EMRFD Message Archive 6235
Message Date From Subject 6235 2011-05-02 22:44:27 KK7B FM
This may be a little off topic, but perhaps not. My roots in amateur radio are in weak-signal VHF-UHF-microwave work, and I still pay attention to activities of that parallel universe. This past weekend was the 2011 South Eastern VHF Society Conference (SVHFS)--a major event in the weak signal VHF world. It didn't happen. The conference Hotel in Huntsville Alabama was hit by a power failure, and the next day, a devastating tornado cell tore through the state, with massive destruction and loss of life. Conference organizers followed the events with concern after the initial storm and power failure, but by the time the destruction hit there were few options for getting word out to the attendees. Many were stranded on the road, some in airports.
No phone. No power. Not internet. No cell phones.
...and no amateur radio.
There was no amateur radio because the weak signal VHF-UHF is an elite technical community. We have an unstated (and sometimes stated) goal of getting folks off their annoying FM handhelds and into more interesting technical pursuits of amateur radio. Newbies at the conferences quickly recognize that HTs on their belts are not a merit badge. In my own articles, I have stated that real privilege of the amateur radio license is not permission to transmit (everybody can do that) it's the privilege to design, build, test, experiment, and modify our gear. Implicit in that opinion is the ancient disparaging view of appliances and appliance operators. We didn't invent that bias--it was around before even the old-timers among us were born. The EMRFD community is also elite and technical, with some of that same bias.
Wes Hayward and I have kidded each other on a mountain top, setting up a field day station, when each of us discovered that the other had a 2m FM handheld hidden away in the bottom of the pack. (Our kids have no such issues--the harmonics and subharmonics (kids and grandkids) have licenses and FM handhelds.)
The amateur radio that I know and love starts and ends in my notebooks and on my bench. I make a point to operate the gear I design and build, because that's the most important part of the Experiment (as in Experimental MRFD). Cool new stuff that works on the bench is disappointing on the air. Until it's connected to an antenna and headphones, I don't even know what I don't know--and until I've used the receiver with a transmitter to make contacts, I don't know how annoying some of the bugs are, and the importance of some of the features I left out. So it's back to the notebook, back to the bench--the stuff I love.
I have little interest in talking--I'd rather think, read and write. If I feel like making noise, I get out my fiddle. So FM is not my mode. I was a purist until I started climbing mountains, 30 years ago. I did a little soul searching, and realized that if I was stuck on the side of a mountain with an injured climbing partner I would want an FM handheld in my pack. So I bought an IC2AT and AA cell pack, wrapped them in a zip lock bag, and they rode to the summit of every major peak in the Pacific Northwest. I never took them out on a climb. But they were there--a basic radio and alkaline cells. Stuff that works.
I haven't climbed anything major for decades, and the IC2AT is somewhere in the garage. The cell phone era arrived, and I didn't think much about amateur radio in any context other than the really cool experimental stuff in my lab/shack. Then a while back I was on Hatteras with the family when the order to evacuate came through ahead of a Hurricane. We spent a day in the world's longest traffic jam. No phone. No power. No credit cards. No amateur radio. The IC2AT in it's ziplock bag rode around in the trunk for a while after that.
Over on the microwave web site there is a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that such a large group of prominent radio amateurs was caught without the ability to communicate. There are some good ideas kicking around involving emergency preparedness. Lots of calls for a phone tree, call-in frequencies, coordinated this and that.
One idea stood out: when the unexpected happens, just turn the radio to 146.52. We're hams, we already know how to use it. No coordination necessary. No emergency preparedness drills. Most of us already have the radio...somewhere out in the garage.
News from the devastation in Alabama is still coming in. My thoughts and prayers are with those folks, as they have been with the Japanese people since the Tsunami. Now I'm going to go rat around in the garage and find that radio, and make sure I've got some fresh batteries. I figure when the next unexpected event hits, I'll be more useful with a handheld radio than a notebook full of sketches of a really cool new mixer.
Best Regards,
Rick KK7B6236 2011-05-03 04:28:20 jforguit Re: FM 6237 2011-05-03 05:59:50 kb1gmx Re: FM
You hit on the founding statement for the Amateur radio service.
