PlanetHam.org

As a flight instructor and Army Air Corps veteran, Jack Sieger earned the credentials to be called "Ace." During World II, Mr. Sieger piloted supplies to the Allied front lines over the China-Burma-India "hump." Jack L. "Ace" Sieger of Whitehall died Monday, Sept. 29, 2008, in his home. He was 88. Ace Sieger also had an international reputation as an amateur radio operator, whose call sign was WB3DPA.

In March 2008 Tony VK3TZ operated in the CQ World Wide WPX Contest from Vanuatu. His callsign for the contest was YJ8TZ.*****

Michael Chen BD5RV provides more information on the XV-1 (formerly CAS-1) Amateur Radio satellite

Experimenters in the south Donegal area are meeting up on Monday 6th October in the Mill Park Hotel in Donegal Town. The intention is to set up an active club called Donegal Amateur Radio Club in this area

The 2008 AMSAT Space Symosium in Atlanta, Georgia is just weeks away, October 24-26. This promises to be a very interesting symposium with presentations scheduled on a wide range of topics from the simplest operations with an HT to some of the latest ideas on digital communications

Weekly IOTA News - compiled by Tedd Mirgliotta, KB8NW

Due to the lack of interest in setting up amateur radio stations in schools in South Africa on October 8, the project has been cancelled

The Radio Amateurs' Emergency Network has published this report on the recent call out of RAYNET groups to provide communications on behalf of South East Coast Ambulance

An explanation for a strange property of noctilucent clouds - thin, wispy clouds hovering at the edge of space at 85 km altitude - has been proposed by an experimental plasma physicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), possibly laying to rest a decades-long mystery

This week, Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU features Digital Television in his Surfin' column on the ARRL website and mentions an Amateur 8-VSB digital TV transmitter, But what is 8-VSB?

Version 0.4.0 of the General Astrodynamics Library has been released

The presentation given by Sir Martin Sweeting G3YJO at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Glasgow is available on the web

A look back at events that made history this week - compiled by the Summerland Amateur Radio Club of Lismore, NSW

This Week: Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, sets the record straight about APRS.

Have ordered a new radio for the K9ZW shack. With Flex-Radio offering a decent discount on their Flex-5000 line of Software Defined Radios (SDR) the plunge to order has been taken. The version I’ve selected is the Flex-5000A with optional Antenna Tuning Unit (ATU) and optional second receiver (RX2).     I’ve been interested in SDR radio from my start [...]

I've just spent three and a bit days helping my step-mother to get on to email for the first time in her life. I thought I'd make a note of the problems she had as it might be useful for others on the same path. She's a highly motivated user, with a great desire to live in the world of email and be able to look things up on the web, but while she's seen people using computers, she never has

Engineering content can be a little dry sometimes. To add some spice to this world of precision, Agilent commissioned Rand Kruback to create his artistic view of some common EE terms and phrases. These cartoons should lighten your day!

Brought to you every few days while I’m downunder, remember normal homebrew activities resume mid October.

End of update.

Yeah, a good sort of trouble.   Over the summer I had Backup woes, with a Laptop Hard Disk bitting the dust, a iMate unit getting roughly unmounted when the power flickered, and some chaos when after restoring from TimeMachine I found my automatic backups were not working right. Much is better now, but I’m in trouble [...]

After a tour of the Golden State of California last weekend, the State QSO Party circuit heads back East to Pennsylvania, as its 67 counties will be front and center on the contest bands this weekend. Check out the story and find out what counties might be the toughest to grab on the air.

Ed Muns W0YK wasn't completely happy with his sleep management or his bandplan strategy as he reviewed his P49X log, but the top flight RTTY operator has the high claimed score for the 2008 CQWW RTTY contest so far. While it's short of the D4B world record, Muns leads by well over 2 million points.

My spouse's notebook computer died a few weeks ago, about 1 year after the 1 year warranty expired. This was not very satisfying. I also had my notebook PC die this past year, so it is starting to look like notebooks are disposal devices. Funny, my desktop PCs just keep on going year after year without a problem. This probably has something to do with the abuse that notebooks get being carried around from place to place.

