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It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our departure into the world of hedonism, random topic excursions, whimsy and (hopefully) knowledge. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.

73 de The LHS Crew

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 169 is now available for download.

Driving a ground rod using water. Windows 3.0, GEOS, CPM, GEM and MS-DOS on a microcontroller. APRS FI explored. On our way to Dayton.

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We have been looking for an opportunity to activate a SOTA summit in our home state of Indiana. Joyce/K0JJW and I were both born there and misspent our youth there. Of course, you might be thinking “there are SOTA summits in Indiana?” Yes, there are three. Two of them are on public land, one is on private land and apparently inaccessible. These three summits are in the southern part of the state, not too far from the hills of Kentucky.

We were headed south towards the Smoky Mountains and passing through southern Indiana and decided to activate Jackson County HP (W9/IN-002). First, we camped at one of Indiana’s best state parks: Brown County State Park, about an hour away from IN-002. The next day we headed to the Jackson-Washington State Forest, where the summit is located. The Indiana Dept of Natural Resources supplies this trail map. As you’ll see, there are a number of trails that can take you to IN-002, but we chose the most direct route, starting at Knob Lake.

There is a State Forest campground around Knob Lake, so that would be another option for camping out.

We headed up a gated road that was labeled “Trails 2 and 3”. This road narrowed into a trail and we took a left turn at the Trail 2 sign. This is slightly tricky because Trail 2 goes off to the left and it continues on straight. The “left” Trail 2 ascends up to IN-002, for a total elevation gain of 465 feet and a distance of 0.7 miles. Go Left.

Once on top, we unpacked our recently purchased Icom IC-705 transceiver. This seemed like a good choice for this activation. While we were sure to try good old 2m FM, there was a good chance that we would get skunked on VHF at this rural and not-too-high summit. Sure enough, 2m FM was silent, even using the mighty 3-element Yagi antenna.

Next, we set up the end-fed halfwave for 20 meters, hoisted by the popular extendable fishing pole. OK, I admit that I had to do some fiddling around with the antenna to get the SWR to behave. Somehow, the test run at the campsite the day before was not sufficient. The SWR was way too high for the “I like 50 ohms” Icom, so some adjustments were required. After an unreasonable amount of fiddling, we put out an SSB signal on 20 meters that seemed good.

The band conditions were not great but they were not terrible. Calling CQ did not seem to work very well, so we tuned around and worked a number of Parks On The Air (POTA) stations to get our 4 QSOs. At that point, we declared victory and headed back down the hill.

This summit was easy to access and an easy hike. If you are in the area and want to knock out a Hoosier SOTA activation, this one is a great choice.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Activate A Hoosier SOTA Summit (W9/IN-002) appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Hello and welcome to the 466th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, we discuss the ARDC's grant program for amateur radio clubs, the Hamvention mega prize, privacy in ham radio, Pop! OS, Fedora 26, Ubuntu 22.04 and a little bit about Hamshack Hotline. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

The work that Rob Sherwood NC0B has contributed to the public over the past decade is unique and an amazing service to hams worldwide. I’m talking about, of course, his summary Table of receive bench tests published at this Sherwood Engineering website. He is independent so no one can think that advertising dollars could skew his assessments or how he presents them. As a CW contest operator, he is very clear that he sorts his table on the basis of what his experience and training has shown him to be the single most important measurement in his table: the narrow dynamic range.

I am not a CW operator or accomplished contester (lol) but enjoy the latter with my small team of fellow hams. But I am a statistician who likes to focus on problems where analytic tools can help foster a wider understanding of the data surrounding the problem area. So, working with Rob NC0B, I’ve created a set of “Sherwood Tools” to visualize his data as well as link them to a couple of other critical aspects of a rig purchase: market-entry price, consumer satisfaction, and the year the radio entered the market. These four vectors of data drive all of these tools, now available over at foxmikehotel.com.

The tools include a sortable Sherwood list where you can sort on any of the nine tests he publishes as well as the composite index of them that I created and included in my two-part NCJ articles in 2021. A set of 3D data visualizations are available to simultaneously view radios on four data elements (that does make it 4D, technically). Several graphs illustrate key aspects of the data, including how to not get tripped-up in the “ranking” of radios where the bench measurements are just not appreciably different. Seeing how the past 50 years of radios appearing in Rob’s Table have made a remarkable and clear progression toward the best receiver performance that modern test equipment can detect is in another tool. In addition, how the trend in getting a receive bang-for-the-buck has progressed over this 50 year period is there, too. Finally, I’ve used the industry-standard tool by Gartner, the Magic Quadrant, to help isolate radios in Rob’s Table that perform and are rated above average at various price points. I call these the Golden Quadrant Lists.

Rob NC0B has not endorsed these tools and neither have Scott K0MD or Bob K0NR. But all three have given advice and suggestions for how I’ve designed them for which I am very grateful. None should be held accountable for any mistake or result that the viewer may find there. I hope these Sherwood Tools are of use to viewers who are evaluating rigs. (They have been to me over the past two years of doing this research during which I’ve purchased two new HF rigs.) Making a written set of must-have features is a critical complement to these tools. Just like Smokey the Bear says: only you can put out forest fires. Only you can determine the feature-set and ergonomics to satisfy your use-case for a new radio!

I’m outlining a talk on the use of these tools should clubs wish me to visit with them via Zoom. See my contact tab above. I’m good on QRZed.

In this episode, Martin Butler (M1MRB) is joined by Chris Howard (M0TCH), Frank Howell (K4FMH), Bill Barnes (WC3B) and Leslie Butterfield (G0CIB) to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature Handy Talkies, New or Secondhand.

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

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Hello and welcome to the 465th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss the latest long-term-support release of Ubuntu, 22.04, otherwise known as Jammy Jellyfish. Topics include installation, updates and changes, general usability, installation of ham radio-specific applications, plans for the LHS re-spin and much more. Thank you for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew