AmateurRadio.com

Not too much time to spend here today, but I just saw an interesting blog from Sivan, 4X6IZ about getting WSPR to ‘frequency hop’. In other words, you could operate on several bands at the same time!

Have a look here

Clever!

Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving.  If you are traveling across the country, across town or just across the room (like me), please be safe about it. 

Have a great holiday weekend!

Jerry

I think I may have discovered one of the best kept secrets in radio. I have been thinking, off and on, about how to make a very low power 2m FM transmitter in order to get weather data into my APRS system wirelessly. A circuit using the Motorola MC2833P chip is quite easy to build, and I even have one in my parts box, but a custom crystal to multiply up to 144.800MHz would cost about £25 to be made which just isn’t worth it.

One day I was browsing looking at various APRS articles and came across a tracker someone had built using a VHF transmitter module from Radiometrix. I had come across this site before but thought that a) these modules were only for transmitting digital data not the AFSK that we use, b) they were not manufactured for amateur frequencies and c) they were not available in one-off quantities for individual private purchasers. I submitted an enquiry, stating that I was interested in purchasing one TX1 low power (10mW) module on 144.800MHz if the price was within my amateur budget, and was amazed to be informed that they would be happy to offer the module for £13.00 plus carriage and VAT, with a lead time of five days. In total it came to not much more than £20 which is amazing considering many professional electronics suppliers specify a minimum order value greater than that.

The picture of the module is much larger than it actually is – the pins are the standard 0.1in spacing. As I am nowhere near actually needing to use it at the moment, I hooked it up on the breadboard to give it a quick test. The module does indeed accept an audio input: as described in the data sheet you should bias the input pin and then feed it with audio at a couple of volts amplitude via a blocking capacitor. I lashed it up to my FoxTrak APRS tracker and a braaap was received and decoded by my 2m APRS gateway which was enough of a test to be going on with.

There are several other products with interesting ham radio applications on the Radiometrix website. The HX1 is a high power (300mW) version of the module I bought. With the addition of a PA I could turn my FoxTrak into a standalone tracker. Even by itself it would probably have quite a decent range from the fell tops. Also of interest is the SHX1 which is described as “a small multi-channel 25kHz narrow band VHF transceiver with up to 500mW RF power output, usable for 144MHz band amateur applications.” I think you could build a little hand-held transceiver with one of these, just for fun.

Many of these products aren’t in the online shop so you can’t find out the price or buy online, which is probably just as well as I could see myself ordering some more of these toys for something to play with over Christmas. I would certainly be interested to hear from anyone who has used, plans to use or has some ideas for using any of these little radio modules from Radiometrix.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don’t forget that the Handiham Internet remote base stations are available for members to use throughout the upcoming holiday week.

The Handiham office will be closed Thursday, November 25, and Friday, November 26 for an extended Thanksgiving holiday. We will reopen on Monday, November 29. Wednesday, November 24 we close early.

Even though this is a holiday week, the Handiham nets will go on as usual at their regularly-scheduled times. If a net control station is not available, we will have a roundtable conversation on the frequency. Sometimes I think that there is even more amateur radio activity on holidays, simply because those folks who might ordinarily be at work will instead have an opportunity to head for the ham shack and get on the air. Of course if you have guests at your home, you need to be polite and see to their needs first. Hey, maybe they would like to see your radio equipment and learn about amateur radio!

Earlier this week I spoke with a Handiham member who was asking if we still have a 20 m net. Well, the 20 m net is listed on many websites as still being active, but it has really fallen out of use during the lengthy sunspot minimum. Now that we are coming into a period of higher solar activity, we will start the 20 m net again. The net time is Monday morning at 9:30 AM United States Central Standard Time. Our net always stands down if the Salvation Army Net is on the frequency. The 20 m frequency is 14.265 MHz. Please join us on Monday morning and let’s see if there is interest in continuing this net or if we should take a look at a different time and frequency. To summarize:

Things to remember about the Handiham 20 meter net:

We meet on 14.265 MHz SSB Net time is Monday at 9:30 AM Central Standard Time Net control station needed; volunteers welcome! Everyone is welcome – you don’t need to be Handiham Radio Club member. We always stand down for the Salvation Army Net if they happen to be on the frequency.

