AmateurRadio.com

Sometimes I just come across some real cool videos when I’m not trying. This is one of those times. It’s surprising how many good videos are on YouTube and just don’t make it to my suggestion area on the front page of my profile. I think YouTube needs to work on that algorithm. From the description in the video…

This video describes the microphone preamp and equalizer that I designed in 1999 to use with my Astatic D-104 microphone with my ham radio. The D-104 suffers from two issues when used with modern ham radios – impedance mismatch and non-ideal frequency response. The circuit addresses both of these issues. The video briefly describes the circuit, it’s frequency response, and demonstrates the bass and treble adjustments using an oscilloscope and signal generator.

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.

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

Looking for something to pique my interest enough to overcome my lethargy I decided to have another look at the V4 Chat digital mode. I tried it first at the end of last year and made one contact with it, but the alpha software was a bit flaky, then the developer Rick KN6KB had a bereavement and nothing happened for a while so I forgot all about it.

What attracted my interest was discovering that the ARQ mode had now been implemented. V4 Chat supports two conversation modes: Forward Error Correction (FEC) in which the data is sent with a lot of checks and redundancy so many receiving errors can be corrected but you have one chance of getting it correctly, and Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) in which the receiver can request a repeat if a transmission is received with errors. Using ARQ a receiver can repeatedly request a repeat (up to a limit) so even if conditions are marginal a QSO is possible as long as propagation is adequate for short periods of time. Under the same conditions conventional (non ARQ) digital modes would print so much garbage that a contact would not be possible. People who own expensive SCS modems like to boast about how Pactor gets through under difficult conditions but V4 ARQ offers the same kind of performance and requires only your PC and a bit of open source donationware.

I re-subscribed to the V4Protocol Yahoo Group (which is where you can get the software from), downloaded and installed the latest version. Then I set my K3 to 14.073MHz (which is the 20m “calling frequency” for experimental narrow data modes) and waited. After a while I heard the sound of V4 ARQ bursts, and found that VK5PO was in QSO. I saw him disconnect from the other station and sent a CQ. He then connected with me and we had (just about) a QSO.

Signals were marginal both ways and I had to crank the K3 up to 50W to help John copy me but over about 10 minutes names and signal reports were exchanged. One of the nice things about the ARQ mode is that when the text prints up you know the other station has received it error free.

OK, it wasn’t much of a chat, but ignoring WSPR spots I have only ever made one contact with Australia before and that was using JT65A which is not a keyboard chat mode. I was pretty chuffed to exchange words with a ham 16,000km away using my stealth radio station!

I think I’ll be spending a lot more time trying out V4 Chat digital mode and I hope you will too because the more people use it the more contacts we can all make. The V4 signal is 200Hz wide so if 14.073 (or 21.073) is busy move up in 250Hz increments to avoid QRMing someone else’s QSO.

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

Hey. How YOU doin’? If you’re a contest junky, here is another one that may get you fired up. It’s the 2011 New York QSO Party sponsored by the Rochester DX Association. Work the 62 counties of New York State for fun and awards. You can even sponsor an award as well.

The contest runs from October 15th 2011 starting at 14:00 UTC until October 16th 02:00 UTC. 12 hours of contacts and exchanges. The RDXA has also instituted a new class of operator for the contest; Rookie. If you are a licensee who got their ticket on or after January 1st, 2008, you qualify for the Rookie class and be able to compete for a plaque if you have the best score. But this award can only be awarded once to an operator. So there is a show window of time to win this I would think. No word on when someone would be exempt from the Rookie class. But you can find all the rules on the website, as well as links for software to log with, and PDF versions of maps of all the New York counties.

There is also a web forum available again from the RXDA. It was closed temporarily because of excessive spam problems, but it’s back open accepting new users. But it appears to be a manual process so don’t expect a new registration to be approved automatically. I can sympathize with this one. There are a ton of spammers out there just looking for the chance to fill forums with their useless crap.

Anyways, as a New Yorker, it would be wrong of me not to mention this contest. Plus I just got the email yesterday and I was still looking for something to write about. SO call it fate of procrastination. Either way, it should be fun. Enjoy!

