handiham - ham radio for people with disabilities

Handiham World for 01 February 2012

2012-02-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

W0ZSW to Participate in Fourteenth Annual Minnesota QSO Party!

The Fourteenth Annual Minnesota QSO Party is on Saturday, February 04, 2012. It is presented by the Minnesota Wireless Association. Stations will be active 8:00 AM CST (1400 UTC) Through 6 PM CST (2400 UTC). Look for Handiham HQ station W0ZSW during the QSO Party.

Because the station will be staffed by real live humans (members of the Handiham affiliated Stillwater Amateur Radio Association, SARA), the Remote Base station W0ZSW will be off line for the duration of the contest. The W0EQO repeater will be active and connected to the Handiham Conference Server.

W0ZSW Remote Base service will be restored at 6:00 PM CST (2400 UTC) on Saturday, February 4, at the end of the contest. W0EQO Remote Base at Courage North will remain in service throughout the contest.
The SARA members are also going to help us assess equipment and clean and organize the Handiham station area and storage room. We will also check the station infrastructure and prepare some of our computer equipment with digital mode software for the upcoming Minnesota Radio Camp session in June.

We hope to hear you on the air!

For Handiham World, I'm...
Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

For more information about the Minnesota QSO Party, including frequencies and rules, please visit w0aa.org.

Handiham World for 25 January 2012

2012-01-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

The new handiham.org is up and running. I hope you like it, but I am sure open to suggestions if there is something you find that does not work. In the meantime, the old website is still alive, but it is at the URL handiham.net. The two sites are different, but many of our users have not yet registered with the new site, and will probably just find it easier to log in at handiham.net until they have time to get set up in the new handiham.org. So if you visit handiham.org and find that your log in credentials don't work, the reason is that the new site uses an entirely new database and re-registration is necessary. I have done this in advance for some users, but have not had the time to devote to manually entering so much data. If you wish you can use the create an account link to enter your own data, but please remember that this is a Handiham member service, so I would appreciate it if you used the credentials you already registered with us for the old website. That way, I can check against our database and approve your account because I will know it is really you, not some spammer who wants access to the site. Most of our users registered with their callsigns, except for those studying for a first license. Please stick with your existing username from the old site and, unless you have a different email address, the same email you registered with us in the first place. Be sure you always keep your email address up to date. If you are not a Handiham member, you may still enjoy the public portion of our website without logging in. If you are a Handiham member and need access, please use the Create Account link and apply for access. I will review and approve as soon as possible.
Another change is that our QST audio digest for February 2012 is available to our blind members in DAISY format from the members section. DAISY is the same special format used by the Library of Congress and other organizations providing specialized adapted audio to blind users. It is a single zip file, the preferred method for download simplicity. It will play on DAISY players and the the new Library of Congress player. The complete issue of QST generally takes a month to a month and a half to be released from the Library of Congress, so our audio digest gives blind hams some of the time-sensitive information at around the same time print subscribers to QST are reading their copies.
VOLLI, our volunteer hours logging system, has stopped functioning. We ask that Handiham volunteers simply email Nancy their hours on a regular basis. The best way is to fire off an email as soon as you finish a project. For example, if you volunteer at a hamfest giving out our literature, when you get home just send Nancy a message letting her know the volunteer activity and the hours you spent at the fest. For recording a big project, such as an audio tutorial or a book for our blind members, you might want to keep a log of your hours and then inform Nancy of the total when you complete the recording project.
The Handiham Radio Club and Handiham Volunteer mailing lists have both gone into the bit bucket! I should have thought about that before changing the domain name, but I forgot that detail. We still have the ability to set up mailing lists, so I will see what we can do. That project will have to wait just a little while because I want the website project to be further along and secure before taking on another task.
So that's my update for this week. I expect to release a new General Class audio lecture on Friday, but we will see what time is available. We are always looking for help from talented volunteers who can record audio, teaching into a microphone. Be on the lookout for an upcoming two part "With the Handihams" series in Worldradio online about how to record using the open-source software Audacity. It is cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac, or Linux!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 18 January 2012

2012-01-18T13:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

Remember last week's E-letter and podcast, when I mentioned that the number one priority here at Handihams would be to fix the website? That time has come, and here is the reason why:
Typically on Fridays I concentrate on producing new audio lectures for our licensing classes. Fridays are also a good time to catch up on loose ends that have collected during the week. Doing website updates is generally a little bit easier on Fridays because I know that I will be logging into FTP in order to put the audio I have produced onto the website anyway, so why not do other web updates while I am at it?
Well, last Friday proved to be a bit unnerving. As I had mentioned before, we had been having serious issues with the performance of the website Handiham.org that had caused pages to either be unavailable or load so slowly that many web browsers would simply timeout. Many of you could not reach our files or would only be able to download a partial file. Needless to say, this situation simply cannot go on. Not only is it bad service for our members, but it can eat up a lot of my time as I try to work my way through the many tech support complaints. Sometimes I have a way to work around it and help the person get the files they need and other times I don't. In any case, Friday was not a good day for Handiham.org because it went down early in the morning and was off-line most of the day. I contacted the hosting service and they began to work on the problem which was on one particular machine in Utah.
Late on Friday the website did return to service. During the outage, it was difficult for me to work since I had to do everything that I could off-line and only later on plan to FTP the files to the website. Of course any members who needed files during the day were out of luck. Since we have had issues extending over months (though nothing quite this bad), we had already procured server space with Network Solutions, a respected company with which we already had a long-term relationship as our domain name registrar. I decided to start putting some serious effort into building a new beta website that would be the eventual replacement for the current one, but I had to step this effort up several notches over this past weekend.
When something like this happens, you really have two choices. You can either whine or complain about how awful things are and make excuses or you can look on circumstances as an opportunity to make something better. It is sort of like having your old fishing boat sink to the bottom of the lake. Yes, you miss your old fishing boat with all its dents and barnacles. On the other hand, you have an opportunity to get a new fishing boat and it can be exactly the kind of boat you have always wanted. A website is like that. We have had the old website for quite a few years now, and it has served us pretty well. However, over the years it has become cluttered with barnacles – too many links and just too much confusing stuff. It has become a little bit too dated and clunky to be useful, especially to newcomers who may be happening on it for the very first time.
Our opportunity is to build a new website that is easier to administer using Drupal 7, and to incorporate some much-needed changes. One new feature is the addition of a "Skip to Content" link near the top of the page so that blind users who are reading the page with screen reading software can skip listening to all of the menu links and go straight to the main page content. Another feature is a more pleasing view for sighted users without making the website inaccessible to blind users. And, of course, we are simplifying the menu structure to make the site less cluttered.
Our choice of Drupal for a content management system goes back quite a number of years when it was originally suggested by long-time Handiham volunteer Phil Temples, K9HI. We have been using Drupal 5.X and for the past few years 6.X. Drupal 7 has been under development for a couple of years and I have been testing it on my private website for quite a long time, watching as it matured. I feel that the time has come to make the change as long as we are redoing the website anyway. The new version of Drupal incorporates many features that had to be manually added to the old versions. Many administrative tasks are easier. We will eventually need to redirect Handiham.org to the new site, and, because of what we experienced last Friday, are going to try to do this as soon as possible.
As you might expect, there are going to be some problems. Any time you make a big website migration like this, coupled with a major redesign, there are going to be some things that might not work correctly or perhaps will be missing or not work at all. This will all take time to iron out. One thing that will have to be done is that we will have to re--register all of our users. I know this will be a major inconvenience for everyone, but it is really the only way to update the database on the new server with a clean installation. I think the strategy needs to be developed on exactly how we will do this, and I welcome user suggestions. I do have a data dump with e-mail addresses and usernames, so we could send out a blanket e-mail when the new site is ready. However, one concern I have about that strategy is that we may get an overwhelming number of hits on the new website as users try to create their new accounts. It may be better to use a targeted strategy of mailing perhaps 25 users at a time to even out the load. Anyone who has Drupal experience or who has administered a website is welcome to contact me directly with their comments.
The old website will still sit on the old server in Utah, but once the name Handiham.org is redirected, it will become unreachable. I will then take steps to reactivate our other Handiham domain name, Handiham.net. The old site would be available there for some period of time.
One problem that I anticipate is that the Handiham mailing lists with the Handiham.org domain name will cease to function. These two lists are the Handiham Radio Club list and the Handiham Volunteer Instructors list. The Wednesday E-letter list and the Friday New Audio Notification list will not be affected because they are hosted at Freelists. I may be able to reconfigure the club and volunteer lists with the.net address, but I would also welcome suggestions on how we should proceed with these lists.
Some of our users may be concerned about how this will affect the two Handiham Internet remote base stations. Neither station is connected in any way with the web hosting service and both are separately hosted on their own dedicated computers on Courage Center properties. Therefore, neither station will be affected in any way. We do update the remote base station status daily on the website, and this update will be continued on the new website as well.
Another change that will be implemented is the availability of more materials in DAISY format. This new format will replace some of the older MP3 audio for our blind members. This advancement will allow for easier navigation through the material for our blind Handiham members. This does not mean that we are moving away from human readers, so please don't worry that you will never hear a human voice again on Handiham.org! Some materials, if they are available in computer text in the first place, are most easily converted to DAISY format that incorporates a voice produced by the computer software. Other materials are more properly and efficiently read by a human reader and can be imported into DAISY by special software. Our original production will still be done by Audacity so that we can more easily edit the audio and still produce four track cassette recordings for the Handiham members who need them during 2012. Of course Audacity remains our editor of choice for the Friday audio lectures and for the Wednesday podcast. As before, the free podcast will remain available to the general public in the iTunes store.
We are hoping that the transition will go smoothly, but you know as well as I do that a project like this is pretty complicated and there will always be some unforeseen problems. In fact, to me it sort of feels like planning for and setting up for Field Day. You always anticipate how much fun it is going to be and you have participated in the planning process for past years and like to think that you know you are not going to forget anything this year. Naturally, when you arrive at the Field Day site and start getting everything set up that is when you find out that no one packed Styrofoam cups for the coffee and the power supply cables are still sitting in one of the club member's basement. That is how it will be for any new project and I am not going to be surprised when things don't work on the website. What we can do is to work together to make the new website project successful by helpful suggestions that include specific recommendations on how to fix a problem whenever possible.
So, even though this is going to be a real roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work couple of weeks, I know that we are doing the right thing. I am encouraged by the American Council of the Blind website, which also uses Drupal 7 and the Bartik theme as its public portal. I also want to thank Handiham Radio Club members and Handiham volunteers who have visited the new beta website and given me suggestions and feedback. I really appreciate your help!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 11 January 2012

2012-01-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

What better time to review things that need doing or fixing than the beginning of a fresh, new year? Here at the Handiham office we are busy getting our 2012 bucket list ready to go. Here are some of our major "to-do's" for 2012:

Fix the website. This morning I tried to reach Handiham.org and it was so painfully slow to load that the web browser just gave up and displayed an error message. We have been encountering this problem more and more over the past year, and it is related to the shared web hosting server that we are using. More than once the hosting company took the site down, surprising us and causing me to have to drop everything else to deal with the problem. Furthermore, I have received complaints about audio files not playing through. This can happen through the loss of connectivity due to server overload. The Fix: Move the website to another hosting service. This project is a major one, and will result in a disruption of our website-based services, but it is going to have to happen sometime soon. We will keep you posted, but before we make the move I would like to hear from you if there is some website feature that you really would like to have that currently does not exist. In the meantime, if Handiham.org appears to be down, it may instead just be really slow due to overload. Wait a while and try again. If audio files do not stream all the way through, an alternative is to download them onto your hard drive then open them. If downloading is slow, try again later.
Improve our audio recording quality. We depend a lot on audio delivered from the website, both for our weekly audio news and for audio lectures for those who are working on a license or upgrade. And we must not forget about the audio tutorials on how to use various rigs, either. It has come to my attention that some of the audio lectures are incomplete. One, for example, is Extra Class Lecture 59, which simply cuts off at the 42 minute mark. An alert Extra Class student let me know about this, and when I downloaded the lecture to check it, sure enough - the audio file was okay up to 42 minutes, after which it simply flat lined to the end. Checking my original MP3 file, I was disappointed to learn that it was also defective. Unfortunately the original Audacity file was long gone, so recovery was impossible. Since the Extra Class pool changes this summer, we have decided to just leave the defective file in place and concentrate on solving these kinds of quality issues with the new recordings that will begin as soon as the 2012 Extra Class pool is released. To improve our audio, we will be updating Audacity and tweaking the settings. We will also be using a new version of the Lame encoder for MP3 production. Because volunteers also produce audio for us at their own homes, we need to get more information out about how to record digitally. A series of how-to articles on this subject will be appearing in Worldradio Magazine soon.
Upgrade the equipment at Radio Camp. Recently I proposed that we acquire a new radio for training purposes at Radio Camp. At the same time, we would buy a new rotor to replace a non-working old unit on the 50 foot tower at Camp Courage. The proposed radio is the Kenwood TS-590S with VGS1 Voice Guide module. Following the camp session, the radio could be pressed into service as a remote base station using the accessible Kenwood software interface. This suggestion is under discussion on the Handiham Radio Club mailing list.
Assess the working space at HQ and make it more productive. A visit to our headquarters will make you a believer - that we need to do something to organize the working space better, that is. A hodgepodge of work stations, storage cabinets, and donated gear that needs assessment greets you as you walk in. We need to put some serious elbow grease into making our headquarters a better space for working and operating, as well as for checking radios and accessories out to see if they are working and to make minor repairs, assemble power cables and coax jumpers, and make sure that each radio has all of its accessories.
Expand our Internet Remote Base capabilities. The addition of a TS-590S station would definitely be an improvement, but what if we could add a DX station with a tower and beam? That is what we will be discussing as we gather for Radio Camp 2012 in June. In the long run such a station benefits our members whether or not they attend a radio camp session. It is an essential service to offer remote base capability now, having begun as a quirky experimental project at Courage North several years ago. Included in our effort is a revamp of the existing W4MQ software, which could use some additional accessibility features. Since 2011 we have been hosting the W4MQ software project following the untimely death at age 58 of Bob Arnold, N2JEU, who had been hosting it for the past couple of years.
Prepare a new Extra Class lecture series. As mentioned, the question pool changes on July 1. The Extra Class lecture series, designed to be blind-friendly and accessible to Handiham members with reading disabilities, takes an enormous amount of time to produce. Based on a variety of references, it will take the student through the concepts and not simply a reading of a textbook or the question pool. I hope to get through it more quickly this time and with better audio.
Plan for the future. In the past we have periodically called on volunteers who serve as members of an advisory board. It is time once again to bring the Handiham Advisory Board back to life so that we can be sure we are hearing from our members as we plan our way forward into the next few years. Obviously technology is changing, and our services must change with it. I can't see the future any better than the next person, but one thing I have learned from experience is that there is usually wisdom and insight to be gained by bringing knowledgeable people together to tackle projects like this. Any one person has limitations based on their likes and dislikes. In a group, we will have a chance to bring forward new ideas, hash them through, and decide where we need to place our efforts. This is timely, since I will turn 64 in April and will eventually retire. While that may not happen for a few years, we need to plan now for a smooth transition, and that can't really take place easily without a "future plan" of where the Handiham program should be in the years ahead.
Leverage social media. With other amateur radio organizations and services already in the game, we have some catching up to do. The Handiham program does not have a Facebook or Google Plus presence, and it is no longer possible to ignore these powerful marketing tools. Courage Center, our parent nonprofit company, and Courage Center Camps (of which we are part) both have Facebook pages. Figuring out a strategy is key, since we would need to limit our administrative time on such an account due to limited resources.

So there you have it. It's ambitious as lists go, but I think you will agree that these are all things that must be done to maintain the program. In due course I will be calling for help and I am confident that we can work together during 2012 to make Handihams even better.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 04 January 2012

2012-01-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

2012 would be a good year to revisit our Handiham nets. Years ago, before the Internet made linking VHF and UHF repeaters so commonplace, there were Handiham nets on 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters... If I'm remembering correctly. The nets slowly dropped out of favor, and the prolonged sunspot minimum we experienced a few years ago was only part of the problem. Today we have the slow speed 40 meter CW net on Fridays, but I have had some inquiries about SSB nets, and I have to say that our Handiham phone nets are pretty much dead.

10 Things That Kill HF Nets

To consider what happened and whether or not it makes sense to go back to HF phone nets, we need to look at other things that are happening within Amateur Radio and society at large. Here is my list of HF net-killers:

Lack of organization. Any activity that involves a group of participants meeting at specific times for some stated purpose requires some organization. To understand this concept, let's consider a simple job like mowing your lawn. You would be correct to assume that you can do this job yourself, so no formal organization is required. On the other hand, suppose you must mow a golf course. Now you need a formal organization, because the job is too large and complicated for one person. The head groundskeeper will be in charge, doling out job assignments to a crew. A net can also need formal organization, depending on its size and purpose. When you don't have job assignments or other necessary organization, it can make a mess of the net.
Failure to commit. This is a problem in every club, and can sure be a problem when it comes to net participation. You need a critical mass of committed participants to make a net happen. Not enough commitment equals dead net.
Distractions & competition from other activities. This is a problem for every club, bowling group, TV network, newspaper, and amateur radio net. There is competition on every front from something else, no matter what you are trying to organize, and that in turn makes it hard to get participants to commit to the net.
Crowded bands. Now that the solar cycle is yielding more favorable HF propagation conditions, the most popular HF bands are more crowded than ever. It can be difficult to find a clear frequency on which to gather for your net.
Poor HF propagation. Ha, ha, this is also an excuse for a failing net, because just as good propagation can result in crowded bands, bad propagation can result in empty bands. You have to hear them if you want to work them, goes the old saying.
QRM. This annoyance has been around as long as anyone can remember, but it can kill a net if the net participants don't know how to manage it. Who wants to listen to all that noise and interference?
Poor net control technique. Oh, man - don't get me started. A net control station that cannot control the net is a real turn-off for many would be participants.
Bad marketing. If no one knows about the net, it is unlikely to grow and prosper. You can't leave it to chance that people will simply run across the net by tuning around the bands, although that sometimes does happen.
Lack of flexibility. Everyone knows that people have lots going on in their lives and that they cannot make every net session. HF conditions change all the time. Sometimes there may be another QSO on the net frequency. If the net does not have flexibility built into it, these problems can turn into a failed net.
Not having a plan. What if the frequency is already in use? What if the scheduled Net Control Station does not show up? What if the band is dead? If there is no plan to deal with such things, the net can fold like a tent in the wind!

Fortunately, we have an excellent Echolink net that meets daily. We can take a look at what planning and organization along with good marketing have accomplished to keep that net healthy, and perhaps apply some of those same principles to building an HF net. We need to develop a plan. Handiham Radio Club President Ken, KB3LLA, has sent out a query to gauge interest via the Handiham Radio Club email reflector. If there is enough interest, we can decide what kind of a net it will be and what bands and times should be considered. Our Echolink net does not have to deal with the challenges of poor band conditions, solar cycles, and QRM (usually). Those things can make HF unpredictable, so we need to have a plan to deal with the "what if's". Net Control of an HF net can be similar to running an Echolink net, but each has its own special challenges and requires learning how to handle them. For example, handling a station checking in without proper identification might be similar no matter what the net. On the other hand, while an Echolink NCS needs to know about the quirky delays built into VoIP communications, an HF NCS would consider it essential to understand how changing HF conditions shape the band as daylight turns to night. Since we have all been away from SSB Handiham net operation for years, we probably need to include some basic training for everyone, and that includes participants as well as net controls.

And what if we end up on 17 meters? The unspoken word is that there are no formal nets on that band, but we had quite a successful run of "non-net get-togethers" on 17 organized by Alan, K2WS. When the sunspot numbers tanked, the band was dead most of the time and the "get-together" went off the air. 17 is hopping today, so another "non-net get-together" is worth considering. It needs no formal NCS, only committed participants. Talk about easy!

The choice of bands requires some thought. HF being what it is, we will not be able to include people around the world as we do now with Echolink and IRLP. And there are trade-offs. Let's consider a 75 meter net as an example. There are plenty of open frequencies on 75 meters during the day, but band conditions are such that only a few hundred miles can be covered, and many potential participants have to be at work during the day and cannot check in except on a rare day off. If the net is moved to the evening hours so that people who work can check in, by then the band has lengthened out and many hundreds of miles can be covered. That makes the band much more crowded. QRM is more likely to be a problem. Furthermore, because propagation on 75 m is so tied to the amount of daylight, seasonal changes in propagation are profound. In the summer, there is high absorption from so much sunlight and the band can be quite dead for many hours during the long days.

When you consider the nature of the HF bands, "reliability" is not the first word that comes to mind. Conditions change all the time, sometimes very quickly. We may need to consider different frequency bands and different times to provide alternatives and to bring the HF net experience to more people. If you are not on the Handiham Radio Club mailing list and want to weigh in, just send me an email. In the meantime, you can enjoy the Friday CW Net: 7.112 MHz CW, 09:00 - 12:00 ET. And don't forget the daily Echolink net!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 21 December 2011

2011-12-21T05:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

This is your last Handiham World for the year 2011, as we are closed next week. It has been a pretty good year overall, with lots of good ham radio news. The burgeoning sunspot cycle has helped make HF operating really fun again, and the recent reports of record numbers of amateur radio licensees have been heartening to those of us who are worried about the future of our hobby. I have my Google News page set up to show ham radio stories, and I'm always finding out about great, positive things our fellow amateurs are doing in their communities.

This gets me to thinking about a recent post I came across on a ham radio mailing list. It was a response to a previous post, scolding the original poster for not posting relevant material. Actually, the original post was a rather pleasant report about how several candidates had passed their exams at a VE session. You can guess that the original poster, feelings hurt, felt pretty unwelcome. It really doesn't matter who was right or wrong about the relevance of the content. Most of the subscribers liked the original post and asked the poster to please stay on the list. One thing for sure is that everyone felt a little less cheer after reading though all of that stuff. Sometimes the same thing happens on the air, though less frequently, thank heaven.

Let's see what it takes to stay positive. Sometimes it is necessary to be a bit more deliberate in what we do and say. Will what we say to someone on the air or on an Internet mailing list actually solve a problem? Is the problem so serious that it requires a comment? Is there a tactful way to say it?

Much of getting through one's day depends on knowing when to speak up and when to keep your counsel. In the vernacular, you might say, "Don't sweat the small stuff", or "Pick your battles."

It really makes very little sense to risk hurt feelings over who didn't bring a dish to pass at the club picnic. On the other hand, it is definitely reasonable to call someone to task for illegal or unsafe behavior. Learning this kind of diplomacy is not something one does without some time and effort. As a married man and a father, I have learned over the years that teamwork is more important than determining who is right or wrong in running a household. It doesn't matter who forgot to take the dog out or left the garage door open. It will do no good to take the attitude that fixing blame for such things somehow earns points for you. The positive thing to do is to take the dog out and close the garage door yourself. If the problems persist, figure out a way to solve them, perhaps with a reminder on your family smart phones or computers.

Let's practice! Your club newsletter editor has made an error, listing the date of the club's flea market wrong. Do you:

Get on the club Internet mailing list and immediately complain about the newsletter, the editor, and the overall lack of quality in "this day and age"?

OR...
Notify the newsletter editor politely about the error and offer to help get the word out about the correct date for the event?

Ha, ha, this isn't really all that difficult. If you went with answer number one, you are probably going to be appointed newsletter editor when the other guys quits. If you correctly chose the second answer, you are a positive problem-solver. As a bonus you are seen as a team player and don't have to learn how to edit the newsletter on short notice!

We are on a roll here with positive news about ham radio every day. Now let's all try to be positive problem-solvers behind the scenes, making amateur radio more fun than ever in 2012.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 14 December 2011

2011-12-14T13:25:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Wow, it's hard to believe that we are only a week and a half until Christmas and two and a half weeks until 2012. My January 2012 QST arrived in the mail the day before yesterday, and it is sure to provide some good reading over the holidays. The theme of the issue is "DIY", or "Do It Yourself", and big letters on the cover proclaim: "Winter... The perfect time of year to build something!"

In case you have not been following the DIY movement, you will certainly want to catch the article by Allen Pitts, W1AGP, on page 75. "The DIY Magic of Amateur Radio" gives an overview of what is going on in the world of creative "makers" who enjoy the challenge of building projects from scratch. As Allen points out, there is nothing new about doing it yourself in amateur radio. Most of us will eventually build something for the ham shack, even if it is a simple project. Even the most impressive home-built project had its roots in earlier simple projects that allowed for a learn-as-you-go evolution of building skill and confidence.

