Wirelessness!

JT65 Articles from CQ Magazine

2011-08-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Last year (October & November 2010) I co-authored with Tomas NW7US a two-part article "Communicating Under the Noise" about JT65A on HF which was published in CQ Magazine. Thanks to Rich Moseson for agreeing to make the articles available in digital form. PDF copies of the articles can be obtained here:

Part 1 - Theory and Background (PDF, 1.0 MB)
Part 2 - Installation and Operation (PDF 1.4 MB)

Enjoy.

You're doing it wrong

2011-01-07T00:32:00.000-08:00

The ARRL kicked off 2011 with a news item that hopefully is not a harbinger of more retro-tech lameness to come during the new year. (Hint: It is.) "Ring in the New Year with Morse Code Ringtones" started off well enough; make your cellphone ring with CQ CQ CQ or some such. I did this almost two years ago and it's great fun; I even made ringtones with my wife's name, the callsigns of hams in the Bay-Net group, etc. I got lots of good comments on my ringtones from folks at the 2010 Dayton Hamvention; a few even requested that I email them copies of my MP3 files for their phones.

The ARRL article fails on two fronts; first off it talks about creating Morse Code ringtones like it's a completely new thing (clearly it's not), and secondly it goes into detail about the horribly convoluted process Tom AD1B used to create his tones. Tom actually used his Ten-Tec rig and a keyer paddle to generate the Morse Code, recorded the audio (article is unspecific on how he did this; my money is on "8-Track Tape Deck"), massaged the audio files in Audacity, and then generated MP3 files. Talk about using a bazooka to kill a mosquito.

Clever. And completely unnecessary. I generated my MP3 files by going to LWCO.net, a website created by Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK. Fabian's website (the URL is an acronym for "Learn CW Online") offers a number of useful tools, many of which are based on Fabian's excellent open source "ebook2cw" library. One of the tools on LCWO is "Convert text to CW". You type in text. It generates an MP3 file for download. You put the file on your phone. Done. I can generate a library of unique ringtones for twenty people in the time it takes Tom to record and process one.

And even my method is now somewhat obsolete with the advent of apps for smartphones that convert text to Morse Code on the fly. MorseRing for Android is available in the Android Market for 99 cents. It converts Caller ID strings to Morse Code. The beauty of MorseRing is that I now know who's calling me even if my phone is 25 feet away. I'm sure there is similar apps for the iPhone, possibly one for Palm, likely not for Blackberry.

You can't fix stupid

2010-11-01T01:24:00.000-07:00

This post has nothing to do with wireless.

Somewhere, out there on the Internet, is a stupid family. Quelle surprise, non? Tell us something we don't know, you say. But this is no ordinary stupid family.

Many years ago (back when the Internet was powered by steam engines which ran on barrels of kerosene) I signed up for a Yahoo account. I chose my username based on a nickname given to me by a friend, and one I had used for my circa 1996 "homepage" which was a sophomoric collection of links, graphics, and sounds used to stake my claim to a corner of the nascent Internet. Unfortunately my Yahoo username happens to be the last name of a stupid family. I'll refer to them as "The Stupids".

A few years later I started getting junk mail at my Yahoo address from a variety of sources; car dealerships, online car broker services, etc. Apparently the Mama Stupid wanted to buy a new car, and had given my Yahoo address as hers. The emails had a lot of information about Mama Stupid; her name, street address, phone, etc. The amount of junk mail became painful, over a dozen messages a day; I had to activate a filter in Yahoo Mail to look for keywords and dump them straight to Trash. 10 years later, if I look in my Yahoo Mail trash folder, there are still car dealerships trying to contact Mama Stupid.

Papa Stupid has done likewise. I've received over the years email from online shopping, stock brokers, get-rich-quick scammers, insurance brokers, magazine publishers, requests for donations, links to photos of newly-arrived Baby Stupid. Again; I get a LOT of personal info on the Stupids from this. A while back Mama Stupid decided she needed some spice in her life, so she signed up for an online casual fling hook-up service. (I'm not kidding.) She (I) started getting email from middle-aged men looking for some "Afternoon Delight", complete with photos intended to "sell the product" if you get my meaning. Icanhazeyebleach?

In many cases I get requests to confirm my address for an account on whatever system the Stupids have tried to sign up for, I can then reset the password and basically do as I please. Most of the time I change the password and then close the account.

I've watched the Stupids build a family. Their son (Stupid Junior) started out years ago using my Yahoo address as his "parental permission" email to sign up for online games. As time's gone on I've watched his game interests evolve into more mature themes. Once he hits puberty I fully expect a lot of porn site account confirmation emails. Their oldest daughter Missy Stupid just went to college in Florida. I got some pictures from Disneyworld. She looks happy.

You can imagine the amount of spam I receive because of the Stupids. I've given up using Yahoo for email, simply because 99% of what I get is spam caused by the Stupids inability to figure out that lastname@something.com doesn't automatically route to their house. I've been tempted to close the account, but in some bizarre way I feel like I need to continue. What will happen next? Will Papa Stupid have a midlife crisis and go looking for a red sports car? Will Missy Stupid get knocked up and have to come home from college? It's like my own private soap opera.

Pacificon 2010 Wrap Up

2010-10-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

This past weekend the Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club hosted ARRL Pacificon at the San Ramon Marriott. I was glad to see the event back this year, after last year's debacle which forced the organizers to move the event to Reno in conjunction with EMCOMM West.

This year's event was well-attended. There were some great presentations, I got a chance to see some folks I don't often see, and I was given the chance to speak twice; including delivering the final keynote on Sunday.

I promised several people that I would post my presentations, so here they are:

Weak Signal HF with JT65A

Ham Radio Must Die!

Dog pile on the rabbit (if by "rabbit" you mean the iPhone 4 antenna)

2010-07-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to find a link on Drudge to a Bloomberg article entitled "Apple Engineer Told Jobs iPhone Antenna Might Cut Calls..." As it turns out the engineer in question was Ruben Caballero, a co-worker of mine at Tropian back in the late 90's. (Trivia: Many of the iPhone team's key engineers are ex-Tropian, for reasons beyond the scope of this post.)

Later in the day Cult Of Mac offered up some comments on Ruben and the iPhone antenna issue from my former schoolmate and Tropian co-founder Earl (mistakenly named "Ed" in the article) McCune. Blogs such as Huff Post, Engadget, etc have also picked up on the story. I also note with great dismay that New York Senator "Chuckles" Schumer has decided to make Apple's business his own. Doesn't he have better things to do, like spending more of our tax dollars and worrying about getting re-elected? I digress...

I feel bad for Ruben that his "15 minutes of fame" will likely bring him a great deal of unwanted attention. Ruben's a great engineer who doesn't deserve to have a double-barreled "Wrath of Jobs" pointed at his nose. I really hope that Apple doesn't scapegoat him on this. Ruben's the kind of guy who would spoken up if he saw a problem, and in doing so unfortunately may wind up taking a fall to cover up the idiocy of an over-zealous marketing department which placed too much faith in their industrial designers and too little in the wisdom of their RF engineers.

I had a similar experience at Verifone in 1998 prior to joining Tropian. We were in the process of starting to build their Omni 3000-series handheld payment terminals. The marketing director and the lead industrial designer were having themselves a little bromance, which resulted in the marketing director taking everything the industrial designer said as the Word of God -- including his insistence that the Omni 3000 needed to not have an external antenna. At the time, mass-production printed antennas were still laboratory experiments and about four years from being commercially viable. ID insisted that the device could not have any case protrusions, and my insistence that this would be impossible in production fell on deaf ears. It's worth noting that the Omni 3750 launched in 2004 -- two years after printed antennas became commercially viable and six years after I told them they were smoking bananas.

I wish Ruben the best and hope he comes out of this unscathed. As for Apple: I've been saying for years that it was just a matter of time before they transmuted their success into hubris and ultimately failure. It's sad when marketing idealism runs headlong into the brick-wall of physics. It's tragic when good people get hurt by the shrapnel of that collision.

Some things never change

2010-05-27T15:15:00.001-07:00

It's been years since I had cable TV, and thankfully as long since I had to deal with Comcast. But the allure of faster broadband has been tugged at me, since we're now watching more streaming TV (Netflix, etc) and my once-fast 1.4Mb Earthlink DSL now feels like a 28.8Kb modem on a noisy line. So I checked into the much-hyped Comcast Xfinity and within minutes was reminded of why I'm thankful it's been years since I had to deal with them.

Lame Encounters of the First Kind: The offers for Xfinity broadband on their website are targeted at existing Comcast customers. Prices for new customers are not shown.

Lame Encounters of the Second Kind: Calling their sales department I was forced to "Press 1 for..." repeatedly because the IVR kept trying to determine my non-existent Comcast account.

Lame Encounters of the Third Kind: After getting through to a human (Paula Perky, Sr. Manager, Comcast Chirpiness Dept.) I was informed that there are NO new customer incentives at this time, unless I want to sign up for a "bundle" of broadband plus TV and/or phone. I'm not interested in their cable TV or phone services; just broadband. And so apparently that makes me El Douchbago Numero Uno to their marketing department. No amount of cajoling was able to extract anything from Paula, who cheerfully told me that they'd love to have me as a new customer at full price.

The prospect of once again dealing with these clowns gives me a case of the hives. If they're this screwed up when trying to get me as a new customer, I can only imagine how bad will it be once I'm under contract with them. I'm sitting here asking myself: Do I really need faster broadband?
in reference to: Welcome to XFINITY | TV & Movies | Internet | Voice | Choice and Control | Subscriber Extras | Buy Online (view on Google Sidewiki)

Mobile video at Dayton Hamvention 2010

2010-05-17T11:52:00.001-07:00

For my first visit to Dayton Hamvention 2010 I thought I would try to use mobile video and share the event with folks who couldn't attend. Being a Google OS my Droid of course offers YouTube, and there is also Qik, a social sharing app.

The value of Qik is that (like Kyte on the iPhone and Nokia platforms) videos recorded with Qik are instantly uploaded to my Qik channel. YouTube requires large videos be uploaded over the Droid's Wi-Fi connection. (I don't understand why they do this, but it's probably some sub rosa agreement between Google and Verizon to help reduce mobile network load.)

While recording at Hamvention I found Qik to be balky and unreliable. I lost a few videos because halfway through the recording Qik would stop itself without warning. For short videos it worked OK, but the longer the video the more likely it was to glitch. Furthermore; on more than one occasion Qik just died completely and I was forced to reboot the Droid.

I like the idea of immediate video posting, and hope that Qik will resolve these issues. Unfortunately until they do so I can't risk using it except for videos which I don't really care about.
in reference to: Qik | Record and share video live from your mobile phone (view on Google Sidewiki)

Hamvention, Day 1

2010-05-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

After dire warnings about thunderstorms and tornadoes the flights were uneventful. I've had bumpier rides flying over the Sierra Nevada mountains in wintertime.

Dayton itself is best described as sub-rural (as opposed to sub-urban) and spread out. It reminds me of areas I've been in Eastern Tennessee.

Hara Arena, the traditional site of the Dayton Hamvention, is...interesting. It's a very outdated facility with old linoleum walls, water-damaged ceiling tiles, and a smell of age. I wonder really how much use it gets outside of Hamvention, because apparently Sierra Radio Systems had the same booth last year (#406) and a plug-strip they accidentally left behind was still here. I've worked a lot of tradeshows in a lot of places, but this is the most unusual.

Staying at a hotel downtown. Nice enough, but they rented the adjoining room to a bunch of teenagers. I had to call hotel security at 12:15am to complain, and an hour later they're still making a ton of noise. So much for their much-touted "Executive Floor". Management and I will be having a chat tomorrow morning.

Strange Sightings: They have a bank here called "Fifth Third Bank" -- we're not sure what that means.

Hamvention 2010

2010-05-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

I'm going to tweet from Hamvention 2010, and also try my hand at some live video using Qik. (The video service, not the powdered chocolate milk.) My video feed will be at http://qik.com/w6dtw and if I'm shooting video it will appear here in real-time.

iPhone Beer Goggles? Gawker Media may be guilty of grand theft

2010-04-26T02:52:00.001-07:00

If a California law dating back to 1872 is applied, then employees at Gizmodo (a web property of Gawker Media) may be guilty of grand theft for paying $5,000 to obtain the iPhone prototype famously lost by Gray Powell in a Redwood City bar.

This isn't the first time that Gawker Media has crossed the line from "aggressive journalism" into douchebaggery; in 2008 Gawker published screenshots of Sarah Palin's email after her Yahoo account was hacked.

Posted in reference to: Lost iPhone prototype spurs police probe | Apple - CNET News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Skype Mobile lameness continues in Android

2010-04-26T02:12:00.000-07:00

During the past week my wife and I upgraded our mobile phones and made a major shift away from Blackberry to Android. This ends (for me) an era which began in 1998 when RIM gave me an Inter@ctive Pager (aka the RIM-900) as part of a pre-sales effort to convince Verifone to use a RIM data module in their Omni 3000 handheld credit card terminal.

I'll have more to say in future posts about why we made this change, but for today I'm focusing on the ongoing lameness that is Skype Mobile. You'll recall that I wrote last month about how Skype Mobile's privacy features are sorely lacking because it doesn't allow you to block IM from people not in your contact list. It also doesn't offer you the ability to report abuse via the mobile client.

During the switch from Blackberry to Android I'd hoped that these limitations would prove to be a limitation of the Blackberry client, but alas the lameness extends to the Android client as well. Queries to Skype support have proven fruitless; they basically have said "Skype Mobile doesn't filter non-contact IMs. Thanks for using Skype Mobile." This needs to get fixed. I'm going to launch a Twitter campaign against @SkypeMobile to put pressure on them; if you're interested in lending your voice then follow @W6DTW.

