KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

ARRL

Radio Celebrates 100 Years of Voices

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From your ARRL:

Newington, CT Mar 17, 2006 — “Hello!” -the first spoken word to be heard over the radio a century ago. The ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio, is celebrating 100 years of voice over the airwaves in 2006.

As a boy, Reginald Fessenden heard his uncle describe Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. The 10 year-old asked, “Why do they need wires?” He then spent much of his life trying to figure it out.

His early attempts at voice transmission were unintelligible. Then, on December 23, 1900, he was able to pass a voice message by radio to his assistant. His first word was “Hello.”

Later, while working to improve wireless Morse code type communication between land stations and ships at sea, he continued his voice experiments. Working in secrecy, he planned a surprise for a 9 p.m. broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1906. Shipboard radio operators had been tipped to listen for something special during the December 24 transmission, but no one could have anticipated what happened. At the appointed hour, radio operators across the North Atlantic were surprised to hear, not the expected Morse code tapping, but a voice coming from their radios, calling “CQ, CQ”. It was Fessenden beginning the very first “radio program.” After a brief introduction, he played music. The planned Bible readings by Mrs. Fessenden and his secretary had to be quickly covered by the inventor as the first cases of microphone fright occurred when both women froze.

While commercial broadcasting didn’t begin for another 14 years after Fessenden’s historic first broadcast in 1906, thousands of inquisitive amateur hobbyists began to experiment with this new fangled technology. They were, and are still, called “Amateur Radio” operators. They labored in attics, barns, garages and cellars to perfect what we now call radio. In the USA, they formed the American Radio Relay League (ARRL).

These Amateur Radio operators, also known as “hams”, continue to be at the forefront of developing technologies years in advance of when they are rolled out to the public. FM, television, and even our small mobile telephones were all used by Amateur Radio operators many years ahead of the public.

You can find Amateur Radio groups in your area at http://www.hello-radio.org . Visit one and say, “Hello!”

The purpose of this site is to introduce the public to amateur radio, so I’m not really sure about the premise of “celebrating 100 years of voices,” but it does have a lot of good information about ham radio, presented in a way that most non-hams will find interesting.

PIO Tools Available on CD-ROM

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From Allen Pitts, W1AGP, ARRL Media and PR Manager:

The Swiss Army Knife for PIOs 2006 edition is available on CD and now there’s also a copy on the internet.

The ‘Knife is a collection of the most used tools, files, and ideas from PIOs around the country. It is the “go to first” place for most of the questions PIOs will have.

Norm Schklar, WA4ZXV, has put the ‘Knife 06 on a website (http://www.wa4zxv.com/sak/sak.htm)! This will allow people who need things in a hurry to get at information. While it is not a replacement for having the disk yourself (the whole idea of the disk was so that people did not have to search through websites or wanted to present parts in a meeting, I definitely DO see it as an answer for people who still have not heard about the ‘Knife and are looking for something immediately.

Actually, the information as well as the entire disk are available there. The site has available the .iso disk image so that you can burn the CD for yourself and for others. Have fun!

E-mailing Affiliated Clubs

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As the Michigan Section Affiliated Club Coordinator, I need to send e-mail to all the clubs in Michigan from time to time. To do this, I need to generate a list of all the clubs with an e-mail address. To generate this list, I have been going to the affiliated clubs search page on the ARRL website, generating a list of clubs in Michigan, and then picking through that list manually for e-mail addresses. As you can imagine, this is a pain.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was asked by our Section Manager to se what I could do about getting inactive clubs back into the fold. “Inactive clubs?” I asked him. “How do I find a list of inactive clubs”?

He replied that I could get this information from a page on the ARRL website. I had never heard of such a page, so he got Rose-Ann Lawrence at ARRL HQ to send me the URL to the Big Club list page.

Cool! Not only will this page give you a list of active clubs and inactive clubs, it will also feed this information to you in comma-delimited, ASCII format. That feature lets you feed the data into a spreadsheet or database and slice it and dice it any way you want.

Since my immediate need is to generate a list of e-mail addresses for club contacts, I developed a program to do just that. At first, I thought I’d just feed the data into a spreadsheet and write a macro to get e-mails, but then it occurred to me that with a touch of programming, I could make this useful for all ACCs. Click here to generate an email list for clubs in your section.

Each club record actually contains four email addresses, a club address, a club contact address, the club president’s address, and the club’s newsletter editor’s address. What my program does is find the first e-mail address from a record and then add it to the generated list. If a club record has no e-mail addresses, then nothing is added to the list.

Anyway, try it out, and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your suggestion for making it better.

The Graying of Ham Radio

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If you need more evidence that ham radio is becoming an old man’s hobby, you need look no further than the latest WorldRadio Subscriber Survey. The magazine polled 1,600 readers; 1,237 replied.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that less than 5% (4.5%, to be exact) of the respondents are less than 45 years old, and more than half (52.8%) are more than 65 years old! No wonder a friend of mine always seems to confuse the ARRL with AARP.

The problem, of course, is not that there are so many seniors in ham radio. I think that’s a good thing. The problem is that there are so few kids.

Why is this a problem? Well, I’m not sure of the demographics of the ARRL membership, but I’d bet it’s pretty much the same as in this survey. Being a membership organization, they do have to provide services to their members, BUT this shouldn’t be at the expense of looking out for the future of amateur radio. And it’s my opinion that this is exactly what’s happening.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but we really do need to start working on this. Ham radio has a lot to offer. We have to get it in front of kids again and make it an option for them.

This Weekend in Ham Radio at KB6NU

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It was a busy weekend here at KB6NU.