I have to admit that I am not all that thrilled with a Monday morning net on 20 m. The band is probably not going to be open to the West Coast all that well, and in the early days when the net time and frequency was originally chosen, it was truly the bad old days for people with disabilities and they were usually stuck at home during the day without jobs. Today is different and many people with disabilities, including Handiham members, have regular employment and are thus not available for a daytime net. Nonetheless, we will soldier on and try the daytime net again and see what happens. In the for-what-it’s-worth department, the daytime EchoLink net does actually offer the possibility of people to check in via computer from their place of employment, hopefully during break time! So I do think that we have daytime activity covered pretty well. It is still the evening 75 m net that needs testing, and we will begin doing that tonight at 8 PM, just one half hour after the Wednesday evening EchoLink net begins. That will give the EchoLink net control station a chance to announce that the 75 m net will be starting at 8 PM United States Central Standard Time. Let’s plan to be on 3.715 MHz, plus or minus QRM. I do need to remind you that this frequency is in the Advanced Class portion of the 75 m band. You must have at least an Advanced Class license to transmit on 3.715 MHz, although anyone, licensed or not, is free to listen on that frequency. As we go ahead and develop this net, we can always change the times and frequencies if that should prove necessary. If there is no net control station available at any given net time, we can just have a friendly roundtable on the frequency. Please feel free to use the Internet remote base stations to check in or to listen, especially if skip conditions for your part of the country (or world) do not favor 75 m. Remember that the EchoLink feature is available for listening.

I’m not going to make any promises about when I will be able to participate in nets this week, although I’m certainly going to try to get on the air as much as I can. We are going to have a house full of guests that will include extended family, and my son Will, KC0LJL, is driving back home from university with three Japanese exchange students who will stay with us over the extended Thanksgiving holiday. You can bet that it’s going to be pretty busy around my QTH, but you never know when you might be able to introduce a new person to amateur radio, especially if they can get on the air and talk to someone from their home country!

So, from the staff, volunteers, members, and supporters of the Handihams, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, and we hope to hear you on the air!

Hello, podcast listeners! It has been an extra week that you've had to wait for our landmark episode 50 to be released. I (Russ)  had planned to do an episode from his hotel room in San Jose. Unfortunately, the network there was so bad it was impossible to record so everything was pushed back.

In this episode, we talk about life, love and amateur radio. OK, not really. But we touch on a number of interesting topics including the necessity of logging in amateur radio, theoretical nonsense like Internet via Moonbounce and, thanks to a couple of missives from AD7MI, we wax philosophical on our ideal ham shacks--computers running Linux included of course.

Thank you for being a listener of our show. If you're new: Welcome! Please tell everyone you know where they can find us. And keep fighting the good fight.

73 de The LHS Guys

I have received many favourable comments whenever I have posted pictures from some of my local walks in this blog. I’m sure this has more to do with the beauty of the landscape than my skill as a photographer or the quality of my camera. Still, your appreciation of my pictures gave me the idea that I could use some of them to create desktop backgrounds or wallpapers that I could give away as promotional freebies from a website that needs more visitors. Here’s a sample of one of them.

If you would like a view from the English Lakes to brighten up your desktop, please visit Free Desktop Wallpapers. I hope you find something there you like. And please feel free to post the link anywhere it might be seen by others who would enjoy the images. Every little helps!

It’s a long while since I spent a whole afternoon on a single HF band, but it’s quite an interesting thing to do, watching the propagation change. I decided I would try my 1W WSPR tests again. I started off at around 1230z.

Reports from around the UK and near Europe were constant, with distances as little as 20km (thanks to Peter, 2E0SQL just over the hill in Oxford!) and further into Germany. Interestingly, Peter, running 5W was heard at consistently further afield than me, as you’d expect, but I was keen to stick at the 1W power level and see how it performed.

As the afternoon wore on, some of the UK stations faded, and I started to be heard by LA9JO in the far north of Norway at just under 2200kms. Late afternoon too, I heard UA3ARC in KO85 (though he did not report hearing me until much later in the day). After around 1815z or so, I stopped copying very much at all and wondered whether I should continue transmitting.

I was glad I did though, as around 1915z I was reported in Spain and Portugal and I wondered whether this was a precursor to the path to the USA opening. Sure enough it was and on the next transmit period, I was very pleased to be heard by K1JT and WB2JEP. After a few minutes more, reports dried up for a while, though then things seemed to swing around to the east with reports from EW1LN and UA3ARC, as well as some Italian stations.

Just before I closed at around 2230z, there were more reports from further into the USA, with AD3X at 5683kms and most distant for the day’s trials was W3GXT at 5747kms.

Lots of fun and I was pleased to see how the 1W signal propagated. With the CQWW CW contest set to take over the bands next weekend, I think I can guarantee it won’t be worth playing WSPR, But it might be interesting to spend some time at the 1W power level and see just how many contacts I can make on CW. I’m guessing not many, but I’d love to be proven wrong!