Is it just me?  It seems almost daily that on the 2 big name ham radio sites, the most bitter, mean spirited and generally obnoxious postings are made as a matter of course.  One ham posts about ham radio being useful in this terrible monsoon damage in northern India.  Straight away, some son of a pig has to post something about call centers from India (which I like BTW - polite people who speak English are rare) . 8,000 dead, 66,000 missing and entire villages including their subsistence farms, literally wiped off the face of the Earth and these are the comments made by the 'hobby' guys!?  May they personally come to know the terror about which they make jokes.

It does not matter if the topic is about QRP, EMCOMM, antennas or almost any topic, these self-propelled-rectums are blethering away, spilling filth, trying to troll. I could go on, but why? 

Interestingly enough, in face-to-face conversations at Dayton or the occasional ham fest, I rarely find this sort of behavior - in fact it's been zero.  Perhaps the fact that I'm 6'5" and able to "correct" such poor behavior on the spot might have something to do with it.  It's not that I have a bad temper - I do not.  It's the cowardice of sniping from behind a keyboard or radio jamming on well established nets is seen as 'safe' because of being out of reach.  Any willingness to convert this bad behavior into actual, physical WORK face-to-face is rare indeed - at least in ham circles.

>>> This is the prime reason that I am grateful for THIS radio forum.  People here are more focused on exchanging ideas to make things better, helping others out with solutions, and trying new ways and methods - like Gil's magnetic loop experiments, which I enjoyed assisting in a tiny way as a distant receiving station.  The occasional troll, SPAMmer and/or anti-social malcontent is rapidly show the door.  We have a collection of raw beginners , old hands and just about anything in between and on a variety of topics, not ONLY radio. There is an increasing move to get on the air from outside of the home, even if it's only a short walk from the car to a park bench. The camping skeds have been AWESOME!  That's always enjoyable and SHARED right here on the forum. Now, I would NOT go so far as to publicly declare that none of us are CERTIFIABLY NUTS, but at least we all play well together.


Gil has run a good forum for what - about a year now? Glad you're all here. 


Now - GET BACK TO WORK!



>de RadioRay ..._ ._

Is it time to dust-off Opah's old enigma machine?




Rules Change Sought to Permit Encryption of Emergency Communications:
from The ARRL Letter on June 20, 2013
Website: http://www.arrl.org/
Add a comment about this article!

Rules Change Sought to Permit Encryption of Sensitive Emergency Communications:

The FCC is inviting public comments on a proposal from a Massachusetts ham to amend the Part 97 Amateur Service rules to permit the encryption of certain amateur communications during emergency operations or related training exercises. On June 7 the FCC accepted for filing a Petition for Rulemaking http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7022424684 (RM-11699) from Don Rolph, AB1PH, and put it on public notice. It will remain open for comment until July 8. Rolph petitioned the Commission in March to suggest an additional exception to ?97.113, which currently prohibits "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning."

"As such, encryption cannot be effectively supported by the Amateur Service," Rolph told the FCC in his PRM, "and this restriction has impacted the relationship of Amateur Radio volunteers and served agencies and significantly limited the effectiveness of amateurs in supporting emergency communications." He pointed out that Part 97 already relaxes its encryption prohibitions with respect to satellite control link communications and model craft radio control.

In his petition Rolph suggested excepting "intercommunications when participating in emergency services operations or related training exercises which may involve information covered by HIPAA [medical privacy requirements -- Ed] or other sensitive data, such as logistical information concerning medical supplies, personnel movement, other relief supplies or any other data designated by Federal authorities managing relief or training efforts."

Commenters may use the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r63ev) to comment on RM-11699 online.

Source:

The ARRL Letter

---

As you know, many of us use radio transceivers in the 5 to 100 Watts range.  Ham radio advertisers would have you believe that buying expensive equipment with more power is the answer to your problems.  As an engineer and life long ham, as well as a once-upon-a-time government communications consultant, I am here to tell you that power is not generally the solution. 

A little science:  Look at the S-meter on the front of any radio.  This will serve as our measuring tool.


