Category: Uncategorised

In search of early morning contacts I converted my 20m dipole into a
40m inverted V.
Wow! 40 is wonderful! I’m running into lots of fellow boatanchor fans,
and am also talking to Italian and Spanish radio amateurs.
Internet should be fixed on Friday.

Last week’s snow storm knocked out internet service here.
It may be out for a week.
This motivated me to get back on the air.
I fired up my OLD HT37 and Drake 2B combo and have been
Having a ball on 20 SSB.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining.
No hay mal que por bien no venga!
Podcast 130 is done (via D104) and
Will be uploaded as soon as they
fix the fiber optic cable.
I’m sending this via Blackberry.

JEFF PULVER: When I was nine years old I was a very lonely person, and I – maybe I’m always lonely forever. But my – I went to my uncle’s office one day and he had this strange radio and he turned it on, and he says, “CQ, CQ, this is K2QQM calling CQ.”

And all of a sudden these squeaky voices started responding to my uncle. And I thought, this is pretty cool [LAUGHS], that these strangers are now talking to my uncle. And I became obsessed between the time I was nine to about twelve and a half. I taught myself Morse Code, electronic theory, I taught myself the rules and regulations all about amateur radio. In high school, junior high school, I would spend 40, 60 hours a week on the radio. And that was my lifeline. That was where I connected. And all I had to say is I was Jeff from New York, and it didn’t matter how old I was, it didn’t matter what I did for a living. I had this.

And now all these years later, 6 o’clock in the morning to 7 o’clock in the morning, every day, wherever I am in the world, I’m online. But instead of saying, CQ, CQ, I say, good morning. And a magical thing happens every day.

——-

That was me too, way back in junior high on 2 meter AM with my Heath Twoer. Turns out Jeff’s still active too. Nice.

Here’s an idea for making maximum use of your heard earned dollars or euros or whatever: When you go to Lulu, don’t just buy “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”
but check out these other fine Knack-related publications:

http://stores.lulu.com/6sj7comics (“Lid, Kid, Space Cadet” “Sky Buddies” by Jeff K1NSS

http://stores.lulu.com/ian_g3roo (Ian, G3ROO’s amazing antenna book)

http://www.lulu.com/copperwood (“Carl and Jerry” books — scroll down a bit)

http://stores.lulu.com/soldersmoke (SolderSmoke and Bill’s other book)

Put them all together in one package to save shipping. Help your wife with the Christmas shopping!

Then use the checkout password TURKEY to save 10% (through November only)

Not bad, especially for a $6000 budget! You can watch it free on You Tube. Here is part one.

Hi Bill:

Just finished listening to SS 121. Fascinating as usual. In no
particular order:

– Microsoft is ending all support for Windows 2000 effective July
13th of this year. For us little guys there’s only one impact, but
it’s a doozy: no more security patches. My bench computer is still
Win 2k, so he’ll either be losing his connection to the interwebs or
get replaced (don’t think his little brain would take the current
Ubuntu release, but perhaps I’ll give it a shot.) I’m a pretty tech
savvy guy so I’ve got no problem moving on, but I hate to toss
perfectly good hardware. Heck, I’ve got a 1965-vintage USAF surplus
VOM and a Fluke LED readout DVM on my bench (both relatively new to
me!) The scope, power supply and sig gen aren’t much newer. I
think the odd duality of hams you pointed out (tech forward and also
sticks-in-the-mud) is another expression of an engineering mindset
that doesn’t accept that the new must devalue the old.

http://blogs.technet.com/lifecycle/archive/2010/02/25/end-of-support-for-windows-2000-and-extended-support-phase-transition-for-windows-server-2003.aspx

– I’m starting to think the Sun has dropped life-cycle support for
HF, effective when I got my HF privileges. I’m following your weak
signal work with a lot of interest.

– I think I mentioned previously that I got to see the Babbage
Difference Engine #2 last fall. After hearing your Dobsonian
maintenance story using “API Grade Extra Virgin” olive oil, I thought
you’d be amused to hear that the BDE is lubricated entirely with corn
oil, which is apparently available in a variety of SAE weights. I
thought they should put a Bunsen burner under the drip pan and make
popcorn in there, but the docents weren’t too impressed with my
engineering suggestions.

– SMT: I got my first serious taste of SMT while building, of all
things, a Nixie clock. It had two large quad flat pack (QFP) chips.
They weren’t involved in the processing (which was done by a proper
DIP packaged PIC chip) but were the HV drivers (apparently actually
intended for use in a plasma TV). The manual instructed me to tack
down the corners, verify the alignment of all the unsoldered pins,
then just heat ’em and solder ’em down, ignoring pin-to-pin shorts.
After soldering all the pins, it then said to lay a piece of
desoldering braid on top of each run of pins, and heat it until the
excess solder wicked up. I was dubious, to say the least. But to my
complete surprise not only did the clock work on the first try
(meaning all 80 pins had been soldered correctly) but the chips
actually looked pretty good, too. Still a bit nerve wracking!

