AmateurRadio.com

It has been a while since I’ve done one of these Internet Spewing posts, so I’ve got some catching up to do.

Twitter is heating up with rumors and reports of new ham gear to be introduced at the Dayton Hamvention. Elecraft is introducing the KX2 QRP HF transceiver. I know this one is real because Steve WGØAT got a chance to try out a unit, shown here in this video. Also, see the short review by Frank KØJQZ.

VA3XPR broke the news about a VHF/UHF radio that does DMR, D-STAR and C4FM digital modes. This is exciting stuff but we’ve been here before and nothing materialized. It is definitely achievable…someone just has to do the work.

K3NG comments on the most recent innovation from Heathkit, the Pipetenna. Leixen recently introduced a 25 W UHF handheld radio. Now who thinks THAT is a good idea?

The FCC is thinking about making amateur radio licenses last for a lifetime. See the KB6NU blog and comments on the topic.

The ARRL announced that the August UHF Contest is cancelled, thereby ticking off the hams that like to work that contest. It seems they also ticked off the many hams that have been contemplating participating in the contest for the last decade but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Not cancelled but expanded is the Colorado 14er Event, which will go the whole weekend (August 6-7). Check out the ham14er web site for the latest info. Its our 25th year and its going to be fun!

The Atlantic published a decent article on ham radio, focusing on the emergency communication aspect of the radio service. Yay!

Don’t forget to participate in the National Pizza Ovens On The Air (NPOOTA) event. Unfortunately, there’s been some partisan bickering about Obama’s recent activation. In related news, here’s a proposal to abolish the use of Q codes. To which I say, QSL!

After one of our Tech Licensees asked “just how many antennas do I need to cover all these bands?”, I wrote this article at HamRadioSchool.com: Antennas… How Many Do I Need?

Another important question is How Many Digits of Pi Do I Need? It turns out that JPL has figured this out using actual math and the answer is 16 digits. You don’t need anymore than that. Ever.

OK, that’s it for now. No, I am not going to be at Dayton. All of the Cool Kids went to Hamcon Colorado instead.

73, Bob KØNR

The post This Spewed Out of the Internet #32 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Hello, listeners! We're putting out our latest episode of Linux in the Ham Shack just before Hamvention. We have great topics tonight including hams suing hams, the fight between Oracle and Google, antenna and kit building, mobile operation and so much more. Don't forget that we WILL be at the Dayton Hamvention this year in the East Hall, booth 625. Also, please note that we could still use your help in defraying some of our Hamvention expenses. If you'd like to donate (and maybe pick up some cool LHS swag in the process), please click on our Generosity Campaign link. See you there!

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

When I tell people I’m a former shipboard radio operator, they always ask if I ever sent an SOS. Well, almost…

I was working on a car carrier, essentially just a big shoe box on a hull, with living quarters on top. We had just loaded cars straight out of the factory in Nagoya. You could still smell the paint. The ship has big blowers to ventilate the cargo holds and cars are packed in just 6 inches apart, strapped down (with the transmission in ‘park’ if auto or first gear if a standard with the parking brake on for extra hold).

The was a typhoon offshore and we were making full speed to get ahead of it. The ship was surging (also called pitching) and we were banging into a heavy head sea. it was nothing the ship couldn’t handle but it is annoying to feel a huge bang every 30 seconds as you hit the waves.

We had just come up from our 10:15 coffee break when all the alarms went crazy. The fire control panel on the bridge lit up like a Christmas tree. We had fire in five decks and we all went to our fire stations.

First we shut off the ventilation for the cargo holds so we wouldn’t fan the flames. The captain took control and sent the chief mate to close up all the ventilation hatches while they opened the hatch door to try and fight the fire with the hoses. Acrid black smoke and flames came roaring out. The AC power was going off and on as circuit breakers tripped all over the ship — but somehow they kept the power on despite heavy smoke in the engine room.

The fire was incredibly hot and the deck began to melt and sag in places. I could feel cars exploding in the hold like popcorn in a kettle. The water was just making steam and things weren’t looking good. I went to the chart room and got our last position at 10:15. I couldn’t send an SOS without the captain’s order because that would expose the shipowners to salvage claims. Instead I sent a PAN notice XXX in Morse code advising ships we were on fire and dead in the water, and our position.

In just a few minutes I had 3 QSL’s and ships were standing by in case we had to abandon ship. On car carriers you can’t just lower the boats because you would bang against the ship and break the lifeboats. You have to swing out the boat, jump in and fasten a 4-point seat restraint and just pull the release and free fall 90 ft. The captain said they did it in the shipyard for the Coast Guard inspection and it wasn’t too bad, but doing it in heavy seas is another matter. Fortunately by then the chief mate had secured all the open ventilators and they fought the fire until they could reach the fire control room. There they released thousands of gallons of CO2 into the holds and eventually the fire was out.

