I’m not a real fan of Las Vegas, but DEF CON is held in Las Vegas, so if I wanted to teach a one-day Tech class there, I just had to go. It was a fun, but tiring trip.

Getting there

I kinda made my travel arrangements last minute because the Ham Radio Village (HRV) folks weren’t sure that they were going to be able to secure a room for the class. That being the case, the only flight I was able to get was a late afternoon (4:50 pm) flight from Detroit. Same with the return. Instead of an early morning flight, I had to opt for the 1:15 pm flight, meaning that I wouldn’t get back to Detroit until after 8:00 pm. I managed to keep myself busy—there’s always something to do—but Wednesday and Sunday were mostly wasted.

I flew on Spirit. Enough said, I guess. It was packed. It was cheap, though, and the flight was direct to and from Detroit.

The flight out was fine. We even arrived about a half hour early. The return flight, however, was a real mess. We pushed back from the gate about 15 minutes late, but then, we sat on the tarmac for another hour and 45 minutes. I never did get a good explanation for what was happening. We arrived in Detroit an hour and a half late.

What a circus!

I stayed at Circus Circus because that’s what came up on booking.com as being close to the convention center. It was definitely close, but I really should have looked around some more. Circus Circus was built in the early 1960s, and it’s really showing its age. My room was clean enough, but the furniture was kind of banged up, there were spots where the wallpaper was peeling from the walls, and the air conditioner was very loud. Ugh.

There are many hotels around the convention center, and I think that if I shopped around more, I could have found a place with better rooms and a lower price. I took notes, and when I go back next year, I’ll be looking into those places as well.

Que rico!

Like everything in Las Vegas, the food is expensive. I lucked out, though, and found a place that was affordable, close to the Las Vegas Convention Center and my hotel, and delicious: Tacos El Gordo on Las Vegas Blvd.

The tacos at Tacos El Gorda are the real deal. They advertise that the tacos are made Tijuna style, and you’d be hard pressed to find better tacos there. They’re made with handmade corn tortillas and homemade guacamole and salsas that are made from scratch daily.

When you enter Tacos El Gorda, you get into one of six lines, depending on the type of taco you want. On my first visit, I opted for the pork (adobada) tacos. In some places, they call this type of of taco a taco al pastor. The meat is sliced from a rotating spit, much like gyros is made, directly onto a tortilla. It really was excellent and only cost $4.12 per taco.

My second visit I decided to get a little more adventurous. I got into the line featuring organ meats, and after waiting in line for about a half hour, I ordered one taco de suadero (beef brisket—not so adventurous), one taco de cabeza (beef head—a little more adventurous), and one taco de buche (pork stomach—really adventurous). I liked the suadero and cabeza, but the buche not so much.

I’’m not really a gambler, but…

I’m not really a gambler, and in 2022 and 2023, I didn’t gamble a single cent. Many years ago, though, I bought some blackjack books and learned some basic strategy. So, this year, when I found a couple of blackjack machines in the Circus Circus casino that would accept $1 bets, I decided to give it a go.

Friday night, I fed a $20 bill into the machine and started playing. This machine was a little complicated in that it had a lot of side bets that you could make, such as whether you were dealt a pair or dealt 19+. I lost three of these sucker bets at a buck a pop before I figured that out.

Once I got that straight, I started playing plain old blackjack using the basic strategy. Using this strategy, your odds about 50-50, and that’s about how it played out. I pretty much broke even over the next half hour. Right at the end, I had a bit of a lucky streak, and when my total hit $20.80, I cashed out.

I say “cashed out,” but what the machine does is print out a ticket that you then have to take to a cashier to actually get cash. I thought that I might play a little again, so I just pocketed the ticket.

Saturday night, I did indeed decide to give it another go. There were only two machines that were working when I got to the casino, so I wandered around for a bit, visiting the circus stage and watching the hotel visitors try their luck at games on the midway. When I got back to the machines, one guy was just getting up, so I took his seat.

At first, I had a run of bad luck, and my total dropped to $15.30. But then, I got on a little bit of a roll, and built my total up to around $20 again. At that point, I played even with the machine for about 10-15 minutes. After a lucky streak bumped my total up to $25.50, I hit the cash out button again, and took the ticket to the cashier to collect my winnings.

