AmateurRadio.com

This week amateur radio came through again, responding to the tsunami disaster at Wasabi Island.  Wasibi Island is a little-known island in the south Pacific inhabited by about 300 people which suffered a devastating category nine tsunami two weeks ago.  Wasabi Island is also a rare DXCC entity, having been in the top 15 most wanted DXCC entities list for nearly two decades.

The Pileup DX Society reacted quickly to the disaster.  Bob Peters, president of the esteemed society, assembled a crew within days of the disaster.  ”After hearing about the disaster we called up our top donors and within hours we had a team assembled.”  The Wasabi team was luckily able to quickly book commercial flights into Chile and charter a cargo ship in Santiago.  They landed on the beach on Wasabi Island three days later.  Within hours they were on the air with many amateurs in North America and Europe working the phone and CW stations on 20 meters, bagging the rare DX country.

“The island is devastated” informed team leader Tom Biznosky over a satellite phone call.  ”There’s no power on the island and no clean drinking water.  Luckily we brought generators, and plenty of fuel and water, so we can easily operate the stations for the next two weeks.  Sleeping conditions on the island have been awful, so we’ve been shuttling operators to the ship where they can get showers and sleep in air conditioning.”

The disaster conditions have made things difficult for the team.  ”The island has been flattened, so it has been very difficult to find any trees to string up dipoles on the lower bands.  On top of that, one of our 12 linear amplifiers which were donated stopped working.  The 10 meter phone station has been running barefoot.” said Biznosky.  ”But despite the setbacks, out team remains in good spirits.”

Amateurs are asked to stay clear of the Wasabi island frequencies as all stations are operating split.  Amateurs should go between 5 and 50 kilohertz above the Wasabi Island transmit frequencies when making their calls.  Look for Wasabi on all bands, on CW, phone, PSK and RTTY.  QSL direct to the QSL manager shown on the Pileup DX Society website (click on Wasabi Island disaster).  Donations to support the operation may also be made on the website.

For those who have followed my adventure over the past couple of weeks through this blog post and especially this one.  The wait is over…the FCC has fully approved, granted and the ULS database shows KD0BIK as an Amateur Extra. 

I won’t say this wait has been easy, but at the same time I won’t say I was ever worried I would be denied the license upgrade.  I knew I had done nothing wrong to end up on any sort of list and knew once someone manually reviewed my application against the information the FCC was watching for, all would be sorted out.  Which actually was exactly what happened in the end with the help of the ARRL.

As with life, the things that don’t kill or injure us….do make us stronger.  I have a much, much better understanding of not only the FCC ULS system, but also the ARRL/VEC process and will turn this negative into a positive and share what I’ve learned with others on an upcoming episode of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast. 

Finally, I really can’t say enough great things about the ARRL.  The information they shared with me in the form of knowledge about this entire process and their reaching out to the FCC on two different occasions mean so much to me.  I hope I never need to seek their assistance again in a matter like this.  But I know they are there, not only for me…but for all licensed amateurs in the US. 

OK…well 20m sounds like it might be hot today.  I just worked a VK on JT65.  Let’s see what other wonderful DX I can round up.

Oh…and one more thing.  My paperwork to become a VE will be emailed to the ARRL later today.  I look forward to serving along side the other many fine VE’s and give back to the hobby of amateur radio. 

Until next time,

73,
Jerry  KD0BIK/AE 

The FSDXA who are putting on the forthcoming T32C expedition plan things enormously well. Even when you plan and plan again, things go wrong. And so it is that their container with 6 tonnes of equipment is stuck in Tarawa (T30) and not where it should be. A boat has broken down, but despite promises, it has proved impossible to get the container to T32. The container has all the equipment required for the station so this is a significant setback. However, Yaesu have sprung to the rescue by lending 10 FT450s which can be hand carried. Lightweight linears, masts, aerials and computer equipment all need to be carried by the expedition operators. Knowing the group as I do, I am confident they will make a success of this. Read the full story at T32C.com

Just kidding!

It has always been a dream to power everything in my shack with sunlight. Unfortenately solar panels and batteries are too expensive at the moment and you would only do such a thing when no other power source is available, like in the new shack from fellow blogger VK2TPM Peter. A good inspirator is VK5SW Rob, he has his solar powered station in the Australian bushbush. But for the average hobby radioamateur his equipment is too expensive I think, look at the size of the batteries! Those are very expensive for shure. In a previous post I wrote I bought a cheap 1,8W solar panel. It’s not sufficient to charge the 7Ah battery actually, it’s just topping it when you’re not using it. If I would have my antenna tuner connected all the time the battery will be below the 12,4V that it needs as minimum supply within 2 hours or so. I measured the current that the tuner takes when just connected and it’s 430mA. That would be P=U*I > 12,4*0,43=5,3W you see that I need a panel that is much larger. As I want to supply the W5OLF TX as well with solar in the future I even need some more power and a bigger battery. I found a nice package including regulator at this german shop, it’s reasonable priced and delivers 30W at a sunny day. Together with a 45Ah car battery I think that will do. They also got all kind of other handy things to connect to your solar installation. Like a fluorescent lamps – potential transformer, a idea for the new shack, imagine free solar powered light in your shack. I like that idea. Unfortenately if you look at the costs of all these nice gadgets you better switch on your light from the mains, till now it will save you money. I think to power my future shack with sunlight the solarpanels need to be a lot cheaper. 

