AmateurRadio.com

You’re kiddin’ PE4BAS goes QRO. No, it can’t be. But a picture says more then a 1000 words! It has to be true. I just had the opportunity to buy this RM KL500 amplifier very cheap on the club evening last friday. I thought what the heck, I just like to experiment. This amp is rated 600W (!!) out with 30W SSB in. Well I don’t recommend that at all, as it will get very hot. At first I connected everything to my FT817 and did a 5W input, the amp was not going to TX, was it broken? So I was a little angry about that. I wrote one of the clubmembers to get the call from the amateur that had sold it so I could get in contact with him. Then it strikes me that there was a extra connection made on the back side. The electronic diagrams were delivered with it and from that I understood the internal VOX circuit was bridged. I just had to connect this connection to earth or neutral via PTT to get it on TX. After looking inside it was clear to me the extra BIAS mods found on the internet were already made in this amp. Anyway, just to be shure I connected a old CB radio with 3W instead of my expensive FT817. With the KL500 on the dummy it did already 100W out full power. But it took 30A of current already. I don’t want to test it any further as that was more then enough for me. I guess it does about +200W out with 10w in? Too much for my needs. So I will sell this one after I tidy it a little and make a proper connection for the large current supply. After that I will try to test it once more with 10W input and then sell it. 

So I’ve been to the local radioclub last friday and collected my QSLs from the bureau. They have a special PE4BAS tab in the QSL trunk now, so they were easy to find. 2 QSLs were special to me. The one from ON2PCO as I remember him well. He was using 10W with a FD4 dipole inside the house and was surprised to work me on 80m in the PACC. And the QSL from JW/PA0ZH from Spitsbergen, Svalbard. I didn’t work them with EME but on 20m SSB. Although they were QRV with EME, I think they made a lot of operators very happy. 

Today I listened for HK0NA once again. I guess luck is not with me as I could only hear a very weak sometimes readable signal on 15m. The rest of Europe seems to have very good propagation as he worked one after the other. Same for TO4M who was just readable on 10m, he worked a lot of Europe but after calling for half a hour I just gave up. I tried for a Brazilian station who was RS58 here, but even he didn’t hear me. Time to leave the radio then and do some other things. I hope propagation will be better with the PACC on……9 days to go.

I received this QSL card in the mail Saturday January 28th. It is autographed by actor Tim Allen. He used to be Tim “the toolman” Taylor on the TV sitcom “Home Improvement,” but now he is Mike Baxter on the new ABC sitcom “Last Man Standing” that airs Tuesdays at 8 PM on ABC. Tim isn’t really a ham, but on the TV show he is and the ARRL was instrumental in helping make it as realistic as possible. He chose the callsign KA0XTT to represent KA0 X Tim Taylor. You can read all about it on the ARRL’s web site at http://bit.ly/A3Aucb.

Last Man Standing also has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/KA0XTT If you would like to have one of Tim’s cards for your collection simply mail him one of your QSL cards (NO SASE required) to:

Last Man Standing
4024 Radford Ave.
Bungalow 17
Studio City, CA 91604

Ham radio is an activity that’s been around for over a hundred years and boasts millions of adherents around the world. It should come as no surprise that an institution so ancient and so compelling would harbor a few mysteries.

During the early development of radio the activity was particularly attractive to a certain kind of fellow, one with a keen interest in science and industry and often a fellow whose station in life was a cut or two above that of the ordinary man. The formation of clubs and societies, recondite in nature and hidden within the rank and file of this adventurous lot of explorers led to more than a few secrets.

That much you might know. What you probably don’t know is that a few of these clandestine organizations remain active inside the hobby to this very day.

I’m not personally a member of any of these groups nor do I have first-hand knowledge of who they are or what they do on a daily basis. But from time to time I hear from some of these secret members who drop bombshells on me that strain credulity.

I think they’ve given me a few of these nuggets to distribute because I’m an oddball. Really, compared to other ham radio bloggers I rarely over-hype the hobby and pretend to be its personal spokesman as has become common among those intent on making “X” number of contacts a day and who extol only the virtues while never telling the whole story of what it’s like to be a radio amateur.

That’s what I like to think anyway.

More’s the likely they know I’m close friends with W6OBB and they’re looking for a higher profile outlet in exposing the reclusive activities of the Lodges and are using me to get that information to him. In any event, on occasion a package arrives at my shack, delivered by a personal courier as happened just a few days ago.

This time the package included a short tale of something that happened 35 years ago and it included instructions to share it with my readers, which I’m doing today…

It seems that back in the late 1970’s a distinguished scientist and radio amateur whose name must not be spoken had developed a rather amazing antenna that performed well at high frequencies. It’s precise construction remains a secret to this very day but imagine if you will a six-foot long tube whose diameter was about two-inches. A coil of wire was wrapped around almost the entire outer body and inside there were active components, including a small pump as most of the tube was filled with a Noble gas compound that periodically required refilling.

