AmateurRadio.com

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 16 October 2012

Some good propagation today. A good opening across the Atlantic seems to have caught operators by surprise. One US station remarked that he wan’t hearing much on 10 metres.

I snatched the K3 away from WSPR duty long enough to work CO8LC in Cuba and Dave, N8DC in Michigan. Also heard several other US states as well as KP4 (Puerto Rico).

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

Introduction:

• The earth moved in Texas, recently, which sends Richard down memory lane.

Announcements:

• Texoma Hamarama will held October 26-27, 2012 at the Ardmore Convention Center in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Pre-registration ends October 20th.
• The Augusta Hamfest will be Saturday, October 13, 2012 in Augusta, GA.
• Scott, N8VSI, was the LHS ambassador at the Ohio LinuxFest, September 28-30, 2012. We look forward to hearing a report from Scott in the near future.

Topics:

• Richard recounts his experience replacing a computer power supply. Moral? Don’t be afraid to try repairing a computer yourself. Swapping parts is easier than you might think. For power supplies, pay attention to the wattage required. (Ed. Note: When in doubt, it’s best to replace the bad supply with one that has the same or greater wattage rating.)
• Departing from our usual topics, Russ and Richard discuss a couple applications for producing slide shows and panoramic photographs:
  • Imagination is a lightweight and simple DVD slide show maker for Linux and FreeBSD that’s very easy to use, offers a wide variety of transitions, supports background music, and much more. Available in the Debian and Fedora repositories, and probably many others.
  • Hugin is a program that allows you to assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete, immersive panorama, stitch together any series of overlapping pictures, and much more. It’s cross-platform and easy to use.
• Why Ham Radio? Richard talks about why you might wish to obtain an Amateur Radio License and how you can combine it with Linux, including:
  • Getting your ham license for our non ham listeners.
  • There are many modes of communication, including voice, Morse code, and many digital modes.
  • The ease of getting your license.
  • Why you should get your license.
  • How to get your license.
  • The Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) is a good source of information
  • Free practice tests are available at qrz.com
  • A list of certified Volunteer Examiner Coordinators is available at www.ncvec.org.
  • Test sessions can be found through the ARRL and many local radio clubs.
• Russ describes Universal Plug ‘n’ Play devices (UPnP). Many new devices offer the ability to play media from UPnP servers. It makes sharing your media very convenient and easy, but can also be a security risk.

Feedback:

• Pete, VE2XPL, sends a long email in response to episode 88, and covers such things as the Toonie, Alexandre Graham Bell, Brad Sucks, the wAVEgUIDES PodCast, SouthCARS, email addresses for LHS, and the MintCast.
• Ted, WA0EIR, asked if there is a problem with the LHS mailing list as his attempts to post a message there “bounced”. Yes, the mailing lists have been broken, but they’re fixed now.
• Larry Bushey of the Going Linux podcast says thanks for the great show, and admits they stole the LHS “badger” sound effect for use on their show. Episode 185 contains an example of their use of the Badger.
• LHS was mentioned in a comment to a post at hak5.org.

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:

• “You Are You” by Fall Walk Run from the album Throwing It All Away, courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Flash Back” by MattMigma from the album Phoenix, 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].

I measured out the distances from the house to the maple tree in the back yard and over to the mast in the “upper right” corner of the back yard.  The 85 foot W3EDP will fit just fine, with room to spare.  There should be less than 10 feet worth of Dacron rope between the end of the antenna and the mast.

The drawing is not to scale; but the run along the side of the house accounts for no more than 15 to 20 feet or so of the antenna run.  The EDZ currently follows the same route (more or less) but I am hoping to get a dog bone insulator (which will serve as the wire “bending point”) up about 10 to 15 feet higher in the tree than where the center insulator hangs for the EDZ.

Last Thursday, I ordered a 4:1 current balun from Universal Radio and I have all the other materials I need.  The balun should come during the week, and hopefully I will get to do some antenna installing next weekend.

In the end, this W3EDP will be configured as a horizontal “L” as you can see from the diagram.  The ends will be at about a 25′ level and I am hoping the point at where the wire will take its sharp right turn will be in the 35 – 40′ neighborhood.

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].

It’s ages since I played with WSPR, but inspired by Julian G4ILO’s 28MHz WSPR results I thought I would give it a go.

I set the rig up with about 1 Watt out – a little over but I have quite a long feeder run to the Butternut. To start with, I doubted that it was working but then I heard G0MGM and he heard me – so it was obviously working!

Left things running throughout the day. My most distant report seemed to be around 3600km away; UA6AAK and 4X1RF around the same sort of distance. Some great reports from EA8FF in the latter part of the day.

Heard LU and T5 – but my 1W didn’t get that far today!

Fun experiment which I will repeat!

