Bloggus Interruptus
Since rebooting the blog at the end of last summer, I’ve posted 187 articles in 162 days. That’s quite a bit of signal and a whole lot of noise. It was never my plan or intent to be quite that prolific though I am very pleased with the 200+ comments that the content has generated (provoked?).
But having said that, it’s time to take a short break from this and focus on a few other projects that deserve some attention.
See you here again in March!
73, Jeff
In: blog · Tagged with: blog
Upcoming QRP Conventions
The coming weeks and months are practically an embarrassment of riches for low-powered enthusiasts. Conferences are slated for the East coast, Midwest, and Mid-America and all that’s missing is you!
March 12-13
The first ever Massachusetts QRP Convention will be held March 12-13, 2010 in the Westford Regency Hotel and Conference Center in Westford, Massachusetts.
The Saturday conference has ten leaders in the QRP community scheduled to appear including QRP Hall of Fame members Dave Benson (K1SWL), George Heron (N2APB), and Joe Everhart (N2CX). Capping the conference will be Joseph H. Taylor, Ph.D. (K1JT) and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1992).
Conference admission, including the Friday evening meet-and-greet is $25 per person. Admission to the post-conference banquet is $40. Tickets for the event are on sale now at the event web site.
April 9-10
The confirmed dates for OzarkCon 2010 are April 9 and 10, 2010 in Branson, Missouri at the Stone Castle Hotel and Conference Center – 3050 Green Mountain Road, (Formerly the Settle Inn). Hosted by the Four State QRP Group this one is fast becoming a QRP crowd favorite. More information will be available on their Web site very soon.
May 13-16
The 15th annual FDIM is practically set. This is the mother of all QRP conventions and is held in conjunction with the Dayton Hamvention. Dayton is a three-day weekend and QRP-ARCI tacks an extra day on at the beginning making it “Four Days in May”. The main event is held at the Holiday Inn in Fairborn, Ohio. Special room rates are arranged in advance (but you’ve got to sign up early!).
There’s much more going on at FDIM than meets the eye so get in the loop and don’t miss out.
In: blog · Tagged with: hamfest, hamvention, qrp
Help Wanted
In: blog · Tagged with: weird
Ham Shack Reinvented
This could put a whole new spin on the ham radio shack – that place where radio amateurs go to make their magic.
The Archipod (yes, it’s another ‘pod’ and we’re all getting sick of that word and its variants) is being pitched as a home office solution though it could be used for anything, like a ham shack.
According to those who make it:
The ‘Pod’ is constructed predominantly from timber, the world’s most replenishable construction material, and is insulated to a standard exceeding that of current Building Regulations. The structure is prefabricated in sections that are sized to allow all the parts to be carried through a house, so it doesn’t matter where you live, we will be able to get the ‘Pod’ into your back garden.
It’s small, cozy, and fairly expensive but plop one of these in your backyard, load it up with your station equipment, and and you’re certain to make the cover of either QST or CQ magazine!
In: blog · Tagged with: shack
Browser Stats
Browser statistics for this site for the month of January. I’ve read that those who are somewhat more technically inclined tend to use Firefox or Chrome instead of Internet Explorer and the data seems to bear this out.
It’s surprising how quickly Chrome has muscled its way to the top of the pile. At least among readers of Signal and Noise. Click the image for a better look.
