VE3MPG's Blog

More changes coming - stay tuned!

2011-07-11T16:57:00.000-04:00

After a long hiatus from blogging some new stories and adventures coming. The design is in flux as well so the dark theme will be changing to something more upbeat and unique.

Bob VE3MPG

Frequencies On The Block

2010-11-23T11:36:00.001-05:00

I read the Globe & Mail online at breakfast most mornings. A lot of the financial news brings me screaming back to reality – gas prices, hydro prices all skyrocketing. And now the two Koreas exchanging mortar fire with civilian casualties in the South.

An article in the business section stood out:

Prime-quality frequency on auction block

“It is called the real estate of the telecommunications business. Wireless spectrum, the regulated airwaves over which an increasing amount of the world’s data flows, is a key source of profit for the industry and brings in billions to the federal treasury when it is sold off.”

Make no mistake about it. Last September’s incursion by Industry Canada into our “airwaves” is part of the big picture here. We, as amateurs don’t own this valuable commodity and the Government of Canada has its eye on all of these underused frequencies. RAC or any organized voice we think we may have will be useless once buyers are found and they are shopping NOW for underused spectrum. The telecom industry will gladly pay the exorbitant prices the GOC is asking – it helps pay down the deficit and will keep our cell phone bills the most expensive in the world.

The rest of the story can be found online at the Globe & Mail here. Industry Canada’s website can be found here.

Bluenose Radio Op Identified

2010-11-17T16:19:00.001-05:00

Last February I posted a story about sailing on the regular ferry run from Bar Harbour Maine to Yarmouth Nova Scotia. I visited the radio room aboard the ship and couldn’t remember the operators name or even what ship it was.

Last week an anonymous poster left a comment identifying the operator as David Vail, VE1GM of Yarmouth. A few days later David left a comment:

“Hello, Bob - I am the R/O in your photo of the radio room on the M.V. "Bluenose" registered in Nassau, Bahamas with the call sign C6DZ. She was the second Yarmouth to Bar Harbor ferry named M.V. "Bluenose" and your other ship photo shows the original M.V. "Bluenose," registered in Canada, with the call sign VDND. I served on both ships and 2 others in the Yarmouth to New England ferry service for a total of 34 years.

If you look up VE1GM on QRZ.com you'll see the radio room clock from C6DZ mounted above my ham station desk.

73...Dave Vail VE1GM”

Very nice indeed to have David write in about that blog entry many months ago. I wrote David and asked him a few more questions about his career aboard ship and his other postings. Here’s what he wrote back along with a photo taken a few days ago.

“OK Bob, here's a photo taken a couple of days ago, about 25 years after the one you took. There's a computer monitor in your photo and we received that in 1985 and used the computer to run a maintenance management system for the entire ship. It fell to the R/O to look after that program. 25 years later I'm 20 pounds heavier and down to almost no hair! (You should see me Dave! – VE3MPG)

Take a look at www.ve1yar.com to see a photo of my largest and smallest Morse keys.
73...Dave Vail – VE1GM”

“I was born in Charlottetown, PEI. I left home at age 17 to take a commercial radio operator’s course in Saint John, NB and graduated in December 1956 with a Second Class Certificate of Proficiency In Radio which was upgraded to First Class in 1977.
I then went to Moncton, N.B. airport for a couple of months of training as a surface weather observer, then posted to Yarmouth, NS Aeradio (CYQI) as radio operator/weather observer. This was a 2-man station open 24/7.
I was transferred from Yarmouth airport to Yarmouth Marine Radio (VAU) then to the LURCHER lightship (VGA) anchored 17 miles offshore. Then it was back to VAU where I was transferred to Seal Island Radio Beacon (VGY), a 1-man station for 14 months. It was back to VAU then transferred to the Canadian Government Ship “C.D. Howe” (CGSS) for the 1959 Eastern Arctic Patrol, a 3-month voyage.
Returning to the Maritimes, I was stationed to Fredericton Aeradio as r/o and weather observer. All these transfers and postings happened over a 3-year period. When a permanent position on the M.V. “Bluenose” (VDND) became open I applied for it and was accepted. I joined that ship on Boxing Day in 1959 and remained in that service until early retirement in 1993.
In the Yarmouth-New England ferry service I served on VDND, on the M.V. “Marine Cruiser” (GSOC), the M.V. “Marine Evangeline” (C6CA) and later VCQK and finally on the second “Bluenose” (C6DZ). The “Marine Evangeline” had two call signs because she changed from Bahamian to Canadian registry.
In the spring of 1957 I joined the Yarmouth ARC where I'm still a member and have helped train many new hams over the years. When I.C. instituted the Delegated Examiner program in the early 1990s, I became an examiner for the various amateur qualifications. In the late 1970s, our club took in our first “White Caner” who was later followed by about 10 others, some of whom are now silent keys.
Nowadays I work a bit of HF, mostly 80 and 20 meters some CW and some SSB. Still take part in Field Day and a couple of local HF contests. Living on a small lot I could only put up a G5RV and a 2-meter vertical, so no powerhouse operation from this QTH.”

SK Willard (Bill) Eric Cousins VE3GPR

2010-10-12T11:06:00.001-04:00

Korean War Veteran

Peacefully at home on Sunday October 10, 2010. Willard (Bill) Eric Cousins age 79. Beloved husband of Carolyn (nee Rogers) Cousins. Loving father of Betsey Stewart (Andy), Velda Eburne, Judy Andrews (Dana), Walter Cousins, Daren Cousins (Danielle Cote) and Sandra MacKenzie (Allan). Predeceased by his son Wayne Cousins. Survived by his sister Betty-Ann Caseley (Clifford). Cherished grandfather of Tammy, Tracy, Kyle, Travis, Krystal, Jason, Tanya and Darren. Also survived by several great grandchildren. Visitation will be held at Grant Brown Funeral Home, Rolston Chapel, Kemptville on Thursday October 14th from 1 to 3pm followed by Funeral service at 3:30 pm at the South Gate Wesleyan Church, 1303 French Settlement Road, Kemptville. Those who wish may make memorial donations to the Canadian Guide Dogs or Korean Veterans Association of Canada.

Original Industry Canada Document To RAC

2010-09-30T11:17:00.001-04:00

Here’s the original Industry Canada document sent to RAC on September 9th 2010 in its entirety and verbatim. I have just received it via email from the regional IC office in Quebec City:

Sir, Madam,

Monsieur, Madame,

The 10 and 12 of september there will be a cycling event in Québec City and Montréal. The runners are mostly european and so is their radio stations, therefore are located in the 430 - 450 MHz. Since this band is reserved secondarly for the amateurs, I beleive it is in order that I warn you. The following frequencies will be used by mobile stations up to 25W:

Les 10 et 12 septembre verront un événement de cyclisme à Québec et Montréal. Comme la plupart des participants et leur matériel radio sont européens, des fréquences entre 430 et 450 MHz ont dû être assigné. Cette bande de fréquence étant réservée aux amateurs à titre secondaire, j'ai crû bon vous en avertir. Les fréquences suivantes seront utilisées par des stations mobiles d'une puissance maximale de 25W:

430.3350
431.0875
432.9250
433.1250
434.7250
434.8500
441.3000
442.1500
442.5750
442.6875
442.7750
443.3000
443.8375
444.4500
445.0000
447.6125

Only one VHF ham frequency will be in use: 145.5550 MHz
Une seule fréquence VHF amateure a dû être assignée: 145.5550 MHz.

Best regards,
Cordialement,

Marc Déry

Agent de Gestion du Spectre | Spectrum Management Officer
Direction générale des opérations de la gestion du spectre | Spectrum Management Operations Branch
Secteur du Spectre, des technologies de l'information et des télécommunications | Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications Sector
Industrie Canada | Industry Canada
1141 route de l'Église, Québec QC G1V 3W5 | 1141 route de l'Église, Québec QC G1V 3W5
Marc.Dery@ic.gc.ca
Téléphone | Telephone 418-648-4848
Télécopieur | Facsimile 514-283-7035
Téléimprimeur | Teletypewriter 1-866-694-8389
Gouvernement du Canada | Government of Canada

A Story (part deux – We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us)

2010-09-29T20:47:00.001-04:00

RAC Bulletin 2010-09-14E
2010-09-10
Industry Canada advised both RAC and RAQI on Friday, Sept 10, 2010 that their Montreal office had authorized a number of 430 to 450 MHz frequencies and a single VHF frequency on 145.555 mHz. According to IC, frequencies were chosen to avoid known amateur repeater channels. These frequencies in the 70 cm and 2m amateur bands were temporarily authorized to support communications for many European entrants of a cycling event to be held on Quebec City and Montreal on Sept 10 and Sept 12 respectively. This type of authorized intrusion by Industry Canada of non-amateur communications in amateur spectrum is highly unusual and is a matter of great concern to Radio Amateurs of Canada. RAC will be taking the matter up with Industry Canada officials. RAC will be interested in knowing if actual interference has been caused to amateur communications; please report any observations to regulatory@rac.ca

Norm Rashleigh, VE3LC
Vice President, Industrial Liaison

All RAC members should have received this a few weeks ago. I did and was naturally quite upset about hearing this. I wanted to wait until I had more information about what actually occurred before publishing here. You, the readers of my blog can read on to see how this unfolded (so far!).

On September 12th I wrote to the President of RAC Geoff Bawden VE4BAW:

Subject: Industry Canada

Date:Sun, 12 Sep 2010 07:46:41 –0400
From: Bob Baillargeon VE3MPG
To: ve4baw@rac.ca

Good morning Geoff,

Could someone at RAC forward the original document from Industry Canada notifying RAC on Friday of the non-amateur use of the 440 and 2m frequencies? What immediate action will RAC be taking in this matter? I hope that RAC makes this a priority concern and I can assure you that all Canadian amateurs are watching this matter with great concern - well, I am anyway.

Thank you,

Bob Baillargeon VE3MPG
RAC member

I received no response from the President but did hear from Norm Rashleigh at RAC:

from:Norm Rashleigh <rashleigh@sympatico.ca>Sent at 16:34 (GMT-04:00). Current time there: 16:26.
to:bob.medialab@gmail.com
cc:gbawden ghbawden@shaw.ca
date:12 September 2010 16:34
subject:Use of amateur radio spectrum for non amateur purposes.

HI Bob..

Yes we do have the original e-mail correspondence from the Department.

We can forward it, but it was between the originator and RAC and I wouldn't necessarily want it on your blog or passed around.

We will be drafting an appropriate well worded response to the Department very soon and this will probably be something worthy of posting in TCA

Thanks for your concern in the matter.

Norm, ve3lc

And here was my final response to Norm and Geoff:

Hi Norm,
Normally I would agree with you on matters of correspondence, but in this instance I believe Industry Canada was writing to RAC rather than a private individual.

Since it was written to RAC, this matter, which is so important to the survival of amateur radio in Canada, must be a public matter, open to all members, to comment and debate.

It has been a common theme that RAC is in a state of crisis, which can be attributed to the state secrecy perpetrated by the executive. Membership has been declining for reasons such as this and we must change the way RAC leadership works in order to stave off the extinction of RAC and of amateur radio in Canada.

Please open up this issue and others to the membership. The executive is there on behalf of the membership, not the other way around. As a paid up member of RAC I believe I am entitled to receive a copy of this correspondence and to comment on it, either in my blog or in writing to you.

Sincerely,

Bob Baillargeon VE3MPG

I received no response to this email and I’ve been hearing from other bloggers that any emails to RAC concerning this matter are not being answered. What’s happening and what’s RAC doing? Nobody knows, not even paid up members of RAC.

On my own initiative I wrote to Industry Canada to find out the real story, the story RAC tried to keep a lid on. I received a response from Industry Canada this afternoon, September 29th, 2010. Here’s the detailed explanation on what happened in Quebec City and Montreal:

Dear Mr. Baillargeon:

Thank you for your email of September 13, 2010, concerning RAC Bulletin 2010-09-14E – Industry Canada Authorizes Commercial Activity on 2-metre and 70 cm bands.

From time to time, Industry Canada receives requests from foreign organizations for temporary authority to operate radio systems in Canada for short periods of time while their officials are visiting. These requests often come from foreign governments for diplomatic visits and from organizers of special events, including motor races and cycling events such as the UCI pro tour that took place in September.

As spectrum managers, our mandate is to manage the spectrum. In doing so, we try to ensure that these temporary users have sufficient access to the spectrum to conduct their communications in a manner that will assure the safety of their participants and spectators, while minimizing the potential for interference to existing users. However, sometimes the limitation of the radio equipment available to our visitors requires that we take exceptional measures in assigning spectrum.

One of the difficulties in accommodating these requests is that not every country allocates the radio spectrum in the same manner as we do in Canada. Many of these teams have existing equipment from their home countries that is set up on channels that are already allocated for a different purpose in Canada. However, if the Department's assessment indicates that the use of that spectrum here is unlikely to cause problems for our domestic users, we can issue non-standard authorizations to these visitors under the provisions of subparagraph 5(1)(a)(v) of the Radiocommunication Act.

Industry Canada considers several factors when making such decisions, but safety and interference are always prime considerations. In this instance, having reviewed the local use of the spectrum requested, we determined that harmful interference was unlikely. Given the short duration of the cycling events (less than four hours) in Quebec City and Montréal on September 10 and 12, and the sporadic nature of the communications, we issued a short-term authorization for 12 frequencies between 430 and 450 MHz. This is a shared allocation in Canada and a secondary allocation for amateur radio. Additionally, a single simplex VHF frequency was allocated for handheld radios (3 watts). The issuance of short-term authorizations in the VHF amateur band is exceptional and not undertaken lightly.

Notification to the local amateurs was achieved via the national organization representing amateur radio operators in Canada, Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC), and the organization representing radio amateurs in Quebec, namely Radio Amateur du Québec (RAQI). The intent of the notification was to seek the assistance of the amateur community in advising us of any incidents of harmful interference that might result from this temporary authorization. Please be assured that when amateur spectrum is affected, the Department makes every effort to give the amateur community as much advance warning as possible, but sometimes we are working with very short time constraints.

We appreciate the positive relationship that Industry Canada has with Canadian amateurs who have a long history of providing emergency communication, as well as facilitating communication for various public events. We would like to assure Canadian amateurs that when amateur spectrum is temporarily used in such circumstances, it is done only after much deliberation, with the hope that amateurs will understand the rationale and will respond in a manner that facilitates the effective use of the radio spectrum.

Yours sincerely,

Michel Landry
Agent de gestion du spectre | Spectrum Management Officer
Industrie Canada | Industry Canada
1141, route de l'Église (5e étage / 5th floor )
Québec (Québec), G1V 3W5
michel.landry@ic.gc.ca
Gouvernement du Canada | Government of Canada

Here’s the subsection 5(1)(a)(v) from the Radio Communication Act mentioned in the Industry Canada response, for those not familiar with it:

MINISTER’S POWERS

5. (1) Subject to any regulations made under section 6, the Minister may, taking into account all matters that the Minister considers relevant for ensuring the orderly establishment or modification of radio stations and the orderly development and efficient operation of radiocommunication in Canada,
(a) issue
(i) radio licences in respect of radio apparatus,
(i.1) spectrum licences in respect of the utilization of specified radio frequencies within a defined geographic area,
(ii) broadcasting certificates in respect of radio apparatus that form part of a broadcasting undertaking,
(iii) radio operator certificates,
(iv) technical acceptance certificates in respect of radio apparatus, interference causing equipment and radio-sensitive equipment, and
(v) any other authorization relating to radiocommunication that the Minister considers appropriate, and may fix the terms and conditions of any such licence, certificate or authorization including, in the case of a radio licence and a spectrum licence, terms and conditions as to the services that may be provided by the holder thereof;

I would urge all of you, members of RAC or not, to contact his or her Member of Parliament and let them know how you feel. RAC only has about 5,000 members out of a ham population of 56,000 in Canada. Therefore RAC does NOT represent the majority of Canadian hams. Most clubs are not even RAC affiliated. I doubt that RAC holds much sway with Industry Canada. It’s up to us Canadian amateurs to protest loudly to our representatives in government.

Some comments from the blogosphere and on public forums >>

“I believe this is a test to see what spectrum can be grabbed; in this day and age of narrow band trunking and digital communications there is absolutely no need for any incursion into the Amateur bands. Also hearing of the technical ability's of inspectors in Canada perhaps you should be pushing for standards for inspectors just like there are standards for other law enforcement officers; just a thought!” – KF5EQB

“Non-qualified persons may use an amateur radio station provided a qualified operator is in attendance to perform the control functions.” – Industry Canada

“If you Americans want to help.... good luck. IC couldn't care less what someone in another country thinks. And as for “our” national organization.... read: deep sigh.... they're the kind of people who would bring a knife to a gun fight.” – a Canadian ham

Thank you all for reading this far. I would hope that any members of the RAC executive read my previous blog post about RAC’s problems. Here’s the link:

“We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us” – a little about ‘dinosaur disease’.

The event in Montreal and Quebec City – and the event partners.

Peter VE3HG’s Blog posting response

Re-Furbishing The MFJ-941D Versa Tuner II

2010-09-20T20:09:00.001-04:00

I was given the MFJ-941D about 8 years ago. It was in rough shape when I got it from another ham. There were bugs in it and every screw and bolts was loose. I re-soldered a couple of points along the coil inside and gave it a good shot of canned air to dislodge dust and the nasty critters that had taken up home in it. I put it away and didn’t think much about it until I was revamping my station this week. The darn thing looked really bad with deep scratches in the powder coated top cover. There were lots of paint chips and the cabinet looked grungy. The self tapping screws were faded and bare so they needed attention too. Here’s a photo before I started >

I decided to use the same paint treatment that I had used on my Cushcraft R6000 a couple of years ago. The paint was from the auto section of our Canadian Tire store. It’s a tough paint used to touch up and paint plastic auto bumpers and I had a little left over – this would be the perfect project for it.

Surface preparation is important so I located some #320 and #600 grit sandpaper. First sanding was with the #320 grit and progressed to the #600 grade. I wiped the sanding dust off with a tack cloth and inspected my work. Sanding is not critical but I payed careful attention to the deep scratches. The bumper coating covers extremely well and I planned for at least 3 coats to hide any imperfections.

To spray paint the top of the screws I lightly screwed them into a piece of scrap wood and spray painted them with 3 coats. The bumper coating dries very quickly, about a half hour – the screws looked new again.

Here’s the finished product. Three coats of bumper coating, air dried for about an hour. There’s a half hour drying period between coats and no sanding between coats. The coating usually hides any imperfections and forms an extra tough scratch resistant coating – much better than the original MFJ powder coated finish. The tuner looks like it just left the factory.

The same methods can be used for just about any ham equipment that needs sprucing up. There are some very interesting paints available at any local hardware stores.

