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International Ham Radio News & Opinion

Series Eight Episode Six – Making PCB’s (22 March 2015)

22 March 2015 | by Colin M6BOY | Leave a Comment (0)

Series Eight Episode Six of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. In this episode, Martin M1MRB / W9ICQ is joined by Ed Durrant DD5LP and Martin Rothwell M0SGL to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin M6BOY rounds up the news in brief, and this episodes feature is - Making PCB’s by Matthew Nassau 2E0MTT

Amateur / Ham Radio Statistics - March 2015
Winner of UK CanSat 2015 Announced
Scientist Radio Ham Named for Prestigious Award
World Amateur Radio Day 2015
80th ARRL Anniversary of North Dakota Radio Amateur
PyQSO v0.2 Released
Amateur Radio Parity Act of 2015 Introduced in Congress
SARL Assist Zambians with the Licensing of Amateurs

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

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Series Eight Episode Six – Making PCB’s (22 March 2015)

22 March 2015 | by Colin M6BOY | Leave a Comment (0)

Amateur / Ham Radio Statistics - March 2015
Winner of UK CanSat 2015 Announced
Scientist Radio Ham Named for Prestigious Award
World Amateur Radio Day 2015
80th ARRL Anniversary of North Dakota Radio Amateur
PyQSO v0.2 Released
Amateur Radio Parity Act of 2015 Introduced in Congress
SARL Assist Zambians with the Licensing of Amateurs

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

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VE3WDM is back into QRPp very low power contacts!

21 March 2015 | by Mike VE9KK | Leave a Comment (7)

I was feeling under the weather this weekend and thought it would be nice and relaxing to spend some time on the radio. It so happens a CW contest was in full swing the Russian DX contest. I was not into competing but just handing out points. The propagation conditions this past week were a struggle to say the least. Today the conditions were on the rebound a K index of 2 and the Sunspots were in at 27 and the solar wind was still up at 615. I parked on 15m and there was lots of DX rolling in for the contest. I made only 7 contacts for Saturday (so far) most were done with QRPp power! I was very pleased that my condo antenna was able to get out to make some great QRPp low power contacts. My K3 is only able to get down as low at 100mW's silly me I sold my attenuator thinking my contacts under 100mW's were over! I was able to make 3 contacts at milli watt power, 2 contacts at 1 watt, one contact at 3 watts and finally 5 watts. My first QRPp contact in the contest was K5WA in the states, my next QRPp contact was with EA3CX in Spain. Then finally F5IN in France with 500mW's of power.

The 7 contacts break down as follows

1. F5IN 500mW 7,500 miles per watt

2. K5WA 100mW 13,213 miles per watt

3. EA5CX 100mW 39,956 miles per watt

4. DK3QZ 1 watt 3,818 miles per watt

5. DL0AO 1 watt 3,818 miles per watt

6. HC2SL 3 watts

7. ZF2DX 5 watts

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

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Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 53

21 March 2015 | by Cale K4HCK | Leave a Comment (2)

Colorado Governor signs Amateur Radio antenna bill into law
Friday the 13th turned out to be a lucky day for Colorado hams, as Gov John Hickenlooper signed into law an Amateur Radio antenna bill that mirrors the PRB-1 federal pre-emption policy.
ARRL

The tallest towers in the world
Name the tallest structures in the world. You’re almost certainly not thinking of TV towers. But dozens of nearly anonymous towers around the United States, most in small rural communities, dwarf all but the tallest man-made structures in the world.
Medium

Strongest geomagnetic storm of Solar Cycle 24
It didn’t take long for the VHF bands to start filling up with auroral signals as 6m diehards soon discovered that something was amiss.
VE7SL

Ubuntu Hams
The Ubuntu Hams Team exists to bring together Amateur Radio Operators and developers of Amateur Radio packages who use Ubuntu.
Ubuntu

Why you should learn to love Ham Radio
When I joined as a squeaky-voiced 12-year-old in the 1990s, it was like discovering the Internet before the Internet.
PopularMechanics

TNC-Pi: TNC-X for Raspberry Pi
TNC-Pi is a special version of TNC-X designed to interface directly with the Raspberry Pi computer. It can connect to the Pi either via the Pi’s serial port, or via the I2C protocol.
TNC-Pi

FUNcube team has received two million packets of telemetry data
FUNcube-1 (AO-73) was launched on November 21, 2013 and since then radio amateurs and schools have been receiving the telemetry packets and passing them to AMSAT UK.
AMSAT UK

