AmateurRadio.com

I usually meet fellow hams on air and then continue our contact via the web. Last night was the other way around and it was a bit embarrassing. I am member of FISTS, the International Morse Preservation Society. I am a bit of a loner, not much into clubs, but do enjoy meeting like-minded folk, so I joined them. FISTS is nice because it encouraged learning Morse code and using it on air. FISTS has some chapters and I joined the East Asia chapter, which is comprised mostly of Japanese members. I offered to help edit and proofread the newsletter and Nao (JO3HPM), the editor-in-chief, took up the offer. For the last couple of months we have had a pleasant exchange via e-mail.

So last night I decided to practise my CW on air and answered a CQ on 30 meters, 10118 kHz to be precise. You may have already guessed it: the CQ came from JO3HPM and 10118 kHz is the FISTS calling frequency in the 30 meter band. Totally oblivious to both facts I started the QSO and only after Nao alerted me who he was it dawned on me whom I was having a QSO with. After my embarrassment faded away we had a very enjoyable 20 minute QSO. I am still a CW beginner and rely on Fldigi as a decoding back-up if my decoding skills fail. But with Nao this was hardly necessary, as he decreased his speed and repeated the more difficult words. That is the spirit and makes being a member of FISTS all the more worth while.

The only other thing……please don’t tell the NCC I had this QSO, because the band allocation for 30 meters here in Taiwan is 10.13 to 10.15 MHz only. Don’t ask me why. 73 de Hans (BX2ABT)

It was balloon foxhunt day today. A yearly event I always try to participate in you can find some more information on http://www.ballonvossenjacht.nl. I always try to improve my station to connect via the balloon transponder. And as always try to get my call into the logbook on 80m. Well, the propagation was very low today on 80m I could hardly copy PI4VRZ/A who was this time on USB instead of the normal LSB. But I finally managed to get my call into the log. I wanted to improve a little since last year so I removed the rotor from below my vertical and placed it on a tripod with on top horizontally my dual band Maspro beam with about 5 degrees elevation. Overall I noriced about 3dB improvement in favor of the Maspro beam. Not bad considering it was on about 4 Mtr above ground behind the house and the vertical nearly 6 Mtr above ground with free sight to the south. Last year I recorded a QSO between PD5DP and G4RUL, this year I succeed to make a QSO via the transponder with G4RUL. So I made a improvement for shure. I did use both radios to see the difference between the two antennas instantly. I noticed that all radio equipment was covered by a pile of dust an the Icom gets very old it switched off twice without touching anything and FM output was only there after 30 minutes. But who cares, I’ve been radio active again.

You can find a small video here

I tried to visit the Bob Heil’s Ham Nation show homepage on the TWiT.tv site today and received this error:

Hopefully they’ll be able to get this resolved soon.  Ham Nation is a great show and provides needed exposure to ham radio to quite a large tech audience.

UPDATE:

From Graham Cluley at Sophos:

The website run by internet celebrity Leo Laporte, TWiT.tv, has been hit by a malware infection intended to infect visiting computers.

Hackers have managed to inject a line of malicious code, in the form of an iFrame, at the very top of the TWiT website pointing to a webpage with a .cz.cc domain name.

Hardly a day goes by when you don’t read some new health report. More coffee, less coffee, more wine, less wine, fish oil pills, vitamin E, raw food, some old world fruit that no one has ever heard of – these are all cited by one expert or another as a potential, partial solution to much of what ails us. Especially as we grow older. The indomitable human spirit wants to live forever while the old clay jar is a whole lot less willing.

One of the effects of the many advances in health care that we’ve seen is that there are now enough chemicals, procedures and micro-gadgets to keep our hearts beating longer than that of most of our ancestors who were considered to have lived to a ripe old age if that made it to 50.

Living 80, 90 or even 100 years has become much more common these days but with that advance we’ve seen an epidemic of the ills that regularly attend old age.

Evolution has best equipped humans to be pattern seekers. We look for order in all sorts of chaos – which is why a fluffy white cloud so often looks like a dog or a dead President. Seeing a human face in the random pattern of bark colors on the side of a tree comes naturally to us since it served our survival needs best to see a vine and think it was a snake than to ignore the deadly serpent.

