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I have retired content here and transferred all material to my new blog at W5PG Thanks. Best, Chas. W6PG.

The END of an Era.

After almost 30 years, and with a firm handle on the future, I am changing my call sign. It was a tough decision. This is like giving up an old friend. However, because of my renewed interest in contesting and a belief that I will probably never return to the western reaches of the United States, I chose to ease things a bit by not having to signal /5 any longer in radio sport events. So here we are…..first to last:

WV6GUL

K3YMA

WA7SHJ

WA6SFM

W7MAP and /5

W5PG

I have transferred all my content to a new blog site at W5PG http:\\w5pg.wordpress.com and over the course of some weeks, I will renew its current look and feel.

Thanks to all of you that have read my ramblings here, and should you feel like doing so you can reset your bookmarks to my new url. Thanks for everything and Best, Chas W5PG.

Summer Reading

I have been remiss in my postings here this summer. I have to admit that with the dearth of sunspots, a stock market/economic crash and my sons ill timed car crash I was in need some good old fashioned escape reading. My wife joined me and together we tried to consume the contents of the local library. The local library has at least two redeeming virtues : it is free and it is close.

So here then, for your enjoyment,is my Summer Reading List. It is pretty random and very entertaining. I would recommend any of these books as they all were fun and had gripping stories to tell. There were three which I would consider as specialty interest reading and may requires more than casual thought. I will mark these with an asterisk and you may wish to look them up in on-line resources to see if they are your cup-o-joe.

Snowball by Warren Buffett*

Protect and Defend/Extreme Measures/Act of Treason by Vince Flynn

Atonement by Ian McEwan*

Camel Club/Simple Genius by David Baldacci

Paranoia by Joe Finder

Night and Day/Stranger in Paradise/Death in Paradise/Appaloosa by Robert Parker

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt-Pulitzer Winner*

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

All are good books. A few are great reads and some may require a lot of mental work or are rather lengthy (*).

Morse practice continues on a daily schedule and it remains hot-stinking hot around these parts.   Much hotter than last summer. Read more-sweat less.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Confessions of a Morseman

To refer to myself as a M.O.R.S.E.M.A.N. somehow seems a bit over the top. Yet, that is how I think of myself. A Morseman. After three summers, or just over two full years of practice, I may be full of myself to even consider myself a Morseman. It has been more years than I care to admit since last devoting any time listening or participating to any mode other than Morse. I fiddled a bit with some WSPR but that isn’t really like actually listening to SSB is it? I hope not. I do admit to a single SSB QSO with a classroom in Belmont Ma. for the purpose of demonstration of Ham Radio to a group of forth graders. I trust that infraction will not blemish and otherwise perfect record.

Still, after working at this for a long time I am dubious about any ultimate success with Morse. Success to me means a natural comfort level having been attained, one can send and receive perfectly spaced characters and words at almost any speed with few if any errors. Some say doing pitch-perfect code at any speed while cooking breakfast or making coffee is required to properly be referred too as a Morseman. Me? I can barely turn on the trash compactor while sending and receiving, let alone any thoughts of a coffee pot ,waffle iron or cake baking activities. Still, I try.

The obvious insecurities I am dealing with do not include receiving-except in one very specific area. Normally, during a QSO I can copy quite well up to about 38 WPM. I say “normally”. Normally to me means being able to get my “Fills” without asking for them by utilizing context and sentence structure to make sense of a fade riddled loss of a character or word. What is the exception? Dare I say contest exchanges? Please do not think of me as less than human. Yes, we have no bananas when it comes to Eastern European call signs, with their plethora a uniquely placed characters designed to cause maximum mental anguish. I have to admit call sign recognition eludes me. Especially those “designed to fail” Balkan devilish ones. There always seems to be an errant dit or perhaps two. H’s turn into 5’s or vice versa, H’s to S’s and reverse or worse, the terrible B’s knees get into D’ees Peas and turn me into a zombie for a minute or more. And there I sit frozen in normal time like some gumbo brained dimwit just learning code. How embarrassing is that? Morse Runner or RUFZ you say? Have you ever actually tried Morse Runner? RUFZ? Doing a session with Morse Runner or RUFZ is the closest thing I can imagine to being stretched on to a mental version of the “Rack”. It is mental torture designed by a madman to filter out pretenders to contesting fame. It isn’t fun for me. Have you got the picture yet? I recall my embarrassment at a friends house doing a CW contest from the East Coast when I first encountered my shortcomings. Trust me. You haven’t lived until you have experienced the joy of European openings, if only with a wire antenna, played out on the US eastern seaboard, only to find that pileups start to sound like a foreign language. Yes, I was Bambi in the Dial Lites. It is perfectly clear to me that my mind shut down under pressure. A similar thing occurred many years ago when my memory of a trip to 5E2EBE for ARRL CW in the 1980’s disappeared. It must have been time for the “other side” of the pileup to pay revenge. Pressure indeed.

Laugh if you must, but contest exchanges are not the worst of it. No, there looms a far greater threat on my road to becoming a true blue Morseman. Sending! What? Sending??? Yup. Sad to admit but I can’t send worth a hoot. Well, let me rephrase that a bit. I could at one time send worth a hoot, but lately, no. Not so much. The nature of our practice is such that for 2 years plus, one or both of us agree to bump speed a bit by one or maybe two words per minute. As speeds get higher it takes one to two weeks before one or the other of us becomes comfortable and we carry on with practice at that speed until we get the urge to bump up again. All of that worked fine until about 33 WPM. My hand-ear coordination began to fall apart at 33 WPM. So we stayed at 33 WPM for longer than normal. Error rates in sending seemed to accumulate and manifest themselves in waves. For a few days I would send with what I deemed an acceptable error rate only to be trounced by a series of really bad days when I seemed to lose control of my finger muscles. There I went; dit dit ditting away uncontrollably. Damn! It is almost as though I had a muscle spasm. Never dah’s. Only dits. I moved spacing, tension, changed keys, posture, closed my eyes to focus better mentally…in short I tried everything save physical fitness which is next on my agenda. Of course the thought that I had reached my potential (made available to me though my personal equation) keeps creeping into my minds eye but I keep pushing it back. Perish the thought. Limits? Nah, not me! We are currently at 35 WPM and suffering through a series of weeks that follow the aforementioned form-waves of errors interspersed with good days. We seem to have finally mastered 33 WPM after what seemed like months. Onward and upward!

This may sound like a rant but it is not intended as such. It is simply a diary entry describing the details of what you discover about yourself while trying to learn a new skill. It isn’t easy. If it were easy more would do it. However, that said, never mix up easy or hard with fun. It is fun. Diabolically so. Practice is invaluable on several levels. First, by its very nature it is point to point. Dallas to Boston. To be successful you have to be flexible, learn how to read what Mother Nature gives you in the form of propagation and plan around it. You have to think and evaluate your successes and shortcomings. Plan to work through the challenges and devise strategies. In short you cannot stop thinking. I am 63. If I quit thinking I would shrivel up and blow away. Learning Morse is no more difficult than learning the flute or a cello or perhaps to play football or baseball. To be good at any of these takes practice while, one by one, removing all the impediments your mind and body toss into the mix. It IS fun. It is also the most wonderful learning experience I could have ever imagined.

Now where the heck did I put that copy of Morse Runner?

Thanks for reading my blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Summer Funk!

I have been away for a time now and thought I had better do an update before WordPress thought I had abandoned this Blog. To be brief, I have been in a summer funk. The funk was brought on by a car wreck that my son had on his way back from college registration.  What a nightmare. He is fine, no one was hurt. The truck is a mess and my mental state went south. To deal with this I read about five dime trashy novels in five days (or less) and am still waiting for the Farmers guy to adjust the damage. 63 year old guys should not have nineteen year old kids. Too much excitement stresses the constitution.   I will be back in a day or so to post my Confessions of a Morseman post that I have been thinking about for some time now.

Thanks for reading my blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Catching Up

It has been a busy month. Graduation, visiting relatives, Fourth of July holiday and as I usually do, I read a book. Summer is reading season for me. This time my wife surprised me with a book from the local library. Snowball, the business life of Warren Buffet. Containing only 835 pages with an additional hundred or so of notes the tome weighed in at an astonishing poundage. This book was an easy read and one befitting a guy that accumulates so much wealth. It really takes that many pages to recount his various business deals and family travails. It is an easy and fast read and I would recommend it to anyone with a few days on their hands, weather at the beach or at home.

While I was reading I had an idea. Why not multiply the utility of local libraries with the application of technology. Let me explain. Local library systems are like lilly pads in their own borrowing/sharing pond. That is to say my local library has access to the whole Dallas County system-but not easily to say Pittsburgh, PA. So why not adopt the NetFlix model and allow local library systems to access requests through a NetFlix style of lending with the local branches minding the shipping (as they do now) and loss prevention. It isn’t hard to see how this would multiply utility of the locals and improve the information flow to everyone. I consider books important for one very special reason….

Digital delivery by it’s very nature makes no guarantees of information fidelity. For instance: with digital I will always question if this is the actual construction of sentences and paragraphs that the author actually intended me to see? 200 years from now I can be reasonably assured that with a book, what the author wrote I am really reading. However I have no such assurance with digital data. Digital data is transportable, editable and easily manipulated in ways book forgeries are not easily accomplished. Rewriting history, adding spin and changing facts after the fact have become the order of the day in news and information outlets. Call me old fashioned.

The NetFlix idea is a wonderful candidate for a foundation such as Carnegie or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but alas, they only accept proposals form 503c Corporations or groups. I am neither so I am positive this idea will wither here in cyberspace. It may not have merit but I believe it does. Books and access to the written unedited words in the context of time is a concept important to me.

While considering the aforementioned idea I went through a thinking exercise about books and the inefficient and cumbersome nature of that delivery system. Much has been written about the books coming demise. Human nature what it is I think the end of the book is very far in the future. Besides I can get entertainment with no commercials. Drive book sales into an electronic medium and how long do you think it will be before the channel is completely clogged with commercial content? Call me selfish but I want a commercial free entertainment/learning medium.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Dream Catcher Flies Again!

After Mother Nature delt me a lump of coal for my Christmas Stocking by way of a Monster wind storm last week, I threw myself against the 98 Degree F. temperatures today and managed to refly my fish pole antenna. Well, sort of fly it. My latest incarnation of an RF Dream Catcher is caught in a web of foliage which is pushing it farther north/south than I like. With a little help from my son we managed to get it vertical and vertical and then vertical again. You see I remanufactured my mast a trifle too long and no amount of threading my fiberglass needles would allow complete tree avoindance. I tried at least three times and I became spent with the heat and humidity. So it is up but I know not for how long. The constant rubbing of wind driven tree limbs has to extract a toll on the fiberglass members. Perhaps when the elements give up next time I will have moved along in my antenna evolution. At least this time it is guyed and the bottom section (the section that bent in the wind storm) is double walled. Sigh. Such is an amateurs life with the elements. I hope it plays well. My one fish pole was shattered when I finally got it to the ground and I had to repair it by sleeving my fiberglass element with a section of aluminum. This will change things I am sure but hopefully not too much. Here then is a picture of my contraption in full flight.

Dream Catcher reborn.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Folklore and Science?

I am a big fan of Folklore. There are a lot of books written about the Folklore of the early settlements in North America.For instance, I find it curious that farmers believed certain moons held sway over fertility of crops and other moons affected hunting and fishing success. This is best illustrated by tales of furrow dancing under planters moons and harvest moons.  Likewise, a significant amount has  written about the history of the North American Indian. One of the traditions that I am fond of is the story of the Dream Catcher. Dream Catcher stories were a fad in the sixties but remain a charming story when told in the original.  Their history began with the Chippewa Tribe and spread to several others. A big piece of the remnants of this history was captured by Margret Densmore at the turn of the nineteenth century. I captured a few of her thoughts on a website called cojoweb.com. There are other sites but I thought this captured her thoughts succinctly.

The Native peoples of the Ojibwe/Annishnabe/Chippewa tribes were the first to make dream catchers to scare away bad dreams. The history of the dream catcher has nearly been lost in the turmoil of cultural mixing and destruction that followed on the heels of the European invasion. Dream catcher history is known with some credibility due to the dedicated field work of Frances Densmore at the beginning of the last century. She conducted a careful and extensive study of many Native American cultures including that of the Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa) living in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario, Canada. many tribes claim the origin and it’s possible that the Dream Catcher has been around since all of the aboriginal Native Peoples of North America have been around. The story is as follows:

DREAM CATCHER Long ago in the ancient world of the Ojibwe Nation, the Clans were all located in one general area of that place known as Turtle Island. This is the way that the old Ojibwe storytellers say how Asibikaashi (Spider Woman) helped Wanabozhoo bring giizis (sun) back to the people. To this day, Asibikaashi will build her special lodge before dawn. If you are awake at dawn, as you should be, look for her lodge and you will see this miracle of how she captured the sunrise as the light sparkles on the dew which is gathered there. Asibikaasi took care of her children, the people of the land, and she continues to do so to this day. When the Ojibwe Nation dispersed to the four corners of North America, to fill a prophecy, Asibikaashi had a difficult time making her journey to all those cradle boards, so the mothers, sisters, & Nokomis (grandmothers) took up the practice of weaving the magical webs for the new babies using willow hoops and sinew or cordage made from plants. It is in the shape of a circle to represent how giizis travels each day across the sky. The dream catcher will filter out all the bad bawedjigewin (dreams) & allow only good thoughts to enter into our minds. You will see a small hole in the center of each dream catcher where those good bawadjige may come through. With the first rays of sunlight, the bad dreams would perish.

We twentieth century types like to think that we have overcome all the fantasy and ritual in our everyday lives. That is probably true to a large extent. However, it seems to me that a little fantasy scattered within our science and technology can bring back just a little sense of adventure and mystery. I see no harm in allowing an allegory to develop that suggests that perhaps a modern antenna may be the 21st century equivalent of a say, an old Chippewa Indian’s legendary “Dream Catcher”? There is certainly more to the theme than coincidence. The central hole through which Good Dreams pass is like a feedline through which only good contacts arrive. I beg anyone to define a bad contact. Without an antenna we can hear no contacts at all and further, not having an antenna is like darkness without any dreams at all. So where is the harm? I came to invent my own allegory when my antenna blew down this past week. The symbols are similar and useful. Just recall that one is folklore and one is science.

Chippewa Dream Catcher

Hex Dream Catcher?

In the great scheme of things, real or imagined, there appears to be room for a little legend and fantasy along with the science. The  fantasy mixed with science  can overcome shortfalls in performance when technology lets you down and grist or porridge  is needed to keep the chinking between the logs of our imagination going. For, after all is said and done, it is imagination and dreams that keep us all motivated. Science provides the hammer and the nail.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

No Fishing on 40 Meters!

Or anywhere else for a while. We had some of the most severe storms pass through Dallas and vicinity that I have seen in over 20 years of living in this area. Wednesday evening I ended up with no telephones, no power and now no antenna. Conditions that persisted until noon on Thursday. Now the hard part begins. Fortunately there were no injuries to our family or damages to our home or automobiles. Just some large trees and of course my well travelled small dipole. Today the tree crew arrives and following that I will attempt to repair my radio antenna. Since one cannot find push up masts any longer I am not sure how I will accommodate the repairs but I am sure a remedy will present itself. A push up mast would be stronger and easier than the last method I used.

Some pictures:

Fallen Hackberry Tree

At least it appears that my fishing poles are intact. I may, however, choose to rebuild this with aluminum replacing my fish poles. Im not sure what I will do just now. First the trees need to be removed.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

A Stain On America That Will Not Go Away

This may be considered by some to be a RANT. If that is you, just come back in a day or so and this post will have drifted down the page a bit.

