AmateurRadio.com

All is going well.....for now

Last weekend  I participated in the CQ WW CW contest and in a post just before the contest I shared some things I included and avoided regarding contests.  One would think that because it's my list and I was "preaching" about it on my blog that I for sure would be one to follow it.........WRONG and boy did I pay for it!! The contest was going along just fine the propagation was great, 10m was wide open and my QRP signal seemed to be getting out just fine. Now this being a CW contest and a world wide one at that I found the CW was being sent as fast as a bullet.  To copy these fast calls was taking more time than I wanted to
spend,  but the stations were much needed multi's or possible DXCC's. In the past this is were my trusty Elecraft K3 has helped me out. The K3 has the ability to copy code and scroll it at the bottom of my Elecraft P3.......but it was not happening and no matter what I adjusted I could not get the rig to read the code.         

Firmware download going well

It was at this time I started to wonder from my own advice........the downhill slide began with a question on the Elecraft reflector regarding my decoding troubles. The common answer that came back was that the latest firmware for some reason did not allow the decode to work. I was advised to download and install the latest BETA firmware (note....Beta firmware downloads are not as simple as production firmware releases) and all would be well. The slow downhill slide was gathering speed when I downloaded the Beta firmware to my PC's desktop. It sat there for some time as the dark side started to take a more firm grip on me!! I then unzipped it and say it ain't so but I began to download it into the Elecraft K3.


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

Perhaps you remember a few months ago, I picked up the KH-6 50MHz handheld from eBay. To be truthful I hadn’t done a lot with it.

I was a bit disheartened when I took it up White Horse Hill and failed to hear either the GB3RAL beacon at Harwell or the GB3ZY repeater at Dundry, both of which I thought should have been audible. So, I had a feeling the rig was perhaps a bit deaf.

A few days ago I was moved to investigate a bit more and the results were interesting. I examined the ‘rubber duck’ which had come with the rig. It turned out to be an AOR scanner antenna – probably not very efficient at all on 50MHz. Connecting the rig up to the 50MHz antenna on the roof, the GB3RAL beacon was end stop!

On my desk was another scanner antenna from my Dad’s old scanner which was a telescopic rod antenna. Although still rather less than a quarter wave on 50MHz it stood a better chance. Promising too was the fact that I could weakly hear the GB3RAL beacon keying.

So, I think the receiver’s just fine. I’ll take the rig up the hill next time and see what I can hear. Incidentally, the battery pack has great life – it’s held its’ charge over an extended period. Impressive!

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

I haven’t been a Fox in a couple of years now. But in going through the logs that our current crew of Foxes have been posting after the hunts, I am seeing a lot of new calls compared to the logs that I had posted in the past.

Now this could mean one of two things:

1) Guys are changing their calls through the Vanity system, or:
2) We’re attracting a nice group of newer hounds.

I think it’s the latter and that’s a really good thing to see. The news of how fun this is, is getting out to people just getting into QRP. And as a bonus, I am still seeing a lot of the familiar calls that you would expect to see, so obviously retention is high.  Just goes to show how addictive that QRP Fox hunting can be.

If you’re a QRPer and you’ve never tried this before, you are in for a world of fun.  The entire concept and the rules can be found here:  http://www.qrpfoxhunt.org/

It’s not hard and there’s nothing to be afraid of – it’s all about a bunch of wacky QRPers getting onto the air and causing our own, friendly melee’.  Nobody bites and nobody gets hurt – even the Foxes. (For the PETA crowd – NO actual Foxes were hurt or killed in the process of the QRP Fox Hunts!) About the only bad thing that can happen is getting your ears blown out by a strong signal; but if you keep your AGC on …

then nobody gets hurt.

So ….. what are the benefits of participating in “The Hunts”?

