A guy near me has started something interesting.  A 2M simplex net where we all check in on the local repeater, then go to a simplex frequency and re-check in with the net control operator who has a 2m beam on a tall tower.  He swings it around so we can always here him and check in.  He asks us to email to him who we heard simplex, then he emails out the tally.

Kind of a nice way to see what your local simplex coverage is.

https://radiofreeq.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/militia-radio-frequencies/

QuoteThis article focuses on some of the radio gear and channel frequencies utilized by various groups

Interesting article with a useful link or 2.  Basically the various U.S. militia groups are now using UV-5Rs, some HF SSB, digital and even a little CW.

Being 20 miles from Boston, there haven't been any militia near me for almost 240 years, but I think I'll monitor some of the HF frequencies just for fun.

The article is short and touches on short term preparedness (4weeks ish) but also discusses that he's "1 standard deviation away" from a big earth quake making Seattle worse than the Katrina hit zones down south.  Lots and lots of good comments after the article too.

http://www.eham.net/articles/35232

The Boy Scouts have a new merit badge and it's requirements are impressive:
Morse, semaphore, ships flags, sign language and braille, cryptography and general signs and markings. 

I doubt my boys will get this badge, but it's encouraging to see the BSA has put this kind of thing back on the list.

Short Article:
https://portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/3635/signs-signals-and-codes

Details and requirements of the badge:
http://www.scouting.org/Home/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-SIGN.aspx

Sunday (8/9) I'll be operating from a little hill in the local State Park from 1:00 - 5:00(eastern).  It's the annual Skeeter Hunt 4hr QRP sprint.  The object is to encourage QRPers to get out doors.  Extra points for operating away from the back yard and for using home made gear (kit or home brew).

I just finished a home-brew BuddiStick and 3-band trap EFHW wire and I'll probably set up both so I can compare their performance.  Since this event doesn't use WARC bands and I'm using the MTR I'll almost certainly be only on 20M.  Look for me around 14.060MHz.  My call will be "CQ BZZ CQ BZZ..."  Look me up if you have time.  You don't have to turn in any logs and I'm not "in it to win it" so I'd love some conversation.

Up for Karma (give away) is the QRP t-shirt I recently bought.  I wore it once for Field Day, but it's just a little too small.  It's a Hanes size Large (I'm 6'1", 180lb)
Just post "In" and next week I'll use random.org to pick the reply # of the lucky person.  I'll ship it free to your QTH (sorry CONUS  only).

It's better to stay ahead of things, rather than reacting to what has already happened.  Drones will soon be everywhere:  police, military, civilian.  Drones won't be ubiquitous for several years, but I don't see a SHTF situation in the next several years either.  Now's the time to start thinking and planning.

They are coming:
Here's that entertaining guy from FPS Russia with a machine gun mounted on his drone.
The military is working on cheap, disposable drones where the circuit board is part of the airframe.  Soon, us civilians will have similar things.

I figure there are 2 main missions drones will be used for; recon and attack.  In either case you want the drone down, but in the attack case you can't expose yourself while doing it.

This is a tough one.  I'm not seeing anything that gives the results I would like. 
*  Trap and skeet skills sounds nice, but that only gives you a reach of maybe 100 yards if you're lucky.  Recon drones, and probably the other type will be higher than that.  And, you are exposed while doing it.
*  Jamming assumes the drone isn't autonomous and that you know what frequency to jam and have the equipment and skills.  This has some possibility for us radio amatures.  Of course properly preparing now by testing equipment would cost me my ham license.
*  Get your own armed drone???  I'm a private pilot and have done a little play dog fighting and lining up for an air-air kill is much harder than it looks.

Has anyone else been giving this some thought?

There's a new company started by a former Cushcraft antenna design engineer that appears to have done what I wanted to but couldn't. A 1KW, 80M-10M EFHW coupler with no variable capacitor (like LNR Precision's couplers).  The price is steep($99), and it weighs 1lb, but if it does what they claim, it would be fantastic.

I've designed a 100W and 10W EFHW coupler similar to LNR Precision's (no variable cap to tune when changing bands).  I take a slightly different approach and don't have that "damping" capacitor across the primary winding, but essentially the same thing.  The best I could do is 40M - 10M.  I couldn't get one to go out to 80M or much beyond 100W.  Transformers are very tricky things.  The small ones don't have enough inductance to work at low frequencies (3.5MHz).  The big ones have too much stray inductance and capacitance to work well at high frequencies (28MHz).  1kW isn't much for a balun, but it's a lot of power to put through a 7:1 step-up transformer.