There are different reasons that motivate builders. If you don't have much money in the ham radio budget, building your own antenna is a good way to get on the air and enjoy the process of figuring out what you are going to make, finding the parts, and learning to to make an antenna by actually making an antenna. For that second project money might not be an object, and yet you might still decide to build your own project, because you can recall the fun and satisfaction of that first project. Yes, building your own ham radio projects really does grow on you!

Since there is a growing "DIY" movement out there that is not necessarily ham radio oriented, wouldn't it make sense to help those folks learn about ham radio and its long history of building? That's what Allen's article is about, and it showcases a new 8-minute video available on December 27 through the ARRL's We Do That Radio website. I'll provide the link to the ARRL website story at the break.

Kudos to ARRL for pursuing this line of marketing amateur radio. There are many misconceptions out there in the General Public, and it is important to tell our story to set the record straight. Finding new and creative ways to get the word out is simply part of the new reality of sharing amateur radio. If you'll recall the post 9/11 days when emergency communication became a hot topic, amateur radio stepped in as a flexible volunteer-oriented way to augment existing public service communications. Excitement grew around serving as emergency communicators, and there was a lot of growth in the new ham population. The EMCOMM system evolved, too. We now have a well-trained cadre of communicators whose focus is on that vital aspect of amateur radio. Now it is time to move on to other interest groups, and makers are prime candidates for the exciting world of amateur radio building!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 07 December 2011

2011-12-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Image: A venerable and still useful Heathkit HM-102 SWR/Wattmeter poses proudly amid my Icom gear. These days, it is an occasional test instrument rather than a device that is used every day.

Kits - electronic kits - have always been a part of my ham radio world since I was licensed as a teenager in the late 1960's. Kits were around before that, and hearken back to the long tradition of amateur radio operators building their own equipment. While not the same as designing and building one's own gear from scratch, kits do allow those who want to feel more vested in their radio equipment to enjoy the "hands-on" experience of assembling the radio and learning more about the layout and circuitry than if they had simply unpacked a new rig and put it on the air. I can't think of a time when I haven't owned at least several kits. Some of them have been transceivers or transmitters, while others have been accessories or test gear.

The motivation for owning kits has changed through the years. Back in 1967, when I got my Novice ticket, and a year later, when I upgraded to General, it was more important to me to find affordable gear so that I could just get on the air. Kits like the Knight T-60 transmitter filled the bill. Paired with a Lafayette receiver that drifted like a rowboat in a hurricane until it warmed up, this little station was the source of more on the air fun than you could ever imagine. I was already familiar with Knight-Kits, having built a two tube regenerative receiver, the "Span Master", while in high school. When I made the inevitable move to SSB, the Heathkit HW-100 was the kit of choice. It's 20 tube circuit was challenging to assemble, but I laid everything out on our family's ping-pong table in the basement and just followed the directions. It worked the first time, and after alignment and installation of the case, provided my first really solid experience with phone operation, though I had plenty of fun working DX on CW.

Over the years I built other kits, some of which were test gear that I still own and occasionally use today. Some kits, like a Heathkit SB-201 linear amplifier, were purchased assembled on the used market. Later on I donated that amp to Handihams, having decided that high power wasn't really all that fun or useful. There are plenty of good used radios and accessories on the market, originally built from kits but working well today.

Today's kit builder is motivated less by the need for economy and more by the desire to experience the fun of putting some of one's own effort into the station equipment. However, there is an important new niche in amateur radio kits - that of simply offering equipment that isn't available any other way. A third development is the evolution of superior kit radios that rival or best the already-assembled competition! Cost does not necessarily enter into the decision making for any of these three kit builders.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear from a group of kit builders here in the Midwest. The Four State QRP Group has a kit building service and has built kits for hams who are blind or who just can't see well enough to complete a kit themselves. They do not charge for their service and would like to offer their services to our members. This is an option for those who cannot build a kit on their own but who would like to experience the fun of operating with a transmitter that would not otherwise be available to them. A link to their website follows after my identification.

But what about kits that can be assembled by blind hams? One inquiry that intrigued me recently came from K9EYE, who would like to find a kit for a QRP A.M. transmitter that is possible to assemble with minimal soldering. Pierre and I both remember as kids having electronics kits or "labs" that were designed to allow for experimentation with a variety of circuits. Since they were designed with clip and plug connectors, they lent themselves to assembly by just about anyone. For some reason you couldn't trust kids with hot soldering irons but wood burning sets seemed to be okay. Anyway, we all survived to tell about it today! But we would like to find some blind-friendly kits. If anyone has sources or ideas, please let us know.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 30 November 2011

2011-11-30T12:11:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Ho, ho, ho, away your radio will go.

Yes, it is the holiday season again, and many of us (or our spouses) are thinking about shopping for gifts, stocking up on the special foods and treats and decorations and all the rest that goes along with this time of year.

But do you know what else goes hand in hand with the holiday shopping season? It's the people who do their shopping without paying - the folks who steal.

The reason I bring this up in the context of amateur radio is that many of us operate mobile, either VHF/UHF or HF or both. Thousands of dollars worth of radio equipment may be in the car, and you certainly don't want to lose it to thieves. As a former policeman myself, I can tell you - and the experts will back me up on this - that the holiday season is an especially bad time of the year for thefts from vehicles. The standard advice for anyone who drives a car and parks it in a public space is to keep packages and expensive accessories out of sight. The car should be as plain and uninviting to thieves as possible. Here are a few of the things I recommend:

	If you own more than one vehicle, consider doing your Christmas shopping with the one that does not have the amateur radio equipment installed in it. This makes it much easier to turn that car into a "plain Jane" that will not attract any attention in the parking lot.
	If you have accessories like transceivers or a GPS, get them out of sight. The GPS can probably fit comfortably in the glove box, but I recommend taking the transceiver out altogether and either leaving it at home or locking it securely in the trunk of the car while you are at home, not in plain sight in the parking lot of some shopping center where the bad guys can see that you are putting valuables in the trunk. I prefer using magnetic mount antennas that can quickly be pulled off the roof of the car and tossed in the trunk.
	I have become somewhat of an expert in hiding wires under the passenger side floor mat. After taking out the radio and throwing it into the trunk, I can easily disguise the antenna feed line by simply coiling it up and placing it under the floor mat where it is completely out of sight. Any accessory plugs or wires for the GPS can also go under the floor mat or in the glove box prior to my leaving my own property.
	Any time you purchase gifts, the time to place them in the trunk of the car is immediately upon leaving the store. Never place them on the passenger seat or anywhere else in the passenger compartment where they can be seen by anyone pretending to park their car nearby. It takes only a few seconds to break into a car and transfer these packages into an adjacent vehicle. Again, the idea is to make your car look as plain and uninviting as possible.
	Never, ever return to the car and put packages in the trunk or anywhere else in the car and then leave the car in the same place and return to your shopping. The only time you should place packages in the car at all is when you're getting ready to leave. Anyone can see you putting packages in the car and break into the car, including the trunk, as soon as you are out of sight. If you must unload because you have just too much to carry and it is necessary to make a stop at the car to put packages in the trunk, I recommend that you do so and then drive the car to another part of the parking lot or a different floor on the parking ramp, park it again, and return to your shopping. That lessens the possibility of someone seeing you fill the car with packages and then leave, giving them time to break in.
	Even if you have placed your antennas out of sight, don't be tempted to leave radios installed in the front of the car where they can be seen through the windows. Thieves may not know what they are taking, but they probably figure that whatever they get can be sold for a few bucks for drug money. You can't simply depend on a thief not wanting an amateur radio transceiver because they don't know what it is!
	I have heard other amateur radio operators suggest that callsign license plates on a vehicle can attract thieves, but I have never found this to be the case. In fact, I think the general public probably thinks of them more as vanity license plates and I have even run into police officers who aren't familiar with call letter license plates. Maybe amateur radio operators are such good drivers that they never get pulled over!
	Generally thieves who break into cars want to be able to do so quickly without being noticed. You can improve your odds of avoiding car break-ins by locating your car in a well lighted, busy part of the parking lot. I don't like parking next to blank walls or trucks or vans that hide the vehicle enough for someone to break in while remaining out of sight.
	The name of the game is to avoid drawing attention to your vehicle with anything that looks expensive, flashy, or easy to steal. I can't emphasize enough how leaving packages or expensive radio equipment in plain sight can attract thieves at this time of year. They are out there looking for easy money, so you really have to be careful to make sure that your vehicle doesn't stand out as an easy mark.
	Even when you park your car in your own driveway your radio equipment can be at risk. I recommend parking cars with radio equipment that you want to leave installed in a secured garage. Don't depend on car alarms to protect your expensive radio equipment. A car parked in the driveway can be burglarized in minutes while you sleep. If you have limited parking space, the car with the radio equipment should be parked inside and the car that must be parked in the driveway should be the "plain Jane" with nothing to attract thieves left in plain sight.
	Of course no matter how careful you are, you can fall victim to thieves. You may want to consider insurance coverage for your radio equipment. Your existing automobile insurance may provide some coverage, but supplemental insurance is always available. This is a matter to discuss with your insurance agent. Sometimes relatively inexpensive transceivers, such as 2 m only mobile units, may not be worth paying an extra insurance premium. On the other hand, if you have a truck load of expensive radios that operate on multiple bands and that are difficult to remove from the vehicle when you go Christmas shopping, you may want to consider that extra insurance coverage!
	As they used to say on the old Hill Street Blues TV series, "Let's be safe out there." Timely advice for the holidays!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Early Winter Reading: Becoming a Ham (Part 11)

Becoming a Ham - Part 11
By T. A. Benham (SK - formerly W3DD, a callsign which has been reassigned.)
Tom Benham, now a silent key but who most recently held callsign W3DD, was a ham radio pioneer, and being blind didn't even slow him down! Join us now as W3DD recalls more about satellites in the early days and his experience with a Senate investigation.
The Teletype Episode
We were a very active part of NASA tracking for a couple of years and the teletype was our means of receiving messages about launchings. One night I stayed in the trailer all night because there was to be a launch about five A.M. We had fitted out the front part of the trailer with a couch, a hot-plate, coffee pot and other things for comfort. I was awakened about three in the morning by the teletypewriter coming on and typing something. Of course, I didn't know what it had written. Perhaps the message required a reply. If so, I would have to use the phone and find out what it was. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I got up, sat down at the machine and wrote, "If what you just sent requires a reply, ring the bell three times. If no reply is required, ring the bell twice." After a few seconds, the bell went ding ding. I went back to bed until five o'clock. A couple of days later, a man walked into my lab and said, "The office in Philadelphia sent me out here to find out what that monkey business the other night was all about." "What monkey business?" "That business about ringing the bell three or two times." When I explained it to him, he got a huge bang out of it saying "Gosh, wait until I get back and tell them that!" and he left. "Voices of the Satellites" got additions made to it during this period. We got the recording of Eisenhower's Christmas message broadcast from a satellite at Christmas 1959, telemetering signals from many satellites, John Glenn's flight in which he talked about the ice crystals, Russians talking back and forth between two space vehicles. As a matter of fact, the news people were out several times with cameras and recorders to watch and listen to the signals as we picked them up. We were not able to pick up satellite signals until they got above the horizon, so there was a delay of about two minutes after launch until the satellite was about 100 miles high before we made contact. In about 1963 we were monitoring a launch. We waited for the two minutes and then began to look for the signal. Several minutes passed with no contact so I went to the teletype machine and asked what happened. In two or three minutes the teletype machine wrote a very short message. I asked someone to read it. All it said was "splash." One time when I thought we would be able to hear the Russian astronauts talking from one ship to another, I invited a member of the University of Pennsylvania Russian Department to come listen. He did and we got a very good signal. Unfortunately, all they talked about was trivia about temperatures in the cabins, how their food was holding out, and such like. But it was interesting to us and he seemed to get a big kick out of it. An interesting but small contribution to the Space effort was made by Ham radio back in 1959. I mentioned that President Eisenhower provided a recorded Christmas message just before December 25th that year. The story has it that the message had not arrived in time for the launch. The vehicle was closed and launch was a few minutes away. A Ham, identity not known, rushed up with a recorder and equipment and said, "Hold it! let me radio the message to the receiver in the "bird". He set things up and sent the taped message to be stored aboard. I recorded the result when it was transmitted some time later.
The Summons
A rather amusing incident took place early in the satellite project. During the first couple of years, there was much conversation about the fact that the Russians had launched before we did. The project for launching was well under way in this country. Werner Von Braun, the German Physicist who was responsible for the development of the V1 and V2 rockets in Germany, was brought to this country at the end of the war and was making good progress organizing rocket development down in Alabama, but the red tape and time spent arguing delayed our program so that the Russians got ahead of us. There was much talk in the US Senate about why we were behind. There was an article published in one of the popular magazines telling what a good job Russia was doing. A Senate Committee was convened to investigate matters. The author of the article and I were subpoenaed to appear before the Committee. I got a small recorder and a few tapes to take with me to demonstrate what I had been recording and asked Corlies to accompany me. We were shown into the committee room and the other fellow was called first. They gave him a hard time and he did not present his information very coherently. The tenor of his remarks was that the Russians were way ahead of us, that he had been there and seen for himself.
Senator Brooks, the chairman said something like, "Well, you certainly have been given a snow job and what you have said does not seem to mean much." Then I was called to the witness table and the chairman said in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Now, what's your story?"
"I don't have a story, as you put it, sir. You summoned me so I'm here. What do you want of me?"
His attitude changed immediately. He said, "We've heard that you have been very active in tracking satellites. We'd like to hear some of your recordings and ask a few questions. Please give us a summary of your activities."
Things proceeded peacefully and pleasantly after that. I played a few samples of the satellite signals and explained what they meant and the information that could be derived from them, both US and Russian vehicles. They seemed to enjoy what I played and were friendly and interested.
Next week: Moonbounce.

To be continued...

Handiham World for 23 November 2011

2011-11-23T12:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

On things for which we are thankful, Black Friday, ham radio gifts, and other seasonal musings:

If you're like me, you probably think of the Thanksgiving holiday as one to spend with family and friends and to consider those things for which we should be truly thankful. I'm talking about the big things like family, friends, health, and having the basic necessities of life, not trivial things like finding whole berry cranberry sauce on the Thanksgiving table. Let's just admit right now that I really like whole berry cranberry sauce, but when you are considering thankfulness there are some things that really have to come first.

So family, friends, and health are right up there at the top of the list. But when I consider how I was lucky enough to get into ham radio in my late teenage years and how it has proven to be an exceptional way to make friends, engage in a lifelong learning activity, and always be there for me to push back loneliness whether I was traveling far away from home or stuck inside in the dead of winter. Being part of a community and being engaged in that community has been shown to contribute to a person's overall health and a longer life. Staying engaged in amateur radio is just the sort of thing that can make life just plain better, and for that I am truly thankful.

When I listen to the Handiham nets, I hear people who are friendly and helpful and who are, whether they realize it or not, making the world a better place a little bit at a time each day by communicating with their friends. I am thankful for each and every one of our Handiham members and for our supporters and volunteers and everyone who helps to spread the good word about amateur radio and the Handiham program. I am certainly thankful that so many amateur radio operators stayed close to their rigs and stayed on the air during the extended sunspot minimum that preceded cycle 24. Now, when I see that the United States amateur radio population has topped 700,000, an all-time high, I feel thankful that so many of our fellow citizens here in the United States and around the world still see amateur radio as a worthwhile activity, a way to build community, and a way to make the world a better place.

While not everyone in the world celebrates Christmas, that will be the next big holiday here in the United States, and it will be followed closely by celebrations bringing in the new year of 2012. Popular culture being what it is, Christmas is celebrated as much as a secular holiday of gift giving as it is a religious holiday. My wife and I were surprised to see lots of Christmas decorations in Japan, where the secular version is prominent. Come to think of it, we even saw Halloween decorations in Japan. Popular culture just has a way of spreading everywhere and anywhere. The reason I mention Christmas and New Year's is that we will be closing the Handiham offices for a fair number of days toward the end of December. We will certainly try to maintain a more or less regular schedule of weekly Handiham World newsletters and podcasts, but some of the Friday audio might not be as current as one would expect in other months of the year. Still, my volunteers always amaze me with their dedication and willingness to help. This Thanksgiving season I definitely have to give a shout out to our Handiham volunteers. They help me with the website, do volunteer reading and recording and audio teaching, help promote the Handiham program, teach at camp sessions and with their local radio clubs, run the nets, and help each other out when technical or operating problems arise. I am so thankful for all of our dedicated volunteers!

Are you planning on shopping at midnight on Black Friday? Me, neither.

Anyway, if your tradition is to exchange gifts over the holidays and one or more those gifts happen to be amateur radio related, just make a mental note to plan to share information about your new ham radio equipment with your weekly E-letter readers and listeners. If you happen to get some piece of equipment that is still not audio-described for blind users, please consider learning about that equipment yourself and then producing an audio tutorial that we can place on our website as a resource for others who are looking for help. And if you get something really unusual and unexpected as a holiday gift, you might consider sharing your story with your fellow readers. In fact, I think I can imagine some pretty weird and unexpected stuff under just about any Christmas tree. One year, when we were kids, I gave my sister a monkey head carved out of a half-coconut. Boy, was she mad at me. Best Christmas ever!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Early Winter Reading: Becoming a Ham (Part 10)

Becoming a Ham - Part 10
By T. A. Benham (SK - formerly W3DD, a callsign which has been reassigned.)
Tom Benham, now a silent key but who most recently held callsign W3DD, was a ham radio pioneer, and being blind didn't even slow him down! Join us now as W3DD recalls more about satellites in the early days.
The Trailer
During April of '59, the students and I heard of an offer from the Government. If we went to Indian Gap, near Harrisburg, we might be able to pick up some surplus equipment. Two boys and I went and we found a fully equipped trailer that was designed for tracking aircraft. It had a parabolic six-foot dish on top that was driven by a sophisticated system from inside. The trailer was 20 feet long and about 8 feet wide. We could have it for the price of getting it hauled to Haverford, which turned out to be $200. The college comptroller authorized the expense and the trailer was parked in a little lot behind the Physics building. With the help of several students, chief among them Amateur Ridgley Bolgiano, the trailer was converted into a satellite tracking station. The 6-foot dish was too small, so we set about finding a larger one. I had heard that ITT, in Nutley NJ, might be interested in giving a hand, so three of us went to visit. We were received most cordially and I asked my contact if they had any parabolic dishes that were due to be scrapped. He paused a minute, looked out the window, picked up the phone and called the Disposal Department. "Hey Jim, you know that 12-foot dish outside my window? Well, it looks like hell, cluttering up the lawn. Please send it to Haverford College, attention T. A. Benham and get rid of the unsightly thing." That was more than we could have hoped for, but it wasn't all. He next called his wife. "Dear, I have three very interesting fellows in my office and I want to bring them home to dinner so you can meet them." We went to his house, had a very nice lobster dinner and a pleasant visit. In a week or so, an ITT truck appeared with the dish. The boys and I got it put together and mounted on top of the trailer. Then Ken from Gerald Electronics came out and helped get the equipment inside the trailer in good operating condition. Since it was intended to track planes, it was nowhere near ready for satellites. When the trailer was ready to be installed in a location suitable for tracking, it was moved to the middle of a large field about a quarter-mile behind the Physics building. We drove two stakes into the ground and strung a string between them to provide an exact north-south line so the tractor driver could point the trailer as nearly north as could be arranged. He had to maneuver the trailer several times to get it lined up to our satisfaction. We had built a heavy platform for it to rest on so it wouldn't settle in the ground and perhaps alter its position. It was very interesting and exciting. We had electric, telephone and teletype lines buried from the nearest pole, which was about 300 feet away. One of the interested boys paid the monthly charges for the phone, another paid for the teletype, I paid the electric.
Linkup with NASA
Now we became a significant link in the NASA tracking chain, at least until they got their multimillion dollar system going. Ridgley built a remote control system so we could turn on functions in the trailer from anywhere. For example, I was coming home from Washington one evening and knew we had to track something about midnight. We stopped in Baltimore and by telephone I turned on the heat, and the receivers to give them time to stabilize. At that time it was illegal to use phone lines for private purposes, but we dodged the rules. One afternoon, there was a knock on my office door and a man entered saying, "I'm from the FCC. I have a complaint from the telephone company that you are running equipment by remote control through their lines." "No, we're not connected to their lines and are not violating the regulations," I replied. "Well then, why have they complained?" I explained that we had mounted a coil on the wall under the wall phone in the trailer. When the phone rang, a voltage was induced in the coil which we used to control relays, timers, etc. He wanted to see, so I took him to the trailer and showed him. He was amazed and left saying "I guess we can't stop you from that!" "No," I agreed. "We do all this without removing the phone from the hook, so there is no way the phone company could know we're doing it. If they allowed us to use the line, they could charge and it would be much easier for us to accomplish the task." I never found out who complained to Ma Bell. Now days it would be no problem. Back in 1936 when I operated my transmitter from the College I had a dedicated line for which I paid, but it allowed control from only one location. The conditions under which this remote system were built had an interesting quirk. Ridgley was driving back to College from his home in Baltimore. Somewhere along the rather poorly lit route 926, he dozed a little and ran full tilt into the rear of a parked truck. Both of his knees were smashed. He spent many weeks in Bryn Mawr Hospital while they were mending. It was during this time that he and I designed the system, on the phone and in person. Then we got tools and parts together and took them to him. He mounted and wired all of the components on a piece of Plexiglas® measuring about two feet square. It was a beautiful piece of work and functioned like a charm. I was heart broken when it was destroyed in a fire! The operating code was simple. Call the number and let it ring once, then hang up. Within a minute, call and let it ring twice. This set two timers running. Then call again and let it ring three times to turn on the heat, or four times to turn on a receiver, etc. Timing was important. To turn things off, let the bell ring four times the second call instead of three and this would set things up for being turned off.
To be continued...

Handiham World for 16 November 2011

2011-11-15T14:40:00.001-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

Image: Here I am recording AMSAT Journal. I find that using a USB headset with boom microphone gives the most consistent audio quality because you can maintain an exact distance between your mouth and the microphone. It is also more comfortable and allows you to use both hands to hold any print material you may be reading from or using as a reference. All recording is done digitally using the open-source software Audacity, which runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac. For insight into recording digitally, see the "With the Handihams" article in an upcoming issue of Worldradio Online. The headset pictured here is a Plantronics brand, but I don't have the model number. It was one recommended for voice dictation by Nuance, the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking®.

This edition of your weekly e-letter is a little bit early because I must be out of the office all day Wednesday for a meeting. I've noticed that the ARRL Letter sometimes has to shift its schedule around a little bit and occasionally there will be no audio version. Sometimes it is necessary for staff to have days off or take care of other office duties, and recording a newsletter is a specialized job only certain staff can complete.

Speaking of recording, I recently received my AMSAT Journal, CQ Magazine, and the December QST. Unfortunately, we have not been able to continue digest articles from CQ for our blind members because of limited staff time, but we do still hope to have some help from a volunteer. Bob, N1BLF, has completed the November WorldRadio digest, but I cannot promise anything from the November CQ, this week at least. I have started recording from the AMSAT Journal and expect to have some audio available by the time we release our audio notification on Friday. Since I must also prepare a new General Class audio lecture from scratch on radio signals in various modes of operation, which can be a complicated topic, it is doubtful that I will be able to tackle QST until the following week.

We are always looking for volunteers who can read for us or assist in the preparation of audio lectures on various operating skills topics and on how to operate particular types of radio equipment. An example of how this is done can be found by listening to the audio lectures done by Matt Arthur, KA0PQW. Matt has done operating skills lectures on VHF propagation and produced several different audio tutorials on radios. If you think that you might like to try teaching into a microphone, please consider helping your fellow Handiham members by sharing some of your knowledge about specific radios or about a particular piece of software or some operating technique. If you are sighted and subscribe to amateur radio print publications, please consider becoming a volunteer reader to help out our blind Handiham members.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 09 November 2011

2011-11-09T15:28:00.001-08:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

Photo: Pat, WA0TDA, poses in front of the Honda Driving Simulator at the Mazda car rental agency in Chitose, Japan. Note the Handiham baseball cap! In Japan one drives on the left side of the road.

I'm back from Japan, and have some awesome jet lag, so this will be a short one! Today is the day of the big FEMA emergency test, so you might drop me a line and let me know if your radio club or ARES group did anything special to participate, or if you even heard any alerts.

My XYL and I had a nice visit with son Will, KC0LJL, on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Although I had hoped to check into some Handiham nets from there, I just could not make the time shift work for me so that I could stay awake to make that schedule. It sure was hard to flip days and nights for 10 days, then do it all over again. One of the oddest things to wrap my brain around was that one can leave Tokyo on Tuesday afternoon and arrive back in Minnesota on Tuesday morning, thanks to crossing the International Date Line while flying east. It reminded me of that book by Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days" in which the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, wins a bet by circumnavigating the globe in 80 days. At first he thinks he lost the bet, but because he traveled east around the world, he actually gains a day and is able to win the bet after all. It's been a long time since I read that story as a boy who hoped someday to see the world! In the novel, Phileas Fogg traveled from Yokohama to San Francisco in 22 days by steamship. Thanks to amateur radio, I can travel the world via DX any day.

Japan is known for its amateur radio manufacturers and enthusiasm for amateur radio in general. While on the road with XYL Susie driving, I spotted plenty of HF beam antennas, but who knows how many wire or VHF/UHF antennas that I missed? One day we visited the city Tomakomai, a port city south of Sapporo. There was one city block where I saw a real cluster of ham radio antennas, and I'm estimating a half-dozen beams or rotary dipoles in that single city block! That's just amazing!

While in Japan, I was not able to get on the air using an HT because I did not apply in advance for a JA license. I did, however, enjoy getting on HF using the Handiham Remote Base station W0ZSW and checked into the PICONET on 3.925 MHz. If you are a remote base user, please consider checking into PICONET, which has a long-time association with the Handihams.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 26 October 2011

2011-10-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

Experiencing a CME

Remember last week's praise of the 10 meter band and the great DX conditions? Well, it's way different this week as the HF communications conditions have been tanked by a CME, or "Coronal Mass Ejection" from the sun.

I subscribe to a service from Spaceweather.com that provides me with a timely email about such solar events. On Monday, the day of the solar event, I was able to communicate on most of the HF bands quite well early in the day, but by mid-afternoon it was clear that something was happening. Sure enough, the email had arrived in my inbox, alerting me to the fact that a CME event had occurred:

"A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 24th around 1800 UT (2 pm EDT). The impact strongly compressed our planet's magnetosphere and may have exposed geosynchronous satellites to solar wind plasma. Mild to moderate geomagnetic storms are possible in the hours ahead as Earth's magnetic field continues to reverberate from the hit."

Later in the evening on Monday I checked in with a group of friends on 1.902 MHz. It was 20:00 Central Daylight Time, and after sunset. Normally the 160 meter band would be really starting to open up that time of the evening, but conditions were so bad that sky wave communications were almost non-existent. Ground wave contacts were possible, and because several of us live within the range of ground wave communications, we were able to carry on a conversation. It was clear that not everyone knew what was happening, but by this morning the news had hit the popular media, with stories about the Northern Lights being observed even in the southern United States, a rare occurrence. Displays of the Northern Lights are common in the far north, as you might expect, when matter and radiation are ejected from the sun in the direction of Earth reach and disrupt the planet's magnetosphere. CME events are actually quite common as the sunspot cycle climbs to maximum, and there may be several each day. However, not all of them are as strong as this week's, nor are they all directed toward Earth. You can find out much more about CME events on Wikipedia or Spaceweather.com, but for our purposes we simply need to know that solar weather can bring a temporary halt to effective sky wave propagation.

It is tempting for those of us who have experienced multiple solar cycles as amateur radio operators to assume that most everyone will know why they turn on their HF radios and find comparative silence. There may be odd swishing sounds or hissing. Tuning around can yield more "birdies" (mixer products generated within the radio) than actual signals. We now have lots of new Technicians and Generals who have never been in this situation. That reminds me of the time when I was a new General and had never experienced the effects of a CME. It was a time of many sunspots, good DX, plenty of activity on the bands, and contacts with low power were "easy pickings". Imagine my thought processes when I switched on the receiver (we had separate transmitters and receivers in the late 1960's unless we had lots of money) and there was nothing but a gentle hiss. I immediately assumed that the antenna was disconnected - that's exactly what it sounded like, so it was a reasonable thing to check. When that idea fizzled, I actually took a hike out into the back yard to look at the antenna. It was till up there in the air, feedline connected, looking fit as ever.

This was a real head-scratcher!

Back inside I went to sit down and puzzle it out. RF gain, check. Antenna switch, check. All vacuum tubes in the receiver lit up, check. Broadcast stations coming in on medium wave, check. Eventually I must have talked with a fellow radio club member and gotten the lowdown on solar weather events like that one, but it always stuck with me that I felt that the antenna must not have been connected - that's how bad it was. You can well imagine a new ham today experiencing the same thing with this week's solar weather and thinking that they are either doing something wrong or they have some kind of an equipment or antenna problem.

So what do you do about it?

This is simple, and the method preferred by lazy operators: Just wait and do nothing. Band conditions will slowly improve, though it may take several days. You can have fun keeping an informal log of stations you hear on the various bands, perhaps even charting the return to normal conditions band by band, starting with 160 or 80 meters, where sky wave will return quickly, often within 24 hours. It will probably take longer for activity to return on bands like 10 meters. By yesterday 75 meters had cleared up pretty well and regional nets were back in operation.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 19 October 2011

2011-10-19T12:32:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

The 10 meter band is back!

We are starting to hear excited reports from amateurs on the regular VHF and HF nets about how the 10 m band is really hot, and that stations from all over the place are being heard really well. You know there is something going on when you start hearing people sing the praises of 10 m while they are checked into a 75 m phone net. Most of us have gotten out of the habit of tuning around 10 m unless there happens to be a local HF net that meets there, operating in a small geographic area by the use of ground wave propagation. We have had such nets here in the Twin Cities area off and on for many years. During a sunspot minimum there is very little activity on 10 m most of the time because the ionosphere is not sufficiently energized to allow for worldwide propagation conditions. As the sunspot maximum approaches, conditions change and long distance contacts on 10 m are not only possible, they are very common and can be completed with simple antennas and low power.

This creates a a wonderful opportunity for amateur radio operators who have never experienced a sunspot maximum and the excellent band conditions that come along with it. Technician class operators now have lots of privileges on the 10 m band, and this is a perfect time to start using HF, especially for those operators who have never tried single side band or who have never operated anything but FM repeaters. This is a whole new ballgame!

Consider these facts about 10 m operation:

Novice and Technician licensees may operate using single side band: between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz using up to 200 W.

When the 10 m band is open as it is lately, high power is not necessary. Excellent contacts can be made even using very low power. Many stations will be using 100 W or less – in fact, I will amend that to say that MOST stations will be using 100 W or less. High power is simply not necessary, which puts Novice and Technician operators on a level playing field with other operators. Experience tells those of us who have been in amateur radio a long time that we are not going to bother turning on a linear amplifier to operate on the 10 m band.

10 m antennas are small and almost everyone can fit this kind of antenna into the space that they have available. Using our formula for a half wave dipole, 468 divided by 28.4 MHz (the middle of the Novice/Tech segment of the band), yields an antenna about 16 and one half feet long. That is a pretty manageable length! You would make each leg of a dipole 8 feet three inches long and feed it with 50 Ohm coax, such as RG-8X low loss if you must use a thinner cable or the standard size cable RG-213. Keep the coax run as short as possible in any case, because loss in the feedline increases as the operating frequency goes up. There is more loss per foot on 10 meters than on 75 meters. A quarter wave vertical antenna for 10 m is only a little over 8 feet high. If you want to construct a quad or Yagi antenna for 10 m, they are much smaller than 20 m directional antennas and thus have a smaller turning radius. A 10 m antenna is lighter and easier to handle, too.

For our Technician Class Handiham members who have already purchased HF transceivers but who have never used them for anything but receiving, this is your chance to press that push to talk switch and enjoy operating SSB. Yes, I know that you have CW privileges on other HF bands, but this is PHONE, and conditions are so good that it is easy to make contacts. Of course Morse code contacts are easier and better during good band conditions, but the window for SSB is open right now.

RF safety is a concern if you use indoor antennas on the 10 m band. Be sure to perform an RF safety evaluation and locate the antenna as far away from people as possible. Adjust the power level to achieve compliance. For more on how to do this, visit the ARRL website and check the TIS, or Technical Information Service. If you are a Technician Class operator who is studying for General, there is information both in your study materials and in the question pool.

Okay, so that brings us up to speed on 10 meters. There is another important thing that I would like to discuss with our readers and listeners: Access to the Handiham Internet Remote Base stations. In general (and that's not meant as a pun), we have restricted the access to our stations to General, Advanced, and Extra Class licensees. However, now that the 10 meter band is open, perhaps it is time to consider opening the stations to our Novice and Technician licensees as well. There is no need to worry about RF safety, antennas, or transceivers since all of that equipment resides far from the control point, your computer. There are pros and cons to this idea.

On the pro side:

	It would be nice to extend these excellent Handiham resources to more members at a time when band conditions are so good.
	Getting a taste of HF operation would surely make Techs excited about earning their General tickets.
	The 10 m band is also a good place to learn more about HF operation because it is not as crowded and competitive a place to operate as bands like 20 m.
	We are now hosting the software downloads for the W4MQ software.

On the con side:

The HF remote base stations do require some additional technical expertise to operate. Novice and Technician operators are usually the least experienced and need the most help getting things to work. Lyle, K0LR, and I don't do much, if any, "tech support" on these stations because we simply do not have the time and most of the problems are located at the user's own home computer anyway. My biggest fear is opening up a floodgate of emails and phone calls about how to install the software and get it to work. This is not an insignificant problem. An installation requires opening a free Skype account, getting audio settings correct, and then installing the W4MQ software and a required W4MQ update. After that, the software must be configured with the IP address of each station and the log in credentials. This is not a problem for a computer user with at least an intermediate skill level, but it is quite challenging for a user who does not know their way around a computer.

Technician users may get frustrated by operating practices on HF, which are much different than what they have experienced on FM repeaters. Of course you have to learn somewhere, but are we really ready to do a "sink or swim" exercise here? Maybe we need some training ahead of time, but we have none set up.

So what do you think? Is this a topic for discussion on the Handiham Radio Club list, or do we need a specialized list set up for Remote Base discussions only? When Bob, N2JEU, became a silent key last summer his discussion board went away. A discussion board on a website or a mailing list might be the best way to provide a forum for users to get their questions answered.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 12 October 2011

2011-10-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

The temptation of power!

What is it about power that makes some people crazy for it? Once they have a taste of power, they want still more.

Of course in ham radio, the idea of more power is usually associated with operating with higher power output by adding RF amplifiers. If 100 watts is good, 1,000 must be better, right?

Wrong!

What does the FCC say? It's §97.313, Transmitter power standards. Section (a) says, "An amateur station must use the minimum transmitter power necessary to carry out the desired communications."

There are good reasons for using lower power levels most of the time. If the other station can hear you when you are using 100 watts, you are only wasting electricity to run more power than that. We are more conscious about waste these days, since power costs are going up and the generation of that wasted power wastes resources and causes pollution. Furthermore, that unnecessary power can cause your signal to be heard on adjacent frequencies and at long distances. A high-power station can easily cause interference to other users on the band, but there is also a much greater chance of RF getting into nearby conductors where it causes bad things to happen.

I remember a Handiham member who moved into an apartment and was lucky enough to be able to have a wire antenna installed on the roof of the building. Back in those days, we were able to field volunteers to help members with such projects, and our volunteer was able to install and connect the antenna. The fellow had moved from a private single-family house where he had owned and operated a complete, well-equipped station that included a linear amplifier for the HF bands. Our volunteer explained to him that the amplifier would not be practical in the new QTH, since there was not enough real estate to get the wire antenna well away from the building. The linear was stored in a closet, and the station was tested on the air with good results.

Well, you can probably guess what happened. The station's owner was used to operating with high power. (Remember: the thinking was, "If some is good, more is better.) So out came the linear from the closet and back into the ham shack it went. It wasn't long before we got a call with the bad news that the poor fellow had lost his ham radio privileges at his new QTH after setting off all the fire alarms in the building. I don't know if he was ever able to get on the air after that. It was before the days of remote base internet operation, so he was probably stuck on whatever VHF repeaters he could work from his apartment.

Adding a linear can put enough RF energy into the area surrounding your shack to affect your neighbors, too, even if you live in a detached single-family home. Devices like audio amplifiers can be connected to speakers systems in home theaters by long lengths of unshielded wire. The final output ICs in these devices can act as rectifiers to demodulate the RF and cause loud thumping noises in the speakers. Other devices that may be connected to long lengths of wire are alarm systems, intercoms, and smoke detectors. The relatively weak field from a 100 watt station might occasionally affect something in one's own home, but is seldom a problem next door. Bump the power up to 1,000 watts and you are asking for trouble.

Another consideration is the need for an RF safety audit. Generally speaking, you don't have too much to worry about when using the typical transceiver without an amplifier. When you increase power levels beyond that 100 watts you are going to need to "run the numbers" to make sure that you are in compliance with RF safety rules. For example, if you are using 100 watts on 29 MHz with a dipole antenna, you will be in full compliance at a distance of 25 feet from the antenna for both controlled and uncontrolled space. However, if you use 1,000 watts and the same antenna, you are out of compliance for uncontrolled space. If a neighbor's property is within that 25 feet, you are now operating outside regulations and exceeding safe power levels. It is even worse if you have a beam antenna for 10 meters because of the antenna gain, which could increase the RF exposure even more in the uncontrolled space. It goes without saying that you want to keep RF exposure to yourself, your family, and your neighbors to safe levels. It is much easier to do this at lower power levels.

My favorite reason to stick to lower power levels is that linear amplifiers only give your transmitted signal a boost. They do nothing at all to help you receive weak signals. In fact, calling CQ with your linear turned on can lead to responses from stations that are too weak to copy. You can get more bang for your buck by installing a better antenna system. Once I learned this for myself, I have advised new hams to concentrate on good, effective antennas instead of amplifiers. After all, the antenna system will help pull in those weak signals, helping you both on receive and transmit.

There is a time and a place for turning on the amplifier. It is when band conditions are deteriorating and more power might help you complete the QSO. It might be when you are the net control station on an HF net and it is necessary to use high power to make sure that you are heard throughout the geographic area of the net. It is probably going to be helpful in the summer when there is thunderstorm static and you are operating on 75 meters. But more often than not high power is really not necessary. Let's not use it if we don't need it.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 05 October 2011

2011-10-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

A broken water pipe gets me thinking...

What sort of things might cause a disaster in my ham radio shack? I started thinking about this recently after dealing with a minor disaster caused by a leaking water pipe in the ceiling of the basement. As usual, I was sitting in my home office, which also serves as my ham shack, when I heard a faint drip, drip, drip. Since I spend an awful lot of time in my office, I know and recognize all of the usual sounds of the house around me. In fact, I don't really notice if the compressor in the freezer comes on and my brain rarely even registers sound of the washing machine or dryer in the adjacent laundry room. The furnace or air conditioner can come on and go off without interrupting me. Jasper, my dog, wanders the house and occasionally growls at a squirrel that he sees through the window. None of this stuff bothers me or particularly gets my attention. But the brain is a marvelous thing; it can ignore the common and expected while immediately picking up on something unusual.

The sound of dripping water, even though barely audible, got my attention!

Sure enough, an inspection of the recreation room around the corner from my office revealed a drip from the ceiling. Several of the tiles in the suspended ceiling had gotten waterlogged and collapsed onto the floor, and I hadn't heard that sound because I had only just a few minutes before come into the office to sit down and do some more work. The leak must have occurred in the afternoon shortly after I had finished my usual office day and had taken the dog out for a walk. When I returned to the office after dinner, that's when I heard the dripping sound that was so out of place. It turns out that a 90° copper connecting joint in the cold water pipe going to the outdoor irrigation system developed a tiny pinhole leak on the inside of the bend. The tiny, almost invisible spray was enough to create quite a mess given a few hours. The soaked ceiling tiles collapsed onto an easy chair, soaking it and ruining the cushion. The carpet on the floor was soaked in an area of about a yard square. A few other items stored in the room got wet on the outside, but were not ruined because I heard the drip and responded in time to shut off the water. Fortunately, we have a carpet cleaning machine that vacuums up water and we had a spare cushion for the chair. I haven't replaced the ceiling tiles yet, but they are standard 2' x 2' squares that are commonly available at any big box building store. As we are so fond of saying in Minnesota, "it could've been worse!"

Of course I called the plumber, and he was able to fix the problem the next day. Fortunately, we have a shut off valve for that particular leg of the water system in our house, so there was no need to keep the main valve turned off. It's heck to be without water when you need to wash, cook, and flush! But what got me to thinking about the ham shack in relation to this broken pipe was that the shutoff valve is located directly above the ceiling in my office. In fact, several water pipes converge in the ceiling above the ham shack and it is sobering to think that the copper pipe carrying all of that water is exactly the same age as the pipe fitting that failed in the next room, which is about 20 years old. So, as I sit here talking into the microphone and enjoying a nice session on my radio, will I one day feel a drip, drip, drip on my head? I guess it could happen, and I have to admit that when I finished the basement and built the ham shack I never gave a second thought to the water pipes running through the ceiling joists overhead. I had grown up with copper water pipe in my parents' house, and I cannot remember a single time that there had ever been a leak. I guess I would not have been too surprised if a leak had occurred where pipes were joined in the soldered connection, but to have a piece of copper simply spring a leak in the body of the pipe? It did seem pretty unlikely, but like all such things it is not something to worry about unless it happens to you – and it happened to me!

So I am forced to assess the probability of another leak, perhaps occurring over the critical electronic and computing equipment I have in the ham shack. Some of this equipment runs for hours or days at a time without being turned off. One can only imagine the damage that would be caused by water pouring onto the energized equipment. When I wired the ham shack, everything was put on ground fault interrupters. Given a good soaking, the equipment would probably short and trip the interrupters, but by then of course the station and computers would be ruined. This is not something I care to think about, but it is nonetheless a possibility. I had considered the possibility of a leak like the one we had to be extremely remote, and perhaps I was right. Nonetheless, had the leak occurred over the ham shack it would've meant many thousands of dollars of damage instead of a soaked chair cushion and a few feet of wet carpet.

What to do? Well, moving the ham shack and home office would be a major undertaking and a huge disruption in my work schedule. It wouldn't be impossible, but it would be expensive and difficult. For now, the best I can do is to turn the main water valve for the entire house to the "off" position whenever we leave on vacation or for any kind of extended multi-day trip. This is something I have always done anyway, and while it is not a perfect solution, it does prevent damage from leaks that might occur when no one is home and when damage can be severe due to the fact that no one is around to discover the leak. Long ago, when I worked in an appliance store, we recommended that our customers who were leaving on vacation turn off the water supply to their washing machines because the hoses that fed the washing machine might burst and cause flooding in the basement. Turning off the whole house valve takes care of that problem. Keeping equipment off the floor is another good idea.

We are used to thinking about protecting our amateur radio equipment and its associated computer equipment from lightning damage, but we cannot ignore the threat posed by water!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 28 September 2011

2011-09-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World.

What got you started in radio?

When I think about that question, I recall a little crystal radio kit that my dad bought for me. It had a plastic housing to make it look like a real table radio, except that it was smaller and had only a single earpiece. And of course it "magically" took a radio signal right out of the airwaves and turned it into music without any electricity at all! It was one of several crystal diode radios that I had as a kid. Another memorable one was made up in a round plastic ball that was supposed to be a satellite. There was a tuning control that consisted of a slug-tuned coil. The brass screw from the ferrite slug extended out of the top of the "satellite" like some sort of antenna. It had a little rubber cap on it to serve as a grip, so that the coil could be tuned more easily. The real antenna was a piece of bell wire with an alligator clip at the end. That allowed you to connect the radio to something conductive that might hopefully act as a better antenna and bring in a local AM station. Of course today the term "satellite radio" means something completely different!

When I was a teenager, dad bought me a Knight-Kit Span Master two tube regenerative receiver. It was not my brightest moment in radio when the kit manual called for putting "spaghetti" over some of the bare wire leads during assembly and I went down to the kitchen cabinet to find this apparently necessary but odd ingredient for a radio. Dad straightened me out on that and we ended up using the insulating tubing that was actually already provided by Knight-Kit.

Image: Here is the Knight-Kit Span Master as shown in a 1962 Allied Radio catalog. You could get the outdoor antenna kit for only 1 cent more, but the radio itself cost $25.95.

The Span Master worked when it was finished, so I installed it in the vinyl-covered wooden cabinet that came with it and ran a wire out of my bedroom window to serve as an antenna. The circuit might not seem like much, since it had only two vacuum tubes, but it turned out to be light-years ahead of the crystal radios. One important feature was a speaker, so I didn't have to use headphones. The tuning knob was connected directly to a variable capacitor, but there was a helpful bandspread knob connected to a second capacitor so that fine tuning was possible without pulleys and dial strings. Furthermore, the radio had a band switch and covered not only the AM broadcast band but also several short-wave bands. In spite of the two tube design, a fair amount of gain could be had from the simple regenerative circuit. It was also possible to hear Morse code and even something that was new and mysterious back then: SSB. You had to be patient and careful tuning it in, though. It was more fun to listen to far off short-wave stations and find out what was happening all around the world.

I consider the Span Master to have been the radio that really got me interested in getting my amateur radio Novice license. Today we can still find electronic kits, and who knows? One of those kits might spark the interest of a future engineer, scientist, or teacher! Consider an electronic kit as a gift for your child, making it age-appropriate, of course. Then make it a parent-child project to assemble it and make it work. You will both have fun, and open the door to STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

Next week: Thoughts about a broken water pipe.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 21 September 2011

2011-09-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

A week from tomorrow (on Thursday, September 29) I will have the opportunity to do what I value most in amateur radio: teach a class for my local radio club. The topic will be the rules and regulations for the General Class, so it's not really either a "fun" or "technical" topic. As the old saying goes, "it is what it is", and that means that:

1. There is going to be a lot of memorization involved, and...

2. It's not the most interesting stuff in the world.

Nonetheless, I will try to keep the class awake for the two hours we will have to hit the high points related to legal and courteous operation. I plan to take advantage of the LCD projector and use PowerPoint to make sure that I stay on subject and on time. If you have endured really boring PowerPoint presentations, you are probably stifling the urge to yawn even thinking about the prospect. As a teacher, I can use some amusing graphics and tell a few stories to break the tedium. Some instructors bring along small bags of candy - wrapped hard candies are great - and toss them out to the students as a reward for answering a question. When I talk about the rules, especially the frequency allocations, I like to emphasize the fun my students are going to have when they get on HF and start working those distant stations. Remember, most of the students will be Technician Class operators whose only experience is getting on repeater systems. Most will never have tried EchoLink or IRLP operation, either. The prospect of a new, more complicated radio and larger antenna might seem daunting, but why not present it instead as an exciting opportunity? As marketing people know, it is all in how you tell the story. It can pay off to tell a few stories about your first DX contact or your Field Day operations. The best one are the memorable ones where you were surprised by really great band conditions and worked some amazing DX or when you were able to pass a message that made a difference to a disaster victim.

Everyone has an interference story. When you talk about that part of the regulations, personalize it by saying a few words about what happened to you. My story is that I was a young operator, living with my parents, when I passed my own General exam and was finally able to get on the phone bands. All I had was a really basic transmitter, a Knight-Kit T-60. It used a really lame circuit that they called "screen grid modulation", and it more or less (but mostly less) allowed for AM phone operation. My antenna was a vertical mounted in the back yard, fed by 50 ohm coax with a tapped coil at the feedpoint. It was pretty basic, to say the least.

