ARROW Communications Association

I've just registered my own domain name--kb6nu.com--and moved my blog there.

Please visit the new blog and continue reading there.

Thanks!

Dan KB6NU

If you need to plan a presentation to your club, but are stuck for a topic, check out the new additions to the ARRL Multi Media Library. They recently added five new presentations:

One cool thing about having an amateur radio blog is that you get e-mail from people who read your blog. Lately, I've gotten e-mail from hams who have blogs of their own. Below, find links to and mini-reviews of these blogs.

Well, for the past 24 hours, I have been masquerading as KN0WCW.

In the late 1800s, if you wanted to chat online, you had to do it with Morse Code. In the novel, Wired Love, a telegraph operator named Ella Cheever Thayer describes not only chatting online via the telegraph, but also a romance that develops between a female operator and a male operator down the line. In this radio essay, writer Paul Collins describes how it was to work as a telegrapher at that time. It also includes a few excerpts from the novel. It's very interesting.

As a followup, Dean Olscher interviews Mel Schneider K2KEY. Mel, who is vice president of the Kings County Radio Club, talks about ham radio and how hams communicate with Morse Code. The report describes the differences between American Morse Code, which was used by the landline telegraphers here in the U.S. and the International Morse Code, which was used by telegraphers elsewhere around the world and by the maritime operators.

It's inevitable, I'm afraid. One of these days--in the relatively near future--we're going to be forced to build things with surface mount parts or not build at all. That's why I've put building something with these parts on my list of things to do.

As usual, the guys on the Elecraft mailling list are way ahead of me. Specifically, Kevin Rock KD5ONS, has posted several times on using a toaster oven to solder boards with surface mount devices. In the first post, he says:

Here's the text of an article I recent sent in to the ARRL for publication in QST's Op-Ed section...

No Ham Left Behind

Dan Romanchik, KB6NU
Michigan Section Affiliated Club Coordinator

A recent item on QRZ.Com reported that the number of licensed radio amateurs on April 3, 2005 was 667,318, a net loss of 20,542 from the peak in April 2003. There are 28,869 Novices; 318,221 Technicians; 137, 093 Generals; 76,706 Advanceds; and 106,238 Amateur Extras.

Some of those that replied to this post used the decline in the number of licensees to predict the imminent death of amateur radio. While I'm not quite so alarmist as these guys, I do think the numbers point to a problem. The problem is not, however, the number of amateur radio licensees, but the number of active amateur radio operators.

Samuel F.B. Morse, for whom the Morse Code is named was born 214 years ago today. But we should perhaps be calling it the Vail Code instead, as Craig W3CRR recently pointed out on the ARRL's PR Mailing List:

Recently, Ray Goff G4FON added MP3 generation to his brilliant Koch CW Trainer program. Now, Nigel Gunn G8IFF/KC8NHF is using that feature to make available the newsletter of the Flying Pigs QRP Club International--Bacon Bits Quarterly (BBQ)--in CW format. The files are a bit on the large side--part 1 of the April editorial was a bit over 20 Mbytes, but the code is beautiful. I've suggested to Nigel that he may want to zip the files as that makes them quite a bit smaller.

A couple of months ago, a group of us were talking on the repeater, and the talk got around to building stuff. One of the guys said, "You can't really build anything anymore." I almost fell out of my chair. There are all kinds of kits out there that hams can build.

So, yesterday, I gave a presentation to our club on kits and kit building. After the short presentation--whichi I've included below--we had a show-and-tell of kits that were brought in by the members and were in various stages of completion. (Pictures coming soon!)

So, what are you going to build next?

For the past several months I've been using an Icom IC-746PRO that was donated to ARROW. I've been feeling a little guilty about using it for so long, so when someone offered to sell me a unit he bought in February, I jumped at the chance. He sold it to me for $1250, about $300 less than what they're going for these days.

I really like the rig, although to be honest, I don't have much to compare it with. The last rig I used regularly was an old IC-735, which I also like a lot, but it doesn't have the bells and whistles that the 746 has.

