Jason Johnston, KC5HWB, announced today that he’s launching a new video series called Ham Radio 2.0. To help fund the project, he’s also launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise $5,000 in a little less than two months.

Johnston’s video podcast joins several other popular shows for hams including Ham Radio Now, AmateurLogic and Ham Nation.

This isn’t Johnston’s first radio-related venture. He sells radio equipment on his Grapevine Amateur Radio website and is a long-time blogger at Grapevine Ham Radio.

He says that his goal is to provide a wide variety of episodes including featuring new radio debuts and hands-on, how-to instructional videos.

Some of the topics he plans to cover include:

• New radio reviews
• Featured dealer profiles
• Hamfest reviews
• Coverage of DXpeditions and SOTA activations
• Tech talks
• Featured homebrew gear

Johnston hopes to leverage success he’s had with other ham-related videos. “With promotions, I see potential for getting tens of thousands of views on every video,” he says. “Promotion is the key, and will be my main focus with kicking the project off initially.”

Judy and I hiked to Bald Ledge in New Hampton today. We had a view to die for, and I worked some nice DX too… Spain, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

We started hiking at Sky Pond. It’s a crystal clear remote pond in the wilderness. It’s a favorite of local fishermen, but not known by many. From the pond we hiked a half mile up an old range road and then north on a woods trail for about a mile.

Bald Ledge is about 600 feet above the west shore of Lake Winona.

I tossed a 28 foot wire over a pine tree and sat down on the ledge facing northeast with the KX3. 20 meters had a few light signals. 15 meters was completely dead, so I started out on 17 meters where there were some strong signals.

EA5GX Sergio in Spain was calling CQ and we made a quick contact. There was some QSB, but he gave me a 579. It was nearly 15 minutes before I made a second contact. There were a couple of pileups, but I stayed away from them. Finally I heard LZ1GU in Bulgaria calling CQ. Harry was strong and he gave me a 569. “Are you happy?” Judy asked. “No….” I answered. “I need another QSO.”

Two nice QSOs and a perfect spot to spend an hour or so? Who wouldn’t be happy?

I like to get at least three contacts, so I scanned 20 meters again. There was Jiri… OK2RRR, the same station I had worked yesterday from Old Hill Village. He was booming in and I called him. Again he gave me 589. NOW I was happy! He told me he had received my email with the photos I sent him from yesterday, and he was pleased I was out hiking on a beautiful hill top. “Enjoy the hike,” he sent as he said 73 and wished me well.

Judy and I shared some fruit and I packed up for the walk back. When we reached Sky Pond, we both took our shoes off and waded in the water. Fantastic!

Like many of my projects, this transceiver is “on hold” due to my stroke. I am still too unwell to do much in the way of designing and building. One day, not too far away, I hope to complete this project. If anyone else wants to do this, please use my schematic as a starting point. With a small PCB it would make a nice club project.

It will make an ideal simple rig for nattering across town, especially as 10m loses its fizz and starts to act more like a vhf band again. Such conditions may be with us for years. I fancy putting this in a box like the old Heathkit Lunchboxes with a proper LS amp and LS.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/tenbox .

I wonder when the next round of price drops will come on Japanese gear? The big Japanese players such as Yaesu, Icom and Kenwood have had an easy ride of late and been able to dictate prices. Now the competition is waking up, I expect they will be facing tougher times.

The latest exchange rates (UK pound to Japanese Yen) is £1 is worth about 193 Yen. Not many years ago it was less than 130 Yen to the pound. In real terms, Japanese goods should be much less expensive. At the moment both the UK dealers and Japanese are doing very well thank you from a customer base prepared to pay high prices. Expect big falls between now and the year end. This will be partly due exchange rates becoming much better (for those in the UK) and partly due to the increasing threat from the non-Japanese suppliers. Don’t you find it amazing how low cost some Chinese hand portables are compared with similar products from Japan? Rip-off come to mind – charge high prices for Japanese goods as long as the suckers pay.

No, the age of UK amateur radio consumers being taken for a ride is ending. The next time you discuss prices with UK dealers remind them of competition and exchange rates! At the moment their margins must be very high. Japanese goods are priced too high in the UK – fact. A few years ago I was more sympathetic, but not any more. UK consumers should pay a fair price with the dealers getting a fair margin, but please don’t take us all for mugs. I shall buy when the prices are fair and not before.

