AmateurRadio.com

I had low expectations for the July SKCC Weekend Sprint and I lived up to them. I usually try to get 2-4 hours in the chair during the 36 hour period but my only real shot at that this go round was on Saturday. And on that day, the thunder rolled from start to finish. I did manage to squeeze in an hour on Sunday morning that resulted in 10 contacts searching and pouncing.

Of those ten contacts, nine were in unique states. Two were with Senators and six with Tribunes. Four of those states, GA, SC, MD, and PA, qualified for a 25 point ’13 colonies’ bonus each. When you put it all together, it totaled a measly 280 points.

But hey, I enjoyed it. I always enjoy these sprints. They’re so much more casual than the real contests.

And I like pounding brass with a real key…

This may sound silly, but using a straight key is, to me, like using a manual transmission. The automatic is much easier and much more comfortable, but I feel more engaged, more connected to the machine with a manual transmission. Same thing with the straight key.

See you next month in the Weekend Sprintathon?

Filed under: Ham Radio Tagged: cw, skcc, wes
Jeff Davis, KE9V, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Indiana, USA.

Our community in Amateur Radio is truly wonderful.

Already, I have had three kind and generous offers to build and test my Ultimate-3 beacon kit, which is currently beyond my building skills because of my brain injury. I still hope to build this myself, but may wait a few more months until I’m less wobbly and clumsy.

This is not the first time I have been touched by the genuine kindness of others. It restores one’s faith in humankind: there are some truly kind people around. Thank you all.

Sometimes we hear about all the bad things in this world. Believe me, the world has very many kind and caring people in it.

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

Mention Health and safety and its likely you think of some Muppet decides that children need a suit of armour to play conkers (for those not lucky enough to have tried to make a horse chestnut seed the hardest material known to man, have a look here). Back to the point. I’m talking about looking after yourself in your hobby.

Ham radio has some pretty high hazard activities. High voltages, antenna’s on towers, climbing on roofs etc. Recently I’ve been soldering a bit more. Whilst its not likely to be particularly harmful to occasionally sniff in some fumes its probably not going to do me much good either. So I might benefit from a solder fume extractor.

I understand that the technical terms (and we all love a technical term) is local exhaust ventilation or LEV. Still doesn’t sound too complex and thankfully it doesn’t need to be. A fan that sucks and a filter is pretty much all you need, it seems. So do I really need an industrial scale extractor? probably not. So as an experiment I’ve bought a £5 extractor from eBay.

Its an mdf laser cut body with a 12v (computer?) fan. It takes 5 minutes assemble and may or may not need some PVA to hold it all together. I say might as mine was a good tight fit so probably won’t need it in the short term but as it gets bashed about on the workbench it might need some help to stay together.

The extractor is basic (what do you expect for £5) and didn’t come with any filter media. So a suitably sized filter will be needed. Perhaps the same activated carbon you get for cooker hoods would suffice, will need to be sourced. I dare say just sucking it from one place to blow to another isn’t really helping matters.

I could measure flow, compare against standards, determine filter abatement. I say could, because clearly this hasn’t been designed with that in mind and how would that really help? The video below shows you how effective it actually is.

So the conclusion. The hazard associated with occasional solder fumes is probably quite low and the risk is also probably quite low. But a simple device, like this, has the opportunity to remove the fumes from the workbench and at the very least stop them going in your eyes. That can’t be bad.

Here it is in action. Distance between tip and fan is approximately 10cm.

p.s. If you’re really lucky you can hear my daughter homebrewing in the background (what she is homebrewing is anyone’s guess)

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

Locators, or as us Brits call them, Maidenhead locators. Named after a town in Berkshire that isn’t close to the meridian but held a meeting by a bunch of VHF chaps in the early 80’s. In fact the now de facto method for looking something up (Google & Wikipedia) give us:

‘The Maidenhead Locator System is a geographic co-ordinate system used by amateur radio operators. Dr. John Morris, G4ANB, originally devised the system, and a group of VHF managers, meeting in Maidenhead, England in 1980, adopted it. The Maidenhead Locator System replaces the older QRA locator system with one that is usable outside Europe.^[1]

