I’ve always recommended that hams join the ARRL, but recent events have certainly tested my resolve. The ARRL seems to lurch from calamity to calamity. Earlier this year, there was the decision to discontinue sending copies of the print version of QST to members. Then, in May, there was the cyber attack on the ARRL’s shaky IT infrastructure.

The latest debacle is this year’s board of directors election. Every year, the ARRL conducts elections for five of the 15 directorships. This year, candidates in three of these elections have been disqualified,  for somewhat dubious reasons, in my humble opinion.

Officially, these candidates were disqualified for violating one of the ARRL’s election rules. They all share a common characteristic, though: they are all critical of the current board and CEO, David Minster, NA2AA. Whatever the real reason, these disqualifications have turned this year’s elections into a sham.

N3JT Disqualified!

The first disqualification that I became aware of was that of Jim Talens, N3JT. At first glance, Jim seemed like a great  candidate. Professionally, Jim was an attorney for the FCC for 22 years and has both BSEE and MBA degrees. He is an active radio amateur and is one of the founders of CWops, a group devoted to furthering the use of Morse Code. He had hoped to run for Roanoke Division director.

Jim lives in Virginia for about half the year and in Florida for the other half. He says that by law, he is both a legal resident of Virginia and Florida.

His FCC license shows his Virginia address. His long-time home of 49 years and his primary station are located in Virginia. He pays real estate taxes in Virginia. He pays personal property taxes in Virginia.  His cars are registered in Virginia. The signatories to his nomination were all in Virginia. When he submitted his nomination petition, he was a full member in Virginia, and not living in Florida.

Despite this, the Ethics & Elections Committee decided—wrongfully in Jim’s opinion—that he was not a resident of Virginia, and therefore, not eligible to run in the Roanoke Division. ARRL By-Law 18 requires that a candidate must be a “Full member of the division.” The problem is that the by-law doesn’t define what that phrase means. In the absence of that definition, the committee just made up its own rule for political expediency rather than apply common sense, law, or fairness.

Sounds pretty shady, doesn’t it? Would Jim have been disqualified if he hadn’t been so critical of the ARRL? Over and above that, should the Ethics and Elections Committee have the power to disqualify a candidate when the bylaw isn’t specific about what constitutes residency in a division?

K1VR Disqualified!

Fred Hopengarten, K1VR was disqualified on even shakier grounds. In his case, he submitted his nominating petition 24 hours before the deadline (noon of August 16), but inadvertently failed to attach the pages containing the signatures of ten or more members of the New England Division. He was informed of this fact by email at 11:05 am the next day, less than an hour before the deadline. He didn’t see this email until after noon, and when he did, he immediately replied with the signatures. But, he was 27 minutes late. This is the reason he was disqualified.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds pretty shady to me. Could it be because Fred supports policies that buck the current trend on the ARRL board?

K7REX Disqualified!

This is another disturbing case. Dan Marler, K7REX, is as good a candidate as you’d want. He currently serves as Idaho Section Manager, has served as Section Emergency Coordinator, and is the founder of the Radio Amateur Training Planning and Activities Committee (RATPAC). He is a retired computer systems administrator for a Fortune-500 company and would bring a much-needed understanding of IT management to the League.

In an email—which I haven’t seen, to be honest—Dan made several statements that the Ethics & Elections Committee took issue with. The committee specifically demanded that he retract several statements.

Here’s the message that he sent to the  members of the Northwest Division listing the supposedly offending statements and his responses:

Members of the Northwestern Division of our League

I have received a demand from the Ethics & Elections Committee to retract certain statements in my last email message within 24 hours or suffer the consequences. The complaints of the Committee are unfounded in my good faith view. But since they have the power to disqualify me if I do not comply with their demand, I offer each statement, their complaint, and my justification to them.  I believe my statements contain nothing inaccurate, false or personally accusatory.  Accordingly, I leave it to you to hear both sides in fairness.

Each of the five specific statements questioned by the E&E state my opinion and belief as to certain matters that I believe do or may adversely impact the ARRL and invites potential voters to evaluate whether they share my concerns as to those matters.

Excessive employee turnover, expensive compensation, a decision to engage in the sale of amateur radio equipment that competes with the League’s advertisers, the extended absence of IT leadership that may have contributed to a $1,000,000 ransomware attack that resulted in damage to the League’s finances and operation, and the unacceptability of handicapping Directors by withholding financial information are what they demand is retracted. For your information as a voter, you decide. as to each of my stated opinions below:

My Statement

1. ” If you are concerned about historically high personnel turnover in Headquarters, where over 50 League employees have left since the arrival of the present CEO, your views align with mine.”

E&E’s COMPLAINT: As we discussed, there have been people leave the ARRL, but this was through natural attrition and not due to the arrival of the present CEO. It has been long known that we would experience a higher number of retirements since there was a large increase of employees hired in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This along with the natural attrition of employees leaving for better pay or advancements in their particular fields of employment has caused our employee numbers to fluctuate some but is not the fault of the CEO.

MY RESPONSE:    The statement that employee turnover for the prescribed period of time is historically high is accurate. The statement that over 50 League employees have terminated their employment during the prescribed time period is accurate.

The statement does not identify any reason for the turnover or attribute responsibility for the historically high turnover to any specific cause or person. Your objection is based on the false assertion that the statement attributes cause of the historically high turnover to the “CEO.” The reference to the “CEO” merely establishes the time period during which the employee turnover is excessive; it does not attribute the turnover to anyone.

As there are neither inaccuracies nor anything false in the statement, my answer stating both sides of this issue here should settle the concern.

My Statement

2.    ” If you are concerned that an annual salary of $350K plus benefits for the ARRL CEO is substantially above what is warranted, your views align with mine.”

E&E’s COMPLAINT: As we discussed, Mr Minster is not making $350,000 at this time. His salary is $315,000. This figure was verified today and is correct.

MY RESPONSE:    The statement expresses my concern that the compensation for Mr. Minster exceeds that which is justified for his position and responsibilities. The dollar amount is sourced from multiple Directors who advised that the Administration & Finance Committee approved a $100,000 salary increase to Mr. Minster’s initial base salary of $250,000. If that compensation package has been modified, it appears the modification is unknown to multiple members of the Board.

