AmateurRadio.com

As I was sitting next to my radio this afternoon, I had tuned to a frequency on 12 meters sideband where I’d seen a spot for a station in Madagascar (5R). I need 5R on 12m so I was listening to see if the station would build (grow in strength) to the point where I could attempt a contact. While waiting for that to happen, I heard another US station call him, giving his callsign properly. Although I couldn’t hear the 5R station, what I did hear was this (callsign changed mostly because I don’t remember exactly what it was, and to protect the not-so-innocent): “5R8UI, did you come back to my-callsign question mark?“. The US station literally said the words “question mark“!

Ok, while I can understand that had this happened on CW, the operation would have sent the code for “question mark”, but given that this was a voice contact, wouldn’t you think that the tone of voice and the fact that the sentence was actually a question would have been sufficient?

There’s been a lot written about the overuse of the CW Q-signals when using a voice mode, and while you can debate some of those (saying “My QTH is River Vale” rather than saying “I live in River Vale”), it just struck me as pretty funny to hear someone actually say the words “question mark“.

By way of explanation, the reason the Q-codes were invented was to provide a shorthand way to send information over telegraph lines and later wireless. It does make sense in particular on CW, where the operators at both ends of the conversation might not both be fluent in a common language. So on CW, it does make sense to say “QTH River Vale New Jersey” rather than spelling it out. It becomes, along with some other abbreviations, it’s own common language.

A bill has been recently introduced which could result in amateurs losing their currently allocated frequencies on the 70cm band (420-440Mhz). The ARRL is asking that folks write to their legislators to oppose the bill in it’s current form. The FCC is proposing to auction off certain spectrum for commercial use to replace the spectrum given up in the 700Mhz band (formerly used for analog TV) to help make up for the loss of commercial revenue in those bands. The spectrum slated for auction is supposed to be existing Public Safety spectrum (since the 700Mhz block went to Public Safety), but the Amateur allocations appear to have been incorrectly bundled in with those from Public Safety. You can read more about this issue at the ARRL website here and you can read how to help here. Please note that they strongly recommend sending letters to their legislative consultants who will hand-deliver them to Congress due to extensive delays in postal mail screening to members of Congress.

Apologies to those of you outside the US who are reading this US-specific posting.

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t published anything here for a bit over a month. I was also pretty much absent from several of the other “social web” places that I frequent (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and in fact got a couple of private notes asking if everything was OK. (Thanks to those who asked for your concern.) The short version is that everything is just fine. Here’s the longer version:

Around a week after I published my last update, I managed to come down with a kidney stone just about a year after the last time I had one. I’ll skip the details, but suffice it to say that I wasn’t very comfortable for a while and blogging, ham radio, and pretty much everything else not essential to feeling better got put aside. Complicating things was the fact that along with Sharon, Justin, and Brett, I was supposed to leave for vacation on the evening of December 25th, and the doctor was pretty adamant that I shouldn’t be traveling unless I had passed the stone. Fortunately, it did pass just a couple of days before that, and given everything we had to do before leaving I never had time to do an update.

The trip itself was something we’d planned for a long, long time, figuring that with the kids getting older (they are both in college), it would become increasingly difficult for all of us to get away. Our trip started in Barcelona where we spend three days sightseeing followed by a twelve-day Mediterranean cruise with stops in Palermo, Athens, Rhodes, Alexandria/Cairo, and Malta. I’m not going to go into detail here about the trip, but I did want to post a couple of pictures that are on topic for this blog.

First, as we were driving from Cairo to the pyramids in Giza, I looked out the window of the bus and saw this antenna. Actually, although I didn’t notice it at the time, in addition to the beam that’s right in the middle of the picture, there’s also what appears to be a wire dipole just to the right of that. Unfortunately, I don’t know specifically where this picture was taken other than we were in Cairo at the time, so I don’t know who that might belong to. (Any Egyptian hams reading this?)

I know exactly who the next antenna belongs to: The Malta Amateur Radio League.  I know this because just a second or two before I took this picture, we passed a big sign that said “Malta Amateur Radio League”. Unfortunately, we were on a bus driving from the city of Mdina to the capital city of Valleta, so I couldn’t stop to get a picture of the sign, but I did get a picture of the antenna on the roof of their building. I apologize for the lousy picture but I’m glad that I was able to even get this shot before we had completely driven past. We only had six hours in Malta, so I didn’t have a chance to try to get back to the MARL shack to see if there was anyone around, but I can say that Malta was absolutely beautiful and I hope to get back there some day for a longer visit.