Here's another thread from the wonderful Elecraft mailling list:

Vic, K2VCO writes:

I made a simple 1:1 receive-only balun for 160 meters by winding 9 bifilar turns of no. 24 enameled wire on an FT37-77 toroid. I connected a 50-ohm resistor to the output and my MFJ antenna analyzer to the input. On 1.8 MHz it shows a resistance of 50 ohms, an inductive reactance of 1 ohm, and an SWR of 1.0:1.

My question is, did I make a 'good' balun? Are there other tests I should do?

Try these to get a feel for how rhytmic CW can be:

• BENS BEST BENT WIRE
• BEST BEEF ESSENCE
• BEST BENT WIRE /5

I got all of these from the wonderful Elecraft mailing list. Just click on the list items to download a zipped mp3 file. I'm sorry about the zip, but it was the only way to make the file small enough to be easily downloadable. Zipped, these files are about 60 kbytes; unzipped, they're over 2.5 Mbytes.

I've always thought Linux and ham radio would be a good fit for one another, but the availability of ham radio related software that runs on Linux isn't all that great. Perhaps it's because Linux still isn't that easy to install. Well, here you can get a CD-ROM with everything a ham should need to get started:

I haven't tried it yet, but the web page says,

The CD contains a complete LINUX-Knoppix operating system and enough software to accomplish the usual tasks we all perform daily from our homes ... web browsing, email, letter writing, etc. In addition, there is a huge library of programs for our Amateur Radio hobby.

In the March 2005 issue of Contact!, an e-mail newsletter for those interested in promoting amateur radio, Robert Homuth, KB7AQD, offers the following suggestions:

Well, my General Class license course ended on Thursday as our club VEs came in and gave the test as the last session. Only eleven people showed up to take the test, and of those only eight or nine passed the written test. (When I left, two of those who had failed the first time were re-taking the test. One of them missed by only one question, so I think she had a good chance of passing the second time.)

I honestly thought all of them would pass the test. When the head VE asked me if I thought any of them would fail, I said, "Of course not. A good teacher has to have confidence in his students, after all." Of course, I wasn't completely sure that all of them would pass, but I thought they all had a good shot. Those who I thought would have trouble passing just didn't even attempt the test at this session.

Earlier this afternoon, I read through an item on QRZ.Com that talks about the number of licensed amateurs in this country. This is quite an interesting item, and one that I'll write more about later.

In reading through this item, Jim Haynie W5JBP, ARRL President, describes a recent visit to Nicaragua. He notes that they must make do with little or nothing in the way of equipment and materials. By comparison, we have an embarassment of riches here in the U.S.--oftentimes hams here have more equipment than they know what to do with.

On the Elecraft mailling list, there was a thread recently discussing portable antenna insulators. One guy noted that he scrounges Lexan scraps and makes insulators out of them, to which Mike VP8NO replied,

Seems like overkill to me. By using synthetic "string" to tie off the ends you have all the insulator you need. OTOH I use plastic "corks" from wine bottles on the end of the elevated radials of my 30 metre GP, microwave oven tested naturally. Much more fun to collect than Lexan scraps.

I e-mailed Mike and asked what he meant by "microwave tested." He answered:

Thursday night, I was tuning around on 30m around 0315Z, and heard the following:

1. 5R8GZ (Albert in Madagascar) with a decent 559 signal on 10.105 MHz. Unfortunately, I couldn't break the pileup and work him. This is the second time I've heard him, but failed to work him.
2. a CW "numbers station" on 10.125 MHz. The station was sending groups of letters this time. The letters were being sent in groups of five at about 20 wpm. Here's a sample of what I copied: TNIGT, UUIMM,WMDAA, GTTWU, RNIUM, MWWGR, NNRTW, IAIUM, RUGTN, etc. I copied a couple of minutes of this, then got bored. When I tried tuning it in about ten minutes later, the station was gone.

One of the problems amateur radio faces is that people are all very busy these days, and when push comes to shove, amateur radio is one thing that often gets shoved. It's just not a priority with people.

This is understandable. Amateur radio takes a lot of time. Setting up a station, building antennas, and then actually operating all take time. BUT, so do other activities. To get the maximum enjoyment and benefit out of any relatively complicated activity, you have to be willing to put in the time.

Assuming that it's a "good thing" that those with amateur radio licenses become more active amateur radio operators, the question then becomes how do you get people to put in the time? I think it's a matter of education.

