AmateurRadio.com

The genesis for this project is local. The Union Express video captures a pair of surfers traveling the coastline of California from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back. The premise is anyone can do this, the trip is cost effective, and there is a story around every corner. Enjoy.

Live to surf, surf to live.

P.S. Still getting worked on the inside near beach break however I paddled into a reform wave that shaped up into a juicy right north of Pismo Pier. My session summed up as good exercise both cardiovascular and anaerobic.

This evening I managed to hear signals bounced off the moon using an FT-817 and an antenna made from a stick and a few bits of wire.

I took the battery out of the clock / weather station to silence its interference and went down to the bottom of the garden with the home made antenna and the FT-817. I couldn’t see the moon this evening as it was cloudy – in fact, attempting to drizzle – but I pointed the beam in the same general direction as last time, turned it vertical to minimize the QRN and started tuning around 432.045MHz. After a minute or so I heard some weak CW.

If I had to give a signal report it would have been 319, the signal was about equal to the noise. Sometimes it would pop up a few dB above the noise for a second or two, and I heard the call KP4AO (though not all in one go), reports being sent, R, 73 and BK, but I couldn’t make out any other calls.

I had the computer interface plugged in to the FT-817 so I brought down the Samsung NC10 netbook which I have been using for my Echolink node and tried to make recordings of what I heard using Sound Recorder in order to listen to them again and even put some samples here. But for some reason when I played them back on my shack PC all I could hear was noise – the CW had all but disappeared. What a disappointment, to have no record of this rare event.

Then, on a sudden stroke of inspiration, I changed my computer sound card settings so that I was using the Realtek internal sound card – normally used for HF digital modes – to play back the audio in place of the cheap USB “dongle” I normally use for computer sound. What a difference! Instead of just hiss with a barely detectable hint that a CW signal might have been there, I now heard the KP4AO signal via the moon just as I heard it live off-air. I have converted a couple of samples to MP3 format without much loss of fidelity so you can hear for yourself what I heard:

• Here is a short sound clip from KP4AO recorded at 1937 UTC
• And here is a slightly longer one recorded around 1945 UTC

The CW certainly is weak but you can pick out letters now and again. If you manage to pick any calls out of those samples then you have better ears than me (which is certainly possible.)

An interesting evening’s experiment. Not just because I heard signals bounced off the moon for the first time ever but also for the unexpected demonstration of how weak signals get lost when you use a cheap sound card. I had been planning on using one of those USB dongles to make my own SignalLink interface. I think it’s back to the drawing board on that one.

I heard nothing during my attempt last night to receive signals from KP4AO bounced off the moon. Nothing, that is, except a lot of noise. Sitting at the bottom of the garden with my newly constructed hand-held 6 element 70cm beam, the Moon was above and just to the left of the roof of our house. And the nearer I moved the beam to the house, the greater the noise. This house is truly a disaster area for radio reception!

This afternoon I thought I would try to see where the noise was coming from. With the beam horizontally polarized the noise was a broadband hash, white noise, indistinguishable from band noise except that its level is much greater with the beam pointing towards the house. If I turned the beam vertical then the white noise faded out almost to receiver noise, but another pulsing noise came up. It went kerchunk chunk chunk chunk, kerchunk chunk chunk chunk, ad nauseum. And the level of this noise peaked up with the beam pointing right at the shack window!

I switched everything off in the house and it made no impact on the noise whatever. I decided that it must be something battery powered. There is a radio controlled alarm system in the house that has a built-in backup battery. Nothing I can do about that. However I could not hear any noise increase when I went near it with the TH-F7E and a whip antenna. The noise level goes up and down as you walk about the house, as does the kerchunk chunk chunk noise, as if the noise source is invisible.

Eventually I did locate the source of the kerchunk chunk chunk noise. It was coming from an Ascot radio controlled clock sitting on the shelf in the shack just above my radios. I removed the batteries and after a few seconds the noise stopped. I walked about the house some more and in places I heard it again! This sort of thing can make you start to doubt your sanity.

Eventually I found that exactly the same noise was coming from another clock / weather station in our conservatory. It’s a different brand, not radio controlled, and (probably not coincidentally) it receives temperature and humidity readings from the same external sensor. Presumably they have some electronics in common and this is transmitting a signal in the 432MHz band.

But I haven’t found the source of the broadband hash, which may or may not be related to the crackly S9 noise that plagues most of the HF bands. I think the noise problems at this QTH are beyond solution. I haven’t logged an HF band contact from here since 13th March. It isn’t that I can’t work anything on HF from here, it’s just the demoralizing effect of hearing this dreadful noise as soon as you switch on and knowing that there are interesting signals buried under it that I have no chance of hearing.

