AmateurRadio.com

Fellow blogger's I  always like to comment on blogs and give my two cents worth about a topic....BUT.....is it just me or are these darn Captcha's getting harder and harder to decipher !! I understand about security and that our comments are to come from humans and not other computers. Having said that it seems to me that some of these Captcha's one needs divine glasses to figure out the letters. At times I fool myself thinking if I look at it long enough the letters will jump out from the blurred combinations.....!  There have been "events" of me trying up to 3 (or more)combinations to get the correct letters. To add insult to injury it wasn't bad enough bending my brain around one word now most Captcha's are two words!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

You can follow the progress of the Olympic torch using APRS. The name of the torch is TORCH2012. The screenshot below shows it being tracked by APRSIS32.

If you don’t have an APRS client you can follow the torch at aprs.fi by going to http://aprs.fi/?call=TORCH2012.

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

I haven’t posted so much lately. Sinus issues have kept me from really spending the time on anything other than work and the necessities of life. There are some great goings-on here on Long Island though. My lovely and amazing fiance had been studying for her Technician license for the last month or so. Armed with a notebook, access to the QRZ.com practice tests, and Gordon West’s book, she finally took and passed the exam this past Saturday. Now we just need the callsign.  A friend of ours once told us that there are two types of Ham Radio spouses.  Ones that embrace the hobby, maybe not to the fullest, but will attend picnics and events, and there are the ones that run screaming from it.  I have been blessed with a fiance who fell in love with the Ham Radio community, and the people we have met through it.  I’m not sure that I’ll ever come home to find her staring at Smith Charts, but I think she and I might get to fight over the soldering iron a bit.

Well, anyway, on to the Baofengs you see here.  She sort-of owed  me a birthday gift for awhile, and I thought she needed a congratulatory gift for passing the exam, so we ordered his-n-hers Baofeng UV-3R Mark IIs.  I know quite a few hams that have purchased these little gems and most are quite pleased.  Now, I understand that I cannot expect the performance of a $300 Kenwood, or other similar HTs, but the value is quite amazing.  Here in the NY Metro area, a small 2 watt HT is not a bad thing to have.

As I do with practically everything I own, I have started the process of learning all I can about getting the most out of these little radios.  I will post the results as I experiment.  So far so good though.  Stay tuned, more to follow.

–Neil W2NDG

Neil Goldstein, W2NDG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New York, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Dr. Bob Heil, K9EID, is the founder of Heil Sound and host of TWiT.tv's Ham Nation which streams live each Tuesday at 6:00pm PT (9:00pm ET) at http://live.twit.tv. Contact him at [email protected].

As the title reads, my 2012 Challenge of having a QSO a Day is on the way to the half way mark.  One more month and we’ll close out the second consecutive quarter, six months and 50% of the year having completed a QSO each day. 

I have admit, the fun really does continue.  I worried that either I might get bored or find it “a chore” to get down to the shack each and every day.  However, I’ve settled into a routine and it works nicely. 

I use UTC as my time and date.  During this time of year, 0000z occurs at my local 6 PM.  I usually get home from work by 5:30, we eat and then I head down to the shack usually around 6:30 PM (0030z).  I log my contact(s) then spend the rest of the evening with my wife.  We did have some nice band conditions during parts of May and I would head back down to the shack for 30 minutes or so around 0400 UTC. 

During much of the work week, I’m mainly concentrating on getting my one QSO worked and logged.  However, on the weekend (when I’m not working on the new shack) I’ve been working special event stations and having fun in the various US State QSO parties taking place on the bands.  By the way, have you listened to my new weekly PARP Plus edition podcast?  PARP Plus is released on Monday evenings (0000z).  Each episode is around 15 minutes in length and I provide a rundown of all the activities taking place in the week and weekend ahead.  The PARP Plus edition covering this week and this coming weekend is available now.

Also, the path to DXCC continues to add up.  This month I worked a total of nine DX stations with three being new DX entities.  The new DX added in May was Bulgaria, New Zealand and Turkey. 

