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Of Pounding Ground Rods and Labeling a Field Box

7 October 2011 | by Todd NØIP | Leave a Comment (0)

My arm is tired! I pounded in a ground rod tonight, a stout 8-footer from Fleet Farm. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had gone in on the first try, but it took me three tries before I found a spot that didn’t have some obstruction about four feet under ground! (Remember I live in Granite Falls. There’s lots of rock around here.) I’m not sure which was harder — swinging the sledge hammer until the rod got stuck, or trying to pull the crazy thing out of the ground when it did. Soaking the ground with water helped to get it out in one instance.

It’s tempting to soak the ground with water before pounding your ground rod in, to make it sink in easier, but I’ve read that you shouldn’t do that as you wind up with a poor connection after the soil dries. As with many other things, the easy way isn’t always the best way.

Anyhow, I finally got it in far enough. There’s about ten inches sticking up out of the ground still, but all I’m doing by swinging at it now is flattening out the top. Once my wife hides it with a hosta plant it will look just fine! I tried pounding in a second one, but when it got stuck and I had to work it out (by clamping vicegrips on it and prying it out with a crowbar, a few inches at a time), I called it a day.

Much easier and more satisfying was labeling the toolbox I’ve converted into a field-kit:I’m asking an awful lot of this decal, sticking it on a pebbled surface. But so far it’s sticking just fine. Randy George, N3ZK, does a great job on these, ships them fast, and the price is right! For only $4.00 (shipping included) you get three of these labels.

In the field box right now is my Heathkit HW-8 and all the accessories necessary to zip out to my picnic table and get on the air with my low-hanging, temporary OCF dipole. Pretty soon it will be too cold to do that comfortably! That’s why I’m pounding ground rods, trying to get my long-awaited New Carolina Windom up and going before the ice and snow comes.

Todd Mitchell, NØIP, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Minnesota, USA. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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CB interlopers

6 October 2011 | by Juilian G4ILO | Leave a Comment (4)

Propagation remains good on 10 metres. I left the K3 on 28.076 running JT65-HF for most of the day. I made several contacts including N3CAL, WA2CRB, PY8ELO, KE1AF, WB9OTX, WK8G and SV4FFK. The map shows where my signal was heard. I was even spotted by Joe, W6CQZ/4, the author of the excellent JT65-HF software.

JT65 is addictive. It’s also a very relaxing way to make QSOs. It’s ideal for me at the moment because my eyes tire very easily. I end up with blurred or double vision if I read or stare at the computer screen for too long so modes like PSK31 aren’t really a good idea. Thanks to the JT65-HF add-on JT-Alert an alarm sounds if a station I haven’t worked before calls CQ and another sound wakes me up if a station replies to me. This means that I can look out the window or something and only need look at the screen when I have something to do. The print in the JT65-HF program window is nice and big too.

Listening on 28.076 I heard some strange noises which I eventually realized were FM transmissions being received in SSB mode. CBers transmitting out of band I presume.

I don’t suppose many CBers read this blog but come on, guys. It’s none of my business if you choose to operate illegally but if you do, please stay below 28MHz. You may not hear our weak JT65 signals with your FM radios but we sure as hell can hear you.

Update: Just worked Joe “The Man” W6CQZ/4 in Florida. He was running 5W to what I seem to remember him posting once in the JT65-HF Google group is a Hamstick on a mag mount stuck to the roof of his shed. Thank you Joe for the contact and for the fantastic JT65-HF software!

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

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Steve Jobs: His Legacy

6 October 2011 | by Rich KB2MOB | Leave a Comment (0)

If you’re wondering why I am posting this instead of an Amateur Radio story, then please read the full article and you will understand. But for now, I am posting a clip and a link to my full article on the Q103Albany website, and it has already been picked up by the station I used to work at in Utica as well. Here is a clip:

I have been trying to write this story for hours now. It’s not hard to talk about someone like Steve Jobs and recite facts about him. Yes, he pioneered how we consume digital content and how we buy our digital music as well as how we use computers and much more. And while it could be considered corny by some for me to say this, he touched lives all over the world. Just look at Twitter and Facebook. One of those lives he touched, is mine.

To read the full article, check out my Tech Thursday story for today.

73.

Courtesy of Gawker.com

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

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Ham Nation 20

6 October 2011 | by Bob K9EID | Leave a Comment (0)

MFJ Factory Tour

Hosts: Gary Pearce (KN4AQ), Gordon West (WB6NOA), and George Thomas (W5JDX)

Shelby Hamfest tour, the MFJ factory, a transmitter with one part, and more.

Download or subscribe to this show at http://twit.tv/hn.

We invite you to read, add to, and amend our show notes at wiki.twit.tv.

Thanks to Joe Walsh who wrote and plays the Ham Nation theme.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Video URL:

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp4/twit.cachefly.net/video/hn/hn0020/hn0020_h264b_864x480_500.mp4

Video URL (low quality):

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp4/twit.cachefly.net/video/hn/hn0020/hn0020_h264b_640x368_256.mp4

MP3 feed URL:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/hn0020.mp3

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].

