AmateurRadio.com

In physics the Theory of Everything is a scientific quest for the holy grail of theories that will pull everything together in one neat package and explain everything in the universe.  It’s unlikely that we’ll come close to the theory being realized in our lifetimes, but Jeff, KE9V, has perhaps stumbled upon a “Theory of Everything” in amateur radio, if there could be such a thing.  Jeff writes:

“I recently happened upon the home page of a fellow who was newly licensed. This fellow described what he thought ham radio was all about, and in four short sentences he captured the essence of the thing. He wrote that “the ham radio operator is like MacGyver. Bad guys put him in a tough situation, then he uses clever methods to get himself out of those tough spots. Except in ham radio, it is the radio operator who puts himself in these tough spots and then devises clever means to get himself out.”  ”

Jeff goes on to cite various MacGyver scenarios in amateur radio that we’re familiar with, such as operating QRP with little homebrew rigs in parks or on mountaintops.  The MacGyver analogy, while quite simple really sums up for me the raison d’être of amateur radio, and with every sub-hobby from DXing to QRP to homebrewing to contesting to CW, to even, yes, emcomm.

Having struggled with my interest in amateur radio recently, I realized if you lose the MacGyver instinct or curiosity, your interest in amateur radio will wane.  You have to get back in touch with your “inner MacGyver” to rekindle your interest.  That may mean going away from a part of the hobby that has become commonplace and mundane and going to new challenges that give new opportunities to put yourself in a “tough spot.”

I think the MacGyver concept can also explain the public’s perception of amateur radio.  One cannot really appreciate MacGyver’s ingenuity unless A) they benefit from it (i.e. he saves the day) or B) if they themselves are MacGyvers with the knack for doing what he does.  So the public often just doesn’t get what we do.  While other hobbies like playing an instrument such as a guitar (one of my goals for 2011) are as equally arcane or complicated as amateur radio, the general public can understand the benefits and satisfaction of playing an instrument and enjoy the results.  While it’s easier to just go buy some music on iTunes, I don’t see a similar MacGyver scenario with making music.

The MacGyver concept can also explain mode wars within amateur radio.  Anyone who’s been in amateur radio awhile knows that we have CW aficionados among us who think “real radio” must involve CW.  Some take the MacGyver quality too far and don’t see others as being worthy radio amateurs because they put themselves in less of a tough spot than CW ops choose to.  I think there is often a similar sentiment with QRP versus QRO.

One area in amateur radio that can be at odds with this MacGyver concept is emcomm.  I think the MacGyver-like motivation still applies, it’s just that the so-called “tough spot” Jeff refers to is slightly different.  Emcomm participants tend to prepare for a real tough spot by creating simulated tough spots in the form of drills.  The real tough spot rarely, if ever, happens.  To many people inside and outside of amateur radio it’s questionable whether amateur radio is in a position to save the day in these situations, and I think that’s where the trouble with amateur radio emcomm lies today.  I do think however that the MacGyver concept still applies.

I would love to go on a major DXpedition like the South Georgia or Heard Islands, but paradoxically DX chasing holds little interest for me.  Yes,  it’s the MacGyver concept at work again; working DX really doesn’t challenge me but the thought of a DXpedition does.

Perhaps I’ve beaten to death this concept, but Jeff’s article really struck a chord with me.  Keeping in mind what is at the core of our love of amateur radio can undoubtedly guide us, keep us interested and on track for years of enjoyment.

On a side note, I guess I need to give the obligatory “Happy New Year” greeting.  I’ll spare everyone the resolution list as you all probably know what’s on it and I’ll be writing much of the same list again at the end of this year.  :-)  I thank all of you, my readers and fellow radio artisans, for reading my thoughts, rants, and satire here the past year and hope you’ll stick around for another year.  Happy New Year and 73!

The ARRL 10-meter (28-MHz) contest was a couple of weeks ago.  Given that I had bothered to install a 10-meter antenna at this QTH and that conditions seem to be improving, I thought it would be fun to play.