To simply say that this antenna worked well would be a serious understatement.

Reports indicated that the antenna was highly effective without a tuner across all of the HF amateur bands. Placed horizontally or vertically in the corner of a room or the attic it was an order of magnitude more effective than any directive array installed at 150-feet.

In a nutshell, it was The One, the killer antenna that the prophets had written about.

This would revolutionize the world of HF communications. No longer would the fellow with the 100-acre antenna farm and California Kilowatt rule the Honor Roll. Now even the lowliest QRPer with his milliwatt homebrew designed gear would be on equal footing with the millionaire.

In essence, the new antenna would instantly turn the 99 percent into the 1 percent and at least when it came to hardware, there would be no more elite amateur radio stations.

Plans were made to manufacture the small wonder. This scientist/inventor wanted to sell the antenna for US $1000 and he fully expected to eventually sell one million of them making him the first amateur radio manufacturer with $1 billion dollars of revenue.

He tried to keep these plans as secret as possible for obvious reasons so he never patented the antenna which would have announced it to the world. His belief was that the gas compound required was so exotic that even if someone managed to reverse engineer the design, the compound would remain the only edge he needed.

The first five-thousand units were assembled in a large, vacant building somewhere in New Mexico.

It was about that time that the inventor discovered that his secret had leaked when he got a call with an offer to purchase the design – which he refused – and he continued to build inventory. But the phone calls and strange contacts never ceased – all warning him to sell the design for the antenna or risk losing it all.

He underestimated the threat and continued in the pursuit undaunted. Until one night when he was visited by four members of one of these secret societies who explained to him that ham radio was bigger than he and his design. And that his antenna while extremely clever would ruin the hobby by allowing those with the most basic equipment to compete on equal footing with those who had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and antenna farms.

Equal wasn’t good nor was it even “fair” he was told.

Unmoved by their threats, he stood to leave so they grabbed him, pulled a covering over his head and tossed him into the back of a dark colored sedan and drove off into the desert where he was never seen again.

The inventory of over five thousand antennas was moved by truck to a landfill outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico where they were first crushed and then buried. Three feet of concrete cover the burial site and while a few of the local hams had some knowledge of this activity, the years have created doubts as to its veracity and scope, leading some to conclude that this was just another urban legend.

But I know better and now so do you.

I can tell you this because the inventor had an assistant.

A fellow radio ham who hid in the shadows when the abduction took place and who watched this all unfold.

And at 85 years of age, he figures there’s no reason to take this story to his grave…

If you had to clean out all but three amateur radio and electronics related books from your bookshelf, which three would you keep?

What makes each of these three so useful to you?

Can’t think of three? At least tell us about one or two favorites.

With well over 4,500 daily readers worldwide (thank you!), I’m always so impressed by the answers we get here.

Here are the top 10 answers so far…

1. ARRL Handbook (7 votes)
2. ARRL Antenna Book (5 votes)
3. ARRL Operating Manual (2 votes)
4. Simple Wire Antennas (2 votes)
5. Experimental Methods in RF Design (1 vote)
6. Rothammels Antennenbuch (1 vote)
7. Grob Basic Electronics (1 vote)
8. TTL Cookbook (1 vote)
9. ON4UN’s Low-Band DXing (1 vote)
10. Vertical Antenna Classics (1 vote)

I’ve been trying to master Morse code since 2009. I have known the basic characters since my teens, but never got the speed and I freaked out whenever I didn’t get a character, stopping cold in my tracks. I never got passed those two hurdles. So when I got my novice licence and decided to get serious about learning Morse code I read a lot about different methods, why Koch is the best, software to help you and most important, that you should be fluent in taking down the code before grabbing key.

But I always had a bit of a problem with the last one. My good friend Wouter (PG2W) was a R/O in the 1970s and his story about him going to maritime school always stuck with me. Back then would-be R/O’s started out from day one by tapping out Morse code signals on their desks, not listening to them. They weren’t stupid then, so why do I have to be fluent in taking code no before I can start sending code? “Well, simply because you can’t understand what the other is sending to you, sonny!”

True, but I am a firm believer of multi-sensory – or Auditory-Visual-Kinaesthetic (AVK) – learning. I am practising it daily in my job as ESL teacher, so I should apply it to my own learning, too. So for a while I have been sending code and checking it with help of the computer. Every now and then I would answer a CQ from a station and try my hand at a real CQ while keeping Fldigi running in the background for back-up. By constantly hearing, watching and doing I felt I was improving more than by only taking down code.

