AmateurRadio.com

  Last night while on the radio searching out once again T32C my PowerSDR showed a pileup off the T32C frequency. Well over I went and sure enough it was a pile up but not for T32C it seemed to be for 3XY1D in Guinea. Hmm I thought never worked that part of the world so maybe I will give it a go. Then out of nowhere came (in CW) "phoney" very loud and over all the traffic. But not just once..... every 10 to 15 seconds!! Then in  CW came a response "NO" to which the reply was "yes phoney".  This ruined it for me as I would guess many others. Now the call did sound funny but I looked up the call and there is a DXpedition there for October and November. As I QSY'd along the band never finding T32C but possibly finding 3XY1D. I had not been given a chance to work him because of an operator who some how was given the "DXpedition gold enforcement badge". What is worse.....an operator pretending (maybe) to be someone they are not just for the joy of forming a pileup....or......an operator who deliberately (for sure) transmits over others knowing he is doing so....or both? Two wrongs don't make a right!

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Introduction:

• Who has a drawl?

Announcements:

• Richard has been reading about Ubuntu 11.10, “Oneiric Ocelot”, due to be released on October 13th. Our hosts hope to have some sort of review in the near future. Richard is also considering trying KDE. (The version of Ubuntu with KDE as default is Kubuntu.)
• Look for another episode of Richard’s Radio Adventures in the near future. It’s recorded mobile, and Richard wonders how to reduce the road noise with Audacity. Russ offers some advice on training the noise removal plug-in for Audacity.
• Richard did not make it to the Belton hamfest this year, but maybe next spring. He’s looking forward to attending the Texoma Hamarama, October 21 – 22, 2011 at the Ardmore Convention Center, 2401 North Rockford Road, Ardmore, OK.
• Richard is recruiting hams for the Kaufman County (TX) ARES group. Please visit the KCARES website for more information.
• Richard re-tells the infamous badger story. Speaking of badgers, you can find the Kiss My Badger tee-shirt, and a lot of other good stuff, at the LHS store.

Feedback:

• Danny inquires about an easy-to-use distribution for a senior and computer novice, perhaps Linux Mint. Our hosts suggest Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS. Note that the Mint live CD does not include the codecs, but the DVD does. If you install from the CD, you can install the codecs later.
• Danny also asks if there is a way to ask the Mumble developers to support screen-reading software. Since Mumble isn’t a GTK-based application, it’s probably not well supported under Orca. You may wish to raise your concerns on the Mumble forum, or on IRC at irc.freenode.net, #mumble, or click the Live Chat Now button on the www.mumble.com website.
• Burt, K1OIK, left a comment regarding Episode 61 entitled “South of the Border”: “I’d like to go south of your borders!” We’re a little worried about you, Burt.
• Michael, KD8GIJ, asks for instructions on removing a dual-boot installation of Linux Mint if he decides he doesn’t like it. You can, of course, just wipe the whole drive and reinstall Windows. You may be able to boot the Windows install media and let it “repair” your installation. However, you don’t really need to remove grub; just make Windows the default and remove Linux from the grub menu. If that’s not acceptable, you’ll likely have to wipe and reinstall Windows to return it to the pre-Linux state.Other suggestions include:
  • install Mint as a virtual machine with Virtual Box.
  • use the Windows Ubuntu Installer (wubi) which will also allow you to uninstall Linux after testing.
  • install Linux to a flash drive and boot and run from that to try it out
  • make an image of the Windows drive before installing Linux, perhaps with PartImage or Clonezilla, and you’ll have an easy means of returning to the pre-Linux-install state.
• John “The Nice Guy” Spriggs, G7VRI, asks about a live Linux distribution reviewed in Episode 62 that contained software to run EchoLink. (I think he’s referring to Andy’s Ham Radio Linux CD). svxlink is the Linux-native EchoLink client, but it is CLI-driven. The Windows client does run well under Wine. You may want to look at qtel, another Echolink client. It’s an older application. In fact, svxlink is based on Qtel.
• John also wonders if the music played on the show is Creative Commons licensed. While most of the music is Creative Commons or podsafe, the music in Episode 62 is not CC or podsafe, but Russ did have permission from the artists to play them.
• John pointed out that the description tags in the podcast audio files were empty. Thanks, John, and rest assured that Russ will be adding descriptions as time permits.
• By the way John, please contact Richard at the email address below as you may be able to help him with some music for another project.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Out of Sight” by White Light Riot from the album “Atomism,” courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Saving Lucidity” by The Way I Am, courtesy of Jamendo.

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].

So I was trolling YouTube again, (I know, it’s getting to be a habit..) and came across a nice video of a 20 something woman named Angelica, in Springfield, M.A. making her first Amateur Radio contact. Remember the first time you cracked a mic? Were you nervous or scared or excited? All three, or calm or just business as usual? Watch this video and you can see how she did on her first go of it. I think she did pretty well myself. And hopefully she enjoyed it enough that she’ll be getting a license of her own some day. I’m still trying to get the YL a little interested, but it’s a no go so far. The daughter though, she just likes to talk. Hope the duty cycle on my radios will be able to keep up with her. And without further ado, the lovely YL making her first contact.

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.

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

For a great tutorial on waterproofing coaxial connectors, check out this post by Paul, AE5JU, over at K9ZW’s blog. I didn’t use Scotch 130C Coax Seal like he does since by the time I discovered its existence I was out of time to acquire it for this project. Next time!

[Update: After the helpful comments I received on this from VE3WDM and others at amateurradio.com, I’ve ordered some coax seal and plan to finish the job as soon as it arrives. What I’ve done here is better than nothing — certainly good enough until I can get the good stuff — but it doesn’t afford long-term protection.]

