A Radio I Wish I Still Had

I had a radio many years ago, grade 7 if I remember. It was a crystal radio in the shape of a Mercury Space Capsule. It was about two inches long with a tuning probe at the top and two wires coming out of the bottom - one a crystal earphone and the other had a clip on it to connect to a convenient antenna. During the hot summer nights in Tecumseh near Windsor I would listen to CBC Windsor and the great AM station WJR (760AM) on the other side of the river in Detroit. At night WJR was all talk radio and CBC would broadcast adventure stories. WJR began as WCX in 1922 and was located in the Fisher Building in downtown Detroit. It began its callsign with "WJR Detroit, from the Golden Tower of the Fisher Building." Many nights were spent tuning that little radio trying to dig out some real distant DX. It needed no batteries or other power source. I wish I'd held on to that little radio.

Crystal Radios: Stay Tuned Crystal Sets

Algonquin Park, Fall 2008

This is not a ham radio related post. Not this time. I've just returned from 5 days in Algonquin Park, without HF gear. I did nothing ham radio related. I needed a hiatus from my radios. I did take my 2 meter handheld for the drive up from Ottawa but repeaters are quiet up that way. It was a weekday so it was even more quiet.

I stayed in the Lake of Two Rivers campground near Killarney Lodge. This is the park's oldest campground. It is kept immaculate for campers. I tow an Antigua hybrid with all the amenities of home. The schedule was getting up late, turning up the furnace to warm the trailer and a good breakfast of porridge and juice with tea. The lunch schedule was usually way after 12 noon and supper was later, after sitting around a good roaring campfire with wine, cheese and crackers. After the dinner dishes were stowed away it was movie time and then bed.

You know I didn't really miss my station much and the dining table in the camper was clear of the clutter of wires, rigs and tuners. It was a good holiday but way too short and Algonquin really is a beautiful place to camp.


I was camping with some university friends - we go way back, to 1972. We've held on to our friendship for a lot of years. We try to meet at least once a year at campgrounds or at my place near Metcalfe.

I think that next year ham radio will definitely be part of my camping. Algonquin was just too beautiful this year to spend any time on the radio.

VC3RCS Leitrim

It was a humid and rainy Friday afternoon at Leitrim Station in Ottawa's south end. Ken Halcrow VE3SRS has only been back from Alert for a few hours and already his hand is on the key sending morse code, making contacts. This is the 50th anniversary of ham radio at Alert and Leitrim. The Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club trailer is on site at CFS Leitrim sheltering the veterans visiting VC3RCS today. There were a handful of hams there this afternoon each with a story about how ham radio served as an only means of communicating with family and loved ones from their remote postings.

CFS Leitrim is Canada's oldest operational signal intelligence collection station. Established by the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals in 1941 as 1 Special Wireless Station and renamed Ottawa Wireless Station in 1949, CFS Leitrim acquired its current name when the Supplementary Radio System was created in 1966. In 1946, the station's complement was 75 personnel. In 2005 personel was estimated at 450 with 29 civilian employees. PACERM PETERE, the station's motto means Research For Peace.

Here's Ken at the door of the comms trailer this afternoon.










Here's an unidentified former op at the keyer with Ken VE3SRS.



Hutch, VE3NG says "My most memorable call sign activity was from 1963-1965 when I was VE8TU and VE8RCS, operating from Alert, N.W.T., on the tip of Ellesmere Island, 650 miles from the North Pole. Alert is the most northern permanently inhabited settlement in the world. " Hutch was also the holder of VE1KV, VE8TU, VE8RCS, VE3GFL, VE2ZD, VE3GUJ.

VC8RCS will be operating most of the weekend on 40 meters and possibly other bands. When I left this afternoon Ken was working repeater VE3TWO making contacts.

911

From A Prayer for America - Sunday September 23, 2001
Oprah Winfrey

I believe that when you lose a loved one you gain an angel whose name you know.

Over 6,000 and counting, angels added to the spiritual roster these past two weeks.

It is my prayer that they will keep us in their sight with a direct line to our hearts.

May we all leave this place and not let one single life have passed in vain.

May we leave this place determined to now use every moment that we yet live to turn up the volume in our own lives, to create deeper meaning, to know what really matters.

What really matters is who you love and how you love.

