AmateurRadio.com

As a pastor the months of December-January are the busiest of the year for me, so I haven’t done much with Ham Radio for weeks now. That is as it should be. As I’ve said before, we must keep our hobby in its proper place. But I haven’t let it completely die, and the hopper has slowly been filling up with things to share with you.

One of those things is the ARRL’s online/mentored course, “Introduction to Emergency Communication.” I’ve registered for the next session of this course which begins on February 29 and runs through April 27. It cost me $50 as an ARRL member ($85 for non-members), but I think it’s worth the money in my situation.

Not that I have to go through this course to learn the material. Much of the material may well be common-sense or a review of what I already know after being a ham for so long. The rest I could pick up by simply reading this book or (probably better) this book. Or I could glean it all from the web or learn it from an experienced member of ARES. So why would it be worth $50 for me to go through a formal course of study?

The answer: for credibility with governmental agencies.

Like it or not, to gain respect from governmental agencies you need to prove that you’ve jumped through a few hoops — especially in a state like Minnesota. Several decades ago Minnesota figured out how important it is to train police officers well. As a former police trainer myself, I cringe when I see poorly-trained officers on COPS. Trust me — agencies that have invested in training are rarely interested in “help” from poorly-trained people, no matter how well intentioned.

So before we go to the local sheriff (who is in charge of emergency management for our county) and talk to him about ARES, we need to get our ducks in a row. Training is #1 — and to governmental workers, that means certification of some kind. Be ready to show Show them paperwork. Other things help too, like uniform vests, jackets, etc., but those things come second. (In fact, you can shoot yourself in the foot with that stuff if you aren’t careful. Take it from me — as a former police officer I know what I’m talking about — if you overdo “the look” in your uniform, your amber light bars, etc. most cops will write you off as a wanna-be commando kid to be kept far away from the grown-ups. If you really want to impress them, wear a tie. Seriously!)

Furthermore, for certification to mean anything to governmental workers it needs to come from the biggest, most widely recognized institutions you can find. For ARES, that means FEMA and the ARRL. I know some hams don’t like the ARRL, and I may get pelted with comments about how terrible the ARRL is. But there it stands.

In order to register for this course you must first complete two free online courses offered by FEMA: IS-100.b, “Introduction to the Incident Command System (ICS 100)” and IS-700.A, “National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction”. Whether or not you take ARRL’s course, you really ought to take these courses (especially the first one) if you ever want to participate in emergency services. I for one needed to brush-up on these things, and I appreciated how well they were done.

Once you successfully complete these online courses from FEMA (they don’t take long) you may register for the ARRL course on the ARRL website. Registration closes on Wednesday, February 15 for the session I’m enrolled in, and on Wednesday, March 15 for the session that begins on March 28. There is still plenty of room in my session — of the 30 seats available, only 21 have been taken as I write this on February 4.

Over at “This Day in History,” the lead story today is “Morse demonstrates telegraph.” It leads off, “On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse’s telegraph system is demonstrated for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey.” Well, I thought, surely this is worthy of a blog post, so I poked around on the web to learn more.

It turns out that this first demonstration was put on by Morse’s partner, Alfred Vail. Vail had first become involved three months earlier when visiting his alma mater, the University of the City of New York. He stumbled upon Samuel Morse demonstrating his “electro-magnetic telegraph” with over one-third of a mile of wire coiled around a room. Vail was hooked. He convinced his brother George and father Stephen to support further development of the telegraph at the Speedwell Iron Works, and he signed an agreement with Morse to turn Morse’s crude prototype into a market-ready model — at his own expense — by January 1, 1838, in return for a minor share.

The challenge was to get the thing to work with a length of wire much longer than Morse had managed to use. Alfred Vail recruited an apprentice at Speedwell, William Baxter, and got to work. After many frustrations, they finally succeeded in getting their model to work:

At last on January 6, 1838, the machine was ready to be demonstrated. The cotton-covered hat wire was coiled around the room on nails to equal a distance of two miles. Alfred sent Baxter to “invite Father to come down and see the ‘Telegraph’ machine work,” which sent the eager lad plunging into the cold afternoon without stopping to throw a coat over his shop clothes.

The machine that sent Stephen’s message, “A patient waiter is no loser,” was still far from perfect. A few days later [January 11] several hundred men and women crowded into Speedwell to witness the first public demonstration. The message this time had a practical cast: “Railroad cars just arrived, 345 passengers.”

http://www.morrisparks.net/speedwell/tel/tel.html

I’m not sure how these messages were formatted, but most likely they were not sent letter-by-letter. In those early days messages were laboriously sent using numbers that were assigned to commonly-used words. Eventually the “Morse Code” alphabet would replace this system, though great debate rages over who invented it.