So on December 23 last year I sat down itching to have a QSO. Busy with work and family I hadn’t had a single one in 9 days. I had just put together a new keyer (the AA0ZZ one, it was on my To Do-list, remember?) and hooked up my Kent paddles to test it. The power was turned down to nil (or so I thought, later it turned out I was still putting out a Watt or two) and when I heard VK2IG calling CQ I answered him, just for fun, because I thought he would not hear me anyway. But he came back to me, went QRS to my speed of 10 wpm and we had a QSO. And all-of-a-sudden it worked! I could understand his code, take it down by hand and answer him. Whenever I didn’t catch a character I simply shrugged it off and kept on writing. I felt great, because I finally crossed those two hurdles.

So later that night I tried 80 meters for a change. In Taiwan we are allowed to operate on 3.500 to 3.5125 and 3.550 to 3.5625 MHz, so CW territory. I heard JO4CTB, answered him and it worked again. BA5HAM, no problem, although he was pretty fast and I had to use Fldigi for part of the QSO. Ever since I have been having a ball. It has been CW all the way and I am glad to say that most hams I called have been nice enough to go slow. Some QSOs have been simple RST exchanges, others short conversations. But every one helps to get me more fluent and gain speed and I enjoy every one of them.

And to set a goal for myself I decided to go for the Prefix Award, which is to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of FISTS CW Club. 250 CW QSOs of which 10 need to be with FISTS members. No small feat, but one I am very eager to achieve. I know I can cross that hurdle, too.

I first noticed these antennas a few months ago. They look interesting. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one and trying it out.

Here is the press release…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

British Antenna Company InnovAntennas Appoints First American Dealer

Glade Park, Colorado – January 23, 2012 – The full line of high performance HF, VHF and UHF amateur radio antennas from fast-growing British company InnovAntennas are now available to customers across the United States via Hamilton, Ohio’s R&L Electronics.

“Our customers have been hearing about the outstanding performance of InnovAntennas’ designs from their amateur radio friends overseas, reading about them in European journals such as DUBUS and from a handful of ‘early adopter’ American hams who couldn’t wait and purchased InnovAntennas products direct from the UK,” said R&L Electronics’ Roger Smallwood. “We are proud to be the first American retailer to represent this exciting new brand.”

InnovAntennas was launched in 2011 by Justin Johnson, G0KSC, after his hobby of designing antennas for his personal use led to a flood of requests to “make one for me” from amateur radio operators who recognized that Johnson’s designs outperformed they could buy in a store. Today, InnovAntennas is building antennas at a former boat factory in Canvey Island, England and selling its products directly via InnovAntennas.com and via a network of dealers in Europe, Australia, and now, the United States.

InnovAntennas’ highly regarded designs include LFA (Loop Fed Array) and OP-DES (Opposing Phase –Driven Element System) Yagis. Performance of GOKSC designs routinely top the charts in their boom-length class on the survey of ‘moonbounce” antennas –“EME-ers” are among the ham world’s most demanding operators –compiled by VE7BQH and available online.

InnovAntennas America’s William Hein said “We selected R&L as our first American dealer due to their commitment to customer service, deep inventory, high order fill rate, great history, product knowledge and enthusiasm for InnovAntennas’ approach to design and construction. We look forward to a long, productive relationship with the gang from HAMilton OH!”

R&L’s Roger Smallwood added “We work hard to have all ham radio products in stock and ready for immediate shipment. From a 50 cent connector to the thousand dollar radio, our customers will receive the same fast service at a great price. No one likes to hear that an item is out of stock or it will be drop shipped from the manufacturer. We already know InnovAntennas are high quality products and will be very well known in the USA in a short period of time. Our goal is to have it in stock when you are ready for it!”

Yes, I am still alive. With the end of the year and the end of a semester at school there was too much going on to sit down and write something properly. But if you have followed the blog on my website you know I have been a bit busy with the hobby after all. The itch has to be scratched somehow.

Chinese New Year is upon us, which means a lot of festivities here in Asia. Expect some more activity on the bands from China and Taiwan as this is the only time of the year that people get some longer time off from work. The coming year is the year of the Dragon and I live in Longtan (meaning Dragon Lake) so my new QSL card will have to be based on a dragon as well. Stay tuned.

After a busy half year it was time to relax a bit and so we went to the southern tip of Taiwan last week. Temperatures were such that the kids could play on the beach and me and my wife could lounge on deck chairs. I didn’t take a radio with me, but still had an interesting encounter with amateur radio.

In the taxi to the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium I noticed the driver had a 2m/70cm rig in his dashboard. So I asked him for his call sign. Instead he gave me his on-air handle. So I asked him again, explaining that when he applied for a licence he got himself a call sign beginning with BM (which is the prefix for the third or entry class station licence). He didn’t remember, because it was over ten years ago that he took the exam and why use a call sign anyway, everybody knew him by his handle? He only uses his rig to communicate with other drivers to warn where the police has put up speeding and alcohol checks.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how amateur radio works in Taiwan. Or as I saw it on a Taiwanese forum: “The third class licence is simply to legalize the ‘sausages‘ out there.” CB radio, but with a licence. Happy Chinese New Year to you all!