So, I’ve recently been going through some old magazines and cam across this advertisement. I forget what issue it came from, but RigPix says that it was manufactured in the early 1990s. Aside from being a bit chunky—and probably pretty expensive—this looks like it could have been a great radio. And, just the thing to encourage more activity on 1.2 GHz.
Anyone remember this radio? How much did it cost? Did it work well?
A software engineer and his father, a broadcast engineer, get their tickets and make their first contact. Thanks to Steve, N8GNJ, of Zero Retries for a pointer to this video.
When I first got back into ham radio, a friend of mine gave me a Slinky antenna. I used that antenna for quite a while, until it rusted….Dan
Learning how to coil cables properly can save you a lot of time when setting up a POTA or Field Day antenna.
The U.S. is on the brink of a new semiconductor manufacturing boom, leaving companies in urgent need of technicians to staff their new fabs and engineers to design the chips that these facilities will churn out. And unless things change, there soon may not be enough skilled chip workers in the U.S. to go around.
A top trade group for the U.S. semiconductor industry issued a report claiming there will not be enough skilled engineers and other workers to support their expansion plans, leaving it 67,000 workers short by 2030.
The way the semiconductor industry is growing, it will need a U.S. workforce of about 460,000 by the end of the decade, up from about 345,000 this year, according to a new study released by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and Oxford Economics.
Wayne Green, W2NSD, publisher of 73 Magazine, always used to tout the opportunities that an amateur radio license afforded hams. I’m sure that he’d be writing about this topic if he were still with us and editorializing today…Dan
Most design engineers are familiar with tools of the trade such as voltmeters, oscilloscopes, signal generators, and spectrum analyzers. Some may not have had the opportunity to use a vector network analyzer (VNA). It’s the intent of this article to introduce VNA measurement and present a few typical applications.
What you’ll learn:
Although written by a a company that makes engineering-grade VNAs, you might find this an interesting article to read if you just purchased a nanoVNA…Dan
DC-DC converters are widely used to efficiently produce a regulated voltage from a source that may or may not be well-controlled to a load that may or may not be constant. This article shows how DC-DC converters can be built using the Renesas SLG47105 GreenPAK programmable mixed-signal matrix.
DC-DC converters are high-frequency power-conversion circuits that use high-frequency switching and inductors, transformers, and capacitors to smooth out switching noise into regulated DC voltages. Closed feedback loops maintain constant voltage output even when changing input voltages and output currents. At 90% efficiency, they’re generally much more efficient and smaller than linear regulators. Their disadvantages are noise and complexity.
I just returned from Las Vegas yesterday, where I attended DEFCON and taught a one-day Tech class in the Ham Radio Village for the second year in a row. As it was last year, it was both exhilarating and exhausting. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, taught the class on Thursday, wandered about DEFCON on Friday, learned a few things, and left Saturday morning.
This year, there was another full house (pun intended) with 31 students in all. Unfortunately, only 24 passed the test. That’s a little lower than my usual pass rate, but come to find out that some of the students had never even looked at the study guide before the class. I know this because when I mentioned that I was following my study guide from front to back, several asked where they could get it.
I’m already thinking about next year. For example, I think with a little more publicity we could get 50 people to attend the class. Also, I probably should make up some slides to make up to show the students what resistors look like and what RF connectors look like. I usually have a goodie bag of components that I pass around for a local class, but it’s difficult to do that for a class somewhere other than Ann Arbor.
At lunch, an ICQPodcast listener joined me for lunch. That was nice. I told him that I was always surprised when people say they listen to us on the podcast. He replied that he was a relatively new ham, and that listening to the podcast helped him learn more about the community and become part of it. I hadn’t thought about that being one of our functions, but it’s something that I’m going to keep in mind on future episodes.
After the class, two study guide readers came up to me and thanked me for writing the study guides. One of them said that he used my study guides to pass all three tests. Now, he’s a VE with Ham Radio Village and giving back as well. How cool is that?
