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from KB3IFH

Thanks to Randy for sponsoring this month’s drawing.
We had almost 500 entries!

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The winner of our May 2011 prize giveaway is…

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The iHAB-4 launch last Saturday was oddly enough close enough to my QTH (51 miles away– in Oxford, IA just east of Iowa City, IA) to justify taking the kids to.  It also happened to be sponsored by the Marion Home School Assistance program (Marion, IA) that my children happened to be open enrolled in. Yes, on top of everything else (having four, young, non-genetically related South Korean adoptees) we homeschool our children.

This was a great way of trying to interest kids in Amateur Radio. I’ve been taking my oldest two boys (9 and 10) to a Technician Class with the hopes that eventually between that class and me teaching them the material that at least one of them would get a Technician license. Yes, they are a little young, but I think they could do it. (After all, they are homeschooled.)   Unfortunately, they have been very antsy.. I think I will get at least one to pass.. but maybe that will take months more.. maybe years more?

They like hamfests… but they LOVED this launch…

It is difficult to keep kids interested in DXing, Contesting, building antennas, etc. But launching a balloon is a different story.

This should remind us all that Amateur Radio is a very diverse hobby with many aspects. Marshall Dias, W0OTM of Ottumwa, IA I believe became a ham to fly the types of communications payloads that he does fly on the iHAB missions.

You can see what this leads to:

Serious hardware for the balloon experiments

And, you can see a “Serious ham’s” equipment inside of the trailer:

Inside of the iHAB Communications Trailer

Of course, the payload boxes are even more interesting than the trailer.  Again, this shows how serious even this unusual aspect of the hobby can be technically!

iHAB-4 Top most payload - APRS 2m Beacon and 20m CW Beacon

As you can tell, Marshall W0OTM is an extremely positive guy and one could genuinely tell he enjoyed the involvement of the children.  My kids, with the important task of keeping the payload boxes from blowing away in the 25 MPH (with gusts over 30) Iowa nasty spring winds we thrilled to have the task.

The picture above showed my 9 year old son helping steady the top payload from blowing away.. the picture below shows my 10 year old (yes he’s shorter and smaller) doing the same with the bottom payload.  One of the experiments on this launch were separating the two payloads and running the antennas vertical between the two payloads.  It was probably a success on 20m, but it proved to be a bad idea on the parrot repeater (and maybe the APRS?) because when the balloon was above about 10,000 ft. the stations on the ground in Iowa were in the antennas deep null!

The payloads are a clever version of simple technology:  Here is an example:

iHAB-4 20m CW Beacon inside the payload box

The equipment inside the payload is decidedly low-tech.  I actually decided to show the 20m beacon as it is probably the most custom piece of hardware in the whole balloon.  The repeaters and APRS transmitters are literally Alinco small Handi-Talkies.

Marshall is not an electrical engineer.  He’s willing to fly payloads that the ham community provides.  (So build something for him!)  Personally, if I had time (which I don’t) I’d like to do a SDR ARISSat-1 style linear transponder with the APRS beacon as the transponder beacon.  Marshall also said that he has most or all of the equipment to do a crossband FM repeater.  But he believes the “parrot” repeater is more accessible to hams.  I think it’s rather awkward to operate through.  Maybe the community can convince him not to fear 70cm.  I worked the parrot repeater with a $99 TYT dual band HT.  Dual band FM rigs are cheap now!

The main point, though is the science and the “WOW!” factor of the event for the kids.  Actually the iHAB-4 launch was probably the least technically successful launches that he did– really.. almost nothing on it worked fully correctly!  But the specific involvement of the children on this launch made the event really special.  Marshall, W0OTM should be lauded for his willingness to cooperate with the homeschool assistance program and his utter excitement and positive energy was an inspiration to my kids– and all of the kids at the event.

He also reminded me, now 25 years into the hobby and — even though I am only 42 years old– I am definitely a curmudgeon and a OF…   the excitement I had early in my ham radio experience.  I suppose I need to try to recapture some of that.

The event was covered by the local newspaper (the Cedar Rapids Gazette) and their associated TV station KCRG-TV (Channel 9) in Cedar Rapids.  So there was very good positive advertising for the hobby with this event.

KCRG-TV 9 report on iHAB-4 launch — video on You Tube

Yes, my children and I seriously get our 15 seconds of fame here.

There are a lot of primary source info about this event on the http://www.ihabproject.com website at the following link:  http://www.ihabproject.com/iHAB-4/

Of course who are these goofy people posed by the fully inflated and ready to go:

The Motley Balloon Observation crewe

4/6 of the Spinner clan.  My youngest son and my wife stayed home to be the remote “mission control” for us!

