AmateurRadio.com

Harvey Adkins, K1ZWK, was found dead in his apartment in New Haven, CT this week of apparent natural causes.  Adkins was first licensed in 2000, shortly after retiring from over 30 years of service at Lockheed Martin.

“He was an engineer’s engineer.”  said Walter Roomberg, a former co-worker.  ”Any challenge you placed in front of him he would attack with vigor.  He was always trying to do “one better” than anyone else and would always succeed.”

“After he retired, Harvey was bored and needed something to do.  He knew about amateur radio for years, but dismissed it as too simplistic.” said Roger Smith, a local ham friend.   “At work he was on complex high tech multi-million dollar defense projects.”

We spoke with Adkins’ ex-wife, Mildred.  ”We divorced in 2010.  He had always been successful all his life but was failing at this new thing he was working on with his radios called QRP.  It became an obsession and he was failing at it.  It took such a toll on our marriage that I had to call it quits after forty years.” she said sadly.

Adkins excelled in amateur radio radio shortly after getting his ticket.  He acquired Worked all States on four bands within his first three months.  DXCC was achieved a few months later and within three years he was approaching the honor roll.

“Harvey operated all the modes at that time, except for CW and some of the slower digital modes.”  stated Smith.  ”He had to learn the code in order to get his license, which he did easily, but he had no interest in CW.  He saw it as slow, simplistic, and too low tech, and enjoyed the ease with which he could conduct a conversation with other modes.  In additional to phone ragchewing and DXing, he was doing all kinds of cool stuff like EME and writing his own DSP software, using the engineering capabilities he developed in his professional career.  ’Life’s too short for CW!’ he would say. “

Another club member, Elmer Keglovits, gave a similar profile of Adkins.  ”He was the Renaissance man of amateur radio.  He did it all.  Some modes he briefly did but found too mundane or just not that challenging.  PSK31 was one of those modes.  He tried it for a short time but found the nature of it, macros and all, to be a bit mindless and boring.  But he would never put down the mode, and if you ever asked him about PSK at a meeting, he could immediately tell you exactly how it worked and even draw on the whiteboard the modulation technique.  It was the same with CW.  He learned it to get his license and felt he knew enough about it, and moved on to other more interesting things, for him.  He wanted to try everything in amateur radio and learn the underlying technical details.  He didn’t find it necessary or worthwhile to dwell on modes that got in the way of his ‘journey of discovery’ as he often called it.”

“One night he was talking about his achievements at our monthly club meeting and someone chuckled and said that anyone could do what he did on QRO and phone and that if he wanted to be a real ham he should do all CW.  Something snapped in Harvey that night.” said Smith.  ”Throughout his professional career he was accustomed to being recognized for everything.  He had thought he had reached the pinnacle of amateur radio achievement and was insulted, but also challenged by this.”

Adkins became introverted and isolated after the encounter, Rogers explained.  ”After that night he changed.  He studied and practiced CW again and increased from a rusty 5 words per minute to 30 in a matter of two or three weeks.  It was amazing.  He made some contacts on the air, but he was frustrated as it seemed too easy to bang out quick QSOs, and he felt too encumbered to ragchew like he did on phone.  On the other hand, once enjoyable phone operation didn’t interest him anymore with the mode considered tainted, in his mind.  That’s when he vowed to go all CW and QRP.  He sold all of his gear at Dayton later and proudly purchased and built an Elecraft K1 and began operating a relatively spartan station compared to his previous setup.  But for some reason he just couldn’t make a contact, any contact, at all with the rig.”

Rogers had offered to help Adkins determine what was wrong with his new radio, but Adkins steadfastly refused, seeing it as a failure if he had to seek help.  ”At that point our relationship deteriorated.” said Rogers.  ”He had gone for about four months without being able to make a CW QRP contact.  He bragged in an email to the QRP-L reflector about diving into the QRP CW lifestyle and how much he was enjoying it, but unfortunately was banned for life when he mentioned a Rockmite that he had acquired on eBay.”

The ban from QRP-L added to his angst and focused him even more, but his downfall was beginning.  He began gaining weight, his marriage fell apart apart and after a messy divorce funds were limited so he had to move into an apartment where no outside antennas were allowed.  This fueled the obsession, with the necessity of stealth antennas adding to the challenge.  Two years later and fifty pounds heavier he still had not made a QRP CW contact.

