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Once-Venerable Radio Shack For Sale?
29 March 2010 | by 
The New York Post is reporting that Radio Shack may be courting suitors, namely electronics retailer Best Buy. If you have the cash lying around, you can pick up your very own electronics...errrr cellphone store chain for a cool $3B. Could this be the next or perhaps last chapter of our once great electronic hobbyist mecca?
Anthony Good, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Pennsylvania, USA. Contact him at [email protected].
Local hotspot
The Digital Voice Access Point (DVAP) Dongle is a small device now available in the US that plugs into a computer and lets you create your own low power (10mW) RF gateway to the D-Star network.
Leaving aside my dislike of D-Star (it is incompatible with existing radios and requires you to purchase an Icom radio to participate, which in my book makes it effectively a proprietary system) for a moment, as someone living in an area where you hardly ever hear any 2m FM activity I can see the attraction of something like this. It would allow one to make some internet-linked ham radio contacts from around the house using a hand-held.
A couple of years ago I started looking into the idea of setting up a low-powered personal EchoLink node, for similar reasons. I prefer EchoLink to D-Star for the simple reason that almost any existing FM radio can use it (as long as it has a DTMF keypad). EchoLink has been going for years and already has a critical mass of users, which is surely more important from the point of view of finding people to talk to than using some new and more state of the art system?
Unfortunately it appeared that in order to set up an EchoLink node I would need to apply for special permission, providing details of three people who could turn the equipment off on instructions from Ofcom, wait months for permission to be granted, etc., etc., which is way too much hassle. I don’t think you are exempted from this procedure simply because the RF output power of the node is very low. Because of this restriction doubt if many people in the UK will be using the DVAP Dongle either.
Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].
Polar Bear Midnight Madness Event Mar 2010
A fitting end to this season of PBMME … Saturday the weather was finally decent here in Orlando and with 80F temperature and lots of sun, I certainly earned my red neck for the season! I set up my portable station near the tall pine trees in our neighborhood park on Lake Fredrica. A few curious neighbors came by to find out what the crazy guy with the wires in the tree was doing!
I am really liking the latest antenna launching combo shown in the photo below. I have been using a slingshot taped to a shelf bracket and equipped with a spincast reel, but have been considering other alternatives. The monofilament fishing line is prone to wind knots and tangles and does not always slip through the branches as well as I’d like. I found an old post by Russ Carpenter, AA7QU, a co-founder of Adventure Radio Society, which described using an archery reel and super slick braided line. Sure is nice to learn from those that have gone before! The bright yellow line is very easy to see though very thin, 3x stronger than monofilament and flies through both air and branches with ease! KEEPER! Think I will do away with the spincast reel and save it for the grandkids!
Antenna Launching options
Here's my site for the event
Great trees for antenna wire hanging!
If you look closely, you can see the 30m half wave going up to the tree on the left. Nearly vertical for 46 feet and is spooled on a Coleman Camping clothes line and used with a 3 ft counterpoise.
To the right is my 20ft Jackite pole and a W3EDP 84 ft antenna with a 17 ft parallel feed with 3/16 inch PET pipe spacers about every 2.5 ft. it tunes 80-15m with my BLT+ tuner.
The Polar Bear QRP Group is a great bunch of guys… (no yl’s or xyl’s that I’ve heard yet) and our monthly outings are something I look forward to each month. The Yahoo Group is a good source of information and laughs as we swap stories and share our adventures. If you like QRP and portable operation, this is the group to join.
Kelly McClelland, K4UPG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].
The NA-034 operation that almost wasn’t, Part II
It turns out that there was indeed a park at the southern end of the island named South Lido Park that was the perfect location to try again. There was a parking lot that bordered the park, and there were a few parking spots that were close enough to picnic tables that I could easily set up the radio and antenna on a table (or even on different tables) with the power cables connected to the car battery. This seemed like a good opportunity to get the antenna even farther away from the car and the radio, and hopefully away from the source of the RF interference. I set up the antenna, and was able to throw the counterpoise over a nearby low tree branch. (One of the recommendations for this particular antenna is to keep the counterpoise at least 2 feet off the ground.) I carefully checked the SWR with the antenna analyzer and found a good match.
