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VE9KK the world of CW 2022-06-30 19:02:00
30 June 2022 | by So why did I move the blog...when I lived in Ontario my call was VE3WDM and the blog also hosted the same call. Now that I moved to the East coast of Canada when I retired I acquired a new call VE9KK. I have had this new call for almost 3 years now and have had requests from my blog readers to change the blog address to reflect the new call and FINALLY, I did just that.
Why did it take so long....well part of it was the old I will do it tomorrow excuse, then I was just not sure how to do it and finally, I was not sure if I wanted to stay with blogger and I was looking at other blog hosting sites. I decided to stay with Blogger and via the internet, I found out how to save my blog posting and transfer them to a new site.
For the time being my old blog will stay in place with a link to the new site and I will have to decide on a timeline for the deleting of the blog but not sure how long I should leave it up.
This new blog moves away from the QRP theme I had, it's not that I moved on entirely from QRP operations but it has not been my focus since moving to the East coast. At this time in my hobby, I have navigated toward CW and am not sure how long this will last and what the next direction will be but for now, it's more CW. My post will not be CW dedicated and I will have a wide slice of events, happenings and adventures here on the blog.
To all those who read the blog, I hope you will continue to enjoy it and please give me input as to what you would like to see and read about.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
LHS Episode #472: Elementary My Dear Watson
Hello and welcome to Episode 472 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics epsiode, the hosts discuss several amateur radio and open source related topics including improvements to GNU Radio, the new book from Science is Elementary, Shotcut, WunderGraph, an update on Hamshack Hotline and much more. Thank you for listening and we hope you have a fantastic 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 [email protected].
Hunting For NDBs In CLE281
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| YIV-300 Island Lake, MB (ve3gop.com) |
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?
When tuning for NDBs, put your receiver in the CW mode and listen for the NDB's CW identifier, repeated every few seconds. Listen for U.S. NDB identifiers approximately 1 kHz higher or lower than the published transmitted frequency since these beacons are modulated with a 1020 Hz tone approximately.
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 CLE info:
Hello all,
Here are all the details for this weekend's co-ordinated listening event.
This one will be a bit different - we shall be trying out a new kind of ‘Special’.
Days: Friday 24 June - Monday 27 June
Times: Start and End at midday, your LOCAL time
Target: NDBs with nominal (published) frequencies of:
200, 210, 220, 230, ………. . . , 1630 kHz
i.e. the NDBs on any/all of the 10 kHz markers
but none on other frequencies (including nnn.5)
We hope this will provide a few more (mid-summer) NDBs than usual for Northern Hemisphere listeners - and for sure a (mid-winter) bonus for Southern Hemisphere listeners who always have relatively few NDBs within range.
The usual ‘rules’ for log-making will apply. First-time CLE logs, short or long, will also be very welcome, wherever you are listening from.
Please log the NDBs you can positively identify that are listed on the ‘ ---0.0 kHz’ frequencies, plus any UNIDs heard there too.
Send your CLE log to [email protected] with CLE281 and FINAL at the start of its title.
Please show on EVERY LINE of your log:
# The date and UTC (the day changes at 00:00 UTC).
# kHz - the beacon's nominal published frequency, if you know it.
# The Call Ident.
Show those main items FIRST on each line, before any optional details such as the NDB's Location, Distance, Offsets, Cycle time, etc.
As always, make your log meaningful to everyone by including your listening location and details of the receiver, aerial(s), etc.
It would be OK to use one remote receiver, with the owner's permission if necessary, provided that ALL your loggings for the CLE are made using it.
Joachim or I 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 Wed. 29th June.
We hope to complete making the combined results within a day or two.
You can find all CLE-related information from our CLE page ( http://www.ndblist.info/cle.htm ).
Good listening
Brian & Joachim
These listening events serve several purposes. They
• 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].
ICQ Podcast Episode 379 – HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen 2022 Preview
In this episode, Martin Butler (M1MRB) is joined by Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen 2022 Preview.
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
- Young Person's Morse Tutor Kit Building Event
- AMSAT announces Youth Initiative at Hamvention
- The Mainstreaming of Morse Code
- New Insights from Retooled Disaster Drill
- Two Brits Arrested in Albania as Police Accuse them of Spying after Seizing Radio Gear
- Military Use of 50 MHz Frequencies
- Alamogordo Hamfest 2022
- Distance Learning for Full Amateur Radio Licence Exam
- Radio Ham Becomes Archbishop
Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].
