Microwave lectures live on Internet

Okay so you have the lead lined underpants so what else do you need to do next to get QRV on those Gigahertz bands?

Answer: The Martlesham Microwave Roundtable is screening a series of lectures live on the Internet, tomorrow Sunday November 8.

11:02 – 11:55 Talk 1 : G4HUP

12:00 – 12:40 Talk 2 : WW2R

13:30 – 14:10 Talk 3 : DL1YMK

14:15 – 14:55 Talk 4 : G4JNT

15:15 – 15:55 Talk 5 : WA5VJB

The Live streaming video can be found on the BATC video site on Sunday under Live Events at http://www.batc.tv/ Hopefully they will be archived at BATC for people like me who will not be around to watch them live.

Radio rescue

Two radio amateurs on their way to check on an amateur radio repeater where able to call for help on their hand portable radios when they came across a 61 year old man who lay bleeding after falling 40 feet. Karl Tso, KI6PCW, and wife Deborah Ava, KJ6CRZ, put their emergency training to good use to help rescue the man after the accident on Catalina Island. Messages were passed first to stations on the mainland who then contacted emergency services by telephoning 911. Los Angeles County fire-fighter paramedics responded and the injured man was flown by helicopter to St Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach for treatment. Both amateurs are members of The Topanga Disaster Radio Team.

Well done to Karl and Deborah on their fine example of why amateur radio is a good thing. Lets all hope the unnamed victim makes a full recovery soon.

60m Band for Norway

It would appear that Norway have granted ordinary full licence amateurs usage of the 5 mHz band. Previously this was only allowed to groups such as clubs from fixed stations and for organisations involved in emergency planning. In the past only a couple of fixed frequencies or channels were available for experimentation in the band. Now it appears they have been a section of band from around 5.2oo-5.410 without restriction although I unsure of the exact band edges.

I worked Lars LA2OKA who was 57 to 59 on 5.3985 with fading and later heard Pers LA1TNA at first a steady 59 but the band was going out and he faded before I got him in the log. I use a resonant dipole at 30 feet over a reflector at 6 feet that is 10% longer than the dipole and 100 watts. Lars told me he was running their legal maximum of 100w on the band.

Various questions remain unanswered, such as are they allowed portable or mobile operation? and is this a blanket issue to all LA full licence holders or a variation they have to apply for? I have scoured the web but so far very little information appears available. One UK station asked if LAs could speak to UK military cadets. I somehow suspect not. Even though the (probably) unique ability for 5 mHz NoV holders to talk to none amateur stations in the form of military stations is written into the notice I personally have only spoken to two military stations since I had my NoV.

The UK 5 mHz NoV ends in 2010 so hopefully the Norwegian decision will help to get an extension if not an outright amateur allocation in the band.

Digital TV causes massive rise in waste

Here in the UK the digital TV switch over is well under way and the next stage in my area is due on December 2nd when the last of the analogue transmitters get turned off. I have already mentioned in this blog how the public in general have been bamboozled in to paying out for high gain antennas that they do not need and new TVs when there was years left in the one they had. I would have hoped that the tree huggers out there would have made some kind of fuss, but they are obviously amongst the ones that have been taken in by the less than truthful advertisements we have seen. The government keeps telling us to reduce our carbon footprint but the digital switch over has seen a 70% plus rise in the number of TVs being dumped and various councils are complaining they cannot cope with the rise in what is referred to as e-waste.

Over the last year households in the Cumbria threw out more than 50,000 analogue TVs despite the fact that around 30,000 of the sets had nothing wrong with them and could be easily upgraded by adding a digital set-top box. Multiply this by the UK’s 86 counties and you get some idea of the problem. In the North West of England 7.2 million homes in the Granada region have been making the switch from analogue TV to digital this week, and queues at council run tips and recycling centres have been twice as long as usual with almost visitor bringing a TV.

Hopefully we radio amateurs are doing our bit and are recovering lots of useful components from at least some of this electronic waste. I look forward to seeing the first batch of QRP rigs made from 100% recycled TV parts.

X-Band 6-10m gets go ahead

I received the following email from Dave G3ZXX about the 6m/10m cross-band repeater the Wessex Repeater Group are working on…

Further to our e-mail of the 3rd November, we would like to confirm the following operational characteristics, for the new GB3WX repeater, as defined by the formal NoV.

