Yikes. It has been a while.

On the work front. Things are going really well at the stealth start up I work for. I am having fun.

I think I have an original subtheme for my office. At least I've never seen any one do it. I have every flavor of Altoids that come in the normal rectangular tin.

• Peppermint
• Cinnamon
• Spearmint
  
• Wintergreen
• Creme de Menthe
• Ginger
• Liquorice
• Chocolate dipped peppermint
  
• Chocolate dipped Cinnamon
  
• Chocolate dipped Creme de Menthe

On the Radio front:
HF is going badly from home. I have a couple more things to try. I live in a Faraday cage. Everything I try to put out gets absorbed by the chicken wire in the stucco. Looks like I'll go mobile. DXpositions is what people call it. Going out somewhere with a group of people to somewhere the HF interference is low and the ability to put up an antenna is great.

On the VHF/UHF, it is going well. OK, I do have one antenna on the car. It looks like a like an extra normal antenna, but it is 4ft tall. I've been Net Control for the 9AM Talk net a few times. http://9amtalk.net/ . I have 2 VHF mobiles. A 2 meter that I keep in the office and a dual band at home on my desk. I have gotten packet and sstv to work. It did require 2 different devices. I use a rigblaster P&P for sstv. I use a tnc-x for packet. Packet, 1200 baud communications over 144mhz frequency. How's that for old school. :D

If you want to use a rigblaster P&P as a sound based TNC, DO NOT DO IT! You need to use a package call agw found at http://www.sv2agw.com/ham/default.htm. Both the free and the paid for version has not been updated for new sound cards since 2002/2003. It did not properly work with the sound cards in my asus eee, 3 yo dell desktop ot 2yo dell laptop.

TNC-x is a great device. I paid $115. only because I have a crappy soldering iron and it was easier to pay the $30 for him to assemble and test it for me, http://www.tnc-x.com/ . GREAT piece of hardware. If you just want the board in kit form, $48, and the surface mount parts are already on the board.

I am learning to be an emergency communicator. I had to take a series of online FEMA classes. I am taking a 5 week CERT training class. I have the back of my car filled with my Go-KIT. The go kit is the stuff needed if you are called out for an emergency. Spare radios, antennas, food, water, clothing. here is an example: http://www.scc-ares-races.org/go-pak.htm

I'll be participating in my first emergency communications excercise on September 6th.

On a personal front, I've kept the weight off for a year now. Sill a bit under 290. 285 on a good day.

ARRL Field Day 2008

Note: I was really going a little nuts with CW when I wrote my last post. It can be very frustrating.

I was at the field day for Foot Hills Amateur Radio Society. I worked the GET-ON-THE-AIR (GOTA) station. With my lousy hearing, I think the station captain Ron was getting a bit frustrated with me. But I made about 30 contacts over the 3 hours or so I worked the station over the 2 days.

I was even doing some supervision by the end of Saturday.

Saturday evening from about 7PM until about 10PM I logged at the HF station. I was the control operator while a 17YO girl was operating. During contests being a woman or tuning your radio so you sound like a woman is an advantage. The guys want to talk to a woman and the tones of the female voice cuts through the static much better. So she made a whole lot of contacts during her time on the radio.

I joked. I was the most inexperienced control operator supervising an unlicensed station operator.

Overall it was fun. Breaking down was tiring. But exercise is supposed to be a good thing. It was cool finding out how the big antenna are taken down.

Overall, I will be at field day next year. I hope to supervise the GOTA station next year.

Why?

I am sitting at my desk tonight trying to listen to morse code. Then I thought WHY? I blog I twitter I IM, I use the slayer app on facebook. Do I really need another semi-anonymous method of communication? Klingon might be more popular with people my age.

The only real open forums of communication in Ham radio are though nets and contests. I am never going to contest. I watched it. I'd rather read a book sit in a coffee shop noticing women I'll never get to date. I now I'm a computer nerd, but I know which form of silicon I prefer. I'm participating in field to to experience contesting. So other than an hour at field day at the end of the month, I'm never going to do it.

I have all the rights and priviledges allowed an Amateur by the FCC. I will never have the space for a proper antenna, so other than my little dual band radio, I have all the equipment I can validly make use of. I'm a 5 Watt 144M/440M kind of guy.

One thing I will pursue is the electronics side of things. Electronics, making bread and women are the things at the top of my list to understand. I've always been intrigued by how someone know how to slap the components on an electronic board.

I've never successfully made bread. Bread machines don't count. Hell, is there any guy who understands women?

My dad recently called me a serial hobbyist. So something else will pop up on the horizon, I'm sure.

I Earned My Amateur Extra

I did it. I crammed well. I spent the entire week studying. http://www.hamtestonline.com is the ticket. It so worth the $50. I spent 34 hours on hamtestonline and about another 8 hours reading.

I missed one on my General and 6 on my Extra.

Now that I've passed the tests, it is time to go back and learn the materials. I am very good with practical application, and can explain what I am doing. But to test on an entire subject when I don't use the knowledgeand never memorize all the formulas, makes me a bad tester. So I spent the week learning the 1200 questions for the 2 tests. The full weekend and from 8PM till 1:30 AM just about each night.