MediaPost.com reports:

ON FRIDAY, DURING THE CLOSING day of Madison Avenue's annual media conference, the government's top media technologist predicted electric utility companies might transform the telecommunications industry providing broadband services anywhere there is an "electric pole," and transmitting data to anything that "uses electricity." If that proves the case, it was not evident in a recent survey asking consumers whom they wanted to receive their telecommunications services from.

One of the beauties of amateur radio is that you never know who you're going to talk to, and what can happen as a result of a QSO.

In a recent post to his blog, Steven Streight, aka Vaspers the Grate, takes on Lev Grossman, who in the December 31, 2004 issue of Time compared blogging to amateur radio. In that issue, Grossman said, "Before this year [2004], blogs were a curiosity, a cult phenomenon, a faintly embarrassing hobby on the order of ham radio and stamp collecting."
Grossman's impression seems to be that hams do nothing more than talk about ham radio (which is, of course, ridiculous) while bloggers spend an inordinate amount of time blogging just to blog. They're filling many Mbytes of disk space with nothing more than jabbering.

The ARRL recently posted the news item "FCC Morse, restructuring proposals could hit the street by mid-year." The report notes that the FCC will probably issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) addressing the Morse requirement and other restructuring issues sometime in the second half of this year. Another round of public comments would follow this action, and that it could possibly be early 2007 before these rules go into effect.

The upshot of all this is that if you're waiting for the FCC to drop the code requirement to upgrade to General, don't run out and buy that HF transceiver just yet. It could be up to two years before the rules change. Do you really want to wait two years? Wouldn't it just be easier to learn the code?

On Saturday, I didn't make a single contact--at least not any radio contacts. I had plenty of face-to-face contacts at the ARROW monthly breakfast, including a nice chat about getting back on the air and working CW with a guy whose call I forget now (sorry about that!).

One of the things that has helped me in finding speakers for club meetings is my experience as an editor with Test&Measurement World magazine. My job as an editor was to first figure out what topics the readers were interested in (or should be interested in) and then find someone to write the article. My job as club president is to come up with ideas for club meetings and then find guys willing to giva a presentation.

Last night, I had a great QSO with Don W2LID. Of course, we joked about his call, and I asked him how long he'd had it. As it turns out, he was issued the call in 1937 at the age of 15, so he's been a LID for 67 years!

As I mentioned, it was a very nice QSO. Don is a real expert at how to conduct a QSO. One of the keys to a good QSO is to ask lots of questions. Practically before I could get a word in edgewise, he'd asked me about my work, why I had a 6 call in the 8 call district, and about the equipment I was running. Through his questioning, we found out that we had some common work experience, he working for Bell Labs, and me working for a competitor, Northern Telecom.

If anyone's callsign can be a misnomer it's W2LID. Don's as far from being a lid as I can imagine.

One of my first blog entries was "Tips for the Casual Dxer." Now, I have another tip:

The night before a major DX contest, get on the air and work the stations warming up for the next day's events.

I did this exact thing yesterday. Tuning around 15m, I worked in quick succession:

• PY1NX, who was booming in with 20 dB over S9 signal;
• PJ4/KU8E; and
• V47Z, a new country for me.

I probably could have worked a bunch more, but I got a little tired of simply sending 599s. It was nice to work the

When guys in our club start to talk about A-indexes and K-indexes, I normally say that I don't use either of those to predict propagation. When they'd ask what I do use, I reply, "I use the E-index."

"What's the E-index?" they ask.

"Well," I joke, "E stands for 'ear' and if I can hear stations on a band then I figure that propagation is pretty good. If I don't hear any stations, then it's probably bad." That usually get a chuckle out of them.

I may be changing my tune, however.

On the G4FQG Software page, R.J. Edwards says, "There ARE such things as free lunches," and then goes on to prove that point by offering a bunch of "original, high-quality, radio engineering/modelling programs" for nothing.

There's lots of good stuff here, including programs that will help you model and design:

• loop antennas
• helical antennas
• loaded vertical antennas
• toroids
• transmission lines
• etc., etc., etc.

One of the cool things about these programs are that they're all DOS programs, and the downloadable files are all small .EXE files that you can run directly after downloading.