AmateurRadio.com

I recently had the fluorescent bulb in one section of the under-cabinet kitchen counter lighting fixture go dark. This wasn’t too surprising as the 24” bulb had been in place since the house was built in 1990!

I purchased the replacement bulb only to find out that it was not the bulb but rather the ballast transformer that had failed.

A search for a suitable ballast replacement turned into a quick education when I learned that these things were quickly disappearing, with many models no longer even being manufactured. Another solution would have to be found and it appeared that fluorescents were bring replaced with, what else ... LED fixtures!

Offering similar brightness and colors as traditional fluorescent fixtures, the LED bulbs came in two basic styles.

One type lets you just pop-in a new LED ballast-compatible bulb and away you go. This is convenient but still wastes energy in the ballast and eventually would require an even harder to find ballast.

The second type is a directly-wired LED replacement, not relying on the ballast transformer at all. Having its own built-in switching power supply, these bulbs connect directly to the 120V AC line normally going to the ballast. It’s a very simple task to snip the 120V AC leads from the faulty ballast and connect them to one end of the bulb’s socket. Now totally disconnected, the original ballast can be left in place as is.

The entire fix took less than 30 minutes ... but how much noise or crud would the switching supply produce in the RF spectrum?

Crossing my fingers, I turned the light 'on' as well as my portable Sony ICF-2010 shortwave receiver. I could hear no noise coming from the radio. I could only detect some RF hash when I put the Sony (with its built-in ferrite bar antenna) right beside the fixture! This was good news and its quiet footprint was confirmed later, out in the shack, with radios connected to much larger antennas.

The bulb I used was a ‘toggled’ product, designed and engineered in Detroit , but I suspect is manufactured, like so many other LED devices, in China. The bulbs are sold in Canada and in the U.S. by Home Depot and possibly others.

If you’re looking for a radio-friendly fluorescent replacement or update, I have no hesitation in recommending these directly-wired LED bulbs from ‘toggled’.

And, if you’re also looking for a ham-friendly light-dimmer, see my previous blog on my own hunt for a noisy next-door neighbour.

Let’s just be real for a moment. A lot of people hate FT8. You all have seen it in social media and on the air. It’s a popular mode, so popular in fact that one report citing Club Log data recently showed that 80% of HF contacts in their tracking nowadays are FT8. This increase has come at the expense of other mode activity, especially CW. What’s worse in the minds of some, is that accomplishments like DXCC which used to take several to many years to reach is being significantly shortened with the use of FT8.

I’ve often thought it’s a fait accompli achieving DXCC, one just needs to sit in a chair long enough.  FT8 has given a means to bypass a lot of that chair-sitting.  I think FT8 just exposed an inconvenient truth that there really wasn’t a whole lot of skill involved in DXCC.  Skill may lessen the amount of time it takes.  FT8 just automated the process and significantly reduced the time needed and totally removed any skill advantage.

FT8 or another similar mode was going to happen sometime.  It’s like the concept of steam engine time.  The idea or theory is that the steam engine would have been invented at probably the same time in history by anyone or several people simultaneously in the world, even if many inventors were isolated and not in contact with each other.  It was just bound to happen at some point given the progression of technology and the availability of materials and know-how to do it.  We all knew (well, those of us with engineering know-how) that a semi-synchronous extremely low baud rate, low signal-to-noise ratio mode would work and be quite robust.  It’s Shannon’s Theorem applied. What is at issue is the way Joe Taylor packaged it.  We could do great things with low baud rate/low S/N modes.  How about a TCP/IP link to a BBS on the moon or an open global resilient messaging network that works on every band in the lowest of the low sunspot cycles? Instead, it was packaged as a low effort point-and-click QSO slot machine, unable to convey anything intelligent.

There are fully automated FT8 stations out there where the operator just clicks a button and the station makes contacts all day. We all know it, we just don’t know the extent of it. This I think is the crux of the problem. FT8 has become something akin to Bitcoin-mining, but it’s QSO-mining, and FT8 with automation which is undoubtedly happening has devolved pursuit of accomplishments into a virtual QSO Battlebots competition.

