AmateurRadio.com

If you read this blog and you haven't seen it yet, you don't have a pulse or you've been busier than Lindsay Lohan's legal team this week and haven't read any email, blogs, tweets, or forums.  This video of a tower climber ascending a 1700 foot tower has been making its way on the Intertubes:



The narrator is friendly enough and sounds more refined than many of the roughneck tower guys I've met and worked with, but I have to question the brains-to-balls ratio of the climber.  While it may not be required to be clipped in at all times, it's a very good idea, especially at the transitions.  I can't fathom why a climber wouldn't clip a lanyard to the tower when pulling themselves on to the very top.  He even putzes around untethered when standing next to the beacon light, digging out a carabiner.  The other climber comes up next to him and clips in before he does.  It would take only one gust of wind or an unexpected move or slip up by the other climber to kill the camera equipped climber.

You can climb untethered and gain some time, but what use is an extra 10 or 15 minutes one day for losing perhaps 40 or 50 years of your life?
Anthony Good, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Pennsylvania, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The South African national radio society, SARL have come up with what I think is a really inspired idea! They are promoting ‘Take your Handheld to Work Day’ on 1st October. They are asking amateurs across South Africa to take their handhelds to work on the 1st October and demonstrate amateur radio to their friends and colleagues during tea and lunch breaks.

In support of that, I’m planning to make sure that I try and connect to some South African repeaters during the day using Echolink and see if I can make a contact or two. It would be great if others did the same in support of this superb idea.

And of course, handhelds don’t just have to be VHF/UHF. Perhaps FT817s and some simple low power morse activity could feature to show the HF side of the hobby too.

You can read more about the SARL initiative here

Well done SARL. I wonder if some other societies will follow suit – I hope so!

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

If you’ve used Google Maps then you have probably tried the Street View feature that lets you look around a place on the map as if you were actually there. Unless you are in Germany, that is. Germany remains the largest European country that is not covered by the Street View service. The German government has forced Google to offer an opt out service that allows people to request that their houses are blurred out of the pictures in the same way faces and vehicle registration plates are. Some privacy campaigners in Germany would prefer that appearing in Street View should be an opt-in feature.

Street View has been available as an option on the aprs.fi APRS tracking site for a few months now. It’s fun to virtually travel along with an APRS user and see what they see. But Street View has a serious use too. If you’re house hunting then it would be a great way to see whether you like the neighbourhood, for example. When Olga and I went to Prague last month the taxi driver from the airport wasn’t sure exactly where our rented apartment was but because I’d “visited” the area in Street View a few days earlier I recognized where we were and was able to direct him right to the door. (Incidentally the Czech government has also called a halt to further data collection in the Czech Republic pending talks with Google.)

I don’t know what people think they are achieving by insisting on being able to opt out of Street View. It shows nothing that you can’t see just by being there. What are they trying to hide? Anyone can take pictures of an area, upload them to the internet (without blurring anyone’s face or vehicle registration number) and link them in a way that anyone searching for pictures of that place will find them. All Google has done is go about it in a more methodical way. Are we going to have controls on publishing photos on the internet now?

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

This month WorldRadio Online features an article in the CW FISTS Club column entitled CW Naysayers: Would You Like Hollandaise Sauce With That Hat?  The article by KC0CCR outlines, correctly, the growth of amateur radio and CW usage since the demise of the code test.  KC0CCR quips: “Will those who predicted that ending Morse Code [...]

This month WorldRadio Online features an article in the CW FISTS Club column entitled CW Naysayers: Would You Like Hollandaise Sauce With That Hat?  The article by KC0CCR outlines, correctly, the growth of amateur radio and CW usage since the demise of the code test.  KC0CCR quips:

"Will those who predicted that ending Morse Code testing would be the death knell of Morse Code on the airwaves, please find your hat and eat it? Would you like Hollandaise sauce with that?"

