Posts Tagged → Amateur Radio
Poison Ivy Almost Gone
This morning I woke up to go to work and was still itching pretty bad though you could barely see it. This evening when I came home from work I noticed something was different. No itching at all! After four and a half weeks it is finally on its way out and all I can say is thank God! This has been a rough month with the never ending itching and even worse the allergic reaction to the medicine.
During this time I had two very big events my life and that was graduating OU and the other was seeing my family in New Mexico for the first time in 21 years. The enjoyment of both of these events were a bit lost because of having the most severe poison ivy outbreak known to the human race. For those of you that saw it, you know what I am talking about. For the rest of you, I will spare you the pictures but I do have some. 
While we were gone on our trip my oldest son Kevin was a hero. He did not get to go with us on our vacation because he forgot to tell his boss about it until it was too late to let him off. I was upset for a while but that was changed when some bad guys broke into our house while we were gone. My son captured two of the three and the police caught the other one. Everyone of them were over 18 years old so we are pressing charges. He walked in on them inside the house. Just yesterday he was at work and helped to capture a thief at his work. I told him that being a police officer may be his calling. The bad guys come right to him. I am so proud of him and the way he handled the situation.
Now that I am feeling better this weekend I have to work tomorrow. That is okay because it will be a short day. I am working a straight eight hours from 6:30 am to 2:20 pm. That should go fast and I will be able to squeak by with a decent weekend after all. Our WIN System repeater was blocked this week because of a stray signal that was mistaken for intermod. This happened once before in 2007 when a local ham was transmitting amateur television (ATV) on 439.25 MHz. This local ham is very close to the repeater antenna and has a very high gain antenna. I am not sure if that is what happened this time or not. Another possibility is that another new ham was trying to get into the repeater with a handy talkie (HT) and was not getting into the system very well. I am hoping that was the scenario because that is an easy one to fix. We have since been unblocked but we are reluctant to connect back up until we confirm the source of the signal.
Just the other day I posted about the new Microsoft search engine Bing.com and how cool it was. A story came out today that shows that in just three days, it has taken the number two search engine spot world wide over taking Yahoo. I have mixed feelings about this because I have always loved Yahoo and still think they are very relevant. At the same time I am really pulling for Bing to succeed. I really do like the way it operates. Well I have rambled long enough so I will get this posted.
Back on Ham Radio
When I was a kid my dad was active on ham radio calling CQ CQ CQ from K5GLH. I grew up hearing that call over and over as he would speak to people all over the country. Later when he upgraded to his Amateur Extra Class license he changed his call sign. When I was 17 years old I took the test and got my own license. Back then my original call sign was KA5QNB. When I came back to Oklahoma I changed my call sign to K5GLH in 2001 reviving my dad’s original call sign. Over the last few years neither of us has been on the radio very much because of family issues. the last couple of days I went to visit my dad and made some contacts on 40 meters and it was like old times. It sure has been a lot of fun getting back on the radio again. Hopefully after I graduate in a couple months I will be able to get on the radio more often. It is really great doing this again with my dad.
To think my dad had not been stationed with our friend Jack, K5ESF at Holomon AFB, in New Mexico he would have never obtained a ham radio license. Thanks to his influence on my dad, he influenced me to get a license. Thanks to my influence on my wife, she has a license as well. Yes we still have the Internet and love getting online but the radio is a hobby that I’ve had since I was a kid. There is just something cool about speaking to someone hundreds of miles away when there is nothing connecting you but air. It is a very cool hobby though it can be expensive. Do not let that discourage you though because virtually every hobby is expensive. I am just enjoying the time that I get to spend with my dad. It is very fun.