Pointless in the extreme

2010-04-14T13:14:00.001-07:00

The ARRL reported yesterday that, in a shining example of government inefficiency, the FCC intends to lower fees for amateur vanity call signs by one penny per year. Honey! Come here and see this! Looks like we'll be able to afford that yacht after all!

In fairness the lowering of the vanity call sign fee is in the context of an overall fee restructuring across most if not all communications services including TV, commericial radio, etc. That being said the FCC's process for dealing with Notices of Proposed Rulemaking is that there will be a period in which the public may file comments. I can guarantee you that there will be at least a few comments filed by amateurs who feel compelled to pontificate on this matter, and by doing so will generate work for the FCC who has to compile, read, and consider comments on NPRMs.

The smarter thing to do would have been to simply leave the vanity call fee structure alone and not draw attention. And the cost of vanity call signs just recently increased, so why now a decrease? Is all this churn worth the effort and expense? It's like the US Postal Service raising stamp prices by two cents every year or so; the cumulative cost of publicizing each change, changing signs at the Post Office, reprinting documents, modifying the website, reprogramming the stamp dispensers, etc is more than the revenue generated by the price increase.

Seems like there are better ways for the government to spend my taxes. Like, I dunno... Lowering my taxes?

in reference to: FCC Looks to Lower Fees for Vanity Call Signs (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sorry: Have to activate comment moderation

2010-04-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

For a long time I have been allowing free posting of comments. Unfortunately I have seen an increasing frequency of spam comments to my posts. These appear innocuous enough on the surface, usually saying something like "Thank u..." Invisibly contained within the comment is a long list of web URLs to porn sites. I have to manually delete these, and it's officially become annoying as of this evening.

The change is fairly innocuous; anyone coming from outside Google will have to complete a "captcha" by verifying a couple of words.

RadioShack - Past, Present, and Future..?

2010-03-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

Recent news reports that Best Buy may acquire RadioShack have been causing me to reflect on the role "The Shack" played in my childhood, my interest in technology and radio, and how much they've changed in 40 years.

I sometimes like to joke that RadioShack was my first consulting client, but there's an element of truth to that. In 4th grade every day after school I would walk over to my local RadioShack (on the corner of W Chapman Ave and Haster St in Anaheim) to spend an hour or more looking at their CB radios and other things I couldn't begin to afford. The store manager finally got tired of wiping my fingerprints off his display cases and offered me a job delivering catalogs to the local neighborhood; paying me in store credit. After a strenuous week and a couple of spills on my bicycle (the catalogs were a lot heavier than the newspapers I was used to delivering) I was able to afford a real walkie-talkie; not one of those 100 mW Channel 14 toys I'd received for Christmas the year before but a REAL radio with channels and meaningful output power. I didn't stop hanging around the RadioShack (because there were always more catalogs to deliver) but I felt like I was part of the store family.

Within a couple of years I'd moved away to New Jersey to live with my father and there wasn't a RadioShack close by, but the school I attended had a fairly good electronics club and a computer lab with punch-card programmable calculators and (of all things) a DEC PDP-8. By the time I returned to California in 1979 I'd become fairly proficient at programming, and there was a RadioShack at the mall on my way home from school selling the newly-released TRS-80 Model II. I would sit there every day, read the BASIC language manual, and try to modify the looping demo program so it would display my name, personalized messages, etc. The manager got annoyed one day when a friend of mine decided it would be funny to write something R-rated, and I was not welcome in the store for a while. Then one day I saw him looking around the mall, turns out he was looking for me. He said that he wanted to customize the TRS-80/II's demo program to promote some store sales, and wanted me to do that for him. He offered to pay me in (of course) store credit. My second consulting gig for The Shack lasted only a short time, but for the second time in my life I was part of a store family.

The rapid changes in technology which came in the years following had a dramatic effect on RadioShack. In 1985/86 despite a store being closer to our Coast Guard base I was driving an additional 30 minutes one-way to places like Electronics Plus in San Rafael to buy parts for custom designed circuits. This continued once I was back in civilian life; most of my time was spent in places like Quement, HSC/Halted, Santa Cruz Electronics, etc. It felt in a way like I was betraying my RadioShack "family" but as the complexity of my designs increased I simply could not buy what I needed from them.

Over the years I've remained hopeful that RadioShack will return to its roots and focus on the hobbyist/experimenter. A while back they updated their selection of components with the bin drawers, and I was very happy back in 2008 to see that they were actively supporting the San Mateo Maker Faire by both selling tickets and exhibiting product at the event. I had visions of being able to buy Arduino shields in a store and browse bins full of interesting I2C chips, but that never happened. It's ironic because you'd think RadioShack would be perfect to become the storefront for the Arduino/Maker circuit hacking movement, but its online stores like Adafruit and SparkFun that dominate. Even the "old school" electronic stores like Anchor Electronics are starting to carry circuit hacking accessories like connector breakout boards.

Yesterday I went to my local RadioShack looking for a solderless breadboard. I'd checked their website and it said that this particular store had some in stock, but the kid working there told me that they hadn't stocked such things in a couple of years. Frustrating, and also sad.

It will be a sad day if and when RadioShack is snarfed up by Best Buy. All things must change, I suppose. I could say that I'll miss my RadioShack "family" but the reality is that they've been gone for a long time now. Like the parent of a missing child I long for their return, or at least the knock of a policeman at my door who brings news so I can begin mourning and find closure.

Skype Mobile and Privacy

2010-03-27T22:15:00.001-07:00

Those of you considering installation of Skype Mobile for Blackberry should be aware that it doesn't offer the same level of privacy features you might expect.

Specifically; in the Skype desktop app you can set "Allow IMs from people in my Contact list only" but the mobile app does not offer this option, nor does it inherit your preference from the desktop app. I've started to receive spam IM on my Blackberry via Skype. Adding insult to injury; there is no way to add the spammer to your blocked senders list via the mobile app; you have to manually type the spammer's Skype ID into the desktop app.

To be fair; Yahoo IM for Blackberry has been out for years and it STILL does not have an "Only accept IMs from people on my Contact list" feature; but I expect so little from Yahoo this doesn't surprise me. I expected more from Skype.

in reference to: Skype Mobile Phone | Skype Cell Phone | Skype Calling (view on Google Sidewiki)

JT65-HF : A New Hope

2010-01-28T12:16:00.000-08:00

Back in late 2007 I wrote about what I thought was the impending demise of the JT65A mode on HF. I'm happy to report that I was wrong thanks in large part to W4CQZ (formerly W6CQZ) who developed several key components for this mode; a reverse-beacon system, a web-based chat/sked page which displays reverse-beacon data in near real-time, and an application (appropriately named JT65-HF) which improves upon the original WSJT application written by K1JT.

Each component is interesting by itself, but combined together they have generated a lot of interest and attracted a whole new breed of very active JT65-HF users; with more coming on the air every day. In 2007 interest in the mode was primarily from the US and Japan. Contrast that with this morning when my reverse-beacon logged nine European stations; including two new ones which I happily logged. Looking at global activity via the PSKReporter map it's clear that Europe is actually more active on JT65-HF than any other regions. South Africa, a rarity in 2007, has become an almost daily presence in the reverse-beacon display. I spoke yesterday with a ham friend in Egypt and hope to see North Africa in my log very soon.

None of this comes without a price, of course. There are some vociferous contingents in the HF digital world who have appointed themselves arbiters of the band-plan and created a lot of conflicts by publishing "official" bandplans which direct multiple (and often incompatible) modes to the same sub-band as part of a strategy to protect "their" channels. The group in question is skilled in search-engine optimization which means that when looking for information about digital modes you're likely to find their info first and take it for granted that this is "the law". Unfortunately this has led to a lot of people directing criticism at the JT65-HF users and (bizarrely) at people like W4CQZ for "promoting inappropriate use". Factoid for any ~~EmComm dorks~~ HFLINK/ALE folks reading this; W4CQZ's application, reverse-beacon system, etc are frequency agnostic. They don't "promote" anything. Choice of frequency is up to the user.

Way to Encourage New Ops, Dude

2010-01-27T23:33:00.000-08:00

I'm on 80m right now listening to a Cuban station (CO8LY) on CW. The guy is doing well, about 15 wpm with a 9 wpm Farnsworth rate; just my speed. He's got a good fist and is managing the pileup well.

Three times in the past half hour I've heard guys come back to him at well over 25 wpm. He's patiently trying to confirm their calls, sending bits with a question mark at the end. It's clear that his max rx speed is around 9 wpm. And yet; these clowns won't slow down for the guy! It's like they're insisting that he match their speed. Unbelievable.

Why do CW ops do this? Slow down. It's not a race, not a competition. He who dies with the fastest key doesn't win. Give the kid a chance to learn and maybe in a few years you can work him at 30 wpm if that's what gets you off.

Power Struggle

2010-01-24T23:01:00.000-08:00

Recently I blogged about amateur radio's culture of exclusion; a post which generated a large amount of interest, new readers, and surprisingly little if any hate mail. Based on the blog post I doubt I'll be invited to join CWops or FOC, but the SOC has welcomed me with open arms and they're a fun bunch of folks.

One of the areas I touched on was how some modes such as RTTY tend to stay away from subbands used by older modes such as CW during contests. WW2PT pointed out a post by W2LJ which indicates that RTTY contester's self-enforced deference to CW may be ending.

It's clear that there is a schism within amateur radio's digital mode world between RTTY and basically everything else. Amateur radio's so-called digimodes (PSK31, Olivia MFSK, etc) are almost always run at 50 watts or less. Some modes such as JT65 and WSPR (developed by K1JT ) are run around 20 watts. And CW (which is technically a digimode) has a large following of QRP operators who run CW using 5 watts or less.

Reason for these low power levels is that modulating/demodulating a radio signal using a digital signal processor allows the use of error-correcting techniques which results in what's termed "Coding Gain". Coding gain usually adds (depending on the code used) about 2 - 6 dB to the system gain. This means that a signal which is transmitted 50 watts into a vertical antenna (unity gain) is seen effectively as 75 - 200 watts by the receiver. Coding gains higher than 6 dB are possible. So digimode practitioners don't run "big power" because in digimodes you don't need much power to work the world.

Stack this up against RTTY where "big gun" stations running kilowatt amps into high-gain antennas are not unusual. While it's true that RTTY doesn't offer any coding gain I think that a kilowatt of power is a bit overkill. If all RTTY operators remained within the usual subbands there wouldn't be many issues. But the problem comes up during contests where the contesters spread out across the band and the other digimodes simply get wiped out; this includes QRP CW ops.

Lately there has been a resurgence of interest in WSJT modes; probably due in part to the excellent work done by W6CQZ in providing a reverse-beacon system, chat/sked system, and building upon K1JT's original software to create a new and improved application. Yet with this new interest there have been a disturbing trend of late where people have been applying an RTTY approach to WSJT modes and wiping everyone out in the process. For example; there's one guy who's just across the valley from me that's creating all sorts of havoc by (1) running big power (his QRZ vanity photo clearly shows his amps), and (2) driving his system into ALC which heavily distorts his signal. And it's not just one guy; the other night I was getting overloaded by a guy in Colorado. How much power must he have been running to overload the front-end of my receiver from 1,000 miles away?

So why is this happening? Because many operators have forgotten a cardinal rule of amateur radio; use only as much power as you need to complete the contact. I've completed three JT65a QSOs to South Africa using 50 watts of power with no sunspots on a vertical antenna that most people consider mediocre at best. Big power in digimodes is simply not necessary. Running JT65a with a linear and a gain antenna is like shooting a mosquito with a bazooka.

Help Haiti - Text HAITI to 90999 - Donate $10 to Red Cross

2010-01-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

Please support American Red Cross relief efforts in #Haiti. You can quickly send a $10 donation by texting HAITI to 90999 -- the donation will appear on your mobile phone bill.

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot : Amateur radio's culture of exclusion

2010-01-08T17:29:00.000-08:00

Throughout the history of amateur radio the introduction of new technologies has been hampered by a resistance against change; often stemming from the mistaken belief that the current state of technology is a pinnacle of achievement. Spark operators resisted the transition to CW, and then later CW ops opposed the introduction of phone. AM phone ops resisted the introduction of SSB phone, FM analog ops are currently up in arms about "intrusion" from P25 and D*Star, etc.

It's interesting how this exclusion of newer technology manifests itself; for example we see it in band-planning and informal agreements about who can use what spectrum for what purpose. The newer technology typically suffers at the hands of the old, until such time as the new technology has been around so long that it's accepted. The new technology, no longer really new, is then accepted as long as it causes no problems for the older technologies.

Consider RTTY contesting. Aside from CW and phone, RTTY is clearly the most popular mode for contesters. A quick scan of the bands will show; on any given weekend there is more likely than not to be an RTTY contest happening. Normally RTTY ops remain in the subbands generally accepted for their mode. But during contests they spread out across the non-phone bands, effectively shutting down other digital modes for 24-36 hours at a time. RTTY contesters will plant themselves right in the middle of the PSK, Olivia, JT65A, MFSK, Feld-Hell, etc subbands -- and we're expected to accept this because RTTY has been around for so many years. What's interesting is that there's one place the RTTY contesters won't intrude; and that's the CW subbands. So CW trumps RTTY, and RTTY trumps all the newer stuff. The same pattern is repeating itself as D*Star attempts to share VHF/UHF spectrum with analog FM. Systematic exclusion is hardly a way to encourage innovation.