I decided to try to eliminate the feedline that I’d brought with me as a possible issue, so I connected the antenna to the radio with a very short (about .5 meter) patch cable that I’d brought with me. Normally it’s not a very good idea to set up that close to the antenna, but I figured that for diagnostic purposes I could do it. It turns out that I wasn’t going to transmit very long that way anyway since I had the same problem. At this point, I decided to go back to the regular feedline, which is a 15m length of RG-8x that I’ve used for the past several years without issue. What I did was to create an RF choke by coiling some of the excess feedline at the feedpoint. The idea behind doing this is to help keep RF off the outside of the feedline, where it can radiate and cause issues. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to help either.
During these tests, in addition to just hearing the odd noise in my headset, and on the radio speaker when I disconnected the headset, I was attempting to call some stations that I had been hearing all afternoon. The location that I had now moved
to was even better than my previous location, as there was water on 3 sides, which means I had an especially good path to Europe, South America, and the southwest US. Some of the stations that I’d tried to contact were extremely strong and should not have been difficult at all to contact. I was finally able to make a contact with S55OO so I knew that the radio was actually transmitting, though he was in the middle of working many other stations so I didn’t have a chance to ask him for a signal report. At that point, I was confused and frustrated at not being able to locate the source of the problem, and given that it was getting late in the afternoon, I decided to break down and shut down for the evening.
After heading back home (well, not to NJ, to where we were saying), I sent an email the Buddipole Users Group to see if anyone there had any ideas what the problem might be. I got back responses from a number of folks within a few hours, most of them suggesting that I try most of the things I’d already tried (which of course they didn’t know I’d done). A couple of folks suggested trying to use some ferrite beads in various places on power cable, microphone cable, and power cables. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any with me, and they aren’t the kind of thing that are stocked in a local hardware store or even Radio Shack. Budd, W3FF, and Scott, NE1RD pointed out that since I’d made one contact that the radio must be transmitting, but it did seem that there was still some problem.
The next morning, I woke up, checked my email and found a few more things to try, packed up the car, and headed out for lunch at The Old Salty Dog on nearby Siesta Key. I was still frustrated that I hadn’t figured out what the problem was, but things always seem better after a beer and a fried Grouper sandwich. They probably would have seemed even better after two or three beers, but since I still had to drive back to the operating site I decided to stop after one.
When I arrived at South Lido Park, I found an even better location than on the previous day, where the operating position was under trees for shade and I was able to set up the antenna on a different table from the operating position, putting even more distance between the antenna, the radio, and the car. I made sure to have the RF choke in place as close as possible to the feedpoint, and wound up as much of the excess feedline into that choke to try to eliminate as much of the unwanted RF on the outside of the feedline as possible.
I was still hearing what I thought was RF in my headset (or from the radio speaker when I switched to the hand microphone), but I decided to call CQ anyway, hoping that perhaps someone would be able to hear me and perhaps let me know what my on-air signal sounded like. I finally got an answer back from Larry, KH6ITY who, as it turns out, was a technology teacher in Texas and was in the middle of demonstrating ham radio to his class. As it turned out, meeting Larry on the air was a wonderful stroke of luck.
David Kozinn, K2DBK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].
Comedy in the woods
As someone who likes a walk in the great outdoors I enjoy reading accounts of people who take their radios out into the countryside for a bit of QRP fun. Today I thought I would try to emulate them. However although I did make a few contacts the attempt was a bit of a disappointment on several counts. Even the photos I took with my camera self-timer were disappointing as the operator completely obscured the radio and a picture of myself sitting on the ground at the foot of a tree apparently talking to my hand is not something I feel should be preserved for posterity on the internet.
As the CQ WW WPX SSB contest was on I thought this would be a good opportunity to make some QRP SSB contacts. The batteries in the FT-817ND seemed to be less than fully charged, and the battery endurance of that radio is poor enough already thanks to its power-hungry receiver. I decided to take my K2 instead, which would give me the benefit of 10W output and really punchy audio. So the local dog walkers witnessed the odd sight of someone setting off up the forestry track into the woods near Watch Hill wearing boots and rucksack and carrying a small Pelican case.