I fired up CQing on Saturday and after a few minutes, Sarah appeared at the shack doorway.  This usually means that something is broken or I’m causing RFI to something she wants to be using.  Since I’m not KT0R, who used to tell his neighbors that he was “busy and please come back on Monday,” I obliged her.  It was the CO detector again.  I unplugged it (it’s battery-backed, so it just means that contesting burns through 9-volt batteries) and returned to the game.  Peace reigned again in the Miller household.

Sneaking in a little bit of contesting before church on Sunday morning is a long-standing habit of mine, although it seems that the Sunday openings are usually better than the Saturday openings.  Today was no exception.  I was working hard to extract a few QSOs out of what appeared to be a mostly dead band and Sarah again showed up at the shack doorway—this time with wet hair and quite agitated.

“The outlet is popping when I plug the hair-dryer into it!”

I assured her that I would take care of it, adding that it was “probably just the radio getting into the GFI.  Let me send a few dits and see if it starts clicking.”

“No, you stay there, I’ll send the dits.  How do you do it?”

“Just press the left paddle.”

And so, Sarah made her first ham radio transmission on 10-meter CW this morning (after which I did identify, for the record).  I confirmed that the outlet made a little click.  She was not completely convinced, but I told her I would shut down while she dried her hair so I could monitor the situation.

The hairdryer (a prior unit), Sarah, and I have had run-ins before.  Several years ago, when we were poor graduate students, a loose screw was causing a nasty vibration in the old hairdryer.  So, I tightened it up and gave it back to her, not knowing that there was another screw floating around inside the case.  One morning, that screw found its way into the motor and sparked.  When Sarah called me on the phone, I thought she’d burnt the house down.  As much as it pains me, I no longer attempt to fix any appliances that cost less than $50 as a result of this episode.

Still worked up, Sarah took the opportunity to grill me about the compatibility of contesting with family life…”When have children, how will you hear them if they’re in trouble and you have your headphones on?  (In jest, I later proposed wiring a baby monitor into the SOnR audio chain.)  Can’t you listen with the speaker?  How will we keep them from eating your little parts, bits of wire, and globs of solder?  Electricity is not a toy!”

We laughed at the last one.  And she added, “I hope they’re all girls who want everything hot pink—so much hot pink that we want to barf.”

I suppose if someone makes a hot-pink Hello Kitty AK-47 (the photo actually looks like a painting of an AR-15) and the Sarah-cuda bow, we can find hot-pink solder irons, paddle finger pieces, headphones, and even radios (I seem to recall that there was a BabyPhat mod’ed hot-pink Motorola HT floating around the web a few years ago).

Anyhow, this post is for Sarah because she puts up with a lot of tinkering, RFI, and headphone time and gets very little blog recognition in return for it.

(The photo above is of Ft Rock, Oregon, taken by me when I was on assignment there.)

Dad and I built a 10-meter rotable dipole some 12-13 years ago using pieces of a large Wilson tribander that I had begged off of a local ham.  It was an interesting mechanical design, using a 3/4-inch CPVC tee fitting as the center insulator and mounting bracket.  The third leg of the tee slipped over a piece of EMT conduit that we had crimped.  The EMT, in turn telescoped into a RadioShack-type TV mast, which was bracketed to our deck.  It was a fun antenna back when 10 meters was fun.

That CPVC tee lasted a good deal longer in the UV and wind than we ever imagined.  Granted, the antenna was stored in my folks’ garage for 7-8 years while I was in college and graduate school.  But, I reinstalled it when we moved to Maryland.  Last week brought high winds to the Mid-Atlantic region and the fitting gave up the ghost:

Fortunately, it takes all of a half-hour and another 33-cent fitting to replace it.  I did think of running a piece of pipe, dowel, or fiberglass across the element for extra strength.  But, I’ll do that if it fails again soon.  The process of repairing the antenna reminded me of the technique we used to tune it, which we thought was very clever at the time.

