Normal view
-
This Week in Amateur Radio
- PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1322 β Truncated 1-hour version
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1318 β Full Version
-
This Week in Amateur Radio
- PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1318 β Truncated 1-hour version
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1318 β Truncated 1-hour version
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1317 β Full Version
-
This Week in Amateur Radio
- PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1317 β Truncated 1-hour version
PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1317 β Truncated 1-hour version
-
KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog
- Amateur radio in the news: Hackable ham radio, ham radio at the museum, club hosts Scouts
Amateur radio in the news: Hackable ham radio, ham radio at the museum, club hosts Scouts
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 Baofengβs 5R, Quanshengβs K5 as a radio transceiver is fine. (Iβm 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 Baofengβs 5R, the firmware resides in read-only memory. But Quansheng stores the K5βs 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.
ICHMS collaborates with IRARC
CASPIAN, MI β 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. βWe couldnβt be any more excited about this collaboration and the exhibits that will come from itβ, 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.
![Railroad depot building](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
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 β and amateur operators β have played in our countyβs, and our countryβs 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. βAll in all, this is a lot of moving parts finally coming together to make this happen.β Long explains.
SIERA hosts Scout amateur radio merit badge day
METROPOLIS, IL β 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.
Β
Operating Notes: Bandscope observations, a pirate on 2m, VU2
Bandscope observations
If you who read my blog regularly, you know Iβm a big fan of bandscopes. Here are a couple of relevant observations:
- I almost missed a DX contact because the DX station called about 250 Hz below my frequency. Because I had my bandpass set to 300 Hz (+/-150 Hz), I couldnβt hear him at all. I did seem him on the bandscope, though, and after I adjusted my receive incremental tuning (RIT), I worked him just fine.
- Not having a radio with a bandscope can lead you to be more pessimistic about ham radio than you should be. I worked a fellow who lamented how quiet the band was and how no one operated CW anymore. I found this baffling, as the band looked pretty active to me. It turns out that the guy was using a radio without a bandscope and when he tuned around, he couldnβt hear anything. I, on the other hand, could see the activity.
A pirate on 2m?
I am the main net control station for our clubβs Monday night 2-meter net. (The net convenes every Monday night at 8 pm Eastern time on the 146.96- repeater. Join us if you can hit the repeater.)
Last week, a fellow checked in the call sign K1TKE. Since I have a computer in the shack, I like to call up the QRZ.Com page for people I havenβt worked before. There was no page for K1TKE.
Now, I know that there are some licensed amateurs that donβt have a QRZ page for one reason or another, so when it was K1TKEβs turn, I gave him a call. I got no response, so Iβm guessing that this guy was unlicensed. Thatβs the first time this has happened to me.
VU2!
After all these years, I finally worked a VU station, logging VU2GSM on March 10 on 30-meter CW. I know this isnβt the biggest accomplishment in my ham radio career, but nonetheless itβs pretty cool to me.
I must say that Kanti had great ears. He wasnβt all that strong here, so I imagine that I was equally weak there. Even so, he got my call correctly the first time.
-
KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog
- Amateur radio videos: ARDC community meeting, Hamvention award winners, send texts over VHF/UHF
Amateur radio videos: ARDC community meeting, Hamvention award winners, send texts over VHF/UHF
ARDC Community Meeting 2024-02-24
Hereβs the latest update from ARDC on their activities.
Hamvention 2024 award winners
The winners this year include:
- Special Achievement Award: Anthony Luscre, K8ZT
- Technical Achievement: Ward Silver, N0AX
- Club of the Year: Young Ladies Radio League
- Amateur of the Year: Edward Engleman, KG8CX
Text over radio with Rattlegram
This might be something interesting to try on a repeater thatβs not very active.
Getting on VHF/UHF
I have a Yaesu FT-991A, it's a great radio and it's served me well on HF, since replacing the broken FT-900, however, it's also a VHF/UHF rig too! That was one of the reasons I settled on it over the Icom 7300. Anyways, I finally got around to setting up a VHF/UHF antenna and getting on the air.
I ordered Dr. Ed Fong's (WB6IQN) DBJ-1 antenna back in May. Just this past week I finally got the antenna set up and on the air.
With my dad's help, we tried to first run the LMR-400 I ordered earlier this month through the wall like how the coax for my HF antenna is setup.Β
However, up in the attic we ran into some issues drilling through the wood, so we tried a different approach and drilled a hole right in the ceiling. It's not pretty, but it got the job done.