I cancelled the XXX broadcast but it was nice to know that we had help nearby if we needed it. The age old system worked just as it was meant to. In all we burnt up over 5,000 cars out of 7,800 on board and the ship was a wreck.

It would take a month to repair it. The fire investigator believed that the surging of the ship had caused a defective starter to engage on a vehicle with a standard transmission. With straps holding it and the parking break on it couldn’t move and the wire to the starting motor became red hot. The wire in turn was secured to the fender well with a clamp. The fender well was made of a composite material and caught fire and burned very hot triggering a runaway “domino effect” as car after car caught fire.

It was a nice ship and it came to Boston not far from my home but after the fire I gave up the job. I knew I’d never be at ease on a car carrier again, and that was my one and only almost SOS.

Andy Bourassa, W1LJJ, is a special contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Hampshire, USA.

Last night I switched on the PC it booted into Windows 7 as normal, after a quick look around at a few Ham sites I was called for my tea. After returning to my desk after eating my roast beef and Yorkshire puds I returned to something new!



Unknowing to me Windows 10 had downloaded in the background and installed itself on my PC without even informing me. Yes, Microsoft can take over your machine without you even knowing! It appears if you have got your settings set for auto updates it will do this. Beware! Big brother is really alive! Would Microsoft like it if I came in through the back door and took over their servers and PCs, I think not!


I must admit though, there were only a couple of little hiccups which I sorted in an hour or so, everything seems to have gone over clean. It appears you can revert back to your previous operating system but only within 30 days of the install.
Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at [email protected].

Last night I switched on the PC it booted into Windows 7 as normal, after a quick look around at a few Ham sites I was called for my tea. After returning to my desk after eating my roast beef and Yorkshire puds I returned to something new!



Unknowing to me Windows 10 had downloaded in the background and installed itself on my PC without even informing me. Yes, Microsoft can take over your machine without you even knowing! It appears if you have got your settings set for auto updates it will do this. Beware! Big brother is really alive! Would Microsoft like it if I came in through the back door and took over their servers and PCs, I think not!


I must admit though, there were only a couple of little hiccups which I sorted in an hour or so, everything seems to have gone over clean. It appears you can revert back to your previous operating system but only within 30 days of the install.
Steve, G1KQH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from England. Contact him at [email protected].

I had originally planned to make a maintenance and upgrade visit to my instrumentation in American Samoa in February 2016.  There are lots of advantages to February:  It’s cold here in W3, the ARRL DX CW contest is in February, and the phenomenon I’m studying is most active during the equinoxes.  I scheduled a 7-day trip that ended with the weekend of ARRL DX so I had the opportunity work through the weekend or play some radio if work went better than expected.

My flight had been booked out of Washington National (DCA) airport at 5:15 am Monday morning, which is the best possible time of day at the worst possible airport.  A snowstorm of unknown magnitude was bearing down on the mid-Atlantic.  And, around 4:00 pm on Sunday afternoon, I fell asleep on the couch.  When I awoke 90 minutes later, it rapidly became clear that I had a nasty stomach flu.  As my condition deteriorated further, I finally decided I didn’t want to be fighting that for the next 24 hours on 767s on my way to a foreign place where I wasn’t sure what kind of medical facilities I could access.  I cancelled the trip and spent the next 24 hours in bed instead.

The trip was rescheduled for three weeks later in March and I managed to get this itinerary out of BWI, which is much more convenient.  I loaded up my gear and went to the airport at 4:00 am.  My upgrade had cleared so I didn’t pay excess on my overweight and extra Pelican cases.  We sat at the end of the runway on the tarmac doing the preflight checks and the cabin lights started flickering intermittently.  And we sat, and we sat. And, we returned to the gate and sat some more.  I nervously refreshed the ETA on my phone finally watching the arrival in PHX slip past the departure to HNL.  I deplaned.

The agents tried to convince me that I could “just take the flight to Honolulu tomorrow.”  With some effort, I communicated to them that the HNL-PPG (Sa’moa) leg my journey only goes on Mondays and Fridays and that I would rather be stuck at home for a week rather than a week in Honolulu.  So, I cancelled the trip for a second time.  My bags went to PHX and were delivered to my house the next day.  I rescheduled the trip for late April with a night in Honolulu on the outbound leg to avoid this bit of bad luck happening twice.

Two days before I left, my local contact called me on the phone to tell me that Tropical Cyclone Amos was bearing down on the island.  Fortunately, the hurricane dumped some rain and brought some winds but passed to the north of island.  The April trip went off without a hitch, although it was scheduled for four days (Monday night – Friday night) instead of the original seven.  So, I was hustling to get my work done and find time for radio.

