AmateurRadio.com

Remember last week’s E-letter and podcast, when I mentioned that the number one priority here at Handihams would be to fix the website? That time has come, and here is the reason why:
Typically on Fridays I concentrate on producing new audio lectures for our licensing classes. Fridays are also a good time to catch up on loose ends that have collected during the week. Doing website updates is generally a little bit easier on Fridays because I know that I will be logging into FTP in order to put the audio I have produced onto the website anyway, so why not do other web updates while I am at it?
Well, last Friday proved to be a bit unnerving. As I had mentioned before, we had been having serious issues with the performance of the website Handiham.org that had caused pages to either be unavailable or load so slowly that many web browsers would simply timeout. Many of you could not reach our files or would only be able to download a partial file. Needless to say, this situation simply cannot go on. Not only is it bad service for our members, but it can eat up a lot of my time as I try to work my way through the many tech support complaints. Sometimes I have a way to work around it and help the person get the files they need and other times I don’t. In any case, Friday was not a good day for Handiham.org because it went down early in the morning and was off-line most of the day. I contacted the hosting service and they began to work on the problem which was on one particular machine in Utah.
Late on Friday the website did return to service. During the outage, it was difficult for me to work since I had to do everything that I could off-line and only later on plan to FTP the files to the website. Of course any members who needed files during the day were out of luck. Since we have had issues extending over months (though nothing quite this bad), we had already procured server space with Network Solutions, a respected company with which we already had a long-term relationship as our domain name registrar. I decided to start putting some serious effort into building a new beta website that would be the eventual replacement for the current one, but I had to step this effort up several notches over this past weekend.
When something like this happens, you really have two choices. You can either whine or complain about how awful things are and make excuses or you can look on circumstances as an opportunity to make something better. It is sort of like having your old fishing boat sink to the bottom of the lake. Yes, you miss your old fishing boat with all its dents and barnacles. On the other hand, you have an opportunity to get a new fishing boat and it can be exactly the kind of boat you have always wanted. A website is like that. We have had the old website for quite a few years now, and it has served us pretty well. However, over the years it has become cluttered with barnacles – too many links and just too much confusing stuff. It has become a little bit too dated and clunky to be useful, especially to newcomers who may be happening on it for the very first time.
Our opportunity is to build a new website that is easier to administer using Drupal 7, and to incorporate some much-needed changes. One new feature is the addition of a “Skip to Content” link near the top of the page so that blind users who are reading the page with screen reading software can skip listening to all of the menu links and go straight to the main page content. Another feature is a more pleasing view for sighted users without making the website inaccessible to blind users. And, of course, we are simplifying the menu structure to make the site less cluttered.
Our choice of Drupal for a content management system goes back quite a number of years when it was originally suggested by long-time Handiham volunteer Phil Temples, K9HI. We have been using Drupal 5.X and for the past few years 6.X. Drupal 7 has been under development for a couple of years and I have been testing it on my private website for quite a long time, watching as it matured. I feel that the time has come to make the change as long as we are redoing the website anyway. The new version of Drupal incorporates many features that had to be manually added to the old versions. Many administrative tasks are easier. We will eventually need to redirect Handiham.org to the new site, and, because of what we experienced last Friday, are going to try to do this as soon as possible.
