AmateurRadio.com

Hello again!  Linux in the Ham Shack is back online after a three-month absence. Thank you all for sticking out our downtime with us. We’ve retooled the show a little bit, added some segments, and tightened up the format. But all the fun, information and Linux and hammy stuff remains! Looking forward to many more years of our show. Sit tight, strap in–we’re just getting started. Again.

73 de The LHS Guys

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].

This weekend was JOTA, and this was the 17th year that Gary VE3ODE, Carl VE3DG and myself Fred VE3FAL have put JOTA on for some of the Otters,Beavers and Scouts in the rural area of Thunder Bay. Each year is a new location with which involves a hike and radio operations. This year we were in Oliver Paipoonge at Scouter Jerry’s home location, on his 90 acre property he has a hilltop with trails right to the top, it is about a 20 minute hike up with a backpack. Gary an I hauled our gear up in a buggy I made with gear in a tote, took us about 45 minutes to get the stuff up. A hike was done in the afternoon by the Otters and Beavers and the Scouts spend the night as well, so in our tents we braved the -2c temperatures once again, this morning though was only thick frost and no snow.
For the Otters I put on one of my manpack radios and went down the trail to talk with them, we used an open 10 meter frequency and answered many of their questions and explained how amateur radio worked. The Beavers made a few contacts with various stations around the country. The Scouts also worked stations from Coast to Coast with the best contact being into Saskatchewan with clear signals in the evening on 20 meters.
We were operating a Icom-703 at 10 watts into a windom antenna, it worked very good and of course running on battery power the entire weekend.
Campfire building skills were also part of the day and so were opening and closing ceremonies.
In total over the 2 days we had 17 participants as well as parents and leaders at the site.
Many thanks to Scouter Jerry and his family, Scouter James, Gary, Carl and the rest of the gang for a great spot and good weekend.

Fred Lesnick, VE3FAL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Nice to get back on the air again

Just this morning I was looking over my last blog post and could not believe it was posted 3 weeks ago! I will say that things here at VE3WDM have been busy and it has not been with radio time. We had our Thanksgiving holiday last weekend and that weekend was packed with family things, shopping and making a turkey dinner. This year for the first time I tried cooking the turkey on the BBQ using the rotisserie, seems it turns out much better when the bird is done old style in the oven........live and learn. The other sliver of my time was taken up with work and once you factor in sleeping and eating not much time was left for radio. Last evening I pulled a 12 hour evening shift at work and arrived home this morning not feeling to bad so Julie and went out for a nice breakfast and then home to some well deserved radio time. The rig was tuned to 17m and I heard GI4DOH calling

GI4DOH

loud and clear  from Northern Ireland. I gave him some calls but was not heard but I did hang in there and finally my 5 watts made it to him. It was nice to get back on the radio as I find this to be a very relaxing time. I then jumped off 17m and over to 20m but there was a huge contest presence there (not that there is anything wrong with that I am a huge contest fan) so it was back up to 17m again. It seemed that for this afternoon Richard was going to be my only contact but it sure was nice to get back on the air again!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

I was very conscious, having been playing with the rig that I really hadn’t put it on any sort of decent antenna. Well, I still haven’t, but at least it was something horizontally polarised!

A few weeks ago I ordered a Moonraker 70MHz HB9CV. I wanted to have an antenna that I could use for some meteor scatter and I was also very interested to see what I could hear over tropo paths with a simple antenna.

Today I had the chance to put the antenna together, which didn’t take more than about 30 minutes. I mounted it on a spare pole in the garden, held up by a stepladder, so the HB9CV was probably no more than about 8 feet above the ground.

Of course, the first signal that I listened to was the GB3RAL beacon, just a few miles away from me. I was pleased to see that the signal strength varied substantially as I rotated the antenna – anything from about S8 to S1, so the pattern of the antenna was reasonable, despite the low mounting height.

