AmateurRadio.com

Time sure flies. We are fast approaching the fifth anniversary of the end of Morse code testing for U.S. amateur radio licensing. Prior to February 23rd 2007, an applicant to the amateur radio service that was interested in world wide communication needed not just exhibit a smattering of radio theory, but was also required to demonstrate a deftness in the manly art of telegraphy. A lot of predictions were made, from the death spiral of ham radio into the swirling cesspool of citizens band, to an actual heaven on earth brought about by a genius class, who, once freed from the shackles of a five word per minute test, would be able to deliver ham radio to the promised land. So how did it wash out? It turns out everyone was a little bit right.

A lot of new blood was brought into the hobby, in fact the number of U.S. licensees recently broke the 700,000 mark. Among our new brothers (and sisters!) are some really sharp children of the computer age. I’m of the era when the internet was just a clever system of pneumatic tubes, so I look forward to picking the brains of these nerds. More operators also bring different points of view that make for interesting QSO’s. I’d even call some ex CB’ers true radio men.

The floodgates also let in a few mopes. Five years later many are still on their HT talking about getting on the HF bands. Most of those that made it really aren’t much of a threat to the airwaves though, feeding their signal into a slinky just isn’t likely to cause an international incident. We shouldn’t throw the babies out with the bath water though. Microphone shyness, or other commitments shouldn’t be construed as a lack of dedication to the radio art. My own on air blunders have been met only with kindness. A warm hand on the shoulder can lead these guys down the right path. Ah the true path.

So what about CW? Alive and kicking! To the uninformed Morse’s code probably seems rearward looking, like a trip to the renaissance fair, or perhaps a route 66 tinplate sign hanging in the garage. Of course CW has a heritage and it’s traditions, but it’s beauty isn’t trapped in history. Just because 32,000 years ago one of our forebears recorded the glories of a hunt on the walls of a cave, it certainly doesn’t make capturing a likeness with pencil and paper any less lovely. CW gives the operator not just the chance to buy something, but the chance to be something. CW is the mode of craftsmanship. When Tut’s tomb was prized open, the world wasn’t admiring the desicated bones or the incestuous bloodlines of the boyhood king. It was (and still is ) in awe of the craftsmanship of the workmen that filled that time capsule. I don’t expect Morse telegraphy, or even ham radio, to stoke the furnace in everybody’s loins, but Marconi’s gift gives every ham the chance to craft signals that will still be coursing through the aether long after the four winds have reduced the pyramids to the finest powder. To me that’s pretty darned cool.

Tom Bruzan, AB9NZ, is a special contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Illinois, USA.

“CQ, CQ, Panama Canal.”

What? Is he kidding? Is that some kind of special event station?

You might hear some strange QSO’s on the air this year as hams work to earn the DXCC Diamond Challenge, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the DXCC award. To earn the award you have to contact 100 or more of the countries that were on the first DXCC list 75 years ago.

Many of the countries from 1937 no longer in exist. That creates some interesting challenges when pursuing this award. The ARRL has a list of current entities to represent former countries from 1937 on their website. Work Ethiopia to get credit for Abyssinia. For the former Belgian Congo, you can work Democratic Republic of the Congo (9Q), Burundi (9U) or Rwanda (9X). How easy is that! The city of Kaliningrad (RF2), which is its own DXCC entity today but politically part of Russia, gives you credit for 1937 Germany, when it was known as Konigsberg. There are some oddities in the list.

My personal favorite is the Canal Zone (KZ5), which of course is now part of Panama. To qualify for the CZ credit, you have to work an Panamanian (HP) station that is within 8 kilometers of the canal.

How would that work? Let’s You might try . . .”CQ, CQ, Panama Canal within 8 KM”…. Or “CQ HP

This is one recent phone contact

ME: QRZ, QRZ HP only.

[I’m thinking. Maybe I’ll get lucky.]

HP Station: HI OM UR 59 here, Name is Ralf. BTU.

[ Hmm…So far, so good…]

ME: Thanks for coming back to me Ralf. What is your exact QTH? Are you within 8 KM of the canal? Over

HP Ralf: What canal? UR 59 hr too. Over.