As you might expect, there are going to be some problems. Any time you make a big website migration like this, coupled with a major redesign, there are going to be some things that might not work correctly or perhaps will be missing or not work at all. This will all take time to iron out. One thing that will have to be done is that we will have to re–register all of our users. I know this will be a major inconvenience for everyone, but it is really the only way to update the database on the new server with a clean installation. I think the strategy needs to be developed on exactly how we will do this, and I welcome user suggestions. I do have a data dump with e-mail addresses and usernames, so we could send out a blanket e-mail when the new site is ready. However, one concern I have about that strategy is that we may get an overwhelming number of hits on the new website as users try to create their new accounts. It may be better to use a targeted strategy of mailing perhaps 25 users at a time to even out the load. Anyone who has Drupal experience or who has administered a website is welcome to contact me directly with their comments.
The old website will still sit on the old server in Utah, but once the name Handiham.org is redirected, it will become unreachable. I will then take steps to reactivate our other Handiham domain name, Handiham.net. The old site would be available there for some period of time.
One problem that I anticipate is that the Handiham mailing lists with the Handiham.org domain name will cease to function. These two lists are the Handiham Radio Club list and the Handiham Volunteer Instructors list. The Wednesday E-letter list and the Friday New Audio Notification list will not be affected because they are hosted at Freelists. I may be able to reconfigure the club and volunteer lists with the.net address, but I would also welcome suggestions on how we should proceed with these lists.
Some of our users may be concerned about how this will affect the two Handiham Internet remote base stations. Neither station is connected in any way with the web hosting service and both are separately hosted on their own dedicated computers on Courage Center properties. Therefore, neither station will be affected in any way. We do update the remote base station status daily on the website, and this update will be continued on the new website as well.
Another change that will be implemented is the availability of more materials in DAISY format. This new format will replace some of the older MP3 audio for our blind members. This advancement will allow for easier navigation through the material for our blind Handiham members. This does not mean that we are moving away from human readers, so please don’t worry that you will never hear a human voice again on Handiham.org! Some materials, if they are available in computer text in the first place, are most easily converted to DAISY format that incorporates a voice produced by the computer software. Other materials are more properly and efficiently read by a human reader and can be imported into DAISY by special software. Our original production will still be done by Audacity so that we can more easily edit the audio and still produce four track cassette recordings for the Handiham members who need them during 2012. Of course Audacity remains our editor of choice for the Friday audio lectures and for the Wednesday podcast. As before, the free podcast will remain available to the general public in the iTunes store.
We are hoping that the transition will go smoothly, but you know as well as I do that a project like this is pretty complicated and there will always be some unforeseen problems. In fact, to me it sort of feels like planning for and setting up for Field Day. You always anticipate how much fun it is going to be and you have participated in the planning process for past years and like to think that you know you are not going to forget anything this year. Naturally, when you arrive at the Field Day site and start getting everything set up that is when you find out that no one packed Styrofoam cups for the coffee and the power supply cables are still sitting in one of the club member’s basement. That is how it will be for any new project and I am not going to be surprised when things don’t work on the website. What we can do is to work together to make the new website project successful by helpful suggestions that include specific recommendations on how to fix a problem whenever possible.
So, even though this is going to be a real roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work couple of weeks, I know that we are doing the right thing. I am encouraged by the American Council of the Blind website, which also uses Drupal 7 and the Bartik theme as its public portal. I also want to thank Handiham Radio Club members and Handiham volunteers who have visited the new beta website and given me suggestions and feedback. I really appreciate your help!