Recently I posted "An example of why amateur radio is failing to attract young people". The title was, in hindsight, perhaps not entirely accurate. "Amateur radio" is simply a concept, an idea, a set of privileges created by FCC/IARU rules and as such can't attract -- or fail to attract -- anything or anyone. It is radio amateurs themselves who are failing to attract -- or actively repulsing away -- new amateurs; young or otherwise.

Some respondents to my post stated that they felt no responsibility to help "grow" the hobby; i.e. people either want to get licensed and will work to do so, or they don't and we're better off without them. I don't agree with this laissez faire approach, because interest in radio isn't coded into our genes at birth. Nearly all amateurs were inspired to get involved by other amateurs, by what hams call an "Elmer", and it's unlikely that someone will come into amateur radio without at least some kind of encouragement. Failing to recruit new hams is a form of exclusion, albeit somewhat passive-aggressive in nature.

Another type of exclusion is active discouragement. In many cases I think hams do this without realizing it. For instance; a while back a RACES/ARES member reached out, asking me to get involved with the local EmComm community. The criterion for certification was onerous; dues, classes, and significant hours of volunteerism. Struggling with declining membership and a need for new blood and energetic leadership; they don't recognize that they've erected barriers to entry which few people have the time or inclination to overcome. And so they will continue to struggle until they either wake up, or are forced to close up shop from lack of interest.

Even casual amateur clubs are prone to erecting barriers which create exclusion. Recently I was encouraged to join the CW Operators’ Club, a group dedicated to "Preserving The Unique Art Form Of Morse Code" -- on the surface a worthy goal. Then I read the process for becoming a member. "...to become a CWops member you must be nominated by a current member and sponsored by three other members who have worked [i.e. communicated with] you twice within the previous 12 months...Once you have your sponsors, there is a 30-day waiting period. Absent an objection, you will then receive a formal invitation to join..." Ummm... So let me get this straight; you're a club dedicated to preserving an increasingly anachronistic mode of communication and your membership strategy involves requiring the applicant to locate and befriend four existing CWops members, enduring a waiting period, and after all that someone can object to my membership?? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot... In all honesty; why would I join CWops? I can join a number of Facebook groups dedicated to CW operation NOW, FOR FREE, and I don't have to hunt for anyone to sponsor me. CWops has 427 members of which 7 are club officers; so they have about 420 more members than I would have expected. Want an example of a great CW club? Try out the Second Class Operator's Club. No membership criteria, no requirement that my CW speed be 25 wpm, just like-minded folks dedicated to having fun with radio.

Hams blame the decline of interest in amateur radio on the Internet, and to some extent this is probably true. Hams should (but often don't) understand the Internet and thus can't learn from its example. Take for example; Twitter. Four years ago Twitter didn't even exist; today it's one of the most popular social communication systems in world with an estimated 18 million users, projected to be 26 million by the end of 2010. It's argued that Obama's use of Twitter helped sway the outcome 2008 Presidential election. It was used to communicate in & out of Iran during the 2009 Free Iran protests, and the American Red Cross has adopted it as a viable method for disaster communications. Would Twitter have ever become so popular if Biz Stone had required new Twitter users to be nominated, locate sponsors, endure a waiting period, be able to type 60 wpm, etc? When will we realize that much of what we do in amateur radio is either explicitly or implicitly creating a culture of exclusion?

Spectrum inventory and reallocation snowball keeps growing...

2009-12-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

Recently on the 9AM Talk Net mailing list Kristen K6WX noted an AP article "Cell phone mania forces scramble for more airwaves". This article came out on the same day Mashable reported that AT&T has stopped selling the iPhone in New York City; presumably because AT&T is finding that their network can't handle the data traffic. The AP article reports that the CTIA is asking the FCC for an additional 500 MHz of spectrum to handle current and anticipated capacity needs.

FCC chairman Genachowsky began talking about a looming spectrum crisis back in November, so it's not a surprise to me that a month later AT&T is shutting off iPhone sales in one of the most densely populated and highly-mobile cities in the USA; what better way to build populist outrage which will encourage Congress to support bills such as John Kerry's SB 649 "Radio Spectrum Inventory Act" and Henry Waxman's companion HR 3125? I wrote about SB 649, and how it potentially threatens amateur radio, back in March 2009.

Another recent development from the FCC is an effort which would terminate most or all over-the-air (OTA) broadcast television. Theoretically; if the FCC could migrate all OTA TV to cable, wired broadband, or some sort of multiplexed digital wireless system this would free up 300 MHz of spectrum. CTIA is asking the FCC for 500 MHz of spectrum, so the FCC would still need to locate 200 MHz of additional spectrum. It's unlikely that any amateur bands below 1 GHz would serve the cellular industry's needs, but consider our allocations above 1 GHz:

1240 - 1300 MHz = 60 MHz
2300 - 2310 MHz = 10 MHz
2390 - 2450 MHz = 60 MHz (In reality; 10 MHz see [a])
3300 - 3500 MHz = 200 MHz
5650 - 5925 MHz = 275 MHz (In reality; 0 MHz see [b])

[a] It's unlikely that the FCC would disturb the lucrative Wi-Fi business, so I presume that 2400 - 2483.5 MHz will be off-limits i.e. this leaves 10 MHz available for reallocation.

[b] This band overlaps with the UNII 5.7 GHz band's channels 128 - 165; so again the Wi-Fi (802.11a) industry will likely trump any CTIA interests.

Thus I'm going on record today with my prediction that 3300 - 3500 MHz is the band likely threatened by SB649/HR3125 or future variants. Of course it could be argued "So what?" and you'd be right; in all honesty how many hams are active in the 3300 - 3500 MHz band? A few guys in the 50 MHz And Up Club? 200 MHz of spectrum will bring in a LOT of money in a spectrum auction.

And the FCC will need that money, because apparently the FCC is planning to pay the NAB and TV broadcasters (who never paid for, and thus don't actually own, their spectrum) about $12 billion to shut down OTA television and migrate to the aforementioned cable, wired broadband, or multiplexed digital wireless system.

An additional $9 billion would be spent (think "DTV Converter Box Coupon" program -- on steroids) to migrate households to the new system. So in the end; the FCC wants to spend $21 billion dollars to ensure that the cellular industry has room to grow. Good thing Congress recently raised the debt ceiling to $12.4 trillion, eh?

I suppose that in the long run this makes sense; the tax revenues from adding more mobile phone subscribers is potentially huge; especially if the IRS succeeds in making it harder for taxpayers to count mobile phone expenses as a deduction. What frosts me is the idea that the NAB, who didn't pay for their spectrum to begin with, stands to reap a $12B windfall. Good work if you can get it.

NIST will re-test P25 radio under high-noise scenarios in 2010

2009-12-15T13:01:00.001-08:00

A while back (July 2008) I discussed a report from the International Association of Fire Chiefs on NIST/NTIA testing of digital vocoder performance in high-noise environments such as firegrounds.

NIST has announced that they'll be re-testing in 2010 with new DVSI vocoders. Urgent Communications reports that next year’s tests will be similar to the previous tests, in that the same noise environments will be explored. Key differences include the use of a mask with an internal microphone, use of radio reference systems to avoid manufacturer settings and the addition of "radio-channel impairments" that are designed to emulate the impact of a firefighter receiving a weaker signal when entering a building. This latter aspect (effects the so-called "digital-cliff" in low signal or degraded propagation environments) was a key component missing from the 2008 tests and I'm glad to see it being included on this round.

I'm still not sure about the wisdom of using proprietary vocoders (DVSI) for radio systems. We have enough interoperability challenges as it is; do we really want to tie next-gen radio systems to licensing from a single manufacturer? The digital radio world really needs to come up with a viable open-source vocoder.

An example of why amateur radio is failing to attract young people

2009-12-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

I follow various hams on Twitter and in blogs. Some because they're friends, some because they're part of my local radio community, and some just because I like what they have to say. There's another smaller group I follow, which is people I tend to not agree with. In the same way that conservatives will listen to NPR and watch CNN as a way to better understand and counter the liberal/socialist viewpoint, reading these people's tweets and blogs helps me understand why amateur radio continues to slide into obscurity.

Mike WA4D's "MEWCOMM" blog and Twitter commentary is one which I typically don't agree with. His position on matters relating to amateur radio are highly representative of a mindset which pervades the hobby, and which I believe is ultimately counter-productive to the hobby's evolution. I will use Mike's writings as proxies for opinions held by others, so apologies to Mike in advance; this is not intended to be a personal attack at you. To be fair; I like and agree strongly with Mike's perspectives on politics and foreign policy, but his judgmental attitude towards no-code hams (i.e. those who have not learned Morse Code or "CW" in the parlance) happens to be a perfect example of why amateur radio is failing to attract young people into the hobby. A sampling of Mike's comments include:

People who don't know how CW "are not real hams".
Removal of the CW testing requirement was equivalent to "affirmative action" or a "back door".
CW defines the "soul of the hobby" and "defines what a real ham is in the 21st century".

In 2006 the FCC was in the process of implementing WRC-03 recommendations which would later eliminate CW testing as a requirement for amateur radio licensing. I filed comments with the FCC during the comment period in support of this decision, in which I asked "Is the true measure of technical prowess the ability to understand what amounts to a language?" Indeed; my experience is that hams who know code are no better or worse operators or technologists than hams who don't know code. Some of the smartest hams I know -- hams who have contributed real value in the application of computing technology to radio -- are Extra-class hams who never learned Morse Code. My opinion? These people, and the technology they're developing, will truly define amateur radio in the 21st century.

Mike recently wrote that no-code hams "know not of the 'thrill of recognition'", which I infer to mean that they're not real hams because they're never experienced the "satori" moment of completing their first Morse Code contact. Having experienced the "thrill of recognition" for CW and other modes I can say that while the satori moment for CW is indeed exciting, it's no stronger or more "real" than the satori moment I had when I made a 10,000+ mile contact using JT65A on HF at 50 watts of power into a hand-made antenna cobbled from $2.00 worth of spare parts and wire. I remember both experiences equally well, and yet the JT65A contact is more memorable (and a source of greater pride for me) because I did it using a new (at the time) mode on jury-rigged hardware. But following Mike's logic I guess this wasn't a real accomplishment because it involved use of a computer, and at the time I didn't know how to send & receive CW..?

Amateur radio is a "big tent" hobby which offers something for everyone. If the hobby were healthy, growing, and not in danger of obsolescence I would say "Live and let live" and be done with it. But opinions such as "people who don't know or use CW are not real hams" are too prevalent among a majority of hams, with the end result being that bright young people who might want to explore amateur radio's application to computers and digital communication are scared away by older hams who insist on defining "real radio" in terms that they can understand.

The danger is that, as older hams pass on and are not replaced by younger hams, we will reach a point where the government decides that amateur radio spectrum can be put to better use. ARRL or not, the ham population will be too small to defend our allocation, and combined with decreasing relevance and value to emergency communications we will eventually lose our spectrum. Proficiency in CW and adherence to traditions will not solve this problem and help us keep our spectrum. The only solution is to open our minds, embrace change, and get over this self-defeating need to hold up 100+ year old technology as the gold standard against which new technology must compare.

The crux of the problem is that the prevailing majority has defined amateur radio and its reverence of traditions as an immutable core. This is horribly wrong and ultimately self-defeating. We should instead be seeking ways that encourage the applying of amateur radio to new technologies, and in doing so continuously finding new relevance and recruiting new hams. "Real hams" are those that are creating innovative technology which applies amateur radio to technology, such as Chris K6DBG's hack that converts a Wi-Fi router into an APRS receiver. Speaking the "language" of Morse Code isn't proof of technical ingenuity, doesn't prove that a ham is innovative or intelligent, and arrogantly judging hams based on their ability (or not) to use CW drives away new recruits and will NOT save our hobby.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

2009-12-05T12:48:00.001-08:00

A while back I set up a Twitter account for the Wireless Communications Alliance (http://twitter.com/wcaorg) and have, on occasion, tweeted from it about non-WCA events. Not a problem, but I thought it was time to set up a personal account so if you like please follow me via http://twitter.com/w6dtw

in reference to: David W6DTW (W6DTW) on Twitter (view on Google Sidewiki)

TV repair tools: screwdriver, wrench, drill...Did you say "drill"?

2009-11-28T00:30:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back my Samsung DLP TV went on the fritz; showing a green tile pattern when playing analog sources, and randomly freezing when playing HDMI sources. After doing some research I found that this is known problem in the digital board on the HLR5067WAX/XAA and other TVs in the series where the DNIe chip (which is a BGA-type package) develops a loose connection. (Root cause was probably a mistake in the solder mask or poor QC on application of the solder paste prior to chip placement.)

The problem can be resolved by (of course) purchasing a new digital board for hundreds of dollars. Some of the sharp minds in the peer forums over at Home Theater Shack have found that if you can apply pressure to the DNIe chip, the problem goes away. So I opted to follow the process outlined by Leonard and Tito over at HTS for installing a mechanical pressure arm to push on the DNIe chip. I figured it was a few bucks, a trip to the hardware store, and some of my time.

I built the arm into the digital board's RFI/EMI cover, adjusted it to apply just a bit of pressure, and re-assembled the TV. Works 100%. Saved myself a few hundred dollars and now I can say I once fixed a TV with a drill and a tube of Loctite.

SO2R -- The hard way

2009-11-22T23:38:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I had the privilege to be a guest operator for the Radio Club of America on their special event station W2RCA, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the RCA. The station was co-located with the anniversary event in Washington DC, and I wasn't able to attend in person, so the operation was handled using remote PC access and VOIP software, similar to the setup which I described back in late 2007.

