Planet Ham (English)

A new DX record for terrestrial (non EME) communication has been set with a QSO between D44 and CT on July 10th over an incredible 2696km. See http://www.hyperatlantica.ch/ for more information.

Today I increased the power from my QRSS3 136.93kHz beacon to 2W out of the PA into the 20m spaced earth electrodes. Another "ride about" test locally with the deaf FT817 and E-field probe RX antenna gave the following results:


These reports are roughly "end on" to the electrodes and I've yet to try other directions such as orthogonal to them. No attempt was made to match the PA output to the impedance presented by the earth electrodes which are around 40-60 ohms below 10kHz; I've not measured it at 136kHz yet.

Even with true QRP it looks like a range of at least 10km should be possible on QRSS3 (and probably WSPR) with a half decent receiver (better than my crude set-up) using just a 20m earth electrode TX antenna on 136kHz.  I'll leave the QRSS3 beacon running over the weekend on 136.93kHz from my QTH in Burwell, Cambs (JO02dg) and any reports and screen shots would be much appreciated.

Check it out here – nice photos too. Pre-built, not a kit. No mention of QSK capabilities yet.

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After pondering tree geometry with the idea of putting up an inverted L for the coming fall/winter season, I decided to just make further use of what I already have – an 80m dipole & its feedline. The idea isn’t original – it came from my well-worn copy of ON4UN’s book on lowband DXing.

Below is a modification of a diagram in the book that more accurately reflects what I want to do.

My main concerns are avoiding ground loops and in utilizing the right relay that will provide minimal loss and maximum isolation for my 100-watt station. Ground loops and relays at RF are both gray areas for me so I plan on picking the brains of those more worthy in this area than I am…

I suppose the relay shown here would be referred to as a DP3T 3PDT (thanks Mike!).

I began the radial installation this weekend by mowing the grass short and using lawn staples (75 for $10 at Lowe’s) to hold down the wires. According to several sources, the wires should be invisible within a week or two. I’ll be able to use elevated radials along the fencelines of my yard.

After several mowings of the yard, laying additional radials each time, I will have a radial system as good as it’s gonna get around here.

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http://www.arrl.org/ubuntu-linux-for-hams

Courtesy : VU2HVK, OM Harsha

I'm trying to optimise an IRF510 MOSFET PA for use in the 136kHz beacon and later transverter design. Alan Melia G3NYK has a very useful page on practical approaches to class E designs for 136kHz at his page http://www.alan.melia.btinternet.co.uk/classepa.htm together with a useful Excel worksheet to come up with practical values for the output network. Class E using square wave drive on the input can produce very good efficiencies, thereby reducing heatsink requirements.

The six meter calling frequency and perhaps other calling frequencies on other bands are a bit of a paradox.  Six meters is often dead and will magically open up between areas due to Sporadic E propagation.  You won't know the band is open unless you continually scan the lower end of six meters hunting beacons or someone happens to be calling on the calling frequency.

We have an amateur in the area who likes camp out on the six meter calling frequency and have his voice keyer automatically call CQ for a few hours some evenings.  It's logical to do such a thing as no one will know the band is open unless someone is transmitting and someone receives the transmissions.  But it's terribly annoying to listen to and I find myself getting frustrated when people do this.  I know others feel the same way as well.  Despite being a calling frequency it's impolite to use it for calling for long periods of time.

Perhaps what we should really have are multiple calling frequencies based on areas such as grid square fields, the first two characters of the Maidenhead Locator System (i.e. "FN", "EM", "CN", etc.).  You could camp out on the frequency for your grid square field and call CQ all you like, but if you just wanted to listen for an opening, you could leave your receiver on one of the other grid square field frequencies and not have to worry about a local station clogging the frequency for long periods of time.

A year and a half ago my LoTW confirmations were at 14%. Either more and more people are starting to use it or contesters are more apt to use LoTW than non-contesters. Most of my QSOs as a function of percentage in the last 18 months have been made during various contests and sprints.

