WDØDXD

Finally ordered a Lazy Dog LD-1B SDR receiver today.  I have another SDR I am working on getting built, but in the meantime I bit the bullet and purchased this on pre-assembled off course.

I love building kits and projects, but sometimes it’s just fun to plug something in and have it work.  So we are going to start playing with this one.  I will write up a good review of it when I have a chance to test it.  This will give me a chance to compare WinRad and PowerSDR also.  So check back soon.

According to NASA/Marshall Solar Physics predictions sunspot cycle 24 will probably be the lowest maximum in nearly 200 years.

I got back into Amateur Radio at the right time didn’t I 🙂  I realize it isn’t all bad, I have made contacts as far away as South Africa and Japan the last couple of weeks.  So I don’t really have a right to complain.

Talking to some old timers, I have been told stories of operators tuning up a lawn chair and making contacts around the world on 10 meters.  Guess I will have to wait until the next cycle.

I was surprised to read tonight that Groklaw.net will cease publishing new articles on May 16th of this year.  What does this have to do with Amateur Radio.  A lot actually.

Groaklaw was formed by Pamela Jones when SCO filed a lawsuit against IBM for its contributions to Linux the Open Source operating system not copied from but functionally similar to Unix.

It was a full attack on Linux and the Open Source Community.  It took many twists and turns over the years and Groklaw was there to cover it all and accumulate evidence about the development of Linux and other matters that were important to the Open Source Community.  Well PJ has decided that Linux has won and her services will no longer be needed, so she will be closing shop on the anniversary of starting Groklaw.  I wish her well and hope to see her someday in her red dress.  (You have to check out really old posts on Groklaw to understand the red dress)  I learned an awful lot about the American Legal system by following her posts and also some things about the seedier side of American Business and the news media.

What does that have to do with Amateur Radio?  Well several things come to mind.  Many of the software innovations that we have in Ham Radio today run on Linux.  IRLP is just one of the major ones I can think of off the top of my head.  This blog is running on a Linux server.  Many of the major Amateur Radio sites run on Linux.  Your phone probably is running on Android which is derived from Linux.

Also the open source community is really an evolution of Amateur Radio isn’t it?  Before there was Collins, Heathkit etc.  There was a community of Hams working together to develop our hobby.  When major corporations go after communities like that, we need to stand up and defend them, just like we would defend our hobby.

Plenty of activity in the Ham Shack this weekend. Most of it not good. I am working on a project that I started back in January and had to put aside. I want to get it done for camping season, but I hit a road block. More on that later.

I was using my Icom 746Pro today. Looked away and turned back and noticed that HRD wasn’t connecting to the unit. Turned around and looked at it, and it was off. So was the power supply. It is an older Astron RM-50A. The fuse was blown. While researching what type of fuse it is (which I am still not sure of) it became pretty clear that the rectifier had probably blew and I needed to repair it. So I have a RM-30A that I will swap and put in it’s place for now. Then I will have a post on the repair of the RM-50A. Looks like I might do some upgrades on it in the process.

The only thing that did go right, I had little to do with. This weekend one of our association members climbed one of our towers and installed a new commercial Larsen antenna on a local repeater. The wind this weekend caused the work to span over two days, but it is up and running again. We moved it up about 30 feet higher, so we have a lot better range on it.

Here’s to hoping this doesn’t portend to how this week is going to go.

I was tooling around on the Android Marketplace awhile back and came a crossed the Echo Link app.  I installed it , but didn’t try it out, since I didn’t want to mess with faxing a copy of my license in and so forth.

Motorola Droid

Well I was going through my emails yesterday trying to weed my inbox down from over a thousand and found the Echo Link registration email.  I click on the embedded link and went to their site.  I couldn’t use the phone authentication since our private line is unlisted, but I noticed that you could use TQSL to authenticate.  So I downloaded their small utility and ran it.  put my cert password in and in literally seconds I was authenticated.

I haven’t made any contacts yet, but plan to in the next few days.  I still have to get over the idea of Amateur Radio without a radio, but we won’t re-hash that argument here.

I received the Zoom 3G Wireless-N Router model 4501 today.  Took it out of the box, put my Verizon (Alltel) 3G USB Huawei EC168 card in and fired it up.  The only thing I had to do is log into the console and enter the Phone number for it to dial.  I got that from the properties of the software that the Huawei had installed on my laptop.

Connected right up with no problems.  From the basement where my cell phone shows only 2 bars, I was able to get about 500k down and up.  I took it upstairs where I get a full 5 bars and I got about 1mb down and 500k up.  About what I expected.

I used my logmein account and remotely controlled my Hamshack pc for a test.  Not sure I will be able to use DM780 at that speed, too many screen redraws.  But it worked fine with JT65-HF, I even made one contact with it.  I will do further testing and see how it goes.  Next step is to get the Maximum Signal Amplifier hooked up and test it’s performance and the performance of the two together.

A word of caution from an experienced computer guy certified on security.  Make sure you change the default passwords.  Set a non default SSID if you have to broadcast it and use at least WPA2 encryption.

The New York times has an article about the new Commodore 64 that recently has been released.  You can read about it here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/the-new-commodore-64-updated-with-its-old-exterior/ .

I broke my teeth in on the original Commodore 64 back in the 80’s.  In fact you could say it is partially responsible for my adult career.  I purchased one along with 2 floppy drive units, a Okidata 82a printer and some accounting software for a grand total of $2500.00.

I could never get it to work with both floppies and the accounting software stunk, but I spent many wee hours into the morning learning to program the thing in basic.

Commodore 64

Would I buy one now?  I am sentimental about a lot of things.  Old pickup trucks, old ham equipment, but not computers.  I make my living with them, so I want the best most reliable units.  My work workstation is a HP XW4200 work station with dual monitors, that I am going to be replacing soon with a newer HP XW4600 with dual 22″ monitors.  So no even though the guts of this new Commodore 64 is basically a modern PC, I won’t be buying one.  It is however kind of neat to see them try again.  I wish them the best of luck.

I received an email from Glen K1GW with a question about importing his JT65-HF logs into HRD. He followed my instructions in a previous post and upgraded HRD to the latest build and then tried to import the ADIF from JT65-HF. When he did this it said the file had 150 lines but no records.

He let me take a look at the ADIF file and the only thing I could find was that there was a blank line at the beginning of the file. I had him remove the line and then try the import again. Sure enough, now it had 149 lines and 149 records.

We aren’t sure where the blank line came from, but check it if you have trouble importing the ADIF file from JT65-HF.

I was going to investigate and post information about HRD’s new Award Tracking features, but I found that K2DSL already has an excellent post on how to utilize them.

http://www.k2dsl.com/2011/04/05/updating-hrd-for-award-tracking/#more-1503

Well that may be a little exaggerated, but I do enjoy the Black hills and vacationing in the Custer area.

What I am rally talking about is getting a eQSL contact from a South Dakota station.  The last 5 or 6 months I have been 2 states away from my eWAS award until this weekend.  I made a contact with AL7GA on JT65 and finally got Alaska.

So now I just need a South Dakota contact to complete that quest.  So look out South Dakota, I am on the hunt.