My biggest class yet

The class went pretty well. Because we were only allowed to have 100 people in the room, HRV limited the pre-registration to 75. Despite the late start in publicizing the class, it filled up quickly. After getting all the pre-registered people in, they started accepting walk-ins, and we ended up with a class size of 90, making it the biggest class I’ve ever taught!

Since it was a bigger room than the one I taught in at HOPE, the setting wasn’t quite as intimate. The students had questions, but not as many as the HOPE class. Perhaps the size of the room had something to do with that. I’m not sure.

Unfortunately, we only had the room for seven hours, meaning that the students couldn’t test right away. Instead, they would have to take the test at DEF CON itself.

As a results, I’m not sure how many of the 90 students eventually passed the test. I know that over the course of the next couple of days I ran into several students who had passed the test. My guess is that a very high percentage did pass.

Mind-boggled

DEF CON is a truly amazing event. It’s a “hacking” conference, but the definition of hacking is about as broad as it can be. There were special interest groups, or “villages,” for a wide range of activities including hardware hacking, voting, lock picking (physical security), embedded systems, Internet of Things, and many more. And not only were there a couple of speaker tracks designed to appeal broadly, each village had their own series of talks. The enormity of it all just boggles my mind.

On Friday, I checked in at the Ham Radio Village and dropped off some of my No Nonsense business cards. I offered to help out, but they seemed to be all set, so I wandered off to experience the conference. I had a fun day attending talks, including a talk on open-source hardware for conference badges. I’ll be writing more about this later.

On Saturday, I updated my Ham Radio for Hackers slides and spoke on the topic in the Ham Radio Village. Like at HOPE, I had a really good turnout, and it was standing room only.

Immediately after, I went to hear a talk by Cory Doctorow in the main room, where he talked about the “enshittification” of the internet. If you haven’t’ heard this talk or read his articles about the subject, you should.

After that, I dropped in to the Women in Security and Privacy Village to make a “friendship bracelet” for my wife. I had been wracking my brain for something to bring home for her, and I knew the moment that I saw the program description that this was the right thing. Basically, the bracelets are simply a number of beads strung together on an elastic band. There were some letter beads, too, so I was able to spell out “SILVIA.” My wife loved it because as you can see, she spells her name a little differently than most Sylvias, and has always lamented the lack of things she could buy with her name on it. I scored a lot of points with Silvia when I got home, pulled it out of my bag, and slipped it on her wrist.

HRV Meetups?

After my talk on Saturday, a guy in his 30s (I’m guessing here) came up to me to talk about his experience with amateur radio. He had recently gone to a local amateur radio club meeting and was not received very warmly at all. He was so put off by the experience that he wasn’t sure whether to bother getting his license. Does that sound familiar?

I tried to explain that ham radio was a big hobby, and he unfortunately had just found the wrong crowd. I went on to say that not all hams were like that and encouraged him to get his ticket. Yesterday, I received an email from him that he had indeed passed the Tech test, and with the help of my study guide, also passed the General. That made me extremely happy.

Of course, he still needs to find his people. As I sympathized with him, it occurred to me that we need to create a way for hams like him to find other hams like him. I’m thinking of something along the lines of the 2600 meetups that used to happen around the country before Covid. Maybe we could even piggyback on existing 2600 meetups. I’ll be blogging about this soon, so if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks to ARDC!

Thanks again to ARDC for funding this trip. The more I teach these classes, the more I’m convinced that we need to continue to reach out to this community. We need more people like the folks that attend DEF CON in amateur radio.

As you may know, there will be an election shortly for ARRL Roanoke Division Director. The Roanoke Division includes Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. I would like you to consider supporting and voting for Jim Talens, N3JT. Jim has a unique blend of experience and training, including 22 years as an FCC attorney, BSEE and MBA degrees, and many years of law firm and consulting experience – all of which he will use to improve the ARRL.

