While I enjoy all the technology we get to play with as amateur radio operators, I enjoy just as much the people you meet on the bands. In the last week and a half, I’ve had three QSO that are worth blogging about.
Carl, N1EVO. I worked Carl on August 25. He was running QRP, from his home in Fort Kent, ME, which is just south of the Quebec/Maine border. He mentioned that he was the manager of a small hotel on US 1, which is 2,390 miles long and runs from the Canadian border all the way down to Florida.
We had an interesting chat about managing the hotel during tourist season, and Carl said he would send me a QSL card and a “Mile 0″ sticker. Yesterday, in the mail, I received his QSL card and two stickers. “Fort Kent,” he writes, “can be the end or the start of US 1.”
Joe, KI4GAP. I worked Joe a couple of days ago. On his QRZ.Com page, he mentioned growing up in the suburbs of Detroit. I mentioned to him that I was an “east sider,” meaning that I grew up on the east side of Detroit. He also grew up on the east side of Detroit, and as it turns out, is the same age as I am. While it doesn’t appear that we knew each other way back when, we did have fun comparing notes.
Joe is now a staff photographer for a newspaper down in Virginia. he mentioned that he was being sent to the coast to take pictures of Hurricane Earl. Just now, I’m listening to a news report of the imminent landfall. Stay safe, Joe.
Mark, VE3CPK. Last night, I had a nice long ragchew with Mark. Again, I pulled up Mark’s QRZ.Com page, which contained a link to another page with more info. As it turns out, Mark is the Vice President, Advanced Technology for Research in Motion Limited (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry. He is also 55, but has been a ham for 44 years!
You can bet that ham radio played a big part in Mark’s life and career. I told him that I thought hams should be doing more with microwave technology, and he readily agreed. Someone really needs to come up with a killer ham app for microwave systems and then build some radios to implement it. Why shouldn’t these radios be as common (at least among the ham community) as 2m HTs?
One of the items making the rounds on the HamRadioHelpGroup mailing list is this video on the Sea Water Antenna:
At first, I thought, “What a novel idea!” Of course, as the Bible says, there’s nothing new under the sun. PA1AP noted, “Reinventing the wheel I would say. There is prior? art for this and cannot be patented, they should do a little more homework and look around before making such claims… google for ‘Ionic Liquid Antenna’.”
I did just that and found a few interesting references. Apparently, N9ZRT did much of the early work on this type of antenna, and his work is online. In March 2005, some researchers published an academic paper on this topic. Unfortunately, you have to pay for this paper. Another good article can be found on the Highfields (UK) Amateur Radio Club website.
Someone from SPAWAR, the research center that produced the video, replied that in their opinion, this design is unique in that it uses a pump to produce a column of water to form the antenna. This feature makes it patentable. I’m not a patent attorney, but they may have a point here. At any rate, I’m guessing that hams should still feel free to experiment with the antenna.
I’m happy to report that I’m now on 17m. I don’t know really what took me so long—especially since I enjoy working 30m so much—but I finally put together a dipole for 17m and hung it up yesterday.
Yesterday evening, the band seemed to be hopping. The first station I copied was CE3FZ at about an S5. I tried calling him a couple of times, but after no response, I went hunting. I found PY7WC pounding in at S9. After a couple of calls, he became my first 17m contact.
I tried calling a couple other stations, but without success. This led me to believe that my antenna was far from optimal. It is kind of low, but so is my 40m dipole. The 40m dipole works pretty well, and I was hoping the 17m dipole would work well, too.
This morning, however, I had a quite different experience. Even though it was quite early in the morning (1230Z), I punched the 17m button on the IC-746PRO. There wasn’t much activity, and what I could hear was kind of weak, but I tuned around until I heard EA1ARV calling CQ. He was barely moving the meter, but I gave him a call anyway. Not only did he hear me, but we had a decent contact.
So, I guess the upshot of all this is that the dipole is not in an optimal position (which I knew anyway), but it does work, and I can make contacts. I’ll have to play around with getting it up higher, maybe in an inverted-V configuration. It seems like a fun band to operate, though.
I’ve blogged about finding hams in your area before:
How Many Hams Are in Your Neighborhood?
How Many Hams in Your Grid Square?
A recent thread on the HamRadioHelpGroup mailing list prompts me to revisit this topic, though. The replies list four different websites that you can use to find out this information:
FCC Universal Licensing System – Advanced Search,
QRZ.Com. . . . → Read More: Find Hams in Your Area
A couple of weeks ago, I spent a week in a cabin on Elk Lake, MI. Over 25 members of my family congregated for this annual event., including my three sisters, a passel of nieces and nephews, their spouses, and kids. It’s a beautiful spot, and we have a great deal of fun.
Yesterday, down at the museum, we got a whole pack of Cub Scouts on the air, thanks to Ovide, K8EV, my ever-ambitious “kid wrangler.” No sooner had I managed to make a decent contact than he lassoed a group of five Cub Scouts from Detroit. Fortunately, conditions held out so that I could give them all . . . → Read More: WA2HOM Introduces Cub Scouts to Ham Radio
The ARRL recently posted the article, “K2BSA: Amateur Radio Fun in the Warm Virginia Sun,” which discusses amateur radio activities at this year’s National Scout Jamboree. It reports:
…nearly 6000 youth scouts — 13 percent of the total Jamboree attendance — received thorough exposure to ham radio, touring the K2BSA station and getting on the airwaves. Six . . . → Read More: Ham Radio at This Year’s National Jamboree
This is from the August Michigan Section News, by Dale, WA8EFK, Section Manager:
The year 2010 will mark an important anniversary in the History of Amateur Radio: The birth of the first public service net and it happened here in Michigan.
I got this from Allen, W1AGP, the ARRL’s Media & PR Manager:
There are only 13 days left until National Preparedness Month (NPM)! If you haven’t done so already, please consider joining the NPM Coalition. More than 2,800 organizations have signed up so far. Help us reach our goal of more than 3,200!
Many moons ago, I was a writer and editor for Test&Measurement World, an electronics engineering trade magazine that covered electronics test and measurement. I wrote about stuff like how to use oscilloscopes, how analog-to-digital converters worked, and how to interpret multimeter specifications.
This was so long ago, that we didn’t even have e-mail! As a result, any . . . → Read More: Reader Feedback
Carl, N1EVO. I worked Carl on August 25. He was running QRP, from his home in Fort Kent, ME, which is just south of the Quebec/Maine border. He mentioned that he was the manager of a small hotel on US 1, which is 2,390 miles long and runs from the Canadian border all the way down to Florida.
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