astrotidbits-blog
282 posts
Latest Posts by astrotidbits-blog
I have waited a long goddamn time for this.
great concept art piece by Neil Blevins
Hydra 3K Medium Mech da Marco Marozzi
Will it be appropriate to tip “robot handlers,” as when they were “delivery people”? Or will the robots pool their tips, and give their handlers a small cut?
When the wrong yoghurt is delivered two hours late and left dripping in the rain, will it be the robot or the handler who gets fired?
Just askin’.
What is the next step for hacktivists, radical or not. What’s 4Chan, what’s Anonymous and what’s the next thing? What’s the real deal - Ray Johansen gives his views.
Revolutionaries are always controversial. Some get proven right, some as a doing bad, some seen as doing equal amounts of both.The truth is complex. So we let Ray give us his views.
As part of our transparent process, we’re making some of our research interviews available for all. Check out both our Transparently Unedited interviews on our YouTube channel where you’ll and also find other awesome clips from a diverse set of characters.
What a stunner! See Jupiter’s southern hemisphere in beautiful detail in this new citizen-scientist-processed JunoCam image.
QSL cards confirm either a two-way radiocommunication between two amateur radio stations or a one-way reception of a signal from an AM radio, FM radio, television or shortwave broadcasting station. They can also confirm the reception of a two-way radiocommunication by a third party listener. A typical QSL card is the same size and made from the same material as a typical postcard, and most are sent through the mail as such.
Fading Females
As the daughter of our town’s E.S.D.A. Coordinator, I have always been intrigued by ham radio. My father (and elmer) has been a ham for about 40 years. He actually received his license when he was in high school!
After studying for three weeks, I went to take the ham test. I was very discouraged to see that I was the only girl in the room. However, I was treated like a queen by the group that was hosting the test. They seemed excited to have a female in their midst.
Upon receiving my Technician license, I eagerly awaited the Tuesday night ARES net (which my dad happens to be the Net Control of). Again, I was saddened to hear but a few female voices. Over time, I noticed that the female hams rarely checked in to the net. I wondered why these women who worked so hard to achieve their licenses would not want to take advantage of all that ham radio has to offer.
I hope that women are being encouraged to be active hams. Whether they join a club or simply make contacts, females are providing a fresh voice and perspective to the hobby. So, ladies, do not be shy! Proudly check in with your call sign. You have earned it!
Thunder Snow!
Ground those antennas kids, winter’s got more than the white stuff today for us!
Catching Up: Weather is weird... TWWN continues... 80 Meter woes...
-=> Weather is just plain odd around here. We’re supposed to get up to 7 inches of snow, but nothing so far. Here in town it’s actually pretty nice
Out in the country it’s a different story. Not snowing, but 30+ MPH winds are whipping the snow we do have into near blizzard like conditions in some areas. Went down to Stockbridge to my favorite coffee shop, Mud Creek, and if I hadn’t been driving the Jeep I don’t think I would have made it. Was bucking drifts a foot or more deep in some areas, and visibility was down to just a few feet in places.
Problem with the Jeep is I get overconfident. I was bashing along around 40 mph in four wheel drive, and nearly lost it when I nailed a 2 foot deep drift. Wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d been driving slow, but at 40 the front end wiped out and I nearly went sideways before I got it straightened out again. Needless to say, I slowed down a bit after that.
So, snow storms today, and by Thursday it’s supposed to be 40 degrees and raining.
Sigh…
Noticed they got the street dug up just down the road from the house here. Another water main break. Must be the fifth one we’ve had in town in the last two months. Feel sorry for the water utility guys. And I stocked up on bottled water just in case…
-=> Work on The World’s Worst Novel continues unabated. I’ve been having way too much fun with this thing. It’s an SF novel in the worst sense of the word, harking back to the old space opera days with ridiculous space battles, paying very little attention to whether or not the ‘science’ bears any relationship to actual physics. It’s also gotten very, very dirty. Well, not by modern standards. Compared to modern fiction it’s actually pretty mild, but for me… I keep wondering where this stuff comes from.
Curiously, I just realized that almost all of the main characters are female. The protagonist is female, her spouse is female, almost all the heads of government are female… Not sure why. Didn’t do it deliberately.