We've all seen those little lines and know that the larger the number, the stronger the signal.  (for the moment we will discuss only signal strength, not signal to noise ratio).  Yes, the higher the number, the stronger the signal - in general.  We also "feel" that -naturally- if we increase our power, even a little bit, it will be more easily understood on the far end - well: yes and no.  The idea that If I double my transmitter power then I double my received signal from S 4 to S 8 is absolutely wrong - here is the REAL math:

Look at that S-meter.  Each one of those 'S-units' represents 6 dB. A doubling of power is only 3 dB.  Therefore doubling your power only gives the receiving station a boost of HALF of one S-unit,  which is generally not even detectable by the human ear, though some might be able to detect the change at a rate slightly over random ... 

Listen to THIS:  To produce an increase of only 1 S-unit on the meter, requires you to double the power and then double it again. 

Let's take the KX3 as an example.  It's rated at "only" 12 Watts maximum output.  Let's call it 12.5 Watts to  make the math easy:

12.5 X 2 = 25 Watts (3dB = half an S-unit)
25    x 2 = 50 Watts (6dB = one S-unit)
50    x 2 = 100 Watts (9dB= 1.5 S-units)

That's right - you could buy an amplifier for over $1,000, to increase your 12 1/2 Watt signal to 100 Watts and ONLY have a signal 1 and a half S-units stronger, though you are burning eight times more power.  Add to this the increased size and weight of your power source, heat sink and etc. - not really worth it. 

The argument is made that "If you're right at the verge of good copy, then that 100 Watts makes all the difference." and this is true, but is also true of 1,000 Watts or 10,000 Watts - right?  It's a matter of what you want to accomplish. If you have that 100 Watt rig, you already have a VERY powerful tool, and frankly, antenna selection is MUCH more important than buying an amplifier. The cost does not stop with 'only' the amplifier either, because usually, every order of magnitude of power increase usually means new BIG power supply, antenna "tuner" to handle the higher power, maybe transmission line and etc. too! the is also the issue that if you have a 'little' RF in the shack at low to medium power levels locking up your computer, getting into your neighbors' viewing of Judge Judy on the idiot box, zapping you when you touch things & etc. , at HIGH power it's going to be a REAL problem...  fixed by more money.

Radio Preppers is a forum primarily dedicated to radio communication during an emergency, especially an extended emergency when we might have to supply our own electrical power.  Unlike ARES/Red Cross/SATERN and other NGO's, we are not primarily focused on being a back-up for infrastructure communications.  We tend to gravitate more toward personal communication (though many of us volunteer for the other as a community service).  Because we are focused on personal/family/small group communications, our needs do NOT include 24/7, high volume low skill requirement comms, as found in cellphones & internet.  With us, it's usually fine to touch base at specific times during an average day, usually while out camping (if there IS call service -wah-hoo, but we make our skeds anyway) some disaster has taken down commercial 'infrastructure' such as during and after events such as hurricanes, blizzards and visits from the Mother In Law.

We've demonstrated what many wilderness QRP'ers already know: that low powered CW is HIGHLY dependable when attention is payed to making skeds based on time of day -v- frequency bands per the distances between stations. We primarily use CW because - on average- there is a system gain of 13 to 18 dB in the ability to copy weak Morse as opposed to weak voice.  Those figures are from various government and civilian studies, matching the ability to convey the same message in voice -v- CW under the same conditions.  Even if we take the lowest of the two figures of 13 dB 'gain' for using CW and apply the basic dB math from above, you see that it requires roughly TWENTY TIMES MORE POWER to convey the same message in voice as is does in Morse over an HF circuit.  Gil & I regularly demonstrate this when we switch to SSB voice, only to find the copy so tough that we return to CW to have easy copy FOR THE SAME POWER SETTINGS. It's simple physics and also anatomy.  It's easier to tell if a weak whistle is on or off, but a weak voice is SO complex, that's it's easy to 'detect' a voice, but miss what it is saying.

So, think 'system gain'.  Slow, steady CW from a QRP rig is VERY effective on a regular basis, while being easily maintainable in a field/disaster environment.  If your goal is to pass messages to/from others when out in the woods, carrying your house on your back (rucksack) or otherwise not having normal infrastructure available, then low power Morse is likely what you should use.




If your goal is  to provide 2mB/sec of websurfing to your local emergency organization, then your going to need a lot more money.