– In the “keeping old computers working” department I just ordered a
solid state drive to replace the oddball 1.8″ drive in the little Dell
I use for travel. It runs Ubuntu pretty well, but I have to have Win
7 on there for work reasons, so I’m hoping the SSD will speed up the
latter (and not blow up the former – Linux and new technology haven’t
worked out well for me in the past).

73,
Bob KD4EBM

No podcast today because we are out in the Sabine hills.But here is a
report on activities here; RC plane was a flop. Advice from WA6ARA and
others helped, but wings are now really messed up. Big success in
astronomy: clear skies and no moon on Saturday. We had a really
beautiful “Mars rise” and were able to see the polar ice cap. Then we
spotted Andromeda galaxy naked eye, and then viewed it in the scope.
Awesome. I’m on the HW8 now. There is a contest but I’ve managed a few
real QSOs. Back to Rome tonight.

News from the construction club

Ian continues with his love of military equipment repair. He has been
working on the B2 spy set. He had it working at Rishworth earlier in
the year but it had a replica TX he had scratch built. Now he has an
original TX section. He has also been using a 123 set and installed a
neat mod for netting. I will try and send you some photos in the next
few days.

Ian and I moderate the B2SPY set yahoogroup. Perhaps you can give
this a mention. A search for B2SPY will lead listeners to our group.

Over christamas I completed my MKARS80 RXTX what a fantastic bit of
kit for £50. The audio is FB, covers the whole 80m band and easy to
build. My friend Norman has not had time to finish his so I have as
of yesterday I now have his aligned on the band and the tx working. I
still have with the help of Ian to set up the drive and mixer
correctly. We have as you know all the kit at the club. I had
Colette aged 7 help with the winding of the final toroid of both
Normans and my kits, this is good and the QRP gods will look down
favourably, no transistors gave up any smoke as a result.

Last night (Thursday) it was one of the few occasions when we were
unable to meet. The threat of more snow coupled with our local
authorities inability to clear our roads means we had to all work at
our home benches and chat over 2m.

Perhaps Bill we can have some photos of the operating position in the country.

My next project will be the cw add on for the MKARS80. Ian tells me
off because I have too many projects on the go. I still have a DDS
sitting waiting to be grated with an icom if and af boards.

Most recent purchase was a froggy 7 for £30. Have installed a slowmo
drive which improved the tuning no end.

I have moved my shack to the conservatory, my loft space shack was
just too cold for comfort. I had a broken antenna switch in the junk
box, the switch had failed, Ian gave me a relay from his massive stock
of spares and now when I power up the downstairs sheck HF is
automatically switched to there, when powered down the feed switches
to the froggy 7 in the bedroom for headphone monitoring whilst Michele
watches Eastenders or some other such TV mush.

Michele has given me a iphone for Christmas. I rarely have to open up
my laptop and can catch up on emails and the like in down time waiting
for Eurotunnel to deal with the snow on the line ha ha. What a
fantastic bit of kit for a ham. It has some cw practice apps. There
is an app which allows a paddle to be used to type in text for text
messaging the problem is it requires the phone to be hacked which
would void the warrantee. A bit risky with a phone that costs about
£400.

I have spend some three years now working in France, and have made
good friends with the Dunkerque radio club as you know. Perhaps this
year it is time to consider new horizons, jobs are hard to find in the
Uk right now but watch this space.

Can I finally ask you to mention the Dover Radio Club Rally on 17th January 2010
information from www.darc.org.uk. The club used to hold an annual
rally and we are planning to start these again. We have almost every
table booked and will be drawing in hams from all over the SE of
England.

What a pity you left London, you could have come down and met the
construction club had you still been in London. I am sure will will
meet up at some time. I am considring the purchase of a motorhome to
replace the one we sold a couple of years ago. I have a trip to Rome
already mentally planned, and Michele as you know is radio friendly.

Bill keep up the good work with soldersmoke.

Because of the snow I am working Uk side today I guess I should get
back to some work again.

73 from Nigel, White Cliffs of Dover England

We were back out in the woods this week, and on

4th grade Morse code lecture. Listening to 40 meter CW in the schoolyard

http://www.soldersmoke.com

December 6, 2009
4th Grade Morse lecture; SPRAT in the Pantheon; Cinghale shot
SSS problem and the gap in my teeth
STAGNOSALD! (Italian Flux)
Movie Reviews
Water on the Moon
QQ: FB!
Tyson the cat crashes both Ubuntu Linux AND WSPR 2.0
Building the Softrock 40: Comments on surface mount
WSPR hits 100k spots per day; my numbers
BIG MAILBAG

Bruce, KK0S, alerted me to this wonderful article in the Wall Street Journal. I liked the line about the “hackerspaces” being “like gyms, but with people milling iron, not pumping it.”

Check it out:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125798004542744219.html