A problem with remote setups is that they require a fast Internet connection to work well; the primary challenge being the speed (or lack thereof) at which you can switch from receive to transmit and back again. Because the W2RCA special event station was scheduled to happen during the ARRL's November SSB Sweepstakes, it was decided that we would work the contest as W2RCA. Being in a contest situation meant that rapid TX/RX switching would be a must.

As it turned out the network connection between my home and the RCA event location wasn't quite fast enough for the furious pace of the contest. I was having a hard time getting the remote radio keyed quickly enough to bust the pileups. In some cases I would bust the pileup only to have the target station get frustrated because I wasn't coming back to him fast enough. Not good, not good...

Out of curiosity I turned on my home station and tuned to the same frequency as the W2RCA remote. I found that despite being separated by 2,500 miles I could hear the target station well on both radios! Not wanting to give up on the contest for lack of fast TX/RX switching I decided to try an odd twist on SO2R (Single Operator-Two Radios) setup. I activated transmit on the W2RCA remote station, muted my microphone, and plugged my headphones into my home station. Because SSB is carrier-less mode the remote radio would not transmit any power with the microphone muted.

The next time the target station called QRZ I unmuted my microphone and called him, and heard him come back to me on my home station! I was able to work several stations this way, although there were still a few challenges. First was the effort of keeping the frequency of ftwo radios in sync. Second was some of the stations I could hear clearly on my home station were outside the range of the W2RCA remote station. But in general it worked and was an interesting way to get around the slow TX/RX switching issue.

..-. .. .-. ... - -.-. --- -. - .- -.-. - <= (First Contact)

2009-09-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

This week marked a big milestone for me; I successfully completed my first radio contact using CW aka Morse Code. It was a tough contact; conditions were bad but the guy I worked was polite and patient with me so we managed to pull it off.

I had always believed that I simply did not have an "ear" for code; it sounded like noise to me and I was never able to get past a basic understanding of the mechanics. After the amateur radio code requirement was lifted I was thankful and quickly upgraded to the highest level license. Still, in the back of my mind I felt I should make a real effort to learn code; if for no other reason than to overcome a personal limitation. (If you think I have a strong aversion to being told what to do; I have an even stronger aversion to being told what I can't do -- even if I'm the one doing the telling.) So my 2009 resolution was to learn enough code to complete a radio contact. It took me nine months, but I made it. I don't know that I will ever be a "real" CW operator, but right now I'm having fun and feeling good about my accomplishment.

I would like to thank the following people who helped make this happen for me:

Gerald Wheeler (W6TJP) - Author of the Code Quick learning method. A great basic foundations course.
Fabian Kurz (DJ1YFK) - Developer of the LCWO.net website. An awesome online Koch-method trainer. Did I mention it's free?
Leon "Skip" Stem (WB4DAD) - CW operator, FISTS member, and the first entry in my CW contact logbook. Thanks for being patient with me.

You, um, expecting trouble? BIG Batteries...

2009-08-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Through a contact at an SF Bay Area web hosting company I recently obtained for free a set of used -- but still very strong -- UPS batteries; the Deka/Unigy 31HR5000. This hosting company offers their customers a 100% uptime guarantee which means that they can't wait for their UPS batteries to fail; they are used for a number of months and then they're replaced. Since the hosting company has to pay someone to come haul them away they're happy to see them repurposed.

These batteries aren't the typical deep-cycle marine variety you see on Field Day. They weigh 95 lbs each. Fresh from the factory they're rated at 135 amp-hours, which is about 1,800 watt-hours. My main HF rig (Kenwood TS-2000) consumes about 200 watts worst-case (when keyed on 2 meter FM, set for 100 watts) which means that using one of the Deka batteries I could leave my rig keyed-down on 146.520 FM @ 100 watts and it would remain on the air for about 9 hours.

I now have 3 of these monsters running in parallel on my home station. That's over a full day of continuous talk time. Left in receive-only mode my station will run off-grid for about 8 days.

Total cost? About $40 for some 4-gauge jumpers and misc hardware.

Bring on the zombie attack. I'm ready.

Secret History of the Silicon Valley

2009-08-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm really enjoying Steve Blank's article series on the Secret History of the Silicon Valley. A very well-written series that has also been presented live at venues such as Google TechTalks, etc.

Most interesting for me is the confirmation of something I've believed for a long time; the "Silicon" Valley might might just as well have been named the "Wireless" Valley.

Frankly, I prefer the latter...

-- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. .

2009-05-31T00:28:00.000-07:00

For a while now I've been forcing myself to spend time studying Morse Code. It's no longer required for amateur radio but I felt I needed to have some proficiency in it, and it's something that I've never been able to quite grasp. I've always believed that I simply don't have an "ear" for code; some people can hear it and some can't. Now I think that's probably true for fast code but I believe now that with some effort an "effective speed" of 6 words-per-minute can be achieved.

The method I've been using might seem unusual. I started out by obtaining W6TJP's Code Quick audio CDs. This is an innovative method for learning which teaches you to associate a "sound-alike" and a humorous image with every Morse character; for example when you hear "DAH DAH dit dit DAH DAH" the sound-alike is "Coma, it's a coma" the image is a bear laying in a hospital bed, and thus the character is "comma" (coma). W6TJP claims that this method ties the Morse Code sounds into your brain's language center, and I can believe that it in fact does. For slow code, to pass a basic test or decode repeater IDs it works and it's good enough.

The problem is that it takes time to mentally process the sound-alike, the funny image, and then recognize the character. So there's an upper limit to the "effective speed" you can reach with this method. I should make a note here about the difference between "effective speed" and "character speed". Character speed is a function of how long the dots and dashes last, and their timing relationship to each other. Effective speed is a function of the duration in pauses between characters. You can send Morse Code at a character speed of 18 wpm, but at an effective speed of only 6 wpm; this gives the receiver time to process each character before the next is sent.

Thus once you've mastered the sound-alikes, and you want to increase your effective speed, you need to "unlearn" the sound-alikes and learn to hear the code directly. One method for doing this is called the "Koch Method" where you start out with two characters and after you reach 90% correct copy you add another character. This type of method typically requires a computer to handle generation of the audio and "grading" of what you type in response. The best trainer I've found for this is "Learn CW Online" at www.lcwo.net. The reasons LCWO is so great are (1) it's free and (2) unlike a lot of websites done by hams it's very well designed.

I started out with LCWO doing fairly well; the number of characters was small (the first 4 taught are K, M, U and R) so if I got stuck I knew the right answer had to be one of those. As the lessons progressed I no longer had that luxury; the answer could have been any one of 40 characters (26 letters, 10 digits, plus comma, period, slash, and equals sign). And yet I also found that I was actually more accurate than I thought I would be! As you increase the effective speed you can't dwell on each character; you have to make a choice and move on. If you get stuck you'll likely not only miss the character in question but also the next few after. So in some cases I'll hear a character but won't be sure, and will just type what I think it is. At the end of the session I'll be thinking "Well, I must have really flubbed this one" but in reality I only missed one character out of 40. So clearly there's some kind of subconcious connection being formed here between my ears and my fingers which is bypassing the rational/analytical part of my brain.

I'm not sure I'll ever be one of those 50+ wpm code guys who hears entire Morse Code sentences in his head, but with luck I might be able to actually hold an on-the-air conversation using Morse Code some day.

The Sound of Silence, Part II

2009-05-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

After the recent surge in 10 meter contacts due to Sporadic E propagation I reported in my last post it seems that hams have again lost interest, yet meanwhile the 11 meter CB DX scene is still going strong. This echoes observations I've made in the past about the differences between what hams and CBers consider "good" propagation.

Here's what I observed... Around 1630 UTC (0930 PDT) on 22-May-2009 I was mobile near San Jose International Airport. Figuring that 10m Sporadic E might bless us again with another day of great propagation I was tuned to 28.400 MHz, but heard nothing on or near that frequency. I figured at first that the Es just weren't there, but then remembered that the CBers and Freebanders often congregate around 27.385-LSB as their "DX calling channel". I tuned down to 11 meters and man, what a ruckus! I was hearing stations from all over the western US, some on the pre-defined CB channels and some were VFO-tuned to whatever frequency they happened to be on.

So as I've asked before; why the dramatic difference in activity? Clearly there was Es propagation to support contacts in the 10 meter band. Yet 28.400 MHz sat there idle, while 27.385 was so crowded CBers were changing frequencies to continue their conversations. One explanation suggested to me was that since CBers have only 11 meters they're forced to make the best of what they have, while hams can easily say "10 meters isn't yet as solid as I'd like, I think I'll drop down to 20/17/15 meters and see who's around down there." Fair enough, I guess. It still seems to me a shame that we're not making better use of the spectrum we have available to us.

Summer Es - Sporadic E season

2009-05-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

In the past week we've seen some increased solar activity; solar flux peaked at 74 and that led to some interesting band openings. I worked LY1000A in Lithuania late last night (20-May-2009) on 20 meters -- an opening to Europe near midnight local time certainly qualifies as "interesting".

The summer sporadic E season (often referred to as "Es") kicked in today with reported 10 meter openings from the west coast to the east coast. I worked KJ7OX in western Washington state just before midnight local time; solid copy on him and after I signed off he was still going strong.

Given that 10 meters was pumping I also listened up on the 11 meters CB band. As expected they were going strong too; I was hearing a lot of AM stations down below channel 23 and I also learned that apparently CB channel 38-LSB (aka 27.385 MHz) is the popular sideband DX calling channel. It was good to see the hams having as much fun as the CBers for a change.

There was an interesting study done on Es propagation by Art KA5DWI; compiled over four years of PropNet monitoring data it shows that "sporadic E" may not be so sporadic after all. One noteworthy finding; Es propagation during ARRL Field Day weekend is typically poorer than the preceding and following weeks.

S 649 : Radio Spectrum Inventory Act

2009-03-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

I posted this because I think Senate Bill 649 : Radio Spectrum Inventory Act (intro'd by Sen. John Kerry-Heinz, D-MA) is the first shot in a battle I've been predicting for some time; the application of populist politics towards spectrum management and allocation. You need only spend an hour tuning around with a decent all-band receiver to discover that the vast majority of spectrum is nothing but static. The real targets of this "spectrum socialism" are the big guns; broadcasters, the military, and even divisions of the government itself (such as NTIA) which has been "warehousing" spectrum for years while hypocritically requiring auction-winning licensees for cellular/PCS spectrum to demonstrate high levels of loading; i.e. subscribers.

Radio amateurs, I believe, are especially at risk from unintended consequences if this bill becomes law. I've previously blogged that many amateur radio frequencies are largely unused. Some amateur bands; such as 1.25m (aka 222 MHz) and 23cm (aka 1.2 GHz) are used only in certain regions of the US. (1.25m is popular in the Los Angeles area because 2m is so laden with bootleggers and jammers it's effectively become CB radio.) One reason for this is that the radio manufacturers are not selling equipment for these bands; the last 1.2 GHz equipment was the Kenwood TS-2000X which was introduced 9 years ago. Alinco is reported to be releasing a 1.2 GHz handheld, but that's not enough to drive adoption of the band. If the RSIA is an attempt to document usage of spectrum as a precursor to re-allocation based on purpose and usage, then 23 cm is one of the most likely targets for re-allocation once the limited use of that band becomes public knowledge. Our only hope is that the proximity of 23cm to radio astronomy likely precludes the allocation of that band to commercial use; but it could still be lost.

Equipment availability is one issue but at a higher-level the problem amateurs face with RSIA is simply that there are fewer radio amateurs than there were in the past; younger people prefer communicating via the Internet and if they do express an interest in amateur radio they're all-to-often turned off by the arrogance of a few hygiene-optional curmodgeons who tend to hang around at club meetings and hamfests complaining loudly and constantly about how the demise of Morse code testing will lead to the death of amateur radio; ignoring the fact that it's their own urine-soaked elitism that's probably a key element in keeping younger people from the hobby. So when faced with a trend towards populist politics and thus policies, a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the federal deficit may exceed $1.5 Trillion dollars, and huge swaths of amateur spectrum laying increasingly fallow as the number of amateurs continues to decline; the likelihood that the government will pull spectrum from amateurs and attempt to auction it off as a revenue source is increasingly likely. It's critical that we change the face of amateur radio (even if it means slaying a few sacred cows) in order to attract licensees or the day will come that some lawmaker will decide that it's politically low risk to start pulling spectrum from amateurs in order to pay off the deficit.

Economy takes a dive; amateur radio vendors fail to notice

2009-02-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

You'd have to be living in a cave to not know what's going on with the economy, or at least what Washington D.C. is trying to terrify us into thinking is going on. Setting aside this Recession vs Depression debate for the moment; it's clear that the economy is struggling at some level. We're seeing home values drop sharply, credit is hard to obtain, auto dealers in some parts of the country offering 2-for-1 deals, etc. One need only visit your local Best Buy, Fry's, etc to find smoking hot deals on consumer electronic equipment. A buyer's market you say? Apparently not for amateur radio.

Recently I decided to buckle down and learn CW aka Morse Code. I've been using various tools, including a great online trainer called LCWO (Learn CW Online). I've also been using W6TJP's Code Quick; good for getting the sound-alikes for each character but my advice would be to save your money on the optional software and focus on sites like LCWO.

