DX World of Ham Radio - Message from Francisco Jackson, PY1PDF: ZZ6Z – Island of Morro de Sao Paulo and Tinharé, SA-080 A team of Radiate will activate the island of Morro de Sao Paulo and Tinharé, SA-080 in the Bay of All Saints, between 3 – 7 September, 2010. Will be operating in the frequency for the operation at IOTA, the bands [...]

KE9V - The Oatmeal takes on the pesky apostrophe in written communication and does a nice job. Now if there were only some way to scrub the use of "ton" when it doesn’t relate to a specific measure of weight: "We’ve got a ton of new ideas…" "…there are a ton of people waiting outside" "I’ve got a ton of 2N2222′s in my junk box…" Sigh.

ARRL - WMA - The W1HFN fox has been brought home to have his batteries re-charged. Watch this spot for the next deployment. 73, Barry W1HFN

MyHamShack.com - My QRP portable setup is almost ready for its first outing. I have finished an 80M dipole which is resonant at the bottom end of the band and can cover the higher end with a home brew tuner with a switched inductance and tuning capacitor connected in s...

frrl.net - Or, Misguided solutions that undermine healthy marketplaces and stall the pace of change Here is another case of an industry (newspapers) looking for government legislation and protection against a disruptive technology that challenges its business model.  The players are the dying newspapers, the Federal Trade Commission, and Google. Here is the “get” on this strategy of protectionism against the (inevitable) re/definition of the business model for traditional journalism (read: print media) The large profit margins newspapers enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No policy proposal will be able to restore newspaper revenues to what they were before the emergence of online news. It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice. “The current challenges faced by the news industry are business problems, not legal problems,” Google says,”and can only be addressed effectively with business solutions. Regulatory proposals that undermine the functioning of healthy marketplaces and stall the pace of change are not the solution.” Truly, lessons learned by the demise of the Rocky Mountain News John Temple, former editor, president, and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, described and applied it to the news industry in his blog post about the lessons he had learned from his newspaper‘s demise on February 27, 2009.  As Mr. Temple explained, the paper‘s online service was not viewed by management as providing consumer value in its own right, but rather solely as a way to support the print edition. This mistake proved to be fatal: Why did the Rocky disappear? Looking back now on that difficult day, the word that stands out . . . is ―newspaper. Being a ―great newspaper‖ isn‘t enough in the Internet era. You have to know what business you‘re in. We thought we were in the newspaper business. Working on the Web, you need to think of now and forever. At a newspaper, people largely think about tomorrow. Thinking about tomorrow isn‘t enough anymore. Consumers today want services when, where and how they want them, and they want to be able to participate, not just receive. We perceived the Web site as a newspaper online, as a complement to the paper, not as its own thing. That‘s not a strategy. Which brings me to the final lesson: Know your customers. If newspapers would spend more time trying to understand their customers instead of focused on their own internal issues – such as which newspaper department should get credit for Web revenue – they‘re more likely to be successful. Read a summary of the debate http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/07/20/google-takes-the-ftc-to-school/ Read the FTC’s proposal to save the traditional business model of the newspapers http://frrl.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/ftc_new-staff-discussion.pdf Read Google’s response http://frrl.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/34593118-comments-to-ftc-20-july-2010.pdf Read a related article from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574569570797550520.html Read a related article on how corporate interests used (=”captured”) government to undermine a competitive disrup

KB6NU - Back in the day—and by that I mean before we had the World Wide Web—electronics and ham radio companies published catalogs. They were wondrous things. Paging through them, one’s imagination could run wild. As a kid, I would pore over the Allied, Lafayette, and Olson catalogs and just imagine all the cool things I could do with electronics and radio. Real, printed catalogs have one distinct advantage over their Web counterparts&mdash;they can be browsed in a way that you can’t browse a Web catalog. The Web just can’t seem to duplicate the experience of paging through a catalog.  Maybe it takes more mental agility to point and click rather than simply flip pages. I’m not sure. All I know is that paging through a real catalog is a distinct pleasure. I had such a pleasurable experience just recently when I paged through the <a href=”http://www.universal-radio.com”>Universal Radio</a> catalog. It came packaged with the LDG 4:1 Balun that I’d just purchased. (The reason for that purchase is another story, which I’ll tell soon.) Just looking at the cover was a pleasure. The cover, as you can see above, is a collage of QSL cards from many different shortwave broadcasters. Like many hams, I got started in the hobby as an SWL, and the cover brought back some nice memories. Another pleasure was being able to look at a number of products all at once, instead of one-by-one on the Web. In the shortwave receiver section, for example, the catalog has pictures and descriptions of five or six radios per page, so on a spread you can look at and compare up to a dozen different units. I also enjoyed seeing some products that I didn’t even know existed.The specialty radios section, for example, included several models of “Internet radios,” which are capable of connecting to your home’s wireless network and connect to the digital streams of thousands of radio stations. Sure, you can do this with a computer, but these radios can also function as alarm clocks, and, presumably, have better audio than a laptop computer. So, even though I’m a big computer and Net geek, I may just have to go request the catalogs of the other ham and electronics retailers and see how they compare to the Universal Radio catalog. With any luck, they’ll also bring back some fond memories and spur my imagination and help me look into the future.

