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Ham College 90
2 July 2022 | by
Ham College episode 90 is now available for download.
Extra Class Exam Questions – Part 28.
E6E Analog ICs: MMICs, IC packaging characteristics
George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].
And so it begins….
And so it begins
In April I posted that my birthday gift had arrived which was the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. Well, this week the installation began and weather permitting I can move closer to the complete installation. We have been having more days of rain than sunshine for June along with some vacation time away from home the antenna had to wait. A few days ago I began by installing the support pole for the antenna. To me this is one of the most important steps as the antenna is no good to me if it falls over, begins to lean or becomes loose and unstable.
The hole was about 4 feet deep and I used fast-setting concrete, this product is poured into the hole and you then add water and stir. I placed my 1 5/8 metal post in the hole, made it level and waited. I decided to use a metal post used for fences as this was readily available at the building supply store. It was also a lot cheaper than buying a 10-foot piece of metal electrical pipe (called EMT).
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| Making certain it's level |
As advertised the concrete was dry in about 40 minutes, having said that I also had to fully understand once the concrete was mixed with water I have very little time to make sure the support pipe was level before things started to harden.
Once finished I added a cap that was temporarily taped in place but will become permanent once the job is complete. At this point that was it for the day as it was very hot and humid out as well I wanted to leave the concrete overnight just to make sure it was fully set.
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| The finished product |
The next step in the dig a trench from the house to the antenna base for the coax.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
Universal Digital Voice
For the June VHF contest, I operated Single-Op Portable from the summit of Pikes Peak. I combined this with Summits On The Air (SOTA) and Parks On The Air (POTA) activations. In a few hours, I made 80 QSOs on 6m, 2m, 1.25m, 70cm, and 23cm bands. It was a fun time.
Quite a few of the contacts were made on 2m FM, The Utility Mode. Even though CW, SSB and WSJT modes are more efficient (especially with weak signals), FM is still the least common denominator for modulation. Everyone has it, so there are more QSOs available with that mode.FM is the default choice for easy VHF simplex communication.
Where Be Digital?
Perhaps it was the lack of oxygen in my brain, but I started to wonder:
Why the heck, in the year 2022 are we still using an analog mode for so much of our amateur communication?
FM was invented in the 1930s, which is ancient history from a technological point of view. Of course, we do have many handheld and mobile radios available that support digital voice (DV) modulation. In fact, we probably have too many digital formats to choose from, all incompatible, which has fragmented the market. The three dominant digital voice modes are D-STAR (first out of the chute), DMR (a commercial standard) and Fusion (Yaesu’s C4FM offering). I think these all have their advantages and disadvantages which attract various people to support one or more of them. However, none of them is dominant and universal, like FM. It is interesting that virtually all DV radios on VHF/UHF include analog FM because it is The Utility Mode, the fallback modulation that keeps us all compatible.
Universal Digital Voice
For this post, I am primarily looking at this from a SOTA and POTA perspective, which means simplex operation and not repeaters. (However, you could extend this idea to repeaters, too.) I am also not so concerned about keyboard modes, just DV plus some basic digital telemetry that goes with it. It can’t be too complex or it will not be fast and easy to use.
I propose a universal DV mode that is implemented in all VHF/UHF transceivers (think in terms of your typical handheld or mobile transceiver for 2m and 70cm). And yes, go ahead and also implement D-STAR, DMR, Fusion, or whatever, but give us a universal digital format that just works. The key idea is to have a digital least common denominator mode that replaces FM. This mode can be the defacto standard for “meet me on simplex” and become the Next Generation Utility Mode. How cool would it be to get on top of a summit and push the DV Call button and work stations on digital many miles away? The station’s callsign should be embedded in the digital stream along with location data (lat/lon or grid locator) and some user-defined fields ( SOTA reference or other information). This format should also have really good weak-signal performance, significantly better than FM, for when the signal-to-noise ratio is low. All the technology must be open, to encourage wide adoption, with no proprietary codecs or modulation schemes.
The technology for this already exists and it would not be difficult to implement. The real challenge is the lack of industry coordination and collaboration between amateur radio manufacturers. Unfortunately, I don’t see this changing any time soon.
That’s my thought for today. What do you think?
73 Bob K0NR
The post Universal Digital Voice appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.
Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].
VE9KK the world of CW 2022-06-30 19:02:00
So why did I move the blog...when I lived in Ontario my call was VE3WDM and the blog also hosted the same call. Now that I moved to the East coast of Canada when I retired I acquired a new call VE9KK. I have had this new call for almost 3 years now and have had requests from my blog readers to change the blog address to reflect the new call and FINALLY, I did just that.
Why did it take so long....well part of it was the old I will do it tomorrow excuse, then I was just not sure how to do it and finally, I was not sure if I wanted to stay with blogger and I was looking at other blog hosting sites. I decided to stay with Blogger and via the internet, I found out how to save my blog posting and transfer them to a new site.
For the time being my old blog will stay in place with a link to the new site and I will have to decide on a timeline for the deleting of the blog but not sure how long I should leave it up.