Needing a paddle/key in order to practice sending CW I decided to stop by Ham Radio Outlet (aka "the candy store" and buy the Bencher BY-1 for what their printed catalog said was $99. I pulled up in front of the store and the parking lot (normally full of vehicles festooned with antennae) was so empty I had a momentary thought that maybe it was a holiday and I'd just forgotten. I walked into the candy store (normally full of amateurs festooned with antennae) and was greeted by one lonely salesman. Recession? Depression? Clearly business is slow.

Inquiring about the Bencher paddle I found it was in stock...and that it cost $109. Ex-squeeze me? Catalog says $99. Yes, but the price went up. Since when? Since the catalog was last printed, apparently. I see... So other retailers are slashing prices, people are spending less, your store is completely empty for the first time I can recall...and you're raising prices.

To his credit my friend gave me the catalog price. Normally I'd also get a discount for being a member of the Cactus Intertie group, but not this time. It started me thinking that I've not really seen prices fall on amateur radio equipment the same way that mass-market consumer electronics have fallen. For example; I've been saying that I'll buy an IC-7000 once the sale price drops below $1,000. And yet the price remains above $1,300 and from some retailers seems (like my Bencher paddle) that the price have actually increased.

Is amateur radio immune to economic downturns? Sure seems like the manufacturers and retailers think they are.

Looking forward...

2009-01-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

With 2008 officially behind us I've spent the last few weeks (as I'm sure many did) contemplating where we've been and where we're going. There seems to be a pervasive sense of relief, some trepidation about what 2009 might bring, but also a growing sense of hope that we're leaving behind a lot of baggage and moving into a period of revitalization and renewal. I believe that it's human nature to think that the troubles of today are unusual, unprecedented, and thus we long for days of old when "life was simpler". The reality is that in each generation there occurs a crisis of some sort that must be addressed. As the saying goes, "This too shall pass". Fortune, bad or good, is a fleeting thing. Our forefathers struggled, we struggle, and I guarantee our children will struggle. In between these struggles are periods of great happiness, and periods relative calm which often pass by almost unnoticed. From an amateur radio perspective I think 2008 will be remembered as a period of struggle, and hopefully in hindsight will be seen as a time when things began to change.

Amateur radio struggled during 2008. We ended the year with the lowest number of sunspots since the early 1900's. The sun's been so quiet for so long that any time the sunspot number isn't zero, or the solar flux index climbs over 70, everyone gets excited. The quiet surface of our sun was echoed in many ways throughout amateur radio. At the 2008 Dayton Hamvention (and smaller events such as Pacificon 2008) equipment manufacturers offered almost nothing new. In some cases popular equipment such as the Kenwood TH-D7A APRS handheld was suddenly discontinued. (It's speculated that certain parts in the TH-D7A were not ROHS-compliant and Kenwood couldn't get drop-in replacements.) It's worth noting that two of the biggest product offerings of 2008 were the Icom's IC-7200 HF transceiver, and Yaesu's VX-8R quad-band APRS handheld. The IC-7200 has "new" features such as (drum roll please) a USB port for audio I/O and control! How innovative! (I'm being sarcastic.) The VX-8R was shown at Dayton in early 2008 but wasn't actually shipped to customers until mid-December. It contains cutting-edge features such as APRS - which works if you buy their "GPS-Mic" which is insanely large and quite expensive. How is it that my Blackberry Curve can feature a high-contrast LCD display, QWERTY keyboard, battery, multi-band voice/data radio and a GPS in a housing that fits in my hand, but Yaesu needs that much room just to house a microphone and GPS? To add insult to injury; I had an on-the-air QSO with KI6CRL once he finally received his VX-8R after several months on a waiting list -- and it turns out it's got a thermal problem where his transmit audio level drops to nothing as the radio gets hot. This is the hot (no pun intended) new product people waited almost a year to buy?

Perhaps the Japanese manufacturers simply observe that amateur radio is struggling to grab the attention of younger people and believe that it's therefore not capable of producing a good return on investment. I would say that this is both a correct and incorrect observation. It's correct that in its current state amateur radio is largely unattractive to younger people. It's incorrect in that it doesn't take into account the concept of "making a market"; more on this later.

Why are young people not getting into amateur radio? It's not because it's technically challenging; you need only look at the surging popularity of the Maker Movement to know that technical innovation is alive and well among the younger generation. The fact of the matter is that it's our own Luddite mindset that's at fault: It's hard to recruit younger people into a hobby where the equipment manufacturers have only just this year discovered that USB is a viable interface option! I once watched a guy at Ham Radio Outlet whine for five minutes about how hard it was to get RAM modules for his 486 laptop; and amazingly he was finding a sympathetic audience. (By the way this happened in 2006, not 1996.) I was once chastized in an online discussion group for promoting the proliferation of APRS iGates; devices that route packet radio traffic onto the Internet -- my detractor stated that he felt "anything which blurred the lines between ham radio and the Internet" was a bad idea. Finding ways to revitalize older technology with the most pervasive technical revolution since the telephone is a bad idea? Give (unto) me a break.

Even when amateurs use computing they often miss the point. Many people who use APRS are still using the DOS version. One of the most popular APRS applications is UI-View32; the author of which (G4IDE) has been dead for several years -- and specifically asked that upon his death the source-code be destroyed rather than be placed into the public domain as an Open-Source project. How about despite the fact that it's marketed as a stand-alone APRS/packet solution Kenwood continues to build its TM-D710A without a USB or even a PS/2 keyboard jack. Simply put: Amateur Radio can't reach a younger audience until it integrates modern technologies and embraces development/collaboration concepts such as Open Source that younger people associate with "good technology".

You might be saying, "So what? Who cares if we fail to attract and retain younger people into amateur radio?" The answer is simply; we stand to lose everything. The current mood in Washington DC is already somewhat negative towards the FCC; there have even been calls for Obama to dismantle the FCC and implement a new innovation-centric technology governance model. Amateur radio is nothing without our spectrum allocations, and given how we're not really using the spectrum we have it's likely that under the new FCC leadership we'll lose some spectrum in the coming years; someone's going to have to pay back that $700 billion bailout and spectrum leases can be auctioned off to raise cash. As time progresses the incoming FCC leadership is going to be increasingly younger, and likely resistant to the idea of leaving large swaths of potentially cash-generating spectrum in the hands of older amateurs who insist on using out-dated computing technology that increasingly doesn't integrate with modern systems.

So how can we solve this problem? How can amateurs help "make a market" and create a potential for vendors to recoup long-term return on their engineering investment? First and foremost we have got to actively embrace modern computing technology, Maker-style hardware re-purposing concepts, and an Open Source licensing model for software and firmware. This means that:

All amateur radios going forward should have USB ports, and if appropriate should support USB host-mode.
I should be able to plug my HF transceiver or my handheld into my laptop and control it or configure it over USB.
I should be able to plug a keyboard into my TNC-capable rig and type text without a computer.
Rather than a proprietary interface, and a proprietary configuration app, all amateur radios should contain an on-board web browser (just like a $30 Linksys router does) running from an embedded controller and an Ethernet jack. I should be able to connect the radio to my LAN, and ideally I should be able to plug in a USB Wi-Fi dongle and attach to the radio wirelessly.
The embedded controller should be some kind of standard (ARM-core, etc) and the operating system firmware should be Open Source and modifiable; picture OpenWRT or some variant.

We must start doing this now, or by the time we realize our mistake it will be too late. I firmly believe that a radical departure from our current mindset is the only way to move amateur radio forward.

Where's David?

2008-09-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Been a while since I posted. Most of the summer was spent doing various projects; some for pay and some for fun. One of my new interests is APRS - Automated Packet Reporting System. It started when a ham friend of mine decided to hike the John Muir Trail and wanted me to keep in touch with him and his girlfriend as they hiked. He carried a Kenwood TH-D7A(G) APRS handheld; so I decided that I would set up APRS to track him.

In the process of doing this I learned a lot about APRS and the mechanics of routing packets through RF. I set up an "I-Gate" which is a system that passes received RF packets into the APRS servers via the Internet. Turns out this was quite useful to some local hams that carried Kenwood TH-D7A(G) APRS handhelds which could not normally reach the mountain-top APRS repeaters aka "digipeaters". So now my station's running 24/7; not great for keeping the electric bill small but I guess that's why I have a 3 KW solar PV array on my roof, yeah?

In exploring APRS I learned that when it comes to digipeaters "more" is not necessarily equated to "better". RF packet is about passing packets to the target (or targets) with little (or ideally no) redundancy. For the most part we enjoy a great VHF environment here in the Bay Area; the Silicon Valley is ringed by mountain ranges which provide line-of-sight at nearly any time to at least one of the wide-area digipeaters. Any additional digipeaters are redundant and therefore create extra packet traffic. (The exception to this is of course low-level/low-power "fill-in digipeaters" designed to serve small pocket valleys, urban canyons, etc.) With a dense population and a lot of hams using APRS it's a constant battle to keep the 144.390 MHz APRS channel from becoming too crowded. I-Gates don't contribute to the crowding problem; that is if they're set up as receive-only I-Gates.

I'm having a good time with APRS; besides just being able to track locations I've also been exploring how it can be used for text communication; I had a nice QSO with YB2TJV in Indonesia recently. It's also proving useful to study VHF propogation in the area. I have no idea why my callsign was used by OH7LZB as an example in his blog post on the new I-Gate coverage function on aprs.fi; but I was flattered anyway!

I'll be hosting a forum on APRS at Pacificon 2008 which runs from October 17th - 19th in San Bruno, CA. My forum is scheduled for 8:00am Sunday the 19th; if you're in town please do come by and say hi!

Tech Note: Radio Shack Pro-2018 Scanner

2008-05-29T00:11:00.000-07:00

I recently purchased a cheap radio scanner to replace my venerable I recently purchased a cheap radio scanner to replace my venerable Electra Bearcat 250. I bought a Radio Shack Pro-2018 (catalog # 20-424). Reading through the Radio Shack website a few days ago I was amazed to find that they were selling the programming cable for my scanner for 97 cents!? The cable (catalog # 20-429) is being discontinued, apparently. I found a store which had one and picked it up.

Radio Shack also offers a free programming software package. It is quite frankly one of the lamest applications I've ever seen; an absolutely horrid GUI and it would only import from DBase III format (.dbf) files. A quick Google search revealed an open-source scanner loader application "ProLink" which looked promising. It doesn't specifically state support for the Pro-2018 but it does support the Pro-2017 and the Pro-79 which are (from a serial port interface perspective) the same.

The nice thing about ProLink is that it can open text and CSV files, so creating a frequency list from copied text is fairly easy. I used Excel, and copied a lot of data from RadioReference.com and K6SCC's SCCFreqs.info page. Caveat: Apparently most of these low-end scanners don't have a download function. So don't expect to use ProLink to download the painstakingly-created frequencies you may have already on your scanner.

I ran into two small but annoying glitches which I'd like to share. One glitch was that when I initially tried to open my CSV in ProLink the application would lock up and require a process-kill. I knew the application could open CSV files because it successfully opened a sample file included with the application install. Examining the good vs the bad CSV revealed that Excel did not maintain all of the commas and quotation-marks around text which apparently ProLink expects. So I had to open the CSV in a text editor and manually reformat the file. Thank you, Bill Gates.

The second glitch was in trying to get the serial interface to work. Turns out the I needed to reconfigure my USB-serial dongle for the following config: 4800-8-N-2 (4800 bps, 8 data bits, Parity=None, 2 Stop bits) and Flow control set to "None".

Once I did this the data file loaded into the scanner no problem. I'm not sure I saved any time doing it this way, but at least now I know that I have a soft copy of my frequency list and should I need to make any changes I can do this in the file and then reprogram the scanner.

Wireless at Maker Faire 2008

2008-05-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my wife went on a short trip with some friends, leaving me home to try my hand at single fatherhood. Still, I managed to get away from my "Mr. Mom Weekend" for a few hours on Friday and Saturday nights (paid a babysitter on Friday, and cajoled my mother-in-law into service on Saturday). On Friday I attended the PAARA amateur radio club meeting in Menlo Park, and on Saturday I drove up to the Maker Faire in San Mateo. The role of wireless technology at the Maker Faire was very evident, but not in the way you might expect. For the uninitiated; the Maker Faire is a combination of Burning Man + science fair + flea market. People come to show off their contraptions and creations; robots, alternative fuel vehicles, lots of stuff which uses embedded controllers, and (especially after the sun went down on Saturday) enough fire and explosions to satisfy even the most ardent pyromaniac. The highlights for me were:

A carriage being pullled by a walking-robot made up to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger (lower-half exposed to show Terminator endo-skeleton)

A chamber which made hydrogen-filled soap bubbles that were detonated by electric ignitors

A seriously huge Tesla coil display which was throwing nine-foot plasma streamers

Some kind of pressure-sensitive podium which caused twelve-foot tongues of flame to shoot up into the air

The "Pinbowl" - a perpetual pinball machine

The contrasts at the Maker Faire are numerous and glaring. The parking lot is filled with hybrid cars, and the usual "Impeach Bush"/"Obama 2008" bumper-sticker polemic you expect to find in the SF Bay Area. So you'd think the Maker Faire would be focused heavily on eco-friendly and minimal carbon footprint exhibits. And yes, there were a huge number of exhibits showing off renewable energy and transportation technology; solar, wind, algae-fuel, bio-diesel, electric motorcycles, pluggable hybrids, etc. But after sunset there were also many combustion exhibits and shows using propane, kerosene, lamp oil, etc. The smell of incompletely burned hydrocarbon was everywhere, as tongues of smoke curled up against the deepening sunset in the chilly evening air. How to reconcile this? I don't know that I can. Is the Maker Faire a neutral zone in the global warming debate, a sort of United Nations of carbon consumption? Or is this yet another example of hippie hypocrisy? Best if we leave that one to the philosophers.

