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In this episode, Martin (M1MRB) is joined by Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwell (M0SGL), Ed Durrant (DD5LP), Frank Howell (K4FMH) and Bill Barnes (WC3B) to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in this episode’s features is the Joy of VHF and Above with Tim Kirby (GW4VXE) followed by your listener feedback.

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- Amateur Radio on Hackaday - French Military Seeks Radio Receivers / Jammers - A New Version of WSJT-X is Now Available - Beware of Fake SDRplay Devices - Using Powerline Noise to Map Sporadic E - Extension to Field Day Rule Waivers from 2020, Add Class D and E Power Limit - RSGB's 'Get on the Air to Care' Construction Competition Winners - Additional Free UK Ham Radio Foundation Online Course Planned

WC - 332 White Rock, BC

For example, 'AA' near Fargo, ND, transmits on 365 kHz and its upper sideband CW identifier is tuned at 366.025 kHz while its lower sideband CW ident can be tuned at 363.946 kHz. Its USB tone is actually 1025 Hz while its LSB tone is 1054 Hz.

Often, one sideband will be much stronger than the other so if you don't hear the first one, try listening on the other sideband.

Canadian NDBs normally have an USB tone only, usually very close to 400 Hz. They also have a long dash (keydown) following the CW identifier.

All NDBs heard in North America will be listed in the RNA database (updated daily) while those heard in Europe may be found in the REU database. Beacons heard outside of these regions will be found in the RWW database. These databases have recently been re-vamped and are slicker than ever before!

From CLE coordinator Brian Keyte (G3SIA), comes the following CLE info:

Hello all

     Days:      Friday 19 February - Monday 22 February

     Times:    Start and End at midday, your LOCAL time

It is just 20 years since fully-organised CLEs started.  Encouraged by Alan, to mark the anniversary Joachim and I have five separate, new, and mostly gentle ‘Challenges’ for you!

They are all based of ’20-ness’.   Whether you have enjoyed 20 years of our CLEs, or are thinking of trying your very first, this CLE should be a good one. 

                  CHALLENGE 1.   20  NDBs ( N )   Log any 20 NDBs located in any ONE RADIO COUNTRY of your choice. 

    CHALLENGE 2.   20  Radio Countries ( C )   Try to log ONE NDB from each of:

        listeners in Europe:       20 different EU radio countries

        listeners in N America: 20 different USA/CAN States/Provinces

        listeners elsewhere:     20 different radio countries

               CHALLENGE 3.   20  re-logged OLD NDBs ( O )  Try to log any 20 of the NDBs that were also logged in our first formal Event - CLE003, 20 years ago.

       In the Final Details a list will be provided of the 80 CLE003 loggings of NDBs in Europe and N America that are still probably active.

               CHALLENGE 4.   20  ‘n20 kHz’ loggings  ( K )   Try to Log a total of 20 NDBs on the ‘n20’ kHz frequencies

        i.e. on 220 kHz and 320 kHz and 420 kHz and 520 .. .  . up to 1220 kHz (as possible!)

       (The other four challenges can use the whole NDBs frequency range)         

    CHALLENGE 5.   20 loggings at 20:-- hrs  ( H )   Log a total of 20 NDBs between 20:00 and 20:59 LOCAL time during the CLE.  

       (If you find the challenges a bit too gentle, there will be an alternative hard version of this 5^th one.

        We will explain in the Final Details)

How will you set about tackling those different kinds of listening?   Some ways are good, others not-so-good, perhaps prompting some questions from you!

About two days before the start, the Final Details will have some answers and suggestions and full advice on tackling your listening and log-making.

So the Final Details will explain how one logging CAN satisfy more than one Challenge without any problems, but, as always, each NDB must appear only once in a CLE log.

 (If you are interested in what was going on 20 years ago I’ve added a short ‘Background for Historians’ below)

Background for Historians!  

Alan Gale still has archive information about what was going on 20 years ago.

At that time several of us were thinking about trying out some coordinated listening.

