AmateurRadio.com

There is good news in the blogosphere! Jeff Davis, KE9V (ex-N9AVG, WD9GCT), has re-established a blog and is now posting regularly. There is no doubt I am an avid fan of Jeff and it is always interesting to watch his online permutations. For a very long time he had a well established blog at ke9v.net. Yes, he frequently rebooted the blog and Jeff is not an online pack-rat. His blog reboots always cleaned away old posts to make room for the new. I encountered many of his short stories, ham radio based. From time to time, he would post the stories on his blog or put them into a post. 1,000 Marbles is the only one that I know of that is published as a book. I also believe that many of his stories were translated into Japanese by Leo, JJ8KGZ. I hope that with this reboot Jeff might again share some of these stories, or perhaps a new one? Or, I would ask him to publish his stories as a collection. I am sure many hams, like myself, would purchase a copy.

Jeff also has been prodigious in producing engaging podcasts. Starting in ~2005, Long Delayed Echos featured over fifty episodes that delved deeply into the roots and history of amateur radio. Cornbread Road was another of Jeff’s podcasts. This 13 episode podcast (and an additional epliogue) not only highlighted Jeff’s talent in crafting ham radio based fiction, but also his storytelling abilities.

Jeff always pushes the capabilities of social media. He regularly uses twitter. After dabbling with Google+, Jeff took the plunge. He discontinued his blog and used Google+ to make frequent posts. Then, not that long ago, came Quintessence, a weekly email. Archives are available here (http://tinyletter.com/ke9v/archive). I personally believe this would make for a great, weekly RTTY bulletin. Far more interesting than the ARRL’s. Perturbation is the name of the latest reincarnation of his blog. He always manages to select interesting titles for each of his blog’s incarnations.

per·tur·ba·tion – a deviation of a system, moving object, or process from its regular or normal state of path, caused by an outside influence.

Bottom line – I am glad to see Jeff’s blog back up and hope it continues for some time. But, as Heraclitus of Ephesus says, “Everything changes and nothing stands still.”

Mention Health and safety and its likely you think of some Muppet decides that children need a suit of armour to play conkers (for those not lucky enough to have tried to make a horse chestnut seed the hardest material known to man, have a look here). Back to the point. I’m talking about looking after yourself in your hobby.

Ham radio has some pretty high hazard activities. High voltages, antenna’s on towers, climbing on roofs etc. Recently I’ve been soldering a bit more. Whilst its not likely to be particularly harmful to occasionally sniff in some fumes its probably not going to do me much good either. So I might benefit from a solder fume extractor.

I understand that the technical terms (and we all love a technical term) is local exhaust ventilation or LEV. Still doesn’t sound too complex and thankfully it doesn’t need to be. A fan that sucks and a filter is pretty much all you need, it seems. So do I really need an industrial scale extractor? probably not. So as an experiment I’ve bought a £5 extractor from eBay.

Its an mdf laser cut body with a 12v (computer?) fan. It takes 5 minutes assemble and may or may not need some PVA to hold it all together. I say might as mine was a good tight fit so probably won’t need it in the short term but as it gets bashed about on the workbench it might need some help to stay together.

The extractor is basic (what do you expect for £5) and didn’t come with any filter media. So a suitably sized filter will be needed. Perhaps the same activated carbon you get for cooker hoods would suffice, will need to be sourced. I dare say just sucking it from one place to blow to another isn’t really helping matters.

I could measure flow, compare against standards, determine filter abatement. I say could, because clearly this hasn’t been designed with that in mind and how would that really help? The video below shows you how effective it actually is.

So the conclusion. The hazard associated with occasional solder fumes is probably quite low and the risk is also probably quite low. But a simple device, like this, has the opportunity to remove the fumes from the workbench and at the very least stop them going in your eyes. That can’t be bad.

Here it is in action. Distance between tip and fan is approximately 10cm.

p.s. If you’re really lucky you can hear my daughter homebrewing in the background (what she is homebrewing is anyone’s guess)

Locators, or as us Brits call them, Maidenhead locators. Named after a town in Berkshire that isn’t close to the meridian but held a meeting by a bunch of VHF chaps in the early 80’s. In fact the now de facto method for looking something up (Google & Wikipedia) give us:

‘The Maidenhead Locator System is a geographic co-ordinate system used by amateur radio operators. Dr. John Morris, G4ANB, originally devised the system, and a group of VHF managers, meeting in Maidenhead, England in 1980, adopted it. The Maidenhead Locator System replaces the older QRA locator system with one that is usable outside Europe.^[1]