If the $350,000 amount is not current, and if no increase to the $315,000 salary amount has been formally or informally agreed to, I have no objection to correcting the dollar amount, but a concern about executive compensation being too high will not be withdrawn or restated. I ask for verification of Mr. Minster’s current salary and benefits and any approved increases that have not yet taken effect. This will allow me to accurately respond to the membership.

My Statement

3.    ” If you think there is no need for the League to sell antennas competing with its advertisers, your views align with mine.”

E&E’s COMPLAINT: As we discussed, we are selling “kits” to encourage folks to get back into building again. These “kits” are also being used for our STEM projects for students and teachers as well. Our advertisers do not have issues with us doing this, therefore there is no competition.

MY RESPONSE:    The statement accurately reflects my concern that the ARRL, financially dependent on advertising revenue, has – or may have – erred by choosing to sell amateur radio equipment similar to that offered by the ARRL’s advertisers. All antennas require some assembly, so attempting to differentiate the League’s offering by characterizing it as a “kit” is disingenuous. I would point out that JK Antennas’ JK803 is also a “kit”. The ARRL’s rationale for offering the “kit” doesn’t alter the fact that it is amateur radio equipment of a type available from the ARRL’s advertisers.

The fact, if true, that none of the ARRL’s advertisers have publicly, or perhaps privately, objected to the ARRL’s conduct does not alter the reality that the ARRL is selling a product, an antenna, that is offered by multiple ARRL advertisers. It is competition whether anyone complains about it or not: a rose by any other name…

As there are neither inaccuracies nor anything false in the statement, my answer here should settle the concern. But members should decide.

My Statement

4.    ” If you feel that not having an Information Technology Manager for the majority of the present CEO’s term is unacceptable and may have contributed to the ransomware attack damage, your views align with mine.”

E&E’s COMPLAINT: As we discussed with this question and question 1, employment today is much different than it was for you and me. Young adults today jump from one job to another regularly for advancement, benefits or just plain old salary increase. The loyalty to stick to a single employer as you and I did in the past is not the philosophy of today. Today, these young adults, many of them in high-tech jobs, go to the highest bidder and the ARRL isn’t usually the highest. So, to imply that this is the CEO’s fault is something that just isn’t so.

MY RESPONSE:    Once again, you are inferring causation, which I did not assert. I made no statement or implication that any of the foregoing was the fault of the current CEO. That said, lacking an IT manager for an organization of the size and importance of the ARRL for a substantial period of time, in this case a period measured by the term of the current CEO, is unacceptable because of the risk that the absence of such leadership, oversight, and knowledge poses to the organization.

My statement also conveys my belief and concern that the absence of such a Manager for such an extended period of time reasonably could have contributed to the lack of maintenance or installation of protocols that could have prevented a $1,000,000 ransomware attack.

As an aside, your comments regarding young adults are remarkably wide of the mark, as neither of the two IT managers since 2016 met the definition of young.

My statement contains nothing inaccurate, false or personally accusatory  Accordingly, I leave it to the voters having sent the E&E concerns.

My Statement

5.     “ If you feel that keeping any League financial information from ARRL Directors is unacceptable, your views align with mine. “

E&E’s COMPLAINT: As we discussed, this is a very misleading statement. If you or I are asked for information at a meeting that we aren’t able to provide immediately with but was willing to get that information and report back at a later time, is that refusing to give you the information? If the person wanting specific financial information demands information on the spot as has been a few times by a specific Director, is that fair to state later that you asked for and was refused the information?

MY RESPONSE:    My statement accurately reflects my belief that failing to provide financial information to the Board of Directors is unacceptable. Although my statement does not explicitly allege that such conduct has occurred, in fact I previously provided the Ethics & Elections Committee with multiple, verifiable instances in which financial information had been withheld from or denied  – not delayed – to Directors.  E&E Chairman Baker did not disagree or advise me that any of those examples were not true and further advised me that he would allow them to stand. There are multiple Directors prepared to publicly verify the accuracy of those instances.

It is my opinion that my original statements do not contain any inaccurate, false, personal accusatory comments.

I leave it to you to evaluate the validity of E&Es complaints. Please make your own decisions.

I thank you for your time, your consideration and I again ask for your vote for Northwestern Division Director.

Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the committee. In a letter dated September 28, 2024, Dan was disqualified. It’s not clear if he was being disqualified for not retracting all of the statements or just the statement about the CEO’s salary. In any case, we see again the high-handedness of the E&E Committee, and again I have to say that this all sounds pretty shady to me.

Is this really the best thing for amateur radio?

At this point, all three candidates plan to appeal these decisions by the Ethics & Elections Committee. It is doubtful that appealing will get them reinstated, but I think it’s worth going through the process, if only to emphasize the shadiness of what’s going on.

Over and above this, though, I really wonder how the powers that be can justify to themselves the shabby handling of these candidates? Do they really think that they’re fooling anyone with these political machinations? Do they reallly think what they’re doing is good for the ARRL, much less for amateur radio in general?

It’s really sad that it’s come to this.

I don’t know that I’d call Clay Mitchell, W8JNZ (SK), my mentor exactly, but I did look up to him, both as a ham and as a person. I’ll always remember one thing that he told me. “Dan,” he said, “one of the best ways to learn about something is to ‘tinker’ with it.” He’d gotten this bit of advice from Dr. Richard Crane, W8CWN, who taught physics at the University of Michigan and was a a well-known science educator and great tinkerer.

I applied this bit of wisdom to the antenna that I use for portable ops. It’s nothing fancy—just a 66-ft. doublet—but by tinkering with it over the years, it’s a much better antenna than it was when I first built it. 

It started with a KX1

It all started about 20 years ago when I decided that I wanted to operate portable and bought and built an Elecraft KX-1. Out of the box, the KX1 covers 40 meters and 20 meters, and you can buy an option to add 80 meters and 30 meters to the radio. I also purchased and built the optional automatic antenna tuner.

The user manual for the KX1 antenna tuner suggested using a wire antenna of 24 – 28 feet and one or more radials of at least 1/8-wavelength. It also suggests connecting these directly to the radio without a feed line. I cut four, 24-ft. lengths of wire from a spool of wire-wrap wire that I had scavenged from the dumpster of one of my employers, purchased a BNC-binding post adapter, connected the driven element to the red binding post and the three radials to the black binding post. 