10m Transmit: Input Freq: 50.520 Mhz – Output Freq: 29.210 Mhz – CTCSS Freq: 82.5 Hz

6m Transmit: Input Freq: 29.210 Mhz – Output Freq: 50.520 Mhz – CTCSS Freq: 82.5 Hz

Mode: NBFM

CTCSS: Please note that the CTCSS tone is now the same on both bands.

Output Power: Will be 25 watts (14 dBW) ERP, on each band.

Antenna: Unity gain omni-directional vertical, on each band.

Beacon Mode:
When not in use, the repeater will ident on both bands simultaneously, every 60 seconds, to enable direct propagation comparisons to be made between the two bands.

The repeater will be co-located with the 2m repeater GB3JB, at Willoughby Hedge, in South Wiltshire, IO81VC, and will be powered by the sites Solar Panel and Wind Turbine generating system.

Further information will be added to the web site as it becomes available.

Now that we actually have the NoV, we need to get moving, as we have a 3 month window in which to get the system operational.

However, as with all our repeater / beacon systems, they are supported by donation, so your support in this area would be very much appreciated. Details on how to make a donation to the Wessex Repeater Group can be found at the group web site.

We currently need a further £800 or so, to complete the project. This being needed for the purchase of a 2nd transceiver, the logic controller and additional batteries to supplement the current system, which will of course have to cope with the significant additional power loading.

To those who have already supported our unique project, we offer our thanks for your interest and trust, but hope that may more of you will find your way clear to offer your financial support.

Please feel free to forward this communication to anyone whom you feel would be interested in its contents.

Cheers and 73’s
Dave, G3ZXX - Keeper: GB3WX

For and on behalf of The WesseX Repeater Group

Congratulations to everyone in getting this far and good luck with the reast of the project.

I was and still am somewhat sceptical about the need and usefulness of this project and Dave is/was aware of this as he contacted me when he was initially gauging the opinions of the amateur community, but despite knowing I was a sceptic  has kept me up to date with details, which I find most reassuring. The project will no doubt be an interesting one for those involved but from my own point of view I have a few issues.  If I was to use this repeater, which I have no intention of doing as I rarely use FM on these bands, I would need to use two rigs as I have no way of switching antennas from my 6m to 10m vertical, so I would have to listen on the same antenna as I was transmitting with resulting inferior reception. The majority of HF equipment still comes without CTCSS  as standard and its inclusion may result in the exclusion of some that may wish to use it. The repeater only puts out 25 watts which is less than I would be running myself even from a mobile, which means simplex contacts would in the majority of cases be easier. When both bands are open and the repeater would be most useful it will be either so busy that only a few people will be able to use it or everyone will be too busy making simplex contacts to bother with it. I would rather they had gone for a single band repeater on either six or ten but I think the added challenge of doing a cross-band unit has been behind it. It should be perfect for that small group of amateurs who own the Yaesu FT-8900 with the matching quad band antenna and live close enough to get the repeater under flat conditions. For the rest of us it may well just remain a curiosity as possibly one of the last innovative analogue repeaters in the UK, because if we like it or not the future is digital. I am just not sure it is D-Star.

DAB vs FM

I have already voiced on this blog and elsewhere my contention that while digital radio is the future DAB is probably an evolutionary dead end. The DAB+ system is better with more stations, better quality sound and cheaper transmission costs, but even this system would probably be just a halfway house solution and not a good one at that. The problem with DAB+ is that most DAB receivers are not compatible with DAB+. Having said that the numbers of homes in the UK with a DAB receiver is probably so low that it does not matter. In my own home on an inside antenna my hi-fi tuners reception is pathetic fortunately if I want to I can listen on amateur radio equipment connected to decent outside aerials. Bring a portable DAB radio into my lounge and you can receive zilch, zero, nothing at all.

According to the Guardian this morning Scott Taunton, head of TalkSport’s parent, UTV Radio GB speaks out and it make interesting reading. According to Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report the plan is to switch off FM broadcasting in 20015, Scott’s contention is that this is unrealistic. What is somewhat surprising is that he represents a leading company that has invested heavily in DAB and not just some minor broadcaster or journalist.