Usually I leave painted components overnight before putting it all back together. After an hour the top cover and screws were ready as this coating dries to a hard finish very quickly.

This was a very easy project and didn’t take a lot of time or effort. If you decide to try this just make sure you have plenty of ventilation while you’re spray painting and keep your work area clean. Use a fresh tack cloth to wipe up sanding dust.

OVQRP Weekend At Rideau River Provincial Park

2010-09-19T00:40:00.001-04:00

It’s the weekend and not a drop of rain. The weather is cool at night, dropping to 6C last night at the campground on the Rideau River near Kemptville.

Members of the Ottawa Valley QRP Society (OV-QRP) group are still out there tonight working qrp and some really great DX. Bill VE3CLQ worked France and Zagreb Croatia with 20 watts and 10 watts with his Buddistick antenna and his Yaesu FT-857. Goes to show that even with low sunspot numbers you can still work some great DX with low power. Martin VA3SIE, Mike VE3WMB and Jim VE3XJ did kitchen duty.

Here are a few pictures of this weekend’s event on the Rideau >

The group will operate through part of Sunday and it was a good effort and not at all a contest type operation.

September 11, 2001 – We Remember 9/11

2010-09-10T13:21:00.001-04:00

“We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire. If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further — we will realize that humanity is indivisible. New threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. A new insecurity has entered every mind, regardless of wealth or status. A deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all — in pain as in prosperity — has gripped young and old. In the early beginnings of the 21st century — a century already violently disabused of any hopes that progress towards global peace and prosperity is inevitable — this new reality can no longer be ignored. It must be confronted.”

~ Kofi Annan ~

Nine years ago, our neighbours, the United States of America had their hearts ripped out. I was in New York twice that summer, my first visit since first being in New York in December of 1970. My last visit was in late July of 2001 just a few weeks before the twin towers were destroyed. The World Trade Center Plaza was always full of tourists and office workers taking time out in the beautiful surroundings. I had friends at the UN in New York and it was impossible to contact them after the attack. They were safe but the UN building was in lock down and they eventually made it back to the Upper East side where they lived.

Ottawa had a memorial ceremony on September 15th just a few days after the attack. Canadians were shocked and in those many days after the attacks we welcomed stranded American travelers until they were able to resume their journeys home.

To our American neighbours, and the amateur radio operators who provided comms during the days and weeks following the attacks “We remember September 11th, 2001”.

Link to memorial events taking place in New York City tomorrow, September 11th, 2001 >>

Remember September 11 on Ninth Anniversary of 9/11

New Kenwood TS-590 Release Specifications

2010-08-19T23:54:00.001-04:00

The new Kenwood TS-590 that created a buzz at Dayton this year is finally being released worldwide this October. Kenwood Japan has released the final specifications. It looks like it’s going to be a superb receiver but the pricing looks to be well over 2K USD. Kenwood’s Japan site lists it at 228,900.00 JPY=2,679.41 USD. No doubt this is due to the fluctuating value of the YEN these past few months.

You can read all about it at these links at Kenwood Japan

http://www.kenwood.co.jp/en/news/2010/20100813.html

http://www.kenwood.co.jp/products/amateur/hf_allmode/ts_590/index.html

Here’s a pretty good page translator for the second link:

http://www.worldlingo.com/en/websites/url_translator.html

Technorati Tags: Amateur Radio

The Latest From PAR Electronics – Dale W4OP

2010-08-17T10:51:00.001-04:00

One of my most popular postings is the interview I did with Dale Parfitt, the owner of PAR Electronics, 2 years ago. Dale makes amateur and commercial antennas. The amateur line and specifically the PAR EndFedz antennas are big sellers, used by amateurs, SWLs, and commercial interests alike. If one checks the eHam ratings on the PAR antennas, well, they can’t get any better than a 5 across the board.

Over the years Dale has had trouble filling amateur orders and has had to rely on time slots of one to two weeks where amateur orders were taken and then filled. These windows of opportunity happened several times a year as PAR was just too busy with commercial interests to accomodate the amateur market full time. That is about to change.

On August 2, 2010 on the PAR Electronics website a press release was published indicating “LNR Precision acquires EndFedz line of amateur and SWL antennas”.

PAR EndFedz are now being manufactured exclusively by LNR Precision. Please contact them for pricing/availability.

On August 2, 2010 LNR Precision, Inc. acquired the popular EndFedz line of amateur and SWL antennas. Larry, AE4LD, is the new owner. Larry is a talented machinist, active amateur, QRPer and will be far better equipped to manufacture and expand the EndFedz line of antennas. In recent years, PAR has had to resort to only accepting orders in 1 week windows in order to better balance their growing commercial segment and the amateur products. LNR Precision will have much larger manufacturing capabilities and thus amateurs will benefit from much faster order filling. Dale W4OP will be staying on to complete new designs and offering technical assistance to LNR Precision. Amateurs can expect new novel EndFedz models in the near future.

I wish to thank the many thousands of amateurs who have bought EndFedz and whom I think of as friends. I will continue to design/manufacture both commercial and amateur filters and expand our line of commercial and amateur VHF/UHF antenna products and hopefully some really interesting surface mount accessories for HF rigs. You may contact Larry at controlliner@embarqmail.com.

Give us a few days to complete the transition.

I had also read about the change at PAR on several other websites like eHam and one of the Yahoo amateur groups.

I was surprised but glad that Dale had taken some steps to alleviate the EndFedz supply problem. I was sceptical about the level of service LNR Precision might be able to provide as Dale was always there to answer questions; even late into the evening. I don’t think we have to worry. I contacted Dale a few days ago and he graciously agreed to another interview. Here it is in its entirety:

VE3MPG: You've obviously made some difficult decisions in the last few months to sell off your amateur antenna division. Tell us how and why this came about and also finding a competent and astute business person, Larry AE4LD, to carry on what you started.

Dale W4OP: This was a very hard decision to make. I felt as though I was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. Our core business has always been commercial. Those clients are very valuable to us but they can also be very demanding. As the EndFedz line continued to grow, I had to resort to limiting orders to 1 week windows every 5 weeks or so. This allowed us to better compartmentalize amateur production and time requirements but was not really fair to our clients. I was personally involved 80+ hours per week. This obviously was very tiring and also prevented me from pursuing other interests. So, I began looking for a buyer for the EndFedz. After four false starts, Larry came into the picture. He is the perfect candidate. He was already using our product. Larry also has injection molding capabilities and an extensive machine shop. Finally, he lives in North Carolina which made the entire transition much easier and smoother.

You mention some new antenna designs in your press release on your website. Can you give us an exclusive look into what's developing?

Dale W4OP: I really cannot divulge what I am currently working on- but it involves several new designs that I simply could not bring to market through PAR for lack of production time. A couple are antennas that cutomers have long been asking for though. Look for some very novel antenna designs with pending patent claims.

With the acquisition of the manufacturing of the PAR amateur antennas including shipping and technical support, what will you do with your spare time? Any plans for a real holiday?

Dale W4OP: I love to play billiards and also I am a competitive distance runner. I will finally have the time to practice both sports and travel to meets. I also just bought another SGC SG-2020 and will be doing a lot of portable ops here in the mountains.

I live on a large Lake (Glenville) that has excellent lake trout, bass and walleye fishing. I have not even bought a license in the last three years. That also will change (my new fly reel just arrived today).

Amateurs around the world are using your antennas and have nothing but praise for the performance and build quality. Your almost immediate email support is legendary. I'm sure that my readers and the users of your fine products will miss your rapport and camaraderie. What can you say about the loyal following your product and your service have created?

Dale W4OP: I have really been blessed by our clients; made many friends and really appreciate how loyal you all have been. This loyal, patient following is what made all the long hours worthwhile.

PAR will still be manufacturing our Omniangles, Stressed Moxons and filters for amateurs and scanning enthusiasts. I plan on staying active on the QRP reflectors and attending Dayton and FDIM.

In addition I will continue support for PAR products that are out in the field and will be answering tech questions for LnR for at least a year.

It's been a great run and it's a wonderful feeling knowing the EndFedz line will continue on with Larry and the enthusiasm that he brings to the plate.

Can you add anything else?

Dale W4OP: I appreciate your site Bob. It is not everyone that can put together insightful questions and keep all of this going. I know I speak for other followers of your site and blog in thanking you for putting your journalism skills to such an interesting and creative use. Much success in the future. Now is Tokyo ever going to release that 160-->6M HT-200?

Thanks Dale for your generous contribution to my blog and to my readers. We wish you and Larry, AE4LD, at LnR Precision the very best in your new directions and endeavours.

My previous interview with Dale, W4OP, can be found at this link:

First interview with Dale Parfitt, October 2, 2008

PAR Electronics

LnR Precision

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us

2010-08-15T12:44:00.001-04:00

The first step is admitting you have a problem and then asking for help. Nothing wrong with this approach. The Radio Amateurs of Canada, Canada’s national amateur radio organization is in dire need of help. The organization wants change and it identifies itself as having ‘dinosaur disease’ as one fundamental problem amongst many.

Peter VE3HG, VP of Public Relations at RAC, has a plea on the RAC blog for members and non-members alike to look at 7 documents for ideas on transforming Radio Amateurs of Canada. Download them to read and please send your comments to Peter in the comments section of the RAC blog or write Peter directly at his RAC email address - ve3hg @ rac.ca . (remove the spaces)

Is RAC worth saving? Let’s hear from you, hams and non-hams alike. Tell it like it is.

About this entry’s heading – Earth Day 1971

California Dreamin’

2010-08-09T20:48:00.001-04:00

June and July were busy. Two trips to California and I’ve only been back less than a week from the last one. I had a few days of work and took a few days to just take it easy and see some of the coastline of California. One afternoon was spent on the Pacific Coast Highway north of Los Angeles. Then it was off to San Diego, a beautiful coastal city on the border of southern California and Mexico.

San Diego is home to the Pacific Fleet and there was no shortage of things to see in the harbour. Below is the USS Nimitz, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier anchored at the San Diego Naval Base. The USS Carl Vinson was anchored alongside.

The ships were surrounded by floating buoys shaped like fat cigars – used to keep any boats away from the carriers – a precaution for all navy ships ever since the USS Cole was targeted and severely damaged in Yemen a few years ago. US Navy armed patrol ships continuously ply the waters near the naval ships guarding against intrusions.

The decommissioned USS Midway, named after the Battle of Midway, is anchored as a permanent museum in the harbour. She was launched in March of 1945 and she served in Korea, Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm. The Navy launched 228 sorties from Midway and Ranger (CV-61) in the Persian Gulf, from Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) en route to the Gulf, and from John F. Kennedy, Saratoga, and America in the Red Sea. Her flight deck is 4 acres in size.

The USS Midway is one large ship. It actually functioned as a small city so it had its own postal code. Naval engineering practices 60 years ago were quite advanced and subsequent refits over the years made it quite a modern carrier. Newer carriers have a 50 year life expectancy. The United States has 11 active aircraft carriers.

Radio Comms center above (no ham shack here!). The main items that are visible are the three AN/USQ-69 data terminal sets with keyboard and CRT display, and an AN/UYK-20 computer.
Racks of R-1051B HF receivers in Comms Center
This is the Command Center where the Commander and Officers watched Desert Storm play out on automated monitors – this was the ship’s nerve center.

These are the outboard HF antennas in their horizontal positions on tiltable bases. There’s a set port and starboard.

Midway prepares to moor at her final resting place at Navy pier in San Diego where she was to become the largest museum devoted to carriers and naval aviation. (10 January 2004).

I also boarded a “Foxtrot” class Soviet submarine, B39, commissioned in the early 1970s. It was based on German WWII era U-boats. It had a crew of 78, was 300 feet in length and displaced 2000 tons. B39 was assigned to the Soviet Pacific fleet. I’m not sure how 78 sailors lived inside this sub for long period of time. I had a difficult time manoeuvring inside each compartment. Each compartment was accessible via a round porthole about 38 inches wide – you went in feet first and propelled yourself through it. The confined space was claustrophobic. They were extremely low tech but lethal and carried 24 torpedoes and some capable of low-yield nuclear warheads. They played a large part in the Cuban missile crisis and other cold war scenarios.

B39 was Diesel-Electric – this design was even quieter than nuclear powered subs. They were used to track NATO and U.S. warship throughout the world’s oceans. See some interior shots here > B-39 Foxtrot-Class Diesel Submarine

So it was a great summer trip to California again. It’s an extremely beautiful state and the people of California are great. I’m headed out next month for a final visit this year.

To those of you wondering what kind of camera I use it’s a Canon Powershot G10. I have a future article in the works on how I take and process my digital photos.

The Midway Museum

Great Weekend With DX

2010-07-19T16:51:00.001-04:00

Weather in the Ottawa area was superb this weekend. BBQs and relaxing outside were the order of the day. Temperatures moderated to the mid-20s (Celsius) on Sunday. This necessitated some outdoor relaxation and a good book.

After dinner I started listening around 17 meters. There were a few signals but not a lot of DX. A few minutes later I saw the S-meter on the FT-950 hitting S9. A digital station was very loud; and there was a pile-up starting on frequency. It was 2330Z and usually at that time of day the band is closed. With little solar activity I was surprised by the strong signals on 17 meters.

The station was Ramon PZ5RA in Suriname. I had worked Ramon in 2004 and again in 2007 on digital modes, using my FT-100 in those days. I finally worked Ramon after 30 minutes using BPSK125 – makes a QSO whip along quickly. I kicked in about 12dB of attenuation because he was so strong on my Cushcraft R6000. About 10 minutes after the QSO the band dropped out – silence – not a signal. I suspect Ramon will be hanging around 17 meters since the band was in good shape for north/south propagation. Maybe we’ll get a repeat tonight and more stations will be able to work Ramon in Suriname.

Late Night DX On 20 Meters

2010-07-09T13:42:00.001-04:00

It’s out there. Last night saw me re-connect with Bill, ZL3NB in Christchurch New Zealand at 0437Z. His signal was 599 and his report to me was the same. There was some QSB but armchair copy using Ham Radio Deluxe and PSK31. My output was set to 25 watts and again this was using my Cushcraft R6000. That’s a distance of 8835 Kms or 14218 miles. Not bad for a low power digital QSO.

I had originally worked Bill in April of 2004 and I happened to be one of his first digital contacts at around the same time at 0358Z six years ago. It was nice re-connecting with Bill. He worked a couple of more stations after my QSO and then called CQ for a long time. It was time for bed knowing there was lots of DX floating around despite the low sunspot numbers.

Bill’s ham shack in New Zealand. The main equipment consists of a Kenwood TS2000 and TS530S (Classic setup with the VFO240 and SP230) along with a Ameritron Amp. Antennas consist of a Mosley TA33 tribander and inverted vee's for 80/40 and 30 meters.

I suspect there’s more DX at that time of the morning, rolling in from the South Pacific area – I just ran out of steam and had to pull the plug.

The steamy heat wave enveloping Ottawa finally broke early this afternoon with some rainshowers and thunderstorms. Temperatures plummeted to +23C and power went out for a few short seconds. It’s time to leave antennas disconnected and grounded before these intense summer storms move into the area. It’s good practice and could save you a bundle if there’s ever a lightning strike close by.

For more info on Christchurch go to: www.christchurch.org.nz

DX Is Out There

2010-07-08T15:29:00.001-04:00

There’s DX to be had on the higher bands despite the low solar activity. A few hours ago I worked UT3UA, Sergey in Kiev, Ukraine. This was on 20 meter psk close to 1 am in the morning local time here near Ottawa (0441Z). Another, EV1P, Vlad in Minsk, Belarus at 2231Z on 20m psk. All contacts were using 20 watts into my Cushcraft R6000 vertical and my Yaesu FT-950. Signals were 599, good solid contacts.

I use Ham Radio Deluxe with the latest build – it fixes some lookup issues with QRZ.com. I sometimes use the DX cluster clients but usually I just casually listen around the bands, even if they sound dead. ZL stations were booming in that same morning on 20 calling CQ with few answering his calls.

Beacons are another favourite method of determining band openings. My favourite and most up to date site is G3USF's Worldwide List of HF Beacons. Martyn is the RSGB Propagation Studies Committee chairman and does a good job of keeping his lists up to date.

In other news, Ottawa is still in the grips of a major heat wave. Temperatures south of the city this afternoon sit at +36C. It’s downright uncomfortable even in the shade.

July 8th is also a significant date for UFO enthusiasts. The Roswell incident happened on this date way back in 1947 – it’s still a controversial subject still much talked about on UFO and conspiracy web sites.

The Roswell Daily Record headlined the story “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region,” providing a historical artefact that, in retrospect, seems ready-made for fuelling an episode of The X-Files. The truth is out there. . . . and so is DX.

Radio Society of Great Britain

Roswell Incident Launches UFO Controversy

Heat Wave – 35.2C (94.4F)

2010-07-06T16:31:00.001-04:00

My outdoor temperature sensors (in the shade) are recording 35.2C at 1900z this afternoon. There’s barely a breeze but the humidity remains at about 50%. It feels like 40C according to the weather bureau. It is hot. It’s the second day of this heatwave. Late afternoon yesterday there was a localized cloudburst; about 5 minutes of cooling rain and I’m sure most of it evaporated quickly.

Toronto experienced a power blackout in part of the downtown for a few uncomfortable hours. I keep a supply of gas and keep the Honda i2000 gen set ready to go just in case. We lost internet service for 5 – 6 hours last evening – no reason given – it just went out with our provider, apparently right across the province. The weather gurus are predicting this weather for a few more days.

The bands have been very quiet today including 20 meters. 10 and 6 had lots of activity yesterday but not a peep so far. I’m hanging out around 18.100 and 14.070 on psk modes today. The shack is at a comfortable 21C. I have a few projects on the go but haven’t touched anything - the dog days seem to be here. Conditions might improve later this afternoon or evening.

I may set up the FT-817 on the picnic table later after dinner. The picnic area is about 350 feet away from the house in the very back of the property. The neighbours beef cattle often approach, from the other side of the fence, when I’m sitting back there. It’s nice and shaded, with canopies of old swamp oaks and a 70 year old elm providing respite from the heat.

Field Day 2010 At W6JW

2010-07-03T22:43:00.001-04:00

I happened to be in California for this year’s Field Day. I had originally planned to participate with the Ottawa Valley QRP group but found that I needed to be in Sylmar California on June 24th. As it happens Murphy was out and about during my travels. I was to leave Ottawa Airport via Chicago with connecting flight to Los Angeles. Sure.

What usually takes about 8 hours turned into 29 hours to LAX. Thunderstorms encircled Chicago for hours and prevented departure from Ottawa for almost 7 hours – part of that was on the plane and on the tarmac. We were de-planed and then reboarded and finally left for Chicago after a lull in the massive weather system encircling Chicago. Ten minutes after departure Ottawa experienced a 5.0 earthquake. Murphy.