Yesterday was June 8th 2009. It was the 42nd anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty. 34 Americans killed and 174 wounded-by an ally. Yes, that is correct. An ally. Unlike the Pueblo, Liberty was in International waters. Unlike Pueblo, Liberty was patrolling off the coast of an ally, not an adversary.

The story of Liberty is here: U.S.S. Liberty

From the U.S.S. Liberty page:

The Betrayal of American Veterans

Americans who volunteer for military service effectively write a blank check, payable to the United States of America for an amount “up to and including my life.” The United States, in turn, promises to spend these checks responsibly. That bargain implicitly includes a promise by the United States to protect them and to seek retribution against anyone who harms them. In the case of USS Liberty, the United States has failed to keep its end of the bargain.

We Americans make mistakes often. This one stands out as particularly damning. If you find this interesting you should find the results of the 2003 inquiry led by Admiral Moorer. It makes some very interesting reading.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

This and That

Ive been away for a bit. It is summer and things have been crazy. Well, crazy and I have been lazy-lets be honest here. My son graduated form High School this past week and we had a lot of activities to attend surrounding that event. We threw a small “Do” for some close family and friends as well as organizing a surprise visit for my wife from an old work chum who has since moved away. All of that was fun and ate into my “Radio” time somewhat.

We still maintained our schedule each day but extras have been on our back burner. I mentioned last time that I was going to try to create a Noise Sink and I did do my experiment. However, no matter the quality of your equipment, there is no amount instrument quality that can overcome poor workmanship. Alas, I messed up my calibration and so the data I have collected was useless. I will do this again but I need to buy another roll of aluminum foil to complete the experiment. News sometime soon.

I spent almost a whole week without reading a single blog. I think I was a little burned out. Except for the daily one hour schedule I didnt engage in any radio activities. Since I have posted here today I must be working through my mental log jam. Today I again visited my favorite blogs and am glad to see that blog life went on while I was away. My best to Shin, Leo and Atsu (BTW I am happy that your K3 has come home again).

WRT to Morse practice. I am going through a period best described as “going in reverse”. This is quite frustrating. While Chuck and I continue to try to push the envelope speed-wise, I am having to move to a slower speed. Instead of improving I am increasing in my sending error rate. I am not having difficulty copying code at 33 or even 35 wpm, just forming perfect characters and spaces at those speeds. I seem to be more comfortable at a lower rate these past few weeks.  A month or more ago I was more perfect at a higher speed than 28-30 wpm. Perhaps this is normal and maybe CW proficiency takes longer than one hour per day for 2.5 years. I cannot carry a tune in a bucket and maybe that is affecting my abilities.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chsa W7MAP/5

Station Ground and a Noise Sink

And nary the twain should meet. Ive been looking at improving my station ground for some time. This becomes more important with the anxiety generated by locally large electrical storms and my mental state when retiring for the evening. That is to say I may forget to remove my feedline at the service entrance to my shack. Ive been rudely awakened at 0230 L time more than once and found myself dashing off to unplug my radios and other equipment.

There are safety grounds and then there are other grounds. First, I am no authority on grounding. However, I want to learn about this subject. Recent articles in QST and on some selected web sites are  much more adept at explaining the single point safety ground than I would ever hope to be….try the QST archives and perhaps W8JI web. I have no real safety ground hence my interest. When fooling around with grounds be sure to follow your country codes and always follow best practice.

On a second note, I have spent many hours reducing station received noise. When I began, my station received noise was in excess of S-9 in SSB (2.4 Khz) bandwidths. Since noise power is proportional to received bandwidth I have taken to measuring my received noise in my widest AM mode which is currently AM (9.0 Khz). My recently measured noise level is running at S-3 to S-4 on 20 Meters in wide AM mode. A lot of improvement since my days of S-9. Most of this improvement is due to the liberal application of ferrite materials throughout my home and station cabling. I used and applied Doctor Counselman’s white paper link you will find filed under “Good Stuff” just to the right on my Blog Page. With my little pistol signal it has allowed me to work loads of things that I would not have been able to hear under normal circumstances. Yet my quest continues. And here is where I get into fuzzy thinking- but just a little.

