AmateurRadio.com

Several amateur radio bloggers have already blogged about this news and the forum thread over at QRZ as all but gone viral.  I realize I’m late to the party, but until today, until this very hour I was of two minds if I would blog about this news.  I’m really not the type of person (and blogger) who wants to report the news.  I say this because 1. it’s already been reported and B. I’m really not sure I want my blog to be about that. 

I made this decision regarding my amateur radio podcast as well.  Meaning, I didn’t want to report the news.  In the example of the podcast, there are already very good amateur radio news based podcasts available.  The goal for my podcast was simple.  I wanted the content and the knowledge shared to be relevant not only at the time of release, but also very much so a year from now, two years from now and beyond.  I’m very much humbled when I receive an email from a new listener who informs me  they have just discovered my podcast and they are in the process of listening to all the previous episodes.  By the way, the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast is up to episode 46 and is in its fourth season. 

Regarding blogging, I just simply don’t have the time to stay current on all the amateur radio news.  Also, like with podcasting….there’s already a lot of “current news” type of blogs out there.  Since I try to mix in both my own personal amateur radio activities along with educational content, I would like to keep my blog posts as valuable a year or two from now as they might be to someone today.

I discovered Ham Radio Deluxe back in the late summer, early fall timeframe of 2007.  I had just earned my ticket and a colleague of mine had been using it for a few months and said you gotta get this software.  It does all this really cool rig control and has digital mode software for PSK and RTTY built in.  He told me about the logbook features and then said….it’s Free!  I hadn’t been a ham very long, but it didn’t take a lot of time to learn the value of it’s Free!

I downloaded and installed the software and got my Yaesu FT-897D connected without any issues.  It was this software which I used to log my very first ham radio contact into as well as what I used for those incredible digital modes like PSK-31.  I seem to remember many software updates were made available and each time things always seemed to get better and better.

The upgrade to version 5 (the current version) came with much improved functionality around the logbook and a few other bells and whistles that I currently don’t use.  Starting sometime in 2008, I would make the occasional donation to the developer of HRD.  While I don’t have the exact dollar amount etched into my memory, I would say between 2008 and present time I’ve done my share to help support the software. 

I’ll be honest and state for the record, that I’ve only tried and/or researched a few other types of rig control software.  I do use other logging software titles for specific contests and then import the contacts afterwards into my HRD logbook.  But when I’ve looked into other full-function types of products they either didn’t do everything I was accustomed to from HRD or were priced a little higher than I wanted to spend.  It’s not that I’m against paying for software, but when I did a “nuts to bolts” comparison…I simply couldn’t justify replacing Ham Radio Deluxe. 

I learned of the news about HRD from the QRZ forums on 12 September.  I’ve been visiting QRZ a lot in recent weeks checking on my extra upgrade.  I use the FCC link in my QRZ callsign record to quickly view the ULS record.  Yes, it still hasn’t been approved.  Anyway, while visiting QRZ I will read some of the news items on the main page.  I dare not go any deeper into the depths of the QRZ forums for risk of being pulled into the dark side.  Ha ha  But for the most part the news items are safe as long as you view them while the news is fresh.  Otherwise, you might read a lot of negativity as our fellow hams begin to comment on what ever the news item is about.

Basically what caught my eye in that article was the subject line which stated “Development to continue on HRD”.  Initial thoughts were “that’s cool” as I hadn’t seen an update since early 2011 timeframe.  I drilled into the thread to learn while development would continue on HRD, it would be done by different individuals and that Simon had sold the rights to HRD to those individuals.  At this time the thread only had about 3 pages of comments.  Today I believe there are over 10 pages.

What we know at the present time is more of less what is covered in the first few pages of the thread.  Ham Radio Deluxe was sold and it will continue to be developed and supported.  The rest really is speculation and the only thing I’ll say is I’m under the impression (since a financial transaction of an undetermined amount took place) Ham Radio Deluxe will shift from a donationware model to a payware model.  But this really is only my impression.

