A short while ago, Canonical released the latest version of Ubuntu:  the fabled Maverick Meerkat, 10.10. This is the latest in Ubuntu’s normal release cycle and is not LTS. I had occasion to upgrade a couple of my personal computers running Ubuntu to the wily Meerkat. Find out what’s new in 10.10, and what’s old, in the first segment of LHS #049.

After that, Richard and I tackle the WSPR protocol for ham radio again. When it was discussed the first time around, neither of us had much of an idea what it was or how it worked. Armed with a broader understanding and a lot more experience, we talk about what works and what doesn’t work with WSPR, how to get it up and running on your system and what we like and don’t like about it.

Following that it’s on to witty banter, a passel of badgers, some hijinks, censorship, feedback and more entertainment than you can shake a wet hedgehog at. Thanks for tuning in. We love you all.

73 de The LHS Guys

Welcome to Handiham World!

In this edition:

• New net will be on 75 m

• Band plan isn’t the same as frequency chart

• Dip in the pool

• NASA internships available for students with disabilities

• Launch date set for Discovery mission

• Putting in a speech module proves to be quite a chore

• K1RFD puts in a guest appearance on TIPSnet

• This week at HQ

It’s time for a new HF net – Part 3

Two weeks ago we said : We need at least consider moving our HF net to 160, 75, or 40 meters, and those bands are likely to be most useful in the evening. Because 160 requires a very long antenna, it is impractical for many users. 40 can get crowded, but requires the shortest antenna of the three. Of course we can consider reviving our 17 meter “non-net roundtable”, which was originally started by Alan, K2WS, but the sun will have to spit out a few more spots for that band to get where it needs to be. So what do you think? 160? 75? 40? Or something else? And what about the time and day?

Decision time is here! we really need to get moving on this new net, and the consensus seems to be building around 75 m as the best band. Therefore, we will proceed to the next step, which is choosing a net frequency. Most of the responses I have gotten indicate that users would prefer a frequency in the Extra or Advanced class portions of the phone band. We were reminded by one respondent about the “DX window” in the ARRL band plan, which is 3.790 to 3.800 MHz. The Extra portion of the band runs from 3.600 to 3.700 MHz. The Advanced portion runs from 3.700 to 3.800 MHz. The General portion runs from 3.800 MHz to the top of the band at 4.000 MHz. All General frequencies are available to Advanced and Extra licensees, of course.

So the next step is to start listening in the evening for clear frequencies. Please report the frequency and the time you listened along with the day of the week so that we can pick a mostly clear spot for a regular weekly net. By the way, the net does not have to be weekly – it could be daily, a couple of times a week, or whatever Handiham Radio Club members think is appropriate and reasonable. Send your reports to me over the coming week so that we can move on to the next step and get the word out about our new 75 m net.

By the way, there are no plans to make this a formal traffic net or anything like that. While I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of handling traffic, I think it would be fun to just have a nice social net on HF during the long winter evenings. As with the daily EchoLink net, we could enlist net control stations or simply have a more or less uncontrolled roundtable gathering. Maybe we will have some of both, depending on who shows up to join in the fun!

Please e-mail me this week with your frequency and time suggestions, frequency reports, and other suggestions about the net.

If you come from a DXing background like I do, then one of the lessons that will have been drummed into you is that you listen, listen some more and then listen again! The great DXer listens and makes his/her transmissions count. And that makes perfect sense if you’re combing the bands looking for new ones.

But how does that translate into our activity on the ‘day-to-day’ chat bands, like VHF/UHF or even some of the HF bands. Quite often you hear people saying, ‘I listen an awful lot but I don’t transmit very much’. And of course, I know that sometimes it isn’t convenient to transmit – it might be an RFI thing – you might not have time – you might not want to disturb the household…. these are all good momentary reasons.

But sometimes, I think we could all be a bit more active on the bands within the constraints of our day-to-day lives. It was Sunday afternoon and I was sat in the lounge entertaining the cats (if you have young cats, you’ll know how important this is to avoid curtains being swung on and bookcases scaled….). I had my iPhone with me and I dialled up a few interesting looking repeaters on Echolink and called through them. Perhaps no-one wanted to speak to me – but certainly no-one called. D-STAR was a bit more productive and I had a couple of nice chats. But even so, the systems I listened to were hardly buzzing with activity!

Perhaps we are spreading our activity too thinly across many bands/modes/repeater systems/digital modes? I think there’s some of that and I’ve certainly heard the view expressed that on D-STAR it’s easy to lose the activity with so many different reflectors (remember D-STARUSERS.ORG is your friend).

Sometimes though, I think there is a sense of wanting our leisure time activities to be laid on for us and for us just to ‘watch’. I get disheartened seeing people sitting in front of the TV apparently endlessly. They may well be watching informative programmes (or they may not). But what bugs me about it is that it’s a one way street. There’s no engagement or activity. I’ve seen a similar trend on Twitter with people who signup and look at other people’s tweets but never share what they are doing or thinking.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Social Media it’s that you must engage to make a success of it and get the best of it.

And so it is, I think, with amateur radio which was probably the world’s first social media platform. To me, just listening does not equal engagement.

So get out there. Call CQ and answer a few more calls through the repeater or on the bands. Have fun and I’ll see you on the air!

I was pleased to receive the following e-mail from Randy, W6SJ this morning.

You were among the dedicated operators to show your support of the DX Code of Conduct project. You and the other respondents energized me to really get some effort behind a project to change things. We gradually attracted a committee of high profile people, many of whom you might know as dedicated HF operators.

The result is that the DX Code of Conduct has been translated into over two dozen languages. Many of the national societies have featured in in their magazines and have links at their websites.