If I have this wrong, I shall be interested to hear the dealers viewpoint. Exchange rates have got vastly better and I do not see this reflected in end user prices here in the UK.  Someone is making very handsome profits.

Consumers – vote with your wallets and do not buy overpriced radios.  I have said before, the FT817 is classic example: all development costs were recovered years ago, so the price should be considerably lower than it is. Dealers have dropped the price somewhat, but it is nowhere near what it should be for a very mature design.

Judy and I stopped by the Ashland Railroad Station today after visiting a blueberry field. I worked eight stations in the NA QSO Party and a station in Bulgaria. It was a gorgeous afternoon.

The station is one of the stops along the Plymouth and Lincoln Railroad that runs between Northfield and Lincoln, New Hampshire. The old depot is a museum now. The train makes regular stops there during the foliage season in the fall when the passengers disembark to tour the museum.

I tossed a 28 foot wire into a maple tree on the other side of the tracks and sat down on the platform with the KX3. I work part-time on the railroad as a conductor and know the train schedules.

The caboose in the background belongs to Brian, KA1JOZ who also works on the railroad. I started out on 20 meters. There were plenty of signals and the propagation was pretty good for a change. The North America QSO Party was in full swing and it was easy to make contacts. I seemed to have a pipeline to Minnesota. Here’s my log:

1 Aug-15 2011 14.019 NA0N CW 599 599 MN
1 Aug-15 2014 14.030 N0AT CW 599 599 MN
1 Aug-15 2016 14.033 N2UT CW 599 599 NM
1 Aug-15 2017 14.027 WO4O CW 599 599 Fl
1 Aug-15 2019 14.024 W9IU CW 599 599 IN
1 Aug-15 2020 14.019 K0MPS CW 599 599 MN
1 Aug-15 2021 14.018 K0AD CW 599 599 MN
1 Aug-15 2024 18.076 LZ73TRC CW 599 599 Bulgaria
1 Aug-15 2027 14.027 WA4PHC CW 599 599 NC

At one point I switched to 17 meters to see how the activity was. I heard LZ73TRC calling CQ. He was strong, and we had no trouble making a nice QSO. I operated for about 20 minutes and packed up.

Watch this video on a large screen. (It is HD). Discuss. Share.

This video features stunning clips of the Sun, captured by SDO from each of the five years since SDO’s deployment in 2010. In this movie, watch giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the Sun’s surface.

April 21, 2015 marks the five-year anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) First Light press conference, where NASA revealed the first images taken by the spacecraft. Since then, SDO has captured amazingly stunning super-high-definition images in multiple wavelengths, revealing new science, and captivating views.

February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole Sun 24 hours a day. February 11, 2010, was the day on which NASA launched an unprecedented solar observatory into space. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) flew up on an Atlas V rocket, carrying instruments that scientists hoped would revolutionize observations of the Sun.

Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the Sun grow and erupt. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.

The imagery in this “highlight reel” provide us with examples of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths (and therefore different temperatures, each “seen” at a particular wavelength that is invisible to the unaided eye) scientists can watch how material courses through the corona. SDO captures images of the Sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. Different temperatures can, in turn, show specific structures on the Sun such as solar flares or coronal loops, and help reveal what causes eruptions on the Sun, what heats the Sun’s atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the Sun’s magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

Coronal loops are streams of solar material traveling up and down looping magnetic field lines). Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. They can occur by themselves or can be accompanied by what’s called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in which a giant cloud of solar material erupts off the Sun, achieves escape velocity and heads off into space.

This movie shows examples of x-ray flares, coronal mass ejections, prominence eruptions when masses of solar material leap off the Sun, much like CMEs. The movie also shows sunspot groups on the solar surface. One of these sunspot groups, a magnetically strong and complex region appearing in mid-January 2014, was one of the largest in nine years as well as a torrent of intense solar flares. In this case, the Sun produced only flares and no CMEs, which, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual for flares of that size. Scientists are looking at that data now to see if they can determine what circumstances might have led to flares eruptions alone.

Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too: Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space as well as on Earth (disrupting shortwave communication, stressing power grids, and more). Additionally, studying our closest star is one way of learning about other stars in the galaxy.

Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. SDO is the first mission of NASA’s Living with a Star Program. The program’s goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXN-MdoGM9g