[I’m thinking maybe Ralf is really in Honduras(HR) or he needs a map.]

ME: The Panama Canal, You know, the big ditch where all the boats go. BTU Ralf

HP Ralf: Oh that canal. I don’t know. I haven’t looked lately. Does that matter? BTW, WX is blah, blah, blah. Rig here is . . .blah, blah, blah. Antenna is blah, blah, blah. Do you want my Grid Square? How about you? Over.

(Obviously Ralf missed the e-mail. Let’s cut to the chase Ralf]

ME: That’s great Ralf. Yes its for a new DXCC award.

HP Ralf: Man, I never heard of that one! That’s some crazy award. I don’t do kilometers, how many feet is that?

[ARGHH! OK, maybe we are getting somewhere at last.]

ME: Its about 26,200 feet. Over

HP Ralf: Sorry OM, there was some bad QRM that time. A lot of guys are calling me like I’m some rare DX all of a sudden. Say again, how many feet is that?

[Panic is setting in.]

ME: 26,200. 26 Two zero zero.

HP Ralf: That is a lot of feet dude. Don’t think I have a tape measure that long. Do you mean from the center of the canal?

[Getting desperate.]

ME: Can you just estimate?

HP Ralf You mean guess? I guess so.

ME: Cool, Good enough for me. Got you in the log. Thanks Ralf. 73

You don’t need confirmations, its on the honor system. You can find the rules at

http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-diamond-dxcc-challenge

A list of the entities and the corresponding countries today is available on the ARRL web site at:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Diamond%20DXCC/DXCC75_Entity%20List%20TABLE_1_3x.pdf

Good Luck and have fun.

73,

Ron, AE5NO

Ron Litt, K5HM, is a special contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The subject of this blog post (#occupyhamshack) relates to a new Twitter hash tag which started up a few weeks ago.  A Twitter hash tag is typically used within a Twitter Tweet or message and is commonly used as a search term.  Depending on the Twitter client you use, you can add columns which will automatically list any tweet showing the particular hash tag.  Other common amateur radio hash tags are #hamr #hamradio #arrl #dx #sota.  The hash tag #occupyhamshack was started by David Kozinn, K2DBK and it’s gained in popularity.  Check out David’s blog site here.

While social media is not a replacement for amateur radio, I’m pleased to see amateur radio gaining a large presence in social media circles.  I’m finding more and more hams becoming members of these various sites and the ability to share knowledge is becoming a power tool.  I also believe it is helping to introduce the magic of amateur radio through these media platforms. 

If you haven’t joined and participated in social media, I strongly encourage it.  You can follow me on the platforms I frequent by clicking the icons in the upper right-hand corner in the section titled “Follow Me”. 

Now go #occupyhamshack and get on the air…

Until next time…

73 de KDØBIK

Jerry Taylor, KD0BIK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. He is the host of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast. Contact him at [email protected].

This afternoon when I checked my email there was a very interesting email from the ARRL. In June of this year QST is going digital!! Well almost they are still going to offer their paper addition but ARRL members will also have access (free of charge) to the QST digital version. The digital version will have some content that is only offered in the digital layout along with videos and hyper-links. Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember back in August of 2011 I posted about Monitoring Times digital addition. They were offering a digital only subscription at a cheaper price than the paper version. I went for it and well...it was the reason the alarm bells went off
when I read my email from the ARRL's regarding the introduction of a digital version of QST.  I have to admit I have had the digital version of Monitoring Times for 5 months now and well this digital thing sounds very sci-fi and geeky...BUT......it just has not worked out for me.  For example on December 17th I was emailed the new Monitoring times issue.....it's still in my Hotmail in box a month later. It's almost time for the next issue!!! There sure are some cool things about the digital issue with the hyper-links and instant emailing feedback to articles.
I have come to the conclusion there is nothing like the paper version. There is something to say for pulling out a periodical when you have a spare minute. With the digital version I found this very hard to do. It's not easy to roll up a laptop or Kindle and toss it in the glove box of the car. I think QST has the right idea offering both for the same price and not making you chose between the two. I am looking forward to June and see what this digital version has to add to the paper version.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

At our local radio club meeting this week, I did a presentation on amateur radio operating awards. The emphasis was on the most common awards: Worked All States (WAS), Worked All Continents (WAC), DX Century Club (DXCC) and VHF/UHF Century Club (VUCC).