In addition to his experience and training, he is an active radio amateur. He was first licensed in 1960, has won the ARRL DX contest, and has written articles for QST and the National Contest Journal (NCJ). In addition, Jim co-authored ARRL’s Morse Code book, and co-founded the 3,500-member CW Operators’ Club. He also supports the League financially as a member of the Maxim Society and Diamond Club,

Jim believes that key to the future of ham radio is change in the current leadership of ARRL. In his opinion, our member-centric organization needs:

• Transparency (too much is done in secret)
• IT competence and protection
• An aggressive school program to entice young people into the hobby
• More work on spectrum preservation
• Continuing lobbying in Washington, DC
• Reduced internal drama (politics) at headquarters (approx. 50 staff members have left in the past few years)
• A more focused effort to push federal legislation assuring that virtually every ham can put up an outdoor antenna

To achieve these objectives, he needs your vote! For more information about Jim and his positions, visit his QRZ page. And, if you feel as strongly as Jim does and I do about the ARRL board needing some new faces and some new ideas, please consider donating to his GoFundMe campaign. I”ve made a small donation, and I don’t even live in the Roanoke Division!

The FCC recently released this public notice:

PUBLIC SAFETY AND HOMELAND SECURITY BUREAU SEEKS COMMENT ON THE IMPACTS OF THE MAY 2024 GEOMAGENTIC STORM ON THE U.S. COMMUNICATIONS SECTOR
PS Docket No. 24-161

Comments Due: June 24, 2024

The Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB or Bureau) seeks comment on any observed impacts to communications that resulted from the May 2024 severe geomagnetic storm. On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch, forecasting a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that merged with the Earth’s electromagnetic fields between May 7-11, 2024.1 On May 11, 2024, the storm reached extreme (G5) conditions, the first time this severity has been observed since 2003.2 According to the SWPC, CMEs are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona.3 Electromagnetic currents generated by CMEs, when merged with the Earth’s electromagnetic fields, may distort the propagation of radio frequency waves.

On May 11, 2024, the FCC High Frequency (HF) Direction Finding Center, which supports the public safety community and federal partners by locating interference to radio spectrum below 30 MHz, observed significant disturbance in the propagation of HF radio signals. This disturbance resulted in the disruption of voice and data communications passed over HF frequencies. To better understand the impacts of the geomagnetic storm on the U.S. communications sector, the Bureau is requesting information from communications service providers and the public regarding disruptions in communications between May 7 and 11, 2024, that it believes to be a result of the storm. The Bureau is encouraging commenters to provide any available evidence, particularly electromagnetic spectrum analyses, imagery, or chronological logs relating the storm’s impacts. Where possible, the Bureau asks that commenters include the description of the impacts; make and model of affected communications equipment, which could include transmitters, receivers, transceivers, switches, routers, amplifiers etc.; make, model, and type of affected antennae and their composition; frequencies affected; type and composition of cable adjoining communications equipment and the antennae, if applicable; duration of the impact; and any residual effects observed in the hours following restoration.

You can find the entire document, including footnotes and instructions on how to file a comment, at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-24-493A1.pdf. It will be interesting to see a report on this after the comments are in.

On Thursday, May 16, I attended Four Days in May (FDIM), an event put on by the QRP Amateur Radio Club International (QRP ARCI). The first FDIM was held in 1996, and QRP ARCI has held it every year since, excluding the Covid years. This year, nearly 300 people attended the event.

Like the name implies, there are FDIM events on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but the main event is the series of talks on Thursday. These start at 8 am and run until 5 pm. This year, the talks included:

• The Construction and Use of a WhoZat by Jack Purdum, W8TEE. Jack is a retired professor from Purdue University, a frequent speaker at FDIM, and the designer of many microcontroller-powered ham radio projects, including transceivers and antenna analyzers. This year, he talked about his latest design, the WhoZat. WhoZat is a portable, battery-powered device that allows an operator to type in a call sign prefix and obtain information about the country associated with the callsign. It will give you the country name, and the azimuthal bearing from your location to that country. One of the takeaways from this talk is that the WhoZat is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico, and Jack encouraged everyone to consider the Pico for future projects because it has more computing power and more memory than most Arduinos.In addition to talking about the WhoZat, Jack was promoting his latest book, Digital Signal Processing and Sofware Defined Radio. It’s available on Amazon for $45.
• Top 10 Junkbox Projects by Hans Summers, G0UPL. Hans is the genious(?), madman(?), entrepreneur(?) behind QRP Labs. In this talk, he extolled the virtues (as I have done) of a well-stocked junkbox. The project that resonated the most with me is the one-tube transmitter.The reason it resonates with me is that I’ve been threatening to build one for years myself. Hans actually did it, though. In fact, he made his first QSO with a transmitter he built from an ECL82 tube.At the end of his talk, Hans gave a little plug for his newest transceiver, the QMX+. The embedded SDR rig covers 160 – 6m, in a slightly bigger form factor than the QMX, for only $125. It’s incredible, really.
• zBitx–A Portable Station for the CW Operator by Ashar Farhan, VU2ESE of HF Signals. In this talk, Ashar described his zBitx, a portable CW/FT8 SDR transceiver. This isn’t a radio that Ashar is selling (yet!), but it does look like a complete design. And, of course, that design is completely open source, something he ribbed one of the other presenters about.

