The 30 Meter Dipole

I've decided that the best accessory you can have in a ham shack is a fifteen year old grandson. Not only are they smart, they're also strong and I think sometimes they just want to show Opa what they can do.

I was trying to work some PSK31 on 30 meters using my super-duper G5RV, but the SWR was too high and the loading was terrible. The antenna works very well on all the other bands, but 30 meters seems to be its nemesis. I was sitting around the shack when my eyes fell upon a small cardboard box in the back of the closet that contained a 20 meter dipole that I had planned to string up in the attic of the home I had in Georgia in an HOA antenna restricted environment. I knew also that I had some 14 gauge Copperweld around somewhere, so the idea began to form.

I pulled out the old dipole tacked on enough Copperweld to produce an antenna cut exactly for 10.140 mHz. The next day, my grandson, Chris, and I got out the old antenna crossbow that I used for years to string antenna wire in the trees when camping and picnicking and along with a hundred feet of Nylon rope and the muscle power of a teenager brought it up to its full height - flat top at 40 feet. This is the best form of recycling - reusing an old antenna for a new purpose!

We came back into the shack and hooked it up to the TS-440 through the Daiwa CN-801HP meter and called CQ on 30 meters. The meter showed a perfectly flat output on 10.140 mHz! I've never cut a dipole before that didn't need to be re-tuned at least a little, but this one was the Cat's Meow. Of course, no one answered... it was too early and the band was either closed or there was simply no other old retired guys with nothing else to do but listen to dead air available.

Later in the evening the band started to show some activity and I met one of the nicest people I've met on the air, AK8D Wayne McKenzie. He has a lot more experience on these new digital modes than I do and was willing and able to spend some time demonstrating some of the other modes available for amateur use. We tried HellSchrieber which I thought was a bit like facsimile transmission and MFSK16 which he described as the mode used by NASA to send photos back from the Mars expedition. He sent me a couple of pictures. In one I could make out what had to be a creature from Mars, and the other was just grain because the band was dropping out from under us.

So far on this new dipole I've worked France, Northern Ireland and a few stations in the US. I'm sure there will be many more to come.

A Death in the Ham Shack

The night after Ron, W2RIP and his lovely wife left, my old homebrew computer died. It started out with the USB ports becoming non-responsive, and none of my USB devices would function. For first aid, until I could completely diagnose the problem, I installed a spare enhanced USB PCI card that I had hanging around and that allowed me to complete the most important project - backing up my data!

These USB 2.0 connected hard drives are the trick for back-ups. They are protected from the foibles of an unsteady operating system, and, best of all, they are portable from machine to machine with no hassle. After I had everything backed up, I went off to bed. As I always do, I left the computer running. The little known fact of electrical machinery is that running a piece of equipment in a constant powered state doesn't hurt it as much as turning it on and off. Cycling may be good for your body, but it's not good for electronics.

I came into the shack the next morning and tried to wake Bigboy (as the computer was named on the home network here) and he was unresponsive. His heart had given out and he died peacefully in his sleep. I ran all the diagnostics and found that the motherboard was dead.

As I mourned the loss of my old computing friend (and the loss of the hamdollars it would take to replace him), I had to think of where to go from here. Should I buy a new motherboard and CPU? As an aside, computers are in a way like motorcycles; just as you would never replace a chain on a motorbike without replacing the sprockets, you would never replace a motherboard without replacing the CPU. I hate to throw new money at old technology, so I thought it more appropriate to move from IDE based technology to serial.

As I walked into the door of the local Staples, I sensed that the salesman saw my need to spend hamdollars. It could have been the black armband that tipped him off, I don't know, but he certainly homed right in on me. I'm standing in front of the row of shiny laptops all with their screens bright with swimming fish, so strong in their youthful vigor and I think fondly of Bigboy and his days of glory... But enough of that. I had told myself over and over that if I have to, God forbid, replace Bigboy it would be with a super whiz-bang laptop with bluetooth and Centrino processing and constantly on line with the world from every coffee house in the world.