-=> Amateur Radio stuff… I have, alas, been doing very little of late except listening. I’ve discovered that my Comet vertical antenna is total crap below about 20 meters or so, which is understandable when you look at how the thing is built. Most of the energy going into the thing, especially at lower frequencies, is never getting into the air. Frankly, it’s surprising I can get a decent SWR at all with the thing on the lower bands. I ran some generic calculations and if I got the formulas right (which I probably didn’t) if I put 200 watts into the thing down at 3.8 mHz I’m lucky if I get 20 out of it.
Weather has been so nasty I’ve never even tried to get the dipole up. For one thing, mounting it is going to be a problem. I’m going to have to put up some kind of mast to try to get the center of the thing up to around 35 feet, and then it’s going to have to be configured as an inverted V because there’s nothing I can hook the ends to.
I picked up a Gap Titan multi band vertical that I’m going to give a try. It’s far more efficient than the Comet and even better, I can finally use my big amplifier with it. It’s rated to handle 1,500 watts so I can finally fire up the Ameritron. If it works, that is. Considering Ameritron’s reputation, you never know what’s going to happen. I talked to a guy who used to sell the things and they’d go through every one before they sent it out because they were having a 25% failure rate straight form the factory. I looked it over carefully when I put it together and didn’t see any obvious issues, and it does come up in standby mode, but until I actually try using it, whether it’ll work or not is anyones guess.
From what I’ve been hearing, the Titan has some issues when it comes to tuning it to work on the various bands. One fellow I talked to told me he never could get the thing down to a reasonable SWR on 80 meters. Other people tell me they had no problems at all. So we’ll see. SWR doesn’t bother me that much. I’ve got a massive Palstar auto tuner that can handle up to 2,000 watts output to hang behind the Ameritron.
I really wish now that I’d spent a little bit more and gone for the solid state amplifier rather than the tube based one. The solid state amps are a lot easier to work with. They’re pretty much plug and play, just turn them on, select the band you want, and go. Tube amps are fussy, requiring a lot of fiddling whenever you change bands, even changing frequencies. It’s easy to mess them up and end up blowing a $300 tube. Still, it was almost a grand cheaper than the solid state amp I was looking at, so we’ll see.
General Ham: CW Procedures/Abbreviations
Have I mentioned that the General Ham License Manual has a ton more information than the Technician manual? If I haven’t already, it’s true. It’s awesome.
So it’s a lot of work to spell out the full text of all words and phrases, so telegraphers developed an extensive set of abbreviations and procedural signals called prosigns. These are two letters sent together as a single character as indicated by an overbar. So the prosign AR is used to indicated “End of Message”.
And then there are abbreviations to shorten common words such as “AND” is “ES” and “GOING” is “GG” and “WEATHER” is “WX”.
Calling CQ on CW is about the same as on phone/voice. "DE" is an abbreviation used in place of “form” and the procedural signal K replaces “over”:
CQ CQ CQ DE W0TTV W0TTV W0TTV K
A response might look like the following:
W0TTV DE W1AW W1AW W1AW K
There’s no need to send the CQing station’s call more than once unless there’s interferences or the signal is weak. When signals are strong and clear, those responding to CQ may even just send their call once or twice.
Good idea is also to respond at the speed of the calling station but if you’re uncomfortable receiving at that speed, send the Q signal “QRS” (send slower) before the final K. Or if you want to go faster, QRQ.
Also adjust your transmitting frequency so that your signals is “zero beat” with the other signal so that you will be on the same frequency. This means the two signals produce the same audio tone in a receiver. Check the radio’s operating manual for instructions on how to zero beat another signal.
And once you’re in contact with another station, the prosign KN is used instead of K to prevent other stations from breaking in during the contact. It means “Only the station with whom I am in contact should respond”. When asked if you are ready to receive, “QRV” means “I’m ready to copy.” After receiving the message, “QSL” means "I acknowledge receipt.“
Then when it’s time to end the QSO, the prosign SK is used to let any listener know that the contact is completed: W1AW DE W0TTV SK and if you’re going off the air, add CL for closing station.
Phew!
@atdiy/@tymkrs
General Ham: Digital Mode Introduction
This is probably a bit more repetition, but well worth the time! So digital modes are where data are encoded as bits instead of in waves, and some are created commercially, while others are created by amateurs!