So if we are going to end up replacing these things every few years, I got interested in lowering the cost. There are a number of compact "webbooks" that typically run Linux on the Intel Atom and use a solid state drive (no spinning hard disk). We settled on the Acer Aspire One, which is $329 from Amazon (free shipping). This computer has a 1.6GHz Atom N270 Processor, 8GB solid state drive, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 802.11b/g, Ethernet, three USB 2.0, VGA output, 1.3 megapixel camera, SDHC and multi-format media readers. I popped an 8GB SDRAM card into the expansion slot and it now has 16 GB. It uses the Linpus Linux Lite operating system. (Some webbook models are going with WindowsXP, but I think these minimalist machines are better off with the small footprint of Linux.) The only thing I wish it had was a good-old dialup modem for those rare times when you are stuck without a decent wireless connection. (I'd trade that for the VGA display output.)

It comes ready to run with Linux and the key applications already loaded. For web browsing (Firefox), email (Acer Email) and writing (OpenOffice), it is ready to go. I did decide to load Thunderbird for email (instead of the supplied Acer Email application). This machine is configured like an appliance with not much thought of how the user will add applications. However, a little fiddling around on the web and the use of my (cough) extensive (cough) knowledge of Unix commands got Thunderbird loaded.

So far, this computer has exceeded our expectations. It is really compact, has a great display and is easy to use. What it does, it does well. However, it is NOT a full-size, full-featured notebook computer. For the intended use of internet communications, email, web, basic document creation, it works great. I am hoping that the simple design, with no hard drive, with also last a little longer. Did I mention that this thing boots fast? Go, Linux.

I can't get it out of my wife's hands. Trust me, I've tried.

73, Bob K0NR

This is a pass along from a list e-mail by W4ZV. If you like hearing the recollections of folks from their novice days, here is a trove of stories. THAT should be good for killing time.

Computers have been running many amateur radio programs since the birth of the P.C. I have always tried to keep reasonably up to date with most software and recently decided to give my Intel Dual Core 3800 some new hardware which was to be some more Ram memory and a HD Graphics adaptor.

I compared the required hardware on the net where I got a good insight into the specifications available as well as the costs. Once I new what I wanted, I set off to my local shop and came away with both. 1 gig of ram memory(DDR) this was to compliment the existing memory, now doubling up to give 2 gigabytes of ram memory.
The graphics adaptor is a NVDIA 9600 GT 512 Megabytes HD card, I fitted it and with both items installed correctly the computer should give excellent performance.

With the new hardware installed i decided to back up my logs/data and then I formatted the C: drive completely wiping it clean ready for a fresh install.

The re-installation takes some time but is well worth it once all software/drivers are updated giving fast and reliable performance for a long time, whilst running all my favorite radio programs.

Here the mother board is exposed displaying the dual core processor(3800), the creative sound card used for all radio software and the ram hidden under the harnesses.

The NVIDIA GT 9600 512MB Card before the installation.

It's that time of the year when contesters are kept busy and the Grumpy Old Men are grumpier: The start of the contest season. I'll get to the Grumpy Old Men part in a bit, but first the part of the contesters.

There are contests every weekend of the year, but the more well-known (or "bigger") contests start taking place around now and continue for the next few months. I imagine this has to do with worldwide propagation or something, but to tell the truth I've never really looked into why the "big contests" alll start right about now.

The good news is that for contesters, there's usually something "big" every weekend. Last weekend I participated (or "played around", as I like to say) in the CQ WorldWide RTTY DX contest. In this contest, any station can work any other station, so even if the band conditions aren't very good (in my opinion, they were awful Saturday, though they improved to merely lousy on Sunday) you can usually find lots of stations to work within your own country. Of course, the way scoring works you get more points for working stations outside of your own country, and even more for working stations outside of your own continent, so that's what you try to do, when you can.

The RTTY (pronounced "Ritty") in the name of the contest means that you can only use Radio TeleTYpe mode to make contacts. Originally, this mean that there was an actually mechanical teletype connected via some specialized equipment to a radio, but now, most RTTY enthusiasts use their computer sound card with a fairly simple connection to their radio, along with an encoding/decoding program on their computer, such as the very popular MMTTY. What's really nice about these digital mode contests is the amount of automation that can be done by your contest logging program. As I've mentioned before, I use N1MM's contest logger, which has some really terrific features for handling digital contests, even for casual contesters like me. For example, as with all contests, the exchange of information between stations is structured, with little or no change between contacts. (For this particular contest, nothing at all changes.) The N1MM program allows you to set up your exchange sequences such that once you've gotten the other stations callsign, the exchange process is almost entirely automated. The operator then needs to hunt for stations, adjust the radio to make sure that there's "clean copy" (meaning that you can read the information being sent), and then just do a few mouse clicks or keyboard presses (all configurable) to complete the contact.

