AmateurRadio.com

Hello and welcome to Episode 436 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, the hosts discuss an ARDC grant for high school STEM students, a pair of intrepid amateur radio hobbyists, state-sponsored ARCs in Africa, Ubuntu 21.10, Sysmon for Linux and much more. Thank you for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at russ@bluecows.com.

The Worked all Germany (WAG) contest was this weekend. It's an event in which you can operate both CW and SSB. I chose the CW only option for the contest. I entered low power (100 watts and under), single op and assisted (using spotting new works) It was very well attended and during the contest I received a station from Israel calling German stations.  It was a shame I could not call him, as with this contest DX can only contact German stations. Oh well, it was nice hearing them anyway. 

The contest is 24 hours long, which is nice as it does not occupy all of your weekend. Conditions were good for me on 15m, 20m and 40m. I did try 80m on Saturday evening, but it provided no contacts for me. On Sunday I stayed on 15m as I was up early and the band was open. I wanted to stay away from 20m for as long as I could, as this was the band I mainly stayed on during Saturday. This way I would not run into Dupes on 20m.  The contest software I used was N1MM+. 

I was using my Icom 7610 radio which for contesting is a great radio, the antenna was my Ultimax DXtreme  it's 52 feet long and about 30 feet off the ground and about 6 feet at the feed end. I used my solid state CW paddle by 9A5N. The key worked very smoothly and worked without issue. 

Speaking of issues, it would not be a contest if there were not some hiccups. First off I thought (for some reason) the contest started at 1600 UTC. I sat at the radio 10 minutes (1550 UTC) before the contest started. I was shocked to see the band's full when I turned on the radio. A quick investigation on my part had me realize the contest started at 1500 and not 1600 UTC, so I was an hour down before I even started. 

At times, I found myself calling a station, and I was not being heard, don't get me wrong this does happen but not with stations that are booming in. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed N1MM+ software was showing me that my transmit XIT  (transmit increment tuning) was on! The reason the station was not hearing me was because I was transmitting way off-frequency. This for some reason happened a few times. 

The last comedy of errors was at one point on Sunday when I was on 15m the band just went dead! Hmm, maybe propagation on 15m just dropped off. I went to 20m, and it was the same, so I checked the solar conditions,  maybe I missed a huge storm forecast. Nope solar conditions were fair.....oh wait a minute it's 1500 UTC and the contest is over!! 

Contest summary 

40m  34 contacts with 18 multipliers 

20m  51 contacts with 21 multipliers  

15m  30 contacts with 17 multipliers 

Total contacts 115 

Score 19,320

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at ve9kk@hotmail.com.

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 160 is now available for download.

Celebrating 16 years of AmateurLogic.TV.
Peter, VK3PB drops in for and update from downunder. George shows some of his favorite tips and projects from the last few years. Tommy demonstrates a neat battery capacity tester. Emile discovers new Cheap Tricks with Echolink.
Announcing the winner of our 16th Anniversary contest!
Cliff Boand, WA0JTW will receive an Icom IC-705 Transceiver, AH-705 Auto Tuner, LC-192 Backpack, MFJ-4230MV Power Supply, MFJ-2012 OCF Antenna, and RG-8X coax.

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George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at george@amateurlogic.tv.

The history of the early 1800s in the United States’ development holds meaning for today. More than we tend to realize. Back before Mississippi was a state, the Federal Government called it “I.T.,” short for Indian Territory. Territories were not “settled” from a Federal viewpoint. During those times, many footpaths established by Native American Tribes—for instance, the Choctaws—became passable roads for travel by foot, horses, carriages and stage coaches. The opportunity for interim settlers, mostly whites but not always, became obvious: Where are the Holiday Inns of the day? There were some, of course, but they were rudimentary places along the paths from here to there, offering a break in the daily travels, food, drink, and overnight accommodations. They were typically called “Stands,” and most often had enslaved peoples working there.

Inns, or stands, provided occasional shelter for travelers along the Natchez Trace from the 1790s to the 1840s. These stands offered food to eat and food for thought: local news, information, and ideas. The ever-changing mix of diverse people – whites, American Indians, African Americans – interacted at the stands on a regular basis.

National Park Service

My portable operations team, consisting of Mike N5DU, Thomas N5WDG, Mike K5XU and myself, availed ourselves of such a break in the daily tasks on Saturday, October 9, 2021 to activate the historic site of Brashear’s Stand on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Ridgeland, MS. It’s just a mile or two from my house. Here’s what it was like back more than a century ago:

Brashears Stand

Brashears Stand is named after Turner Brashears, who moved to the area in the late 1700s. He became a trader with the Choctaw and learned their language.