[Update: When I went to put on the coax seal, I discovered my nice pretty electrical tape already coming apart after less than two weeks! Use coax seal! Another thing I’ve learned about is “Magic Tape,” the self-amalgamating silicone tape you can easily find even at stores like Target and Walgreens. Some hams have told me it works great to put over the coax seal.]

What I did do was wrap the connectors with teflon plumber’s tape, then covered it with black 3M electrical tape. The teflon tape is intended simply to keep adhesive from gumming up the connector. I put several layers of electrical tape down and made sure to wrap the last layer up, i.e. toward the sky, so that the turns are stacked like shingles on a house with their seams pointed downward. Here’s a slideshow:

Click to view slideshow.

Todd Mitchell, NØIP, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Minnesota, USA. He can be contacted 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 that QRN I had a year ago. It suddenly disappeared after a few days. I never found the real troublemaker but suspected it came from the house or from nearby. Now since we are going to build a new bathroom next week, I had to rebuilt part of the house and wiring I came accross some mains wiring above the ceiling that probabely caused this QRN. When I opened a junction box and touched the wire nuts lights went on and off. Actually all connections were very poor made and the last owner of the house apparently tried to stick everything together with tape, besides that he probabely was colorblind. I removed all nuts and made new connections with new connectors no nuts again. As a result of that blindness wires were switched, I noticed a short circuit at first after reconnecting I thought. But in the end it seems the safety earth was used as switch wire, so it became a life wire as well. That was a 2 weeks ago, in the mean time I did a rebuilt and rewiring, that junction box has been removed together with a lot of other junk. I already made some preparations for the new radioshack and of course for the new bathroom and finally switched over to the new wiring last Sunday. Unfortenately I think other wiring in the house is just the same mess as this, although that wiring is from a earlier date I think around 1950-1960. I already removed parts of it when building the baby room last year and found some nice porcelain wire nuts at one of the old junction boxes. They are originally from the first mains wiring when the house was built, great to find such items in our 1935 house. Well despite a lack of time I’ve tried some radio as well looking for T32C in the evening, reading other blogs it seems they are easy to work from North America. But although I saw a lot of dx cluster spots on 20, 15, 12 and 10m from stations in Europe and even from the Netherlands I could not even hear a whisper from them. So I guess to work them you really need a beam from this part of the world, or I’m just not lucky? If time allows I’ll try again next few days till the DXpedition is over.

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

Welcome to Handiham World.

• Novice and Technician licensees may operate using single side band: between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz using up to 200 W.
• When the 10 m band is open as it is lately, high power is not necessary. Excellent contacts can be made even using very low power. Many stations will be using 100 W or less – in fact, I will amend that to say that MOST stations will be using 100 W or less. High power is simply not necessary, which puts Novice and Technician operators on a level playing field with other operators. Experience tells those of us who have been in amateur radio a long time that we are not going to bother turning on a linear amplifier to operate on the 10 m band.
• 10 m antennas are small and almost everyone can fit this kind of antenna into the space that they have available.  Using our formula for a half wave dipole, 468 divided by 28.4 MHz (the middle of the Novice/Tech segment of the band), yields an antenna about 16 and one half feet long.  That is a pretty manageable length! You would make each leg of a dipole 8 feet three inches long and feed it with 50 Ohm coax, such as RG-8X low loss if you must use a thinner cable or the standard size cable RG-213.  Keep the coax run as short as possible in any case, because loss in the feedline increases as the operating frequency goes up.  There is more loss per foot on 10 meters than on 75 meters.  A quarter wave vertical antenna for 10 m is only a little over 8 feet high.  If you want to construct a quad or Yagi antenna for 10 m, they are much smaller than 20 m directional antennas and thus have a smaller turning radius.  A 10 m antenna is lighter and easier to handle, too.
• For our Technician Class Handiham members who have already purchased HF transceivers but who have never used them for anything but receiving, this is your chance to press that push to talk switch and enjoy operating SSB.  Yes, I know that you have CW privileges on other HF bands, but this is PHONE, and conditions are so good that it is easy to make contacts.  Of course Morse code contacts are easier and better during good band conditions, but the window for SSB is open right now. 
• RF safety is a concern if you use indoor antennas on the 10 m band.  Be sure to perform an RF safety evaluation and locate the antenna as far away from people as possible. Adjust the power level to achieve compliance. For more on how to do this, visit the ARRL website and check the TIS, or Technical Information Service.  If you are a Technician Class operator who is studying for General, there is information both in your study materials and in the question pool.  

 

	It would be nice to extend these excellent Handiham resources to more members at a time when band conditions are so good.
	Getting a taste of HF operation would surely make Techs excited about earning their General tickets.
	The 10 m band is also a good place to learn more about HF operation because it is not as crowded and competitive a place to operate as bands like 20 m.
	We are now hosting the software downloads for the W4MQ software.

 

 

The HF remote base stations do require some additional technical expertise to operate. Novice and Technician operators are usually the least experienced and need the most help getting things to work. Lyle, K0LR, and I don’t do much, if any, “tech support” on these stations because we simply do not have the time and most of the problems are located at the user’s own home computer anyway.  My biggest fear is opening up a floodgate of emails and phone calls about how to install the software and get it to work.  This is not an insignificant problem.  An installation requires opening a free Skype account, getting audio settings correct, and then installing the W4MQ software and a required W4MQ update.  After that, the software must be configured with the IP address of each station and the log in credentials. This is not a problem for a computer user with at least an intermediate skill level, but it is quite challenging for a user who does not know their way around a computer.

Technician users may get frustrated by operating practices on HF, which are much different than what they have experienced on FM repeaters. Of course you have to learn somewhere, but are we really ready to do a “sink or swim” exercise here?  Maybe we need some training ahead of time, but we have none set up.

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