Digital modes consist of two things: a protocol and a method of modulation. A protocol is the set of rules that control the encoding, packaging, exchanging and decoding of digital data. For example, packet radio uses the AX.25 protocol standard. This standard says how each packet is constructed, how packets are exchanged, what characters are allowed, and so forth. The protocol standard doesn’t say what kind of transmitter to use or what the signal will sound like on the air.
Digital mode signals are restricted to the CW/data segments of each band and most digital mode operation is close to the top of the CW segment. Calling frequencies for the popular digital modes are incorporated into band plans and are usually the lowest frequency of operation with operators moving up in frequency as activity increases.
For example on 20m, most PSK31 signals are found near 14.070 MHz. RTTY and other digital mode signals are found above that. The modems used for digital signals often do not recognize signals from CW or other digital modes.
Here’s the Digital Signal Band Plan:
@atdiy/@tymkrs
My Radio-inActive Life
I am a non-practicing amateur radio operator. K4EYO is my callsign. I have a General Class license, but I got that after the FCC did away with the Morse code requirement, so to some people that doesn’t really count.
There is still the Extra class license out there, my one last goal, the pinnacle, the zenith of the U.S. Amateur radio licensing system. I’m putting that off, because once I pass that test, well, what’s left? I already have the Holy Grail of licenses, which is the General Radiotelephone Operator’s License (GROL). But that’s for working on radio equipment on ships in the Great Lakes and in the oceans, and also for supervising avionics techs, or something like that. In other words, very non-amateur. It’s a lifetime license, so I don’t have to deal with renewing it, which is the coolest thing about it, to me.
Ancient History
When I was a kid, way back in the 60’s my best friend’s dad was a Ham (that’s what we call ourselves in Amateur Radio-Land) and he tried to teach a bunch of us kids Morse code via LPs. We sat in the basement and wrote down what we heard, or what we thought we heard. I hated it. But he had a great ham shack (equipment room) with lots of postcards (QSL cards) from his radio contacts all over the world. Cool. He also took us to the local radio club meetings in nearby Hazel Park, MI. All I remember from that was all of the cigar smoke and the swap meet equipment - old Hallicrafters and Heathkits. These were the computer geeks before there were computers.
And that was it for my radio experience. We moved to Atlanta and my attention was refocused on not being beat up by the various gangs at my new high school and pretending to like Elvis.
Not So Ancient History
Years later (1990-ish) I wound up going to a technical school in the mountains of North Georgia, which is a story for another day. But there I could pick from auto mechanics, brick-laying (yep!), practical nursing, electrical wiring, and electronic technology. They used to have watchmaking(!), which is what I would have taken, but instead I settled for the electronics program.
We had a couple of old guys who taught us all about analog circuits, tubes (we had a room full of tubes - must be worth a fortune now), and antennas. I loved this stuff.
We also had a younger guy who taught us about digital circuits, PLCs, assembly language, and who asked me at one point what the hell I was doing there, and not in a university somewhere.
I owe him a debt of gratitude for encouraging me.
It was here that I got my Technician class license and my GROL (first person in something like 15 years from the school). We re-established the dormant radio club at the school, which had three or four members. We’d go to hamfests (conventions for radio geeks), and talk to each other on 2 meter radios in our respective cars. We strung antennas up on the roof of the classroom. We also tried to communicate with MIR as it made its passes overhead, along with the other thousands along the east coast. Remember MIR? From Wikipedia, ca 1993:
One guy had an HF setup at home. I just had a mobile 2m radio in my VW Bug, and a 2m handheld radio that stayed on my hip, as I played geek wannabe.
A Slight Divergence- typewriters
We moved back to Atlanta and my new skills got me a job repairing typewriters (actually, the auto mechanic track would have been more useful). This was a very cool job, but the pay was terrible. But I learned how to repair/adjust IBM Selectrics via sets of slides in Carousel trays, and older mechanical machines like Smith Coronas, Remingtons, Olivettis just by figuring them out. I keep thinking this is what I’d do if I started my own business. But then I come to my senses.
White Collar Work
Then I got into call center work, first answering phones, then managing, then building them as a project manager. This was the period where I’ve earned the most money so far.
The problem with project management is that by definition, projects are temporary. And so are project manager jobs. At this time there was also a huge movement to move call centers to India, and I didn’t like the thought of that commute.