W2LJ - I think that today, it should have been the Flight of the Butterflies. My wife Marianne, who is a nurse, was on call today. That meant, at any given moment, she might have been called in to go to the hospital to administer dialysis to a patient, had the need arisen. With her schedule so uncertain, and not being able to leave the kids home alone (yet), I decided to operate FOBB from the backyard. We have a few butterfly bushes out there; and while I was operating, I glanced over to see a multitude of butterflies feasting on the nectar that the flowers contained. I set up the Buddistick for 20 Meters, and got on the air shortly after the 17:00 UTC start time. I was glad to be under the patio umbrella as it was about 92 degrees (33C) outside. The first 45 minutes or so went well, and then I heard rumbles of thunder. The sky was starting to get dark and a breeze was picking up; so I decided to take the station apart and head inside. I'm glad I did. The station was packed away in the rucksack and the Buddistick was being put away as the first huge drops of rain began falling. I waited for a half hour after the last rumble of thunder and got back on the air again. This time from the basement shack and the HF9V. That lasted for all of about 4 QSOs when a deafening static crash advised me that the local thunder was becoming active again. Closing down the station yet again, it was only a few minutes later that I heard a loud, "BZZZZZT" and the power went out. The transformer on the utility pole down the street died yet again; and we were without power for over 90 minutes. I guess I could have hooked the K2 up to a battery to continue, but sitting in a dark basement wasn't appealing as far as logging goes. A few minutes after the power went out; the downpour really began in earnest. After the last of the lightning and the last rumble of thunder was long gone, and after last raindrop had fallen - the temperature had dropped, too. It went down from 92F to 72F (22C) in about the stretch of about 90 minutes. The scorching heatwave of the week and the Flight of the Bumblebees 2010 edition were both over. 72 de Larry W2LJ

K3NG - Readers who follow this blog regularly (all five of you in straight jackets) have probably noticed that I haven't blogged much recently.  I'm still alive, in good health, and pumping RF into the atmosphere.  In fact, I've emitted more RF into the atmosphere these last few weeks than I have in quite awhile.  Six meters has been hopping and I re-joined the local amateur radio club to participate in Field Day.  I think I may be getting my radio artisan mojo back that I thought I was losing much of the previous year. In my Blogger drafts area I have 98 articles that I've started but haven't completed or I've completed but just haven't felt like they should see the light of day.  Some are just titles of quick, fleeting ideas I had for an article but just haven't had the time or inclination to further develop.  Several are April Fool's joke articles.  And then there are the rant or soapbox articles.  I hope to polish some of these draft articles in the coming weeks and months and slim down my drafts area.  Hopefully I don't release any clunker articles in the process. The web animation I did a few weeks ago with virtual radio artisans Bob and Jane was done on a bit of a whim.  I'm working on a second web animation on a different topic with most of the dialog again coming from online amateur radio forums.  I'm entitling this series of web animations Off Frequency.  I intend to add more characters and other sources of dialog, focusing on this strange hobby we all love and the often strange people within in. We'll see where this goes. On an aside, I have to give a shout out to KE9V for his Cornbread Road podcast.  I'm hooked on the story and I'm impressed with the production quality of the podcast, and I'm not much of a podcast aficionado.  If you haven't been following Cornbread Road, I strongly suggest you check it out.

AE5X - Nothing says serious contest station like Barney videos and sippy cups. I was fortunate in this afternoon’s FoBB to have the assistance of my 2-year old granddaughter who is staying with us for a few weeks as her parents (both in the Air Force) tend their duties. Too hot here to go outside anyway, my hat is off to those who endured the heat and set up from afield. Besides the periodic local QRM there were also several thunderstorms in the area with their static crashes making the copy tough at times. Strongest station by far was Seab AA1MY (quick MP3 here), however by the last hour, QSB had rendered everyone as barely copyable here. Here’s the log, such as it is….. Anna likes the K3 but hopes that I have better antennas on 40 and 160 meters by the time DX season rolls around again. I’ll see what I can do. . .

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G3XBM - I'm getting ideas, and parts, together to allow me to build a small transverter for 136kHz. For the TX low pass filter I'll use either T68-2 or T157-2 (or something on between) toroids as these seem most suitable at up to 30W.  For the RX input tuned circuit I still need to find a suitable inductor, preferably tunable. Any ideas?