In: blog · Tagged with: browser, site, stats
Jive Talkin’
James Kunstler never misses the mark by far and this week, he nailed it. In The Jive Economy, he says things that you won’t hear repeated on any American news network. But they need to be said…
“The Republican resurgence now underway — or imagined to be, I’m not really sure — casts photogenic clods like Massachusetts’s new senator Scott Brown as heralds of a new free market Golden Age, in which WalMart will profitably manage every moment of daily life from grocery shopping to banking to medical care to the mortuary (and perhaps even war). Little thought has been allotted to exactly what the role of citizens might be in such a nirvana. I suppose we’d become an endless chain of $8-an-hour "greeter associates" — which is at least a step above being a national feedlot of polled Herefords. But I wouldn’t want to be mistaken as a shill for the Democratic party, either, since the Obama team has opted for creating its own reality as much as its predecessor bunch did. The result will certainly be the election of countless maniacs to congress this fall, especially of the theocratic-despotic brand — creationists, alien abductees, economics professors from bible colleges, Sunbelt war hawks, Lyndon LaRouche acolytes, Nativists, Palinites, crusaders against the New World Order, anti-Bilderbergers… the whole appalling menu of thought-disorder cases now roiling in the breakdown lane of American history.”
“They are our future, these yeast people and mudskippers, because the intelligent minority of this nation lacks the one thing that animates intelligence in the service of reality, and that is the courage to tell the truth.”
He has a blog, and books, and an entertaining Podcast. All good stuff, all recommended.
In: blog · Tagged with: kunstler, meltdown
An Antenna in Every Room
It’s been a couple of years since I first floated the notion of an ‘Anti-Shack’. At the time I was high on using my KX1 transceiver and if you recall, I had posited that the days of the radio shack stacked from floor to ceiling with bulky old equipment was waning and a new age was dawning – the anti-shack.
I’ve seen nothing in the ensuing period that has changed my mind about that…
For a while I had taken to just stringing the feed line across the floor which allowed me to operate the KX1 anywhere in the house. This was somewhat liberating in that I could enjoy my hobby from the comfort of my recliner in the family room alongside Brenda and Jamie while they enjoyed ‘Dancing With Stars’ or whatever they watch.
But I’ll be the first to admit that dragging the feed line across the floor was an inelegant solution…
I haven’t been very active on HF of late so this hasn’t been much of a concern.
But when I saw this concept for a retractable electric cord, it got me thinking about how something like it could be deployed for the feed line.
An antenna outlet in every room with a central switch to select where the signal goes would undoubtedly make the anti-shack notion a bit more spouse friendly for the HF aficionado.
Whether driven by limited living space or numerous other factors, hobbyists continue to pioneer alternate operating styles that look considerably different from the radio shacks of old. A growing number of radio enthusiasts who have been forced to deal with draconian antenna restrictions keep finding new ways to enjoy the hobby
In: blog · Tagged with: kx1, shack
SuperBowl Sway
The hoopla that surrounds the Super Bowl is always a lot of fun. Sometimes it even eclipses the game itself, though I think that highly unlikely this year. An Indianapolis band is ramping up support for the Indy Colts second Super Bowl championship bid with a new song that’s going viral on the Internet and is loaded with local fan flavor.
Members of Living Proof say they started writing the lyrics before the Colts wrapped up their 30-17 AFC championship victory against the New York Jets last weekend.
Check it out and … GO COLTS!
Direct link to the video
In: blog · Tagged with: colts, video
Living in the Future
On the road again on another Sunday morning. Sitting in a Starbucks far from home catching up on email when my wife calls via Google video chat. We chat a few minutes, I spin the laptop around to give her my view of yet another coffee shop.
I notice the sun is shining brightly back in central Indiana this morning too.
It beats a cell phone call by a country mile.
I mention that on Twitter and Randy, K7AGE, in California, comments that it’s “just like Star Trek”…
He is so right.
In: blog · Tagged with: tech, wonder
Last Card Played
I listened to a fairly lengthy dissertation on the air last night about how “the ARRL is pushing the EmComm agenda down our throats just so they can sell more training and certification courses at $85 a whack”…
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I don’t care about this ongoing debate but everywhere I turn, more is being written and said about it than about anything else in all of Hamdom, or so it seems, and I suppose it deserves some attention – though now I’m only adding to the growing noise.