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Android is popular linux based operating system for most of smart phones and also tablet PCs. Some said that android based phones is an iPhone killer. Can we run an android on your x86 pc ? yes we can!

Steps

1. Get android x86 iso here at http://android-x86.googlecode.com/files/android-x86-1.6-r2.iso
2. you need UNetbootin to make bootable USB drive or just burn the iso if you got cd/dvd drive ( you can also run this iso in your virtual environment, vmware, virtualpc, virtualbox )
3. reboot your pc to your USB drive or burned cd/dvd

Screensnap

Today I started to modify my 136kHz QRP beacon to increase the power from 250mW to around 5W using an IRF510 MOSFET PA. I've still work to do to optimise the design but hope to complete this tomorrow.

A rather long, but fascinating article on the possibilities and issues with time travel is on Wikipedia.

Researchers at MIT may have come up with a way of travelling through time (and space) using quantum closed timeline curves or CTCs. It has always fascinated me that in quantum mechanics one can describe things as wave functions that have existed in all space and all time, past present and future. It takes a leap of imagination to consider the possibilities. For an explanation see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7904712/Quantum-time-machine-allows-paradox-free-time-travel.html

This is the abstract of the original MIT paper:

"This paper discusses the quantum mechanics of closed timelike curves (CTC) and of other potential methods for time travel. We analyze a specific proposal for such quantum time travel, the quantum description of CTCs based on post-selected teleportation (P-CTCs). We compare the theory of P-CTCs to previously proposed quantum theories of time travel: the theory is physically inequivalent to Deutsch's theory of CTCs, but it is consistent with path-integral approaches (which are the best suited for analyzing quantum field theory in curved spacetime). We derive the dynamical equations that a chronology-respecting system interacting with a CTC will experience. We discuss the possibility of time travel in the absence of general relativistic closed timelike curves, and investigate the implications of P-CTCs for enhancing the power of computation."

Simple ??? See http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.2615

I have no idea what caused that horrendous QRN on 20 Meters the other night; but I have been hanging around and listening to 20 Meters tonight; and so far there is no sign of it. The weather here is the same as it was Tuesday night - hot and humid, no rain.

I am sure that it will probably not rear its ugly head again until the next time I am scheduled to be the 20 Meter Fox in a few weeks.

Sigh.

However, I did manage a very quick QSO on 30 Meters with HP3DX. K2 and the Butternut got me a 449. Bill was about 569 here.

72 de Larry W2LJ

The scenario is,

i have created a pdf file for my personal document, and then to make it safe i put a password so anyone else cant read the file except myself.

After a month later, I've forgot the password but i want to read the file as soon as possible.

here it comes, pdfcrack! ( also available on win32 )


Mission: recover the password
target: piju.pdf's password
weapon: pdfcrack http://pdfcrack.sourceforge.net/
estimation time: depends on the length of the password
situation reports: no text, just photos

I have often heard it said that, "If you listen to the radio long enough, you will hear everything." I think that in 30+ years as a Ham, that finally came true the other night.

I was driving home from work and had the Icom in scan mode. It settled on one of the repeaters in New Jersey that is linked for statewide coverage. I heard a Ham relating the following story.

He was driving through a certain town and got stopped by a police officer for going over the speed limit. He was also on the radio at the time. In New Jersey, when you get a speeding ticket a certain "point value" goes on your driving record, depending on how far above the speed limit you were traveling. If you accumulate more than 12 points in three years, your license to drive is subject to revocation. The Ham must have offered some kind of sob story and the officer must have felt sorry for this guy, or something, because he offered him a choice. He had to issue a summons; but was willing to avoid giving the guy the points for speeding if he would take a ticket for using an electronic device while driving. This is New Jersey's cell phone law. If you use a cell phone (other than a non-hands on system) while driving, you get a fine. The Ham agreed to the cell phone ticket instead of the points.

What the officer didn't know, it seems, is that there is a specific exemption for Amateur Radio operators built into that law. As far as the law is written, Amateur Radio is NOT cell phone communications and is therefore permissible while driving.

So our friendly "lead foot" Ham was explaining to his friend on the air how he is going to court to challenge and possibly have the driving offense expunged on the technicality.