It's food for thought.


de RadioRay ..._ ._

Yup - this JUST happened.  I was listening on 20 meters during exceptional conditions, hearing F2YT near Paris in PSK31.  I NOW have a little KX3 transceiver (3 days old!) and it can send PSK31 by using the CW paddles to tap letters in Morse, which it converts into PSK31.  My received text scrolls across the small radio screen.  This fellow was SO loud, that for a little experiment, I set the power to .1 Watt ( 100 MilliWatts) and gave him a call: he came right back.  We exchanged locations names and signal reports - all repeated with no trouble. I simply answered his "CQ" while using .1 Watt so that he did not know my power level.  The antenna here is a just wire Delta loop for 40 meters, facing the wrong way...  Go Figger?!  ???

Checking the on-line tools, out two stations are 3846.8 miles apart. Doing the math that is:

38,468 miles per Watt!   

Radio - my friends - is magic!  This is not to count the CW conversations with Britain, France, Belgium, Sweden and tons of the USA using 10 Watts or less in CW. This PSK experiment was done without a computer - only the rig and paddles for interface.

>de RadioRay ..._ ._

Ps.  Gil & I have  also been doing some experiments on 60 meters...

This is a sheet metal project to extend the bottom case . . .

http://nf3v.com/wp/?p=276


>Ray

I have been slowly working through some 'bugs' on my homebrew amplifier.  It looks like it is alive and STABLE.  I'll save the boring parts, but it was unstable above about 50 Watts.  In the application notes, there was a small entry stating that because of the HIGH gain of this amplifier, it is advisable to separate the input coax from the output.  Welllll DUH!  Ya' think?  Due to the small size of my 'shack' all coax goes into a common 'well' in the wall, between the 2x4's to save space.  After making it all neat tidy and segregated, the amp is now able to run at 140-150 Watts for my QRP rig's input of 1-2 Watts.  It looks better when it's neat and tidy too!

The amplifier components and PCB are available from Communications Concepts Inc.  Mine is the EB63A



>Ray


Ps. Now to make output filters for the other bands.

I read apocalyptic novels every so often, so have something other than my usual reads.  In almost all of them, the big thing is EMP or solar flux wiping out all tech toys . . . well - First of all, if you've every traveled into the third world, one of the things that you'll notice after you've been there a while is the almost total lack of junk piles.  Oh - there is often trash around but not 'junk'.  No trashed TV sets, and other items.  Almost anything that can be used for something is in use. 

However, here in the good old USA we have junk piles galore!  As a kid, I used to build my radios from junked TV sets, because there were tons of then.  In today's surface mount world, it's a little more difficult, but it can still be done.  I think of all those 1960 - 1990 electronic wonders "preserved" under mounds of dirt, and I can see some enterprising soul digging them up, post EMP and building what he needs. Much of what's down there is often thrown out, not because it did not work, but because the owner wanted a new one. Alternators, the lead from old batteries . . . who knows.  We could make Baghdad batteries to run our home brewed stuff.  I see this not as a practical matter, but more as grist for the mill of those who write the pupl fiction of the prepper genre.


Taking it even further down the path of technology, there is THIS entertaining site.

http://sparkbangbuzz.com/copper-oxide-te/copper-oxide-gen3.htm

How about a reasonable substitute for a transistor, by using a strip cut from a galvanized bucket?  A microwatt transmitter that covers several miles - suitable to ground wave and community comms . . .  It's a great site and a good read for the science hounds in the group.

> de RadioRay ..._ ._

I saw that Gil brought up a good point in another forum: the difference between what most hams all "EMCOMM" -vs- communicating during an emergency.  The difference is huge.  Usually EMCOMM mans supporting government or NGOs like The Red Cross in disaster, when infrastructure is not used. However, our focus on communicating during emergencies is often quite another matter because it comes to personal and small group preparedness.

For small group preparedness, we are not generally passing large messages, containing large complicated text such as 150 refugees , their next of kin and etc. or orders for supplies from distribution centers and etc.  For our use, ham radio emergency communication is more for checking the status , location and perhaps some planning needed for our family/small group.  The next layer is local area reporting by eye witnesses or second source (next to eye witness) of events which might impact us locally, usually on the 2 meters band.  Finally, we consider long distance information from around the nation and the world, via HF radio. We'll generally be doing more listening and less talking, so the ability to monitor is important. Hand crank shortwave/AM & FM radios are an excellent way to let non-geeks contribute to the information gathering, saving your 'geeky radios' for those who are trained and have the least likelihood of accidentally damaging them. 