The first order of business was the Fists Sprint. Although the contest started 1:00 pm, I got started with preparations a bit earlier. I had taken down my 20m ground plane antenna a couple of weeks ago, so that I could try it in a different–and hopefully more effective spot. Well, of course, I never got around to doing it earlier, so I did it Saturday morning.

Not wanting to goof around too much, I hung it from the same branch that it hang from earlier. It always seemed to be pretty effective there, but when I had it there before, I did not have the 40m/30m dipole. I was kind of worried that there would be some interaction between the two antennas.

Fortunately, that did not seem to be the case. Neither antenna seemed to be affected, and I was able to make contacts on all three bands.

Unfortunately, neither 20m or 40m seemed to be in very good condition, and while there were stations on the air, I wasn’t having a lot of luck working them. After almost two hours and 30 contacts, I pulled the plug.

After a disappointing contest, a cool contact. After giving up on the Sprint, I tuned around a bit and worked K6KPH on 14.050. K6KPH is the station of the Maritime Radio Historical Society. According to their QRZ.Com page,

The Maritime Radio Historical Society is dedicated to the preservation and documentation of the history of maritime radio communications with special emphasis on the stations and companies of the Pacific coast of the United States. The call sign of the amateur station of the Society, K6KPH, is intended as a tribute the greatest of those stations, the “wireless giant of the Pacific”, KPH.

K6KPH on-the-air operations use only the original transmitters, receivers and antennas of KPH. No amateur equipment is employed. At this writing K6KPH operating frequencies are 3545kc, 7050kc, 14050kc and 21050kc. The transmitters for most of these frequencies are 1950s vintage RCA commercial units known as “K” and “L” sets.

The antennas used are double extended Zepps for frequencies below 12Mc and H over 2 for 12Mc and above. All antennas are fed with open wire line.

The KPH receiving station is 18 miles north of Bolinas on the Pt. Reyes peninsula. The operators work from this location, keying the transmitters in Bolinas remotely, just as was done when the station was in daily service.

KPH is activated at least once a year for the “Night of Nights” event that commemorates the last commercial Morse transmission in the US on 12 July 1999. KPH operates on HF frequencies in the 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 and 22Mc marine bands and on 500 and 426kc in the MF band.

K6KPH is typically activated for International Marconi Day in April and for Straight Key Night on New Year’s Eve.

It was very cool to work them. There is more information on the history and operation of KPH and K6KPH on the Maritime Radio Historical Society website.

Lots of old junk and some campaigning in Kalamazoo. On Sunday, I drove out to Kalamazoo for the Kalamazoo Hamfest. One reason for going was to continue my campaign for Vice Director. Another was to meet with the organizers, with a view to having them host the 2006 ARRL Michigan Section Convention. Third, I wanted to see some radio junk. :)

For some strange reason, this hamfest had a lot of old test equipment. There were lots of old VOMs, and some VTVMs and one guy even had an L&N precision potentiometer. What caught my eye, though, was a 1938 Weston Industrial Circuit Tester. It looked to be in good condition, and it was a real beauty in its wooden case. The guy only wanted $22 for it, too. I really was thinking of buying it, but I resisted the temptation.

I did make one purchase–an external speaker for $2. It’s kind of old and a bit beat up, but I hooked it up to my rig yesterday, and it seems to work pretty well. So if I don’t factor in the $30 in gas it cost me to get there and back, I got a pretty good deal.

While one of my reasons for attending was to do some campaigning, at first I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m getting kind of burned out on campaigning. It didn’t take long to make a couple of circuits around the hamfest, though, so I stationed myself at an empty table and began working the crowd.

I actually got into it once I got started. It’s fun to talk to hams and find out their concerns and get their views on how to make ham radio better. I also talked to some guys who were just getting started in the hobby and hopefully I gave them some good advice.

Jumping into the fray on eHam. Another thing I’ve been doing all weekend is monitoring the response to my latest article on eHam. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I submitted the article on Friday morning, and by that evening, it had been posted on the website.

I knew that both I and the ARRL would get a lot of criticism–and the boys didn’t disappoint me–but I also got a lot of positive comments and support. That was heartening.

One of the reasons I posted my article was to see how I’d react to criticism. I am happy to report that if all they can come up with is illogical rants about the ARRL using disaster funds for new office furniture and that I have a 6-land call and not an 8-land call, then I think I’ll be OK.

The ARRL Must Be More Responsive to Members

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I’ve been out campaigning for Vice Director of the Great Lakes Division for about the last month or so, and if there’s one recurring theme, one thing that the members want from the ARRL, it is for them to be responsive. Let me give you an example.

Last night, I visited a local ham radio club meeting. When I asked the president if I could have a couple of minutes to introduce myself, the first thing he said is, “Boy, do I have a bone to pick with the ARRL.” He went on to tell me that he’d just completed the online emergency communications courses, and one of the assignments was to contact the Section Manager and/or other section leaders. He told me that he e-mailed each of them, but never got a response.

Later that evening, another guy approached me and related his experience with the ARRL Awards Program. He’s been working on his Five Band DXCC Award, but has been frustrated because only contacts on the 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10-meter bands are allowed. He noted that he really enjoys working the WARC bands and has almost 100 countries on 17m. He sent a letter to the ARRL asking why contacts on 17m are not allowed for this reward, but like the first guy, he never got a response.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard similar comments from many different amateur radio operators. And I’ve had similar experiences with the League. It seems at times as though they blow off any idea that does not come from someone in Newington.

Now, I understand that an organization as large as the ARRL is never going to make everyone happy, BUT it should always respond to its members. Maybe this is the source–or at least one source–of the antagonism so many hams feel towards the ARRL. At any rate, looking into this is on my list of things to do should I get elected as Vice Director.