AmateurRadio.com

Series Three Episode Six of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast. News Stories include:-

• Memorandum on PLT
• Reverse Beacon Network
• ROS outside US license
• Special short contest callsigns
• NoV's for operation below 9 kHz
• Automotive Electromagnetic Compatibility
• New Zealand's Amateurs get 600m band
• Delayed QSL Card
• 20m ROS frequencies moved
• Tripod test with Miracle Antenna & FT-817
• Amateur Radio World Prefix Maps
• Tape Measure Satellite Antenna
• Trapping sunlight with silicon nanowires

Your feedback, Upcoming Events and Martin (M1MRB) gives some tips for growing your Amateur Radio Club.

According to DX World, Stan Strzyzewski, SQ8X announced the launching of a special website to provide aid for tsunami survivors on Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile. The mission of the website is to rally our international ham radio community in support of rebuilding island infrastructure and helping survivors return their lives to normalcy.

Furthermore, it was stated at DX World, that Dr. Galdino Besomi, CE3PG who is President of Radio Club de Chile, would declare patronage over aid action. Additionally, the club is 100 percent responsible for collecting and transferring funds to islanders and a monthly report will be posted at the club’s website for review.

Please help support The Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2009. I’m going to quote from the ARRL’s Government Relations page to explain what it will do:

What S 1755 Does

If enacted into law, S 1755 – the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2009 – would instruct the Secretary of Homeland Security to undertake a study, and report its findings to Congress within 180 days, on the uses and capabilities of Amateur Radio communications in emergencies and disaster relief.

The study shall:

• Include recommendations for enhancements in the voluntary deployment of Amateur Radio licensees in disaster and emergency communications and disaster relief efforts;
• Include recommendations for improved integration of Amateur Radio operators in planning and in furtherance of the Department of Homeland Security initiatives;
• Identify unreasonable or unnecessary impediments to enhanced Amateur Radio communications, such as the effects of private land use regulations on residential antenna installations, and make recommendations regarding such impediments;
• Include an evaluation of section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-104, 110 Stat. 56 (1996)); and
• Recommend whether section 207 should be modified to prevent unreasonable private land use restrictions that impair the ability of amateurs to conduct, or prepare to conduct, emergency communications by means of effective outdoor antennas and support structures at reasonable heights and dimensions for the purpose, in residential areas.

To support this bill, the ARRL says:

Please contact Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA-30) and Ranking Member Joe Barton (R-TX-6), urging them to send this bipartisan bill to the House floor for adoption. A sample letter can be found here. Send your letters urging consideration of S 1755 by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to Rep Waxman via fax at 202-225-2525, and to Rep Barton via fax at 202-225-1919. Also, please fax a copy of your letters to the ARRL’s Washington representative, Chwat & Co at 703-684-7594.

If you’re like many of us and have free dialing to anywhere in the US and have a fax machine, this is a very easy and very inexpensive way to support amateur radio. Make sure that you sign the letter (which proves that this isn’t just some kind of automated system sending it) and if you can, customize the letter or, better still, hand-write a letter which will draw even more attention. If you aren’t able to edit the letter from the link, please post a comment to my blog and I can convert it to pretty much any format that you need.

Thanks for helping.

(Apologies to those of you outside the US for this US-specific posting).

Yesterday Kevin GW0KIG downloaded Fldigi with the aim of trying to make some Olivia contacts. He had some success but wasn’t always sure which settings (width, number of tones) to use. He also found the number of different digimodes a bit confusing and wondered what the benefits of them all are. Well, Kevin, you’re not the only one!

The Fldigi online help has some information about the different modes. The website of MultiPSK also has some good descriptions of different modes, including the speed, bandwidth and minimum signal to noise ratio of most of them. Someone should probably take this information and summarize it on a website – unfortunately the domain confused.com is already taken.

Olivia appears to be the best performing of the multi-frequency shift keying (MFSK) modes, which should not be surprising as it is the most recently developed of them. That being the case, it might not be a bad idea for older MFSK modes that have fallen out of use to be banished altogether. There is no reason for every mode ever invented to continue to be an option on every digital mode program – it just creates confusion. The latest Fldigi beta (3.20) actually goes some way towards this by providing an option where you can specify which modes appear in the menu. The next step would be for the obsolete or little-used modes to be hidden by default.

Life on the digital modes would be easier if the commonly used modes each had their own place on the band where you could expect them to be used. PSK31, WSPR and JT65A all have their own “homes”, and Olivia also uses certain frequencies – or did until they were overrun by a certain other mode that is not available in the popular digimode programs and can’t easily be inter-operated with.

Solutions exist to help identify a mode being received, but they are hardly ever used. Both of the methods are supported by Fldigi and quite possibly by DM780 as well. One is video ID, as illustrated by the screenshot above. The software will transmit sounds to create letters identifying the mode at the start of a transmission. The other is RSID (Reed Solomon ID) in which the software transmits a signal that identifies the mode to the receiving software, which can then automatically switch to the correct mode.

There is clearly no need to use these IDs for commonly used modes like PSK31 or RTTY which can be recognized by sight and sound. That would just waste time. But for the various similar sounding MFSK modes it would be a big help if IDs were used. Fldigi runs on all platforms and it’s free, so there is no excuse for not using it and enabling the ID if you want to try some of these lesser-used modes. (Note: You really want the 3.20 beta in which the options for configuring the use of IDs have been much improved.)

RadioSport USA | Elecraft QSO Party.
Keyers sound Morse code while voices hail open frequencies and digital modes finalize the connection. The simplest form of human connectivity is the tribe. Elecraft nonetheless has built a community of loyal enthusiasts and its QSO party is an ultimate expression. It expresses one’s connection to the radio, and, in broad terms, to a group sharing a common interest.

The object is fun and why not? One goal is to collect rig serial numbers while logging old friends and making new friends. The event itself is open to everyone “no Elecraft radio required” while logged Elecraft serial numbers count five points and no rig serial number counts three points.

Rules (link).

RadioSport USA | Second Class Operator’s Marathon Sprint.
I’m laughing with the let’s not take ourselves too seriously marathon sprint. How can one have a marathon and sprint at the sametime? They can and they are!

The point is, like other events, it is social connection via the airwaves that brings people together. I wonder which is first, our technology connecting with others, or people connecting with technology, in either case, it’s a ham radio tribal weekend.

Rules (link).

SFI = 90 | A-index = 9 | K-index = 1 | Sunspot count is 31 @0101UTC.

My bud Ulis K3LU just turned me onto the WebSDR project. Spent a little time this morning listening to W4MQ’s station, which is set up for 160m, 40m, and 20m. Very impressive — I’ve steered clear of online remote receivers in the past because they were typically a single radio controlled by a single user at a time (or, worse, by multiple users continuously changing frequency and mode, making it little more than an exercise in hi-tech uselessness). But this is different — a true server that lets multiple people listen at the same time on whatever band/frequency/mode they want, completely independent of one another. Way cool.