As such, our power burden is generally lower, our volume of radio traffic is actually quite small and one of the most important bits of information in our case might simply be a one line message. "WE ARE SAFE AT FAMILY FARM.". This is easily tapped out in Morse on a small, light kit transceiver, powered by AA batteries and recharged by solar or other means, as Gil has doing for fun from his campsite a very short time ago.


Your Thoughts?


>Ray

By definition, in CW (Morse code) , hams refer to running 5 Watts or less as 'operating QRP'.  I love running low power and Gil and I have a regular sked from Virginia to Florida.  He has run as low as .100 Watt (100 milliWatts), but usually runs 3.5 to ten Watts, depending upon what rig he decides to use that day.

However, there ARE times when it's handy to have a station running some power, like when the fellow you have a sked with , lives in a city, possibly in an apartment, and local electrical noise is high, so it HELPS him if he can have a more powerful signal to receive through the noise.  The great thing though is tht you do NOT need to buy a BIG rig for power and then use your great QRP rigs onyl when it's easy.  I just built a 140 Watt amplifier, from kitted components bought from Communications Concepts Inc.  This is not a kit, in that you do not have detailed instructions.  There is a quick 'cheat sheet' and the manufacturers' application notes to build it by.  However, I just fired it up on ONLY 20 meters tonight and yes -  it is absolutely working! Listening on internet web receiver, I gain roughly two to 2  1/2 S-units on a distant receiver.  That makes a huge difference when there is noise.  I plan to make the other output filter modules for other bands and then put it all into a metal box for easy use.  However, this means that my QRP rigs, with their fine receivers and etc. now become my 'Big Rig'!  It's THRIFTY too!


>de RadioRay ..._ ._

NEWS 15APR13 // 2:50pm eastern

I just got the news that two bombs exploded at the Boston marathon.  That part you can get in more detail on the news.  The aspect you might consider is that when this happened, the government shut down cellphone service in an effort to prevent further explosions, in case the bombers were using cell phones for command detonation of more devices. 

So - cellphones are -once again - not your best bet for emergency communications for this and many other reasons.



>de RadioRay

Gil & I were designing this water tight, shoulder operated QRP rig with built-in magnetic-loop antenna, stabilizing forward hand-grip/tuning knob, key in the pistol grip, day/night frequency display (hooded), Quick change/Hi-Capacity battery pack and 'ground spike'.  The rig has an -auto-keyer in it, capable of sending DITS & DAHS as fast as you can pull the trigger. However, recent legislation has made it highly UNlikely that it will ever go into production. 

What A Shame - -



de RadioRay ..._ ._

I recently purchased a 'dongle' on E-Bay, iriginally designed for watching digital TV and such.  I don't have any use for that, but I bought it because the thing can be used with FREEware as a VHF through micro-wave, multi-mode  radio receiver!  The RTL dongle cost me about $17 and the software is "  SDR#  ".  Right out of the box, it displays up to 2 MHz of spectrum, you tune with the mouse and it's great for seeing all thos weird signal out there.  Next I ordered a converter so that I could receive HF frequencies from 'ham-it-up  company.  They had dongles and the converter. 

WOW!  Please, rather than asking me about this, just go to You Tube and search "  RTL SDR dongle  " and watch the videos.

http://youtu.be/V73q1p1yOHw

For those who have never used an SDR, it will blow your mind about 'tuning the dial'.


>de RadioRay ..._ ._

For those who tell you that alternate communications methods for disaster preparedness is silly or paranoid, consider this...

Yesterday, Gil and I were using highly portable HF radio transceivers slightly larger than a paperback book, to hold a conversation in Morse code while over 800 miles apart and the topic of this discussion was . . . . . //waaaaaait for it . . . .//  the damage , injuries and disruption of infrastructure as a result of the recent meteor strike(s) in south eastern Russia.  Now, if that is not a page out of an apocolyptic novel, I do not know what is. I mean - a METEOR STRIKE?  What do you figure the ODDS of THAT happening?

 

Folks - we're 'there'.  IT's game ON, because even the most improbable things can and are happening. Having a 'hobby/mania' like ham radio gives you the skills and hardware for use as a serious TOOL when things go BOING!   Have FUN on the radio, but remember to make it relevant to actual USE during a disruption of commercial infrastructure, such as loss of power, loss of internet, loss of (GASP!) cellphones . . . Anyone who tries to tell you that 'That can't happen' is trying to sell you something - and THAT 'something' is widely available in any barnyard by the shovelfull.



