AmateurRadio.com

Jeff, KE9V, posted a note today about all of the bellyaching that goes on over the Hamvention venue at Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio, also occasional home to Bill Goodman’s North American Gun and Knife Show (“Tell a buddy, bring a friend…Don’t you dare miss it!” the jingle goes).  In fact, according to the Hara calendar, it appears to host almost monthly gun and knife shows.  But, I digress.  I’m delighted that Hara is near my in-laws’ home should I ever wish to make a last-minute appearance—yes, it’s tempting to get in the car tonight.  And, I digress farther.  The point of this post is to explain the pervasive grumbling, finger-pointing, and misinformation, that spews forth from a vocal minority of the amateur community.

I was sitting in 8th grade math class adrift in daydreams as the teacher reviewed yet another topic from a prior grade.  Clearly, this was a widely-perceived problem, because one of my classmates persisted in talking to several others around her.  Finally, the teacher became so exasperated that he asked, “Young lady, do you have a license to talk?”  Of course she did not, but I chuckled noting that, as a newly-minted General class amateur radio operator, I had a license to talk.  I tucked that away for future use and went back to whatever it was I was daydreaming about.  And today, some 16 years later, the thought sprung into my mind as I read Jeff’s blog.

Another curious coincidence contributed to this confluence of cogitation.  As I was eating my lunch, I happened across an old KK7B paper from the Proceedings of Microwave Update ‘94 entitled “Simply Getting on the Air from DC to Daylight.”  It’s not a particularly technical paper.  It is about the art of doing radio and it was fun to read.  In the first three paragraphs, he writes,

In the not-so-distant past, the primary emphasis in amateur radio was putting a station on the air…Sometime in the ’70s the ARRL stopped calling amateur radio a technical hobby and started referring to it as a communications hobby.

Brilliant.  I’d like to update that for the present,

In the not-so-distant past, the primary emphasis in amateur radio was communication via radio…Sometime in the ’00s, realizing that it had lost the communications game to telecom deregulation, mobile phones, and the Internet, the ARRL stopped calling amateur radio a communications hobby and started referring to it as an emergency service.

So, where does that leave us?  Well, we have a technical license exam structure impressed upon a group of people who are enthralled with communication but use the Internet because it’s easier.  No wonder anybody who reads about ham radio on the Internet thinks we’re up a creek!

I’m going to go make a CW contact or melt some solder to cheer myself up.  In the end, we have a license to communicate via radio.  Let’s use it.

Ethan Miller, K8GU, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Maryland, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

As some of you know, I’m a bit of a sucker for hand-held radios. Whilst browsing eBay I’d often come across the Intek H-520 Plus CB hand-held and thought what a nice looking rig it was and wouldn’t it be nice if it could be converted to amateur 10m usage. A couple of days ago I stumbled across a site that gave the details of how to convert it for amateur 10m use so I decided to order one. It arrived this morning.

Never has a radio been taken apart so soon after its arrival. (Real hams don’t care about warranties!) Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find again the site that had the modification information, but I vaguely remembered the details. Beneath the battery compartment there is a loop of wire. Snip it and push the ends apart. I’m not sure what that does. Now put the batteries back in and turn on the radio whilst depressing the Menu button. You can then select the option “Po” by pressing the down arrow button. Press Menu again, then press and hold the up arrow button until the frequencies displayed are in the 29MHz region. You now have a 10m FM / AM hand held.

Whilst I was doing this I was WSPRing on 10m and I saw some very strong traces from stations in Germany indicating that there was short-skip Sporadic-E on 10m. Were conditions such that I would actually be able to make some contacts with the new radio today?

The antenna supplied with the Intek H-520 Plus is about 15cm long so I suspect it will be less than useless for making any DX contacts. Clearly what I need in order to use this as a portable radio is some kind of long BNC 10m antenna, but at the moment I don’t have one. The H-520 comes with a “car kit” which screws to the bottom of the radio and allows you to power it from an external supply and connect an antenna with a PL-259 plug. So I hooked it up to the shack supply and the attic dipole.