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.

 

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

On Sunday afternoon it was now time to figure out why the lights in two rooms were flickering. Also along with the lights my two Astron power supplies would let out a deep hum now and then as well. I began by turning off the circuit breaker to the upper rooms to see what all this circuit breaker fed. I then went to each outlet to see if there were any loose wires. I came across a box that had many neutrals tied together and another group of hots tied together. They seemed to have no evidence of burning or overheating and all seemed to be very tight with the wire nut holding each set together. I still gave both  wire nuts a few good turns and put all the wires back into the box. I then went down again to turn on the circuit breaker and see if the problem was fix....low and behold the problem was gone and has never returned since. So even though the wires did not seem loose they must had been just enough to cause the lights to flicker. It's time to go back to radio fun!!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

The zed is reporting today that the source code and rights to Ham Radio Deluxe have been sold to three radio amateurs, Mike Carper WA9PIE, Randy Gawtry, K0CBH and Rick Ruhl W4PC.  No details are posted right now other than development and support will be continued on the product (emphasis mine).

HRD is arguably one of the best, if not the best amateur radio loggers ever written.  It’s the first amateur radio program I would give straight As for design and usability.

While HRD has always been a free piece of software, it would follow that if someone has paid cash for the source code and rights, they intend on getting a return on that investment.  Considering one of the purchasers runs an amateur radio and communications software company, this is quite plausible.

I find myself sounding a lot like the open source zealots I used to bemoan on Slashdot, but I’m increasingly concerned with closed source software and systems within amateur radio.  I’ve seen freeware closed source software authors and followers who think they have a license to be arrogant to users or use the software to further an agenda or an ego.  Some closed software stagnates over time when the author no longer has the time or interest in maintaining it.  Networks run by closed source software tend to be silo solutions developed in a vacuum, ignoring standards and recreating the wheel.  Open source can prevent all these scenarios and create a design and development “ecosystem.”  Such an ecosystem is quite apparent in the Linux and Arduino communities and for a spell in the 2000s I think we had such an ecosystem in QRP.  I don’t think we’ve ever had a truly great software ecosystem.

There is one positive if HRD goes commercial.  With a revenue stream there will be an incentive to continue development, support users, and maintain it as the fine product that it is.  Perhaps I’m jumping the gun and prematurely assuming it will go commercial, but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibilities.  I made a contribution to HRD in the past, so I would probably buy the commercial product as it’s just that good.  It’s just unfortunate that HRD couldn’t have been released as an open source project and been freed to evolve in a community based effort.

I’m not a fan of New Kids on the Block, but this title just jumped out at me when I saw the story over at ARRL.ORG that NASA is looking for more astronauts. Currently there are only 59, where a decade ago, there was 150. Since the retirement of the Shuttle, the numbers have been going down.

It takes 2 and a half years to train to be an astronaut, on top of the years of college getting a degree. Then there is the 31 weeks of working in Russia to learn how the Soyuz craft work and learning Russian. It’s a pretty big commitment, but from what I can see, it has some big payback and perks. I mean, who wouldn’t want to fly a few hundred nautical  miles above the Earth in micro gravity?

But currently, the Soyuz is grounded because of the crash of a supply ship in August, while Russian space agency investigators troubleshoot what went wrong. This could lead to a short abandonment of the International Space Station if Russian officials find the problem quickly. But still, the need for astronauts for the manned space flight program is still there.

From the ARRL.ORG story:

NASA has said that it expects to send four to six astronauts to the ISS each year for six-month rotations. But the August crash of a Russian re-supply rocket has grounded the Soyuz, the only vehicle capable of flying crew members to the station. NASA noted that the Russian crash might lead the agency to temporarily abandon the ISS this fall unless the Russians quickly troubleshoot the problem. “We will understand, to our satisfaction, the anomaly, what is believed to be the cause and how they resolved it,” said NASA ISS Program Manager Michael Suffredini in a press conference after the crash. “If we’re not happy, we won’t put our astronauts on the Soyuz.” In April, NASA awarded $269 million to four companies developing craft to deliver cargo and crew to the space station.