I was perturbed. First off, the police officer did this guy a favor. Even though Joe Ham broke the law by speeding, the police officer gave him a break by charging him with a lesser offense with a smaller fine and no points against his driving record. Joe Ham freely admitted his guilt and freely admitted that he was going to try and get out of this on the technicality that the police officer was probably unaware of. How about taking responsibility for your actions and taking your medicine like a man? As it is, he should be eternally grateful to the police officer for not issuing him the speeding points.

Secondly, if this guy's argument works; and he does beat the ticket .... how is that police officer going to treat other Hams in the future? He will have gotten burned by one of us once. Think that's not going to reside in the old memory banks for a long time? Think this police officer is going to be sympathetic to some other Ham in the future? I doubt it.

This kind of thing makes us all look bad. Fortunately, the friend that "lead foot" was talking to on the repeater advised him against his planned course of action. The friend was trying to be the voice of reason and common sense; but somehow I don't think his advice will be heeded. It seems that anything goes these days.

I will keep an ear open to this repeater system over the next few weeks. I will be very interested to see how this turns out.

72 de Larry W2LJ

My little piece of Cold War history arrived today in the form of an NOS telegraph key built for the Soviet military in the 1980’s. For only $18, I had to have one.

Shipping was quick (got here in 12 days) and the key seems as solid and well-built as I was hoping it would be.

For a better description and far better pics than I could ever take, have a gander at Yury’s eBay store.

This’ll be the first straight key I’ve owned/used in three decades so  I guess the folks on the next Straight Key Sprint from NAQCC will be suffering my poor sending come August 11. I’ll try to brush up a bit before then…

Now if I can only figure out how to read these instructions!

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The July issue of Wireline is available here

73, Steve

The Ohio QSO Party (OhQP) is just 5 weeks away, and the excitement is already building. Stations from across Ohio are making their plans to be on the air for one of the premier state QSO parties. Small stations from Ohio can make hundreds of QSOs during the short 12 hour event. Get on and call “CQ Ohio QSO Party” and run the pileups! We hope you will join us to make this the best event yet – our goal is to get fixed operations on from every county this year. If you are planning on being on, please let everyone know by posting your county of operation on the “Planned Operations” website at http://ohqp.org/plannedOpsEntry.html

For those who don’t know what the OhQP is all about, it’s a fun time for Ohio stations to be on the air and be the hunted station, or “DX”. People from around the world are seeking out Ohio stations in this event, which is a nice change from most operating events. The OhQP occurs on Saturday August 28, 2010 from local noon to local midnight. In the basic QSO exchange, Ohio stations send a consecutive serial number + county, and non-Ohioans (who can only work Ohio) send a consecutive serial number and state/province/DX. Suggested frequencies are: CW: 3545, 7045, 14,045, 21,045, 28,045 kHz; SSB 3825, 7200, 14,250, 21,300, and 28,450 kHz. Don’t be shy – try calling CQ in addition to searching and pouncing. Remember, the world is tuning the bands looking for Ohio stations – your CQ’s will be answered! Full details and an OhQP operating guide can be found on the official website at: www.ohqp.org/.

This is a great event for a club activity or a training ground for new(er) hams. QSO rates are as high or higher than Field Day, and there’s virtually no QRM in this event. Round up the club and have some fun. If you are in the mood to enjoy the great Ohio countryside, try operating portable or mobile from a rare county. Remember, the ultimate goal is to just get on the air and have some fun!

73 and we hope to hear you on the air,

Kenny K2KW
Ohio QSO Party PR Coordinator
kenny.k2kw@gmail.com

P.S. If any Ohio amateur radio organization has an upcoming event, they can post it on the ARRL Ohio Section calendar, even if they are not a member of the ARRL. http://arrlohio.org/calendar/calendar.php (QSP from Scott N8SY, ARRL Assistant Section Manager)

Talk about a good workout ...that trail up Blodgett Peak (9465') climbs approximately 2500' in a little over 2 miles. Got a late start 9:40AM from the trail head parking lot and didn't summit till almost noon! Weather was sunny and clear and no forecast of T-storms! Woohoo! Setup the antenna/radio and conditions were GREAT it sounded like CQ-WW Wow! ...lots of signals from 14058.5 to 68 ...absolutely amazing for a QRP 'test! I've never heard such a joyful noise!