A pool of experienced communicators. It makes a difference sometime
what we use but that we do communicate is important.
I try to keep balance. I do have FM, 6,2, and 440 in the form of various radios including the requisite HT. They are tools of communication utility. I try to pass the message that, use it
and enjoy it but there is more, to the new techs.
Fro a build and design standpoint, there is such a thing as high performance FM. Good receivers, efficient class E transmitters
and the like.
When the VHF and UHF bands favor it I've worked some long haul
6M and 440 simplex. That and it's always fun when on a high
spot to pull out the HT and try a bit of fun, the classic who
is out there. Just a hint of the magic of radio in that someone somewhere might here me.
That and I have a few good friends on a 2M/440 repeaters that I
enjoy talking to during the commute. For that the channelized
nature makes it nice. Thats more about the conversation then the medium. But, like many it lives side by side with the 6M
SSB radio for those that can and do also for Es when present.
Whats interesting is there is very little experimenting with FM.
For me I can create a narrow band FM signal on most UHF bands
faster than a SSB and nearly as fast as a CW one. I've considered
it but from what I've heard few will listen for it. But one experiment I did do was to take a 1.5W HT and put it on a 8 element beam horizontal and coax a few people to see how far that could be heard and the best shot was 39 miles simplex. Here in New England
that means a lot of possible contacts ignoring the repeaters
and SATs. When you consider both the HT and the 8element beam are
small and easily carried there is some fun potential there along
with capable communications.
As to the cell phone thing.. I live in eastern MA in a large town
(read as not in the outback, or boonies) and my Iphone is useless
(as cell or Edge) in the house but I can hit full quieting 7 UHF repeaters and at least as many VHF repeaters with that same
1.5W dual band HT. That and its fun to play with VHF/UHF antennas.
For me FM is a mode and there are many others and all are fun to experiment with. But I will tell the new Hams to pay attenti6238 2011-05-03 07:43:01 Chris Howard Re: FM
I moved from front range Colorado 18 months ago to Columbus, Mississippi,
60 miles west of Tuscaloosa, AL.
I have mostly been an HF/CW guy since I arrived. The local repeater is
not very busy
and the voices have a strange accent that I sometimes have trouble decoding.
But now, here I am on the west edge of the biggest tornado run in
history and
I feel kind of helpless to be of much good.
So this weekend I pulled out the scanner and programmed up all of the local
repeaters and public service frequencies.
At the ham club meeting on Thursday I plan to ask what I need to do to get
more plugged in to the emergency operations side.
Chris
w0ep6240 2011-05-03 08:08:48 Paul Daulton Re: FM
About 15 years ago there was a major club fight locally over some
obscure agenda some one wanted to pursue. One of the factions got on
our repeater and made an hour long soliloqy about his position. I was
on the road and missed it but a friend Dave W5DSB taped it . I set down
poped it in my cassett player and tried to listen but fell asleep.
Never did make it through that tape!
Dave commented "I can have more fun on that piece of green carpet on
my workbench than those guys can have with thieir clubmeetings". So
the idea of the GREEN CARPET CLUB was born. We discussed getting blank
pin on name badges and glueing a scrap of green carpet to them to
identify ourselves to others at hamfests. Maybe its time to revive that
idea, a swatch of green carpet would identify us to the ham community.
Never ask a ham if he is a builder. If he is he will let you know.
If he isnt, dont embarass him.
Paul Daulton k5wms
Quoting KK7B :
Hi All,
This may be a little off topic, but perhaps not. My roots in amateur
radio are in weak-signal VHF-UHF-microwave work, and I still pay
attention to activities of that parallel universe. This past weekend
was the 2011 South Eastern VHF Society Conference (SVHFS)--a major
event in the weak signal VHF world. It didn't happen. The conference
Hotel in Huntsville Alabama was hit by a power failure, and the next
day, a devastating tornado cell tore through the state, with massive
destruction and loss of life. Conference organizers followed the events
with concern after the initial storm and power failure, but by the time
the destruction hit there were few options for getting word out to the
attendees. Many were stranded on the road, some in airports.
No phone. No power. Not internet. No cell phones.