Image: Knight-Kit T-60 transmitter

Anyway, I had my new General ticket taped to the wall in my bedroom and was really excited to get on the air. I found an open frequency and called CQ. Now that I have been a ham for decades I know that it would have been better to listen and join a QSO in progress or listen for someone else's CQ, but I was really a newbie back then and didn't know any better. Imagine my surprise when one day I was out fiddling with the tapped coil at the base of the vertical antenna, when our neighbor lady across the back fence got my attention and asked me if I was a ham radio operator. She explained that she was hearing my transmissions on top on her favorite AM broadcast station, WCCO. I was apologizing for the interference, but she stopped me and told me that it was perfectly all right and that she was interested in learning about ham radio herself! It didn't take her long to get her ticket and for many years afterward she enjoyed getting on the air herself. Not every interference complaint is bad, it seems! Telling a story like that can add a bit of interest to an otherwise dull topic. Use your imagination and keep your students engaged!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 14 September 2011

2011-09-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Helping others learn about ham radio or work on their radio equipment and antennas has always been an important part of amateur radio. Indeed, being a mentor, one who helps other operators succeed in reaching their amateur radio goals, is a long-cherished tradition. Sometimes we hear this kind of helper called an "Elmer". If you are curious about how that came to be, you can find an excellent explanation on the ARRL website.

But that's not exactly what I'm thinking about today. This is something that's a little bit more subtle, and it has to do with figuring out when people might need help, and in how best to communicate with them.

Okay, so here's the deal: It is easy to make mistakes by assuming that others know the things that you know. Of course sometimes we also assume that we know something, when in fact we really don't have the whole story or even have the facts completely wrong. Furthermore, people perceive things differently, so I might look at a situation and come to one conclusion while you look at that very same situation and come to another conclusion. Mistakes, sometimes huge ones, happen all the time because of such misunderstandings. They happen everywhere, too. Government, industry, educational institutions, engineering projects, public safety… You name it; mistakes can happen anywhere when people fail to communicate clearly and make assumptions that perhaps we shouldn't be making quite so readily!

Consider these points:

	Common sense is relative. Odd as it sounds, so-called "common sense" can be quite different from person-to-person, culture to culture, age to age… In fact, I am almost tempted to think there really is no such thing as "common sense". I can remember being told one time that I was lacking in common sense and yet another time that I had an exceptional amount of common sense! How can both of those statements possibly be true? Of course what really happened was that a person who understood something in a certain way and discovered that I did not understand or perceive the situation in the same way he did then felt that I didn't have any common sense. In his universe, everyone would understand that situation or concept exactly as he did. Naturally the opposite happened when another guy told me that I had lots of common sense, but what he really meant was that I was pretty smart because I understood the situation or concept exactly the same way that he did. Common sense is determined by life experience. People will have different life experiences because they have been born and raised in different geographical areas at different times and in different cultures. When you are talking about electricity and electronics, you cannot simply assume a "common sense" understanding of even the most basic underlying concepts. Yes, we might assume that everyone understands basic electrical safety, such as never putting one's body between a voltage source and ground, but does a person from a culture where electricity isn't common understand that? Does a small child? How about an elderly person visiting the ham shack? Or even your neighbor from down the block? The fact of the matter is that you simply cannot assume that everyone has the same common knowledge that you do or that you yourself necessarily have the common knowledge that might be considered very basic in the world of academia or engineering. In other words, you have to be cautious and thoughtful when communicating amateur radio concepts as a mentor. The person with whom you're working does not necessarily understand things – even basic things – about electricity and electrical concepts the same way you do.
	When people say that they understand, it isn't necessarily so. I'll bet all of us have been in the situation where we have been sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher telling us all about a concept that is complicated and new to us. The other people in the classroom seem to be following along with the lecture and understanding the concepts, so a person who doesn't quite get what is going on can feel self-conscious about asking a question. Even if the teacher stops to ask if there are any questions, a self-conscious person might simply nod their understanding and hope whatever the teacher talked about doesn't show up on the final exam! You can't always assume that people are following along with your brilliant explanation of the FCC rules and regulations during that Technician licensing class you are teaching for the club. An experienced mentor will be watching for signs of puzzlement or misunderstanding and ask if perhaps there is another way that they can explain the concept. By the way, this goes for projects outside the classroom, too. If you are directing the organization of Field Day for your radio club, you cannot necessarily assume that everyone understands their roles exactly the same way that you do. You have to be flexible and willing to spend some extra time making sure that such a project runs smoothly and safely even though it may mean checking back twice with your other volunteers, just to make sure that everyone is "on the same page".
	You have to make some assumptions, but be careful! One of the worst bosses I ever had in my working career was a grumpy old sourpuss who always insisted that you should NEVER assume anything. I always felt that that was ridiculous advice because no one could ever get through their day without making hundreds of assumptions. For example, when I get out of bed in the morning, I place my feet on the floor. I have assumed that the floor is there and that I will not fall into a hole into the basement. I assume that when I turn on the water tap that water will flow. And – when it comes to electricity – I assume that when I flip on a switch or plug in a power cord that the circuit will be live and that electricity will flow. Sometimes assumptions are pretty sure things. I have never gotten out of bed and fallen through a hole in the floor to the basement, so I feel very safe indeed in assuming that the floor will be there. On the other hand, I have flipped on electrical switches and found that there was no power. Power outages happen for one reason or another, and we have all experienced them. The point here is that there are assumptions that a person can make with a high degree of confidence and others with perhaps only what we will call a high expectation. Other assumptions may be so wild and crazy as to be downright silly. An example would be to assume that you will win the lottery, so there's no point in putting any money away for retirement. Making careless assumptions can get you into trouble when dealing with amateur radio and electricity. You should ALWAYS assume that an electrical circuit is live until you have disabled it with certainty so that you can safely work on it. When acting as a project leader for your radio club, you cannot necessarily assume that others will show up to participate, or that the right tools will be carried to the project site by other volunteers. You have to have a plan! Spelling things out carefully for those who will be helping you can be a huge timesaver when you actually get on site and ready to put up that big antenna.

What I am getting at here is that when you are acting as an Elmer and mentoring new amateur radio operators or when you are leading a project for your radio club, you have to keep an open mind. Even though I have been an amateur radio operator for decades and have worked with many other ham radio operators in many capacities, I am still surprised sometimes by how we can fail to communicate simply because we assume that others know what we know or that we know something that we really don't know! There is no single way to overcome this failure in communication, but we can minimize its effects by remembering to really press people to let us know that they truly understand what we are talking about. Be patient. Listen! Observe. Repeat: Go over the plan or concept again if it is important. Assume what seems most reasonable up to a point, but check to be sure thereafter.

As you might expect, this is not an exact science. The best mentors are those who are willing to learn as well as to teach.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 07 September 2011

2011-09-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

I don't know how it is for you, but in our household Labor Day here in the USA marks the unofficial end of summer. Yes, I know that by the calendar September is still really a summer month. Autumn isn't official until Friday, 23 September 2011. But if you are an early riser like me, you can notice quite a difference week to week as the morning daylight retreats and it is really quite dark when you make that first pot of coffee or take the dog out.

Image: The analemma as depicted for the northern hemisphere. A typical globe of the world has an analemma to help describe the Earth's progress through its seasons.

The reason for this quick change in daylight hours is, of course, that the Earth is reaching that portion of its orbit around the Sun where the tilt of its axis favors direct sun over the equator instead of here in the northern hemisphere. We call this the Autumnal Equinox, and it means that our daylight hours are roughly equal to our night time hours - depending on location, of course. If you look at the analemma on a globe of the world, you can see that it looks like a rather tall figure "8", with the very top of the 8 representing the summer solstice in the north and the very bottom representing the winter solstice in the north (or summer solstice in the southern hemisphere.) The center of the 8, where the lines cross, represents the two equinoxes, autumn and spring. The thing about the length of the days is that as we make the trip around the top of the figure 8 the days are long and there is little change, but once we start our wild ride down the steep slope of the 8, the roller coaster really seems to speed up and the days get shorter fast!

For amateur radio, this has some interesting implications. Since the days are getting shorter, there is less direct sunshine, which in turn means less absorption on the lower HF bands like 160 and 75 meters. Those bands are also hard to use in the high summer months of July and August because of the thunderstorm static. Thunderstorms are ultimately driven by sunshine that heats the ground and builds huge clouds from rising air. The jet stream pulls storms through the upper Midwestern United States all summer long, creating a cacophony of noise on the HF bands. As the sun appears to retreat to the south at this time of year, the storms and RF noise also retreat. This makes the HF bands much more useful. During the winter months the long nights will mean better conditions for long-distance contacts on 160, 75, and 40 meters. If you have not considered getting on these bands, you might think about it now while the weather is still pleasant enough to allow for some serious antenna work. Most of us use either simple wire antennas or verticals for these bands because of their wavelength and the obvious problems one encounters constructing directional antennas for such frequencies. A one half wave dipole for 3.9 MHz would be around 120 feet from end to end, which makes it pretty impractical to try to put on a tower and rotate!

So what that means is that for a few bucks and a little elbow grease, you can get on the air and have an antenna that isn't that different from what everyone else is using. This is certainly not the case for highly competitive bands like 20 meters, where some stations are equipped with large directional antennas on tall towers. You will get a chance to be as competitive as you like on the lower frequency HF bands, but you have to get your antenna work done now!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Help us win the Dr. Dave Challenge!

Thanks to everyone who has helped us with donations to the Dr. Dave Challenge so far. I don't have an update this week due to the high volume of phone calls and the holiday weekend. Money is tight these days and we desperately need your support. Now, thanks to a generous challenge grant by Dr. Dave Justis, KN0S, we have a chance to help fill the budget gap. Dr. Dave will donate $5,000 to the Handiham System if we can raise a matching amount. That means we need to really put the fund-raising into high gear! If you can help, designate a donation to Handihams, stating that it is for the "Dr. Dave Challenge". We will keep you posted in our weekly e-letter as to the progress of the fund.
Nancy can take credit card donations via the toll-free number, 1-866-426-3442, or accept checks sent to our Courage Center Handiham address:
Courage Handiham System
3915 Golden Valley Road
Golden Valley, MN 55422
Be sure to put a note saying "Dr. Dave Challenge" somewhere in the envelope or on the note line of the check. If you donate online as detailed toward the end of your weekly e-letter, be sure to designate to Handihams and then send me an email letting me know you donated to the Dr. Dave fund: wa0tda@arrl.net.
Thank you so much for your support!

W0GLU License Plate

This vintage automobile license plate was issued to Rex Kiser, W0GLU, in 1971 by the State of Minnesota. It has renewal stickers for 1972 and 1973. Rex is now a silent key, but had literally decades of volunteer experience for the Handiham program. The license plate was a gift to us from Miriam Kiser, Rex's wife.
Rex's specialty was repairing and modifying amateur radio equipment for the use of our members with disabilities. He soon became our crew leader, taking charge of shop activities. Back in the early days, the modifications to equipment included mounting clothespins on band-switch knobs so that people with muscle weakness could get enough leverage to change bands by themselves. The Handiham System also kept a "fleet" of loaner CW transceivers, Ten-Tec Century 21 models. These would be modified by Rex and his crew for use by blind hams. The mod included cutting away part of the plastic bezel covering the radio's frequency display dial and putting tactile bumps on the dial to mark frequency intervals. The blind user could put his or her fingertips through the hole in the bezel and feel the raised markings on the frequency display dial. This was about as analog a frequency display as you can get! It was only in later years that frequency displays started going digital and the door began opening to voice frequency announcements.
In later years, Rex and his crew installed voice modules in radios like the venerable Kenwood TS-440SAT, a very popular radio that appeared in the late 1980's. The VS-1 speech module made it the most blind-friendly HF radio of its day, and the built in automatic antenna tuner in the SAT version freed blind users from the hassle of fiddling with manual tuners. Needless to say, Rex and his crew knew these radios inside and out!
W0GLU was also a regular net control station on the PICONET, which meets daily except Sundays on 3.925 MHz. I would describe Rex as a well-rounded ham radio operator who enjoyed many aspects of radio and electronics. Injured serving his country during WW2, shrapnel pierced his spinal column and he never walked again. That didn't keep Rex from driving his own car and maintaining his considerable upper body strength. I was surprised when he decided to take up adapted skiing with his disabled vets group, but I shouldn't have been. As I said, Rex was a well-rounded guy, interested in helping others by volunteering and in living a good and worthy life.
Rex Kiser, W0GLU - A great ham radio operator who inspires us still.

Image: Rex poses for the camera in the Handiham repair shop.

Handiham World for 31 August 2011

2011-08-31T09:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Photo: Where's the antenna? Believe it of not, there is a "W0OXB Special" antenna in this photo, and it tunes 160 meters through 6 meters! There are a lot of trees on the property, so hanging the antenna was not a problem. The foliage also confuses the eye and effectively hides the wire antenna, which is in excess of 200 feet long and fed with 450 Ohm ladder line to a 4:1 current balun. If you look closely, you will see the feedline just to the left of the guy standing on the garage roof.

Last Saturday I had fun participating in a good old-fashioned "antenna party". These antenna raising projects are loosely coordinated through our local radio club, and I hadn't been along on one for quite some time. We had plenty of help, but as the old saying goes, "many hands make light work". It was certainly instructive to help, and I learned more about how to launch wires and pull them high up into the tree branches, how to use a guide rope to pull the center insulator and feedline away from branches, and especially the detail work on the center insulator strain relief and weather sealing. One tip from Dave, W0OXB: If you use high quality UV-resistant rope to tie off the ends of the antenna, there is really no need for end insulators. Putting on end insulators is just asking for them to get stuck in the tree branches.

Anyway, this story isn't really about the antenna party. It's about the final result, which (for those of you who can see the photo) is an all but completely invisible wire antenna capable of operating on the HF bands, including 160 meters! The QTH sporting the new antenna is on a corner lot, and the antenna runs diagonally across it, supported by mature trees. The 450 Ohm ladder line comes down from the center of the antenna, angling over the single-story garage's roof and to a current balun mounted on the soffit of the house, somewhat protected from the weather. Although this kind of feedline would be painfully obvious, coming as it does down from a point over the front yard, a clump of birch trees effectively hides it from anyone but the most determined observer. The result is an excellent, versatile antenna that can be used on multiple bands without being an eyesore.

The single biggest obstacle to effective HF operation today is the difficulty many amateur radio operators have getting an antenna up in the air! If only it were as simple as just ordering an antenna and installing it... But it isn't easy at all. There are antenna restrictions of all sorts, and they are not all formal regulations, either. The restrictions that get the most attention in the amateur radio media are those that are codified in municipal ordinances or that are part of homeowner association covenants. The ARRL offers resources on working through such restrictions, and each instance is likely to be somewhat unique.

There are other, but no less real, obstacles to getting an HF antenna up. Consider these:

	Aesthetics. The antenna will be unsightly. Yes, you and I know that a good antenna is a thing of beauty, but your spouse and neighbors may not like seeing that monstrosity in the blue sky above your ham shack. This is an especially relevant concern these days when traditional TV antennas have pretty much disappeared because of TV cable and small satellite TV dish antennas. The TV antenna free clean look of the typical suburban roofline makes that HF antenna stick out like a sore thumb!
	Power lines! They run where they run, and that is often exactly in the wrong place when HF antenna installation is concerned. Older neighborhoods typically have lines running along alleyways at the rear or side of a property. Power lines might also line the street in front of the house. The "drop" from the main power pole to the house sometimes crosses large sections of the property. You cannot safely run wire antennas above or below power lines, and running your antenna parallel to a power line may result in a higher than average interference from power line noise.
	No antenna supports. Your lot may just not have any natural place to support a wire antenna. The trees may be too small or in the wrong places.
	Budget! Your budget may not be generous enough to have a tower in the back yard. Like it or not, you may have to make do with less.
	Space. Actually, it's the lack thereof! Most city lots are a challenge when you are talking about getting wire antennas up for bands like 160 and 75 meters, but some are really, really small.

Well, what are the options? Before deciding on your own, it might be best to get another opinion. That's part of the process for my club's "MAP", or "Member Assistance Program". We didn't all just show up at the guy's house last Saturday with a bunch of wire and tools. Prior to the antenna party, a separate "antenna assessment" had been done. This is usually completed weeks before the actual installation, and it involves a visit by a knowledgeable team leader. The MAP team leader will walk through the property, measuring the distances between likely antenna supports and planning different installation scenarios. If the situation is hopeless, you might as well find it out from someone who will have other ideas and be able to offer you some alternatives. You might be surprised at how you really can fit an antenna into the space available, but without the practiced eye of the team leader you might have never known.

Vertical antennas can fit in small spaces and when positioned in the back yard can also be invisible from the street in front. Most designs do require at least some radials, but a few don't. You might consider one of the new 43 foot verticals fed with a current balun at the base. I see in the September QST that LDG now has one for under $200. This antenna design, available from LDG and other companies, allows you to operate on 80 through 6 meters with one antenna. True, you will not get on the "top band" (160 m), but you will have good coverage on the other bands and will be able to make use of most bands on your HF radio. If a wire antenna won't fit, a vertical might.

Sometimes there are just no options outdoors, but an attic antenna might be possible. These are generally good for 14 MHz and above, because there will not be enough space to fit antennas for the lower frequencies in an attic space. I really don't like attic antennas much, because they are often hard to install in unfinished attic spaces. The space may be cramped and unlighted, and you may need to step carefully on rafters so as not to put your foot through the ceiling below. Running feed lines can also be challenging. Attic antennas are most suited to digital low power operation, such as QRP CW or PSK-31.

Mobile or portable operation might be viable choices. There are small antennas designed for backpacking into the wilderness - you might be able to operate with one of them set up in whatever space you have available, even at home. Be prepared for some difficult copy and some tough times breaking pileups, though. These are not the most efficient antennas, and because they usually are inductively loaded, they have narrow - almost single frequency - bandwidth without tuning. One special type of portable antenna is the simple end-fed wire. It can be thrown up into a tree at a campsite and tuned with an antenna tuner. Some tuners are automatic and match a wide variety of antennas. Mobile antennas suffer from the same limitations. They are physically short and have very sharp tuning. They are also not terribly efficient. Still, they can offer you a way to get on the air.

Remote base operation is an option for Handiham members with computers with Microsoft Windows® and high-speed internet. Sometimes a mixture of operation from a home station and a remote base station is the way to go. For example, you may have room for an antenna that operates on 14 MHz and above, but not enough room for a wire antenna that would be effective on 3.9 MHz. To get on that 75 meter net you like, you can then use either of the W0ZSW or W0EQO remote base stations. The remotes are a Handiham member service. Both stations have excellent wire antennas and are located in RF-quiet areas.

I guess the point is that you can get on the HF bands one way or the other. Getting help while assessing your antenna situation is a good first step. Even if your local club does not have a member assistance program, you can still speak up at the club meeting and ask if there might be any volunteers who might know about antennas and who could help you decide how to best use your available space. If stealth is an issue and you need to camouflage the antenna, the club members will usually have some ideas and suggestions. Just don't give up! If you want to get on the HF bands, there is a way to do it.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 24 August 2011

2011-08-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

We're back!

In praise of summer nets:

August is usually not a high activity month in ham radio anyway, so what the heck, maybe not that many people noticed if the local radio club didn't have regular meetings during the summer. They were probably all on vacation or harvesting the vegetables from their gardens.

Still, key members of radio clubs are waking up and thinking to themselves, "Holy cow, it's almost September and the club's first meeting of the new ham radio season is almost here. We've got to start on the club newsletter! Plan the business meeting agenda! Who's in charge of the club program? Yikes, how are we going to get all this stuff done?"

Yes, it's that time again, time to plan for the Autumn and Winter months, when ham radio interest will be higher than the snow bank outside my window here in Minnesota. Last week I attended a planning meeting with some of my fellow radio club members. We talked about the upcoming membership meeting, the newsletter, and what direction the club would take in the upcoming months. We are already planning to teach a General Class course this Autumn. My local club, the Stillwater (MN) Amateur Radio Association, has a strategy of offering Technician training in the Spring to coincide with Skywarn training prior to the summer severe weather season and a General Class upgrade course in the Autumn when our Technicians from the previous Spring may be interested in learning more about amateur radio and the HF bands. Many clubs take a three month summer break like ours, though June, with ARRL Field Day, is still quite busy. It is just the regular meetings and the newsletter that "go on vacation" for the summer break. Other club activities, like the local HF and VHF nets, remain active throughout the year.

One of the tricks to remember about keeping your radio club active and healthy is to ALWAYS have something going on, even during the summer. Regularly scheduled activities are going to provide the continuity that will keep members from drifting away over the summer and never coming back. Now, I'm not talking about elaborate dog and pony shows here. You don't have to organize special meetings or events. Simply having an evening net, even an informal gathering without a net control, can be good enough. Scheduled nets are good, too. Some clubs have a regular monthly breakfast or lunch, all of which is informal and completely optional, which is just perfect for summertime when plans can change at a moment's notice. At the Handiham Radio Club we have our daily EchoLink net. The important thing is to keep club members connected with simple, easy, optional, low-commitment activities that require almost no planning or effort.

While large, elaborate activities like summer hamfests or special event stations are fun and can sometimes be the highlight of the summer, not all club activities need be so ambitious. If you set the standard too high, an elaborate event can burn volunteers out. If such events take place once in a while, that is one thing. If they are scheduled every summer and the same volunteers are expected to manage them again and again, you should not be surprised to find that one summer will come along when everyone is just too busy to plan or be part of the event. The easy to plan informal on the air get-together or regular net can be the glue that holds your club together over the summer. Don't sell it short!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

But first - Help us win the Dr. Dave Challenge!

Photo: Bill, K9BV; Lucy, KE6QNX, Dr. Dave, KN0S, Bill, N6HBO & Guide Dog Heldy, and Pat, WA0TDA (kneeling in front.) Thumbs up for a pass for Lucy at the VE session.

Thanks to Chris Peterson, KG0BP, for taking advantage of his employer's regular automatic donation system. Chris has been helping us out with regular contributions. In fact, quite a few companies have such donation programs, and they can make supporting non-profit causes like the Handiham System easy and quick. Check with your employer to see if this option might be available to you. Thanks also to Bob, N0HBC. Money is tight these days and we desperately need your support. Now, thanks to a generous challenge grant by Dr. Dave Justis, KN0S, we have a chance to help fill the budget gap. Dr. Dave will donate $5,000 to the Handiham System if we can raise a matching amount. That means we need to really put the fund-raising into high gear! If you can help, designate a donation to Handihams, stating that it is for the "Dr. Dave Challenge". We will keep you posted in our weekly e-letter as to the progress of the fund.
Nancy can take credit card donations via the toll-free number, 1-866-426-3442, or accept checks sent to our Courage Center Handiham address:
Courage Handiham System
3915 Golden Valley Road
Golden Valley, MN 55422
Be sure to put a note saying "Dr. Dave Challenge" somewhere in the envelope or on the note line of the check. If you donate online as detailed toward the end of your weekly e-letter, be sure to designate to Handihams and then send me an email letting me know you donated to the Dr. Dave fund: wa0tda@arrl.net.
Thank you so much for your support!

Handiham World for 03 August 2011

2011-08-03T13:42:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Photo: Butternut vertical at the WA0TDA QTH is covered with snow. Maybe this "cool" picture will help us all get through this spell of hot, humid summer weather!

Handiham Radio Camp begins on Monday, 8 August. The weather across most of North America has been uncommonly hot, often setting new temperature records. Fortunately we did get a nice weather break today here in Minnesota as the humidity dropped a bit and the morning temperature was in the low 60's Fahrenheit. Of course we would like to see nice, comfortable weather during our week at Camp Courage, but there is another reason I look forward to less heat and humidity in the atmosphere: there will be less interference from thunderstorms! Thunderstorm static is a common problem for amateur radio operators who enjoy making contacts on the lower frequency HF bands. The 75 m band is still somewhat usable during the summer months, but it does take patience to put up with all of the static from storms that are sometimes hundreds of miles away. Add to that the long summer days when absorption gets really high and makes signals so attenuated that they really have a hard time competing with the static crashes and you really have quite a challenging radio environment. Believe it or not, some amateur radio operators still even make contacts on the 160 m band during the summer. That is the absolute worst of our HF bands during the high summer season because it is most affected by absorption and QRN.

Sometimes it makes sense to simply shift gears and try some other bands and modes of operation. I really like staying in touch with my friends on the EchoLink-enabled repeaters and even through EchoLink on my computer or smart phone. Summertime can be an excellent time to start listening on the VHF bands, too. June is typically a good month to experiment with making single side band contacts on the 6 m band. As summer continues to unfold and you get into July and August, you may find that it is possible to make single side band contacts on the 2 m band. If you like CW, you may find others who share your interest on VHF over the summer months. Summertime conditions, while bad for HF operation, can sometimes make for excellent long-distance contacts on VHF.