Sunrise in OKC
It is hard to find anything more pleasing than a nice morning sunrise when you do not have to go to work. The beauty of my situation this morning is that it is the end of the year and I have some use or lose vacation time that I have to burn so I took this beautiful Friday off. Although it is a crisp 32 degrees at this early hour it still is a pretty morning. This time last year we were sitting in the dark for a week. You may remember the horrible ice storm that knocked out the electricity to more than 250,000 in Oklahoma City while more than a million state wide. You can look at the photos I took here. The weather forecast is showing another ice storm coming in next week though most believe it will not compare to the monster we had last year. Most people sleep in on their day off but not me. I love mornings and I always have. I went out to breakfast at the Waffle House at 5:30 this morning as she was going to work. She could not take the day off because in her Wing they were having a General come to their office. She had to be involved in the protocol activities so I had to do without my beautiful wife this morning. As a second choice I thought I would spend my morning watching the sun rise over Oklahoma City. I took this photo among others around 7:00 AM.
Below is another photo of downtown. As you can see the Sandridge Energy and the Chase Bank both have crosses on the buildings representing the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for us as we celebrate his birth on Christmas. Now I sit here listening to 40 meters on ham radio while typing a blog post. I wanted to get some pictures of the full moon but there were some clouds in the western sky. I only have two more classes before I can graduate the University of Oklahoma. I will start those on January 20, 2009 and I am very happy to have this journey almost complete.
This morning I found San Francisco 49′ers football star Jerry Rice and the Phoenix Suns star Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter. That was pretty cool as well. Now that we have the Oklahoma City Thunder I will have to temper my love for the Phoenix Suns. As many of you know we use to live in Phoenix, Arizona while I was stationed at Luke AFB. I also lived in Tucson, Arizona while stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB. Those were some wonderful times of my life that I will never forget. I lived in Phoenix during the great run of the Suns in 1993. That is when I really became a fan of the NBA.
I had a very nice visit with my dad last night. Many of you ham radio people may know him as W5QO, the trustee for the Del City Amateur Radio Club (DCARC). It is hard to believe that experiment has lasted for six years. It is hard to believe that in 2002 I was trying to kill time while my wife was spending time in the hospital visiting her mother has turned out to be a full blown ham radio club with an FCC license (W5DEL). Though I had an amateur radio license since 1983 I was not very active because I could not afford the gear until my dad gave me a dual band mobile radio. Now it is a whole different world where I have my own ham shack, President of the DCARC and a 70 foot tower in the back yard and all this since 2002.
This year just does not feel much like Christmas with my 16 year old son gone. He ran away on 26 Sep 08. He is safe and staying with friends. I spoke to him briefly on Yahoo Instant Messenger the other day. We have decided to let him go and put faith in God that he will overcome and have a successful future. Many have told me to file charges against the people that he is staying with but I think that would just make things worse. My goal is to retain a relationship with him for the future and hope that he remains well. Thank you for those that have offered their prayers of support. We have decided to keep faith in God and enjoy life. My other son got his driver’s license a couple days ago and we added him to our insurance. Once I came too and realized that we really could afford the extra $100 per month premiums I was fine. I am happy for him as he just got a job at a local restaurant a couple weeks ago. Despite everything I am very proud of both of my kids. Once I graduate, I will have more time to do some hobbies that I have neglected for the last couple years. I love taking pictures and talking on the radio. Of course let’s not forget my big hobby of playing on the computer. Thankfully today with amateur radio and photography joining with computers I can do all of them at the same time.
Again, it is a beautiful morning and I am off work too. With no homework this weekend I am sure to have a nice weekend. I only wish my wife could have taken off work. That would have made it perfect.
Field Day
Today is a special day for amateur radio operators. You may have heard them referred to as ham radio operators. I have been a licensed ham radio operator since I was 17 years old in 1983. Today being the last Saturday of the month of June makes this a day that many hams look forward to and it is called Field Day. Throughout the years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has justified allotting certain radio bands aside to the Amateur Radio Service for emergency communications. The Amateur Radio Service is a group of frequencies that cover the entire radio frequency spectrum set aside so that ordinary citizens would be fully trained to perform radio communications in the event of an emergency.