If not the most horrible, then certainly one of the most horrible diseases humans can face is Alzheimer’s. While science continues to look for a miracle drug for that terrible disease, humans look for patterns of behavior that result in lower incidence of disease or a later onset.

For instance, we often promote diet and behaviors that reflect the way people live in a particular part of the world where they live longer and healthier lives. I’m not suggesting that this is a bad idea, but it at least partially explains why coffee is good for you one day and bad for you the next.

Alzheimer’s disease is of particular interest to me because my Mother suffered with it for five years before it claimed her life in 2005. Because of that, I tend to read more news articles about this breakthrough or that hopeful new treatment in the disease.

Nothing is certain at this point but one thing does surface in almost every medical report about Alzheimer’s.

Those who lead more active lives and who remain more mentally active seem to have a higher probability of escaping life without a visit from this disease or the onset of it is delayed. There are all sorts of ideas of what constitutes healthy brain exercise – from playing chess to reading to learning a new language.

Having been a radio amateur since 1977 I have to tell you that I have seen a lot of old hams, I’m talking about a lot of fellows who are over 80 years of age and it occurs to me that they share certain attributes. Things like maintaining a close cadre of friends – either over the air, via the local club, or at hamfests, etc. Most of the older hams have used CW for decades and continue to do so. And most remain fairly inquisitive about the nature and properties of radio – and in the last few decades, many of them have taken to personal computers which offers a new learning challenge.

If you think about the mechanics of Morse, one must hear the sound of it and decode it, often out of the noise. It must then be mentally translated into words – and many operators choose to either hand copy 100% of a message or at least make notes on paper. When it’s their turn to send, they have to think about what they want to say and translate those thoughts into mechanical motion in a particular pattern.

It seems to me that this constitutes as much, and probably a whole lot more brain exercise than almost any other mental function that I can imagine.

Amateur radio is probably too far outside the mainstream for scientists to target it for serious research in this matter. But given the advice that seems to have become standard in this regard I don’t think it’s far out of line to suggest that being an active radio amateur could be an effective weapon in the battle for a clear mind and a higher quality of life for those who have lived beyond the median age.

Frequent medical advice for brain health includes staying physically active, maintaining proper body weight, controlling blood pressure, enjoying a glass or two of red wine each day, and maybe, just maybe they should add – making a few CW contacts each and every day.

After all, there’s absolutely no downside in adopting all of the above.

It was a week in which I tried to get some loose ends fixed. I finished the SLA battery charger after I got the 1R8 resistors from my favourite supplier, did the family finances and tried to get the home-directory on my laptop cleared of some junk. In the process I upgraded my logging software, which is CQRlog. It was a major upgrade since the author switched to another back-end database, so it messed up my log quite a bit. I sorted that out and now everything is back in order again.

In the process I noticed that there was an option to look up data on hamQTH.com. Having never heard of this site I checked it out and found it to be a light-weight version of QRZ.com, or as they claim on the web site: Free Hamradio Callbook. It was set up by the authors of CQRlog, Petr (OK2CQR) and Martin (OK1RR). The reason, according to their web site:

Since the owner of one popular server decided to hide all addresses until you are not registered, I decide to write my own. This callbook provides all information for free because you entered data to callbook for free and didn’t get paid for it. So it won’t be right to ask for a payment if you want to publish your data.

Petr’s English is a little crooked, but he means: “At QRZ.com you have to register (and pay) to get access to data that you and others gave for free. With us your info remains free.” You might recall that QRZ.com restricted the xml access to their database last June, shutting out some logging software from auto-filling in some data fields. They also limited
look-ups by registered and non-registered users and hide address details to non-registered users on their web page.

I usually steer clear of web sites that are set up because of frustration about another web site. But this one got me thinking and there is an analogy that came to mind. About 18 years ago a couple of guys set up a CD database, with users contributed content, called CDDB. It grew phenomenally and a company was formed to manage it, which was sold off and made the owners rich men. The new owners then said the info in the database would stay freely accessible, but in
the end the database (with data which users gave for free) was closed for most software packages which accessed it. And if you ever ripped a CD you know how annoying it is to not have access to a database with song titles. Luckily the database had already been cloned and freedb had been set up to replace CDDB.