The tuner found a match for this antenna, but I was never really thrilled with the performance. I made some contacts, but with only 4 watts output, most of those contacts were a struggle. I struggled with this setup for a couple of years, but since I was really enjoying portable operation, I decided that some tinkering was in order.  

A new antenna is born

In 2007, my 66-ft. doublet was born. Our club here in Ann Arbor, MI, ARROW, conducts mini-Field Days the we call AMP Team meetings every month. (AMP is short for ARROW Mobile and Portable.) We haul all kinds of radio gear out to a park and set up and operate. The gear you’ll find at one of these events includes HF, VHF, UHF, and even some microwave gear. Some club members, for example, are experimenting with AREDN mesh networking, and these meetings are a good place to test out their nodes without having to worry if their node’s antenna is line-of-sight with another node.

As I was contemplating what to use for an antenna for one of these outings, I scanned the shelves in my shack for antenna-making materials. I still had a fair amount of wire-wrap wire that I could use for the antenna itself, but what to use for feed line? When my eyes lit on a spool of twisted-pair wire, I thought why not give that a try? I cut two 33-ft. lengths of wire-wrap wire for the antenna elements and one 33-ft. length of twisted-pair wire to use as feed line. 

As this was going to be an experimental antenna, I didn’t care too much how kludgey the thing looked. For the center insulator, I dug a ceramic dog bone insulator out of my box of antenna parts. To connect the feed line to the antenna elements, I used a couple of small wire nuts.

Cutting a 33-ft. length of wire for the feed line was actually a mistake. I figured that if I made the twisted pair feed line a half-wavelength long, then I’d have a relatively low impedance at the rig. Instead, in my haste, I cut it too short. 33 feet is only a quarter wavelength at 40 meters, which theoretically should have yielded a high impedance at the antenna input. In practice, however, the KX-1 managed to tune that antenna and feed line on 40 meters and 20 meters just fine. That just goes to show how much I know.

To hang up the antenna, I made a small loop at the end of each wire, and to that I tied some mason twine. I threw that twine up into a tree using a weighted tennis ball, and pulled up the antenna. One problem with this approach is that I was never able to get the antenna up all that high. Sometimes the antenna was less than 15 feet off the ground.

Another problem is that it took a long time to do this. It takes time to get two lines up into trees, raise the antenna, then tie off the lines. Not to mention that you need two trees relative close to one another. Sometimes, I would set up this antenna as an inverted-V, but I still had to find an appropriate tree for this.

Enter the KX3

In 2015, I bought a used KX3. Being a KX1 user, I had subscribed to the Elecraft-KX mailing list, and when someone offered to sell a KX3 with antenna tuner for about $1,200, I jumped on it. At first, I had visions of outfitting with with a PX3 band scope and some kind of amplifier to make a base station out of it, but when I found a good deal on a Flex 6400, I decided against that approach. The KX3 would be devoted to portable operation.

Because the KX3 antenna tuner has a wider range than the KX1 antenna tuner, I wasn’t anticipating any problems with it tuning the doublet. And, in fact, that was the case. The KX3 easily tunes the doublet on all bands between 40 meters and 10 meters.

POTA improvements

Improvements to the antenna accelerated once I started operating Parks on the Air (POTA). One of the first improvements was to purchase a 10-meter, telescoping, Spiderbeam fiberglass mast. With the Spiderbeam mast, I no longer have to throw lines up into trees. I slide a small eyelet into the top section of the telescoping mast and attach the center insulator of the antenna to the eyelet. I extend the mast and operate the doublet as an inverted V. No trees needed.

To anchor the telescoping mast, I pound three garden stakes into the ground at 120-degree intervals around the mast, then put a strap around the stakes and mast to hold the mast  upright. This arrangement is much easier to set up than others that I’ve seen that use ropes and tent stakes, and it is very stable. It’s certainly stable enough for a two- or three-hour POTA activation.

To anchor the elements, I use two-pound exercise weights that I bought for a buck each at a local thrift shop. Using the weights, it’s easy to extend the elements to whatever length I need quickly. Overall, setting up the antenna is very quick. I can be on the air within 20 minutes of arriving at a park.

The next improvement that I thought I’d make is to find a center insulator that would provide better strain relief for the feed line. Searching the internet, I found a 3D-printed center insulator by an eBay seller who calls himself thecrazyham. He didn’t have anything designed for a twisted-pair feed line, but I guessed that a center insulator designed for 300 Ω twinlead would work just fine. It did work just fine, and as a bonus, it only cost five dollars!

After acquiring the new center insulator, my friend, Rick, K8BMA gave me some 26-ga. Poly-STEALTH antenna wire. I cut two,  33-ft. lengths and connected them to the feed line with wire nuts again. I hadn’t had any trouble with the wire-wrap wire I was using, but this wire was made with antennas in mind. It’s really first-rate stuff. I don’t think it works any better than the wire-wrap wire, but it coils up neatly and fits nicely into the small toolbox I use to carry around POTA station. 

A “real” feed line

Whenever I was asked about my POTA antenna, I would brag about the twisted-pair feed line. I was rather proud that I thought to use twisted-pair wire as a feed line, and that it actually worked. But, a  couple of months ago, my friend Paul, KW1L, bought a Cobra antenna. Before putting it up at his house, he asked if we could take it on a POTA activation and try it out. I agreed, and one morning, we took it up to the Island Lake Recreation Area.

Band conditions were good that morning, but even so, it seemed like the antenna was performing at least a little better than my doublet. Paul said, “Well, sure, it’s because the Cobra antenna has a real feed line.”

So, I decided to try a “real feed line” on my doublet. It just so happened that I had a 100-ft. roll of  300 Ω twinlead that I purchased at a dollar store many years ago. I cut off a 35-ft. hunk of it, soldered it to the antenna elements, and put some banana plugs on the other end of it. After using this  antenna for a couple of months now, I feel that I have to swallow my pride a little and say that the antenna with the 300 Ω feed line does work a little better than it did with the twisted-pair feed line. I’m guessing that it’s because the twisted-pair feedline has a higher loss than the twinlead.