“Local hams could hear his signal very weakly, but no one dared work him.”  said Rogers.  ”Knowing Harvey, we didn’t want to ruin his challenge.  We weren’t rare DX so it probably would have made him go over the edge if someone a mile away worked him.”

But Harvey was already going over the edge.  Analysis of files on his computer showed that he had created an anonymous email alias and fake callsign and was frantically emailing QRP-L.org, the other main QRP “watering hole”, for suggestions.  Unfortunately his emails were HTML formatted which was forbidden by the reflector, and his emails were silently discarded without anyone seeing them or responding.  The lack of response which mimicked his on air struggle was apparently more than Adkins could bare.

After nearly three years of no QSOs, Adkins was found dead in his apartment full of Elecraft rigs, Rockmites, straight keys, and various homebrew stealth antennas.  Roger Smith acquired all of the rigs and coordinated an estate sale at the request of estranged relatives who declined to be involved.  ”Each rig was modified.  There was a resistor pad on the output of each one, reducing the power output.  Apparently five watts was too much power for him, or he thought someone would up the ante on him again with an even lower power challenge.  All of his rigs were putting out less than a milliwatt.  It was very strange.”

No services are planned for Adkins, however local amateurs are planning to honor him by acquiring his ashes and compressing them into an Altoids tin and storing them at their clubhouse in New Haven.  Harvey Adkins was 74 and is survived by two children and one grandchild.

The Raspberry Pi, which is a 700 Mhz ARM-based single board computer targeted at providing computing hardware to poor countries is going to be going into production soon.  Two models called “A” and “B” are being offered, at approximately $25 and $35 (US).  Options to purchase boards and donate money to provide units to needy folks around the world will be available.  

The concept of single board computers isn’t new, but the horsepower and price point of these units are.  At this price range it puts the boards squarely in Arduino territory, but unlike the Arduino and other microcontrollers it will run a full blown OS.  Several Linux distributions will be supported immediately and presumably BSD variants won’t be far behind.  It will not run Windows or Windows emulation, like WINE.  (Yes, I know WINE is not an emulator).

The board is equipped with a USB port that obviously can be used to interface with a multitude of devices, however it also includes a General Purpose I/O port or GPIO that supports, PWM, Serial UART and I2C capability.  This will open the board up to hardware hackers like us.  Sweet!

I’m pondering what amateur radio applications this could run.  It has enough horsepower to do DSP.  It would make a nice logging and contest appliance, with  some well-designed software.  How about an EchoLink or digimode appliance?  Considering the low price it’s almost disposable and could make a powerful hot air balloon radio payload system controller.  I may port my keyer code over to it for giggles.  It will be interesting to see what uses radio artisans come up with.

Often I complain about what we’re doing wrong or what we should be doing.  This time is one of those exceptions where I have to pass kudos along.  CQ Magazine has announced a “Maker” column which will be edited by Matt Stultz, KB3TAN, and will appear in several issues this year.  The so-called maker movement has always been around, it’s just recently become more “hip” with the “maker” moniker and like with amateur radio the Internet provides a means for tinkerers to network, exchange ideas and information, and come together as a more organized movement.  In my opinion amateur radio missed two prime opportunities with techie movements in the past, that of the open source world / Linux, and the wifi boom in the late 90s, early 2000s that led to wireless ISPs and got a lot of geeks interested in wireless but without amateur radio.

It’s great that CQ recognizes the opportunity and is taking advantage of it to bridge the maker and amateur radio worlds, and it just makes sense from a technical standpoint to introduce amateur radio to makers.  Maker projects often have an element of mobility or remote control — projects that need wireless for control or data telemetry.  Rather than just purchasing a mystery “black box” radio unit off-the-shelf and incorporating it into a project, makers have the opportunity with amateur radio to understand what’s going on inside the box, or bettet yet build that black box themselves.  Introducing amateurs to the maker world will be beneficial as well, hopefully encouraging more amateurs to build and perhaps build projects outside of the normal QRP rig projects we tend to do.  Overall this is a win-win situation for radio amateurs and makers.

Here’s a project I’ve been working on which kind of started on a whim a few days ago.  I’ve had two NJQRP DDS Daughtercards lying around, the older versions without the output amp update.  I decided to interface one permanently to an Arduino and build a dual 10 and 6 meter beacon.

