McHamming

How often do you eat at McDonalds?

Quick, easy, relatively inexpensive.   Why not eat there all the time?

Same can be said for Ham Radio over the Internet...   Quick, easy and inexpensive.  Who needs to bother with silly radios, antennas and all that stuff...


Or maybe it's just like cooking at home..   Better, healthier, learn more, more fun...   It's radio that makes what we do special.  When we bypass the radio - which is so easy to do these days - we lose all the opportunities that make make it so much more.

ICOM IC-7100

Good reivew on the IC-7100 by M0ZZM

Learned:

• It does RTTY natively.   That's a big plus.  RTTY is one of the many Ham Radio modes I've never tried.  I did have a MARS provided 19" rack mount dual diversity tube decoder many many years ago.  I copied a few RTTY transmissions with it but never transmitted.  In the good old days it required adding small capacitors on the tuning VFO to pull the frequency.  Today it's just another program...
• AB4OJ 7100 notes

Portable Go Box

>> This is an nice post by VE6AB, the same author that had the article on
>> HF APRS in the last QST.
>>
>>   http://ve6ab.blogspot.ca/2015/10/scs-trackerdsp-tnc-for-hf-aprs_18.html
>>
>> My DSP TNC is on order.  Looking forward to exercising it on all band
>> with all modes once it arrives.

> Are you going to put it in your car, your boat or plane? What radio are you going to use?

The plan now is to build it into a portable communications Go box.
It'll have the good old ICOM IC-706Mk2, a small switching power
supply, manual tuner and basic netbook for controlling the radio and
talking to the TNC.

So the next time I'm visiting Montana or Seaside I should be able to
check in to the Traffic Net or Noon-Time-Net or voice, run Robust
Packet for tracking on 30 meters and access the local 9600/1200 packet
infrastructure on VHF/UHF.

It's a fun little project that may turn out to be very useful...

Emergency Channel 9 for Two Meters

CB has channel 9 that is supposedly monitored by folks for emergency traffic.

We have nothing similar for our Ham frequencies.

Scanners would allow picking a channel and watching it.

Many rigs have Priority channel checking even when another discussion is being followed.

My suggestion is to use the calling frequency of 146.52 as our emergency channel - but do it with a tone of 123.0 Hz.


Three memory channels.

• 146.52 with no tones for general operation
• 146.52 with 123.0 Hz tone receive (CTCSS) for quiet monitoring of priority traffic
• 146.53 with 123.0 Hz tone transmit only but receive with no tone.

The CTCSS would be used for monitoring.   CT on transmit for making a call.  May work better to leave the CT transmit memory in a different bank so it's not taking a spot during normal scanning.

It's a Priority plan, not necessarily Emergency.  Use it for Important traffic but don't over use it.

Use it as a calling channel - not working frequency - unless it's an Emergency.  If an Emergency - it takes precedence.

The MickeyD Effect

It tastes good.  It's handy.   It's a know quantity that you know what you get where ever you're at.  It's even economically reasonable.

And in the long term - it's not a good thing.  (I'd use stronger words but McD would probably not be amused.)

How's that apply to Ham Radio?   I suggest we have McD services and, in the long run, that's bad bad bad for the community.

Pacific Northwest VHF 2015 Convention

I wasn't sure I wanted to go.  Boy would staying home have been a mistake this time...  

Many details to fill in here but this gets it started.

• Designing antennas with EZNEC
• DXpedition to the Falkland Islands
• More VHF activity by Kermit x9xx
• We need a contest log on line.
• xxx
• to be carefully presented to Kermit - link to page on getting the ARRL to not support ham actives on the Internet when there are Ham radio alternatives.
• Lunch
• ARRL Meeting
• Is there an Amazon Smile account for the PNW Division Scholarship Award?
• Club meeting and awards
• Prizes - X Engineering 222 MHz 10 element Rover Beam
• Prizes - Icom All Band All Mode Radio

We Need Radios - Data Radios!

We Hams need more radios..    Not big fancy expensive shortwave radios.   Not cute little cheap walkie talkies.   We need data radios.   It's the data age yet for ham radio the good stuff was on the market twenty years ago.

