Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

Hello and welcome to Episode #576 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts kick the tires on Aurora Linux, a distribution based on an immutable variant of Fedora 41. Topics include installation, configuration, pre-installed applications, third party repositories, the quirks of immutable distros, styling, customization and much more. Thanks 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.

It’s been sometime since I have posted some of my incoming QSLs as I've been waiting arrival of the last one of my 6m winter DX season cards to arrive, which it finally did yesterday!

Unfortunately the peak of Solar Cycle 25 arrived a little ahead of time, peaking in the early fall rather than later or in early winter which is much more favorable for higher F2 MUFs. Nevertheless, some interesting days were to be had if the propagation patterns were followed closely, particularly after a solar event. Hopefully we will see a second peak of the cycle later this fall as most cycles have a double peak … if it comes in this summer, it’s not going to be of much help for 6m fans.

I started the 2024 6m sporadic-E season with a confirmed DXCC total of 110 countries and hoped to add at least one or two new ones via chordal-hop E or via F2 in the fall. My hopes were indeed met but if the cycle had peaked a few weeks later, the fireworks would have been something much more exciting.
The solar flux began to drop soon after, hitting the 150s at times, but began to pick up once again. 

Soon after, the solar flux began to drop once again, hitting a low 130 before starting to slowly rise once more. One solar rotation after working XT2MD, the flux was back into the low 200s and a short opening to Africa produced DXCC #114 with C5T in The Gambia, demonstrating that November can produce good F2 MUFs without as much flux as in previous earlier fall months.Other than a few good transcontinental openings into early December, it seemed like most of the fireworks were over as the flux retreated once again. Although there have been spotty openings into March of this year, so far nothing new has shown up. Is that it for Cycle 25? Time will tell.

JOHR 1287 kHz on Japan's northern Hokkaido Island

Akashvani (ex-All India Radio) 15050 kHz

Akashvani continues to be a reliable QSLer

Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at ve7sl@shaw.ca.

Ham College episode 123 is now available for download.

Technician Exam Questions Part 9. T3A – Radio wave characteristics: how a radio signal travels, fading, multipath, polarization, wavelength vs absorption, Antenna orientation.

Download
YouTube

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.

Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

 

Planning for the special event stations commemorating the life-saving food drops to NW Netherlands near the end of World War II is now in full swing. 62 nationalities were part of Bomber Command in WW2.

Please visit Operation Manna @ 80 for a full list of stations around the globe. Here are the Canadian stations participating:

VB7MAN Surrey Amateur Radio Communications

In Canada, Surrey Amateur Radio Communications (SARC) has been granted special event callsign VB7MAN from April 1^st to May 10^th. We will be on the air from our training station and elsewhere prior to, during, and after the event and will seek involvement of the high school students from our RF Communications class. Contacts with Europe can be sporadic from our location but we are generally able to contact North and South America, Asia, and Oceania. We have created a QSL card to commemorate the event. The card bears the $100 Royal Canadian Mint gold and silver coin struck in 2020 for the 75^th anniversary. 

We will update this page as plans progress but hope to make a QSO with you in April or May. Any certified amateur in BC may operate the special event callsign, as long as it is only used in one location at a time. If you wish to use the call on any band or mode, a Google calendar has been set up to reserve the call for your use between April 1st and May 10th. If you wish to book an operating time for VB7MAN, please contact VB7MAN@gmail.com.

John VE7TI
Coordinator VB7MAN@gmail.com

> 

VB6MAN Calgary Amateur Radio Association

CARA will be operating from the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta. They will activate on April 25, 26, and 27th and May 9 and 10. The final dates and hours of operations will depend on the radio amateur operators participating.

> 

VE1MAN Nova Scotia

The Canadian teams closest to Europe will be operating from their club station as VE1MAN. They may be activating from a former WW2 air base or another location of significance to tie in with the event.

 

 

Radio Amateurs of Canada published an article about MANNA@80 in the March-April issue of The Canadian Amateur, as did the Radio Society of Great Britain in their national magazine RADCOM.

 

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If you’re a workbench ham, you like to measure things. Some like to just get a rough cut while others like to be “nuts” about it. There are groups, like Volt-Nuts and Time-Nuts, who focus more on what’s formally called Metrology. Me? I’m somewhere in the middle but tending toward more precise and reliable measurements, although I do get the Cal Lab magazine each month. Perhaps it’s because I taught classical measurement theory to PhD students for over 30 years and understand true-score theory (e.g., every observed measurement is determined by the “true score” plus some error). Adding multiple observed scores and modeling the errors is something I taught and used for a few decades. Reading Bob Witte’s books from HP as well as Joe Carr’s various texts helped me transfer over the statistical base into electronic measurement issues although clearly I have a lot to learn in this realm.