Is your lab as messy as mine?

The Arduino alternates the DDS frequency between 28 Mhz and 25 Mhz and CW keys the amplifier board.  For the six meter transmitter chain I’m doubling the DDS 25 Mhz output to create the 50 Mhz six meter signal.  Output power on each band will probably be around 250 mW.  I’m probably going to put the unit in a weatherproof box, install it in the backyard, and attempt to power it with solar power.  In addition to doing the CW keying and DDS programming, the Arduino will also measure and announce the battery voltage and perhaps the solar panel charge current.  For antennas I’m thinking of simple wire loops.

Several years ago I ran a 100 mW ten meter beacon.  I like lower power beacons; it’s more of a treat when people report hearing them.  The previous ten meter beacon got quite a few DX reports from Europe during the last solar cycle.

Undoubtedly some of you radio artisans have been following the LightSquared spectrum fiasco.  For those of you who haven’t been, in a nutshell LightSquared is a US company that is attempting to deploy a 4G mobile wireless network on 59 Mhz of real estate that’s right next to the GPS band.  Their plans have been halted due to concerns about interference to GPS services, used by consumers, industry, and the military.  Technically the problem is due not to LightSquared’s technology directly, but rather deficiencies or design limitations of millions of GPS receivers in use.

For a solution to this difficult interference issue, perhaps the FCC should look to a past interference situation, that of Broadband over Powerline, or BPL.  Here are some ideas, some that came directly from BPL vendors and advocates or the FCC, and others just in the “spirit” of BPL:

Regulate it under Part 15.  Part 15 states that a Part 15 service can’t interfere with licensed services.  So, everyone should be happy, right?  If someone experiences interference, like with BPL they can contact LightSquared and hopefully have the issue resolved in 6 to 36 months.

Declare no protection for mobile operations.  Like mobile amateur radio operations and BPL interference, GPS users can just walk or drive away from LightSquared towers or cell phone users.  Interference problem solved.  Only stationary users of GPS should be able to file interference complaints.  This would include people using GPS in their living rooms.

Create an online database of LightSquared towers and cell phone users.  As with the BPL database, GPS users could query it to determine if they are experiencing interference from a LightSquared tower or device and determine where in the US they can relocate to avoid the interference.

Claim that interference to military GPS users really isn’t an issue.  The military really only needs GPS when there’s a war going on.  Most people in war zones aren’t making phone calls and LightSquared probably won’t be deploying towers in Iran, where our next war is likely to occur.

Point out that 4G wireless services are new technology and GPS is old.  GPS development began in 1973, 39 years ago.  Why are we still using this old, antiquated technology?  4G wireless is new, it creates jobs, and people can use maps instead of that old GPS.

There is always a simple solution to a complex problem.  BPL was the no-brainer solution to the broadband crisis.  The FCC just needs to dust off its BPL files and apply the same technical expertise and creativity that solved the BPL interference problem and made it the success it is today.

Yaesu has been in the news recently for the digital salvo they fired over the bow of the D-STAR ship.  In theory I think this is a great move, and others are praising Yaesu’s announcement.  My concerns with D-STAR’s proprietary AMBE vocoder algorithm and hardware, the essentially one vendor market for D-STAR equipment (Icom), and the relatively dated and unscalable D-STAR protocol are no secret to anyone who reads this blog regularly.  But looking at the Yaesu digital voice whitepaper, it’s somewhat a half-baked initiative, in my opinion, where Yaesu has a new hammer and everything looks like a nail.

Most of the paper focuses on the modulation technique of D-STAR, GMSK, and pits it against Yaesu’s (errr….. Motorola’s)  C4FM.  While better RF and data throughput performance can be had with better modulation techniques, the big issue with D-STAR isn’t its modulation technique, it’s the layer two protocol.  Yaesu doesn’t even mention its layer two protocol and network that would presumably be used, Wires II.

Yaesu’s case for C4FM superiority beyond it being used in commercial networks falls flat.  In the paper there are specifications of selected D-STAR and C4FM radios compared, with some highlighted parameters.  There’s also a graph comparing various modulation techinques, but the big takeaway is D-STAR has a rate of 4800 baud versus 9600 baud for C4FM.  I’ve used the somewhat archiac term of baud rather than kpbs intentionally to illustrate just how lame the comparison is.  Furthermore, while D-STAR is clearly in the crosshairs of Yaesu, there is no mention of D-STAR’s 128kbs data mode or how Yaesu’s solution beats that data rate.