My latest improvement is to use a 4:1 balun between the feedline and the antenna tuner. Until just recently, I was connecting the feedline directly to the KX3 antenna tuner, but the fellow who sells Cobra antennas recommends using a 4:1 balun, so I thought that doing so might improve my antenna’s performance as well.

Several years ago, I purchased a couple of W1CG  current balun kits at a hamfest, and now was the time to build one. This is a really great kit, and if you ever see one at a hamfest or wherever, buy it. The New Jersey QRP Club that sponsored this kit is now defunct (despite the website still being online), and the kits are no longer available. (I’ve been thinking about kitting up some and selling them, but that’s  a discussion for another day.) The instruction manual is still available, though, and it’s not hard to find the parts. 

If you’re at all interested in baluns and how they work, you should download the instructions. They contain a great description of how baluns work and the difference between voltage baluns and current baluns.

At any rate, I built one of the kits, and have started to use the balun on my POTA activations. I can’t say for sure how much the balun has improved my results, but it certainly hasn’t hurt them, so I’m going to continue to use it. 

Tinkering gets results 

If you take away only one thing from this article, take away the idea that tinkering with something gets results. The antenna that I’m using today is basically the same antenna that I built 20 years ago, but the tweaks that I’ve made have significantly improved its performance and its ease of use.

One final note: I recognize that much of my success is due to the magic of the Elecraft antenna tuner. I have used this antenna with other antenna tuners, including the inexpensive Z-match tuners you can get from Ali Express or Amazon. It should also work well with the Emtech ZM-2 antenna tuner. If you purchase and tinker with this antenna and one of these tuners, please let me know how it works out for you.

I was just going to let this go, but after I watched this video, I just had to write about it. The video below is a recording of a presentation by Mickey Baker, N4MB to the Southeastern DX Club.

Discussion of the IT situation starts at about the 16:00 minute mark. It’s truly amazing to me that these systems were being run so poorly. I’ll just mention one of the points here.

Apparently, to recover Logbook of the World (LoTW) after the attack, the ARRL hired the original developer who released LoTW in 2003 with no testing and no user documentation. In addition, LoTW is running on versions of CentOS (Linux) and SAP MaxDB—both of which has been unsupported for more than 5 years.

As one person on our club mailing list put it, “CentOS is end-of-life now, after Red Hat pulled the plug on it. . . running an OS after the vendor stops providing security updates is bad practice.”

I think it was very courageous of Director Baker, to come forward with this information. If he wasn’t on the ARRL CEO’s sh*t list, he certainly is now.

Another factoid in this video is really concerning. In the Q&A portion of the video, Baker mentions that he estimates that there’s been a 15 – 18% membership loss due to requiring members to pay extra for the print version of QST. I predicted that the League would take a hit for doing this, but I didn’t think it would be that drastic.  A 15% loss of members would put the percentage of licensed radio amateurs who are also ARRL members well under 20%.

And, so it goes…

A couple of days ago, a reader, who is a “sorter” for the ARRL Incoming QSL Bureau, emailed me about the ARRL’s decision to end funding for the bureaus at the end of this year. In an email dated Friday, June 21, 2024, Bart Jahnke, W9JJ, Radiosport and Regulatory Information Manager, informed the Incoming QSL Bureau managers that the ARRL Board of Directors had decided that the bureaus would have to recoup “their full expenses from shared charges to the participants themselves.”

According to the June 2024 Standard Operating Guidelines for Incoming QSL bureaus, the funding for many expenses, including PO box rental and other postal expenses, office supplies, printing, and mileage, was to have ended on July 31, 20204, but that date has been pushed back to the end of the year.

My reader was a little upset about this because this decision was made with little or no input from the bureau managers, and they were quite caught off guard by this decision. Not only that, the ARRL is putting the entire burden of how to recoup expenses on the bureau managers. In essence, this makes the bureau managers and sorters, not the ARRL itself, the bad guys in this scenario. I told him that this really didn’t surprise me as this kind of thing seems to be standard operating procedure for the ARRL.

My reader was also a little upset that the ARRL will continue to tout the QSL Bureau as a member benefit, when in reality, it’s the members and volunteers that will be footing the bill. When I asked if he had any idea how much this was actually costing the ARRL every year, he didn’t really know.

Honestly, I’m not sure how big a deal this really is. With the advent of Logbook of the World, paper QSLs are slowly becoming a thing of the past, in much the same way that AM phone has become a historic curiosity. Even so, I do sympathize with the volunteers who were not asked for any input and are now expected to squeeze more money out of their users. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the QSL Bureau volunteers quit over this slight from ARRL HQ.

Nor would I be surprised if the ARRL lost some members over the increase in fees. There are always hams out there just looking for an excuse to quit the League. As I’ve said in the past, the ARRL needs to get serious about how to increase membership, not lose membership.

Anyway, what do you think? Are you a QSL bureau user? If so, how do you feel about paying more for the service?  If you’re not a QSL Bureau user, do you think I’m making a big deal about nothing?

I enjoy reading essays, so when I saw a collection of essays from Joseph Epstein, Familiarity Breeds Content: New and Selected Essays, on the new books shelf at my local library, I checked it out. The essays were fine, although I’m not sure that I agree with David Brooks, who called the essays “funny” and full of “charming banter.” 

One essay in the book, “The Bookish Life,” did catch my eye. The essay discusses lists of books that a “well-read” person might be expected to have read. Epstein notes the difficulties with such lists and writes,

Such lists reveal a yearning for a direct route to wisdom. Brace yourself for the bad news: none is available. If one wanted to establish expertise in a restricted field—economics, say, or art history, or botany—such a  list might be useful.

I’m thinking that such a list might be useful for amateur radio, and I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a list. So, let’s start one. 

Scanning my bookshelves, I offer the following:

• The ARRL Handbook
• The ARRL Antenna Book
• The ARRL Operating Manual
• The Art of Electronics, 3d edition. Horowitz and Hill.
• Electronic and Radio Engineering, 4th edition, Terman. 
• Antennas, 2d edition, Kraus
• Experimental Methods in RF Design, Revised Edition; Hayward, Campbell, and Larkin.

I have not actually read all of these books, so I can’t claim to be a bookish radio amateur. I have cracked them open on occasion, though. Some I’ve cracked open more than others.

