Posts Tagged → ham radio
Update Two Twelve Twenty Ten
What an amazing week. A week ago it was a sad day when I had my tower taken down and sold. The WIN System antenna was placed on my dad’s (W5QO) tower about 1/2 mile North of here. The 443.3 repeater is back on the air at this new location with the antenna mounted on the Southwest side of the tower. We were concerned how we were going to install the IRLP node on the repeater because there is already another node (3867). Since both repeaters are now at the same location, they are using the same Internet service. If you know anything about IRLP, Echolink, or any other streaming service, you know that audio and control commands happen on certain ports. The ports are the same on all nodes of like systems. Most people forward those ports to the node using a router. The problem is that you cannot forward the same ports to more than one computer simultaneously. This causes a unique problem because simply having a router will not be enough to have more than one node on one router.
We were left with either changing locations of the IRLP node and transmitting the signal to the repeater or getting another Internet account at the same address. Transmitting the audio to the repeater from a remote location is not the desired method for various reasons. For one thing the audio is not as clear by doing it this way. We prefer to have the IRLP node connected directly to the repeater. Secondly, having the node at a remote location makes moderating it more difficult. By having it connected directly to the repeater we solve these issues and others. We did some research and found it would not be that expensive to purchase another Internet Protocol (IP) address for the same Internet service. This eliminates the problem of forwarding ports to more than one computer. Now the 443.3 repeater’s node (8440) has its own IP address so that it does not require any ports to be forwarded. For the purposes of security, we have to block all ports except the ones that are needed.
As of last night, 11 Feb 10, both repeaters are back online with both nodes fully operational. We remain an affiliate of the WIN System so once the audio levels are set on the 443.3 repeater, the WIN System will return 24 hours a day. The antenna is currently not as high as it was before it was moved but we are evaluating our options to remedy this limitation. Either my dad, W5QO, Larry, KD5MAF, or myself will keep you up to date on the operation of the systems.
Thank you,
Happy Thanksgiving
This is a day that we all look forward to and it has finally arrived. We are up bright and early this morning so we can go see some relatives on this Thanksgiving Day. I wish my oldest son could go with us but he has to work today. I will take many pictures and post them on Flickr while we are there. It is a very chilly 32 degrees this morning at 6:00 AM. Yesterday my son and I worked on painting the East side of the house as well as taking down my high frequency (HF) antenna from the tower. It was sort of sad taking the antennas down but it is a price to pay to move. I cannot sell a house with 400 cables coming out of the house. Just kidding, it was really 401 
. Soon I am going to have to take the 443.3 MHz repeater down as well for the same reason. This repeater will likely be relocated to my dad’s house though the WIN System may be down for a considerable time because I will have to transmit the signal to his house. You can only have one IRLP node per external IP address and he cannot have both of them at his house though he can have both repeaters there.
My beautiful wife Sunday worked all day long cooking for today’s event. I just hope we can fit it all in the car. I gained 100 pounds just smelling the food cooking yesterday. This morning we are trying to clean up the house, shower, and get the food to the car without dropping any of it. This should be a challenge but I think we can do it.
I will post updates to Twitter/Facebook from my phone while I am with the family. These updates also show up to the right side of this page. It looks like it is going to be a great weather day at 60 degrees and tomorrow is going to be 70. We could not ask for better weather.
You may remember my rant about Google Wave a few day ago. My complaint was that after a month, I had no one to try it on because I could not invite my own family and friends. Well this week, they sent me eight invites, and then by the time, I got down to two, it went back up to 10. I have now sent them out to people that I thought would actually sign up and use it. Hopefully over time, they will send out more but for now I am satisfied and I take back all the horrible things I said earlier. It does work pretty good but there is one glitch that I have notice. Keep in mind that it is a beta release but my friend Kevin Davis, has been added to my contacts at least 10 times and every time I come back, he is gone. It is only him that is doing it. Maybe I should talk to him and ask if he is deleting me . Just kidding. He and used Google Wave for over an hour a couple days ago.
Remember to be thankful to God for all the blessings you have on this day. I can honestly say that we have been very blessed. It looks like I am holding up the family’s progress this morning so I better get this posted.
