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KB3BYT, SK
29 October 2023 | by This is the most difficult article I’ve ever had to write, not only because I lost a very good friend, but also because it’s so hard for me to put into words and express the impact this person had on my life and others.
I met Rob about 25 years ago. Rob lived in Philly working long hours programming minicomputers. He developed various medical issues and had to retire early, relocating to the Poconos here in Pennsylvania. He tended to be a night owl, sleeping all day and relentlessly pursuing amateur radio projects at night. We served at our struggling local ham radio club for several years, me as president, him as vice president. He joked his callsign should be VP4LIFE. Rob was a ever-present friendly voice on the local 2 meter repeater, welcoming beginners and having conversations with other night owls well into the morning. We spent many a night at Field Day, operating the CW station and we both substantially improved our CW skills over the years.
Rob and I tended to be mentors to each other. We frequently had multi-week email conversations going about projects. Rob would get interested in a topic and he’d call or email me. Rob always seemed to know the right questions to ask. I would research the topic and inevitably get interested in it. We went down many technical rabbit holes over the years, some going nowhere, others resulting in some sort of rig, circuit, or antenna. I would often wake up in the morning to one or several 10,000+ word emails with pictures showing what Rob was experimenting with. Rob never bought a few components for a project, he’d buy 1,000 of each, and stockpile the unused parts in case he wanted to build more of something or give the parts away to others. Our last major conversation was about making vacuum tubes from scratch, with him collecting the necessary tooling and materials to do this. We complemented each other well, with Rob having the energy, curiosity, and ability to create the spark, and me with the technical know-how to figure things out and fan the spark to become a fire. I can honestly say I am a better radio amateur and person today because of Rob.
I’m still in shock over the loss of Rob. I often see some neat project and think that I should email Rob, but realize he’s no longer around. I open in my email in morning expecting to read a long diatribe about some late night experiments, but there is nothing there.
Robert Roomberg, KB3BYT, 63 years old, Silent Key. Dit dit.
This article was originally posted in Radio Artisan.
Anthony, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com.
Ham College 106
Ham College episode 106 is now available for download.
Extra Class Exam Questions – Part 44
E9B Antenna patterns and designs: E and H plane patterns, gain as a function of pattern,antenna modeling.
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 [email protected].
Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 304
New Elecraft KH1 Transceiver demo
Wayne Burdick N6KR Elecraft cofounder talking about the new KH1.
KE6MT
ISS SSTV Verification Test Oct 27-Nov 1
The SSTV system will be activated to attempt to verify a replacement piece of hardware.
AMSAT UK
Being a YL in Ham Radio
A personal experience.
OnAllBands
40th anniversary celebration of the positive impact of Amateur Radio on human spaceflight
Held February 22-24, 2024, at the NASA Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center.
ARISS
Eclipses do odd things to radio waves
An army of amateur broadcasters wants to find out why.
BBC
Linux Packeteering: The full service HF PBBS
How to set up your very own full service HF packet BBS on a Raspberry Pi.
N6CTA
Wind turbines for off grid radio: Pros and cons
Wind turbines, the forgotten stepchild of off grid power, deserves more attention.
Off Grid Ham
Listening to astronauts
All the elements screw together through the boom and so it makes it quick to put away and assemble.
GM5ALX
Video
K1N The Navassa Island DXpedition 2015
The complete video of the 2015 Navassa Island DXpedition.
HamRadioNow
USGS Shakeout exercise 2023 over Winlink: A video report
Participating in the USGS worldwide Winlink exercise.
LB4FH
Tape measure vertical on cheap dowel mast pulley system
Resonant on 5 bands.
HamJazz
Stealth foil antenna designed for a car sunroof
Simple antennas can bring joy and a sense of accomplishment.
Ham Radio Rookie
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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.
Hunting For NDBs In CLE279
Another month has zoomed by and it's CLE time once again. This is a challenge for all newcomers to NDB listening and the ultimate test of your medium frequency receiving capabilities. Can you meet the challenge?
For example, 'AA' near Fargo, ND, transmitted on 365 kHz and its upper sideband CW identifier was tuned at 366.025 kHz while its lower sideband CW ident could be tuned at 363.946 kHz. Its USB tone was actually 1025 Hz while its LSB tone was 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.
From CLE organizers comes the following info:
Hello all
Here are the full details for this weekend's co-ordinated listening event.
It is open to everyone including CLE new-comers:
Days: Friday 27 Oct. - Monday 30 Oct.
Times: Start and end at midday, LOCAL time at the receiver.
NB: Most of us are changing our clocks by one hour this weekend.
However UTC time (as shown in our logs) continues unaffected.
Range: 335.0 - 349.9 kHz
Wherever you are, please join us and log the NDBs that you can positively
identify that are listed in this busy frequency range (it includes 335.0 kHz
but not 350 kHz), plus any UNIDs that you come across there.
Short and long logs are welcome (in-between ones are good too!)