Safety Grounds are high surge current but mostly DC grounds. There are whole text books written on this subject. I need a safety ground and I know it. However,  I am also interested in a low impedance AC ground that will effectively shunt unwanted RF to infinity. Sort of an infinite RF sink that I can throw unwanted signals into and have them go away. My Elmer tells me this is hard to do and so I really need to try this for myself. I have the instruments to make the measure so I will try it. The reason for this exercise is that I want to try to see if I can quiet devices like DSL Modems etc. When I had my internet DSL modem in my shack I had tons of ferrite on every lead-good HF ferrite like Mix 31 and still I could hear DSL noise -0nly lightly- but it was still present. There are all sorts of sources like DSL modems in a modern home and so I am searching for a low cost solutionto: how do you quiet a noise source if ferrite does not do the entire job?

This line of thought all began when I happened across Dr. Bingo’s website. He proposed  a buried 12 foot long dipole of 12 gauge wire to be used as a dummy load. You can find that article here:

http://www.km5kg.com/dummy.htm

After reading that article and knowing my Elmer had used a really large sheet of copper foil in his attic as a low impedance to infinity under his attic mounted tuner I thought to myself, what if we combine both ideas and see if we get a low impedance to ground over a broad range of frequencies? Then I would have two things-a dummy load that works well and a low impedance RF ground.

So today or over the weekend I intend to construct an aluminum foil dipole that will lay on my kitchen flooring just above my foundation slab. I will try various layouts like typical dipole, right angled dipole etc. My goal is to get a low impedance (1-15 ohms) to infinity. Successful or not I will publish my result here in graphical form along with my wife wondering what I am doing with a floor full of her aluminum foil on the floor!

Even if successful with this endeavor, I may have found a solution that cannot be implemented because I still would need to place the foil or connect to it and that would require a large low impedance foil strap connector-not a high inductance wire. In the AC or RF world nothing is simple. Ground changes with frequency-or at least grounds properties change. Moisture will move things around a lot. I dont know if this idea has merit or not.  But this is the essence of learning so I will plow ahead. I learn better by doing rather than reading. The important thing is to measure results not guess at them. I will be using my AIM 4170 Vector Impedance Meter to collect data.

I still need to do a safety ground-how did I ever get off on this tangent?

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Kewl Rememberance!

One of the fun things my son and I used to do was visit the Texas Star Party at Ft. Davis Texas. Recently I came across a short video that brought back memories of those trips. I will try to embed it here. Enjoy!

more about “Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises ov…“, posted with vodpod

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

To All Of My Blogging Friends

Our first child came to us in 1976. Many of you may not have been born then. Our last child was born in 1990. That my friends, is a serious number of brown bag lunches! My long suffering wife will testify to that as fact. Our only son graduates from high school this spring, and so to celebrate our daughter made an invitation. You are all welcome to come should you be in the area.

Matt's Invitatation

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Who Needs Sunspots?

During the past two years I have become ambivalent regarding Sunspots. They are way over rated. Sure they facilitate loads of DX and the higher bands open up. However, for me at least, the “Fun” quotient will go down with the return of higher SSN’s. Let me explain.

I have no idea why I become more “Radio Active” during sunspot minimum’s. It has happened that way for three cycles now and it has me perplexed. Sure, I am active when sunspot numbers increase, but more active when they are lower. I had never given this much thought until now. During past cycles I can recall being active on Ten Meters almost exclusively. At one point I can recall having a 50 foot tower with only a 5 element KLM monobander for 10 M on it. Those were some heady days for radio enthusiasts; working European stations by pointing southwest from Phoenix AZ or over the south pole to work Italy-at midnight local time!  But by the very nature of how things work, episodes like I just mentioned are but fleeting examples of what could be only ever so rarely. Something a lot less thrilling is more the norm with radio propagation.

In economic terms, when something is plentiful, near chases dear. That which is close at hand moves out that which is not so close at hand. When we have a plentiful supply of sun spots we forget the lessons of economy that their absence taught us. But not having spots plentiful is more the norm. Plentiful I consider something over a SSN of 30 ish.