  

  This radio is powered by a Raspberry Pi, specifically the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. This module costs $15 and runs Linux. Ashar says, “If Arduino was a matchbox RC car, this Raspberry Pi is an Airbus A380, both in terms of size and speed. It can run WSJT X, fldigi, and full-stack SDR.” The radio also takes advantage of the WiFi capablity of the RPi. There’s an app that runs on a smart phone that acts as a front panel.

  At the end of his talk, instead of flogging a product, Ashar passed out a small PCB assembly called the sBitx Hat. Designed to plug into a Raspberry Pi, it includes an Si5351 clock generator and a 96 kbps, dual-channel audio codec. It looks it will be a fun thing to play with.

• Adventures of a QRP Evangelist by Cliff Batson, N4CCB, proprietor of the QRP School YouTube channel. Cliff gave us a primer on QRP operation and on how to make YouTube videos. He encouraged us all to go out and make videos. I’m not so sure about this myself. It seems to me that there is already too many ham radio videos to watch.
• Amplifying Your Adventures, Minimizing Your Power by noted YouTuber Tom Witherspoon, K4SWL. In his presentation, Tom concentrated on the personal and operating aspects of QRP, not the technical. The conclusion published in the proceedings does a good job of summarizing his talk. It reads, “Since my journey into ham radio began in 1997, I’ve encountered countless naysayers proclaiming, ‘That won’t work’ or ‘Life’s too short for QRP.’ These discouraging words often came from individuals who lacked firsthand experience in the field. Rather than accepting the pessimistic views, I’ve treated them as a checklist of challenges to overcome. my approach has been simple: get out there, experiment, and fully immerse myself in the moment. It’s through this hands-on exploration that I’ve discovered the true joy and potential of QRP operations.”
• Designing the Elecraft KH1: From Vision to Reality by Wayne Burdick, N6KR. Wayne certainly needs no introduction. His talk concentrated on how he made some of the decisions he made in designing the Elecraft KH1 hand-held HF transceiver. It was a great talk that gave quite a bit of insight into the design process. Personally, I’m not sold on the KH1, but Elecraft can’t make them fast enough, so I guess that tells you how valuable my opinion is.
• The Amazing Thermionic Valve by Greg Latta, AA8V. Greg is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering from Frostburg State University. He delved into some of the theory of how vacuum tubes work and some of the practical applications.
• Stealth Operation from Hotel Rooms and Other Unlikely QTHs by Ross Ballantyne, VK1UN.

Unfortunately, Ross was unable to present, either in person or via Zoom. According to the paper in the proceedings, Ross was part of several peace-keeping missions to remote spots around the world. On these trips, he operated from many hotel rooms and gained quite a bit of experience doing so. For example, he writes that virtually all of his antennas are made from wirewrap wire, which he gets from Ali Express. To couple the wire antenna to the transmitter, he uses a Z-match tuner or a modified Z-match tuner called the FRI match ATU. It’s a shame that Ross wasn’t able to adress us in person, as he sounds like quite an interesting fellow.

A walk with VU2ESE

After the talks, I decided to take a walk and stretch my legs. Just as I got to the street, I ran into a friend of mine, Arun, W8ARU, and Ashar, VU2ESE. We decided to walk together, and ended up walking about a mile and a half or so.

Arun and Farhan have been friends for many years. In fact, Arun hired Ashar to work for a company that Arun owned when he lived in India. (Arun now lives in Ann Arbor, MI, which is how I got to know him.) Arun once told me the taught Farhan how to solder. I confirmed that story at Hamvention last year when Ashar visited the ARDC booth.

In addition to all his development activities, Farhan recently joined the board of directors of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), the private foundation that I retired from last May. We had a great chat about the future of ARDC and amateur radio in general, among other topics. It will be interesting to see in which direction the new board members take ARDC.