Building out a good test workbench has been one of my priorities over the past few years. I’ve been inspired by many others, mostly on Youtube, but the IMSAI Guy channel is one of my favorites.

The Soldersmoke Blog says his identity is Michael Cassidy W6UAB in Oakland California. He doesn’t exactly say on his Youtube Channel. Whether this is his real name or not, he is very educational in his videos. I have learned a lot but he’s cost me money! He is a clear workbench Elmer to me. I’ve acquired a couple of professional lab-grade test pieces on the used market for far, far less than what they cost new because he first went through them thoroughly on his Youtube Channel. The first was the HP 4735a LCR meter. Here’s my latest one.

The HP 8714ET VNA is a two port VNA. Yes, I have a few NanoVNAs. In addition, the SDR-KITS VNWA 3SE Automatic 2 Port Model with their MagiCal calibration device. Plus, I picked up a LibreVNA with their LibreCAL device. I recommend R&L Electronics for LibreVNA products. Why would I need another VNA? If you are seriously asking this question, my friend the Smoking Ape has some Cat Videos for you to watch. Because I wanted it is the simple answer, LOL.

Shown above is the 8714ET connected to the eight-port test set with an old Barker & Williamson Model 425 Low Pass Filter as the DUT. I purchased it at a hamfest for $5 to use the case but have not yet.The larger monitor on the right serves dually as a second screen to my PC (HDMI port) and as the VGA output with customizable color from the VNA. This is the conversion loss measurement shown. Note the USB floppy drive under the monitor.

Plus, it’s a device with a lot of features that raise the bar for bench testing. It is monochrome green in the internal display but customizable colorized in the VGA output. It’s remotely reachable by HP-IB (I use an HPIB-to-USB adapter), LAN (internal web server), and via a 3.5″ floppy disk. I purchased an inexpensive USB-based floppy drive for the Dell Precision 1700 PC that runs my workbench. And, yes, the 8714ET will indeed format a 3.5″ floppy to DOS. I suspect that I will retrieve screen images, the underlying data, and Touchstone files via the web interface but, heck, I’m kinda digging having a floppy disk in my Lab. In time, I will use some of the many IBASIC programs written for this line of VNAs. The PS/2 keyboard that I just ordered plugs into the rear of the VNA, making editing or writing IBASIC scripts much easier as well as entry for some features on the VNA.

I’ll let IMSAI Guy’s video playlist on his earlier model (HP 8711C upgraded to an 8712) give you the fuller run down on all the things it will do, especially with IBASIC programs that automatic a lot of testing, storage of calibration data, and so forth. But I added something to mine, the Agilent multiport test set, 8-port, 50-ohm model. I found it for $200 on eBay and it is pristine, almost as much as the 8714ET that I found there from a “junk shop” vendor. Very lucky it seems on this set of purchases.

An engineer friend (N5WDG) gave me some high quality test cables when he built a new house and cleared out some extras from his workbench. Good ones can cost almost as much as the used test gear scored online so I’m grateful for the crate of “stuff” that Thomas N5WDG, a WAN Engineer for AT&T, handed to me a couple of years ago. The connections between the VNA and the multiport test set require a standard DB25 male parallel port cable plus two specific firm metal connector jumpers. I found these new-in-box on eBay for $25 each. So with the $1500 price of the 8714ET VNA added to the multiport test set and cables I purchased, I have about $1,750 in this “like new” lab grade VNA from the 1990s.

One thing that the multiport test set provides is a much easier way to tune filters like repeater duplexers and such. The reference materials for the device lay out the wiring diagrams and how to tell the multiport device to configure the ports remotely from the VNA itself. The 100 db dynamic range will help a lot for tuning the standard 2M and 70cm duplexers that are in common use. Covering 300 khz to 3 Ghz, the 8714ET has up to 1600 data points which allows a more thorough sweep for a given frequency span. Nice.

There are always multiple documents to study on new “old” test gear. Each one has a design theory to the things it claims to measure. There are always quirks that support communities (e.g., HP Test Equipment Groups.io; EEVBlog Forum; Youtube) can education you on to more fully utilize gear like this. I also read the archived HP Journal for articles published announcing the release of gear like this. It’s very instructive to have one or more of the design engineers to outline the theory of the device, detailing how they approached the critical aspects of implementing the instrument. Lots of reading and study ahead!

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