One interesting thing about RTTY mode is that although you can hear the sound that the other station is sending, unlike CW (and certainly unlike any speech modes) it can't be decoded by ear. (Ok, I've heard that some really experienced guys actually can decode RTTY by ear. I sure know that I can't. Here's an audio sample, you can decide for yourself). The software used to help tune in the signal has a tuning aid to help you zero-in the signal, so you can use RTTY completely without any audio coming out of your speakers (or headphones) if you want to.

Anyway, I've played in RTTY contests before, and one big thing for me is that they are often a good place to pick up a new country, or a country that I've contacted before on a new band. My decision to participate in this contest was very last minute: I think I fired up the contesting software about 15 minutes after the start of the contest, spent a while configuring it, and then operated for a while on Friday night. I did some more operating Saturday afternoon, and again Sunday afternoon into early evening. I wound up on the air for around 12 hours or so, and made 257 contacts, with a score of just under 115,000 points. I was quite happy with my effort, which I think was decent for a low power station just "playing around".

One thing that I did was to set some "moving target" goals for myself to help keep going. Initially, I wanted to try to make at least 150 contacts, which seemed reasonable on Saturday afternoon. After I surpassed that, I decided that I wanted to break 100,000 points, and then, at the very end of the contest, I decided that I wanted to make at least 250 contacts. (Although I did succeed in that, I was getting a little frantic as I was about 3 contacts short of my goal with not long to go in the contest, and seemed unable to make any others. Fortunately, I managed to work a bunch of stations during the final minutes.) Setting these kinds of goals for me helps to make things fun. Unlike serious contesters, I "cheat" by setting my goals as I'm operating. I do this because I'm trying to keep things fun for myself. If I'd set out to make 250 contacts before I started Friday night, I probably would have gotten discouraged during the day on Saturday when things were going slowly and given up. So, I "cheat" and create goals that seem reasonable for the conditions and the amount of time I'm likely to have available. I'm not suggesting that this works well for anyone else, but it works for me.

This weekend is the California QSO Party contest, which is one of my favorite state QSO party contests. (As I've mentioned before, the goal of these contests is to make contact with as many stations within a particular state as possible, or for those within that state to make as many contacts in general.) Sharon and I had plans on Saturday (visiting a few wineries in the Hudson Valley in New York), so I only had a few hours to operate in the contest on Sunday. Unfortunately, the bands just weren't cooperating early Sunday afternoon, and after about an hour of operating, I'd only worked eight stations. Listening now (around 4PM EDT), things seemed to have picked up a bit, so maybe I'll try again in a while, but my initial attempts were not fun, so I stopped to work on some other things, including writing this.

So what about the Grumpy Old Men comment? It seems that as the contest season gets underway, the complaints start to flow into the mailing lists complaining about the contesters. Some of the complaints are legitimate, since unfortunately some of my contesting brethren do just plop themselves down on a frequency without ensuring that the frequency is not in use. That is just plain wrong, period. However, some of the complaints are made because "the contester was on the frequency that we use every day, and even though they were there first, they should move". Sorry, but that's not the way things work. We amateurs have a reasonable amount of radio spectrum to use. There's plenty of room for all of us if we cooperate with each other. We are fortunate to have these valuable resource to share. If we can't play nicely with each other, then the FCC might just decide to pick up our collective sandbox and give it to someone else.

Image via Wikipedia

I have used Firefox for a long time (back when it was known as Firebird before it was forced to change its name). It is a great browser and if you have not tried it and its tab browser feature then I recommend you give it a try. Although I have used, and still use other browsers, I do like Firefox and return to it regularly.

By the way, if you have only ever used Internet Explorer, you should really try other browsers. You may find one which is more enjoyable to use than IE. Besides Firefox, take a look at Safari, Opera, Sea Monkey or Amaya (these last two contain HTML editors too - I would go further and say Amaya is an editor first and a browser second).

Besides its price (free), speed and tabbed browsing (I cannot do without that), Firefox is popular because of the variety of plugins to enhance its features.  Plugins are modules that can give your browser extra features. Here are some plugins I use for amateur radio.