“In 1806 Turner Brashears placed an advertisement in the Natchez newspaper about his stand labeling it “A house of Entertainment on the road leading from Natchez to Nashville.” Travelers on the Natchez Trace generally seemed to be pleased with their treatment and accommodations at Brashears Stand. In 1807 Reverend Jacob Young, a Methodist preacher, wrote “Near the line that divided the Choctaw Nation from the Mississippi Territory stood a fine public house kept by a man by the name of Brashears…He treated us very well but knew how to make a high bill.” In addition to earning money from his stand operation, Brashears prospered by selling land and enslaved people.” (National Park Service)

The Stand no longer exists but it’s a testament to what we hams sometime take for granted when we get outdoors to enjoy our hobby. One inspiration of mine to better understand these environs is the well-known POTA and SOTA activator and blogger, Thomas Witherspoon K4SWL (see QRPer.com). He is always appreciative in his blog posts about the park or summit he’s activating. This area was the location my team chose for our very first POTA activation. Here’s the setup, two permanent picnic tables with 100+ foot pines. That and perfect weather make for an enjoyable time whether the band conditions follow suit or not.

The four of us paired up at each of the two permanently mounted picnic tables. We placed old sheets on top of the tables. You may guess why since there are lots of birds in the area! We used N5DU’s Xiegu G90 (the one Rob Sherwood tested for his website) for FT8, K5XU’s Kenwood 590s for CW, and my new Icom IC-705 on it’s maiden voyage. Mike K5XU has been blind since birth and is a 50 year amateur licensee and career broadcaster. (Learn more about Mike’s amazing life and career on the ICQ Podast episode 299 here.) He is the CW op for our team. Thomas N5WDG is a wide area network engineer covering several states for AT&T and is one of my engineering Elmers. Mike N5DU has become our FT8 leader. I can neither deny or confirm that he uses the G90 bedside at night to work other countries via FT8. Mike is the State of MS RACES Officer for the Emergency Management Agency and practicing attorney in Jackson MS.

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Given the tall pines in this small park area, we used three EFHW antennas I had built in the past month. I ran across an eBay vendor, John KG6ZBN (seller name eddieson), who was selling both 1:9 and 1:49 UnUns for $10-$12. I could not source the parts for that! Since George at Packtenna was out of stock on his EFHW antennas, I just bought several of John KG6ZBN’s EFHW UnUns as shown below for the 1:49 model. I did follow George’s build specs using the #26 Silky Wire from The Wireman. This wire for low power is a wonder. One of the EFHW’s is shown below with inexpensive plastic kite winders to manage the wire. I use S-hooks to link the kite winder in the air to very small paracord once I have the latter over a tree branch or something. A sweep of one of the 1:49 EFHW is shown using a RigExpert Stick analyzer and Antscope illustrates the resulting SWR dips in the HF bands. The bluetooth-connected “blue stick” was connected at the SO-239 connector of the EFHW before hoisting up in the air so the coax is not in the system on these measurements. I was very pleased with these results.

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So how did our first POTA activation go in an otherwise ideal Saturday for doing some amateur radio? Not bad. Not bad at all. I posted our activation on both the POTA.app and on the Parks on the Air Slack Channel. Some tweeted that they tried to reach me on SSB while I was using the IC-705 at 10 watts. Most were a no-go except the one SSB contact from Arizona giving us a “true” 599 report. We had 59 contacts in all, but dropped one due to a busted call sign. The map below shows the range by mode. SSB is green, CW is red, and FT8 is yellow.

Mike K5XU’s 30 watts on CW worked very well as he is a master operator in that mode. Catching Alaska and Puerto Rico on 30 watts was not surprising. Mike N5DU’s FT8 power was 10 watts (5 watts for the first two). Working Guatamala and Sardinia on 10 watts using an EFHW was nice. N5DU added his DX Engineering Bandpass Filter box which significantly reduced interference between his FT8 rig and my SSB rig sitting just a few feet apart. My poor SSB showing, except for the one QRP contact out to AZ in their State QSO Party, was not to be unexpected. Nonetheless, as my friends Scott K0MD and Thomas K4SWL told me, my first deployment of the IC-705 was better than imagined in terms of how the rig operates and the features it contains. I did connect it the day before to my amateur radio laptop (Thinkpad 420s) on my patio via USB and tested a 1:9 EFHW strung head-high between two bushes in my garden. This is the very first rig that has connected immediately to WSJTX after two settings: rig selection of the 705 in the software and pressing the on-screen menu button for FT8 Preset on the 705. I immediately began receiving and decoding FT8 signals! One contact convinced me that I had that mode in the bag on the 705. Well done, Icom!