Another excellent summertime amateur radio activity is to do an antenna assessment and make a list of everything that needs doing to keep your station on the air before the cold winter months arrive. Believe me, I have done antenna work in every single month of the year and it is much easier to strip wires, put on connectors, climb ladders or towers, and handle aluminum tubing during the summer! A big antenna installation almost has to be done in the summer months when there is good weather and adequate daylight after dinner, when help may be available from other radio club members.

Speaking of antennas, I had to take down two of my wire antennas earlier this week. There was a dead tree in the backyard and I had made arrangements with a tree guy to come over and cut it down as well as do some trimming of the other trees around our property here at the home QTH. Well, I was surprised when the tree guy called and told me he had an opening on Monday, so he would be able to come right over that morning and do the work. "Sure", I said, before remembering that both of my wire antennas either ran through the tree that needed to come down or close to it. So I ended up having to rush outside and try to get the antennas down in the half-hour to 45 minutes before the tree crew arrived. That turned out to be a decision point, because I had already taken part in an antenna assessment earlier this summer and with help from my local radio club will get a new, longer wire antenna installed. That made it easy to just go get my extendable tree branch pruner and cut the old antennas right down without doing any climbing. That leaves me with my trusty Butternut nine band HF vertical ground-mounted in the backyard. The good news was that I had already completed my summer maintenance on the vertical and it was ready to go for use as my main HF antenna. It had needed replacement of one section of cracked aluminum tubing and the addition of new radials. Had I not followed my summer plan of getting antenna maintenance started early, I might have been off the air right now except for the VHF and UHF bands.

I guess the moral of the story is that it pays to have a plan and to get things done earlier rather than later when at all possible. You never know what might be coming up later today, next week, next month, or next year. It doesn't hurt to build in a little planning and redundancy when it comes to amateur radio!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

But first - Help us win the Dr. Dave Challenge!

Thanks to Diane WI8K, Dan N8OJW, and Gary KB9ZUV for your help this past week. We appreciate your support.
Money is tight these days and we desperately need your support. Now, thanks to a generous challenge grant by Dr. Dave Justis, KN0S, we have a chance to help fill the budget gap. Dr. Dave will donate $5,000 to the Handiham System if we can raise a matching amount. That means we need to really put the fund-raising into high gear! If you can help, designate a donation to Handihams, stating that it is for the "Dr. Dave Challenge". We will keep you posted in our weekly e-letter as to the progress of the fund.
Nancy can take credit card donations via the toll-free number, 1-866-426-3442, or accept checks sent to our Courage Center Handiham address:
Courage Handiham System
3915 Golden Valley Road
Golden Valley, MN 55422
Be sure to put a note saying "Dr. Dave Challenge" somewhere in the envelope or on the note line of the check. If you donate online as detailed toward the end of your weekly e-letter, be sure to designate to Handihams and then send me an email letting me know you donated to the Dr. Dave fund: wa0tda@arrl.net.
Thank you so much for your support!

FCC seeks comments on change to allow exam credit for expired Amateur Radio licenses

The FCC is going to entertain the possibility of allowing examination credit for expired ham radio licenses and is seeking comments on the matter. As we know, if your license expires and is beyond the two year grace period, you must start all over again with the Technician exam and work your way back up to whatever your former license level was, taking every exam. The Anchorage VEC has requested this change.
DA 11-1318
Released: July 29, 2011

Handiham World for 27 July 2011

2011-07-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

It is less than two weeks to Handiham Radio Camp, which begins on Monday, 8 August. As you might imagine, Nancy and I have been busy with last minute paperwork and communications from everyone who is planning to be at camp. We have made considerable progress, but lots of work still needs to be done as we get the equipment ready and answer questions while still trying to provide services to our Handiham members who will not be at camp. Last week I got my son Will, KC0LJL, sent off to Japan, where he will be teaching English for a year. Needless to say, I have not been bored for lack of things to keep me busy!

Today the Internet went down here at my home office and I'm slowly bringing it back on line. Yesterday Don, N0BVE, went out to camp and got our Internet connection working there, and also got the W0EQO repeater back on Echolink. Last night and today Lyle, K0LR, and I have been working on the W0ZSW remote base, bringing it back on line after the camp Internet outage. The camp Internet failed during a severe thunderstorm last Saturday.

All of this makes me wonder if good old Murphy has us in his sights for Internet problems! The long and short of it is that it does serve to remind us that as useful as the Internet can be, especially with VoIP connectivity for our repeaters and nets, it is still brittle and can suffer outages. All the time the Internet was out here at home, guess what was still working? Yup, you've got it: My VHF and HF radios, right here next to me in the ham shack.

Now, don't conclude that I am about to sing the praises of trusty, time-proven RF while I go on a rant about how unreliable the Internet is and how we amateurs should avoid using it in favor of RF only. I think the thing we should conclude is that we need redundancy in our communications, and that means the ability to use RF while still having Internet-enabled methods of communications enabled and ready to use. After all, the Internet-enabled systems we have built to enhance our radio networks have generally been reliable. If disaster strikes, we need to be ready to use whatever works. Keep an open mind when it comes to this stuff, folks.

One consideration is to try using digital modes on HF. Some of these, such as PSK-31, are more reliable than SSB communications and can work well at lower power levels and with less elaborate antenna systems. I just got an email from our ARRL Division Director K0GW, who mentioned that ARRL has approved a new way to pick up your DXCC; there will be a new “Digital” DXCC. This will include RTTY as well as the many other digital modes. No matter what you think of chasing awards like DXCC, I think this is a very good move on the part of the League. It will ramp up on the air activity, stimulate interest in digital modes, and help to build up a cadre of digital operators. That will ultimately be good for emergency operations, as more of us will become proficient in digital modes. Remember, PSK-31 does not need the Internet to get through!

In other thoughts:

Wouldn't it be nice to get QST in digital format? That just could be an option in the future. A plan for the next steps in providing QST digitally (in addition to the print edition) was approved at the recent ARRL Board meeting. The change in accessibility brought about by the personal computer and digital reading devices is simply enormous. Worldradio Magazine has led the way with an entirely digital version, which allows blind computer users to access the articles with screenreading software at virtually the same time they are available to everyone else.

Curious about Morse code? Coming to Radio Camp? Keep reading for news about learning code.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

But first - Help us win the Dr. Dave Challenge!

We need your help.
Money is tight these days and we desperately need your support. Now, thanks to a generous challenge grant by Dr. Dave Justis, KN0S, we have a chance to help fill the budget gap. Dr. Dave will donate $5,000 to the Handiham System if we can raise a matching amount. That means we need to really put the fund-raising into high gear! If you can help, designate a donation to Handihams, stating that it is for the "Dr. Dave Challenge". We will keep you posted in our weekly e-letter as to the progress of the fund.
Nancy can take credit card donations via the toll-free number, 1-866-426-3442, or accept checks sent to our Courage Center Handiham address:
Courage Handiham System
3915 Golden Valley Road
Golden Valley, MN 55422
Be sure to put a note saying "Dr. Dave Challenge" somewhere in the envelope or on the note line of the check. If you donate online as detailed toward the end of your weekly e-letter, be sure to designate to Handihams and then send me an email letting me know you donated to the Dr. Dave fund: wa0tda@arrl.net.
Thank you so much for your support!

Handiham World for 20 July 2011

2011-07-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

It looks like we will meet our goals for Radio Camp this summer. We have a healthy level of participants, and most have completed their paperwork and made their travel plans. Quite a bit remains to be done in preparation, though. We have an excellent tower and beam antenna on a hill behind the camp's "Rotary Building", where we plan to set up an HF station using a Kenwood TS-570SAT and a TS-2000. Having these rigs to choose from should help make more operators comfortable. Since the beam has not been used this past year and things have been moved around, I will need to locate the rotor control box and dress the wiring back into the shack for a test run. One thing I have learned about antenna systems over the years is that unexpected problems can show up at the most awkward times. It pays to do a little footwork in advance. In this case, I will need to do real footwork, too. The main Handiham Headquarters building rests in a storybook-like clearing surrounded by forest at the base of a hill. Built on and into the side of the hill is the Rotary Building, named for its benefactors, the Rotary Clubs. Long ago, when the Handiham System was very young, there was a ham radio station in the Rotary Building, which was used during the shorter "May Convocations" that would ultimately evolve into the full-fledged Radio Camps.

So you can imagine that there would need to be an antenna system near the Rotary building, and sure enough, there was. A 50 foot self-supporting tower and beam antenna were installed up at the top of the hill behind the building. The entire system fell into disrepair when the Radio Camps moved to Courage North, and it wasn't until recent years that the antenna and wiring were refurbished as part of an Eagle Scout project by Peter Widin, KC0ENI. This excellent resource will once again be used at Radio Camp, and should provide us with the opportunity to work some real DX! What is different this year is that we plan to install a permanent station in the library of the Rotary building, an excellent gathering space with plenty of room for operating skills participants. In preparation for the use of this area, I have completed the installation of wireless Internet and done some preliminary planning of the station setup. Although we could set up temporarily as in the past, this year we will have one of the familiar equipment desks that we have used at Courage North. This cabinet will provide a place to lock up the stored equipment when non-ham radio users are in the space.

Meanwhile, back on the Woodland side of camp, which is where we will enjoy living in the modern cabins during the week, I have checked the Internet and done my walk through of the buildings. I am thinking that we may have only one HF station, if that, set up at the Woodland cabins. After all, we will have stations on the pontoon boat, at the Rotary Building, and at the Headquarters. We do plan to have a JAWS computer with Echolink and the Remote Base software available as a training tool. Since there are wireless Internet hotspots available in Woodland, the Rotary, Lakeside dining hall, the Lakeside Gazebo, and Handiham HQ, there should be no shortage of places for us to use the Internet-enabled stations. Furthermore, the camp repeater will be on the air and it is Echolink-enabled. One of our goals is to teach the use of these new tools to as many of our campers as possible. If we are successful in getting our new IRLP node that has been configured by Lyle, K0LR, set up on our Woodland Internet connection, we will be able to use that to connect to IRLP node 9008, the Vancouver BC system.

By the way, this month marks 60 years since the FCC created the Novice class license. I was reminded of this by Ron, K3PID, my co-editor of our local radio club newsletter, who was asking club members to send in stories about their Novice days. I thought that was such a good idea that I would like to steal it, so how about some of those Novice stories? I will tell you one of my own next week.

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Thanks for your support!

The Owatonna Steele County (Minnesota) Amateur Radio club recently sent in a gift of $50 in support of the Dr. Dave Challenge Grant. Dr. Dave Justis, KN0S, has challenged us to raise at least $5,000, which he will match.

Help us win the Dr. Dave Challenge!

We need your help.

Money is tight these days and we desperately need your support. Now, thanks to a generous challenge grant by Dr. Dave Justis, KN0S, we have a chance to help fill the budget gap. Dr. Dave will donate $5,000 to the Handiham System if we can raise a matching amount. That means we need to really put the fund-raising into high gear! If you can help, designate a donation to Handihams, stating that it is for the "Dr. Dave Challenge". We will keep you posted in our weekly e-letter as to the progress of the fund.

Nancy can take credit card donations via the toll-free number, 1-866-426-3442, or accept checks sent to our Courage Center Handiham address:

Courage Handiham System
3915 Golden Valley Road
Golden Valley, MN 55422

Be sure to put a note saying "Dr. Dave Challenge" somewhere in the envelope or on the note line of the check.

Thank you so much for your support!

Handiham World for 13 July 2011

2011-07-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Photo: Pat, WA0TDA, holds up the the new ARRL 2010 Periodicals on CD-ROM and TravelPlus® for Repeaters CD. Both will be available for our Handiham members to try out at the Radio Camp in August.

Have you ever wondered where you saw that article about the antenna that you could build yourself and that would actually fit into your real estate? What month's QST was it that had the review of the rig you're thinking about buying? What's in QEX, the "Forum for Communications Experimenters"? What about the National Contest Journal?

If you're anything like me, you probably subscribe to several magazines and don't really have the time to read every article. I always go through the contents and page through to see what jumps out at me, and in the process I find plenty of interesting articles that I am going to read later or save for reference. Before I know it, the next month's magazines arrive and I am falling behind in my reading. I'll have much more time in the winter, so the magazines go on the shelf in my ham shack, ordered by month. Sometimes the articles I wanted to read just never get read, and the reason is that they are too hard to find. It may be that I don't even recall the title of the article or the author's name, just the general topic. True, the periodicals search tool on the ARRL website will be helpful, but sometimes I can't locate the article I want because my shelves are not organized as well as I would like.

I can see to read the print articles. Doing this kind of a search when you are blind can be a much more daunting task. That's one of the reasons we will be installing the 2010 ARRL Periodicals CD-ROM on a Windows computer equipped with JAWS®, a popular screenreading software program by Freedom Scientific. The upcoming Handiham Radio Camp provides exactly the right opportunity for us to test the accessibility of the Periodicals CD using a screenreading computer operated by experienced blind amateur radio operators. The idea of having an entire year's worth of QST, National Contest Journal, and QEX, the Forum for Communications Experimenters, available on a single CD with search capability seems a lot better than saving print publications on a shelf - or shoeboxes full of audio tapes or even the new flash memory digital NLS "books". Most of us just don't have the space to save more than a couple of year's worth of old print magazines, and even if we do manage to keep them all in order, finding a particular article can be a chore, so we are looking forward to exploring this ARRL CD during Radio Camp.

One book we have never put onto tape for our blind Handiham members is the ARRL Repeater Directory. Think about it for awhile, and you'll realize why. Not only would it be like reading the phone book, but it would also be impossibly difficult to use because you could never find anything in it, especially in audio cassette format. Imagine back in the days of books on tape what such a book would be like for a blind user. It would be a box full of cassettes, and one would have to keep them organized carefully. Even then, who wants to listen for hours to find the right spot on a tape that has just the repeater information you need? The lack of an accessible repeater directory for blind hams has been a problem, and even those of us who can see to read a print version can find the lookups of repeaters while traveling a hassle. That's where the ARRL TravelPlus Repeater Directory on CD comes in handy. While I seldom plan to tote along a notebook computer just for repeater lookups while driving cross country, I do appreciate the pre-trip planning capabilities of the ARRL software. Once can print out a list of repeaters within a user-defined distance along a planned route. That saves the hassle of paging through a print repeater directory during your trip. I find it much more intuitive and easier to use, but what about our blind Handiham members? Would there be some features of the ARRL TravelPlus CD that could prove useful? That is what we are going to find out at Radio Camp in August when we install the software on our JAWS computer and see what we can do with it.

Handiham Radio Camp is August 8 through 13, 2011 at Camp Courage near Maple Lake, Minnesota. The camp repeater, W0EQO-R, is connected to the HANDIHAM Echolink conference and the Vancouver, BC IRLP node 9008. We also plan to have our own experimental low power IRLP node 7051 on the air. The camp station is W0ZSW, and will be operating on the HF bands.

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

News of Mumbai bombings arrives on Handiham net

I was surprised to hear about terrorist bombings in Mumbai, India from Vispi, VU2WLL, on today's Handiham Echolink net. He says that he and his sister are both all right. The news media have conflicting numbers of casualties. There will no doubt be much more information later on today as this story unfolds. In the meantime, our thoughts are with the people of India as they cope with this senseless violence.

Handiham World for 06 July 2011

2011-07-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

...And welcome to a new era of challenges for radio clubs.

What do I mean by that?

Well, if you have to ask, you might not be that tuned in to your local club's activities. Radio clubs provide a means for you and I to get together with like-minded folks who appreciate amateur radio and who enjoy learning new things through club programs, keeping up their operating skills through club nets and activities, socializing with other radio amateurs, or being part of public service activities - to name just a few of the more obvious ones. I know that I have learned a lot about useful things that have helped me out in ham radio, thanks to the presentations at my local radio club.

Pictured: Greg Widin, K0GW, ARRL Dakota Division Director, gives a club program presentation on lightning and grounding.

"A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal." Thanks, Wikipedia! Of course we seldom think of clubs in terms of only two people. Usually a radio club is larger - sometimes much larger - and there may be several distinct interest groups within the club. The club may own some equipment, such as special tools for antenna work, a repeater system, a club station, training materials and equipment, and more.

The challenges:

Meeting space. If you have a club of only a few members, this isn't a big deal. Clubs of a dozen or fewer members have lots of choices, up to and including private homes. Typically, a radio club will have a membership that is too large to be accommodated anywhere but a more formal meeting space, and that means casting about for a venue. With a demographic that includes aging baby boomers, a club definitely wants to have a meeting space that is accessible to those who might use wheelchairs or who are unable to climb stairs. You also want electricity, good lighting, and quiet space. Internet is a bonus, but if it is not available, it isn't exactly a deal-killer. The challenge is finding the space at an affordable price! Back in the day, meeting spaces were plentiful and free for the asking, especially to small public service or special interest clubs like ham radio groups. Venues might include the local school, church halls, service organization halls, and municipal or county buildings. It is not so easy today. The economy is down. Every venue is looking to raise extra cash, so the days of free meeting space might just be in the rear view mirror! And permanent space with room for a club station - wow, that is REALLY hard to find these days. I know that several clubs have either lost or given up their space for club meetings and stations due to the press for more revenue or other activities related to the needs of the landlord or host organization.

Apathy. This one drives club officials nuts. And it's nothing new, of course. There have always been club members who would rather jump out a window than put together a club program or write an article for the newsletter. But it's worse now than ever before, and it's related to number three on my list, which I'll tell you about shortly. Suffice it to say that there are all too many hams out there who think it is a major hassle to even join a club, much less actively participate.

Overworked club members. Yes, this one has always been around because some club members take on way more than their share of club duties. But the reason it is worse than ever before goes back to the world economic downturn that started in 2007. As the economic woes gathered, companies and organizations began trimming their workforces. Everyone seemed to be affected, no matter what the industry, and those who were still working felt lucky to have jobs. Those who lost their jobs, ham radio operators among them, tightened their belts and didn't spend anything extra on their radio hobby. Back at the workplace, those who still had jobs were doing the work of their old job plus that of a co-worker or two, since there were now not enough people on staff to get everything done. That meant longer, harder hours at work, and less time for amateur radio club activities. I have been a ham since 1967, and this is the first time I have been hearing about this phenomenon from other hams who feel too pressed to participate in club activities as they once did.

Recruiting. A club will fade away if it does not attract new members to replace those who die, lose interest, or move out of the area. Yet this aspect of club life is often left on the sidelines, going unnoticed until all of a sudden it seems as if there is no longer a reason to have regular club meetings. Recruiting is challenging in a world of worldwide internet connectivity with VoIP and other activities that mimic worldwide radio communication.

What can be done?

Remember that whatever needs doing, you do not have to do it all yourself. Leverage the manpower you do have by using the resources available at ARRL, which has lots of advice and ideas about clubs, club organization, and recruiting. Let's take a closer look at each challenge:

A strategy to make meeting space more available is to make your club stand out above and beyond the others who might be competing for the same space. For example, if you are meeting in the county law enforcement center, you can make a better case for meeting space because your club supports emergency communications, Skywarn training and weather spotting, and public service communications. You are making sure that your club's mission is aligned with that of the meeting space owner! No matter who hosts your meeting space, remember that it is wise to give back to your host in some way. If you are using a church hall for your meetings, perhaps the church needs volunteers for a clean up day or help at the church picnic. If you are lucky enough to get a special meeting room at a restaurant, everyone should buy a meal or at least spend a reasonable few bucks to make sure the restaurant owner turns a profit. The key? Be the best meeting space user you can be, and you will have more choices!

Apathy is hard to cure. In fact, I don't even care anymore.

Ha, ha, I am just kidding about that not caring part, of course! I look at the programs and activities as the "good stuff" associated with a radio club. The other more pedestrian activities like the business meeting don't really interest many of us. It's the program on the DXpedition or the special event station that draws club members to the meetings. If your club has apathy oozing out of every nook and cranny, I'm willing to bet that your club doesn't host good programs. Finding good presenters isn't a given; the really good ones make the rounds but have limited time and resources. Most of your club's programs and activities will ultimately come from within the club itself, and that means finding the right club member - one who is a really enthusiastic and positive go-getter - to do the going and getting. By that I mean they need to observe the membership, noting what areas of interest and expertise there are within the club. Then they have to recruit the guy who knows about antennas to give a talk. Apathy is something you chip away at by slowly building your circle of presenters. The more varied the topics, the better. Like the offerings on a menu at an excellent restaurant, there will soon be something for everyone at the club meetings.

The problem of club members who are stressed out by their work schedules will not be solved at the radio club, but I think it is reasonable for those members who are retired or who have a bit more time to step up to the plate and take on some of those extra club duties. We need to appreciate that those in their working years are trying to stuff 10 pounds of potatoes into a 5 pound bag these days, and are often also raising families with all of the obligations and demands on their time that those things require. Yes, those people are sometimes willing to take on club duties, but they are subject to "burn out" if they don't get a little help. Next time you are at your radio club meeting and something needs doing, raise your hand. Lead by example.

Recruiting is vital, but how does a club go about it? I have seen several once active and vital radio clubs fade into obscurity and finally disband. Others have been successful in maintaining and growing their membership numbers. What is the secret?

Well, there are several, really. You have to understand the world around you - no small feat, that. What it means is knowing that amateur radio has a lot of competition for hobbyists who want to experiment with electronics. It means understanding that on line video gaming, so-called massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), include elements of world-wide communication, cooperation, competition, scoring points, and community-building that are found in traditional amateur radio. There is, in other words, a lot of competition out there. Knowing what you are up against makes it easier to figure out how to package amateur radio and your radio club to better draw people in. If you want to make ham radio attractive to anyone under 100, you'd better start thinking of some interesting activities, outreach to school science teachers, high-profile cooperative ventures with other groups... I think you get the idea. My own local club drew some university students in by participating in tracking high-altitude balloon flights via APRS.

Another recruiting strategy is to offer Technician courses to the general public. We schedule ours right after a Skywarn course in the Spring, just before severe weather season kicks in. The classes are free, but the participants buy their own books. Graduates are invited to join our club. Education is one of the most important indicators of a club's health. Show me a club without an education program, and I'll show you a meeting room that will soon be available for a group of rock hounds or stamp collectors. Seriously, you have to offer classes or your club is toast. Again, check out the excellent resources on the ARRL website for tips on teaching and for resources like math help. Most importantly, say "YES!" when asked if you will be part of your club's education and training team.

Your job? Make getting on the air with amateur radio sound like it's at least as much fun as World of Warcraft®.

Go get 'em, tiger!

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 29 June 2011

2011-06-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Before I mention anything else, I want to thank all of you who expressed sympathy or had suggestions for me and my broken computer. Things are looking up this week, and most everything is back to normal. I did have everything properly backed up. In our radio club, this is called the "belt & suspenders theory". You wear both to make sure that if one fails, the other will still hold your pants up! It does pay to back up your data, since you just never know when something will quit working, whether hardware or software, in a system as complex as a computer. The idea of having backups extends to other parts of your ham shack, too. Having more than one radio can be a real relief when another has to be repaired at a factory service center a thousand miles away. Having a spare HT battery during a public service event is just plain smart. Engineers call this concept "redundancy", and there is certainly good reason for it when you need to protect a high-stakes system like the communications system in an airliner or the brakes in a car. Since you have a lot at stake with your personal computer's many files, you have an interest in protecting it with regular backups.

Turning to Field Day, we have an email from Ken, W6KHS, who came up with the idea of holding our own version of Field Day on the HANDIHAM Echolink conference:

You probably know by now that Field Day operations using the Handiham conference server was a total success. As this entity becomes more and more popular, repeaters and radio links using it will be more likely to receive emergency or life or death messages from situations when cell service is not available. I recommend that there be a twenty second break between transmissions so that there is room for emergency traffic to enter. If this information comes from you, it will be carved in stone, rather than from me. Thanks again for just being there.

73, Ken Schwartz W6KHS

Yes, Ken, you are right about that! Occasional longer pauses are in order considering that we are using a worldwide resource. Susi, WA0DKS, who worked behind the scenes to manage the Field Day event on the HANDIHAM conference and put in considerable time as net control station during the overnight hours, commented on the event, calling it a "rousing success". Podcast listeners will hear Susi tell them about it herself! Our thanks to Jim, WB4LBM and the other net control stations and participants who made this first-time event possible. In talking with Susi after the event, we concluded that the HANDIHAM conference really gained a lot of exposure worldwide. I just happened to tune in later in the day on Saturday and heard a YL who had been at a local Field Day station here in the eastern Twin Cities Metro area. She was driving back home and heard our net on the N0BVE repeater system. (Thanks, Don!) As I have said many times before, having Echolink or IRLP on a repeater really enhances its value to the community, and will make the difference between a dead, unused system and a vital, much-appreciated community resource.