Vendor Night

Thursday evening, FDIM holds Vendor Night. It’s a great deal for vendors. There’s no charge to participate as a vendor, and it’s a lot of fun. A couple of years ago when I did Vendor Night, I also shared a booth with the Dayton Makerspace on Friday and Saturday at Hamvention and ended up selling more books in 2 hours at the FDIM Vendor Night than I did in 2 days of Hamvention.

This year, I sold about $150 worth of books. What was even better was meeting everyone, including those who have used my books to get licensed or to upgrade. For example, Tom, K4SWL, came over and shared his story with me.

He said that one year his wife said that she would also get her ticket as an anniversary present. He gave her my study guide and ten days later, she had her license. How cool is that?

Kudos to QRP ARCI for another successful FDIM. If you’d like to get a copy of this year’s proceedings, you can contact them by emailing toystore@qrparci.org or n8et@woh.rr.com. QRP ARCI also has some other goodies, if you’re interested, in their Toy Store.

I really had a blast at this year’s Dayton Hamvention. My 2024 Hamvention experience included:

• Parks on the Air (POTA)
• Four Days in May
• New product introductions: QMX+, zBITx, Icom X60, Flex 8000
• Forums
• Kids
• Food
• Friends, lots of friends

Rather than try to write about it all in one big blog post, I’m going to split it up into a bunch of smaller posts. Here’s the first installment…

POTA, POTA

I’m retired now, so I can take as much time as I want for events like Hamvention. That being the case, my first decision was to not only go to Hamvention, but also Four Days in May (FDIM), put on by the QRP Amateur Radio Club International. The biggest part of FDIM is the all-day seminar held the Thursday before Hamvention. The talks begin at 8 am and run until 5 pm.

I only live about three and a half hours from Dayton, so in the past, I’ve driven down verrrry early Thursday morning, so that I could get there in time. My wife thinks I’m getting too old to do that, though, so I drove down on Wednesday. Since the drive is so short, however, I took advantage of the fact that I had a lot of time and activated two parks along the way: Van Buren State Park and Grand Lake St. Mary’s State Park. Both of these parks are not far from I-75, and I was kind of excited about doing this as it would be my first “rove” on my own.

I left my house at 9:30 am. It was raining as I left, and for most of the way to Van Buren State Park, which is just north of Lima, OH. When I got there, though, the rain had stopped, and I got set up quickly. While eating lunch, I made 18 contacts in a little over an hour.

Onward and southward

I packed up and headed to Grand Lake St. Mary’s State Park. On the way, it began raining again, but by the time I reached the state park, it had stopped and the sun was shining.

As the name implies, it’s quite a big lake for a man-made lake. In fact, according to Wikipedia, Grand Lake is the largest inland lake in Ohio, and at one time, was the world’s largest man-made lake. The lake was constructed in the early 19th century as a reservoir for the Miami and Erie Canal, which connected the Ohio River with Lake Erie. The canal system thrived for about thirty years in the mid-to-late 19th century before it was replaced by the railroads.

One of the attractions for me is that there is a lighthouse on the lake. That being the case, my first choice for an operating position was at the lighthouse. Unfortunately, the lighthouse is on private land, so I couldn’t operate from there. Instead, I chose a spot on the west side of the lake, from which I could see the small lighthouse. It was a very nice spot, and like the first park, I made 18 contacts in a little over an hour.

The adventure started after I packed up to go. While finishing up the activation, I noticed that battery in my phone was draining quicker than usual, but I still thought that I had enough battery power to get to Dayton. I started out on the route that Google Maps gave me, but I only got about ten miles, before the phone went completely dead. I plugged it into the car’s USB port, but it just didn’t want to charge up. I kept driving going first south, then east, then south again, reasoning that I’d eventually hit I-75.

That strategy worked quite well, and I evenutally ended up in Fort Loramie, OH. I stopped for a bite to eat, hoping that I could charge up my phone there, but the battery was completely dead. It wouldn’t take a charge at all. I lost that POTA logs and all of the photos I had on the phone.

After eating, I headed south on I-75, hoping that once I got to Dayton, I could figure out how to get to the hotel in Fairborn. That was wishful thinking, of course. After getting off the freeway, I asked for direction several times, but even so, I wandered around northeast and nothwest Dayton for at least an hour before I got to where I was going.