Maybe we'll go for the next 50 years without any 'disaster' - but that's not likely AAAAND maybe those politicians will take excellent care of us if there IS a disaster.  However, you might consider asking the people of Staten Island about how well they were taken care of ???    >:(  >:(  >:(   

Yeah - I thought so -    ::)

I can remember a decade and a half ago, the non-event of Y2K was most Americans' first encounter with a disaster centered  'what if?' thinking and planning in large numbers - at least since the H-bomb scares. Suddenly even late thirties hippie chicks were soliciting the thoughts of 'survivalists' in their planning. 
:-* :-* :-* :-* :-*  8)  :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*   //It was a good time in my life...   ;)   //


Ten years after that, it was 9/11, planes flying into buildings, anthrax in the mail, talk of duck tape and plastic to turn our houses into HEPA filtered/overpressure protection chambers (or asphixiation chambers, if you did what FEMA said and had simply sealed everything in plastic with NO filtered air in or 'used' air out . . . ) and now meteor strikes, like in some Hollyweird movie.

So - it's been done in real life and it's here on this site: hams discussing meteor strikes which resulted in over a thousand injured.  (Note: the meteor did the injury, not the ham contact - we actually injured nobody...)

I remember the words of a long distance sailor who made certain that sailors who read his book were prepared for eventual capsize (it WILL happen) because just about every other page there was this note:

"Think Inverted!"

I would offer YOU the same advice, but about society and it's niceties in general.

THINK INVERTED!

>de RadioRay ..._ ._

Once bitten, your knowledge of Morse Code will show itself in the strangest ways. Birds chirping, seem to be sending messages. Rain drops sound like a thousand conversations in Morse and those silly movies where they pretend to be sending Morse, but are not - or are sending something entirely different... fun. . .  and then there is hidden Morse in architecture -



This left me laughing for several minutes. My dog would only tilt her head and wonder at my outbursts . . .


de RadioRay ..._ ._

Just when I think that I've seen just about every approach to QRP radio . . .

https://sites.google.com/site/oh6dccw/qrp-transmitter-powered-by-a-cw-key


Moo-ha-ha-ha!


de RadioRay ..._ ._

I often monitor the Maritime Mobile Service Network on 14300USB.  Today, there were several sailors - not unusual - except these were not enjoying the latest drink in the Caribbean, they were in the SOUTH Atlantic, including "Jeanne/KC2IOV. She is SOLO skipper of s/v Nereida SOLO , non-stop around the world on her sailboat.  Current position is between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good hope.  Picture yourself being halfway between the extreme southern tip of South America and South Africa on a boat alone - by choice.  She had to adjust her goals from a previous attempt at non-stop, solo circumnavigation when her boat/home was knocked down WEST of Cape Horn, causing extensive damage, then had to sail into the south Atlantic ANYWAY to Ushuaia, Argentina for anything even remotely like a repair. I'm telling you, she must be tougher than woodpecker lips!

>>>=====> I plan to listen tomorrow. I also heard her on an inter-boat radio sked in the marine bands.

http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KC2IOV


How was YOUR commute today?   ha ha  I've had some really lousy drives in Los Angeles or D.C. area, but was never rolled over by monster waves like she was . . . It's a BIG world out there and radio helps us to learn more.  Now that I'm limited to being an arm-chair sailor, this is a REAL thrill for me.


>de RadioRay ..._ ._

Gil & I have been enjoying daily contact on CW, with his PAR wire antenna to my simple 'halfsquare' wire beam or dipole.  Power levels with Gil now range from 10 Watts down to a half a Watt on CW, using such 'monster' rigs as the RockMite or the DC-20B kits. We make contact daily, usually chat for a half hour, then sign-off.  This is using simple , wire antennas on battery powered rigs and only a few times have we decided that conditions were too noisy to ENJOY the contact, but we were able to explain this ove the radio and then sign-off. 

In short:  CW on HF frequencies at "QRP" power levels, using highly portable equipment is entirely practical for basic communication and message delivery on a repeatable basis.

