Ham Radio – A contact sport

Last Sunday I drove to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to a hamfest.

Some of my earliest ham radio memories are going with my dad to the hamfest in Cedar Rapids in the 1970s.  In those days, the hamfest was a huge event… I vaguely recall table after table of boat anchors and Art Collins sightings. Art, founder of Collins Radio, was one of the local ham celebs that Iowa hams would easily recognize.

In the 1980s and 1990s, PCs began to invade the local hamfests.  Even though I’m a bit of PC nut, I was never drawn to PC stuff at hamfests. I figured that I could always buy PCs elsewhere – I was there to buy ham stuff. Maybe that sounds hypocritical coming from a guy who sold a lot of solar panels at Dayton. Oh well.

Anyway, I picked up a few goodies (antenna mount, patch cables, and a barrel connector). I also got to catch up a bit with some Iowa hams I don’t see often.  Good times.

Is the local hamfest what it used to be now that the internet is here? No – but it’s still worth the trip in my opinion.

While flipping through the July 2010 issue of QST I stumbled on the Vintage Radio column titles “From Dits to Bits”.  In this article, John (K2TQN) describes his long held fascination with computers and connections to some some early computer magazines, clubs and kits. I would imagine many hams would have a similar long time passion for electronic computing – myself included.

However, the article did have a glaring error that I need to mention. It credits ENIAC as the first electronic computer built at the University of Pennsylvania.

While ENIAC was certainly a major milestone in the development of computers (and truly was the first general purpose electronic computer), ENIAC was not the first electronic computer.

In 1939, John Vincent Atanasoff, prototyped the first electronic computer at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa. This machine, dubbed the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was little known until a highly publicized court case in the 1970s.   The judge ruled that the ABC was “prior art” which voided the Sperry Rand claim that the ENIAC was the first electronic computer.

So, here’s to you John Vincent Atansoff… let’s hope that QST sets the record straight.

The Story County Amateur Radio Club (SCARC) held field day at the 4H building on the Iowa State University campus again this year. This building is considered an EOC for the campus which allows us to “compete” in “F” category. We have been using two transmitters plus a “Get on the air” station to put us in the 2F category.

This year I offered to provide the solar power for field day.  Not many ham radio clubs have access to a 190 Watt military roll-up solar panel, so this was something new for the guys.  The PowerFilm 190W Solar Quad is folded and rolled into a package that is roughly the size and weight of a sleeping bag. Unrolled, it’s a flat mat that is staked and plugged into a battery system.

The  solar panel and its BOS performed quite well and several QSOs were made with a 100W IC-746 using this system. The BOS is a DC-AC power inverter, pair of deep cycle batteries and a charge controller in a box.

The SCARC group had a great time and worked more QSOs than any previous year.  The score is not final, but I think we were a bit behind in our bonus points. Anyway, great fun was had by all.

My pictures from this outing are included with the DMRAA effort in a single Solar Powered Field Day 2010 photo album.  See you next FD!

Field Day 2010 is in the books. The antennas have been plucked from the trees, the BBQ has been finished and the generators have been unplugged. Field Day is always entertaining and it’s a great way to try a new aspect of the hobby. This year, I spent time with two clubs: the Des Moines Radio Amateur Association (DMRAA) and a combined effort of the Story County Amateur Radio Club (SCARC) and Cyclone ARC (CARC).

At PowerFilm Solar, we’ve put an effort into supporting ham radio & EMCOMM groups. To this end, this year we loaned about $30,000 worth of solar panels designed for the military to DMRAA and SCARC.

A crew of 5 deployed a 1 kW Solar PowerShade (a solar field shelter) for the DMRAA. Setup went well and we really didn’t have any issues.

While we did have a few clouds and an overnight storm with high winds, the shelter performed well – but functionally and electrically.

A full set of PowerShade solar shelter setup photos from Field Day 2010 can be found by clicking on the image. I’ve posted pics from both clubs including setup of the 1kw PowerShade and 190W roll-out solar quadrant at SCARC.

At the Dayton Hamvention we displayed a scale model of the PowerShade Field Shelter – the 2KW version. That model drew a lot of attention and comments such as “Hey Bob, look at this…. this is just what we need for our field day outing.”  We knew that this shelter would be a hit for DMRAA.

The DMRAA group has posted a writeup and video of their Field Day experience this year.

PowerFilm Solar will have it’s first booth at Dayton Hamvention 2010. This will mark an entry into the ham radio market for the thin-film solar panel company.

Last fall, I joined PowerFilm Solar. At PowerFilm Solar we make thin film solar panel products for a wide variety of products. PowerFilm products include:

• Ruggedized/weatherproof rollable solar chargers
• Solar powered military tents
• Custom solar products
• Solar panels for electric carts and other unique applications
• A variety of foldable solar chargers
  • A small USB port/AA battery solar chargers
  • Digicam and black foldable solar panels (up to 90 watts)

Anyway, since joining PowerFilm, I’ve wondered how well these products would do in the ham radio market. Many of our products were designed for military use, but are deployed where Emcomm service is required (for example, Haiti).

So, we’re going to give it a shot – we’ll have our first booth at the Hamvention at Dayton this year. We’ll be selling and displaying everything from small solar panels to larger panels. Still locking in the details – but we’ll be there.

I’m looking forward to returning to Dayton – this time, from the other side of the booth.

I managed to spend some time in the ARRL SSB International/DX contest a few weeks ago. Although it was a very casual effort for me (I started about an hour late and took many big breaks) – I still had fun.

This contest was a good chance for me to give the IC-7600 a workout in a SSB DX contest environment. I was very pleased with the way the rig performed. I did run into some issues with the Prosistel rotor which, at times, did not want to rotate through 45 degrees (NE). Strange bug that will need some investigation.

