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Ham College episode 85 is now available for download.

Extra Class Exam Questions – Part 23
E5D AC and RF energy in real circuits: skin effect, electromagnetic fields, reactive power, power factor, electrical length of conductors at UHF and microwave frequencies, microstrip.

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George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

20m at 19:10 during the CWops 1 hour contest

 

With the increase in sunspots and rising flux comes some solar flares and the Kp-index will have it's ups and downs. This afternoon the Kp index up was up to 5 and 6 and that does not my Mike the ham a happy person. Now having said that right in the middle of the high Kp index the bands at 19:00 UTC came alive! It was the weekly running of the CWops test, a one hour contest. Before the contest 20m was dead and at 1900 UTC life was brought to the band. Stations from Canada, U.S and Europe warmed up 20 meters to a nice glow. It's great mini contests like these happen as it shows some action on the bands. 

Another great CW contest is the K1USN SST CW contest this contest happens on Fridays at 20:00-21:00 UTC and Monday 00:00-01:00 ( which for most of us is still Sunday evening) This contest is not one of speed but slower. You will find operators sending from 10 wpm to 20 wpm and if you are not sending at 10 wpm then speed is slowed to match your speed. These are nice contests that only asks for 1 hour a week and it can get  your feet wet with contesting. 

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

20m at 19:10 during the CWops 1 hour contest

 

With the increase in sunspots and rising flux comes some solar flares and the Kp-index will have it's ups and downs. This afternoon the Kp index up was up to 5 and 6 and that does not my Mike the ham a happy person. Now having said that right in the middle of the high Kp index the bands at 19:00 UTC came alive! It was the weekly running of the CWops test, a one hour contest. Before the contest 20m was dead and at 1900 UTC life was brought to the band. Stations from Canada, U.S and Europe warmed up 20 meters to a nice glow. It's great mini contests like these happen as it shows some action on the bands. 

Another great CW contest is the K1USN SST CW contest this contest happens on Fridays at 20:00-21:00 UTC and Monday 00:00-01:00 ( which for most of us is still Sunday evening) This contest is not one of speed but slower. You will find operators sending from 10 wpm to 20 wpm and if you are not sending at 10 wpm then speed is slowed to match your speed. These are nice contests that only asks for 1 hour a week and it can get  your feet wet with contesting. 

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Hello and welcome to the 451st installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss the care and feeding of VSCode. VSCode is a developer environment and testing platform for almost any language and is cross platform, leveraging all the beast parts of your operating system and programming tools. We touch on everything from installing to configuring to using the platform for development, debugging and version control. We hope you find this discussion entertaining and informative. We also hope you have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

We all have read about backing up your PC in the event your beloved hard drive will just stop spinning out the information you have become accustomed to. I am sure most of us have added a few gray hairs when all our info vanished with the greetings of the blue screen of death (in the case of Windows) At that point in time the little voice in our subconscious whispers "just resort to the backup.....oh that's right there is NONE!! 

Well, I am here to say that I did not have a hard drive failure and if I did I have a dedicated drive with clone backups of my main hard drive and another separate drive with image backups. These backups are done on a regular basis and in fact, I have had to go down the restore road twice now and it has worked amazingly. 

My click of the mouse was during my just being bored and "clicking" around my logging program N3FJP logger. I still am not sure what I did but somehow I deleted my whole log...yup 16,000 contacts GONE! Well, not a big deal I thought as I also upload my contacts to LOTW, Club log, QRZ.COM and Eqsl. Soooo Eqsl I just could not figure out how you can even export contacts so that option was out. QRZ.COM you can export your log but first, you have to be a paid member and I am not. The free version only allows you to upload and I have no issue with that at all. I was then off to club log and for the life of me I searched everywhere and I could not find any link to download the complete log............having said that I know there is going to be a comment posted that explains it and I missed it. Well next is LOTW and again I could not find anything there. 