A new electronic payment processing company called Square, named after the shape of their credit card reader that plugs into the audio jack of your smartphone, makes it possible for hams to inexpensively accept credit cards at hamfests. They charge a flat 2.75% of the transaction, but there is no per transaction fee, monthly fee, or equipment to buy or rent.

It’s brilliantly simple.  Download and install the free app for iPhone, iPad or Android. Attach the reader to the audio jack of your phone. Enter the amount of the transaction on the screen, swipe the card, and have them sign on the touchscreen with their finger.  Done.  That’s it.

I think it’s a no-brainer.  Apparently, so does Visa who made a “strategic investment” in the company just last week.

Here is a video demonstration:

Why is this great news for small-time sellers at ham radio swapmeets? Until now, it’s been prohibitively expensive and somewhat complicated for occasional sellers to setup for credit card processing.  Anyone who has tried to price it out knows the drill: statement fees, gateway fees, transaction fees, and on and on.  You simply had to do a certain amount of business each and every month to make even having the capability of accepting credit cards worthwhile.  With Square, there is no transaction fee or monthly charge of any kind.

Without fail, it seems that I always run out of cash just about the time I spot a great deal on a piece of gear. The seller could accept a personal check, but if we’re talking about a pricey item then that’s a pretty risky proposition.  They could use one of those “knuckle buster” card imprinters, but with those there is no real-time authorization and by the time you realize there is a problem a crook could be long gone.  With Square, lack of available funds isn’t an issue.  You’ll know if there is a problem right away.

Some people might balk at paying $13.75 in fees to sell a $500 radio.  Compared to cash, it does cost more.  But, think of it this way: accepting credit cards will give you access to a much wider selection of buyers. You’ll likely get a better price for your radio gear making the fee irrelevant.

Sign up for an account on their website and they’ll FedEx you a free credit card reader.

Editor’s note:

Some reader comments have expressed concern about chargebacks.  Here is the relevant info from their website:

How Square protects you from disputes

One part of building any payment service is dealing with cardholder disputes. As with everything else at Square, we strive to make dealing with these as simple as possible and we’ll certainly never charge you for it. Read below for a guide on how this works.

• If one of your customers sees a charge they don’t recognize on their statement, they can call the toll-free number in the payment details that goes straight to us. We have all the information needed to look up the payment and help them get a better idea of what was sold. If we can’t find enough information about the purchase in your account, we’ll reach out to you and ask for more details so we can let your customer know.
• Sometimes, the customer may go straight to their bank before calling the number and dispute the charge. If that happens, we’ll get a letter from the customer’s bank telling us that this payment is in dispute. We will then contact you to gather more information so we can provide the issuing bank as many details as possible to get it resolved successfully.

Some of the information we can provide in order to resolve disputes are:

• Customer’s signature
• Description on what was sold
• Precise location data
• Whether the reader was used for the payment or not

Because descriptions help describe purchases to customers, we always recommend our users add a description for the item or service sold as well as issue receipts. Also, make sure that your Account page accurately represents your business name. A customer may not remember the charge if it reads “Joe Smith” instead of “Joe’s Coffee Shop.”

(via KB2MOB @ AmiZed Studios)

AmateurRadio.com is offering a free prize drawing!
Deadline to enter: 9 May 2011 18:00 UTC

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The F-117 Nighthawk, designed by the Lockheed ‘Skunkworks’. (Image in public domain from Wikimedia Commons)

I have just finished reading ‘Skunkworks’ by Ben Rich and Leo Janos and it should be one of those books that engineers, students of engineering and those that like technology should read. The book details the secret Lockheed Martin aircraft design branch, set up and run by Kelly Johnson, which became known as the ‘Skunkworks’. Out of this special projects group came the F-104 Starfighter, the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk (also called the stealth fighter), amongst other aircraft.  The book starts out with the development of the Nighthawk which was developed by a team led by Ben Rich, who replaced Kelly Johnson as the head of the Skunkworks.  After telling that story of the stealth fighter development over the first few chapters it goes back in time to when Ben Rich first joined the special projects unit and how he became involved in the development of some of the most advanced military aircraft of the 20th Century. The book is an exciting insight in to how advanced engineering projects can be run.  ’Skunkworks’ was allowed to be free from the usual corporate bureaucracy and therefore it could move quickly in development. There was also a philosophy of using off-the-shelf parts as much as possible, including engines, so reducing delays from manufacturing new parts that would then need to be continued to be produced.  Although this philosophy was challenged with the development of the Blackbird which was designed to achieve Mach 3 speeds and so needed to be constructed with large amounts of titanium.