Personally, I’ve become indifferent to the whole FT8 debate, and frankly anything that involves DXing, DXCC, contesting, or collecting wallpaper. I don’t hate FT8, but I get the discontent about it that is expressed in amateur radio circles. I have always been one to tell others to not be mode bigots, or put down other modes. The FT8 mode itself is not bad technology, or detrimental to amateur radio. The mindless fashion in which it is in use I’m not so sure about.

This article was originally posted on Radio Artisan.

Let’s just be real for a moment. A lot of people hate FT8. You all have seen it in social media and on the air. It’s a popular mode, so popular in fact that one report citing Club Log data recently showed that 80% of HF contacts in their tracking nowadays are FT8. This increase has come at the expense of other mode activity, especially CW. What’s worse in the minds of some, is that accomplishments like DXCC which used to take several to many years to reach is being significantly shortened with the use of FT8.

I’ve often thought it’s a fait accompli achieving DXCC, one just needs to sit in a chair long enough.  FT8 has given a means to bypass a lot of that chair-sitting.  I think FT8 just exposed an inconvenient truth that there really wasn’t a whole lot of skill involved in DXCC.  Skill may lessen the amount of time it takes.  FT8 just automated the process and significantly reduced the time needed and totally removed any skill advantage.

FT8 or another similar mode was going to happen sometime.  It’s like the concept of steam engine time.  The idea or theory is that the steam engine would have been invented at probably the same time in history by anyone or several people simultaneously in the world, even if many inventors were isolated and not in contact with each other.  It was just bound to happen at some point given the progression of technology and the availability of materials and know-how to do it.  We all knew (well, those of us with engineering know-how) that a semi-synchronous extremely low baud rate, low signal-to-noise ratio mode would work and be quite robust.  It’s Shannon’s Theorem applied. What is at issue is the way Joe Taylor packaged it.  We could do great things with low baud rate/low S/N modes.  How about a TCP/IP link to a BBS on the moon or an open global resilient messaging network that works on every band in the lowest of the low sunspot cycles? Instead, it was packaged as a low effort point-and-click QSO slot machine, unable to convey anything intelligent.

There are fully automated FT8 stations out there where the operator just clicks a button and the station makes contacts all day. We all know it, we just don’t know the extent of it. This I think is the crux of the problem. FT8 has become something akin to Bitcoin-mining, but it’s QSO-mining, and FT8 with automation which is undoubtedly happening has devolved pursuit of accomplishments into a virtual QSO Battlebots competition.

Personally, I’ve become indifferent to the whole FT8 debate, and frankly anything that involves DXing, DXCC, contesting, or collecting wallpaper. I don’t hate FT8, but I get the discontent about it that is expressed in amateur radio circles. I have always been one to tell others to not be mode bigots, or put down other modes. The FT8 mode itself is not bad technology, or detrimental to amateur radio. The mindless fashion in which it is in use I’m not so sure about.

This article was originally posted on Radio Artisan.

9K2OW in the log

This evening I decided to settle into the shack and once again get on FT8 to see what was happening. I went directly to 40m and set my power to 70 watts. As a side note funny thing about 40m  I used to bother the washer machine and an office light would turn on and off but for some reason not anymore. Anyway, this post was about a very nice FT8 contact I made. I was calling CQ well to be more accurate my computer was calling CQ. Right out of the blue I had a call from 9K2OW in Kuwait!! 

With a couple of mouse clicks and he was in the log. Recently I have been reading some positive and negative opinions regarding FT8. Personally, I like to stay neutral when I read these posts maybe that is the Canadian in me but I do know I had a blast having Kuwait answer my CQ call on 40m. It was a short but good evening on ham radio! 

Hello and welcome to the 405th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss the zombie apocalypse--well, almost. Topics range from World Amateur Radio Day to the return of RMS to the cancellation of big amateur radio events around the world. There's also a new edition of Deepin and AlmaLinux, available funding for open source projects and much more. We hope you enjoy this episode and as always, thanks for listening.

73 de The LHS Crew

In the new AmateurLogic Shorts episode 2 Mike shares a great Pi project. MotionEyeOS turns your Raspberry Pi and camera into a motion tracking device.

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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