Now I did post a question on N3JFP's contest logger IO groups site and Scott (The developer of the software) got back to me right away. Before I go on yes Scott is the developer but not just him it's his wife Kimberly and his son Chris who work as a team it just happened to be Scott that got back to me. He gave me a suggestion that also got me to think. Long story short I did find out that within the N3FJP logger program you can request LOTW to download a complete copy into N3FJP. Excellent my issue has been resolved.........not so fast! 

It did download a complete copy of the log BUT the number in which the contacts were entered was reversed......so my first contact was numbered 16001 and my most recent was 1 ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!. 

It was time for tea and some relaxation as really in the big picture it's a hobby and not the code for a missile launch. The next day I was reading the email again that Scott had sent me and at the bottom of the email there was a link. It was a bot in which you entered your question and the bot did the search. Low and behold the bot gave me info on how N3FJP automatically stored a backup of the log. I found the backup and was thrilled. So I deleted the complete log again (on purpose this time) and restored my log using this back up and I was back in biz!! 

The lesson of the day is yes you may have a backup for your PC and I do BUT being a ham a log backup is also very important just in case like me you end up clicking your mouse one too many times and well.....you read the possible results. 

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

We all have read about backing up your PC in the event your beloved hard drive will just stop spinning out the information you have become accustomed to. I am sure most of us have added a few gray hairs when all our info vanished with the greetings of the blue screen of death (in the case of Windows) At that point in time the little voice in our subconscious whispers "just resort to the backup.....oh that's right there is NONE!! 

Well, I am here to say that I did not have a hard drive failure and if I did I have a dedicated drive with clone backups of my main hard drive and another separate drive with image backups. These backups are done on a regular basis and in fact, I have had to go down the restore road twice now and it has worked amazingly. 

My click of the mouse was during my just being bored and "clicking" around my logging program N3FJP logger. I still am not sure what I did but somehow I deleted my whole log...yup 16,000 contacts GONE! Well, not a big deal I thought as I also upload my contacts to LOTW, Club log, QRZ.COM and Eqsl. Soooo Eqsl I just could not figure out how you can even export contacts so that option was out. QRZ.COM you can export your log but first, you have to be a paid member and I am not. The free version only allows you to upload and I have no issue with that at all. I was then off to club log and for the life of me I searched everywhere and I could not find any link to download the complete log............having said that I know there is going to be a comment posted that explains it and I missed it. Well next is LOTW and again I could not find anything there. 

Now I did post a question on N3JFP's contest logger IO groups site and Scott (The developer of the software) got back to me right away. Before I go on yes Scott is the developer but not just him it's his wife Kimberly and his son Chris who work as a team it just happened to be Scott that got back to me. He gave me a suggestion that also got me to think. Long story short I did find out that within the N3FJP logger program you can request LOTW to download a complete copy into N3FJP. Excellent my issue has been resolved.........not so fast! 

It did download a complete copy of the log BUT the number in which the contacts were entered was reversed......so my first contact was numbered 16001 and my most recent was 1 ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!. 

It was time for tea and some relaxation as really in the big picture it's a hobby and not the code for a missile launch. The next day I was reading the email again that Scott had sent me and at the bottom of the email there was a link. It was a bot in which you entered your question and the bot did the search. Low and behold the bot gave me info on how N3FJP automatically stored a backup of the log. I found the backup and was thrilled. So I deleted the complete log again (on purpose this time) and restored my log using this back up and I was back in biz!! 

The lesson of the day is yes you may have a backup for your PC and I do BUT being a ham a log backup is also very important just in case like me you end up clicking your mouse one too many times and well.....you read the possible results. 

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

In this episode, Martin Butler (M1MRB) is joined by Edmund Spicer M0MNG, Ed Durrant DD5LP and Leslie Butterfield G0CIB to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature is a discussion with Dave CRUMP G8GKQ about Amateur TV and the BATC.

We would like to thank Wes Nairne and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

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• RSGB Release Board Proceedings
• Advisory Board Aims to Encourage Youth into Ham Radio

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].