• Propfire: This is provided by N0HR and displays the current solar activity indices in the browser frame.  Right clicking on the indices also gives more detailed information including propagation forecasts and a graph of data.
• Haminfobar: This is a full toolbar that fits across the browser and includes an array of amateur and related information.  This has a wealth of information within it, plus RSS feeds can be added to it.  Content includes:
  • A search window
  • A drop down menu with links to key pages such as, DX info, QSL info, propagation, specific modes and forums to name a few.
  • A drop down menu that shows sites for equipment, world facts, radio magazines etc.
  • a UTC clock
  • Selected RSS
  • Weather info
  • and so on.
• HamLinks toolbar: Another tool from N0HR and it is very similar to Haminfobar, mentioned above, (not sure which came first but one looks to be a derivative). The content is slightly different, including links to AmateurLogic.TV, which is interesting to watch.  Propagation information is also included inline.
• Foxclocks: It is always useful to have a series of clocks with a series of times at locations around the world.  Foxclocks allows you to display the time at different cities/locations and provides a lot of ways to modify.  I usually display the West Coast of North America, Europe (UK), Far East or Australia.  Great for DXers or users of IRLP or DStar gateways.
• Google Notebook:  I use this for quickly collecting web information for projects.  It is more than a bookmarker as you can clip content too.  It is like an electronic scrapbook.  Great if you use different computers as your Google account means that you can access the same notebook once you are logged in.

• Twitterfox:  I am an infrequent user of the micro-blogging tool Twitter.  This is a nice plugin that allows you to see the Tweets (or posts) that the people you are following have made.  If you want to quickly find out which amateurs use Twitter (so you can select who you want to follow) then check the HamTwits webpage.

I hope you find some of these plugins useful, if you have not tried them before.  I am sure there are other plugins out there being used with amateur radio.  Please share what you use by posting details in a comment below.

      

The online grabber of Johan, ON5EX, provided instant gratification this morning. Right after I finished some modifications that I hoped would result in a Frequency Shift Keying signal on the 30 meter visual QRSS band, looked at the grabbers and found this. That's me. It is a kind of "upside down" FSK. Look along the bottom of the square wave and you can read the CW.

I used a fairly standard approach to get the FSK, but with a twist: I added the usual LED and a cap to the oscillator circuit. Now, on key down, the positive voltage from the keyer causes the LED to conduct, putting the additional cap into the circuit. But here is the twist: for the capacitor, I just used some of that twisted-up two conductor insulated wire that often comes with cheap old (mono) ear phones. In the old days this would have been called a "gimmick" capacitor. I started out with 3 or four inches. Using Spectran to monitor the amount of shift, I just cut off bits of the wire until the shift was at the desired 5 Hertz. I just clipped away at the wire until the shift looked about right.

The rig is now key down all the time, and even though power out is still only about 20 miliwatts, I have the final in Class A, so I actually had to put a heat sink on it. But there is still no need for a muffin fan, or liquid cooling or anything like that!

Five hertz isn't much of a shift. I think I can hear it, but barely. Shows up nicely on the grabber screens.

It was a lot of fun to start out with a vision of what I wanted the signal to look like, then actually make it happen.

I'm finally back on the air. Finished getting the 80m zepp back up in the tree in the front yard and strung over the house. Had to go up on the roof to accomplish the last part. One branch from a tree on the side of the house is preventing me from pulling the antenna to full height, but I will fix that soon with some sling-shot and rope Fujitsu. I also put back up the 40m vertical and connected it to the chain-link fence for a ground system. It works, but signals are down 2 s-units compared to the zepp.

It is nice to be back in radio-land.

Allthough Dayton 2008 took place in May this year, I think this is worth a blog post. The presentations of this years antenna and contest forums are online. Antenna forum Real World Antenna Patterns vs. Theoretical Computer Antenna Plots by W9RE and K9XV A New Approach for Measuring Complex Antenna Currents in a Vertical Array by W8WWV Multi-element Lowband Vertical [...]

Read comment (link).

Ham radio changed after FlexRadio Systems announced the Flex-1500 and Flex-3000 (link). I would consider both as difference makers and game changers. The Flex-1500 opens the door to the NexGen with its affordable price point. One can save the dollars needed for this software defined radio (SDR) within a short period of time. The Flex-1500 does not break the savings account. That's a difference maker.

Additionally, the Flex-3000 is a game changer for its price point as well and, small footprint in the shack. I'm wondering if the next wave of DXpeditions will consider operating a Flex-3000 in the near future? Match this SDR with a laptop and your footprint is substantially less along with reducing freight weight.

I'm looking forward to the innovations that will follow because of the nature of SDR open source coding. The Flex-1500 gives low-power, low-profile operators in densely packed suburban areas a lot of hope at reaching high frequency (HF) operations.

Read Jeff, KE9V's latest posting Flex-Radio Makes Big Move (link).

73 from the shackadelic.