I'm really having a hard time not calling B.S. on this:

QuoteJust adding a wire radiator of ~130 feet makes this antenna resonant on 80/40/30/20/17/15/12/10m.
Power Handling:1kW I.C.A.S

Especially the 1kW.  I can't believe a transformer that big will work at 28MHz, or pass 1kW at only 3.5MHz.

So, anyone know about MyAntennas.com?  No reviews on eHam yet.

I really want one.  Even if it only works for 80/40/20 ad 100W, that would be a nice simple, end fed, no tuner antenna.  Great for NVIS in a go-kit.

Who's got experience with QRP traped wire antennas?

Now that I have a MTR_V2 and am going backpacking this summer, I want a small, light 40/30/20 end fed antenna for SOAT work.   A 63' end-fed wire with a pluggable link at the 30meter point would work 40/30/20, but it's long and I would have to lower it to change the pluggable link.   I'm thinking what I really want is traps as 20M and 30M.   Traps will make the overall length shorter and I can jump between bands without fussing with the antenna.   The traps need to be small and tapered at the ends in case all I can do is an inverted-V and need to pull the traps over a tree limb.

All I've found on the web is a design using T50-2 toroids and 1,000V mica caps (27pf-47pf range).   Sounds good, but I wonder if the Radio Preppers brain trust has some advice on the subject.

Two articles.
http://gazette.com/military-briefing-morse-code-out-of-army-training/article/1550882#!

http://www.army.mil/article/147247/Fort_Huachuca_bids_farewell_to_Morse_code_training/

In short:  The army has dropped its Morse course. 

QuoteIt isn't going away entirely, though. Because some low-tech military forces use the code, troops will have the option of going to an Air Force Morse code course taught in Texas.

Quote"We train [for] Morse code because the adversary still uses Morse code," said Germain, who, along with another course instructor, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Joshua Henrichs, are training two airmen to serve as Morse code instructors in Texas.

Air Force Tech Sgt. Ryan Kilcrease agrees there is a continued need for Morse code training. "It remains the cheapest and most reliable means of communication."

Everything has a finite useful life, then morphs or dies.  Morse has done well and I expect it to be around 25 years from now, but with the rapid advancement of technologies I would be surprised if it was in common use in 50 years.  Meanwhile I'm having a blast with it.

This is an interesting video where a guy guts a washing machine, adds a eBay paddle wheel and makes a hydro generator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0ieFZI4-6K8

I never really gave hydro power any thought before now.  Flat-landers like Gil are probably out of luck, but anyone that can run a pipe down hill from a water source so it has some pressure can make power.

eBay is full of useful stuff.  You can get the Pelton wheel for around $50. 

Here's a wheel and 12V-36V, 1KW generator for $211.  Needs a housing, plumbing and controller.

Here's a cute little 12V, 10W generator for $13.49 with threaded pipe connections.  Even something like this running 24/7 could run your LEDs, radio and provide a little time on the computer each day.

Though eastern Massachusetts is very bumpy, the tallest hill within 25 miles of me is probably only 300' so I don't have much to work with.  Still, this warrants some thought.

Years ago, in times B.C. (before children) I did a fair amount of snow camping.  This year, from late January to mid February Massachusetts broke all kinds of snow fall records.  We got about 5'-6' in 3 weeks.  With all that snow I decided to do something I haven't done in 20 years; sleep in a snow cave.  It would be a good test of what little gear I now have, and it might be fun.

After shoveling 2' of snow off the back porch for the 2nd time in a week I had a really big pile to tunnel into.  It took me a little over an hour of hard work to dig out a cave big enough for 2 people.





I threw down a tarp, closed cell camping pad and a fancy air mattress that supposedly has synthetic down to keep cold air from circulating up.  Recently, for Boy Scout trips I bought myself an inexpensive (Kelty) zero degree mummy bag.  I also dug out my old candle lantern.  With a piece of plywood covering most of the door opening the candle lantern got the interior up to 35F even though it was 22F outside.  Once I went to bed my body heat kept the inside in the low 30s with the outside temperature at 20F.  It was quite comfortable, except when I had to get up and pee and brushed the low roof with my back and got snow in the bag.  I think that's the one big down side of a snow shelter is trying to not get snow in your gear as you move around.