Lunch was served at my house a couple of miles away after our noon shutdown. Fried catfish from nearby Cock of the Walk restaurant, hush puppies, corn bread, fried onion rings and pickles were the main course. To finish off our meal, apple pie or brownie a la mode with chocolate peanut clusters were served. We dined on our screened porch with a breeze off of the Barnett Reservoir flowing through the solar shades. While not the healthiest diet, and one we do not eat often, a good time practicing this aspect of our hobby was had by all. We plan to continue POTA activation’s, and perhaps the one SOTA entity in the State, in the future. Having a group of ham radio friends like this makes the hobby most pleasurable. Now, I need to get that log submitted to my POTA manager!

Frank Howell, K4FMH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Mississippi, USA. Contact him at k4fmh@arrl.net.

It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at russ@bluecows.com.

You may have noticed announcements about the Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) making substantial grants to various amateur radio and communications technology projects. Where did this outfit come from and how do they have funds to donate?

This is my story about it, but I don’t speak for the ARDC. I am a member of the Grants Advisory Committee, which reviews the grant proposals.

My Story

My story starts with a discussion that happened a long time ago (1980s?) with Bdale/KBØG. We were talking about packet radio, networking, and other technical topics and he mentioned that a group of hams had requested and obtained a block of IP addresses. The ARDC website credits Hank/KA6M, for taking the lead on this. This block turned out to be 44.x.x.x, which was set aside for amateur radio use. At the time, I thought it was a nice thing to have but really didn’t pay much attention to it.  This 44Net or AMPRNet was managed informally until 2011 when ARDC was formed as a non-profit, public benefit corporation under IRS rules 501(c)(3).

Well, it turns out that in today’s world of everything-on-the-network, IP addresses have a significant monetary value. The ARDC Board of Directors recognized that the amateur community would not use all of the IP addresses assigned to it and that those IP addresses could be sold for significant dollars. Also, the value was time perishable because the internet would eventually transition to IPv6. So in 2019, ARDC decided to sell a portion of those IP addresses with the goal of using the proceeds to benefit the amateur radio community and digital communications, in general. More specifics to the story are available here.

The amount of money raised from this sale was not disclosed. However, the ARDC 2019 Financial Statement shows assets of approximately $109M. Yes, that is an M, as in millions of dollars. This is an unprecedented amount of money available to the amateur radio community. The basic idea is to spin out a portion of these assets as grants (say 5% annually), while maintaining and growing the principle.

Grants Advisory Committee

In 2020, Bdale pointed out to me that ARDC was taking applications for the Grants Advisory Committee (GAC). This committee reviews the grant proposals as they come into the ARDC and makes a recommendation to the Board on whether to approve them. (The final decision is with the Board of Directors.) In my semi-retired state, I was looking for ways to assist charitable organizations, so doing this role for ARDC sounded great! How can you not like helping out with a well-funded organization focused on amateur radio and communications?

At this point, I am about 10 months into the effort and I’m really enjoying it. I think everyone in ARDC sees 2021 as a building year…not everything is running like a precision machine just yet. Some paid staff have been hired which has been a huge step forward. This program is large enough that it is difficult to operate with just part-time volunteer efforts. More importantly, we have people like Rosy/KJ7RYV and Chelsea/KF0FVJ that have deep experience with non-profit charitable work. My friend (and well-known ham) Dan/KB6NU has signed on as the Content Manager.

The details of the grants program are spelled out on the ARDC website, so I won’t cover that here. I will say that if your radio club or other organization has a project they would like to pursue but is struggling to fund it, consider asking for a grant from ARDC. What kinds of things has ARDC funded? College scholarships in partnership with the ARRL Foundation, development work on the M17 protocol (open-source digital voice), ham stations at several universities, repeater installations and upgrades, radio club communications trailers, and much more. The list of 2021 grants that have been funded is on the website.

As you can probably tell, I am excited to be a part of this worthy effort and helping to make it happen.

73 Bob K0NR

The post What’s This ARDC Grant Thing? appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at bob@k0nr.com.

Hello and welcome to the 434th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss creating bootable images to start your computer with Linux or install the operating system. Discussion ranges from CDs to DVDS, USB flash drives and Micro SD cards. Also touched on are persistence, running distros from install media, dual booting and more. We hope you enjoy this episode and come back for the next one. Have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at russ@bluecows.com.