BELTON, Tex. (Oct. 1, 2008) -- About 1,500 Amateur Radio operators and electronics hobbyists with items to sell or with money to spend will gather at the Bell County Expo Center in Belton on Saturday, October 4 for HamEXPO. Temple Amateur Radio Club (TARC) sponsors this twice-a-year techno-fleamarket. The doors open at 7:00 a.m., and the event ends by 1:00 p.m.

Sept. 30, 2008: Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the "blankest year" of the Space Age. As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times. "Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We're experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle."

The Dutch radio-pirate Eric van Willegen gave up his illicit broadcasts from high-rise apartments and ships at sea after being raided by the authorities for the 20th time. Eric has hired an old Soviet transmitter in Lithuania and is now rebroadcasting old tapes of The Wolfman Jack Show all over Europe and beyond

Hans van de Groenendaal, ZS6AKV, and Francois Botha, ZS6BUU, made presentations at the South African regulator ICASA's PLT Hearing held in Sandton last Wednesday and Thursday.

Episode 22 features part two of a tour of the Australian Army’s Signals Museum

The Caribbean National Wildlife Refuge Complex has selected and announced a team of operators to activate Desecheo Island (KP5) sometime between January 15, 2009 and March 30, 2009

An International Space Station Expedition 17 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at Scuola Media Statale Donato Forlani, Conversano, Italy on 07 October.

On Friday, we reported that RAYNET in Kent were in action following the failure of the ambulance service communications system. Raynet have issued the following update on the situation

It all started when Geoff, VK2KPK, in Australia spotted the e-mail address of Mike Bosch, ZS2FM, on their VK-VHF NET. VK2KPK e-mailed ZS2FM on Monday asking for his help to locate a lost amateur friend, Arthur White, who moved to the RSA many years ago..

One colourful web site is that of the Wanganui Amateur Radio Society Inc located on New Zealand's North Island. However, the exciting and interesting item on this website is the ability to 'tune in' to New Zealand's National System

Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the expected solar activity will be very low. The geomagnetic field is expected to be mostly at quiet levels untill 11 October

Engineering content can be a little dry sometimes. To add some spice to this world of precision, Agilent commissioned Rand Kruback to create his artistic view of some common EE terms and phrases. These cartoons should lighten your day!

Brought to you every few days while I’m downunder, remember normal homebrew activities resume mid October.

End of update.

New are the Flex-3000 Portable 100w and Flex-1500 QRP radios. FLEX-3000™ Software Defined Radio An Affordable and Compact Software Defined Radio Built on the Same Solid Foundation of the FLEX-5000™ Family of Transceivers. They say dynamite comes in small packages and nothing could be closer to the truth. The new FLEX-3000 software defined radio, built using the same [...]

Jan 15-Mar 30, 2009 -- Desecheo -- KP5 -- QSL: unknown -- Source: NN3W (Oct 4, 2008) -- By W0GJ K4UEE + 13 others; for 14 days within this date range; exact begin and end dates not yet known

Kev and Ian, two of our members, are involved with a new Amateur Radio training website. It launched this weekend and aims to bring together training material from the internet into a central site. It also has the added advantage of a forum to allow potential licensees and amateurs wishing to progress through the licensing system to interact with each other and registered instructors who are always on hand to help! The forum also has a whole series of mini-lessons (Learning Curves) available to registered users, registration is free and simple from the forum pages. Also available on the site are sample exam questions and an FAQ. Anyone is welcome, at any level of licence, whether to learn, improve or to teach and guide!

Click here to visit Amateur Radio Training

Since August 2008 a "new" 10m beacon from Mexico is operational. The beacon is operated by Ramon, XE1KK from grind square EK09 in Mexico City. The beacon uses a CB Radio Midland 13-879B modified by XE1GFF and transmits "XE1KK/B EK09 PSE RPT". The morse code is generated with a PIC 16F64. The beacon is connected to [...]

The California QSO Party (CQP) begins in a few hours. And I have N1MM Contest Logger configured and ready. My goal is 24-hours of operating time called butt-in-the-chair and borrowing a bumper sticker, my task is simply CQ, Baby, CQ. I want to exceed my 2007 effort in CQP as well. Unlike last year, I'm operating Single Operator 2 VFO (SO2V) using N1MM software control of my Yaesu FT100. And my understanding of digital signal processing (DSP) has improved over last year as well.

read more

Fun time is spite of not very many QSOs or much activity? But how can you NOT have fun with Rooster & Peanut and playing radio in the woods with QRP buddies? Especially since we had such beautiful weather, great views and an isolated campsite. It almost didn't matter what the band conditions were. But they weren't horrible as I heard many EU stations on 17m although I couldn't crack the pileups and even on 20m in the early AM the EU stations were a little QRM issue for the QRPaF at times. QSB was deep and made copy a challenge at times too. All in all it was a hoot!