The goats and I went on a reconnaissance mission to check out Huron Peak for a possible 14er (14,000') for the Ham-14er this coming August 8th. When we will operate as NØB! ... It was a picture perfect day in the Colorado mountains and us goats had a super day on the peak! Very few climbers made it out that day maybe 12 or so?
for more information on the Ham-14er:
http://n0b-14er.blogspot.com/
http://www.14er.org/
Please join us for the fun! Here's some photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/qrp.wg0at...

Recently I had the thrill of making contact with Wes Hayward W7ZOI! Who's Wes/W7ZOI you say? Together with another QRP giant, Doug DeMaw, W1FB, Wes was among many who was responsible for popularizing home made construction of simple radio equipment, which fostered experimentation among radio amateurs.

Most of all he inspired me to get out doors with radio! By sharing his QRP adventures and stories on the web and in print. I was eager to follow his lead taking my rigs to the woods to experiment with antennas and little QRP cw rigs I built from his and Doug's designs. You could say he started me down the "trail" of 40 years of very rewarding QRP fun!

The goats and I put Mt herman on the air for the first time for SOTA Summits On The Air program. Our original plans were to do an overnight but weather was factor. So we hiked up and down both days instead. Made over 35 fun contacts world wide and several summit to summit contacts and several Europeans QSOs. We did get chased around by spring snow flurries but had a fun time. For more information on SOTA:

Our original plans were to hike up Mt Herman with the goats for one of the best QRP contests of the season "QRP to the field" QRPTTF. But Mother Nature had other plans. She dropped 20" of very wet-heavy snow on our us instead making it impossible to travel any of the backcountry roads near by. So we tossed the goats a some fresh hay and tossed another log in the wood stove and operated QRPTTF from home.

Phil/KL8DX and Suann/KL8SU on their way back to Alaska from vacationing in the lower 48 stop by Colorado to visit Peanut & Rooster for a goat hike up Mt Herman. Phil snags some amazing DX while on top. The goats are up to their usual tricks and antics. Great day on the mountain! Fun time for all!

Tonight was my night in the barrel as Fox in the 20 Meter Summer Foxhunt. And in the 5 or so years that I have been a Fox, this had to be my worst performance, by far!

20 Meters was lousy for me tonight with some local QRN that was horrendous. I took some video, have a look:

Courtesy of sarahbellem :

1.) Go to google and type in "You know you're from [your area] when..."
2.) Cut and paste the list
3.) Bold or italicize items that apply to you.

-=-=begin paste=-=-

 1.  You think its hilarious that getting into New Jersey is free, but 
     you have to PAY to get out.

 2.  You take pride in the fact that after crossing into PA (from
     NJ) there is a sign that says "Welcome to Pennsylvania, America 
     Starts Here".

 3.  You thought everyone in the world had 2 or 3 different choices 
     for ABC NBC CBS and FOX (this reception is getting fuzzy, there 
     must be a storm in Philly, I'll just switch to the New York 
     Channel).

 4.  You've never had to explain that you are really from
     Pennsylvania, not someplace in the middle east (Bethlehem, Egypt,
     Nazareth, Emmaus).

 5.  You think Industrial Parks are better uses of the land then Farms.

 6.  You actually can show people the dairy where your milk comes from.

 7.  You've never thought that Walmarts are "creeping in" from the 
     South.

 8.  If it takes less than ten minutes to get to a mall but more than 
     10 minutes to park and get inside.

 9.  When Roadside America isn't a warm nostalgic idea but a 
     place you've passed on I-78.

10.  If you can go to a church bazaar every night all summer and not go 
     to the same one twice (and not win at bingo either).

11.  If you lived somewhere between Mario Andretti's place and
     Larry Holmes' place and yet never watched a Race or a Prize Fight.