I Dislike Contesting!
CQ Contest CQ Contest, this is kilowat five golf lima hotel. CQ Contest CQ Contest,CQ Contest CQ Contest. This is Mike three papa papa papa. CQ Contest CQ Contest. CQ Contest CQ Contest. This is November seven Alpha X-Ray Lima. CQ Contest CQ Contest. CQ Contest CQ Contest this is whatever whatever whatever. You are 63. Roger… You are five and nine into Michigan. CQ Contest CQ Contest. CQ Contest CQ Contest. This is Kilowat eight zanzabar romeo sierra.
If this sounds like a bunch of gibberish, you are not alone. The hobby of ham radio seems to be plagued by these never ending contests that take the entire band with never ending CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest. I too feel this is as appealing as fingers on a chalk board and eating glass at the same time. Today I turned on the 20 meter band and it was nothing but CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest all the way across the band. This usually prompts me to turn the radio off because it could scare off a sasquatch. If you are one of those that likes to get on the radio and just talk, then good luck today because it is nothing but anarchy and chaos… CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest,CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest,CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest, CQ Contest CQ Contest.
I will never understand what the appeal of this CQ Contest CQ Contest,CQ Contest CQ Contest is all about. Maybe it is just me.
The End.
Broken Antenna
This week has been very busy with having to work overtime the last two weekends in a row and working two hours overtime each day. Some point this week, my HF antenna fell from the tower and landed on my next door neighbor’s power line. Both the antenna and her power line were insulated so it was not a big deal for it to lay there a couple days because I just have not had time to work on it. As you can see below, it is the antenna on the top and to the left. It is an Alpha Delta DX-LB Plus 6 through 80 meter dipole antenna that was quite expensive.
What happened was that I had the antenna suspended on a pole off the side of the tower at 50 feet by a pulley and a nylon rope. Some time this week, the rope broke sending the antenna to the power line below. Well I hoped the neighbor would not notice it until I would have time to fix it but she did. The night before last she came to the door about 8:00 pm and told us how concerned she was. Of course I had already showered for bed because I had to be up at 4:00 am. Well the next morning I got up and I was on that tower about 40 feet up at 5:00 am trying to pull the antenna off the wire. Because the antenna has large traps on it, the antenna did not want to cooperate. I eventually got it down but not after getting every dog in the neighborhood wound up. Man I have the most stupid dogs that live next door to me on three sides. These dogs will bark non stop for hours on end. If I did not sleep with a fan next to my head, I would never get any sleep.
For the life of me I cannot see what the attraction is to a loud barking dog. They have all the appeal of a wasp in attack mode. Oh well, I did manage to get the antenna down without destroying it though it is all tangled up. I hope to be able to work on it within the next few weeks and get it back up. I really am not up to climbing the tower any time soon because my feet have been hurting a lot lately. So this means that I will not be on the radio in the near future. Do you hear that lady next door? When your television is not working right, it is not me. Just kidding. She is okay but she does think it is me sometimes when it is not. That is part of the way of life when you are a ham rado operator. People will see your antenna and just assume that it is you that is messing up their television. I have been watching TV and not even have the radio turned on and people come to the front door and accuse me of coming in on their television. It just comes with the territory as my dad can attest to. He has had similar experiences at his house with false accusations
For the most part, things have been going fine around here except for all the overtime. Some people love working overtime but not me. I believe that time is the only resource that you cannot get more of. You can work and get more money but you cannot get more time. Fortunately my overtime is limited in scope and I work with some great people. I am looking forward to not working next weekend. Well I think that just about covers my week. I thought I should post an update since I have not posted much lately. I will try to keep this up to date more so you will know how things are going.
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.
Veterans Day Eve
This morning I woke up around 7:00 AM and it was raining with a strong and cold South wind and I thought I was going to cry ;-D. It is not often that I get to see rain when I am off work and I am loving it. I decided to take off today so I could have a four day weekend since tomorrow (Tuesday) is Veterans Day. I have five and half days of use or lose leave that I have to burn up before January 3rd so this makes a good time to take off. Sunday has to burn some leave too so she took off also. Wow! I just heard some thunder outside. To me that is the equivalence of angels singing because after all, I just love rain. I really should be doing some homework but I have been slow to get motivated this weekend. I only have one more semester after this one and I will be finished and then I will have some weekends to do things again.