On Friday, I hung out at the conference and learned stuff. I learned a bit about quantum computing, how some people are using social media to chart the course of the war in Ukraine, and whether or not solid-state drives are actually more reliable than mechanical hard drives.
One of the other “villages” that I was really impressed with was the Hardware Hacking/Soldering Skills Village. They had at least a hundred people sitting at tables soldering and unsoldering things. Hamvention needs something like that.
While I’ll teach at DEFCON for as long as they’ll have me, I have never been a big fan of Las Vegas. I really have no desire at all to gamble anymore (I used to play a little blackjack), it’s incredibly hot in August (every day was over 100ºF), and the price for nearly everything is sky-high (I paid more than $20 for breakfast at a Dunkin Donuts!). Even so, it was packed to the gills. I was amazed that they get so many people there with such high temperatures and high prices.
Despite all that, DEFCON did get me pumped up about doing more hacking. For example, I’m going to look into purchasing a Xiegu X6100 and hacking on it. Apparently, the software runs on an internal Linux computer and can be user-modified. R1CBU has already hacked the X6100, adding features and improving the radio’s performance. I’m looking forward to learning more about this. I also have some other ideas, which I’ll be writing more about in the future.
I got this very nice email today:
Hi Dan,
Thank you for teaching your class @ DefCon! I was lucky enough to snag a spot at the very last minute; I got a lot out of the class but, since I had no prior knowledge of/experience with the subject and the exam was being offering for the duration of the con, I decided to hold off until I’d had a chance to review the material.
That said, I’m happy to share that I took & passed the exam on Sunday after re-reading your guide and taking a practice test.
So, thank you again for piquing my interest in ham radio & making it so accessible — I hadn’t expected to leave Las Vegas a licensed amateur radio technician!
I’ve since downloaded your “21 Things to do After” guide and look forward to getting started with my first radio.. : )
How cool is that? That bumps up my pass rate a little more :)
I’m not sure who got the Texas Department of Public Safety to do this, but kudos to them.
I’m a big fan of building things like this yourself. Not only do you spend less money, you learn something in the process.
Watch and see what I mean.
As Twitter descends into hellhole that Elon Musk is making it into, more hams are showing up on Mastodon, a “non-profit, abuse-free social network based on open web standards and principles.” I am @[email protected]. Mastodon.Radio is a space for the amateur (ham) radio community and anyone interested in shortwave listening (SWL). It’s run by Christopher, M0YNG. Thanks, Chris!
I’m finding it actually more interesting than Twitter for ham radio kinds of things. Here are three things that were in my feed yesterday.
The author of FutureSDR, Bastian Bloessl, describes FutureSDR, as:
An experimental asynchronous SDR runtime for heterogeneous architectures that is:
Here, he does a little live coding that some of you might find interesting.
OpenEar is an open source ear training app for musicians that runs on Android phones and tablets. It includes exercises to help musicians master recognizing musical patterns. I’m wondering if it might also help those learning Morse Code. If you do download it and try it, let me know.
Flashdancer (@[email protected]) shared this photo, noting, “I’m assuming that 403 years ago this person died very unexpectedly.”
I love this feature in QST. Not only can you feel the history of amateur radio by reading these articles, many of them still impart useful technical information. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
July 1923The article that I chose from this issue is “Electric Filters” by F.S. Dellenbaugh, Jr. He writes, “Most thing in amateur radio have gotten beyond guesswork; reliable information is available. A glaring exception is the electric wave filter…” He then goes on to give a relatively rigorous explanation of LC filters in many different forms. This is all good stuff and still relevant today.
Also notable in this issue are the articles:
You might thing that the article, A Simple Computing SWR Meter, describes one of the first amateur radio applications of a microprocessor, but you’d be wrong. Instead, the article gives plans for an SWR/power meter that uses op amps to perform analog computations. The beauty of this approach, according to the authors, is that the SWR reading are independent of the forward power.
