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My wife and I are on the way to Toronto, Ontario for a wedding. Right now I’m dashing this off before laying my head down to sleep in the apartment of a dear friend of ours in South Bend, Indiana. She’s a PhD student at Notre Dame and will be hitching a ride with us since she’s the maid of honor. My daughter, one of the bridesmaids, is already in Toronto since she went out a day ahead of us with the bride’s family. My son had to stay home since his passport didn’t show up in time — he was disappointed but getting to stay with friends made up for it.

NØIP at the Gates of the University of Notre Dame

Anyhow, I brought along my Wouxon KG-UV6D. I would have brought along my HW-8 but space was at a premium. I didn’t use my HT on the drive (I simply didn’t have time to figure out the repeaters on the way and program them on my radio), but once we got into South Bend I hit two repeaters that both came in full-quieting — one a 2m repeater in town and the other a 70cm repeater belonging to the University of Notre Dame Amateur Radio Club. I’m sorry to say that despite many calls I have yet to hear anybody on the two repeaters. Perhaps it has something to do with my timing; the academic year has just ended and things are unusually quiet around here.

My XYL outside the Basilica, University of Notre Dame

I had high hopes of setting up an impromptu visit to the Jerome Green Amateur Radio Station (click here), but I also knew my hopes weren’t realistic since it was a last-minute idea. Next time I’ll try to remember and search out such opportunities in advance.

Basilica, University of Notre Dame

We had a great time exploring the Notre Dame campus, touring the grotto, basilica, and bookstore. (Already bitten hard by the academic bug, I nearly melted when I got near the philosophy section!) Eventually we went out for a late supper at Fiddler’s Hearth, which serves up the best Reuben I’ve ever had in my life (and I’ve had a few).

Basilica, University of Notre Dame

Next stop, Toronto! I am using this website (click here) to find repeaters by clicking on a Google map, so I have the frequencies, offsets, tones, etc. all printed out and in the car with me.

If only I had that HW-8 with me . . .

so I can be sure I’m not dreaming!

Is it true?  I guess it is!  This finally appeared in my “inbox” today:

“Dear KX3 Customer,

Your KX3 order is expected to ship during the week of 5/23 to 5/29. The exact day is not known at this time.

(Snip)

If you have any corrections or changes to your order please let us know.

If you need the shipping delayed for any reason that is fine. We can ship at the later date you specify. (You’re kidding, right?)

Once we have received your confirmation your order will ship as soon as possible. (That was sent immediately!)

The day it ships you will receive an email from the shipper ( either UPS or USPS) with the shipping notice. The KXBC3 (didn’t order one) is currently on backorder. It will not be included with your KX3 shipment. As soon as it is available, we will ship it to you.

We look forward to your reply and shipping your KX3 order. Be sure to reply!!! (I did, I did !!!!)

 Regards, Vicki Seavy

Hallelujah!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

A new weekly audio edition of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast, called PARP Plus is now available.  PARP Plus will feature a rundown of all the amateur radio happenings taking place on the bands for the upcoming week and weekend.  If you enjoy working special event stations, contests, dxpeditions…but just don’t have time to track down what is taking place and where, then I believe PARP Plus will help you.

If you have 15 minutes each week to listen to the podcast, I’ll run through all you need to know for all the on-air activities taking place in the week ahead.
Each weekly PARP – Plus Edition will release on Monday evening around 0000z and will cover the week/weekend ahead. Just listen and make note of the various special events, contests, dxpeditions, hamfests etc. that I discuss…then just work them.

You’ll still get your BIG PARP episode each month. PARP 56 will be available in June, just before Field Day.

I hope this new weekly format helps you. I also plan to mix in other content from time to time. So please download and listen. If you are already receiving PARP, you’ll get PARP – Plus the same way.

PARP Plus, episode 001 covering the week of May 22 through May 28 is available now at MyAmateurRadio.com. 

73 de KDØBIK

Introduction:

• Hacker Public Radio celebrates their 1000th episode!

