AmateurRadio.com

This past week a very interesting question was posed, one I had not really thought about but now has got me thinking. Paul PC4T asked the question " Are more and more radio amateurs are using social media such as Twitter and Facebook"  Paul had checked the stats on his blog traffic and it was down....due to what, was the question?? I will be the first to admit I am really not up on the social media scene at all. I do have a Face-book page and Twitter account but I really don't understand them or use them all that often.  Here is my question to the bloggers out there....

Fellow blogger's I  always like to comment on blogs and give my two cents worth about a topic....BUT.....is it just me or are these darn Captcha's getting harder and harder to decipher !! I understand about security and that our comments are to come from humans and not other computers. Having said that it seems to me that some of these Captcha's one needs divine glasses to figure out the letters. At times I fool myself thinking if I look at it long enough the letters will jump out from the blurred combinations.....!  There have been "events" of me trying up to 3 (or more)combinations to get the correct letters. To add insult to injury it wasn't bad enough bending my brain around one word now most Captcha's are two words!!

There were train tracks here at one time.

2 clicks into our walk

It seems that up this way spring has sprung early and I am not complaining at all. Today the temperatures were in the 16C range which has broken a 35 year old record. Today the sky was clear, the sun was shinning and no wind at all so it was due time to take in some nature walking. Very near to our home is a nature trail that winds

A shot of the Grand River

along the Grand river. This nature trail goes for 77 km's (we did 6 of the 77 km's) The trail is an old railroad run that was made into a nature path. Julie took her camera along the only wild life was a red tailed hawk, Cardinal and some Canada geese. The shoots on the blog were taken by me with my Iphone as we walked along.The trail is very well maintained and no motorized vehicles are permitted. In the winter it is a great cross country ski spot as well. I was scouting out some stopping areas for when I bring along my K2 possibly this summer. I did find some nice spots and will see what the summer brings!

To my surprise I have been asked to be a mentor to someone who wants to get their ticket. My wife works with the public and she was chatting with this gentlemen and they were sharing info about their hobbies. It came to light that he was interested in getting his ham license. Julie told him I would be more than happy to help him on his journey.  At first I was excited....not that I am not now but it's been over 20 years since I received my license and things sure have changed from then. I want to sit down with this individual and see what it is they
are looking for in ham radio....strictly VHF/UHF, upgrade to HF and are they interested in code? The meeting to find all this out will be this weekend over coffee. In the mean time I have been on the Internet looking up what is now involved for one getting their Amateur radio license here in Canada! I found out that it sure has changed and in a very good way. It seems to me at first glance anyway that the study materials  exhibit a more practical aspect of the hobby. Sure the regulations are still a part of the exam but there is more on antennas, propagation and even setting up a station. I can see for me this is going to be a learning experience as well. I will have the opportunity to brush up on my theory and who knows learn some new "stuff" about antennas, feed lines, radio equipment, the regulations and the theory! Wish me luck..........

I just came across some info regarding a replacement for the road warrior FT-817 it's the mystery FT-818? I have read some comments on blogs that wrote about the FT-818. Some seem to be drooling while others see it as wishful thinking. I did try a link on one blog that boasted of a Yahoo group for the FT-818 but it did not exist. The "up coming rig" sure does boast of some very impressive improvements.

• All mode, all bands 1.8-1296MHz with 5MHz and 70MHz
• 5W RF (2W 1296MHz)
• 3.5AHr Li-Ion battery pack (2hr charging)
• Built in random wire and whip auto-ATU
• Full colour OLED display
• Multi-function DSP noise reduction
• RF Speech processor

BUT Yaesu has not even hinted about this rig...nothing at Dayton....and well check out the Icom IC-7000........seems to me the FT-817 has had a photo shop crop job done to it! What do you think is the the FT-818 fact or fiction?

The repaired key ready for action

I have not been able to get around to putting a post out there the last couple of days but I have been busy getting stuff done around the shack and shack related stuff. Some of the action here was been wanting to settle the Begali key issue. I found it to be sending dot's and dash's on it own now and then. The right paddle was sticking very badly so I took it apart. Low and behold  the coffee that splashed some weeks ago here at the operating desk also got on my key in a very hard to see place. So it's all cleaned up, working great and waiting for me to use it!!!

RufzXP happy again

On my laptop I have Ubuntu 11.10 and up until Friday RufzXP was working just great. It was installed using Wine (a program that allows Windows programs to run on Linux machines) along with Netframe 2.0 but for some reason it just went funky and would not load. The error message said Netframe 2.0 needed to be  installed BUT IT WAS!! I tried many times to reinstall it but with no avail. Yesterday I
took the jump and downloaded Virtualbox onto my Ubuntu laptop and installed WinXP. Virtualbox is a great program that allows you to run other operating systems within a "virtual computer" it creates. I now have Windows XP running on my machine and was able to install Netframe 2.0 and RufzXP...all are getting along just fine now.

The KAT2 which also has a "cat" hair

Finally I have started my Elecraft KAT 2 antenna tuner for the Elecraft K2 radio.If you enlarge the picture see if you can spot the cat hair.....Oliver knows he is not supposed to be playing with my toys....BUSTED! I also have picked up some nice headphones at a great price along with a nice carry case for a surprising low price as well....but more on that in another post. Finally my Nikon D60 camera I use to photograph most if not all my blog pictures was giving me troubles. The memory card would not stay in the camera. Each time I tried to place it in it just popped out. If it stayed in the camera would tell me it was not installed. The camera is under extended warranty but the turn around time is 6-8 weeks! I took it in and I demonstrated the trouble....but it functioned fine and has ever since.  Now it's time to get some radio time in as most of the household chores and running around have been done. This week it will be time to setup for the ARRL international CW contest coming up next weekend.

Lots of changes

As those of you know who have been reading my blog that I have no problem selling items that are no longer being used here at VE3WDM....and it would look like I am not done but that is a whole new subject. Since I have sold and bought items, things here at the shack have changed a lot. This afternoon I was looking at the pic on my blog of me sitting at the op desk and boy is it out dated!!! Some of the gear in that picture no long find it's home here but are being used at other op's. Just some of the items that no longer call it home are the LP-Pan (along with it the external sound card) that I built and was very hard to let go seeing it

The KAT100 and 100w amp enclosure

P3 and AKG headphones

was a project of mine. There was a second MFJ 1026 noise canceller which by the way went to soon in hind sight I would had sent it down to Larry W2LJ. I now know that he is looking for one due to Plasma TV troubles...would had sent it to him to try and buy. Then there was the K1ELUSB keyer that seemed to just be taking up space. Some the additions to the shack over the last little while are Elecraft P3 and all I can say is "it's excellent"!! I have remote mounted my Elecraft KAT100 tuner and 100 watt module in a separate enclosure. This allows me to run the K2 both at home and then grab and go for portable op's. Soon the battery and internal tuner will be installed in the K2 for the full portable operation experience. Another addition to the ham family was the CMOS-4 Logikit keyer by Idiom press. That seems to be about all the changes that have gone on here and I will be updating my profile picture soon to reflect the changes. I also sold the Heil Pro headphones since I am 100% CW then the Pro set plus was a waste. I read glowing reviews of the AKG K240 headphones I decided to go with those.