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Yesterday I attempted to have a QSO using the XBM-10-2 two transistor “Chirpy” transceiver for 10m. I asked Jim, G3XPD, who is about 8km south of G4ILO to listen out for me. Jim could hear the distinctive sound of my 100mW transmission, but I could not hear Jim, not even when he called using 100W.

I know the Chirpy receiver works because I can receive a locally generated signal such as my antenna analyzer. But I guess even that is a big signal compared to one received off the air. I need to find a way to improve the receive sensitivity if it is to be possible to make a real two-way contact using this simple transceiver circuit.

I have tried adjusting C2 for maximum noise in the earpiece rather than maximum output when the key is down, to see if that gives some improvement. If nothing else it seems to have tamed the chirp a bit.

The November 2011 issue of QST contains an Op-Ed that really left me shaking my head more than normal.  The author bemoans the complexity and feature sets of newer handheld radios and pines for the days of his IC-02AT.  He goes on at length about the “unnecessary” receive capabilities (NOAA weather broadcasts, AM/FM radio, etc) and how he has to search for the manual every time he wants to program a repeater offset.

Well, as someone who recently upgraded from a radio just slightly newer than the IC-02AT to a “modern” HT, he’s wrong on nearly every account (except the micro-/mini-USB port, which I would wholeheartedly support for charging purposes).

• Eliminate extraneous features.  Too bad we all have different definitions of this.  I think scanning is a worthless feature, but like NOAA/NWS weather broadcasts.  In fact, my wife is delighted that we now have a battery-powered AM/FM+NOAA/NWS radio again that I will always be able to find and will guarantee that it works.  Did you hear that, guys?  My non-ham wife actually likes my HT and uses it to listen to FM radio!
• Eliminate multilevel menu trees.   I’m just dying to replace my cell-phone-sized VX-3r with a knob-covered brick.  I’m sure you are too.  It’ll look great in my shirt pocket.
• Eliminate the proprietary programming cables.  Maybe I’m not a typical ham, but I only have about ten memory channels programmed into my VHF/UHF FM radios and they took about 10 minutes to program through the front panel (my bad, menus).  The mini-/micro-USB port is a good idea for charging, though.
• Allow for a battery pack that uses disposable batteries.  Last time I checked, most radios have this option.  Did I miss something?
• Create an inter-vendor standard for user interface.  What if they standardize on Icom?!?!  The last Icom VHF/UHF FM radio I used received a “grade of S, for ‘stupid’” from its owner.  That was in 1993.  All of the Japanese manufacturers will be put out of business by the factory owned by the Chinese military that produces their products before this happens.

He should buy another IC-02AT if he liked them so much.  I bet for a Jackson or two, you could have a nice one…complete with the 6x AA battery holder.  Heck, buy two or three for spare parts.  I think I have the Service Manual around here somewhere if I didn’t already sell it.

On a more serious note, there are lots of no-frills radios available out there, even brand new ones with factory warranties.  Until recently, at least, the money in VHF FM radios was in two-way, government, and public safety, not amateur.  There are a lot of amateur rigs at the “low end” of the market that share a lot in common with their commercial counterparts.  And, of course, you can always buy used Motorola gear on eBay if you desire ultimate performance and ruggedness.

Despite the fact that I live pretty close to some power transmission lines as well as the regular above-ground residential service, I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve never had much of an issue with powerline noise. Unfortunately, that changed just about a week ago. It might be coincidence, but there there were about 4 or 5 houses around a block away from here that lost power due to the October snowstorm that didn’t get it back until last Friday, which is when I started getting S7-S9 powerline noise on all the HF bands, 2m, and, to a lesser extent, 70cm. Given that there were still others in the area without any power (we were very fortunate in that we never lost power at our house), I figured I’d wait until the local power company indicated that they’d finished restoring power to everyone before calling to report it. (Powerline QRN is bad, but it doesn’t come close to not having lights or heat.)  In the meantime, I put my main HF rig (Icom 756 Pro II) on a battery and turned off the main breaker to the house to eliminate any possibility that it was something in the house, but with that done, there was no change to the noise signature.

On Wednesday, the QRN was gone for a few hours in the middle of the day, and I figured that maybe they’d found and fixed the problem on their own, but it was back by the afternoon. Yesterday, the power company officially announced that all customers were back in service, so I figured that I’d give them a call today to see what they’d say.

The automated voice response system had no way to understand “RFI” so it thought I was reporting an outage, and because that’s not the case, I finally got through to a human … who seemed equally baffled. I explained that I was an amateur radio operator and that I was hearing electrical noise that I hadn’t heard until about a week ago. He put me on hold for about 10 minutes and when he came out he said they’d be dispatching a crew.

While the recommendations for a situation like this are to try to narrow it down to a small area or even a single pole, in additional to not really having the right kind of DFing equipment for this, I’m home tending to one of my kids who is recovering from minor surgery, so I didn’t want to spend the time walking or driving around. I am crossing my fingers that PSE&G (my power company) will take this seriously enough to send out a properly equipped crew and find the problem. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Here’s a short video that I took showing what the powerline noise looks like:

An awesome story over on Southgate’s website shares that Ham Radio operators in Thailand, have helped to save almost 1,000 lives during the course of the floods that have been going on in this unusually heavy monsoon season. RAST, which is Thailand’s Amateur Radio society, held a gathering making this announcement.

Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia/Navy Visual News Service/Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Villalovos

RAST Secretary Wacharaphol, HS4DDQ, and his team working with the Public Health Ministry, setup station HS0AC and helped to coordinate rescue communications for medical emergencies. This action made it possible to save those lives. Like here in the US, many of the government agencies have been able to take advantage of the services Amateur Radio operators can offer when their communications networks failed either to overload or from interference from other agencies also trying to help during the emergency.

From the Southgate Story:

The NBTC (National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission) has praised the role that radio amateurs have been playing to help people cope with the disaster by providing communications support and this have been especially helpful in flooded areas where several mobile phone cell sites have failed.

During the meeting, Pranee Netrattana, E21DKD, who is a CQWW VHF Contest winner, was praised for her efforts in the disaster, as a net control operator. This is just another example of how Amateur Radio is still relevant in the 21st century. Even in the information age, there is still room for century old technology.

73.

Rich also writes a Tech blog and posts stories every Tuesday and Thursday on Q103, Albany’s #1 Rock Station website, as well as Amateur Radio stories every Monday thru Friday on AmiZed Studios and hosts a podcast called The Kim & Rich Show with his fiance’ Kim Dunne

Welcome to Handiham World.

Photo: Pat, WA0TDA, poses in front of the Honda Driving Simulator at the Mazda car rental agency in Chitose, Japan.  Note the Handiham baseball cap!  In Japan one drives on the left side of the road.