Two articles in this issue are aimed at helping clubs:
A frequent topic of discussion in amateur radio circles is speculation about new products from major manufacturers. There was, for example, a lot of discussion before Dayton about a new product introduction by Kenwood. Many were hoping that they were going to introduce a new HF radio and were disappointed when the new product was just a new HT to replace the TH-D74 (see right).
Other manufacturers are equally opaque when it comes to their product plans. That just leads to a lot of guessing that rarely corresponds to reality.
Every once in a while, though, we get some tantalizing info out of manufacturers. I found an example of this in a recent post to the IC-7610 mailing list, “Interesting document on the Icom Japan website.” The topic points to a document, “Medium Term Business Plan 2026,” on the Icom Japan website. This report gives its fanboys (myself included) a little visibility into what’s going on at Icom.
The report paints a picture of what Icom’s business strategy will be over the next three years. I’ll let you read the report for yourself, but let me point you at some of the interesting tidbits I found. For example, the report notes that amateur radio products accounts for 17% of Icom’s sales. It’s not their biggest sector, but it’s not inconsequential, either.
Under the heading, “Improved Performance and Functions of Products with New Platforms and Technologies,” they make these three points about amateur radio:
These bullet points aren’t very revealing to be sure, but it does makes me wonder what they mean by “restructuring of product lineup.” One thing is for sure. Icom has plans for the amateur radio business.
Under the heading, “Strengthening Our Business Base: New Business,” are the following bullet points:
While not directly related to the amateur radio product line, these bullet points do point to what may be coming. Think of the possibilities of incorporating AI technologies into amateur radio transceivers for example.
Finally, the report discusses some of the company’s efforts towards sustainable growth. Now, this might all be just hype, but at least they’re saying the right things. For example, in addition to reducing CO2 emissions and waste in the manufacturing process, they discuss what they hope to do to improve employee satisfaction and to “create a safe and prosperous society through communication.” I may be an Icom fanboy, but isn’t that a philosophy that we can all get behind?
In this episode, i joined Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the following:
Other news includes:
This episode’s feature is MFJ8504 Review and Understanding HF Controls.
About a year and a half ago, I bought an Icom IC-2820H at the Findlay hamfest. It included the UT-123 option, which is a board that you plug into the main board, which gives it D-STAR capability. I mentioned in a previous post that I’d be willing to remove and sell that board as there are non D-STAR repeaters in my area.
I got one offer about a year ago, but that never panned out for some reason. Then about a month ago, someone else offered to buy it. After agreeing on the price, he sent me a money order for the amount, so yesterday, I attempted to remove the board.
I hit a snag, though, in getting the board out of the unit. To remove the board, you have to remove 10 tiny Phillips head, M2 screws. I don’t know who installed the board, but whoever did, really torqued down these screws, making them very difficult to unscrew. I got the first nine out OK, although some of them i had to really bear down on some to get them out.
The tenth was another matter. I stripped the head, making it unremovable, at least by any method I could find on the internet. I tried using a straight screwdriver and then a rubber band, but the darn thing just wasn’t coming out.
This morning, I took it over to my favorite hardware store, Stadium Hardware. The people there are really amazing. They’ll help you with almost anything. I knew that if it was possible to get that screw out, they could do it.
At first, the guy said, “Hmmmm. Looks like we’re going to have to drill that out and re-tap whatever it’s screwing into.” But, then, he walked away from the counter and came back with a set of damaged screw removers and a drill motor.
At first, it looked like he was just shaving more metal from the stripped screw, and I’m thinking that I’m really screwed now. Eventually, though, the screw began to turn and it came out. I ended up buying the extractor set, of course.
I took the radio home, popped the lid, removed the board, packaged it up (the guy who sold me the radio even had the original box for the UT-123), and I sent it on its way. The hardware store didn’t have the right screw to replace the ruined one, so I only had to replace nine of them.
The whole process was kind of a pain, but it was a learning experience, too. I learned how to use a screw extractor, and I now have the right tools to do the job.