Military/'spook' transceivers with Morse power levels of 5 Watts (PRC-64) up to 15-20 Watts (PRC-74, GRC-109) were used as lifelines, usually from 'denied areas' to home stations hundreds and even thousands of miles away.  This being the case, we as hams can CERTAINLY do this for basic disaster reporting & etc.  I would HIGHLY encourage everyone to get on the air in Morse, enjoy your time doing it and 'own your skills'.
-...-
SSB has been fun at lower than usual power levels also, though not nearly as effective.  Occasionally, Gil & I will slide up into the voice portion of the bands and chat in voice. This has been at 14 Watts and most recently 10 Watts.  Voice requires MUCH more power than CW, for the same reliability over a given radio path. It's fun to use voice occasionally, but when you go from essentially 99.9% copy in CW down to fadng and noisy voice at the same power level, you DO notice the difference - immediately!  We've often decidede to return to CW so that we could more easily continue the conversation.  We have NEVER asked the other station to switch TO voice because CW was not getting through.

If you do not have commercial infrastructure, it's MUCH easier to keep a small battery powered rig operating, than the large power hungry transceiver.  The idea that you can just turn down your big rig to save power is not really that effective - though it helps.  You see, you'll do more listening than anything else, at 100% receive duty cycle.  Therefore, your RECEIVE current is what eats most of your power.  A QRP rig generally draws very LITTLE receive current and in Morse, your average 'duty cycle' during transmit is 25-50%, depending upon how you send: very energy efficient.


If you're thinking that 'Oh, my code is not good enough for that.' : remember that Gil had NO code when he started this, not very long ago.  Now he truly 'Owns' his skills'.  If you have ANY code - that's a great place to (re)start!

Go Forth & Conquer!


de RadioRay ..._ ._

After MUCH head scratching and etc. I discovered why signals from Gil were quite readable but not as strong as they probably should be.  More importantly, my signals to him were not at all strong.  Using analysis software - and Kentucky Windage- it was determined that my 130 foot doublet antenna makes a big null right on his location and the take-off angle is too high for the prefered path, forcing us to a lower band, higher absorption and noise.  We were making useful contacts - no question - and it was quite impressively functional considering the use of expedient antennas and powers as low as 200mW..  HOWEVER - I didn't want to settle for "functional" and so designed a wire beam of a type I used a long time ago with manpack sets: the Half Square antenna. (GOOGLE)

In about two hours, I put in a quick and dirty Half Square pointed toward Gil, expecting him to be at home with his best antenna at the ready.  At the appointed time I heard his signal, switched between antennas and sure enough, about one S-unit improvement, little or no fading, while on my 'regular' antenna, he was down one S-unit with deep fades and increased noise. THEN he taps to me that he's not home running 14 Watts into his PAR EndFed, properly installed, but instead he's at the coffee shop using a BuddiStick, wedged-in among chairs, tables and frightened housewives...   ::)   using his K1 at 5 Watts. So - his signal ranged from S3 to S5 on the first test, S4 to S7 on the second about 45 minutes later. I recorded the audio and have sent it to him.

:o  ! The RF noise in an urban cyber cafe' must be tremendous !       :o

Be Warned!!!  JUST when you THOUGHT that it was safe to go enjoy a fine cup of coffee , served by a shapely 20 year old barrista...


some guy sets-up a 'coffee clandestine' radio station and begins to radiate mystery signals into the ether to who-knows-whom???   ha ha




de RadioRay ..._ ._

Assuming the loss of commercial infrastructure, with internet being first on the list, what are your expectations and 'wants' from the use of ham radio and radio in general?

Local Information:  For me, the first use of radio is for information from farther than I can personally see. This begins with 2 meter radio for local information.  However, my use of 2 meters is very limited because in this area, it's barely used at all.

National Information: The simplest form of mind control is to control what goes INTO the mind. By now, you've probably at least strongly suspected that The Mass Media is a very shallow and glitzy control mechanism for the generally dumbed-down public. As a people, we know more about "Desperate Housewives" and the NFL (the National Felons Legion)than we do about the noose that national and global politicians are cinching ever more tightly around our few remaining freedoms. We've been conditioned to think in sound bites and 'go with' whoever spliced together the best 5 - 10 second infomercial foisted upon us as news reporting, rather than requiring actual indepth reporting within an historical context.  As an example: most of our population wanted to go to war against Iraq as 'payback for 9/11' even though Iraq had nothing to do with it.  Now the public wants to turn Iran into a 'glass parking lot' because the TV says so, though most Americans can't find Iran on a map and don't know a thing about the Persians who have lived there for more than three thousand years.