Flights in or out of the UK are banned for a fourth day due to the alleged effects of dust from the Icelandic volcano. Flight restrictions have been just been extended until midnight tonight, with suggestions that they could extend for “several more days”. Britain is virtually cut off, with the Channel Tunnel and ferries to and from continental Europe fully booked. There is talk of an economic disaster, with some European airlines in serious financial difficulties as a result. Tens of thousands of people are stranded, unable to get home from their Easter holidays and facing financial ruin, loss of pay and even the loss of their job as a result. Travel insurance companies in most cases are refusing to pay out for additional accommodation or the cost of returning by alternative means.

However, the Dunkirk spirit is not dead. Just as in 1940 when Brits with small boats went across the Channel to bring our defeated troops back, TV presenter Dan Snow is today mounting an operation with inflatable craft to bring stranded Britons back from Calais to Dover. You couldn’t make it up. (Postscript: The attempt was halted by authorities, presumably for health and safety reasons. Oh well. Nice try.)

It is reported that the Dutch airline KLM has flown a Boeing 737 to 13km over Dutch skies with no adverse effects, whilst Germany’s Lufthansa has flown several planes from Frankfurt to Munich without any harm being caused to the windows, fuselage or engines. But Dutch and German airspace are also closed for the time being. However the Ukrainian International airline – which coincidentally Olga used on her recent trip to Ukraine – is to recommence flights at 0900 UTC today as it believes the skies are safe. Hooray for the Ukrainians! At least someone has some sense.

According to some aviation experts, the only time aircraft have suffered from volcanic ash is when they flew right through a plume of it as the volcano was erupting. The ash here is so thin that you can see the moon and stars when the sky is clear. Isn’t this just another case of out-of-control safety mania, with bureaucrats being afraid to make any decision that just might lead to them being blamed later on, regardless of the probability of risk? Isn’t it time for someone to use some common sense?

Vision. Leadership. Commitment.
World Wide Radio Operators Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization, “Dedicated to improving the skills of amateur radio operators around the world, utilizing education, competition, advancement of technology and scientific research, promoting international friendship and goodwill, and preparing them to better serve society in times of communication need.”

Board of Directors.

• Doug Grant, K1DG, Chair, Founding Director.
• John Dorr, K1AR, Vice Chair, Founding Director.
• Ralph Bowen, N5RZ, Treasurer, Founding Director.
• Tom Lee, K8AZ, Secretary, Founding Director.
• Mark Beckwith, N5OT, Founding Director.
• Bob Cox, K3EST, Founding Director.
• Tim Duffy, K3LR, Founding Director.

Believe in your signal.

See Also.
Radio-Sport dot Net | Formation of New Contest Operators Group Announced At 2010 Visalia DX Convention.

I applaud Pete Smith, N4ZR, Rick Walker, K4TD, Felipe Ceglia, PY1NB, and Nick Sinanis, F5VIH for their innovation — Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) Telnet Feed combines data output of all current RBN Skimmer receivers at no-charge for ham radio operators world wide.

Is this the end of ham radio as we know it?

Certainly, not.

Boomer And Millennial.
I’m a late Baby Boomer born in 1964 at the tail end of my generation. Some say, we are the silent cohort, our voices eclipsed by earlier Boomers and the later Millenials. However, what is not recognized; we witnessed and actively participated in all the infant technologies that are now beginning to mature.

I played Atari with its read only memory cartridges. I have dialed both a rotary and touch tone phone. I watched wireless television succumb to cable when Home Box Office was a big deal on the block. We used push button remotes tethered to a cable before the ubiquity of wireless remotes. Remember, when someone actually switched channels on an analog dial?

I pushed eight track cassettes into players before cassette tapes ruled one’s Sony walkman. I participated in the battle of beta and VHS for dominance in delivering home entertainment; renting a movie was a big deal. Today, format competition continues as Blu-Ray wrestles for market share against that of DVD.

Change is not a big deal for the silent cohort or those thereafter, perhaps, it is expected, sometimes begrudgingly, sometimes with fascination.

Disruption.
However, even beyond the CQ Contest Digest discussion, a chasm exists between keeping ham radio in its purist form and technological progress. I hear those who are steadfastly resolved that ham radio is nearing an apocalypse — robots will soon replace humans in RadioSport?

I’d like to know, how many still spin their dial, looking for a DXCC counter given the near efficiency of spotting networks? Can one with a reasonable commitment to occupation and family afford such a time consuming luxury? Retirees need not answer that question.

The same is said, dial tone replaced rotary, compact disc replaced VHS, and liquid crystal displays replaced cathode ray tubes. What happened to auto-patch? Essentially, at the end of the day, it is digital change and the anxiety that follows the disruption of long established comfort zones.

Conclusion.
The Reverse Beacon Network Telnet Feed is not the end of ham radio. It is technological progression perhaps at the level of software and digital signal processing. I did not immediately leap to the idea that it is the symbolic end of RadioSport, rather, RBN is the result of hard work by a group of men who care about the longevity of ham radio.

RBN is a beginning and not the end.

See Also.
Fi-Ni Report : Contester Criticizes New Technologies.