AmateurRadio.com

I built the Kits and Parts RF Amplifier. Unfortunately it didn’t work.

When power is applied the meter in my bench power supply reads 0.01A. As soon as the Propeller beacon starts the current draw increases to 0.03A (at 8V). But the needle on my QRP power meter, which shows more than 25mW from the barefoot Propeller, doesn’t budge.

I don’t understand it. It’s a simple enough circuit, there isn’t anything to go wrong. Unfortunately I find these kit construction failures too demoralizing. I struggle with my vision and shaky hands just to build the board. Desoldering and faultfinding are beyond me at the moment. If I do discover the cause of the problem it’s something really obvious that anyone with a normally functioning brain would spot. I think it is time for me to accept my limitations and stop attempting to do what I used to be able to do before my brain surgery. From now on if I can’t buy what I want ready to go out of the box I’ll just have to do without.

One of the enduring aspects of amateur radio is the emphasis on ‘experimentation’ and ‘homebrew’. To many people this means designing innovative circuits for their own transceivers, amps or whatever floats their boat. My area of interest is in collecting either bent wire, off cuts of cable and odd shaped plastic parts scavenged from just about any skip or rubbish bin I can find. Some people like to call this antenna experimentation. My XYL likes to call it ‘That junk in the garage’. I like to call it my continued education. Below is a teaser!

The latest in my armoury of ‘stuff I’ve done’ will never help anyone chase DX or bust a pile up for a little activated square or something else. But it will give me another band to work with when I’m away from home, either on top of a summit, at the mother in laws or operating portable in the summer Es season (I say summer because the top of St Bees head isn’t very welcoming in the winter as I found out whilst operating GB4LBC).

My take on the 5/8 wave 6m vertical originally published by the UKSMG by Mike, G3JVL took a little over a weekend and was made relatively cheaply from scrounged resources. I enjoyed the job so much I’ve added a little project page here which I hope you enjoy. Feel free to try it out yourself and improve on the design path I took, let me know how you got on with the manufacturing of what should be a nice project (that can also be cheap if you’re scrounging skills are up to scratch)

One of the enduring aspects of amateur radio is the emphasis on ‘experimentation’ and ‘homebrew’. To many people this means designing innovative circuits for their own transceivers, amps or whatever floats their boat.

My area of interest is in collecting either bent wire, off cuts of cable and odd shaped plastic parts scavenged from just about any skip or rubbish bin I can find. Some people like to call this antenna experimentation. My XYL likes to call it ‘That junk in the garage’. I like to call it my continued education. Below is a teaser!

The latest in my armoury of ‘stuff I’ve done’ will never help anyone chase DX or bust a pile up for a little activated square or something else. But it will give me another band to work with when I’m away from home, either on top of a summit, at the mother in laws or operating portable in the summer Es season (I say summer because the top of St Bees head isn’t very welcoming in the winter as I found out whilst operating GB4LBC).

My take on the 5/8 wave 6m vertical originally published by the UKSMG by Mike, G3JVL took a little over a weekend and was made relatively cheaply from scrounged resources. I enjoyed the job so much I’ve added a little project page here which I hope you enjoy.

Feel free to try it out yourself and improve on the design path I took, let me know how you got on with the manufacturing of what should be a nice project (that can also be cheap if you’re scrounging skills are up to scratch)

The other night, I tried uploading some QSOs to Log of the World.  I was unsuccessful as my certificate had expired.  I filed for a new one, got everything working and uploaded my latest batch of QSOs without a problem.  I try to do this once a month or once every couple of weeks.

Out of curiosity, I went back to the LOTW site tonight to do a little math.  I have a LOTW QSL return rate of 19.8 percent.  I have no idea as to whether that’s good, bad or average.

I went over to eQSL and did the same math – 19.27 percent – slightly lower.  Frankly, that surprised me.  I think we can all agree that eQSL has less “hoops” to jump through in order to get it working.  I am not criticizing LOTW when I say that – I’m just pointing out what I think is fact.  Although personally, I have not had any insurmountable LOTW problems, I have heard horror stories from other Hams who had, and gave up – running and screaming into the night.  eQSL may not be as secure, I don’t know – but it does seem easier to use. 

I would have thought (there goes that “conventional wisdom” again!) that being easier to use would also translate to ” greater participation and use”.  I guess not.

Tonight is the 80 Meter QRP Fox hunt.  Dave N0IT in Missouri is not feeling all that great, so he has swapped with John K4BAI.  So the Foxes will be John in Georgia and Jim K9JWV in Utah.  “Conventional wisdom” is telling me that from New Jersey on 80 Meters, I should be able to work John fairly easily and that Jim may be a stretch, if I hear him at all.