This is where listening to shortwave radio comes in: 

#1 : Every broadcaster has an agenda, but by being able to listen to many, entirely different points of view on the news about our nation and the world via the foreign media, you're much more likley to be able to decide what is REALLY happening by reading between the lines.  I learn more about international and national crop failures, monetary policies and their effects from INTERNATIONAL broadcasters, than I ever do from the talking heads and 'press-titutes' of the domestic media.  It also helps in gaining more of a world view to understand that we've been lied to on may occasions and on most topics. Listening to the same topics via Radio Japan, Red Line frm the Voice of Russia, Deutche Welle (Germany)  and etc. makes for interesting 'information fusion sessions' with friends.

#2 : Being an old Cold Warrior, I never forget the use of shortwave radio to reach the millions who lived under Soviet occupation behind the Iron Curtain. Despite the power of the massive central State, millions listened to the outside world via UNTRACEABLE shortwave radio.  The internet is a wonderful tool that I believe is as pivotal as the invention of the printing press,. However, the internet IS a government system at it's core and by it's very nature, designed to be a tracing & collating mechanism.  Shortwave radio however, flows across borders and listeners can be very anon.  This might prove to be very handy later.

#3 : HF ham radio is a great way to communicate across an entire region - like in State and also across a continent, even internationally.  In talking with hams in the areas struck by post tropical cyclone Sandy, it was soon evident that the news media did NOT meantion many of the politically embarassing things which these real people on the ground were first hand witnesses to.   The direct conversations about power, water and domestic services being disrupted, looters being coddled, while homeowners were identified then charged with 'crimes' because because of their being seen on TV footage of them bearing bats, bows and pipes for the better pat of a month, when entire sections of the city just a 1/4 mile away were lit-up like - welllll like BROADWAY, was a clear indication of many things - none of them good.

So - there's a start. Let's get a discussion going about what YOU want, need or aspire to in radio and maybe a little bit about how you plan to do it.



de RadioRay ..._ ._

Last Night I had a little trouble sleeping so I decided to call 'CQ' around the center of the 30 meter band on the 'big' rig at 75 Watts.  European stations were finally fading away so that I culd listen 'out there' for the more distant stations, and hopefully to make contact with some fellow hams who are not '599 73 SK' type of operators. My antenna is a 130 foot wire doublet at a bit over 40 feet in the air and fed with ladder line, running roughly NNE/SSW. For those who do not regularly operate thirty, it's a treasure trove of interesting stations, particularly during the off hours when non-US hams can get on the air an not be mobbed. Having operated from overseas many years ago, I remember how it was to be mobbed by rude paper chasers, while I trying to hold a conversation with a friend back in the U.S.  This was in the pre-internet days, so being able to talk with 'home' real-time was a treat!

Last night was one of those memorable nights. We've all had them - or should! The band sounded dead, yet I knew that is not the case, because 'utility' stations in Germany and elsewhere were quite readable on adjacent frequencies.  Besides, the middle bands are usually open to somewhere. With a little bit of calling 'CQ', I had two different South African stations give me a call. A distance of over 8047.6 miles! What a delight to actually have more than a bit of time in a QSO with such an interesting couple of fellows in an exotic place such as the former RSA!  I must say that their code was good, steady and well sent and neither of us required a mega-station to communicate.

The next contact was on the late night/early morning forty meter band with my heavily modified Wilderness Sierra Mk.4 (shown elsewhere). at the BONE CRUSHING POWER of between 2 to 3  Watts. This led to a nice, hour long chat with a fellow named Glen out in Kingman , Az. A distance of 2086.6 miles.  Glen is good on the key, so I was able to 'slide the weight back' on my old Vibroplex original 'bug'  to do a LOT of talking at a brisk but not fast speed ( ~ 28 - 30 WPM ). This allowed an hour of real conversation on a wide range of topics.

So, even a modest station of less than 100 Watts, attached a basic doublet/dipole antenna hung in the trees often yeilds the ability to talk with other hams all the way across the Atlantic ocean before their breakfast is ready in the southern hemisphere. Then QRP to a great CW man two thousand miles away who is also a radio insomniac! Contrairy to what those glossy magazines and web adverts say, you do NOT require a mega-station, huge linear amplifier and a sound-studio voice equalized for 'Hi-Fi SSB' (what a silly idea!) .  A good receiver, a few Watts on transmit and an old Morse key will do the job nicely.

73 de RadioRay ..._ ._