“Revolutionary” Cover Story in RadCom July 2022
I’ve mentioned this work in various episodes of the ICQ Podcast as well as on social media in my Twitter account and now it’s published. Dr. Scott McIntosh and I collaborated since my original feature interview with him in Episode 332 of the the ICQ Podcast back in 2020. He paid a return visit with me for a follow-up feature interview by Martin Butler M1MRB in Episode 377 recently. The article by Howell and McIntosh, “On the Cusp of A Scientific Revolution,” is the cover story in RadCom, the magazine published by the Radio Society of Great Britain. Here’s the cover with a very nice photo of the sun and the ESA Solo satellite facing it. Kevin M6CYB, layout and design specialist at RadCom, put this cover together using resources from the ESAATG Media Lab, for Elaine Richards G4LFM, Editor of RadCom.
Elaine G4LFM is a delightful Editor to work with! As my readers no doubt know from previous posts on this blog, I served as Editor-in-Chief for Springer Media, a very large scientific publisher based in The Netherlands. So I’veb oo that side of the editorial desk for both journal articles and book manuscripts. Moreover, the untimely loss of her Technical Editor, Giles Read G1MFG (sk), added to her workload recently. But she handled all of that, plus her pending retirement, with the utmost aplomb. There’s no muss, no fuss in submitting a paper. No waiting for 6-8 weeks or more for the Editor to “maybe” get back to you. I highly recommend RadCom as a potential outlet for your work.
This is Part 1 of a lengthy and detailed paper. Part 2 is scheduled to appear next month, in the August issue. It’s not an elevator speech so be prepared to read it like you would read a schematic diagram. We think it will be worth your time.
There are some other great articles in this month’s edition of RadCom. Here’s a screen shot of the Table of Contents so you can take a look at both the regular columnists and contributions by authors such as Scott and me.
So what’s all of this about?
We place the current situation of significantly different Cycle 25 predictions of sunspots into the framework of how science works. I’m not speaking of which test tube or microscopic plate to use, for that involves the mechanics of each specific scientific field (Yep, I realize just how outdated those examples are but you get my point.) How does “science” as an institution work?
This diagram illustrates how Thomas Kuhn depicted “scientific revolutions” in paradigm change:
We argue that understanding the solar cycle is in the model competition stage of this diagram.
Dr. McIntosh is the solar physicist. I’m not. But I taught philosophy of science, research design and modeling various scientific phenomena in obscurely named course titles like Structural Equation Models with Latent Variables and Spatial Analysis. I also edited and created a few journals in my career, too. Moreover, I’ve worked for NASA in their Commercial Remote Sensing Program at Stennis Space Center and managed peer-review panels in Washington, DC. So I’ve witnessed how this works in several fields of science, especially when I’ve been invited to reconcile disputes in funding or peer-reviews (e.g., integrated pest management).
When I interviewed Scott in 2020 for the ICQ Podcast, it was clear as a bell to me that the issues he and his colleagues were having in getting some of this “revolutionary” work published in solar physics outlets reflected a clash of theoretical paradigms. Pure and simple. It represents a competing paradigm attacking many of the anomalous findings (or lack thereof) involving the amplitude and cycle transition. Afterwards, he asked me to read a draft of a key paper establishing the linkages between the Hale Magnetic Cycle and the Solar Cycle in which I made voluminous comments and suggestions on the data, modes of analysis, and how to deal effectively with reviewers as a former editor. I’m sure I made a number of “rookie mistake” comments since I’m not a solar physicist, lol. But he was very kind to not mention those, only suggesting other sources for me to read and review.
When it was published, I was greatly touched to have received an acknowledgement for my impact on the final paper (see Scott W. McIntosh et al. (2020). Deciphering Solar Magnetic Activity: 140 Years of the ‘Extended Solar Cycle’ – Mapping the Hale Cycle. Solar Physics (2021) 296:189 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-021-01938-7). Considering that this could be a seminal paper among those published by the McIntosh team that might precipitate a paradigmatic revolution in our understanding of the solar cycle and sunspot amplitude and the transition from one cycle to another, it’s an even greater honor to receive this acknowledgement outside my own field of science.
Scott and I have developed a close collaborative relationship and I’ve learned a lot from him and his published work. He is just a delight in “elmering” me about solar physics. But have no confusion: he’s the solar physicist and I’m the statistician and philosopher of science. We hope that through this collaborative paper, his team’s theory, models and data reach the wide audience that is amateur radio. We hams are one of the significant consumers of this slice of solar physics. But we decided that my expertise would help identify the paradigm boundaries of Scott’s new paradigm as well as some other facets of communicating outside of solar physics. Perhaps even within solar physics, too.