..and no amateur radio.
There was no amateur radio because the weak signal VHF-UHF is an elite
technical community. We have an unstated (and sometimes stated) goal of
getting folks off their annoying FM handhelds and into more interesting
technical pursuits of amateur radio. Newbies at the conferences quickly
recognize that HTs on their belts are not a merit badge. In my own
articles, I have stated that real privilege of the amateur radio
license is not permission to transmit (everybody can do that) it's the
privilege to design, build, test, experiment, and modify our gear.
Implicit in that opinion is the ancient disparaging view of appliances
and appliance operators. We didn't invent that bias--it was around
before even the old-timers among us were born. The EMRFD community is
also elite and technical, with some of that same bias.
Wes Hayward and I have kidded each other on a mountain top, setting up
a field day station, when each of us discovered that the other had a 2m
FM handheld hidden away in the bottom of the pack. (Our kids have no
such issues--the harmonics and subharmonics (kids and grandkids) have
licenses and FM handhelds.)
The amateur radio that I know and love starts and ends in my notebooks
and on my bench. I make a point to operate the gear I design and build,
because that's the most important part of the Experiment (as in
Experimental MRFD). Cool new stuff that works on the bench is
disappointing on the air. Until it's connected to an antenna and
headphones, I don't even know what I don't know--and until I've used
the receiver with a transmitter to make contacts, I don't know how
annoying some of the bugs are, and the importance of some of the
features I left out. So it's back to the notebook, back to the
bench--the stuff I love.
I have little interest in talking--I'd rather think, read and write. If
I feel like making noise, I get out my fiddle. So FM is not my mode. I
was a purist until I started climbing mountains, 30 years ago. I did a
little soul searching, and realized that if I was stuck on the side of
a mountain with an injured climbing partner I would want an FM handheld
in my pack. So I bought an IC2AT and AA cell pack, wrapped them in a
zip lock bag, and they rode to the summit of every major peak in the
Pacific Northwest. I never took them out on a climb. But they were
there--a basic radio and alkaline cells. Stuff that works.
I haven't climbed anything major for decades, and the IC2AT is
somewhere in the garage. The cell phone era arrived, and I didn't think
much about amateur radio in any context other than the really cool
experimental stuff in my lab/shack. Then a while back I was on Hatteras
with the family when the order to evacuate came through ahead of a
Hurricane. We spent a day in the world's longest traffic jam. No phone.
No power. No credit cards. No amateur radio. The IC2AT in it's ziplock
bag rode around in the trunk for a while after that.
Over on the microwave web site there is a lot of weeping, wailing and
gnashing of teeth over the fact that such a large group of prominent
radio amateurs was caught without the ability to communicate. There are
some good ideas kicking around involving emergency preparedness. Lots
of calls for a phone tree, call-in frequencies, coordinated this and
that.
One idea stood out: when the unexpected happens, just turn the radio to
146.52. We're hams, we already know how to use it. No coordination
necessary. No emergency preparedness drills. Most of us already have
the radio...somewhere out in the garage.
News from the devastation in Alabama is still coming in. My thoughts
and prayers are with those folks, as they have been with the Japanese
people since the Tsunami. Now I'm going to go rat around in the garage
and find that radio, and make sure I've got some fresh batteries. I
figure when the next unexpected event hits, I'll be more useful with a
handheld radio than a notebook full of sketches of a really cool new
mixer.
Best Regards,
Rick KK7B
Paul Daulton K5WMS
beacon WMS 185.302 khz qrss30/slow 24/7
Jacksonville,Ar 72076
em34wu
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]6244 2011-05-03 15:34:19 Gian Re: FM
thanks for sharing with us your thoughts.