As I write this, it’s the middle of a fairly nasty winter. We have had near record snowfall and the temperature is currently 5°F (-15° C). What better time to reflect upon a warm/sunny Field Day 2009?

The Story County Amateur Radio Club (SCARC) and Iowa State University Cyclone Amateur Radio Club (CARC) joined forces once again on the ISU campus to stage a class 2F (2 transmitter, emergency operations center) effort.

Yeah, that’s me – late at night on 20m CW. Nice posture, eh?

Our 2009 score improved dramatically over 2008.

The station featured a tri-band beam mounted on a tower, a couple verticals, and a few wire antennas. We use (mostly) Icom IC-746s which are reliable, easy to learn and plentiful in our club.

The facility is great. Air-conditioning, bug-free, indoor plumbing – it’s got all we need.

In 2009, we tried a few new things. For example, about 20 Boy Scouts were on site working on their radio badge, WA0ROI gave a demonstration of building a J-Pole antenna, and we made an attempt to work a satellite. Great fun.

If you’d like to see our full presentation (including a lot of nice summer time, central Iowa photos of the club in action by yours truly), see the full report.

It’s been far too long since I’ve updated the blog.  I hadn’t intended to go so long without a post, but the chaos of life simply got in the way.

I’m now planning to get back into the routine of posting from time to time on this blog. I’m going to keep the focus on ham radio, antennas, DXing, contesting, towers, radios, ham radio software, SDR, … basically the facets of the hobby that I love. I don’t know if anyone has noticed my absence from the ham radio blog landscape, but I tend to post for my own benefit anyway.

Here’s a short snapshot of what I’ve been up to over the past year or so…

• Career changes
  • New company – Adapt Data Solutions
    Just about 12 months ago, my job as Director of Quality at a Fortune 500 company was “restructured”. I know many have gone through the same thing. I can tell you that such an event will shift your priorities… as a result, my time and energy went into starting a CRM/issue tracking software sales/consulting company (Adapt Data Solutions).   The company continues to grow even in this business environment.
  • New employer – PowerFilm Solar
    In September, I began to work as VP of Quality & Process Improvement for PowerFilm Solar, a thin film solar products company. PowerFilm Solar makes solar products for military and consumer markets including large tents with flexible solar panels integrated into the fabric to small devices to charge AA batteries, portable electronics (including USB charging) and much more. It’s an exciting company in the middle of the “Silicon Prairie” and I’m looking forward to watching it grow.
• New radio – Icom IC-7600
  After reading a lot of reviews, analysis and hand wringing, I purchased a new rig: the Icom IC-7600.  It was a tough decision – but long overdue. The old IC-746 was simply outmatched in contests and DX pileups. I was leaning towards the Flex-5000, and still may pursue a Flex rig in the future. However, I just kept envisioning a PC crash/reboot in the middle of a contest run. I’m glad to see guys like W9OY having fun with the Flex platform, and I still look forward to adding SDR to my shack someday.
• Software & N0HR website updates
  • Moving this website to a new hosting company is a bigger challenge than I’d anticipated. My site has a lot of gotchas – custom scripts/code (Propstats, DXpedition Map, etc.) that will not move without some effort.
  • The N0HR DXpedition Map had a “Y2010″ problem. When I wrote the software long ago, I hardcoded a date search that went through the list of dxpeditions chronologically, but it would only work through 12-31-2009 as it tried to parse the year by looking for “200X”. I’ve updated that code so it will be good for another 10 years or so
  • I revised the popular Propfire plugin for Firefox today to support FF v3.6.  When a new rev of FF arrives, I get a lot of email asking to update Propfire to support the new version. I’m glad it’s so widely used.
  • The HamLinks Ham Radio Toolbar still has a few thousand loyal fans according to the statistics. In fact, during the recent contest season I had more than one guy stop me to ask if I was the toolbar guy (or the Propfire guy).
• On-the-air activities
  • Field Day 2009 was a lot of fun. I’ll post some pics in the coming days to give those of us in the upper midwest a reminder of summer (”You mean there’s grass under all this snow?”)
  • Contesting: CQWW-CW, CQWW-SSB, ARRL SS-SSB, ARRL RTTY Roundup. Still getting acquainted with the new rig. Lots to learn.
  • DXing
  • Kid’s Day 2010 was a lot of fun with our 7 year old daughter.

That’s a snapshot. I hope to post more frequently and get into some of these topics soon.

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Nasa reported today that the sun isn’t broken after all. Whew!

I learned a few things about the inner workings of the sun by reading this article:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm?list1061202

The sun has an internal “jet stream” that shifts latitude with the solar cycle. It’s been sluggish, but they’ve now seen it move back to where it should be headed (albeit a year or so late).

Look for sunspots and better HF radio propagation in the days ahead.

I’ve made some headway on the new website. Lots of work to be done yet, but it’s good to tackle some of the major challenges prior to the big cutover.

If you would like to get a sneak peek at the new N0HR.com website – just be warned that it’s only partially done. There’s still stuff that’s not functioning as expected – I know that and am working when I can to make the changes.

I think the Ham Radio Links system will be the next to move. That thing is massive and it would be a shame to lose it in the move. Next will be the Ham Radio Product Reviews section. Again, there’s a lot of effort that’s been spent to build the reviews system that I don’t want to lose.

Some things might have to wait until the new server is live. The propagation updates are from a thorny script that I created (which provide feeds to Propstats and the propagation numbers in the HamLinks Ham Radio Toolbar).

The Ham Radio Forums are low traffic and should be relatively easy to move (famous last words).

Anyway, let me know what you think of the new look & feel.

73

Pat N0HR

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