If you're still reading, you might be wondering how this all relates to wireless. It does, and thanks for sticking with me as I get around to that. Wireless technology of all types was very evident and widely used at the Maker Faire, but the operating word here is "used". There were no exhibits (that I saw) which showed off anything related to innovation in the wireless space. There were a ton of people using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, proprietary ISM data-link radios, radio-controlled servos, etc. Wireless was everywhere, but in all cases it was "user wireless"; projects created with off-the-shelf modules and in some cases chipsets. Wireless is a tool to complete projects, not the project in and of itself. I find that this echoes a growing trend I've observed at the WCA and in the wireless industry as a whole: Put plainly, wireless technology is becoming a commodity.

Some of the hams from PAARA set up an amateur radio special-event station to make 20m and 2m/70cm contacts from the Maker Faire. I never found this exhibit, but a few people on the N6NFI repeater say the station had to contend with some bad RFI; which I can imagine given that a giant Tesla generator was operating nearby. I'm quite sure that most of the Maker Faire was essentially a gigantic FCC Part 15 violation.

It's unfortunate that the hams did not have a bigger role at Maker, because amateur radio has its roots in innovation and home-brewed technology; ham radio is a great-great-granduncle of the Maker movement and should rightfully hold a place of honor and respect in the Maker community. I think that the problem is that a lot of amateur radio has become consumerized and is now ironically an example of the "culture of learned helplessness"; ironic because the technology consumerism which is the fastest growing segment of amateur radio (i.e. people who chose to buy versus make) is at odds with the hacking/creation/innovation core elements of the Maker movement.

The amateur radio community still certainly has a lot to say about innovation and technology; the huge number of hamfests, tech days, field days, DXpeditions, etc is evidence of this. The problem seems to be that amateur radio events have become somewhat insular; we're doing events for ourselves, and not reaching out as much as we should to non-hams. By way of example; this month's AM-TECH Day is on May 10th. Past proof shows that it will be popular, or at least popular with hams. Wouldn't it have been better to push AM-TECH up a week and hold it at the Maker Faire? How many Makers could we have licensed if we'd held AM-TECH and a VE test session a week earlier at the Maker Faire?

I also think that we need to seriously rethink our approach to new technologies. Hams are spending way too much energy on "maintaining the tradition" in modes of operation such as CW and voice, and not exploring how amateur radio might benefit from integration with other technology. I think radio amateurs still have a lot to offer the wider technical community, but we need to reach out and open our doors. This means far less worrying about nurturing traditions and whining about the evils of no-code HF, and a lot more mold-breaking. The concept of the Maker Faire and amateur radio is to hack, to repurpose, to change forms and function. We can learn a lot from the Maker community, and they from us. How do we make this happen?

$20 Billion dollars later [700 MHz auction]

2008-03-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

Article from InformationWeek which talks about the 700 MHz spectrum auction. (Verizon, AT&T Big Winners In 700 MHz Auction) I'd been hearing projections of between $15-$20 Billion; so this tracks with expectations.

The point I think nobody has yet addressed is "what will happen to all the money that didn't win the auctions?" Presume that in total the amount of money which smaller players had available to bid was equal to the amount that was bid by the winners. This is a conservative estimate; in fact I suspect the number is larger. So that means that as of yesterday there's $20 Billion dollars sitting around which must now be re-purposed.

Let's look at this in perspective... The worldwide semiconductor market is approximately $200 Billion dollars. The entire worldwide electronics industry is approximately $1 Trillion dollars. Presuming that all of the unspent bidding dollars are put back into technology; this means that the worldwide electronics industry as a whole grew yesterday by 2%. If my suspicions are well-founded, it could in fact be greater than 2%.

So...where's the money going to be spent? What's if anything is the net effect on the technology markets?

The Sound of Silence

2008-02-27T20:45:00.000-08:00

Last November we drove down to Disneyland in my wife's van, and I wired up a VHF/UHF rig and mag mount for the trip. Ever since the phone systems failed due to overloading during the relatively minor October 2007 Alum Rock quake I've been nervous about relying on cellphones in emergencies. I spent some time researching repeaters along the route, and more time programming everything into the radio.

All for naught, apparently. During the trip I was struck by the almost complete lack of traffic on every repeater I tuned in. It wasn't a problem with my equipment; there just wasn't anyone on the air. Even in the densely populated Los Angeles area, the entire twelve hour trip was mostly a never-ending chain of silence. The most traffic I heard was on linked systems such as the Cactus Intertie and the WinSystem, but that's to be expected because they have dozens of connected repeaters and all it takes is one person talking somewhere on the system to light them all up.

On my base and mobile rigs I have a lot of local repeaters programmed, ready to go. And yet at any given time; nobody's talking. Pick up the mic, announce "W6DTW monitoring".... and listen to silence. Reminds me of the This Week In Amateur Radio "Random Access Thought" segment by Bill N2FNH about a repeater that died when a spider crawled across a circuit board; shorted himself across a resistor; killed the repeater...and nobody noticed. And yet; try asking your local frequency coordination council for a frequency pair and you'll get told "there's nothing available". The howling wind of silent FM static is blowing through most of our local repeaters just as it was through the repeaters I tuned into on the trip to Southern California. So how is it that all of the frequencies are spoken for..?

Things are not much better down in the HF bands, or perhaps I should say not much better in the legal HF bands. Given that we're currently coming out of a low point in the 11-year sunspot cycle you might be tempted to allow that the amount of traffic will be low. Especially in the higher frequency bands like 10 meters, where popular wisdom says there's little propagation during the day and certainly none at night. So the 40 and 20 meters bands have some traffic (mostly contesting), 17 meters opens up around noon for a while, and we're starting to hear folks on 15 meters. But for the most part; few stations are on the air and silence above 21.5 MHz is the rule.

So then why is it that on any given weekend day, if you listen above 27.405 MHz into what's been termed the Freeband, you'll very likely hear a lot of traffic? I hear strong stations coming in from around the Western US and Mexico. Is there something odd about propagation that creates a difference between 27.915 MHz (aka the freeband "Redneck Skip Calling Frequency") and 28.400 MHz (aka the amateur "10 Meter Calling Frequency") so that one is active and the other not? Surely the Freebanders don't have some kind of secret technical prowess that allows them to punch through where amateurs cannot? The reality is likely that amateurs simply don't believe that there's good propagation without sunspots, so they don't tune in and "no propagation" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I find it amazing that while the great swaths of spectrum which amateurs can legally use sit idle; another group of people who are sometimes called "pirates" (agree or disagree with the term as you wish) are happily making use of frequencies which are right next to a band that amateurs will effectively ignore for a good 25%-40% of every sunspot cycle. Yes, Freebanders are operating illegally according to FCC regulations. No, I'm not a Freebander. However; I do have a sense of respect for them. They are (from what I can see) more enthusiastic and aggressive about pursuing the hands-on technical aspects of radio than many hams. They're out there modifying radio equipment on their own---which they have to do because there's no legal way to buy freeband radios. They're not sitting around waiting for sunspots to come back so they can get good propagation; they get on the air and take what the sun gives them on that day.

That's real radio.

Expensive Desktop Mic Get Pwned By $12 VOIP Headset

2008-02-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

A while back I purchased an entire amateur radio set from a ham who was getting out of the hobby. A rare occurrence, mind you. I really only wanted the radio (a Yaesu FT-1000D) but the guy sold me everything except the feedlines and antennas for less than I'd expected to pay for the radio. Everything worked as expected. In the plethora of boxes I lugged home were a lot of accessories; among them a West Mountain Radio RigBlaster Pro.

The RigBlaster sat in storage for almost a year, until recently when I watched K7AGE on YouTube talking about his homebrew Bluetooth headset interface. One of the accessories which came with the FT-1000D was a Yaesu MD-100A8X desk mic. I've frankly been less than pleased with performance of that mic; it's very sensitive to any change in sound level due to distance from my mouth which means that keeping the FT-1000D's ALC from kicking requires that I constantly ride the PA drive control--and that's tough to do when I'm focused on maintaining a constant mouth-to-mic distance. So I started thinking about getting a headset. Of course, you can spend a ton of money on a "good" headset; e.g. Heil Sound is the name in radio mics and headgear and their stuff starts over $100 and goes up from there. Being the cheapskate I am I decided to experiment with a $12 General Electric VOIP headset I got from Target to do Skype while I was traveling through Asia in 2006.

Interface to Yaesu was a snap using the RigBlaster. As with most amateur radio accessory companies, West Mountain Radio's website and manuals are poorly written but I was able to decipher them enough to set the jumpers properly for the Yaesu. Most computer headsets are have electret voice elements which require a 5 VDC bias on the ring terminal; the RigBlaster can provide bias on the MIC2 jack which also happens to be the perfect size for a PC headset plug. I didn't bother to route any of the receive audio paths; for now I just have the receive side plugged into the headphone jack. I have the MD-100 plugged into the RigBlaster--just in case--but its primary function now is to act as a PTT switch.

The results were impressive. I checked in to the 75M late night net and got an unsolicited report of "great sounding audio" from W6EZV. A flattering report, considering that the 75M late night guys are used to hearing perfectly processed and equalized audio from people like W6OBB aka Art Bell. I'm now able to operate with both hands free, and the headphone has an added benefit of making sure the receive audio is not bothering my family after they've gone to bed. My audio settings are a lot more consistent and don't require constant fussing with the PA drive and speech processor levels. Best of all I'm no longer inclined to go out and spent hundreds of dollars to get a high-end Heil headset. I'm now curious to find out if my successful experiment is unique to this particular VOIP headset or if I can get the same results with other brands.

Pimp My Rig

2008-01-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

During the recent severe storms we lost power at home a few times. I had my radios on battery power monitoring various emergency frequencies but at times I was struggling to read some of my equipment with non-backlit displays. A small LED flashlight worked well in a pinch, but afterwards I started to think about how I might improve the lighting at my station without using wall-socket power and/or consuming a lot of my station's reserve battery power.

The answer came to me while I was wandering around a Target store. There's a company called WinPlus that makes a line of auto accessories under the brand name "Type-S"; they offer a lot of dashboard gizmos, LED map lights, gadget holders, etc. Their stuff is actually quite well-conceived, for the most part. One of the items they sell is a "Dash Mood Light Set" which consists of two small "LEDs in a barrel" with 3M adhesive-backed swivel-mounts and a "cigarette lighter" accessory plug. Setup was very simple; all I had to do was plug in the lights (using an accessory socket) and stick the swivel-mounts on the radio faceplates. The lights draw less than 10 mA of current and provide great illumination of the displays even in total darkness. The wires are very slender so I was able to tape them down with black electrical tape and now they're essentially invisible.

What a day....

2008-01-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

So today was quite a day. The stock market (and my 401k) tanked on job data and high oil prices. Britney Spears got carted away for observation at a mental hospital after a standoff with police. And the Silicon Valley got slammed by a major storm that toppled trees, knocked over my backyard fence, ripped the roof off of our rental property (complete with flying roof tiles smashing a car window in the process), and bending my Comet CHA-250BX antenna. I'd probably be more upset by all this (except the Britney Spears part) if not for the fact that I'm sick as a dog right now with some kind of nasty virus.

I'm hopeful that the amount of misery in any given year is limited and that I'm getting all of my ick for 2008 out of the way early.

TS-2000 Remote Control w/ Audio

2007-12-19T19:58:00.000-08:00

One of the fun but also useful capabilities to have in your shack is the ability to run your rig remotely. I decided to do this for my Kenwood TS-2000 since it's basically a radio wrapped around a computer and has a zillion interface options. Kenwood makes ARCP-2000, a remote display program which frankly isn't worth the $250 they ask for it. Ham Radio Deluxe (aka HRD) is a great program; it's feature-rich, highly configurable, and best of all free. You can run it over a screen-scraper like VNC, Remote Desktop, or even X-Windows. A better solution is to use the HRD remote access system; this essentially allows you to tunnel serial data to your rig and control it via a remote instance of HRD.

Two challenges exist here; publishing the HRD server over the Internet without open router firewall ports, and creating a high-quality and stable audio path.

Dealing with the server question first; I absolutely do not recommend opening holes in your firewall. There are a lot of solutions available which eliminate that need. I use Hamachi which has an additional benefit in that the clients are coordinated via a central server so a static DNS is not required. I simply point my remote HRD instance at the private IP assigned to my home system by Hamachi and I'm connected.

Getting quality audio across the Internet used to be a challenge, but after using Skype this year for business I think it's ready for prime time. I created a separate Skype client ID intended only for receiving inbound calls from me when I'm remote. I set Skype to auto-answer, and point the audio paths to my rig's sound interface.

Detailed diagram of my setup is available here.

Public Speaking: Wireless Connections 2007

2007-11-19T22:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy time over the last few months. I attended the Texas Wireless Summit in Austin, then WCA shared a booth at CTIA with some other groups; WIPConnector, WINBC, and the Austin Wireless Alliance. Made a big push to produce our 700 MHz analyst panel event, and to complete a report due for one of my clients. Then I headed off to Banff in Alberta for Wireless Connections 2007. I was invited to speak at the conference, and it was a great show. Loved the location; the Fairmont Banff Springs. I spoke about the cultural aspects of living and working in the Silicon Valley. I think the talk went well based on feedback from attendees. I'm looking forward to seeing a few of the Alberta folks down here in the Valley on Nov 27th at our Mobile OS panel event.