Announcements:

• The Black Sparrow Media Mobile App for iPhone/iPad and Android has been updated. You can now listen to all of the old episodes, as well as new ones, via the app. wAVEgUIDES episodes are now included, as well. All streaming content is now available for iPad/iPhone. Please download and enjoy. It’s at the Google Play marketplace, as well as via the Black Sparrow Media website, and it’s still free!
• The LHS Hamvention fund drive was a success! LHS will be at Dayton Hamvention 2012, May 18-20, in the North Hall of the Hara Arena in booth 131, the same place as last year.
• Russ fixed a website bug that may have been causing some visitors to see the Black Sparrow Media site when surfing to LHS. Thanks to John, EI7IG, for pointing it out.
• Please sign up for the LHS mailing list at http://lists.blacksparrowmedia.net/mailman/listinfo.
• Please join the LHS subreddit and contribute show topic ideas, news of interest to our listeners, or just about anything else.
• Please tell your friends about the show.

Topics:

• Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, in his recent Surfin’ column on the ARRL website, recommends open source Apache OpenOffice and the desktop publishing software Scribus. Note, LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and is also quite functional. Both offer word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentations. Scribus may have a steep learning curve, but it’s a very powerful program. Easy tasks are easy to accomplish. Complex projects may take more effort to learn. Also note that many open source programs, like OpenOffice, Libre Office and Scribus, are available for Windows, OS X, as well as Linux.
• Take a look at the ham radio section at Linux Journal which also has links to their Ham Shack forum.
• Richard discovered several open source ham radio applications at Sourceforge: ircDDB_gateway, CQiNET, phppredict, contest loggers, fldigi, paclink-unix, OpenMOR, software for SDR radios, Ham Radio Net Logger, and more. So, don’t just look in your distributions repositories for applications. You may have to compile the programs from SourceForge yourself, but it may be worth the trouble.
• Finally, a reminder to visit KE2YK’s Random Oscillations website.
• An overview of ham radio apps for Android phones, available at the Android market, aka Google Play:
  • Morse Code apps:
    • Morse Decoder ($4.99)
    • Morse Code Reader (Free)
    • Morse Trainer Lite (Free)
    • Morse Trainer ($2.99)
    • Morse Code Trainer (Free)
    • Morse Code Keyboard (Free)
    • Morse Code Teacher ($3.99)
  • QSO Logging:
    • Amateur Radio Call Log (Free)
    • HamLog ($0.99)
    • Hamroid Free (Free)
    • Hamroid ($6.53)
  • Miscellaneous:
    • QSY (Free)
    • DroidPSK ($4.99)
    • DXCluster ($2.49)
    • DTMF ($2.49)
    • Echolink (Free)
  • A few more from Bill:
    • APRS Viewer (Free)
    • Ham Radio Tools (Free)
    • Who Is Calling Me? (Free)

Feedback:

• Ronny, K4RJJ, regrets that he won’t be able to act as the LHS ambassador at the Knoxville hamfest. If you’d like to be our representative at the Knoxville, or any other event, please contact us via the Ambassador link on the website.
• Roy, KK4ATD, reiterates how much fun it is to be an LHS ambassador.
• Chris, K4FH, says he offers a presentation at club meetings he calls Linux in the Ham Shack. He’s hoping Richard or Russ has some material they can share.

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:

• “Gunpowder Chant” by Diablo Swing Orchestra from the album “The Butcher’s Ballroom,” courtesy of Jamendo.
• “L.E.O.” by Oleg Serkov from the album “Epoch Symbol,” courtesy of Jamendo.

I mentioned in a post over the weekend that a couple of channels on the Anytone 10m rig were showing a slight discrepancy between transmit and receive when no clarifier was switched in.

I thought perhaps a factory reset might do the trick.

This morning, as I had a few moments before the train arrived, I performed the reset after I had parked up in the station car park.

With a loud beep the display changed to 25.615MHz! Quite a reset then, and the segments that had been programmed were lost! Just the lower bit of 28MHz was accessible!

Happily, you may recall that some months ago, I purchased the programming lead for the AT-5555. And even more surprisingly, I had backed up the configuration of the rig onto my laptop.