Dave Philipps from the Colorado Springs Gazette did a fun story titled "From barnyard bad boys ... to backcountry bellhops" about pack goats featuring Peanut and Rooster. During the video interview Rooster gets bored and decides to walk off while I'm leaning on him and carries me off camera! As a follow up I made a video of our backpack trip which the Dave the reporter accompanied us on while he was writing his story.

(link) FlexRadio Systems Flex-1500 Low Cost QRP Software Defined Radio (SDR) priced at $499.

(link) FlexRadio Systems Flex-3000 SDR priced at $1499.

Congratulations FlexRadio Systems for defining the new era in ham radio. Absolutely stellar!

Turn on, Tune, Operate.

INDIANA--Saturday morning, the amateur radio community in Indiana County will discover just how prepared it is should a national disaster hit the area. But what sets this simulated disaster test apart from most others is that, not only is it conducted for amateur radio operators only, but it's planning and orchestration have all been conducted by a local teenager.

Aging hobbyists hope to reach new generation: FRAMINGHAM - The spinning radio dial yielded pops and crackles, blips of Morse code from a ham radio operator in the Midwest, a warbling voice in a German accent, and, finally, a friend. "CQ, CQ, CQ," came the call, strong and clear, amateur-radio shorthand for a general invitation to speak to anybody who's listening. "This is Whiskey-1-Foxtrot-Yankee," replied Sumner Weisman in a smooth voice, giving his radio club's call letters, W1FY, assigned by the US government. "We're the Framingham Amateur Radio Association." Knowledgeable radio buffs have connected on the airwaves in this way since practically the dawn of radio. But these days, with the Internet at the cutting edge of communications, amateur radio - the term refers to its noncommercial status, not the skill level of its practitioners - is turning a bit gray.

After waiting for nearly two years for a response from Ofcom over the introduction of possibly non-compliant power line adapters, the RSGB was extremely disappointed to hear from Ofcom that they do not intend to do anything about it

Michael Chen BD5RV reports that the first Chinese Amateur Radio satellite has been renamed from CAS-1 to XW-1 and is planned to launch next June

The Sheffield Amateur Radio Club is proud to present… Enigma Talk by John Alexander G7CGK on the WWII German Enigma and mechanical cipher machines, an interesting talk not to be missed. Helping to tell the story is Wireless Times, the Riotous Retro Radio Recreation

The Wireless Institute of Australia is pleased to announce the results of this year’s Clubs Grant Scheme

After nearly 26 years, MEGAHERTZ magazine of France has closed due to increasing production and distribution costs, and market factors

The latest sunspot appearance reported last week seems to follow the pattern emerging for most of 2008. A spot will appear for one or two days, and then suddenly it is gone..

The RSGB are pleased to announce that they have taken delivery of the new GB4FUN trailer and it is being fitted out with a wide range of amateur equipment

On Friday the UK regulator Ofcom published its digital television update for the second quarter of 2008

The RSGB is sorry to have to report that the HFC Buildathon has been cancelled due to insufficient bookings

GB2RS News was first broadcast on Sunday 25 September 1955 from the station of Frank Hicks-Arnold G6MB on 3600kHz using voice amplitude modulation

Just when I thought and UltraDX (link) melted the capacitor with serious juice. UltraDX is hot like CQ, Baby, CQ.

Why? A quote from UltraDX mission statement--

• "UltraDX.com is committed to bringing amateurs worldwide a rich set of community related services and tools that enrich our experiences as amateur radio operators both on and off the air. As part of that commitment, we are actively building and delivering new applications almost daily. Many of these applications and services are designed with recognition to existing online amateur services and it is our intent to provide interactive tool-sets that enable members to not only use our services, but to streamline the use of other great services such as QRZ, QTH and eHam."

The new standard for ham radio community interactivity is UltraDX (link).

Turn on, tune, operate.

Read comment (link).

Now that's an aggressive ham radio related schedule! Everything is ready for CQP weekend--

• Doublet deployed.
  
• N1MM Contest Logger configured for CQP.
  
• Listening to 40M this morning and Japan is pumping.
  

Hope to see you in the log.

Contest on.

