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.
For those who use Google Earth or Google Maps and need to easily convert Excel files to kml files with shading and polygons try the following web page;
http://www.earthpoint.us/ExcelToKml.aspx
K5MJE had generated the BernCo ARES repeater coverage maps for Google Earth that are in .kml format. You can look at those maps using Google Earth and obtain the .kmz files from the following web page;
If there is a future major incident in New Mexico and the Incident Commander requests that maps be generated for Evacuation Shelters or local treatment facilities, we will probably use the .kml or kmz (zipped) formats on either Google Maps or Google Earth.
This web page also works using OpenOffice provided you save the file in .xls or .csv formats.
There is a tutorial about using .kml files on the above web page with lots of examples. The most you need to know is how to create an Excel file.
–
ARS: W5WHN
Jay Miller
DM65qd
We’ve set up a Ning social network for New Mexico Amateur Radio enthusiasts. Join an interest group, or start your own. Send us feedback on how to make it better.
Amateur Radio’s greatest gift to the nation is our readiness to serve in time of emergency. Here in New Mexico, Jay – WA5WHN has been an outstanding steward of the Internet communications infrastructure for our ongoing training and informational updates in the Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) world.
Jay is in the process of migrating our email group to Google Groups. Here’s the new link: http://groups.google.com/group/nmaresraces
He provides a friendly reminder of our Nets and does a terrific job of getting information out quickly when there are opportunities for us bring ham radio to bear in service of our communities.
From Doc Searls:
The COSMO-SkyMed 3 satellite will be launched into orbit tomorrow, October 24, at 19:28:21, or 21 seconds after 7:28pm, Pacific time, from Vandenberg AFB in California. Says here that the rocket will be a Delta II, which puts on a great show. While the launch will be spectacular from nearby viewing locations, it will be visible all over the southwest U.S. and northwest Mexico. More from that last link:
| COSMO-SkyMed, one of the most innovative Earth Observation programmes, is financed by the Ministry for Education, Universities and Scientific Research, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Ministry of Defence. |
| The programme involves the launch of a constellation of four satellites, equipped with radar sensors that can operate under any weather conditions and with very short revisiting times. |
| COSMO-SkyMed was conceived as a dual use programme intended to meet both civil and defence objectives. The application services that can be derived from COSMO-SkyMed will contribute significantly to the defence of the territory in areas such as fire, landslides, droughts, floods, pollution, earthquakes and subsidence, management of natural resources in agriculture and forestry, as well as monitoring of urban sprawl. |
Guess this is the third in the series.
In any case, I assume that this one has a polar orbit, which is the only kind of orbit that allows scanning of the whole earth over the course of time. That means it will be launching toward the south. This is good. Even if it’s in that direction, it will still be impressive.
Here’s a photoset of two launches from Vandenberg AFB, and two launches there, both shot from Santa Barbara. And here’s a video of one of those.
One cool thing: As the rocket enters space, exhaust is no longer contained by atmosphere, and it expands into something shaped like an elongated light bulb. Then the exhaust drifts in strange and wandering ways, determined by edge-of-space movements in atmosphere, altered by the directions of rocket exhaust, and then space itself, where the exhaust moves win all the directions the rockets shoot (which in most cases is in four directions at once). It’s fun and strange to watch.
By Scott Westerman – W9WSW
Several years back, my good buddy Matt Bennett got me fired up about Linux, the open source operating system that controls the ones and zeroes along a vast array of computer hardware. Linux runs the server that hosts W9WSW.com. It also is the concert master that makes the circuits and wires of the a number of wireless routers sing.
Routers help guide network data to its proper destination and the device firmware allows you a great deal of control over everything from the RF channels that collect WiFi streams to the security system that protects your communications.
Routers come loaded with firmware that often rides on a stripped down Linux operating system. But most factory firmware has it’s limitations. In a world where an increasing number of ISPs are considering capping monthly bandwidth, your router most likely can’t tell you how much you’ve used. The vast majority also can’t survey the airwaves for a clear WiFi channel, can’t run a trace route or ping a distant IP address.
Enter Tomato. The folks at Polar Cloud have devised a super-charged firmware for routers that use the Linksys WRT54G chipset. It has all the resident features that typically come with the factory version, features a user friendly interface, a sophisticated bandwidth monitor, feature rich quality of service and access controls. If that’s not enough, Polar Cloud’s website boasts that Tomato “enables new wireless features such as WDS and wireless client modes, raises the limits on maximum connections for P2P, allows you to run your custom scripts or telnet/ssh in and do all sorts of things like re-program the SES/AOSS button, adds wireless site survey to see your wifi neighbors, and more”.