We do not have hurricane or tornados this side of the pond...only earthquakes.... sometimes in some places...hi
I have my handheld but battery is discharged... we do still have some people left6249 2011-05-05 15:47:14 davidpnewkirk Re: FM 6250 2011-05-05 21:39:11 davidpnewkirk Re: FM 6251 2011-05-06 02:04:17 Ashhar Farhan Re: FM
when i was a kid i ran into a bunch who came to school one day and gave us a
ham radio demo. it was a wonderfully sunday evening and the twenty opened up
gorgeously to sweet cw on their HRO and a homebrew AM/CW transmitter. i was
hooked and i kept visiting shacks as often as they allow me in. all of them
were uniformly the same - an HRO or a BC-348 (rarely an AR88) and a homebrew
transmitter with an 807 in the finals (sometimes two of them). It was only
later that i saw a commercial transceiver - an atlas 210dx. but for most of
us, there was no choice, you had to build your own.
those who couldn't build by themselves, often trekked to another city after
collecting the obligatory 'junk' of plate capacitors, RFCs and 807s to an
elmer who would assemble a transmitter for you. these were quite bad jobs
even by those standards. i remember returning abeezar's call on 20 meters
from delhi, when he was actually transmitting on 40 in hyderabad (a distance
of 1000 KMs). the transmitters hopped and jumped with every key click, but
we went on air and some of us even got a DXCC award. 40 watts was a lot on
cw.
now, around this time, india was wrecked with cyclones (they are like cat 5
tornadoes) regularly. the country's already poor infrastructure was always
the first to go down. hams rushed in. there were very few of us (my first
license was no. 1407, just 1407 of us by then). so, there was little choice
but to pack our HROs, homebrew MOPAs and head out with dipoles into the
water logged fields.
as a kid, i was left behind in the city. but this turned out to be boon of a
different sort, i became the traffic controller for the emergency net during
the '79 and '81 floods. we were operating out of the government secretriat
building. the chief minister (usa equivalent - state governer) would be
sitting beside me and all officials huddled all around. i felt very
important while asking the OMs at the other end to QRS (i was and remain
pretty slow on CW, i max out on 18 wpm). there were other stations that
rallied around, just to keep the frequency clear or to relay during the
afternoons when 40 meters was washed out.
finally, in 83 i got my chance to get out of net control and be out there.
this was no longer a movie. as i stepped out from the chopper, with a trunk
full of my homebrew gear, i realised the stench - the smelled of death. i
was entirely unprepared for this. my lose idea was that it would be a picnic
to stay with the rural folks, handle some traffic and relax. instead, i was
cremating dead bodies, bringing in bad news, ordering medicines and fighting
terrible propagation conditions. my qrp gear proved to be inadequate - i
should have carried something at least 40 watts higher. the other side folks
developed a fatigue after hours of listening in to my weak S1 to S2 signals.
the two truck batteries proved more than adequate though. after a while, my
fist begun to hurt, i was not used to such high volume traffic. finally,
after two nights, i waded my way across to a road, took a truck to
a neighboring town where a ham lived, woke him up at 2am, pulled out his AM
homebrew, woke up a few more souls in the town looking for a generator, and
headed back to my station with two jerry cans of kerosene as well. only
then, did things then get better.
years later now, though i do look up qrp as as my prime passion, i know that
some time or the other, life will depend up having better beef. i always
have an all valves set on the standby (a BC-348 and one of those AM/CW
transmitters that i bought off a ham who was now using a BITX build!). i
have recently bought a chinese 2 meter VHF (50 dollars USD!!), the handy
stays clipped on my jeans though i haven't pressed the PTT for days now..
- farhan
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]6252 2011-05-06 03:45:10 g3oth Re: FM
That is a fascinating story you tell, I really enjoyed reading it as I had no idea before of your early ham radio background and experiences. I am a lot older than you (I guess perhaps 25 years or so) but started off with the type of rigs you mentioned and still have some HROs, BC348s and AR88s here. I am sure that if you were to post this on the BITX20 site or allow me to draw attenti6253 2011-05-06 06:33:10 Ashhar Farhan Re: FM
i'd prefer this to remain within the shadow of rick's post. which is that
too often, we forget that we are communicators first. thought it might be
interesting personal tidbit for the BITX gang, with little bearing on the
art of radio. i hope you understand.
- farhan
6254 2011-05-06 07:23:21 c6alk Re: FM
That was a very inspiring story. Thanks for telling it to all of us.
Brian K7RE
6262 2011-05-07 08:34:43 longjohn119 Re: FM 6263 2011-05-07 09:25:53 longjohn119 Re: FM