Saturday morning, the amateur radio community in Indiana County will discover just how prepared it is should a national disaster hit the area. But what sets this simulated disaster test apart from most others is that, not only is it conducted for amateur radio operators only, but it's planning and orchestration have all been conducted by a local teenager.

On Sunday, September 27, the VoIP Hurricane Net formally activated at 5 PM EDT to provide surface reports as Hurricane Kyle affected portions of extreme Northeastern Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada.

As Hurricane Kyle brushed its way across the Eastern New England region on its way to the Canadian Maritimes, hams in the area were prepared for impact. Heavy rain associated with a stalled out boundary, as well as some influence from Kyle, caused heavy rainfall and flooding in the region.

Army Captain Jeff Hammer,YI9IC/N9NIC, the custodian of the Baghdad Amateur Radio Society (BARS), is due to come home after a nine month tour of duty with the Indiana National Guard. "I need someone I can turn the BARS station over to," he said. "Please assist me in finding other Amateur Radio operators in or coming to Iraq." The Baghdad station boasts the following equipment:

Ten years ago, only a few hams in North America knew that on-foot hidden transmitter hunting is an international sport with many names such as foxtailing, foxhunting, radio-orienteering and Amateur Radio Direction Finding (ARDF).

Almost 150 aficionados of digital communications came to Chicago for the 27th annual ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) the weekend of September 26-28.

"The 2009 ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications" uniquely serves both amateur experimenters and industry practitioners, emphasizing connections between basic theory and application. "The ARRL Handbook" is simply the standard in applied electronics and communications. This 86th edition is both a useful introduction to radio communication and features the most current material on electronics and Amateur Radio.

A 67-page booklet, "Ethics and Operating Procedures for the Radio Amateur" by John Devoldere, ON4UN, and Mark Demeuleneere, ON4WW, is available for free download from the ARRL Web site.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has appointed ARRL West Gulf Vice Director Dr David Woolweaver, K5RAV, to the Council of the Department of State Health Services (DSHS), formally known as the Texas Department of Health.

ARRL Continuing Education Course Registration remains open through Sunday, October 26, 2008, for these online course sessions beginning on Friday, November 7, 2008:

The latest sunspot appearance reported last week seems to follow the pattern emerging for most of 2008. A spot will appear for one or two days, and then suddenly it is gone.

The East Bridgewater YMCA was again thankful for radio communication support of members from the Massasoit Amateur Radio Association and the Whitman Amateur Radio Club during the Family Fall Frolic Road Race on Sept 28. The walkers left the start line at 10:00 am; runners followed at 10:30. The 4-mile event encountered light- to moderate rain and standing water on parts of the roadway. It was a challenge for the walkers and runners who participated. MARA and WARC members who participated included: N1FRE, K1VQ, KB1MOC, KB1MTW, NI1X, KB1CYV, N1XTB. --Thanks, N1XTB

The sunspot appearance reported last week seems to follow the pattern emerging for most of 2008. A spot will appear for one or two days and then suddenly it is gone. Last week's report mentioned the solar wind being at an all time low. This week, NASA announced that so far, 2008 is the "blankest year of the space age," with more than 200 spotless days. The minimum following Solar Cycle 18 in 1954 had 241 days without sunspots, and it preceded the solar max in 1959 for Solar Cycle 19 that had the highest sunspot numbers on record.

More at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2008/10/03/10375/

ARRL Audio News--OPEN--In this edition . . .; Canadian and American Hams Provide "Textbook Example" of Amateur Radio's EmComm Role; Radio Amateurs Assist with Hurricane Kyle Operations; ARRL Audio News ID--Public Relations Update--BREAK; Another World Championship Medal for ARDF Team USA; 27th Annual ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference Wraps Up; 2009 ARRL Handbook (Eighty-Sixth Edition) Now Available; ARRL Audio News--News Briefs--CLOSE

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 22 is now available for download.

Episode 22 features part two of a tour of the Australian Army’s Signals Museum. Vintage communications equipment from WW1 - the Vietnam era. Plus the answer to the question posed in part one concerning to use of the odd cw device with two keys.

17 minutes of old radios and war stories.

View or Download

View in web browser Google Video or YouTube

The sunspot appearance reported last week seems to follow the pattern emerging for most of 2008. A spot will appear for one or two days and then suddenly it is gone. Last week's report mentioned the solar wind being at an all time low. This week, NASA announced that so far, 2008 is the "blankest year of the space age," with more than 200 spotless days. The minimum following Solar Cycle 18 in 1954 had 241 days without sunspots, and it preceded the solar max in 1959 for Solar Cycle 19 that had the highest sunspot numbers on record.