All in all this whitepaper and initiative which some are praising appears to me to be a rather sophomoric effort, and one more concerned with selling retreaded commercial rigs in amateur radio.  Aligning amateur standards with commercial ones isn’t a bad thing especially when secondhand commercial gear can be re-purposed for amateur use, but there needs to be other compelling reasons to adopt a commercial modulation technique. Even with the best layer one modulation technique, if the layer two protocol and the supporting network is badly designed the digital voice standard is doomed for failure.  Yaesu needs to be making a case for its system by explaining the entire network, how it is open and non-proprietary, and how it will scale in the future.  I hope Yaesu does successfully launch a competing digital voice solution, and I hope organizations like ARRL and RSGB get involved and insure that the standard is consistent with the spirit of amateur radio.  Unfortunately to me this new initiative looks like another D-STAR in the making.

(D-STAR is a registered trademark of Icom Incorporated.)

What would a blog be without the traditional year-in-review-and-here-are-my-New-Year’s-resolutions post?  For a general overview of amateur radio in 2011, Jeff, KE9V, has a rather excellent summary over at KE9V.net worth reading.  From a personal standpoint, it was a year that I spent less time on the air and more time tinkering with stuff.

Much of my activity was centered around the Arduino CW Keyer.  I’m especially proud of the Winkey emulation mode which enables interfacing to many logging and contest programs and the PS2 Keyboard code.  It’s been really satisfying to hear from folks, especially DX, who are using the code in their shacks.

Another project was the Yaesu Rotator Controller Emulator which interfaces most any rotator (not just Yaesus) to a computer for control via a terminal session or logging/contest program.  It’s cool to be running Ham Radio Deluxe and just point-and-click to where you want to go and have the beam rotate automagically.  Yea, I’m amused by simple things.

One of my 2011 resolutions was to do Summits On the Air or SOTA in a big way.  I ended up doing only three SOTAxpeditions, but I’m finding outdoor operation much more interesting than sitting in a shack trying to bang out cookie-cutter QSOs.

I tried Weak Signal Propagation Reporter or WSPR.  It’s an interesting novelty, but I’m not sure it will hold my interest for long.

My blogging suffered a bit.  Quality over quantity has always been my goal and my post drafts folder continues to be littered with unfinished posts, half-baked ideas, and posts that never saw the light of day because I felt they were too controversial or critical for the intended tone of this blog.

My summary of 2011 wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the influence of G4ILO on my daily thought.  Julian’s announcement of a statistically-incurable brain tumor was a shock to all of us here in the amateur radio blogosphere, myself included.  His writings in both his amateur radio blog and One Foot In The Grave have helped me remember what is really important in life and how valuable our time is.  Now that I’m in my forties I’m realizing I need to start figuring out how to better spend my finite time here and do rather than just dream.  Julian, I wish you the best for you and Olga in 2012, and know that your insights have helped this radio artisan.

So what’s on the roadmap for 2012?

Many more SOTA expeditions and outdoor operating in general.  I’ve been talking for years about doing a spring Appalachian Trail overnight expedition.  Time to just get some friends together and do it.

VHF Contest Mountaintopping.  This goes along with the outdoor operation theme.  Just do it.

Arduino CW Keyer.  I may add more features in 2012, like LCD display support and CW decoding, but I’m probably going to focus my efforts on facilitating community efforts to build complete units.  Oscar, DJ0MY, who has been helpful in suggesting and testing keyer functionality has recently been working on an “open source” design PC board and an enclosure.  Perhaps kitting would be the next logical step.

Build an Az-El satellite antenna array using cheap homebrew yagis and a homebrew Frankenstein rotator setup with my Arduino rotator interface.  That should make the neighbors wonder what I’m doing.

Develop the RadioCubeCache idea further and see where that goes.

Build an Arduino-based automatic antenna tuner.  This one has been on my list for awhile.  Like the keyer I think I can build something as good as commercial offerings and offer it to the community.

Try JT6M, JT65, and all the JT modes.  I think this is going to be the bulk of my home on-the-air time in the new year.

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year!