Welcome to Handiham World.

2012 ARRL Field Day is coming up this next weekend. It is always the last FULL weekend in June, which is Saturday and Sunday June 23 and 24.
Summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere on June 20, 2012, at 6:09 P.M. USA Central Daylight Time. Of course this means that our hours of daylight are at their maximum around this time of the year, and that always helps with getting set up for Field Day. There is always a lot of antenna work and temporary infrastructure to be set up at a multiple station club Field Day site. Having those extra hours of daylight can make it a little easier to get to the site and get things ready to go. On the other hand, more hours of daylight are likely to mean more absorption of signals on the lower frequency HF bands such as the 75 m band and – it goes without saying – more thunderstorm activity since thunderstorms are driven by convection and that takes place when you have long, hot, sunny days.
Field Day is different things to different participants. Some clubs are highly competitive, and this goes for individual participants as well. They are in it for the points and there is nothing wrong with that approach because if that is what you like and enjoy, then that is what you should do!
My feeling is that Field Day should ALWAYS be about having fun. I know that I have mentioned this before, but it certainly bears repeating: it is up to you to find a radio club Field Day that matches your expectations for what you expect the day to be all about. A mismatch between your expectations and the type of operating that is going on at the Field Day site will probably result in a disappointing experience for you and a bit of consternation on the part of the event organizers. If your idea of having fun is to get on the air and operate a highly competitive Morse code station to rack up hundreds and hundreds of points, you need to find a club Field Day whose goal matches yours. If you would rather spend most of the day socializing, greeting visitors to the Field Day site, helping newcomers get on the air, or experimenting with different modes of operation, then you should try to find a club that emphasizes those things over highly competitive operations.
If I hear from someone that they did not have a good experience on Field Day, I like to try to find out what went wrong. After talking with them for a while, I usually find out that there was a mismatch of expectations. They expected to do one thing at Field Day while the club’s event organizers had arranged for something entirely different. That is why you need to do a little bit of research to find the kind of Field Day operation that will suit you. If you do this, you are almost guaranteed to have an excellent time during what many of us consider the highlight of the amateur radio calendar – ARRL Field Day.
Incidentally, you do not have to feel as if you are all on your own when trying to find a club that will meet your Field Day expectations. ARRL Field Day sites across your state are probably going to be visited by your local League Section Manager. If you drop your Section Manager an e-mail or call him or her on the telephone, you can ask which Field Day sites they have visited and which they might recommend to a person like you with your expectations. Local League officials are a good resource to help you get connected with the right radio club as well. You can find lots of information on the ARRL website, which you can link to from the Handiham website.
Email me at [email protected] with your questions & comments.   
Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

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

The long awaited but ultimately unwanted GMR radio

As my day job starts to include more long term projects & project management I was particularly intrigued by an article in arstechnica.com. The article is, “How to blow $6 billion on a tech project“, although the title may be more inflammatory than technically accurate.

The article covers the 15 year development of an advanced & unified military radio communications system that suffered from multiple issues including scope-creep & a rapidly changing underlying technology.

If you are involved with a group that is working to develop a product or service you’ll really get something from this article. If you interested in radio systems, military or otherwise, you’ll find this interesting as well.

Its hard to image the frustration people suffer when contributing to a project that is mismanaged unless you have been there yourself. I hate to think of the wasted effort that resulted when people found out How to blow $6 billion on a tech project

Owen Morgan, KF5CZO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

I looked at the weather forecast for the next two days – 96F tomorrow (35C) and 102F on Thursday (39C). Wow! I guess it is no coincidence that tomorrow is the first day of summer.

And wouldn’t you know it ?!?  Band conditions seem to be headed right into the toilet as Field Day weekend approaches.  The Sunspot number is 66 and declining. We’ll get to see of Amateurs create their “own” propagation this weekend.  Maybe with that much RF heating up the ionosphere, we won’t need so many Sunspots.

The past few nights have been very good on the bands.  Tonight, the noise floor seemed to be higher and it sounded like there was less activity.  FG5FR was booming into NJ from Guadeloupe; but I worked Frantz about a week ago, so it’s time to let other stations have at him.

Looks like some reading tonight and then sack time.

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].

The Lancaster and Super-fortress together (click on all images to enlarge)

Julie's relatives are over from England for a few weeks and to start off the holidays on June 16th it was off to Hamilton Air show loaded with vintage aircraft. It was a nice sunny day with a temperature around 27C.

 The air show lasted 6 hours which included a nice lunch also table and chairs down by the runway....so we were close to the action. The air show hosted the Avro Lancaster this plane is only one of two that are still flying today the other one is in England.  Also the B-29 Super-fortress and this one at the air show being the

Corsair,  P40, Spitfire, Mustang, Sabre

 only air worthy B-29 in the world. Some other vintage plans were the B-24 Liberator, Avenger torpedo bomber, FM-2 Wildcat, Corsair, Spitfire, Curtiss P-40,  F-86 Sabre just to name a few!! It was great to see the Lancaster for the first time as it was the bomber my dad flew in during WWII as a tail-gunner. Two hours before the show began we purchased a ramp pass which allowed us to get up close and personal with most of the aircraft in the show. The Lancaster came with a

B-29

wireless operator. The transmitter/receiver used was the R1155 and T1154.  As for the B-29 they had a multi radio setup check this link out for info and great pictures of the B-29's radio op's rigs.  Now an air show would not be an air show wit the the JETS!!! Becuase this was a vintage aircraft show 99% of the aircraft were WWI and WWII. BUT there is always an exception to the rule and the exception this year was the CF-18 fast, loud and proud!! All photo's were taken by my wife Julie the shutter bug!!