I guess I should mention that I didn’t do any ham radio while we were away at all. We had a very tight schedule almost everywhere other than some very relaxing days at sea, and given the difficulties of transporting gear with me (in addition to everything else we brought), licensing, and the fact that unfortunately Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines explicitly prohibits the use of ham radio on board the ship, I decided that it didn’t make much sense to try to operate. As a result, it was just over a month between the last HF contact I made in December (before I was ill), and the next one that I made in January after I returned.

You might want to read Part I of this if you haven’t done so already. It’ll be a lot less confusing that way.

After we got the far-end rope over the correct limb, we tied off one end of the new G5RV and pulled it up in the air a bit just to make sure that we didn’t run into any unexpected issues. That went well, so we moved to the near-end tree to attach the other end to that rope, which I’d lowered before David and Matthew arrived. We attached the other end of the G5RV to the rope and I started to pull it up, but the insulator at the end snagged on a branch and we couldn’t get the antenna up nearly high enough. We dropped the antenna down to the ground and tried to use the rope itself as a kind of saw to see if we could break off the very small branch that was causing the problem. After about 5 or 10 minutes, we realized that 1) It was getting dark enough that we were having trouble seeing where the rope was going, and 2) The cold wind that had been blowing all afternoon wasn’t stopping, and with the lack of sun it had gone from chilly to “ok, we’ve just about had enough of this” cold. It was time for plan B.

Several years ago, when having some work done on that “near-end” tree, I had the tree service put a pulley with some rope as high as they could up in the tree. I’ve played with it a few times trying some wire antennas, but hadn’t used it at all for the last year or two. I figured that at least temporarily we could attach the remaining end of the G5RV to that rope to get it up into the air. If needed, Matthew could come back another time and try to get a rope over a higher branch with the potato gun, but there wasn’t enough light to try that. (The reason why I didn’t want to use the pulley permanently was because it wasn’t all that high up in the tree, plus I didn’t want to lose the use of that for any future experiments.) That worked out pretty well, and David, K2DSL, was nice enough to volunteer to head up to the roof to connect the antenna to the feedline. Next, it was into the shack to see if the antenna would load up (and to warm up!), which it did. I made sure that the tuner would be able to find a match as it had with the old antenna and was able to do so on all bands. By that point, we were all exhausted and cold, so after thanking Matthew and David they left. I did a little cleanup outside and headed in. I made one quick QSO (KP2B on 40m CW) just to make sure that the antenna actually worked, then headed out for dinner with Sharon.

The next morning I figured that I’d see what things actually looked like, and I was disappointed when I realized that the antenna was even lower than I’d thought. The pulley just wasn’t very high up in the tree, and my G5RV was nowhere near a “flat-top” installation. I figured that I’d take a look at the other rope to see if I could do anything with it, hoping that perhaps “something” had happened overnight that might allow me to use it instead of the lower-than-expected pulley rope. It seems that I finally got a little break: I got both ends of the old rope and pulled back and forth to see if the resistance caused by that little branch was any less. As soon as I did, I saw a small piece of ice drop off from where the rope was wrapped around the branch, followed by a small piece of a branch. I think that what happened was that the rope rubbing the night before had allowed some sap to get onto the branch, which froze overnight and must have caused the branch to break. As a result, the little branch that was not allowing the insulator to move when pulled up into the tree was no longer in the way.

I dropped down the antenna from the “pulley rope” (which required me to toss the throw bag over the antenna wire, and carefully pull it down) and attached it to the older rope, and pulled it up. It took a little bit of work, but I was able to get it back up to nearly the original height. I spent about another 30 minutes more permanently tying off the ends of the rope, including connecting the ends to bungee cords that I use as shock absorbers before heading inside. I was able to make a few DX contacts on several bands, and in the week since then, I’ve actually picked up a couple of new countries on 80m (Iceland and Faroe Islands) as well as some new bands or modes for other countries (Congo on 20m phone and CW and 17m RTTY, Gabon on 20m CW, and Dominica on 40m RTTY, among others), so I guess the antenna is working well.

I’m still not very happy with the mechanical connections, and in particular, the connection from the ladderline to the coax feedline. I don’t think they are nearly as sturdy as the antenna that I replaced, but I hope that what’s there now will work out until the spring. At that point I want to replace some of what I think are the weak points with something sturdier. I may also look into other types of antennas, but for now, I’m very happy to be back on the air.

