AmateurRadio.com

The view at CT9/OM3RM..

I was sitting at the operating desk this evening setting up N1MM logger for the ARRL CW contest starting Friday. I was sitting with the K3 on 40m and clicking on spots on the N1MM band map, wanting to see if the radio followed and all was working well. There was a spot CT9/OM3RM and I clicked on the spot and the rig did do as it was told  and go to the spot. I could hear Madeira island calling CQ so I gave it a go and low and behold he came back to me!! Now for some this is no big deal BUT for reasons unknown my attic

C6APG setup

dipole just does not like 40m at all. It's to the point were U.S station struggle to hear me. I then saw C6APG in the Bahamas again on 40m gave him a call and he too came back to me. I am in total shock with how 40m is co-operating this evening. I hope this holds up for the contest this weekend it sure will help out the score for sure. Maybe I will spin the K3 antenna tuner and give 80m a go as well! Oh and just for the record both these contacts were done with 5 watts QRP and the faithful attic dipole.


Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Due to the health issues of the developer Joe Large W6CQZ it has been some time since there was a new version of the popular JT65-HF application. So I was interested to receive an email from Erwin, DK5EW, telling me about an enhanced version of JT65-HF made by Matthias DL3VCO called JT65-HF-Comfort.

JT65-HF as enhanced by  Matthias, DL3VCO

Matthias has not made an add-on to JT65-HF in the style of programs like JT-Alert. Instead he has made changes to the actual JT65-HF source code. I was particularly pleased to see that the enhanced version retains compatibility with the popular add-on JT-Alert by Laurie, VK5AMA. When I tried recompiling the JT65-HF source code myself the new version did not work with Laurie’s program, which I regard as an essential aid to JT65A operating. (In fact I have cheekily asked VK5AMA if he would consider making a version of JT-Alert that works with K1JT’s WSJT-X program!)

I have not spent much time with JT65-HF-Comfort as my interest at the moment is directed towards the new JT9 mode, but you can see from the screenshot that one of the improvements DL3VCO has made is to display the callsign above each trace on the waterfall. He has also added a new Statistics menu which displays the number of contacts you have made per DXCC entity per band. I couldn’t show you that as I use KComm for logging so my log is not in a format that JT65-HF-Comfort can read. You  can find a Google-translated version of the JT65-HF-Comfort information here.

If you are interested in trying JT65-HF-Comfort then you can download a setup program (a modified version of W6CQZ’s installer) to install the updated version. I shall certainly try using it the next time I do some JT65A operation.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 50 is now available for download.

Peter builds the NS-40 40-Meter QRP Transmitter Kit. George and Tommy visit friends and find new toys at the 2013 Capital City Hamfest. Emile talks about Ham Radio Deluxe and Automating routine tasks. We run into someone you may remember and much more.

1:09:00 of the usual suspects.

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George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

I spent couple of hours last night playing in the NAQCC Sprint.  It was the 100th Sprint held since the founding of the club back in 2004. It was good to hear familiar friends and new calls come back to me last night.

My score?

Pitiful.

19 QSOs with 13 S/P/Cs worked – my total score didn’t even break the 1,000 point mark, only 988 total points at the end.

Not sure why I didn’t do better, but if I could blame one thing, I’d have to say probably a lack of practice.  A few years back, I used to get into every QRP Sprint I could.  NAQCC, ARS Spartan Sprint, RFTB every blessed month as well as all the miscellaneous QRP-ARCI and FISTS events.  I would routinely make 30 – 40 contacts in the same amount of time.  Nothing has gotten worse, equipment wise, in fact it’s gotten better.  I still have the Butternut, the G5RV got switched out for the 88′ EDZ and I even added the W3EDP.  The antenna and rig quality have definitely increased.

What hasn’t gotten better has been the time spent behind the rig.  I am doing much better getting behind the key this year compared to last year (heck, the past two years!), but I don’t get on nearly as much as I did when I was heavily involved in the sprints a few years ago.  My rustiness shows.

No one to blame, but myself.  I just have to get back on the horse and back in practice.

73 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

As I was clearing out my childhood home I came across an old radio that my father had tucked away in the basement. It was a German Blaupunkt radio, and what a historic dial it had!

It turned out that my father had himself found it as he was clearing out his childhood home many years before and that it had belonged to my grandfather who died in 1959.

It covers longwave, medium wave and three shortwave bands from 5.5 to 21 MHz. I had never before seen a radio with a dial given in meters rather than kHz or MHz, but I have later understood that that was not uncommon for pre world war II radios.

Since the back was missing, I had no information about age or type. The tubes which were all in the 11-series suggested the end of the thirties, but here it turned out that the dial had valuable information.

The medium wave part of the dial had a separate side on the left hand for German stations and here one can find cities that are no longer in Germany such as Königsberg on 223 m and 291 m (1348 and 1031 kHz). Today this is Kaliningrad in Russia. The dial also showed Danzig on 230 m (1303 kHz), ”Schles. G. W.” (Schlesische Gleichwelle – a single frequency net with stations in Gleiwitz and Reichenbach/Oberlausitz) on 244 m (1231 kHz), and Breslau (315 m – 950 kHz). Today these are the cities of Gdansk, Gliwice and Wroclaw in Western Poland, an area which was in Germany until the end of the war. At least the radio must have been from before the end of WW2.

But there were a couple of more names with a lot of history in them. Troppau can be found on a wavelength of 249 m (1204 kHz), a frequency which it had until September 1939. Today Troppau is called Opava and lies in the Czech Republic. Troppau lies in the Sudetenland which Germany annexed on 30. September 1938. Finally one can find Memel on 531 m (565 kHz). This city is today called Klaipeda and lies in Lithuania. It was occupied on 22. March 1939 as the last German annexation before the outbreak of the war on 1. September 1939.