Seven Years Since - The Big Picture - The Boston Globe

9/11

The anniversary of that fated day, 9/11, is tomorrow. Those of you reading this blog will probably reminisce of where you were when they heard of the monstrous attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center, and over Pennsylvania in 2001. I was in my office when a colleague called. Turn on the TV he said. He told me what was going on but I could not comprehend any of what he was saying until I turned on the teli and saw something unimaginable happening in New York city and then at the Pentagon. The chaos caused with the no fly orders in the U.S. was felt here in Canada as those planes without airports were landing at Canadian destinations. Overseas flights were filling Gander's airport and available accommodations were scarce. The people of Gander opened their hearts and their doors to stranded fliers. I know we'd help our friends south of the border again, without reservation. Some of you may have known friends or family directly involved in the mayhem in New York or the Pentagon. A retired friend living across the street from my former home in the Glebe had a daughter working at the Pentagon when it was hit by American Airlines flight 77. The enormity of the attacks still linger today. Our world was permanently changed by the events of 9/11. Hams took up the slack when comms were needed at the WTC rescue effort and even welfare traffic into NYC and elsewhere when it was needed during that crisis. These tireless hams need to be remembered too.

The Pentagon Amateur Radio Club is hosting a special event station commemorating 9/11.

Pentagon Amateur Radio Club to Host Special Event Station Commemorating 9/11 (Sep 2, 2008) -- On Thursday, September 11, the Pentagon Amateur Radio Club (PARC) will operate a Special Event station commemorating the 7th anniversary of the attacks that occurred on the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and over Pennsylvania in 2001. This special event will be held in conjunction with President Bush's visit to the Pentagon to dedicate the new Pentagon Memorial, honoring the 184 people, both at the Pentagon and on American Airlines flight 77, who lost their lives in the attacks. Operators will be on 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80 meters - both phone and CW - with plans to operate on a 12 hour basis (1200-2400 UTC). There will be a special QSL card available for stations that work K4AF. For more information, please contact Gary Sessums, KC5QCN. QSL via PARC, PO Box 2322, Arlington, VA 22202.

First Anniversary 9/11 Special Events Station Story - The K4P story 9-11-2002 Special Event Station at The Pentagon.

J-38 Telegraph Keys used by the US Army Signal Corps

I'm not an avid key collector. If I come across something interesting I usually go for it if the price is right. I found this Lionel J-38 key at the large flea market just north of Morrisburg on Hwy. 31 (Bank Street). I'd seen it a week before I bought it but the seller wanted way too much for it. The following weekend I went down again but he was nowhere to be seen since it was one of our 'rainy' type weekends. Well three weeks later I went down with a friend who did the haggling for me since I didn't want to show up again drooling over that key and him not budging from his price. I eventually brought it home for $35CDN.

Now was research time - I had done a bit of research during that first week but looking again at all the Google hits I realized that this was one of the rarest J-38 keys manufactured by the Lionel Corporation of N.Y. The full name of the Lionel company was engraved just below the knob on the base. Now the key is not perfect but a little cleaning will bring it all back to an acceptable 'shack' showpiece condition.

In the coming weeks I'll showcase a few more finds. My collection isn't huge but I do have some interesting keys. Bob Ellis, VE3DUB (Dirty Uncle Bob), now a silent key, got me interested after seeing his collection way back in 2002 - here's a photo of Bob and his collection and his ham station.

More than you ever wanted to know about J-38 keys.

Virtual Box, Linux and PSKMail

Sun Microsystems has just released version 2.0 of its free virtualization software. The free and open source software runs on all major operating systems. Sun VxM Virtual Box runs multiple operating systems at the same time on the PC. Virtual Box runs Linux on the Windows desktop, in a separate window. It supports the Solaris OS, OpenSolaris, Windows, Macintosh OS X, and Linux. Here, at VE3MPG, I've been using it to experiment with PSKMail which only runs on Linux at present. The photo at the left (click for larger view) shows Puppy Linux running on the XP desktop. For all of you who have wanted to experiment with the different flavours of Linux this software will run most distributions quite nicely on Windows XP or Vista. The software allows Linux to boot from an iso CD image that you download from the various Linux sites. So far I've run Puppy, Mandriva and will be trying openSuse in the next few weeks. There is a live PSKMail distribution called PSKLive. It has everything installed and ready to run and uses Mandriva 2007 linux distribution as its base.

More information on the various flavours of Linux distributions can be found at Distrowatch.

The first graphic below shows the startup and configuration screen of Virtual Box. The second graphic shows PSKMail and fldigi, a linux psk program running under the PSKLive distro.











We experiment and try new things, this is what hams do, and PSKMail seems like a worthwhile effort to pursue. More on this in a future post.