You might want to read Part I of this if you haven’t done so already. It’ll be a lot less confusing that way.

After we got the far-end rope over the correct limb, we tied off one end of the new G5RV and pulled it up in the air a bit just to make sure that we didn’t run into any unexpected issues. That went well, so we moved to the near-end tree to attach the other end to that rope, which I’d lowered before David and Matthew arrived. We attached the other end of the G5RV to the rope and I started to pull it up, but the insulator at the end snagged on a branch and we couldn’t get the antenna up nearly high enough. We dropped the antenna down to the ground and tried to use the rope itself as a kind of saw to see if we could break off the very small branch that was causing the problem. After about 5 or 10 minutes, we realized that 1) It was getting dark enough that we were having trouble seeing where the rope was going, and 2) The cold wind that had been blowing all afternoon wasn’t stopping, and with the lack of sun it had gone from chilly to “ok, we’ve just about had enough of this” cold. It was time for plan B.

Several years ago, when having some work done on that “near-end” tree, I had the tree service put a pulley with some rope as high as they could up in the tree. I’ve played with it a few times trying some wire antennas, but hadn’t used it at all for the last year or two. I figured that at least temporarily we could attach the remaining end of the G5RV to that rope to get it up into the air. If needed, Matthew could come back another time and try to get a rope over a higher branch with the potato gun, but there wasn’t enough light to try that. (The reason why I didn’t want to use the pulley permanently was because it wasn’t all that high up in the tree, plus I didn’t want to lose the use of that for any future experiments.) That worked out pretty well, and David, K2DSL, was nice enough to volunteer to head up to the roof to connect the antenna to the feedline. Next, it was into the shack to see if the antenna would load up (and to warm up!), which it did. I made sure that the tuner would be able to find a match as it had with the old antenna and was able to do so on all bands. By that point, we were all exhausted and cold, so after thanking Matthew and David they left. I did a little cleanup outside and headed in. I made one quick QSO (KP2B on 40m CW) just to make sure that the antenna actually worked, then headed out for dinner with Sharon.

The next morning I figured that I’d see what things actually looked like, and I was disappointed when I realized that the antenna was even lower than I’d thought. The pulley just wasn’t very high up in the tree, and my G5RV was nowhere near a “flat-top” installation. I figured that I’d take a look at the other rope to see if I could do anything with it, hoping that perhaps “something” had happened overnight that might allow me to use it instead of the lower-than-expected pulley rope. It seems that I finally got a little break: I got both ends of the old rope and pulled back and forth to see if the resistance caused by that little branch was any less. As soon as I did, I saw a small piece of ice drop off from where the rope was wrapped around the branch, followed by a small piece of a branch. I think that what happened was that the rope rubbing the night before had allowed some sap to get onto the branch, which froze overnight and must have caused the branch to break. As a result, the little branch that was not allowing the insulator to move when pulled up into the tree was no longer in the way.

I dropped down the antenna from the “pulley rope” (which required me to toss the throw bag over the antenna wire, and carefully pull it down) and attached it to the older rope, and pulled it up. It took a little bit of work, but I was able to get it back up to nearly the original height. I spent about another 30 minutes more permanently tying off the ends of the rope, including connecting the ends to bungee cords that I use as shock absorbers before heading inside. I was able to make a few DX contacts on several bands, and in the week since then, I’ve actually picked up a couple of new countries on 80m (Iceland and Faroe Islands) as well as some new bands or modes for other countries (Congo on 20m phone and CW and 17m RTTY, Gabon on 20m CW, and Dominica on 40m RTTY, among others), so I guess the antenna is working well.

I’m still not very happy with the mechanical connections, and in particular, the connection from the ladderline to the coax feedline. I don’t think they are nearly as sturdy as the antenna that I replaced, but I hope that what’s there now will work out until the spring. At that point I want to replace some of what I think are the weak points with something sturdier. I may also look into other types of antennas, but for now, I’m very happy to be back on the air.

As I wrote about last week, my G5RV antenna came down as the result of a storm. My original plan was to try to repair the existing antenna, but after examining it further, I decided that I’d be better off buying a replacement which is exactly what I did. (I’ll look at fixing the old one one of these days.) Matthew, K2NUD, and David, K2DSL, volunteered to come over last Saturday to help me get the antenna up in air, so we planned to meet at my house at around 2:30 which would give me enough time to run out to KJI Electronics to pick up the new antenna. The one that they had in stock from from MFJ and while it didn’t seem to be build as sturdily as what I’d had in the air, I figured that getting some copper in the air was better than nothing.

