AmateurRadio.com

GB4LBC has now shut down, we’ve amassed quite a few contacts over this weekend to add to our haul from last weekend as well. The loan of the old shop from St Bees lifeboat was very much appreciated by all of us that got involved. I managed to get a couple of 2m FM contacts from the top of the headland before the battery died on me and fired up the Monday night intercontinental special (loosely based on just about every other vertical but with one exception – It wasn’t resonant on the band it should have been). I’ll check it with the analyser shortly to see what I’ve managed to do with it but even when it was tuned by the autotuner and at an awful efficiency no doubt I managed a couple of DX contacts to add into the book.

Over the next few days I’ll be collating all the log sheets we have and totting up all the contacts. I’ve got quite a few to do. We seemed to be more popular than we bargained, so it’ll take a bit of effort to sort out the QSL cards and awards.

Norman, G7MRL, Noel, G4PEW, Liz M6EPW and myself will undoubtedly be back next year and hopefully colin, M0XSD can do better with his lurgy timing with our muddy antenna installation and modest transceivers to do battle with high winds and rain as well as frozen soil so thanks to everyone who answered our calls, forgave our ability to forget your callsign, call you by someone else’s name or listened without switching off to us repeating ourselves with the same facts and figures that we’d handed out in the previous over. You’ve all made our 2 weekends of SOS Radio week enjoyable and most of all memorable.

GB4LBC going QRT

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

Series Five Episode Two of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Earth Station For Sale
• New 60m web site
• ARRL achieves fund raising goal
• KG4, Guantanamo Bay
• UK amateurs experience echo phenomenon
• Danish presidency of EU callsign
• Student D-STAR satellite to launch in 2012
• The new VHF-UHF band plan - 4m in Ireland
• QRP to the ISS
• Special callsigns for UK radio amateurs during 2012
• New Clubs and Training section for RSGB website
• Cuban Amateur Radio regulations modified
• Call of Titanic will go out again

Your feedback and Colin (M6BOY) reviews the G-QRP Limerick Sudden 40m Receiver.

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Harvey Adkins, K1ZWK, was found dead in his apartment in New Haven, CT this week of apparent natural causes.  Adkins was first licensed in 2000, shortly after retiring from over 30 years of service at Lockheed Martin.

“He was an engineer’s engineer.”  said Walter Roomberg, a former co-worker.  ”Any challenge you placed in front of him he would attack with vigor.  He was always trying to do “one better” than anyone else and would always succeed.”

“After he retired, Harvey was bored and needed something to do.  He knew about amateur radio for years, but dismissed it as too simplistic.” said Roger Smith, a local ham friend.   “At work he was on complex high tech multi-million dollar defense projects.”

We spoke with Adkins’ ex-wife, Mildred.  ”We divorced in 2010.  He had always been successful all his life but was failing at this new thing he was working on with his radios called QRP.  It became an obsession and he was failing at it.  It took such a toll on our marriage that I had to call it quits after forty years.” she said sadly.

Adkins excelled in amateur radio radio shortly after getting his ticket.  He acquired Worked all States on four bands within his first three months.  DXCC was achieved a few months later and within three years he was approaching the honor roll.

“Harvey operated all the modes at that time, except for CW and some of the slower digital modes.”  stated Smith.  ”He had to learn the code in order to get his license, which he did easily, but he had no interest in CW.  He saw it as slow, simplistic, and too low tech, and enjoyed the ease with which he could conduct a conversation with other modes.  In additional to phone ragchewing and DXing, he was doing all kinds of cool stuff like EME and writing his own DSP software, using the engineering capabilities he developed in his professional career.  ’Life’s too short for CW!’ he would say. “

Another club member, Elmer Keglovits, gave a similar profile of Adkins.  ”He was the Renaissance man of amateur radio.  He did it all.  Some modes he briefly did but found too mundane or just not that challenging.  PSK31 was one of those modes.  He tried it for a short time but found the nature of it, macros and all, to be a bit mindless and boring.  But he would never put down the mode, and if you ever asked him about PSK at a meeting, he could immediately tell you exactly how it worked and even draw on the whiteboard the modulation technique.  It was the same with CW.  He learned it to get his license and felt he knew enough about it, and moved on to other more interesting things, for him.  He wanted to try everything in amateur radio and learn the underlying technical details.  He didn’t find it necessary or worthwhile to dwell on modes that got in the way of his ‘journey of discovery’ as he often called it.”

“One night he was talking about his achievements at our monthly club meeting and someone chuckled and said that anyone could do what he did on QRO and phone and that if he wanted to be a real ham he should do all CW.  Something snapped in Harvey that night.” said Smith.  ”Throughout his professional career he was accustomed to being recognized for everything.  He had thought he had reached the pinnacle of amateur radio achievement and was insulted, but also challenged by this.”

