AmateurRadio.com

Last Monday, January 4th, 2016 marked my last official day as an employee. I am now retired. I made the decision a year ago, so I've had some time to get ready for the transition. I had a very demanding job and life was a very tight schedule. Now I get to decide when I get up in the morning.

Basically my last day in the office was mid-December, so I've had a nice taste of freedom from employment already. My schedule, or lack thereof, is starting to gel although I'm sure I will go through numerous "phases", I think the pattern is set. So below are  few things that I've already experienced on how retirement will effect my ham radio pursuits.

• I've had time actually read the owner's manual for my radios.

• I've learned to set-up and use the frequency/band memory functions available on the K3
• I now understand more of the menu options for the radio
• I can now operate my HT.
• I'm reading books about antennas

Contacts can actually last longer than 10 seconds

• I love CW and have found that rag-chewing is a very enjoyable aspect of ham radio. I have met some very interesting people and I've started to make a lot of new friends since I've taken time to just call CQ and not append DX to it
• I joined the local 2 meter weak signal group and I actually check in to their weekly net.. When I'm home I monitor 144.200 on SSB/CW. VHF/UHF can provide a lot of excitement for a DX minded ham. The DX isn't as far, but it's just as satisfying. 

Cleaned out my shack

• I've acquired a lot of new equipment over the years, but I haven't gotten rid of much. There are many avenues to sell gear, EBay, QRZ.com, eHam, etc.... Now that I'm retired I will have a more modest ham radio budget and getting rid of the old stuff provides a little cash for even more toys.

Build the kits I've purchased

• I haven't finished this yet, but I've started

Consider more expeditions

• I love SOTA and can now plan extended SOTA activation trips with no time lines.
• I've activated 10+ IOTA islands and can now consider planning more trips.

Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

My contact on 20m

New and improved waterfall

Yesterday I spent some frustrating time trying to get WSJT-65 HF software up and running. I was having sound card issues and software issues, it sure was making my Saturday radio time very upsetting. I sat down and posted on my blog the issues I was having and I received lots of advice via the blog and emails. From the advice here is what I did…..with regards to the WSJT-65 HF program I made these adjustments. Bin/Pixel I set to 3 from it's setting of 7, I removed the check mark from flatten, NAvg was set to 1 from 5 and HZ was set to 0 which it was already. These settings made a world of difference to the waterfall display. Since I have the Signalink USB which has it's own sound card I was advised to just use the RX control on the Signalink for the waterfall setup. Yesterday I tried to do this and any adjustments to the RX really only had sporadic effects at best. Once the software settings were changed to what I mentioned above the RX adjustments seem to work very well. With all that was done to the program today I was able to make 2 contacts. AK4BB on 20 meters and K4OP on 30 meters. Again I just want to thank everyone who me great advice and because of that I am up and running on WSJT-X program.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Here are the 10 winners of our Skilman Instroduction to Morse Code giveaway:

Darlene (Unlicensed)
British Columbia, Canada

John KB5HCT
Oklahoma

Jeff K3JRZ
Delaware

Scott K3BYU
Washington

George Porth NY4FD
Florida

Sean KC2LWX
New York

Scott W0SGM
Iowa

Paul AF7HL
Washington

Joe KC1BJG
New Hampshire

Joe W2DRS
New York

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to the 286 of you who entered! If you’re listed here, Skilman will contact you shortly to arrange for the shipment of your prize.

If you weren’t one of the winners and are interested in trying out the program, Skilman has sent us a 10% off coupon code ‘U4YDIFM’ (valid through 1/24).

Thanks again and stay tuned for our next (BIG!) worldwide giveaway in the next couple of weeks!

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

In this episode, Martin M1MRB / W9ICQ is joined by Leslie Butterfield G0CIB, Matthew Nassau M0NJX, Andy Mace 2E0IBF and Edmund Spicer M0MNG to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin M6BOY rounds up the news in brief, and this episodes feature is an interview with Dan Romanchik KB6NU regarding one day licencing courses.

• Realtime Band Conditions Website
• Australian Radio Ham Celebrates 105 years
• ARRL Lodges Glow Light Complaint
• Global Wind Pattern Indicator
• Retirement of RSGB General Manager
• No 60m Operation Possible in VK
• Amateur Radio Club Train School Pupils
• RSGB Contest Committee Changes

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

In this episode, Martin M1MRB / W9ICQ is joined by Leslie Butterfield G0CIB, Matthew Nassau M0NJX, Andy Mace 2E0IBF and Edmund Spicer M0MNG to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin M6BOY rounds up the news in brief, and this episodes feature is an interview with Dan Romanchik KB6NU regarding one day licencing courses.

• Realtime Band Conditions Website
• Australian Radio Ham Celebrates 105 years
• ARRL Lodges Glow Light Complaint
• Global Wind Pattern Indicator
• Retirement of RSGB General Manager
• No 60m Operation Possible in VK
• Amateur Radio Club Train School Pupils
• RSGB Contest Committee Changes

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

This Saturday me and my friend Stan UA3LMR (also RD2A) tried to work as pedestrian mobile (/PM) for the first time. We took my FT-817nd (running 5 W output power) and his AlexLoop Walkham antenna, and walked to the park near Moscow river.

Despite cold and windy weather of minus 16C, we had luck to make 11 QSOs with 6 DXCC countries (UA, UA9, G, F, I, OE) during an hour and a half. We used SSB QRP frequency on the 20-meter band (14285 kHz), hf-pack frequency on the 17-meter-band (18157.5 kHz), and one very popular among ex-USSR HAMs frequency for mobile and portable operations on the 40-meter-band, i.e. 7175 kHz.

Peter Dabizha, R2ABT, is a special contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Moscow, Russia. Contact him [email protected].

If, like me you have an rtl dongle, there is another ‘thing’ you can do with them that I bet you never knew. Ok you did but I’ll bet all of you didn’t know. Its called OpenWebRX

You can also arm yourself with one of those old netbooks you’ve got loafing about in the corner and put it to use into the bargain.

To tell the truth I’d not heard about it until Daniel, 2E0DNX mentioned something in passing as I was driving him back from the club night last Monday. I can’t remember what started it but we got onto the subject of putting receivers on the web a la WebSDR and the well known Hack Green SDR. This time, as we are both cheapskates, it was around the use of the cheapo dongles.

So, after downloading a copy of Lubuntu (A lightweight ubuntu distro) I installed it onto an old netbook. I thought I followed the instructions on the website and but I hadn’t and after a false start with some rubbish spelling had a receiver running on the local host. I did get some pretty speedy support from the developer though who helped to narrow down my incompetence.

Getting it on line is a little more complicated and needs a bit of fettling. In order to get it listed on the site it needs a web presence. To get that you can pay for it and host it or you can be a cheapskate and use a service like N0-IP.  Guess which route I went? They provide a web address that you can use and some really handy instructions for linux installations, if, like me, its not a natural environment to work in but you can largely follow instructions.

After all instructions followed correctly (there are no spelling mistakes in your config file ) then the last thing to do is make sure your router lets the traffic through (port forwarding). This can be a pain if you’re on BT like me and can lead to no end of frustration that was eventually fixed with a new, non BT router. I’ve got my head round this and will now look to set up a more permanent installation, perhaps with a RPi2 if its got the right mojo.

All in all you’ve got to hand it to people who set out these environments as they are becoming a great way of distributing amateur radio to a wider audience. Thanks Andras, HA7ILM and well done!

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].