AmateurRadio.com

I do love my radio. I really enjoy getting on air and always like the qso’s I have, even the rubber stamp ones. But recently, I’ve started to think about other aspects. The cost of equipment is one such thing (I’ve blithered on about that before) and the other is that in general you don’t see a very diverse age group in the hobby. There are you people who get into it through a number of different means and I’m fairly sure many drop the mic / key / keyboard. I suspect that getting on air is a costly business and that the pub may be a more alluring draw. A large portion of the people I have met or are involved with Ham Radio are ‘of a certain age’ ; i.e not in the 16-24 year old bracket. A bracket that I left behind nearly 20 years ago.

So I thought I’d write to the RSGB to see what their thoughts were and they decided to publish my letter. I didn’t offer any solutions but merely an opportunity to open the debate. I think its safe to say that the door has been shut now. The response to the letter was fairly swift and I read it is ‘We’re doing alright’. I remain unconvinced. I am very disappointed that they seem reluctant to grasp the nettle.

I’m a clanky by trade and the IMechE (along with just about every other professional body no doubt) make it part of your chartership that you must spend time mentoring the next generation. I spent 2 years teaching to 6th form students and thoroughly enjoyed it. Other ways include being on the young members board, who were represented at a national level. I firmly believe that the next generation is the key to this hobby and engaging them will bring us strength, diversity, enthusiasm and energy. I don’t know how much it costs to sponsor a trophy but I’ll be looking into it as a way reward the next generation. If there are any ideas I’d love to hear about them.

I’ve order the Argent Data Arduino Shield Kit for a little project and been well and truly had by the post Office. £3 worth of customs duty on an £18 item and £8 for the privilege of them paying the bill. Best not choose that option again

Worked my good friend and professional colleague Nathaniel, W2NAF, who is a radio instructor at the 2013 National Jamboree. Fast QSL with a special postmark. Ham radio continues to be cool.

Its always difficult to see a computer screen in bright daylight. Here in Florida, there are numerous pavilions with roofs over them and that helps a lot. Something extra is usually needed on a bright sunny day.  I had a pizza today and while I was waiting for it to come out of the oven at the Pizza shop, I asked the cook if I could buy a couple of extra boxes. I told her what they were for and she gladly gave them to me. The $4 tip didn’t hurt that situation I’m sure!

I’ll make the next one look prettier. 

I’m sure that I’m not the first one to come up with this idea. But here is my version of the Pizza Box Sunshade.

The interior of the box is pretty dark. Note the clear packing tape holding the sunshade together.

I did this job by myself, so I didn’t have anyone to hold the box in place while I applied the tape.

Using ordinary paper staples was a mistake, they leave sharp places to stab your fingers with.

Cheap and workable, the Sunshade should last a while. I’ll collect pizza boxes  to keep me supplied.

It took 3 Pizza boxes to make up this sunshade, and it was worth every bite of Pizza! 

I took this photo with a flash to show the interior of the sunshade.

73 de AA1IK

Ernest Gregoire

My friend Matt, KB9UWU, eggs me on to buy things.  Sometimes I listen.  Sometimes I don’t.  But, eventually he wins me over and I’m usually happy with the purchase (e.g., K3 and Hex beam, although I built the Hex from scratch, which reminds me that I owe the blog a discussion of that).  I like to think that I let Matt be the early adopter and then pick and choose based on his experience.  He convinced me to buy a copy of N6BT’s book Array of Light.  Here’s my review.

If there’s anybody that knows antennas in the amateur community, it’s Tom Schiller, N6BT, the founder of Force12 and now owner of N6BT Next Generation Antennas.  He’s also a member of the very successful Team Vertical contest team, who have revolutionized DXpedition and contest expedition antenna systems by replacing trapped tri-band Yagis like the TH-3jr(s), TA-33jr, and A3S, with arrays of verticals located at the water line.  Schiller’s work has been nothing short of revolutionary so I had high hopes for the book.

My copy, like every other copy, is signed by the author.  It’s a good-quality laser print and has the same spiral binding as the Elecraft manuals.  The book is a loosely-edited collection of articles and clippings that read pretty well in series.  But, it’s bear to skim or go back to find specific things unless you’ve read the whole thing cover-to-cover a couple of times.  But, that’s pretty easy to do because Tom is a good storyteller.  My only other complaint is that there are a couple of places where I think Tom has drunk his own Kool-Aid regarding the efficiency of his antennas, especially “linear loading.”  This is a topic that I need to revisit with a pencil and paper study at some point because there is a lot of misinformation floating around about traps, linear loading, and “multi-monoband” antennas.  It’s not clear to me that anyone has sat down and really examined this in a methodical way.  It was disappointing that he quoted numbers like “greater than 99% efficiency” without going into more detail about the efficiency of a full-size antenna versus the linear-loaded one, etc.  Of course, this is difficult, but it’s something that always makes me a bit skeptical.

Array of Light is worth the price of admission for a couple of reasons—the first is the stories and the second is the antenna designs.  I’m a big proponent of not reinventing the wheel on most of my homebrew projects and this book is sure to provide some proven designs to work with.  Especially if you want a good discussion of practical antennas for DXpeditioning and contesting I think it’s a real winner.

1. Crystal oscillator for 98.5 MHz.  Check.
2. TUF-1 and TUF-3 mixers.  Check.
3. SMT protoboard.  Check.
4. MMIC amplifiers.  Check.
5. Larcan TV exciter amp.  Check.

Do you see what I see?  Yes, a 222-MHz transverter is on the horizon.

Guess the rude noise on 6m I recorded a little while ago but forgot all about

Guess the dinmap :: {skin:’black’, animate:true, width:’200′, volume:0.5, autoplay:false, loop:false, showVolumeLevel:true, showTime:true, showRew:true, downloadable:true, downloadablesecurity:false, id3: false}