Ron Gang, 4X1MK on "QSO Today" Podcast: Knack Story, Satellites, Quads, Philosophy

Wow, Eric Guth's interview with Ron Gang 4X1MK really resonated with me: 

-- Asked about how he got is start in radio, Ron went back further than many of us do in response to this question.  He cited his early experiments with "two tin cans and a string." Yes, of course!  I'd forgotten all about it, but in retrospect this might have been a very early indication of THE KNACK.  (I'll bet many of our readers were also active on the String and Can band.) 

-- Ron used a DX-100.  FB. 

-- Ron was active on the satellites.  In his voice you can hear the joy and the burst of enthusiasm that resulted from those early satellite contacts.  He also mentions the untimely demise of Oscar 13.  Bummer. 

-- Ron was the Israel correspondent for 73 Magazine.  I held a similar position in Dominican Republic.  My friend David Cowhig was at the same time correspondent from Okinawa, Japan.  We should have a reunion of "73 Magazine Hambassadors."

-- Ron mentions John Tait EI7BA.  John was a regular contact of mine when I was in the Azores.  He appears in the SolderSmoke book.  He was the one who introduced me to an important Irish accolade:  John told me that WD-40 is "the Pope's pee." 

-- Toward the end, Ron discusses the wonder of ham radio conversations, and provides a good suggestion on how to get beyond the all-to-common "hello-59-goodbye" contacts. 

Ron's comments on the spiritual or philosophical aspects of the hobby were just the thing for a quiet Sunday morning. 

Thanks to Eric and to Ron for a great interview.   
    
Listen here: 

http://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/4X1MK

BITX40 Featured in "Nuts and Volts"

Congratulations to Steve Jackson and to "Nuts and Volts" for putting out a very nice article on the BITX40 transceiver.   Steve did a great job in describing the origins of the BITX, and in explaining that Farhan's intent is to encourage experimentation and tinkering.  Pete and I had pitched a similar article to a major ham radio magazine  but sadly they were not interested.  Three cheers for "Nuts and Volts."  I'm thinking about subscribing. 

I know many of you will wince when you see Steve's unshielded mic cord lying right next to the front panel antenna connector, but please don't freak out about this -- in the article you will see that Steve acknowledges that the antenna connector would have been better placed on the back of the box.  That's an example of the educational value of the BITX40 -- live and learn.  Even with the connector like this, Steve was making many contacts. 

The "Nuts and Volts" website very kindly let me read the entire article without a subscription. 

Try here and click on the blue "digital edition" box: 

http://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/meet-the-bitx40-a-single-sideband-transceiver

Or try going directly here:

http://nutsvolts.texterity.com/nutsvolts/201711/?folio=36&pg=36#pg36

Pete's Simple-ceiver -- Al Fresco Success

N6QW's Simple-ceiver design is being replicated far and wide.  Above you can see PA3GUP's beautiful rig in its "Al Fresco" stage of development.  For much more of this -- including a cool video of Pete's rig in action -- go to Pete's blog: http://n6qw.blogspot.com/ 

630 Meter DX from Wasilla, Alaska

Kl7L's 600m Part 5 station

Hi Bill - It's been a few years and I'm sort of glad my global wanderings have been curtailed to a point and I'm now based out of Alaska and via a couple of call signs (KL1X KL7UK etc) have ended up with KL7L. I still travel with the Oil Company but no China on the horizon.

I had a chuckle when you and Pete mentioned the new 630 and 2200m bands - and the real estate requirements - Well, I've been active with the experimental callsigns since 2003 and very glad we have finally got the bands - so a small form to fill out on the UTC web site and a 30 days wait to check you are not within 1Km radii of the co channel PLC on Trunk power lines, if no "disapprove" away we go - and I and many have! 

Just turn off all those nasty dimmers, LED lights and SMPSU wallwarts - plonk your radio on 474.2kHz USB and decode using WSPR or JT9 and I think youll be surprised on what you can hear even on a short typical 80m or topband wire or so.  There a lot of activity all around you

The station for both band is homebrew soldersmoke heaven - transverter/PA and filters/Couplers/Phase meters etc with only my ol' TS850 doing the prime driving, or a Hans  Summers U3S.