A) You get to know your equipment better.  The ins and out of it – what works and what doesn’t.  Pardon the over done cliche’, but you really do “become one with your rig”.
B) You get schooled in several virtues – patience, humility, persistence being among them.
C) You have fun
D) You learn the proper way to operate in a pileup (as well as the NOT proper ways) – and if you choose to volunteer to be a Fox, you learn this from BOTH sides, in a microcosm sort of way.  I really have to attribute the experience I gained through the Fox hunts as a major help in allowing me to successfully navigate several DXpedition pileups with only QRP power.
E) You have fun.
F) You learn about propagation and your antennas and what works compared to what you THOUGHT would work.  You learn that conventional wisdom isn’t always so …… conventional.
G) You have fun.
H) You can make some really great, long lasting friendships with some outstanding folks – who you might never meet face to face.  But these friendships can end up becoming your most valued ones.

Did I mention that you have fun?

Now a thought had come to me – a question really …….

I know the QRP Fox Hunts were the brainchild of Chuck Adams K7QO – I was actually there, in the beginning, participating as N2ELW.  But has this caught on in other countries besides here?  I don’t see it mentioned on any of the major QRP e-mail lists and I know there are a ton of you dedicated QRPers out there that read this blog that are not from this side of The Pond.  Is there a European or UK or other (Russian, VU ……. ) version of this going on?  If there’s not, there should be!  It’s so much fun and in addition to that, the friendships that are forged because of the hunts are just priceless.  Heck, the friendships made are more valuable than the hunts themselves!

Just sayin’

All that said – the QRP Fox Hunt Committee, the Foxes, and yes, even the Hounds do such a great job, keeping this fun (there’s THAT word again) and exciting. A big tip o’ the hat and a hearty “Thank You” to all of them.

72 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].

After some delays and setbacks, certificates for the 2012 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt have gone out this week.

The top five finishers; as well as the high scorer for each state and province that participated will be seeing something in their mailbox within the next few days to a week, hopefully.

Also, those of you who home brewed a key for the event will be receiving a special certificate of appreciation.  Those of you who home brewed, but qualified for a high score certificate, will receive the score certificate instead.

Thanks again for your participation and please be on the lookout for the announcement for the 2013 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt somewhere around the beginning of May 2013.

72 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].

Today I was getting caught up on my reading of QST.  I had gotten two issues behind for various reasons, and was browsing the November issue.  In the editorial there was a quote from a popular contest logging program author implying that their software is open source.  I was really puzzled by this as I know for a fact that the software isn’t open source and I re-verified on the web that the source code isn’t freely available and is only given to select people upon request.  This software quite simply isn’t open source, it’s freeware.

There seems to be a lot of confusion within amateur radio over just what is open source,  and I’ve even seen amateurs berate others for wanting open source software because it’s thought someone wants a free lunch or wants to copy a product.  This couldn’t be further from the truth and it really shows an ignorance of the modern software world.  Amateur radio collectively has never really understood or embraced open source, opting for freeware offerings since the days of DOS.   Freeware software authors are often put on a pedestal in the community as selfless contributors doing a great service.  Most have good intentions, but freeware is not necessarily a good thing.

Freeware is not free and is a technological dead end.  Now that I’ve lost half my readers and puzzled the rest, please stick around and I’ll explain.  But first, what is freeware? Freeware is software that you can install without paying any licensing fee.  You can use it all you want and share it with others, but you can’t sell it, reverse engineer it, or modify it.   Freeware is not open source software.  You do not get the source code for freeware.

So how could freeware not be a good thing, or even a great thing?  It’s written by someone, one person or perhaps a team of people, giving their time and energy to a project that they derive no income from and get only satisfaction and accolades for providing a free tool to a group of users.  And, did I mention it’s free?  So, we should really be thanking them and indebted to them, right?  To an extent, yes, but long term they’re doing a disservice to the community.

Freeware “sits” in between commercial and open source software.  It’s my belief that commercial software is more beneficial to amateur radio than freeware.  With commercial software there is a motivation (revenue) to keep the product up to date and functional and not let it whither on the vine like some freeware projects have over the years.  With a commercial product, the desire for revenue drives quality and responsiveness to the user community.  With open source, quality drives usage and community participation.  If the product is popular, but quality later suffers, the community can fork a new initiative to maintain and improve the software based on the original project’s source code.  With open source there is a built-in mechanism to bypass lousy or absent code writers, or unfriendly supporters of software like we’ve sometimes seen in the freeware world.