Moronic DIY Electricians

2007-09-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

After the CHA250B antenna install I was doing some cleanup work on the roof. Went to ground the mast and noticed a bit of a tingle on my hands when I was holding the mast and touched the ground wire. I put my trusty Fluke multimeter on there and was amazed to find about 74 VAC on the mast! No current to speak of, which accounts for the fact that I didn't get zapped off the roof, but enough to feel it when barely touching the ground wire.

I headed back inside to do some testing. Poking around my shack, I discovered that some of the AC outlets had reversed hot/neutral wiring!! The only thing that saved me from destroying my gear (or myself) is that thankfully I'd never used a correct outlet and an incorrect outlet at the same time for anything that was connected. (e.g. computer on one and rig on the other.)

I'm annoyed beyond belief that the previous owner of my house did this. The real kicker is that he was also a ham. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, because this isn't the first electrical oddity I've found in this house. Apparently Mr. Fixit fancied himself quite the handyman. I'm not going to name names here, but he's the moron that after 5 years still hasn't updated his license address in the FCC database.

New Antenna!!

2007-09-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

My wife spent the day visiting a friend, and took the girls with her, which left me about 12 blissful hours on a weekend to do whatever I wanted to do. I'd be intending to install a new HF antenna for some time, so this was the best and obvious time to do this.

I put out a call asking my amateur radio friends to come by and help. Bojan agreed, which was great. He's a bright guy, very creative when it comes to technology. If you're ever looking for someone who can turn ideas into reality, give him a call.

The antenna I chose was a Comet CHA250B. This particular antenna is unique in that despite being vertically-polarized it has no ground radials, and it will also tune all bands from 80m to 6m. The coax feeds into a large black cylinder which acts as a matching network. This particular antenna has been alternately praised and vilified on review sites like eHam. People are either giving it a 0/5 or a 5/5. There doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to this; although it's interesting to note that people giving it a 0/5 tend to compare it to a dipole which might be unfair.

For me, I was willing to try it out. Considering that my comparison point was my aforementioned $2 "Speaker-wire Special" I suppose anything would seem better. The real challenge in the antenna install was not so much the outside work, it was deciding how to get the coax up to the roof from my shack. Doing so entailed slithering around in my attic, which is a complete mess after a roof replacement earlier this year. There were also a few setbacks, such as a broken lag bolt and a too-small bracket on another antenna (my HDTV antenna) which is now needs to be adapted to the new larger mast.

In the end we got the Comet installed, and two extra runs of coax. I fudged up a temporary VHF/UHF antenna (until I can get a replacement lag bolt and the new mast installed) by slapping a magnetic mount down onto a metal attic vent. I may also sell the VHF/UHF antenna I had on Craigslist and get something else because it's a 6m/2m/75cm tribander and the Comet now covers 6m.

As expected the Comet performs better than the homebrew. I'm getting signals where there were no signals before, I don't have RF-in-the-shack problems like I did before, and the antenna is clearly quieter (lower noise floor) than the homebrew. It tunes a lot of bands, so all in all I'm happy with it. I'm not quiet sure why some people have panned it so hard on eHam. I suspect that it may have to do with unfair comparisons to dipoles, but also it might be the install makes a difference. The Comet's instructions call for it to be installed 32 feet off the ground. Perhaps if it's not installed at that height the matching network doesn't work?

JT65A-HF, we hardly knew ye...

2007-09-05T22:32:00.001-07:00

A while back I wrote about JT65A, the amateur radio weak signal digital mode being used on HF bands. My best contact was just before Field Day 2007 when I logged ZS6WN in South Africa; over 10,500 miles using 50 watts and an antenna made of speaker wire at the bottom of the sunspot cycle. It was a very interesting and powerful mode. And yet I haven't heard anyone on the bands in over a month. Which leaves me to ponder; why?

WSJT (the software for JT65A) was originally written for weak signal paths such as Earth-Moon-Earth. As with most weak signal modes, a trade-off is made where the amount of information transmitted is intentionally limited in order to pull weak signals up out of the noise floor. In JT65A, the total transmission cycle was one minute (actually, about 48 seconds plus 12 seconds for the recipient to react and respond) and in this minute only 13 ASCII characters could be sent. Not exactly a rag-chewing mode. So once I'd worked a station and logged them, I was basically done. I'd see someone calling CQ, note that I'd already logged them, and so wouldn't respond. And once I'd worked ZS6WN in South Africa, working non-DX contacts was (to be blunt) boring.

So my theory on the premature demise of JT65A on HF is this; everyone worked everyone and once they were done there was no point in continuing. Radio amateurs like to rag-chew, talk about stuff, brag about their rigs and such. Hard to do at 13 characters per minute. And without a conversation, it's hard to make friends. Sure, you could always get to know folks by hanging out in the Ping Jockey web chat, and there's certainly a core group of people who do just that, but if you're going to chat in a chat room then why bother with a radio? So I think JT65A on HF has turned into the one-hit-wonder of amateur radio.

Echolink Follies

2007-08-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

One of the developments we're seeing in amateur radio over recent years is the proliferation of VOIP and digital voice technologies. Examples of this are things like D-Star, IRLP, and EchoLink. The latter is sometimes a contentious technology, in that some amateurs don't consider it "real" radio because the audio/control interface is PC-based. Once while on a visit to San Diego I was having a pleasant conversation with a local repeater operator which turned very sour at the mere mention of the word "EchoLink" as he went into a tirade about the evils of the system. Normally hams reserve this sort of loathing for CB radio and BPL companies, so I was a bit surprised.

Since then I've encountered a few more instances of "EchoLink Enmity". My personal opinion is that there's little difference between controlling a radio/repeater with EchoLink versus using Ham Radio Deluxe plus Skype to control a rig remotely. The question of whether EchoLink users are higher or lower on the amateur food-chain is best left to the philosophers. I will concede however that there's an annoying element to EchoLink, but it's the fault of the developers and not so much the users themselves.

Allow me to explain: Most if not all EchoLink users are unaware that when they connect to a repeater or simplex link the server software by default transmits an announcement over the air which says "Connecting to EchoLink [callsign] -- Connected". Since a lot of EchoLink users are looking for QSOs (amateur-speak for conversations) they tend to hop from repeater to repeater looking for traffic. If a repeater's quiet, they tend to silently disconnect and go looking elsewhere. And again the server software by default transmits an announcement which says "[callsign] -- Disconnected". To the locals on the repeater, this can seem a bit rude. If the EchoLink user was looking for a QSO, then why didn't he transmit and ask if anyone was interested/available to chat? So throughout the day you hear a lot of Connect-Disconnect, Connect-Disconnect...over and over again. After a while, you might start to think that maybe EchoLink users really are bozos.

However I think the users are largely not to blame for this. The connection announcements are not played back to the EchoLink client's inbound audio, so users don't know about them unless they're listening to the repeater in question. Most EchoLink users connect to remote repeaters or links in other parts of the country or even around the world, so they often don't ever hear what goes out over the radio. I once sent a detailed email to the EchoLink developer team explaining all this. I was told that a repeater/link admin can turn off the announcements, but they're on by default. Most admins clearly don't bother to turn announcements off, and the users are unaware of them. I suggested to the EchoLink developers that they might want to add a note to the EchoLink FAQ/guide explaining all this, but they didn't. And so EchoLink users will continue to unwittingly annoy repeater users, and apparently the developers think this is OK. I don't understand this, but whatever. Therefore, here are my How Not To Be An EchoLink Bozo tips:

Be aware that every time you connect/disconnect, your callsign is transmitted over the air.
Knowing the preceding it should be no surprise why when I further suggest: Don't repeatedly connect/disconnect to the same repeater. It is amazingly annoying to the locals when you do.
Try saying hello if it's quiet. You may be surprised at how many locals are listening and willing to come back and chat with you.
Be careful about "calling CQ" on a repeater. CQ is traditionally used for simplex contacts, and a repeater is not a simplex system. Some people won't care, but others will think that you're a bozo. If the EchoLink node ends in "-R" it's a repeater and I advise against calling CQ. If the node ends in "-L" (a link node) then CQ is probably OK.
Don't ask for a QSL card because you made a contact over EchoLink. People will think you're a bozo. For that matter; I will think you're a bozo. QSL cards are for commemorating simplex contacts. Would you send a QSL card to someone you chatted with over Skype?

Amateur Radio: A funny thing happened on the way to the contest today...

2007-07-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note on a funny story; at least one of those ones that radio amateurs find funny.

Most amateurs have stories about RF (especially in the HF bands) causing trouble around the house. Usually just simple TV interference, harmless stuff. One guy I knew said his digital bedside clock would reset itself when he transmitted on certain frequencies. Another said his stereo would turn on by itself. I've heard my external hard drive park its heads during transmit, and in general USB hardware doesn't seem to like RF.

I've been dealing with some "RF in the shack" lately; because until I can get my heavy coax run back up to the roof I'm operating on a somewhat hacked setup. Specifically; at anything below 20 meters I get feedback paths into my audio, and one night I got "bit" by one of the screws on my radio's casing. (Caused by signals inducing currents into the radio itself.) Typical symptom of a grounding problem, and expected considering my current setup. I decided to try out an artifical ground; which is essentially like an antenna tuner between the station and ground. It provides a tuned circuit that electrically lengthens or shortens the ground, and it can even be used to make a random wire stretched along the floor act like a ground.

So as I fiddled with the artificial ground settings on one band I keyed up and as I did I heard my sprinklers come on. Maybe my wife's working in the garden, or...? I key up again, same thing. Apparently I was kicking out enough power to activate the driver transistors in my sprinkler controller and this is what caused them to turn on.

Bizarre.

How to not be evil

2007-07-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

Today's buzz is Google's Ex Parte FCC filing in which Eric Schmidt tells Chairman Martin that they have committed $4.6 billion to purchase spectrum in a future Upper 700 MHz auction - provided that the FCC structures the new service in such a way that license holders will have to offer at least 1/3rd of their spectrum to other companies on a wholesale market. The interesting thing about this is that the FCC's "auction reserve" has been said to be...$4.6 billion.

I think it's great that Google is trying to leverage their financial strength in order to ensure that wireless broadband remains somewhat open, and help prevent yet another telco monopoly from developing. The 1982 court-mandated breakup of the Bell system (the Greene Decision and subsequent Modified Final Judgement) opened the doors to increased competition and (some would argue) allowed technologies such as DSL to develop which would not have done so under the oligarchy of Ma Bell. To a large extent, today's cellular providers are no different than the wired telcos; largely run by a bunch of visionless business school graduates who are unresponsive to the needs of a market hungry for cutting-edge technologies. In a very real sense, the driving force behind wide-area broadband technologies such as WiMax exists because of the cellular carriers have consistently failed to meet those needs.

The carriers are of course not stupid, just short-sighted. Their initial response to alternatives was to be indifferent; then arrogant, and finally now they've become patronizing and suggested that the FCC should not allow "distractions" from smaller players (i.e. anyone who isn't a cellular carrier) and let them do what they will with the Upper 700 MHz spectrum. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about all this wireless stuff, young lady. This is man's work. Run along and play with your dolls now."

Allowing any one company or group to monopolize all or even a majority of the Upper 700 MHz would be a mistake of biblical proportions, and would result in the exact same kind of anti-competitive market and visionless wireless technology offerings the cellular carriers have today. The Upper 700 MHz spectrum is fertile soil in which entirely new markets can be grown and nurtured; wireless broadband, additional spectrum to relieve the crowding in 900/2400/5200 MHz ISM bands, and with any luck a nationwide interoperable emergency communications system which we desperately need and do not have today.

This isn't to say that if Google bought the Upper 700 MHz whole band that they would do the right thing either. Their mantra "Don't Be Evil" is simply that; a mantra. That and $3 will get you a latte at Starbucks, and I've always wondered when (not if) Google would devolve into a typical big company mentality. A few quarters with shortfalls in earnings ought to do the trick. But in the meantime, I think what they're doing is great and applaud them for their willingness to put their money where their mouth is.

How not to build a transceiver

2007-07-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Primarily due to its flexibility, one of the most popular mobile rigs for amateur radio is the Kenwood TM-742A and associated models such as the 942, 741, etc. The TM-742A is a tri-band rig which can accept up to three band modules out of an available five; 10m, 6m, 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm. Interesting trivia; the MSRP in 1994 was $660. Today, clean TM-742A rigs can and do go for over $750 and rising as replacement parts and band modules become harder to find.

Every rig has its quirks, and a quirk of the TM-742A is that the 2m module is prone to failure. The 2m power amplifier is a Toshiba S-AV17 which is a set of power transistors and associated components soldered onto a beryllium ceramic substrate. Symptom of the failure is that the rig will transmit enough power to be heard on other close-by (within a few tens of feet) rigs but makes no power at the antenna. Most people just pony up the $65 and replace the S-AV17. Others have discovered that the failure lies in a microscopic crack in the ceramic that breaks one of the microstrip filter traces. The fix for this is to remove the S-AV17, pry off the plastic cover, and run a rapid thermal recovery soldering iron (like a Metcal or Hakko) over the crack area. A standard resistive heater iron will not work; because the ceramic module is designed to absorb lots of heat so the trace won't get hot enough to flow. It takes 15 minutes to disassemble the rig and 15 seconds to solder it. Thanks to Kevin W3KKC for his webpage discussing the problem and walking through the repair process; complete with photos.

(Disclaimer: beryllium is nasty stuff. You don't want to inhale it. If you're not comfortable doing this; don't have the right equipment; etc blah insert dire warnings here then pay the $65 and don't try to repair the amplifier!)