I’ve never owned a copy of Experimental Methods, but every time it’s mentioned, it seems to be mentioned with a certain reverence. That’s why I’ve included it in this list. It’s no longer in print, though, which is curious. If it’s such a great book, you’d think that the ARRL would continue selling it.

Anyway, I’d like to get your nomination for the essential amateur radio book list. Please comment below or email me directly. 

Here are some articles I found intersting. The first details a cheap way to teach kids (and adults, too!) about circuits….Dan

Scrappy circuits

The best dollar you can spend on a child’s STEAM education is to take them to the dollar store, buy an electronic item, and then take it apart. Learning how a handheld fan, LED light, remote control, or headphones work will help show how wind turbines, traffic lights, speakers, keyboards, and other modern devices function.

The next step is to take apart a dollar store item and make it better — combine two items, replace a switch, create something new and unique. Scrappy Circuits is the perfect way to get started.

I first developed Scrappy Circuits with Chris Connors and Eva Luna while working at Xraise, an education outreach program at Cornell University. What began as an exploration of DIY switches ended later as a self-made invention system sourced from a fifty-cent LED tea light. Educators can build it with their class for about $20. Anyone with access to office supplies and a dollar store can make the five Core Bricks for about $1. Here’s how to create each one.

…read more

---

I think that we short-change ham radio’s usefulness in getting people to pursue STEM careers…..Dan

Ham radio inspired this Scranton University student to pursue engineering

Many college students participate in sports, listen to music, or play video games in their spare time, but IEEE Student Member Gerard Piccini prefers amateur radio, also known as ham radio. He’s been involved with the two-way radio communication, which uses designated frequencies, since his uncle introduced him to it when he was a youngster. His call sign is KD2ZHK.

…read more

---

I’ve always been something of a measurement nerd……Dan

Why measurements are important

Practically everything you use in your everyday life works because of measurement science. Without precise measurements, your car wouldn’t run, your phone wouldn’t work, hospitals couldn’t function, and the ATM would fail.

NIST is the national measurement institute of the United States. Most people in the U.S. have no idea that there is a single organization within the federal government that makes sure all measurements in the U.S. are correct and trustworthy — and that they are accepted by other governments worldwide.

…read more

---

Copper is one of those things that we take for granted…..Dan

Copper: Conductivity Benefits and Environmental Impact

Most circuit designers probably aren’t thinking about, much less worrying about, the metal copper. But as the electrification of the world continues, copper conductors used in applications from microchips, other components and circuit boards, to household, industrial, and automotive wiring, and critical workhorses like batteries and electric motors, points to the need to spotlight its starring role.

…read more

Three new radios were introduced last month at this year’s Japan Amateur Radio Leage (JARL) Ham Fair, including:

• the Icom IC-7760
• the Yaesu FTX-1F
• a new mobile VHF/UHF transceiver from Kenwood

Icom IC-7760

Icom tried to get hams talking about the new IC-7760 by displaying a bunch of prototype board under a plexiglass case at the Dayton Hamvention. It generated some buzz, but in general, most hams here in the U.S. took a wait-and-see attitude.

When it was finally unveiled, many were disappointed, mostly because of the price, I think. DXZone reported that “the initial price in Yen was approximately $6000 or 5400 €. Just a few weeks later, European dealers began publishing the official IC-7760 price at around 6650 €, significantly higher than the original estimate.” None of the U.S. dealers has published a price for the radio yet.

The radio does have some interesting features, including:

• 200 W output
• Separable control head and RF deck
• In-house remote operation through a wired LAN
• Two displays, 7-inch wide and 2.4-inch

The question is whether theses features justify the high price. Members of the IC-7610 mailing list don’t seem to think so. One of them noted, “I think the biggest competition to the 7760 will be the 7610, at nearly half the price and with very similar features, my guess is that few will opt for a 7760 unless they ‘just have to have one….'”

Yaesu FTX-1F

The FTX-1F is Yaesu’s replacement for the very popular FT-817/818. Its features include:

• SSB, CW, AM, FM and C4FM digital modes
• SDR technology and 3DSS (3-Dimensional Spectrum Stream) on a 4.3-inch high-resolution full-color touch display panel
• Two independent receivers for true simultaneous dual-band operation, whether in the same band or in different bands.
• USB ports support CAT operation, audio input/output and TX control
• 9 hours battery life on HF bands, 8 hours on V/UHF bands

Like the IC-7760, it’s not currently available from U.S. dealers, so the pricing isn’t set yet, but the word is that it’s going to cost around $2,000 when it’s finally released sometime in 2025. That’s quite a bit higher than the price of the FT-817/818, but it does have more features, and presumably, better performance.

Like the IC-7760, the question is whether these features justify the higher price. There are lots of interesting comments about this on qrper.com.

Kenwood mobile transceiver

The last announcement from the JARL Ham Fair is a new mobile radio from Kenwood. Details on this radio are sketchier than for the other two, but hamlife.jp reports the following:

• Compatible with D-STAR and APRS. 
• Separate controlunit and RF deck.
• Built-in GPS receiver
• USB ports on both the control panel and the radio body.
• Currently developing it for release in 2025.

They also report that, “Price is expected to be higher than the TH-D75.” That puts the price north of $750.

---

The question that I have with regard to these new radios is are they making ham radio better? This is only a partly-baked idea, but please stick with me on this. I can see where these new radios might make Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood more money, but I don’t really think that they make ham radio better.

First, how many hams can actually afford a $6,000 radio? And of those, how many will actually buy one? I’d love to see Icom’s marketing study for the IC-7760. Same goes for the Yaesu FTX-1F and the yet-unnamed Kenwood radio.

Second, I teach a lot of ham classes, and work with a lot of new hams, so I have a particular point of view here. That being the case, I’m not so sure that I’d counsel a new ham to buy one of these three radios. These are not radios for people just getting started in the hobby.

I think that what we need are more radios like the HF Signals sBitx. The sBitx is a reasonably-priced radio that offers reasonable performance at a price that’s affordable. And, it’s hackable, too!  It’s not the perfect radio, but it’s certainly more accessible.

As I say, this is just a partly-baked idea, so I’d love to hear what you think. What features should a radio have to make the hobby better for all radio amateurs.

