AmateurRadio.com

A picture Julie took of the CN Tower in Toronto from our condo

I just wanted to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Trying to decide between a Baofeng and a Wouxun HT? Here are some thoughts…

The good:

• They are super-cheap
• They are usually dead-on frequency and stable through temperature change (better than most Japanese radios)
• The Receiver sensitivity is usually better than the .2 uV specification at 12db SINAD
• They always produce at least as much power as advertised
• The Wouxun is excellent at harmonic suppression and adjacent channel selectivity

The bad:

• The Baofeng usually is pretty bad on harmonic suppression sometimes as bad as 20db
• The Baofeng has terrible adjacent channel selectivity and is easily interfered with in busy RF environments

Overall, all the Chinese radios are decent, but in my experience, the Wouxun is excellent compared to the Baofeng.

The Wouxuns I have personally tested gave the Japanese models a run for their money, at about a quarter of the price.

Chris Hite, AJ1Q, is a special contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

In November 2005, I took a look at some statistics on FCC amateur radio licenses. At that time, I compared the number of ham licenses to such things as the US population, number of cell phones in use and the number of birdwatchers in the US. Interesting stuff.

Ten years later, we can take a look at the how the composition of FCC licenses has changed. The total number of licenses has grown to over 733k, increasing 11% over 10 years. This is a small growth rate, only 1% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

	Extra	Advanced	General	Technician	Novice	Total
Nov 2005	107,177	74,351	135,023	317,839	26,882	661,272
	16%	11%	20%	48%	4%	100%
Nov 2015	139,515	48,272	172,239	362,580	10,988	733,594
	19%	7%	23%	49%	1%	100%
% Change	30%	-35%	28%	14%	-59%	11%

Source: www.ah0a.org

No surprise that the number of Advanced and Novice licenses has decreased because the FCC stopped issuing those licenses. Technicians represent about half of the licenses, a proportion that has remained steady over the decade, increasing 1 point.  The percent of Generals increased by 3 points, to 23%. Similarly, Extra Class licenses increased by 3 points to 19%.

I reported the ARRL membership as approximately 152k in 2005. The 2014 ARRL Annual Report shows 165,663 members resulting in a growth rate of about 9% over 9 years (not ten). I’ll go ahead and “spot them” another point of growth in the tenth year and call it 10% over ten years. So it seems that ARRL membership is roughly keeping pace with the growth in amateur radio licenses, put probably not gaining on it.

Another question is how are amateur radio licenses keeping pace with US population growth? During the period of 2005 to 2015, the US population grew about 9%, which means that the number of FCC licenses is actually growing slightly faster than the overall population. Source: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/

At this point, many of us will ask how many of those FCC license holders are actually active in ham radio. Hard to say…perhaps a topic for another post.

73, Bob K0NR

The post Ten Year Trends in US Ham Licenses 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].

As a birthday present to myself I have just ordered a Retevis RT3 DMR hand-held off eBay which should be delivered just after Christmas.

South Kesteven ARS had a talk in October by Sean Burton 2E0ENN about amateur DMR where he demonstrated some handsets and the new DV4Mini which allows gateway and internet linking for the various networks, DSTAR, DMR and System Fusion. This piqued my interest in the DMR scene.

As I posted last time I dabbled a few years ago with decoding PMR DMR using software and a sound card but they were very hit and miss at the time. I reacquainted myself with the various projects and using the FUNCube Dongle Pro+ and the latest version of DSDPlus (support forum at RadioReference.com) monitored the nearby GB7RR DMRPlus repeater managing to get some reasonably clear decodes of some amateur transmissions.


I decided to dig out my Realistic PRO-2022 scanner and using a discriminator tap fed into the sound card got slightly better quality decodes.


Doing some research and reading a couple of reviews had decided I was going to get a Tytera TYT MD-380 when funds allowed but spotted the Retevis RT3 which appears to be identical and slightly cheaper.

I know some people wince at the thought of DMR and issues with proprietary technology used in some of the systems but I think the genie is out the bottle and it isn't going away soon. Adoption of DMR appears to be growing with talk of restructuring of talk groups needed to deal with the growth (whatever that means!) so I should at least get my feet wet and understand the technology.

I registered for an ID, now off to decode the jingo and understand all this talk of codeplugs, talk groups and time slots.
Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

As a birthday present to myself I have just ordered a Retevis RT3 DMR hand-held off eBay which should be delivered just after Christmas.

