AmateurRadio.com

This morning was the monthly meeting of the West Central MN Amateur Radio Club. I joined this club about four months ago thanks to the invitation of Dean Herzberg, NYØI.

It’s the first amateur radio club I’ve ever joined. I wish I’d joined one sooner! Certainly I wouldn’t have had to drive as far to attend club meetings while I lived in the Twin Cities. This club meets in Madison, about 45 minutes away from my house. It’s worth the drive, though. I get to put faces with call signs and catch up on local developments. Speaking selfishly, it’s already benefited me a great deal. Dean helped me mount my dual-band antenna on the roof, and he allowed me to borrow the club’s antenna analyzer, too. I hope I can return the favor somehow. That’s the sort of thing that happens in an amateur radio club.

My son, Antonio, came along this morning, hoping to take his Technician exam. Unfortunately the test-materials hadn’t arrived yet, so he was understandably disappointed. I invited the Volunteer Examiners to my house for dinner when the materials do arrive. Since my son has become adept at grilling, maybe he’ll be the one to serve them steak if they decide to make the trip.

One of the things we discussed this morning was the possibility of helping out at the airshow two weeks away here in Granite Falls. There is a gap that needs filled in their operations, namely the coordination of shuttles running between the airport and remote parking lots. It remains to be seen whether we can muster enough volunteers, but if we can it would be a great way to demonstrate our capabilities and practice working together for the day we assist in an emergency. I’m hoping we will get some more volunteers from another ARES® group nearby. It would really be neat if we had enough hams with APRS to put the shuttles on a map, but that’s a pretty tall order right now. I’ll be happy just to put one ham in each parking lot, one at the airport, and perhaps one NCS at the midpoint if we decide to use simplex. The local sheriff has a portable tower that he has offered for our use, and it might be just the thing for an NCS to use. All these details need to be worked out, but that’s exactly why these opportunities are so valuable — better to figure out how to do these things now rather than in a time of crisis.

If you aren’t a member of a local amateur radio club, I encourage you to look into one. It is well worth your while!

Todd Mitchell, NØIP, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Minnesota, USA. He can be contacted at [email protected].

The build continues.  So far I have put about 2 hours into this.  While I’m not quite done, I can see this being done in the 2 hours that Wayne mentioned on the KX3 reflector.  But being uber careful, I am going slow and really taking my time (and also taking time to take photos).  At this point I am “basically“ finished.  I still need to install the battery holders, the auto tuner and the roofing filters.  That won’t take long.  While I am done for the night, I should have this completed and will hopefully make my first QSO (God willing and the creek don’t rise) tomorrow.

This is what the top half looks like from the back. You can click on any of these photos to get a larger image.  The speaker and VFO encoder are towards the top right.

Here’s a close up of the speaker hooked up to the CP board.  Directly below that is the VFO encoder (and shield).

Here’s the finished top half.  If you look at the bottom right hand corner of the plastic bezel you will see where I have a temporary “make do” silver screw holding the bezel down.  This is where I was shorted one screw. I will put a black one in whenever it arrives from Elecraft.

This is the RF board in the bottom housing.  That big black square to the upper left is a magnetic shield.  Things are really crammed onto these circuit boards, I can only imagine the effort it would take to build these boards as a “conventional” kit.

This is the BNC connector. It was a bit tricky to get this in, as with the RF Board in place and screwed down you have to finagle the connector part way into the hole, then get the lock washer and nut in place and started.  Then you have to push the BNC to its final resting place against the chassis wall while simultaneously tightening the lock nut.  There’s just not a lot of space!

Here’s the two final transistors tightened down to the chassis/heat sink area.  This is another area where you have to be careful as Elecraft makes sure to mention (with a big caution) not to disturb that electrolytic capacitor.

So far this has been real easy as kit builds go.  The assembly manual is superbly done. The hardest part so far was installing some nylon screws for the rubber feet.  You want to make sure you get the screws started at exactly the right angle so you don’t end up cross threading or otherwise mucking up the screw threads.

And except for that one silver screw at the bezel, I have been able to make do and keep the build going using those extra screws I had left over from my K1 and K2.  Kudos to Elecraft for basically staying with the same hardware so that my “junk box” screws blend right in.  The hardware that I have coming from Aptos will go to replenish my “extras”.

The bad side of all this ????  This is really making me want a K3 now!  Maybe if I sell off some of my baseball memorabilia collection …………….

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].

Introduction:

• Back from Dayton and ready to go.

Topics:

• Dayton Hamvention 2012
  • LHS had the same booth as last year at North Hall #131. Estimated attendance was 25,000 individuals. Russ recounts the experience. Thanks to Matt, KC8BEW, who stopped by and helped out at the booth. The LowSWR podcasters stopped by, too.
• FCC Dismisses Texas Ham’s Fourth Petition, Calls it “Repetitive”
  • Our hosts discuss.
• Contest logging for Linux.
  • Several people at Hamvention asked about contest logging software for Linux, but Russ was at a loss for a recommendation. Upon his return, he discovered…
  • SO2SDR Contest Logging Software
  • Stefano, IZ3NVR/KD2BGM was trying to get so2sdr to work under Linux Mint and while it would compile, it did not run, so Russ set about trying to get it going.
  • It’s not packaged for Debian or Fedora, so it must be built from source, available at the link above.
  • The program is written in Qt, so it can be run on devices which support that environment, including Linux and Windows. Of course, Qt must be installed in order to compile so2sdr.
  • Russ also had to install the following packages on his Linux Mint machine: portaudio19-dev (NOT libportaudio-dev; apparently, libportaudio-dev is too old), fftw3 and fftw3-dev
  • The compilation procedure consists of:

                  qmake
                  make
                  sudo make install

  • so2sdr compiled and ran fine. It did complain that it wanted a parallel port for switching between radios, but you can ignore that if you don’t need to do that.
  • Russ gives an overview of the features and capabilities.
  • There are a few drawbacks:
    • An apparent lack of SSB support? It seems to be CW-only.
    • Frequency input checking is broken.
    • Keystrokes are not intuitive, but are well-documented.
  • However, the built-in help file is quite useful.

Feedback:

• E-mail from Larry, KG4Q, extolling fldigi and JT65-HF. He wishes there was a version of JT65-HF for Linux. Well, Larry, there is! You can download the source here. Also, WSJT does JT65, too.
• Chris, K4FH, caught up with Russ at Hamvention and talked about his Linux in the Ham Shack presentation. He managed to put together a fine bunch of slides completely without our help. Sorry, Chris!

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:

• “Down Today” by Jonathan Coulton from the album “Artificial Heart”.
• “Sucker Punch” by Jonathan Coulton from the album “Artificial Heart”.

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].

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].