![]() |
The hole drilled in the ceiling |
![]() |
My dad hooking the antenna into place. |
2019 Boston Marathon After Action
![](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
There are various roles amateurs play at the Marathon and it is divided into four segments, Start, Course, Finish and Transport. Start and Finish work obviously the start and finish line. Course, which was the segment I was assigned to, is split among the hydration and medical stations along the course and Transport works the sweep buses to pick up runners who have dropped out. Course and Finish also have Net Control Operation Centers that serve as the focal point of relaying operations for their respective segments.
There are also amateur radio operators assigned to other roles such as shadowing VIP race officials to provide information and there is even a ham or two assigned to the MEMA Bunker in Framingham.
Most of this came about due to the after effects of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The BAA setup a Communications Committee which created standard operating procedures for hams to make everything more organized.
The sheer amount of volunteers makes this one of the biggest, if not the biggest ham radio public service event. One of my fellow hams from reddit who contacted me for help said he was amazed the amount of ham radio volunteers alone, not to mention the medical and hydration volunteers needed.
The race
Last year, was my first year and I was assigned to a hydration station in Wellesley's College Sqaure, where I promptly got soaked in a monsoon of freezing rain, but at least I had convenient parking to park in the parking lot of the library right there and duck into my car from time to time.This year I wasn't so lucky parking wise, as I was on a side street due to the station being located on the Natick/Wellesley line. However, it was a medical station, which means a bit more shelter should the rain come pouring down.
It did, but only before the race began, a thunderstorm came plowing through leading to us being held at our volunteer meeting location of Babson College's auditorium. The same went for other volunteers down the course who were held at Newton North High School. Luckily, the storm passed and the all clear was given to proceed out.
Current conditions at the @babson volunteer meeting point. #bostonmarathon2019 pic.twitter.com/Lm6QX4EU4uβ π‘Patrick β‘ W1PACπ» (@W1PAC) April 15, 2019
The race began, and other than having some radio trouble with my partner not being able to hit the repeater, it was mostly uneventful for the first couple of hours as the wheelchair runners came through followed by the elite men and women and eventually the first waves of regular runners.
One of our main jobs was to report the hour stats of how many runners are being treated which was thankfully zero, so the medical staff mostly handed out water and Vaseline on sticks for the runners, some of whom had to be reminded it was Vaseline and not to eat it. (My opinion is I think some of the runners mistook it for energy gel which was also being handed out.)
However, towards the end of the race, we started to see runners coming in with various ailments, some minor but some major. I started getting reports from the hydration stations from the east and west of me that we had runners in distress who couldn't make it the medical station and required pick up. I relayed this information to medical station lead who had a Gator cart dispatched to each location to pick up the runners.
Thankfully, that was the most excitement I had as one of the other fallback tasks an amateur radio operator has at a medical station is to make EMS requests should all other methods of requesting help fail.
My only major gripe is the location of the station as their is a minor radio dead zone where I am because while I could receive net control, it was very hard to hear the hydration stations next to me with many garbled transmissions until they could into a clearer area.
Conclusion
Five months in
- Work and Time: I've worked an odd schedule for the past half year, working from 1700 to 0130. As many hams are driving home, I'm driving to work. It doesn't give me much time to talk as most non-retired hams are in the middle of their work day when I'm just waking up. Plus while working I obviously I can't talk on my radio.Β
- Location: I live in Lynn, Massachusetts. Lynn has odd geography, it's flat near the ocean and the Saugus River, but other parts of the city are very hilly. I happen to live in the hilly section. The only problem, the slight hill I'm on is surrounded by taller hills, so in essence, I'm a valley. My club's main repeater is located in Danvers. Which while only separated by another city is about 10 miles. As VHF and UHF radio is line of sight, it has to traverse those hills to reach the repeater. I can receive the repeater just fine on my Yaesu VX-6R, but transmitting is another story. I've listened to myself via Echolink on the repeater and I've heard nothing but static on Echolink despite kerchunking the repeater with my Yaesu, and this is with an upgraded Diamond SRH320A as the antenna.
- No Local Repater: Lynn has a couple repeaters according to the New England Repeater Directory, RFinder, RepeaterBook and even the New England Spectrum Management Council, the repeater coordinators themselves. There's only one problem, they're offline according to a couple of sources and have been since before I got my license. This would make it a lot more easier to talk since I'm right down the road from the repeater and would have no issues, that is unless.
- Repeaters Are Dead: Some of the repeaters are just dead. D-E-A-D. Not all of them, but a good majority of the day, which plays into issue #1. Some are active, but again, they're usually active when I'm at work, or they're out of transmitting range.