Arriving in Chicago so late I missed my connection to LAX. Finally a flight was announced, boarded the flight then sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours while another thunderstorm rolled in. Then the pilots walked off – they had reached their allotted flying time and a fresh crew was finally located but the storm continued unabated. The flight was cancelled. Murphy.

Another flight was announced for 10pm, pilots arrived and then an hour later that flight was cancelled – no flight crew available. It was close to midnight Chicago time and the airport was overflowing with travelers – all stranded due to weather conditions and our friend Murphy. The customer service lines were at least 4 hours long so I ended up getting a hotel in Chicago for the night and catch a 6:30 am flight out – Murphy – a late afternoon flight finally left and I arrived in Los Angeles a day late. Friday was a work day and we did finish a bit early and I had the rest of the weekend in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles.

I had planned to participate with the Santa Clarita Amateur Radio Club and bookmarked directions into my GPS and it was only a short drive from my hotel to Castaic Lake Water Agency park high above Santa Clarita in the foothills. There’s a beautiful resource center and offices located at about 1500 feet elevation with beautiful desert type gardens. It was a very relaxed field day group and the W6 amateurs were great fun. Here are some photos – they tell a better story than I could ever put up here in print.

WA6EWY’s trailer and rolling shack – the trailer has been once around the continental United States with his family, including twins about 39 years ago. His Volvo has nearly 300K miles on it. Next shot shows the operating position.

A view of the W6JW Field Day operating site. Temperature at 11am was over 90F and very low humidity – so it was very comfortable; but the sun was very intense. Shade was a valuable commodity.

W6JW Field Day exact location surveyor’s mark.

Twin Honda 6500W gas generators – one as a spare – gasoline was stored about 100 hundred feet away – including 2 industrial fire extinguishers. The generators were located several hundred feet away down a concrete walkway facing away from the operator positions – very quiet.

Field Day site surrounded by beautiful desert vegetation – there’s irrigation late in the evening here with water from the Castaic Lake area – see Castaic Lake information here.

It was interesting to see how other clubs in another country operate during the annual Field Day exercise – it’s really not any different than any of the Ottawa area clubs do it. W6JW and the Santa Clarita Amateur Radio club operated as an emergency preparedness exercise and not a contest – the true spirit of Field Day. Many thanks to the fine members of the Santa Clarita club for the nice welcome to their Field Day exercise last Saturday.

30 Years

2010-06-21T21:27:00.001-04:00

It’s been 30 years since I was licensed. It was 1980 and I wrote the theory and did the code and got my license somewhere around this date, June 21st. My first transmission was on July 9th, 1980 at 0200 with KA1FIQ on 80 meters using CW. I was using another ham’s station, VE3LAE Serge Arpin who is now VE2BO. He let me borrow a Heathkit set, the Apache and Mohawk receiver and transmitter. I had to stay well away from the band edges as the transmitter and receiver were not well calibrated.

I worked CW for the first two years until I passed my Advanced license in 1982. I gained voice privileges on 10 meters and 160 meters after the first 6 months – there’s a stamp in my log from the DOC inspector, Ken Duncan who perused my log for accuracy and number of contacts. A note in my log said that the Heathkit set put out 40 watts and I was using an end fed wire from a homebrewed tuner. These were the days before plasma TVs and all of the other noise pollution we have today – one could still hear signals in downtown Ottawa.

In August of 1980 I switched off the Heathkits and switched on a brand new Kenwood TS-520SE. For a couple of years or so I started and net controlled the Canadian Top Band Net (160 meters) and used that long end fed wire for most of the other HF bands too. The wire was about 150 feet or so and rested atop some 60 foot trees running 3 properties down from my location. In those days there were TVI complaints but I did get most of them sorted out. A new home a few doors down had a spiffy intercom system installed that broadcast my signals right through to every room – never did get that one fixed.

I worked a bit of VHF SSB from my location downtown. I had an 11 element 2 meter yagi up on the roof, on a tripod. I was using a Kenwood TR-9000 10 watt all mode transceiver. I picked up an 80 watt amplifier at the Rochester Hamfest and managed to work into South Carolina with that set up.

Digging out those old log books sure brings back memories – for some reason those old Heathkits were always “hot” with RF. My logs were filled with contacts from hams all over the world.

No doubt you’ve noticed the postings here have been few and far between. Spring and summer are very busy times out here in the country – there’s a large organic garden to sow and look after and 2 acres of lawn and flower beds to care for. We’re just wrapping up a pretty good asparagus season and other vegetables are soon to follow. The garden went in a full month ahead of last years’ schedule. A few frosty nights in May caused a bit of concern but we covered the seedlings with plastic and all seemed fine.

FT-817 And A New Rockwell Collins 500Hz CW Filter

2010-05-31T15:46:00.001-04:00

A new filter arrived today for my FT-817. It was an extremely simple install procedure. It involved removing the screws from the top of the 817, installing the filter by pushing it into place, replacing the cover and going through a few menu settings to activate the filter. From preliminary tests I’d say the filter works very well under crowded band conditions using CW and digital modes.

Here are a few pictures of the installation of the 500Hz CW filter into my FT-817.

Menu #38 of the FT-817 should be set to “CW” instead of “OFF”. There's one more thing you have to do to get the CW filter working. Check out page 14 of your FT-817 Operating Manual - number 7 at the bottom right of the page you will see the “C-Key” setting for "NAR". You have to set this in order for the receiver to switch to the narrow CW filter when you switch the rig to CW or CWR modes. To do this, first put the rig into CW or CWR mode then tap the “F” key once quickly. The FUNC Keys menu items for the A/B/C pushbuttons should appear. Rotate the SEL control until you see “IPO ATT NAR” over the A/B/C buttons. Then press the “C” pushbutton once to set the filter to Narrow. A small right-pointing arrow should appear and the rig should switch to the CW filter - you should hear a marked difference in the receiver noise “tone”.

The FT-817 should be ready for the Ottawa Valley QRP Society’s Field Day on Bate Island at the end of June.

10 Meters And 6 Meters

2010-05-31T15:19:00.001-04:00

Ten and Six have been crowded with signals the last few days. I’ve worked Puerto Rico and to the American mid and south west with good signal reports. Both bands remained active until well into the evening. There’s a good chance these two bands will remain active for the next few hours. Low noise on 10 meters make it really great to work weak stations on digital modes. I’ve noticed before noon noise is extremely low as well as the signals. But whatever I could hear on my FT-950 and the Cuschraft R6000 vertical, I could work. Shortly after the lunch hour noise increased but so did the signal levels. There’s some great DX if you’re patient and make use of the DX clusters.

Larry Wilcox, VE3WEH, SK - May 28th 2010

2010-05-29T21:14:00.001-04:00

http://va3qv.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/the-man-behind-the-camera/

Field Day Dry Run – Ottawa Valley QRP Society

2010-05-22T20:46:00.001-04:00

Some members of the Ottawa Valley QRP Society joined ranks today at Hampton Park. The exercise was a dry run for the much anticipated Field Day on June 26 – 27th. Here are a few snap shots of the QRP ~~nuts~~ enthusiasts enjoying the day this holiday weekend.

Just When I Thought It Was Safe

2010-05-22T12:10:00.001-04:00

You know, I’m a cautious kind of guy. I know that every activity is fraught with peril but little did I know that QRPers were nut jobs. Yes that’s the new diagnosis for being passionate about low power operating or better known as a QRP operators. Now the professions who treat psychiatric disorders have a new (un)treatable disorder on the books. Read this post by KE9V on his blog titled “Low Powered Nut Jobs.” Now I must get this news out to the Ottawa Valley QRP Society.

FT-817 Gets Updated After 9 Years

2010-05-17T16:43:00.002-04:00

My trusty little FT-817 is getting a CW filter. I’ve had the 817 for 9 years now and it has never let me down. I have the original 817 not the 817ND version. I’m preparing for Field Day with the Ottawa Valley QRP Society and I’m trying to improve my CW proficiency in time for Field Day 2010, scheduled for June 26th and 27th – the last weekend in June. Even if I don’t reach my goal I’ll use the 817 on PSK. The 500Hz filter should help in that situation too. I also have a new PAR EF-10/20/40 End Fedz QRP antenna on the way. Dale, of PAR Electronics has informed me that between May 21st to the 27th is when he’s taking amateur orders for his End Fedz antennas. He’s extremely busy with his commercial and mil orders when he’s not fulfilling amateur orders.

I want to add that I have had 2 PAR End Fedz (EF-40 and a EF-30) installed as permanent antennas for 2.5 years; they still operate and look like new. Don’t hesitate to use Dale’s antennas in permanent locations. If they can survive Ottawa’s extreme weather conditions they can survive just about anywhere. Highly recommended for either portable or permanent locations. I keep a spare EF-20 in my go kit just in case.

Field Day equipment will include my FT-817, an FT-100 as a spare transceiver, a 15W solar panel and charge controller for my 12V 18A/H gel cell, the PAR antenna and a Buddistick as a spare antenna. I’ll be taking along my Honda EU2000i gen set to run my laptop throughout the operating period.

The bands have been lousy lately and the sun is quiet, no sunspots. Despite the conditions there’s DX on everyday. 17 meters is open as a write this at 20:30Z. Ukraine, Russian and Italian stations are on the PSK section of the band with Americans having QSOs in the phone portion of the band.

VE3MPG Blog posts that mention the PAR antennas

Summer Storms And Your Shack

2010-05-04T15:57:00.001-04:00

The summer storm season is here. As I type this there’s a lightning storm passing overhead. My antennas are disconnected and my gear is unplugged and protected with good quality uninterruptible power supplies when in use. We get some extreme variations with line voltage here. A few winters ago line voltage had dropped to 107V AC and my UPSs, all 4 of them started beeping in unison. A quick call to Hydro One and they discovered most of our rural road had low line voltage – not good for appliances. I did lose 2 circuit boards in a front loading microprocessor controlled clothes washer either from low voltage or summer storm activity – the washer and dryer get unplugged if I think about it too.

I make sure when leaving the house, even on sunny days to disconnect the station. I’m located about 23Kms from city center. We seem to have a micro-climate south of the city and summer and winter storms that bypass the Ottawa manage to hit us out here.

On the bands: 10 and 6 have been open and lots of stations on if you manage to get on when those openings occur. There’s a slew of sunspots this week making for some great DX on the higher ham bands.

Photo courtesy of Sebastien D'ARCO

20 Meter DX – Band Wide Open At 04:15Z

2010-05-02T00:41:00.001-04:00

It’s early morning (04:15Z) out here in the south of Ottawa. 20 meters is wide open and DX stations fill the digital portion of the band. Lots of Pacific stations and quite a few Asiatic Russian stations on the air this morning. Background noise is undetectable. I have the AGC in the FT-950 in the OFF position to better hear the weak stations on PSK. I’ve just worked UA0ZAY Igor, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. I hear Hawaii calling CQ with mostly stateside stations responding. I’m on the Cushcraft R6000 this morning running about 30 watts.

Earlier I had worked UA0ZK, Vasily, also on Kamchatka. Signals were all 599 and perfect copy. If you’re a night hawk there’s DX to be had with very little effort.

The Volcanoes of Kamchatka are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

St. Louis Vertical Part 1 - Prep

2010-04-30T15:06:00.001-04:00

The St. Louis Vertical portable antenna has been talked about and modified over the years. It’s a very portable antenna solution for Field Day or QRP enthusiasts. It’s easy to build and modify and covers 40 meters to 10 meters with the use of a tuner. Radials are a must with this type of antenna. I use a Shakespeare Wonderpole, a collapsible fishing pole. Fully extended it’s 20 feet long and collapses to 45 inches for storage and transport.

Years ago I purchased a good amount of Radio Shack twin lead for this project and like any good ham I’m ~~finally~~ getting around to building a St. Louis vertical for use at Field Day and with the Ottawa Valley QRP Society group outings.

The first preparation that must be done on the Wonderpole is the removal of the two clips midway up on the first section. These two brass clips are used to hold a fishing reel. The reason for removing these two clips is to assure that the twinlead once wound on the lower section is flat against the bottom section when you wind it on. It’s more esthetics and it makes it easier to wind without the bumps of the clips underneath the twinlead.

I used a Dremel tool with a cutting disk attached to cut through the clips. I still have to smooth down the plastic adhesive used to attach the clips with a small grinding tool attachment on the Dremel.

For the last while I’ve been thinking quite hard to determine a good way to wind the twinlead onto the bottom section so it stays in place. In part 2 of this series I’ll show you a novel method that I devised to accomplish this – it’s weatherproof too.

Have been listening to 17m psk this afternoon and just finished working A71EM in Qatar with 40 watts on the R6000 vertical. 17 is a fine band with some great DX and quiet band conditions – opportune for working DX. It seems to be open early morning till sundown here near Ottawa – always with some exotic stations waiting to be worked.

Here’s a link from the American QRP Club describing the St. Louis Vertical:

AMQRP.ORG St. Louis Vertical

April 27, 1791: Samuel F.B. Morse

2010-04-27T09:01:00.001-04:00

Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the Morse Code was born on this day, April 2tth 1791. His invention was patented in 1837, and he gave the first public exhibition of his device to scientists the following year.

QRPTTF A Success And Great Social Event

2010-04-25T17:59:00.001-04:00

The QRPTTF event yesterday at Hampton Park in Ottawa, was a great success. The bands were in terrible shape and lots of electrical noise pollution on most of the bands. Turns out it was more of a social event interspersed with working a few stations. The weather was great – not too warm with a light breeze. Many locals and dog walkers stopped by to investigate what we were doing and most had heard about amateur radio. Here are a few pictures of the ops and stations and some of the visitors. Forgive me if I miss your name and call.

A great time operating QRP in the park. Michael provided hot coffee and mini muffins – the kind where you can’t eat just one. The Ottawa Valley QRP Society members are a great bunch and I hope there are more in-the-field type QRP events this year.

QRP To The Field (QRPTTF) 2010 This Saturday

2010-04-22T13:21:00.001-04:00

The Ottawa Valley QRP Society takes to the field this Saturday April 24th. The Ottawa location will be at Hampton Park, near the Island Park exit westbound from the Queensway. Start time is 11am EST and it’s a CW QRP (5 watts or less) only exercise. I’ll be joining them in some capacity. I have my FT-817 station almost ready to go with just wiring up a CW key left to do. I also have to cut a 40 meter radial for my Buddistick. I have the Buddistick tuned for 20 and 40 meters. I take along my MFJ antenna analyzer just to be sure all is good for the final section on my FT-817. Power will be from an 18AH gel cell and a spare full size 12v deep cycle wet cell battery. I haven’t operated the 817 on cw and don’t have any filters installed yet. Still a few things to get ready but it should be an interesting day. For suggested operating frequencies see the QRP To The Field web site.

QRP To The Field (QRPTTF) site

About Hampton Park, Ottawa

Software In The Shack At VE3MPG

2010-04-20T12:01:00.001-04:00

Once in a while I come across some very unique software for use in my radio shack’s computers. Synergy+ is that software. It shares a common mouse and keyboard if you’re using several computers and operating systems. I use 3 systems in the shack – a kinda new Windows 7 Home Premium box, an older Pentium 4 running Windows XP Pro and sometimes my laptop gets included in the mix. Normally that would be a lot of wires and keyboards to have on the desk where real estate can become scarce. From my main computer display (Win7 – the server in Synergy+) I can access the screens of the other 2 systems by floating my mouse over to the right side of my main monitor and the mouse appears on my P4 system and my keyboard becomes part of the P4 system. I can configure Synergy+ so that the left side of the screen in the Win7 (server) system transfers my mouse pointer to the laptop display and my keyboard becomes the laptop input keyboard. Keyboard input goes to the same screen that your mouse cursor is on.

You might ask what is so special about this? It’s done over my home wireless network with absolutely no lag time and no KVM switch. The Synergy+ software can be made to run as a service on boot up so you can even log in to other computers at the login prompt. Now I only have one mouse and one keyboard available without all of the extra wires and separate connections to various monitors required of a KVM switch. It’s a bit tricky to set up initially but after a few minutes and reading the wiki at the Synergy+ site I was up and running. There’s also an excellent discussion group available.

Synergy+ works with different resolutions – my main box running Windows 7 runs at 1680 x 1050; the P4 at 1280 x 800 and the laptop at 1024 x 768. I can still use multiple monitors on my Win7 box too.

Synergy+ is available for Linux 32 and 64 bit and Windows 32 and 64 bit versions, and Mac OS X.

Here’s the link to the Synergy+ website - >>What is Synergy+?

Popular Radio – Dr. Alexander Graham Bell - March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922

2010-04-15T12:32:00.001-04:00

Another archive picture from Popular Radio March 1923.

Dr. Alexander Graham Bell link

DX Is Out There Despite The Marginal Conditions

2010-04-12T16:36:00.001-04:00

Last night or early this mornning to be more specific, just before turning in (04:53Z) I checked the bands – quiet'; until I saw a trace on the waterfall. It was ZL1PWD, Peter in New Zealand calling CQ. His signal was in and out but I decided to give a call anyway. We did manage a nice qso and Peter sent an email with a screen capture of the contact. Signals were in and out with heavy fades but there was DX rolling in. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard signals so late into the night on 20 meters. I did a quick check of the other bands but nothing above 20 meters. Earlier in the evening there had been a 6 meter opening but it was short and I missed it. Contact was made with the FT-950 with 20 watts to the Cushcraft R6000. I had a tune around 160 meters and there was a fair bit of activity and not much atmospheric noise. This is a great time of the year, during the spring equinox, for DX at odd times of the day or night.

From My Archives – Popular Radio March 1923 - Nikola Tesla

2010-04-12T12:33:00.001-04:00

I have an almost complete archive of Popular Radio from 1923 to 1924 with some rare black and white photos of some famous radio pioneers. I’ll attempt to post a couple of archive photos every week.

About That Blackout; Being Ready, Always

2010-04-07T13:24:00.001-04:00

A few days prior to the recent power grid blackout we experienced here two days ago I had been meaning to get fresh gas for the gen set. A complete blackout brings you screaming back to reality – Be Ready and Be Prepared. This is the first blackout of the season and we usually have several out here in the country. It’s a fact of life when you live away from large cities like Ottawa.

I always stock up with gas every fall, add the appropriate gas stabilizer to my stock and mostly that’s it. I change the oil in the little Honda 2000i once a year or if it gets used during the summer months camping twice a year. I use a good quality synthetic oil, Mobil 1, and keep a couple of litres handy. I keep a spare spark plug and clean the air filter regularly. It’s been running smoothly and without problems for 7 years now. I start it up every 3 weeks and let it run for 30 minutes and keep the gas tank topped up. I rotate the gas every spring, like I did 2 weeks ago. I dump the stabilized gas into my car and usually get new gas right away – lesson learned this time. I had to drive 15 Kms. to get gas for the generator when it should have been available and beside the generator.