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

It's now Sunday and it's not been "one of  those days" BUT one of those weekends!!! Now that it's Sunday the frustration factor for me is just about blowing it's way through the roof  here. Maybe if I vent my weekend on the blog it will help level the playing field for me....oh and thanks for listening. Well Friday started off like any other Friday. I woke up to celibate the TGIF feeling, the weekend was here. My work day went well but it was after work that things when a little funky. After going to the gym I got back in my car to head home only to find I had left my Iphone and company cell in the change room. So back I went and both phones were gone!! I looked around in the change room and nothing, I checked with the front desk and no one had turned anything in. It was back out to the car thinking maybe they were in my gym bag or in the car somewhere. I ended up going back to the front desk at the gym to call my cell to see if rang in the change room. I called the cell and low and behold it started to ring at the front desk!!!! It was turned in and the young lady at the desk within all of 5 minutes forgot it was turned in
. Getting home I found the internet, home phone and cable not working. I called the provider, was on hold for over 25 minutes being told how important I was to them and to please hold. Seems there was a problem in the area it was being worked on. At this point thought I would work on my Elecraft KX3 movie with some final editing with Apples Imovie. Turns out you need the internet with Imovie to view the tutorials which I need so that was stopped as fast as it started. Since I was on the subject of the KX3 felt is was time to finish off the calibration of the rig. Well how do you think that worked out!!! Not so good the rig was calibrating transmit bias and was in some type of a loop were it would not stop. Oh well have to save that one for Elecraft Support on Monday. 

Endless calibration...that had 3 failed upload to blog attempts

Time to start dinner, went to open the cupboard under the sink......there was an smell coming from there like something had died. Turned out to be a leaking drain plug in the sink drain trap. The drain trap turned into an adventure.....purchased gaskets that were to small. Then I found the replacement drain plug complete with gasket......to good to be true drain plug turned out to be to big. Drain trap has to be replaced save that for next weekend, for now  put some silicone on the plug with a bowl under the trap.
Hey on Saturday the phones and cable were up and running but no internet. It was back on the phone to tech support and after unplugging and plugging things in and up and down stairs to the basement to the modem. The support came to the conclusion the modem was toast and so was I almost after all that running around the house.
Picked up a new modem at the cable store and hooked it up.....funny thing nothing in the house wants to connect up to the modem!!! Great back to tech support on the phone that for some reason now is NOT WORKING!!! Called them on the cell and they know about the phone troubles but the internet is good to go I was told.  Told her my troubles about getting on the net and the response was "I have no idea what's wrong" I was told I was not stating a problem to her just a statement....can you believe that!! To make a long story short I did it myself it turned out the modem and my Apple airport router did not like each other. With a few menu adjustments to both units they are fully in love with each other.
As I began saying today is Sunday and to not turn this post into a book not all adventures were mentioned. The lights in my radio room flickering, loosing my car keys while at the mall, dropping carton of milk at the grocery store (yes it went everywhere), leaving my debt card at the machine, taking a picture with my Nikon camera to have it display a message "all files are corrupt" then totally stopped working..... the list goes on. So it's now Sunday, Julie thought a nice trip to Starbucks with my laptop and her Kindle would be relaxing. That sounded great until the laptop decided to not start....nothing. When I got home I got the Linux CD out to see what I could do. I started the Laptop and it started just fine!!! I started and restarted that thing at Starbucks like 10 times and nothing it now works like a charm.
So how has your weekend been going???? To think it's not even over yet the adventure here at VE3WDM lives on.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 14 October 2012

Not very good propagation today. Several two-way spots with EA8FF and even more with UA6AAK, otherwise only ‘local’ stations.

This will be the last one of these I shall be posting for a while as I want to do some antenna comparisons on different bands.

BTW someone asked if the colours of the lines showing the signal paths mean anything. I have no idea. Do they?

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

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”.

Yes.  The original plan today was for self indulgence – to spend all afternoon playing in the QRP ARCI Fall QSO Party.  Needless to say, it didn’t happen.  Not by a long shot.

There was grocery shopping to get done, lawn mowing and leaf clean up to get done, baking to be done for the Sacred Heart Music Ministry bake sale tomorrow.  All things that had to get done, which left me not much time on the radio.

After dinner, I have gotten on the air and have made some contacts on 20 and 80 Meters.  40 Meters would be nice but the RTTY’ers are once again swallowing up the band all the way from 7.040 to 7.100 MHz.  Wow, I remember in my RTTY contesting days in the 90’s we didn’t dare come below 7.060 MHz.  Times have changed.

I will go back down to the shack in a bit; but wanted to share something I found in the basement while calling “CQ QRP’ looking for contacts.

I found some old licenses. These three each have one of the call signs that I have held.

The top one is a KA2DOH one, and this is the license I received after upgrading to General in the Summer of 1979.  The N2ELW one is from when I applied for a General Class call in 1983.  Got this one in August of 1983 and shortly thereafter upgraded to Advanced on October 18th, 1983.  The reason I remember that date so well is that’s the date of my parent’s Wedding Anniversary.  If they were both alive, they’d be celebrating their 60th this year.  Both of these licenses were from back in the days when the license term was only five years.

The W2LJ one is the license that I carried before I renewed two years ago.  I found the CSCE’s (for you non-US Hams, those are Certificates of Successful Completion of Exams) from when I upgraded to Extra all the way back on March 1st, 1993.  Next year will be 20 years as an Extra and this year will mark my 34th as a Ham – sure doesn’t feel that long!

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].