Options

• UHF, VHF, 50 MHz, 144 MHz, 222 MHz or 440 MHz..   We need them all!   Various bands have different rules and characterists.   Given that, 440 MHz would be the best start.
• Variable programmable frequency operation please.  Crystals are so expensive and so slow to order.   Ideally frequency could be set by program operation but that's a Want and not a Need.
• Power - not a lot, not a little..   5 watts might be low.  Couldn't go wrong with 10 watts.
• Voice and Data.   Older radios had voice modes.  That's nice but not needed.
• Examples of the past
• Kantronics D4-10   10 watts on 440 MHz.   9600 or 19200 modulation. Add programmable frequency operation and a reasonable price - this would be a break through product.  Febo Notes
• Kantronics D2-2
• MFJ 9641  (220, 144, 440)
• Ritron embedded radio - http://www.ritron.com/pdf/dtxpl.pdf
• 1200 baud support, like voice, would be nice but it shouldn't distract from the primary goal of a good reasonable speed data radio.

Other Notes

• Can any of the existing radios with 6 pin DIN data jacks support speeds higher than 9600?   For example, will the Kenwood D700 or D710 support 19200?
• Alinco single band radios with 9600 data input/output - 
• Modems for higher speed radios:
• SCS DSP Tracker TNC - 19200 G3RUH - Farallon  (free shipping and same price at HRO)
• UZ7HO Soundcard - http://uz7.ho.ua/packetradio.htm

Wetnet Brunch 26-Sept-2015

Thanks Ken for the NC@40 and NO@45 temperature switches.  Handy gizmos that I didn't even know existed.

Pacific Northwest Things Digital

Upcoming:

• September 26 - Wetnet Brunch at Jimmy Jacks
• September 26 - Washington State Convention, Spokane Valley, Washington
• October 10,11 - Pacific Northwest VHF Conference, Issaquah, Washington

On the air:

• Monday evening at 8 PM - Puget Sound Digital Hams net - Digital Radio Fun with FLDIGI and EasyPal and FLAMP and FreeDV  On the WW7SEA machine at 444.550, tone 141.3

Groups:

• Puget Sound Digital Hams
• NWAPRS - Northwest APRS group - discussion
• NW-MESH - Yahoo group - some notes on a NW-Mesh wiki
• WETNET (SEATCP) - all things fun and digital - discussion

Resources:

• FLdigi, FLmsga, FLAMP - http://www.w1hkj.com/download.html
• FreeDV
• FSQchat
• APRS-messenger
• Winlink2K

Morse Code - the original digital mode

Good stuff on the code:

• Learn CW Online - This website features include High score rankings, Discussion forum, Text to CW and a KOCH based CW learning course.
• FISTS - the International Morse Preservation Society
  
• Straight Key Century Club - Straight Key Corse Code Operators
• CW Blasphemy - doing CW without knowing CW.... A group dedicated to the infamously unpopular use of software to decode and transmit Morse code (CW) on amateur radio.
• Morse Runner download the free application! A contest simulator
• CW Skimmer - Multi-channel CW decoder and analyzer
• MRP40 - MRP40 Morse Code Decoder & Sender (Looks very nice but a bit pricey at 49e)
• Pocket Digi
• fldigi
• gMFSK
• N1MM transmits CW but has no decoding
• Writelog has a CW decoder
• CWget and CWtype - the visual display of the incoming on CWget and the macros for CWtype look like nifty features to be checked out. Windows programs!
• WinWarbler of the DXLab suite has CW functionality.. Of special interest to me is its ability to send using external modems such as the KAM
• Hundreds of hours of W1AW code practice in MP3 format are available from www.pcpractice.com/CW
  

Favorite Antenna Sites

Here's a (start of) a list of my favorite antenna sites:

• www.astromag.co.uk/j-pole - a 6 meter J-Pole made from 450 ohm twinlead
• www.wb8erj.com/bike-ant - a 2 meter J-Pole made from RG-58 coax instead of the convential design using 300 ohm twinlead. This is essentially what I use taped to my bicycle safety flag.
  

Good Things Radios Amateurs are doing

• International Health Services of MN supporting medical/dental/eye care teams for 10 day missions in Honduras with Winlin e-mail over the past 5 years.

FLdigi and amateur radio

This exposure to Amateur Radio by the general Linux public is what we need more of...

Fldigi and amateur radio on Linux

On a sad note, the author of that article recently became a silent key(board)...

HT Counterpoise

Here's a web page by K6GPH with a couple good ideas for building an HT counterpoise..

1. Use the spade connector so the wire is easily detachable.
2. Use different lengths of wire for different bands
   

Linux Ham

There have been some impressive new software offerings on Linux recently.. It needs better advertising. More on that soon...