We developed a section for DXpeditioners and have gotten incredible support from them. All have supported us and they are listed too. After all, they are the real beneficiaries of polite operating.

We also have spread the word through a number of clubs and we just developed a Power Point that is designed to be shown at club meetings.

Please take a look at our website www.dx-code.org and see our progress. Note that we have had over 5500 unique visitors.

Your enthusiasm was important to me and the others on the team and you should feel pride at having given us the courage to try to change the situation.

Please take this opportunity to tell the rest of your friends about the project and encourage them to support it as well..

Please let me know if your club would be interested in seeing the Power Point once it is ready for release.

Randy also goes on to say “PS – This site and the Power Point were developed with my pretty feeble HTML 3.0 skills and both it and the PPT could benefit from some enhancement by a person with “artistic website skills.” If that describes you, perhaps you might want to volunteer to help us create a 21st Century look. “

It’s great to see that the DX Code of Conduct is receiving plenty of support. I hope that will translate to plenty of support on the bands too. We can but hope. And if you can help Randy with the web presentation of his excellent ideas, then I hope you’ll get in touch.

As the owner of a Kenwood TM-D710 I was interested to see that Anastasios, SV8YM, has developed a mod to fix the problem of the failing IF filters which causes these radios to go deaf after a couple of years. As explained in admirable detail in his original article describing the problem, it is caused by electromigration due to the fact that Kenwood omitted DC blocking capacitors on the input and output of the ceramic filters. This issue affects the TS2000 as well.

As you can see from Anastasios’ excellent photographs, the mod involves cutting some tiny circuit board tracks, bridging between pairs of them with wire, then soldering 0.1uF SMD capacitors between the bridge and the filter input. The TM-D710 has two receivers, each with two filters (one for wide FM and one for narrow FM) each of which has both an input and an output that needs to be treated. So that is 16 tracks that need to be cut and 8 tiny capacitors inserted. I’m afraid working with these tiny components is beyond me, which is a shame as it is now, while my Kenwood is still only a few months old, that it needs to be treated.

Thanks to SV8YM for sharing the details of the modification.

Version 2.0 of Xastir, the open source APRS client, has just been released. The new version now supports OpenStreetMap mapping, the same as is used by APRSISCE. I was interested to see that the project web page claims it runs on Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris/MacOSX/Windows so I thought I would try it out on my shack PC which runs Windows. I was puzzled that there was only one download file instead of different versions for each platform, but thought that perhaps they had recoded it as a Java application. I downloaded the .tar.gz file. opened it in BitZipper and found a load of source code files but no .EXE.

There is a file called readme.W32 which contains a lengthy and complex explanation of how to install the program under Windows which involves compiling it yourself using free software development tools. I seem to recall trying this once with an earlier version and failing. Most other developers of popular free software ham radio apps, such as Fldigi, WSJT and WSPR, now produce ready to run compiled versions for Linux, Windows and any other platform their program runs on. Why can’t Xastir’s developers do this? Most APRS enthusiasts don’t possess a PhD in computing so it’s unrealistic to expect them to do it.

Last week at the Waverley Amateur Radio Society monthly meeting there was a fascinating and well-prepared talk from Justin Lavery VK2CU on the history of the Heathkit company.

The scene at the front of the clubroom was not unlike this great shot from the website of Fred W1SKU.

Heathkit equipment on display at W1SKU

Only there were more pieces of equipment on display! Justin’s clearly been collecting for a while, specialising in valve gear and the SB series. He had a stash of catalogues dating back to the early 1960s which evoked memories for many of us there old enough for Heathkit – even on the other side of the Pacific Ocean – to have been a radio icon.

Justin filled in the deep history of the company, with its kit airplane beginnings through to its heyday when it actually made economic sense to build your own colour TV!

He also managed to evoke the history of the time – which is some achievement for someone who I don’t think was actually alive for most of it!

MAKE magazine beautifully evokes the times and the anticipation – those long painful delicious moments between posting the order and the kit arriving.

Heathkit times (MAKE Online)

I was especially interested in observations about how the fortunes of the company were in synch with a strong tradition of making it yourself – which seems to be a core part of both the US and Australia. We both have frontier experiences still in our recent folk memory.

I wonder what Heathkit would make of the kit market today if they were still around. They certainly set a benchmark. And they certainly sold a lot of kits over the years.

So it was an interesting coincidence for me at least that on the same day as I’m thinking about Heathkit and how I used to long to own an HR-10 and a DX-60, I received my Genesis G59 Mk2 SDR transceiver kit.

The Genesis G59 is a very exciting sounding project. I believe I’ll have a pretty impressive SDR transceiver once it’s complete.

While GenesisRadio is more cottage industry in scale than Heath – who grew so much they opened a factory in the UK – the quality is there where it counts. Part of the decision to take the plunge was an estimation of the support both from Nick Hacko VK2DX and the online community of builders on the Yahoogroup.

One step in phase 1 building the G59 SDR kit

The then and now comparison shows how much kit building has changed. Kits now can be delivered across the world in days. Speedy support from a global network of enthusiasts is available via email. Documentation is able to be kept up-to-date and builders alerted to important developments. And most amazing, of course, the firmware can easily be updated and improved.

The key to the success of all of this is the social glue of the builders online. That’s another reason not to delay the build and to glean maximum advantage of the communal energy available there.

The Genesis documentation is clear with excellent photos. Not the component by component style of Heathkit, but totally adequate.

So far I’ve completed phase 1 successfully (the power supply) and am in the middle of the second phase (the microcontroller circuit). I’m taking it slowly and really enjoying those moments at the end of the night when I can get to it. That lateness is the one reason I’m taking it slow. The other is – I really enjoy this part!