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Last night I uploaded HamRadioNow Episode 138. I’m calling it MotoTRBOStar because it’s about a newly announced handheld radio that will claim some firsts: it’s the first “dual-digital” mode radio (D-STAR; and MOTOTRBO, or generically DMR – Digital Mobile Radio); and it’s the first non-ICOM off-the-shelf radio to do D-STAR.* The episode is an interview with the CEO of Connect Systems, Inc., Jerry Wanger (rhymes with Ranger). CSI (isn’t that a TV show?) has been selling analog, trunked and DMR digital handheld radios in the commercial service. Recently, Jerry learned that a lot of hams have latched onto his radios for use on the ham-band MOTOTRBO repeaters. The radios are quite inexpensive, and apparently pretty high quality.

Jerry had a novice license long ago, but never mastered the code to upgrade. Side note: back in the 60’s, a Novice license ran one year and couldn’t be renewed.  And Novices had voice privileges on only one band: two meters. So Novices who spent too much time on two-meter AM (there was almost no FM then) and didn’t get their code speed up to 13 wpm for a General could get a Tech, but then they were confined to VHF/UHF. Again, repeaters were just barely getting started and were mostly unknown, so Techs were in a kind of Purgatory. But it was a way to keep licensed. Evidently Jerry didn’t choose that route. But he’s about to get re-licensed now.

So Jerry appreciates ham radio, and decided to make a model radio (CS700) that was more “ham-friendly,” with features like DTMF and the ability to program frequencies and parameters directly from the keypad. Then he decided to add D-STAR. That model, the CS7000, is planned for Fall release. He’ll be at Dayton to show it off.

Jerry does the software and designs the hardware specs himself, and has the radios manufactured in China. As he says, he can buy the finished radios cheaper than he can buy the parts.

So that’s all in the interview. Now I’ll wax a bit philosophical on the topic.

I’ve been a ham since 1965, WN9NSO, in the Chicago suburbs. And while I did play on two meter AM with a Heathkit Twoer (to the displeasure of my mentors, who warned sternly about neglecting the code), I also spent enough time in the 40 and 15 meter Novice cw bands to wick the speed up and pass my General after just a few months. And while I have almost always had a presence on HF, I’ve felt more at home on VHF/UHF. I was introduced to FM almost immediately. I had a Motorola 30D base station in my shack, and 80D mobile in my Dad’s car by 1967 (these were ancient, all-tube radios. The 80D even had a Dynamotor to power the transmitter). There were only two or three repeaters on the air in Chicago at the time. I was too young (and never an engineer) to be much of a leader at the time, but I watched the FM boom from a front row seat.

Fast forward to the early 2000’s. I’m editor of the SERA Repeater Journal, the magazine published by the SouthEastern Repeater Association, the group that does frequency coordination for 8 states. I come across a reference to D-STAR, and while I didn’t think much about it at the time, I did ponder a digital future in my column. But D-STAR wasn’t one of those flights of fancy that came and went. With ICOM behind it, D-STAR grew beyond it’s original 1200 MHz system as ICOM added radios for 144 and 440 MHz. Meanwhile, I had moved from editing the magazine to producing ham radio video on DVD as ARVN:Amateur Radio//Video News. I bought ICOM’s first D-STAR dual-band mobile, the ID-800, and handheld, the IC-91, and soon after produced a documentary titled Digital Voice for Amateur Radio. The DVD also featured a segment on HF digital voice, and a little on APCO-25, another VHF/UHF digital mode being adapted from Public Safety radio to Amateur Radio. I’ve written a few articles and reviews in QST on D-STAR and ICOM radios. I’m not the foremost authority on it by any means – I consider myself a journalist (with a side of pundit these days), not an expert – but I’ve learned a lot. And ham radio doesn’t have many pure journalists. Everybody’s involved.

D-STAR was met by hams with sharply divided reaction (and more than a few yawns). A few embraced it immediately (best thing ever). A few more were rigidly opposed (End Of Amateur Radio As We Know It). Most, if they were even aware of it in the early years, were more wait-and-see. Not gonna sink a lot of money into a radio that might not go anywhere. All the D-STAR radios were good Analog radios, too, but they were a few hundred bucks more expensive, so while the radio wouldn’t be useless, it would have been a costly experiment.

Turns out D-STAR has hung around and grown fairly quickly. It’s in most major and medium metro areas, and even some rural areas, of the US and many countries around the world. But there’s still plenty of territory that has had analog FM for decades but no D-STAR at all yet. Any long road trip will quickly bear that out. You’ll drive a long way between “islands” of D-STAR coverage. It’s very much like FM was in 1970 – available mostly in the larger cities. I remember being excited when driving toward Denver way back then. A mountainside repeater on 146.94 broke my squelch about 100 miles out after hours and hours of radio silence.