Fortunately, the hotel was close to several stores that sold Tracfones, which is the cell phone service that I use. I was able to purchase a new Samsung for $50, and after some wrangling with their tech support was able to get my phone number assigned to it. I was back in business. At that point, it was time to hit the sack.

Stay tuned for more of my Hamvention 2024 adventure. Tomorrow, I’ll be blogging about the Four Days in May talks and Vendor Night.

A Stroudsburg teens’ passion for radio

[Stroudsburg, Monroe County, PA (WBRE/WYOU)] In this week’s Here’s to You Kid segment, 28/22 News met a young ham radio operator. It’s not only his hobby, what he does also involves helping save lives.

14-year-old Samuel Thrall, W3GZ,  is a member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Amateur Radio Association (EPARA.) He passed three levels of the FCC Amateur Radio Licensing exam and now helps at the Monroe County Public Safety Center.

What interested him in ham radio in the first place is simple. “The scientific aspect of it is very interesting because it’s a technology we use on a daily basis. Our phones are all powered by radio just with computers built into them,” Samuel explained.

…read more and watch the video

As a ham radio operator, Lacy, of Middleburgh, had interesting perspective on Boston Marathon

[Middleburgh, MA] There are an estimated half a million spectators along the Boston Marathon course in any given year. If you’ve run the race, you know what a half-million voices stretched over 26.2 miles of Massachusetts roads sound like.

Of the over 9,000 volunteers that work Boston, over 300 serve as the voice of the marathon in their own way, but also serve as the eyes and ears. For the last two years, Matt Lacy of Middleburgh has been one of them. On Monday, he took up his assigned station at Mile 11 as one of the amateur (ham) radio operators who play an important role from start to finish by providing a communication network that supplements the other public safety personnel and resources vital to this massive enterprise.

“For the ham radio folks, it’s the premiere public service event, the chance for us to get the experience doing one of these events, having to report to whatever levels we need to, working within the confines of whatever section of the course we’re on,” Lacy said on Wednesday.

…read more

TAG students launch solar-powered balloon

[Iowa Falls, IA] Riverbend Middle School TAG (Talented and Gifted) students launched a solar-powered balloon on April 5 from the school, after a presentation and help from amateur ham radio operator Jim Emmert of Pella. The balloon named PENS-p22 traveled across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, the Atlantic Ocean, Morocco, Algeria the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and the Adriatic Sea.

“I am constantly on the lookout for guest speakers, fascinating projects or unique things that we could learn about,” TAG teacher Amanda Fjeld said. “I value exposing students to new topics and projects of any kind. I am constantly brainstorming ideas and often ask others for engaging project ideas. My friend Jen, who is from Pella, told me about Jim’s Solar Balloon program, so I reached out to him. I was especially excited because I lack knowledge in the world of solar technology and weather patterns but want to expose students to more science-related opportunities.”

Emmert is a retired teacher who lives in Pella and travels to different schools teaching students about amateur radio, earth science, balloons, and GPS technology. He also launches Pico balloons and gives predictions and tracking to the students.

“Our students spent about three hours on the morning of April 5 learning and launching the balloon,” Fjeld said. “It was one of the few times I have had all of the students in TAG in 6th, 7th and 8th grade come together on one project, so it was encouraging to see them interact and work together.”

…read more

The good news about this point in the sunspot cycle is that the sun is more active, meaning that in general, band conditions are pretty good. Except when they’re not.

According to the NOAA:

There are several types of space weather that can impact HF radio communication. In a typical sequence of space weather storms, the first impacts are felt during the solar flare itself. The solar x-rays from the sun penetrate to the bottom of the ionosphere (to around 80 km). There the x-ray photons ionize the atmosphere and create an enhancement of the D layer of the ionosphere. This enhanced D-layer acts both as a reflector of radio waves at some frequencies and an absorber of waves at other frequencies. The Radio Blackout associated with solar flares occurs on the dayside region of Earth and is most intense when the sun is directly overhead.

This seems to be happening frequently in the last week or so. You can go to the NOAA site or SolarHam to learn more than you probably want to know about this.

Radio blackouts are no fun, but they’re especially disappointing if you’ve hauled your gear out for a POTA activation. I went up to the Island Lake Recreation Area (US-3315) on Saturday afternoon and fought the conditions for a while. I was also competing for calls from the Indiana, New England, and 7th Call Area QSO parties.