 


A week later I did it again when the temps went down to zero F.  I know my "zero degree" sleeping bag is really good for about 20F, but I figured the snow cave would keep me warm.  It did until 3:30am when I had to get up.  It was about 2F outside and leaving the door open chilled down the inside.  I didn't bother lighting the candle lantern and the inside of the cave never recovered.  At 4:30 the inside was 15F.  I decided this was the limit of the bag.  I got up with very cold feet, went inside, turned the electric blanket up high and crawled in bed.

So, what if I had to bug out on foot today?  It would be bad.  Even with my snow shoes, travel in 3'-5' of snow would be exhausting and I'd cover 1mph.  The temperature has been in the teens and single digits at night lately.  Nights would be bad without a good fire.  Maybe if I wore most of my clothes and had a hot water bottle in the sleeping bag (used to work great for me) I could get a few hours of sleep.  I would be in my tent unless it was very, very cold.  The work of making a snow cave and putting up with a snow ceiling are big drawbacks to a snow shelter.

Do zombies hibernate or travel south for the winter?  With the way they walk I can't imagine them catching me in my snow shoes while they sink up to their thighs in snow.  At least I've got that going for me.

I want 40/30/20M capability with my SOTA EFHW antenna coupler.  I want to be able to hang 1 wire from a tree and not have to worry about taking it down to change length.

I know that with one trap at the 30M point I can have a 40/30M half wave radiator.  It seems to me that since that antenna would be resonant at 40M it would also work as a 20M EFHW radiator too.  It seems like it should work, but in 2-3 years of reading about EFHW antennas I've never seen this done.

Anyone got an opinion on this?  Having one wire to string in the trees for my 40/30/20 MTR radio would help keep the complete rig package small and simple.

I never gave much thought to WHEN land-line telegraphy was phased out in the US.  I was reading this short article on a presentation an 83 year old gave who started his career as a railroad telegrapher at the age of 19 (around 1950).  In the article it says: 

"One of the most memorable telegrams he sent came after President John F. Kennedy  was assassinated, alerting all trains to stop for one minute and blow their  whistles to honor the president." 
That was in 1963!  I had no idea land-line telegraphy was still in use then.  I googled around and couldn't find a concise article on when it was phased out, but Canadian railroads were still using it in the 1970s.

Anyone know of a good history of telegraphy in the US?

I just put together a couple Get Home Bags for the wife's car and mine.  They've got the usual survival stuff tayored for 1-3 days(sleeping bag, space blanket, food, Esbit stove and 6 fuel bricks, lighters, flashlight, 1st aid, multi-tool, compas/whistle, etc, etc).  I had 2qts of water in them, but that had to come out because it's getting into the 20's some nights.  How can I store water and have the container survive many freeze/thaw cycles???

The scenario is playing out in upstate NY right now with people stuck in their cars for 2 days.  Getting out and lighting a fire in 3-5 feet of snow isn't viable and I'm assuming the fuel tank will be pretty empty.

In case you're wondering, I checked.  Wine freezes at 15F-20F so I can't substitute that for water :-\ .

While in D.C. this summer we visited the International Spy Museum.  It's not a .gov museum, but a small for-profit museum.  They had a pretend black-bag mission you could go on, which was fun for the family, but mainly it was displays behind glass.  As you would expect, the stuff on display was old since new stuff is still classified, and besides, with modern technology, if they can imagine a spy toy they can make it.

Naturally there was some radio and Morse oriented stuff:

I like the bike generator and the cat supervising.




If I believe the sign, this is THE radio Virginia Hall used in the picture above. 




Paging agent 86.  Well, not a shoe phone but a bug.





A QRP rig after my own heart.  A little more info on the Tenzor (Tensor) radio.  I would give a lot to own one, but it seems they are very, very rare.





Nice little Tx rig with radials on built in reels.  Only problem is it blows itself up.






Very nice little SSB & CW rig.

I've had 2 serious encounters with EMI making my radios almost useless.  One battle is won and the other is ongoing.  I thought others may benefit from my ongoing adventure.


Mobile (car) Noise: 
I did an installation of my FT-857 in my SUV that I was rather pleased with.  The remote head is on a microphone gooseneck up front and the main body is in the baggage area.  I installed jacks in the center console for the mic, Morse key, headphones (or plug into car stereo) and for the remote head.  It looked great.  However, with the engine running I had S8 noise on just about all the bands.  The noise did not change with engine speed. 


First, with straps I grounded everything:  doors to body, body to frame (body is on rubber isolators).  That didn't help.  Then I was told to ground the exhaust system to the body.  That worked!  On a quiet day it was below S2 with the engine running.