Size does matter - but my best RX for both bands is a 2ft long active probe up a pine tree, that's all - and some 300ft of RG6, and the Tx antenna is a 60ft high  Marconi or more over an inverted L with a 3 wire top cap all nested in the Birch forest - loads or radials but still very lossy in the Summer - nothing special here - Of course with the QRP per se we have to use CW or digital modes mostly but DX can be done - after all my closest active neighbor on 2200/630m is over 2000Kms away!

So, for the first time I sparked up on JT9 on 630m this early morning and first blood to QSO with VK4YB @ 5W EIRP!

 Not bad for a first qso on what is a fairly typical back yard antenna - so, there is hope and many people appear to be putting transcontinental signals out this power, so everyone is on the same playing field - just the ground and location and latitude will change things! It tends to be more flaky, lossy and geo/solar events tend to hit us hard up here compared with say Seattle.

On 2200m TX its a loop of thick wire hanging in the trees - literally 500ft circumference and a beefy coupler to deal with the 50A or so of antenna current to make the 1W ERP or so - still its getting out OK and again should be putting signals over the Pole to EU and across the Pacific as it becomes more and more dark up here.

I'm now caught up with past Soldersmoke pod casts and thanks to you and Pete for making me smile

Take care

Laurence KL7L  aka G4DMA et al
Wasilla Alaska 23rd Oct 2017

Woz with Soldering Iron; Wooden Enclosures for Electronics (Video)

The Woz scared me for a second -- I tought he was going to leave a hot iron on the desk amidst paper and other flamable items.  But no -- he put the soldering iron in its holder. 

Later we hear Woz talking about the need to update schematic diagrams.  And I was esepcially taken by the use of wooden enclosures for electronic projects.  My BITX rigs have followed the Apple example. 

Cliff Stoll -- K7TA -- Has THE KNACK. And a GREAT NOVA Video

Hack-A-Day had a piece on Cliff Stoll of  "The Cuckoo's Egg" and "Silicon Snake Oil" fame.  I read these books years ago.  I included a quote from Cliff on page 45 of the SolderSmoke book (the quote seemed to foreshadow my aversion to SDR). 

I didn't know that NOVA produced an hour-long program on Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg adventures.  It is really good.  Many of those involved play themselves in the video.  Very cool. See above. 

I checked Cliff's QRZ.com page.   We wrote several years ago that Cliff has THE KNACK.  Note below his preference for thermatrons and the affection for Heathkits.  Diagnosis confirmed. 

From QRZ.com: 

   Hi gang!   This is Cliff Stoll, K7TA

   Way back in the Jurassic, I was licensed as WN2PSX, in Buffalo NY.  Got my general ticket around 1967 as WB2PSX, and helped build ham radio stations at Hutch-Tech high school, University/Buffalo, and University of Arizona.   When I went to Tucson for grad school, I passed my extra ticket and snagged the call K7TA (back when this meant 20wpm cw).  I held a first-class commercial ticket, which let me engineer at WBFO radio, but I don't know if commercial licenses even exist anymore.

   I now live in Oakland California, and occasionally get on the cw lowbands with old heathkit gear ... just rebuilt my novice NC-270 receiver with filaments that glow in the dark.  Gotta restring my 40 meter dipole that came down in a windstorm.  

   You can guess that I'm pretty much retired.  Along the way, I've worked in FM radio, planetary physics, computing, writing, speaking, teaching, and math.  Best way to reach me is through my website www.kleinbottle.com

   Warm wishes to all -- 73's,

-Cliff

Info on Cliff's latest gig: 

https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2016-war-stories/how-berkeley-eccentric-beat-russians-and-then-made

The First "Transistor Radio"

I'm a few days behind on this.  On October 18 Bob Crane pointed out that Garrison Keillor marked the anniversary of the broadcast band "transistor radio."   I had mine (a 1970s version), and it did indeed allow me to listen to that seditious rock music without parental interference. Looking around the shack, I still have items in use that have "Transistorized" as part of their product name (like my Lafayette Radio Electronics Transistorized DC Power Supply." 