Combining details of how the planes were developed, the challenges and uses of the planes, as well as some insight into management styles and how to obtain multimillion dollar contracts make the book extremely interesting. When you read about the uses of the U-2 in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the shooting down of Gary Powers, and the use of the F-117 in Iraq you can see these aircraft had influencial and important roles in the the Cold War period and beyond. It was also interesting to read about the irony of how a relatively obscure Russian paper on electromagnetic theory  lead a young mathematician at the Skunkworks to propose how they could devise an aircraft that was almost invisible to radar.

Check out your library or bookstore to find a copy of ‘Skunkworks’ and read about engineering at its best.  To illustrate the performance of the U-2 here is a video from the BBC where presenter James May gets a flight in the two seater version of the U-2.  You can see how the U-2 could fly so high it was out of range of fighter jets and missiles (although there is a report of an English Electric Lightning F3 intercepting one at 88,000ft during a NATO excercise in 1984).

Onto the second engineering biography book to read.  This is ‘iWoz’ by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, which I read a year or two ago and should have written about sooner.  This is the story of Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and the real technical brains behind the development of the first Apple computers, including the massively successful Apple II.  This is a very personal account, and more like a traditional autobiography than ‘Skunkworks’, but there are some interesting insight into how ‘the Woz’ come come up with the design for computers that effectively started the microcomputer revolution. It is fascinating to read how in high school he collected minicomputer manuals and with the help of catalogues and datasheets of newer components he would redesign the circuitry of those computers to use fewer components. Also interesting is his interest in using components in more than one way on the same board.  Here you can see the real engineering genius coming through. Below is a short clip of Wozniak talking about the ‘economy’ of the design of the Apple II at book signing event for ‘iWoz’.

Summer is not far away so chase down one or both of these books for your Summer vacation.  Lots of engineering inspiration is contained within the both books.

Talk about the trip of a lifetime! This from their new website launched today:

Jan Mayen Island is a volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean and part of the Kingdom of Norway. It is 55 km (34 miles) long (southwest-northeast) and 373 km2 (144 mi2) in area, partly covered by glaciers (an area of 114.2 km2 or 44.1 mi2 around the Beerenberg). It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by an isthmus 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide. It lies 600 km (about 400 mi) northeast of Iceland, 500 km (about 300 mi) east of central Greenland and 1,000 km (about 600 mi) west of the North Cape, Norway.

Jan Mayen island is not placed at the top of the 100 Most Wanted DXCC list, but it’s still very wanted in some areas and modes – especially West Coast of the USA, Japan, Oceania, Africa.

After a deep analysis of specific areas vs. modes, we decided to focus on CW and RTTY as our primary modes during JX7VPA.

Since our path towards Africa (where, according to feedback we received, it is still very wanted) will be a bit more difficult due to island’s terrain, we will try to test long path conditions if short path fails.

First day of our activity will be used to check openings toward different areas as conditions we will find at the island may be a big surprise due to polar day period 24/7.

The biggest threat we must face while at Jan Mayen is auroral activity. Since the island is in range of often Au oval’s activity, any increase of A/K indexes may result in deep RF blackouts. Please keep that in mind if our signals disappear from bands suddenly.

Take a moment to check out their website and of you’re a CW or RTTY op, mark your calendar for early July.

I was looking through the online scanner feeds available on RadioReference.com and found a list of the Top 50 Audio Feeds. Most of the large police departments can have quite a few listeners at one time, sometimes approaching a couple hundred listeners.

The single Amateur Radio repeater on the list caught my eye: the KE6RRI 147.435MHz repeater located near Los Angeles. The feed had 120 listeners which is pretty amazing for a ham repeater (for comparison, Chicago Fire Dept. had 40 and Las Vegas PD had 39 at the time). There was obviously something going on here that was attracting attention. So, of course, I tuned in.

Well, it’s quite the experience. Let’s just say that the conversations are colorful.

I remember as a newly licensed teenager that I was super-paranoid about following the rules. I’d stay well clear of the band edges for fear my signal might bleed over due to some malfunction. If the FCC said that I had to identify every ten minutes, I’d make sure to do it every five. Like Christian Slater’s character in the pirate radio movie Pump Up The Volume — I imagined those yellow vans conspicuously marked “F.C.C.” circling the neighborhood just waiting for the most minor of infractions as their signal to move in. Apparently, after spending a little time listening to the 435 repeater online, the folks on this machine don’t seem to worry too much about that.

There are two interesting interview segments worth listening to on The RAIN Report where Hap Holly, KC9RP, interviews Christina Holzschuh, KE6RRI, the current owner of the repeater: Part 1 Part 1 (14 min.) Part 2 Part 2 (14 min.)