I keep 2 deep cycle batteries topped up here too. One powers my sump pump and kicks in automatically during a blackout. I check the condition of the battery and keep distilled water on hand to top up the cells when needed. I also check each cell with a specific gravity wet meter just to make sure none of the cell have gone weak on me. The basement battery is kept on a trickle charge at all times and recharge is automatic when power resumes. The sump pump will run for approximately 17 hours on battery. I also have a direct connect to my generator at the pump location if run time is exceeded on the battery; I can connect the Honda generator outside on the back patio and run that with a fill up every 5 to 6 hours. The other deep cycle battery is kept in reserve or to run my ham shack. I also have 2 – 12v, 18amp/hr gel cells to run 2 meter gear or qrp (FT-817) hf. These get trickle charged every 30 days.

The Honda of course will charge 12 volt batteries; on hand too are 2 – 100 watt solar panels and a portable 15 watt panel for charging things if the grid goes down for extended periods. The great ice storm of 1998 was such an event and I don’t wish it to be repeated ever. During winter blackouts heating can be a problem. My home has 2 airtight wood stoves – a large Elmira Stove Works airtight in the basement and a BisII airtight in the living room – that heats the first and second floors. I keep a good supply of seasoned hardwood for those occasions. When the power grid goes down in the country our water source is affected – we can’t pump water from wells without power. Spring water is stored in 5 gallon containers for drinking.

In conclusion one can never be prepared for all eventualities. Being well prepared is what to strive for. Keep drinking water and food on hand; don’t depend on your neighbours as they’re in the same situation you’ll find yourself in. Know you equipment and how to repair it. Keep records of run time on your gas powered generators and change oil, filters and spark plugs when required. Keep a stock of batteries for flashlights and radios. Keep candles and kerosene or naptha on hand for lanterns or oil lamps.

Be prepared before emergencies and for when the grid goes down.

A short note about last night’s thunderstorm in Ottawa – disconnect those antennas BEFORE the storm hits. Disconnect before going to work – the spring and summer storm season is upon us and who wants to toast or damage expensive radio gear? Take precautions. Have spare antennas on hand to get back on the air quickly after the storms have passed, especially if you are a member of ARES Emergency Measures Radio Group in the National Capital Area.

Emergency Measures Radio Group – Ottawa ARES

Deep Cycle Battery FAQ

SurvivalBlog.com

RAC ARES Operations Training Manual

The Survival Podcast Forum

Total 6 Hour Blackout Tonight – Eastern Ontario

2010-04-06T00:49:00.001-04:00

The power just came back on a few minutes ago – it’s just after midnight April 6, 2010. Power was lost just after supper yesterday – around 6:30 pm in the Metcalfe, Vernon and Osgoode area of Eastern Ontario. No reason from Hydro One so far. Living in the country one is prepared for these events. I have a good Honda generator, battery backup on my sump pump and ample deep cycle batteries to keep some of the ham gear on the air. I was a bit low on gas so I headed out two hours into the blackout to get an extra 5 gallons. All was well in the VE3MPG household. Enough candle power to light the shack and living quarters and the Blackberries were fully charged earlier in the day. The RIM network was still functioning. The Honda 2000i used up just a little over a gallon of petrol during the 6 hours of non-alternating current on the mains. It’s been a great little gen set and made it through an even longer blackout several years ago – about 13 hours that time.

Below are photos of the big blackout of August 15, 2003, courtesy of NASA’s Earth Observatory. That afternoon I hurried to a Honda dealer to purchase the last generator on the shelf – a demo model – the City of Ottawa had purchased their entire inventory. More tomorrow.

Blackout Leaves American and Canadian Cities In The Dark

I Guess I Don’t Have a Boat Anchor After All

2010-04-05T17:08:00.001-04:00

Just finished reading KL7AJ’s write up on QRZ’s forums. Read on about how to restore a real boat anchor – Restoring Your Vintage Radio, by Bo Tanker.

“By the way, I should mention at this point that it seems a lot of the uninitiated refer to ANY amateur radio that happens to contain a tube or two a boat anchor. Excuse me, but a Yaesu FT-101 doesn’t even REMOTELY qualify as a boat anchor. It’s got a HANDLE on the thing, for crying out loud!”

“Here’s a test for whether your radio qualifies as a boat anchor. First, locate your nearest ocean or Great Lake. (If you live in Nebraska, this may be a bit of a trick in itself). Go down to the nearest dock on the shore of the aforementioned ocean or Great Lake. Find a big boat. Look for a big, rusty pointy object dangling from a chain somewhere on that big boat. Pick up that big rusty pointy object dangling from the chain. Record or otherwise document the grunting sounds you make when you pick up that big pointy rusty object. Or, alternatively, record the pain level in your back as you pick up that big pointy rusty object.”

”Now go home, pick up your radio, and compare your grunting and/or pain level with that experienced upon lifting the rusty pointy object dangling from the chain on the
big boat.”

“Is it comparable? If so, you might have a genuine boat anchor.”

TS-520S Boat Anchor #2

2010-03-31T12:18:00.001-04:00

Spent half the day yesterday dusting off my venerable TS-520S. I acquired this almost 45 lb. (20.5 Kilos) radio a couple of years ago from an on and off short wave listener. It was in pristine condition, had never transmitted and it was stock – no filters of any kind. I spent time taking both covers off checking for leaking or bloated capacitors and had anticipated blowing dust out of it. The interior was in factory condition and I just used canned air to blow out the cooling fan area from mostly accumulated light dust of 30 years. There are no scratches anywhere on the covers, and the plastic bezel is blemish free too. I checked all the boards for tightness and got it put back together after well over two hours of eyeballing most of the components for defects. I had the radio connected and on the air the day I brought it home so I knew it all worked just fine – a testament to the quality and durability of Kenwood ham equipment designed over 30 years ago.

A good coat of car polish on the covers finished the job – I use Nu Finish liquid wax and it makes the radio look out-of-the-box new. Any good car wax will work and I’ve always done this to radios that have a smooth finish like the old line Kenwood gear. The Nu Finish was goes on very easy – and no rubbing – it does a superb job and lasts a long time. The wax is available at Canadian Tire or local WalMarts.

This long weekend will give me the opportunity to get the radio on the air – on 40 meters phone and work some of the local nets. Eventually I’d like to get a CW filter for it and use it exclusively on morse code.

Some great links:

Kenwood Hybrid Transceiver Sales, Restoration & Service

Kenwood Hybrid Tune-Up Procedure

Ken's K4EAA K1 Knob Page

Kenwood TS-520 HF Transceiver Capacitor Replacement Kit

QRP DX

2010-03-30T10:45:00.001-04:00

Operating QRP these last few days has been fun and a challenge. I can work lots of DX with 5 watts from my FT-817. Most stations don’t know I’m running 5 watts until my brag macro informs them. I run digital modes 100% here. The challenge is that many stations run excessive power; some run dirty signal that wipe out the psk segment of the bands I’m working on. Here’s a screen shot of a Cuban station with sidelobes so strong the band segment was wiped out up here in Ottawa. Setting up your station for proper operation using digital modes takes some effort. Excessive power into yagi, verticals or dipole antennas isn’t necessary; it’s important to monitor ALC (assure that the ALC setting of your S-meter shows no movement) when ones changes band and even moving within the passband where you’re operating. Proper adjustment and judicious use of RF output makes it a whole lot easier for everyone using the narrow psk segments of our shortwave bands. Of course the little FT-817 doesn’t play as nice as the Ft-950 – I have no filters installed and there are no DSP controls to make things easier on digital modes.

Working QRP is a challenge; I usually wait until a station signs off with another station and then I call them and usually that gets me the DX. When you’re working with 5 watts you want to make sure all of your power gets out to the antenna. That means no antenna tuners. Make your antenna resonant for the band you’re working. 99% of the DX stations I’ve been working give an honest 599 report with a few 569 reports so my setup is doing something right. I always make use of an antenna analyzer to check my antenna a few times a month to make sure all is working as it should.

Here are a few stations worked from my QTH in south Greely – FN25fe – F5FMO, PA3HDG, RA3FO, G0UAN, ES4MM, 2E0GHQ, SM0EJR and RA6AN. Some of these stations are well over 7,000Kms away yet with 5 watts most gave consistent 569 - 599 reports– there was the odd dropped character due to fading and interference from strong stations but the DX is out there – you don’t need a lot of power and it’s fun once the other QRO station finds out you’re only running 5 watts to a vertical antenna. I’m able to work both strong and weak stations – it doesn’t seem to matter too much.

I have plans to order a CW filter to install in the FT-817 to make things a bit easier. I also plan to do some portable operating like I did almost ten years ago when I first got the 817. I used Hamsticks in those days with a large magnetic mount. Hamsticks work very well when conditions a good but they did get the job done during Cycle 23.

QRP Blogs and Websites via K4UPG.com

QRP Amateur Radio Club International

QRP on 17 meters with the FT-817

2010-03-26T12:25:00.001-04:00

In my previous post from late last evening I decided to get my 817 back on the air and attempt some qrp contacts. I was really surprised at what 5 watts into 130 feet of coax to a vertical can do. I’ve been working all over Europe and to the southern U.S. states with this barn burner. Most contacts took one call with the real DX taking 2 to 3 calls. There was lots of QSB and the band was wall to wall digital signals. Low power and high power stations and stations with sidelobes – lots of sidelobes.

Setting up the 817 took a bit of effort since there are no DSP filters like in the FT-950 – nada, nothing. I had to resort to the RF gain control and the RX control on the Signalink USB interface to dig the signals out. The 817 performed admirably. I had the 817 stored in an Eagle Creek pouch for protection and its little log book with the last entries dated in 2001.

The 817 was an early 2001 copy with no filters installed. Way back in 2001 I was still able to make SSB contacts (before I lost all of my hearing) and these QSOs (log book above) were made from my car with monoband Hustler verticals – not the most efficient antennas. They were cheap and they worked and allowed me to operate mobile from quiet locations. At that time I still lived in the downtown core of Ottawa – a very noisy environment, even before the days of plasma TVs. I traveled south to one of the locks on the Rideau Canal near Manotick and operated parked near the lockmaster’s building. As you can see from the log conditions during that Cycle 23 were very good.

Today’s contacts included IK7EJT, LB1TE, YL2JZ, DL5ZAA, IZ4BEZ, and KB0QC all on psk. I had a 569 report and all other sig reports were 599. Conditions are very good and the 20 meter band stays open quite late here in North America. 17 meters fades out at sunset.

QRP is lots of fun and a bit of a challenge for simple transceivers lacking all the new DSP controls of the new radios.

I hope to fill out my little log book with more contacts during this year’s upcoming Field Day. I will be operating with the Ottawa Valley QRP Society from Bate Island on the mighty Ottawa River.

For the record space conditions as follows:

Solar-terrestrial indices for 25 March follow. Solar flux 88 and mid-latitude A-index 5. The mid-latitude K-index at 1500 UTC on 26 March was 2 (12 nT). No space weather storms were observed for the past 24 hours. No space weather storms are expected for the next 24 hours.

SpaceWeather.com

The Firmament – Jan Timmermans

QRP With the FT-817

2010-03-26T00:20:00.001-04:00

Conditions on the bands have been extremely good for a few weeks. I rarely use more than 20-25 watts with my FT-950 on digital modes. Starting today I’m dusting off the 817 and using QRP power on 17 meters. In the last few days I’ve worked CR1Z, OM1ZL, ES7FQ, YL3BF,1B1AB, TM7CC, Z36W and a multitude of other stations on 17 meters. Max power out averaged about 22 watts and garnered consistent 599 reports using my Cushcraft R6000. Let’s see what I can do using QRP power. Stay tuned.

Amazing that Radio works at all

2010-03-23T13:58:00.001-04:00

Think about this:
An S9 signal (50 microvolts) at the input terminal of an H.F. receiver with a 50 ohm input impedance, is 50 PICOWATTS. That's 50 TRILLIONTHS of a watt, for the prefix illiterate.

That's a STRONG signal.

An S1 signal, (assuming a standard of 6 dB per S unit) is down 54dB below that (almost six decimal places). That's in the QUINTILLIONTHS of watts!

(Thanks to KL7AJ on QRZ.com’s public forums)

Beginnings – SWL 1967-1969

2010-03-22T11:46:00.001-04:00

This was the beginning of my love affair with all things radio. It was the late 60s. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, Detroit was burning with race riots, and I had seen “Hair” on stage at the Royal Alex in Toronto. We could see the smoke billowing from the great Motor City during the riots. Every Sunday Detroit tested the air raid sirens and they could be heard well across the river – a long wailing lament, as if they could save us from nuclear vaporization.

My father got me an 8 band shortwave radio at the local K-Mart. Early mornings I would listen to Radio Australia with their sign on tune of “Waltzing Matilda”. I listened to Red China and even wrote to Radio Peking for a QSL. They sent a huge package, Mao’s Little Red Book and a poster of Mao Tse-tung – it was plastered inside my high school locker for a spell. Don’t know what happened to the Red Book. Dad always said that the RCMP had me on a watch list after receiving that package. I had neat QSL cards from WWV, Radio Cairo, Radio Japan, a station from Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles.

I learned much about geography and a little about electronics. I built a outboard BFO so I could zero beat cw stations and learn the morse code, but I never did. The BFO worked just fine – it was from an article in Popular Electronics and I etched my circuit board and found all of the parts over in Detroit at the old Lafayette electronics store. In those days we took a bus over through the Windsor-Detroit tunnel under the St. Clair River. One only had to show a birth certificate in those days. It was a good walk to the Lafayette store and then back home with my treasures.

The main antenna was an old single bed spring suspended at ceiling level – it worked great but I suspect it was the height of the sunspot cycle.

It wasn’t until 1980 that I got my ham license; now I’m 30 years in.

Some Upgrades, Some DX

2010-03-17T21:19:00.001-04:00

The weather’s been beautiful in the National Capital Area. We’ve broken some temperature records, not just in the last few days but for most of the month of March. The winter was mild too. There have been robins in south Greely since Christmas week. They stayed all winter this year. Temperatures were 16C yesterday and reached a high of 15C today. With the warm weather comes antenna maintenance and improvements. I spent yesterday running 130 feet of new coax to my Cushcraft R6000 vertical. It was long overdue and I kept putting it off in typical ‘ham’ fashion. I did spend most of the winter on 40 meters because conditions were very good and my PAR EF-40 End Fed dipole performed very well.

After terminating the coax with connectors and checking my work I got it all connected and working. 20 meters was full of signals about mid afternoon and I snagged a DXpedition – TM7CC – Ouessant Island IOTA EU-065. Ouessant Island is the western most part France’s territory out in the Atlantic. They had a potent signal into Greely on RTTY and I snagged them on the second call. Signals on 20 were strong until well after dusk.

Today, signals were pounding in on 17 meters. Around supper time the JAs dominated the band with RTTY. It’s great to see the bands coming alive again and staying open late. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that much DX on the upper bands. There are some exciting times ahead for us hams – all over the world.

What I’m Reading

2010-03-15T19:15:00.001-04:00

Russian literature was never my forte. Sure, I read The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in high school, slogged through it actually – a novel about morality and of God.

Many years ago I began collecting books; nothing very rare but most interesting. At a yard sale in Ottawa East I discovered a neat book and paid ten cents for the hardcover novel. It was signed and even had a rough sketch of a woman inside the front cover. At that time I didn’t recognize the author – Igor Gouzenko. I’m finally getting around to reading “The Fall of a Titan.” Gouzenko, in his book, explains the facts of Soviet life: “The Government keeps you, pays you, looks after you without end. Now you're going to pay some of it back.” Gouzenko defected September 5th, 1945.

Gouzenko was a cipher clerk at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. He defected, actually walked out of his job and produced 109 startling documents which laid bare the Russian atomic espionage network in North America and paved the way to the conviction of British Physicists Klaus Fuchs and Allan Nunn May, the Rosenbergs and half a dozen others who stole allied atomic secrets for the Kremlin. Gouzenko asserted that the USSR maintained an extensive spy ring in Canada, aimed mostly at obtaining atomic secrets. Furthermore, Gouzenko warned, the Soviets were not allies but were planning world domination. Gouzenko’s revelations shattered the innocence of the naïve Canadian populace. His defection initiated the Cold War between the Soviets and the West and led to the creation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Among those implicated by Gouzenko’s documents was Egerton Herbert Norman, an External Affairs official hotly pursued by US Red-hunters, and Lester Pearson, then secretary of state for external affairs, who ardently protected Norman. Gouzenko maintained that Pearson had Communist leanings, an allegation supported by Elizabeth Bentley, a Soviet double agent who later withdrew her testimony. Documentation regarding her testimony has since disappeared. Historians argue about the state of Pearson’s loyalty. While some regard Gouzenko as a hero to the West, others accuse him of being a mercenary or a traitor. Gouzenko’s reply would be that he “had a duty to the millions enslaved and voiceless in Russia.” At the very least, he was an opportunist who made a better life for himself and his family, though he did not enjoy the freedom we take for granted. He lived the rest of his life in Mississauga under police protection. He died in 1982.

Gouzenko’s sketch and signature in my copy of “The Fall Of A Titan.” The Gouzenkos were accomplished writers and artists.

Windows 7 At VE3MPG

2010-03-14T18:18:00.001-04:00

I’ve been using Windows 7 RC1 since the beginning of June last year. I installed it on my AMD64 3200+ Asus motherboard system with 2 gigs of ram. It was a fairly painless install at that point. I had 3 hard drives in the system and used the smallest as my Windows 7 test drive; completely wiping out the old XP Pro install and doing a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit install. It was probably one of the easiest OS installs I’ve ever done. The RC (release candidate) detected all of the old hardware except the on board Asus wireless card. I installed a Trendnet wireless network card and all was well and working. All of my software worked just fine as well as some external hardware like a flat bed scanner, several USB external hard drives as well as several thumb drives.

This past week was install week at VE3MPG for 2 machines: my ham computer described above and my work machine – a AMD quad core system with 4 gigs of ram, 2 hard drives – a 500 gig OS drive and a 1 terabyte data drive, fast video, and wireless network card. This last system was newly built a few months ago and tested with the release candidate Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. With the official release version of Windows 7 many more drivers were made available and my ham shack system installed in less than half an hour; this time the on board wireless drivers installed. I purchased the 3 pack Home Premium version of Windows 7 as I find this is probably the best bang for the buck of the available versions of Win7. One can install either the 32 bit or 64 bit version to a maximum of 3 systems. If you’re not on a corporate network this version works just fine for home based networks.

I find that Windows 7 is snappier and just works faster than XP did on my ham station computer. All of my ham software works great – Ham Radio Deluxe, VE7CC’s DX cluster program and just about anything I’ve downloaded to do with amateur radio. All of my older legacy programs work fine as does my Keyspan (USA-19H) USB to serial port adapter. It all works just great. Boot up times seem to be about the same or slightly faster.