Send your CLE log to the List, preferably as a plain text email
(not in an attachment) with ‘CLE297 FINAL’ in its subject line.
Please show on EVERY LINE of your log:
# The date (e.g. '2023-10-27' or just the day no. '27') and UTC
(the day changes at 00:00 UTC).
# kHz (The beacon's nominal published frequency)
If you don’t know it, please visit https://rxx.classaxe.com
where you will find all the details.
# The Call Ident.
Show those main items FIRST on each line, before other optional details such as Location, Distance, etc. If you send any interim logs during the event, please also send your 'FINAL', complete, log.
Always make your log interesting to everyone by giving details of your listening location (the 6-character Locator) and brief details of the receiver, aerial(s), etc., that you were using.
We will send the usual 'Any More Logs?' email at about 19:00 UTC
on Tuesday so that you can check that your log has been found OK.
Do make sure that your log has arrived on the List at the very latest
by 08:00 UTC on Wednesday 1 November. We will then hope to complete making the combined results within a day or two.
You can find full information about current and past CLEs from the
CLE page https://www.ndblist.info/cle.htm.
You can also find your relevant seeklists made from REU/RNA/RWW by visiting https://rxx.classaxe.com/cle.
Good listening
Brian and Joachim
(CLE Coordinators)
(Reminder: You could use any ONE remote receiver for your loggings, stating its location and owner - with their permission if required. A remote listener may NOT also use another receiver, whether local or remote, to obtain further loggings for the same CLE)
• determine, worldwide, which beacons are out-of-service or have gone silent since the last CLE covering this range
• will indicate the state of propagation conditions at the various participant locations
• will give you an indication of how well your LF/MF receiving system is working
• give participants a fun yet challenging activity to keep their listening skills honed
Final details can be found at the NDB List website, and worldwide results, for every participant, will be posted there a few days after the event.
The NDB List Group is a great place to learn more about the 'Art of NDB DXing' or to meet other DXers in your region. There is a lot of good information available there and new members are always very welcome. As well, you can follow the results of other CLE participants from night to night as propagation is always an active topic of discussion.
You need not be an NDB List member to participate in the CLEs and all reports, no matter how small, are of much value to the organizers.
Remember - 'First-time' logs are always VERY welcome!
Reports may be sent to the NDB List Group or e-mailed to CLE co-ordinator, Brian Keyte (G3SIA), whose address appears above. If you are a member of the group, all final results will also be e-mailed and posted there.
Please ... give the CLE a try ... then let us know what NDB's can be heard from your location! Your report can then be added to the worldwide database to help keep it up-to-date.
Have fun and good hunting!
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
Rainy weekend adventure.
This weekend was the running of the Worked All Germany contests or WAG. This contest supports both CW and SSB within the same contest. As for me, it was strictly CW....go figure eh!. As happens now and then just before the contest there was an atmospheric burp and the K index moved to 5! The good thing about this is everyone is affected so your still kinda on the same playing field more or less.
This is a 24-hour contest that starts at noon Saturday my time. With the poor solar conditions, there was lots of fading in and out (QSB). This resulted in lots of repeats and contacts that started at S7 and ended somewhere in the dust. I take this as an opportunity to sharpen my CW skills and learn more about the Icom 7610 filtering. This time around I took advantage of the two independent receivers the 7610 has. I had a split screen of the band I was on and the next band that could in time show some excitement. This came in very handy today when I noticed 10 meters coming to life. I swapped out 15m for 10m as it seemed to just jump to life. I had 51 contacts in just 1.5 hours and that was during so-so band conditions. I entered the contest as single operator/all band / low power (100 watts). It was a very rainy weekend here so that made it very easy to stay in the radio chair and plug along.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
ICQ Podcast Episode 415 – The Importance of WRC Agenda 9.1B
In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB, Chris Howard (M0TCH), Martin Rothwell (M0SGL), Frank Howell (K4FMH), Bill Barnes (WC3B) and Leslie Butterfields (G0CIB) to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature is The Importance of WRC Agenda 9.1B
We would like to thank our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate
- Jamboree on the Air (JOTA)is on 20-22 October 2023
- Presenter Opinion : Updating the Amateur’s Code
- Web-based Antenna Designer and Calculator
- ARRL Urges Comments to FCC on 60-Meter Band
- ARRL Launches The NTS Letter
- A book for all About POTA (Parks on the Air)
- Using Amateur Radio to Play Chess
- GigaParts Expands Facilities
Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].
AmateurLogic 186: 18 Years of AmateurLogic
AmateurLogic.TV Episode 186 is now available for download.
AmateurLogic.TV celebrates 18 years on the air.
George reviews the Craftsman Battery Powered Soldering Iron.
Jocelyn demonstrates the MFJ-1898 Portable HF + 6 Meter Antenna.
Emile introduces Outlook Package Message Manager.
Mike explores OpenWebRX +.
Announcing the winner of our 18th Anniversary contest and Icom IC-705 prize package giveaway.
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 [email protected].
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