12.  If you have rooted for either side in a Lehigh - Lafayette game.

12a.  If you own a piece of Lehigh-Lafayette memorabilia (a brick glued 
     to a plaque, a cylindrical piece of white wood from a supposed 
     goal post from a certain year, etc.).

13.  If you prefer Yocco's over Pott's  or vice versa.

14.  If you think Quakertown is far away (25 minutes by car) but you 
     think nothing of driving 15 minutes one way to pick up a friend 
     and then backtrack another 25 to get your girlfriend and then 
     another 10 to get your friend's girlfriend and then another 20 to 
     go to the movies on a Friday night.

15.  If you've ever been to a 'platz.

16.  If you've ever said to yourself "Damn, I need two more tickets" 
     while attending a platz.

17.  If you or any of your relatives have ever "worked the beer tent".

18.  You know when Rice's is open for business and plan accordingly.

19.  If you know the real reason kids have off from school the 
     Monday after Thanksgiving.

20.  When you and your co-workers discuss the "game last weekend"
     on Monday morning, you're referring to high school football.

21. You think the PP&L Building and Martin's Tower are skyscrapers.

22. If you finish every sentence with "dontchano".

23. You can get pierogies in every restaurant.

24. You actually think ring baloney is good.

25. Ring baloney is an appetizer at most black tie events.

26. You think the Morning Call has a great sports section.

27. You haven't figured out the correlation between the name
    Scrapple and what's in it!

28. The freak show at the Allentown Fair has more normal looking
    people than the people attending the fair

29. You've been stuck in traffic on Rt 22.

30. You know that 7th Street, MacArthur Road and Rt 145 are the
    same stretch of road

More reasons exist.  This is just the first list I chose at random.  More:

-You know what a tasty cake is, and when you go out of town you take boxes and boxes with you.

There seems to be a lot of interest in personal weather stations among ham radio ops. I started my own a little over a year ago after researching what was out there, equipment wise, and I did so thinking it would be interesting to see trends over time here at my own QTH.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how much goes on behind the scenes regarding the data flow of weather info for those stations that are tied to computers with an always-on internet connection. I learned about all that after getting set up and was/am amazed at what occurs without my having to do anything to enable it other than allowing my data to go out into the ether.

I’ll describe it in brief here, and provide relevant links to more detailed info for those considering a similar set-up.

For the record, I have a Davis Vantage Pro II with a USB connection to my computer. It comes with its own software for local presentation of graphical data, charts, etc on your own computer. But instead of that program, I’m running Virtual Weather Station which provides far more options in how and which data is presented. It also allows me to upload my selected graphs to a page on my website.

And it has a free add-on program called VWSaprs that runs in the background and uploads your weather station’s data to the APRS network.

If I didn’t have a 24/7 internet connection, I could feed my weather station’s data to a 2m FM radio tuned to 144.390 MHz and get onto the APRS network that way. To control and convert weather data to audio for the 2m rig, I’d use one of these or one of these or something similarly inexpensive.

Either method gets your weather data onto the APRS network and that’s where the magic begins. By magic, I mean that you are not only sharing your info but are allowing it to be smoothed, compared, evaluated and rated.

This is important for two reasons: it provides you with info regarding the proper siting of your weather station and it provides external weather entities (NOAA, MADIS, Wunderground.com, etc) with an additional source to use for their purposes.

Furthermore, each of these users of weather data provides their own way for you to see how your data compares to what they believe is the correct data for your area and time. By data, I’m talking primarily about temperature, barometric pressure, rainfall and dew point/humidity.

Here is a diagram of the data flow that results simply from you putting your wx data onto the APRS network using either method mentioned above:

The presence of your own station’s dataflow throughout this system can be seen at each step along the way, often accompanied by quality checks and other comparative data derived from other sources. Here’s mine at various steps along the way:

FindU - Wx Quality Reporter – MesoNet or, more easily, here.

Keep in mind that I didn’t do anything to make those links occur – they are simply the result of having data go onto the network either via 2m FM or regular automated uploads to the APRS network.