As I said, there’s a lot of emotion taking place in the QRZ thread and I’m only to assume that this emotion is being played out in other ham radio forums.  Like many, I’m somewhat sad to see this happening….but I also enter it with a degree of optimism.  First the sad feeling.  I’m sad from the standpoint that something I always appreciated viewing on the HRD website was the following statement “Keep Amateur Radio Free”.  This spirit is what makes the hobby so special.  The free-flow of knowledge shared from one to another is exactly the character of amateur radio.  While we can’t expect everything in amateur radio to be free, when someone has a talent and develops something like HRD, it truly is a gift to the hobby.  This is exactly the same and shares the same value (in my opinion) as someone who shares their knowledge with others in the form of Elmering or someone who donates their time to become a VE. 

My optimism?  Well, since HRD is already a product which I know and use, I’m optimistic the continued development will not only match, but surpass the standard of quality we have come to know of Ham Radio Deluxe.  While it might be hard to imagine HRD getting any better than it is now, I’m sure there are many enhancements that could be made to an already great product to truly make it better.

Donationware versus payware?  As I have stated, I donated what I believed was a fair amount over the course of the last 3-4 years.  How much I donated is between me and my conscience, and of course what I perceive is both the value of the product and all the enhancements made since I’ve been using it.  While I believe I’ve contributed enough to cover what currently is HRD, I’ll certainly evaluate any future enhancements the new owners make and balance that to what HRD is as of today.  I may feel any new enhancements made is something I can or can’t live without. 

While it has been discussed once or twice (and with a lot of passion) in those ten pages over at QRZ, I doubt the new owners will issue any sort of cease and desist order to either pay for the new HRD or stop using the old.  While I work in the software and hard industry, I’m not an attorney, I don’t play one on TV and I also didn’t sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night, So I can’t and won’t pretend to know what I’m talking about.  But I certainly can’t see where the new owners will have any ground to stand on in attempting that maneuver when HRD has been and was certainly always intended to be free as the current version stands today.

I would just like to close by saying a sincere THANK YOU to Simon Brown and all the many individuals who donated their time and efforts and made available a wonderful product.  If you haven’t tried Ham Radio Deluxe, I certainly recommend it.  For now, the HRD website is operational and the current version 5 is available for download.   Also, at present time the link still takes you to Simon’s website where the download is 100% free.  As you might expect in a few days, a few weeks, next month…certainly sometime in the near future the URL may redirect to another website where you’ll find HRD is now payware. 

Until next time,

73 de KD0BIK

I tried to visit the Bob Heil’s Ham Nation show homepage on the TWiT.tv site today and received this error:

Hopefully they’ll be able to get this resolved soon.  Ham Nation is a great show and provides needed exposure to ham radio to quite a large tech audience.

UPDATE:

From Graham Cluley at Sophos:

The website run by internet celebrity Leo Laporte, TWiT.tv, has been hit by a malware infection intended to infect visiting computers.

Hackers have managed to inject a line of malicious code, in the form of an iFrame, at the very top of the TWiT website pointing to a webpage with a .cz.cc domain name.

Another episode of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast is available for streaming or download.  In episode 46 I discuss the JT65 mode and JT65-HF software.  In addition, I introduce listeners to the new Elmer Connection on the MyAmateurRadio.com website and share my good news on the extra upgrade and discuss plans of becoming a volunteer examiner (VE) to further give back to the hobby. 

Please look for the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast in iTunes or direct from MyAmateurRadio.com.  Have an iPhone or other smart phone?  You can also stream direct from my mobile page.  I hope you’ll listen.

73,
Jerry KD0BIK

Welcome to Handiham World!

