As of January 1, my adventures at Comcast in Albuquerque came to an end and I started a new gig as Head Servant for the Michigan State University Alumni Association.

It’s a homecoming of sorts. I’m an MSU grad and Colleen and I lived in the Lansing area for five years during my cable career.

Looking forward to re-connecting with the ham community!

I’ll be updating this site with an East Lansing QTH look and feel. The ISS and AO-51 pass info will be changed to reflect the new location, too.

Stand by and 73!

When I wrote this NMHams.com post about the Japanese creating a Morse device as a way to quickly input Twitter content, it got me to thinking…

Why not use a code key in place of your computer keyboard?

Turns out that at least one other person had this idea. The Comax people have developed an application that allows you to use your mouse to input text and other key strokes into any MS Windows computer. Attaching your favorite Morse paddles is as easy as buying one of these specially equipped mice.

The concept of using a keying device to translate content from your brain into a PC began at the dawn of the computer age. Folks with physical challenges that precluded keyboarding noodled creative alternatives that included straight keys, even bugs as input devices. Physicist Stephen Hawking is a notable example of someone who has mastered a joystick as a tool to turn his brilliant thoughts into everything from books to real-time speeches.

Comax has a code group for every key on your computer keyboard and with a little practice, you’ll be popping text into your Windows apps like a pro.

So if you’re a hunt and peck typer who is more comfortable at 20 WPM on CW, hook those paddles up to your PC and send away.

In 1984, I had been a ham for just 3 years. My antenna was an energized downspout and I had just bought a used Ten Tec Omni to energize my Heathkit 2080a antenna tuner. We were at a great point in the sunspot cycle. Working DX on CB radios converted to 10 meter from the parking lot at work during lunch hour was not uncommon.

It was a time before DX clusters were on line, when we’d call one another on a special two meter frequency when we heard a rare one. We depended on the beacons to tell us when the circuit was open to the far East, and we calculated the grey line with our trusty ARRL tools.

I was president of the Oak Park Amateur Radio Club and then, as now, was responsible for coming up with an interesting program each month. The highlight of that year for me was a presentation by Jim Sansotera – K8JRK.

Jim was the quintessential DXer in Detroit. His country count was the envy of everybody in our group and when he agreed to be our speaker on August 13, 1984, we knew we were in for a treat.

From today’s perspective, many of the tools he recommends are outdated, but his tips of how to snag the rare ones are timeless.

Here’s an MP3 of that presentation. 25 years later, we can still learn from him.

Members of the NM-ARTS group saw a terrific presentation by Mike, K5KM, about how to protect your station from a lightning strike. It’s all about grounding, grounding, grounding. We learned a ton of theory plus some very useful ideas on how to protect your station, both from lightning and from the static discharge that’s often an issue during our March windstorms. Here’s a PDF of Mike’s presenation. Join their Yahoo group and get free access to all the NM-ARTS presentations.

Isaac, W5IDT proved again that DX is within our reach, bagging LY2ZZ the other night. Here’s what propo looks like to Vilnius.

By Scott Westerman – W9WSW

When we gathered to audit the logs from the New Mexico QSO party with the great guys from the Los Alamos Amateur Radio Club, the conversation turned to the challenges of suppressing ignition noise. KJ5KU has a hamstick and a Icom 706 as part of his mobile installation and recommends this link. Not only is Alan a New Mexican (he lives in Roswell), K0BG is an expert on identifying and mitigating ignition noise. A trip to his website will give you solutions along with audio examples with the fingerprints of the various devices that are often the culprits.

Fixing ignition noise can be as simple as turning on your noise blanker, Fred K9GAJ solved his issues that way, or as complex as wrapping the offending item with copper tape.

Need help? Visit K0BG.com. Your answer may well be found there.

By Scott Westerman – W9WSW

As a bunch of us hams gathered at W5FHA’s place to help him erect his new vertical antenna a couple of weeks ago, my mind faded back to my earliest days as an amateur.

We were living in a long two-story town-house building on “Sugarbush Road” in suburban Detroit and despite my great relationship with the complex manager, overt antenna installations were a no-no. I immediately popped the attic door and attached a 2 meter ground plane to a truss. One problem solved.

