AmateurRadio.com

I received a note from Thomas Andersen, OZ1AA, sharing some information about his around-the-world bike trek:

This is the story of an adventure across countries, continents and cultures, enriched by the spirit of Amateur Radio.

Apart from ham radio I have been interested in cycling since I was a kid. I also love to travel so it was somewhat natural for me to combine my passions in life into a perfect match. I first did some shorter bike trips in Europe including a three week ride through the Balkans in 2007. A year later in the middle of the financial crisis, the startup company I was working for suddenly went bankrupt. I wasn’t slow to hit the internet and look for a cheap flight ticket to a warm place. I spent the next 2 months cycling from South India to Delhi and had an amazing time. After the trip I decided to plan for “The Big Ride”, but first I needed to earn more money.

When I came home from India a got a job on Faroe Islands. Apart from the fact that the beer up there is incredible expensive, I figured it would be a good place to save up some cash as there wouldn’t be a lot of other things to spend money on. During a long and dark winter I managed to make 28000 QSOs as OY3AA and save up the money I needed. In the beginning of October 2010 I came back to Denmark and one week later I was saying goodbye to friends and family on the central square in Copenhagen.

After more than 20,000 km and three years on the road, I learned that there is always a radio amateur around, ready to give a helping hand. I have now reached South America and started cycling north from Ushuaia. The goal is to reach Canada within a year.

I think it would have been possible to do what I am doing without being a radio amateur, but there is no doubt in my mind that it would be a much more boring trip. I can’t honestly think of any other hobby where you can show up in any town in any part of the world and be welcomed like I have been. I have realized this is unique because my non-radio friends simply can’t understand how I can know so many people. They think I am the world’s best networker, but all I can tell them is: Become a Ham and you will have 1 million friends around the world as well.

A sincere thank you to all hams who helped making this possible. Amateur radio spirit is alive!

Follow his ride via cyclingtheglobe.com or via Twitter. Also, if you’re on his route (the North American portion is mostly Eastern U.S./Canada), consider showing him some local ham hospitality! 🙂

In a surprise announcement tonight, Ed Griffin of Import Communications (Wouxun.us) has abruptly ended sales and support of the popular Wouxun radios.

As one of the largest Wouxun distributors, Import Communications was selling as many as 500 radios per month, according to the company.

In an email to customers, Griffin indicated that he had been having difficulty dealing with the manufacturer in China. He also claimed that all Wouxun radios contain an “internal defect” which the factory is unwilling to address.

Griffin’s description of the lost memory problem / reverting to speaking Chinese matches my experience with two of my Wouxun radios.

Griffin wrote that he would continue to sell Wouxun accessories and is in the process of importing a new dual-band HT manufactured by Anytone.

Every Saturday morning from 9am until around noon, the Hurst Amateur Radio Club meets for tech-talk and all-around live ragchew at the Hurst EOC, which is located at Hurst Fire Station#2 in Hurst, Texas.  This is a fun time to get together and talk shop on anything related to Amateur Radio. Usually there isn’t a scheduled format, we’ll just pick a topic at random and share ideas, information, and answers to questions.

Today’s topic was the Broadband Hamnet. I posted about this topic the other day for the first time. I also purchased a Linksys WRT54GS router on eBay this week, which arrived in the mail yesterday, so I was able to bring it with me to flash the firmware and get it ready for the Broadband Hamnet.

In short, this is a wireless network that is separate from the standard Wi-Fi network used by the public.  With certain routers you can change frequencies that the router uses, which fall inline with ham-usable frequencies, and setup a sub-network to communicate only with other hams.  From what I understand there is an entire network already covering Dallas-Fort Worth, with nodes setup on towers and buildings that any Wi-Fi  router, after modification, can connect to, and allow the operator to use this network for communications with other hams. They have a great “getting started” page here.

I’m now officially online at my QTH in Grapevine, but I wasn’t able to find any other nodes in my area. Of course I only have the stock antennas on the back of the router, inside my home. So its time to find some external antennas and a setup the router outside.

This, of course,  poses some challenges since these routers aren’t really made to be weatherproof.  The coax line between the router and the antenna can’t be more than a few inches (there is probably a formula, but I don’t know what it is).  So you basically have to mount the router right next to the antenna.  There are enclosures that will house the router and a power source, and are weather-proof, and mountable onto a mast or tower.  Listed below are some links I have found for doing all of this.  I’ll probably change or update this list before the project comes to fruition, but for now, here is the build-list I am planning:

• A WRT54GS router.  There is the version with the most memory, according to this hardware list.
• An Enclosure.  I found a Multilink RNI-3620 Outdoor Residential Enclosure (Cable Box) on eBay.  Under $24 with free shipping, and it comes with mounting hardware.
• A couple of Antennas.  The WRT54 routers have dual antennas on the back, which are movable, and connect via a plug called RP-TNC.  Finding the correct connector shouldn’t be too much of  problem, but pay attention to this.  The cool thing about having dual antennas is that I can connect both a directional yagi or dish type antenna and point directly to another node, and also an omni-directional antenna which should listen and talk to anything within a certain distance.  Titan Wireless is a good place to find 2.4GHz antennas for base mounting.
• A power source.  You can use PoE or you can run an outdoor, weatherproof extension cord up to the router and connect the power directly.  This will depend on where I decide to mount the enclosure.  At this point in time I am thinking about mounting it to the top of my chimney on my 2-story house.  This will be about 30 feet in the air. I could run an extension cord from the chimney, down the side of the house, and into the garage.