To make a somewhat longer story a bit shorter, I learned a whole lot more about propagation this minimum. I had to learn what worked with the sunspots we had or forget about a daily code practice session which I value so highly. QSO’s and friends made by having to really work at it seems to me to make the success just a little sweeter. DX worked by chance and with a little less of an advantage that high SSN’s afford are the contacts one remembers a long time after the spots fade away. At least that is my longer view, developed over my  4.5 active solar cycles. You see, I can almost tell you where in my life and geography I was by where we were are in a sunspot cycle.

I will not say that I am retiring Barnaby and his sunspot dancing lizards quite yet. He and his friends got me through last summer nicely. However, I will not be quite so anxious to wish away this minimum. It affords one with great opportunities to learn new things and develop new friends. Seize the moment. You only get a few cycles.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Bummer! :(

Sigh. Too many lightening bolts to make a dent in NEQP this year. 24 continuous hours of electrical storms took the starch out. I had fun though. It is a great low impact contest and well run too boot. CW LP with wire antenna. With QRN keeping me on 20 M most of the time with occasional excursions to 15M, its clearly the hour to gin up more sun spots. Propagation was thin and watery to New England this weekend on 20M. Time to get my Backyard Anole’s fired up again this summer. They didn’t do much last summer but we can always hope to stimulate some Sun Spots by dancing the jig with my Solar Prominent Lizards. Lessee where did I put the old Bogen?…

NEQP 2009 CW LP

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Today is NEQP

Well today is a trial run for my station and I. Last year I spent a lot of time with the New England QSO Party and I only maintained a paper log book. Last year I didn’t sent in my score and so was disappointed to see I would have actually done quite well as a casual effort. So this year I have been fiddling with N1MM and a Digi Keyer interface to run a computer log. I have actually had my Digi Keyer for 3 years but my first experience with it was so abysmal that I placed it on a shelf and contemplated dropping an HRO Five on it. That was then ( with MMTTY/Writelog) and this is now (CW Only and N1MM) and so I will give it another go.  One fear I have with hooking up this rig was proper sequencing of my key lines to avoid frying my amps TR Relay. I cleared that hurdle by paralleling my key line from the N1MM program/Digi Keyer with Logikey keyer output. Since the Logikey keyer already keyed my amp and then the amp sequenced the keying in my exciter, I think this will work. News later.

I entered New England QSO Party in 2008 to give points to a friend but this year, along with those same goals,  I will attempt to add some score and actually be a competitor and produce an entry. My first bonafide contest entry in a very long time from my own station. Wish us luck!

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Another in my “Old Days” Series

The last ship I served aboard was USS America CVA-66. She now rests on the bottom in the North Atlantic ocean, a test platform for torpedo practice. Fortunately for me one of my shipmates lives nearby and offered up a picture of our Ham Shack as it was in 1971. I am not in the picture but a couple of chums are; W5CWO, Fred Lusen, a Marine Squadron AIMD Sgt. at the time, and Chief Fred Bacon, a Senior Chief Petty Officer now retired and his call is WA1MRH. Fred (W5CWO) had this official “Naval Picture” stored in his “stuff” and was kind enough to share it with me.

The Ham Station consisted of the ubiquitous Collins S Line with a 30S1 and just off to the left edge you can see part of the ships gear in the form of a WRC-2 which is basically a R-1051 receiver with a second as an exciter and an amp mounted on top. I think it output something like 200 watts USB/LSB etc. Pretty light service for a ships radio but was used mainly in voice service.

This photo brought back some fond memories. Enjoy.

Sgt Lusen (W5CWO) and Chief Bacon (WA1MRH)

A lot of great QSO’s were originated in this rustic radio “shack”.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Weak Signals and More!

I have been abducted by the Siren Song of WSPR. Saturday morning I finally got around to reading about this latest iteration of K1JT’s weak signal protocol and downloaded it for fun. I warn you now-if you are short on self control don’t do it! It is very addictive and opens a lot of possibilities. Besides that, it is just plain fun.