Now I am not a lazy person and I have always typed in my logs by hand. But with hamQTH.com I now have an auto-fill function available for CQRlog, something I have to pay US$29.95 for with QRZ.com. You could argue that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that QRZ.com has grown to be the default standard. I agree that bills have to be paid and money has to be made. But I also come from a free world and believe in creating and sharing your work for every one’s benefit. As a result I have been using and contributing to the GNU/Linux operating system for over a decade already. My contribution may not have been big, but it doesn’t have to be so: many small contributions do make a huge difference. A contribution of US$29.95 a year is kind of steep in my world. So I give hamQTH.com a thumbs up and have updated my profile with the latest info. If only I had discovered them last weekend when the All Asian contest was going on. Would have saved me a lot of typing.

This weekend is Mid-Autumn Festival in the Chinese world. Look out for some extra activity from East Asia and don’t choke on your moon cakes.

73 de Hans (BX2ABT)

An interesting news item on Taiwanese television: people were complaining that they had to run USB extension cables from inside their home, through the kitchen, over the washing machine, onto the balcony, to get some decent wireless internet access from their dongle. Why couldn’t Chunghua Telecom provide decent coverage inside their apartments? “Because this is not why it is called wireless, is it?”

I love these NIMBY (not in my back yard) paradoxes: people don’t want antenna towers close by, but still expect a perfect service from their mobile phone or WiMax providers. But it made me ponder and come up with a theory.

We recently moved into our own semi-detached house. After emigrating from the Netherlands to Taiwan we were living-in with mother-in-law. It wasn’t that bad, but there’s no home like your own home, right? Back in the Netherlands we had a 90 year old town house. The kind of a house where you point your finger at the brick wall and there is a hole in it. Despite the soft walls, I could take any radio or HT and have clear reception throughout the house. So late at night I monitored 40 meters, practised taking morse code or talked some on my HT in bed before going to sleep. Heaven!

Here in Taiwan I am lucky to get any radio signal inside our new home. Shortwave is completely empty. Mediumwave too, apart from one or two local stations. FM is not much better, even though we live only kilometres from the nearest broadcasting facility. And it wasn’t much better in mother-in-law’s apartment. On the roof top or balcony things are fine and I can hear the world and some more. In the reinforced concrete cage that we live in now it is no dice.

So what is my theory? Radio is dying because we can’t receive it any more! We amateur radio operators know how to, but we are being curtailed by antenna restrictions. And potential hams? They don’t even get to discover the magic of radio waves, because they live in boxes that keep radio waves out. I started out with shortwave listening after accidentally finding Radio RSA on an old radio I found in the attic. I doubt that my son will ever make such a discovery on his own. But luckily he has a father who is heavily into radio, so he will turn out right, don’t worry.

For now I put up an old CB antenna on the balcony – with the railing acting as a counter poise – and I am enjoying myself. I was just testing the whole set-up when KA5PNX called me, so the first QSO was some good DX as well. Things are looking good so expect more reports from the Far East in the future.

73 de BX2ABT a.k.a. Hans “Fong” van den Boogert

I was perusing eBay a few weeks ago and stumbled upon an interesting listing:

What is it? According to the listing, it’s a remote adjustable half-wave dipole antenna with an SWR of less than 1.5:1 from 1.8 MHz to 55 MHz. How does it work? From the listing:

By Extending or retracting the 2 Antenna elements until you have reached the point of Resonance for the desired operating frequency. There by providing maximum forward power and little if any reflected RF power.

You have effectively built a custom cut to frequency dipole antenna each and every time you change frequency with out leaving the equipment operating position.

The Antenna is controlled by the flip of a switch, or could possibly be controlled by the micro processor in most modern day transceivers and could possibly track the VFO as you move up and down in frequency so it would always be at its resonant point.