This along with the time needed to train, could lead to a shortage in 5 years. So NASA is looking now. But I doubt you’ll find a posting for the job on Monster.com or Regionalhelpwanted.com. Still, if you possess  a pretty hefty degree and are in good physical shape, you could be the next NASA astronaut. And having a Ham Radio license is also a plus. Right now there are 4 Hams on the Space station. Ron Garan, KF5GPO (NASA), Mike Fossum, KF5AQG (NASA), Sergei Volkov, RU3DIS (RKA), and Satoshi Furukawa, KE5DAW (JAXA). And you can check out AMSAT or the ISS Fanclub for more info on working the ISS.

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

Hardly a day goes by when you don’t read some new health report. More coffee, less coffee, more wine, less wine, fish oil pills, vitamin E, raw food, some old world fruit that no one has ever heard of – these are all cited by one expert or another as a potential, partial solution to much of what ails us. Especially as we grow older. The indomitable human spirit wants to live forever while the old clay jar is a whole lot less willing.

One of the effects of the many advances in health care that we’ve seen is that there are now enough chemicals, procedures and micro-gadgets to keep our hearts beating longer than that of most of our ancestors who were considered to have lived to a ripe old age if that made it to 50.

Living 80, 90 or even 100 years has become much more common these days but with that advance we’ve seen an epidemic of the ills that regularly attend old age.

Evolution has best equipped humans to be pattern seekers. We look for order in all sorts of chaos – which is why a fluffy white cloud so often looks like a dog or a dead President. Seeing a human face in the random pattern of bark colors on the side of a tree comes naturally to us since it served our survival needs best to see a vine and think it was a snake than to ignore the deadly serpent.

If not the most horrible, then certainly one of the most horrible diseases humans can face is Alzheimer’s. While science continues to look for a miracle drug for that terrible disease, humans look for patterns of behavior that result in lower incidence of disease or a later onset.

For instance, we often promote diet and behaviors that reflect the way people live in a particular part of the world where they live longer and healthier lives. I’m not suggesting that this is a bad idea, but it at least partially explains why coffee is good for you one day and bad for you the next.

Alzheimer’s disease is of particular interest to me because my Mother suffered with it for five years before it claimed her life in 2005. Because of that, I tend to read more news articles about this breakthrough or that hopeful new treatment in the disease.

Nothing is certain at this point but one thing does surface in almost every medical report about Alzheimer’s.

Those who lead more active lives and who remain more mentally active seem to have a higher probability of escaping life without a visit from this disease or the onset of it is delayed. There are all sorts of ideas of what constitutes healthy brain exercise – from playing chess to reading to learning a new language.

Having been a radio amateur since 1977 I have to tell you that I have seen a lot of old hams, I’m talking about a lot of fellows who are over 80 years of age and it occurs to me that they share certain attributes. Things like maintaining a close cadre of friends – either over the air, via the local club, or at hamfests, etc. Most of the older hams have used CW for decades and continue to do so. And most remain fairly inquisitive about the nature and properties of radio – and in the last few decades, many of them have taken to personal computers which offers a new learning challenge.

If you think about the mechanics of Morse, one must hear the sound of it and decode it, often out of the noise. It must then be mentally translated into words – and many operators choose to either hand copy 100% of a message or at least make notes on paper. When it’s their turn to send, they have to think about what they want to say and translate those thoughts into mechanical motion in a particular pattern.

It seems to me that this constitutes as much, and probably a whole lot more brain exercise than almost any other mental function that I can imagine.

Amateur radio is probably too far outside the mainstream for scientists to target it for serious research in this matter. But given the advice that seems to have become standard in this regard I don’t think it’s far out of line to suggest that being an active radio amateur could be an effective weapon in the battle for a clear mind and a higher quality of life for those who have lived beyond the median age.

Frequent medical advice for brain health includes staying physically active, maintaining proper body weight, controlling blood pressure, enjoying a glass or two of red wine each day, and maybe, just maybe they should add – making a few CW contacts each and every day.

After all, there’s absolutely no downside in adopting all of the above.

Jeff Davis, KE9V, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Indiana, USA.