I was vaguely aware that KC0W is also in KH8, but given my historical bad luck with this particular visit, I didn’t reach out to him.  In fact, he’s the one that contacted me once I arrived.  We met for breakfast at the McDonald’s in Tafuna one morning and had a nice long ragchew about radio and travel.  Typical hams.  I decided to focus on bands (especially 160) that Tom wasn’t on given my limited time on the island.

Fortunately, I had access to this mobile phone tower, which I use for my wireless networking for instruments as well.  So, I climbed up to check on the network equipment and put a pulley on the tower so I could raise and lower ham antennas safely after-hours when no one was around.

The tower is on the top of Cape Matatula, which sticks out of the northeast corner of Tutuila island.  It’s the bit of land jutting out in the middle of the photo below.  If you open the full-size photo, you can see the tower just at the edge of a rather precipitous drop-off toward the rocky shore about 1/3 of the way from the right-hand side of the frame.  Needless to say, it’s a great QTH with 270 degrees of saltwater view as I’ve mentioned before.  At sunrise and sunset, the middle and higher bands are open to EU, JA, and NA/SA all at once.  The pileups are thrilling but very challenging.

Here’s the radio setup from this trip:  K2/100, KPA500, WKUSB, and TRLinux running under VirtualBox on my Mac.  This worked OK, but the WKUSB would drop out every few QSOs and needed to be completely rebooted which meant that I had to unplug the USB cable and restart TRLinux.  Obviously, this worked when I tested it at home but I was not stressing it like I was in the field.  I’m not sure whether it was an RF issue or software/hardware.  In any case, I will probably be installing another Windows VM like I’ve used previously.

I only ended up making about 400 QSOs on this trip, which is way down from the approximately 3000 QSOs I made over the past two trips.  The combination of aggressive work schedule, glitchy keying, and poor 160-meter conditions (too late in the season, but I made a few guys happy), made it hard to get excited about operating a lot.  Furthermore, my operating position was located in a room with an air compressor nearby that would kick on every few minutes.  Even with the excellent Etymotic MC5 earbuds, it was still loud.  Enough complaining!  There will be at least one more trip out there under my present project and if KC0W hasn’t worked everybody, I’ll be there to give you all new counters again.  I just uploaded the log to LoTW before I posted this blog entry.  I have not responded to any direct QSL cards yet.

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

• Installed the new WD hard drive inserted Win7 CD and started the PC. The screen goes blank and PC shuts down!
• I reboot again and get a message “can’t read boot manager”
• I reboot again this time a blue screen and the message “ corrupt bios”
• I now remove the WD drive from PC and boot from the second drive in the PC (my drive for backup’s) with the Win7 CD all booted ok.
• I now figure the WD is bad but I put the WD drive back in on its own removing the Seagate drive just to make sure. Restart PC and it boots into the Win7 CD without issue.
• I now add the Seagate drive and restart and the PC screen once again goes blank and the PC shuts down.
• I Googled it and found out I may be powering both drives from the same daisy chain on the power supply and it can’t handle it. I have to power each drive from a separate daisy chain from the power supply.
• No problem I thought I will just plug in to a second daisy chain……it was too short!
• I had to move the drive down 3 bays which meant removing RAM and the video card.
• With that done the PC starts no problem and low and behold Win7 starts to install on the WD drive.
• Then all of a sudden part way through install I get a blue screen and a message “memory dump” and this is just an ongoing cycle!
• I went onto a PC forum site and was told to run a WD diagnostic program and I did and I was told my new drive was defective.
• Back to the store with bill in hand and a hard drive that is hours old.
• I was told at store that drive could not be returned as I did not have anti-static bag. I flipped and the exchange was made.
• Put the new drive in the PC and this time I ran the diagnostic program first (learned my lesson) and the drive passed.
• It then loaded Win7 without any issues and it was now time to start loading programs.
• I had loaded about 15 programs and all was going great. I then downloaded Win4K3 64 bit version.
• I was told I can’t load this version as I am only running Win7 32 bit???? That’s very odd as I know without a doubt I was using the 64 bit version.
• Then it hit me……I installed my Win7 32 bit version and not the Win7 64 bit version!!!!!!
• So had to reformat the WD drive and start all over again. I installed Win7 64 bit and all went well with the software install.
• Finally I wanted to reformate the Seagate drive as it did have some programs on it from before. I wanted to use it to store my backups on.
• As I went to reformat the Seagate drive I got a message “not an active drive” whatever that means!!!!
• Back to the PC forum and I was guided on how to make the drive active and format it.
• So now I have a Seagate 1TB 32mb 7200 drive for backup and storage. The new Western Digital black 1TB 64gb 7200 drive as my main functioning drive.

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].