Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute Handiham World Weekly E-Letter for the week of Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Welcome to Handiham World.

Big change coming on 28 March 2014!

Listen to the entire podcast!

Read the entire issue here.

What?  Is it time to set the clocks again?  Oh, wait - that's not it.  Time to check my antenna traps to see if they caught any DX?  Nope.  It's something that's been the same for decades, but that will change this Friday.   And, no, it is not that I am changing my socks!

Here's the deal:  Our phone numbers at the Handiham Program are changing beginning Friday, March 28, 2014.  This will be a system-wide change at the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute Golden Valley location.  Our existing Toll-Free number, 1-866-426-34421-866-426-3442, will remain the same.  This is one of several contact information changes taking place this year.  We will also be alerting you to new email addresses later this Spring. 

Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute Handiham Program will switch phone numbers on the evening of Thursday March 27 and new numbers will be active on Friday morning March 28.

The new numbers will be:

Nancy Meydell: 612-775-2291612-775-2291 (General information about the Handiham program, membership renewals)
Patrick Tice, WA0TDA: 612-775-2290612-775-2290 (Program Coordinator, technical questions, remote base requests, questions about licensing)

While we expect the change to go smoothly, you just never know with something as big and complex as a system-wide phone change.  If you do experience problems getting through to us next week, please be assured that we are working to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible.  In the meantime, our existing email address will be an alternative way to reach us:

Nancy Meydell: hamradio@CourageCenter.org  (General information about the Handiham program, membership renewals)
Patrick Tice, WA0TDA: handiham@CourageCenter.org  (Program Coordinator, technical questions, remote base requests, questions about licensing)

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Courage Kenny Handiham Coordinator

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Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute Handiham World Weekly E-Letter for the week of Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Welcome to Handiham World.

Don't look now, but something we depend upon is an endangered (technological) species:

I use a Panasonic touch tone phone in the WA0TDA ham shack. It's got a real electromechanical tactile numeric pad laid out in the standard configuration. While I can see the keypad to dial, it really isn't necessary since I can also feel the keys, 10 digits and the star and pound keys, arranged in a known pattern. Like most keypads of this type, the number 5 key has a raised tactile bump so that you can find that starting point in complete darkness, or if you are blind.  My Icom IC-7200's keypad is arranged in the same way and also has the raised tactile on the 5 key. 

Touch Tone pad goes away:  Read or listen to the entire edition here.

 

Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute Handiham World Weekly E-Letter for the week of Wednesday, 12 March 2014

We've come a long way in ham radio computing since this early "personal electronic computer", the model Minivac 601, appeared in the 1968 Allied Radio catalog. Amateur Radio has always been fertile ground for trying new stuff, building things, and sometimes even pushing the envelope on technology in general!

Since the ham shack computer is a well-accepted piece of "gear" these days, we need to sit down and have a talk about what works.  I don't want to launch a kerfuffle over operating systems.  Some of you will prefer Windows, some will like Mac OS, and a few will snap their suspenders and stroke their beards while proclaiming some version of Linux to be their choice.  I get that.  I've tried all of them at one time or another.  But the fact of the matter is that what we think we know about ham radio computing might be, well... wrong.

Read or listen to this week's edition here.

Courage Kenny Handiham World for 05 March 2014

Early morning HF conditions bring opportunities on 75 meters

Read or listen to the entire edition here.  

If you have an opportunity, check the 75 meter band before sunrise any day this week.  We are nearing the Spring Equinox, and conditions for making contacts far and wide on 75 will never be better.  This morning Radio Nikkei 1, a 50 kW shortwave broadcast station, was booming into Minnesota on 3.925 MHz, all the way from Japan. I asked my son Will, KC0LJL, to confirm that what I was hearing was Japanese, and he was able to do so.  Will has lived in Japan and speaks Japanese. 

Why does a signal travel halfway around the world on a band that usually only serves up regional contacts within a few hundred miles? 

Read or listen to the entire edition here.