1. Fix the website.  This morning I tried to reach Handiham.org and it was so painfully slow to load that the web browser just gave up and displayed an error message. We have been encountering this problem more and more over the past year, and it is related to the shared web hosting server that we are using. More than once the hosting company took the site down, surprising us and causing me to have to drop everything else to deal with the problem.  Furthermore, I have received complaints about audio files not playing through.  This can happen through the loss of connectivity due to server overload.  The Fix: Move the website to another hosting service.  This project is a major one, and will result in a disruption of our website-based services, but it is going to have to happen sometime soon.  We will keep you posted, but before we make the move I would like to hear from you if there is some website feature that you really would like to have that currently does not exist.  In the meantime, if Handiham.org appears to be down, it may instead just be really slow due to overload. Wait a while and try again.  If audio files do not stream all the way through, an alternative is to download them onto your hard drive then open them.  If downloading is slow, try again later.
2. Improve our audio recording quality.  We depend a lot on audio delivered from the website, both for our weekly audio news and for audio lectures for those who are working on a license or upgrade. And we must not forget about the audio tutorials on how to use various rigs, either.  It has come to my attention that some of the audio lectures are incomplete.  One, for example, is Extra Class Lecture 59, which simply cuts off at the 42 minute mark. An alert Extra Class student let me know about this, and when I downloaded the lecture to check it, sure enough – the audio file was okay up to 42 minutes, after which it simply flat lined to the end.  Checking my original MP3 file, I was disappointed to learn that it was also defective.  Unfortunately the original Audacity file was long gone, so recovery was impossible.  Since the Extra Class pool changes this summer, we have decided to just leave the defective file in place and concentrate on solving these kinds of quality issues with the new recordings that will begin as soon as the 2012 Extra Class pool is released.  To improve our audio, we will be updating Audacity and tweaking the settings.  We will also be using a new version of the Lame encoder for MP3 production.  Because volunteers also produce audio for us at their own homes, we need to get more information out about how to record digitally.  A series of how-to articles on this subject will be appearing in Worldradio Magazine soon. 
3. Upgrade the equipment at Radio Camp.  Recently I proposed that we acquire a new radio for training purposes at Radio Camp.  At the same time, we would buy a new rotor to replace a non-working old unit on the 50 foot tower at Camp Courage. The proposed radio is the Kenwood TS-590S with VGS1 Voice Guide module.  Following the camp session, the radio could be pressed into service as a remote base station using the accessible Kenwood software interface. This suggestion is under discussion on the Handiham Radio Club mailing list. 
4. Assess the working space at HQ and make it more productive.  A visit to our headquarters will make you a believer – that we need to do something to organize the working space better, that is. A hodgepodge of work stations, storage cabinets, and donated gear that needs assessment greets you as you walk in.  We need to put some serious elbow grease into making our headquarters a better space for working and operating, as well as for checking radios and accessories out to see if they are working and to make minor repairs, assemble power cables and coax jumpers, and make sure that each radio has all of its accessories.
5. Expand our Internet Remote Base capabilities.  The addition of a TS-590S station would definitely be an improvement, but what if we could add a DX station with a tower and beam?  That is what we will be discussing as we gather for Radio Camp 2012 in June.  In the long run such a station benefits our members whether or not they attend a radio camp session.  It is an essential service to offer remote base capability now, having begun as a quirky experimental project at Courage North several years ago.  Included in our effort is a revamp of the existing W4MQ software, which could use some additional accessibility features.  Since 2011 we have been hosting the W4MQ software project following the untimely death at age 58 of Bob Arnold, N2JEU, who had been hosting it for the past couple of years. 
6. Prepare a new Extra Class lecture series.  As mentioned, the question pool changes on July 1.  The Extra Class lecture series, designed to be blind-friendly and accessible to Handiham members with reading disabilities, takes an enormous amount of time to produce.  Based on a variety of references, it will take the student through the concepts and not simply a reading of a textbook or the question pool. I hope to get through it more quickly this time and with better audio.  
7. Plan for the future.  In the past we have periodically called on volunteers who serve as members of an advisory board. It is time once again to bring the Handiham Advisory Board back to life so that we can be sure we are hearing from our members as we plan our way forward into the next few years.  Obviously technology is changing, and our services must change with it.  I can’t see the future any better than the next person, but one thing I have learned from experience is that there is usually wisdom and insight to be gained by bringing knowledgeable people together to tackle projects like this.  Any one person has limitations based on their likes and dislikes.  In a group, we will have a chance to bring forward new ideas, hash them through, and decide where we need to place our efforts.  This is timely, since I will turn 64 in April and will eventually retire.  While that may not happen for a few years, we need to plan now for a smooth transition, and that can’t really take place easily without a “future plan” of where the Handiham program should be in the years ahead. 
8. Leverage social media.  With other amateur radio organizations and services already in the game, we have some catching up to do.  The Handiham program does not have a Facebook or Google Plus presence, and it is no longer possible to ignore these powerful marketing tools. Courage Center, our parent nonprofit company, and Courage Center Camps (of which we are part) both have Facebook pages. Figuring out a strategy is key, since we would need to limit our administrative time on such an account due to limited resources.

