AmateurRadio.com

Yes, I did it again. Needed a 25 cent Molex connector and while browsing the electronics supply store I bumped into a rack with Arduino stuff. Maybe it was the Buddhist music playing in the background (the owner of the store is a devout Buddhist and only meditative music is played in the background), but I suddenly felt the urge to buy one. Now remember, I have a love-hate relationship with computers. I prefer having nothing to do with them, but since I cannot avoid them I just go with the flow. Apart from that, I never really got the coding bug.

But for some reason the urge was too strong this time. And so I spent 15 bucks on a Arduino Duemilanove and 3 bucks on two add on boards: a 3 color LED and an analogue temperature sensor. Not much money to try it out and if I don’t like it then no big loss. Because of the name alone you should buy one, too. Can you name me an electronics product with a sexier name than Duemilanove??? And it just means 2009!!! Sometimes I wish I married an Italian girl, then I would be living in Italy now and be immersed in that wonderful language every day.

Back home I found out that installing the IDE was a simple “sudo apt-get install arduino” and I was connected. It took me all of 15 minutes to get the 3 color LED blinking and I was hooked. This is not difficult at all and a lot of FUN! Now it’s not that I have all the time in the world to start learning to write sketches now. Far from it, I’m as busy as ever. But after introducing the Arduino to my 11 year old son he started playing with it and it took him an hour to make the LEDs blink his name in Morse code (because that’s the only Morse code he knows). This might turn into a nice father-son play-thing and who knows, maybe I finally start to get the coding bug.

http://youtu.be/yIOpwHVJVb8

As a young boy I recall listening to long distant A.M. radio stations in the evening on my transistor radio. As a young boy I had two hobbies that thrilled me, that was rock collecting and electronics. At a very early age my parents would buy me Radio Shack perfboard kits, 101 in 1 project kits and then an AM radio kit to build and then I was fortunate enough to get a Radio Shack Globe Patrol SWR to put together and listen to the world.

But what I recall most of all was having a tie to many of the local AM stations as I had an Uncle who was a DJ on many of them and then he eventually became Chief News Editor in Thunder Bay for CBC (CBQ). In the day we had 3 A.M. stations that ran full time, 580 CKPR , 800 CBQ and then 1230 (CJLX, CFPA), and then not being too far from Duluth MN where we are located I could usually hear at least 2 stations from there both day and night, one in particular was around 560.

I best recall listening to many programs at night, everything from Grand Old Opry, CBS Mystery Theater, The Great Gildersleeve and The Life of Riley, Dragnet and others. Of course WLS 890 was always loud here in Thunder Bay, ON (Formerly The Twin Cities of Fort William and Port Arthur)

There are no more A.M. stations in Thunder Bay, all have migrated to F.M., however as you drive along the North Shore of Lake Superior you will find many low power A.M. stations that rebroadcast some of the larger stations.

Here is a look at a few of the reminders of those once powerful and notable stations that once took on the air waves.

Completed 40m Pixie assembly

This evening, I completed the build of the 40m Pixie PCB assembly. It will get checked over for dry joints or shorts in the morning and air-tested shortly.

A very half-hearted attempt at the 6m UKAC this evening was aborted because of my poor voice but I only worked 3 locals in the short time I was on with my V2000 vertical.

I really wanted to crack on with the Pixie build, although I was not expecting to finish the built today.  The small PCB based kit does represent very good value.

Over on Reddit, there’s a discussion going on about an Android smartphone with some sort of built-in UHF radio (FRS/GMRS). It appears to be a Chinese-made Android phone from Otium called the Otium V8. It’s for sale on Amazon for about $300.

Below is a screenshot from someone asking how it works. The frequency is a shared FRS/GMRS channel (in the U.S). I would expect a radio like this to be “channelized” and not show a frequency directly on the screen — which makes me wonder what other frequencies one might be able to enter…?

Courtesy of /u/rgansaldi

Are GSM phones with built-in radios common? Has anyone ever used one of these?

From the screenshot of the built-in PTT app, it looks like it has an adjustable power level, does frequency splits, PL/CTCSS, and even has a narrow/wide bandwidth selection.

What chip are they using to do this? Can it be tweaked with software to transmit/receive “out of range” in the 70cm ham band? I’m curious!

Been a long while since I played with satellites or even the ISS for that matter. In fact 2 meters has taken a total backseat for me as it no longer thrills me as far as APRS or even repeaters. IRLP nodes as well just don’t do it like they used to, combine that with only one telephone provider (Thunder Bay Telephone) and major dropouts etc on the IRLP it makes it no fun on nodes.

So turned the FT857 on today after reading about the ISS sending SSTV pictures down to earth. Using a dual band vertical at 25′ and using MMSSTV I was able to copy these pictures this afternoon. (Monday afternoon in Ontario)

So kinda made my day to see the pictures up on the screen when I got back into the shack.

Cheers

Fred

VE3FAL

Tomorrow I am going to try to build my little 40m Pixie kit that I bought for just over £7 from China. This build is an attempt to see if I am “up to the job”. I know the limited performance the Pixie is capable of and on 40m BC breakthrough may be a major issue here in the UK.

I really really miss doing real building and truly experimental amateur radio. This is a step on a long road. My health has been so poor in the last 16 months or so that there was no way I could have attempted this before. People have been very kind and offered me building help and help with antenna erection. These offers have come from all over the world – the world is filled with good and very kind people. There are far more good and kind people than evil ones.

By normal standards a little Pixie build would be trivial. For me it is a major step and test of my current abilities. I do so hope I can manage this! Please don’t laugh – to me it is a major step.

There’s something that just didn’t sink in as I interviewed CQ editor Rich Moseson W2VU at the Orlando HamCation for this episode. CQ is in trouble, and advertising is the problem. Or rather, lack of it. Rich said that while subscriber numbers are important, the real revenue comes from ads, and the ham radio manufacturers and retailers that had been buying the ads in the magazine can’t afford to buy them, or as many of them, today.

Subscriber numbers bring in advertisers, of course, but if the companies can’t afford the ads, it doesn’t matter. And I got that, for a minute or two, but then I sort of lost the concept. But the bigger connection I didn’t make until maybe the 10th time I watched the interview (yes, I do that, because I like to hear myself talk) was that ads in the digital version of the magazine are an even tougher sell. So if CQ were to go all-digital to save printing and postage, it wouldn’t help enough. They’d make even less money because they wouldn’t get many of the ads that they do get now. At least that’s my takeaway.

It’s not just CQ and ham radio – digital media, including print, audio and video, isn’t valued as much as “traditional” media, even if the audience is the same. I’m no expert in this, but that’s the conventional wisdom I read in the trades.

One other thing to consider before you watch the episode is that sub-$50 Chinese HT you marvel at. They don’t advertise or support ham radio in any way other then selling you a radio for peanuts. Some of their distributors are beginning to advertise for them, but the companies themselves are still mostly a cypher here in the US. I’m just sayin’….

There’s more from Orlando at HamRadioNow.tv.

73, Gary KN4AQ