AmateurRadio.com

In the 1990s while living in eastern Montana, I had the amazing experience of reuniting two soldiers that served in the Devil’s Brigade. They both trained near Helena, Montana.

One day, I was operating on the amateur radio shortwave Ten-Meter band, and a gentleman answered my, “CQ, CQ, CQ, this is N7PMS in Montana, Over”. I took notes of our conversation.

The next day, when again I called for any station to answer my call for a conversation, another fellow, from Canada, answered me. I learned something amazing: Both of these two men mentioned that, during World War Two, they both were in the same special forces unit, training near Helena, Montana.

One of these Veterans served in the Canadian Armed Forces, and the other in the American Armed Forces. Listen to my story, for the full details of this amazing experience I had as an amateur radio operator.

Jump to 3:22 if you wish to skip my introduction to the story, during which I give some background on when and so on:
https://youtu.be/YFMplHjxy6s?t=3m22s

This certainly was one of the most memorable moments in my amateur radio hobby experience! The joy of reuniting friends is good.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Special_Service_Force:

The 1st Special Service Force (also called The Devil’s Brigade, The Black Devils, The Black Devils’ Brigade, and Freddie’s Freighters), was an elite American-Canadian commando unit in World War II, under command of the United States Fifth Army. The unit was organized in 1942 and trained at Fort William Henry Harrison near Helena, Montana in the United States. The Force served in the Aleutian Islands, and fought in Italy, and southern France before being disbanded in December 1944.

The modern American and Canadian special operations forces trace their heritage to this unit. In 2013, the United States Congress passed a bill to award the 1st Special Service Force the Congressional Gold Medal.

Thank you for watching, and sharing. Comments are welcome: do you have a memorable moment in your radio hobby experience on the air?

73 de NW7US

Step-down converter based on LM2596. Note the damaged chip

Ok, now I’ve done the test. My QRPLabs U3S runs off a 12 Volt power supply. There are two step-down converters, one for 5 Volts for the processor and another adjustable one for the power amplifier, if one can call 0.2-0.5 Watts a power amplifier. See picture of these voltage converters in this post.

I happened to make a new cable for 12 Volts which had the polarities inverted – and puff – there was a noise and absolutely no response from the U3S. I feared that I had blown the entire circuit. As my power amplifier was turned off, only the 5 Volts supply was affected and upon inspection I found that the voltage converter had a destroyed chip.

Since since they are so cheap, I had a spare. Luckily for me, the U3S worked as it should after replacement. So the LM2596 can take a reversed polarity and sacrifices itself in order to protect the rest of the electronics. Nice!

This post first appeared on the LA3ZA Radio & Electronics blog.

My first QSO (and, yeah, it was with Morse code) was petrifying and…

What’s your story of your first QSO?

73 de NW7US

Welcome to Episode 220 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, we tackle such monumental topics as weather spotting, the ARRL Teacher's Institute open enrollment, AlaskIT.co, the EU and its stupid rules, the Open Container Initiative, HF packet, Echolink, big words and much more. Thanks for listening. Please donate to our GoFundMe campaign if you can. If you can't, please share, Share, SHARE!

73 de The LHS Crew

Probably the best commercial radio available to radio amateurs currently is the IC7300. However, its price is still set by market forces: it could still be profitable at a much lower selling price.

Whether prices drop depends on many factors, but there is no doubt that the price is what it is largely because people are still prepared to buy at this price. If the dealers can still make a killing why would they reduce prices? Also, currently there is no real competition.

See https://icomuk.co.uk/IC-7300/Amateur_Radio_Ham_Base_Stations

Mr. Regula-tor

OB2 in action... Glow baby, Glow!

I'm going to order a larger filter capacitor.  The only one I had to test with was 22uF 360V and I'd like to use higher capacitance value of 47uF with a more appropriate voltage rating of 250V.  I will also be adding 0.01uF caps at the input and output of the filter capacitor and I may add a 0.01uF across the OB2 pins 1/7 to further attenuate any RF noise.   

With the current values I'm seeing 50mA ripple on my regulated voltage.

A bit over 50mA ripple

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2018 Apr 09 0536 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 02 – 08 April 2018

Solar activity was at very low levels throughout the period with only a few low level B-class flare observed on 03 Apr from Region 2703 (S08, L=193, class/area Axx/010 on 31 Mar). No Earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit reached high levels on 02-04 Apr and at moderate levels on 05-08 Apr. The largest flux of the period was 2,150 pfu observed at 02/1915 UTC.

Geomagnetic field activity was mostly quiet with unsettled periods observed on 05 Apr. Solar wind speed began the period slightly enhanced near 470 km/s with total field around 4-5 nT. Solar wind speed declined to near 320 km/s by 04 April before increasing briefly to near 450 km/s by late on 05 Apr. Total field increased to a maximum of 9 nT at 05/2130 UTC. By 07 Apr, solar wind speed had decreased to 330-380 km/s while the total field decreased to 5 nT or less.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 09 April – 05 May 2018

Solar activity is expected to be at very low levels throughout the forecast period.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to reach high levels on 12-30 Apr due to recurrent coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS) influence.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at unsettled to active levels on 10-16 Apr and again from 19-23 Apr with G1 (minor) storm levels likely on 10-11 Apr due to recurrent CH HSS effects.

Don’t forget to visit our live space weather and radio propagation web site, at: http://SunSpotWatch.com/

Live Aurora mapping is at http://aurora.sunspotwatch.com/

If you are on Twitter, please follow these two users: 1. https://Twitter.com/NW7US 2. https://Twitter.com/hfradiospacewx

Check out the stunning view of our Sun in action, as seen during the last five years with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXN-MdoGM9g

= = = = =

BOOK SALE: Space Weather and Sun Science – get these from Amazon, and help us stay online!

NOTICE: When you buy this (or any item after starting with this link), you are helping us keep our SunSpotWatch.com and other resources “on the air” (up and running!). In other words, you are helping the entire community. So, check out this book:

Here is the link to Amazon: http://g.nw7us.us/fbssw-aSWSC

We’re on Facebook: http://NW7US.us/swhfr