A little intrigued, I e-mailed the creator, Frank McGinley, WB4NWV, to inquire about it. I asked how he developed it and told him that I’d be interested in doing a little post on his antenna design.

THE TITLE OF THE THE STORY IS HOW FAR HAVE WE COME.

LOCATION FORT BRAGG NORTH CAROLINA, UNIT OF ASSIGNMENT,  50TH SIGNAL BATTALION ( AIRBORNE ), FIELD TRAINING EXERCISE.

IT WAS DARK EXCEPT FOR THE LIGHT FROM THE STARS, THAT SHOWN THROUGH THE CLOUDS , IT WAS BITTER COLD AND THE WIND WAS HOWLING , THE RAIN AND SLEET WAS INTENSE, AS I STUMBLED THROUGH THE BUSHES TRYING NOT TO GET THE DIPOLE ANTENNA ELEMENTS TANGLED UP IN THE SAME BUSHES, UNSUCCESSFULLY I MIGHT ADD,THE TIME 23:45 HOURS I HAD TO CHANGE THE LENGTH OF THE DIPOLE  FROM THE DAY FREQUENCY TO THE NIGHT FREQUENCY, AFTER A HECK OF A FIGHT TO LOWER THE ELEMENTS TO THE GROUND AND SPENDING 3 OR 4 MINUTES TRYING TO UNTANGLE THE HALYARDS, THE FLASH LIGHT WITH THE RED LENS HELD IN MY MOUTH AND MY GLOVES REMOVED, MY FINGERS  SO COLD THAT THEY DID NOT WANT TO COOPERATE  I WAS SHAKING SO BAD FROM THE COLD THAT THE LIGHT WAS HAVING A HARD TIME STAYING ON THE SPOT WHERE I NEEDED IT, MAKING IT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT TO UNTIE THE TANGLED MESS ALL THE TIME TRYING TO HURRY TO BE BACK UP ON THE AIR BY 24:00 HOURS

WELL AFTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE  FOREVER I GOT IT BACK UP,AND RETURNED TO THE WARMTH OF THE RADIO TELETYPE SHELTER, AND BEGAN THE PROCESS OF CHECKING THE SWR, ONLY TO FIND THAT IT WAS TOO HIGH, WELL BACK OUT INTO THE COLD AND RAIN I WENT, THE ANTENNA WAS TO SHORT, ROUND 2 WENT ABOUT LIKE ROUND 1 NOT VERY SMOOTH, AS THE WIND HAD BLOWN THE ANTENNA ELEMENTS INTO THE BUSHES, IT TOOK ME QUITE A WHILE TO UNTANGLE THEM,  LENGTHEN THEM  AND PULL THEM BACK UP, BACK TO THE RADIO VAN, CHECK THE SWR AGAIN, NOT FLAT BUT GOOD ENOUGH, I WAS SOAKED AND FROZEN AND WAS NOT GOING TO TRY IT A THIRD TIME, NOT TO MENTION THAT IT WAS 00:24 HOURS,AND TIME FOR ME TO CHECK IN WITH THE NET CONTROL STATION, I HAD NO TRAFFIC AND THE RADIO CHECK WENT WELL, IT WAS NOW TIME FOR ME TO GET OUT OF MY COLD WET UNIFORM AND INTO A DRY WARM ONE, WELL AS YOU CAN IMAGINE I WAS NOT A VERY HAPPY CAMPER, AND TO THIS DAY I DO NOT ENJOY CAMPING OUT, THERE WERE MANY DAYS  AND NIGHTS LIKE THESE THAT FOLLOWED , EXTREME HEAT,EXTREME COLD, WET AND SOGGY, BITING  FLY’S, MOSQUITOES,  YOU NAME IT AND ALWAYS THE SAME PROBLEM, TO LONG OR TO SHORT, KNEE DEEP IN MUD, UP AND DOWN BACK TO THE VAN, UP AND DOWN AND BACK TO THE VAN,AND NEVER COULD I GET THE SWR FLAT, CLOSE BUT NEVER FLAT.

