Posts Tagged ‘history’
Memorial Day 2013
May 26th, 2013 | 
Author: 
This weekend is Memorial Day weekend in the United States. Originally the day was known as “Decoration Day”, when families would decorate the graves of their husbands, fathers, uncles, sons, brothers and nephews who died in battle.
Today the holiday weekend has become known as the “unofficial start of summer”, and like everything else has taken on more of a secular connotation. Please take time from your busy weekend, in the midst of your cookout, party, ballgame, travel, or whatever to say a prayer and remember all those who made “the ultimate sacrifice”.
More on Project Diana
I found this interesting:
And this is from the InfoAge Webpage concerning the project:
“In late 1945, in the lull that followed the Japanese surrender, a number of scientists at Fort Monmouth’s Camp Evans began working on a way to pierce the earth’s ionosphere with radio waves, a feat that had been tried just before the war without success and which many thought impossible.
Project Diana, named for the goddess of the moon, was designed to prove that it could be done. Begun on an almost unofficial level by Evans radar scientists awaiting their Army discharge, the project was headed by Lt. Col. John DeWitt. Operating with only a handful of full-time researchers, the project scientists greatly modified a SCR-271 bedspring radar antenna, set it up in the northeast corner of Camp Evans, jacked up the power, and aimed it at the rising moon on the morning of January 10, 1946. A series of radar signals were broadcast, and in each case, the echo was picked up in exactly 2.5 seconds, the time it takes light to travel to the moon and back.
The importance of Project Diana cannot be overestimated. The discovery that the ionosphere could be pierced, and that communication was possible between earth and the universe beyond, opened the possibility of space exploration that previously had been only a dream in adventure films and comic books. Just as Hiroshima opened the nuclear age in 1945, Project Diana opened the space age in January of 1946. It would take another decade before the first satellites were launched into space, soon followed by manned rockets, but Diana paved the way for all those achievements.
It even initiated the tradition of naming such projects after ancient Greek and Roman gods, like Mercury and Apollo. For Fort Monmouth Project Diana was a pivotal event that built on World War II expertise, but pointed the way to the future.”
Somehow, I have got to fit this location into either an upcoming QRPTTF or perhaps a cool theme for the 2014 Skeeter Hunt ……………
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very east!
The radio amateur who felt compelled to abandon his own call sign
If you mention that you are a radio amateur to any Norwegian who was old enough to watch TV in the mid 70’s then he is bound to respond with LA8PV. This was the callsign of the fictious figure Marve Fleksnes in the comedy the “Radiot”. To bad for the poor guy who actually was given that callsign some years later. I had contact with him on CW (= morse) in 2002 just after I got my license and I just couldn’t believe that anybody actually was using that particular callsign.
The first of three cuts can be viewed in the embedded Youtube video. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any clip that was subtitled in English, but the first minute or so is almost silent and is about the joy of getting a replacement DF1987B (sic) tube for his transmitter. The tube is supposedly plugged into the output tube socket of a Quad II audio amplifier and then he is ready to go on the air. Later one gets a glimpse of his AR88D receiver.
As the story goes, the Norwegian Post and Telcom Authorities, had marked off LA8PV as a callsign that shouldn’t be used. But due to a mistake they blacklisted LA8PW instead. I had contact with LA8PV almost every year up to and including 2007, but have never had it since. I understand why now, because QRZ.com says that the real LA8PV finally must have given up and gotten the new call sign, LA2WRA, on 4 Jan. 2008. I don’t envy him the fate of having been made LA8PV, and fully understand why he finally abandoned that callsign.
The source for much of this story is a Swedish discussion page on hamradio.se. Marve Fleksnes and LA8PV also aired on Swedish television and were very popular there as well.
Bunch o’ stuff
There’s a bunch of stuff I wanted to cover today.
