AmateurRadio.com

Welcome to Handiham World!

A volunteer summer

Will Tice, KC0LJL, does some soldering.

Handiham volunteer Will Tice, KC0LJL, helped out at Camp Courage by soldering some PL-259’s to random wire receiving antennas. Will learned to solder when he took an electronics class in high school. Now that he is heading into his senior year at university, he helps us with other jobs as well, including computer-related stuff.

“Look at these nice, shiny solder joints”, he says.

And speaking of volunteers, Bob Garwood, W0BV, has a first draft of the Summer Handiham World print edition ready. Bob is an experienced newsletter editor, and knows how to cut my sometimes too-long articles down to size. Look for the print edition (with a giving envelope) to show up later this summer.

Handiham volunteers Lyle Koehler, K0LR, and Eliot Ricciardelli, KE0N, will be working with me on the W0ZSW Remote Base HF station. We expected to work on the project soon after radio camp, and several important pieces of the project are now in place. We have completed our office move and have configured the office and ham shack space at Camp Courage. We have drilled holes through the concrete walls for feedlines, and our antenna team of Dave Glas, W0OXB, and John Harvard, KC0UHY, have installed an excellent 300 foot center-fed dipole fed with 450 Ohm open wire line and a current balun. The parts were donated by the Stillwater Amateur Radio Association, and a tuner was donated by Eliot, KE0N.

We are so grateful for the time and talent that all of our volunteers share with us. Thank you!

For Handiham World, I’m…

Patrick Tice
[email protected]

Welcome to Handiham World!

A volunteer summer

Will Tice, KC0LJL, does some soldering.

Handiham volunteer Will Tice, KC0LJL, helped out at Camp Courage by soldering some PL-259’s to random wire receiving antennas. Will learned to solder when he took an electronics class in high school. Now that he is heading into his senior year at university, he helps us with other jobs as well, including computer-related stuff.

“Look at these nice, shiny solder joints”, he says.

And speaking of volunteers, Bob Garwood, W0BV, has a first draft of the Summer Handiham World print edition ready. Bob is an experienced newsletter editor, and knows how to cut my sometimes too-long articles down to size. Look for the print edition (with a giving envelope) to show up later this summer.

Handiham volunteers Lyle Koehler, K0LR, and Eliot Ricciardelli, KE0N, will be working with me on the W0ZSW Remote Base HF station. We expected to work on the project soon after radio camp, and several important pieces of the project are now in place. We have completed our office move and have configured the office and ham shack space at Camp Courage. We have drilled holes through the concrete walls for feedlines, and our antenna team of Dave Glas, W0OXB, and John Harvard, KC0UHY, have installed an excellent 300 foot center-fed dipole fed with 450 Ohm open wire line and a current balun. The parts were donated by the Stillwater Amateur Radio Association, and a tuner was donated by Eliot, KE0N.

We are so grateful for the time and talent that all of our volunteers share with us. Thank you!

For Handiham World, I’m…

Patrick Tice
[email protected]

I think something must be broken in Blogger. Two people posted comments today, one each to the two postings I made. I know this because I received an emailed copy of the comments. Neither of the comments are showing up in the blog. In the Blogger dashboard, one of the posts shows “1 comment” but when I click on that link I can’t see it.

So, Paul and S.o.a.l., don’t be offended. I didn’t delete your comments.

I just took a look at the excellent 70MHz website.

United Arab Emirates have granted permission for 70MHz activity, as a secondary service. 70.000 to 70.500 may be used, with 100W.

In the Chatterbox section, David, G4ASR reports activity yesterday from CU4/DL3GCS and D44TD.

Four metres gets ever more interesting!

No, this isn’t a post that was meant to go in my other blog One Foot in the Grave. But I just cannot believe the amount of bad luck I have ordering radio goods from suppliers.

A few months ago I wrote about what a difference it made to the effectiveness of helical “rubber duck” VHF antennas if they were tuned precisely to 145MHz and I described how I had tried to lower the resonant frequency of some helical antennas I already had that were too high in frequency.

A few days ago I discovered that Waters and Stanton sell a tunable VHF rubber duck with BNC socket that can be trimmed to frequency by the user. As I have decided to switch completely to BNC antennas on my hand helds I needed another so I decided to order one.

