AmateurRadio.com

A few days ago I recorded and made available the 50th episode of the practical amateur radio podcast.  A few hours later I started coming down with cold-like symptoms and spent a few days resting to try to get ahead of this prior to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I’m glad to report I did manage to get just slightly ahead and at least appeared to be alive and coherent.   Thank God for cold meds, chicken noodle soup and my wonderful wife. 

If you’ve been around from the beginning, you already know I started PARP in May 2008.  The 50th episode wraps up the 4th season and I truly look forward to 2012 and many, many more episodes.

Episode 50 is devoted to SOTA or Summits On The Air.  I realize I’ve recently blogged about and have also talked a lot about SOTA.  While the activity is certainly a new passion, I realize there is much, much more to the hobby.  However, based on comments I’ve received from listeners via email, Twitter and Facebook…I know many have an interest and wanted to discuss the topic so you might plan and conduct your own SOTA chasing and/or activations. 

PARP is available and you can subscribe via iTunes, Zune or stream directly from MyAmateurRadio.com.  Want to stream on the go from your favorite smart phone device?  You can do that as well from our mobile site.

Finally, as a Christmas gift to my family and I suppose to the podcast, I now own a small HD Sony video camera.  I do plan to create some supplemental video content for PARP and will also document some (perhaps) all of my SOTA activations. 

Thank you for listening. 

Until next time….

73 de KD0BIK

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].

For some reason around the Christmas season every year, I think of one of my favorite films… Evil Roy Slade. This year, I had planned to do some serious kit and homebrewing on my days off. But I managed to cut my stubby index finger while trying to fix our dishwasher. Somehow some broken glass was in the drain basket when I went feeling around. OUCH… ever try to solder and handle small parts with a wounded finger?  How about operating a straight key like I do?

So I share a clip from my buddy Mickey Rooney and his character in the movie. Hope you have a Happy Holiday!

 

Kelly McClelland, K4UPG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Myself , Julie and Oliver wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Since I didn’t want the beam lying in the grass the whole winter I did temporarely mount it on a 4m pole. I have it in a fixed position to the USA now. It’s far to low to give good performance but still it equals the vertical already in that direction. Merry Christmas everyone…

Bas, PE4BAS, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Groningen, Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

JT65 HF with webSDR

It’s cheating I know. But considering I still had my thoughts about my 5W 40m signal being received in daylight by VP8DMH Mike in Antarctica. It came across my mind that Mike could have been testing with a webSDR located in Europe. Is that possible, as JT65 is time related and internet has a bit delay. So, I would like to test it and set up JT65 with a webSDR in the USA. At the middle of the day I reported some American JT65 calls to PSK reporter. So, you cannot always believe spots via the internet. Although received by radio, the reporting station can be everywere, propagation or not! With that in mind I mailed Mike down on Antarctica, I wished to solve the mystery. Did he use a webSDR in Europe or his own receiver?

Here our small conversation: 

 

On 23/Dec 04:15, BasLev wrote:

 

> Hello Mike,

> 

> I hope you don’t mind writing you but I have something on my

> mind that I would like to solve.  I was received by your

> station at 20-12-2011 see my

> blogpost:?http://pe4bas.blogspot.com/2011/12/40m-jt65-surprise.html

> But since you were in daylight and far from the greyline this

> would be impossible in my opinion.  You also wrote??on

> QRZ.com?your equipment would not arrive before christmas.  It

> could be received by a SW receiver of course. But it could also

> be that you were listening/decoding via a webSDR?

> 

> Can you help me out with this??

Hi Bas,

 

Thanks for the mail.  My main radio is indeed on the ship, and

won’t be with me for another week or so, but I do have my FT-817

with me, and I’ve been using that for WSPR and JT-65A in the

meantime.

 

As for propagation, strange things happen down here!  We have a

suprisingly good nighttime path to the EU on 40m, even though

it’s 24-hour daylight here at the moment.  I recently did some

tests over a few days using WSPR, which I wrote about here:

http://clarkema.org/posts/2011-12/2011-12-12-propagation-videos.html

You might be interested in the video linked at the bottom of the

4th paragraph, which shows propagation from here to Europe as

night falls.