Blue Collar Work
After being unemployed for 7 months I went to a Georgia Department of Labor job fair in 2001, where the local transit authority (MARTA) had a recruiter looking for radio techs. I was the only one there who had radio licenses and education (the line for computer maintenance/IT jobs was a mile long). 2 months later I had a job and became underemployed.
So now I was in a real radio shop! I could talk about radios, bring in my equipment to adjust and tune…
Nope. Only one had a ham license, the old-timer. The rest of them couldn’t care less about radios. And to add injury to insult, we were not allowed to work on our own stuff, even off the clock.
But I did get great training on 800 mhz trunking systems. And it got me motivated to go to college to get a degree in Economics (“you won’t get rich studying economics, but at least you’ll know why”, as the old joke goes.)
Back to White Collars
It was a few months after graduation that I got a new job at MARTA, as a Maintenance Planner for the computer maintenance group. 7 years later and I’m still doing that. Still not getting rich.
Urban Radios
This is when I upgraded my license to “General” and started putting together a radio setup. But we live in a high-rise, so antennas are more of a challenge. And to keep from singeing the fur on the cats, I had to look at low power (QRP) systems. I have always preferred these anyway, just to be an iconoclast amongst the iconoclasts.
For decades the radio magazines touted home-built (or store bought) 1000 watt or more systems. Just blast that signal out there, power bills & other people’s TV reception be damned! Not really, RFI is bad.
QRP systems appeal to me just like bicycles and economics appeal to me: Efficient use of resources.
So I’ve built assembled a little 40 meter radio, and built assembled an iambic paddle and have built assembled a meter in an altoids can. Now I just need to revisit my old nemesis, Morse code.
See, these low powered, efficient systems are that way because they don’t transmit voice. No fat sidebands. But they only use 3 watts instead of 100 or 1,000.
So I need to string up some wire, or build some exotic coil loaded beast to transmit from the living room, which could double as a scratching post for the cats. And then we’ll be in business.
Now
And six years later nothing has changed, except for the thick layer of dust on my stuff. I really should wire it all up and at least listen to chatter out there.
But I also need to make a shirt, finish the kitchen cabinets, build a workbench…
Just a typical Saturday in our courtyard calling Ohio using Morse code.
The Clansman PRC-320 - Plessey RT-320 Military Manpack Transciever [HD] - M0VST (by markbeermonster)
The Black Knight
The Black Knight is a mysterious artificial satellite that’s been orbiting our planet transmitting radio signals that we’ve been intercepting for quite some time now. Nikola Tesla was the first person to intercept these strange radio transmissions in 1899 while building a radio device in Colorado Springs. Since then, the radio signals from this object have been consistent.
In 1957 the Black Knight was seen “shadowing” the Sputnik 1 craft in orbit. At this time it was determined that the mysterious Black Knight was in polar orbit. Satellites in polar orbit are classified as observational satellites, they’re typically used for mapping and reconnaissance. Is it possible that this satellite is of extraterrestrial origin, and is sending radio signals back to its home with observations of our planet? It can’t be of human origin, humans didn’t have the capabilities of putting a satellite into polar orbit until 1960.
A Ham radio operator attempted to decode the radio transmissions in an attempt to understand its purpose. He interpreted the signals to be a star chart of the Epsilon Bootes star system. He continued to attempt to interpret it and concluded that the Black Knight originated from the Epsilon Bootes system 13,000 years ago. Does this prove that there is intelligent life in the Epsilon Bootes system? Have they been watching us for 13,000 years? Or was the radio signals misinterpreted or the meaning of them made up? The answer revolves around our planet, observing us from the stars.
This full functional CW Keyer was built by a spanish jeweler with watches parts. He gave it to me, as a gift, ten years ago.
ham radio.
World ham radio prefix map
Ham Radio and Equipment Operator at Short Creek
Using a shortwave radio to listen to Jupiter and the Sun.
Sorry, Tumblr, but Seth found his new favorite social network to reach fans: Ham radio.
Found a couple old photos of my mom practicing her ham radio skillz back in the day. Ham radio was actually the catalyst through which she met my father. Take that, Internet Dating.
My grandma made that dress she’s wearing with their call letters appliquéd along the hem.
Ham radio operator taking part in a field day
(Walter B. Lane. 1946)