This new blog moves away from the QRP theme I had, it's not that I moved on entirely from QRP operations but it has not been my focus since moving to the East coast. At this time in my hobby, I have navigated toward CW and am not sure how long this will last and what the next direction will be but for now, it's more CW. My post will not be CW dedicated and I will have a wide slice of events, happenings and adventures here on the blog.
To all those who read the blog, I hope you will continue to enjoy it and please give me input as to what you would like to see and read about.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
LHS Episode #472: Elementary My Dear Watson
Hello and welcome to Episode 472 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics epsiode, the hosts discuss several amateur radio and open source related topics including improvements to GNU Radio, the new book from Science is Elementary, Shotcut, WunderGraph, an update on Hamshack Hotline and much more. Thank you for listening and we hope you have a fantastic week.
73 de The LHS Crew
Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].
Hunting For NDBs In CLE281
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| YIV-300 Island Lake, MB (ve3gop.com) |
It's CLE time once again. This is a challenge for all newcomers to NDB listening and the ultimate test of your medium frequency receiving capabilities. Can you meet the challenge?
When tuning for NDBs, put your receiver in the CW mode and listen for the NDB's CW identifier, repeated every few seconds. Listen for U.S. NDB identifiers approximately 1 kHz higher or lower than the published transmitted frequency since these beacons are modulated with a 1020 Hz tone approximately.
For example, 'AA' near Fargo, ND, transmitted on 365 kHz and its upper sideband CW identifier was tuned at 366.025 kHz while its lower sideband CW ident could be tuned at 363.946 kHz. Its USB tone was actually 1025 Hz while its LSB tone was 1054 Hz.
Often, one sideband will be much stronger than the other so if you don't hear the first one, try listening on the other sideband.
Canadian NDBs normally have an USB tone only, usually very close to 400 Hz. They also have a long dash (keydown) following the CW identifier.
All NDBs heard in North America will be listed in the RNA database (updated daily) while those heard in Europe may be found in the REU database. Beacons heard outside of these regions will be found in the RWW database.
From CLE organizers comes the following CLE info:
Hello all,
Here are all the details for this weekend's co-ordinated listening event.
This one will be a bit different - we shall be trying out a new kind of ‘Special’.
Days: Friday 24 June - Monday 27 June
Times: Start and End at midday, your LOCAL time
Target: NDBs with nominal (published) frequencies of:
200, 210, 220, 230, ………. . . , 1630 kHz
i.e. the NDBs on any/all of the 10 kHz markers
but none on other frequencies (including nnn.5)
We hope this will provide a few more (mid-summer) NDBs than usual for Northern Hemisphere listeners - and for sure a (mid-winter) bonus for Southern Hemisphere listeners who always have relatively few NDBs within range.
The usual ‘rules’ for log-making will apply. First-time CLE logs, short or long, will also be very welcome, wherever you are listening from.
Please log the NDBs you can positively identify that are listed on the ‘ ---0.0 kHz’ frequencies, plus any UNIDs heard there too.
Send your CLE log to [email protected] with CLE281 and FINAL at the start of its title.
Please show on EVERY LINE of your log:
# The date and UTC (the day changes at 00:00 UTC).
# kHz - the beacon's nominal published frequency, if you know it.
# The Call Ident.
Show those main items FIRST on each line, before any optional details such as the NDB's Location, Distance, Offsets, Cycle time, etc.
As always, make your log meaningful to everyone by including your listening location and details of the receiver, aerial(s), etc.
It would be OK to use one remote receiver, with the owner's permission if necessary, provided that ALL your loggings for the CLE are made using it.
Joachim or I will send the usual 'Any More Logs?' email at about 19:00 UTC on Tuesday so that you can check that your log has been found OK.
Do make sure that your log has arrived on the List at the very latest by 08:00 UTC on Wed. 29th June.
We hope to complete making the combined results within a day or two.
You can find all CLE-related information from our CLE page ( http://www.ndblist.info/cle.htm ).
Good listening
Brian & Joachim
These listening events serve several purposes. They
• determine, worldwide, which beacons are out-of-service or have gone silent since the last CLE covering this range
• will indicate the state of propagation conditions at the various participant locations
• will give you an indication of how well your LF/MF receiving system is working
• give participants a fun yet challenging activity to keep their listening skills honed
Final details can be found at the NDB List website, and worldwide results, for every participant, will be posted there a few days after the event.
The NDB List Group is a great place to learn more about the 'Art of NDB DXing' or to meet other DXers in your region. There is a lot of good information available there and new members are always very welcome. As well, you can follow the results of other CLE participants from night to night as propagation is always an active topic of discussion.
You need not be an NDB List member to participate in the CLEs and all reports, no matter how small, are of much value to the organizers.
Remember - 'First-time' logs are always VERY welcome!
Reports may be sent to the NDB List Group or e-mailed to CLE co-ordinator, Brian Keyte (G3SIA), whose address appears above. If you are a member of the group, all final results will also be e-mailed and posted there.
Please ... give the CLE a try ... then let us know what NDB's can be heard from your location! Your report can then be added to the worldwide database to help keep it up-to-date.
Have fun and good hunting!
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
ICQ Podcast Episode 379 – HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen 2022 Preview
In this episode, Martin Butler (M1MRB) is joined by Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen 2022 Preview.
We would like to thank our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate
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Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].
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