This is the new logo for Yaesu Musen.

In a letter dated 12/27/11, Jun Hasegawa, president and CEO of Vertex Standard, has announced that the company is ending its four-year-old joint venture with Motorola. The letter states,

…we have decided to transfer the Vertex Standard LMR business to Motorola and focus on Amateur, Marine and Air-band business. The effective date for this reorganization will be January 1, 2012.

Other details include:

• The name of the company will revert to Yaesu Musen.
• The company will be wholly-owned by the founder’s family.
• The name of the operation in the U.S. will be Yaesu USA, and there will be no change in management or in address and phone numbers.

I love this YouTube video. It’s a great mix of images from old catalogs and newer images.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

And, here’s a recent recitation of the classic “Ham’s Night Before Christmas.”

I recently became a Dr. Who fan when I stumbled up the latest several reincarnations of Dr. Who on Netflix. I quickly worked my way through the episodes of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors.

If you know anything about Dr. Who, you know about his Sonic Screwdriver. On the show, this fine bit of alien technology seals doors, hacks into computers, and may even drive screws.

Now, you can get this replica of the 11th Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, as well as several earlier models, from ThinkGeek. They’ve got a bunch of other Dr. Who stuff, too. Great stuff for the geeks on your holiday shopping list.

On a recent episode of This Week in Tech, Leo Laporte, W6TWT, mentions ham radio, and a guest asks him how much time he is spending on the air. Leo, who just recently got his Tech license says “Zero!” and laughs.

This is not uncommon. Lots of people seem to get a ham radio license and then do very little with it. I think one reason for this is that they don’t take into account how much time the hobby really can eat up.

They get their ticket because it seems like a cool thing to do, but then they have to carve out some time to actually be a ham radio operator. Even if you don’t make any of your own gear, setting up a station takes time, and then there is the operating time, of course. Carving time out of busy schedules—and I would guess that Laporte has a pretty busy schedule being the owner of TWiT—is a challenge.

I see things like this all the time. At one ham radio club meeting that I attended, the club vice president asked, “OK, here’s the question of the month. How many of you actually got on the air in the past month.” Less than half of those in attendance raised their hands. Geez, I thought to myself, why do they even bother to come to meetings if they don’t get on the air?

Making time for ham radio
So, if you’re a busy person, how do you make time for ham radio? Well, being the Internet geek that I am, I Googled, “making time for things you love.” I got a lot of links to sites that talked about work-life balance and some new-age blogs, but none of them offered much in the way of concrete advice.

Then, I Googled “make time for hobbies” and right off the bat, I found two good articles—7 Creative Ways to Make Time For Your Creative Hobby! and 5 Ways to Make Time for Your Hobby. Both articles offered very similar advice. Here are four points that both made:

1. Schedule it. Set aside a specific time during which you’re going to do ham radio. Don’t let that time get pre-empted.
2. Designate a place in your home for ham radio. Having to set up your radios or dig out your tools every time you want to operate or build something is not much fun and wastes a lot of time. Having a “shack” and a workspace designated for your projects will let you spend more time on the fun stuff.
3. Partner up. Arranging to work with another ham will make it harder to blow off ham radio for some other activity. Besides, it’s a lot of fun to do things with other hams. If you’re a newly licensed ham, find an Elmer. There really are plenty around who would be willing to help you.
4. Create a project plan. Setting up an amateur radio station is no small feat. Breaking it down into smaller chunks will make it seem more doable, and you’ll get a feeling of accomplishment when you meet your in-between goals.

There’s so much to learn and do in amateur radio that it can seem quite overwhelming at first. I think that’s one reason why so many Techs never really get into the hobby, and even more experienced hams eventually drift away. I think if you follow the advice above, though, you’ll not only find the time to pursue amateur radio, but get a lot more out of it.

The first two items are courtesy of Hajo, DL1SDZ. The third courtesy of Jeff, KE9V.

http://myplace.frontier.com/~k9la/html/tutorials.html

http://ve3wdm.blogspot.com/2011/10/recycling-postare-toroids-getting-you.html

www.youkits.com

One of the good things about friends is that they push you. My friend, Scott, W1BIC, recently pushed me into thinking about how this website looked on a mobile device, such as an iPhone or an iPod. So, a couple of days ago, we connected via Skype, and together we explored some of the options for making our WordPress sites look good on mobile devices.

The result was that we both installed the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin, and now both sites look decent on a mobile device. What the plugin does is to detect what kind of browser the user is accessing your site with, and then use your regular theme if they’re using a desktop or a mobile theme if they’re accessing your site with a mobile device. It comes with some very basic mobile WP themes that you can use and modify.

So, if you have a smart phone or an iPod, take a look at the site. I’d be interested in what you think about how it looks and what changes I might make to make it even more readable.

UPDATE 11/13/11
I don’t know what’s happened, but this plugin has stopped working and I can’t seem to get it working again.  I’m going to have to find another WP plugin for this functionality.

I know that sounds crazy to ask you to unsubscribe to my blog, I’m having a problem with FeedBurner, which sends that e-mail to you.  It looks like they deleted my user account, even though the feed still seems to be working.