My dad just had cataract surgery done on both his eyes in the past couple weeks and he is very pleased with the results. This morning he has an appointment with the doctor to follow up after the surgery. I am glad he had it done since his vision was getting pretty bad. He says that he can see without glasses.
It looks like Firefox has finally captured 20% of the browser market. I really like Firefox though I really wish it was more automated to install Windows Media Player plugin. I love the ability to customize the browser with all the plugins like mail retrieval, social networking, and photography. Virtually anything you would like to do can be done with this browser. I really love it when new web based toys are invented.
I am doing research to find a new 3G phone or third generation phone that can be used on a GSM system. I have been a T-Mobile customer since they were Voicestream back in 2000. They have been very good to me. Now that they have the broadband speeds, I want to get a new phone that has faster Internet and a full QWERTY keyboard. I know it will be sort of expensive but I like being able to have the Internet with me when I travel. The sad thing is that most of the phones that I find are not available in the United States. Having a good camera phone that can post directly to Flickr is real hand when you are out on the street witnessing a crime or something. I like to take my camera places with me so I do not miss anything but it is not convenient where I work. My office is in a very large bay with many cubicles in pods. I really do not feel comfortable leaving an expensive camera in that environment. The Google G1 phone is looking very attractive as an option.
I know most of you are thinking that I am crazy for wanting to be connected all the time. That is who I am, I mean after all I became a ham radio operator for a reason. I think it is wonderful being able to keep in touch even when I am on the road. I can just send a Twitter message and it shows up on the website so you can keep people up to date where ever you are. Unlike many people, I am not concerned about privacy. As long as I am not posting my social security number, I am not worried about anything else. Your address and pictures of your house are already on the Internet whether you realize it or not. I can look at the front of virtually anyone’s house using Google Maps/Street View. For those of you not aware of this, Google hired a company to drive up and down every street with a pole on the top of the vehicle with six cameras on it.
You can zoom right up on your front door. I actually think this is exciting technology and do not worry about privacy at all. If you use Google Earth you can zoom up even closer. Now Microsoft has Virtual Earth and Yahoo has Yahoo Maps.
I know I have spent a considerable amount of time chastising the Google worshipers but I must say I am becoming a convert. I have been amazed with the integration of Gmail, with GTalk, Google Documents, Google Calendar, and the contacts. With the prospect of getting a G1 phone, the possibilities of syncing my Gmail contacts and calendar with the phone sounds pretty exciting. I am still in my anti-Apple mood though . To use an Iphone would mean that I would have to switch to AT&T. I really do not want to do that if I can get out of that. Secondly Apple products are way over priced and I cannot support them in their gouging efforts. Oh well… I will get away from my Apple bashing . I just received a Skype message from Larry, KD5MAF telling me there is a 40 meter net about to come on 7290 KHz that he wants me to join. I better send this post in so I can check in on the net. If you are a ham radio operator, join us.
IRLP Upgrade
This weekend the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) sent out an upgrade that would vastly improve the audio from node to node. This update changed out two files, the imike, and ispeaker. This allows nodes to connect to each other with uncompressed audio making an incredible audio quality. This increase in audio quality also increased the bandwidth required to stream the audio by 100%. Now the stream requires 80 Kbps to carry the audio virtually solidifying the requirement for broadband Internet.
To date, there are only five reflector channels that are capable of handling the uncompressed audio. These are 9200, 9003, 9739, and 9755. Nothing has changed on the reflectors except that the owners of these listed have set up those channels to select UNCOMP as the default codec. It is likely that not all reflector owners will opt to use this uncompressed audio because of the incredible demand for bandwidth. Since most of these reflectors are operating on donated bandwidth, they may be reluctant to double the bandwidth required if there are many users like the WIN System which typically has 50+ nodes connected 24 hours a day.
