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Hello and welcome to the 408th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short topics episode, the hosts discuss the new, upcoming YOTA contest, Pop! OS, the new amateur radio census, codec2, Linux Mint, the Universal Ham Radio Remote and much more. Thank you for listening and have a great week!

73 de The LHS Crew

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 155 is now available for download.

Pi Pico OLED display. Hamshack Hotline Beyond BLF. FCC licensed by rule radio services and you. Tower failure follow up. New RF Exposure rules updated. Name that part.

1:11:40

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It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.

73 de The LHS Crew

Hello and welcome to Episode 406 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, we interview Dave Slotter, W3DJS, of the HamPi and HamPC projects. We learn a little bit about dave, then we take an in-depth look at his ham shack distribution projects. We explore how to get them, compile them, configure and use them and also get support for them. Thank you for listening to this episode of the show. We hope you have a fantastic week and join us again for our next episode.

73 de The LHS Crew

In this episode, Martin (M1MRB) is joined by Chris Howard (M0TCH), Ed Durrant (DD5LP) and Bill Barnes (WC3B) to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in this episode, we feature Kit Building Tips - Joe Eisenberg K0NEB

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We would like to thank Dave Goodwin VE9CB, Sebastian Soyka OZ2IRO and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

- NCVEC Question Pool Committee Seeks Input for an Updated Technician Question Pool - HEMA has come to South Germany - Cyprus Radio Hams Remove Discriminatory Language - Radio Frequency Interference from USB 3.0 - Friendship on the Air Award - RSGB Patron - His Royal Highness, The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - New National Shortwave Listeners Club - Kanga Kits Closes Down - Business Up for Sale

George attempts to re-pressurize a flat can of contact cleaner. Will it work?

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I recently had the fluorescent bulb in one section of the under-cabinet kitchen counter lighting fixture go dark. This wasn’t too surprising as the 24” bulb had been in place since the house was built in 1990!

I purchased the replacement bulb only to find out that it was not the bulb but rather the ballast transformer that had failed.

A search for a suitable ballast replacement turned into a quick education when I learned that these things were quickly disappearing, with many models no longer even being manufactured. Another solution would have to be found and it appeared that fluorescents were bring replaced with, what else ... LED fixtures!

Offering similar brightness and colors as traditional fluorescent fixtures, the LED bulbs came in two basic styles.

One type lets you just pop-in a new LED ballast-compatible bulb and away you go. This is convenient but still wastes energy in the ballast and eventually would require an even harder to find ballast.

The second type is a directly-wired LED replacement, not relying on the ballast transformer at all. Having its own built-in switching power supply, these bulbs connect directly to the 120V AC line normally going to the ballast. It’s a very simple task to snip the 120V AC leads from the faulty ballast and connect them to one end of the bulb’s socket. Now totally disconnected, the original ballast can be left in place as is.

The entire fix took less than 30 minutes ... but how much noise or crud would the switching supply produce in the RF spectrum?

Crossing my fingers, I turned the light 'on' as well as my portable Sony ICF-2010 shortwave receiver. I could hear no noise coming from the radio. I could only detect some RF hash when I put the Sony (with its built-in ferrite bar antenna) right beside the fixture! This was good news and its quiet footprint was confirmed later, out in the shack, with radios connected to much larger antennas.

The bulb I used was a ‘toggled’ product, designed and engineered in Detroit , but I suspect is manufactured, like so many other LED devices, in China. The bulbs are sold in Canada and in the U.S. by Home Depot and possibly others.

If you’re looking for a radio-friendly fluorescent replacement or update, I have no hesitation in recommending these directly-wired LED bulbs from ‘toggled’.

And, if you’re also looking for a ham-friendly light-dimmer, see my previous blog on my own hunt for a noisy next-door neighbour.