Welcome to Handiham World!

1. Lack of organization.  Any activity that involves a group of participants meeting at specific times for some stated purpose requires some organization.  To understand this concept, let’s consider a simple job like mowing your lawn. You would be correct to assume that you can do this job yourself, so no formal organization is required. On the other hand, suppose you must mow a golf course.  Now you need a formal organization, because the job is too large and complicated for one person. The head groundskeeper will be in charge, doling out job assignments to a crew.  A net can also need formal organization, depending on its size and purpose. When you don’t have job assignments or other necessary organization, it can make a mess of the net. 
2. Failure to commit.  This is a problem in every club, and can sure be a problem when it comes to net participation. You need a critical mass of committed participants to make a net happen.  Not enough commitment equals dead net. 
3. Distractions & competition from other activities.  This is a problem for every club, bowling group, TV network, newspaper, and amateur radio net.  There is competition on every front from something else, no matter what you are trying to organize, and that in turn makes it hard to get participants to commit to the net.  
4. Crowded bands.  Now that the solar cycle is yielding more favorable HF propagation conditions, the most popular HF bands are more crowded than ever.  It can be difficult to find a clear frequency on which to gather for your net.
5. Poor HF propagation.  Ha, ha, this is also an excuse for a failing net, because just as good propagation can result in crowded bands, bad propagation can result in empty bands. You have to hear them if you want to work them, goes the old saying. 
6. QRM.  This annoyance has been around as long as anyone can remember, but it can kill a net if the net participants don’t know how to manage it. Who wants to listen to all that noise and interference? 
7. Poor net control technique.  Oh, man – don’t get me started.  A net control station that cannot control the net is a real turn-off for many would be participants. 
8. Bad marketing.  If no one knows about the net, it is unlikely to grow and prosper. You can’t leave it to chance that people will simply run across the net by tuning around the bands, although that sometimes does happen. 
9. Lack of flexibility.  Everyone knows that people have lots going on in their lives and that they cannot make every net session. HF conditions change all the time. Sometimes there may be another QSO on the net frequency. If the net does not have flexibility built into it, these problems can turn into a failed net.
10. Not having a plan.  What if the frequency is already in use?  What if the scheduled Net Control Station does not show up? What if the band is dead?  If there is no plan to deal with such things, the net can fold like a tent in the wind!

Welcome to Handiham World!

1. Get on the club Internet mailing list and immediately complain about the newsletter, the editor, and the overall lack of quality in “this day and age”?

   OR…

2. Notify the newsletter editor politely about the error and offer to help get the word out about the correct date for the event?

Welcome to Handiham World!

Welcome to Handiham World!

Welcome to Handiham World!