Low level 1,000 km per-hr pass. Below flying dirty ( gear down) almost stopped then afterburners!!!

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

If you’ve listened to the news or picked up a newspaper in the past week, you’ve probably heard about the forest fires in Colorado.  There are several popping up across the state as our temperatures continue to soar and very little to no moisture is falling.  The immediate weather forecast doesn’t look promising. 

The High Park Fire is the big one which is grabbing the most media attention.  At the present time the High Park Fire has burned more than 59,500 acres, destroyed 189 homes and there has been one fatality.  The over 1800 personnel have done an outstanding job to get this fire 50% contained.  Below is a current map of the burn area.  This fire has earned the title of most destructive fire in the history of Colorado.

Many Colorado Hams are assisting to fill in communication gaps and this was recently recognized by the Denver Post.  It’s great to read about amateur radio participating in such activities. 

I’m proud to call Colorado my home.  I’ve lived here for almost 14 years and the beautiful Rocky Mountains have become my playground for all sorts of activities, even including many related to amateur radio.   We all know Mother Nature has a way of healing and in time the forest will return.  However, this destructive fire has taken a toll on those living in the area. 

The various media outlets in the Greater Denver area are advertising the following link to iGivefirst.  Through the iGivefirst website, you can donate to either the Larimer County Humane Society (currently housing over 200 animals displaced by the fire) or the Salvation Army and  American Red Cross.  This link will take you to the iGivefirst website. 

On behalf of all the residents of Colorful Colorado,  Jerry Taylor – KD0BIK thanks you for your prayers and any help you can provide.

Until next time…

73 de KD0BIK

Jerry Taylor, KD0BIK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. He is the host of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast. Contact him at [email protected].

I hate “stealing” material from my fellow bloggers.  I saw this referenced on John N8ZYA’s extremely good blog and I thought that it could withstand repeating:

This is such a good video for promoting Amateur Radio!

It not only shows some of the “cooler” things you can do with the hobby; but it also stresses that Amateur Radio still serves as an important communications back up role.

A very big tip o’ the hat to John N8ZYA – cool beans, John!

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].

We’re hearing talk these days of the “Post-PC Era” when devices like the iPad, tablet PCs, and smartphones along with cloud-based applications will ultimately replace the PC.  I don’t totally buy into this as these devices don’t have the form factor or horsepower to replace the PC, at least in business environments.  I do think that the venerable tower PC, outside of gamer circles, will die.  It used to be standard to select a tower PC based on the number of expansion slots and bays, and it was once common to upgrade processors for more horsepower.  Those days are gone and more people are using one-size-fits-all laptops or appliance-like desktop machines, and when they’re three or four years old they’re tossed out for the latest model that can run Microsoft’s latest OS and office suite.

For over the last 15 years, when you bought a PC you by default got Microsoft’s OS, Windows and usually Microsoft Office or Works.  This symbiotic relationship has been dubbed “Wintel”, symbolizing the combination of Windows and Intel-based hardware.  Of course Linux has made inroads over the years but despite what Linux advocates say, it’s never passed the philosophical litmus test, being able to be run by your grandmother.  It continues to be the darling of techies’ desktops and runs the Internet behind the scenes.

With applications heading to the cloud and developers needing to support multiple devices running different operating systems, applications are more and more running in virtual machines such as Java rather than on the bare OS.  HTML 5 is supposedly going to revolutionize web applications, bringing functionality that was previously limited to Flash applications into HTML, an open language that is universally supported.

Amateur radio in my opinion has always had an odd relationship with software, that somewhat has its roots in the mindset of 1980′s DOS PC computing.  It wasn’t until the early 2000s that some of our most widely used logging and contest programs offered Windows replacements of their DOS ancestors.  Our free software authors never quite embraced open source, opting more for free-as-in-beer / freeware.  Nearly all notable amateur software is Windows/PC based.  There is some software for Mac and Linux, but it’s more a novelty.  I’ve found Linux ham radio software, especially logging programs, to often be someone’s experiment with making a database frontend rather than a concerted effort to build a major software application, like Ham Radio Deluxe or DXLab.  I know this will raise the angst of Linux users, but if you want to run amateur radio applications with full functionality, it’s tough to not use a PC running Windows.  I’ve tried about five times to switch to Linux in the shack and gave up.  I would love to buy a Mac, but I would still need a PC to run my amateur apps.

There is a paradigm shift in software coming.  The PC/Windows world is coming unseated.  It’s not going away, but it’s not going to be the default “no-brainer” choice that it used to be.  While we have many fine commercial and free software offerings, we’ve failed miserably in making cross-platform applications.  Even our networks like Winlink, D-STAR, IRLP, and APRS are vertical “silo” applications, some tied to specific OSs or hardware, or just outright ignore open standards.

Enter the Raspberry Pi, a very inexpensive single-board computer that is for supporting economical computing in third world countries.  It’s quickly turning into the latest geek fad.  Never has such a small board had such computing power at such a low price, and despite being a full-fledged computer it may very well displace the popular Arduino on many experimenter’s benches.  It should be a very hot commodity in amateur radio as it’s cheap and open, and ideal for hardware hackers like us.  Here’s the kicker.  It has an ARM processor and it can’t run Windows.  The best programs we have can’t run on this device.

I don’t see the PC world ending very soon, but I have to question at what point we’re going to start sacrificing some opportunities due to our lack of cross-platform software and systems.  In the past when considering software compatibility, one used to ask whether you ran a PC or Mac.  Today you hear questions like, “Can I get that in my app store?”, or “Does it run on Android?”