Any individual node that calls another node will be able to experience the improved quality of audio. Both of our repeaters have been updated to the new audio though our 443.3 repeater may not be noticeable because it is connected to the WIN Sytem 24 hours and they have not upgraded their channel yet on the 9453. I have been amazed at the improved quality as it is virtually perfect.
Another improvement that came with this, most users will not notice because it happens behind the scene. Before, when a node would connect to a node for the first time, it would automatically download two .wav files. These were the announcement files that you hear when connecting or disconnecting from the other node. After you visit many nodes, the node hard drive begins to fill up with many audio files making it difficult to do a backup. Also since many of the nodes are using older computers, they sometimes have smaller hard drives. With this upgrade, the nodes now stream these connect and disconnect announcements from the IRLP servers so nodes owners are no longer concerned with filling up a hard drive.
Dave Cameron, VE7LTD, the creater of IRLP put out a beta test version of this upgrade last Wednesday and more than 250 nodes participated with zero errors. On Thursday night, he decided to push the upgrade out on the nightly updates. On Friday morning, all nodes should have received this upgrade. We are thrilled with the performance on both of our repeaters. Since both of them are on broadband Internet connections, this higher bandwidth requirement was not an issue with us.
Thank you for those of you that use our nodes/repeaters.
Paul
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
Update June 14, 2008
This week I have been in school half days at work. They have me taking a class on how to use a program that my office will never use. My job series uses this program but in my particular office, it will never be used. I am always open for training at work whether it is relevant or not because it always helps to make me more rounded and better qualified for future opportunities. I just want to thank God for helping me to stay healthy this year allowing me to build my leave (vacation) back up. In 2007, I had a bad year where I was sick all the time and missed a lot of work. I missed more days last year than I have missed during the last three years combined. This year I moved to a new position that I am thrilled to be in. Now I can actually look forward to going to work. My wife works down stairs and down the hall from me so I have been pretty blessed on that. With gas getting out of control, it is comforting to know that I can ride to work with my wife. I was browsing around on Friendfeed and stumbled on a streaming audio of an HF radio being streamed on Ustream. I have been listening to a net in Tennessee for a while and it is pretty interesting. You can find it here.
My son had some friends over last night until midnight and that was pretty fun and relaxing. Around 10:00 pm we had a line of thunderstorms that came through and the line progressed across the same place for a couple hours and I loved that. I am always open for a thunderstorm. I love to keep the rain coming as late in the year as possible because once the ground gets dried out, we start heating up above 100 degrees and I am not looking forward to that. Last year and this year we have managed to keep the ground wet enough to keep the temperatures relatively low. I was listening to our local NBC affiliate KFOR this morning and they just told of someone here in Del City entering a funeral home and stole the belongings of the mourners at a funeral. It is hard to comprehend someone lacking morals to that degree. If you will steal from someone mourning the loss of a loved one, then you are a sorry human being.
I know I am usually hard on the media and rightfully so because of their political slant in their reporting. Yesterday Tim Russert had a heart attack and died and I would like to pass my condolences to his family. He seemed to be willing to listen to both sides of the conversation when others would not. I heard he collapsed while at work at NBC. I wish his family the best and feel for their loss.
I have a lot of school work this weekend to catch up on as the unit ends tomorrow. I normally do not wait this late to finish up my work but last weekend we had some welcome family and we had a very good time. My wife’s sister and her daughter came to see us after their home was hit with a tornado and we really enjoyed their stay. I hope they are able to get the damage repaired without too much trouble.
This year we managed to get a lot of growth cleared out of the fence line.
As you can see from this picture, you cannot see through the fence and see the houses behind the house. In this picture you can see how one of our neighbor’s tree fell across the fence taking the power lines down. This was a couple years ago. We have lost power so many times because of all this growth out of control. Little by little, we have cleaned out this brush to where there is none left. After the ice storm last December we decided that it all needs to go because it has been growing into the power lines and you could not work on anything. I am pleased to say today there is no vegetation left along the fence line all the way around the property. Hopefully we can keep our electricity the next storm that passes over us. Well I have covered just about everything I can think of so I better get this posted. Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: Friendfeed, ham radio, trees, brush, clearing, Tim Russert, storm, Del City, Ustream