	If you own more than one vehicle, consider doing your Christmas shopping with the one that does not have the amateur radio equipment installed in it. This makes it much easier to turn that car into a “plain Jane” that will not attract any attention in the parking lot.
	If you have accessories like transceivers or a GPS, get them out of sight. The GPS can probably fit comfortably in the glove box, but I recommend taking the transceiver out altogether and either leaving it at home or locking it securely in the trunk of the car while you are at home, not in plain sight in the parking lot of some shopping center where the bad guys can see that you are putting valuables in the trunk. I prefer using magnetic mount antennas that can quickly be pulled off the roof of the car and tossed in the trunk.
	I have become somewhat of an expert in hiding wires under the passenger side floor mat. After taking out the radio and throwing it into the trunk, I can easily disguise the antenna feed line by simply coiling it up and placing it under the floor mat where it is completely out of sight. Any accessory plugs or wires for the GPS can also go under the floor mat or in the glove box prior to my leaving my own property.
	Any time you purchase gifts, the time to place them in the trunk of the car is immediately upon leaving the store. Never place them on the passenger seat or anywhere else in the passenger compartment where they can be seen by anyone pretending to park their car nearby. It takes only a few seconds to break into a car and transfer these packages into an adjacent vehicle. Again, the idea is to make your car look as plain and uninviting as possible.
	Never, ever return to the car and put packages in the trunk or anywhere else in the car and then leave the car in the same place and return to your shopping. The only time you should place packages in the car at all is when you’re getting ready to leave. Anyone can see you putting packages in the car and break into the car, including the trunk, as soon as you are out of sight. If you must unload because you have just too much to carry and it is necessary to make a stop at the car to put packages in the trunk, I recommend that you do so and then drive the car to another part of the parking lot or a different floor on the parking ramp, park it again, and return to your shopping. That lessens the possibility of someone seeing you fill the car with packages and then leave, giving them time to break in.
	Even if you have placed your antennas out of sight, don’t be tempted to leave radios installed in the front of the car where they can be seen through the windows. Thieves may not know what they are taking, but they probably figure that whatever they get can be sold for a few bucks for drug money. You can’t simply depend on a thief not wanting an amateur radio transceiver because they don’t know what it is!
	I have heard other amateur radio operators suggest that callsign license plates on a vehicle can attract thieves, but I have never found this to be the case. In fact, I think the general public probably thinks of them more as vanity license plates and I have even run into police officers who aren’t familiar with call letter license plates. Maybe amateur radio operators are such good drivers that they never get pulled over!
	Generally thieves who break into cars want to be able to do so quickly without being noticed. You can improve your odds of avoiding car break-ins by locating your car in a well lighted, busy part of the parking lot. I don’t like parking next to blank walls or trucks or vans that hide the vehicle enough for someone to break in while remaining out of sight.
	The name of the game is to avoid drawing attention to your vehicle with anything that looks expensive, flashy, or easy to steal. I can’t emphasize enough how leaving packages or expensive radio equipment in plain sight can attract thieves at this time of year. They are out there looking for easy money, so you really have to be careful to make sure that your vehicle doesn’t stand out as an easy mark.
	Even when you park your car in your own driveway your radio equipment can be at risk. I recommend parking cars with radio equipment that you want to leave installed in a secured garage. Don’t depend on car alarms to protect your expensive radio equipment. A car parked in the driveway can be burglarized in minutes while you sleep. If you have limited parking space, the car with the radio equipment should be parked inside and the car that must be parked in the driveway should be the “plain Jane” with nothing to attract thieves left in plain sight.
	Of course no matter how careful you are, you can fall victim to thieves. You may want to consider insurance coverage for your radio equipment. Your existing automobile insurance may provide some coverage, but supplemental insurance is always available. This is a matter to discuss with your insurance agent. Sometimes relatively inexpensive transceivers, such as 2 m only mobile units, may not be worth paying an extra insurance premium. On the other hand, if you have a truck load of expensive radios that operate on multiple bands and that are difficult to remove from the vehicle when you go Christmas shopping, you may want to consider that extra insurance coverage!
	As they used to say on the old Hill Street Blues TV series, “Let’s be safe out there.”  Timely advice for the holidays!

Early Winter Reading: Becoming a Ham (Part 11)