The history of emergency communication provided by wireless service prior to the 1980s is replete with examples of ham radio standing in the gap and saving the day whenever and wherever lines go down. I cannot find a single shred of evidence that these meritorious services were the result of hams having worked closely with the government. At any level. The War Emergency Radio Services (WERS) that came to be during World War II when ham radio was shutdown is an exception, but it was never intended as means of communication during natural disasters – more than anything it gave radio amateurs something to do so they wouldn’t be tempted to fire up on 20 meters despite the ban.
Loose lips sinks ships and all that rot.
This notion that we need to attend training, be deputized, get a badge and a flashing dash light is all relatively modern era detritus and frankly, I’ve just never bought into the need for it.
I spend my life trying to avoid the government at all costs. If I never have another single interaction with any employee of the federal, state, or local governments I will believe that life has been good to me.
Cops, firefighters, the IRS, the mayor, the dog catcher – I understand that society needs them, but I work diligently to avoid them all. The very idea that I would spend every other weekend at the local Red Cross center working with tin-plated government officials to prepare for some future disaster is as appealing to me as a raging case of syphilis.
Frankly, if it were a condition of licensing, I’d give up ham radio in a heartbeat.
In a real emergency, my station along with any technical and operative abilities that I can bring to the table shall be willingly surrendered to whoever might have need of them. But until then, I want to live life on the down-low in this regard and that doesn’t involve spending my weekends with local authorities to practice these things.
But ham radio does has a problem, a big problem, and I’ve come to believe that the ARRL’s constant messaging about “When All Else Fails”, (which by the way is more hubris than can be found anywhere other than on a church sign), is most likely very carefully calculated; and necessary.
Hams often prattle off about Section 97.1 of the FCC rules that govern amateur radio. It’s the “Basis and Purpose” preamble that sets out the reasons why amateur radio exists and why the government has carved out valuable RF spectrum for it.
Someone jump in here and correct me if I’m wrong, but this section of Part 97 has not changed for decades. In fact, I’m not certain it has ever been changed since first being written in 1934. As such, it’s an antique and no longer reflects either the hobby or the real world in which we now live.
Take a look at 97.1 – basis and purpose:
The rules and regulations in this Part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles:
(a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications.
(b) Continuation and extension of the amateur’s proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.
(c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communications and technical phases of the art.
(d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.
(e) Continuation and extension of the amateur’s unique ability to enhance international goodwill.
No one in their right mind would suggest that amateur radio enthusiasts are advancing the radio art in this 21st century and there is no longer a place or need in today’s market for a reservoir of trained operators, technicians or electronic experts. The days when TV, radio, or stereo equipment could be repaired went out with the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
It did work out very well during WWII that radio hams were pre-trained, so to speak, to enter that great conflict as trained radio operators. But can you honestly imagine a modern conflict where the Pentagon would seek out 60 year-old men to serve because they have a proven ability to build a transmitter from a box of 2N2222 transistors and know the Morse code?
And as for enhancing international goodwill, that probably ended with the advent of the Internet. One only has to give a passing glance at the many online ham radio forums to see the flood of jingoism from a sea of thick-necked hams who congregate in these dimly lit back alleys of amateur radio and epitomize the notion of the Ugly American.
What does that leave? Non-commercial emergency communication services.
When it’s all said and done, the only thing that ham radio brings to the table in this new millennium is our unique ability to provide communications services when the normal channels are disrupted.
To be very clear, ham radio is fun. It can be a most enjoyable hobby that offers enough challenges and opportunities for personal learning and growth to fill multiple lifetimes and I’m a big believer that if you’re not enjoying it, you aren’t doing it right.
But in terms of what we offer the people of these United States in return for the billions of dollars of radio spectrum that they permit us to use as our very own playground, is nothing other than the free emergency communication services that we provide and the laurels from our past days of glory.
Simple as that.
And I suppose that we need to hope that they keep seeing it that way.
How can anyone not see that the ARRL is simply pushing that agenda in it’s incessant campaign to promote “When All Else Fails” to everyone who will listen?
In: blog · Tagged with: arrl, emcomm