I started out on 20 meters, but after making only five contacts, I decided to try 17 meters, where I was able to scratch out a couple more.  I then tried 15 meters, but had absolutely non success there, so I went back to 20 meters.

By hunting around for some park-to-park contacts, I was able to make 20 contacts overall, but it took me two and a half hours to do it. I’m not sure if the conditions or the contest competition was the main culprit, but activating on a big contest weekend was probably not the smartest thing to do.

Activating the AACME

Conditions weren’t all that much better Sunday morning, when three of us—Joe AC8ES, James AE8JF, and yours truly—set up to demo amateur radio at the Ann Arbor Creativity and Making Expo (AACME).  Joe had brought his Xiegu G90 and Alex Loop, but we were barely able to hear anything.

We attributed this to two factors. First, we were trying to operate the loop inside the building. Second, there had been reports of solar flares that morning that were adversely affecting HF propagation.

Despite that, we had a great time. Joe had brought his latest project—a QRP dummy load/wattmeter—that’s going to be our club’s next build project. And, I brought various keys and code oscillators to demonstrate Morse Code and get kids (and adults) to send their names in Morse Code.

A little after 1 pm, I decided to set up my KX-3 and see what I could do with it. Before the event started, I had set up my 66-ft. doublet in the courtyard just outside where our table was located. Over the next hour and a half, I managed to scratch out eight contacts, all on 20 meters, and all with participants in the New England QSO Party.

Overall, I think our participation in the AACME was a success. We were able to spread the word about amateur radio and our club. I passed out some flyers for my June 1 Tech class, and met some other interesting people.

Here are a couple more QSL cards from my collection of QSLs whose calls spell words….

I’ve actually had this care for a while, but I just ran across it while going through a pile of cards I received from the bureau.

Here’s one that’s appropriate for the season.

I didn’t know that Rochester had such an impressive waterfall. I’m going to have to visit there sometime to see it.

The Most Hackable Handheld Ham Radio Yet

The [Quansheng] UV-K5, released last year, might be the most hackable handheld ever, with a small army of dedicated hams adding a raft of software-based improvements and new features. I had to have one, and $30 later, I did.

Like Baofeng’s 5R, Quansheng’s K5 as a radio transceiver is fine. (I’m using K5 here to refer to both the original K5 and the new K5(8) model.) The key technical distinction between the 5R and K5 is a seemingly minor design choice. With Baofeng’s 5R, the firmware resides in read-only memory. But Quansheng stores the K5’s firmware in flash memory and made it possible to rewrite that memory with the same USB programming cable used to assign frequencies to preset channels.

…read more

ICHMS collaborates with IRARC

CASPIAN, MI – The Iron County Historical & Museum Society (ICHMS) will have two new exhibits this summer thanks to a collaboration with the Iron Range Amateur Radio Club (IRARC) and a grant from the Crystal Falls/Dickinson Area Community Foundation. “We couldn’t be any more excited about this collaboration and the exhibits that will come from it”, states museum director Kathlene Long. The club members are in here helping build the exhibits and are bringing their expertise along with their own artifacts to build these exhibits in time for this coming summer season.

The Club is building a working ham radio station in the museum. It will be fully functional. Museum visitors will be able to see the exhibit and signs will help visitors understand the importance ham radios – and amateur operators – have played in our county’s, and our country’s history. They will also learn why they continue to be so important. In addition, the Club is recreating a display of a vintage WIKB studio from pieces they have collected over the years. All of this is being paid for, in part, from a $500 grant from the Crystal Falls/Dickinson Area Community Foundation. “All in all, this is a lot of moving parts finally coming together to make this happen.” Long explains.

…read more

SIERA hosts Scout amateur radio merit badge day

METROPOLIS, IL — Boy Scouts talked to amateur radio operators as far away as Puerto Rico and Arizona during a radio merit badge class hosted by the Southernmost Illinois Emergency Radio Association (SIERA). Five scouts from Troop 2007, out of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Paducah, attended the class on Saturday, March 23, at Trinity Church in Metropolis.

Scouts experimented with tuning forks and a wave generator and had the opportunity to talk on both handy-talkie and high-frequency base radios during the class. They also learned about the science and mechanics of radio as well as important safety measures.

…read more