Maidenhead locators are also commonly referred to as QTH Locator, grid locators or grid squares, despite having a non-square shape on any non-equirectangular cartographic projection. Use of the terms QTH locator and QRA locator was initially discouraged, as it caused confusion with the older QRA locator system. The only abbreviation recommended to indicate a Maidenhead reference in Morse code and radio teleprinter transmission was “LOC”, as in “LOC KN28LH”’

But more to the point how do you calculate one? Easy if you know Perl (apparently – thanks again Wikipedia)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# (c) 2012 Chris Ruvolo.  Licensed under a 2-clause BSD license.
if($#ARGV < 1){
  printf("Usage: $0 <lat> <long>n");
  exit(1);
}
 
my $lat = $ARGV[0];
my $lon = $ARGV[1];
my $grid = "";
 
$lon = $lon + 180;
$lat = $lat + 90;
 
$grid .= chr(ord('A') + int($lon / 20));
$grid .= chr(ord('A') + int($lat / 10));
$grid .= chr(ord('0') + int(($lon % 20)/2));
$grid .= chr(ord('0') + int(($lat % 10)/1));
$grid .= chr(ord('a') + int(($lon - (int($lon/2)*2)) / (5/60)));
$grid .= chr(ord('a') + int(($lat - (int($lat/1)*1)) / (2.5/60)));
 
print "$gridn";

But what happens if its all Dutch to you (It is to me)?

Well I put together a simple spread sheet that does the calculation. Its nothing special but deciphering what several different people have put into explanations that include adding your birthday, taking away your dogs maiden name and that kind of thing. Hopefully it’ll help you understand where those numbers come from and how to calculate them. So help yourself and if it doesn’t work then fix it and share it ( I tested it with 3 locators and lats / longs and it seemed to work). I also learnt a few more things about Excel so its all handy.

Here it is then

Call: K8GU
Operator(s): K8GU
Station: K8GU

Class: SO CW LP
QTH: FM19li
Operating Time (hrs): 5
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Zones  HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
  160:    0     0       0       0
   80:   50     0       3       4
   40:   87     0      11      12
   20:   47     0       7      15
   15:   16     0       7       9
   10:    0     0       0       0
-------------------------------------
Total:  200     0      28      40  Total Score = 25,092

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

 
Since the birth of our second child, I’ve had to become a little more creative in my approach to operating contests.  There are rare days when both children are in phase with their eating and sleeping needs and we can accomplish some things, and then there are the other days.  With the coincidence of the quadrennial World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) and IARU HF World Championship contests this year, I thought I would make a game of trying to contact all 59 of the competitors rather than maximizing contest score.  The motivation for this is that WRTC was in New England this year, which is a stone’s throw away from me and middle-of-the-night operation would yield QSOs with the WRTC stations on 40 and 80.

I did end up working all 59 of the WRTC stations with their distinctive 1×1 callsigns by furiously searching and pouncing on both radios on 40 and 80.  In fact, I worked most of them twice before I finally found K1T.  I’m going to do an analysis of the standings of the teams versus when I worked them to test if any of the teams were better at “marketing” than others.  Should be fun!  Anyhow, all of these operators were really outstanding but a special congratulations to N6MJ and KL9A who seem to have run away with the whole thing operating as K1A.

In the lead up to the contest, I finally managed to get the station fully SO2R (single operator, two radio—essentially the ability to operate interference-free duplex on any pair of HF bands) again.  And, in the process, I have automatic band switching again, so I don’t have to run across the basement to switch antennas.  Thank goodness for small conveniences.

Here’s the mess for low-power (100 watts and less):  KK1L 6×2 switch to connect two radios to any of six antennas, W3NQN single-band 200-watt transmitting filters for each band (10-80 meters shown here since I still don’t have a 160 antenna yet), and the K6KV-K8GU triplexer that allows me to share the feedline to the G3TXQ broadband hexagonal beam with both radios.  All this stuff was homebrewed by me but it is all available in commercial form as well.

I’ve described the W3NQN filters considerably in the past, but the triplexer is new (built in March 2014) and since I’ve had some e-mail traffic from a couple of people who know I built one, I’ll probably write something up on it in the next few weeks.  I mention it here because WRTC is actually one of the events that popularized the use of triplexers, which are downright freaky when you think about plugging two 100-watt class radios into a box that separates/combines the signals.  Electrical engineering for the win on this one.  Anyhow, I based my triplexer off the K6KV QST article from June 2010, finding some beautiful Johnson capacitors in a flea market for $5 each and using leftover toroids from the W3NQN filter project instead of the solenoid coils used by K6KV.  The whole thing set me back about $30 total and it works great with the W3NQN filters, to say the least.