For example, early in 2001 Bill Hohnstein wrote “What would seem interesting to me would be to have a weekend (certain days) where ndblist would sponsor concentrated monitoring of a 10 – 20 kHz segment of the LF NDB range with everyone reporting their results” and Lionel Roithmeir organised an event for 2182 kHz monitoring.   Andy Robins, Michael Oexner, Morris Sorensen, Kathleen Redding, Brian Keyte and others contributed further ideas.

We were talking about ‘Coordinated Monitoring Events’ or CMEs.

We had an informal ‘CME’ on 20-21 January listening on 380-400 kHz.  There were logs from Alan, Kathleen and Brian (all ENG), Roger Caird (IRL), Andy, Bill, Dave Tomasko, Douglas Klein, Ken Zichi and Phil Atchley (all USA), and Morris (CAN)

Phil rescued us from the ‘CME problem’!   He wrote “I have one big suggestion. Let's change the name from CME to CLE, Coordinated Listening Event".  Every time I see CME in a message subject line I think a CME "Coronal Mass Ejection" has just taken place.”

Then on 3-4 February we were also joined by Bo Nenson (SWE), Christoph Mayer and Norbert Reiner (both DEU), Lionel and Mike Trodd (both ENG), Bob Parsons and Chris Steele (both USA) for a second informal Event which we called a ‘CLE’.

Good listening
    Brian & Joachim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Brian Keyte G3SIA          ndbcle'at'gmail.com
Location: Surrey, SE England     (CLE co-ordinator)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 

If you are interested in some remote listening - maybe due to local difficulties - you could use any one remote receiver for your loggings, stating its location and with the owner's permission if required.( e.g. see  kiwisdr.com ) A remote listener may NOT also use another receiver, local or remote, to make more loggings for the same CLE.

These listening events serve several purposes. They

As a follow-up post from my last post entitled  "What has happened to Elecraft" in that post I wrote how shocked I was when I visited Elecrafts order page and the results, I had found. I was surprised to see the K3S had been retired and the lack of availability of their other products. My post had only been up for a short time until a comment from Eric Swartz WA6HHQ who is the co-founder (Wayne Burdick N6KR being the other founder) of Elecraft was posted. To be honest I was shocked and pleased to see that Eric was a reader of the blog. I emailed Eric asking him if it was ok to repost his response with a new post as some folks do not always read the comments.  I felt it to be very important to highlight Eric's response in a post for all to see.  He emailed me back and agreed without issue and below is Eric's comment. 

Hi Mike,

While the last year has been challenging due to the Covid crisis, the CA wildfires near us and related supply issues, we are not now shut down by CA for COVID and are financially healthy. We are alive and kicking - shipping radios, amplifiers and accessories every week.

You mentioned the backlog on the KX2, KX3, KXPA100 and K2, for which I apologize. All of these are still in production and shipping. Orders for all of our products surprisingly have been much higher than we expected during the Covid crisis, which has contributed to the current backlog on these products. (It looks like hams had more time this past year to enjoy the hobby, which has helped sales!) I just checked our shipping report for the first ten days of this month (through today 2/10) and all of these are shipping along with their accessories, the KPA500, KPA1500 etc.  We certainly have seen intermittent production delays due to parts shortages, but to date, nothing has shut us down. We've gotten pretty good at quickly finding alternate parts when one is delayed.

I see you were disappointed the K3S was no longer in production. We formally discontinued it in May of 2019 when we introduced the K4, after a close to 13 year run for the K3 and K3S. We've also previously discontinued the K1 and KX1, which also had a long run. In general, we discontinue products as sales decrease over time and when new products replace them. Fortunately, we've been able to continue production of the K2 since its first ship in Jan of 1999. No that's a long run :-)

We are also ramping up production and shipments of the K4, which also competes for production resources. I noted in my recent live video Q&A session on the K4 that we had just received 100 full PC board sets for the K4 from our local assembly subcontractor and these are winding their way through production. (See the Elecraft YouTube channel for the Zoom recording.) We received a huge response to the K4 and as a result, have a very large number of backorders that will keep us busy and financially healthy for some time.

Lastly, you mentioned the 'TBD' on K3S option boards and accessories. We recently asked for interest from our customers on a special run of all of these and received a very large response, which makes it economical to build another run of most of these. We've now received the quote updates from our suppliers and we will be contacting everyone starting next week who expressed interest in these items.