Adkins became introverted and isolated after the encounter, Rogers explained.  ”After that night he changed.  He studied and practiced CW again and increased from a rusty 5 words per minute to 30 in a matter of two or three weeks.  It was amazing.  He made some contacts on the air, but he was frustrated as it seemed too easy to bang out quick QSOs, and he felt too encumbered to ragchew like he did on phone.  On the other hand, once enjoyable phone operation didn’t interest him anymore with the mode considered tainted, in his mind.  That’s when he vowed to go all CW and QRP.  He sold all of his gear at Dayton later and proudly purchased and built an Elecraft K1 and began operating a relatively spartan station compared to his previous setup.  But for some reason he just couldn’t make a contact, any contact, at all with the rig.”

Rogers had offered to help Adkins determine what was wrong with his new radio, but Adkins steadfastly refused, seeing it as a failure if he had to seek help.  ”At that point our relationship deteriorated.” said Rogers.  ”He had gone for about four months without being able to make a CW QRP contact.  He bragged in an email to the QRP-L reflector about diving into the QRP CW lifestyle and how much he was enjoying it, but unfortunately was banned for life when he mentioned a Rockmite that he had acquired on eBay.”

The ban from QRP-L added to his angst and focused him even more, but his downfall was beginning.  He began gaining weight, his marriage fell apart apart and after a messy divorce funds were limited so he had to move into an apartment where no outside antennas were allowed.  This fueled the obsession, with the necessity of stealth antennas adding to the challenge.  Two years later and fifty pounds heavier he still had not made a QRP CW contact.

“Local hams could hear his signal very weakly, but no one dared work him.”  said Rogers.  ”Knowing Harvey, we didn’t want to ruin his challenge.  We weren’t rare DX so it probably would have made him go over the edge if someone a mile away worked him.”

But Harvey was already going over the edge.  Analysis of files on his computer showed that he had created an anonymous email alias and fake callsign and was frantically emailing QRP-L.org, the other main QRP “watering hole”, for suggestions.  Unfortunately his emails were HTML formatted which was forbidden by the reflector, and his emails were silently discarded without anyone seeing them or responding.  The lack of response which mimicked his on air struggle was apparently more than Adkins could bare.

After nearly three years of no QSOs, Adkins was found dead in his apartment full of Elecraft rigs, Rockmites, straight keys, and various homebrew stealth antennas.  Roger Smith acquired all of the rigs and coordinated an estate sale at the request of estranged relatives who declined to be involved.  ”Each rig was modified.  There was a resistor pad on the output of each one, reducing the power output.  Apparently five watts was too much power for him, or he thought someone would up the ante on him again with an even lower power challenge.  All of his rigs were putting out less than a milliwatt.  It was very strange.”

No services are planned for Adkins, however local amateurs are planning to honor him by acquiring his ashes and compressing them into an Altoids tin and storing them at their clubhouse in New Haven.  Harvey Adkins was 74 and is survived by two children and one grandchild.

Well, that has to be the longest day I’ve ever spent at the mic. Both Norman, G7MRL and myself have been at the coalface from about 8am. The morning sun was just starting to peep through the fells and made for a lovely sight. The bonus was that the ground that had been boggy and muddy last week was stiff with the hard morning frost and it made setting up the mast much easier.

The St Bees lifeboat station manager has been so helpful and not at all concerned by our muddy footprints that have given away our movements on his clean floor. We’ll need to clean it up properly tomorrow afternoon.

Conditions weren’t as good as last weekend. The band seemed to have a lot of static in the morning and QRM at lunchtime followed by bedlam in the afternoon with stations on top of each other on 40m. 20m was contest town and we only managed 1 contact before be gave it up as a bad idea. 17m, 12m and 10m gave a few contacts including Greece on 10m FM, which was nice.

Both Norman and myself had a tiring day and at 3pm headed back to 40m for a few more QSO’s. We’re back on the air tomorrow although I’m on home duties in the morning but Noel and Norman will be on in the morning. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to use my 6m 5/8 vertical.

Anyway, although it was a tiring day we couldn’t have filled 5 pages in the log without everyone coming back to our CQ call. Without those patient people who  helped us when the conditions were against us. The number of stations that wanted our little extra award certainly helped get the numbers up. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that GB1LBC will be in big demand tomorrow after Bill had to call it a day with feeder troubles today.

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

Ham radio is an activity that’s been around for over a hundred years and boasts millions of adherents around the world. It should come as no surprise that an institution so ancient and so compelling would harbor a few mysteries.

During the early development of radio the activity was particularly attractive to a certain kind of fellow, one with a keen interest in science and industry and often a fellow whose station in life was a cut or two above that of the ordinary man. The formation of clubs and societies, recondite in nature and hidden within the rank and file of this adventurous lot of explorers led to more than a few secrets.

That much you might know. What you probably don’t know is that a few of these clandestine organizations remain active inside the hobby to this very day.

I’m not personally a member of any of these groups nor do I have first-hand knowledge of who they are or what they do on a daily basis. But from time to time I hear from some of these secret members who drop bombshells on me that strain credulity.

I think they’ve given me a few of these nuggets to distribute because I’m an oddball. Really, compared to other ham radio bloggers I rarely over-hype the hobby and pretend to be its personal spokesman as has become common among those intent on making “X” number of contacts a day and who extol only the virtues while never telling the whole story of what it’s like to be a radio amateur.