	Common sense is relative.  Odd as it sounds, so-called “common sense” can be quite different from person-to-person, culture to culture, age to age… In fact, I am almost tempted to think there really is no such thing as “common sense”. I can remember being told one time that I was lacking in common sense and yet another time that I had an exceptional amount of common sense! How can both of those statements possibly be true? Of course what really happened was that a person who understood something in a certain way and discovered that I did not understand or perceive the situation in the same way he did then felt that I didn’t have any common sense. In his universe, everyone would understand that situation or concept exactly as he did. Naturally the opposite happened when another guy told me that I had lots of common sense, but what he really meant was that I was pretty smart because I understood the situation or concept exactly the same way that he did. Common sense is determined by life experience. People will have different life experiences because they have been born and raised in different geographical areas at different times and in different cultures. When you are talking about electricity and electronics, you cannot simply assume a “common sense” understanding of even the most basic underlying concepts. Yes, we might assume that everyone understands basic electrical safety, such as never putting one’s body between a voltage source and ground, but does a person from a culture where electricity isn’t common understand that? Does a small child? How about an elderly person visiting the ham shack?  Or even your neighbor from down the block?  The fact of the matter is that you simply cannot assume that everyone has the same common knowledge that you do or that you yourself necessarily have the common knowledge that might be considered very basic in the world of academia or engineering. In other words, you have to be cautious and thoughtful when communicating amateur radio concepts as a mentor. The person with whom you’re working does not necessarily understand things – even basic things – about electricity and electrical concepts the same way you do.
	When people say that they understand, it isn’t necessarily so.  I’ll bet all of us have been in the situation where we have been sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher telling us all about a concept that is complicated and new to us. The other people in the classroom seem to be following along with the lecture and understanding the concepts, so a person who doesn’t quite get what is going on can feel self-conscious about asking a question. Even if the teacher stops to ask if there are any questions, a self-conscious person might simply nod their understanding and hope whatever the teacher talked about doesn’t show up on the final exam! You can’t always assume that people are following along with your brilliant explanation of the FCC rules and regulations during that Technician licensing class you are teaching for the club. An experienced mentor will be watching for signs of puzzlement or misunderstanding and ask if perhaps there is another way that they can explain the concept. By the way, this goes for projects outside the classroom, too. If you are directing the organization of Field Day for your radio club, you cannot necessarily assume that everyone understands their roles exactly the same way that you do. You have to be flexible and willing to spend some extra time making sure that such a project runs smoothly and safely even though it may mean checking back twice with your other volunteers, just to make sure that everyone is “on the same page”.
	You have to make some assumptions, but be careful!  One of the worst bosses I ever had in my working career was a grumpy old sourpuss who always insisted that you should NEVER assume anything. I always felt that that was ridiculous advice because no one could ever get through their day without making hundreds of assumptions. For example, when I get out of bed in the morning, I place my feet on the floor. I have assumed that the floor is there and that I will not fall into a hole into the basement. I assume that when I turn on the water tap that water will flow. And – when it comes to electricity – I assume that when I flip on a switch or plug in a power cord that the circuit will be live and that electricity will flow. Sometimes assumptions are pretty sure things. I have never gotten out of bed and fallen through a hole in the floor to the basement, so I feel very safe indeed in assuming that the floor will be there. On the other hand, I have flipped on electrical switches and found that there was no power. Power outages happen for one reason or another, and we have all experienced them. The point here is that there are assumptions that a person can make with a high degree of confidence and others with perhaps only what we will call a high expectation. Other assumptions may be so wild and crazy as to be downright silly. An example would be to assume that you will win the lottery, so there’s no point in putting any money away for retirement. Making careless assumptions can get you into trouble when dealing with amateur radio and electricity. You should ALWAYS assume that an electrical circuit is live until you have disabled it with certainty so that you can safely work on it. When acting as a project leader for your radio club, you cannot necessarily assume that others will show up to participate, or that the right tools will be carried to the project site by other volunteers. You have to have a plan! Spelling things out carefully for those who will be helping you can be a huge timesaver when you actually get on site and ready to put up that big antenna.

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.

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.