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Welcome to Handiham World!

One of the movies I remember enjoying was “The Perfect Storm”. A huge storm barreled up the Eastern United States seaboard and all the conditions aligned to turn it into a real disaster. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

This week seems a lot like that here in the ham shack. My main Windows computer suffered a failure and the Windows installation could not be repaired without a complete reinstallation. Although I regularly back everything up, reinstalling an operating system is still a huge and very disruptive process. Although you may have documents and the files you have created preserved, you have to reinstall all of your applications. That means all saved settings, passwords, usernames, the lot of it. So I am operating here on an old computer with limited resources. I cannot retrieve all of my old email and many contacts have disappeared. It is a huge mess and it will take a long time to get back to anything like an efficient office day.

But is it a perfect storm? Well, consider that yesterday I had to attend some staff training at our main office at Camp Courage. A thunderstorm had passed through several days before, knocking the W0ZSW remote base offline. That problem was fixed easily enough by restarting the rig control computer and setting the BIOS to always turn the machine on following a power failure. Turning to my main office computer, I found that it had been fried. So now my main office computer and my main home computer on which I produce all audio podcasts, do all audio editing, all my home email, the web publishing, and nearly everything else having to do with my computing life, all both down for the count.

Add to that the fact that we are into the busy season at camp and Courage Center, like other healthcare providers, is worried about an impending State government shutdown, and you can see that this is quite some storm!

So today’s e-letter will have to be shorter. I will do my best to catch up, but ask that emails and phone calls be kept to a minimum.

I know this is disappointing, so to cheer you up, we will hear a special presentation by Matt Arthur, KA0PQW, later on in the audio podcast version of this week’s e-letter. Matt sent me an audio lecture on sporadic-e propagation, and this is a perfect time of year to learn more about it and then look for some sporadic-e yourself!

Letters

Anne, K1STM, wrote to let us know that TIPSnet is in summer shut down mode and will return on September 13. The final TIPSnet for this past season was yesterday, June 21.

Editor’s note: I have lost a considerable amount of email. I am not sure when it will be recovered. If you have sent me something and it does not get acted upon, that is the reason. Please send only urgent email to [email protected] until further notice.

Troubleshooting 101: No column this week

Maybe if I ever figure out my computer problems, I’ll write about that, HI!

Send your ideas about troubleshooting for possible inclusion in this column to:

We’ve all seen the neat projects on the web where someone uses a power supply taken from an old PC.    There is something simple about the project, yet so insanely useful and versatile.

I have not seen many that were as “polished” as the power supply project here.  This is from the blog “TG’s Electronics Exploration”.  The project is laid out in a way that will give you multiple power options as well as a digital readout.  Most of the power supply projects I’ve seen are relatively simple hacks where the basic simple values of a PC power supply are used (5 volts, 12 volts, etc).  This has many more options.

I really like how clean the layout is as well as the LCD’s.  The other really neat thing about his – the work isn’t wasted if the power supply eventually dies on you.  It is relatively easy to move all the electronics to a new supply.

The project page can be found at:

http://tgbuilds.wordpress.com/projects/diy-bench-supply/

The next website we will talk about comes from a sit I visit on a regular basis.  Not ham radio, but plenty of electronics information and kits – ladyada.net.  I used to run a hackerspace in my area.  We did a few projects to get people soldering.  One neat project was a “TV be-gone”.  Simple device where you build it, put it in a container (I, of course, used an Altoids tin) and use it to turn off TV’s.  Great when you’re somewhere where a TV is on, loud, and nobody is actually watching the thing and you can’t even carry a conversation with the guy next to you.  Simple enough project.

This site goes into several questions I get from potential hams when I teach radio classes, including:

What is a power supply?

Why use a power supply?

What’s inside a power supply?

AC/DC theory.

A really neat primer geared towards those that may not understand anything about all those wall warts that are drawing tons of power when not used!  I almost passed this up, as I know enough about power supplies to get me through what I need for my projects.  I found it a neat article that allowed me to probably explain it easier to those that aren’t technically inclined.