This was the second contest with TRLinux contest software by N6TR and W9CF.  It has some idiosyncrasies, such as the effect of CAPS LOCK on the shortcut keys.  For example, did you know that ALT-r is not the same as ALT-R?  The great thing about it is that TRLinux talks natively with the YCCC SO2R+ box that I use to handle keying and audio switching for both radios.  And, the band data is handled by the YCCC SO2R+ with TRLinux, so I didn’t have to buy a band decoder for the K2.  That whole process of setting up the band decoding was another midnight oil project Friday night before the contest started.  Fun and games.  But, it worked flawlessly.

And my three-year-old son, future SO2R CW operator, rocking the Bencher and Palm paddles…”I’m doin’ lots of Morse code!”

Radio Merit Badge Requirements

I was cleaning up the shack on Friday. Unfortunately, the shack becomes a dumping ground for “stuff” that I think I may need at some point in the future. I have a bag of RS232 serial cables. Probably have at least a dozen. 75 ohm TV coax cable and splitters. POTS (RJ-11) two and four wire extension cords. A collection of Palm Pilots with a multitude of accessories. I don’t think any pf the Palm Pilots work anymore. A vast cornucopia of audio cables and connectors. A box of WiFi routers. Computer keyboards. Etc. Etc.

So, I was cleaning and organizing the “stuff” when I just happen to come across a station calling CQ on 40M. “CQ CQ 40 Meters, CQ Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts, this is KD0VMM”. That definitely got my attention. After a short QSO I figured out that these were Scouts from a camp about an hour north near St. Joseph, MO called Camp Geiger and these Scouts were working on their Radio Merit Badge. I continued to monitor the Scout’s QSOs until I heard a bugle blare in the background. The Merit Badge Counselor got on the air and explained the bugle (which had just blown at the top of the hour) signaled an end to that hour’s Merit Badge class. Additionally, there was another Radio class that was just beginning and the Scouts would be back on the air in about 20 minutes. Sure enough, this was the case and I was able to talk to another Scout. After an email exchange with Bruce, owner of KD0VMM, he explained that another group of Scouts would be back on the air next Thursday and Friday as they were finishing up their requirements for the Radio badge.

How cool having a Scout camp offering the Radio Merit Badge! I attended Scout camp many a summer as well as even being a counselor one year, but the Radio badge was never offered as a merit badge that could be earned. What a great opportunity to introduce Scouts to radio!

After a bit of research, it was interesting to see that back when the badge was created in 1918 it was called the Wireless Merit Badge. Then in 1923, it changed names to the current Radio Merit Badge. Requirements for the badge has evolved over the years… and most recently in 2009.

What I didn’t ask Bruce, KD0VMM, was if the Scouts had the opportunity at camp to earn the Morse Code Interpreter Strip. The Morse Code Strip is a fairly recent edition to Scouts and can be earned by:

Boy’s Life, the Boy Scouts of America’s monthly periodical, recently put up a web application called the Morse Code Machine. Looks like fun!

… as a final note, don’t forget about the Boy Scout’s Jamboree-On-The-Air (JOTA). This event occurs annually during the third weekend in October.

Two things that always pique my interest: ham tales of yore and the backstories of what led a individual to the hobby. I bumped into Jim, K5LAD’s site and found both. If you have a minute or two, dive into Jim’s “50+ Years of Ham Radio Memories” and follow his path through amateur radio. As I am reading through it, I am not sure if there is an aspect of the hobby that Jim hasn’t dabbled in.

I would suspect that if you have done even a bit of tuning around the HF dial in the last few months, you have probably heard W1AW/0-9 making contacts. This week W1AW, the ARRL mothership in Newington, CT, has been on the air as W100AW in celebration of the ARRL anniversary.

As busy as that sounds, W1AW is consistently on the air with a great variety of activities. Yesterday I took the opportunity to copy their digital modes broadcast. http://www.arrl.org/digital-transmissions

ARRL has various means of promulgating a great deal of information. The primary way I usually receive a good portion of it is via email. I thought it would be interesting if I could try and copy their digital transmission of their bulletin, which I was able to do yesterday.

Every weekday, W1AW sends out a bulletin twice a day on multiple bands while rotating through three different digital modes: Baudot (RTTY), PSK31, MFSK16. The first broadcast kicked off at 5pm (local) which I was able to copy of 17M (18.105 MHz). It appears to be ARRL’s propagation bulletin. Here is what I copied:

Please find my full copy here.

Later in the evening (8pm local), I copied the next broadcast which looks like their DX bulletin:

…. and the complete text is here.

During the 8pm transmission, I was able to copy the bulletin on 10M, 15M, 17M, and 20M. I could not find it on 40M or 80M.

Although these bulletins are easily obtainable via email or from ARRL’s website, I enjoyed copying the broadcast from here in eastern Kansas.