AmateurRadio.com

One of the blogs I read this morning contained a link to this article in the Mail Online “Stocking up for Doomsday.” The scenario it describes might seem to many of you a bit far-fetched but there are quite a few Americans who wouldn’t think so. You don’t have to look far to find web forums where people discuss survival plans. These people have guns to defend their families and their food and fuel store. They will use ham radios to communicate when the phones and internet are down.

This Doomsday picture doesn’t seem so far-fetched to my wife Olga. Few people in the West even know about this as it received hardly any coverage in the media at the time but in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukraine went bankrupt. Ukrainians who had money in the bank lost it all (and most have still never been compensated for it.) Food disappeared from the shops – not that there was much to start with. People stood on station platforms and begged for food from trains travelling through to Moscow. For years Olga suffered from stomach problems as a legacy from that period when she almost starved. Yes, this happened in a developed country that is right next door to Europe.

The Ukraine government allocated plots of land so people could create kitchen gardens and grow their own food but these were usually a long way from where people lived and anything you did manage to grow got stolen. Olga and her mother avoided complete starvation only because her mother had food coupons as a war veteran which entitled her to obtain military rations.

It’s easy to think “it couldn’t happen here” but the number of economists who are starting to predict a complete economic collapse is enough to make you start wondering if that is just being complacent. Most of us older people who have savings for our retirement have already experienced anxiety about the security of those savings. We naively trust that the British government will honour its promises to guarantee the first £50,000 of individual savings held in British banks but how do we know it could afford to? And how long would it be before we received that compensation? We’d have starved long before, I’m sure of it.

And what about businesses, whose deposits are not guaranteed: businesses that we imagine would provide the food and services that we would need but which wouldn’t have the money to keep trading? Panic buying will have long since emptied the shops of food. What would we do then? Make soup out of five pound notes?

Happy New Year? I wonder.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Four Episode Twenty-Seven of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• SwissCube update
• Experimental D-Star repeater
• Miracle Antenna suspends order-taking
• Digital pictures sent from balloon
• Vietnam operation
• UZ7HO Soundmodem software
• Russian Military OFDM in 40m
• ARRL to inspire Hackers and Innovators
• German CBer's get 12 watts SSB
• 70cm to help paralyzed patients?

Your feedback, Ed Durrant (VK2ARE) provides a Christmas Australian report and Chris Howard (2E0CTH) reports from the London Science Museum for Amateur Radio Operators.

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

Some weeks ago I blogged that I was installing Ubuntu on my laptop as I was going to give another operating system a try. It's been over a month now and the learning curve has been slow. It's not because Ubuntu is difficult and arduous it is Bill Gates who has a firm hold on me.  We all learn new things different ways and the trick is to find how best you learn.  As for me the best way I learn things depends on what I am trying to learn. When it comes to operating systems...well.... it has and always been the Windows systems.  When one of Bill's OS's where changed there was the frustration factor of just trying to make it work. This is where I am at with Ubuntu; I have downloaded some programs and once downloaded for the life of me I can't find them. It occurred to me the other day that I am looking for these programs with a Windows mindset.  I began to head over to Youtube to check out some learning videos. The problem here was I would have to keep stopping,
trying what they said then getting back to the Youtube video and then back to the same spot in Ubuntu again. That was just a receipe for frustration as this game plan was far from smooth going. It was off to some user groups but that turned out most of the time to be a hunting trip. I would end up going to so many links that the original question was forgotten and at my age that process does not take  long.  I came to the conclusion the written word in the form of books was the way to go to solve this monkey on my back.   I hope to become more familiar with the Ubuntu OS now and get past the wall I have come up against. Over the Christmas break I will be taking a leisurely approach with the help of some books and hands on learning to get Ubuntu in check.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

This is one of the coolest stories for the year I think. Ron Meadows, K6RPT and his son, Lee, launched a high altitude balloon along with the group they lead, the California NEAR Project, on December 11th. The balloon was caught in the jet stream at an altitude between 105,000 and 115,000 feet.

From there, the balloon was carried east at a speed of about 150 miles an hour and traveled across the United States, all along the way transmitting it’s APRS beacon of K6RPT-11. It then continued to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain into the Mediterranean Sea. The balloon had traveled 6236 great circle miles in just 57 hours.

From the Southgate ARC website:

The balloon, which bore the call sign K6RPT-11 and could be tracked via APRS, traveled through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. “When the balloon left the New Jersey shore behind, it was received by coastal stations as far away as Nova Scotia,” explained CNSP Team Member Don Ferguson, KD6IRE. “When it exceeded the range of these stations, we lost track of it and feared that we would not hear from the balloon again.”

The balloon finally came down December 14th, when it burst off the coast of Algeria.

This is a pretty exciting event and sure to peak the interests of people and perhaps inspire some to try High Altitude Ballooning themselves. This flight for the California Near Space Project was by far a huge success and I can’t wait to read more about their future flights.

For more details on this story, head over to the article on the Southgate ARC website and visit the California Near Space Project website.

Rich Gattie, KB2MOB, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New York, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

This was the scene that greeted me when I looked outside this morning! Nothing to what folks in the USA get, of course. But considering that it used to be unusual to have any snow at all during the winter here in West Cumbria it’s still noteworthy.

I hope we don’t get any more, though. Apart from the hassle factor of slushy slippery pavements, a thick layer of snow on the roof won’t help my attic antennas to get out.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

• Windows notepad (or another text editor)
• adif2xlsadif.xls and of course Excel
• Log Converter
• Any logger that can import ADIF format

 

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

Although the sunspot number was not promising today I decided to give it another 100mW go. And was not dissapointed. Still no VK, but have been received at Reunion Isl. today. Although I thought this 5mW from VU2SWS was amazing I observed her reports today and think that she did not set the power correct in the WSPR program. Probabely she was using 5W, there was a connection with the internet but she reported only 5W WSPR stations. Below my results today. I can now make decent cards with mapper through HRD V4. I will post a step-by step manual tomorrow about converting WSPR data to ADIF.

WSPR TX with 100mW                     WSPR RX Worldwide                 WSPR RX USA East

 

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