Each year on the last Saturday in June, hams from all over the world set up tents with generators, solar cells, batteries, and all sorts of remote radio gear with their log books in hand. They do a contest to see how many contacts they can get all over the world on different bands using primitive radio power and antennas. This is what they call Field Day. Literally thousands of ham radio operators do this world wide exchanging call signs, signal reports and locations (QTH) logging them in. Contesting has never appealed to me so I usually sit this out but many enjoy this immensely. Every band is filled with thousands of calls CQ contest CQ contest, or CQ Field Day. This event usually makes the news at least here in Oklahoma City. Here it is 10:51 PM and the bands are still filled with people as I type this.
The above image is my ham radio station that was taken a while back. It is not in that configuration anymore but still looks similar to this. Below is the antenna that I use to transmit from. I have superimposed the text on there with Photoshop so you can see what each antenna is for. If you are interested in ham radio let me know and I will get you information that you can use.
One thing that I love about ham radio is that there are so many different methods of communicating using computers, AM, FM, single sideband. Since I love computers so much I often like to use my computer as a tool on ham radio. I really love high frequency (HF) communications using the shortwave bands. This is where your signal hits the invisible ionosphere and the signal bends back to the earth where people can hear your signal for hundreds and even thousands of miles. Another interesting phenomenon is the stratospheric ducting. This is when the atmosphere has an inversion, or a layer of warm air above the surface of the ground. Both UHF, and VHF communications can speak hundreds of miles when this happens. It usually happens at after sunset or before sunrise in my part of the country. I always use the old back up, Skype to coordinate an available frequency so that I am not transmitting on top of someone. I am hearing a guy in Seattle, Washington right now and he is coming in very strong. If you ever try ham radio, you will likely be hooked.
Technorati Tags: ham radio,field day,antenna,radio,amateur radio,K5GLH,Skype
Repeater, IRLP, COS “Oh My”
This weekend Larry, KD5MAF and I worked on getting our two Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) nodes set up on our repeaters. We already had them installed but we found a vulnerability. These ham radio repeaters are set up to require a sub audible tone to be on the carrier or they will not respond to incoming signals. This is designed to prevent intermod interference from getting into the system. The way we had it hooked up, people could speak on the frequency without the sub audible tone to and the repeater would not hear the signals but the IRLP would. This is an undesirable condition because it opens the system to being exploited. If someone were to transmit failing to use the correct tone, they could have dialed up connections and cause all sorts of jamming, and interference. No one would have known because they would not have been activating the repeater.
We found that we had connected the carrier operated squelch (COS) to a place that was getting a signal regardless of the presence of a correct tone. Now we have modified them in a way so that the IRLP does not detect the COS until it gets the correct sub audible tone. Since the IRLP requires both an audio and a COS to operate, it now lacks the COS when the correct tone is not present thus preventing interference from entering the IRLP link. It works so well I have updated both repeaters and updated the wiring diagram. Both repeaters are working very smooth. We are very pleased at the performance. The WIN System repeater has been down for three months after the power amplifier burned out but now it is working great. Hopefully it keeps working.
Technorati Tags: IRLP , Internet Radio Linking Project , repeater , ham radio , ham , radio , amateur radio
The State of Ham Radio
In life you sometimes have to accept some difficult facts whether you want to or not. I often want to think the most of my home town as a growing and great place to live. This is very true in most ways but in the world of Ham Radio, we are beyond hillbillies. We have a CB culture in Oklahoma and with the FCC continuing their downward trend it will certainly get worse. The amateur radio world use to be a world of respect and on the cutting edge of technical discoveries. I have only had an amateur radio license since 1983 and I have seen a lot of changes. To get a full picture of what I am talking about, I must explain the differences between CB and amateur radio.
The citizens band (CB) radio service was created to be just that, a band where normal citizens could communicate through type accepted radios that were commercially made. The only licensing that was required in the beginning was to educate users how to operated within the guidelines. There was no technical expertise required because the radios were commercially made. Eventually due to lack of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforcement the darker side of humanity began to rule the citizens band. Since these relatively cheap radios were available anywhere, the FCC eventually washed their hands of the citizens band and removed the licensing requirement. The days of citizens band radio being a civil means of communications were over. The culture on CB consisted of profanity, rudeness, interruptions, and illegal power. The use of citizens band was and forever will be a wasteland not suitable for children.
