AmateurRadio.com

How many of you ham radio operators are also classical musicians? (I’m using “classical” loosely here, the way NPR does — not merely referring to the classical period per se, but broadly referring to all music of higher artistic expression.) I’ve always been intrigued by this kind of simultaneous development of artistic ability and scientific/technical ability. I’ve long heard that the two complement one another nicely, e.g. I’ve heard that musicians make better programmers.

Rehearsal of Exultate Festival Choir and Orchestra (Kristi Brackett, Photographer)

Right now I’m working hard with the Exultate Festival Choir and Orchestra to get ready for an upcoming performance of The Messiah by George Frideric Handel. Ham Radio has taken a back seat in my life during this seven-week project (as well it should, if we have our priorities straight). Yesterday’s rehearsal in the Twin Cities was exhilarating, and once again proved that the 2 1/2 hour drive to get there is definitely worth it. Dr. Tom Rossin is an outstanding conductor, and the choir is so good I have to pinch myself sometimes to see if my place there in the bass section isn’t just a dream. (If any of you happen to be in the Twin Cities on the weekend of March 9-11 and would like to hear The Messiah in its entirety, send me an email and I’ll email you a coupon that will get you two tickets for the price of one.)

Music was part of my life as a boy before I became a ham, but it didn’t blossom until 13 years ago at the age of 31. That was when my brother Tom (NØBSY) got me involved in a cappella shape-note singing from The Sacred Harp. This taught me how to sing parts; without it I could never have gotten into choral singing the way I have. My first choral work was with Exultate, singing Bach’s Mass in B-Minor, followed by Brahms’ German Requiem (in Rutter’s English translation). Since then I’ve been involved in a small choir here in the church, too. All of this has been a huge surprise to me. Up until I was 31 years old I was afraid to sing in front of other people, and I couldn’t sing parts if my life depended on it! So if any of you think you can’t sing, think twice — you might be surprised at what has been lying dormant in those vocal chords of yours, just waiting for the proper nudge to burst forth into beautiful song.

I see Tyler Pattison, N7TFP, is not only an accomplished ham radio operator but an accomplished musician. Along with his excellent tutorials for ham radio operators, Tyler has also posted a video of his performance of Charles-Marie Widor’s Toccata in F from Symphony No. 5. In this video you can see the organ from Tyler’s perspective, not only as a musician but as an electrical engineer. He is bringing both sides of his brain to bear upon the magnificent task of rebuilding and upgrading this organ — and then making beautiful music on it.

How many others like Tyler and myself are out there? If you are a musician and an amateur radio operator, what do you think? Has one influenced the other in your life? How?

I have made some progress with the FreeTrak PIC based APRS tracker. I found a slightly newer version of the PICFlash programming software. At first this gave exactly the same warning message as the original version. But after a bit of random clicking I tried again and this time the software reported that it was writing to the chip. It verified OK as well. I don’t know exactly what I did, but at least that hurdle was now passed.

FreeTrak configuration

I set the DIP switches on the EasyPIC board to link the PIC pins used for serial I/O to the serial output. That didn’t seem to work the first time, either, but at the second attempt at powering up I saw the configuration prompt appear in the terminal window. I was able to complete the FreeTrak configuration with the PIC in the development board.

Next, I changed a DIP switch to put the chip in Run mode. Using a utility called NMEAGen I began sending simulated GPS messages to it using the same serial connection I used for configuration. The LED began flashing at 1 second intervals and using a crystal earpiece on the output pin I could hear the familiar sound of 1200baud packet bursts. I don’t know why it appears to be transmitting at 1 second intervals, but perhaps it is something to do with the simulated GPS data.

FreeTrak schematic

So FreeTrak appears to be working. All I need to do now is build it on to a circuit board and attach it to my GPS module and a radio. Here’s where I could use a little help from readers. The AFSK audio output of the FreeTrak uses an obsolete op-amp which is unobtainable. I presume I could just replace this with a simple transistor amplifier stage using a 2N3904 or similar, but do I really need anything at all, given that the audio will drive a sensitive microphone input? Could I get away with just a DC blocking capacitor and a trimpot to set the level?

The other thing I’m unsure about is how to interface the FreeTrak to my GPS module. I think the circuit shown is intended to work with GPS devices that use 5V TTL or even RS-232 signal levels. The data sheet for my bare GPS module states quite clearly that the absolute maximum voltage on any of the pins is 3.3V. The serial lines on the PIC measure close to 5V. How to connect them?