So, this evening saw me out on the drive with the laptop, the rig open and the programming lead. It’s all back as it should be (I think). Though I didn’t check yet whether those two channels were fixed.

For a change, it was quite interesting to listen to the activity on 27.555 as I drove home.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the Dayton Hamvention this year.  It was on my list of things to try to accomplish for 2012, but since I’m heading out west to Pacificon in October, I needed to save my pennies for that adventure.  The Dayton Hamvention will be moved to my “things to accomplish list” for 2013.

As you may know from my recent blogging, I do own the brand new Elecraft KX3.  I described this little rig in a recent podcast as “ultra-lite, ultra-portable, ultra-awesome” and the KX3 certainly lives up to all of these fine attributes.  While I’ve owned my Yaesu FT-817 for about 4 years, I really love the larger display of the KX3 and of course all the updated features certainly don’t hurt either.

The Yaesu FT-817 was first released in 2001 and an updated FT-817ND model was made available in 2004.  The 817 is based on the main circuit board design of its bigger and more powerful brothers, the FT-857 and FT-897. 

As I stated, I purchased my 817 back in the 2008 timeframe and used it for portable operations and carried it along with me on hiking and backpacking trips.  I became hooked on SOTA or Summits On The Air in the fall of 2011 and this became my main radio for that purpose.

While I’m perfectly happy with my KX3 and have already used it on one SOTA adventure, I was (like many) thinking, hoping, expecting, anticipating Yaesu to unveil it’s new QRP portable offering at the 2012 Dayton Hamvention.  However, the Dayton Hamvention is over and there was no announcement or news of any kind from Yaesu regarding their future QRP/Portable offering.  I’m wondering if the boat has sailed and left Yaesu high and dry? 

With Elecraft announcing the KX3 at the 2011 Dayton Hamvention and opening the KX3 up for orders in late December 2011 and beginning to ship orders in the Spring of 2012, the 2012 Dayton Hamvention would be the perfect place to announce a new QRP offering from Yaesu.  Well…that is if a new offering was planned.

Of course, Yaesu is big enough and perhaps powerful enough not to necessarily need to leverage an event like the Dayton Hamvention to announce a new QRP rig.  Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the FT-817.  While it may be over 10 years old, the old dinosaur is still kicking and screaming and loved in the QRP community.  As I stated I do own one and I plan to keep it….for now!  

So why do I even bring this up?  Well I do have an interest in QRP operations and an updated offering from Yaesu would be great news for the hobby.  However, I don’t view this as doom and gloom.  I figure Yaesu will update their aging line of 817’s, 857’s and 897’s when they feel the time is right.  However, I just wonder if that time is NOW!

Until next time…

73 de KDØBIK   

I have the company of 3 rigs in my shack. The XYL IC-7000 friendly rig that offers quite a decent amount of features for its pygmy size. Not to mention its requirements for very adaptable fingers to enable these features and a good memory. The handheld VX8-GR which give me a fell friendly access to 2m and 70cms and the always useful APRS. Finally the FT-817  for holidays and occasional summit activations.

Lately the FT-817 has been lagging behind in the ‘access to all parts of the band’ feature which is pretty useful at worst and a necessity when the bands are crowded or as in the case of this weekend. A special event station run by our club, GB1WSL was transmitting outside of the window of opportunity for the unmodified rig. GB1WSL was on 7.133Mhz and mine stopped in its tracks at 7.099.9Mhz.

Until this evening, when soldering iron in hand I removed solder from 1 jumper and added some (not the same stuff i might add) to another jumper and hey presto the Full TX on FT-817 as mods.dk calls it was complete. Its a bit more fiddly than that but even an inexperienced soldering iron toting danger managed it in about 15 minutes. Why had I not done this before?

Now the rig has the full 40m band, which is the primary reason why I did the modification,  it becomes even more indispensable when I go portable. Next stop is a suitable capacity LiPo battery that I can add on to give it the full output away from a power outlet and an ATU for portable means. I wonder if there is a design out for a homebrew ATU about.