Amateur Radio (Ham) was always different in that it was an experimental band that was designed for people of a technical background. The amateur radio bands contrary to their name was meant to be reserved for the use of normal citizens who had the technical know-how to build radios and antennas for the purpose of national emergencies whether natural or man made. These bands were designed to have citizens trained in a skill that could protect Americans in the event that ordinary means of communications failed during an emergency. Since a certain level of skill was required to use amateur radio, the FCC required a strenuous testing system to ensure that users were capable of operating and building equipment under emergency conditions. The testing traditionally consisted of both a morse code examination and an electronic skills examination. These tests were in a progressively more technical level based on the privileges authorized to the user.
Looking at these two bands, you can see they were meant for different purposes and therefore had different requirements to operate. The FCC was right in requiring these skill levels. In my opinion the purpose of the examinations were two fold. One was to ensure the required skill level and two was to ensure the value of this privilege. It is well know that when something has value, then people desire it and value it and its meaning. When something is of no value it is thrown to the street to be trampled upon. I will discuss the values later in this document. Unfortunately the amateur radio band has lost its value because of a chain of events by the very organization that was designed to protect its value. This organization is the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). This is a private union that was organized back in the early days of amateur radio for the sole purpose to lobby the United States Congress to ensure the rights are protected for amateur radio operators. As with most unions of today, they have strayed from their calling to protect individuals and have become greedy. Their primary goals in recent years are both to have power and have money. More members accomplishes both of these goals.
Without fail the ARRL in its typical union ways and its pursuit of more members (aka dues) lobbies the FCC to lower standards. One thing that is common about unions is that there must be an enemy and the impending crisis this enemy is bringing on your group. Sometimes this enemy is real and needs to be watched. Unfortunately most of the time this enemy is fabricated for the purpose of creating crisis. When there is crisis the union can place themselves as savior to protect individuals from this enemy whether genuine, or fabricated, thus recruiting more dues paying members. Over the years the ARRL has produce many enemies to ham radio, some real, and some fabricated. A few examples of these are…
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- The morse code requirement is antiquated and no longer has a purpose in amateur radio and it is making it difficult for people to join the hobby and causing our hobby to die.
- The Broad Band over Power Line for Internet service causes radio frequency interference (RFI) to amateur radio and should be stopped.
- The testing requirement is too extensive and preventing average people from getting into the hobby and therefore our hobby is dying.
They use the argument that our hobby is a dying hobby. Some excuses are real but misplaced such as the price of equipment, or the Internet instead of testing. The average amateur radio operator although technically smart seems ignorant of the ways of unions like the ARRL. Most amateur radio operators put the ARRL in high regard as a protector of our hobby but then fail to see the ARRL has become self indulgent and put self motivation above their calling. They have successfully convinced the FCC and worse yet the average amateur radio operator that our hobby is dying and newer generations are put off by the strenuous examinations. This is sad because most are failing to see the argument that I made earlier is that values matter. When you lower standards to attract new members, you get a lower standard operator. This is evident when listening to the 75 meter, and 2 meter bands and to a lesser extend on the other bands.
The FCC has bowed to the pressures of this ARRL union because its constituents are ignorant of the union ways. The FCC has a history of doing this. One example that I recall is my father studying hard to obtain his First Class Radio Telephone License when I was young. I still remember the pride that he had walking out of that examiners office in Dallas, Texas. Soon after that, he was notified the FCC would be doing away with the First, Second, and Third Class licenses and would be replaced by the General Radio Operator License. All holders of First, Second, and Third Class licenses would be changed to a General Radio Operator License. This devaluated his First Class license to lower than a Third Class license. He was right to feel betrayed when he worked so hard for the prestige of this higher class license just to be devaluated. Similarly those of the amateur radio licenses that worked so hard for theirs should feel betrayed for theirs to be devaluated to the newer non technical licenses.