Fortunately, a cooler head and shrinking hamdollars convinced me that I no longer travel the world (except by radio) and I haven't hung out at coffee shops since my days at the Army Language School in Monterey. Sancho Panza's Coffee House downtown was THE place to meet women. No Wi-Fi in 1962!

To an old computer builder like me, there is no nastier words to hear than "bundled," but there on the floor of Staples was a stack of boxes with bundled kits of Dell Inspiron 530's with a 20 inch monitor for fewer hamdollars than I had figured I'd had to spend. All that new technology in one big package was more than I could stand. I had priced this very machine pretty much in this configuration online at Dell for about 300 hamdollars more than was being offered at Staples. It was that bargain hunters dream - a closeout sale!

I thought the price was fair and decided that I would take it. Rather I decided that the salesman could take it for me out to the car - those bundles weigh a ton! At the register, I presented my Staples Business Owners card and found that the price was reduced by yet another 100 hamdollars. The bargain gets even better! Business owner? You don't have to be it when you apply; all you have to do is say it!

I have spent the best part of two days now dragging off all that junky software they put on the hard drive and installing the good stuff like HRD and DM-780. There are no ports for keyboard and mouse! Everything and I mean everything runs off the serial bus. There are eight ports on the machine (four in front and four in back) and I have an external USB hub. I have two USB to serial port adapters and they posted just fine for radio control and for digital working via DM780.

I had to install a firewire card (from the junk box) and a video card (NOT from the junk box, but from Bigboy himself), and I bought a USB to IDE box to house the old 400gb drive from Bigboy. Sigh, it looks like we're finished for now.

I decided, after a lot of hand ringing, to leave the VISTA SP1 operating system on the machine. I was sorely tempted to wipe the hard drive and start with a fresh copy of Windows XP pro, but in the end I decided that I'd leave it, but the moment it starts getting unstable, I'll jerk it out and replace it with XP in a flash.

Finally I had to name it. That's the hard part part you know. Once you name it, you just can't take it back to the store! I tried several names; Farmer... for Farmer in the Dell; I thought maybe "Little Boy," but that sounded too nuclear, but finally I decided on "John's PC." O.K. so my poet's soul takes a rest from time to time, but the machine doesn't know it has an ugly name, and to me it'll always be "Bigboy II."

Eyeball

I wrote earlier about having Ron Foster, W2RIP help me get my signal cleaned up on PSK. He showed great patience and specific knowledge on how to get a clean signal into the ether from my PC. I mentioned to Ron that if he should ever be in the area, look me up, and he replied that he, in fact would be in the area soon. He had to make a trip to Charlottesville to see his daughter and would be coming down I77 on his return. We arranged to meet on Tuesday, June 24. I was, needless to say, excited about the visit. So I shoveled out the shack (even vacuumed the floor!) , stacked all the old QST's on the shelves in what I would consider a neat pile and made sure that all the gear had been dusted off at least on the outside. I met Ron in the parking lot of Lowe's down at exit 42 on I77 and he followed me to the house.

It has been a long time since my wife and I have met such pleasant people. Ron's wife, Betty and my wife, also Betty found that they had so much in common and they talked about photography, camping and wildlife for the hours that Ron and I talked about radio. Ron and I spent some time in the shack going over the software and the equipment, but it was the conversations that were so pleasant. Ron was really impressed at how well DM-780 ran on my super-go-fast PC that I had built from scratch, and that made me feel good.

We ended the visit with a trip down the road to Troutman to Julia's Tally House. Julia's is one of those home-cooking places you just don't find when you're traveling. It's a family place that serves good down home food and lots of it. The fried chicken is the best I've had anywhere, and I'm sure the Colonel could learn something at Julias!

We bid them a reluctant farewell and watched them head south on I77. This "eyeball QSO" was one of the truest pleasures I've ever had. See ya Ron!