Becoming a Ham – Part 11
By T. A. Benham (SK – formerly W3DD, a callsign which has been reassigned.)
Tom Benham, now a silent key but who most recently held callsign W3DD, was a ham radio pioneer, and being blind didn’t even slow him down! Join us now as W3DD recalls more about satellites in the early days and his experience with a Senate investigation. 
The Teletype Episode
We were a very active part of NASA tracking for a couple of years and the teletype was our means of receiving messages about launchings. One night I stayed in the trailer all night because there was to be a launch about five A.M. We had fitted out the front part of the trailer with a couch, a hot-plate, coffee pot and other things for comfort. I was awakened about three in the morning by the teletypewriter coming on and typing something. Of course, I didn’t know what it had written. Perhaps the message required a reply. If so, I would have to use the phone and find out what it was. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I got up, sat down at the machine and wrote, “If what you just sent requires a reply, ring the bell three times. If no reply is required, ring the bell twice.” After a few seconds, the bell went ding ding. I went back to bed until five o’clock. A couple of days later, a man walked into my lab and said, “The office in Philadelphia sent me out here to find out what that monkey business the other night was all about.” “What monkey business?” “That business about ringing the bell three or two times.” When I explained it to him, he got a huge bang out of it saying “Gosh, wait until I get back and tell them that!” and he left. “Voices of the Satellites” got additions made to it during this period. We got the recording of Eisenhower’s Christmas message broadcast from a satellite at Christmas 1959, telemetering signals from many satellites, John Glenn’s flight in which he talked about the ice crystals, Russians talking back and forth between two space vehicles. As a matter of fact, the news people were out several times with cameras and recorders to watch and listen to the signals as we picked them up. We were not able to pick up satellite signals until they got above the horizon, so there was a delay of about two minutes after launch until the satellite was about 100 miles high before we made contact. In about 1963 we were monitoring a launch. We waited for the two minutes and then began to look for the signal. Several minutes passed with no contact so I went to the teletype machine and asked what happened. In two or three minutes the teletype machine wrote a very short message. I asked someone to read it. All it said was “splash.” One time when I thought we would be able to hear the Russian astronauts talking from one ship to another, I invited a member of the University of Pennsylvania Russian Department to come listen. He did and we got a very good signal. Unfortunately, all they talked about was trivia about temperatures in the cabins, how their food was holding out, and such like. But it was interesting to us and he seemed to get a big kick out of it. An interesting but small contribution to the Space effort was made by Ham radio back in 1959. I mentioned that President Eisenhower provided a recorded Christmas message just before December 25th that year. The story has it that the message had not arrived in time for the launch. The vehicle was closed and launch was a few minutes away. A Ham, identity not known, rushed up with a recorder and equipment and said, “Hold it! let me radio the message to the receiver in the “bird”. He set things up and sent the taped message to be stored aboard. I recorded the result when it was transmitted some time later.
The Summons
A rather amusing incident took place early in the satellite project. During the first couple of years, there was much conversation about the fact that the Russians had launched before we did. The project for launching was well under way in this country. Werner Von Braun, the German Physicist who was responsible for the development of the V1 and V2 rockets in Germany, was brought to this country at the end of the war and was making good progress organizing rocket development down in Alabama, but the red tape and time spent arguing delayed our program so that the Russians got ahead of us. There was much talk in the US Senate about why we were behind. There was an article published in one of the popular magazines telling what a good job Russia was doing. A Senate Committee was convened to investigate matters. The author of the article and I were subpoenaed to appear before the Committee. I got a small recorder and a few tapes to take with me to demonstrate what I had been recording and asked Corlies to accompany me. We were shown into the committee room and the other fellow was called first. They gave him a hard time and he did not present his information very coherently. The tenor of his remarks was that the Russians were way ahead of us, that he had been there and seen for himself.
Senator Brooks, the chairman said something like, “Well, you certainly have been given a snow job and what you have said does not seem to mean much.” Then I was called to the witness table and the chairman said in a sarcastic tone of voice, “Now, what’s your story?”
“I don’t have a story, as you put it, sir. You summoned me so I’m here. What do you want of me?”
His attitude changed immediately. He said, “We’ve heard that you have been very active in tracking satellites. We’d like to hear some of your recordings and ask a few questions. Please give us a summary of your activities.”
Things proceeded peacefully and pleasantly after that. I played a few samples of the satellite signals and explained what they meant and the information that could be derived from them, both US and Russian vehicles. They seemed to enjoy what I played and were friendly and interested. 
Next week: Moonbounce.

To be continued…