Fifteen minutes later they would have witnessed the even odder sight of the same person trying to throw a stick with a bit of wire attached over a tree branch. Now I know why the MP-1 was invented! After about ten minutes of persevering I managed to get the wire over a branch about 12ft high. The stick hung down the other side tantalizingly out of reach and I spent the next five minutes trying to hook it with the end of my walking stick so that I could pull the wire taut and secure the end of it.
I had previously prepared two lengths of wire for my portable antenna. One is about 22ft long, and has a few feet of nylon cord attached to the end for tying to sticks or rocks to hurl over branches and then secure in position as the radiating element. The other is about 16ft long and is laid out along the ground as a counterpoise. They are fixed to the red and black terminals respectively of a BNC to binding post adapter which is plugged in to one of the antenna sockets of the K2. The reason for the selection of these particular lengths is that I seem to recall them being suggested by Elecraft as good lengths to use with the T1 portable auto-tuner.
There are no picnic benches or tables in the forest so I just sat down on the ground and used the Pelican case as a table. The K2 sat on that, and the antenna ran off directly behind it at about a 45 degree angle, over the tree branch and down a few feet at the other side. The counterpoise ran off at right angles.
I switched on the K2 which was still on 15m from my last mobile outing and immediately heard many strong signals. However signals didn’t seem as loud or as plentiful as I would have expected during a major contest. I pressed the Tune button and the K2 ATU whirred away and finally delivered its verdict: 9.9:1! It couldn’t match it!
I didn’t hear anything on 10m so that wasn’t worth trying. I got a usable SWR on 17m but there was hardly any activity on that band. On 20m the best SWR was between 2:1 and 2.5:1, and on 40m I managed to get 1.5:1. Unfortunately the K2 is a bit SWR-sensitive – something I never noticed during the years I used it as my main home station when I could always get a 1.2:1 or better – and it flashed up Hi Cur (high current) when I tried to use 10W on 40m. So I had to back my power down to use that band, which didn’t help matters.
I made nine contacts in less than an hour’s operating, which included a break to eat my sandwiches:
1130 7.113 ON5SY 59 609 59 001
1131 7.123 PI4Q 59 801 59 002
1133 7.167 PA6Z 59 1022 59 003
1138 7.123 SP4TKR 59 1130 59 004
1143 14.286 YL6W 59 2416 59 005
1212 14.292 HG1S 59 1821 59 006
1215 14.315 OG6N 59 1450 59 007
1217 14.321 SN2B 59 2772 59 008
1218 14.335 SP9LJD 59 1876 59 009
But these were not nice easy contacts like I made using the same radio and the same power from the car using the MP-1 antenna. My thanks, as well as my apologies to the stations that wasted valuable minutes trying to pull my call and serial number out of the ether.
It was getting a bit cold and I felt a few spots of drizzle so I decided to call it a day. I think I’ll stick to taking VHF on hikes in future.
Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].
ICQ Podcast Series Three Episode Seven (28 March 2010) – Callsigns Uncovered
Series Three Episode Seven of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:-
- Canadian access to 137 Khz
- Canadian Surfacewave HF Radar
- 5MHz for Danish hams
- Viet Nam DXpedition include satellite operation
- Iraq DXpedition
- 60M in Czech Republic
- Beeping Morse Code into business
- Changes to SA radio regulations
- New 8.97kHz DX record
- Hams of the Future Sourced
- Popular After-School Club
- Youngster receives DXCC certificate
- Society celebrates 50th Anniversary
- Installing transceivers in vehicles
- Lightning Predictor kit available
Your feedback and Martin (M1MRB) explains callsigns.
Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].
Antenna Party
Rather than hinging down the 40' (12 m) Rohn tower as usual I rented a 45' (14 m) manlift locally. This was a good decision. This model had a 500 pound (227 kg) platform capacity, so two people plus gear could fit in it. Once I figured out how to operate the controls, it was a very nimble piece of equipment. We wore harnesses and clipped into the platform railing with lanyards for safety.
Anthony Good, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Pennsylvania, USA. Contact him at [email protected].
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