I personally think the low up-take of DAB by the public will continue with more people listening via satellite, Freeview boxes and the Internet. Mobile telephone technology is at present limited to using expensive Internet airtime or built in FM receivers, but the potential is for always available for mobile phone service providers to set up free lines or free Internet streams from web enabled radio stations. It would be fairly simple to route the same audio data to thousands of listeners via their mobile telephones. I think the future of personalised radio listening is in the hands of mobile telephone service operators and manufacturers.

If indeed we are going down the road of DAB or DAB+ the first thing that should have been done is to force car manufacturers to fit compatible radios, which is not happening on a wide scale. In fact some manufactures are still supplying cars with cassette players in and how many people still use cassettes? It is even hard to buy blanks these days. The fact that the latest iPod has a built in FM radio may just be a clue that FM is not going away any time soon and the popularity of FM radio is growing in places like China, Korea and Taiwan, where a lot of the devices we buy are made. It has been suggested that Worldwide an FM revival is on the horizon so do we really want to kill the golden goose in six years time? How many people will just stop listening altogether if the powers that be insist on hurtling down this digital highway?

On a lighter note; One conspiracy theory has it that the authorities want to stop analogue transmissions because it could be picked up by hostile alien life forms whereas digital will just sound like noise to them. “Calling occupants of Interplanetary craft!”

Digging a deeper hole

I hope that at my funeral nobody quotes Oscar Wilde and says, “He had no enemies, but was intensely disliked by his friends.”

I have not seen the Simon Pegg film ‘How to loose friends and alienate people’ but what I am about to write here may just do that, however when I started this weblog I did not intend to pull my punches. It is not that I wish to upset anyone but as Elbert Hubbard said, “If you have no enemies you are apt to be in the same predicament in regard to friends.”

At the North Wales radio rally Kath Wilson M1CNY from the UKFM Group North Western approached me and asked if would fancy getting involved with the group and I am afraid I was less than polite at the suggestion. I would apologise but it may not help now.

My take on repeaters has always been somewhat negative, there are people out there who seem to think amateur radio is something done on a walkie talky with a rubber duck and have no idea how to set up a real amateur radio station. I believe that they invite idiots and that they give them the ability to create the maximum havoc possible with the minimum of equipment. On the plus side it keeps most of the morons in the same place. I dislike repeaters in general and would prefer that they gave way to allow more bandwidth for more interesting stuff but obviously that is not going to happen any time soon.

For the past few years there has been one exception to my repeater aversion GB3CR.
Charlie Romeo is on 433.150 and located on Hope Mountain and until recently it was seriously under used. The only reason I started using this repeater was it was not subject to the abuse that is rife on the local 2m repeaters and it was the only frequency where I could find up to a dozen amateurs on at 06:00 hours in the morning as I travelled either to or from work. The gang that were on at that time of the morning were irreverent and cynical, witty and well informed and somewhat above average intelligence. Sure we had the odd boring git call in and we all have our off days but it passed the time travelling and usually put a smile on my face.

One of the regulars on our early morning net owns the equipment, antennas, pays the up keep, electricity and site rental bills. Another member of the net services and repairs the equipment and antennas. Neither of these people is a member of the UKFM Group North Western so I therefore believed I owe nothing to the group as I never use anything they paid for.

Kath Wilson actually asked me nicely enough but I unfortunately was caught off guard and snapped back that I did not use repeaters. “What about CR” she said and I replied that the UKFMW have nothing to do with the upkeep of CR. Kath replied that they did and that her husband Dave Wilson M0OBW was the NoV holder. I did not want to discuss it and moved on.

To quote one of the founders of GB3CR “The repeater comes under the umbrella of the north west repeater group, UKFMW, but the refurbishment has cost the group nothing. Thanks to the site owner, running costs are zero.” This was referring to the Storno commercial repeater that has only recently been replaced by the owner at no cost to UKFMW with a more modern and hopefully more reliable Tait repeater with such useful goodies as remote shutdown.