Imagine a jet engine hooked up to a VW and you begin to get a feel for how Tomato enhances router functionality.
I’ve been able to test drive a variety of routers over the years and wondered how all of these features could actually work on low cost consumer devices. But when my state of the art N series box started acting up, I decided to give Tomato a try.
The Polar Cloud website has an extensive list of compatible routers. I bought a Linksys WRT54GL for $49 bucks at NewEgg. Downloading the appropriate firmware version was easy and the instructions for installing it were straight forward. When the router re-booted, I was presented with a robust red and white menu with 25 primary options and a status screen that displayed the key system, WAN, LAN and wireless data.
I’m somewhat of a power user and have special settings on my router to accommodate things like Echolink, audio streaming and remote control. Configuring port forwarding and security was a snap. If you’ve set up virtual apps on other boxes, you’ll be able to migrate to Tomato easily.
The added functionality is where Tomato really shines. The wireless survey tool turns the router into a scanner and spits out detailed information on any neighboring WiFi access points to quickly find a vacant channel. There’s a noise floor meter that can help you avoid RFI, too. And if you’re watching your bandwidth, Tomato gives you five options to measure usage in real time, over the last 24 hours, daily, weekly or monthly.
To date, my Tomato enabled router has been bullet-proof. No crashes, no re-boots. And it handles my lightning fast Comcast 16 meg Internet connection like a champ.
Tomato is just one of several enhanced firmware solutions out there. If you don’t have a Tomato compatible device, there may be other options. Polar Cloud continues to improve Tomato, too, so you can continue to get the most out of your hardware as the state of the art evolves.
Best of all, Tomato is free. If you like what you see, there’s an option to donate. After experiencing Tomato, I was happy to contribute to the cause.
It was a throw-away comment in last month’s QST and I almost missed it. A new benefit of being a member of the American Radio Relay League is the ability to search the entire archives of QST, QEX, NCJ and Ham Radio, from 1915 through the present.
Last night, I finally got around to a test drive.
I’m a history buff by nature and spent more than my share of time hooked to microfilm readers at our local library looking through old newspapers. So this new membership enhancement was a rare treat. In the space of an hour I read:
- The life story of H.P. Maxim, the League founder, inventor, and rennaissance man.
- About the first telecom over power line experiments (hams did it, of course), in 1942.
- How to modulate a flashlight bulb, ham radio’s first forays into what would become fiber-optic communications, before 1950.
- How amateurs were among the most sought after recruits as operators for the then top secret technology known as radar.
Searching the archive is incredibly easy. And the information is rendered in a PDF file that is easy to print or to save to your local drive.
If you’re already a league member, log-in over at www.arrl.org. If you’re not a member, now is a great time to join.
Just as the volunteer community stepped up for Gustav, so it was with Ike.
Here are some of the resources we found for hams interested in following hurricanes.
The national HF Hurricane Watch Net can be found on 14.325 MHz (3.950 Mhz alternate). Gulf Coast nets include:
Emergency Net: Daytime 7.285 MHz Night 3.873 MHz
Health & Welfare: Daytime 7.290 MHz Night 3.935 MHz
Texas Weather Net: 7.248
More Frequencies and abbreviations from N1TAI
Here’s the Texas Emergency Traffic Plan (tnx Wa5WHN)
Hurricane resources on the web:
Weather Underground tropical page.
Storm Pulse Tracker
MSNBC’s Tracker
National Hurricane Center and NHC mobile edition.
Storm surge data.
Interdictor’s special Internet Relay Chat channel
Watch all the affected Texas TV station feeds here. An quick reference with the latest radar and satellite imagery can be found here.
Echolink is a great way to monitor the situation. Use one of the reflector channels (VKEMCOMM, N5API, KC4QLP-C) and avoid the WX_Talk conference during the height of the storm, unless you are filing a report. You can listen to an audio stream of the Echolink traffic along with local scanner feeds here. And even larger list of audio feeds can be found here.
Dennis Dura, K2DCD conducts the ARRL’s hurricane page
Other resources:
Hurricane Watch Net
VOIPWx.net.
Andy Carvin’s hurricanes08.org has become a clearing house for hurricane information. He’s also the guy behind www.hurricanewiki.org.
You can also follow Ike via Twitter’s real-time search. Here are some special Twitter accounts you can follow that are Hurricane specific. @redcross @milvius @hurricanealerts @hurricanes2008.