TIME FLY’S WHEN YOU ARE HAVING FUN,  SOON 20 YEARS OF FUN TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE  HAD COME TO AND END,  AND IT WAS TIME TO ENJOY H. F. RADIO AS A SERVICE,  WELL THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME,  MY DIPOLE ANTENNA CUT FOR THE HIGH END OF THE BAND WITH A CLIP LEAD EXTENSION TO MAKE IT RESONANT AT THE LOW END OF THE BAND, WELL YOU GUESSED IT, BACK OUT INTO THE NIGHT IN THE SNOW IN MY BEDROOM SLIPPERS  P.J.’S AND HOUSECOAT, NOT A GOOD THING,  I KNOW I COULD HAVE USED AN ANTENNA TUNER OR COUPLER AS IT IS CALLED,  BUT ALAS I AM A PURIST, AND DO NOT LIKE THEM, EVERY TIME I HAD TO DO THIS,  I KEPT HAVING FLASH BACKS OF MY MANY FIELD TRAINING EXERCISES , THAT WAS WHEN IT STRUCK ME THERE, HAS GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY.

WELL I TRIED EVERY THING, G5RV’S, OFF CENTER FED DIPOLES, YOU NAME IT I TRIED IT,  WAS I HAPPY, TO PUT IT MILDLY,  HECK NO,  SO IT WAS TIME TO PUT ON MY THINKING CAP,  MY MIND WANDERED BACK TO WHEN I WAS THE NONCOMMISSIONED  OFFICER IN CHARGE OF THE MARS RADIO STATION AT FORT BRAGG, WE HAD A DIPOLE MADE FOR COLLINS BY HYGAIN THE TD-1 IT WAS MADE OUT OF TAPE MEASURE TAPES, IT WAS A POOR DESIGN,  IF YOU USED MORE THEN 100 WATTS IT WOULD ARC INTERNALLY , BUT THE CONCEPT WAS THERE,  CHANGE THE DESIGN SOME ADD A 13.8 VOLT D.C. MOTOR, SOME LIMIT SWITCHES AND A CONTROL BOX AND , YOU HAVE A MOTORIZED ONE HALF WAVELENGTH DIPOLE THAT CAN BE REMOTELY ADJUSTED FROM INSIDE THE RADIO OPERATOR’S  LOCATION, WITH NO NEED TO SEE  IT OR GO OUTSIDE TO ADJUST THE ANTENNA.

YES 1.8 MEGAHERTZ TO 55 MEGAHERTZ AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN WITHOUT COMPROMISING,  PERFECTLY FLAT SWR 1 TO 1, AND NO NEED FOR THE INFAMOUS ANTENNA TUNER,  IN THIS AGE OF ALL MODE ALL FREQUENCY  H.F. TRANSCEIVERS, THERE WAS A NEED FOR AN ANTENNA THAT WOULD COVER THE ENTIRE H,F, SPECTRUM WITHOUT COMPROMISE,  MANY THOUGHT THAT DAY WOULD NEVER COME, ARE YOU SICK OF DUMMY LOAD ANTENNAS AND ANTENNA TUNERS,  GENERAL COVERAGE TRANSCEIVER MEET GENERAL COVERAGE ANTENNA,  I GIVE YOU THE AMAZING TUNE-A-TENNA.

Frank has a fascinating story and I salute his service to our country.

Pretty neat. But… well, $25,000 is a lot of money for an antenna.  What do you get? A patent (7,286,100B1), trademark (3,336,489), domain names, and a few prototypes. According to the eBay listing, Mr. McGinley believes that the right buyer could base a business around this antenna design and manufacture them for about $300 each:

Our best estimate, the cost to produce the final product for sale should be around $300, Possibly lower.

Our best Estimate of the retail price of the semi-auto version would be $825, which equates to $525 per unit. If you advertise wisely on Ebay, Qrz.com and QST Magazine you should have no problem netting $500 per unit profit, possible more?

Our best estimate of the retail price of the auto version would be $1,225 which equates to $700 net per unit possibly more?

What do you think?  Is there a market for such an antenna?  If you think so, check out the eBay listing or contact Frank. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.