Since I became an amateur radio operator in 1983, the FCC has lowered the examination standards at least three times that I can recall. With each successive lowering of standards, the operating standards continue to drop. This lowering of standards subsequently lowers the value of this band. Remember above I spoke of value and what it means. When something loses its value, it is thrown to the streets. The once highly regarded amateur radio has almost but not quite reached the citizens band. It is my opinion that we have already reached the point of no return and will eventually arrive at the value of the citizens band. Once you had to be a person of high character and skill to obtain a license and now you have to have virtually no skill at all and can even be convicted of a felony to have a license. I am not saying that a person cannot be rehabilitated when they make mistakes but history has shown that many felonies are carried out by people of low moral character.
This is why I feel that my amateur radio license holds little value. Today there are people that have equal license privileges that have not had to endure what I have had. One can make the argument that morse code is antiquated and serves no purpose in a modern day amateur radio but it missed the second purpose of the examination process in giving the hobby value. If saving our “supposedly dying hobby” means lowering standards to citizens band then it is not worth saving. I think having a smaller high standards band is far better than having a crowded convict laden citizens band. Call me cynical but if you are paying any attention at all you know I am right.
Oklahoma City, Ok
Technorati Tags: American Radio Relay League, ARRL, FCC, Federal Communications Commision, Amateur Radio, Ham Radio, Citizens Band Radio, Oklahoma City
Getting caught up
Man what a busy weekend. As I posted in the last post about what all we got done with our ham radio repeater. After that, I got three school lessons done. We already have next weekend scheduled because we are going to install the IRLP to the 145.25 repeater like we did this weekend. My dad said he is going to get the supplies tomorrow and Larry and I are going to get that done. It should go so much easier because we don’t have to study to find out where the connections are. We discovered that on the last repeater. Here is the diagram that we came up with to show the connections. This way we can pre-fabricate the cable before even going over there and just connect them when we get there. Then once and for all we will have both repeaters back in operation.
I sure hate that we have had to lay off church lately for my school but this will not last forever. Speaking of church I never understood why church is held on Sunday’s. I have always had a problem with that. The Sabbath day is Saturday not Sunday. Secondly Sunday’s are usually the worst possible day to come up with time to go to church because it is the day before you have to go back to work. It is very inconvenient to get ready for work and go to church on Sunday’s. The weekends are the only time I have to get my thoughts together enough to write my papers for school. I think church would get so much more attendance if it were on Saturday or even Friday. I know what most people say when I say this… “You have to set your priorities”. Again I say where is it written that church must be on Sunday? I have not found a living soul that has been able to show me that. I am a person that likes to see it in black and white before I take something as fact. Anyway…
I am hopeful to get the last remaining paper for the summer semester done quickly and not wait until the last minute to get it done. The last two units I have procrastinated to the last second. I don’t like doing that but I got busy on that repeater and it took longer than I expected. Thankfully Larry is just as stubborn as I am about sticking to it until it is finished.
By the way, did I tell you what a wonderful wife I have? Yes I have but I just like saying it. In September we will be married 18 years and I am still as happy as can be about her. She has been having an aching shoulder for a month and has been to the doctor twice about it. They told her that her muscle has been tightened up and forcing the rib out of place. Please keep her in your prayers. She deserves better and I want her to get better. Well I guess I have rambled long enough so I will go for now.
Not keeping to schedules
I had high hopes for this week. I was off for July 4th and I took of the 5th and 6th using vacation time. I had planned on working on my school work and getting ahead so I would not be behind like I was in the last unit. Well that did not pan out as I had hoped. I spent all day Thursday and Friday setting up a ham radio repeater to get the WIN System working on it. Larry, KD5MAF, a cousin by marriage came over on the fourth of July for dinner and we talked about getting our repeater back on the air after two months of down time. We were blocked from the WIN System for pulsing a couple of months ago and we just shut it off because the problem was intermittent.