I can now slowly read the ARRL general and extra license guide. I've also got the ARRL 2008 handbook. I am just glad that book comes with a cd of the book in pdf form. I would nst carry a monster like that in my backpack.

Since past the ability to use my FT-60 for emergencies, and thing else I learn is for nerdy fun. Ham today is about esoteric knowledge and talking to people you'll probably never meet. Like most social networks :D But you never get hot chicks on your friend page. So HAM is about esoteric language. Sort of like learning Klingon or having the map to middle earth memorized better than your local town. I am learning morse code. I even went to a 2 hour lecture about it yesterday.

The speaker was Dave Wolfe. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak go. Even the inside jokes he does in the code isn't bad. His presence is excellent. I did not realize the talk had gone on for so long until I looked at a clock and realized it had gone for an hour and a half at that point.

Well 73.

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Hams on Twitter

Looks like I am finding a population of Ham Radio Operators on Twitter. If any Hams use twitter, use any of the following to get noticed. Use either "#CQCQ" or "#HAMR".

I am personally tracking ARRL, CQCQ and HAMR.

With the demographic of twitter, I might eat my words from a previous post. Hopefully some are Makers and we can do something good to draw attention at the Maker Faire in San Mateo in 2009.

Do better than the ARRL just handing out pamphlets.

I have my call sign

I am KI6QNZ. I am tuned to Palo Alto,ca repeater N6NFI 145.230 most of the time. Sometimes 442.900 in San Jose.

A dying breed

It seems people are leaving amateur radio and this world faster than they are entering this hobby. I bought the May and June 2008 copy of QST, the main magazine for the American Radio Relay League, has a page called silent keys. It is the list of ARRL member who have died in the last month. The 2 month sample shows about 200 per month are leaving us. This matches what saw at the Ham Radio store and the club pictures I see online and the age of the guys who oversaw the exam. At 46, I feel like I'll be a kid in this group.

One of the justifications for ham radio is to have a group of trained radio operators who can set up a communications net in an emergency. If what I saw at the Maker Faire was how they are recruiting, then there won't be enough Hams in this world to do what is done now in the next 10-15 years.

Here they were at the Maker Faire, HAMS, the ARRL, a group that has historically prided itself on DIY and invention, and all they did was hand out pamphlets. That is not how you recruit. Where were the demos. The electronic workshops. A talk or two about moon bounces. Can anyone imagine how amazing a radio would be if a homebrew Ham teamed up with a Steampunk artisan. What gorgeous radios you would have. Some of the Steam Punks would probably love the idea of using Ham radio.

The number of people reusing parts would have loved to see some restored working tube radios.

They could have had a morse code class. Teach people to send "Hello World" in morse code.

Even go retro and sell and help people build crystal radio kits.

If there was a set of QRP stations and supervising control operators, there could have been a local net set up for people to use with supervision.

There are probably some QRP kits that could be built in an hour or 2. To eliminate some issues, use the QRP kits to use FRM or walkie talkie frequencies.

There is so much that the ARRL could be doing, and they aren't. Especially since Morse code is no longer required for any of the 3 levels as well as ALL the possible questions for the exams are published.

This is a hobby that you can enter for $200, less if you get a used radio. And if you never get more involved, you have all the gear you will ever need. If you drop out, in an emergency, you will be able to get a message to someone when the cell phones and land lines are out after the next big earthquake.

If I am wrong here, let me know. Let me be flamed be the 200 new hams under the age of 30 that are joining every month. Otherwise the ARRL and the local clubs better get their act together.

Balcony antenae mount

I passed my Technician exam. 35 out of 35. I should have my call sign between Wednesday and Friday this week.

One thing I've found is that being in my office, the small rubber duck antennae does not work. So the guys recommended a mobile magnetic mount antennae. I get both 2DB gain at 2M, and I can place it on the balcony rail.

They did not sell a bracket to mount it. Since I live in a condo, I am not allowed to buy something to permanently attach it to the balcony. Neither The Ham Radio outlet, Radio Shack, Fry's or Orchid Hardware had a ready built bracket. With some ideas in mind I wandered the hardware store. The end result is that I built a PVC contraption that I attached to the balcony. It has an iron metal flange acting as a ground plate. PVC and metal pipe use the same threading. The only pain was to seal the PVC. I used silicon caulk to plug the hollow fitting used to attach the flange.

To seal the opening, I stuffed a plastic bag into the pipe. Then used silicon caulk to fill the pipe and create a plug.

I am definitely getting signal from repeaters that I did not get a signal from before.

I used 3/4 inch PVC pipe. Here is an image of the parts.


Here is the test assembly of the parts.



Here is the installed bracket.


I used 5/8 inch clear plastic tubbing and 11 inch tie wraps to attach the bracket to the balcony. I ran each of the 2 tie wraps through a 4 inch piece of the tubing to help prevent damage to the wood. I know I'll have to replace the tie wraps every couple of years.

Once thing I can play with is to attach a larger ground plate to the antennae. The antennae is designed to take advantage of using the entire roof or trunk of a car as a ground plate. We'll see.

I'll put up another post when I get my call sign. This is Mike India Kilo Echo Yankee clear.