In case you were wondering, Ron is the handsome one. Yes! The one on the right!

A Labor of Love

There's a stack of reference books on the floor next to my desk, all of them have either Dreamweaver, PHP, MySQL or something similar in the title. I wanted to put my QSO log on my website http://www.kr4ro.com/ . I'm sure that there are easy ways to do this, but I don't know them, and I don't know anyone who could tell me. Hence the stack of reference books.

Actually, I had done it once before, but it was so long ago, I simply couldn't remember how I did it. I guess I could have checked the documentation I made after that labor of love, but, of course, I didn't document anything at all.

Well, it's done now, and I'm glad it's over. Now all I have to do is remember to update it on a regular basis. It's a nifty little program; you can see the entire log or you can see all the entries for a particular callsign. For instance, if you want to see if I've worked St. Brandon, you could enter 3B7C and the QSO would pop up. Yes I did work them and I got the card! It sits on my bulletin board in a place of honor along with the card from K8DAR a Boys and Girls Club station that I hear from time to time on twenty meters.

Well, go check it out. For my next "labor of love" maybe I'll build a database of all my QSL cards... yeah, that's the ticket...

This is what it's all about

I've been hammering away on PSK and RTTY on 20 and 30 meters for days now, making beaucoup QSO all around the world, but last night I though I'd slip down to 40 meters and see what was shaking. This was my first time on 40 and fortunately I ran into Ron, W2RIP from Gainesville, GA. In the back of my mind, I knew that in PSK, power doesn't mean the same thing as it does in SSB or that old southern favorite, AM. I tried to keep the power output to about 50 watts thinking that would solve the problem and to be quite honest, I was knocking 'em dead and filling up the log, so it must be right, huh?

Ron worked with me for 45 minutes teaching me about the linear flow of audio from the sound card to the ether. By the time we were finished, my IMD was 27-28 dB and my signal was perfectly readable at Ron's shack. I finally had to pull the plug and head off to bed. This old body doesn't do late nights like it once did!

But overall, my point is that in this hobby, hams help hams to do better in the hobby. I know that people help each other in other hobbies; I see it all the time, but for me this is special because THIS is MY hobby. Thanks Ron!

I didn't spend much time on the air yesterday; it was my older son's birthday. As I was out buying an "over the hill" balloon for him, it struck me that one of my children is now 41! There is little in the world that makes you feel older than that. I asked one of my grandsons to suggest a game for the Xbox my grandchildren and my son huddle around in the evenings; I wanted to have a special present that played to the closeness of Stan with his children. One wouldn't think a game with the title of "Gears of War" would bring family closer together, but it does. After the gifts were opened and the ooohs an ahhhs were done, my youngest grandson, Chris, tapped me on the back and said, "Thanks Opa." I knew it had hit the spot.

Going Digital

When I was first licensed back in 1988, I had great thoughts of building a truly digital station. I tried to get started with my (then brand new) Commodore 64 and an interface I bought at the York County (PA) Hamfest. Too new to understand what loose RF in the shack could do, I tried to get it on the air. Every time I keyed the TS-820 I had, the C-64 would reset and I'd lose everything. The most important thing I lost was my enthusiasm for digital communications.

You'll have to read my old blog http://jenniferway.com/Blog.html to see why I was off the air for so long and all about my rush to get back on the air, but suffice it to say, I'm back, I'm grounded, and the electronics have improved exponentially.

If I had to pick out the single thing that has pulled the amateur digital communications experience all together for me, I would have to say it was the software. Ham Radio Deluxe and Digital Master 780 opened the digital door for me, and I've walked right through it.

I want to give Simon Brown's website a plug http://www.ham-radio-deluxe.com/ if you haven't been there then go there. The web site is well written and the programs and help are spectacular.




Needless to say, my log is now filled with interesting PSK, RTTY, SSTV and CW QSO's. I'm still active on sideband voice, but in the evening hours when 20 meter SSB is dead, i'm working Iceland on 14.070.15!