South Kesteven ARS had a talk in October by Sean Burton 2E0ENN about amateur DMR where he demonstrated some handsets and the new DV4Mini which allows gateway and internet linking for the various networks, DSTAR, DMR and System Fusion. This piqued my interest in the DMR scene.

As I posted last time I dabbled a few years ago with decoding PMR DMR using software and a sound card but they were very hit and miss at the time. I reacquainted myself with the various projects and using the FUNCube Dongle Pro+ and the latest version of DSDPlus (support forum at RadioReference.com) monitored the nearby GB7RR DMRPlus repeater managing to get some reasonably clear decodes of some amateur transmissions.


I decided to dig out my Realistic PRO-2022 scanner and using a discriminator tap fed into the sound card got slightly better quality decodes.


Doing some research and reading a couple of reviews had decided I was going to get a Tytera TYT MD-380 when funds allowed but spotted the Retevis RT3 which appears to be identical and slightly cheaper.

I know some people wince at the thought of DMR and issues with proprietary technology used in some of the systems but I think the genie is out the bottle and it isn't going away soon. Adoption of DMR appears to be growing with talk of restructuring of talk groups needed to deal with the growth (whatever that means!) so I should at least get my feet wet and understand the technology.

I registered for an ID, now off to decode the jingo and understand all this talk of codeplugs, talk groups and time slots.
Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2015 Dec 21 0423 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 14 – 20 December 2015

Solar activity was at low levels. The period was dominated by low to mid-level C-class flare activity from a number of active regions, the largest of which was a C6/1f flare at 16/0903 UTC from Region 2468 (S15, L=128, class/area=Dao/120 on 10 Dec). Region 2468 was the most productive region on the visible disk throughout the summary period, however, an unnumbered region behind the northeast limb produced multiple mid-level C-class flares within quick succession and caused a slow increase in the background GOES-15 x-ray flux late in the period.

Two asymmetrical full-halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were observed in SOHO/LASCO C2 coronagraph imagery on 16 Dec. The first CME was observed in C2 imagery beginning at 16/0924 UTC and was associated with the C6/1F flare mentioned above. The second CME, associated with a filament eruption, was first observed in coronagraph imagery at 16/1436 UTC. Both CMEs were determined to be Earth-directed and arrived at Earth late on 19 Dec. See the geomagnetic summary below for further information on this event.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit reached high levels on 14 Dec and 19 Dec with moderate levels observed throughout the remainder of the period.

Geomagnetic field activity reached active to G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storm levels late on 14 Dec and early on 15 Dec due to the influence of a corotating interaction region followed by the onset of a negative polarity coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS). Isolated active field conditions were observed early on 16 Dec and again late on 17 Dec due to weak substorming. The CMEs from 16 Dec presumably merged in the interplanetary medium and impacted the Earth at 19/1528 UTC. During the passage of the interplanetary shock, solar wind parameters aboard the ACE spacecraft became suddenly enhanced. Total field strength values initially increased from 5 nT to 17 nT and the Bz component went strongly southward shortly after the initial shock passage. The prolonged period of southward magnetic field (-Bz) associated with the passage of the 16 Dec CMEs caused periods of active conditions late on 19 Dec and active to G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storm levels on 20 Dec. G2 storm conditions were observed between 20/0300-0600 UTC and 20/1500-2359 UTC.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 21 December – 16 January 2016

Solar activity is expected to be low throughout the period with a chance for M-class flares (R1-R2 (Minor-Moderate) Radio Blackouts) on 21 Dec through 03 Jan to the increased flare activity from an unnumbered region behind the east limb.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at normal levels on 21-27 Dec, moderate levels on 31 Dec-02 Jan, and 14-16 Jan. High flux levels are expected on 28-30 Dec and 03-13 Jan.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at active to G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storm levels early on 21 Dec due to the waning effects of the 16 Dec coronal mass ejections. G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storms are likely on 02, 06, and 10 Jan due to the influence of recurrent coronal hole high speed streams.

Don’t forget to visit our live space weather and radio propagation web site, at: http://SunSpotWatch.com/

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Today we have a special episode of Linux in the Ham Shack in which your hosts interview two of the volunteer coordinators for the Southern California Linux Expo, Hriday "Bala" Balachandran and Stewart Sheldon. Both of them are amateur radio operators and play key roles in making SCaLE one of the largest and most successful Open Source conferences in the world. We talk with them about their new amateur radio focus for 2016, the conference program, technology and many other topics. It's a lot of fun and highly educational, so don't miss this one.

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].