I talked a bit about how to obtain a QSL card for written confirmation of  a radio contact. As I discussed using the QSL Bureau, it became clear that this is the kind of thing that a new ham might not learn on their own. In fact, they might not know this even exists.

The “Buro”, as it is often called on CW, is really two separate systems: The Outgoing QSL Bureau and the Incoming QSL Bureau. To use the Outgoing QSL Bureau, you need to be an ARRL member and send your outgoing cards to ARRL HQ. They are forwarded on from there to the other country and ultimately to the other amateur. See the Outgoing QSL Bureau information on the ARRL web site for the full story.

The Incoming QSL Bureau delivers cards coming in from other countries. This work is handled by various radio clubs, organized by call area. You do not need to be an ARRL member to use the incoming service. You can find the incoming QSL bureau for your call area here on the ARRL web site. My callsign is KØNR, so I use the WØ QSL Bureau which has this web site: http://www.zeroburo.org/  The  WØ QSL Bureau is operated by the Mississippi Valley DX/Contest Club. Thanks, Guys!

Now here is the important part:

If you have worked any DX stations, you may have QSL cards waiting for you at the buro. You should supply your QSL bureau a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope, which they will use to send you any cards that are waiting.

Look up your Incoming QSL Bureau and follow their specific instructions concerning supplying them with envelopes.

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, 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].