We’ll see.

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

I’m a few days late in getting this posted.  I wanted to provide a quick update on the progress of my 2012 challenge.  As I blogged about recently, I set my 2012 challenge to be a QSO a day throughout the year.  I’m happy to report I successfully closed out the month of January with a QSO logged each day for a total of 205 logged QSO’s total for the month. 

The breakdown is as follows: 

I’m hoping as the year progresses to operate more SSB and also PSK.  But with over 540 JT65 Q’s logged since I learned of this mode, I’m still having a lot of fun with JT65.

I’ve also recently given my main KDØBIK.com website a new look by using a  WordPress theme install.  While I’m keeping this blog site, as well as my SOTA blog and the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast websites all separate, the clean look of the WordPress theme just better ties everything together. Also, it allows me to essentially update the site from just about anywhere and even when on my iPad. 

Finally, another plug for my podcast.  I did release episode 51 back in late January.  As I’ve done the past several years, the January episode is devoted to amateur radio related New Year’s resolutions.  I provided several ideas in an attempt to help motivate and inspire.  While we are almost to the half-way point in February, in my opinion it is never too late to set a goal.  Especially if that goal allows you to have fun in the hobby of amateur radio.  

Until next time,

73 de KDØBIK

Introduction:

• They barely get the introductions done, and Richard is off on a tangent about the great hobo migration in Texas. All this just  proves Larry Bushey of the Going Linux podcast is right: LHS rambles. More on this in a moment.

Announcements:

• Richard and Russ discuss a disparaging comment Mitt Romney made six years ago about ham radio operators. He’s since reversed his position, at least publicly.
• Larry Bushey says LHS rambles in episode 160 of the Going Linux podcast. You know, Larry, you’re right.

Topics:

• Terminal emulation programs for Linux.
• If you’re interested in running packet radio with your Linux computer, you’ll likely need a terminal emulation program to communicate with your terminal node controller(TNC). There are several Linux tools you can use:
  • setserial is a command-line program designed to set and/or report the configuration information associated with a serial port.
  • microcom is a very basic terminal emulation program. Tip: pressing Control-\ will access the menu.
  • minicom is a menu-driven communications program. It emulates ANSI and VT102 terminals, has a dialing directory and auto zmodem download.
    • At the command line, type “minicom -s” to begin configuration. The first time you run “minicom -s”, you’ll probably want to run it as root so you have write access to the configuration file.
    • The first serial port in Linux is called ttyS0.
    • Most things will work at 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity bit, and 1 stop bit.
    • Text based modem control program.
    • Runs in a terminal screen
    • It’s useful for other serial port tasks, too.
    • Ctrl-A followed by W turns on line wrap, so you won’t have long lines truncated.
    • Install on a Debian-based system by using “apt-get install minicom” or use Synaptic.
    • Press Ctrl-A then X to exit.
  • GTK Term is a terminal emulator written with GTK+.
    • Gets added to the launch menu during installation, but with the name “Serial Port Terminal”, not “GTK Term”.
    • Has a nice looking interface.
    • Easy access to the serial port settings.
  • CuteCom is another graphical terminal emulator, with split input and output screens.

Feedback:

• Sean, AC0VD, writes about http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com. Thanks, Sean. That’s pretty much where the whole badger thing on LHS began. Sean also likes the howto article Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.
• Ilan Rabinovich, of the Southern California Linux Expo, SCALE, sent a voice mail asking that we play promotions for the event. Unfortunately, we’re too late with releasing the LHS episodes to promote SCALE in time. We’ll try to do better next year.
• Richard has posted an article Making Yourself Clear on the Radio, and it received a couple of comments:
  • Tim liked the article and agrees that talking slower helps.
  • Lief, KC8RWR, notes that codes and ciphers are only prohibited when intended to hide the meaning of a transmission.
• We received a donation from Walter J. Thank you, Walter!
• John, KF6EFG, asks what was the open source podcast mentioned in a recent episode. We don’t remember, John, but it may have been any of these:
  • ICQ podcast
  • Tux Radar
  • Linux Outlaws
  • The Linux Link Tech Show (TLLTS)
  • Going Linux
  • Mintcast
  • To answer the second part of John’s question, neither Russ nor Richard will be at the Indiana LinuxFest. If you would like to be the LHS ambassador there, please let us know.
• The Dalton Hamfest in Dalton, Georgia, will have an LHS ambassador on duty! Look for the LHS booth on February 25th, 2012.
• If you’d like your podcast included in the Black Sparrow Media empire, send us an email!

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:

• To be added.