It came this morning, but when I tried to fit it to the BNC adapter on my antenna analyzer in order to start trimming it, it wouldn’t go. When I examined the BNC closely I saw that the insulation had melted and deformed, presumably during the process of applying heat shrink tubing. So it is completely useless! You would have thought an “ISO 9001 Registered Firm” would have heard of quality control, wouldn’t you?

I have written Waters and Stanton a snotty email containing a copy of the photograph asking if they would send me a replacement. Since I have no desire to incur additional expense sending the faulty one back I have also asked how they will reimburse me for the postage.

Practical Wireless editor Rob Mannion G3XFD has been writing to radio clubs urging members to support a campaign to save analogue radio. However, the radio he wants to save is not ham radio but broadcast FM radio, which has been threatened with closure in the UK forcing users to switch over to the “new” Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) system.

The much vaunted DAB was supposed to re-invigorate the UK’s radio industry, provide a raft of new and interesting IP based services to audiences, permit the launch of new national, regional and local radio stations and generate new marketing revenue for radio stations. However, DAB is almost dead on its feet, as users have been reluctant to buy expensive new radios which in many cases offer poorer reception and fewer stations than they can get on FM. If this reminds you of something more amateur radio related you can probably guess where I am going with this.

D-Star was supposed to re-invigorate VHF radio usage, deliver a raft of new, interesting IP based services like text messaging, DPRS and file transfer to users, permit international, national, regional and local contacts and generate new revenue for Icom. However it is struggling to gain acceptance as people have been reluctant to buy expensive new radios that will provide access to fewer repeaters and fewer local contacts than they can get on FM and have been underwhelmed by the new features offered. Nevertheless the creeping D-Starization of the VHF and UHF bands continues, with the regulatory authorities now apparently refusing to allow new analogue repeater proposals whilst fast tracking D-Star applications through the system.

It does not seem to me to be beyond the bounds of possibility for the powers that be to decide at some point that there will be a ham radio digital switchover, that all analogue repeaters should be switched off and sections of the bands previously authorized for analogue FM use will be allocated to digital.

Perhaps we amateurs need our own campaign to Save Analogue Radio before it is too late. If you oppose the D-Starization of the amateur VHF and UHF bands, feel free to use the “No D-Star” logo on your website, your forum avatar and anywhere else that people might see it.

As I mentioned previously, Ed, VP9GE helped me to get a license to operate from Bermuda (VP9) for my vacation last week. Since this was all pretty last minute, the exact plans to get on the air were pretty much non-existent, but Ed suggested that I contact him on the repeater when I got down to Bermuda and work out the details that way. I decided to bring along my Icom W32a HT (a full-featured 5w transceiver) as well as my little Icom Q7a HT, which is very small, runs off two AA batteries, but only puts out 500mw (1/2 w).  I haven’t used the W32a much recently, and although I’ve tried to keep the batteries (I have 2 battery packs, one stop and one an extended capacity version) topped off, I think they may have simply reached the end of their life and don’t seem to hold a charge very well. Still, I figured that I might be able to get enough power out of them to make contact with Ed.

I didn’t mention previously that we were taking a cruise to Bermuda, and because of the location of the ship (we were docked in “Dockyard” it was very difficult to reliably hit the repeater. The first day there, we decided to take the high-speed ferry to Hamilton (the capital city) and I took the small Q7a with me, hoping that there would be good-enough coverage there. As it turns out, that did work out quite well, and I was able to contact Ed via the repeater, using my K2DBK/VP9 callsign. Ed is constantly running around (he runs some guest apartments on the island) and had a number of runs to the airport and meetings over the next couple of days, but we agreed to try to contact each other again at around noon the next day.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get in to the repeater the next day, as we were doing some sightseeing in St. Georges, and apparently the repeater doesn’t have good enough coverage there to pick up my little 1/2 watt signal. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was close enough that I could have worked Ed simplex, but I never tried.

So although I did manage to operate at least once as K2DBK/VP9, I wasn’t able to get on HF or 6 meters. Still, it was fun doing that, and if I ever get back to Bermuda, I’ll try to plan a bit more in advance and hopefully get on the lower bands.