Remember last week’s E-letter and podcast, when I mentioned that the number one priority here at Handihams would be to fix the website? That time has come, and here is the reason why:
Typically on Fridays I concentrate on producing new audio lectures for our licensing classes. Fridays are also a good time to catch up on loose ends that have collected during the week. Doing website updates is generally a little bit easier on Fridays because I know that I will be logging into FTP in order to put the audio I have produced onto the website anyway, so why not do other web updates while I am at it?
Well, last Friday proved to be a bit unnerving. As I had mentioned before, we had been having serious issues with the performance of the website Handiham.org that had caused pages to either be unavailable or load so slowly that many web browsers would simply timeout. Many of you could not reach our files or would only be able to download a partial file. Needless to say, this situation simply cannot go on. Not only is it bad service for our members, but it can eat up a lot of my time as I try to work my way through the many tech support complaints. Sometimes I have a way to work around it and help the person get the files they need and other times I don’t. In any case, Friday was not a good day for Handiham.org because it went down early in the morning and was off-line most of the day. I contacted the hosting service and they began to work on the problem which was on one particular machine in Utah.
Late on Friday the website did return to service. During the outage, it was difficult for me to work since I had to do everything that I could off-line and only later on plan to FTP the files to the website. Of course any members who needed files during the day were out of luck. Since we have had issues extending over months (though nothing quite this bad), we had already procured server space with Network Solutions, a respected company with which we already had a long-term relationship as our domain name registrar. I decided to start putting some serious effort into building a new beta website that would be the eventual replacement for the current one, but I had to step this effort up several notches over this past weekend.
When something like this happens, you really have two choices. You can either whine or complain about how awful things are and make excuses or you can look on circumstances as an opportunity to make something better. It is sort of like having your old fishing boat sink to the bottom of the lake. Yes, you miss your old fishing boat with all its dents and barnacles. On the other hand, you have an opportunity to get a new fishing boat and it can be exactly the kind of boat you have always wanted. A website is like that. We have had the old website for quite a few years now, and it has served us pretty well. However, over the years it has become cluttered with barnacles – too many links and just too much confusing stuff. It has become a little bit too dated and clunky to be useful, especially to newcomers who may be happening on it for the very first time.
Our opportunity is to build a new website that is easier to administer using Drupal 7, and to incorporate some much-needed changes. One new feature is the addition of a “Skip to Content” link near the top of the page so that blind users who are reading the page with screen reading software can skip listening to all of the menu links and go straight to the main page content. Another feature is a more pleasing view for sighted users without making the website inaccessible to blind users. And, of course, we are simplifying the menu structure to make the site less cluttered.
Our choice of Drupal for a content management system goes back quite a number of years when it was originally suggested by long-time Handiham volunteer Phil Temples, K9HI. We have been using Drupal 5.X and for the past few years 6.X. Drupal 7 has been under development for a couple of years and I have been testing it on my private website for quite a long time, watching as it matured. I feel that the time has come to make the change as long as we are redoing the website anyway. The new version of Drupal incorporates many features that had to be manually added to the old versions. Many administrative tasks are easier. We will eventually need to redirect Handiham.org to the new site, and, because of what we experienced last Friday, are going to try to do this as soon as possible.
As you might expect, there are going to be some problems. Any time you make a big website migration like this, coupled with a major redesign, there are going to be some things that might not work correctly or perhaps will be missing or not work at all. This will all take time to iron out. One thing that will have to be done is that we will have to re–register all of our users. I know this will be a major inconvenience for everyone, but it is really the only way to update the database on the new server with a clean installation. I think the strategy needs to be developed on exactly how we will do this, and I welcome user suggestions. I do have a data dump with e-mail addresses and usernames, so we could send out a blanket e-mail when the new site is ready. However, one concern I have about that strategy is that we may get an overwhelming number of hits on the new website as users try to create their new accounts. It may be better to use a targeted strategy of mailing perhaps 25 users at a time to even out the load. Anyone who has Drupal experience or who has administered a website is welcome to contact me directly with their comments.
The old website will still sit on the old server in Utah, but once the name Handiham.org is redirected, it will become unreachable. I will then take steps to reactivate our other Handiham domain name, Handiham.net. The old site would be available there for some period of time.
One problem that I anticipate is that the Handiham mailing lists with the Handiham.org domain name will cease to function. These two lists are the Handiham Radio Club list and the Handiham Volunteer Instructors list. The Wednesday E-letter list and the Friday New Audio Notification list will not be affected because they are hosted at Freelists. I may be able to reconfigure the club and volunteer lists with the.net address, but I would also welcome suggestions on how we should proceed with these lists.
Some of our users may be concerned about how this will affect the two Handiham Internet remote base stations. Neither station is connected in any way with the web hosting service and both are separately hosted on their own dedicated computers on Courage Center properties. Therefore, neither station will be affected in any way. We do update the remote base station status daily on the website, and this update will be continued on the new website as well.
Another change that will be implemented is the availability of more materials in DAISY format. This new format will replace some of the older MP3 audio for our blind members. This advancement will allow for easier navigation through the material for our blind Handiham members. This does not mean that we are moving away from human readers, so please don’t worry that you will never hear a human voice again on Handiham.org! Some materials, if they are available in computer text in the first place, are most easily converted to DAISY format that incorporates a voice produced by the computer software. Other materials are more properly and efficiently read by a human reader and can be imported into DAISY by special software. Our original production will still be done by Audacity so that we can more easily edit the audio and still produce four track cassette recordings for the Handiham members who need them during 2012. Of course Audacity remains our editor of choice for the Friday audio lectures and for the Wednesday podcast. As before, the free podcast will remain available to the general public in the iTunes store.
We are hoping that the transition will go smoothly, but you know as well as I do that a project like this is pretty complicated and there will always be some unforeseen problems. In fact, to me it sort of feels like planning for and setting up for Field Day. You always anticipate how much fun it is going to be and you have participated in the planning process for past years and like to think that you know you are not going to forget anything this year. Naturally, when you arrive at the Field Day site and start getting everything set up that is when you find out that no one packed Styrofoam cups for the coffee and the power supply cables are still sitting in one of the club member’s basement. That is how it will be for any new project and I am not going to be surprised when things don’t work on the website. What we can do is to work together to make the new website project successful by helpful suggestions that include specific recommendations on how to fix a problem whenever possible.
So, even though this is going to be a real roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work couple of weeks, I know that we are doing the right thing. I am encouraged by the American Council of the Blind website, which also uses Drupal 7 and the Bartik theme as its public portal. I also want to thank Handiham Radio Club members and Handiham volunteers who have visited the new beta website and given me suggestions and feedback. I really appreciate your help!

Pat Tice, WA0TDA, is the manager of HANDI-HAM and a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].