CY9C

When CY9C began operations back on August 26, there were huge pileups. On 30-meter CW, the pileup was at least 5 kHz wide. One of the reasons for this, of course, is that St. Paul Island is part of Canada and not that far from most of the United States. That made it a lot more accessible to hams here in the U.S.

I waited, and on the evening of August 31, I actually heard them calling CQ on 30 meters managed to work them on the second call.

As it turns out, I probably could have skipped it entirely. I just checked Logbook of the World (LOTW) and see that I worked CY9C on August 21, 2016; CY9SS on July 5, 2005; ;and Cy9A on July 31, 2003.

VUs in the log

For some reason—maybe because I don’t really have a DX station—I had never managed to work anyone in India. Well, in the last  month or so, I’ve managed to work two Indians, VU2GSM and VU2TMP. VU2TMP has QSLed via LOTW, making my current DXCC count 174.

AllStarLink

And now for something completely different, as they used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus….

Several months ago, the University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club (UMARC) upgraded their repeater system (145.23-, 100Hz). As part of this upgrade, they became a node on the AllStarLink network, which they have been proudly announcing on their Sunday night net. 

After last Sunday’s net, I decided to find out how to access the network. The first thing I did was to take a look at the UMARC website, or I should say websites. UMARC actually has four different web pages. Unfortunately, none of them had any information on how to access the AllStarLink network.

Then, I asked one of the club’s advisors. He wasn’t really sure how to do it either, and advised me to search for the information on the web. I did this and found a Beginner’s Guide, but this isn’t really what I was looking for. The Beginner’s Guide directs someone on how to set up their own node, not really how to use the network.

I kept looking and found the page AllStarLink Standard Commands. This is exactly what I was looking for. This page describes the DTMF sequences a user needs to connect and disconnect from nodes. Fortunately, the UMARC repeater uses this standard command set.

Next, I had to find a repeater to connect to. That shouldn’t be so difficult, I reasoned, since the network boasts that they have 34,720 users and 35,345 nodes. I started with the AllStarLink Node List. I was able to connect to a couple of repeaters, but most of them seemed either offline or inaccessible for some reason. One of the active nodes that I was able to connect to was WW8GM, the General Motors Amateur Radio Club repeater in Detroit, but I got no reply to my call there.

So, I asked on /r/amateurradio if anyone had suggestions for active or interesting nodes.  I was directed to a list of “keyed nodes,” which I guess are nodes that are currently active. Currently, this page is showing 30-35 active nodes.

One of the nodes that looked promising was a repeater in Seattle. The page showed that it was connected to at least a dozen other repeaters. When I connected to that repeater, I heard a net with everyone giving weather reports! I didn’t find that very interesting, so I quickly disconnected.

I’m told that the UMARC repeater connects to a net of student stations on Saturday afternoon. I’ll be listening for that, but really would like to know of other interesting nets or nodes on the AllStarLink network. If you know of any, please comment below.

 

W3LPL on HF propagation

At an hour and a half, this video is kind of long, but if you’re interested in propagation, it’s worth watching.

W2AEW on how to use a NanoVNA to measure a filter’s characteristics

Alan, W2AEW, shows how to use a NanoVNA, which is one of the most useful tools for characterizing RF components and circuits.

Hallicrafters World of SW Radio

Back in the day, Hallicrafters was arguably the biggest name in amateur and shortwave radio. Unfortunately, this is just an audio file, but I guess, radio is audio so just close your eyes and imagine that you’re listening to this on a Hallicrafters receiver.

One of the things that makes Parks on the Air (POTA) so successful is the way that they use their database to keep folks involved. It’s very easy for activators to upload their logs, and once uploaded, the website takes it from there, generating myriad awards for participants. There are awards for all kinds of things including activating or hunting early in the day (Early Shift) and later in the day (Late Shifter). There are “rover” awards for operators who like to operated from many different parks and “repeat offender” awards for those that tend to operate from a single park or a small handful of parks.

And, if you’re a repeat offender—which I tend to be—there are awards for making at least 1,000 contacts from a particular park. They call these the “Kilo” awards. Earlier this year—June 20, to be exact—I earned my first kilo at Island Lake State Recreation Area, US-3315. Today, I earned my second at the Pinckney State Recreation Areas, US-3322.

I worked fairly hard to do this. Since June 20, when I completed my first kilo, I activated US-3322 14 times, making a total of 667 contacts, almost all of them on CW. My most productive activation was 82 contacts on August 2. My least productive activation was 11 contacts on August 17.

This activation was a short one because of the weather. Just after I made the seventh contact, it started to sprinkle. Thinking that it might blow over, my wife handed me an umbrella (see above). Just as I made the ninth contact, however, it started to pour. I was just able to squeeze in two more contacts before I decide the best course of action would be to shut everything down before it was drenched.

My 51 contacts today put me over the top.

What’s next?

Now that I’ve made it to 1,000 at two parks, I’m pondering what I should do next.  I could go for 2,000 at US-3315 or US-3322. US-3322 is really a pleasant place to operate.

I could also expand my park selection. There are several nice parks that are only a little further away than Island Lake or Pinckney. I have, for example,  52 contacts from Waterloo State Recreation Area, US-3331, and Maybury State Park, US-1518, is purported to be a nice place to operate from.

Something else that I’m working on is coming up with some new gear for POTA. I’m currently working on building a QRP Labs’ QMX transceiver kit. Last night, I managed to wind and install the first toroid, T501 (see below).   Only 10 more to go!

I’m also going to have to purchase or assemble a tuner to go along with the radio. Maybe once I get it all built, I can start on my first 1,000 using only gear that I’ve built. Maybe I could suggest that POTA add an award for making so many contacts with homebrew or kit rigs.

 

 

According to BleepingComputer.Com, “On Wednesday, ARRL revealed that it had indeed paid the attackers a [$1 million] ransom not to prevent stolen data from being leaked online but to obtain a decryption tool to restore systems impacted during the attack on the morning of May 15.”

A member bulletin detailing the situation was sent to members on Wednesday, August 21. The text of this bulletin can be read online.

---

Las Vegas hacker convention attendees complain of harassment by Resorts World staff

The hotel of Resorts World Las Vegas played host to many attendees of the convention this year, which ran from Thursday to Sunday at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and attendees of the cybersecurity conference complained that they were being treated like criminals by security.