Vail himself gives credit to Morse for the alphabetical system on p. 30 of his book, The American electro magnetic telegraph: with the reports of Congress, and a description of all telegraphs known, employing electricity or galvanism (available online for free), though some doubt the truth of this statement. Many years after his death, someone even sneaked in and engraved on Vail’s tombstone, “INVENTOR OF THE TELEGRAPHIC DOT AND DASH ALPHABET.”

Whoever invented the alphabet, what does seem clear is that Vail was the one who invented the straight key, an elegant improvement upon the cumbersome machines first used to encode messages. Today, you can even purchase a replica of Vail’s “spring key” from Kent Morse Keys!

Alfred Vail became increasingly frustrated by Samuel Morse’s lack of involvement in the development of the telegraph while publicly taking all the credit. Vail stuck with it for ten years before finally leaving the telegraph behind.

In my last post I promised to write about the minimum-loss matching pad that I’m using to couple my signal generator to the device I’m testing. The source impedance of the generator is 600 ohms and the output is intended to be terminated in a 600 ohm load, but the device I’m testing is only 228 ohms. The way to match this with the lowest loss is with a transformer, but it is inconvenient and unnecessary to come up with a transformer for every mismatch this piece of test-equipment will face.

Thanks to advice from the ham who is guiding me in this project, I’m using a minimum-loss matching pad, also known as an “L-pad,” to match these two impedances. (I’d tell you who this fine fellow is, but to keep you in suspense about my project I’ll wait until my final write-up. If I name him now, the cat will be out of the bag!) This quick, cheap, and easy match requires only two resistors:

Courtesy of http://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedia/attenuatorL-pad.cfm#minloss

To calculate the value of the resistors and to calculate the loss of the matching pad, use these formulas (A spreadsheet that uses these formulas is available through this webpage.):

In my case R₁=472, R₂=290, and the loss is -9.25 dB. That loss is pretty significant, but it is acceptable for this application. Remember this is a minimum-loss matching pad, not a no-loss matching pad. Using what resistors I had on hand to come as close as I could to the required values, I soldered this pad on a generic PC board from Radio Shack that I cut in half using my Dremel tool with a cutting wheel:

For more on this topic, I commend to you this webpage on “Impedance and Impedance Matching.”

After building the “Accurate LC Meter Kit” from Electronics-DIY.com, I turned to their “1Hz – 2MHz XR2206 Function Generator Kit”. All parts necessary to complete the kit were included, though not exactly as pictured on their webpage — two of the WIMA capacitors had been replaced with substitutes and there was no IC socket. All components were through-hole; soldering the kit together went quickly and easily.

If you build one of these kits you’ll need to provide your own power source as well as your own pin-connectors (if you choose to use the pins provided). As with the LC Meter, I used a size M coaxial DC power jack to accept a plug from one of the wall-wart power supplies I have around here. I didn’t bother to install a power switch in either unit since I won’t be using them very often; I won’t leave them plugged in between uses.

The fellow at the local Radio Shack gave me some pin-connectors for free, clipping them off of some battery packs that were in a box for recycling, though he only had two-pin connectors. Since one of the pin-sets has three pins, I just soldered a piece of hookup-wire to the third pin. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t bother with these pins — I’d just solder hookup wire right to the PCB. By the way, if you ever try soldering to a pin make sure you clip a heat-sink to the pin before heating it up. The plastic base of those pins melts pretty quickly!

I chose a plastic project box from Radio Shack to house this function generator. Using a Dremel tool with an engraving cutter (at the lowest speed — 5,000 RPM), I put three notches in one side of the box for the potentiometers, a notch on one end for the two switches, and ground down all four stanchions on the floor of the box since otherwise the potentiometers would have extended too high to allow the lid to fit. That Dremel tool sure is handy! A few knobs from Radio Shack finished off the project.

The two outboard switches allow you to select between three waveforms — sine, triangle, and square. I don’t have an oscilloscope so I can’t tell you how the waveforms look, but I can at least tell you that the sine wave sounded pure when I hooked my headphones up to the output with a matching pad. I am pleased to report that the signal generated by this function generator is very stable. Four DIP switches on the PCB allow you to select between four frequency-ranges, and two potentiometers allow you to tune within the selected range. One of these two potentiometers provides coarse tuning, and the other provides fine tuning. The third potentiometer controls the amplitude of the signal generated (note: amplitude decreases as you turn this potentiometer clockwise).