I really enjoy the desktop gadgets – some ham radio related that I’ll write about in another post. On my work system, the quad core machine, I installed Sun Microsystems’ VirtualBox and installed Windows XP Pro as a guest operating system, in case I do run into some non-functioning or XP only software. With VirtualBox you can run multiple operating systems on the desktop. XP in VirtualBox makes use of hardware, networking components and USB ports. VirtualBox supports Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000, NT, Server 2003 + 2008, Windows XP, Ubuntu and many other Linux flavours. See the VirtualBox website for more information. VirtualBox hosts include Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris.

Microsoft provides a tool called Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. You download, install and run it on your system – it will advise you if it’s realistic to run Windows 7 on your hardware and determine which hardware has new drivers or drivers not yet available. Microsoft updates the Upgrade Advisor regularly as new drivers are released by the manufacturers.

My ham station computer is going on 6 years old now but it’s running all of my software just fine on Windows 7. I’ll report later on other ham software compatibilities.

Smallest Morse Key - Field Telephone Set D.MK.V

2010-03-07T11:03:00.001-05:00

This small key is part of a WWII Field Telephone Set D.MK.V. As you can see the set is in very fine condition and complete. It came up at a flea market many years ago and I dug it out of storage yesterday to have a good look at it. The original field telephone called the “Fullerphone” was developed during the First Great War by Captain A. C. Fuller.
From a document by Louis Meulstee, PA0PCR - 1915 . . . the British and German armies were densely packed in their trenches, at places only a matter of yards apart. Communication was mainly by telephone and various Morse buzzer telegraph instruments, connected by a single wire and earth return. During mid-1915 the Germans were extraordinarily well informed of Allied plans. Espionage was suspected but an interned British civilian brought back the information that induction from cables led to overhearing. Experiments carried out within the Allied lines left no doubt of the cause of the leakage.
The solution to the overhearing problem came toward the end of 1915 from Captain (later Major General) A.C. Fuller, who invented the Fullerphone, a small direct-current Morse telegraph instrument. In October, Fuller brought two prototypes to 5 Corps in Flanders. His invention was tested on a five-mile loop of cable, part of which ran in the water-filled moat of Ypres with a 10-ohm leak to earth. The prototypes worked well. They were obviously the answer to the problem of overhearing by induction which had brought the British Expeditionary Force almost to a standstill in terms of signals.

Working principle of the Fullerphone
The Fullerphone is essentially a DC Morse telegraph instrument with high sensitivity. Morse signals can he sent and received by the same instrument, no send-receive switch being used, so "break-in" working is possible. When sending, a very small direct current flows through the line and the receiving instrument. A readable signal is produced with a current of only 0.5 microampere!
To make the DC Morse signals audible, Fuller added an interrupter for changing the steady current into an intermittent current, suitable to produce a tone in a pair of headphones. The result is that dots and dashes sent by the key at the far end are received as short and long notes at the receiving end. Fuller completed the circuit by inserting capacitors and LF chokes to keep the current in the line relatively constant.
Features of the Fullerphone
Fullerphone signals cannot be overheard by induction or earth leakage and can be tapped only by the direct connection of a similar instrument to the line. The Fullerphone can be used simultaneously with a telephone or buzzer telegraph on the line. Working via leaky or very long cables is possible. However, the normal range for reliable communication under field conditions is 25 to 35 miles. Much greater ranges are possible under special conditions (e.g. open-wire lines in the desert) or by putting in a minor circuit change.
During 1939 a newly designed Mk IV model went into service. It was more sensitive than its predecessors, with a more easily adjustable buzzer/interrupter, and simpler to use as it carried no telephone set. Small modifications, such as radio-interference suppression of the buzzer and insertion of a crash limiter across the phone jacks to limit line static, were carried out on the Mk IV model.
Tobruk-1942... A row of Mk.IV Fullerphones in use at an Australian headquarters in the Western Desert
In 1943 a tropicalized version was issued. This Mk V model had a similar circuit but tropicalized components. The Mk VI Fullerphone, the last type built, was completely tropicalized and immersion-proof.

The D.MK.V was used by British, Canadian and United States forces during the war.

Cases arose where a submarine cable circuit was available but the necessary telegraph terminal equipment was found totally destroyed or was not immediately available. To ascertain to what extent Fullerphones could be used on submarine cables of various lengths, trials were carried out in 1943 by Cable & Wireless Ltd. at request of the British War Department. The results exceeded any expectation; ranges of up to 700 miles were obtained with faint but readable Morse signals at a maximum of 20 words per minute.
So there you have it – a very interesting story about an innovative piece of communications gear developed almost 100 years ago and used in two World Wars.
Links:
The Fullerphone
Additional Photos

Popular Science – Entire Archive Online

2010-03-05T14:16:00.001-05:00

Popular Science magazine, has scanned its entire 137-year archive and put it online.

The archive is made available in partnership with Google Books. I did a few searches this morning – ham radio related searches (like the March 1932 edition above) and there’s some really great vintage articles in the archives. Definitely worth a look.

“We've partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It's an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology's incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”

It also works on the iPhone and iTouch.

Here’s the link:

Search the PopSci archives

Identifying An Old Key

2010-03-03T19:57:00.001-05:00

I acquired this morse key about 25 years ago. A few years ago Bob VE3DUB (SK) made a nice oak base for it and put a knob on it. At that time he told me it was a very rare key. There are two marks on it – the initials GNW and 1795 – as seen below.

Not sure if any of my readers can identify it. I’ve spent a good deal of time on Google trying to datamine information about it.

Links:

Radio Telegraphy Net

J.H. Bunnell and Co. Telegraph Apparatus

Straight Key Century Club (SKCC)

Morsemad G0RDO

KT5X Morse Code Key Collection

The Yarmouth To Bar Harbor Ferry circa 1983

2010-02-23T11:25:00.002-05:00

A photo from my collection – taken in the early 80s aboard one of the CN ferries between Bar Harbor Maine and Yarmouth Nova Scotia. I had heard that the shipboard radio op was a ham so I had asked one of the crew if I could visit the radio room. I believe the ship was called the MV Bluenose; I don’t recall the radio operator’s name. You can see they were still using morse for hourly reporting. The call letters on the red plaque just above the operator appears to be C6DZ. If any of the readers can help identify the ship or the operator please let me know. This type of radio room is from an era long gone I suppose, now replaced with satellite communications and no morse code.

This photo was taken after arriving in Yarmouth, just up from the ferry terminal docks – another era long gone.

Links:
Maritime Radio Day – 2nd Weekend in April
Maritime Radio Telegram Award
Live Ships Map

Movers and Shakers – Alan VA3STL & Jim VE3EJJ

2010-02-22T14:12:00.001-05:00

There was an important story on Alan VA3STL’s blog that bears repeating here in the ham blogosphere. Alan and Ernie, VE3EJJ, have added to the ranks of the Amateur Radio fraternity nine (9) new radio amateurs. This event happened yesterday, on a Sunday; these two amateurs have spent hours of their time making sure that these 9 novices understood and had a passing grade to join the ranks of amateur radio operators in Canada. Hopefully we’ll all hear them on the air soon.

On top of these accomplishments Alan will be re-viving the Amateur Radio club at Carleton University here in the National Capital, Ottawa. With Alan and Jim’s help the nine new amateurs, students at Carleton will get the club station VA3CUA back on the air.

I remember the club station at Carleton in the early and mid 80s when it was in operation. It had a wide area repeater atop the Dunton Tower at Carleton. I remember a well equipped HF and packet station in operation at that time.

A job well done and nine new amateurs added to the ranks. Alan and Jim represent the true spirit of Amateur Radio in the National Capital.

And 73 to those nine new amateurs!

Yaesu FT-950 – Solid Performer With PAR End Fedz

2010-02-21T14:56:00.001-05:00

After over two years of owning the FT-950 it’s still a solid performer. In the field, during Field Day 2008 with auxiliary power and a PAR EF-40 End Fed along with a Buddipole it was exemplary. At home in the shack it’s even more fun. The menu system offers lots of settings for personal preferences and I often change parameters if I see something on the Yahoo FT-950 group that I find interesting. I keep copious notes in a small notebook of all the settings I’ve ever tried, with dates and comments. The primary use of the 950 is on psk and cw modes; I rarely run more than 30 watts to my antennas which include the Cushcraft R6000, and several PAR End Fedz dipoles. The PAR antennas have survived two brutal winters with ice storms. The last ice storm a few weeks ago saw the PAR antennas coated with almost 2 centimeters of ice but they held up very well. The EF-40 is over 20meters (66 feet) in length so that’s a lot of ice load to carry. We also get terrific winds out here but the PARs just keep going – a testament to their engineering and design. I have plans to erect a full G5RV and an end fed loop this year on my 2 acre property south of Ottawa. I would like to get back on 160 meters in time for next winter.

Since the release of the FT-950 in the fall of 2007 Yaesu in Japan has released firmware updates – numerous updates called the PEP950-Performance Enhancement Program with updates available for download on the Yaesu website. Each update added features and improved functions – with feedback garnered from the user community and Yaesu’s monitoring of the FT-950 group on Yahoo. Dennis Motschenbacher K7BV, (Yaesu VP of Sales) often drops by the group with information and comments. Dennis was even kind enough to send me a poster of the new Yaesu 5000 transceiver including the Yaesu world map. It’s really great to see a company interacting with users and potential users in this way.

In 2010 it’s hoped that Yaesu will continue to improve and update the firmware in the FT-950. With the release of the new FT-5000 Yaesu will continue to be at the forefront of cutting edge communications gear.

Some of you may be aware of free amateur radio publications such as WorldRadio online magazine available for download. There’s another publication free of charge from the Robert F. Heytow Memorial Radio Club called the KY9A Telegraph. It’s by subscription so an email notification is generated and sent to you when a new issue is ready for donwload. Both of these publications are in the Adobe PDF format. Highly recommended reading during these long winter nights.

Interview with Dale Parfitt – PAR Electronics

Patching A Boat Anchor (Yaesu FT-707)

2010-02-19T15:59:00.001-05:00

About 10 years ago I acquired a Yaesu FT-707 as a backup radio. My main radio was the Yaesu FT-100 purchased in 1999 new. The 707 was from an estate sale, in pristine condition, with original box and manuals and sales flyers. The radio looked like it had very few hours and came complete with the FP-707 power supply and the matching FC-707 antenna tuner. I used in on digital modes for awhile and then loaned it to a friend who used it on psk and voice for a few years.

A couple of years ago while listening to it in the shack the audio became distorted and then a puff of smoke and then no audio. I knew the radio was built like a tank because I had opened it when I first had it in the shack to tighten all of the circuit boards down; something I do on older rigs just to make sure everything is ship shape and all grounds are working properly.

Taking the cover off the top I noticed a toasted component on the RF board. I couldn’t tell what it was since the cap, resistor or transistor had partially blown up and was blackened. That was 2 years ago and at that time I had removed the board and connectors and slipped all into zip lock baggies including all screws and spacers and other hardware.

Last summer and fall I dug out the blown board and looked at the schematics attempting to trace the burnt and blown up component. I used Q-tips dipped in 90% isopropyl alcohol to clean up the burned mess on the circuit board as each component had a label silk screened onto the board. None of the neighbouring components were damaged and I managed a good cleanup around the component and determined nothing else was damaged. In fact the alcohol removed all of the crud from the board and from neighbouring components and wiring. All that remained of the original component were two legs going through the solder holes and a bit of hard black charcoal like material. I was finally able to see the component type and number on the board. It was a tantalum capacitor – a common value that I was able to find at Active, a local electronics parts store. They sold only in quantities of five for $2.99CDN. That was the easy part.

Here’s a component level shot of the RF board in the FT-707 showing how densely populated the board is; a challenge in replacing and finding defective parts.

Here’s a close up – the defective tantalum capacitor has been replaced with a new ROHS compliant 16V 22uF tantalum cap (shiny yellow cap in the center of this photo). All of the area was cleaned after being covered in splattered charred residue from the exploded 30+ year old capacitor. I neglected to take a photo of the charred cap that was there.

The challenge in this repair was de-soldering the remaining legs of the old component – finding the solder point on the reverse of the board – I used a very strong flashlight, shining the light through the board and marking the solder points in black with a marker pen. I then used a 27 watt solder tool to remove the old leads and a solder sucker to clean the holes. While I had to board out and check it completely for cold solder joints and repaired two at jumper J07 (bottom center) in the first picture above. The radio was re-assembled and smoke tested successfully.

The FT-707 is still a venerable old transceiver and it hears very well. It includes all of the WARC bands. It will still be part of my boat anchor collection in the shack along with the TS-520S.

Things to remember when troubleshooting a boat anchor project:

Scour the net; remember Google is your friend – I discovered that tantalum caps, old tantalum caps do blow like this and it’s not a problem unique to the 707.
Use your nose and your eyes when troubleshooting. If it smells like smoke or you see discoloration on the circuit boards that’s a clue. In my case it was very apparent what the problem was – even the top lid had exploding tantalum residue.
Make sure you have schematics – if you don’t they’re available on the net – again use Google.
Know how your project was taken disassembled and document how it goes back together again (with no spare parts left over!). Use a digital camera to document your progress.
Use various sizes of Zip lock bags; in this case I kept the circuit board in one bag, new components in a separate bag and hardware like screws and spacers in a another. I often stick small notes inside the bags explaining where the longer or shorter screws go.
Make sure you have the correct tools on hand ready to go once you settle in to complete your repair – correct wattage solder iron, correct solder and flux – if ROHS compliant boards use ROHS compliant solder.
Dry fit your components first to assure they fit the old holes in the circuit board and watch the polarity of your new replacement components – again have your schematic on hand and observe the markings on the motherboard. Tantalum caps have one leg longer than the other – the positive (+) leg, and they are marked but in tiny lettering. Double check your work before soldering.
Use a good workstation – use magnifier and clamps to hold your work.
Use good lighting – it pays off when working around small components and crowded board inside today’s transceivers.
The internet is a great resource – ham radio operators are only too happy to help if you do run into problems.

YouTube has some excellent soldering tutorials – here are a couple of very good ones:

This repair was my first on a transceiver but I have built a few things an I thought I had some decent soldering skills until watching these videos. I really needed a refresher on how to improve my soldering skills.

My next project is to assemble a Softrock 20 meter Lite II receiver kit and these videos have proved invaluable. Watch this blog for how this Softrock project is progressing.

Some great links about the Yaesu FT-707:

Rob MJ0RZD’s blog entry – Old Yaesu’s

Teruhiko Hayashi's JA2SVZ developed a frequency counter replacement KIT

Yahoo FT-707 group

Just Sayin’

2010-02-18T11:52:00.001-05:00

This cautionary tale from G4ILO’s blog this morning:

A site called Please Rob Me has been created by some website developers in Holland. It claims to provide a list of empty homes based on what people post online. The information is extracted from Twitter feeds when people post their whereabouts. Apparently it's been done to highlight the risks of location-sharing through social networks. That sounds a bit like the justification used by sites that expose software security flaws - and we all know where that has led to. Whatever, the site's existence does have some implications for we radio amateurs.

I know many of the local hams are using Twitter and APRS. I’ve seen blogs where hams post their holiday plans too. Be very careful what you’re posting or twittering – just a security precaution that we should all heed when we’re using social media for messaging and blogging.

LInks:

Please Rob Me

Good Radio Practices For Net Controls (and the rest of us mortals!)

2010-02-16T12:55:00.001-05:00

This information comes courtesy of the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club. Needless to say these ‘Best Practices’ can be adopted to everyday usage on the ham bands. I’m not sure if Canadian emergency nets have adopted or use some of these points. I’ve often heard DX stations ask for repeats, several times, of Canadian and American stations. Adopting some of these points should facilitate the non-English DX stations getting the proper information needed for their logs. With the many emergency and traffic nets in operation recently with the Haiti quake and foul weather on the American eastern seabord proper net etiquette is ‘de rigueur.’ The document was authored by Lou Dartanner, N6ZKJ.

Aim to project a professional image with proper operating practices, whether you're a net controller or a field unit.

Keep traffic to a minimum. Say what you have to say then release the frequency. Silence is Golden -- it allows someone else to use the channel when he or she needs it.

Some things to remember to help you be an efficient, professional sounding radio operator include:

Pitch, tone, and volume of voice. A moderate tone and pitch are desirable. Too high a voice can be irritating, too low can be hard to decipher. While you can't go out and buy a new voice, you should deliberately lower your voice pitch slightly when using the radio unless you have an especially low voice. Try for an even modulation, but not a monotone. Don't trail your voice off at the end of your message -- the last part is just as important as the first! Don’t shout into the microphone.

Speed. Too slow and your listener may try to anticipate your next words or may not understand you because it's an unnatural speed. Too fast is worse! Make it a point to slow down slightly when talking on the radio. If you normally talk very fast, slow way down! When transmitting call signs, addresses, names, and other items that must be remembered, noted, or written down, be a bit more deliberate. The speed at which you transmit should be such that the listener can easily understand and/or take notes. Sending logical phrases at nearly normal reading speed followed by ample pauses to allow the receiving operator to finish writing and the results will be fast, error-free transmissions. You tend to talk faster when emotions run high and things get exciting, but that's just when your message MUST get through! Take a deep breath, get yourself under control, plan what you're going to say, and say it slowly.

Enunciation and Pronunciation. Clear, distinct pronunciation is essential to communications, especially over the radio. Enunciate every word you say. Sloppy articulation includes lazy or mush speech, slurring words, and running words together. When transmitting over the radio, use the commonly-used pronunciation. Don't talk with objects or food in your mouth. It makes understanding you very difficult. Of course, someone always calls you just as you take a bite of that sandwich you've been waiting an hour to eat, but take small bites so you can swallow quickly!

Emotions. It's sometimes difficult to not let your emotions show in your voice, especially when you're tired, angry, or busy. These emotions can be misunderstood by others. You may be very busy, but a curt response could be interpreted as your being surly, sarcastic, or angry, and now you have someone more concerned about your answer and intentions than about the task at hand.

Think before you speak. Know what you're going to say before you call Net Control. Always wait a second after you push the mike button before you talk. This will avoid clipping the first word or syllable of your message. This will also allow two or more repeaters which are “linked” together to complete the circuit before you start. Remember “Push-2-Talk.” Push the mike button, count 1-2 (to yourself), then talk. If you have a one-word answer, it's best to add a word or two before it. Instead of "one," you might say, “There is one person here.” Or, “I say again, one.”

Use expected phrases and words. Anything out of the ordinary may result in confusion and your having to repeat or rephrase. If your message is technical or unusual, slow down and warn your receiver.