D-STAR proponents, and even us “objective journalists” (OK, I’m not objective on this) point out how much technology is going digital (TV, cell phones, a fair amount of two-way business and Public Safety radio) while hams have barely moved the needle, except for the all-text modes. Yeah, we led the way with Packet Radio in the 80’s (a few did, anyway… not most of us). But for a group that likes to talk more than anything else, our voices have remained mostly analog, right up to today. Digital has some advantages (signal to noise, voice+data, and spectrum efficiency), but they haven’t been compelling enough yet to get wholesale adoption. Except for D-STAR, they mostly haven’t been built-in to radios. And on HF especially, we don’t know how we’d use them for some of the core activities like contests and DX.

As we gaze outside of our pasture to that real world that’s growing increasingly digital, there’s another issue to note. Digital doesn’t stand still very long. Upgrades happen fast, and sometimes older stuff becomes obsolete – even unusable – pretty quickly. Analog TV made it about 60 years. Vinyl records a little longer. CDs aren’t dead, but sales went to nearly zilch, after about 20 years. On the Internet, where software and apps can be easily upgraded or replaced, we’re talking a few years or even months. Remember “RealTV”? And you know that 70″ 1080p High-Def TV you just got. Obsloete. Here comes 4k. Then 8k. Broadcast TV stations are going nuts trying to figure out to squeeze that into their “Advanced” television system. **

I’m about to edit my next HamRadioNow that I recorded yesterday with Bruce Perens K6BP. Bruce is a serious open-source guy, so he never had a great love for D-STAR. Bear that in mind when he declares it obsolete. Objectively, things in ham radio move slower. Whenever there’s fixed hardware involved, upgrades can’t happen that fast – it costs too much. But D-STAR is 15 years old, and better technology is available. Yaesu claims their new C4FM “System Fusion” is “better.” Bruce disputes that, and I don’t have the background to determine it for myself. But I can say that if Yaesu is correct now, what can they say in 5 years (0r 5 months) when the next something better comes along?

Bruce is involved in a couple of projects. For HF, there’s FreeDV, and for VHF/UHF, it’s the “HT of the Future.” Both are based on the open-source CODEC2, which is still very much under development, and always will be, at least for the foreseeable future. Today, FreeDV is a sound-card mode that you can run much like PSK-31. Tomorrow, you might punch it up on the mode switch (Flex will probably be the first radio to have that option). FreeDV – and probably a lot of new modes – will be upgradable by downloading software. I won’t say it will never be obsolete, but it’s the kind of thing that will move us from being slow-moving dinosaurs tied to our fixed-technology hardware, into a more nimble future where we are not walled off from each other by incompatible modes. All this stuff is coming up in HamRadioNow Episode 139, as soon as I can stop typing here and get back to editing it (maybe tomorrow or Monday).

Ya know… I’ve never operated FreeDV or it’s predecessors (FDMDV, WinDRM) that I featured in Digital Voice for Amateur Radio. I don’t have a computer sitting next to my HF rig… at least not yet. All my computers are busy doing something else. But I’ll find one soon, and give it a try.

73, Gary KN4AQ

* Devices like the DVDongle are cool, but they’re not standalone radios. There are a few modules that you can use to turn an analog radio into a D-STAR radio using its 9600 packet port, but that’s not off-the-shelf. The NW Digital radio might lay claim to being the first non-ICOM commercial D-STAR capable radio if it reaches production before the CS-7000 does, and right now it’s a race. But while it will do D-STAR’s DV voice mode, it’s really designed as a multi-mode platform for medium-speed data, using D-STAR’s DD mode and many others. It will have exciting uses, but it’s not your grab-and-go handheld or mobile radio.

** My career has been in the audio/video production business, mostly making commercials. I quickly learned a lesson: never stick a label on anything that calls it “new.” And never call anything “final.” OK, sort of two lessons.

The “new” lesson came from a reel of alignment videotape that we used at a TV station I worked for. You had to run that through the old 2″ “Quad” videotape machines to align the heads before making a recording, so the reel got used several times a day. It started life as a 5-minute piece of tape, but every time you used it, you’d then rewind it and thread a piece of blank tape for recording onto the machine. That rewind was high-speed, and if you didn’t catch it fast enough, the end of the tape would flap like crazy, and get frayed. You had to cut the frayed piece off lest it get caught in the high-speed spinning video heads next time, clogging the hell out of them and maybe ruining a head assembly that cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace. The boss would be very angry.

When I started working at the station, that alignment reel had about 45 seconds of tape left on it, having had a half-inch of frayed end cut off many, many times. And the flange was grimey from all the hands that had loaded it on the machines over the years. But there beneath the grime, just barely readable in faded Sharpie, were the words that some engineer wrote just after he took that reel out of the box for the first time: Alignment Tape. 5 min. NEW.

