AmateurRadio.com

Introduction:

• Richard is looking forward to winter in Texas… all three days of it.

Announcements:

• Subscribers to LHS now have access to the Etherpad, or via the Etherpad link in the Content area of the LHS website.
• Black Sparrow Media now has a Twitter feed at BSM_Network.
• Richard rants: Ubuntu has added a nag screen to the download page requesting a donation.
• Linux Distributions for Ham Radio:
  • Has Shackbox died? There does not seem to be much activity since 2009.
  • Andy’s Ham Radio Linux CD by Andy, KB1OIQ, revisited. Version 11 was released in June, 2012, and is based on Ubuntu 11.10. Several of the tools have been updated to newer versions. Also at http://kb1oiq-andysham.sourceforge.net/
• Jeff Hodsdon published a list of influential ham radio operators, and neither Richard nor Russ are on that list! For shame!

Topics:

• Russ and Richard interview Scott, N8VSI, our LHS ambassador at the 2012 Ohio LinuxFest. He had demos of xastir, fldigi, yfktest, and others. Scott had two computers running and a Raspberry Pi. Sadly, the official LHS banner didn’t show up until two days after the event. Scott is a member of the West Chester Amateur Radio Club which operates from the Voice of America Bethany Relay Station.

Feedback:

• The Old Texas Engineer sent an audio response to Episode 88 about High Speed Multimedia and mesh networks. He gives us some history of HSMM in Texas and his experiences with the technology. He mentions the Open Mesh project and the South Texas Balloon Launch Team website.

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:

• “El Bubblino” by 20lb Sounds, from the album Bubblino. (That’s Dan Lynch’s band, one of the Linux Outlaws!)
• “Kitsch Me If You Can” by MMO, from the album Drunk Dial of the Year, courtesy of Jamendo.

Inspired by a tweet from PD7N this evening, I hooked up the WSPR gear to 144MHz. Although I’m only using the vertical antenna I’m pleased to have received M0DEV in IO82 – as well as being heard there too.

Haven’t seen any other traces yet….

I have taken advantage of the poor propagation conditions – the WSPR application waterfall has been blank all day and just two stations have spotted my 10m beacons, while APRS on 30m is only just beginning to receive any other stations – to make available a new version of my logging program for Elecraft transceivers, KComm, which is now version 2.0.

The main difference in the new version is that the Elecraft KX3 is supported (though it could be used in older versions by pretending it is a K3.) I have also added an option for specifying alternative URLs such as QRZCQ.com for looking-up callsigns, so you can now say goodbye to logging in to QRZ.com every five minutes if you want to.

The other changes are all minor bug fixes and small improvements that probably no-one will notice.

My regrets to Linux users but I no longer have a Linux system available so I cannot provide a Linux archive of the new version. I really need a Linux user to install Lazarus and compile the source code then send me a new tar.gz file to put on the web site.

When I popped some dry cells in the FT790 the other day, I noticed that the springs in the battery compartment were not sufficient to keep the batteries pushed together. I emailed Yaesu but they had no spares of the battery box but did point me in the direction of some companies that could help.

However reading around last night, I saw an idea which inspired me to a possible solution. Someone on a forum had put some washers in between their batteries to keep the tension in the battery box.

I didn’t have any suitable washers but this morning I headed to Homebase and had a look around. I came home armed with a couple of packs of ‘Repair washers’ which looked suitable. An initial effort of inserting the washers to ‘pack’ the batteries was unsuccessful. I then sat down with the meter to understand what was happening.

It took a few minutes but it turned out to be a corroded connection that I hadn’t spotted. I cleaned that up and put the batteries and washers back. Success!

And of course, almost to the second, my iPad pinged with an email from HiFiSSB who had a battery box that they could let me have!

So, with the exception of a bit of a sloppy mode switch, the FT790 is now exactly how I want it!

Propagation is really poor at the moment. Never has my WebProp propagation widget been quite so accurate. On 10m WSPR I am hearing nothing and no-one is hearing me. On 30m APRS it’s just as bad. I’m not picking up a single packet.

I opened WebProp’s page in Google Chrome and noticed that the small format widget had a vertical scrollbar on the right hand side. I thought I could remove it by adding a few pixels to the iframe height attribute but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I think a bug in Chrome might be causing this. The presence of the scrollbar reduces the width of the table causing several lines to wrap and making the table taller.

I found that the scrollbar was eliminated by adding the attribute scrolling=”no” to the iframe definition. If you are using WebProp on your website I recommend you do the same. If you aren’t sure exactly what to do then go to the WebProp web page. The code examples have all been updated with this extra attribute.

I recommend you to do this even if you don’t see the scrollbar in Google Chrome. That will prevent it from appearing in any web browser.

I’ve been writing a few articles for the HamRadioSchool.com web site during the past few months. Most of these are aimed at newly licensed Technicians but other radio amateurs may find them useful.

Click on this link to go directly to the Shack Talk articles:

• A Half-Wave Antenna for Your 2 Meter Handheld Radio
• VHF FM Station At Home
• Yes, Band Plans Do Matter

I also put together a quick reference chart for Technician License Bands and Modes.

Check out the other content available on HamRadioSchool.com.

73, Bob K0NR