The real problem I have is that the lunatics appear to have taken over the asylum. The bad operating practices heard on the North West’s (mainly) two metre repeaters are also perpetrated by some of those running the group. The infiltration by the very foul-mouthed cab and truck drivers I left CB over is self-evident. They pay their fees and so are allowed to be part of the clique and as a result seem to have become almost untouchable. I have seen indications that some abuse on the repeaters is being carried out by normally good well-mannered amateur radio operators who have been driven off the repeaters not by the ‘mic keyers’ but the inane mundane drivel spouted by ‘Good buddies’ now elevated to the dizzy heights of the ‘Novice’. Some of them are so thick I am sure that they probably had a mate sit the exam on their behalf, even though any CBer with half a brain could pass the novice test easily enough.

To put it in a nutshell I do not want anything to do with UKFMW because there are some people involved with it that I would not piss on if they were on fire and while I have every admiration for the hard work Kath and Dave Wilson have done in providing training for amateur radio licensees with their work at ‘The Beacons’ I do not like the way they operate on the air and for some reason when I see them the hairs on the back of my hands stand on end. I have no basis for saying I do not trust them and they have done nothing to make me dislike them, but I do generally I trust my first impressions and would prefer to keep them at arms length.

As a result of my somewhat uncalled for indiscretion, which I have probably compounded by writing this, I tried to find who actually was the repeater’s registered keeper is and it is indeed Dave Wilson M0OBW (if the site that has not been updated for four years is to be believed) but what shocked me even more was finding that he has been elected RSGB president from 1st January 2010.

Now I have always been of the opinion that anyone who seeks a position like that of President of the RSGB must be so far up his own arse as to be automatically excluded from standing for election. So is Dave in that category? I must say I do not know that much about him and certainly not enough to say either way but it seems to me that someone in that position should be at least active on the air. I know his wife Kath is almost omni-present on the two metre repeaters, even if I do not listen on those frequencies very often, but M0OBW is not a call we hear banded about very often. I decided to look him up on QRZ.com and was only the 51st look-up he had ever received, keen DXer then Dave. Compare that to my call, which although I have not checked lately is in the thousands.

So UK amateurs are to be led in to 2010 by someone who teaches but does not practice what he teaches, that sounds like your typical politician. It does not seem like a good move but at least he lives in Sandbach, Cheshire and as such is a Northerner, which has to be good (doesn’t it?) and hopefully he is not one of those G&T swilling knobs or lager drinking pussies from down south. I hope that despite my reservations he can kick some ass and move the society forward, I really do.

I now have some thinking to do, should I stop using GB3CR and should I leave the RSGB before Dave has me expelled? Maybe I should follow Groucho Marx’s lead and send the RSGB a note saying, I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members. Oh come to think of it I did that last time I resigned from our national society!

N.Wales radio rally 2009

Saturday 31st October 2009 started off better than most and the sun was shinning. It felt good to be alive. I had a wallet full of money and we were headed for the North Wales radio rally at Llandudno. I hoped to meet loads of on air friends and perhaps put a face to some call signs that I had never met other than on the air. It helped that I had a most enjoyable evening out with some of the local amateurs the night before at the Royal Oak in Higher Kinnerton. I had an excellent meal washed down with a couple of pints of Black Sheep ale. There were fifteen of us and everyone seemed to have enjoyed the evening.

I had a shopping list but it was for the Mold & District Radio Club. I had my own money to spend but I did not really know what I wanted. The main item on the club’s list was a new 2m/70cms collinear to replace a wind and water damaged one that had resisted my attempts to repair it. On entering the rally one of the first people I met was a club member Ron 2W0BLG who said he had an antenna the club could have, so no need for wasting funds on a new one just yet. I purchased a few dipole centres and end insulators so we can have some antenna making sessions at the club and some small pulleys so that we can raise and lower the wire antennas with a lanyard as we need to. The only thing I bought for myself was a 8GB compact flash card for my digital SLR camera.

I was surprised that although there appeared to be more people at the rally than last year I saw less people I knew. I went both days last time and last year Sunday was poorly attended but a lot of folks I spoke to this year said they would be there on the Sunday so hopefully things will have evened out and Sunday will see similar numbers to Saturday. As a guess I would say attendance and stallholders were both up by about 10% on last year but still well short of former glories. We seemed to be missing the Irish contingent that used to arrive by the coach load off the boat from Holyhead and spend lots of money, but I notice from RSGB news that the Foyle & District ARC rally was taking place at Best Western White Horse Hotel, Derry on Sunday so maybe they went there instead.