I am not a QSO monster and usually only add around 400 QSOs to my log each year. But with two new rigs and the sun helping out I already have 170 QSOs in the log for this year. And it is not even the end of March!

But I do notice that my desire to operate has diminished a bit and so it is time for some DIY again. The lightning sensor is progressing and once that is up and running it is time to tackle another problem: weather satellite reception. I have a dedicated NOAA 137 MHz receiver, which is controlled via serial port and feeds its audio to the excellent Wxtoimg program for decoding of the APT signals. Unfortunately my current server doesn’t like either Wxtoimg or the 137 MHz receiver, so the latter has been sitting idle in a corner for a while now.

Time for a new server. Even though I didn’t like the Raspberry Pi very much, I do like the concept of a small, low cost, low power consuming computer. Apart from the Raspberry Pi there are plenty of alternatives now that use an ARM CPU, e.g. the BeagleBone Black or the PandaBoard. They are more expensive, but also offer better performance and features. For us radio amateurs they usually lack an essential feature: analogue audio in. So when I read about the Cubieboard and discovered that their version 2 board has both audio-in and out I had to try it out. I ordered one from our Taiwanese version of Ebay and for US$ 71.50 it was delivered home. Twice as expensive as a Raspberry Pi, but the package was very complete, with all the cables necessary and a power supply too. Nice detail on the package: Made in China, Designed in China.

The very complete Cubiboard Package

Getting it running was a bit of a struggle, though. Finding an suitable image was difficult because I only had a 2 GB microSD card. Once I had found one it wouldn’t boot and apparently it also killed the Android OS that was installed on the NAND memory. The Cubieboard has 1 GB of RAM and 2 GB of internal storage (NAND), much better than the Raspberry Pi.

The Cubieboard. Twice as large as the Raspberry Pi. The audio input-output is on the left.

So I flashed the NAND with a new version of Android and now it was running fine. After buying a new 8GB microSD card and flashing it I was able to boot into a fresh Cubian LXDE install. It looks great on our Panasonic HD TV. So far, so good. I hope this is a winner, because I already have lots of ideas for it: remote rig, APRS digipeater, second weather station, web cam server. Let’s just wait and see.

Android running from the build in 2G NAND memory.

It was gorgeous today. Tim W3ATB and I headed to Profile Falls and set up right alongside the Pemigewasset River. We worked Russia, the Canary Islands, PA, OH, NC, and Belgium.

We had lunch in Bristol and then drove out the back road toward Hill Village. We turned left toward the Smith River and parked the car not far from Profile Falls.

We walked through the woods about a half mile toward the Pemi. The Corps of Engineers has a picnic area along the river. We set up right under an 85 foot pine tree.

Tim brought his HB-1B and tossed a line over the pine branch and pulled up his portable Par antenna. He was running about 4 watts with internal batteries on 20 meters and snagged W1AW/8 in Ohio within a few minutes of sitting down. He was ecstatic.

I set up on a nearby table. I tossed a line over a second pine branch and pulled up a 33 foot wire. I was using the earchi.org 9:1 unun with the internal tuner on the KX3. I set up on 12 meters with 5 watts.

I worked Alex RA6MQ in Russia almost immediately. He was a 599 and gave me a 559. Within two minutes, I worked another station… EA8/OH2OT in the Canary Islands. We exchanged quick 599’s.

I switched to 10 meters, and worked ON6MG in Belgium followed by Alex RA6MQ again. He had also switched to ten meters. It was fun to work him on two bands. By now my fingers were getting a bit chilly so I built a small fire in the grill by the table and listened while Tim racked up the QSOs.

Tim had a long chat with Don, KD3CA in PA and told him we were operating outdoors alongside the river. When they finished Tim made a quick contact with K4DJ in North Carolina and exchanged SKCC numbers.

We packed up and walked along the river to enjoy the remarkable scenery… sparkling water, deep blue sky and brilliant snow. We stopped for a minute to soak up some warm sun before heading back down the trail towards the car.

From here, it only gets better… warmer days, melting snow and finally spring!

I had a slow radio weekend. After spending most of the week trying to get my weather station back up I finally succeeded and decided to spend time on an unfinished project instead of time behind the radio. We had our first thunderstorm of the year last week so the 1-wire lightning detector has be be done before the season really kicks off. The “radio” part was already done, but the 1-wire counter/memory part not. Maxim put everything in one IC, the DS2423P, which has a 6 pin TSOC package. I haven’t worked with SMD components a lot and never build a one-off circuit. Traditionally I would use the Manhattan style of building, but after a lot of thinking I decided to do the following: draw a lay-out of the circuit, put some copper tape on the back side of a PCB and cut out the lay-out. With solder paste the components can then be put into place and soldered on. The first step you can see on the photo below.
Now the only thing I am still not sure of is if it is wise to put the 100 nF capacitor across one of the tracks (after I coat it with conformal coating, of course). It would save me a bridge if I do it this way. I only have one DS2423P and they are US$10 a piece, so I can’t mess it up.