Well on the fourth of July, we thought about connecting the IRLP node directly to the repeater the way the IRLP website says to do it. In the past we had it connected to a link radio that transmitted the signal to the repeater. So at 9:00 PM on the fourh, the the only place that was open was Wal Mart. We drove up there and bought 100 feet of six conductor telephone wire. On the fifth of July I went to Radio Shack as soon as they opened and bought an RS-232 (DB-9) connector, two 1/8″ stereo audio plugs, and a package of RCA jacks. Larry came over to my house and we went to work on the repeater. Larry assembled the wiring harness that went from the IRLP node to the repeater. It had to be pretty long because the IRLP computer stays in the house where it is cool. After working on it for 13 hours I just gave up.
It was working well except when we hooked the sound card output to the repeater, the local audio including courtesy tones and CW ID’er would be very low. Both Larry and I were very disheartened by the whole thing. I called my dad and told him the symptoms but he was too tired to understand what I was talking about. Well yesterday the sixth, I got a call from my dad and he told me that he had been thinking about the problem. He said it sounded like the low 8 ohm impedance of the sound card was draining the audio of the repeater. He told me to try installing an isolation capacitor to block any DC from passing through. I went back up to Radio Shack and bought several different sizes of disc capacitors and the first one I tried worked. I installed a .01 uF capacitor in-line with the sound card output to the repeater. It worked immediately.
Then Larry and I spent a couple hours trying to set the audio levels correctly and was plagued with the IRLP node audio being too high even when the mixer was set to only 1 on the meter. After replacing the sound card a few times, I went back to the repeater and found the volume was set too high. Suddenly the system was sounding great. Man what a job but it is sounding good. I went to bed on the fifth thinking we had just wasted a whole day and then one day later, it is working. On our club website I updated the links on the left so that we can have streaming audio for the WIN System as well as our two meter repeater. I just stole a link from the WIN System website and put it on ours for convenience since they already had the streaming going. Our two meter repeater we have been streaming for a number of months already.
Well I am very satisfied with how it all turned out. It has never sounded better and I am already getting positive feedback. I would like to give my thanks to Larry, KD5MAF, my dad Paul Sr., W5QO, and my lovely wife Sunday, KE5APB. She took care of us when we were racking our brains. She kept us with drinks and food. I can honestly say that I have the best wife in the whole world. I love you Sunday. Well, this leaves me behind on my school work again. I will just have to buckle down and get that caught up this week. I need to keep priorities straight but it is also satisfying when other things in life are working. Thanks for listening to my update.
Technorati Tags: IRLP, Internet Radio Linking Project, repeater, ham radio, amateur radio, ham, radio, Radio Shack, Walmart, KD5MAF, W5QO, K5GLH, KE5APB, Del City Amateur Radio Club
K5GLH Tower
K5GLH antenna Hosted on Zooomr
This weekend, Larry, KD5MAF and myself installed the new Alpha Delta DX-LB Plus HF dipole antenna. You can see it hangin off the tower at the 50 foot level on the left. It took us until nearly 10:00 pm last night to get it installed. The antenna has three elements that are installed through standoffs. As soon as we got it installed we went into the house and made two contacts with good signal reports. I spoke to N5ZPW in San Antonio, and N0CAR in Herford, Arizona. I am very pleased with the antenna. It loads up on 10 – 160 meter bands with a tuner. I was using 100 watts and got a signal report of 10 dB over S9 from both contacts. Thanks to Larry for all the help. I am getting too old to be climbing towers anymore. I climbed to the 50 foot level 5 times since yesterday and I am aching all over. It was a good time though. It is great to be back on HF again.
Technorati tags: Alpha Delta, DX-LB Plus, K5GLH, KD5MAF, amateur radio, ham radio, radio
HF Antenna
I am trying to decide on a multiband dipole antenna for my HF radio. I have very limited room on my property. My yard is only 65 feet at the widest point and my neighbor has a large tree that hangs over into my yard. I have a G5RV up there that works fine but the wind keeps breaking it. Maybe the W5GI Mystery antenna, or the B&W folded dipole? I have been off HF for quite a while because my antenna is broken.
Technorati tags: amateur radio, w5gi, antenna, ham radio