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Proper Radio Protocol…Over

6 October 2011 | by Bob KØNR | Leave a Comment (0)

It is always important to follow proper radio protocol…

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

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Rest In Peace, Steve

6 October 2011 | by Anthony K3NG | Leave a Comment (0)

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Handiham World for 05 October 2011

5 October 2011 | by Patrick WA0TDA | Leave a Comment (1)

Welcome to Handiham World.

A broken water pipe gets me thinking…

What sort of things might cause a disaster in my ham radio shack? I started thinking about this recently after dealing with a minor disaster caused by a leaking water pipe in the ceiling of the basement. As usual, I was sitting in my home office, which also serves as my ham shack, when I heard a faint drip, drip, drip. Since I spend an awful lot of time in my office, I know and recognize all of the usual sounds of the house around me. In fact, I don’t really notice if the compressor in the freezer comes on and my brain rarely even registers sound of the washing machine or dryer in the adjacent laundry room. The furnace or air conditioner can come on and go off without interrupting me. Jasper, my dog, wanders the house and occasionally growls at a squirrel that he sees through the window. None of this stuff bothers me or particularly gets my attention. But the brain is a marvelous thing; it can ignore the common and expected while immediately picking up on something unusual.

The sound of dripping water, even though barely audible, got my attention!

Sure enough, an inspection of the recreation room around the corner from my office revealed a drip from the ceiling. Several of the tiles in the suspended ceiling had gotten waterlogged and collapsed onto the floor, and I hadn’t heard that sound because I had only just a few minutes before come into the office to sit down and do some more work. The leak must have occurred in the afternoon shortly after I had finished my usual office day and had taken the dog out for a walk. When I returned to the office after dinner, that’s when I heard the dripping sound that was so out of place. It turns out that a 90° copper connecting joint in the cold water pipe going to the outdoor irrigation system developed a tiny pinhole leak on the inside of the bend. The tiny, almost invisible spray was enough to create quite a mess given a few hours. The soaked ceiling tiles collapsed onto an easy chair, soaking it and ruining the cushion. The carpet on the floor was soaked in an area of about a yard square. A few other items stored in the room got wet on the outside, but were not ruined because I heard the drip and responded in time to shut off the water. Fortunately, we have a carpet cleaning machine that vacuums up water and we had a spare cushion for the chair. I haven’t replaced the ceiling tiles yet, but they are standard 2′ x 2′ squares that are commonly available at any big box building store. As we are so fond of saying in Minnesota, “it could’ve been worse!”

Of course I called the plumber, and he was able to fix the problem the next day. Fortunately, we have a shut off valve for that particular leg of the water system in our house, so there was no need to keep the main valve turned off. It’s heck to be without water when you need to wash, cook, and flush! But what got me to thinking about the ham shack in relation to this broken pipe was that the shutoff valve is located directly above the ceiling in my office. In fact, several water pipes converge in the ceiling above the ham shack and it is sobering to think that the copper pipe carrying all of that water is exactly the same age as the pipe fitting that failed in the next room, which is about 20 years old. So, as I sit here talking into the microphone and enjoying a nice session on my radio, will I one day feel a drip, drip, drip on my head? I guess it could happen, and I have to admit that when I finished the basement and built the ham shack I never gave a second thought to the water pipes running through the ceiling joists overhead. I had grown up with copper water pipe in my parents’ house, and I cannot remember a single time that there had ever been a leak. I guess I would not have been too surprised if a leak had occurred where pipes were joined in the soldered connection, but to have a piece of copper simply spring a leak in the body of the pipe? It did seem pretty unlikely, but like all such things it is not something to worry about unless it happens to you – and it happened to me!

So I am forced to assess the probability of another leak, perhaps occurring over the critical electronic and computing equipment I have in the ham shack. Some of this equipment runs for hours or days at a time without being turned off. One can only imagine the damage that would be caused by water pouring onto the energized equipment. When I wired the ham shack, everything was put on ground fault interrupters. Given a good soaking, the equipment would probably short and trip the interrupters, but by then of course the station and computers would be ruined. This is not something I care to think about, but it is nonetheless a possibility. I had considered the possibility of a leak like the one we had to be extremely remote, and perhaps I was right. Nonetheless, had the leak occurred over the ham shack it would’ve meant many thousands of dollars of damage instead of a soaked chair cushion and a few feet of wet carpet.

What to do? Well, moving the ham shack and home office would be a major undertaking and a huge disruption in my work schedule. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be expensive and difficult. For now, the best I can do is to turn the main water valve for the entire house to the “off” position whenever we leave on vacation or for any kind of extended multi-day trip. This is something I have always done anyway, and while it is not a perfect solution, it does prevent damage from leaks that might occur when no one is home and when damage can be severe due to the fact that no one is around to discover the leak. Long ago, when I worked in an appliance store, we recommended that our customers who were leaving on vacation turn off the water supply to their washing machines because the hoses that fed the washing machine might burst and cause flooding in the basement. Turning off the whole house valve takes care of that problem. Keeping equipment off the floor is another good idea.

We are used to thinking about protecting our amateur radio equipment and its associated computer equipment from lightning damage, but we cannot ignore the threat posed by water!

For Handiham World, I’m…

Patrick Tice
[email protected]
Handiham Manager

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

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