I also decided to map my May QSO’s.  I’m using a web tool created by K2DSL called ADIF to Map to create the image below. 

Finally, May was a productive month for work in the new basement ham shack.  As I updated you all earlier in the week, the drywall work is done and the texture process is also complete.  We picked up paint and paint supplies last weekend and hope to get started next weekend.   It’s all finally starting to come together and I’m very pleased with how it looks.  It’s going to be a fantastic ham shack, home office and man-cave.

The QSO breakdown for May is as follows: 

Mode
Number QSO’s

JT65
61

SSB   
37

PSK31
1

Additional notes of interest:

DX Stations Worked in May – 9

New DX Entities in May – 3

Total QSO’s for 2012 – 577

Total consecutive QSO days – 152

Days left in 2012 – 214

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 never really thought I would be saying this but I have entered, or rather plan to, enter a contest. Sports radio as it is sometimes called always seems like a bear garden on HF with just about every station barking out ‘CQ Contest’ to claim a few more points. To me it doesn’t sound like a sport unless you’re keen on drowning out the competition.

I have mostly avoided contests as to me it has the perception of something where ‘He who has the largest bank account wins’ and the is little room for tiddlers. So to challenge this perception I shall be entering into something that I think / hope will be a bit more relaxed. The UKSMG Summer Es contest might be the highlight of the 50Mhz calendar but for I shall be operating at the most for 6 hours. The likelihood it will be around 3 hours at best as a tiddler station.

I will be operating at best 100W from my IC7000 into my homebrew 50Mhz vertical which so far has escaped the operation in anger mode it needs. Part of the reason for this is to see if I actually enjoy it. The other part is to do something different.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for 6m but have no idea why as my QTH precludes much in the way of ‘proper’ antennas and so far I have only made a few contacts on the magic band. Most of these contacts were a few years ago when I could put a beam up in the garden for a few weeks. This needs to change in my opinion and this weekend is the best opportunity for me for a while.

So if you happen to be on the magic band, listen out for the tiddler that is my station (operating as GM7KSE as it happens). The contest starts on the 2nd June at 1300Z

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time.

Paul Simon – Have a Good Time

It’s become a tradition that I play this song on May 31st. I did so every year, since I discovered the great Paul Simon. Just a reflection on my own life and every year the song seems to describe exactly how my life is going: it’s a mess, but I’m having a good time.

I make my own good time and so I was good to myself this year. I ordered an Argents Data Systems APRS kit, because I’ve been longing to do something with APRS for a long time now. I’ve already had some success with Xastir and SoundModem decoding APRS signals on my laptop, so I’m good to go now.

My wife was good to me, too, because she brought a Baofeng UV-5R back from China. Even cheaper than the export model, with a cute Chinese lady inside and a lousy Chinese manual. In China they use simplified characters, but also the use and translation of foreign phrases and words is different than in Taiwan. So over here in Taiwan we translate “menu” as 功能表 or “Function List”. Makes sense, right? In China they translate it literally: 菜單 or “Dish/Vegetable List”, like in the different dishes listed on the menu of a restaurant.

Enough has already been written on the Baofeng UV-5R. I can only add the following: “What an ugly looking thing!” The designer should be subjected to some serious Chinese torture. Not that we Westerners don’t mess up every now and then. When having the HT in my hand I constantly had to think of this beauty made by the French truck maker Renault.Maybe theses things are for “manly men” and I’m not man enough to appreciate this kind of design.

Anyway, I am also going to make my foray into the SDR world, because my lovely wife also brought back an DVB-T USB Television stick with a RealTek RTL2832U inside. There has been a lot of talk about these sticks lately and for only US$11 is it worth a try. I’ll keep you posted, but for now I only tried the TV reception (great) and DAB radio stations (non what-so-ever in Taiwan! It seems FM radio is here to stay for a long time).

Together with the other projects that are under way I will have a busy summer holiday.

Hans "Fong" van den Boogert, BX2ABT, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Taiwan. Contact him at [email protected].