On Sunday night I still got my dose of radio fun. Just before heading for bed I tuned to 6 meters and heard AH2G/B with a lot of chirp, but coming in quite well. So far I have not heard anything on six this year, apart from some local hams, so this was a welcome change. I tuned around and 9M2TO came in very strong, so working him was easy. I also heard and worked 9M6ZAE. Some traces of VK8 stations and FK8CP, but he was calling SEA/ME and didn’t answer any calls from me or other Taiwanese hams. A pity, but at least I did work my good friend BX2AB, who was also calling CQ on six in CW. It made for a funny exchange: “BX2AB de BX2ABT BT GE OM Lee, 599 in Longtan BK”

http://youtu.be/uBlxRFszKRA

Hi, AmateurRadio.com subscribers!

I’m Gary Pearce KN4AQ, and I produce videos for and about Amateur Radio at www.HamRadioNow.tv. I’ve just released Episode 137, with a pair of DXpedition talks from the Charlotte Hamfest: the 2013 Wake Atoll K9W operation, and last month’s FT5ZM Amsterdam Island mega-DXpedition. Maybe you worked these guys? Check out what’s behind the signals you heard.

Episode 136 (embedded above) is a talk I had with CQ Editor Rich Moseson W2VU on what’s happening up there. If you’re a CQ subscriber, you know it isn’t good. Print editions have been late, with the December issue being the last one most of us have received (January is “in the mail”). CQ-VHF, Popular Communications and WorldRadioOnline are being discontinued, with some of their content being absorbed in an expanded ONLINE ONLY section of the main CQ magazine called CQ-Plus. CQ will still be a print magazine, but only the online version will have the CQ-Plus content. These were painful but necessary steps to keep CQ afloat financially.

HamRadioNow is a tv show with sort of an identity crisis. Sometimes we’re a talk show, with interviews either on Skype or at hamfests. Sometimes we’re a “documentary unit” with field-produced programs about almost anything in ham radio. And sometimes we shoot forums and seminars, like the two DXpedition talks in Episode 137, and all of last years TAPR Digital Communications Conference.

We’re really a shoestring operation – just me and a few friends helping out. But even shoestrings cost money, so you’ll see me begging for contributions from viewers who like the show. Watch first, and if you like it, send a few bucks. In those 137 episodes are really about 170 programs (some of the episodes have two or more full-length programs that just seemed to go together). The programs are hosted on YouTube (www.Youtube.com/HamRadioNow) and Blip.tv (www.blip.tv/HamRadioNow). Blip used to port us to iTunes, but they just stopped, so we’re looking for a new route there. Until then, downloads are only by whatever software you can jeep to lift stuff from YouTube (against their wishes, but it’s fine with me). Our official web site is:

http://HamRadioNow.tv

We’ve been doing this for just over two years, so that’s more than one show a week. More to come, and we’ll try to announce each new one here on AmateurRadio.com.

73, Gary KN4AQ

It’s always easy to point a finger at others when you encounter noise while scanning the bands. More than often it is yourself who has to take the blame. In my case the switching power supply from my shack laptop is producing a lot of noise and artifacts, especially below 7 MHz. For a long time I had the plan to operate the laptop from my linear power supply and recently I got serious about it. A DC-DC step-up converter was bought for a mere US$7 and the following video shows initial results are very encouraging. The unit runs very cool so I am going to box it up and see if it can handle long operating periods.

Next up: isolating the USB connection. Stay tuned.

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published an article about the growing prevalence of RFI from unlikely sources.  They quoted Tom Thompson, WØIVJ, of Boulder, Colorado:

Radio hobbyist Tom Thompson of Boulder, Colo., last year tracked a signal using a homemade contraption. After knocking on the suspect’s door, he traced it to ballasts on marijuana grow-room lights. He says he built a filter that the grower agreed to use.

Tom, a retired NOAA electronic engineer, created an entire web page devoted to the grow light ballast filters. According to his page, these ballasts are switching power supplies for high-pressure sodium or metal-halide lamps.

He goes on to describe the problem in good detail:

Typically the light fixture is removed from the ballast by about 25 to 30 feet.  Since this length is about a 1/4 wavelength on 40 meters, it makes a good “antenna” for 40 meters so the RFI may be strongest on 40.  I have heard radiations from these systems up to about 1/2 mile away.  Also, since the “antenna” is so low to the ground, the RFI is mostly vertically polarized which is important when tracking it down.

Check out his page to see how he built a filter that he says reduces the RFI by about 30dB. That’s some good ol’ ham ingenuity!