AmateurRadio.com

Last week, BBC’s Panorama programme did a frightening documentary on factories used by Apple in China and on their tin supply chain in Indonesia. If such poor conditions are used by Apple, many other products will be produced in even worse conditions. As a user of Apple products I am appalled.

See Panorama, Apple’s Broken Promises .

Of course, we in the West milk the low costs that such poor working procedures/conditions permit. With time, conditions will improve and the West will look to other low cost manufacturing areas for our low cost products. Sadly, our greed feeds this process.

Frighteningly, other products we buy are probably made in places that are far worse.

Andrew G6ALB tells me of a friend in the automotive industry who visited a Chinese supplier where he found workers using ordinary sun glasses to protect eyes from welding gear. After 6 months  the workers were totally blind. So they just got fresh workers to replace them!

Thanks to Steven G7VFY for most of this information.

UPDATE 1740z:  Sadly many (most?) of our electronics components will be made in sweat shops in the Far East. It is very hard to get away from this problem.

From Steven, G7VFY comes news of a very simple 10m DSB transmitter from the blog of KA7OEI. This is an experimental very low power transmitter. It is unlikely to be of use in serious applications, but the range might surprise some.  On 10m, the antenna is efficient and on a clear frequency it has the potential to get a long way. Over 1000km would not surprise me on a totally clear frequency. After all, 1mW (or so) is about 53 if a 100W signal was 59+12dB. On 10m such signals with 100W are very possible.

See http://ka7oei.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-pointless-10-meter-dsb-qrp.html .

The DX record for communications at optical frequencies is phenomenal these days. There is a growing interest in communications over non line of sight paths (NLOS) using cloud-bounce or clear air scattering. To my knowledge, in recent times experiments are (or are about to start) by F1AVY, VK4EBP , VE7SL and G3XBM (when fit again). I am sure there are others too. Weak signal modes certainly help. I used QRSS3 over an 8.5km NLOS path, but much further has been achieved.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-line-of-sight_propagation.

Australian Optical DX   https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Optical_DX/info

Nanowaves              https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/UKNanowaves/info

In HamRadioNow Episode 178 (Radio Games, embedded below), my partner Jeff AC4ZO and I banter about the concept of “rebranding” ham radio contests to make them more attractive to young people. My suggestion is to call them Radio Games, an allusion to Video Games, of course, which attract young people like crazy.

About this point in this article, I’d be disappointed if a few of you readers didn’t go nonlinear, considering this idea to be:

1. fully baked, and
2. the end of Amateur Radio as we know it

So if you actually watch the show, you realize that the idea isn’t even half-baked. It hasn’t even hit the oven. It’s fodder for a TV show conversation (makes a good radio show if you just want to listen to it) listen to it

And you’ll notice we wander around the point so much that you may think we’ll never actually make it. But we do. Then it’s off to other stuff. Some of you will like it, some of you will hate it, and that’s show biz.

But while the idea is far from mature, I’m serious about it in some fashion.

I think there’s little argument that we need to attract many more young people to ham radio, people in their teens, twenties and thirties. And I think what what attracted us old farts (I’m 65, and in a couple weeks I’ll hit my 50th year of hamming) isn’t attracting young people today. Not many, anyway. Something about ham radio has to change.

I don’t know what that is. Nobody knows for sure, or we’d be doing it (and once again leading us all to the End of Amateur Radio As We Know It). But for sure it’s not One Thing. It’ll be a lot of things, some little and some big.

One of those things might be figuring out how to make ham radio interesting to some of the people who love video games. They’re mostly young. Many have an interest in technology. And if we got just a small fraction of them, we’re still talking about thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Our contests are a starting point. Just changing the name to (or adding the name) Radio Games isn’t going to fool anyone. But it seems to me that integrating the elements of radio that we know – the vagaries of propagation, the competition for contacts, the reality of having to make something work with your own hardware and skill – to the aspects of video games that they know, might be an interesting mix.

For me, this is just fodder for my TV show and a column here on AmateurRadio.com. I’m sure not going to be the one doing it. I’m not a contester beyond making a few random contacts now and then, and I’m not a gamer. Which just may mean I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that wouldn’t be front page news, either.