If you build this kit you’ll want to hook it up to a frequency counter. Two pads on the PCB are provided for this purpose. I have a piece of coax hanging out of the back of the box for connection to my own frequency counter — not that you have to use coax, but it was handy for terminating with a BNC connector. (If I were really classy I would have put this coax through its own hole in the project box, but hey, this is a piece of test equipment — I just ran it through the big hole I made for the RCA connector.) When I hooked up my frequency counter I noticed that the published ranges for each DIP switch were just rough approximations, but I was pleased to see that this frequency generator covered the entire published range and more — up to about 2.4 MHz, if I recall correctly.

Here is a slideshow of photographs I took of the completed function generator:

Click to view slideshow.

The source impedance of the generator is 600 ohms and the output is intended to be terminated in a 600-ohm load. In my next post, I hope to discuss the construction of a minimum-loss matching pad to hook it up to a piece of equipment that has a different input impedance.

Update (3/7/12): Yesterday I prompted [email protected] for a reply, mentioning the number of pageviews this post has received. I received a prompt and polite response. I learned that I was mistaken in expecting the meter to read capacitors 1 uF or higher, since the published range of the meter is only 0.1pF-900nF. There was no explanation of why I am having problems with inductors that are within the published range of the meter. However, I was quite favorably impressed by an offer to test and fix the kit at no extra charge! I shall take them up on this offer and keep you updated.

Update (2/8/12): I am having trouble with this LC Meter. It gives me the same reading for all capacitors 1 uF or higher, and the same reading for all inductors higher than about 70 mH (this last value is just a guess): 838.8 nF and 83.88 mH, respectively. As you can see the digits are the same. It seems to work for really small capacitors and inductors, but anything bigger and these are the only readings I get. I emailed [email protected] on 1/8/12 about this, but as of 2/8/12 I have received no reply. Unless and until I learn the problem is due to some error of my own in constructing this kit, I recommend against purchasing it.

Yesterday evening I finished building the “Special Edition Accurate LC Meter Kit with Blue Backlight LCD”, available from Electronics-DIY.com for $69.95. I have no experience with such devices; a more experienced fellow told me he was impressed by its specifications, so I ordered the kit. Soldering it up was a snap. The main printed circuit-board is all through-hole construction, and the LCD-board that mounts over the top of it requires nothing but a connector.

If you want to build one of these you may want to order this version of the kit instead of the one I purchased: Accurate LC Meter Kit with Green Backlight LCD, for $59.95. My kit’s “Blue Backlight LCD” turned out to be green anyway, and I think the two kits have the same circuit, save an adjustable potentiometer on mine that controls the contrast of the LCD (which I just set to maximum anyway). Certainly the cheap case that comes with the kit I ordered is not worth the extra $10 — to use it you have to carve out a bunch of stuff (to make room for the circuit-boards), including two of the four stanchions that attach to the lid. After going to all that trouble (I used a Dremel tool) you are left with a case that requires adhesive tape to hold down one side of the lid!

The instructions that came with the kit were pretty sketchy, mostly limited to how you need to carve up the case (by the way, the measurements were wrong, so ignore them). The only thing that got me into trouble was the voltage regulator, which gets in the way of the LCD-board (and protrudes too high to seat the lid of the supplied case) if you solder it in the way you normally would (which I did!). By bending the voltage regulator out at angle I managed to get the LCD-board mounted, but the lid still won’t seat properly. Learn from my mistake, and bend the leads of the voltage regulator into a Z so that they lay flat on the board and allow the voltage regulator to sit just off the edge of the board. (Of course, this only matters if you try to use the case provided.)

You’ll need to supply your own power to this unit. There isn’t enough room in the case for a 9V battery, so I purchased a DC socket. You’ll also need to supply your own connectors for testing inductors and capacitors; the photograph on the Electronics-DIY.com website shows them in the case, but they aren’t supplied. I used banana-plug sockets. You’ll also need to supply your own pin-connectors if you use the supplied pins on the circuit-board, and you’ll need your own stand-offs if you want to support the LCD-board (only two of the four screw-holes match up with the lower PCB, but that’s probably good enough).