If you’re considering setting up a personal weather station, this page is required reading. So is this .

Have fun.

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I've mentioned Penguicon before, so I'll skip the introduction to it. In a nutshell though, it's an annual science fiction and open source convention in the Detroit area, and I've been going for a few years now. The topics that come up there range from an hour-long talk on Godzilla that a friend attended, to a presentation about PHP by the guy that wrote it. Guests there have included people like Randall Munroe of XKCD, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Schneier, and so on and so on. You get the idea - it's pretty great.

Obviously, I've lately been getting back in to amateur radio, and last year brought along my HT. Someone had put up signs showing a talk-around frequency on 440Mhz, but that seemed to be the extent of the amateur radio activity there. I did meet a few other hams there that saw my HT and introduced themselves (it worked great in that capacity, enough that even when I didn't plan to use it at all I left it on my belt), but that's about it. So this coming year, I plan to help change that a bit along with Adam, KD8OMY.

Adam and I have both been going to Penguicon for a few years, so the idea of doing a few talks sounded enticing, if not a bit intimidating. We're still in the planning stages and I'll post more about it as it develops, but I thought I'd share what we have in mind at the moment, and any feedback or comments are more than appreciated. We're still very early in this, we haven't even really talked much to the people at the con about doing it, so things are still very fluid.

So, some of the talks we're considering doing:

Intro to Amateur Radio
We're definitely going to do a very entry-level introduction to the hobby, although possibly with a cooler name. I think it'd be best to assume they barely know what a radio is, and go from there, with the intent that even attendees that are just there for webcomics and science fiction sorts of things would be able to walk in and learn the basics about what the hobby is, what we do, a little about how it works, and so on. It'd probably be more about the hobby in a practical way than a technical way, although a mixture of both.

Open Source and Amateur Radio
It just makes sense at a convention like this, and it's a topic both Adam and I spend some time with, both of us being Linux users. Some open source software we thought about at least mentioning includes:

• gpredict
• xastir
• hamlib
• fldigi

Satellite Communications with Amateur Radio
Kind of an obvious one, since I've been getting into it. I'm kind of on the fence with this one though, just because it's a bit more of a niche. It'd be great if we could do a live demo, but I don't know for certain the date of Penguicon 2011, so I can't check for satellite passes yet.

Digital Modes in Amateur Radio
Packet, APRS, PSK31, maybe even a brief mention of Echolink. Not sure how much we'll be able to demonstrate instead of purely talk about, but the more the better.

Homebrew fun
Not sure exactly what we'd do with this one, but homebrewing electronics is an interesting part of the the amateur radio hobby. What would be the point if everything we did was just store-bought and plugged in, with no understanding of what was going on? This could also be done as more of a "Intro to Radio Electronics" or something, too.

We probably won't do all of these, maybe two or three, but that's what we're thinking about at this point. It was also suggested that we have a VE testing session at the con, but that'd be a bit more involved to plan out and get ready (we're just a pair of Generals, so we'd have to get other VEs in to do it), and this is our first time, so we might have to skip that, at least this year.

Let me know what you think, either in the comments here or emailing me at my-call-sign@arrl.net. I'd love any comments, feedback, or suggestions.

As I mentioned in the earlier Field Day 2010 report, the CUARC group built two antennas for the event.  In this post I will describe the first one of these, an off-centre fed dipole. The common place for the feed point of the off-centre fed dipole is at a 1/3 : 2/3 split in the [...]

The last couple of days I received a few direct QSL cards in return to mine. Thanks to Mark KB2MS and Buzz NI5DX for their quick response (within 8 days)!

Mark return me the QSL card of Edwin HI3K for the SSB QSO I made with him on 10 meter with just 25 watt.

I appreciate the way Buzz is doing his job as QSL manager. With the QSL card (for my QSO with Khalid A61BK) there was a small note (click on the image to enlarge it) that stated that he donates the money he has left at the end of a year to one of the DXpeditions.
Thats the way to do it! Keep up your good work Buzz!

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