But hot to get on the low bands? I had built a Heathkit SA-2060 roller inductor tuner for my Ten Tec Omni, but needed something to connect it to. My shack was in the basement and as I pondered my predicament I happened to glance outside the window and saw my solution… The gutter downspout.

Our complex had a long rain gutter system that ran the length of a football field, with periodic downspouts to help drain the inevitable Michigan thunderstorms. That night, I drilled an 8 foot copper ground rod next to the down spout and, after connecting the coaxial shield to the copper, bonded the center conductor to the downspout.

With my 2060 tuner, I found I could get a nice 1:1 SWR on every ham band, including 160 meters. And since we were a the height of the sunspot cycle, the DX came rolling in.

This all came back to me today when I read the latest ARRL DX bulletin and their story about Jeff Lackey, K8CQ of St. Simon’s Island, Georgia and his HF rain gutter stealth antenna. In the March, 2009 issue of CQ, Jeff’s antenna system is diagrammed. He uses an auto-tuner and has, even at the low ebb of our sun cycle, bagged 243 “DX entities” in 38 zones. He’s confirmed 87 countries on 80 meters and… 34 states, 3 provinces and 7 countries on 160!

Since I’ve dragged my YL across the country and back again in my 30 year telecom career, she gets to pick the houses and our current location forbids external antennas. We don’t have rain gutters, but I do have a well hidden long wire that wraps the roof line of our place, terminating into an SMC 320 auto-tuner. It works great, as my recent QSOs with K5D attest.

But every time I tune up, I can’t help thinking of Sugarbush road. Proof once again that in amateur radio, anything is possible!

If you’ve perused the left navigation column at NMHams.com, you’ve probably discovered our all new DX Spot application. It’s an RSS grabber that propagates the #DX search over at Twitter.com. If you haven’t visited Twitter yet, check it out! It’s been described as the “heartbeat of the Internet”, a 140 character world of comments and information, a microblog environment where you can share what’s on your mind and follow what’s on others.

Digging a bit deeper into how the DX spots get to Twitter, and to us.. Many come via DXSummit, through the VE3SUN DX Monitor software, which has a hook to spit spots to Twitter.

There’s also a tantalizing Twitter account, W5UGD, through which John Hoyt fires spots from the #marac dx spot interface over at irc.superhosts.net. Notice the “irc” at the head of that last Internet address? That stands for Internet Relay Chat, the granddaddy of all Internet communication mechanisms. Not as many folks use IRC these days, but it’s still a robust and customizable system that hams sometimes use to augment emergency communications.

And we can’t forget Telnet. Telnet is another of the early Internet applications from the days when plain text ruled the web. Just about every computer operating system has a terminal program built in. You can use it to Telnet into DX Clusters that send DX spots as they are reported. It’s textual so you have to learn the language of telnet to control how you get your DX feed, but it’s possible to customize what you see to meet your specific tastes. You can also send your own spots via Telnet, too.

If you want a full featured GUI DX application, there are a ton of choices out there for whatever operating system you prefer from Linux, to Windows, even for the IPhone.

But, whether you Telnet, tweet or have your own application, with our special DX cluster monitor here at NMHams.com, you’ve got the latest spots whenever you visit.

Scott Westerman – W9WSW – is the New Mexico Technical Coordinator for the American Radio Relay League.

I’m a digital freak. I still have my packet rig percolating away on 145.01 and I love scanning the waterfall on the low bands for interesting digital signals. Recently I downloaded Ham Radio Deluxe, the free, very cool radio control software trail bossed by Simon Brown HB9DRV. One of the programs included is DM780, a robust digital signal reader that can decode 35 different formats.
I love digi because you can copy it down in the mud. It can be particularly useful to get important traffic through even when the band’s aren’t cooperative.

But you still need your ears to discern what format is being transmitted, so you can set your software to decode it. Here’s a site that can help you develop that skill. It has MP3 snippets of 20 plus digital formats. You can set your mixer to the Wave setting and read the data stream on your digi software, too.

Several hams have put examples of digital signals on YouTube. Not only is it a good way to develop your ears, but you can also see what programs and equipment they use to receive and read it. Plug PSK31 or FeldHell into the search box and see what you get.

If your ears are still deceiving you, you can check out this site, which has pictures of various digital wave forms as seen on the waterfall display.