AmateurRadio.com

One of our local runners approached me a few months ago, knowing I was a bit of a radio geek asking for advice on which walkie talkies to use for his upcoming trail race. For the unitiated a trail race is a bit like an old fashioned cross country but it generally goes over some serious terrain and can be quite long. Jon’s event was from Bassenthwaite to St Bees, totaling 35 miles. Not to be sniffed at. I’d suggested at the time that walkie talkes might not do it and as a member of the local Raynet group I offered our services.

Well the event was yesterday and after the runners set off at 8am I was manning checkpoint 1, some 20 miles into the race. Only the first couple of people through the check point looked ‘sprightly’ the rest took on more knackered looks as they went through. Eventually some RAF guys came through with packs on and the stragglers shuffled on. What’s this got to do with Ham Radio?

Well. the Cumbria Raynet group support a few of these types of events and I think our services were appreciated. The organiser thanked us and said he didn’t realise how complicated the whole thing was to maintain communications in a mountainous place. Perhaps it was the relief or local beer (Ennerdale Blonde) that helped his cheery outlook. Perhaps next year I’ll run it…with an APRS tracker! (It’ll need to be a very lightweight one though)

One thing I’ve never done is build my own complete rig. There are a lot of choices to be made when considering this, including budget and complexity. I’ve always liked SDR as a way to go but building my own Hermes HPSDR is probably a little bit beyond me soldering skills. So next on the list is the Genesis G11 from down under. I think I’ll do a bit more investigation and then plump for a suitable design. The club has some good test gear if its required so that shouldn’t be limiting.
I’d love to hear your advice or comments

If you fancy trying your hand at Arduino or Picaxe projects and need to ask a clever person (Don’t look at me,I’ve already put a couple of thicko questions on) then the companion website to the ARRL book is up and running. The code for the projects is on the site too so if you’re not a fan of typing then cut and paste

I’m a bit of an Arduino fan. I’m also interested in APRS. So I was keen to get hold of something that would bring the two together. Enter the Argent Data Radio Shield

I bought one a while ago and used it to make my shack clock. Arduino’s come in a lot of shapes and sizes but the Uno is probably the simplest. You can add bits and bobs to them through stack-able ‘shields’. One of these shields is the Argent Data radio Shield. I ordered mine before going on holiday and got a bit done over on the customs charges but have assembled the little thing and put together one of the simple sketches to show the thing working.

All ready on the bench

All in all the assembly was pretty straightforward with a few parts to put together and not a lot else. You don’t get much in the way of guidance but the suppliers website has all the pertinent information and it shouldn’t challenge most who are ok with a soldering iron. As shown here as a finished article

Ta Daaaaa

Below is a little video clip of the thing running a simple sketch from the website. Instead of the output being to an LCD I’ve sent it to the Arduino IDE serial monitor. This is easily done by not actually putting an LCD on the headers. All nice and simple.

Radio Shield

After a good 7 months of work without much time off I’ve come back off a lovely holiday in Ile de Re, France. The island is 4km off the coast of La Rochelle and is a fantastic place and a popular place for ‘Le Weekend’. It reminded me how bad my French was but nice to practice what poor language skills I have.

Famous for salt and donkeys in pyjama’s as well as good wine and sea food. Gros Jonc is the long vertical beach on the right hand side at the top of the picture. Lovely in the sun and 2 minutes walk from where we were staying.

The closest I got to radio was seeing a chap with a TM25H (Le Mans 24 hour race special event station) T-shirt but as he was heading for the gents I wasn’t going to strike up a conversation.

Just a little piccy from Hannah moor. My contest station for an hour or so. Biggest dx was EA3EVL about 1500 miles on 5w.

I’m really enjoying the UKAC contests and had to cut this trip short because of thunder but the 2 element Nuxcom lightweight antenna on a decorating pole did the business.

I do love my radio. I really enjoy getting on air and always like the qso’s I have, even the rubber stamp ones. But recently, I’ve started to think about other aspects. The cost of equipment is one such thing (I’ve blithered on about that before) and the other is that in general you don’t see a very diverse age group in the hobby. There are you people who get into it through a number of different means and I’m fairly sure many drop the mic / key / keyboard. I suspect that getting on air is a costly business and that the pub may be a more alluring draw. A large portion of the people I have met or are involved with Ham Radio are ‘of a certain age’ ; i.e not in the 16-24 year old bracket. A bracket that I left behind nearly 20 years ago.

So I thought I’d write to the RSGB to see what their thoughts were and they decided to publish my letter. I didn’t offer any solutions but merely an opportunity to open the debate. I think its safe to say that the door has been shut now. The response to the letter was fairly swift and I read it is ‘We’re doing alright’. I remain unconvinced. I am very disappointed that they seem reluctant to grasp the nettle.

I’m a clanky by trade and the IMechE (along with just about every other professional body no doubt) make it part of your chartership that you must spend time mentoring the next generation. I spent 2 years teaching to 6th form students and thoroughly enjoyed it. Other ways include being on the young members board, who were represented at a national level. I firmly believe that the next generation is the key to this hobby and engaging them will bring us strength, diversity, enthusiasm and energy. I don’t know how much it costs to sponsor a trophy but I’ll be looking into it as a way reward the next generation. If there are any ideas I’d love to hear about them.