Even though the contacts made on our system don't count for points, the whole idea of building our operating skills, making friends, showcasing amateur radio and technology, and building a stronger community while HAVING FUN just somehow seemed more important to me. I'll bet it did to you, too.

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 22 June 2011

2011-06-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

One of the movies I remember enjoying was "The Perfect Storm". A huge storm barreled up the Eastern United States seaboard and all the conditions aligned to turn it into a real disaster. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

This week seems a lot like that here in the ham shack. My main Windows computer suffered a failure and the Windows installation could not be repaired without a complete reinstallation. Although I regularly back everything up, reinstalling an operating system is still a huge and very disruptive process. Although you may have documents and the files you have created preserved, you have to reinstall all of your applications. That means all saved settings, passwords, usernames, the lot of it. So I am operating here on an old computer with limited resources. I cannot retrieve all of my old email and many contacts have disappeared. It is a huge mess and it will take a long time to get back to anything like an efficient office day.

But is it a perfect storm? Well, consider that yesterday I had to attend some staff training at our main office at Camp Courage. A thunderstorm had passed through several days before, knocking the W0ZSW remote base offline. That problem was fixed easily enough by restarting the rig control computer and setting the BIOS to always turn the machine on following a power failure. Turning to my main office computer, I found that it had been fried. So now my main office computer and my main home computer on which I produce all audio podcasts, do all audio editing, all my home email, the web publishing, and nearly everything else having to do with my computing life, all both down for the count.

Add to that the fact that we are into the busy season at camp and Courage Center, like other healthcare providers, is worried about an impending State government shutdown, and you can see that this is quite some storm!

So today's e-letter will have to be shorter. I will do my best to catch up, but ask that emails and phone calls be kept to a minimum.

I know this is disappointing, so to cheer you up, we will hear a special presentation by Matt Arthur, KA0PQW, later on in the audio podcast version of this week's e-letter. Matt sent me an audio lecture on sporadic-e propagation, and this is a perfect time of year to learn more about it and then look for some sporadic-e yourself!

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Letters

Anne, K1STM, wrote to let us know that TIPSnet is in summer shut down mode and will return on September 13. The final TIPSnet for this past season was yesterday, June 21.

Editor's note: I have lost a considerable amount of email. I am not sure when it will be recovered. If you have sent me something and it does not get acted upon, that is the reason. Please send only urgent email to wa0tda@arrl.net until further notice.

Troubleshooting 101: No column this week

Maybe if I ever figure out my computer problems, I'll write about that, HI!

Send your ideas about troubleshooting for possible inclusion in this column to:

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 15 June 2011

2011-06-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Wondering about this photo of me getting grabbed by a giant alligator? I've used it many times before on a variety of occasions, but this time it's especially apropos because time is flying by and there are some important dates that are approaching a little bit too fast for some of us!

Here we are halfway through the month of June already. That means we definitely have to pay attention to two important ham radio events, ARRL Field Day and the transition to the new The General Class question pool for all examinations after June 30. Field Day happens on the weekend of June 25 – 26. You still have time to volunteer with your local amateur radio club to help with planning, set up, and operation. I have operated many Field Day stations over the years and have had lots of fun. As I have mentioned in past years, what you want to do is find a club or group of other amateur radio operators who share your goals for the contest. If you are highly competitive and want to be in it for the points, you will want to pick a group with a no-nonsense approach to efficient operating. If you are like me and just want to have fun and really don't care about your score all that much, you are going to be pretty unhappy if you are pressed to work lots of stations instead of having fun socializing or perhaps helping to run the GOTA (get on the air) station. So if you don't care to rack up the points, be sure to make that clear to your other group members so that you are creating reasonable expectations when Field Day rolls around. The thing about Field Day is that it has always been part contest, part social get together, part emergency communications practice, and often times a good excuse for a family picnic. Since points are also given for getting a story about your Field Day operations in the media, the event also serves as an excellent way to showcase amateur radio to the general public. My own local club, the Stillwater Amateur Radio Association, has decided to locate its Field Day event in a local park and nature preserve. It offers the advantage of easy access and parking for the participants and general public, and it is also in an excellent, air-conditioned wheelchair-accessible building that will allow anyone to get right up to the stations and find out what is going on. Yes, it is true that we are not going to be using emergency power nor are we going to be setting up in an actual field. But our vision of Field Day includes getting as many people as possible to participate and to make it easy for the general public to stop by and see what we are doing. Some of our field locations in the past have been pretty rugged and visits by the general public were few and far between. Of course in those locations we were able to use portable power sources like generators and put up long wire antennas and even towers with beams. The thing about Field Day is that it is such a flexible event that you can pretty much make it what you want to be. So whether you are in it for the points or in it for the fun of just making an occasional contact and showcasing amateur radio, you can plan on having a great weekend of ham radio fun.

Following shortly on the heels of Field Day is July 1, the first day on which the new General Class question pool is in effect. If you have been studying for your General Class license, now, and I mean today, is when you have to start looking for a VE session so that you can take your exam under the old question pool. Although it is not a disaster if you miss this deadline and have to test under the new pool, there are new questions in the upcoming pool for which you haven't studied. It is far better to get the test out of the way ASAP so that you can start looking around for an HF radio and planning your new HF antenna system. If you have put off studying and are not sure whether to attempt the test or not, I suggest that you head for one of the online testing sites such as AA9PW.com and take some practice exams. I would say that if you pass two out of three times, you may be ready to take a chance on the real thing. If you are failing the tests by many points, forget it; you have to hit the books and take the test under the new question pool after you have had sufficient time to prepare.

There is one other thing happening on July 1 that probably only affects us here in Minnesota, and that is the prospect of a State government shutdown. We have a divided government here in Minnesota, and the legislature and governor have not been able to agree on a budget. This must be done by June 30, or at least part of the State government will have to shut down. Because our parent organization, Courage Center, provides services for people with disabilities, there will be a definite effect on us as an organization as there will be on other healthcare organizations and nursing homes here in the State of Minnesota. While the Handiham program does not depend on government funding, significant parts of other Courage Center programs do. In the upcoming weeks Courage Center is planning what to do in the event of a government shutdown and loss of funding for a portion of our clients. If you think about it, it makes sense to plan for the worst-case scenario while hoping for the best. It is already quite late and much planning has already taken place, but the fact of the matter is that no one knows exactly what will happen in a State government shutdown. We will keep you posted on anything that affects the Handiham program. Radio Camp will continue as planned, because our Handiham services are not government-funded.

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Letters

Anne, K1STM, writes about her sudden exit from last night's TIPSnet session:

In case you're wondering what happened, a very good friend's daughter called telling me her mother and guide dog were hit by a car while out for a walk. My friend, Nancy, is fine. Her dog, Simon, broke the bones in his foot and has a tender stomach. He is in the animal hospital, Nancy is home. They were at the end of a driveway near their home when a car suddenly started and backed up fast and hit them, throwing Nancy down and Simon under it. Nancy didn't have time to finish crossing the driveway and the driver apparently didn't look. We think Simon saved Nancy's life. What a night!

Anne, K1STM
TIPSnet Manager

Editor's note: We are sure happy to hear that your friend Nancy and her dog Simon are going to be okay. In some ways, even with the awareness of good pedestrian safety practices and better driver training, pedestrians and wheelchair users are at more risk than ever. There are a lot of distracted drivers out there, busy talking on cell phones or fiddling with the radio. If you drive, make operating your vehicle your first priority. If you are walking or using a wheelchair remember that even though you may have the right of way not all drivers are responsible and careful.

Troubleshooting 101: The junk box - is it obsolete?

In the course of a conversation I had with a Handiham member recently, the topic of spare electronic parts came up. That got me to thinking how the Handiham shop has changed over the years and how the traditional ham radio operator's junk box has changed right along with it. 20 years ago, when I started with the Handiham program, we had a very well stocked collection of vacuum tubes and discrete electronic components in our electronic repair shop. We had a cadre of around a half dozen dedicated volunteers led by chief volunteer Rex Kiser, W0GLU, and the repair shop was staffed several days a week. Back in those days, donated electronic equipment was usually tube-type and was generally considered to be "repairable" unless it had been dropped from a 10 story building or run over by a truck. Most of the components were discrete, meaning that if a capacitor went bad it was possible to trace it and replace it. The same went for vacuum tubes, a common source of failures in equipment of that vintage. Naturally it was practical and necessary to maintain a well-stocked collection of electronic parts and repair manuals for a variety of common and not so common pieces of amateur radio equipment. The shop volunteers had pretty much "seen it all" and were familiar with all of the common problems in the amateur radio equipment of that era. Some of the donated gear that came into the shop had been modified by its previous owner, but the shop volunteers were pretty much able to figure out just about anything and make it right. The old shop was in the basement of the Courage Center in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Golden Valley is adjacent to Minneapolis and thus was a relatively convenient location for volunteers to get to so that they could work in the shop. I don't remember exactly how many square feet of space was devoted to the shop, but I can tell you that there was a significant amount of both working space with large, well-let workbenches and another separate area with many shelves to store donated equipment, gear that was in the process of being repaired but waiting for something or other, and equipment that was ready to be sent out in the equipment loan program of the day.

Everything is so much different today. Most of our volunteers, including Rex, have become silent keys. It has been so very hard to lose so many good friends over the past two decades. In some ways, their passing reminds me of my father's working life and what has transpired since he passed away in the 1980s. Dad was a typewriter repair man, and in the last quarter century since he died, so has the typewriter, at least in any form in which he would recognize it. Technology has changed amateur radio just as radically as it has the typewriter business.

The amateur radio equipment of today is often not considered to be user-serviceable. Tiny integrated circuits and surface mount components are packed onto dual-surface circuit boards. It has become very, very difficult to trace and diagnose problems in this new equipment. When repairs are necessary, one simply packs the equipment up and sends it back to a service center for repair or replacement. Even at authorized service centers repairs usually consist of replacing entire sections of the radio because it is often times not practical to trace problems down to a single bad component. On the plus side, this new equipment with its solid-state surface mount technology is far more reliable than the old equipment and as a result will likely never need repairs.

So the Handiham repair shop has pretty much ceased to exist. About all that can be done these days is to diagnose at a very basic level, and that means simply giving a piece of donated equipment a "thumbs up" if it is working or a "thumbs down" if it is not. It would be impossible to maintain a supply of discrete parts or even modules for all of these new radios. Furthermore, the test equipment available to us is simply too basic to be used in any practical sense to repair serious problems. Since all of this change has happened to the Handiham shop, I think it is reasonable to expect that similar changes have taken place in your own workshop in the basement or the garage! You may have quite a collection of vacuum tubes, radio hardware, and discrete electronic components. I have some of that stuff myself, but I am hard-pressed to think of the last time I made use of any of it. When something needs fixing, it had better be something pretty basic like a dipole antenna or a manual antenna tuner if I am going to actually attempt any repairs myself. I don't own a single radio with a vacuum tube in it anymore and the radios that I do own have been extraordinarily reliable because of the solid-state design and good engineering decades of improvement have brought to the amateur radio manufacturers. So maybe it is time to take a look at my own ham radio junk box and try to decide what to save and what to get rid of. This, as you might expect, is not going to be an easy task. For one thing, some of the old parts and frankly "junk" that I have collected over the years will simply never be any good to anyone in any practical sense. That means disposing of it, but because we are more aware of environmental consequences these days, one may have to dispose of old electronic parts through an electronics recycler. The days of simply pitching everything into the trashcan are gone forever. Where I live, my local county government has a recycling center that will take electronic parts, so at least I know that if I do a little sorting I can dispose of them without too much hassle.

The hard part is really the sorting. How do you decide what to get rid of and what to keep? If there is one thing I have observed over the years about the typical ham radio operator, it is that most of us think that there will be a use for every single item in our junk box collection at some time in the future. This is where you have to think things through before you start and develop a strategy for the kind of repairs you intend to do in the future. For example, since I no longer own any vacuum tube gear, I am going to get rid of any vacuum tubes that I find in my collection. I probably only have one or two left, so that shouldn't be any problem. I have several tubs of unsorted oddball hardware. Yes, I could take a week off of work and burn some vacation time sorting through that junk, but why? Like as not, if I have a need for a particular piece of hardware, such as replacement stainless steel nuts and bolts for an antenna project, I am probably going to make a trip to the hardware store anyway rather than spending hours sorting through my tubs of hardware junk. Wire, if it is in actual usable lengths and properly rolled up and stored, can come in useful. You never know when you might want to put up another antenna or use the wire to add ground radials or to repair a dipole system. Coaxial cable deteriorates in the weather, so it never hurts to save a partially-used spool in your collection. That is the sort of practical stuff that one can save without feeling guilty about being a junk collector. On the other hand, those old carcasses of broken radios and military-surplus chassis that you had cannibalized for parts in 1975 really don't need to be in your parts collection anymore, do they? If you haven't used something in the last few years, you are probably never going to use it and you should think about getting rid of it. Yes, getting a table at a hamfest is one option, but I have never really understood the practicality of dragging 500 pounds of old junk to the high school gym, putting it on a table for people who don't need it anymore than you do to look at, and then stuffing it all back into the trunk of the car and hauling it all home again that afternoon. It's probably better to do some simple networking at your ham radio club meeting to see if anyone wants something from your collection and is willing to take it off your hands. I've always felt that it is better to repurpose than throw away, but sometimes the only practical thing to do is to simply make the decision to clean up the junk box and the workshop and be done with it!

What should the workshop and parts collection of the 21st century ham look like?

Well, it's going to be pretty lean and mean, that's for sure. You are going to have a good tool collection and some basic test instrumentation, just as you have had in the past. You are not going to have boxes and boxes of assorted electronic junk and hardware that you are never going to use. It is okay to have a few basic components that are actually useful, such as connectors, fuses, and common hardware. Think about it: if you are really going to build one of those projects you see in one of the amateur radio publications, you are going to go to a company like Digi- Key and simply order the parts you need online or by calling on the phone. In fact, that is probably what you have to do already even if you have shelves and shelves and boxes and boxes of old hardware and electronic parts already in your collection, because none of that old junk is going to do you any good in the new project anyway. Furthermore, having lots of old unnecessary junk around can actually get in the way of enjoying building a new project. It is simply a fact that modern technology is going to require fewer repairs than old technology and the repairs that must be done will probably have to be done in a factory service center anyway. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. If you are one of those amateur radio hobbyists who are interested in vintage equipment, it may be practical and necessary to maintain a stock of vacuum tubes. Most of us have newer equipment and, if you are like me, too much old junk lying around that you will never use. I have been an amateur radio operator for over four decades, so I have had plenty of time to collect a sizable junk box. Since at one time I did own vacuum tube equipment and user-repairable radios, it made sense to have a collection of parts. Today those radios are long gone and replaced with modern equipment, but the junk box still has those old parts. I know that I am not alone in having this kind of collection in my workshop. Over the years in my work with the Handiham System I have run into some mind-boggling collections that have taken up entire basements and then some. Some people are just collectors, I guess! I prefer the lean and mean approach to the modern ham radio workshop. That's why I've been paring down my junk collection and concentrating on keeping just what I need to do regular maintenance on my antenna systems and to do simple repairs. If I'm going to build the project I'm going to order new parts and get on with it. That is the practical, modern approach to the ham radio workshop.

Send your ideas about troubleshooting for possible inclusion in this column to:

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 08 June 2011

2011-06-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Strap on your tool belt! It's time for...

Troubleshooting 101: Your toolkit

Having the right tool for the repair at hand is important. Life being what it is, you never know what you might be called upon to fix, and being an amateur radio operator most definitely opens up possibilities that the average homeowner will not encounter! While a typical household toolkit will include hand tools like a few sets of pliers, a hammer, perhaps a wood saw and a hacksaw, screwdrivers and some wrenches among other simple tools, the ham's toolkit will add a few tools related to electronics.

When I was growing up, my dad made a living by selling and repairing office machines, particularly typewriters. That work was mostly dealing with mechanical devices, and dad had plenty of tools specific to the job. There were lots of screwdrivers, specialty pliers and other hand tools designed to get at small parts in tight places. Typewriters of the day were both mechanical and electric. Mechanical calculators were such an amazing conglomeration of cogs and tiny moving parts that I still stand in amazement when I think of how the clattering devices could come up with solutions to math problems! Anyway, dad had collected and organized all of his tools and his workspaces to complete diagnoses and repairs on these machines as efficiently as possible.

It takes time and experience to build a workshop and collect the right tools for an activity like amateur radio. I started decades ago with some of my own hand tools, like wrenches, which I needed to do antenna work. I didn't want to have to borrow my dad's tools. Not having much to spend as a teenager, I bought a set of "Globemaster" wrenches. They were stamped "Made in India" and I still have some of them today. I couldn't even begin to guess how many miles they have on them just going up and down towers! Of course I acquired a multimeter from Radio Shack when I felt that I could really afford to splurge. A cheap SWR bridge of the type used with CB radios worked for my antenna needs, and dad helped me choose a soldering pencil and showed me how to correctly heat and flow the solder over a clean joint to make a solid connection. Dad used a propane torch for some of his parts soldering, so I learned how to use that to make outdoor connections, soldering my antenna wires.

Over the years I have collected lots of tools. I have a frequency counter, an oscilloscope, a transistor tester, several multimeters - both analog and digital, SWR meters, a logic probe, a frequency generator with selectable waveforms, lots of hand and power tools, and those old Globemaster wrenches. It's worth noting that most of these tools really are not what I call "core" tools. Using an oscilloscope is a rare thing for me, but the small hand tools like side cutters and screwdrivers get used all the time. That's partly because they have to do service in the repair of typical household items. You can get started building your tool collection logically by getting a good set of screwdrivers, nut drivers, and pliers, including needle nose pliers. You will need a couple of side cutters, probably a miniature pair and a larger pair for cutting and stripping wires. A multimeter is a definite plus as an early purchase, because you will use it for household repairs as well as for radio work. Many of them include an audible continuity tester, something that really comes in handy when checking coaxial cables for shorts and open circuits. Good quality electrical tape, such as that made by 3M, is a useful item to have in your toolbox. And speaking of a toolbox, you might want to have several of those as well. I like the smaller plastic ones with a couple of trays to help keep things sorted out. A bigger metal one may be the best bet for tools like hammers, saws, and plumbing tools.

One thing you will learn by experience is which tools to put in a small toolbox to take along on most of your projects. When you get good at doing simple repairs, you likely have gotten the hang of grabbing the right tools before setting out for the garage or back yard, or the Field Day site. If you have ever been working on a Field Day antenna and needed a wrench that you forgot to bring, you know how frustrating a poorly-stocked toolbox can be. Going to Field Day? Why not start a checklist so that you are sure you'll have all the tools you need?

Don't forget about safety! Whether you are working on projects around the house or yard or at the Field Day site, you will still sometimes need gloves or eye protection - and yes, even if you are blind you do need eye protection. Some basic safety gear to consider as you build your tool collection might be:

	Safety glasses or goggles - use for lots of stuff around the house, and for antenna work or during soldering.
	Gloves - great for hand protection while gardening or installing masts!
	Extension cords with third wire for ground - help to prevent electric shock when using power tools.
	Hearing protection - perfect for saving your hearing while vacuuming the carpets or while using power tools.
	Hard hat - protects your noggin while trimming trees or while working on a tower project when someone drops a wrench from 30 feet up.
	Ground fault interrupters - excellent shock protection!

Proceed logically with your tool collecting. Acquire the usual household tools and safety gear first, then add the meters and other less often used gear later on. If your capabilities in tool use are limited, start simple and learn what works for you and what doesn't. Asking for help through your local radio club is usually an option, and actually makes a lot of sense for anyone, because there will be times when you only need some esoteric and expensive tool once, so why not ask a fellow club member who owns one to help you out? Everyone should have at least one pair of hearing protectors around the house, but it is perfectly understandable if you don't care to own a chain saw or an oscilloscope.

Know your limitations. If you cannot see to use some power tools safely, you can concentrate on building a collection of hand tools that you can use independently. If you are unable to lift and climb, you are not going to need a climbing harness. This is not rocket science, but it does bear mentioning because we don't always know our own limitations without trying something first. This is a very individual thing, so I recommend keeping an open mind and trying new things - but with someone experienced in operating that new power tool or doing soldering. Having a spotter available during a project like using a table saw or climbing a tower is essential. I recall one of my ham radio friends who severed his fingers with a power saw. Thankfully there was help nearby! Using tools when you are tired or not feeing well, or - heaven forbid - when you have been drinking alcohol, is a prescription for disaster.

Having a good, basic set of tools that you are comfortable using should be your goal. Now, let's get out there and fix something!

Send your ideas about troubleshooting for possible inclusion in this column to:

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Letters

Looking for a TS-480SAT? Here's your chance!

Tom Behler, KB8TYJ, writes:

I think I'm just about ready here to take the plunge and order a Kenwood TS-590S HF transceiver. Before doing so, however, I am going to have to sell one of my TS480's. You know: It's the old "radio in, radio out" principle.

So, here's what I've got, and what I'm proposing:

TS-480 SAT, which includes the mobile mounting bracket and all original accessories plus the VGS1 voice guide, and a 500 HZ CW filter. I also have a number of Braille and electronic documentation files on the radio, including the manual, a key-chart, menu list, and other assorted goodies. I bought this TS480 slightly used back in the Spring of 2008, and it has served me well. It is in good working order, and I've never had a problem with it.

I'm asking $900 for the entire package, and that will include shipping within the USA. If the VGS1 is not needed, I'll take it out of the unit, and drop the price down to $850. I would prefer payment in the form of either a postal money order, or certified cashier's check. I have advertised the rig in other places, but really would prefer it to go to a fellow blind ham, or other Handiham member who could take full advantage of its great accessibility. If you have questions, or want more specifics, please e-mail me personally at:
tombehler@gmail.com

Blind users: Call for assistance with Elecraft K3 screenreader project

The Elecraft K3 has earned a reputation as an excellent, high-performance 160 through 6 meter rig. Wouldn't it be great if there was a software program to collect data from the radio and return it in a blind-accessible format? Well, listen to what Mike, NF4L, says:

Dear Handihams,

I'm Mike Reublin NF4L. I have written a program that collects the responses that an Elecraft K3 can return, and puts it on the computer screen, so a user's screen reader can say it. I'm in late testing, and it was suggested that some of the Handiham members might be interested in helping me test. And to use it when it's released.

If this is of interest to you, how can I make the request to the sight impaired community?

This has the backing of Elecraft, and it's free.

73, Mike NF4L

Can you help Mike with this project? If so, he would like to hear from you. Contact him via email at nf4l at nf4l dot com.

Please feel free to share this story with the blind ham community. Let's get the word out to as many potential beta testers as we can!

Handiham World for 01 June 2011

2011-05-31T16:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Last week's e-letter delivery was a mess, for which we apologize. For reasons still unknown, the Internet hiccupped last Wednesday and the Freelists.org website was unreachable. I am not sure what caused the outage, but I did notice that some other websites were unreachable as well, and that seems to point to some problem with a domain name server, which could be anywhere. Although I had opened the Freelists admin page, everything had quit functioning and the situation did not change for the rest of the day. We decided to extract the email addresses from the web page HTML, which was by then the only option. My son Will, KC0LJL, wrote a small program to do the extraction from a command line, and we set up a new Handiham World mailing list on our own Handiham server. I did run into a glitch, though - it did not seem to be delivering to all of the addresses on the list. Since that problem has not been resolved to date, we are returning this week to the now-functioning Freelists mail server.

Of course when the e-letter does not go out, I start to hear from subscribers. One thing to remember is that announcements about service will be posted on Handiham.org as soon as it is possible to do so. Reading the updates there will be faster than trying to get through to me since the weekly e-letter is always published on the website prior to its release via email. The audio podcast was available on time as usual and was not affected.

Anyway, we hope the Freelists site stays up and running - it has been really reliable, so this past week's outage was quite unusual - and we will be able to publish according to our usual schedule. Remember, if something does not seem to be working, check the website for possible news. If you do have to report a problem, please email me instead of using the phone. That will help me organize my messages and make sure I get back to you effectively, since I can mark the messages as "tasks" to be completed in Outlook.

And a special note to Avery, K0HLA: Maybe if we offered the e-letter via Morse code, it would get through these adverse Internet conditions!