Use common words. Don't try to be funny with some “cutesey” phrase. Avoid slang; not everyone knows your jargon. It's OK and in fact necessary to use specialized terminology, but be sure your listener speaks the same “technical-ese.”

Speak in whole but brief sentences. That's what your listener expects to hear. Don't speak in shorthand. Don't ramble on and don't repeat your message by rephrasing it unless asked.

Use plain English and no "10" codes or "Q" signals.

Pause often: You never know who else might be trying to join the conversation or ask a question. Take a 5- to 10-second pause every few minutes to let other hams speak up. Pausing is especially important if you’re using a repeater: repeaters need to reset after every 2 to 6 minutes of continuous operation, which interrupts your ability to transmit and receive for a few minutes. Every time you pause, the repeater also gets a break, making it less likely that it will have to be reset.

Remember your ABCs: Accuracy Brevity Clarity

The rest of this good information can be read at the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club website here. It’s called “A Handbook For Amateur Radio Operators”. There are other Emergency Preparedness documents located on their site too.

Homebrew Night - 1982

2010-02-11T18:39:00.001-05:00

It was a Wednesday night many years ago, at the Ottawa Amateur Radio Club’s ‘Homebrew Night.’ In 1982 the meetings were held at the National Research Council’s auditorium on Sussex Drive across from External Affairs. I’d only been licensed a couple of years (1980) and was slowly learning the technology of the day. My home station consisted of a Kenwood TS520 with a matching tuner.

Radio Shack was still a pretty good source of parts for the homebrew enthusiast. I had decided to build a digital GMT clock for my shack. Radio Shack carried the clock module – a self contained LCD display that was programmable with the addition of push button on-off switches. The project box and the battery holder and one ‘Extra Life Enercell"’ custom manufactured in Japan for Radio Shack. You can see the simplicity of this small clock below.

I know it looks kind of crude with the Dymo lables stuck on like that. The most interesting part of this homebrew project, and why I’m writing about it today is the it has been running non-stop for 28 years. It’s still on the same battery purchased at Radio Shack in 1982. Here’s a photo of the inside with the battery and holder and 28 year old dust.

The display still lights up using the LMP button on the front and it still keeps good time. It’s not anything to look at really but it has been keeping time, in my shack all of these years. The Energizer Bunny would have a hard time keeping up I bet.

Upgrading The LDG Z-11 and AT-11MP Tuners

2010-02-09T16:26:00.001-05:00

It’s been at least a couple of years since I ordered new microcontroller chips for both my LDG Z11 and AT 11MP tuners. It’s a simple upgrade but the board is jam packed near where the new parts need to be soldered. There’s an electrolytic cap and a new microcontroller – the old 1.4 software controller needs to be pulled and the cap has to be installed with one leg soldered to a tiny diode – the other leg to a tiny tantalum cap near the controller.

Here are a couple of close-up macro shots of the area I’ll be working on:

The new microcontroller will upgrade each tuner to version 1.6; you can see these photos show the original 1.4 software that’s at least 9 years old. The new electrolytic cap goes to one leg of C35 shown in the photos to the small adjacent diode – this will require some good steady handed soldering. I use a low wattage iron and work with a magnifier over the work area for this type of work.

The new software controller will add 200 fast memories to the Z11 and the AT-11MP, saving the last tuned position when power is removed (MP only), saves the audio mode setting (MP only), and increased meter accuracy on the AT-11MP. The resolution of the meter driver was doubled and the lower power accuracy was improved on the 11MP.

The small Z11 tuner is used with my original FT-817 (not the ND) when I’m out in the field or camping. The larger AT-11MP is used with the main station when required. I’ve had them both for over 9 years and they are real performers and will tune a salad fork if need be.

The AT-11MP includes a meter on the front panel and can be used with 100 watt radios.

New microcontroller kits can be ordered directly from W4RT or CheapHam.

Wired Winter Clothing

2010-02-07T13:46:00.001-05:00

After visiting the Winter Field Day operations last weekend the ops could certainly have used some hi-tech clothing. In –20C weather prevalent here in Ottawa and the actual temperatures measured at the winter field day site, this clothing would have been a boon to the operators’ endurance. I see Martin VA3SIE has been on another arctic trek with Roy VA3CKD operating portable yesterday during the Arizona ScQRPions QRP Club 2010 FYBO (Freeze Your B___s Off QRP contest). Temperatures and wind are always issues to be taken seriously in these northern climes.

Here’s an excerpt about this winter gear:

The heat is on

From the "why didn't I think of that" files, Mountain Hardwear (mountainhardwear.com/ardica) has just introduced the first pre-wired winter sportjacket that not only provides heat on demand but also powers and recharges your iPhone and other hand-held gadgets. Called the Refugium (for men) and Radiance (for women), these stylish, insulated jackets are designed to accommodate the optional Ardica Moshi power system to generate heat (up to 37 C) via integrated circuitry woven throughout the jacket. Toss in the $60 Tech Connector Kit for iPhones (or MP3 players, GPS units or cameras) and you're ready to rock 'n' talk while braving the Canadian winter.

Now I’m not sure if the power pack could be re-wired to power the KX1 or the FT-817 but I’m sure hams can find a way.

Links:

http://www.ardica.com/enabled/enabled.html

http://mountainhardwear.com/ardica

N0AR’S Winter QRP FYBO Shelter

New Sunspots – Cycle 24 Alive and Well

2010-02-06T13:26:00.001-05:00

Got up this morning and checked VE3EN, Kevin’s SolarCycle24.com site and the sun is alive a well. Kevin has called them “popcorn” sunspots – they are popping up all over the north quadrant of the sun. There’s even an aurora watch for this evening and tomorrow. Here are a couple of images courtesy of SolarCycle24.com .

Kevin says:

“C-Class flare activity - C-Class flares are now taking place around rapidly growing Sunspot 1045. There is some polarity mixing within this region and there could be a chance for M-Class flares. Any earth directed CME's could trigger Geomagnetic Storming and Aurora.

Sunspots are now starting to pop up in many areas on the visible solar disk including a fast growing cluster which is now producing C-Class flares. This region will probably be numbered 1045 on Saturday.”

This spot will probably given number 1045 later today.

Dust off those 10 meter antennas – conditions are improving.

Links:

Space Weather Prediction Center

SolarCycle24.com Daily Report

Scientists warn solar activity could hit London 2012 Olympic Games

Smart dust could give early warning of space storms

Everyone’s Radio Store

2010-02-05T18:09:00.001-05:00

We all grew up with Radio Shack even here in Canada. Radio Shack has been in business since 1921, over 90 years. Radio Shack started in 1921 in Boston, Mass., by London-born Bostonian brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann. For most of those 90 years Radio Shack published some great catalogs. As a young boy and teenager living just across the river from Detroit, the best of both worlds existed. Lafayette Electronics had a huge store in Detroit’s downtown core. Windsor had a couple of Radio Shacks and both companies had some great catalogs.

From the website “Radio Shack Catalogs” -

But the growth of the Radio Shack chain was short-lived as management made a mistake: The stores began selling on credit and soon had a pile of uncollected receivables. And in the late 1960s, with the bank on their back, the company was practically bankrupt.

Enter Charles David Tandy. Tandy, owner of the leather goods company, Tandy Corporation, saw the potential of Radio Shack and the future of retail consumer electronics. In 1963, seeing an opportunity, he bought the company for $300,000.

And here’s the neat part of this story – a website about everything you’d ever want to know about Radio Shack, and copies of years of original the Radio Shack catalogs. What's unique about this website is that the catalogs are presented as a VIRTUAL catalog, in a “page-flipping” format. This gives you the experience of paging-through an actual Radio Shack catalog.

This should bring back some memories of our early years as budding amateur radio operators.

Link:

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/

Haiti – From The Heavens Above (and through the ether)

2010-02-03T22:08:00.001-05:00

The tragedy still unfolds in Haiti. In my previous post I stated that it would take up to ten years to repair and rebuild the island. Newspapers, the internet and news services were saturated with constant news of rescue, survival and death in the days and weeks after the first quake.

What we didn’t hear about was how Google Earth quietly slipped in some high resolution images a scant 24 to 48 hours after the initial damage. The first announcement indicated that an image overlay of the Port-au-Prince harbour area was available and later in the week a high resolution image was made permanently available of the damaged area. There was rumour that it was a fly-over image instead of a satellite acquisition image. Resolution is extremely good – down to a few meters.

If you’re interested to learn more about Google Earth join the Google Earth Community here. There’s a slew of information on the Haiti crisis in the current events section including layers showing the epicentre, current airports, medical rescue locations, the Israeli field hospital location, well you get the idea. A particularly good layer map is a Damage Assessment of Major Buildings / Infrastructure – UNOSAT – from January 16, 2010 available in the current event section of the Google Earth Community. Once you log into the Google Earth community you’ll be able to find information on how to use Google Earth and especially the layers and add-ons mentioned here. If you’re really stuck post a query in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond. Responders and logistical groups have been using the services of Google Earth’s high resolution images to assess and inventory damage and show areas where people are congregating and sleeping out in the open and in tent cities, collections of people living under tarps and canopies.

K5EHX, Tom White, has created a repeater layer for Google Earth. It happens to cover Haiti and once you get Tom’s layer installed and working you will be able to see two repeaters on Haiti, both near Port-au-Prince. Tom’s repeater layer can be downloaded from here. Have a look at your respective areas in Google Earth to see your local repeaters too. Both Haitian repeaters were sponsored and financed by DERA - The Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response Association. DERA set up the repeaters in 2004 to meet that Caribbean country's present and future disaster communication needs. There’s no information about repair or reactivation of these repeaters. The layer map shows general coverage for the repeaters and their frequencies.

And to close this blog entry - an airborne AM radio station broadcasting to the Haitian nation. I found this buried on CNN.
An U.S. Air Force C-130 flies over Haiti dangling a 264 foot long antenna from its belly – the longwire is kept vertical by a 500lb lead weight. It’s transmitting to the Haitian people. Four other antenna on the wings and fuselage are sending FM signals.

Read the story here on CNNTech.

Links:

DERA Relief Team Gives a Leg up to Haiti Ham Radio Disaster Communication

Haiti Rewired's Mission Statement

Google Earth 5.0: Historical Imagery

The Blog Is Back!

2010-02-02T12:41:00.001-05:00

I apologize to my readers for my long hiatus away from my blog. Other priorities and interests took me away from my beloved ham radio blog. My passion for ham radio has not diminished. I do have some new material that I hope you will enjoy. I’ve had to moderate the comments to eliminate spam – there seems to be more than usual these days and I’ve had to erase several spam comments lately. Note that all comments pertaining to this blog will be published; that includes positive and negative feedback. I figure if you have taken the time to write a comment then you deserve to be published.

G4ILO sums it up nicely here:

“It probably goes without saying that someone who has a blog has opinions they have a burning desire to tell the world about. And if you have opinions, you have to be prepared for people to disagree with you. As a blog owner, you have the right to allow or delete comments. However I have always believed that you should allow the dissenting voices to have their say as well as those that support you. The only comments I have ever deleted from this blog have been ones that appeared to be spam and did not relate to the subject of the posting. I think deleting comments from people who have taken the trouble to reply after reading your blog is pretty insulting.”

If you’re a ham and connected to the internet or have been on the air in the last few weeks you’ve all been reading about or heard of the Haiti quake and the resulting heroic efforts of various agencies, military, search and rescue and hams who have volunteered their time, effort and equipment. This is still a huge undertaking requiring manpower and money. From what I’ve been reading it will require a ten year effort to rebuild Haiti and to heal the populace of this poor Caribbean nation. Only good can come of it as the island is rebuilt with a better infrastructure of quake resistant buildings and communications network.

The next blog article will be about Haiti and some of the behind the scenes efforts of a large software organization – and ham radio is part of it.

I wish you all the best for 2010 – with the sunspots making a regular appearance now, better band conditions encourage more activity on the bands.

The picture at the top is of my FT-707 – a story about restoring this excellent old transceiver coming up in a new blog post.

The Blog Is Back!

2010-01-26T13:21:00.001-05:00

I apologize to my readers for my long hiatus away from my blog. Other priorities and interests took me away from my beloved ham radio blog. My passion for ham radio has not diminished. I do have some new material that I hope you will enjoy. I’ve had to moderate the comments to eliminate spam – there seems to be much more than usual these days and I’ve had to erase several spam comments these last few months. I want to note that all comments pertaining to this blog will be published; that includes positive and negative feedback. I figure if you have taken the time to write a comment that you deserve to be published.

G4ILO sums it up nicely here:

“It probably goes without saying that someone who has a blog has opinions they have a burning desire to tell the world about. And if you have opinions, you have to be prepared for people to disagree with you. As a blog owner, you have the right to allow or delete comments. However I have always believed that you should allow the dissenting voices to have their say as well as those that support you. The only comments I have ever deleted from this blog have been ones that appeared to be spam and did not relate to the subject of the posting. I think deleting comments from people who have taken the trouble to reply after reading your blog is pretty insulting.”

If you’re a ham and connected to the internet or have been on the air in the last week you’ve all been reading about the Haiti quake and the resulting effort by the various agencies, military, search and rescue from various countries and the hams who have volunteered their time, efforts and equipment. This is still a huge undertaking requiring manpower and money. From what I’ve been reading it will require a ten year effort to rebuild Haiti and to heal the populace of this poorest Caribbean nation. Only good can come of it as the island is rebuilt with a better infrastructure of quake resistant buildings and communications network.

The next blog article will be about Haiti and some of the behind the scenes efforts of a large software organization we all know, and

Technorati Tags: Haiti,G4ILO,Earthquake

ham radio is part of it.

Prague, Spring 1990

2009-04-02T23:43:00.005-04:00

I've been busy spring cleaning and finally found my ham license issued to me in the spring of 1990 while I was stationed in Slovakia. My call at that time was OK8AIO and I got to use it a few times from the Technical University of Kosice ham station. A few of the student hams helped me obtain a license to operate there. The photos are from Wenceslaus Square in Prague, during the final days leading to the election.

I did manage to make a few contacts back to Ottawa with a list of ham gear to be sent to me. A packet tnc and an all mode 2 meter transceiver, a Kenwood TR-9000 and a 5/8 mag mount whip antenna and 100 feet of coax. I had a floppy disk based Tandy (Radio Shack) black and white laptop and some terminal software and was able to connect to a node in Budapest Hungary.

It's hard to believe all of this happened 19 years ago now.

WorldRadio Online now Free

2009-03-29T13:08:00.005-04:00

WorldRadio Online is published monthly by CQ Communications, Inc. It is now free for downloading and it is a mini magazine about the current state of amateur radio and contains lots of great DIY articles. The decision by WorldRadio Publisher Armond Noble, N6WR, to retire and sell the magazine. CQ bought the magazine WorldRadio and are now publishing WorldRadio Online as a 21st century manifestation of the popular old print magazine.

Hams can subcribe to the magazine via email notification or download the current issue at the WorldRadio Online web site. Highly recommended reading and it's all free. Let CQ know what you think of their new publication.

WorldRadio Online Web Site

Antennas Survive Ottawa Winter

2009-03-24T17:40:00.006-04:00

My antenna farm survived the brutal, windy, snowy, freezing rain type weather known in this neck of the woods. Some good planning, engineering and blind luck allowed my PAR EndFedz and my Cushcraft R6000 to survive unscathed through the arctic like conditions up here. A 3-point guy system protected my R6000 from self-destruction. The PAR EndFedz were securely anchored with enough slack to survive the windy conditions south of Ottawa. We do get some extreme winds out here. A couple of years ago, during a micro-burst type summer storm I lost some siding on the upper story of my home. Anything not anchored down gets blown to the next county.

DX has been hit and miss but throughout the season there's been some good conditions favourable for long haul communications. D44TXF on Cape Verde - 17m, NH6I Hawaii on 40 meters, ES3RM - Estonia on 17m, 5D0IPY - Morrocco on 17m, ZS6GAV - South Africa on 17m, and many more. The 17 meter band has been open during the very early morning hours during dawn and stays open for at least a couple of hours. Despite the low sunspot numbers there's a lot of DX to be had. I'm working these stations with a multi-band vertical and low power and on digital modes. Power reaching my R6000 vertical can't be more than 10-15 watts. I'm feeding it with 100 feet of RG59 75 ohm coax. At the transmit end I have my FT-950 set for 20 watts output.

The new Yaesu PEP FT-950 enhancements have made the FT-950 a superb DX rig. The receiver is quieter, the noise reduction settings now work great, and the AGC and Contour functions have been improved 100%. Check out the eham.net ratings for the FT-950 with the PEP enhancements. Satisfaction all around, and Yaesu is continuing to enhance the FT-9000, FT-2000 and FT-950 family of transceivers with regular firmware and DSP updates and features. The latest update to the FT-950 required a new operating manual to be released by Yaesu, such were the number of changes to the radio.

In conclusion the PAR EndFedz 40 and 30 meter antennas survived quite nicely through the rigours of an Ottawa winter, as did the recently refurbished Cushcraft R6000. Proper installation and guying were the key points that kept everything running with zero maintenance.

K5D - Desecheo Island Expedition - Worked!

2009-02-17T16:42:00.005-05:00

Desecheo Island off the coast of Puerto Rico was activated and will be on the air from February 12 - 26, 2009. The ops at K5D are covering most of the HF bands for the duration. Check your DX cluster of choice to discover their operating band and mode. They also have a very detailed website and also an online logbook that's updated at least twice a day. I've just worked them this afternoon on 17m SSB and they have an excellent signal to the Ottawa area. They've been on most days and I had a few spare minutes so I decided to work them. The ops work split and announce the listening frequency on the cluster and occasionally while transmitting. Still, you hear many ops trying to work the expedition on their transmit frequency.

I've been using the FT-950 and my re-furbished Cushcraft R6000 vertical. It's a nice combo and K5D came back on my second call. I'm running 100 watts and a wee bit of processing (20%) - seems to be working well. His signal was S5 - S9 and the ops are very very good in working all the stations. Not rapid fire fast, but a nice easy pace.

The FT-950 is very easy to set up on split and with the latest "PEP950" updates the receiver is very quiet - signals jump out. The "PEP950" updates include processor and dsp fixes and new features added to an already great transceiver.

K5D is the 6th most-needed DXCC entity world-wide, the 3rd most-needed DXCC entity in Europe and the 2nd most-needed DXCC entity in Asia.

What I'm Reading - "The Invisible War"

2009-02-17T12:44:00.004-05:00

This isn't a ham radio entry today. While away on Barbados I took a couple of books with me to fill in time on the beach. The Invisible War by Gil Murray is a fascinating read on a little known top secret group of Royal Canadian Signal Corps operating in Australia, from 1944 to 1946. The group intercepted and deciphered Japanese military signal. Number One Canadian Special Wireless Group (1CSWG) was part of the Allied Special Wireless units that provided vital advance information about Japanese battle plans.