There is no way to select the units displayed on the screen, e.g. pF vs. nF. But the dearth of selector switches is actually one of the nice things about this unit. There is no need to select a range of capacitances or inductances. The only thing you have to do is plug it in, hit the reset button whenever you want to calibrate it, and stick in a capacitor to get a reading. If you want to test an inductor, you simply press one button to select inductance-mode, then attach your inductor. It just works — and it works with precision.

Here is a slideshow of some snapshots that I took with my cell-phone. They didn’t turn out very well, but they’re good enough to give you an idea of what it looks like. Notice that I used black electrical tape to mask the edges around the LCD. That’s because the opening I made was downright ugly. Next time I’ll try using a cutting wheel on my Dremel tool instead of a grinding tip!

Click to view slideshow.

I’m afraid I haven’t spend much time on the air lately, because what time I have for ham radio has been devoted to a project that began as an idea for a blog post and has grown . . . and grown . . . and grown! I hope to write it all up when everything comes together, but I don’t want to give it away just yet. For now I’ll just give you a few clues: I’ve been assembling some test equipment, including an inductance-capacitance meter kit and a signal generator kit, and I received a tantalizing shipment in the mail today from a fellow who wrote a stellar article in QST 31 years ago. Stay tuned!

On another front, I finally got to meet a local ham who is the IT manager at the hospital in our small town (population ~3K) — Mr. Andrew Rosenau, KCØYFY. I’ve been meaning to introduce myself to him ever since moving out here, but when I found out a few days ago that he is our county’s ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Services) Emergency Coordinator, I sent him an email right away. He replied immediately, and today, after wrapping up a meeting in another part of the hospital, I ambled over and chatted with him for a few minutes in his office.

Behind him on his desk sat an HF rig, a 2M rig, and a TNC. Andy explained that he was a ham before moving here, and he got involved with ARES when the hospital became interested in EmComm. But with so few hams in our area (only 14 in the whole county), there hasn’t been much in the way of ARES activity. I volunteered to do what I could, and he said that for starters I could act as a back-up operator there at his station if he were unavailable in time of need.

It turns out that Minnesota has a huge packet network, and a radio club in a nearby town has even installed an antenna right in our city to extend this network. That was news to me! I’m going to have to dig up my old TNC and see if I can get it running. As much as I prefer CW, I have to admit that it does seem like an excellent way to handle traffic in an emergency.

ARES has always interested me. I’ve never been involved in it before, back when I lived in the Twin Cities, but now I think I owe it to my community. It appears that while there is less opportunity to do much ARES work out here in the sticks, there is also more opportunity for one ham to make a difference. So far Andy has been all alone in his effort — if even one ham chips in, that would double the number of ARES operators in our county.

Andy’s wife is a ham, too! I hope to have them over for dinner one of these days and get to know them better.

For some time now I’ve been nibbling away at H. G. Wells’book, War of the Worlds — in CW! It is available along with several other books at the SKCC CW Learning Page. What a blast! It’s an effective way to improve your code speed, and it is so captivating that you want to keep coming back to it to find out what happens next. Somehow the story is all the more gripping as it unfolds slowly, letter by letter, giving you ample time to imagine the scenes that Wells describes.

Each chapter is one word-per-minute faster than the last one. So while it starts at a mere 10 WPM, if you finish the book you’ll be copying 36 WPM!

A couple other features are helpful, too. For one thing it has punctuation marks that I’ve never learned before. It’s not everyday that you hear hyphens on the air, and the first time you hear an apostrophe or quotation-mark it will throw you for a loop. But you learn them quickly enough.

Another thing I like is that Wells uses some expressions that are a bit antiquated. This helps keep you on your toes. On the air, it can be a help to anticipate the next word, but it can also be a hindrance — if you don’t hear what you expect to hear, it can take just enough milliseconds to get over the surprise that the whole word “rushes by like a freight train” (as my friend Keith describes code when it suddenly becomes opaque). By listening to War of the Worlds on CW, with its occasionally unfamiliar turns of phrase, you learn to temper your expectation so that you’re not thrown off.

All in all it’s a great way to hone your skills, and it’s way more enjoyable than the dry practice tapes I listened to ‘way back when!

Thank you to SKCC and especially to John Dunlap, KF7BYU, for making this book available!

Update: One ham has asked me for help on this. Currently the only way to listen to the files at http://www.skccgroup.com/learn/learn.php is to click on them one at a time, either listening to them one at a time online or right-clicking each one and saving them one at a time to put together in a playlist on your computer (That’s what I did, and it was a bit tedious.). If you would like to download a zipped file of the whole book, send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll give you the link for as long as I can spare the disk space to keep the zipped file online.