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Help us win the Dr. Dave Challenge!

Nancy can take credit card donations via the toll-free number, 1-866-426-3442, or accept checks sent to our Courage Center Handiham address:

Courage Handiham System
3915 Golden Valley Road
Golden Valley, MN 55422

Be sure to put a note saying "Dr. Dave Challenge" somewhere in the envelope or on the note line of the check.

Thank you so much for your support!

Strap on your tool belt! It's time for...

Troubleshooting 101: Station list but no connect in Echolink.

It's happened to virtually all Echolink users when trying to set up the application on a computer for the first time. You get the Echolink application downloaded and installed, you have your log in credentials all squared away with the Echolink administrators, and you are excited to get Echolink logged on for the first time. Up comes the station list, and you are all set to go!

Or are you?

Well, maybe not. Let's take a look at a typical screenshot. Here we see that Echolink has opened the station list in index view, which is a typical first screen. At this point, we have a station list, and we want to try connecting to one of them to check to see if everything is working.

Now it is time to open the "Find" dialog and search for ECHOTEST. There will be several stations in conference with the test server, so keep repeating your search until you find ECHOTEST on its own line, where it is not shown to be in conference. The keyboard command to open the find dialog is CTRL-F. A complete list of Echolink keyboard commands is listed on the Handiham website:
http://www.handiham.org/node/286

Highlight the ECHOTEST line and press the ENTER key. Echolink will connect to the test server and you will hear a voice welcome and you will be invited to record an audio test. That way you can check your levels and make sure your audio is good before making an actual contact. We won't go into all of that, because what we want to do is follow through on what happens when ECHOTEST does not connect and instead times out.

One option is to run a test using the Tools menu in Echolink. Open Tools, then go to "Firewall/Router Tester". Select and run the test, which will probably show something like this "fail" message. It will almost always indicate a UDP test failure. The problem is generally traceable to the firewall in your home network's router. It will be necessary to go into the administration pages of the router and forward the ports, the instructions for which may be found on the Echolink.org website. The menus and procedures vary from model to model and brand to brand, so the Echolink site will point you to Portforward.com, which has an extensive list of configuration instructions by brand and model.

But, as the Echolink site points out, it may not be possible to access the router. Either you do not have administrator credentials or you do not have the computer skills to make these configuration changes. This is a common problem when using a public WI-FI network. In that case, you should know how to use a public proxy.

Our first step is to open the setup menu with ALT-E or by clicking the little crossed tools icon with the mouse. Here you see my System setup screen.

Use the mouse or your screenreader skills to choose the "Proxy" tab. Here you see that I am connected via "Direct Connect" to the Echolink system and not through a proxy:

I want to try a public proxy, so I will click the "Choose Public Proxy" radio button:

Next, find and press the "Refresh List" button. Once that is done, the pull down menu is used to reveal a list of available public proxies. Choose one by highlighting it and find and press the "Ok" button.

The application will then reload the station list.

Next, find and try connecting to ECHOTEST as before:

If you have connected to a public proxy correctly, the connection to ECHOTEST will now succeed and you can test your audio:

Once you have completed any audio adjustments, you may disconnect from ECHOTEST and begin making real contacts:

Of course we would like to hear you on the Handiham daily Echolink net. Our preferred conference server is HANDIHAM, which you can find with the search function the same way you found ECHOTEST.

Here are some things to know about using public proxies:

	Just because you connected successfully to a public proxy one day does not mean that it will be available the next day. Another station may have grabbed it before you, or the proxy operator may have taken the proxy down for some reason. That means that you may need to go though the proxy setup each time you get on, but it will be pretty obvious when the Echolink application fails to load the station list. If the proxy you used yesterday is available today, Echolink will connect and load the station list. If it is not available, you will get an error message and you can try a different proxy. I have had times when the same proxy worked several days in a row, and other times when I had to try two or three different ones just to get one that worked.
	Some proxy owners time-limit connections. After all, this is a public service and it would not be good for one user to hog the proxy all day long. Good operating practice is to use the public proxy only as long as you need it so that another station can have a chance.
	A public proxy is like a seat on a city bus. You might have a favorite seat if you ride the bus to work every day, but it should not be too surprising if sometimes when you get on the bus "your" seat is already taken!
	Like the seat on the bus, only one station can use a public proxy at a time. When the station using the proxy disconnects, the proxy is then available for another user.
	A public proxy bypasses firewalls and is easy to use once you figure out the simple procedure for finding and selecting a new proxy.

I hope to hear you on the Handiham net soon!

Send your ideas about troubleshooting to wa0tda@arrl.net for possible inclusion in next week's edition of your weekly e-letter.

Free iBlink Radio application for Android puts radio stations and audio at your fingertips - and it is super-easy!

There is nothing more frustrating than a hard to use mobile application. Some of the "do-everything" audio players have pretty steep learning curves precisely because they try to do everything. Since those applications are designed for the general public, they have to have attractive interfaces - and that can further confuse the user. Wouldn't it be nice if someone would release an easy to navigate audio application designed for blind and low vision users, or for anyone who might have problems navigating the small touch screen on a mobile device?

Well, they have! It's from the most excellent folks at Serotek, who make the free SA Mobile application called "iBlink Radio" available on the Android Market. Downloading and installation is a breeze, and the screens come up in easy to read and intuitively navigable plain text links. The default is bold white text on a black background, which is good for reading and saves battery power.

"But", you say sadly, "I have an iPhone® and not an Android phone, so I must be out of luck!"

No, you are not out of luck! In fact, you can just go to the iTunes App Store and search for iBlink Radio, which is also available for your iPod Touch®, iPhone®, and iPad®! It is also a free app, and please do not confuse it with the "iBlink" app, which is NOT the same as the iBlink Radio app.

The content is designed to be of interest to blind and low vision users, so you will find easy links to ACB Radio and blindness related podcasts, but there is still some time for fun with old time radio. Give it a try, and let our friends at Serotek know how much you like it.

Handiham World for 25 May 2011

2011-05-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Photo: Larry Huggins, KA0LSG, Handiham volunteer. Hap Holly, KC9RP, is in the background since our Handiham booth and the RAIN Report booth were neighbors.

Photo: Volunteer John Pedley, N0IPO, hangs the banner at the back of the booth because he is the tallest of our crew and can reach the hooks.

Photo: Larry, KA0LSG, John, N0BFJ, and Ken, KB3LLA, on booth duty.

Thanks to all who stopped by to visit us at Hamvention® 2011 and to volunteers John Hoenshell, N0BFJ, Larry Huggins, KA0LSG, John Pedley, N0IPO, and Ken Silberman, KB3LLA, Handiham Radio Club President, for staffing the booth. We'll have a full report later, but I also wanted to thank DARA for their generous support in awarding the Handiham System a check for $500 and to John Hoenshell, N0BFJ, for his financial support of the Hamvention trip that enables us to be there.

The ARRL Youth Forum, conducted by Carole Perry, WB2MGP, was a must-see, because our young people are the future of amateur radio - we all know that - but I like listening to the poised young folks telling us about the aspects of ham radio that they have mastered. And do you know what? I feel positively uplifted by their energy and enthusiasm for science and technology, as well as for public service. I know the world will be better off with people like them in our future.

We are giving a special shout out to 10 year old Amanda Lee, KD0JAY, for her excellent presentation about "People with Disabilities and Ham Radio" and Handihams at the Youth Forum! Hopefully a video of her presentation will be available on YouTube soon. Amanda told us that she was inspired by Gerry, WB6IVF, who had been mentioned in our past columns as the owner of the "Unseen Bean" coffee roasting business.

Photo: Shirley Roberts, N8LX, and Lynn Roberts, N8LXK, at the Handiham booth.

Shirley Roberts, N8LX, is a celebrity this year, because she won the Dayton Hamvention® Amateur of the Year award. She and her husband Lee, N8LXK, stopped by and paid us an extended visit at the Handiham booth. Shirley and her many accomplishments in amateur radio public service are featured in the Richard Fisher, KI6SN, Public Service column in the May 2011 CQ Magazine. Shirley is active in many ham radio organizations, including the ACB radio club, QCWA, Handihams, ARRL, and, of course, SKYWARN® as a liaison.

Speaking of CQ, when I stopped by the CQ/Worldradio booth to visit with publisher Rich Moseson, W2VU, he pointed out a giant reproduction of the Worldradio June 2011 cover, and there I was, right on the front. The photo was taken by Avery Finn, K0HLA, and shows a smiling Pat Tice wielding that familiar Handiham coffee mug. The photo accompanies a story about how I have completed 20 years with the Courage Center Handiham System in May, 2011. Be sure to read it! Bob Zeida, N1BLF, writes that he should have the audio version ready in time for the Friday Handiham Audio Digest, available to our blind members.

Wandering around is always fun. The main arena section has a very high roof and hosts some familiar manufacturers like Kenwood, Icom, and MFJ. In this photo taken from the stands, we look down at the MFJ booth with its many tall vertical antennas.

I make no secret of the fact that I like my own Icom IC-7200. Imagine my surprise to see it dressed up in a camo paint job at the Icom booth! We have mentioned in the past that the IC-7200 comes with speech frequency readout installed. Kudos to Icom for including this accessibility feature instead of making it an option.

Photo: Stack of three IC-7200 transceivers, one in plain black, one in army green, and one in camo paint.

What a great show it was again this year! Now that we are all jazzed up from all the new ham radio stuff we saw at Dayton, it's time to roll up our sleeves and get busy with the summer antenna work and ARRL Field Day!

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Read more or find the audio podcast on handiham.org.

Handiham World for 18 May 2011

2011-05-18T11:38:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Hamvention® 2011 - Visit the Handihams!

Handihams planning for Dayton HAMVENTION®.

Image: Pat, WA0TDA, peeks out from behind a display at the Handiham booth during a previous Hamvention.

It is hard to believe that it is the month of May already, and that means that it is nearly time for the biggest and best ham radio get-together, Hamvention(TM) in Dayton, Ohio. Thanks to support from a generous donor, John Hoenshell, N0BFJ, who underwrites much of the expense, we are once again able to have a booth on the Hamvention floor. If you are planning to attend, and we certainly hope that you are, please stop by booth SA0330 and pay us a visit. SA=Silver Arena. Hamvention begins on Friday, May 20th and runs through the weekend of the 21st and 22nd.

As you might expect, we are busy getting ready for the big show.

When you stop by the Handiham booth, you will be able to sign our guest register. We always have a few extra chairs if you want to sit down and talk with us for while. If you are a wheelchair user, you will find that we always place our display table at the very back of the booth, which allows you to bring your wheelchair into our area and get out of the main traffic stream in the aisle.

Ken, KB3LLA, Handiham Radio Club President, will be at the booth whenever he isn't out somewhere on the show floor finding out about all the new amateur radio gear. I will be there, as will Handiham volunteers John Hoenshell, N0BFJ, Larry Huggins, KA0LSG, and John Pedley, N0IPO. If you hang around too much, we will put you to work as a greeter and Handiham representative!

So consider the welcome mat out and waiting for you. We hope you can stop by and see us in person, but if not, we are going to try to get on the Handiham EchoLink Net on Saturday and on the same node and frequency at other times throughout the day on Saturday. This all depends on whether or not we are able to get a reliable Internet connection, so no promises.

I hope to see you there!

Patrick Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net
Handiham Manager

Handiham World for 11 May 2011

2011-05-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

What time is it? Think about that awhile and we'll come back to it shortly.

This morning while having my coffee and listening to the radio – NPR – I heard some guy who's a technology specialist talking about how standalone devices are becoming obsolete because they are being replaced by smart phones and tablet computers that do all kinds of stuff for us. I thought it was strange that he forgot to mention the standalone camera, at least the non-professional snapshot or low-quality video camera, which is certainly being superseded by the built-in cameras in smart phones. He was on the mark when he mentioned that paper address books are becoming obsolete. Most people who carry cell phones these days probably have their contacts in the phone's address book. Smart phones and tablet computers might just win the day over standalone e-readers, too. Standalone music players are taking a hit as smart phones become more convenient for playing everything from audio podcasts to audio books. Accessibility features on these multifunction devices are getting better and better, and it is my belief that it is only a matter of time before most accessibility features are simply built in to every consumer smart phone or tablet right off the shelf.

Now where was I? Oh yes; we were talking about how many different things these new smart devices do. They are book readers, take pictures, take notes in both text and audio, record videos, surf the web, handle e-mail and texting with aplomb, make telephone calls (yes, some of us still do use the telephone), and those are only the mainstream common functions of such devices. Applications are being developed at such a rapid pace that it would be a full-time job just to do an overview of all of the specialized functions and tools that are becoming available daily.

Anyway, the point of the story on the radio was that these multifunction smart devices are making other standalone devices obsolete. As an amateur radio operator, I have grown used to self-styled technology pundits predicting the imminent demise of ham radio at the hands of new technology. Of course ham radio is stronger and more popular than ever, and because of its propensity to attract a certain number of techie geeky people to its ranks, it has been able to shoot out some tendrils into the new technologies that the pundits thought would bring about its demise. Take, for example, the smart phone. Both the Android and the iPhone platforms are ham radio friendly thanks to the availability of the EchoLink application. While I may be interested in carrying a handheld radio if it is small and convenient enough, I know that I can access a huge interconnected world-wide resource of repeater systems through my smart phone. Thus, ham radio will come along with me and be available more times and in more places than it ever has been before. Sure, my preference might be to use the handheld radio if I am taking a walk in the park and can access my local repeater. On the other hand, that same handheld radio might be nearly useless on a road trip where repeater resources are more distant and when one has to constantly fiddle around trying to find the right frequency and tone combinations. The smart phone EchoLink application eliminates those problems and allows me to stay connected with my friends on my preferred local repeater.

Here is a test that shows how the sands of technology are shifting under our feet. Ask the simple question "what time is it?"

You might be surprised at the answer, because it depends a lot on how people use and perceive technology. If the person you ask wears a watch and looks at it to find out the time, you are probably dealing with an older guy like me. If the person pulls out a smartphone and looks at that to determine the time, you probably are dealing with a younger person - probably someone in their 20's or younger. You know who was ahead of the curve on this one? Avery, K0HLA! I remember Avery telling me several years ago when we were both working at the old Handiham headquarters office at Courage Center about how he just used his cell phone when he needed to find out the time and how he thus did not need to wear a watch. There are probably lots of amateur radio operators who are following that very trend line in spite of their, shall we say "advanced years". Remember that to a teenager even those who are past their mid-20s are geezers! Ham radio operators do like technology and many of us enjoy being early adopters who like to learn new things and try new things. I have to confess that since I traded in my old clunky cell phone with its tiny hard to read screen even I have found myself checking the phone to get the correct time. I don't think I'm quite ready to give up either my wristwatch or my handheld radio, though.

Photo: Trendsetter Avery, K0HLA, operates CW at Handiham headquarters. Notice that neither arm has a wristwatch!

If I might be so bold as to suggest how you should live your life, try to be open-minded and non-judgmental about some of these new technologies. That kind of mental attitude opens the road to using new technologies in ways that can really enhance your amateur radio experience. Now all I have to do is catch up with Avery on telling time!

Pat Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

Strap on your tool belt! It's time for...

Troubleshooting 101: A quick diode check.

This week we use a multimeter for a quick and easy check of a power diode.

Suppose you have a simple power supply with discrete diodes. For the uninitiated who have never built a small power supply, discrete diodes are not diodes that can keep a secret. A discrete diode is a single component solid-state device, often times a small plastic cylinder similar in form factor to a resistor with two wire leads, one coming out of each and of the small plastic cylinder. The diode is marked with some kind of polarity marking to indicate which lead belongs to the anode side and which belongs to the cathode. If a power supply fails and the fuse blows or the breaker trips within the power supply, this indicates a condition where too much current is being drawn and a prime suspect is one of the diodes. Often times you can check power supply diodes without taking them out of the circuit. All you have to do is use your multimeter to run a few simple tests.

Of course before you do anything with the power supply that you are going to be working on, what do you have to do? Unplug it and be darned sure that it is not powered up or connected to any other piece of equipment, that's what! In addition, any power supply with large filter capacitors might require the discharge of those capacitors to ground in order to make the supply safe to work on. If memory serves me right we have talked about discharging filter capacitors before. In small power supplies I use a metal screwdriver with a clip lead attached between it and the chassis ground to discharge filter capacitors. Working on this stuff is something best done with someone who has a bit of experience if you are entirely new to troubleshooting power supplies. Anyway, assuming everything is unplugged, disconnected, and discharged, you can go ahead and locate the power diodes. If they are discrete diodes, you can run a simple test with your multimeter's ohmmeter function.

Put the multimeter into the ohms times one position. This is generally the best setting to do simple tests with solid-state devices. Remember that everything must be powered off and discharged not only to prevent electric shock but to protect your multimeter. We want absolutely no voltages to be present in the circuitry under test. With the multimeter in the ohms times one position, place one lead on the cathode side of the diode and the other lead on the anode side. Note the reading, then reverse the two leads. If the diode is good, there should be a significant difference in the reading between the two tests. If the diode measures about the same in both tests, it is probably shorted. You cannot always assume that something else in the circuitry is not causing these readings, so it may be necessary to disconnect one lead of the diode from the circuitry and run the tests again. A good way to practice the ohmmeter test for diodes is to just use spare diodes from the junk box. That way you can test each diode in your parts drawer without having to worry about any interference to the readings from other components that might be in parallel with the diode under test. A good diode will read maybe three-quarter scale or so in one direction and then when you reverse the multimeter leads you will get almost no reading in the other direction. A shorted diode will read almost full-scale in both directions. I recommend practicing on some diodes selected from a knowledgeable radio club member's junk box with some help getting the multimeter set up right and learning to hold the leads in place or learning to work with clip leads.

I have used a multimeter many times over the years to perform simple tests to figure out if transistors – usually power transistors of some type – or power supply diodes were good or shorted. Of course these days discrete components are getting somewhat more difficult to find because transistors and diodes may be part of an integrated circuit. The simple ohmmeter test is only effective for discrete components, and if you suspect a bad power supply integrated circuit your only recourse may be to test by direct replacement or, if the circuit breaker in the equipment under test does not keep tripping, by testing voltages at the different pins on the integrated circuit. I have to admit that this is something I would probably not look forward to because these types of components tend to be small and subject to damage if you slip with a multimeter probe and short something out while using the voltmeter section of your multimeter and testing the circuit while it is powered up. Needless to say, all sorts of things can go wrong when you are testing a circuit under power. Not only can you damage the circuit even further, but you can potentially damage your multimeter if you forget to set the right mode and range for the circuit under test, or of course you could get an electric shock!

An interesting radio club "show and tell" project might be how to use a multimeter for some of these simple tests like the diode test. Remember, we are only testing the bigger diodes, not the tiny small signal diodes because you may damage them by trying to test them with an ohmmeter.

Send your ideas about troubleshooting to wa0tda@arrl.net for possible inclusion in next week's edition of your weekly e-letter.

Handiham World for 04 May 2011

2011-05-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

It's May, and for many amateur radio clubs, the end of the regular meeting schedule. The summertime months are filled with other activities, and ham radio meetings are not really right up there on our list of priorities. When the weather finally gets nice, we want to head outdoors and forget about meetings.

That said, it does not mean that amateur radio disappears in the summertime. Consider the following ham radio highlights:

	May and June are the traditional months when the six meter band perks up and band openings make it a lot easier to collect 6 meter QSOs toward "WAS", or "Worked All States". Listen on 50.125 MHz USB. Wikipedia tells us more: The 6-meter band is a portion of the VHF radio spectrum allocated to amateur radio use. Although located in the lower portion of the VHF band, it nonetheless occasionally displays propagation mechanisms characteristic of the HF bands. This normally occurs close to sunspot maximum, when solar activity increases ionization levels in the upper atmosphere. During the last sunspot peak of 2005, worldwide 6-meter propagation occurred making 6-meter communications as good as or in some instances and locations, better than HF frequencies. The prevalence of HF characteristics on this VHF band has inspired amateur operators to dub it the "magic band". In the northern hemisphere, activity peaks from May through early August, when regular sporadic E propagation enables long-distance contacts spanning up to 2,500 kilometers (1,600 mi) for single-hop propagation. Multiple-hop sporadic E propagation allows intercontinental communications at distances of up to 10,000 kilometers (6,200 mi). In the southern hemisphere, sporadic E propagation is most common from November through early February. Read the entire article on Wikipedia; just search for "6-meter band".
	Dayton Hamvention® is in May, and will attract tens of thousands. Get details on Hamvention.org. This year's show is May 20-22. The summer may bring other shows and fests, or perhaps ham radio flea markets near you!
	ARRL Field Day is the last full weekend in June, which turns out to be the 25th and 26th this year. There will be many clubs, small groups, and individuals participating. Find a club or group with Field Day goals that fit your own idea of having fun, and go for it! You can always run your own single op station if you have an independent streak.
	Ducting and Sporadic E propagation can come and go all summer long, and are usually surprising when they pop up unexpectedly. You may hear a two meter repeater from hundreds of miles away, or even farther. Communications beyond the line of sight are possible.
	Public service events like parades and races are common in the summer months. They may provide opportunities for you and your radio club to provide volunteer communications.
	Summer ham radio events like hidden transmitter hunts can combine being out of doors with ham radio direction finding fun.
	Radio Camp! It's August 8 through 23. Even if you can't attend camp yourself, you can work us on the air and get a QSL card.
	Vacation time? Take ham radio along. If you are taking a road trip, learn to use the tone search feature in your radio so that you will be able to find the repeater subaudible tones. The ARRL Repeater Directory is a must, too.
	Skywarn! ARES®! The hot, humid summer days bring those dew points into the danger range and severe weather is a real possibility. Generally the severe weather season begins in the southern United States in the Spring and migrates northward, reaching the northern states in late Spring and early summer. Severe weather or other emergency situations can happen anytime, though. Amateur radio operators can make the difference in providing vital communications services.
	Antenna projects: The best time is in the summer, not during a sleet storm in November or a blizzard in January. Get those antenna projects out of the way when the gettin' is easy!
	Back indoors... Yes, there will be some days when it is hot and humid outdoors, or raining buckets. Might as well get the ham shack cleaned up or work on a kit or other building project.
	Those lazy days on the deck or patio? Spend at least part of them studying for your license upgrade. You folks studying for General will have to test using the old pool before July 1.

With all the potential ham radio stuff going on in the summertime, who needs radio club meetings? Take some notes on the things you do all summer and you can give a report at your September radio club meeting: "What I did on my summer vacation."

For Handiham World, I'm...

Pat Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

Strap on your tool belt! It's time for...

Troubleshooting 101: Technology and obsolete media - some further thoughts.

Last week we posed this dilemma:

Help! My old computer died - and it really wasn't that much of a surprise, since it was nearly 10 years old and didn't really owe me anything. I love my new, faster replacement machine, but recently I decided that I needed to set up the memories in my trusty HT, and two things were pretty much deal-killers:

My rig software was installed on the old machine, which is now dead, and the original installation disk is a 3.5" floppy. My new machine doesn't have a floppy drive!
The interface cable that came with the rig uses a DB-9 serial interface, but my new machine doesn't have one of those, either.

What can I do?

Several of you wrote to remind us that USB sticks are really coming down in price and going up in storage capacity. They make good substitutes for old media like floppy discs and can easily substitute for compact discs or DVDs when you are using netbook computers that don't have DVD/CD drives. In addition, you can buy USB extension cables and "hubs" that add multiple USB jacks in case you have more USB devices than jacks to plug them into. USB stands for "universal serial bus", and this type of serial port has overtaken the less-versatile DB-9 serial jack on many new machines. Universal means that there are technical standards applied across a broad range of uses for USB cables. You can get USB to DB-9 converters.

Our readers are correct - those little USB storage sticks are a substitute for traditional disc media. But there are some potential "gotchas":

	Easy to lose because of small size, which can result in data loss with possible security and privacy implications.
	Hard to label because of small size.
	Because they stick out of the side of a laptop computer, they are easily bumped and that can result in the computer's USB jack being damaged.
	Prone to damage (such as going through the washing machine because of being forgotten in a pocket.)
	The computer will attempt to reinstall drivers for the USB storage device if you plug it into different USB ports. This isn't a big deal, but it can be annoying.

Handiham World for 27 April 2011

2011-04-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

And welcome to our special occasional computers-drive-me-crazy edition! Since the personal computer has become such a mainstay in the ham shack, every so often we devote an edition to the blessings and curses these machines visit upon us, and this is that edition.