In notices from Resorts World shared on social media, the casino-hotel warned guests of “room checks on all stay over rooms” in the block reserved for DEF CON attendees. Guests have also shared their own personal stories to social media, complaining of harassment by overzealous security staff with the intention to intimidate.

…

Some DEF CON attendees shared their negative experiences on forums, such as Hacker News. One, known by the username FickleRaptor, said security demanded their ID and threatened to have them arrested for trespassing. “The issue was that my colleague was one of the amateur radio VEs for the Ham Radio Village and happened to have his handheld with him,” they explained, adding that the guard was “aggressive, entitled, and arrogant.”

…read more

---

OM80SNP celebrates 80th anniversary of Slovak National Uprising

While listening to the August 21, 2024 podcast of Radio Slovakia International’s daily English show, I was surprised to hear a report on OM80SNP, a special event station commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising (Slovenské Národné Povstanie).

This station has been operating since August 1 and will continue through August 31, 2024.  A special QSL card is available.

Being Slovak-American, I wish I’d known about this sooner. I still have a chance to work them and get a QSL card, though.

I attended DEF CON 32 a week or so ago, and like many “hacker” conferences, attendees got an electronic badge. This year’s badge was built around the new Raspberry PI microcontroller, the RP2350. It actually works like a GameBoy, and you can add games like you would a GameBoy. Here are a couple of videos that talk about the DEF CON 32 electronic badge:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWxjNNbiQ5Y
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPrIO0fhikE

Some of the “villages” or special interest groups, such as the Aerospace Village created their own badges.

At DEF CON, I attended a talk by a fellow who’s created an open-source design—both hardware and software—upon which you can build a badge for your event. He calls his badge OpenTaxus, and you can find the documentation here.

Since these things are so popular at hacker conferences, I wonder why they aren’t more popular at amateur radio events? Is it because hams are just too cheap to buy something like this? Or, maybe, it’s because hams are just not as “creative” as hackers.

At any rate, I’m thinking about coming up with some kind of electronic badge for the 2025 Dayton Hamvention. If any of you have ideas for the badge—or would perhaps be interested in working on the badge hardware or software—let me know. If we are going to do a badge, it would probably be a good idea to get started on it now.

Here are three interesting things I found on mastodon last night. If you’re a mastodon user, you can follow me at @kb6nu@mastodon.radio. If you primarily post about #hamradio, I’ll follow you back.

Electronics at Work: 1943

In 1943, electronics was all about vacuum tubes. This video is a good introduction to how vacuum tubes work and how they were used in industry.

Open Source in Amateur Radio Wiki

The Open Source in Amateur Radio Wiki provides information about open-source software and hardware as well as free home-brew projects for radio enthusiasts and promote the use of open source software and hardware in amateur radio. The wiki’s founder, Michael, DK1MI, writes, “This wiki cannot be filled and maintained by one person alone, which is why I call on people to register on the wiki in order to correct errors, add information, translate articles and/or create new content.” Check out the how to contribute page for more information.

Amateur Radio Community Operating System (arcOS)

arcOS is a bootable Linux system on a USB drive. arcOS is founded on the belief that digital communications within communities of operators can be accessible and easy to use for ALL, regardless of license class or experience.

The author of arcOS is KG4VDK. He writes, “By minimizing the number of included applications and complexity, arcOS strives to avoid overwhelming new or inexperienced users, while offering ambitious users the ability to configure additional features and functionality.”

I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like something to investigate.

 

Last week, I attended DEFCON, where I gave my “Ham Radio for Hackers” talk and mingled with a number hacker types. This talk seems to have struck a chord. It was featured on Hack-a-Day, and recently, Steve Stroh, N8GNJ, commented that I am “fast becoming the Amateur Radio Evangelist of techies / hackers / makers.”

All this has got me thinking, though, that perhaps I’m not really walking the walk, so to speak. After all, I’m using an Icom IC-7610 in the shack and an Elecraft KX-3 out in the field. I am using a K3NG keyer that I built as my main keyer, and I have been building my own antennas and baluns, but to really earn the title “ham radio hacker” perhaps I need to step up a little more.

So, how do I really earn that title? What comes to mind is that I could sell my current closed-source gear (dare I say appliances) and go with all homebrew and/or open-source gear. For example, for the shack, I could sell my IC-7610 and purchase an HF Signals sBitx. The sBitx is a 40 W, fully open source, high performance HF SDR transceiver with built-in digital modes, including FT8, RTTY, PSK31, and more, in addition to CW and SSB. Based on a Raspberry Pi 4, this radio is very hackable.

For VHF/UHF operation, I could go with any of the radios that support OpenRTX. Open RTX supports M17 on some radios, too. There’s also the Quansheng UV-K5. There are many open-source firmware hacks for this radio.

Antennas I pretty much have covered. I bought a Buddipole about 15 years ago, but aside from HT antennas, that’s the only commercial antenna that I currently own.

These are all just partly-baked ideas at this point. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do this, but now that I’m retired, I certainly have the time to do it. Please let me know what you think. Are there other cool open-source/homebrew projects out there that I should also consider?

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.

On the spur of the moment, my wife, Silvia, and I decided to head up to East Tawas, MI on Lake Huron for an overnight excursion.  It was a nice change of pace, and it helped us beat the heat a little.

One of the things I most enjoy about East Tawas is being able to operate at Tawas Point State Park (US-1545). It’s a two-fer in that operating from there is not only a POTA activation, but also a lighthouse activation, as the park is home to the Ottawa Point/Tawas Point Light (ARLHS USA-837). And, as a little bit of a bonus, last weekend was National Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend.

It’s about a two and a half hour drive from Ann Arbor to the park, but it took us at least 30 minutes extra, due to construction near Flint. We got there about 1:30 pm, and enjoyed the lunch we had brought while we looked out over Lake Huron.

I then found a nice shady spot to set up the rig. Last time I was here two years ago, I set up in the sun, and my KX-3 got so hot, I thought I’d damaged it. This time, in the shade, the radio stayed nice and cool.