K2DBK - I operated a contest yesterday that I'd only ever done before as as DX, The RSGB IOTA contest. In this contest, any station can work any other station, but if you work an island (as defined by the organizers [note that the link goes to a PDF file]) it is worth more points (15, instead of 3 for a non-island contact) and each island you work counts as a multiplier, increasing your score. The contest has some interesting rules regarding hours of operations (you can submit as a "12 hour" or "24 hour" contestant) and some categories that are different from many other contests. (e.g., "Island DXpedition"). I decided that I'd try to operate in the 12-hour, low-power assisted  mixed category as "world" station. That means that my operating time was 12 hours or less, I used 100 watts to transmit, I used the packet cluster to help locate stations, operated both phone and CW, and I was not located on a island. Unlike many other contests which typically start either in the evening or mid-afternoon for me, this one started at 8AM local (Eastern Daylight Time), and, not being a "morning person", I didn't get on the air until around 11:30 AM, and was a little disappointed to find out that the band conditions didn't seem to be as good as I'd hoped. I started off on 20m phone and made a handful of contacts in the first 20 minutes. I realized that if 15m was open, if I wanted to work anyone outside the US it would have to be early in the afternoon. I switched over to 15m and found ... nothing. Well, almost nothing. I did manage to work two stations in about 10 minutes, one on phone and one on CW. Clearly 15m was not going to be a productive band. I moved back to 20m and worked stations steadily, thought not terribly quickly using Search & Pounce to find stations. I worked a few dozen stations on phone, then another dozen or so on CW and moved back to phone. After another hour of S&P, I was lucky enough to find a clear frequency to call CQ to try to "run" stations. (During most contests, it's pretty tough to find and keep a frequency, especially for a small station like mine.) I called CQ for a couple of minutes and got one reply from a station in Poland, then about a minute late got a reply from my friend David, K2DSL, who is located nearby. We chatted briefly, then I moved on to work other stations. All of a sudden, a number of stations all started calling me. It turned out that David had "spotted" me on the packet cluster. When that happens many stations will tune to the spot frequency to work whoever is there. For someone like me being spotted is terrific because it significantly increases the rate at which  I can work stations. Prior to being spotted, I'd operated for around 4 hours and had made around 100 contacts, for a rate of around 25/hr. One hour after being spotted I'd worked an additional 65 stations, almost tripling my rate. I finally gave up the frequency after about 90 minutes, making 75 QSOs during that time which comes to around 50/hr. (The final 20 minutes or so of that period was considerably slower). In any case I had a great time and it was a lot of fun being the person that was being called, rather than having to hunt. After time out for dinner (we were out with friends), I got back on the air at around 11:30PM. The only band that was open at the time was 40m, and because of atmospheric noise due to all the thunderstorms in and around the east coast, the band was very noisy. It was very slow going making contacts, and I suspect that some of the ones that I made then will turn out to be incorrect, since I had a particularly difficult time getting the details of the contest exchange. (For this contest, you gave a serial number, starting at one, and, if located on an island, the island identifier). I gave up after about 90 minutes, with a total of 210 contacts in my log. I thought that

K2DSL - As I was uploading my contacts for the 2010 IOTA contest I noticed that LoTW was showing exactly 10,000 confirmed QSLs so I snagged a picture of it. From the numbers it looks like I’m running at an overall QSL rate of 52.5% on Logbook of The World. Thanks for all the contacts! 73, K2DSL

NG3K-ADXO - Jul 21-Aug 31, 2010 -- Rwanda -- 9X0TL -- QSL: DL2RUM -- Source: DL2RUM (Jul 15, 2010) -- By DL2RUM fm Kigali; 80-6m; CW SSB RTTY; 600w; vertical + wires; spare time operation

NG3K-ADXO - Jul 23-25, 2010 -- Kazakhstan -- UP44Q -- QSL: UN0GL Buro -- Source: UN6QC (Jul 15, 2010) -- By UN8GU UN9GG UN8GC fm UNFF-008; 80-10m; CW SSB + digital; QSL also OK direct: PO Box 15, 050009 Almata, Kazakhstan

NG3K-ADXO - Jul 15-Aug 2, 2010 -- Burkina Faso -- XT2EME -- QSL: EA7FTR Direct -- Source: OPDX (Jun 14, 2010) -- By HB9CVC HB9HLV HB9EOU fm Ouagadougou; CW SSB PSK

NG3K-ADXO - Jul 24-31, 2010 -- Malta -- 9H3Y -- QSL: IT9ABY -- Source: IT9ABY (May 11, 2010) -- By IT9ABY IT9WKU IT9ZRU IW9HJT; QSL via Buro OK, direct preferred

NG3K-ADXO - Jul 6-30, 2010 -- Djibouti -- J28RO -- QSL: F8DFP -- Source: OPDX (Jun 28, 2010) -- By F5IRO; HF; CW SSB + digital; mainly Fridays and Saturdays; QSL OK via Buro or direct (w/ IRC only, no cash); operation to continue for 2 years

NG3K-ADXO - Jul 4-14, 2011 -- Jan Mayen -- JX -- QSL: TBA -- Source: OPDX (Mar 1, 2010) -- By SQ8X SQ9DIE SV2KBS EI6FR NI1L SQ9C HB9ASZ OH2TA K6WH as TBD; focus on 20 15m, possibly higher bands if solar numbers cooperate; 2-3 stns; verticals, perhaps yagi

NG3K-ADXO - Oct 10-23, 2010 -- Togo -- 5V7TT -- QSL: I2YSB -- Source: I2YSB (Jun 22, 2010) -- By I1HJT I2YSB IK1AOD IK2CIO IK2CKR IK2DIA IK2HKT