Next I listened for the GB3BUX beacon. I heard nothing and a quick look at the Beaconspot database suggests that it may be off air. Then, I pointed the antenna to the south west to listen for GB3MCB in Cornwall. Very pleasingly, I was able to hear it, just out of the noise, peaking up every few minutes. This may have been tropo or it may have been aircraft scatter. Either way, I continue with my assertion that the NR4SC has a nice quiet receiver. I’ve not, yet, tried this path with the Spectrum transverter. Interestingly, I have not heard GB3MCB on 144MHz very often. I’ve always assumed that is because of Faringdon Folly – a hill to my south west a mere 4 or 5 miles away. So it’s interesting that the path works ok on 70MHz, even with a low antenna.

I also listened for the GB3ANG beacon near Dundee in Scotland. I cannot be certain whether I heard it – certainly nothing concrete, but I’ve a feeling I heard a fragment at one point. More extensive listening would reveal, something I am sure.

This was a very pleasing test and one of the benefits of having the compact NR4SC was that it was easy to bring down to the lounge, with a PSU and connect up to the coax coming in through the patio doors! The NR4SC is very compact and would make the basis of a nice portable station. Just need a matching 150W PA now!

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

I was very conscious, having been playing with the rig that I really hadn’t put it on any sort of decent antenna. Well, I still haven’t, but at least it was something horizontally polarised!

A few weeks ago I ordered a Moonraker 70MHz HB9CV. I wanted to have an antenna that I could use for some meteor scatter and I was also very interested to see what I could hear over tropo paths with a simple antenna.

Today I had the chance to put the antenna together, which didn’t take more than about 30 minutes. I mounted it on a spare pole in the garden, held up by a stepladder, so the HB9CV was probably no more than about 8 feet above the ground.

Of course, the first signal that I listened to was the GB3RAL beacon, just a few miles away from me. I was pleased to see that the signal strength varied substantially as I rotated the antenna – anything from about S8 to S1, so the pattern of the antenna was reasonable, despite the low mounting height.

Next I listened for the GB3BUX beacon. I heard nothing and a quick look at the Beaconspot database suggests that it may be off air. Then, I pointed the antenna to the south west to listen for GB3MCB in Cornwall. Very pleasingly, I was able to hear it, just out of the noise, peaking up every few minutes. This may have been tropo or it may have been aircraft scatter. Either way, I continue with my assertion that the NR4SC has a nice quiet receiver. I’ve not, yet, tried this path with the Spectrum transverter. Interestingly, I have not heard GB3MCB on 144MHz very often. I’ve always assumed that is because of Faringdon Folly – a hill to my south west a mere 4 or 5 miles away. So it’s interesting that the path works ok on 70MHz, even with a low antenna.

I also listened for the GB3ANG beacon near Dundee in Scotland. I cannot be certain whether I heard it – certainly nothing concrete, but I’ve a feeling I heard a fragment at one point. More extensive listening would reveal, something I am sure.

This was a very pleasing test and one of the benefits of having the compact NR4SC was that it was easy to bring down to the lounge, with a PSU and connect up to the coax coming in through the patio doors! The NR4SC is very compact and would make the basis of a nice portable station. Just need a matching 150W PA now!

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

My soldering skills are rather “challenged” since my brain bleed 13 months ago. I have an un-built Ultimate 3 kit waiting for my better health. Several kind people have offered me help to build and test it: you know who you are and thank you!  The kindness of fellow QRPers knows no bounds. It is so lovely to find how many really kind people there are around. There are far more good people in the world than bad ones.

Some years ago W5OLF sold a very simple, single board, few parts, WSPR TX which I think I could manage to build. I could not find it advertised. Anyone know if it is it still available?

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

Message from SAQ (sic). There appears to be some confusion over the time. If I get clarification I’ll let you know later.   The transmissions are CW from the World Heritage transmitter that dates from about 90 years ago. It is run up on special occasions only.

There will hopefully be a transmission with the Alexanderson alternator on 17.2 kHz on “United Nations Day” October 24, 2014 at 10:00 UTC. Start up and tuning from about 11:30 UTC.

There will be a message written by students in Denmark.

We are not hundred percent sure we have access to the antenna this day because of other organization using it.

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