I tuned around and there seemed to be things going on, so I found a clear frequency, 29.520MHz, and called CQ. After a few seconds jack PE1JRP called CQ on the same frequency. I called him and we made contact. He found my signal was up and down, as I did his, but he gave me a 53 report. He said that Leo PA3ELQ was waiting on the frequency and he then called, for my second contact. My report in this case was 57. They were both pretty impressed with my signal running – as I thought – 4W output.

I decided to check the H-520 Plus on my power meter and found that, far from putting out the advertised 4 watts, it was only radiating a whisker over 2. I took it down to the CB channels and even there it was giving barely 3W output. I also recalled that the web page that I could no longer find mentioned the need to turn up the deviation for 10 FM use.

I managed to locate and download a service manual for the H-520 Pro and this gave a procedure for adjusting the power. I had to turn the power control pot all the way up and I still only got about 3.6W on battery power (and just about 4W when running from the car adapter.) That’s good enough, though. From the block diagram I also was able to identify the FM modulation pot and turned that up a bit, though neither of the Dutch stations had complained about my audio. In the picture above, the red circle shows the wire loop that you cut, the green circle shows the power out pot and the blue circle the modulation control.

With the radio back together I hooked it up to the dipole again and worked Oliver DH5PK, receiving a 53 report. I am quite happy with my three contacts considering that I only opened the box after lunch and the radio spent much of the time disassembled. I saw from VHFDX.info that there was a great opening on 6 metres at the same time, but making contacts with less than 4W of FM is more challenging.

What I’m hoping, of course, is that I can make some contacts like this using the H-520 Plus as a hand held radio with a whip antenna!

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

There is speculation at the moment about whether Icom will release the new IC-9100 top band to 23cm transceiver at Dayton, and what the price will be.

I wish someone could tell me why there is this trend towards do-everything shack-in-a-box radios instead of separate VHF/UHF rigs like the now discontinued IC-910H which I just bought? One of the reasons I switched from using a transverter to having a separate rig for VHF is that I can’t use HF and VHF at the same time. An all-in-one radio would have just the same limitation.

Just because technology makes it possible to cram everything into one box doesn’t mean that there is no longer a reason to have separate radios. If you want a new multimode radio for 2m or 70cm you have to buy an FT-817, FT-857, FT-897 or TS-2000 – which are all compromise rigs with fairly poor performance – or wait for the IC-9100. No wonder good single VHF band multimode rigs like the IC-275H are now worth their weight in gold bullion.

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

Welcome to Handiham World!

Courage Center Development Officer Walt Seibert Passes Ham Radio Exam

Guide Dog Trawler passes away quietly

Pat Tice, WA0TDA, is the manager of HANDI-HAM and a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

I phoned up Radioworld this afternoon to ask why I hadn’t received the 2m 5/8 vertical I ordered a week ago. After looking up the order the girl told me that the stock hadn’t come in yet. “We sent you an email yesterday” she said. That was presumably in response to my shirty enquiry yesterday. I checked through my Spam folder and I didn’t receive any email from Radioworld. I mentioned twice that I had received an email saying the item was despatched on the day I ordered it, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of an apology, just a repetition of the fact that the stock hadn’t come in yet. Radioworld goes on my list of dealers to avoid.

LAM Communications by contrast has been a pleasure to deal with. After failing to win any VHF multimodes on eBay I decided that rather than gamble my money on the stock markets or leave it in the back at an almost zero rate of interest I might as well buy any radio gear I want, so I treated myself to an Icom IC-901H. LAM had a used one for sale so I phoned up to ask about it. I was told it was in really nice condition but when I asked its age the salesman (Dave) didn’t know, so he promised to phone Icom UK to find out when the guarantee ran out and call me back.