Maidenhead locators are also commonly referred to as QTH Locator, grid locators or grid squares, despite having a non-square shape on any non-equirectangular cartographic projection. Use of the terms QTH locator and QRA locator was initially discouraged, as it caused confusion with the older QRA locator system. The only abbreviation recommended to indicate a Maidenhead reference in Morse code and radio teleprinter transmission was “LOC”, as in “LOC KN28LH”’

But more to the point how do you calculate one? Easy if you know Perl (apparently – thanks again Wikipedia)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# (c) 2012 Chris Ruvolo.  Licensed under a 2-clause BSD license.
if($#ARGV < 1){
  printf("Usage: $0 <lat> <long>n");
  exit(1);
}
 
my $lat = $ARGV[0];
my $lon = $ARGV[1];
my $grid = "";
 
$lon = $lon + 180;
$lat = $lat + 90;
 
$grid .= chr(ord('A') + int($lon / 20));
$grid .= chr(ord('A') + int($lat / 10));
$grid .= chr(ord('0') + int(($lon % 20)/2));
$grid .= chr(ord('0') + int(($lat % 10)/1));
$grid .= chr(ord('a') + int(($lon - (int($lon/2)*2)) / (5/60)));
$grid .= chr(ord('a') + int(($lat - (int($lat/1)*1)) / (2.5/60)));
 
print "$gridn";

But what happens if its all Dutch to you (It is to me)?

Well I put together a simple spread sheet that does the calculation. Its nothing special but deciphering what several different people have put into explanations that include adding your birthday, taking away your dogs maiden name and that kind of thing. Hopefully it’ll help you understand where those numbers come from and how to calculate them. So help yourself and if it doesn’t work then fix it and share it ( I tested it with 3 locators and lats / longs and it seemed to work). I also learnt a few more things about Excel so its all handy.

Here it is then

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

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 68 is now available for download.

It’s been three years since the ALTV team did Field Day in the wood. We disturb the peace and quiet of Shrock, MS this episode for another Field Day adventure. Listen to the roar of generators and crickets. Learn a little about the history of the site. Take a look at the location, tent and our choice of antennas. Check Wayne’s coax cables with the Megger(we were surprised what we found). Peter joins us to chat about Field Day and a report on his KN-Q7A transceiver kit. Witness the great Quadcopter mishap, plus much more.

1:35:04 of good outdoor Ham fun.

Download

YouTube

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

Saturday night's CW beaconing by myself and VE7BDQ on 630m CW produced a number of interesting heard reports from various directions. It seems as though most receiving stations were bothered by the high level of thunderstorm QRN, very common at this time of the year and usually the limiting factor in reception. The Vaisala lightning map indicated various pockets of lighting in the PNW and a solid wall further to the east. Being located near any of these cells would make it difficult to hear anything at all and all but impossible nearer the wall.





Courtesy: vaisala.com

Nevertheless, reception reports, often of both beacons, were received from Washington, Oregon, Utah, British Columbia, Alberta and as far east as Saskatoon, SK. It seemed like stronger signals were reported from the east rather than from the south or south-east which is more often the case. I suspect that the lower level of lightning in this direction, rather than enhanced E-W propagation, was the main reason for the nice 'over the Rockies' reception.

Thanks to the following enthusiasts who were kind enough to listen and to report on Saturday night's activities, hopefully I haven't missed anyone:


It appears that even under fairly severe conditions (mid-summer QRN), small backyard antenna systems and 100W can propagate well enough for CW contacts on the 630m band. The band is certainly much more prop-friendly than 2200m and quiet winter conditions will be even better. In the meantime I hope to make some crossband contacts with anyone that might like to try that mode.
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Alan Wolke, W2AEW, posted a great video yesterday of a presentation on oscilloscope basics at the Ocean-Monmouth Amateur Radio Club in Wall Township, New Jersey. Thanks, Alan!

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