So, what I would like you to do is to click the unsubscribe link, which will unsubscribe you from the old feed. THEN, you can resubscribe using the subscription link on the KB6NU.Com homepage.

THANKS!

I often joke that I have the #1 amateur radio blog. That is to say when you type “amateur radio blog” or “ham radio blog” into Google—if you live in the United States, anyway—I am the #1 result.

Well, imagine my chagrin at being #262,054 on the Amazon Kindle best-seller list. That’s right, KB6NU.Com ranks #262,054 on Amazon.

KB6NU.Com ranks #262,054 on the Amazon Kindle best-seller list

To be honest, I’m amazed that I rank at all. It was on a lark that I listed my blog on Amazon a couple of months ago. I was amused about a month and ago when I found that someone had actually paid good money ($1.99/month) to get my blog on their Kindle. Today, when I checked, I was flabbergasted to find that I actually have twelve paying subscribers and four who have signed up for a free trial.

I’m not only flabbergasted, but encouraged. So much so, that I want to reach #250,000 by the end of the year. I’ll continue to provide interesting and useful content, but I need your help. You don’t have to actually purchase the blog, but please visit the KB6NU.Com Amazon page and enter a comment there. Maybe if more people gave KB6NU.Com a positive review, more people would become subscribers.

UPDATE 11/7/11
I just ran across this post while searching for something else, and I thought I’d check my Amazon ranking.  Whadda ya know? I’m up to #247,260 now! So, I met goal #1, to get to #250,000 by the end of the year?  Might #225,000 be possible by the end of January 2012?  I don’t know, but that’s what I’m shooting for.  Please consider giving me a favorable review by clicking on the link above.

The following is from a press release. I normally just don’t reprint press releases, but I liked this so much that I thought it deserved some press. More retirement communities should have ham radio stations…….Dan

A feature story in the new edition of Guide to Retirement Living SourceBook reveals how residents of one retirement community have used Amateur Radio, often called “ham radio,” to maintain purpose, friendship and even their own health.

Grant Bagley is one of a group of residents who have helped set up a fully functional Amateur Radio center in the extensive woodshop at Collington Retirement Community. (PRNewsFoto/Guide to Retirement Living SourceBook)

When Grant Bagley and his wife decided to make the move to a retirement community, he believed he would have to give up ham radio, a lifelong hobby of his. The retired physician and attorney said he thought at the time, “I may have to give that up, but I can replace it with other things.” Fortunately, his community, Collington, had plenty of other activities and interesting new friends to keep Grant occupied.

But not long after moving to the Continuing Care Retirement Community in suburban Washington, D.C., Grant connected with several other residents who were also ‘hams.’ Working with these individuals, Grant has helped set up a fully functional Amateur Radio center in the extensive woodshop at Collington. Not only will the radio station provide a venue for the enthusiasts, but as Grant said, “It will serve as an integral part of the emergency communications systems in the county.”

When an emergency strikes, even if internet and phone systems are still working, they are often overloaded as everyone tries to use them at once. The Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) is a nationwide program of the ARRL – the national association for Amateur Radio. It provides Amateur Radio communications for critical organizations in emergencies. Emergency Management Centers, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, FEMA, CERT, National Weather Service, many hospitals and others have formal agreements with the hams. Ham radio volunteers have been lifesavers in the Haitian earthquake, Japanese tsunami, and in many hurricanes and tornadoes in the United States.

Despite this, it was a personal connection with a resident in the community’s nursing and rehabilitation section that really opened the door to a meaningful purpose for the radio. Grant was recently approached by another resident with vision problems who told him, “I’ve lost my sight and the worst thing is I have nobody to talk to. I should have never gotten rid of my ham radio license.”
Without hesitation, Grant had responded “Let’s get you one again and you’ll have all the people you want to talk to.” Grant is working to help him study for the FCC tests needed to earn an Amateur Radio license. When discussing this connection, Grant could not help but beam with enthusiasm, saying, “He’s going to be up here, so it’s growing; it’s great.”

Grant continued, saying, “People think that ham radio is not as viable a hobby, but in this age of the Internet, it’s even more so.” This is right on track with American Radio Relay League, the national association for Amateur Radio in the United States. According to Allen Pitts at the ARRL’s national headquarters, there are over 695,000 ham radio licensees in the United States today – more than ever before. Approximately 30,000 new hams earn their first licenses each year. “Collington is an excellent example of creative thinking in a retirement community. Their inclusion of Amateur Radio opens the doors to hands-on learning about wireless communication, provides social interaction in a most enjoyable hobby and also can quickly become a functional emergency communications option for residents.”

While this may be a unique activity when compared to other retirement communities throughout the country, Collington is known for a robust list of activities all driven by a highly intelligent and diverse group of residents. Whether individuals are building and racing model sailboats or playing on the competitive croquet team, the community supports thinking creatively. “Collington is full of interesting people who really know how to live into life. We’re all extremely active and very social. It’s easy to find new friends”, says long-time resident Marion Henry, who chairs two committees at Collington.