The rally was much improved on most rallies in recent years by the lack of stalls selling fudge, knitted baby wear and computer bits. No sign of the guys selling dodgy CD’s full of stuff you can download free of the Internet either. There was still a few amusing items on sale such as a World War II silk parachute which had avoided being made into a wedding dress for some GI bride. One stall had a baking tray with cookie cutters in the shape of the letters of the alphabet that might have been good if it included numbers so we could have baked call signs biscuits.

The big dealers Waters & Stanton and Radioworld were at either end of the hall but may have lost out to a number of potential sales due to not having the big Icoms on display. One well heeled station I spoke to was interested in the £6,500+ IC-7800 and another was keen to see the £3,300+ IC-7600, he even had his Kenwood TS2000X in the boot of his car hoping for a part exchange deal.

Just like last year there was nobody selling coaxial cables or twin feeder unless you wanted some cheap and nasty RG58. I have been after some very thin low loss coax for my portable operations for some time but have been reluctant to pay the stupid postal costs required for such heavy items as 100m reels of coax.

The canteen that is run by staff employed by the centre was a minor annoyance. There were as many people behind the counter as in front of it, but no one seemed to be doing anything and even when we got to the front of the queue it took fifteen minutes to get served. Some people who only wanted to pay for a cold drink from the self- service fridge stood in line as we did for 45 minutes. At any one time there was no more than 15 people in the queue. How on earth they cope with hundreds of screaming kids on school days I do not know.

Last year I had a big list and failed to get most of it. This year I got what I wanted for the radio club but failed to be tempted to spend anything on myself. Maybe next year I will be tempted to buy something a bit more substantial than a handful of PL259’s as long as the big dealers are there and have the IC-9100 or something similar with them.

I really hope this rally continues, as most of the best ones seem to have gone. It is not that long ago we could have been at a radio rally every weekend and I would probably have attended six or seven in a year. The UK rally scene seems to be hanging on by its finger tips for grim death and I do not wish for it to be just a dim memory of good times. In the case of Llandudno I feel more and better publicity might just help and the same may be true for other rallies. The ball is in everyone’s court so if there is an event spread the word by what ever means.

I hear lots of people say that the reason they stay away from rallies is that they refuse to pay to get in and spend money, but the same people pay money to park at shopping malls and are prepared to pay postage on items ordered via the Internet or telephone sales. Surely the more people that attend the less the organisers have to charge us and if the dealers make enough money then they are prepared to come back and even pay more for their stalls. The main dealers will tell you they do not make money doing rallies, and that if they even break even it is a bonus, they do it to maintain a public face. Lots of volunteers put in long unpaid hours and weeks of work so these events to go ahead and tend to get nothing but flack as a result. Please support you local radio rallies because like the amateur bands themselves if we do not use them we could soon loose them.

NASA iPhone App with ISS tracking

Another iPhone app making waves is one released on Friday by NASA that delivers up-to-the-minute agency news, videos, and other fantastic scientific content. The app currently hosts details and updates (in the form of Twitter feeds) on NASA missions such as LCROSS/LRO, Mars Exploration Rovers, the International Space Station, the Constellation program, Mars Odyssey, and the Space Shuttle. Each category also contains pictures and YouTube videos available of the mission — plus live tracking of the ISS using Google Maps.

The NASA iPhone app was created by the New Media Team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The app is available free on Apple’s App Store — and can be downloaded here

Remote control your car with iDriver

Spotted like the previous item in the Daily Telegraph and in a move likely to put Canadian legislators in a complete tizzy, German researchers have come up with an iPhone application capable of controlling a car. The ‘app’ turns the iPhone into the equivalent of a video games controller and has been used to control a two ton van. There are separate controls for accelerator and break and the motion sensors in the phone turn it into a steering wheel.

The app was created by Appirion a firm that specialises in software for mobile phones.

While iDriver is believed to be the first car controller devised for the iPhone, it follows a spate of technological advances aimed at creating “autonomous vehicles” capable of driving themselves and reacting to their surroundings.

I can see it now, you are sat at your desk in work and the telephone rings. Your wife wants the car so you get out your iPhone and drive it back home while still sat at your desk. Or maybe you stop for a drink on the way home and then have you wife drive even though she is back at home sat in front of the TV. Somehow I don’t think anyone trusts technology that much to allow it on the streets but we can dream.