Throw bag

The old antenna was suspended between two trees with the farthest end being at probably 60 or 70 feet in the air. (I’m terrible at estimating height, but I know that it’s significantly higher than the roof of my house, which is at about 35 feet or so.) The antenna snapped at the far end, leaving the line suspending it about 50 feet in the air and somewhat tangled in the branches. As a result, it wasn’t possible to get to that rope to re-use it, so Matthew came up with a better plan: a potato gun. The link tells you lots about potato guns, but in a nutshell, this is a gun made from PVC pipe that’s used to fire a potato. (Why would you do that? Because it’s unbelievably fun!) In order to get the potato to do something other than just shoot up in the air (and make a pretty cool sound), we put the throw bag which trailed 100 feet of line on top of the potato which worked like a champ.

The way the potato gun works is that you put the “fuel” (old-fashioned non-environmentally friendly Aqua-Net hairspray) into a chamber and ignite it which forces a potato, previously jammed down the barrel, up and out of the barrel at a pretty high rate of speed. In the picture here, Matthew (green jacket) is holding the gun while I spray in the “fuel” into the combustion chamber. That’s David on the left. Somewhere out there I’m sure someone has done some calculations about amount of force that’s being generated to launch the potato that far (not to mention the added one-pound throw bag), but physics aside, as I mentioned earlier, it’s fun to watch.

It took a few tries, but Matthew managed to get the line over the right branch, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Although made somewhat easier by the fact that there are no leaves on the trees at this time of the year, it’s still a lot like threading a needle that’s about 50 feet away and 75 feet in the air. We came close a couple of times, but Matthew wanted to keep trying to get it exactly right, which I think was an excuse to fire off a few more shots. There’s more to the story which I’ll talk about in Part II, but here’s a video taken by my son Justin during one of the “firings”. (If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or email and can’t see the video, you click here to go directly to the video on YouTube.)

As I wrote about last week, my G5RV antenna came down as the result of a storm. My original plan was to try to repair the existing antenna, but after examining it further, I decided that I’d be better off buying a replacement which is exactly what I did. (I’ll look at fixing the old one one of these days.) Matthew, K2NUD, and David, K2DSL, volunteered to come over last Saturday to help me get the antenna up in air, so we planned to meet at my house at around 2:30 which would give me enough time to run out to KJI Electronics to pick up the new antenna. The one that they had in stock from from MFJ and while it didn’t seem to be build as sturdily as what I’d had in the air, I figured that getting some copper in the air was better than nothing.

Throw bag

The old antenna was suspended between two trees with the farthest end being at probably 60 or 70 feet in the air. (I’m terrible at estimating height, but I know that it’s significantly higher than the roof of my house, which is at about 35 feet or so.) The antenna snapped at the far end, leaving the line suspending it about 50 feet in the air and somewhat tangled in the branches. As a result, it wasn’t possible to get to that rope to re-use it, so Matthew came up with a better plan: a potato gun. The link tells you lots about potato guns, but in a nutshell, this is a gun made from PVC pipe that’s used to fire a potato. (Why would you do that? Because it’s unbelievably fun!) In order to get the potato to do something other than just shoot up in the air (and make a pretty cool sound), we put the throw bag which trailed 100 feet of line on top of the potato which worked like a champ.

The way the potato gun works is that you put the “fuel” (old-fashioned non-environmentally friendly Aqua-Net hairspray) into a chamber and ignite it which forces a potato, previously jammed down the barrel, up and out of the barrel at a pretty high rate of speed. In the picture here, Matthew (green jacket) is holding the gun while I spray in the “fuel” into the combustion chamber. That’s David on the left. Somewhere out there I’m sure someone has done some calculations about amount of force that’s being generated to launch the potato that far (not to mention the added one-pound throw bag), but physics aside, as I mentioned earlier, it’s fun to watch.

It took a few tries, but Matthew managed to get the line over the right branch, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Although made somewhat easier by the fact that there are no leaves on the trees at this time of the year, it’s still a lot like threading a needle that’s about 50 feet away and 75 feet in the air. We came close a couple of times, but Matthew wanted to keep trying to get it exactly right, which I think was an excuse to fire off a few more shots. There’s more to the story which I’ll talk about in Part II, but here’s a video taken by my son Justin during one of the “firings”. (If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or email and can’t see the video, you click here to go directly to the video on YouTube.)