Introduction:

• Apologies for being late with this episode.

Announcements:

• LHS had planned on attending the Ohio LinuxFest on September 9-11 in Columbus,OH, and the Huntsville, AL hamfest Aug 21-22, but it’s just too expensive. To address that, LHS has started the LHS Ambassadors program where listeners of the show act as representatives for LHS at events. If you’re interested, please contact us at [email protected]
• When you make a donation to LHS, you can choose to appear on the Sponsors page on the LHS website.
• Linux Format magazine, the producers of the Tux Radar podcast, recently reviewed various Linux-related podcasts, and LHS wasn’t even mentioned! Ouch!
• Richard announces the demise of Resonant Frequency: The Amateur Radio Podcast. Richard is looking for a place to post the articles and other content. The podcast episodes are saved at the Internet Archive, and the videos will remain on YouTube.

Topics:

• WinLink and AX.25
• Richard describes his trials and tribulations getting a WinLink packet gateway working under Ubuntu Linux.
• For the most part, Richard followed the instructions provided by Charles, K4GBB: How to install RMS Gate.
• Richard and Russ describe the steps in the Howto and possible pitfalls. Richard notes that you’ll probably want to run the commands as the root user, either by logging in as root or using sudo.
• (Note, near the end of Section 4 of the Howto, it appears the author left out the “wget” in the command to retrieve the script. On the page it reads:

  Get Script – Bernard has written a little Housekeeping script...

  http://f6bvp.free.fr/logiciels/ax25/rc.init.script && ...

• I think that command should be:

  wget http://f6bvp.free.fr/logiciels/ax25/rc.init.script && ...

  Note that I’ve shortened the lines with ellipses here. -Ed.)

• Other useful links:
  • AX.25 HowTo
  • HowTo:AX.25 – Ubuntu/Debian
  • How to set up an RMS Gate on Linux

Feedback:

• Andy, KB1OIQ, tells us of his Ham Radio Linux CD, based on Ubuntu Linux 10.10, and includes many ham radio programs.
• Rich, KD0BJT, of the LowSWR podcast, is working on a ham radio-related Linux distribution, too.

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:

• “Mendes” by Assembly Line Gods from the album “Control: Volume 1.”
• “Pound of Flesh” by Assembly Line Gods from the album “Control: Volume 1.”

Please note that the music in this episode is neither Creative Commons nor podsafe. To support the artist, please visit Assembly Line Gods on Facebook, iTunes or at http://www.assemblylinegods.com.

The North Texas Balloon Project is going to be launching mission number 19 tomorrow, at about 8:30am central time. The balloon will have a few payloads attached with different sensors and a 10 meter beacon aboard. It’s expected to go up to 100,000 feet, which will take approximately 90 minutes and return by parachute in about 50 minutes. A recovery team will track and retrieve the balloon using it’s on board APRS. All the particulars for mission 19 can be found on the group’s website. There is also information on their past flights as well. Below, I found a nice little video for a 2009 flight they did. This kind of thing is still on my bucket list to do. Maybe I should take the time this winter to start planning something out. Do some research and get some stuff together for it. And if I wasn’t already going to be running around Upstate NY all day tomorrow, I would be trying to listen for this on 10 meters and watching on APRS.

73.

Rich also writes a Tech blog and posts stories every Tuesday and Thursday on Q103, The Rock of Albany’s 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.

I usually meet fellow hams on air and then continue our contact via the web. Last night was the other way around and it was a bit embarrassing. I am member of FISTS, the International Morse Preservation Society. I am a bit of a loner, not much into clubs, but do enjoy meeting like-minded folk, so I joined them. FISTS is nice because it encouraged learning Morse code and using it on air. FISTS has some chapters and I joined the East Asia chapter, which is comprised mostly of Japanese members. I offered to help edit and proofread the newsletter and Nao (JO3HPM), the editor-in-chief, took up the offer. For the last couple of months we have had a pleasant exchange via e-mail.

So last night I decided to practise my CW on air and answered a CQ on 30 meters, 10118 kHz to be precise. You may have already guessed it: the CQ came from JO3HPM and 10118 kHz is the FISTS calling frequency in the 30 meter band. Totally oblivious to both facts I started the QSO and only after Nao alerted me who he was it dawned on me whom I was having a QSO with. After my embarrassment faded away we had a very enjoyable 20 minute QSO. I am still a CW beginner and rely on Fldigi as a decoding back-up if my decoding skills fail. But with Nao this was hardly necessary, as he decreased his speed and repeated the more difficult words. That is the spirit and makes being a member of FISTS all the more worth while.

The only other thing……please don’t tell the NCC I had this QSO, because the band allocation for 30 meters here in Taiwan is 10.13 to 10.15 MHz only. Don’t ask me why. 73 de Hans (BX2ABT)