Introduction:

• Only 317 days until the end of the world as we know it!

Announcements:

• The Black Sparrow Media application for iPad, iPhone and iPod has been submitted to the iTunes store. It is just awaiting validation from Apple, which may take up to two weeks. We’ll let everyone know when it’s available.
• Special Event Station W0S (Whiskey Zero Sierra) will be operating from the Titanic Branson Museum from April 13-15, 2012, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Russ, K5TUX, will be operating the station at some point.

Feedback:

• Scott, AD7MI, asks for help linking APRS and his his Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station with Xastir. Our hosts suggest trying one or both of these:
  • Meteo – Davis weather station platform software for Linux. You can subscribe to the Meteo mailing list by sending a subscription request to [email protected]. It has been several years since Meteo was updated, and is still not at version 1.0. You must download the .tar file from the web site as it does not appear in the distribution repositories.
  • wview- Cross-platform weather station software. It does need an internet connection if you are going to contribute information to various weather sites, such as:
    • Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP)
    • Weather Underground
    • Weather For You
    • awekas

    This program is under active development. Even if it requires a work-around to perform as you wish, it may be worth the trouble. If you’ve ever configured a Linksys router, the web interface of wview looks a lot like that. wview has a support site via Google Groups at http://groups.google.com/group/wview.

Let us know how you get on, Scott!

We received a donation from Bill H. Thanks, Big Poppa!

Contact Info:

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• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• To be added.

Welcome to Handiham World.

Ice!  Are you ready?

Photo:  Ice and snow cling to the dipole at the WA0TDA station in Minnesota.  The 450 Ohm feedline and the antenna wire are carrying a coating of heavy ice, as are the nearby tree branches.

Photo: Iced birch tree branches pull the antenna wire down.  

Photo:  Heavy ice coats the 450 Ohm ladder line in this close-up.
Here it comes: The annual Spring severe weather season is here in North America.  Tornadic winds hit in the southern Midwest states of Missouri and Kansas last night, while the same huge weather system brought Minnesota freezing rain and snow.  The transition from winter to summer often means that we will be visited by bad weather that can take down antennas and put stations off the air at the very time their communications capability may be needed.  This storm was well-forecast because it was being watched even as it approached the west coast from the Pacific.  Computer modeling lends a new degree of confidence in such forecasts, so it is perhaps a bit easier than ever to be ready.  

The problem for any given amateur radio operator is that forecasts cannot predict exact weather circumstances in a small geographic area. In this particular storm, heavy snow fell north and west of my location but we only got about 3 inches worth.  Our snow was preceded by rain – freezing rain – which coalesced around antenna wires and tree branches.  When the snow came, it added to the mass already collecting on the branches and wires.  This was a prescription for power outages because tree branches would inevitably begin to break under the weight of the ice and fall across power lines. The power lines themselves, if in the clear, seldom collect enough ice to fall on their own. Sure enough, this morning almost 15,000 customers were without power here in the Twin Cities. Since the storm was more severe in the northwest part of the urban area, that was the place with the most power outages. Even so, in my town there were over 400 customers without power. Our power never failed or even flickered, probably partly because of just plain luck and good switching at the power company to keep failed power lines from bringing down the entire system. One thing I looked for specifically when purchasing my property was underground power lines. I have lived in too many neighborhoods where tree branches fell across lines and cut the power in almost every severe storm.

So what can you do to keep your own antenna systems from failing under the weight of snow and ice?

Wire antennas should be installed so that they have some “give” to them. That means that if the wire should be stressed by the extra weight of ice, the antenna will be able to bend with the weight enough to avoid outright failure. There are various methods of making a wire antenna a bit more flexible. The obvious one is to make sure that when the antenna is installed that the wire is not pulled up tight. Sometimes ingenious methods can be designed to allow an antenna anchored in a tree to move freely as the tree moves in the wind. Usually unless the tree is exceptionally flexible it will be enough to simply allow enough slack in the antenna wire to make for reasonable movement.