We're still in business, healthy and enjoying designing and building exciting products for the amateur radio community, and we hope to continue doing so for some time!

73, Eric - WA6HHQ

 For the first time in a very long time, my radio shack is without an Elecraft product.  I was and still am a big Elecraft fan and had 2 Elecraft K2's that I built, KX1, K3 and finally a KX3. The only rig I had left was the KX3 and a short time ago that rig was sold off. As with most hams sold equipment becomes ham bucks for new things. I may regret selling my KX3 but at this time that has not happened.  I really needed to upgrade my PC and it was the KX3 funds that allowed me to do that. 

My KX1

I was on the internet this afternoon and wanted for old time sake visit the Elecraft website and what I found was shocking! I went to the order/shipping status page as I was feeling the fuzzies for maybe another K2 to build.  I saw the K4 and its ongoing status update link but then I saw "K3S no longer available" I took a double-take! That was the flagship of Elecraft.  It gets better......the K3/K3S add-on kits are for the most part " availability TBD" so much for an upgradable radio. 

Then there were the back orders KX3, KPA100 amp,  KX2 and K2. I am not sure if it's COVID that has put things in a tailspin but as an Elecraft fan, I was shocked to see this.  

One of my K2's

Way back in the Wayback machine, when I was working on getting my Technician license (in the 20th century), I recall looking at the frequency bands available to Techs. Technicians had operating privileges for everything above 50 MHz, which looked like a lot of useful spectrum to me. The idea at the time was that Technicians were exploring the new frontier of amazingly high frequencies. Since then, the Technician license has morphed to be the entry level license.

ICOM has a good graphic that shows all of the ham bands and shows the common subbands for various modes. I snipped out the portion that covers the most popular VHF/UHF bands (below). Wow, look at all the stuff you can do! Also, it is 4 MHz of spectrum, big enough to fit eleven 20 meter bands inside it. (Yeah, yeah, the propagation is a lot different.)Speaking of bandwidth, take a look at the 70 cm band, with 30 MHz of spectrum. (Not shown is the 23 cm band, which spans 60 MHz.) The higher you go in frequency, the more spectrum there is.

Most people think of the 2-meter band as just FM and repeaters, but it is much more than that. I copied the 2-meter band graphic and added my own notatation on the various uses of the band.

Much of the band is allocated to FM, which is consistent with the popularity of the mode. I didn’t mark all of the FM segments, so refer to the color coding to see them. But there is much more than FM simplex and repeaters. Down on the low end is the CW-only segment and EME activity (Earth-Moon-Earth or moonbounce). The “weak-signal” enthusiasts tend to use the SSB portion, with the SSB calling frequency of 144.200 MHz. You may often hear CW in the SSB subband and radio hams flip back and forth between the modes depending on propagation.  Meteor scatter is mostly done via the WSJT-X mode of MSK144 around 144.140 MHz.

Automatic Packet Reported System (APRS) activity is mostly on 144.390 MHz, using FM-based 1200-baud packet radios. Other packet radio usage is not shown but is usually around 145.01 MHz. The 2m band is very attractive for satellite use, with VHF propagation properties and manageable doppler shift for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The downlink from the International Space Station (ISS) is usually 145.80 MHz.

Over time, I’ve used all of these 2m modes mentioned above, with the exception of EME. I am still working on that one and I hope to have a new 2m Yagi installed sometime this year that will enable it.

73 Bob K0NR

The post The 2 Meter Band: Much More Than FM appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Hello and welcome to the 392nd episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss amateur radio related horror films, an ISS EVA snafu, ham radio in the BSA, YOTA, Microsoft on the Raspberry Pi, software freedom, display servers and much more. We hope you enjoy this episode and also have a safe and prosperous upcoming week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Hello and welcome to Episode 390 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts interview Jason, KM4ACK, the author of the Build-a-Pi shack computer build script. We cover where to get the script, how to use it to create your shack machine and a few tips and tricks for better operation and configuration of your ham radio applications. Jason also has an informative YouTube channel and is a great resource. Hope you enjoy this episode and have fun building a Pi for your shack and operating often.

73 de The LHS Crew