I was on the air for a little over two hours and made about 30 contacts. Most of my contacts were on 20-meter CW, but at the end, I ventured into the phone portion of the band and was able to make four park-to-park contacts. I figured—correctly, I think—that I’d have better success hunting than calling CQ on phone. One tactic that seemed to work very well is to add “park to park” to my call. That got the activators’ attention even though my 15 W was certainly not the strongest signal on the band.

A noisy activation at Tawas State Harbor

We stayed at the Tawas Bay Beach Resort that night. It’s a nice hotel, has its own little beach, and is close to downtown East Tawas. It’s also right next to Tawas State Harbor (US-6812).

Since we had to check out of the hotel by 11:00 am, I decided to get up a little early and make some contacts in the morning. That way, my wife could stay in bed and not have to sit out in the park while I operated. I left the room a little after 7:30 am, hiked over to the park, and was set up just before 8:00 am.

When I turned on the radio, though, I was quite dismayed to hear all the noise. It was peaking at S5! When I conjured up the plan to activate this park, I hadn’t realized that it was right next to an RV campground. My guess is that all that noise was coming from the campers. I tried re-orienting my doublet antenna, but that didn’t help at all.

Not only that, band conditions seemed quite poor yesterday morning. There were only a few strong signals. Couple that with having to operate with the noise reducer on means that I’m sure that I missed a few calls just because they were below the noise floor and I couldn’t hear them. If one of them was you, please accept my apologies.

I operated until about 8:30 am, when I decided to give up fighting the noise and band conditions. Overall, I managed to make 16 contacts in about 35 minutes, so actually not a bad rate.

I packed up and headed back to the room. When I got back, Silvia was ready for breakfast, and so was I. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, then took a walk out to the end of the breakwater at Tawas State Harbor. It was a little bit warm out there in the sun, but quite enjoyable looking out over the lake. From the shore, you could just spot the lighthouse, which had to be at least a couple miles away.

After our walk, we packed up the car and headed home. There were no major traffic holdups on the way home, and we made it in two and a half hours.

Question T3C07 in the Technician Class question pool reads:

What band is best suited for communicating via meteor scatter?

1. 33 centimeters
2. 6 meters
3. 2 meters
4. 70 centimeters

The answer, of course, is B. 6 meters.

I make a big deal out of this question when I teach my one-day Tech classes because I think meteor scatter is probably one of the coolest things that Techs can do. Have I ever done it? Well, no, at least not yet.

Two months ago, I came across this video:

After watching this video, I said to myself, “Hey, that looks simple enough that even I can do it.” Not only that, after looking around the shack, I realized that I had all the parts necessary to make it. I had a piece of PVC pipe that I bought for some other antenna project, and I had a terminal strip in my junk box to connect the loop to the coax.

I also had a bunch of 75Ω coax that was installed back in 1985 when the house was built to distribute cable TV to the living room, bedroom, etc. I’ve never had cable TV in the nearly 25 years I’ve lived here, so I just cut a length from one of the cable runs. So, not only did the antenna look easy to build, I wouldn’t have to spend a dime on it.

Today, I finally got around to putting it all together. As you can see from the photo below, I used the military surplus fiberglass mast to get it up off the ground.

The photo below shows how I connect the loop  to the matching stub using a terminal strip.

Troubleshooting the antenna

When I first connected my antenna analyzer to the antenna, I was a little dismayed that the SWR was 14:1! I hadn’t expected it to be perfect, but I did expect it to be a lot lower than that.

The first thing I did was make sure that the wires were connected to the terminal strips properly. When that proved not to be the problem, I thought that maybe it was too close to my other antennas, so I moved it to the other side of the yard. That didn’t change a thing, either.

My next guess was that perhaps the coax was bad somehow, so I disconnected the matching stub and measured the SWR again. At 50.1 MHz, the SWR was now a much better 1.76:1. Since the feed point impedance of just the loop is supposed to be about 100Ω, I knew the problem was the matching stub.

In another video, I’d seen the coax used for the matching stub coiled around a PVC pipe. The theory behind this is that not only the stub matching impedances, but also acting as a choke. I didn’t have any PVC pipe big enough, so I simply coiled the 75Ω coax and taped it together. WRONG! When I uncoiled the matching stub, the SWR came down dramatically, measuring about 1.1:1 at 52 MHz. Down at the bottom of the band, where I planned on playing, it was a bit higher, but it was still less than 1.5:1, and that is easily handled by my IC-7610’s antenna tuner.

Of course, now that I have the antenna, the band is just dead. I’ve been monitoring for the last hour or so, with nary a signal received. That’s just how it goes with 6 meters, I guess.

Meteor scatter here I come

I think that to be more successful on 6 meters, I’ll need to make some improvements to the antenna. For example, I’ll have to figure out a way to make the connections more robust and maybe add a little wire to the loop to bring the resonant frequency down a little. I probably should get the antenna up a little higher, too.

Building this antenna has been fun, and even though I still  haven’t made any contacts, I’m looking forward to operating 6 meters in the future. Maybe I’ll even get lucky and make some meteor scatter contacts. Then, when I cover that question in class, I can say that I’ve operated meteor scatter and it’s pretty cool.

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!

Last night, on Mastodon, I came across a post that just made me say, “Wow!” It contained a link to a post by Susan Kaye Quinn, who is a speculative fiction author with a PhD in environmental engineering, who writes hopepunk climate fiction & solarpunk. The post on Quinn’s webiste includes the following video on how to make an eight-page “zine” from a single sheet of paper.

I love this idea so much that I now want to make my own ham radio zines. The first could be  something like, “Cool Things that Hams Do.” Off the top of my head, I have come up with the following eight pages:

• Title Page: Cool Things that Hams Do
• Build Radios
• Operate from parks and lighthouse and…
• Bounce signals off meteor trails
• Set up our own communications networks
• Talk to astronauts on the ISS (and other hams via satellites)
• Talk to each other using Morse Code
• Back Page – Want to get your own ham license?

Heres a start I made on the “Cool things hams do” zine, and here’s a template in Word format if you want to get started on your own.

Let’s make this a community effort

I”d love to make this a community effort. Here’s how you can help:

• If you can draw, perhaps you could make a drawing illustrating one or more points above.
• Come up with other ideas for the zine.
• Come up with ideas for other, more focused zines on particular topics.