Gil Murray says, " Long after the war's end, the very existence of 1CSWG and its part in the Pacific victory has remained unknown to Canadians. Canada's contribution to the top-secret Allied operations known in the Pacific as "Magic" and in Europe as "Ultra" could not be told under the Official Secrets Act." Canada and other Allied countries had been monitoring Japanese military signals since before the outbreak of war in the Pacific in 1941.

The book details the lives of the 336 operators, their equipment and skills and their survival in the bleak hostile terrain of Australia during the Pacific war.

Highly recommended.

"The Invisible War" ISBN 1-55002-371-3

8P9VE Barbados Expedition

2009-02-04T12:28:00.005-05:00

Ahhhhhh, warm, sunny, clear blue waters outside the door of a rented villa. Monday January 26th saw me leaving Ottawa (-29C) for a short holiday in beautiful friendly Barbados (28C). Ron, 8P6JB did all the paperwork and running around getting my license to operate in Barbados. I settled on the call 8P9VE as this represented a little of Canada in it.

The villa was at Reeds House on the north west shore of Barbados. The back entrance and patio of the villa descended to a white sand beach and palm trees. Very much a heaven compared to icy frozen Canada. I traveled with my VX-170 and VX-3R handhelds and a small external window mounted antenna. I just happened to be in the shadow of the island repeaters so I couldn't qso with anyone from the villa unless I was in the rented van and up at a high point away from shore.

The Barbados Amateur Radio Society meets at their club station every Friday night for a social get together, and Ron 8P6JB invited me to attend. The club station is located at one of the highest points of land on the island just outside Bridgetown. It sits on a former sugar plantation and you can see the remnants of the old wind mill that powered the plantation machinery.

The Friday meetings are very informal and softdrinks and beer are available to all - which probably makes these meeting very popular. I got to operate the club station which is equipped with very modern up to date gear.

Peter, 8P9NX, a retired M.D. from the Mayo clinic in Minnesota was operating the station when I arrived. He quickly set up the club laptop for psk and I made a few stateside contacts on 40m psk that evening.

Peter's obsession is golf and ham radio since he retired to the island a few years ago. He plans to sail his 37 foot sailboat with his son, from the U.S. to Barbados later this year. Peter works about 50 stations a day on his K3 and CW - he does a bit of psk too.

Barbados currently has about 150 licensed ham radio operators. Barbados' population is 281,968 (July 2008 Est.). Peter was telling me that at these latitudes 80 meters and 160 meters are great in the evenings with very low noise levels. Getting a license to operate in Barbados cost $15USD and you have to send a copy of your Canadian license and a list of all the equipment you'll be bringing to the island. The license is good for one year and I plan to go back in a few months with my own equipment and a couple of my PAR EndFed antennas packed away in my suitcase. Using the 8P9 call created quite a stir on 40 meters but qrm was high due to the number of stations.

The club station also has emergency backup power via batteries and generators in case of natural or man made disasters. The stations included a Yaesu FT-1000 MkV, an FT-450, 2 meter handhelds and base radios along with older Kenwood and Icom radios - so a very well designed and equipped ham station. Antennas include wire dipoles, various beams and verticals.

I would like to thank again Ron Wilkinson 8P6JB for all of the legwork and keeping in contact with me while on Barbados and the great Friday evening club meeting of January 30, 2009. And a big thanks to Peter 8P9NX for showing me the ropes at the club station.

Geography
Area: 431 sq. km. (166 sq. mi.); 2.5 times the size of Washington, DC.
Cities: Capital--Bridgetown.
Terrain: Generally flat, hilly in the interior.
Climate: Tropical.

International Space Station Ham Radio Repeater

2009-01-23T11:36:00.001-05:00

This is from SolarCycle24's web site run by Kevin VE3EN.

Here's what Kevin has to say:

This weekend I will again be broadcasting LIVE the 2m downlink of the International Spacestation Ham Radio repeater. This is a fun way that Ham Radio ops make contacts on the VHF airwaves.

When the ISS is within our footprint, Amateur Radio operators transmit on the 70cm amateur radio band freq. 437.800 where the antenna and repeater system onboard the ISS will relay the signals back to earth and the downlink is received on 2m freq. 145.800.

Below is a link to an earlier ISS pass video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-0zGnaFHK4

(image courtesy NASA)

A Season's Greeting To All Good Readers

2008-12-24T14:48:00.003-05:00

I would like to thank all readers of my blog for making it a success. A season of giving and renewal is upon us and I hope that each and every one of you finds the time and energy to help those less fortunate. If you know someone who’s spending time alone during this holiday season call them or have them in for a meal or invite them out for a coffee and donut.

I also hope that you all find some amateur related goodies under your trees in the morning.

See you all on the air, Christmas Day, for a few hours.

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.
- John Lennon

3B8GT, Mauritius

2008-12-20T21:07:00.004-05:00

Ham radio has been slow here at VE3MPG. I do get on most mornings just to listen around and I work PSK 99.99% of the time. It’s just a lot easier than trying to decipher SSB sigs with my less than perfect ear.

I was on this morning just before lunch and heard VE3JW, the amateur station over at the Museum of Science and Technology about 24 Kms to the north of me. Darin, VE3OIJ was just signing with a station, 3B8GT. Had to look that one up; and quickly, after Darin’s final, I got a call in to that DX station. He responded with a 599 and he was strong here too with some QSB. 3B8GT is the island of Mauritius about 900 kilometres to the east of Madagascar and east of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. A good catch indeed with all of 20 watts reaching my Cushcraft R6000 vertical. I’m not really sure how much signal reaches the antenna as I’m feeding it with 100 feet of RG59 el cheapo coax. That’s 75 ohm coax, but my FT-950 swr meter tells me there’s no reflected power. Let’s say that less than 20 watts gets radiated. The Museum uses a beam but I was hearing the Mauritius station Q5 here.

The op on Mauritius is Alexey 3B8GT with a very modest station according to his QRZ.com listing – 50 watts to a 3 element yagi. Conditions seemed to be perfect this morning but looking at the solar terrestrial data indicated the solar flux at 69, A-index at 2 and the K-index at 0. Not so good propagation it says. Nevertheless the actual working conditions seemed excellent at the time. Local temperature was –17C, crisp and sunny. When I signed with Alexey I hung around a bit to see who might work him but he called CQ for a good ten minutes and no takers. My strategy is to look for weak traces on the waterfall and try to work those stations – usually they turn out to be some good DX. Last spring I worked Reunion Island late in the evening on 20 meters using this strategy – it took me a week to snag him due to pile ups he was generating. That contact was using a 20 meter hamstick and 20 watts.

Another PSK31 tip:
Use the center of your waterfall. Testing will show that your transmit (TX) and receive (RX) will be strongest there. Don’t blindly use 1000Hz tone or strictly follow the VFO ‘set it and forget it' concept. You can easily lose 20% or more of your power on each edge of your pass band. Pass band centering of the signal will give the best results of both RX and TX.

CIA World Fact Book on Mauritius

A Good Cold Snap

2008-12-07T15:54:00.005-05:00

Winter has arrived in the Capital, Ottawa. Power is out this afternoon to about 17,000 people on the outskirts of greater Ottawa. There's been some terrible winds in excess of 50Km/hr and gusting higher out here near Metcalfe about 19 miles south of Parliament Hill. Temperatures have been dropping all day and stand at -12C at 3pm. Expected low temperatures overnight will hover around the -20C mark and that's not including the wind chill. Affected areas include: Orléans, Alexandria, Alfred, Clarence, Cumberland, Hawkesbury, North and South Plantagenet, Osgoode, Rockland, Russell, South Gower, and Winchester.

I've been listening to the Emergency Measures group repeater VA3MV, 146.985- (100.0Hz tone) but there's not much going on. Power in FN25fe has been on all day with no hiccups so far and the band conditions have been very very good on 20 meters. Last night 40 meters was extremely quiet; so quiet that I kicked in the preamp on the FT-950 so I could hear band noise. Signals really jumped out of the noise floor with very deep qsb on all the sigs.

My R6000 is surviving the windy onslaught largely due to the guying I installed when it went up a few weeks ago. I can see a very slight side to side movement of a couple of inches which isn't too bad. The PAR end fed dipoles of course are rugged enough for even Arctic use, which today's weather approximates very well.

Unconventional Antennas from NASA Labs

2008-11-28T11:22:00.006-05:00

Yes, I know I'm writing a lot about NASA, the Jet Propulsion Labs, and space stuff in general. This interests me a lot, anything to do with space travel and its related technology. I still remember watching the historic moon land in 1969 on our first Zenith colour TV. You've probably noticed too that I like working with different antenna technologies.

I ran across a NASA article that describes their antenna design software. It's nothing like what's available to the ham community. Their software takes ten hours to design new antennas for their satellites and spacecraft. You can imagine the criteria as to size, weight, and performance required for operation in deep space.

Here's what their computer clusters have managed to design - very unconventional - it looks like a bent paper clip but their computers have determined this is the best performing hardware for their satellites.

NASA describes their software, that runs on a network of personal computers as "evolutionary". The above photo shows an antenna that can fit into a one-inch space (2.5 by 2.5 centimeters) in front of 'borg' of computers.

"The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one," said project lead Jason Lohn, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. "Through a process patterned after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest,' the strongest designs survive and the less capable do not."
The software started with random antenna designs and through the evolutionary process, refined them. The computer system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design process. "We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have, and the computer simulated evolution, keeping the best antenna designs that approached what we asked for. Eventually, it zeroed in on something that met the desired specifications for the mission," Lohn said.

When I visited the JPL in Pasadena California in April of this year I discovered a group of hams working there and they had a JPL ham club and repeater. Bets that some hams had a hand in this software. Now if they could only release the software to us lowly hams who use wire antennas and minimalist stealth antennas. I need something this small on 160 meters.

NASA 'EVOLUTIONARY' SOFTWARE AUTOMATICALLY DESIGNS ANTENNA

JPL Amateur Radio Club

(Photos courtesy of NASA Ames)

NASA Tests First Deep-Space Internet

2008-11-24T13:26:00.004-05:00

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (11/18/08)

Some exciting new communication technologies are sure to emerge from these new protocols - they may even trickle down to amateur digital modes.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers have successfully tested the first deep space communications network based on the Internet, using the Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol to transmit dozens of images to and from a spacecraft more than 20 million miles from Earth. NASA and Google's Vint Cerf jointly developed the DTN protocol, which replaces the Internet's TCP/IP protocol for managing data transmissions. "This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet," says NASA's Adrian Hooke. An interplanetary Internet needs to be strong enough to withstand delays, disruptions, and lost connections that space can cause. For example, errors can happen when a spacecraft slips behind a planet, or when solar storms or long communication delays occur. Even traveling at the speed of light, communications sent between Mars and Earth take between three-and-a-half minutes to 20 minutes. Unlike TCP/IP, DTN does not assume there will be a constant end-to-end connection. DTN is designed so that if a destination path cannot be found, the data packets are not discarded but are kept in a network node until it can safely communicate with another node. In October, engineers started a month-long series of demonstrations, with data being transmitted using NASA's Deep Space Network twice a week.

Researchers say the interplanetary Internet could allow for new types of complex space missions that involve multiple landed, mobile, and orbiting spacecraft, as well as ensure reliable communications for astronauts on the surface of the moon.

NASA Tests First Deep-Space Internet

(photos were taken at the NASA JPL in Pasadena California, during my visit there in April 2008)

30 Meter Weekend

2008-11-24T12:24:00.002-05:00

30 meters was very busy this weekend but I didn't get to operate very much due to a GTD (getting things done) list. The little time I did have to operate worked out quite well. I tried my hand at Olivia mode. I had just finished reading in the December08 QST about this magic mode and made a nice contact to W9NWR down in Wisconsin. Copy was excellent and it's expected of this mode. Though Chuck's signal was full copy with Digital Master 780 he wasn't moving the S meter. Olivia presented perfect copy with no effort on my part. I had the pre-amps off in the FT-950 and about -6dB of attenuation - just enough to lower the band noise. I like Olivia but it is a really slow mode of communications. I can see using it under extreme band conditions where noise is bad or the signals are not visible in the waterfall. At least I could keep the buffer full with my typing.

The next morning I snagged some good DX just before heading out for a Sunday filled with activities. ES0IC, Meeme, on the island of Kassari (IOTA-EU034) in Estonia on PSK31. He was 599 copy on my PAR EF-30 end fed dipole. A really nice contact and great DX to boot. I noticed many DX stations operating Sunday morning. Sunday night was good too and the band stayed open well past 10:30pm local time. A strong Puerto Rican station, WP3UX, was calling CQ for at least a couple of hours. On Saturday night the band closed just after sunset.

If you haven't tried 30 meters give it a go. It's a great DX band, only digital and CW modes are permitted (no contests!), and if you hit it right there's a lot of great DX to be had. All contacts on the weekend were completed using 20 watts output and using my FT-950. The 950 dsp filtering options are great for digital work.

To keep tabs on 30 meter DX activity I was using a new DX cluster called DXAnywhere programmed by a young British chap, Peter, M3PHP. Peter says, "The system also includes a full blown social networking system where users can setup profiles of themselves and their amateur radio background and become friends with other users! We're also keen on keeping the system fresh so on a monthly basis we're going to be adding new applications into the mix."

30 Meter Digital Group 1 Year Anniversary Weekend

2008-11-21T20:18:00.003-05:00

For all of you digital mode enthusiasts this is the perfect weekend for testing those 30 meter antennas and setting the bandswitch to 30 meter position.

The 30 Meter Digital Group is celebrating their one year anniversary this weekend. The activity starts this weekend November 22nd and 23rd.

10.140 USB +/- 1000 PSK

(10.132 – 10.145 – HELL, OLIVIA, MFSK, RTTY, WSPR, PropNet, Etc)

10.140 +2000 – 30MDG Members Dedicated Hours from 1900z to 2200z - 30MDG members look for other members to ragchew with further up the waterfall.

Let's celebrate our 30MDG 1st year anniversary and have some fun on the 30 Meter Band! The 30 Meter Digital Group would like to invite our 1,350 plus members along with any and all digital operators for a casual digital weekend on the 30 Meter Band.

Those that are 30MDG members this would be a good time to mark your calendar and meet up with other 30MDG Members for a ragchew or meet a DX member. You do NOT have to be a 30MDG member nor join the 30MDG to participate; just get on the 30m band and have some digital fun!

Our 30 Meter Digital Group promotes:

- Awareness of the unique 30 Meter Band (note: we are SECONDARY USERS
of this band and must give way to Primary users so please use good operating procedures)

- Proper digital mode operation and procedures

- Experimenting with different digital modes, power, antennas, etc.

- Low power operation and only using the least amount of power needed for the contact at hand (note: 75% of digital mode operators use between 20-40w on the band…also note for U.S.A. operators the 30m band is a great place because we must use <200w so we are all on the same playing field on the 30 meter band…oh yes, no voice for U.S.A. ops so it is really an all digital band)

- Casual operating on the 30 Meter Band from ragchews to DX but we do NOT promote Contesting….30 Meters is a WARC band and one place we all can enjoy away from contesting.

- Increase 30 Meter digital mode use on this under used unique band that has the best of both 20 Meter and 40 Meter propagation because it sits between them (again note we are SECONDARY USERS)

Here at VE3MPG I use the PAR EF-30 End Fed Dipole on 30 meters. I'll report after the weekend on conditions and activities.

Yahoo 30 Meter PSK Group

30 Meter Digital Group

30 Meter Antennas

Arnie Coro CO2KK talks about 30 meters

VE3MPG, Cyborg and Bionic Ham

2008-11-19T13:06:00.003-05:00

Cyborg is a fictional character, a superhero appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Ooops wrong definition; here we go again - Cyborg: A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e., an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. That's close enough, though I haven't been to outer space yet but it could happen. And, I'm not a superhero or even a superham.

In the fall of 2006 I received a cochlear implant, my bionic implant.

In the mid 1980s I was losing my hearing at a rapid pace due to a genetic fault. Many in my family were hard of hearing and the older family members, my father and my grandmother were left with little hearing. By 1990 I was wearing two intra canal digital aids but speech and going to the movies and TV were extremely difficult to hear. By 1993 I was profoundly deaf and could barely use a phone and had a closed captioning device on my TV set. I was wearing very powerful behind the ear aids at that time and by the year 2000 I was really struggling. I had my first appointment at the Audiology Unit at Ottawa's Civic Hospital but didn't qualify for an implant at that time. Apparently I wasn't deaf enough yet. Criteria has since changed making it much easier to qualify for a cochlear implant.

Deaf or hard of hearing persons learn to cope with their disability and I learned to lip read very well. Of course lip reading only worked if the other person was facing me. I carried on pretty well in this way for a few years. In 2005 while at home my burglar alarm tripped and two squad cars showed up - I live out in the country but it didn't take long for the police to respond. I signed to them that I was deaf and they wondered if I could hear the alarm and I shook my head 'no'. Well that was the turning point for me - I could no longer use a telephone but did rely on the very early Blackberries for text and email messaging - another way of coping.

So I got with the program again at the Civic hospital after an audiologist at the Canadian Hearing Society recommended it since hearing aids couldn't do anything more for me.

Curtail my ham activities it did. In 1993 I got so discouraged I sold my HF gear, a beautiful Kenwood TS-520SE as I couldn't hear SSB anymore. CW was fine even up to my last few days before the implant. With the little residual hearing I had left I was still able to hear that CW tone. I hadn't done 2 meters from the car for years but still had a radio installed just in case. I remember the day I just couldn't struggle anymore not hearing the guys on the repeater. I really missed that.

Pictured above is the implant receiver, the Advanced Bionics HiRes 90k the most advanced DSP based processor available. The gold plated titanium part is the enclosure for the electronics. The clear part with gold wires running along the perimeter is the implant antenna with a small magnet in the center. The long sensor array tip is wound inside the cochlea of the inner ear. There are 16 sensors on the tip and most of them end up touching ever so slightly some of the nerves inside the damaged cochlea. A small channel is routed out from the surface of the skull just above and behind the ear to seat the processor and antenna. A hole is then drilled through the mastoid bone behind the ear to carefully insert and position the sensor array in the cochlea. Some extremely small metal guide tools are used by the surgeon to carefully insert the array without doing any damage to the fragile cochlea.

This photo shows a channel routed from the skull - where the receiver will reside. You can see the sutures that will hold the receiver in place and the electrode lead channel. The skin and scalp are then replaced and sutured back. I arrived at the Civic Hospital in the morning and was prepped for surgery. After 5.5 hours in the OR I was wheeled into recovery, then ICU and was released at 6a.m. the next morning. Five weeks later my implant was activated.

Did deafness affect my ham radio hobby? Yes it did. Did I give up? No!

