AmateurRadio.com

There’s an interesting BBC article involving Hiram Stevens Maxim, the father of Hiram Percy Maxim who was the founder of ARRL and a mover and shaker in the nascent world of wireless back in the early 20th century.  Both Hiram junior and senior were inventors.  Hiram senior invented several items but was known most for the Maxim machine gun, the first portable firearm of its kind.  Outside of the radio work we know him for, Hiram Percy Maxim also invented a silencer for firearms and what was essentially a muffler for car exhaust systems.

A contemporary firearms engineer and inventor in Europe named William Cantelo mysteriously disappeared in the 1880s when he went on a road show to sell his new invention to investors and manufacturers, a repeating firearm.  Cantelo, his body, or evidence of foul play was never found, however rumors of him being in America were circulated.

To add to the mystery, the resemblance between Hiram Stevens Maxim and William Cantelo is quite striking.  The similarities in appearance along with their common talents in firearm inventions led to claims that Maxim was really Cantelo.  This has never been proven, and it’s been written that Hiram Stevens Maxim was not interested in engaging the Cantelo family’s questions about his identity.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Gun Inventor

Julian, G4ILO just asked me a question about how I’d programmed the UV-5R to work through SO-50.

I’ve set up 6 different memories, just as you would for a repeater, except that in this case, the input and output frequencies are on different bands. For each memory, I have left the transmit frequency as 145.850 (it might be a bit out towards the beginning and end of the pass, but hopefully not too far off). On transmit, I have the CTCSS tone set to 67hz. I have seen documentation that SO-50 likes this, and other people saying it doesn’t really matter! I also programmed one memory which is not used for QSOs with a CTCSS tone of 74.4Hz. This can be used to ‘wake’ the satellite up if the radios have switched off. I’ve not done this myself yet.

Receive frequencies are 436.805, 436.800, 436.795, 436.790 and 436.785. I also programmed up 436.780, but have not used this one so far.

On the basis that a picture speaks a thousand words, here’s a picture from the programming software of what the setup looks like.

Yesterday, Chris KQ2RP tweeted K2TK’s line ‘A poor antenna has infinite gain over no antenna’ and it made me smile. It encapsulates so much about my whole approach to radio (and actually more than that).

Some people like everything to be perfect before they embark on a project. Every little last thing needs to be just right. That’s not me. In radio terms, I’d far rather try and lash something together to get it going and try it out than wait for something to be perfect (in my case, it would never happen!).

As a VHF enthusiast, I very often hear, I don’t have an antenna for 50MHz, or whatever. If you’re a 160m enthusiast, you probably hear the same thing! There’s usually some sort of antenna that you can bodge into service, even if it’s a grotty wire dipole twisted together. It’s rare that you can’t get it to radiate SOME sort of signal, and I’m sure I’ve made hundreds of QSOs on antennas where bits of wire were just twisted together.

I often hear people say of the data modes, such as PSK31 – ‘I don’t have a data modes interface’. To get started – just hold the microphone over the speaker of the computer as it transmits the PSK31 tones – and use the microphone on the computer to decode the tones from the radio. It works fine – even if there’s a little juggling to do. You can even use apps on your mobile phone to decode the PSK31!

Having proven that you can make something work simply, you may be enthused to get a more elegant solution going. Or you may not – sometimes, just the simple matter of having made something work is enough and you don’t need to come back to it.

Give it a go (what ever it is!) I bet it will be fun…

Although not spotted on a cluster at the time, I heard this station on 17 meters around 5:30 PM local time, Not a soul was answering his attempt to work North American stations. Not spotted, not noticed, on 18.075, sending with excellent spacing, doing everything correctly, but not getting any response whatsoever. What a bummer on his part!

I felt that I must make the attempt to work this station, and remarkably, I was able to do so. I had assumed this was a European Russian station but I soon discovered he had an Asiatic designation on the DX entity list. I’ve worked Asiatic Russian stations before but never with a “R0” prefix. Perhaps that’s why it literally “jumped out” at me when I heard it?

When I looked him up on  QRZCQ,  it became “crystal clear” that he was on the Northern part of a large Island just above Japan, and on the far side of China.

There’s been a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia on this Island for many years. It’s currently resolved that the upper Northern portion of the Island is Russian; and the Southern portion of the Island is Japanese. In September of 1983, due to pilot error, Korean Airliner Flight Number 007 strayed into Russian air space, and was shot down over this Island, with the loss of 269 innocent lives.

Gena (R0FA) answered my call after several attempts. I wasn’t sure that he had it correct but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and entered the data on the DX cluster.

Here is where the story gets interesting.

In the electronic world of today, the appearance of an unusual “response” on a DX Cluster can generate a lot of attention. I had just entered his call, frequency and time along with my customary “QRP @ 3W and Indoor Random Wire” in the comments section of the entry when I immediately heard my call sign being sent, by him, with a familiar IMI (question mark) afterwards. It only took seconds….

I’m assuming he had the original contact correct and when he saw my QRP designation on his computer screen, that it “startled him”. It sure did me when I heard him calling me “personally” and putting me in the spotlight. To my knowledge, he worked only one more station in New Jersey on the east coast.

It’s difficult to express in words how I felt when I heard myself being called from this Russian / Japanese Island. I can’t find the “R0” designation in my “DX” list but I’m assuming this one is a “new country for me.”

He was specific about sending QRP and my 449 report on his second response. I was on the proverbial cloud nine. This contact was similar to my previous contact with Japan several weeks ago. I noticed a contact with a California station, just after me, and assume I was getting the “second bounce” onto the east coast.

I sure felt good about working this station with three watts and an indoor random wire. I think he felt the same way by being able to hear and respond to me. At almost 6,000 miles, he was a good catch!