But it is something to think about, maybe to talk about. First-class video games are multi-hundred-million dollar epics. The biggest probably involve more money than all of ham radio worldwide. They blow Hollywood out of the water. But a Ham Radio themed game doesn’t have to be the biggest and best. I guess I’d just hope that if someone develops one, it isn’t lame. But everybody’s a critic, and no matter how good it is, someone will call it lame. So I’m not going to worry about it.

Here’s the show. The most perceptive (or maybe just cynical) among you will recognize this column as just an excuse to get people to watch the show. You’d be right. And… sorry about the distorted audio. I did figure out what was happening.*

73, Gary KN4AQ

*What was happening to the audio? Google’s Chrome browser was grabbing the Windows Record Level setting and cranking it up so it could hear me say “OK Google” to initiate a voice search. That happened ever time I opened a tab with Google’s search page in it (and that’s where new tabs defaulted, so if it happened a lot). Later, I found a setting to turn “OK Google” off, but not one to tell Google to leave my audio alone, period. If I initiate a Google Hangout,  Google grabs it again. Grrr.

First of all, thank you to the 1,450 people from all over the world who entered the giveaway. That’s a record number of entries for us!

Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for… the winners!  OK, here they are:

Three (3)
Complete NESDR XTR HF SDR packages including:
NESDR XTR SDR Set
(Brand new model, featuring the popular E4000 chip tuner)
Ham It Up upconverter
Upconverter Enclosure (silver)
Male MCX to male SMA pigtail (SDR cable)
Male SMA to female BNC adapter (antenna adapter)
Estimated $129.95 value

Luc ON7DQ
Tom KJ9P
Mika KF4IVM

Five (5)
Complete NESDR Mini 2 HF packages including:
NESDR Mini 2 SDR set
Ham It Up upconverter
NESDR Mini 2 enclosure (silver)
Upconverter enclosure (silver)
Male MCX to male SMA pigtail (SDR cable)
Male SMA to female BNC adapter (antenna adapter)
$111.95 value

Ed N2RWH
Claudio PU4BIT
Paul MM1BJZ
Joseph KK4PYN
John KC8JZO

Twelve (12)
NESDR Mini 2 SDR sets
$25.95 value

Rob KA2PBT
Delrey K4WJR
Mike KA7PLE
Marco DE8MSH
Dale WX8W
Suresh VU3JOG
Boban EA2DVR
Chris KD4OGD
Robert KB5SQG
Carl M0SER
Budd WB7FHC
Bob WB3DYE

If you won, you’ll be hearing from me very soon! If you weren’t one of the lucky winners, NooElec has sent us some coupon codes for those who would like to order on their website:

W5OLF’s tiny WSPR-AXE-CW

Jay, W5OLF, the creator of the “no PC needed” WSPR-AXE-CW beacons for WSPR on 30m, 20m or 10m has just started a new website.  He expects to start selling the new versions of his little beacons, either as kits or built and tested units, in late January. These stay on all the time (the PA can be turned iff) , but frequency is randomised over 100Hz within the WSPR window. Once set, the timing is fine for ages and ages – certainly days or even weeks.

Jay’s email (replace the (at) with @ ) is: w5olf(at)comcast.net .

His new website is www.w5olf.com .

I am privileged to be a beta tester of his 10m version (500mW). As you will have read in earlier posts, this unit certainly works very well, mine having been copied all over the planet in just a few weeks. Just press a button to sync time on an even minute and watch all the reports come flooding in. I was blown away with mine. Tiny, but brilliant. If you like WSPR I can thoroughly recommend this little unit. It comes pre-programmed with callsign, locator and power level.

UPDATE 1448z: This little unit has been spotted in Antarctica (13676km) 8 times today already. My antenna is nothing special, just a low 3 band end-fed wire.

Looking on the internet, there is a wide selection of 10m (28-29.7MHz) transceivers available. Many can be extended (illegally in the UK) to cover CB frequencies.

As an example, the Alinco DR135 is available for £144.99. I am sure shopping around will show that lower prices are possible. This rig was available (special offer) for less than £100 recently. At one time, single band 10m rigs were illegal in the UK. This is no longer the case and these rigs can be a low cost way of getting on this most interesting band.