride the critical part of the HF spectrum that just barely remains inside the “always useful” zone. At sunspot minimum, it is generally crowded with DX seekers and anyone else simply looking for an open band with capability of working stations at some distance during daylight hours. Even then, 20 isn’t always reliable when solar storms wipe out the bands. So what happened was that the conditions on 20 simply didn’t favor continued scheduled net activities. The net control station would be faced with terrible band conditions and fewer and fewer check-ins. In spite of my efforts to find another net control station, no one was interested, and I guess I don’t blame them. Who wants to preside over a net with no stations checking in?

But we can’t ignore other factors that came into play during the deterioration of the HF bands during the sunspot minimum. The rise of the Internet followed by the spread of broadband connectivity made EchoLink much more practical and reliable than HF communications. The VHF and UHF repeater systems with EchoLink capability came into their own as HF activity deteriorated. More and more people made the move to EchoLink. The Internet is also a huge factor in siphoning away people from ham radio – and most other leisure time activities. It’s not that the Internet is good or bad per se, it’s just that people only have so much time for all of the competing leisure time activities, and ham radio is simply finding a new “normal” in this very different world.

Another factor is that a daytime 20 m HF net is simply too hard to conduct when more and more people with disabilities are going to school and work, instead of the “bad old days” situation in which people with disabilities simply sat around housebound. We are glad that those days are gone, but Handiham members who work and go to school cannot be expected to have the time to check into a daytime net on any regular basis. You simply can’t count on enough folks having a day off from work or a school holiday to keep a critical mass of net participants.

So what to do?

I would suggest a change in net frequency and timing. We need at least consider moving our HF net to 160, 75, or 40 meters, and those bands are likely to be most useful in the evening. Because 160 requires a very long antenna, it is impractical for many users. 40 can get crowded, but requires the shortest antenna of the three. Of course we can consider reviving our 17 meter “non-net roundtable”, which was originally started by Alan, K2WS, but the sun will have to spit out a few more spots for that band to get where it needs to be. So what do you think? 160? 75? 40? Or something else? And what about the time and day?

I hope to hear from you about this suggestion soon. Please drop me an email, and I’ll share your thoughts with our readers and listeners.

New at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair: Wouxun KG-UV920R

The Hong Kong Electronics Fair opened today, October 13, and runs through October 16.

Amateur radio is about to be introduced to a brand-new entry in the mobile dual-band radio category, the Wouxun KG-UV920R. Although at this time we have little in the way of product specs, the Wouxun dual-band handheld radio that was demonstrated at Handiham Radio Camp early this year created quite a lot of interest because of its built-in speech frequency readout for blind users. The KG-UV920R features dual-frequency display and cross-band repeater capability. It comes with more than a thousand memory channels. It also includes an unusual receiver that covers the short-wave bands! We are waiting for a more detailed specification document so that we can tell if speech frequency readout will be a feature – and we sure hope that it is! At this time, no pricing is available.