This he did after a few hours. He was a bit apologetic, saying that it was made in 2003 so there was “a bit of age behind it” and in view of that he would knock an extra £50 off the price and throw in carriage for free. I decided to go for it and he then warned me that the FedEx courier had already called so it wouldn’t go out until the following day. Fine, so it would arrive today. It did, well-packed (the Icom box was bubble wrapped and inside a larger box) and was exactly as described. Better, in fact, I can’t see a single mark on it. I am well pleased, and would be more than happy to buy from LAM Communications again.

The worst offenders in my experience for service have been Waters and Stanton. I forget the details of all the times I had to hassle them to send things I ordered, such as when I bought a rig advertised as with a free desk mic in RadCom and they didn’t send the free desk mic. A classic example of dealing with W&S was when I ordered the MFJ magnetic loop a few years ago. I didn’t receive any email or acknowledgement and no money was taken from my account so I decided that the online order hadn’t gone through. I started to have second thoughts about needing the antenna so I decided to forget about it, which I did until one day, more than three months later, without any prior warning, a courier knocked at the door with a very large box…

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

With antennas, it's not about the feet and inches (or meters), think in terms of wavelength.

Don't worry about the orientation of a dipole when it's less than a half wavelength above ground.

In multi-multi contesting and big gun DXing it's often more a battle of bank accounts than operator skill.

You're going to go through several phases in your radio artisan career.  Don't spend too much money until you're sure you like the phase you're in.

Don't gauge your success by the number of awards you have on the wall.

Don't get your start on 2 meter repeaters.

Don't be nervous.

Your money is better spent in antennas than amplifiers.

There are good CBers and bad CBers.  More amateurs than you think got started on CB.

There are jackasses in amateur radio.  You cannot identify them by license class, age, years licensed, call area, operating mode, education, or income.

When the bands are open any goofy antenna will make contacts.  People will think this makes a goofy little antenna a good antenna.  Not so.

The perception of amateur radio that the general public holds is much different from the perception within amateur radio.  We're in a strange, esoteric and sometimes archaic hobby that most of the world doesn't understand.  Welcome to our secret society.

It's not that extra one or two dB that makes the difference, it's the first 50 dB that really matters.

Girls actually dig letters written in Morse code while you're dating.

Save your money and buy a crank up or tilt-down tower.

Six meters.

You can operate anywhere you live, no matter what the restrictions.  About any piece of metal can be loaded up with a tuner.

You buy an HF quad only once.

Low SWR doesn't mean it's a good antenna.

Ladder line.

Homebrew it, even if you're not some master electronics designer.  When building equipment, don't worry about not being a EE or building the perfect circuit.  Don't bother making printed circuit boards, you can build just about anything you want Manhattan style.  Experiment.  You will learn more from your building failures than your successes.

Don't fall in love with one brand of radio.

Don't limit yourself to one mode.

Join a club.  Do what is fun and what you want to do in the club.  As soon as others tell you what you should be doing, it's time to leave.  When being involved in a club feels more like a chore, get out.  If the club is on life support and you can't revive it in three years, pull the plug.  Move on.  Don't look back.

QRP isn't difficult.  It requires persistence and patience....and knowing when to go QRO or when to QSY.

If you are in a club you don't like and you want to leave that club to create a new or rival club, list on a piece of paper why you don't like that club.  This list is why you shouldn't start a new club.

Don't do CW because you want to impress others.

Get a ARRL life membership as soon as you can afford it.  Don't worry, you will get angry at ARRL at some point, but you'll save money on the magazine subscription.  And ARRL is about the only reason amateur radio is still around.

It's never what you don't know that bites you, it's what you don't know you don't know that gets you into trouble.

Walk away when you need to.

In amateur radio do what you like, like what you do.

You're in a great hobby for life.
Anthony Good, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Pennsylvania, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

How’s this for poor service? I ordered a 2m 5/8 vertical online from Radioworld on Wednesday May 5th. That afternoon I received an email updating the order status to “Despatched.” I paid £10.00 for next day courier. We have ensured that someone has been in all the time every day since then and no-one has tried to deliver an antenna.

I sent an email at lunchtime asking why I hadn’t received it yet. As of now, I have had no reply. Why is buying ham radio equipment always such a hassle?

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