Tuesday, July 29, 2008
PowerSDR/IF Stage K3 Short Demo
Ever wonder what SDR (Software Defined Radio)is all about. Here's a little video that will give you some idea of what's possible.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
W5YI: New Award from ARRL
A new Triple Play Award will be created within six months for radioamateurs who achieve Worked All States (WAS) on voice, CW and digital modes. All 150 QSLs must be presented through the Logbook of The World (LoTW). Only those contacts made after the awards start date will be eligible.
I'm sure there will be more about this from the league shortly.
KE9V: Ham Radio Underground
A long time ago, sometime after the Pleistocene epoch and before Bill Gates made his first billion, amateur radio and personal computers began their slow dance…
It was in March, 1980, . . . .
It was in March, 1980, . . . .
Saturday, July 26, 2008
DAN'S SMALL PARTS AND KITS
What a great place to buy your small parts cheap. The design of the WEB site is not very impressive, but the deals are great. Check it out at http://www.danssmallpartsandkits.net/
Friday, July 25, 2008
Nasa: What's Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)
Here are some interesting observations about the current sunspot minimum.
W5YI: Amateur Radio Demographics in the United States
In an online technology series entitled “Top 25 things vanishing from America?, editor Tom Barlow (who is N8NLO, Technician Class) lists Ham Radio as number sixteen. We quote:
“This series explores aspects of America that may soon be just a memory... In the past five years alone, the number of people holding active [Amateur Radio] licenses has dropped by 50,000, even though Morse Code is not longer a requirement.”
I don’t know where he got his information from ...but it is skewed at best or just plain wrong at worst. Determining how many active radioamateurs there are is really impossible to say. All you can go by is published statistics from the FCC.
There are currently 723,000 “active” radio licenses in the FCC database of which 11,000 are club call signs. (Amounts are rounded off.) The FCC considers an amateur license to be active for 12 years ...the 10 year license term plus an additional 2 year “grace period” during which licensees may renew their license without losing their call sign ...or having to be retested and start all over again.
Of the 712,000 radioamateurs in the FCC’s active database, 54,000 are expired licenses leaving 658,000 currently licensed. But that does not mean they are active on the ham bands. The figure for July 2003 (five years ago) is 687,000 - an apparent decrease of 29,000. But the licensing figures are really not comparable.
In 1984, the FCC extended the Amateur Radio license term from five to ten years. That meant that five year term licensees whose license was due to expire had their licenses extended another five years before they were eligible to be purged from the database. Since there were no expirations between 1984 and 1994 (when the ten year term kicked in); the actual census of radio amateurs was overstated for many years ...and understated for several years after that. See this graph posted by ARRL’s Ed Hare, W1RFI.
The bottom line is that you can’t accurately come up with the number of active amateurs over an extended period of time when it includes two different systems for purging expired licenses from the database. But even if you take the published figures, the decrease is no where near 50,000. Our best guess is that the ham ranks have been increasing slightly over the past 20 years.
“This series explores aspects of America that may soon be just a memory... In the past five years alone, the number of people holding active [Amateur Radio] licenses has dropped by 50,000, even though Morse Code is not longer a requirement.”
I don’t know where he got his information from ...but it is skewed at best or just plain wrong at worst. Determining how many active radioamateurs there are is really impossible to say. All you can go by is published statistics from the FCC.
There are currently 723,000 “active” radio licenses in the FCC database of which 11,000 are club call signs. (Amounts are rounded off.) The FCC considers an amateur license to be active for 12 years ...the 10 year license term plus an additional 2 year “grace period” during which licensees may renew their license without losing their call sign ...or having to be retested and start all over again.
Of the 712,000 radioamateurs in the FCC’s active database, 54,000 are expired licenses leaving 658,000 currently licensed. But that does not mean they are active on the ham bands. The figure for July 2003 (five years ago) is 687,000 - an apparent decrease of 29,000. But the licensing figures are really not comparable.
In 1984, the FCC extended the Amateur Radio license term from five to ten years. That meant that five year term licensees whose license was due to expire had their licenses extended another five years before they were eligible to be purged from the database. Since there were no expirations between 1984 and 1994 (when the ten year term kicked in); the actual census of radio amateurs was overstated for many years ...and understated for several years after that. See this graph posted by ARRL’s Ed Hare, W1RFI.