Then, after not using it for a year I put the radio back in for a long drive and the noise was S9!  I assumed a ground broke so I re-did some grounds and added some.  Didn't help.  After lots of reading I concluded it might be the fuel pump.  On fuel injected cars the fuel pump is in the tank and runs at the same speed regardless of what the engine is doing.  A clever test to perform is to note the noise with the key off, then turn the key on, but not start the engine.  The fuel pump will turn on for 1-2 seconds to pressurize the fuel system.  I saw the noise jump to S9 then drop back down.  To confirm the theory I put a 6' piece of wire at the end of the antenna cable and went sniffing around the car.  Everything was quiet except the fuel pump wires at the fuel tank, which were real loud.  I made a filter from a 0.1u, 100V cap and a couple large ferrite beads and spliced it into the pump wires close to where then enter the fuel tank.  That got the noise down to S3.  I can make a better filter, but S3 is plenty good for me.  I hate doing wiring up under the car.


I don't know why the pump got noisy, but my instincts tell me it may be thinking about dying.


Home EMI:
I don't know when it got bad or why I didn't notice it earlier, but my home station has had S8 of background noise for some time now, even on the 15M band.  With the rig running from a battery I threw the house's main breaker.  Noise went to S0 :D .  I hadn't seen that in a long time.  After so much breaker flipping that one of my Verizon set top boxes lost its programming and won't work, I found 4 breakers that cause noise of S5 - S8.  One is from a wall wart power supply.  One is the supply for the Verizon cable box >:( .  Those I can filter or replace with linear versions.  I haven't tracked down the noise sources on the other 2 breakers yet.  My family hates when I shut down parts of the house when they're home.  I'm going to have to track them all down though since even the weakest will keep my S-meter at S5.  I'll post a follow-up as I make progress.

My wife has been slowly getting more on board with the whole concept of prepping.  Ebola has her spooked, with good reason I think, and for a bug-in situation she's jumped ahead of me  :D . 

This morning she told me she want's 3 months of food in the house in case we need to bug-in and wait out the worst of an epidemic.  She also wants a get-home-bag for her car.  She's on some meds so she's refilling her 1month prescriptions after 3 weeks and banking the excess in the basement fridge until she has a 3month supply.

3 months of food!?!?!  We have 2 teen age boys with hollow legs.  Figuring 2,000 calories/day for them and a little less for me and the wife, a 3 month supply is over 600,000 calories!  For context, that's 400lbs of rice.  I've got over 100,000 calories stashed in long shelf-life items.  Getting that up to 600,000 will take some effort and $.  Fortunately, we go through a lot of rice, olive oil and peanut butter in this house, so we'll eventually eat most of the things on my list once the scare is over.  We're also going to put a big bottle of multi-vitimins in the basement fridge.  Living off prepper food long term can leave you lacking in vitamins.

The September issue of QST has an article describing a simple cable to connect my UV-5R to my Android phone and doing APRS with an app using the phone's GPS.  Sounds great; cheap and no new gear.

I want to do this, mainly just to do it and see it work, but I'm not entirely sure what use I would make of it.  I don't have a bunch of friends using it.  It would be for "normal life" only as I certainly wouldn't be broadcasting my position during a SHTF situation.

Anyway, what do you use APRS for?

I know.  The only good contest is a canceled contest.  But,

I stumbled across a monthly sprint that has my attention.  It's the Adventure Radio Society's Spartan Sprint.  As far as contests go, it looks like it does more good than harm.

* It's got a light footprint on the bands:
     -Happens on the 1st Monday of the month (doesn't clutter up the weekend).
     -It's only 2hrs long:  9:00pmest to 11:00pmest.
     -It's small:  seems like about 40 people turned in logs last month.
     -QRP only.
    -Stays out of WARC bands.
* Operating outdoors is encouraged.
* Using scratch built antennas, rigs or whatever is encouraged.
* Here's the part I like:  your score is the number of QSOs divided by the weight of your rig in pounds!
   Last month someone with a 30lb rig made 3 contacts for a score of 0.1.  Elsewhere someone made 16 contacts on a 0.26lb rig for a score of 61.

I just put this one in my calendar.  By then my KX1 will have arrived so the weight penalty will be small. :D   8) .

The ARS also has their annual 4hr long Flight of the Bumblebees in July.  Similar concept except you are either a home station, or if operating portable and you got there under your own power (feet, bike, canoe,...) you are a bumblebee. 
Bumblebees can earn special commendations for:
 

   
• Most interesting equipment
• Most fascinating FOBB venture
• Most beautiful site
•