Rigid metal antennas are another story. Most amateur radio beam antennas are made of aluminum tubing. Some types of aluminum tubing are “aircraft grade” and may flex more than standard tubing before breaking. No matter what kind of aluminum tubing is used, it is not immune to severe damage from ice loading. If the weight of the ice itself bending the aluminum doesn’t break it directly, wind that comes up after the ice is coated onto the elements may very well finish the job and bring the entire structure down in pieces. I am not sure that there is any practical way to prevent this kind of damage in a beam antenna system, but perhaps someone with experience can weigh in on the matter and let us know. Few amateur radio operators have tilt over towers that can perhaps be used to bring the whole antenna down close to the ground with the elements 90° to the surface of the earth so that water will run off of them. But what happens to the horizontal portion of the tower that will then be collecting ice? It’s hard to figure out how to prevent ice damage on a beam antenna system, so keep your insurance paid up.
An antenna that is coated with ice and snow will not necessarily tune correctly. When I tried using the LDG auto tuner this morning to tune my 200 foot wire antenna on a frequency that had been previously “memorized” by the tuner, it behaved exactly as if it were visiting that 75 m frequency for the very first time. The tuner cranked away for a while before finally settling on what had to be a very different combination of capacitance and inductance to allow for a reasonable standing wave ratio. Once the ice melts off the wire, the auto tuner will have to search again for a new combination as things return to normal. One thing to consider is that not all automatic tuners will be able to match an antenna that is heavily loaded with ice and snow. The operator must be aware of this and be careful not to operate with a high standing wave ratio.
The antenna wire itself is not the only thing affected by ice and snow. If you are using open wire feed line as I am, you can expect ice loading on the feed line to contribute to changes in how the antenna behaves on the air. If you use coaxial cable, your only real concern is weight of the ice on the cable itself. Any place feed line comes into the house it should have a “drip loop” so that water can drip off the bottom of the loop of feed line as the ice melts. This prevents the water from following the cable through the wall of the house and into the ham shack.

Your antenna system will be more robust if you use good quality materials to construct it in the first place. Good antenna wire may be more expensive initially, but it will be more likely to stay up under ice loading than some bargain wire. As the old saying goes, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. In terms of a wire antenna system, this means that a cheap insulator could easily be a failure point no matter what kind of expensive wire and feed line you use. Needless to say, you should always take the time to secure wires properly to center and end insulators so that it will not work loose under pressure as ice pulls on the wire.

Following a weather event such as high wind or icing, you should plan to inspect your antenna systems for any possible damage or tree limbs that might’ve fallen against the antenna wire. Any kind of antenna system should always be located well away from power lines so that a failure in either the power line or the antenna will not make one of them come in contact with the other.
Tomorrow it will be March, and that is the month that I usually think of as being the start of this severe weather transition season. Maybe it’s time to take a look at that go-kit and make sure that you are ready.

For Handiham World, I’m…
Patrick Tice, [email protected]
Handiham Manager

After our quick renumbering, we come now to Episode #076. It didn’t start out as an all-feedback episode, but that’s how it wound up. The best part is, we had such good feedback from our listeners it made an entire show. As it also happens, most of our discussion revolves around digital mode communication for amateur radio using Linux. We touch on D-Star, Echolink, IRLP, Allstar Link and more. If you’re interested in using computers to connect to your radios and talk around the world using a multitude of digital technologies, including VoIP, this is the episode for you.

Please keep those donations coming in for our Hamvention Fund, if you’re able. We want to be a part of Hamvention and we hope you will be, too. Thank you for all you do.

Just as I did last month, I want to briefly provide an update on my 2012 Challenge.  My 2012 challenge is a QSO a day for each day in the calendar year.  I’m officially two months in and still successful. 

I wouldn’t say this is proving to be a difficult project.  But I do have a lot going on both in the hobby of amateur radio and outside.  As I’ve recently discussed in my blog, I’m kicking the new basement ham shack, podcast studio, home office and just general man-cave project into high gear.  After working for 8 hours hanging sheetrock, I really just want to crash…but I also want to get that contact in.  In one example, the contact was a new DX entity of Canary Island.  So I suppose it was very much worth it and I’ve gotta admit the excitement caused the aching bones to feel better.   

My QSO count for the month of February was significantly lower than in January by almost half.  While I chased a few special event stations, I didn’t do any contesting during the month and that shows in my totals.  But of course the 2012 challenge is a QSO a Day.

The breakdown is as follows: 

Additional notes of interest:

DX Stations Worked – 3

New DX Entities – 1

Total QSO’s for 2012 – 316

Total consecutive QSO days – 60

Days left in 2012 – 306

Until next time…

73 de KD0BIK