That’s what I like to think anyway.

More’s the likely they know I’m close friends with W6OBB and they’re looking for a higher profile outlet in exposing the reclusive activities of the Lodges and are using me to get that information to him. In any event, on occasion a package arrives at my shack, delivered by a personal courier as happened just a few days ago.

This time the package included a short tale of something that happened 35 years ago and it included instructions to share it with my readers, which I’m doing today…

It seems that back in the late 1970’s a distinguished scientist and radio amateur whose name must not be spoken had developed a rather amazing antenna that performed well at high frequencies. It’s precise construction remains a secret to this very day but imagine if you will a six-foot long tube whose diameter was about two-inches. A coil of wire was wrapped around almost the entire outer body and inside there were active components, including a small pump as most of the tube was filled with a Noble gas compound that periodically required refilling.

To simply say that this antenna worked well would be a serious understatement.

Reports indicated that the antenna was highly effective without a tuner across all of the HF amateur bands. Placed horizontally or vertically in the corner of a room or the attic it was an order of magnitude more effective than any directive array installed at 150-feet.

In a nutshell, it was The One, the killer antenna that the prophets had written about.

This would revolutionize the world of HF communications. No longer would the fellow with the 100-acre antenna farm and California Kilowatt rule the Honor Roll. Now even the lowliest QRPer with his milliwatt homebrew designed gear would be on equal footing with the millionaire.

In essence, the new antenna would instantly turn the 99 percent into the 1 percent and at least when it came to hardware, there would be no more elite amateur radio stations.

Plans were made to manufacture the small wonder. This scientist/inventor wanted to sell the antenna for US $1000 and he fully expected to eventually sell one million of them making him the first amateur radio manufacturer with $1 billion dollars of revenue.

He tried to keep these plans as secret as possible for obvious reasons so he never patented the antenna which would have announced it to the world. His belief was that the gas compound required was so exotic that even if someone managed to reverse engineer the design, the compound would remain the only edge he needed.

The first five-thousand units were assembled in a large, vacant building somewhere in New Mexico.

It was about that time that the inventor discovered that his secret had leaked when he got a call with an offer to purchase the design – which he refused – and he continued to build inventory. But the phone calls and strange contacts never ceased – all warning him to sell the design for the antenna or risk losing it all.

He underestimated the threat and continued in the pursuit undaunted. Until one night when he was visited by four members of one of these secret societies who explained to him that ham radio was bigger than he and his design. And that his antenna while extremely clever would ruin the hobby by allowing those with the most basic equipment to compete on equal footing with those who had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and antenna farms.

Equal wasn’t good nor was it even “fair” he was told.

Unmoved by their threats, he stood to leave so they grabbed him, pulled a covering over his head and tossed him into the back of a dark colored sedan and drove off into the desert where he was never seen again.

The inventory of over five thousand antennas was moved by truck to a landfill outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico where they were first crushed and then buried. Three feet of concrete cover the burial site and while a few of the local hams had some knowledge of this activity, the years have created doubts as to its veracity and scope, leading some to conclude that this was just another urban legend.

But I know better and now so do you.

I can tell you this because the inventor had an assistant.

A fellow radio ham who hid in the shadows when the abduction took place and who watched this all unfold.

And at 85 years of age, he figures there’s no reason to take this story to his grave…

Jeff Davis, KE9V, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Indiana, USA.

A contact from 23 years ago

A QSL card arrived  Friday not an usual thing for me but this one was almost a quarter century in coming!! The card was in an envelope on it's own most of the time QSL cards arrive in a stack of 50 or so from the buro. The card was from Louis N8LA and on the back of the card he apologized for the delay in sending me his QSL up to this point all was normal, then he thanked me for my QSL card. WHAT a QSL card I
have not sent out QSL cards (all electronic cards now) for over 10 years. Now I was just a bit confused...maybe this was a mistake....he must had copied a call wrong and sent me a card......Then I look a closer look at the front of the card..... this card was from 1989!!! To say the

The back of the card

The station 23 years ago

 least I was shocked. On the back of the card Louis told me he no longer lives in Michigan but St.Louis now. At the time he was running the Ten Tec argonaut 515 QRP at 3 watts. The antenna was 80m inverted V at 40 ft. I looked up Louis on QRZ.com and he still has the same rig the 515. He is an avid  QRPer with memberships with MI QRP # M-0078; QRP ARCI # 4508; GQRP # 5048; NAQCC # 2358; Flying Pigs # 1974; SKCC # 4327; Fists # 13757; 10-10 # 16161, VP # 868; Member of St. Louis QRP Society, Morse Telegraph Club, and ARCH Radio Club. I had hoped I kept my logbook from back then as I wanted to find N8LA in the log. I did find the log and he was my 26th contact in my ham radio adventures. I had  been licensed for just over a month at the time. My code would have been around 5-8 WPM as nerves would had play a roll in my coping. My rig was the Icom 735 the antenna was the Cushcraft R4, Bencher paddle along side the Kenwood AT-230 tuner. Now how cool is that!!

The log (N8LA at top of log) and QSL

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. 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].