Helen Keller said that if she had to choose between being deaf and being blind, she'd be blind, because while blindness cut her off from things, deafness cut her off from people.

My hearing today is based on the skills of the engineers, programmers and researchers at Advanced Bionics in California. Sound is coded in bits and bytes and transformed into something recognizable to my brain. My implant has 16 electrodes, but the virtual-channels software will make my hardware act like there are actually 121. Manipulating the flow of electricity to target neurons between each electrode creates the illusion of seven new electrodes between each actual pair, similar to the way an audio engineer can make a sound appear to emanate from between two speakers. It takes at least 100 channels to create good music perception.

The photo above is me, five weeks after surgery and the day of my 'activation'. This is the external processor with a small T-mic in the ear where the sound is picked up. The gray headpiece is held on with a small magnet where the internal receiver, antenna and magnet are located. A battery located on the external processor powers the internal electronics through the skin. A diagnostic light on the external processor stops blinking when a data link is established with the internal processor. I'm being programmed via that cable to an XP computer running Advanced Bionics' mapping software. Three new strategies can be programmed to the external processor - I have one for loud environments, very quiet environments and one for regular sound environments. The T-mic detaches and I can plug my Ipod directly to my implant for listening to music (mono only!) or podcasts which I download to the Ipod Touch.

I am slowly making more voice contacts on SSB and FM but still have a lot of difficulty with bad audio on the phone bands. Some operators have excellent audio while many have overprocessed and overdriven audio. I find this especially on the local HF nets where good net etiquette is not followed. The net controls either speak too fast or you get the 'yellers' with their mic gain turned up too high. It will just take time and the patience of the hams at the other end of the mic. Today most of my HF activity centers on the digital modes and I enjoy that immensly.

If any of you have questions about this article please post them in the comments section or email me directly via the QRZ.com listing for my call.

17 Meters and K4CMC

2008-11-16T14:07:00.001-05:00

17 meters has been open for most of the morning to Europe and now the southern U.S. states are rolling in. QSB is heavy but signals are 20+ S9 most of the time. I worked Bruce Davis, K4CMC. He used to work at NASA during the Apollo moon missions. Small world after posting the article about the recovered moon photos yesterday.

Here's a picture of Bruce in the Apollo 11 cockpit at Kennedy Space Center in July of
1969 about one week prior to the first lunar landing mission.

Bruce says, "After getting out of the USAF I worked as an Instrumentation Technician and then as a Senior Apollo Spacecraft Electronic Technician at Kennedy Space Center from 1965-1970 as a Spacecraft Operator (SCO) in cockpit of Apollo Spacecraft during ground testing on many of the Apollo missions,including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13."

This is the coolness factor of amateur radio. You really never know who you are going to meet on the air. I always make it a habit to check QRZ.com for profiles of the hams I meet on the bands.

New Pictures of the Moon Discovered

2008-11-15T22:28:00.001-05:00

A woman saves the 1960s photo archives of the moon's surface

This article really is about ham radio - well more specifically how collecting and hoarding our treasures can really pay off. The absolutely cool technical stuff going on here is historical, especially with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing taking place next year on July 20th 2009.

A retired NASA employee, Nancy Evans, kept many things in her garage. But as time passed, NASA forgot. In fact, it would have thrown the machines out, if not for Nancy Evans, who had worked the project. She stored the machines in her garage for more than 20 years, and when NASA wanted to recycle the moon tapes, she took those, too.

"I had spent most of my working life saving data, and salvaging data, seeing that it got put safely in the planetary data system. I wasn't about to let this huge data set be thrown away," said Nancy Evans, a former NASA/JPL researcher.

In the late 1960s, NASA sent five Lunar Orbiter missions to photograph the surface of the moon and gain a better understanding of the lunar environment in advance of the Apollo program. Data were recorded on large magnetic tapes and transferred to photographic film for scientific analysis. When these images were first retrieved from lunar orbit, only a portion of their true resolution was available because of the limited technology available.

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, located at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., is taking analog data from original recorders used to store on tape and 1,500 of the original tapes, converting the data into digital form, and reconstructing the images. The restored image released Thursday confirms data from the original tapes can be retrieved from the newly-restored tape drives from the 1960s when combined with software from 2008.

"I'm glad that we could offer our services to the project team and play a part in the recovery of such an historic image of the moon," said Ames Director S. Pete Worden.

Future images will be made publicly available when they are fully processed and calibrated. The intent of this project is to facilitate, wherever possible, the broadest dissemination and public use of these images.

"It's a tremendous feeling to restore a 40-year-old image and know it can be useful to future explorers," said Gregory Schmidt, deputy director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute at Ames. "Now that we've demonstrated the capability to retrieve images, our goal is to complete the tape drives' restoration and move toward retrieving all of the images on the remaining tapes," he added.

Another, image of the lunar surface now shows details as small as one meter, which they can compare with future mapping missions.

"This is going to show us how the moon is changing. We fully expecting to see some new craters," said Greg Schmidt, Deputy Director of Lunar Sciences.

A classic case of pulling treasure from what might have been in the trash and all because Nancy Evans was a bit of a packrat.

As the images are processed, they will be submitted to the Planetary Data System, which NASA's Space Science Mission Directorate in Washington sponsors in cooperation with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The images also will be calibrated with standard mapping coordinates from the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Research Program in Flagstaff, Ariz.

NASA will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009 to map the moon's surface. The restoration of the Lunar Orbiter images to high quality images will provide the scientific community with a baseline to measure and understand changes that have occurred on the moon since the 1960s. These data could help mission planners assess the long-term risk to lunar inhabitants from small meteor impacts and establish longitude and latitude lines for lunar mapping.

"This effort was made possible by the vision and dedication of Apollo-era NASA employees, independent researchers, and a true veteran team of engineers and young students," said Dennis Wingo, the program lead for the project.

"We liken it to archeology. Techno-archeology," said Dennis Wingo, an imaging expert.

NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and Innovative Partnerships Program Office in Washington provided initial funding for the project. Engineering and logistics for the project team were provided by Wingo of SkyCorp, Inc., Huntsville, Ala., with donated services by Keith Cowing from SpaceRef Interactive, Inc., Reston, Va., under the auspices of Alliance of Commercial Enterprises and Education for Space, and the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

To view the image and for more information about the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP

and

http://www.moonviews.com

For more information about NASA's exploration program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

Download video about the LOIRP project.

Thanks to NASA Ames, JPL in Pasedena and ABC News (KG0-TV, San Fransisco)

40 meter DX via RTTY

2008-11-13T16:25:00.003-05:00

Worked OX3DB in Igaliko Greenland on 40 meters RTTY this afternoon at 2030Z. That's a good hour before dusk here south of Ottawa. Conditions are very good around that time. Jan, OX3DB, gave me a 599 signal report. I was transmitting on the PAR EF-40 end fed dipole with 20 watts.

Here's a bit about Igaliko, from the Greenland tourism bureau -

Igaliko is a settlement in the ancient see of Gardar. From the slopes above it, people enjoy the most beautiful and peaceful panorama of the country. The name Igaliko means “The Abandoned Fireplace”. The Norwegian Anders Olsen started farming at Gardar in 1780 and dedicated the place to St. Nicolas, the protector of seafaring people. A ruin of a cross church, 27x16 m, built of sandstone in the 12th century remains there. The ruins of the bishopric cover an extended area, among them the ruins of a 130 m² celebration hall, a tithe-hut, where the tithes were kept, and a cow shed for 100 heads of cattle.

The most remote abode of the pope’s representatives was at Gardar. Exploration voyages to Markland (Labrador and Newfoundland) and voyages for walrus hunting started from there and Brattahlid. Under the choir of the church, skulls of walruses were excavated. Probably people hoped to improve the walrus hunting by burying them near the graves of the chieftains. Gardar was the main centre of education and administration in Greenland.

And a bit more info on Gardar from Wikipedia -

Gardar was the 'capital' of the Norse settlements in Greenland and seat of the bishop of Greenland. Presently the settlement of Igaliku is situated on the same location.

Many ruins of the Norse settlements can still be seen in Igaliku today. The main ruin is of the Gardar Cathedral, a cross-shaped church built of sandstone in the 12th century. The maximum length is 27 m, the width 16 m. Besides the cathedral ruins of the stables (with place for 60 cows) and other buildings can still be seen. Its population in 2005 was 60.

It's interesting to check qrz.com for information about the DX station one works. Sometimes it's a great lesson in geography and history as is the case here with OX3DB.

The last time I worked Greenland was in the very early 80s using the RS satellites and CW using 10 meters up and 144Mhz downlink using a Sinclair ZX-81 for tracking. Printouts were on thermal paper and the tracking program was loaded from a cassette tape player and the Keplerian elements input manually. I believe the Keps in those days were published via the local packet working group bbs.

Amateur Radio Exam Generator

2008-11-13T11:42:00.001-05:00

The website of the Canadian regulator, Industry Canada, provides a free download of software to generate Amateur Radio exams. This service is provided as a learning aid for prospective amateurs and as an administrative tool for accredited examiners.The software can be downloaded from "Software to Generate Amateur Examinations".

This software package can produce a unique examination for either a basic or advanced amateur certificate according to the random selection criteria outlined in RIC-3. It will also generate a worksheet, and it has an additional feature that allows self-testing on a home computer.

Awh Master Commander: Software Control For The YAESU FT 2000 or FT 950

2008-11-12T16:34:00.002-05:00

N.B.: February 20, 2010 – From Rick IW1AWH - “Currently MC is not working with FT-950 and with FT-9000 (needs more work, I'll need more time).” http://iw1awh.jimdo.com/

AWH Master Commander is control software for the Yaesu FT-2000 and the FT-950. What makes this suite of software different from Ham Radio Deluxe and other software for rig control is that each module shows a graphical representation of specific controls of each radio.

Here's an example of the connect screen for the FT-950.

This next control screen is the most impressive - a panoramic display in real time.

This next control component is the transmit equalizer and processor control screen.

Here's the 10 meter FM control module - with tone access control

And finally the SWR control and testing module - be careful of this one as it will sweep the entire band to map the SWR of your antenna. It will also check a band segment or single frequency.

This cutting edge software developed by Rick (Riccardo) Bertoli IW1AWH is in its current beta stage but I can tell you once you try it you'll be hooked. Awh Commander is turning out to be a very comprehensive piece of software to extend the controls of the FT-950 or the FT-2000 to your home computer or laptop. All that's needed is a serial cable connected from your laptop or shack computer to the FT-950 or the FT-2000.

I highly recommend the software and I'm looking forward to what Rick will be doing to further enhance Awh Commander. Rick gives SDR a whole new meaning with this fantastic piece of software.

You can download the beta version from Rick's blog here or go to the site of W4LGH in the U.S.

Software Defined Radio Wikipedia

Cycle 24 Sunspot 1008

2008-11-12T11:49:00.001-05:00

A new sunspot (1008) emerged this week signaling more Cycle 24 activity. The bands have been very good even up to 17 meters. PSK stations populate 18.100 and some good DX is to be had.

Above: New-cycle sunspot group 1007 emerges on Halloween and marches across the face of the sun over a four-day period in early November 2008. Credit: the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

On Nov. 3rd and again on Nov. 4th, double-oh seven unleashed a series of B-class solar flares. Although B-flares are considered minor, the explosions made themselves felt on Earth. X-rays bathed the dayside of our planet and sent waves of ionization rippling through the atmosphere over Europe. Hams monitoring VLF radio beacons noticed strange "fades" and "surges" caused by the sudden ionospheric disturbances.

Good news for the upcoming winter season and should give us some decent conditions for working lots of DX.

I notice that an hour prior to sunset on 40 meters the Europeans start to roll in very nicely. Good signal strengths and many psk stations on. I work psk stations exclusively here and I'll write a future blog posting on that very soon. Well after dark 20 meters is still open with south American stations populating the band.

Coming up on November 22nd and 23rd is the "30 Meter Digital Group 1 Year Anniversary Weekend."

10.140 USB +/- 1000 PSK
(10.132 – 10.145 – HELL, OLIVIA, MFSK, RTTY, WSPR, PropNet, Etc)

10.140 +2000 – 30MDG Members Dedicated Hours from 1900z to 2200z
(30MDG members look for other members to ragchew with further up the waterfall)

Check into the 30 Meter Feld Hell Net:
30 Meter Net 0000 Z Monday 10.138. Feld Hell Net Control is W8LEW Lew.

Not sure what 30 Meters has to offer? Then go here:
http://www.30meterdigital.org/files/30_Meter_Band_INFORMATION.pdf

30 Meter Digital Group

FT-950 Back On The Air

2008-11-04T20:26:00.004-05:00

It's been a few months since I've fired up the FT-950. Got it dusted off and moved back to the shack. The last time it was used was at the MARG Field Day at the Long Island Marina in Kars. It's hard to forget how great the receiver is in the 950.

Late this afternoon I worked TK5IH in Corsica and ZP8AE in Paraguay, on PSK, with 589 and 599 reports using 20 watts to the Cushcraft R6000. Earlier in the day using the 'old' FT-100, I worked Maria, SA2YLM on 20 meters. 17 meters opened just after lunch for a short time and managed to snag a few Europeans with great 5NN reports.

The nice 'width' feature of the FT-950 allows me to narrow down the passband and get rid of high powered stations close to the DX that I want to work. The HRD* waterfall below shows the passband with many signals.

The HRD* waterfall below shows no signals, on either side of the received psk track. This eliminates desensing of the receiver by narrowing the passband so strong signals on either side of the track being decoded dissapear. The FT-950 can also notch out a signal on either side of the decoded signal.

I use Ham Radio Deluxe as control software and Digital Master 780 for digital modes. I find it is one of the most intuitive ham software suites. It keeps track of my logs and can be used for just about any digital mode now current on the amateur bands. There's an excellent satellite tracking module included. Simon Brown, HB9DRV, is continually adding features and tweaking the software. The Ham Radio Deluxe forums are a repository of information pertaining to any subject about digital modes and how to connect Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, and just about any transceiver to sound card interfaces and to your shack computer. HRD works with Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Some PSK tips:

In PSK modes use UPPER CASE characters sparingly. Lower case text in PSK31 varicode transmits fewer bits of data. You'll increase transmit speed and improve the likelihood of proper decoding on the other end by using lower case text as much as possible. (For example, the difference between a lowercase “e” (11) and an uppercase “E” (1110111) is three times more bits.)

*Ham Radio Deluxe

The R6000 Rocks!

2008-11-03T19:06:00.001-05:00

Finally got the antenna connected late this afternoon and got on 20 meters, PSK. Worked Florida and Cuba with about 15 watts to the antenna. 599+ reports so I could lower the power a bit more. I’m a bit hesitant to do this as I’m feeding it will el cheapo RG58 coax; about 110 feet of it so the attenuation is about 3.5db. Have to get some connectors on the good RG213 stuff that I have still coiled, new, in the basement.

Conditions seem to be very good as most signals are way over S9. There’s been some very recent sunspot activity. My favourite site for checking solar activity belongs to Kevin, VE3EN, down in Cornwall Ontario. There’s been a good bit of traffic in the forums these last few days. Check it out.

SOLARCYCLE24.COM

Technorati Tags: R6000,sunspots,PSK31

R6000 Up and Running

2008-11-02T12:58:00.001-05:00

Spent a few hours yesterday getting the 20 foot R6000 set up – it worked right away and tuned very nicely on all of the band portions that I use. I used guy ropes to steady this vertical. In previous years at this location the winds are brutal and the R6000 used to sway precipitously. I am positive this had much to do with weakening the joints and accelerated wear and tear. It’s so windy in these parts that one farm a few lines down from us uses wind turbines and some solar panels for their only power source. Testing the antenna with my MFJ-259 analyzer shows it’s right on the frequencies that I measured for in the instructions.

The above photo shows the fibreglass repair to the main insulator – this was all shredded and weather beaten. Three coats of black bumper paint were applied for protection. The control box was also sprayed with 3 coats of bumper paint and the seams sealed with Silicone II.

The antenna is mounted on a solid metal fence post knocked into the ground about 5 feet and a round steel post was knocked in beside it about 4 feet down and wire wrapped together for stability and strength. The R6000 then slips on to the round fence post about 4 feet above ground. Not the best installation but it’s easy for one person to service and maintain at this height. I’ve worked lots of DX this way.

Technorati Tags: R6000,DX,vertical,Cushcraft

Cushcraft R6000 Repaired and Refurbished

2008-10-25T18:08:00.001-04:00

My R6000 is several years old now. I took it down 2 years ago intending to repair and refurbish it in a few weeks. Typical of my many projects lying around the garage this one always seemed to take longer than usual. If any of you are familiar with the R6000 it is quite a tall antenna. I've had it lying across a portable workbench and plastic lawn chairs for support. Last winter I took the traps inside and spent a couple of weeks cleaning adding new stainless hardware and sealing the traps. The original hardware nuts inside had become corroded due to moisture so they were all replaced. Everything was double checked and then new caps installed and then sealed with Silicone II to waterproof them.

The most complicated part of the project was the repair to the main insulator base. Originally an unprotected tube of fibreglass, UV had deteriorated it so the polyester surface had evaporated and left bare fibreglass fibres that absorbed dirt and moisture.

Show here as an example is the R5 fibreglass insulator in the same sorry state mine had become after 6 years exposure to Ottawa weather conditions.

I purchased a fibreglass repair kit at Canadian Tire where you mix resin and hardener and paint the resulting mixture on the old surface. You have about eight minutes to work the mixture before it hardens. I did this in two stages, sanding between the coats and re-opening the bolt holes with a cordless drill. After the final coating of resin, sanding and making sure the bolts fit through the holes I spray painted the repair with bumper paint, flat black, with 2 or 3 coats. Bumper type paint is very tough and now provides a UV blocking layer to prevent any further deterioration.

Here's what the repair looks like. Again this is a Cushcraft R5 photo the repair looks very similar to my Cushcraft R6000. The R6000 is still sold retail in Canada for about $450CDN. I purchased my copy second hand and used it for a season out here till the brutal winds loosened everything up. Every piece of hardware was replaced with stainless steel. In a refurbishment like this a Dremel tool in invaluable for cutting new stainless steel hardware down to size and removing corrosion and polishing. The R6000 is a great performer and have worked Antarctica using 20 watts on PSK. The R6000 uses a set of elevated ground radials and there's no need for installing a ground radial system. The antenna instructions require the antenna to be at least 10 feet off the ground. I have mine sitting about 4.5 feet above ground but may elevate that when I erect the antenna this coming week. I'll post actual close-up pictures when I get it mounted in place. I also intend to add three guying ropes to stabilize the antenna during high winds.

Technorati Tags: R6000,Cushcraft,psk,refurbished

Radio News August 1929

2008-10-23T20:56:00.001-04:00

From my collection