As we “shockingly” disclose in RadCom, the current NASA/NOAA “official” predictions for Cycle 25 do not release any of their methods or assessments to the public. (Insert record scratch here.) Yet, their forecasts are decidedly lower in amplitude than those published under peer-review by my co-author, Scott McIntosh, and his team of collaborative scientists. Amateur operators, however, view the official NASA-NOAA Panel predictions over the past several solar cycles are the Holy Grail source of sunspot activity. We’ve seen this movie before:
While Scott has published beaucoup papers documenting his team’s explicit theory of how these aspects of the sunspot cycle (as amateurs like to call it) work together, our RadCom article attempts to lay it out in comparison to those “official” predictions by the NASA-NOAA Panel. One team will ultimately be proven to be more correct as Cycle 25 matures; the one based upon Panel votes of “expert opinion” or the one based upon a peer-reviewed alternative paradigm.
Those who see SSNs as the critical daily index shaping their amateur radio operations will want to see which team is “right.” To facilitate this, there is a website where the NASA-NOAA predictions, the McIntosh team predictions, the average SSN over the horizon, and the observed SSNs for each month are published in clearly annotated graphs for all to see. No “smoke-filled rooms” where just a professional opinion is offered, but observable empirical data, updated monthly.
Hmm. I wonder whether I’d trust a team of physicians who just met in a conference room and voted to see if I had cancer (which I did in 2005) or a team of physicians who took X-Rays, MRI’s, blood samples and so forth to aid in their diagnosis and treatment plan. Which one do you think is more worthy of your trust? Well, it’s largely up to the observed SSNs and the two sets of predictions, even though one is formally devoid of a stated theory, isn’t it?
Here’s the money graph here:
As the reader can see, the McIntosh predictions (in black) are decidedly closer than the “official” NASA/NOAA/ISES Panel’s predictions (two different blue lines) to the actual observed smoothed sunspot numbers as of July 2022 (green lines).
This is not unlike how the educated world awaited a specific set of photographic plates from an eclipse to determine whether the famous Sir Isaac Newton or the (then) young, whipper-snapper Albert Einstein was correct about Relativity. That was how the Newton-Einstein debate was largely resolved. The McIntosh team has put it’s scientific reputation on the line with observable data, which is how science has moved over the centuries since its emergence in modern societies.
You can find out more about Dr. McIntosh at NCAR (his research center), on Twitter, or by listening to the two podcast episodes I noted above on the ICQ Podcast website. In addition, Scott has given many talks to amateur radio clubs on this team’s work. Youtube is your friend here. I’m already scheduled for late July to talk about this RadCom article to the Denby Dale Club. If you’d like a talk on this to your club, feel free to email me and I’ll do my best to accommodate you. I’m good on QRZ.
Frank Howell, K4FMH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Mississippi, USA. Contact him at [email protected].
Something is up?
Hmm something is just not as it should be?
For about a month now I have been on the low side with receiving comments on my blog posts. Don't get me wrong I am not full of myself thinking my blog posts grab thousand of readers BUT I usually get a few comments. A fellow blogger Bas PE4BAS posted on his blog regarding a similar issue he was having and both our blogs are hosted by Blogger. He found changing a few settings within Blogger did the trick for him. I followed his lead and did the same. I thought all was good until I had some emails from readers informing me they were unable to leave a comment. I was told that all seemed to go well with the comment bot and a comment was submitted but it would never appear on the post......
So here we are again.....if anyone out there has:
- Had the same issue with their blogger blog and found a work around let me know?
- If anyone has tried to leave a comment and it failed to post please let me know?
- Finally does anyone know of a no issues blog host? I have looked at WordPress but it seems for what I want to do I have to pay?
Instead of the frustration of trying to leave a comment just email me at [email protected] or try leaving a comment and see that happens but do email me as that for sure will get to me. It gets very frustrating when things are just working fine and someone somewhere has a bright idea to change things around.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
Something is up?
Hmm something is just not as it should be?
For about a month now I have been on the low side with receiving comments on my blog posts. Don't get me wrong I am not full of myself thinking my blog posts grab thousand of readers BUT I usually get a few comments. A fellow blogger Bas PE4BAS posted on his blog regarding a similar issue he was having and both our blogs are hosted by Blogger. He found changing a few settings within Blogger did the trick for him. I followed his lead and did the same. I thought all was good until I had some emails from readers informing me they were unable to leave a comment. I was told that all seemed to go well with the comment bot and a comment was submitted but it would never appear on the post......
So here we are again.....if anyone out there has:
- Had the same issue with their blogger blog and found a work around let me know?
- If anyone has tried to leave a comment and it failed to post please let me know?
- Finally does anyone know of a no issues blog host? I have looked at WordPress but it seems for what I want to do I have to pay?
Instead of the frustration of trying to leave a comment just email me at [email protected] or try leaving a comment and see that happens but do email me as that for sure will get to me. It gets very frustrating when things are just working fine and someone somewhere has a bright idea to change things around.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].
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