AmateurRadio.com

A longtime reader, Chris K9ROC (Blog | Twitter), wrote me looking for some advice. Please take a moment to leave your great ideas, friendly suggestions, or dire warnings in the post comments. I know Chris will appreciate them!

2M/ 440 antenna mounts for a 2009 Dodge Grand Caravan? …

For many months I had a 1/4 wave 2m mag-mount antenna on the roof of the minivan and it worked very well with respect to both transmitting and receiving.

But I took it off for a couple reasons. First, a whip on the roof of the minivan hit everything in the parking garage at work. Second, the coax went through the rear of the van, the large door. Every time my wife opened the rear door it was grinding at the coax. And of course the mag-mount itself wasn’t great for the roof. 😉

I’ve been told to install an NMO mount on the roof with a hole (I have a great elmer experienced with this). But when I mentioned the idea to my wife I realized that discussion was a non-starter. 😉

Soooo … what other options do I have? Through-the-glass on a side window? I’ve read that that’s not a good idea with modern auto glass.

What about something that would clip-on to the front fender? At the last couple RARA events I saw a lot of cars that appeared to have some kind of fender mount.

Or should I really let myself get talked into the NMO?

Thanks very much in advance,
Chris K9ROC

Just received this from Ed at Import Communications:

fyi… KG-UV920R

Wouxun has released a limited number of the mobile radio to dealers. These samples are not FCC Certified yet and do not have the required 2.5 kHz tuning step required for 2013 regulations. SO THE RADIO DOES EXIST.

If no major problems are found when testing these samples, hopefully full production will begin in July.

The costs of these samples are higher than I expected but hopefully the costs will come down when the radio goes into full production.

If you have your name on the reserve list at www.wouxun.us, you will be notified by email when the radio is available to order.

I received a QSL card in the mail the other day for a contact I made with N1ME though a high altitude balloon repeater launched during the Pine State Amateur Radio hamfest near Bangor, Maine. I made the contact while camping with my family in a state park on the Maine coast with a Wouxun HT (stock antenna). The repeater signal was amazingly quiet from my operating position atop a picnic table.

The picture above, taken by the balloon, is at approximately 95,000 ft.  I heard contacts being made from as far away as Long Island, New York which is about 450 miles away.  For quite a few minutes, the repeater was covering an area well over 600,000 square miles. Very cool stuff!

While my kids found it quite entertaining, sometimes I worry that growing up in the “Skype” generation — where everyone in the world is a mere free video phone call away — has raised the bar when it comes to impressing them. I feel that it’s my responsibility to make this stuff fun and show them that they can be creators of technology and not just consumers. I suppose every “nerd” dad shares this frustration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAspyuQYWI

Kudos to University of Maine Associate Professor Dr. Rick Eason, AA1PJ, and his team of students at UMaine’s High Altitude Ballooning project. This is truly great stuff! It’s fantastic to see folks in higher education reaching down to the high school level to show them how exciting — and relevant — this kind of thing can be.

Field Day 2012 is upon us and many of you are out enjoying the day.  For those who are working or can’t make their local Field Day event, there is always the option of living vicariously through those who are able.

Here is a live feed from Kings County Repeater Association (KC2RA) in Brooklyn, New York:

Noted amateur radio author and blogger Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, has released a new Kindle e-book titled 21 Things to Do After You Get Your Amateur Radio License.

Romanchik said that many people rush headlong into the hobby only to stall out. “The main reason that I wrote this book is that it was frustrating to me that so many people get their Tech licenses and then never do anything with them,” he said. “They never really get involved in the hobby for whatever reason. I am hoping that if they read this book — and actually try some of the things that I suggest — they will be inspired to really get into ham radio.”

If you have a Kindle or the Kindle app for iOS/Android, you can download his book for $2.99 from Amazon. There are also Nook and PDF versions available on his website. Don’t forget to check out his blog at http://www.kb6nu.com (and while you’re there, check out his No-Nonsense Study Guides!)

Dustin, KC5FML from McKinney, Texas is the winner
of our TYT TH-UV3R giveaway from Import Communications!

Congratulations, Dustin!

There are lots of scams on the Internet and I’m usually pretty good at catching them right away. This one, however, was a little trickier and I wanted to take a minute to spread the word about it so that you don’t fall prey.

I received an e-mail notifying me that I had received a Twitter direct message (though Twitter’s user-to-user messaging system).

A crazy Tweet about ME?!  It sounded scandalous! I immediately clicked through the link in the notification to see what the ruckus could be.  But wait…

OK, now I was starting to get a little suspicious. I don’t normally stay logged into my Twitter account, but I’ve never had to sign in to view a Tweet. A little bit of a closer look revealed this:

Sure enough, the URL was “tvviiter.com” — a common “phishing” scam where the bad guys try to trick you into entering your username and password into an otherwise authentic-looking login screen.

Disaster averted!

So what happened here?  Most likely the victim who sent me the direct message in this case, clicked on a similar link at some point and had their username and password stolen.  The scammers then logged into their account, Tweeted out a spam message to the person’s followers offering whatever male enhancement product of the day, and then tried to trick more folks into giving their info by sending out direct messages through the victim’s account.

Unfortunately, unlike most “phishing” scams that are obvious forgeries, these appear to the recipient as legitimate Twitter direct messages. The key tip-off, however, is the fact that the login URL is not “twitter.com” but a spoofed misspelling of the domain name.

The moral of this story… make sure you know “where you are” when you enter your username and password!  A hacked Twitter account is a lot less of a big deal than a hacked bank account.