We used the “magic” 468 to set the initial length of the antenna optimized for 28.400 MHz, which was totally wrong since 468 is intended for bare wire, not tapered aluminum.  Then, we installed it and measured the VSWR across the band (in the shack).  Next, we took the frequency of the minimum VSWR and divided that by the design frequency.  Then, took the antenna down and scaled the length of the antenna by the quotient from the previous step.  Finally, we reinstalled the antenna and measured the VSWR across the band.  It hit dead-on.  Dad was impressed that my first two QSOs were KL7 and ZS!  It was, of course, ten meters when ten meters was good.

This may be old-hat to a lot of folks, but we thought we were geniuses at the time, although it was purely an act of shade-tree engineering!  For those who don’t mind watching sausage made, I will now muse on the validity of the technique.

Suppose you have a “magic factor,” M (=468 or whatever), that defines the frequency of minimum VSWR for an antenna of length l:

Rearranging that will be useful later:

If we take the partial derivative of each side in the first equation, and substitute M from the second equation we get the following relationship:

Cross-multiplying/-dividing and abusing the partial derivative notation to be a small perturbation yields:

This is subtly different from the original technique, which can be derived from this using some small-number approximations.  But, the point is that there exists a simple technique to prune a dipole to resonance.  delta-f is the offset between the design and actual VSWR minimum frequencies, f is the design VSWR minimum, l is the design length, delta-l is the amount that needs to be added (pruned).

Series Four Episode One of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:

• Distracted Driving - an amateur replies
• Walkie-talkies abroad
• Brightest northern lights display for 50 years
• Gadgets Frequencies?
• iPhone Amateur Radio apps
• Chevy hidden antenna
• Work all Britian 2011
• Amateur Radio World Castles Award
• Greek radio repeater locator app
• Icelandic hams get 5.36-5.41MHz
• Russian engineers plan to extend Internet to space
• British Young Ladies Amateur Radio Association 
• New amateur radio bands for Spain

Your feedback and Martin (M1MRB) reviews the G-QRP Club.

Series Four Episode One of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:

• Distracted Driving - an amateur replies
• Walkie-talkies abroad
• Brightest northern lights display for 50 years
• Gadgets Frequencies?
• iPhone Amateur Radio apps
• Chevy hidden antenna
• Work all Britian 2011
• Amateur Radio World Castles Award
• Greek radio repeater locator app
• Icelandic hams get 5.36-5.41MHz
• Russian engineers plan to extend Internet to space
• British Young Ladies Amateur Radio Association 
• New amateur radio bands for Spain

Your feedback and Martin (M1MRB) reviews the G-QRP Club.

I was just chatting to Dave, G4AQK on 70MHz and he mentioned that he’d seen a video on YouTube showing how ZS6DJM had modified an FT897 to include a Spectrum 70MHz transverter.

Interesting! The transverter is located in the battery compartment and a switch has been added to the top of the rig to switch the transverter on and off. Very neat

New Year’s Eve dawned with some fairly localised (to me) but quite intense tropo on VHF/UHF. When I first switched on the 144MHz rig around 0815z (It *WAS* a day off!) I noticed the GB3VHF beacon in Kent was well over S9 – it’s normal strength is around S6.

Didn’t get a chance to operate, but I had the FT8900 on in the car as I was driving down to see the bees and noticed that the GB3PO repeater at Ipswich and the GB3BX repeater near Wolverhampton were coming through.

From home, literally seconds before we went off to see Mum in Cheltenham, there was a flurry of activity on 70.450MHz FM. 2E0EKF, 2E0CBP and G0AUI were all coming through. Looked them up this morning and 2E0EKF is in Chigwell, Essex and G0AUI in Haywards Heath, Sussex (can’t find 2E0CBP at the moment!). Shame there wasn’t an opportunity to call them as that would have been an excellent distance on 70Mhz FM.

Happy New Year!