Check it out at:

http://www.ladyada.net/learn/powersupply/index.html

Now, if you have any links to great projects or informative sites, please leave them below.

Series Four Episode Thirteen of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Urgent notice to South Africian amateur radio licensees 
• Ethiopian Amateur / Ham Radio Society back on the air
• New shortwave frequency for Commando Solo 
• International Museums Weekend
• SatNav Jamming
• Powerline to pollute Cumbria 
• Council of Europe recommends RF free zones 
• US Amateur / Ham Radio 60m under threat
• ARRL VHF/UHF advisory committee seeks input
• Ham Radio in NY Times Podcast
• DXpedition to Palestine 
• 21 MHz band Aussie radar
• NZART Amateur of the Year 
• Norwegian Radio Amateurs provide emergency comms 
• Amateurs help NASA to receive solar images 

Your feedback, US Hambrief report from Chris Matthieu (N7ICE) and Martin talks about the Joys of Electronics.

Series Four Episode Thirteen of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• Urgent notice to South Africian amateur radio licensees 
• Ethiopian Amateur / Ham Radio Society back on the air
• New shortwave frequency for Commando Solo 
• International Museums Weekend
• SatNav Jamming
• Powerline to pollute Cumbria 
• Council of Europe recommends RF free zones 
• US Amateur / Ham Radio 60m under threat
• ARRL VHF/UHF advisory committee seeks input
• Ham Radio in NY Times Podcast
• DXpedition to Palestine 
• 21 MHz band Aussie radar
• NZART Amateur of the Year 
• Norwegian Radio Amateurs provide emergency comms 
• Amateurs help NASA to receive solar images 

Your feedback, US Hambrief report from Chris Matthieu (N7ICE) and Martin talks about the Joys of Electronics.

I happened to logon to my eQSL account the other day – I’d recently configured my logging program, Winlog32 to automatically upload QSO records as I make them. I hadn’t logged into eQSL for quite a while, but I noticed that I’d qualified for eDX100 (100 countries confirmed on eQSL) and ePFX300 (Over 300 prefixes confirmed on eQSL).It was fun getting the certificates back – I’m not at all into the whole awards / QSL part of radio at all – but since all I had to do was press ‘Apply for award’ then that’s ok!Funny wording on the certs though…..

I’ve been quite tempted by one of the Anytone AT5555 10m transceivers. Quite clearly its heritage is a CB radio, but there’s an appeal in the simplicity of it. A few watts of SSB on 28MHz can go a long way as we know by now, and FM can be fun at times. Partly I’d thought about having one for the car – as long as I could find a 10m mobile antenna that will fit under the barrier at the station! Reading around on the web, reviews are fairly favourable. Still haven’t quite convinced myself to push ‘buy’ on the website! Anyone reading this that’s tried one?Either way – the musings have convinced me to reroute the coax from the Butternut vertical to the shack (it was previously routed to the lounge…) so that I can listen on 28MHz a bit more on one of the rigs I’ve got around. If I get a chance this weekend I’ll work on that.

It’s a rainy lunchtime in London and I just popped over to the City branch of Maplin to pick up a few connectors for something I want to do at the weekend. Whilst I was in there I had a look around.

To my surprise, under the communication section was a 144MHz handheld for about £90. It’s badged Moonraker, but I’m guessing it is one of the many radios finding their way to our market from China. Doubtless the quality isn’t going to be quite as good as one as one that you’d pay two or three times the price for, but at that price it would be worth trying.

What excites me about seeing equipment available so readily and as cheaply is that it has the potential to tempt people to take their first steps in amateur radio – or even to return to the hobby.

I’ve worked quite a number of people who had dropped out of the hobby over the years, but had seen the budget priced transceivers and been tempted to pick one up and try it out.

If you’ve got a ham licence, but no transceiver – why not give one a go! Amateur radio is much more than an HT – but every journey has to start somewhere!