If you are anything like the typical computer user, you use your computer to do a variety of plain vanilla tasks like web browsing and email. These functions are so mainstream that even grandma and grandpa have become comfortable with them. I know from my experience with amateur radio and amateur radio operators that most of us will go way beyond asking our computers to do those basic things. The typical ham shack is full of equipment that is just begging to play "tag, you're it" with your computer. There is a specialty software for everything from antenna modeling to rig control, and of course VoIP software like EchoLink. Ham radio operators are often interested in other activities like astronomy, photography, aviation… The list seems to be just about endless. Personal computers can host software applications to make all of those other hobby activities even more fun. With all of these different applications installed on the ham shack computer there is potential for conflicts and – dare we say it – computer problems.

Who among us hasn't had their personal computer drive them crazy on a semi-regular basis? Whether it is just one application that simply refuses to work even though it worked perfectly the day before or the whole computer being overtaken by malware or perhaps some kind of hardware failure, we have all experienced the frustration of dealing with this machine that has become pretty much essential in our daily activities. Why do we keep it around? Well, because it's so doggone handy! I know I would hate to go back to the bad old days of typing on a typewriter. I've always been a terrible typist and make oodles of mistakes that used to require gallons of white correction fluid. When I type something on a typewriter, it is more efficient to use a paint roller to apply the correction fluid to the page than that little brush that comes in each bottle of "Type White". In fact, I am typing this using voice input computing, Dragon NaturallySpeaking to be specific. I know my blind friends would hate to go back to the days before personal computers and modern screen readers opened up so many pathways to accessibility. And in the ham shack my radios are controlled by software, Ham Radio Deluxe, and I'm afraid I've gotten pretty spoiled with how easy this software makes keeping my amateur radio logbook up-to-date. Although the computer may be a pain in the posterior more often than I think it should be, I would never go back to the bad old days of pre-computer ham radio.

So today let's take a look at some ongoing issues with computers in the ham shack and computers in general as well as some new stuff that has been suggested to us by Handiham members.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Pat Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

Handiham World for 20 April 2011

2011-04-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

My May 2011 QST magazine arrived last week, and I was pleasantly surprised to see an excellent review of the new Kenwood TS-590S 160 through 6 meter transceiver. This radio is of special interest to us at Handihams because it uses the optional VGS-1 voice chip that gives excellent access to the menu system and the frequency display for blind users. Some listed features are:

• 100 W heavy-duty design
• Built-in automatic antenna tuner ( 6 ~ 160 meters )
• USB & Serial DB-9 ports for PC connectivity
• Kenwood ARCP-590 Control Software
• Kenwood ARHP-590 Radio Host Program for VOIP
• CW Auto Tune
• Beat Cancel

Although the QST article does not assess the TS-590S from the standpoint of a blind user, it is an excellent overview of the radio and is well worth the read. The article has been read for our blind members and is available in the members only section of Handiham.org.

Lyle, K0LR, and I have both taken a quick look at the ARCP-590 Control Software and we think it will be blind-accessible. Of course neither of us has that rig, so we are hoping a Handiham member who owns one will do some experimenting with the various accessibility features of the radio itself and the software, and then write up the results for us to share with our readers and podcast listeners.

For another take on the TS-590S, check out the eHam reviews. These reviews are all written by users, and if you find the post by K3UL from April 19, you will be able to read what a satisfied blind ham thinks. I'll give you some useful links at the end of this story.

I'm going to just add a few words of my own to the discussion, because I've noticed that some potentially helpful information is not necessarily part of the usual review process. I know that my blind friends will be interested in what the front panel of the radio looks like. Anyone familiar with radios like the TS-440SAT and the TS-570SAT will feel right at home (almost) with the front panel of the new 590. Unlike the vastly different layouts of the TS-480SAT or TS-2000, this radio is the familiar rectangular shape with the big main tuning knob near the bottom center. Just to the left is the keypad for direct frequency entry or band selection. The keypad follows the expected 3 by 4 arrangement. Buttons for the antenna tuner, power, and attenuator (among others) are in a familiar location at the upper left of the front panel. Below them are the headphone and microphone jacks. I'm beginning to think at this point that I would have to look at the model number to make sure I wasn't sitting in front of the venerable TS-570! On the lower right corner, easy to find, is the audio gain control. The outside concentric control is RF gain, as one would expect. The upper right corner is home to the XIT/CL control, another oft-used adjustment. Between these controls and to the right of the main tuning knob are the adjustments having to do with filtering, such as the notch control, noise blanker and IF filter. Immediately to the right of the main tuning knob are the split and M/V buttons. To the lower left of the main knob is the usual frequency lock button, which doubles as the fine tuning toggle. Other familiar buttons to the immediate left of the main tuning knob are the various mode selections. This doesn't cover everything, but it should be enough to let you know that as a blind user, you will be in somewhat familiar territory if you have already familiarized yourself with the TS-570, or to a lesser extent with the TS-440.

In a sense, radios are like other technologies in that switching between models and brands can be a problem. Imagine, for example, what would happen if the main controls in cars were not standardized. If turning the steering wheel clockwise made the car turn right in one model, but left in another, or if the brake were a pedal in one but a button on the steering wheel in another, you can imagine the disastrous consequences for anyone trying to switch between cars! So one unspoken and really significant feature in the TS-590S is this familiar feel and standardization. I'm just putting it out there as one more reason Kenwood has hit a home run with this model!

For Handiham World, I'm...

Pat Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

Now, here are the links I promised: (See Handiham.org.)

Handiham World for 13 April 2011

2011-04-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Have you ever participated in a poll or survey about a product or policy?

There are plenty of surveys out there, covering everything from political candidates to laundry soap. They are used to help make decisions about how to best improve and market candidates and products. It would be unthinkable for a company to refuse to poll its customer base about product preferences. By querying the consumers, the company finds out what is working and what is not, so that they can fine tune a product or service and ultimately sell more of it.

Recently my local radio club sent out a survey designed to find out what the club members think is most important in terms of club activities. In all my years of belonging to all sorts of clubs, especially radio clubs, this is the first club I have encountered that conducts such periodic surveys. What a great idea!

Some clubs are focused on a very specific mission and stray very little from a path toward their goal, but most radio clubs at least have some flexibility in their mission and can happily sponsor a variety of activities that might include on the air nets, ARES training and deployment, SKYWARN, classes in amateur radio, hidden transmitter hunts, Field Day, a club repeater, and... Well, you get the idea. Where the survey comes in is when the club has so many ideas for projects that they cannot all reasonably be given enough time and support to be successful. While the club leadership may decide for the entire group, it is always better to gain the confidence and support of the membership in deciding which projects to put at the top of the list and which might be better off tabled until some later date.

A properly designed survey can be a valuable tool to help a club chart its future. It is not going to be enough to simply ask for ideas in an open meeting. Not every member is present at every meeting, and some members may speak more persuasively than others, even though a survey done in private, when each member has a chance to think about what he or she really would prefer the club to do, might be entirely different. Another thing a survey can do is to lay out a variety of choices as well as to solicit original ideas from members. When I looked at the well-designed survey our club sent out, I was reminded of many good and worthy projects that our club has supported over the years. If pressed to remember all of that stuff on my own, I know I would have forgotten many projects, which would have made it more difficult for me to help the club make decisions on what to do. When I wanted to comment on a couple of items, I found comment space available so that I could put my thoughts down in my own words. Our survey asked for members to "rate" each project idea from one to five, based on whether the item was of no importance all the way up to great importance to the member. A couple of entries were blank, allowing each member to add a couple new items in the rate by number list. Although I can see the survey to complete it on paper if I wish, it was nice to see that the survey was available via email in an accessible format. That method also saves printing costs.

I realize that my preferences on the club survey may not be what others want, but I know I had my say and that it is likely at least some of what I like will become club policy. If your radio club seems to be stuck in a rut and lacking in direction, why not suggest that the club conduct a survey to find out what club members would like to do for projects and activities? It is a great way to stimulate thinking and bring out new ideas. Everyone will have more fun and the club and the greater amateur radio community will be the better for it.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Pat Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

Handiham World for 06 April 2011

2011-04-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

It's been a busy week at Handiham headquarters with Nancy out of the office and the phone ringing all day long, and on into the weekends and evenings. When you run a program across time zones, that's the sort of thing that happens. There has been quite a lot of interest in amateur radio already this Spring - I can't help thinking that the growing solar activity and improved sunspot numbers have somehow toggled the "upgrade to General or Extra" switch for many of our Technician operators who might have been satisfied with repeater operations during the long dry spell of a seemingly endless sunspot minimum.

For those hoping to upgrade to General, time is ticking on the old question pool. The pool is in effect until the stroke of midnight (presumably Eastern Daylight Time) on July 1, 2011 - and that leaves (realistically) only a couple of months to pass the exam. While many VE teams will undoubtedly schedule exam sessions in late June ahead of the big changeover, can you really count on being able to attend one of these late sessions?

Let's consider what could happen if you wait until the last minute to get to a VE session:

The session could be cancelled or the venue could be changed. Sometimes this happens when a VE team member gets sick or has an emergency, or if the exam meeting space becomes unavailable.

You could get sick or have something important come up.

Your transportation to the VE session might fall through, causing you to miss the session.

You might miss passing by only a question or two and wish you had another opportunity to test again before the question pool changes.

So do you see what I'm getting at here?

Any of a number of things can come up to change our plans. It has certainly happened to me before; it's something I learned early on in life when my parents insisted that I study for tests and complete homework projects well ahead of time in case something might come up later on. That has proven to be a good life lesson and I hope I have passed it on to my son. When something is really important, you have to plan and pace yourself so that you reach your goal.

If you have been studying for General you really need to think about testing soon, and that means getting ready to pass. When you have completed your studying through the ARRL license manual, Gordon West audio CDs, or Handiham audio lectures, you should be taking practice exams. We recommend the AA9PW.com website for its ease of use by people who access it with screenreaders and for its great selection of up-to-date content. Taking practice exams on a regular basis adds two important things to your studies: First, it familiarizes you with the questions and reminds you of what you have already studied. Educators call this "reinforcing" your learning. Second, it teaches you how the test will be structured and allows you to become comfortable with answering questions. If you plan to take the exam with the help of a volunteer reader, you might even want to have someone read the practice exam to you and mark the answers down as you direct, just as you will be doing at the actual exam. One useful feature of the AA9PW.com website is the "practice exams by email" option that allows you to email an exam with answers to yourself or your volunteer reader to print out and read so as to simulate the actual test session. If you are taking an exam that will be read to you, be sure to practice using the "no figures" option. The practice exam that is generated will have no figures but will still have the proper mix of questions from all topic areas in the question pool. When you are consistently passing practice exams, you know that it is time to take the real exam at a VE session. If you take practice exams and consistently miss by many points, you should take stock of your study plans and hit the books again, even if it means possibly having to take the exam under the new question pool. If you are missing only by a question or two on the practice exams, you still have time to work on those problem areas in the question pool that are giving you trouble. You can always email me if you are a Handiham member taking our course and I will do my best to help you.

If you are studying for your Extra, you have plenty of time... Or do you? The Extra pool changes next summer, on July 1, 2012. If you have been half-heartedly studying and thinking about how far away the test is, you might want to look again at your study plan. Unlike the Technician and the General with their 35 question exams dealing largely with operating procedures, rules, and basic electronics with simple math, the Extra exam is a 50 question test with some no-nonsense engineering concepts and college level math concepts. You can learn this material and pass the exam, but it will not be easy unless you apply yourself in regular study sessions and learn where you are weakest so that you can concentrate on improvement where it counts. Again, start taking practice exams. It does not make sense to go to a VE session unless you are really ready, because all you will do is waste time and money if you are still at the point of only getting half of the answers correct. Study, study, study! For challenging material like the Extra, you may want to check out your radio club to see if there are others interested in upgrading at the same time so that you can form a small study group. If you meet regularly and help each other learn, it will not only be more fun but you will be more motivated to be at each study session.

For Handiham World, I'm...

Pat Tice
wa0tda@arrl.net

All About Ham Radio: Does having the top license really make you a good operator?

Some people feel that earning their Extra makes them not only the big dog but a good operator as well.

It just doesn't work that way. You get to be a good operator by listening, learning, and gaining experience on the air. A good operator learns by his or her mistakes and does not repeat them. A good operator is aware of his or her operating weaknesses and takes steps to gain more knowledge and experience in those areas. Good habits help, too. You can start forming good habits by starting at the beginning, when you earn your Technician license. Those good operating habits will carry on through your entire ham radio career. Bad habits work the same way, and they can become so much a part of our operating that we don't even realize it! Lately there is a movement to eradicate the term "73's", which is an incorrect variant of the proper term "73", used when signing off. It's easy to get into the bad habit of saying "73's" when you hear others doing so, but if you know that the right expression is "73" and make it a habit to say it that way every time, you will be cool and correct on the band!

Of course the way we say 73 isn't really that big a deal as far as good habits are concerned. The really important good habits have to do with following the rules and operating safely. Some examples of good habits:

	Always use your full callsign to identify.
	Always use standard phonetics, because in an emergency this good habit will help you be understood.
	When driving a car and operating mobile, make driving your first job before doing anything with the radio. There are times when driving is so intense that you might need to simply tell the other station that you will talk to them another time because you have to concentrate on driving.
	The good habit of always putting the main task first before radio will help to keep you and others safe. If you are cooking something on the stove or taking care of small children, stay on task and leave the radio until later. Don't risk burning dinner or having a toddler wander off because you got involved in an interesting conversation on the radio.
	When working in potentially dangerous situations such as on a tower, always use safety equipment and have a spotter in case anything goes wrong.
	Always follow safety procedures when working around electricity.

I'm sure you can think of other good habits to make part of your radio life!

Strap on your tool belt! It's time for...

Troubleshooting 101: I can't connect to the HANDIHAM conference on Echolink!

Okay, here's one for you to figure out: You've been using Echolink for quite a while now, and you feel comfortable with operating through your computer. You have forwarded the ports and opened the firewall for the Echolink application when you configured your wireless router. It is usually pretty easy to connect to the HANDIHAM conference server, node 494492, because you have saved it to your favorites in Echolink, and it virtually always connects without a problem in one or two tries. You like the HANDIHAM conference because the station list appears and you know that most of the net participants are likely to be using the same conference, so you can get a better idea of who is around listening or planning to check in to the net.

Because you enjoy being on the go and taking ham radio along, you also take your iPod, iPhone, or Android phone with you and have the free Echolink app installed. Whether you are at home using your own wireless router connection to the internet or traveling and using the phone's data plan or a Wi-Fi hotspot somewhere, it is easy to use Echolink when the net time rolls around. At first, you found that it was simple to connect to the HANDIHAM conference server, but lately it seems as if it is becoming much more difficult to make the connection. Oddly enough, you can make a connection to the Echolink test server and to one of your friends who agreed to help you run a test, and when you use your computer to connect, there is no problem at all.

Can you suggest what might be wrong and what you could do about it?

Send your replies to wa0tda@arrl.net for possible inclusion in next week's edition of your weekly e-letter.

Handiham World for 30 March 2011

2011-03-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

Strap on your tool belt! We are jumping right into...

Troubleshooting 101 continued: "My antenna is generating electricity and giving me shocks!"

Recap: Last week we presented the following scenario and invited comments:

We are going back in time to when I worked at an antenna company, a job that often involved talking directly to customers on the phone. I would answer questions and make suggestions about installation and troubleshooting. One fine day we got a call from a fellow who had installed one of our vertical antennas. He had ground mounted it, carefully following the instructions in the manual. This antenna came with an aluminum mounting post that was dug into the ground and usually secured with a bag of do-it-yourself concrete mix. A fiberglass dowel in the exposed end of the mounting post served as an insulator and supported the vertical element of the antenna. The center conductor of an included length of a matching section of 75 Ohm coaxial cable was connected with a stainless steel bolt to the main radiating element and the braid was connected to another stainless bolt on the grounded mounting post as well as to a ground rod within inches of the antenna base. The customer had to supply the remaining run of 50 Ohm coax from the ham shack out to the antenna and connect it to the already installed matching section with a barrel connector. When the customer called us, he complained that his antenna was generating electricity and giving him shocks. He noticed this as he was trying to connect the two pieces of coax together.

Can you guess what was wrong and suggest what questions I might have asked the customer to verify my theory? For bonus points, what did I have to tell him to resolve the problem?

I got some good comments back from you, so it's time to share your brilliance in troubleshooting with our readers and listeners:

	From Tom, WA6IVG: Unless he'd driven the antenna's mounting rod into a buried power cable, (unlikely) the problem just about has to be bad station ground. Ask exactly what the coax run is connected to, and how said equipment is grounded. If the station isn't closely connected, with heavy wire or braid, to the electrical service ground, or better yet to a separate ground rod and said service ground, then that's what to do. Also check that power main connections are two standard 3 prong grounded outlet boxes. In a totally desperate situation, of 2 prong power, maybe reversing 2 prong cords could provide a temporary, unorthodox solution but bad idea. If all is claimed to be as it should be, then his station and antenna must be on 2 different continents.
	From Mike, KJ6CBW: The customer was getting shocked when connecting the long run of coax to the 75-ohm run from the ground-mounted vertical that has its coax braid connected to ground rods. The two coax cables are at different ground potentials. I think the most likely cause is that the station is not grounded because the power line isn't grounded or a 2-wire plug is being used where a 3-wire plug is appropriate. Another possibility it that the ground rods at the antenna intercepted a buried telephone line or cable-company cable, which make the antenna ground different from that of the long coax. Please don't shoot me, I'm new at this. ..!
	And fasten your seatbelt for this one from Kevin, [formerly: N1PKE ]: I have been pondering your *Troubleshooting 101, query, supra, and have attempted to extrapolate a scenario that would lead to such a conclusion as that of getting poked with an electrical current while I was hooking-up my antenna feed-line connections; wherein initially, I would cast basic common-sense to the literal wind, and just to make sure that things were to be a little more interesting, I would wait until the middle of the frigid winter season, for a night when there was very little light and there was then, e.g., currently, a frozen sleet / snow storm with full-gale winds occurring; just to make sure that Mr. Murphy would have all of the available advantages to be had, at his disposal; oh, and I would purposely plug-in and turn-on, e.g., charge my electrical circuitry with an electrical current, just to make sure that if anything went horribly wrong, that it would be the last time that I would ever have to address such a problematic situation. After all, why would I want to abrasively clean-up & 'tin' any of my integral and important electrical connections? I simply would refuse to apply any dielectric dope-grease and/or silicon caulk to any of my in-line electrical components and/or fixtures; and, as a matter of establishing a ground, I would first, have several-hundred yards of my fertile, composted soil removed, and then replaced with several hundred yards of coarse beach sand, just to make sure that I had an earthen environment that promoted instability of antenna constructive support and near zero ohms of conductivity. In this way, I would have assured myself, of having an almost completely isolated radiating antenna element, that I could then have used to have my soaked, limpid corpse hung-up on, as an object lesson for folks whom mistakenly believed that incessant adherence to safety considerations were foolhardy ruminations to be utilized by keenly sensitive brainiacs, wherein, I would think that I would in the future, be included in a list of: "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME or ANYWHERE ELSE Listings", those listed, right next and/or near to, my newspaper obituary listing! I think I got it right?

Wow, those are all great comments. Of course the antenna didn't "generate" electricity. Our wise readers and listeners know that the difference in potential exists when all pieces of equipment in the station and out at the antenna are not at the same ground potential. One of the first questions I asked the customer (knowing about the possibility of that ground potential problem) was whether he had unplugged the station equipment in the ham shack from the AC power mains. He had not, and because the station was not properly grounded, there was a potentially dangerous voltage difference between the plugged-in radio and the grounded antenna. I felt that he was lucky not to have been electrocuted! Kevin's "Do not try this at home" applies here for sure. Always disconnect equipment from the AC mains before doing any service on your antennas and feedlines. This is especially important to remember as we get warmer weather and our thoughts turn toward doing some of that antenna work we have been putting off during the cold winter months. And I mustn't forget: Although I do ground my station equipment, I never trust the ground to protect me. I always disconnect the power before working on the antenna system, because I know that a grounding system might fail. There is no sense taking unnecessary risks when you are working around any kind of electrical equipment.

Another thought that was brought up is the possibility of a ground rod hitting a buried power cable. The way to avoid that problem is to be sure that your antenna site is clear of underground utilities. Find out from your utility company what number to call to set up a free inspection and marking of your property so that you will know where underground lines are buried. Here in my area we have a single number to call and they send out a worker to mark underground lines like gas and electric with spray paint right on the ground over the lines. "Gopher State One Call" is our system, but you will have a similar service in your area. Be aware, though, that such services will not let you know about things like the location of underground lawn sprinkling systems that are not part of the utility system.

Since the antenna in question was a vertical, one has to be especially careful assembling it on the ground and then swinging it up into place on the mounting post. You have yourself a 26 foot long aluminum stick and you are holding it with both hands, so you most definitely do not want to swing it up into a power line! Since my caller was in fact alive to call and tell me that his antenna was "generating electricity", I pretty much assumed that he didn't make that particular mistake. Direct contact with even a household power line in such a situation is often deadly because the current will flow from power line to antenna through the victim's arms and through the chest cavity, where it will likely cause the heart to stop or go into arrhythmia.

Anyway, when you are answering customer complaints like this one, the most likely cause usually turns out to be the right one. He had indeed left the rig plugged into the AC mains and was getting a shock because of some fault in his equipment or station ground.

Stay safe and out of the obituaries!

Handiham World for 23 March 2011

2011-03-23T13:33:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Handiham World!

The power of ice combined with wind is evident once again! As those of us whose antennas have had to weather many winters can tell you, there is little worse for an antenna system than ice combined with wind. I was reminded of this earlier today when I opened my email and found a message from AA9BB in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. It had a link to a story about the 2,000 foot WEAU TV transmitting tower that collapsed near Fairchild, WI during the ice and wind storm that moved through last night. We are still having a pretty terrible Spring blizzard from the same weather system here in the Twin Cities. Fortunately no one was hurt in the tower collapse, which was only discovered when the station engineer paid a call to the transmitter site to determine why the station had gone off the air. While there will obviously need to be an investigation into exactly why this tall tower fell, my money would be on the wind and ice combination causing the design limits to be exceeded.

When the wind blows, most amateur radio antennas will not be damaged. Wire antennas have little wind loading area, and beam antennas are made to flex in the wind. The problem comes when weather conditions are just exactly right to allow freezing rain to fall and turn to ice upon hitting the ground or your ham radio antenna. The extra weight of the ice can be several times the weight of the antenna itself, putting considerable strain on the supporting system components like insulators, guy wires, masts, and towers. This is bad enough, but then suppose that the wind picks up. As storm fronts move through, the weather conditions will change. There can be periods of regular rain followed by freezing rain as the temperature plummets, and then the wind can shift and pick up as the freezing rain picks up or turns to snow. Imagine the terrible wind load and strain on the supports as the antenna whips in the wind, pushed all the more by the greater wind loading due to the coating of ice. When the design limits are reached, the antenna or its supporting structure will fail.

What can you do about ice and wind? My feeling is that moving to someplace with a better climate might be the only sure-fire answer. Some places are more prone to ice storms than others, though, and about all you can do is build your wire antennas to withstand greater loads by using compression-style insulators instead of the "dog bone" style. Compression insulators are much less likely to break because more pull on the wires actually compresses the insulators instead of pulling them apart. Better quality wire can help, too, as can good, heavy-duty hardware at all supporting points. Antenna towers that telescope down during high wind conditions can help protect your antenna investment. At least the antenna will be closer to the ground where the wind may be less, and the entire structure presents less of a wind load when telescoped in the down position.

My wire antennas are not that great. One is a commercial Windom about 125 feet long and the other is an end-fed wire, also about 125 feet. Neither one was mounted with heavy-duty hardware, so if they come down in an ice storm with lots of wind, I wouldn't be surprised. What I am doing is sort of playing the odds, since we don't get those conditions together too often here. My Butternut vertical can pretty much take care of itself because it has almost no horizontal surfaces to collect heavy ice. Flexing in the wind just breaks the ice off and it falls harmlessly to the ground around the base. It is really the horizontal surfaces that you have to protect the most from icing. How much is an airline ticket to Florida? Can't afford that? Try getting some compression insulators - they're a lot cheaper.

Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham System Manager
wa0tda@arrl.net