Development of new features in the freeware world is usually at the whim of one person.  This can also be said of open source software, however because the source is available, anyone with the requisite motivation and skill can modify the code and not involve the original developers at all if needed.  Living within the walled garden of freeware is great until the gardener decides to stop maintaining the flowers. The same could be said of commercial software, but for better or worse money is a great motivator.

Often de facto standards develop around a piece of software.  This isn’t really the case with a logging program, but there’s a least one digital mode and one messaging system that have developed proprietary standards around them.  To interoperate with these standards one has to reverse engineer the standard based on the behavior of the application.  In the case of a messaging system, and one that is centralized, a homogeneous software environment can fall apart when a latent bug rears its ugly head.

So what is the reason for someone to offer freeware and not open source applications?  I’ve often pondered this question and can come to only one conclusion, a desire to someday go commercial with the product.  With open source, the intentions of the author are quite clear and in the open.  When a freeware software author refuses to open source their project for fear of it being copied and a competing product being created, they don’t quite understand that this sometimes happens in the open source world and as mentioned above, is known as a fork.  It usually occurs when someone feels they can do a better job improving the software and meeting the needs of the community.  Forks are often short-lived but in some cases a fork will become more popular than the parent it was spawned from and it becomes the de facto parent project.  This is a risk, but ultimately it’s a better process as it results in a sort of software Darwinism.  Forking is not plagiarism, as long as the original code is attributed to the original authors, and forking is an accepted practice in the open source community.  Nit-picky “armchair programmers” who are often the bane of freeware authors have nothing to complain about with open source as they can improve the software themselves or be put in their place when they discover they’re not really skilled programmers.

Open source enables collaboration.   I had to put considerable time into developing a specific feature on my open source Arduino keyer project.  If I would have had the source for a logging program that implemented this particular protocol, it would have saved me much time in developing this feature, or I could have even written and contributed a module for a logging program to implement the feature rather than having to write what I did for the Arduino in a roundabout way.  Arguably the Internet wouldn’t be what it is today, or perhaps not even exist, without open source software and the collaboration it creates.  Undoubtedly amateur radio has missed out on some collaborative opportunities over the years due to a lack of open source software.

I think it’s time for amateur radio freeware authors to take their commitment to the community a step further, embrace what became popular in the mainstream software development world two decades ago and open source their code for a long term benefit to amateur radio.

I was visiting AmateurRadio.com today and happened to see Tim G4VXE’s post about a new logging program, called PZT Log.

I’m a sucker for logging programs and my search for the “perfect” one continues.  I do not have the knowledge or expertise to write one that would 100% suit my needs, so I go from logging program to logging program, like Diogenes.  He searched the world for an honest man – I am looking for my ideal logging program.

This one by Charlie MØPZT looks like it has the potential to be a winner in my book.  Not overly complicated – not too many unnecessary bells and whistles; but it might have to wait before I try it out in earnest.  So far, there is no ability to import ADIF files, so I cannot load my current logbook into it.  Once Charlie comes up with that fix, I am more than willing to give his program serious consideration as my primary logging program.

Currently, I am using AC Log by N3FJP.  I really don’t have many complaints with it; but there are a few things in Charlie’s program that I like.  Here’s what I would like in an “ideal” logging program – and yes, if wishes were nickels I would be a rich man.

Easy to use – very intuitive, with no encyclopedia needed to use it  – if a logging program requires its own Yahoo group, that’s more than likely more software than I need (I can be quite the dunce, at times).

Should include the following:
Capability to monitor TelNet Clusters
WWV information
Capability to interface with Google Earth
Import/Export capability of ADIF files
A world map with current day/night grayline display would be nice.
Be able to import QSL information from QRZ or some other such source.

Other than that, my needs are few. Computer control of the rig, Digital Mode capability, and all the other fluffy type things are not required by me.  At the same time, I want the program to “look good” on my computer – I got tired of Win-EQF’s UNIX look and that’s why I switched to AC Log.  I was using Ham Radio Deluxe for a while and liked it; but when they decided to charge for future upgrades (none of which I would probably be using) I decided to switch back.

Free is not a priority, but I have to admit that the concept is nice.

I am not technically savvy enough to fully describe my “prefect” logging program; but I would know it if I saw it!

72 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].