Interestingly enough, and relevant to the title of this post, is to examine why the module fails. The reason for the failure is excess heat. The stock configuration for the band modules is to have the 2m in the middle, which means that the 2m power amplifier is buried about as deep in the rig as it can be. At 50W the 2m module is also capable of the highest power output, so therefore it gets hotter than the other modules. The ceramic cracks and you get a dead S-AV17. I would accept this explanation readily enough except that every 2m module I've disassembled has had the same problem; the S-AV17 is mounted dry. Not one has used any form of thermal grease to promote conductivity into the heatsink and transceiver structural frame. This would be like a high-speed CPU being installed onto a motherboard without thermal grease; the CPU is essentially guaranteed to fail from thermal overload. This is (or more accurately was) a blatantly stupid move on Kenwood's part that has cost radio amateurs thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars in unnecessary repairs, replacements parts, shipping costs and downtime. Can you demand a recall of a 14 year old product?

Bluetooth Headset Quest 2007

2007-06-18T01:05:00.000-07:00

My wife was kind enough to assist me in my quest for the perfect Bluetooth headset by giving me an Aliph Jawbone for Father's Day. I spent some time wearing it and came to the conclusion that the ear fit wasn't optimal. Maybe I just have weirdly-shaped ears? A quick Google search revealed that no; I'm not the only person having trouble.

It also revealed a very simple and elegant hack; replace the stock ear bits with Jabra Eargels such as those for the BT250. I happened to have a spare set of Jabra Eargels (for my backup wired headset, ironically) which did in fact fit and it presses the headset hard enough against my skin (essential so that the "jawbone" pickup microphone works) so I was able to do away with the sproingy behind-the-ear wire loop in the process. I actually shook my head hard (like a dog after a bath) and the thing stayed put without the ear loop. Added bonuses; the incoming audio is much louder since I can rotate the Eargel to align with my ear, and I can slam the thing into my ear within one ring versus time wasted fiddling with the ear loop.

Remains to be seen how it works in daily operation. I'm already missing the audio feedback tones I got with the Plantronics 645. For example when you dial a call with the P645 it gives you a tone sequence to tell you the call is connected, disconnected, etc. The Jawbone is just basically an audio conduit. You get tones for things like volume up, power on/off, Noise Shield on/off, etc but no tones for call processing status. On the other hand; I can already tell the Jawbone's range is better; which isn't hard to do given the unbearably short range of the P645. I once had the P645 go out of range on me while the phone was on my belt.

101 Essential Freelancing Resources

2007-06-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

Recent article over at FreelanceSwitch listed a huge pile of tools and resources for freelancers. Having gone independent myself as of January 2007, I found this article interesting and shared it with a few other freelancers. It's been universally well-received, so figured I'd just post it here so everyone could benefit.

101 Essential Freelancing Resources

Note: Reader contributions have driven the count up to 126 resources, from what I understand. And the article has been translated into a few other languages; sounds destined to be a classic!

Amateur Radio: 5,200 miles on 50 watts and a $2 antenna

2007-05-28T01:59:00.003-07:00

Lately I have been getting prepared for the annual ARRL Field Day, which is an annual operating exercise and public showcase event for the amateur radio world. Amateurs all over North America will set up in campgrounds, parking lots, and fields and attempt to make as many contacts as possible using various "modes"; everything from Morse Code and "phone" (what normal people would call voice, talking into a microphone) to exotic digital setups which use computers connected to radios. My club (the Northern California Cactus Radio Association) will operate as K6SRA from a campground in Henry Coe State Park, near Morgan Hill CA.

I'll be running the digital station this year, and plan to use (in addition to the usual PSK31 and RTTY setup) a very new mode called JT65A-HF. JT65A isn't new to amateur radio as it's been used for a while for "moon bounce"; and yes, I mean literally for bouncing signals off the moon. Earlier in 2006, a few people decided to transmit JT65A signals over the HF bands; primarily 20 meters (14.076 MHz) and 40 meters (7.076 MHz). In only a few months this new mode has exploded in popularity, primarily due to the very high sensitivity afforded by a Reed-Solomon forward error-correction algorithm implemented this mode. It's mathematically provable that JT65A signals can be detected with 100% certainty even if the received signal is -22 dB under the noise floor.

In preparing for working JT65A-HF on Field Day I've been learning to use an application called WSJT which is used mostly by the moon bounce and meteor-scatter folks but now also HF enthusiasts. I've made some amazing contacts this way; just tonight I logged a contact with a guy in Australia using only 50 watts of power and a homemade antenna I built with $2 worth of parts I had lying around my garage. This is the equivalent of someone being able to see a 50 watt light bulb from space at a distance four times that of the International Space Station, or of someone talking from San Jose CA to San Diego CA on a CB radio. I expect we'll be seeing a lot more of JT65A in the HF bands, especially as radio amateurs suffer through the poor radio propogation conditions created by the current solar minima.

Update (15 June 2007) : I just beat my Australia record with a solid contact to ZS6WN in South Africa. 10,526 miles, same power, same antenna!

Update (24 Sept 2007) : WA3LTB has created a video demo of WSJT and posted it to YouTube.

Spectrum

2007-05-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting articles about upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auctions over at Spectrum Matters, where Nick accurately notes that this is an insanely important change that nobody really knows about. There have been a few under-the-fold articles in the San Jose Mercury News, but mostly these just talked about the impact to next-gen systems like WiMax. The real and underreported story here is that some of this spectrum will get set aside for a nationwide interoperable emergency communications system, and with any luck we'll see this system deployed sometime between now and when my newborn daughter graduates college. The issue is important enough that the Wireless Communications Alliance has created the Emergency Communications Leadership and Innovation Center dealing specifically with this topic.

For the uninitiated, the issue at hand is this. In the past few years we've seen examples of disasters (Sept 11th, Katrina, Florida) which have overwhelmed the communication capabilities of the local emergency response infrastructure. Well-meaning people from around the world sent teams into these areas in a desire to help, only to find that they could not communicate with other groups or even the locals. People like Brian Steckler from the Naval Postgraduate School had to create ad-hoc "hastily-formed networks" to replace some of the missing infrastructure, and amateur radio operators acted as relays between agencies whose radios could not interoperate.

These problems occurred after disasters which "only" claimed a few thousand lives. What if we have a disaster (tsunami, pandemic flu, meteor strike, terrorist attack, etc) which claims tend of thousands of lives or even (God-forbid) millions? How will the responding agencies communicate? So the government (in a rare display of forward thinking and long-term strategy) has decided that once analog TV is shut down some of that spectrum will go to this nationwide interoperability system. Of course, not everything thinks this is a great idea.

Is it real? Will it survive a possible party shift in the White House come 2008? Will we see it in our lifetimes? Time will tell.

How not to do business

2007-05-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

The amateur or "ham" radio world is filled with an interesting cast of characters, to say the least. It's no surprise then that the companies who sell amateur radio equipment are themselves somewhat odd, which makes doing business with them often a challenge.

As with all companies, the leadership and more specifically the founders lay the foundation on which the company will build itself. Because amateur radio is not mainstream technology (although it often serves as a model for later commercial developments) there is little commercial development and so most companies are started by radio amateurs who have a unique idea and want to sell it. However, being a technical genius and knowing how to build a company are two separate things.

When I worked in sales we had various customer profiles each with a corresponding strategy. This is much like the way Best Buy profiles their customers. Nearly every amateur radio company I've ever encountered (with the exception of the main radio manufacturers; Kenwood, Yausu, Icom, etc) would have fallen into the category named "Fred In The Shed". "Freds" as we termed them were technically gifted but often financially inept. They run their businesses as an extension of their hobbies, and either don't bother to develop a corporate "face" or in many cases deliberately eschew the entire concept. Websites are poorly done, manuals horribly written, eCommerce infrastructure is weak, etc. In short; Fred is more concerned about being smart than being successful.

Fred also tends to run a very lean operations, and while he might offer a lot of different products he doesn't stock inventory. It's this more than anything that annoys the living daylights out of me. I can honestly say that every single item I've ever ordered from an amateur radio equipment company has been backordered. Fred and his folks don't tell you this up front, because then every item on their entire website would have to say "Backordered". What they do is take your order, then later (if you're lucky) they tell you it's backordered. What this really means is that they're hoping to gather enough orders to justify an order to their assembly house, presuming that their assembly house isn't the kitchen table at Fred's house. It's one thing to do this if you're up front with your customers, but the duplicitous bait & switch thing really annoys me.

Complaints about Fred's lack of alacrity have always fallen on deaf ears. Fred isn't concerned about losing my business because there just aren't a whole lot of people out there who are building what he's selling. In his mind I'm already a bozo because I'm not building the whatever-it-is myself.

Announcing my Second Harmonic

2007-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Tara Joy Witkowski
Born: May 5th 2007
9 lbs 9 oz, 21.5 inches long

Picture here shows her sleeping on her hands. Interestingly, she was not posed this way. The kid has amazing upper body strength; she was picking her head up within hours of birth. She lifts her head, slides her arms underneath, and lays down. It's a little freaky, but very cute.

More pictures here.

Public speaking: IITBHF -- The Future of Mobile Computing

2007-04-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to be the moderator of a panel at the IIT Bombay Heritage Fund event "The Future of Mobile Computing". Panelists will be from Greylock, Beceem, Mobio, and Norwest Venture.

Public speaking: MIT CNC -- The Future of Portable Communication

2007-03-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

I was invited to be a panelist at the MIT Club of Northern California's Entrepreneurship series "What’s In Your Pocket? The Future of Portable Communication" event. Other panelists were from OQO, Digital Chocolate, NVIDIA, and HP Labs. Julie Ask from JupiterKagen moderated.

My fellow panelist Susie Wee from HP Labs wrote about the event in her blog. She quoted me as expressing some reservations about the viability of WiMAX in the face of a nearly ubiquitous Wi-Fi install base. This is essentially correct, however WiMAX being a somewhat diaphonous term it's important to make distinctions on what use-model I was referring to.

I personally believe that Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) will never happen due primarily to the nearly universal attach rate of Wi-Fi to mobile consumer devices, which severely drives down the potential for widespread adoption of Mobile WiMAX. It's estimated that by late 2009 it will be essentially impossible to purchase a laptop without 802.11, and that most will be 802.11n. This trend likely holds true for handheld devices (PDAs, SmartPhones, etc) if for no other reason than chip manufacturers will simply stop building non-11n parts at some point.

The essential question is; If the installed base technology is viable, and a network exists, then why change? Novarum has done extensive real-world use model system testing, and subsequent analyses in their "Wireless Broadband Rankings" and "Metro Wi-Fi Rankings" show that actual throughput of many municipal Wi-Fi deployments is approximately the promised performance of as-yet-undeployed WiMAX systems. 3G & LTE deployments from cellular carriers are increasing footprints daily and coming up the throughput curve. So why change, and why will anyone invest capital in spectrum, equipment, siting, and deployment of a Mobile WiMAX system that in the end will only be as good as what's already available?

The logistical and financial challenges of deploying wide-area wireless networks are rather severe and (most fortunately for those people trying to get investors to drink the WiMAX Kool-Aid) not well understood by more than the relative handful of people who've actually done such work. Those who don't understand history (anyone remember Metricom's Ricochet network?) are doomed to repeat it.

I believe that Mobile WiMAX might find a niche in non-stationary backhaul i.e. broadband on commuter trains, etc but I don't believe it will ever be the "last yard" connection for mobile devices. Fixed WiMAX has a better chance, especially in rural areas of the US which aren't served easily by broadband. Fixed WiMAX also stands a strong chance of succeeding in developing regions outside the United States.

The Reluctant Webmaster

2007-03-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

I've been spending the last few days educating myself on the nuances of website management, on account of being recently elected to Vice President at the Wireless Communications Alliance. The WCA has a "working board" which means I'm doing all this myself. Google AdSense, Google Analytics, XML sitemap generation, etc... I recently swapped out our old DreamWeaver/FrontPage site for a Drupal CMS site, and that's really made all this a LOT easier. If you haven't used a CMS system before and you do site development, especially for dynamic sites which have constantly updating content, I really suggest you consider switching. Drupal is Open Source, widely used, and very powerful. Once you get through the initial setup it's amazingly easy to add features. When I wanted Google Analytics I went and fetched the Drupal module for this and was done in two minutes. Google AdSense setup was also very easy with the Drupal module.

Daylight savings, time wasting

2007-03-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

I just got done spending a couple of hours downloading and installing updates to keep my PocketPC's calendar from going nuts when the new daylight savings rule kicks in next week. What a pain. Anyone old enough to have lived through the first DST modification fiasco during the 70's is having flashbacks this week. I recall walking to school in the dark, myself. I understand the reason for doing this, but wonder just how much money we'll save versus how much we'll waste dealing with the technology adjustments. My way cool Yes Zulu watch, which used to auto-adjust for DST changes, doesn't anymore. For $200, I can get new watch guts to fix it. How many hours of electricity savings will I need to offset this?

Wirelessness...

2007-01-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

Decided to move the Witman Zone, Part II over to BlogSpot because, at the risk of being rude, Yahoo's blogging system sucks. I've had "Entry for January 29, 2006" showing up as my most recent post for almost a year now, even though that post's title was changed and the post itself deleted. Odd behavior, and the folks at Yahoo don't seem to give a rip about fixing it.

Besides, with the recent changes in my career I think it's time for a fresh start. Still working on closure of the new gig. Consulting in the meantime, doing some work around the house, just enjoying not being where I was.

...dtw