 

I did make a couple of European JT65 QSOs on teh 20th as well as

just listening, so hopefully I’ll see you in the log at some

point.

 

73,

 

— 

Mike, VP8DMH

 

P.S. my location given the pskreporter website is out of date; my

current QTH is HB64ok.

A very fast reply and amazing that I can just e-mail to someone in Antarctica. So he did receive me on his FT-817. And he even made a few QSOs to Europe. And most interesting of all he has his own blog and actually does something usefull with the WSPR data. I was really surprised and can recommend this video. It gives a nice insight in the Antarctic propagation. Anyway, e-mail still is the best way to verify if you want to be certain a station heard your signal, especially in suspicious situations. Internet can be usefull but also very misleading and that concerns not only amateurradio !!

A small JT65 cheat..

Bas, PE4BAS, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Groningen, Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

When I first got started in amateur radio (many years ago), one of the engineers that I was working with at a summer job told me “Don’t get stuck on 2 Meter FM”. At the time I was a college student and felt lucky enough to have 1) found time to pass my Novice exam, including Morse Code test, 2) found time to travel 150 miles to the regional FCC office and pass my Technician exam, and 3) scraped up enough money to buy a basic 2 Meter FM mobile rig. I was in Technician ham heaven, playing around on 2 Meter FM, both simplex and repeaters. Oh, and we had this cool thing called autopatch that let you make actual phone calls from your car. I really wasn’t worried about getting “stuck on two”.

Even though my discussions with this Old Fart Experienced Radio Amateur revealed that he didn’t see 2 Meter FM as Real Ham Radio, I could see that he had a point. Two meter FM is only small part of the ham radio universe and it would be easy to just hang out there and miss out on a lot of other things. I was reminded of this recently by K3NG’s post: Things I Wish I Knew When I Was A Young Radio Artisan. I agree with most of his comments with the exception of this one:

Don’t get your start on 2 meter repeaters.

This took me back to the comments from the Experienced Radio Amateur from years ago. I get the point — starting out on 2 Meter FM and Repeaters can give you a limited view of ham radio — but I see it as the perfect platform for getting started. Here’s what is working in my area with new Techs: get them started with a dualband FM rig (usually an HT) so they have some on-the-air success. This also puts them in touch with the local ham community, where we not-so-subtlely expose them to other bands, modes and activities. They hear the other guys talking on the repeater about working DX on 10 Meters and start thinking about how to pursue that as a Tech. From there, it just expands out to all kinds of bands and modes.

Just for the record, I guess I did follow the advice of the Experienced Radio Amateur and managed to not “get stuck on two” (i.e., I’ve worked all of the bands from 80M to 10 GHz, earning WAS, WAC, DXCC and VUCC.)

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Last weekend I thought it was about time that I made some D-STAR contacts again. Out here in the wilderness, I use my DVAP to connect to the network. As I have noted on the blog before, I often use the Win-DV software from http://www.dutch-star.eu
That software allows me to do a bit more than the DVAP-Tool software from AA4RC – just in terms of being able to set up connections on the PC rather than having to do it on the E-92.

Anyway, last weekend I started up the Win-DV software connected it to REF001C and went downstairs with my handheld. I hadn’t heard anything after a while so I did a quick check and found that I had been disconnected. No big deal, I’d probably done something silly!

Connected it and checked again. I’d been disconnected. Probably something to do with 1C so tried another reflector. Same again!

Hmmm. Now my mind was starting to wonder. I closed down Win-DV and started up DVAP-Tool. Guess what? It connected and stayed there!

I didn’t have anytime to investigate at the time, but this evening I checked out the Dutch*star site. It seems that a decision was taken by ‘DPLUS Network managers’ not to allow DVAPs or DV-Dongles to connect to the network unless they sent the hardware serial number. DVAP-Tool was doing that and Win-DV was not, hence anyone using Win-DV would get disconnected.

Why was this done? This blog has never been about radio politics and we’re not going to start now. You can form your own opinion I am sure.

However, the good news is that the latest release of Win-DV allows you to select the ‘HARDWARE’ option to send your DVAP serial number to the network.

I tested it this evening and it’s working fine. You can read more detail on the Dutch*Star site.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].