Minimalist VHF Software Defined Radio
Our next step will be to mix this signal to VHF and add a PA to produce 1 Watt of signal on 2M, to support our VHF FreeDV work. Please contact us if you can help us with a VHF PA design!
Rowetel

Video

1st contact as a licensed Ham made via satellite
There probably are not any other 8 year olds who can claim that!
Vimeo

Tower demolition
This video features the demolition of a 300′ cable head end tower in Jackson, MN. Built in 1953, it did not want to fall over.
YouTube

New products

RUMlogNG now available
RUMlogNG is the next-generation of Thomas’ (DL2RUM) excellent RUMlog logging software and incorporates logging, rig control, Winkey support, DX Cluster, LoTW/eQSL/Clublog, support for HamQTH or QRZ.com XML lookups, award tracking, QSL printing, integration with Fldigi for digital modes, and much more.
Mac Ham Radio

CQmaps: Professional maps for Amateur Radio
At CQmaps, you will find that all the maps offered have been drafted with the utmost care and precision gained from 10 years of experience as a Geographic Information System (GIS) Analyst and cartographer.
CQmaps

Reviews

Baofeng FF-12P (UV-5X)
A clip on YouTube suggested that the UV-5X / FF12P scans faster. This proves to be true: the FF-12P outperforms all other Baofeng radios I own, including the GT-3 Mark II. Scan speed is about 5-6 channels/sec.
PD0AC

SSTRAN AMT3000 AM transmitter kit
The AMT3000 can be configured to work with the supplied simple wire antenna, which will essentially broadcast AM to radios throughout your home, or it can be configured for a Part 15 compliant outdoor base-loaded vertical antenna which will extend your range up to 3/4 of a mile, should your shack be down the road or in an outbuilding.
The SWLing Post

Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

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Amateur Radio Newsline Report 1957 March 20 2015

21 March 2015 | by Amateur Radio Newsline | Leave a Comment (0)

Sunspot AR-2297 hurls a massive solar flare toward Earth
Cyclone Pam devastates Vanuatu cutting it off from the world
Dayton Hamvention names its 2015 award winners
GAREC 2015 to take place this June in Finland
Colorado hams now have their own tower and antenna protection law
Proof that wireless power can be transmitted using microwaves

THIS WEEK'S NEWSCAST
Script
Audio

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FT817 replacement?

21 March 2015 | by Roger G3XBM | Leave a Comment (10)

I have mentioned this before, but I am truly amazed that Yaesu has not updated the FT817. OK, I have heard the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” argument but on simple commercial arguments I think they must be stupid. There is a worldwide market (500000?) ready to upgrade yet I think they have now missed the window of opportunity as sunspot numbers are falling.

I wonder if any sharp eyed, sharp eared readers have heard any rumours of an imminent replacement?

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

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Spurious Emissionz

20 March 2015 | by Anthony K3NG | Leave a Comment (1)

AMSAT is offering a discounted satellite antenna package to members. The package consists of two M2 antennas, one for 2m the other for 440, both circularly polarized. Looks like a nice package at a decent price. I’m going get this for the new bachelor pad QTH. If you’re a satellite aficionado and not a member of AMSAT or another organization that launches birds, you should join and support one so we can keep satellites orbiting the globe.

Make has an article on how to turn your Raspberry Pi into a “pirate radio”. This appears to be done all in software by outputting a high frequency bit stream on a GPIO pin. The software will frequency modulate the carrier and it’s intended mainly to be a short range (i.e. unlicensed FCC Part 15 here in the US) FM broadcast transmitter you can play your tunes through while on the beach. A more technical article, mentions it has 1 to 250 Mhz capability. This might make a cool little exciter for QRP CW, with appropriate filtering to clean up what undoubtedly has a lot of odd order harmonics.

There’s this cool little Kickstarter project called Tsunami. It’s an Arduino-based audio signal generator and analyzer. Undoubtedly this could have some amateur radio applications, like generating and decoding digital modes.

One of the original Arduino founders who ran the main firm which manufactured Arduino boards is accused of going rogue and registering the Arduino trademark in Italy. Arduino.cc is the original, core Arduino team and the Arduino LLC entity, and Arduino.org is Arduino SRL, the rogue manufacturing company. Arduino SRL is no longer paying Arduino LLC royalty fees and Arduino LLC is now in a legal battle. Any Arduino board that was purchased in the last year that was made in Italy did not have royalties go to the Arduino team which has been responsible for design, creativity, and energy behind the Arduino project.

Anthony, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com.

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