The irony of this is FISTS led the charge against eliminating the code test and even petitioned for more stringent CW testing requirements, 180 degrees out of phase with the direction CW testing, amateur radio, and the rest of the civilized world was heading.  FISTS' own petition to the FCC stated:

"...Morse code proficiency assists amateurs in acquiring the very skills that form the basis and purpose of the Amateur Radio Service, and provides something essential to our country - technical skill and experimentation. There exists no simpler entry into the field of radio-frequency circuit design. Without Morse proficiency this easy entrance will be closed."

"Retaining the Morse code requirement encourages amateurs to become proficient in Morse code and many other activities...."

"Failure to keep Morse testing part of the licensing structure undermines many core activities integral to the Amateur Radio Service and nullifies one of the traditional objectives of the Service, i.e., to train a ' . . . reserve pool of qualified radio operators and technicians.' "

While the FCC NPRM was open for comments, the FISTS Code Crusader webpage rallied the troops and rattled the sabers to encourage everyone to protect the CW test and all that was good and wholesome in amateur radio:

"LET THEM HEAR FROM US!! Start a petition at your local club!! We will not just sit by quietly and let them dumb us down any further!!"  (emphasis added)

Presumably a large number of hats sporting Hollandaise sauce will be FISTS caps?
Anthony Good, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Pennsylvania, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The October edition of WorldRadio Online magazine is available now.

Highlights include:

* An End-Fed Dipole That’s Easy to Build and Great for the Field – a trail-friendly design inspired by Kurt N. Sterba’s Aerials column in the August edition of WorldRadio Online, where four stacked F114-61A toroids are the secret weapon along with one-quarter wave of RG-174U coax…

* Seeing What Others Are Hearing: A DX Cluster Primer – How to tap into the information flowing through the DX Cluster network

* Radio & Relaxation = The Great Family Vacation – One ham’s adventures combining radio fun with family holidays.

Stephen Rapley, VK2RH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New South Wales, Australia. Contact him at [email protected].

One of the reasons I’m not endlessly filling my log with DX contacts is because I actually get more enjoyment and interest out of trying new things or just tinkering about. On Sunday I decided to try using my K2 – which has been redundant since the few mobile excursions I made earlier in the year when Olga was away – for HF 30m APRS. I connected it up to the magnetic loop. I didn’t have a spare sound card I could use for the packet modem, but the microphone input of the USB dongle I use for computer audio playback was free, so I set it up for receive only.

When I previously tried to use that USB audio device to decode HF packet via the AGW Packet Engine I had no luck at all. At the time, I concluded that this was due to 300baud packet being a higher speed mode than PSK31 and the USB device was somehow losing the information necessary to decode it. However it now appears that the reason it didn’t work before is because the AGW Packet Engine opens the device at a higher sample rate than most digital mode programs. For the last few weeks I have been using TrueTTY as a packet decoder and this uses a 11025Hz sample rate. I used TrueTTY to decode the audio coming from the cheap dongle and it appears to be just as sensitive as it was when the audio was coming from my best sound card.

This morning I tried listening on 14076kHz, the JT65A frequency, and decoded several stations despite the high noise level on 20m. So it seems to me that it is possible to use these cheap USB dongles for sound card digimodes as long as the software you use samples at 11025Hz. Some programs unfortunately don’t let you set the sample rate and may use a rate as high as 48000Hz. This is unlikely to work if my experience is anything to go by, so I still don’t recommend that you buy one of these cheap devices for digimode use unless you have a specific application in mind that you know it will work with.

I have now ordered another of these cheap USB dongles which I plan to make into a “DIY SignaLink USB” with the aid of the digital VOX circuit developed by Skip Teller, KH6TY. This will allow me to use the K2 for HF APRS, WSPR or other QRP activities using the magnetic loop, and free up the K3 for other purposes using the multiband dipole. In fact I will then be able to use four amateur bands and four different radios simultaneously if I want to!

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].