The bottom line is that you can’t accurately come up with the number of active amateurs over an extended period of time when it includes two different systems for purging expired licenses from the database. But even if you take the published figures, the decrease is no where near 50,000. Our best guess is that the ham ranks have been increasing slightly over the past 20 years.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Antennas By N6LF: Broadband antennas
In terms of percentage of frequency the 80m band is quite wide. Few antennas will provide a low SWR to a random length of transmission line over the entire band. Here are two antennas which will do just that and one of them will even provide 3 dB of gain over a dipole. Broadband 80m dipole, 747 kb, QST July 1995 and Improved double zepp , 2,581 kb, Antenna Compendium 4
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
SolderSmoke: Shep, SETI, Radar, Spark Coils
In this episode Shep builds a 2 meter rig to talk to locals, but picks up signals from much farther away. Musings on extraterrestrial DX. Also, our hero gets zapped by a park coil. As always, it takes Shep a while to get going on the ham radio stuff, so you might want to fast-forward through the groovy 1965 small talk at the beginning. XCELSIOR! Here is the mp3: http://ia310115.us.archive.org/2/items/JeanShepherd1965Pt1/1965_04_15_Radio_Signals.mp3
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The BEST Jean Shepherd Ham Radio Episode
This one is from http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/
Mark, W8MOJ, found this one a while back, but then somehow we lost it. This morning I found it again. Jean Shepherd talks about ham radio homebrewing, regen receivers, searching for parts at radio row, building stuff in the basement, secretly studying for his ham license during civics class, and one of his teenage ham friends who, in his basement, secretly built a.....
"Other kids would draw Christmas trees and sailboats... I would draw schematics of phone transmitters."
Don't miss this one! Here is the link to the mp3 file: Jean Shepherd, January 24, 1973
Mark, W8MOJ, found this one a while back, but then somehow we lost it. This morning I found it again. Jean Shepherd talks about ham radio homebrewing, regen receivers, searching for parts at radio row, building stuff in the basement, secretly studying for his ham license during civics class, and one of his teenage ham friends who, in his basement, secretly built a.....
"Other kids would draw Christmas trees and sailboats... I would draw schematics of phone transmitters."
Don't miss this one! Here is the link to the mp3 file: Jean Shepherd, January 24, 1973
Very Nice Blog
Here is a very interesting blog by AA6E. He doesn't post very frequently, but if you look through the archives, you'll find posts on a large variety of technical subjects. Give it a looksee at http://blog.aa6e.net/
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
N3ZI's $9.99 Counter Kits
From SolderSmoke:
Doug, N3ZI, was one of the intrepid participants in the ARRL Homebrew Challenge competition. FB! He is now making available some very inexpensive digital frequency readout kits. Jerry, NR5A, sent me one. (Thanks Jerry!) Obviously this is a kit useful to Knack victims.
Here is the web site for the kits: http://www.pongrance.com/
Doug, N3ZI, was one of the intrepid participants in the ARRL Homebrew Challenge competition. FB! He is now making available some very inexpensive digital frequency readout kits. Jerry, NR5A, sent me one. (Thanks Jerry!) Obviously this is a kit useful to Knack victims.
Here is the web site for the kits: http://www.pongrance.com/
SolderSmoke #87
July 6, 2008
http://www.soldersmoke.com
On the beach at Fregene
-----------
QRSS Mania:
Calibration problems solved
First reports received
The Fun of Grabbers
Checking your signal via Blackberry
The Joy of Milliwatting
Chirp, Click, Drift in QRSS
Temperature sensitivity
Bury that Beacon?
Why so little US QRSS?
More US Grabbers needed
AA1TJ/QRSS?
----------
Elser in "History of QRP in US"
New Slides, WAC on ClustrMap!
MAILBAG: G0FUW reports EI9GQ victin of Knack
KC0PET on understanding our circuits
ON4FW sends FB pictures
KG6TCJ on QRSS calibration
W7ZOI on FD and calibration
W4NI on measuring harmonics
PE1OIT on GPS calibration technique
http://www.soldersmoke.com
On the beach at Fregene
-----------
QRSS Mania:
Calibration problems solved
First reports received
The Fun of Grabbers
Checking your signal via Blackberry
The Joy of Milliwatting
Chirp, Click, Drift in QRSS
Temperature sensitivity
Bury that Beacon?
Why so little US QRSS?
More US Grabbers needed
AA1TJ/QRSS?
----------
Elser in "History of QRP in US"
New Slides, WAC on ClustrMap!
MAILBAG: G0FUW reports EI9GQ victin of Knack
KC0PET on understanding our circuits
ON4FW sends FB pictures
KG6TCJ on QRSS calibration
W7ZOI on FD and calibration
W4NI on measuring harmonics
PE1OIT on GPS calibration technique
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Shepherd Learns Morse and Discovers Ham Radio
From SolderSmoke News
Here is another gem from Jean Shepherd. He describes his discovery of CW at age 6 or 7, his first shortwave receiver, and his discovery of amateur radio. Plus, some Army Signal Corps madness.
Click here for the mp3 audio file: Shepherd, Morse, Ham Radio
Here is another gem from Jean Shepherd. He describes his discovery of CW at age 6 or 7, his first shortwave receiver, and his discovery of amateur radio. Plus, some Army Signal Corps madness.
Click here for the mp3 audio file: Shepherd, Morse, Ham Radio
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