What follows is a screen shot of my system running in Receive Only. I have yet to transmit as I get goosey about turning my big Icom over to a computer with transmit control while I am not watching it. However, so far it seems to run in receive just fine.

WSPR Console @ W7MAP/5

So far I have only tried to use this system on 30 Meters. That appears to be where most of the participants are centered. However, I would like to use the data from this system to validate VOACAP forecast models by comparing actual data via WSPR to forecast data from VOACAP or ICEPAC. The root of an interesting project is forming in my pea brain.

Instead of tying up my normal “Big” radio I am now thinking about finding a used QRP 2 mode, three band rig and using it with my R-7 which I will need to take apart and repair, clean and re erect on the other side of my home. I would also need to find a low power laptop (Net Appliance?) and a suitable place to leave it setup and running off of a gel cell. All of this smacks of a time consuming project as  I will try to do this on the cheap. But time I have and shopping I can do. Rome wasn’t constructed overnight.

I am not positive I could do much analysis of actual vs forecast for more than a single point to point (as in my daily schedule for Morse Practice) but it will be fun trying. Developing methods that could be applied to any generic path or patch of geography would be fun. At least finding a way to improve or reduce VOACAP’s forecasting errors would be helpful as it seems VOACAP is generous at times. Anything that improves reliability in Sunspot times like these is helpful. And what a wonderful platform for learning!

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

RF Safety

Several days ago a contributor to a small QRP  group of which I am a member made a provocative posting. He suggested that 25 watts of RF into a vertical antenna, ground mounted, was sufficient to violate RF Safety guidelines. Not being one to let an obvious troll go unchallenged, I googled the net for some of the abundant RF Safety calculators populating the net. I did not check the programming behind the on-line calculator. It was stated that it was initially programmed in Basic by (Dr. I think) Wayne Overbeck N6NB. In any event in my later trials I checked results against several calculators, one of which was sourced by the government.

Results? Sure enough, the 25 watt level is in violation of RF Safety Guidelines at both 21 Mhz and at 28 Mhz in an uncontrolled environment (i.e. not inside your fenced backyard) and if you are standing at a distance of 1 meter from the antenna! 25 watts! Wow. Who would have believed that?

After a couple of days I began thinking about cell phones. Since RF Safety is an issue at 30 Mhz why not 1 Gigahertz? I plugged the calculators with 1 Ghz, .001 Meter as the distance and all zeros for antenna gain and 300 mw as power. Finding your cell phones power output is a bit of a challenge. All the units have been mixed to make direct comparisons difficult. Cell phones are rated not in power output but in SAR units. This is a measure of how much of a cells power is absorbed into a human tissue. That does me no good with my experiment. I spent some time looking for generic output power levels and found a resource that suggested most modern cell phones output two common power levels. 300 mw and 600 mw. The old style bag phones could output as much as 3 watts. All that aside, I was only interested in 300 mw. That would be the minimum power output and if it fails it would be damning. At least in my mind.

I ran a cell at 300 mw output and with the governments own RF Safety calculator the cell phone failed. The calculator suggested a 300 mw level at 1 Ghz is not safe at distances normally used by cell users.

The cell industry is full of disclaimers and what I like to call- weasel words. Specifically, they claim this power level is non ionizing as opposed to ionizing. I dont know much about human physiology and what ionizing vs non ionizing means but I do know one thing. Cancer comes from oxidation of a cells DNA. Weather during mitosis or not, any oxidation (breakage) of a cells DNA chain is cause for concern. In an effort to mitigate my families risks I am immediately making them all aware of the risks. I am suggesting they use blue tooth ear pieces and if they don’t want earpieces than  only to text via cell. Personally, I have been around RF all of my life and so I am probably closer to the threshold than my kids ,so I am just going to turn off my cell service. Now I am wondering  how much power those 1200 Mhz walk around cordless phones put out? Or for grins how about those 5 watt 440 Mhz walkie talkies? I am not trying to be an alarmist. Just cautious and exorcise good judgment.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5