I own a Wouxun KG-UV2D from Import Communications and a KG-UV3D from HRO. They are both great radios and I honestly can’t complain too much about their small annoyances. They are extremely affordable and have proved durable and reliable. They represent a great value and I continue to recommend them.

About a year ago, however, my KG-UV2D developed an annoying habit. Out of the blue, it would lose all of its programming and revert to some kind of factory default. The condition is easy to detect as it starts talking Mandarin on power up. Really handy if you’re in the middle of something important.

At first I attributed the problem to the fact that the radio may have been dropped one too many times, and maybe I’d bent the battery contacts causing the radio to somehow reset itself. I bent the contacts out a little and things seemed to be OK for awhile. After it started happening again, I invested in a second Wouxun, the KG-UV3D, and relegated the KG-UV2D to backup status. It still worked fine, but it I had become concerned about its reliability.

Fast forward a year…. Now my KG-UV3D is exhibiting the same annoying problem. Is it due to user error? Abuse and neglect? Maybe, to some degree. But I find it strange that the same problem has now occured in both radios.

There is very little information online about this problem, but there has been some discussion about it occurring. Some people report that it happens when you let the battery run dead. Others report that it can occur when swapping batteries. Neither of these scenarios describe my situation. My radios were fully charged and I only use the batteries supplied with each radio.

One common factor between both radios is that I use the excellent KC8UNJ KG-UV Commander programming software. I have had great luck with this and recommend it for its ease of use and intuitive memory channel management. Could there be something about the software, how I’m using it (number of memories or settings), or how it programs the radios that is causing the radio not to retain programming in some cases? This really doesn’t make sense as I know MANY people who have used this software without any problem.

Have you experienced similar problems with your Wouxun HT or heard of it happening? If so, have you had any luck tracking down the issue?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all!

CRX1 Receiver from Etherkit

I’m working on a major update for the kit guide.  I’m finally alphabetizing the list, and including a directory of sources.  I should have the new guide up by this weekend.

I have added a bunch of new vendors. 14 so far and counting.  If you can think of any more, let me know at: W2NDG(at)RadioKitGuide(dot)com

The next big change will be getting the guide into a separate hosted site, and adding a files section, and a forum.

Big things are coming.

Click “Read The Rest of This Post” to read the current list of vendors.

(note: new vendors in the list (*) have not been added to the site as of yet)

73 de Neil W2NDG

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for the announcement of the ten winners in our SDR receiver giveaway….

Here they are:

Peter, ZL1PWD
Ivan, KP3IV
Jerome, WB8LFO
Norm, VE1NMK
Larry, WA0JDL
Andrew, AA4XS
Edward, VA3EDO
Bob, W2RWM
Keith, ZS6TW
Paul, VK2APA

Congratulations!  Thank you to everyone who entered — all 973 of you!  We love co-sponsoring these contests, especially with a great company like NooElec.

Didn’t win?  Well, Jeff at NooElec was reading all of your great comments about their SDR products and wanted to offer everyone the opportunity to get 5% off any order (no minimum!) at NooElec.com until December 31, 2013. Use coupon code AMATEURRADIO to get your discount. It may only be used once per customer.

Check out NooElec’s USB SDR receivers and Ham It Up upconverter

Please note that we do not get a commission or other compensation from NooElec if you use this code  — we just want everyone to be able to try out these cool little receivers and save a little money, too.

Thanks again for entering and stay tuned for our next giveaway!

I was excited to see that Ken Reitz, KS4ZR, managing editor of MT, will continue to publish an e-magazine called The Spectrum Monitor. As most of you know, Monitoring Times has ceased publication with the December, 2013 edition.

The lineup looks fantastic:

Keith Baker KB1SF/VA3KSF, “Amateur Radio Satellites”

Kevin O’Hern Carey WB2QMY, “The Longwave Zone”

Mike Chace-Ortiz AB1TZ/G6DHU “Digital HF: Intercept and Analyze”

Marc Ellis N9EWJ, “Adventures in Radio Restoration”

Dan Farber ACØLW, “Antenna Connections”

Tomas Hood NW7US, “Understanding Propagation”

Kirk Kleinschmidt NTØZ, “Amateur Radio Insight”

Cory Koral K2WV, “Aeronautical Monitoring”

Stan Nelson KB5VL, “Amateur Radio Astronomy”

Chris Parris, “Federal Wavelengths”

Doug Smith W9WI, “The Broadcast Tower”

Hugh Stegman NV6H, “Utility Planet”

Dan Veeneman, “Scanning America”

Ron Walsh VE3GO, “Maritime Monitoring”

Fred Waterer, “The Shortwave Listener”

Thomas Witherspoon K4SWL, “World of Shortwave Listening”

A charter subscription is available for the very affordable price of $20 and includes 12 issues available in a variety of digital formats.