The first is totally unrelated to Ham Radio; but I found it fascinating. Today, the Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously to Fr. Emil Kapaun, a Catholic priest and Army Chaplain who courageously served our country in WWII and the Korean Conflict. He died a POW at the hands of the Chinese in North Korea. The story of how he conducted himself as a POW and as a leader of men is, to use an overused word, awesome (in the truest sense of the word). After finishing reading the eight part story, all I could think of was “Wow!”. Follow this link for the story about the humble, brave and holy man : http://www.kansas.com/kapaun/
Secondly – this comes from the “I ordered me one” department. The Four State QRP Group introduced a new kit today. I immediately ordered one. It’s called the “Force Link” but is spelled 4S-Link. It is an interface between your radio and computer for the digital modes. All you need in one totally complete kit for $40. You can’t beat that with a stick!
QOD7 – Can you communicate with me in Norwegian?
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| The Oseberg viking ship, 820 AD |
Not so many nationalities are included in the exclusive group of countries with their own Q-code. I mean of course the QOD-code. I have never heard it used by radio amateurs, but it must have played a role some time ago in shipping.
The Q-codes date back to 1912 and were meant to be a short-hand for use in telegraphy. According to the list of Q-codes which Ralf D. Kloth (DL4TA) has on his web page, the meaning of QOD with a number added is: “Can you communicate with me in … 0 Dutch, 1 English, 2 French, 3 German, 4 Greek, 5 Italian, 6 Japanese, 7 Norwegian, 8 Russian, 9 Spanish?” As a response to the question the meaning was “I can communicate with you in …“
The reason for a separate code for Norwegian must be the historically large shipping fleet in Norway. This is still the case as graphically depicted in this overview of the Top 20 Ship Owning Countries, where we seem to rank as number seven – so QOD7 is appropriate!
But today all of them will QOD1.
Image from Wikipedia, user Karamell
Why do Norwegian callsigns end in A?
Well actually not all end in A, but almost all of the recent ones do. Amateur callsigns in Norway are not so well documented on the web, so here is a short explanation.
Norwegian callsigns are used in these territories:
- LA-LN for use in mainland Norway
- JW is used on Svalbard and close-by islands Hopen and Bjørnøya
- JX is used on Jan Mayen
- 3Y is used on Bouvet Island, Peter I Island, and in Antarctica (Queen Maud Land)
Usually the callsign starts with LA, but why do so many of the LA callsigns end in A?
The callsigns have been distributed with the last letter as the most significant letter, e.g. in this order for the two letter series: LA1AA, LA1BA, LA1CA, …, LA9ZZ. In the 80’s it was necessary to add a third letter and that series started like this: LA1AAA, LA1BAA, LA1CAA, …, LA1ABA, LA1BBA, … As an example LA9KTA was issued last year. With the ‘TA’ we are getting closer to the last one, LA9ZZA, in the series ending in ‘A’ now. Therefore in some years all new radio amateurs will get callsigns ending in B.
We also had an LC license at the same time. That was a no-code VHF/UHF-license. All those callsigns ended with -T for Technician license, e.g. LC3SAT. That series is no longer used and it is not possible to get the old LC callsign back.
There is no vanity callsign system in Norway, but club stations were allowed by the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority to get one of the rare single-letter callsigns that were issued to the very first radio amateurs (up to about the time of the second world war). There are only 26*9 = 234 of these callsigns and one example is LA4O for the Oslo group. But this practice seems to have ended now. It is also possible to inherit a callsign from family as I have done.
There are also a few special callsign series:
- LD: Packet radio repeater nodes for VHF and UHF, e.g. for APRS. An example is LD3GT
- LF: License issued to a company, e.g. LF2E
- LG: Only Norwegian-Swedish station LG5LG in Morokulien
- LN: Club stations may switch to this in some of the major contests, e.g. LA8W – LN8W
100 years ago
Last night, I received an e-mail from Bob W3BBO about an item he saw in The County Hunter News. The article was written by Bob Voss N4CD, and it concerned a book written 100 years ago, entitled “Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator“. The book has been made available through Project Gutenberg.