Thus the conclusion of this historic search across the dial is that the radio dates from some time between March and September 1939.

With some cleaning the exterior turned out to be quite nice. I thought to myself that I cannot give up now, so on inspection I could see that a couple of electrolytic capacitor had been replaced, probably by my father. It had the following tubes: ECH11 as mixer/oscillator, EBF11 and EF11 for the intermediate frequency stages, and EFM11 for the magic eye and the first low frequency amplifier.

The output tube and the rectifier were missing, and it was natural to look for tubes in the same 11-series. I was not able to find this particular radio in the large archives of the Norwegian Radio History Society, but there was documentation for a few other Blaupunkts there. From their descriptions I could guess EL11 for the output tube. Measuring the filament voltage for the rectifier gave 4 Volts, so then AZ11 was a good choice.

With some excitement I turned on the voltage for the first time, and to be on the safe side I connected it in series with a 60 W light bulb to reduce the voltage. No explosion! As incredible as it sounds, with full voltage it actually produced sound. But unfortunately after a few seconds everything disappeared. One evening with diagnosis of the radio and I could isolate the problem to the beginning of the audio section and two rotten shielded cables connecting audio in and out of the pentode in the magic eye. Not everything is as new after 60 years! After having replaced the cables the radio was perfect, and even the magic eye and the dial lamps functioned. In my experience the magic eye is often weak and in the Oslo region the dial lamps for the longwave band may have burnt out as the local station used to be on 218 kHz.

Some weeks later as I was about to clean the dial for dust I disassembled the glass in the front and found an inscription saying Blaupunkt 7W79 and the date 28.3.39. So the result of my detective search wasn’t too bad! In fact the dial was produced with an updated name just 6 days after the occupation of Memel/Klaipeda. 

This radio cannot have been more than a couple years old when all radios were confiscated in Norway in 1941. Imagine how sad it must have been to give up such a nice and costly radio at that time! This must also have been one of the few radios that actually were returned to their rightful owners in 1945.

Now the radio has a prominent place in my house and every time it is turned on it is a reminder of both the history of my family and of a turbulent era in the history of Central Europe.

---

First published as “Min farfars Blaupunkt radio” in Hallo Hallo of the Norwegian Radio History Society, September 2001, updated in 2013. © Sverre Holm

Sverre Holm, LA3ZA, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Norway. Contact him at [email protected].

Introduction:

• Apologies for the tardiness of the show notes for Episode 99. I spent a few days in warmer climes, neglecting my duties. -Bill, KA9WKA
• Welcome to episode 99 of Linux in the Ham Shack.

Announcements:

• Linuxfest Northwest has announced their Call for Papers, Sponsors and Exhibitors. The show will be at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, Washington on April 27th and 28th, 2013. Visit their website for more information.
• Donations for LHS to be at the 2013 Dayton Hamvention are already rolling in. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far. Please send anything you can. Even a dollar helps out. Donate here!
• The Wouff-Hong Podcast has been announced. It will star Tracy Holz, N5UNX and Joel McLaughlin, W3RAZ. Joel is also a co-host of the long-running Linux Link Tech Show podcast. Tracy has been a guest on many podcasts and also did his own show, Working in the Open, a couple of years ago. The show will be ham radio focused, with topics ranging from operating practice to folklore to hardware. Tracy is currently co-hosting The Techie Geek podcast with Russ Wenner.
• Things to do:
  • Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
  • Become a subscriber for $2/month or $20/year. That donation does count towards the Dayton Hamvention fund.
  • Record a little memento for the 100th episode. Tell us you like us, or hate us, or whatever. Just let us hear from you. Leave your voice message at +1-909-547-7469. (By the time these notes are published, the 100th episode has already been recorded. However, feel free to leave a message, anyway!)
  • Check out the Events and Ambassadors pages on the LHS site. If you can help us out by being at an event for us, please let us know. We provide the booth setup and a free T-shirt or ball cap. You provide a presence and a demo computer. Everyone has a good time.
  • Join the LHS IRC channel. We are at #lhspodcast on Freenode (irc.freenode.net), and there’s almost always someone to chat with. Plus you can participate in the live show that way.
  • Listen to the live show every other Tuesday night at 8:00pm Central. You get to hear all the stuff we cut out of the podcast release. Plus, if you’re in the IRC, your experience is twice as fun. The URL to listen is http://stream.blacksparrowmedia.net:8008/lhslive.
  • Join the Linux in the Ham Shack Google+ Community.
  • Follow LHS on Google+, Identi.ca and Facebook. Also, follow BSM_Network and LHSPodcast on Twitter.

Topics:

• FreeDV is a GUI application for Windows and Linux (MacOS and BSD are in testing) that allows any SSB radio to be used for low bit rate digital voice. It appears to be using Codec 2!
• Hamux 6 is a CentOS-based repository with ham radio software. It is compatible with the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project. It works with CentOS 5 and 6, and i386 and x86_64 versions are now available. It’s not a distro, but repackaged RPMs for RHEL and CentOS. It does require EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux).
• Fedora 18 has finally been released, and Russ shares his experience with this much anticipated, and often delayed, release. Russ provides a brief and not very favorable, review.
• Richard suggests trying SliTaz GNU/Linux.

Feedback:

• Leif, KC8RWR (in reference to our discussion of using short wave radio for Internet connectivity in Episode 98), offers his thoughts.
• Dave, M0DCM, also chimes in with some comments about high-speed Internet over HF.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Drinkin’ Problem” by Freeky Clean & Dickey F from the album South of Pearly Gates, courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Writing on the Wall” by Freeky Clean & Dickey F from the album Double Feature, courtesy of Jamendo.

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

Pat Tice, WA0TDA, is the manager of HANDI-HAM and a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].