Members of the Framingham Amateur Radio Association were interviewed for a front-page article in the Metrowest section of The Boston Globe entitled Ham Radio Showing Its Gray on October 2, 2008. Despite the less-than-positive title, the article successfully depicted the lure of Amateur Radio, the excitement of making distant HF radio contacts and the devotion to the hobby by the FARA members. Sumner Weisman, W1VIV was featured prominently in the article. Weisman described his "first crystal-controlled radio transmitter more than 50 years ago" consisting of a single vacuum tube, and the "long wire along the roof of his house." Other club members described Amateur Radio as "a hobby that requires patience - as well as knowledge, training, and skill - draws a more interesting class of people than does the Web." ARRL Public Relations Manager Allan Pitts, W1AGP was also quoted in the story. "Ham radio is attracting new fans from two groups: recent retirees who now have the free time to scratch some longtime itch to learn radio, and young people - late teens, early 20s - who 'are interested in the emergency communication aspect of amateur radio.'"

See New York Times article. The prospects for "Cycle 24" are especially interesting for hams who use the "high frequency" (HF) bands, 3 - 30 MHz. We need those sunspots!

For those QRP contesters out there, these events may interest you:

German Telegraphy Contest (CW) ... QRP Category
Oct 3, 0700z to 0959z
Rules: http://kontest.de/dtc/DTC-Rules_e.pdf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TARA PSK31 Rumble (PSK31 only) ... QRP Category
Oct 4, 0000z to 2400z
Rules: http://www.n2ty.org/seasons/tara_rumble_rules.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EU SPRINT CONTEST (SSB) ... 100W category
Oct 4, 1600z to 1959z
Rules: http://www.eusprint.com/index.php?page=140&lang=g
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
California QSO Party (CW/SSB) ... QRP Category
Oct 4, 1600z to Oct 5, 2159z
Rules: http://www.cqp.org/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RSGB 21/28 MHz Contest (CW/SSB) ... QRP Category
Oct 5, 0700z to 1900z
Rules: http://www.vhfcc.org/hfcc/rules/2008/r2128.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to SM3CER, WA7BNM, N0AX(ARRL), VA3JFF & G4GXL (QRPARCI)
N2APB (AmQRP), WB3AAL (EPAQRP) and others
for assistance in compiling this calendar.

This was made possible through the courtesy of Ken Newman, N2CQ.

73 de Larry W2LJ

This week’s Surfin’ considers Web sites where Amateur Television (ATV) is going digital.

Did you know that Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that features Web sites related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general? If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.

Had the best 50MHz FM QSO so far, this morning. Paul, 2E0BHA was only a few miles in front of me on the way to work, so we had a QSO on 51.510 at great strength. Even when we were around 15 miles apart, signals were great and I last heard Paul, as I was in the car park at Didcot as he was south of the M4 interchange on the A34 - over some quite hilly terrain.

Again, if you're in range, do come and join us.

If you're not a UHF type, then there's an HF contest that you might want to take a look at on Sunday, from 0700-1900. It's the RSGB 21/28MHz event, and it's your opportunity to work lots of UK stations, if you're based outside the UK.

It's CW and SSB and UK stations will give an exchange of report and serial number plus a district code which will be something like OX = Oxford or RG = Reading. If you have the opportunity to come on and work some UK stations, that will be great.

If you're based in the UK, you can work anyone you can hear!

Let's hope conditions are co-operative.

This week's Surfin' considers Web sites where Amateur Television (ATV) is going digital.

This weekend it's the October UHF/SHF contest from 1400z on Saturday to Sunday. It's an all bands affair from 432MHz to 248GHz.

Activity from the UK is never huge, but I hear that EI9E/P will be on from IO62. If you don't always turn the beam west, you should this weekend!

From Amateur Radio Newsline:

The Simplex Preservation Society is a club in the United States that is an alternative to what it calls the traditional repeater-centric amateur radio groups. It's not suggesting anyone gives up repeater use, but its members do monitor simplex, make regular contacts that way and maintain a capability to be able to operate independently of repeaters. SPS members maintain, or improve, their VHF stations to ensure they can effectively communicate within their city limits.

Hmmm? Aren't we doing this on 146.460 MHz? Learn more at http://www.73sps.com/about/simplex-utilization.html

RAYNET in Kent are in action following the failure of the ambulance service communications system