Garrison (on October 18, 2017): 

It was on this day in 1954 that the first transistor radio appeared on the market.

Transistors were a big breakthrough in electronics — a new way to amplify signals. They replaced vacuum tubes, which were fragile, slow to warm up, and unreliable. During World War II, there was a big funding push to try to update vacuum tubes, since they were used in radio-controlled bombs but didn't work very well. A team of scientists at Bell Laboratories invented the first transistor technology in 1947. But the announcement didn't make much of an impact because transistors had limited use for everyday consumers — they were used mainly in military technology, telephone switching equipment, and hearing aids.

Several companies bought licenses from Bell, including Texas Instruments, who was bent on being the first to market with a transistor radio. Radios were mostly big, bulky devices that stayed in one place — usually in the living room — while the whole family gathered around to listen to programming. There were some portable radios made with vacuum tubes, but they were about the size of lunch boxes, they used heavy nonrechargeable batteries, they took a long time to start working while the tubes warmed up, and they were fragile. Texas Instruments was determined to create a radio that was small and portable, and to get it out for the Christmas shopping season. They produced the transistors, and they partnered with the Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates, who manufactured the actual radios. Their new radio, the Regency TR-1, turned on immediately, weighed half a pound, and could fit in your pocket. It cost $49.95, and more than 100,000 were sold.

Texas Instruments went on to pursue other projects, but a Japanese company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo decided to make transistor radios their main enterprise. They were concerned that their name was too difficult for an American audience to pronounce, so they decided to rebrand themselves with something simpler. They looked up the Latin word for sound, which was sonus. And they liked the term sonny boys — English slang that was used in Japan for exceptionally bright, promising boys. And so the company Sony was born. Soon transistor radios were cheap and prevalent.

With transistor radios, teenagers were able to listen to music out of their parents' earshot. This made possible the explosion of a new genre of American music: rock and roll.

The Quantum Indians

Beautiful video.  Strongly  recommended.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=350&v=bI7sasQsQWI

Ham Radio, Dilbert, Dating, and the Baofeng Breakup

Was the young lady turned off by his obvious "appliance op" status? Was it the Baofeng?  Would he have fared better with a homebrew rig? 

Dilbert addressed the relationship between ham radio and success in the dating game: 

I blame Peter VK2EMU for this digression. 

SolderSmoke Podcast #200! 17, Knack Nobel, QCX, 630, UHF, Fessenden, TROUBLESHOOTING

DL3AO 1950

SolderSmoke Podcast #200 -- TWO HUNDRED!!!!-- Is available

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke200.mp3

-- Old friends on 17 meters.  

-- Another Knack Nobel in Physics.  

-- Hans Summers' QCX transceiver:  $50 IS THE NEW 10 GRAND! 

-- New Bands!  630 and 2200 Meters.  BIG ANTENNAS! 

-- Nuke Powered QRP.  No joke! 

-- The Challenge of UHF.  Not for the faint of heart. 

-- Reginald Fessenden, Father of Phone. 

PETE'S BENCH REPORT:   The New Simple-ceiver.  Soon to be a Transceiver. 

BILL's BENCH REPORT:  Discrete, Direct Conversion, Ceramic Receiver in iPhone Box.  

THE EDUCATIONAL PORTION OF TODAY's PROGRAM:  
HOW TO TROUBLESHOOT A HOMEBREW RECEIVER. 

MAILBAG. 

DL3AO 1950

SPRAT -- The 007 Connection

The eagle eye of Brent KD0GLS spotted this frame in the 007 movie "Casino Royale."  
Wow -- I just knew those GQRP guys had to be much cooler than they seemed.  I guess there were some indications: They do seem to talk quite a bit about "Q".  There is that weird fondness for Parasets. I understand that several of the senior GQRPers drive Aston Martins.  And that Dobbs guy -- a kindly retired Anglican minister you say?  Really?  I can just hear him saying it:  "Dobbs, George Dobbs."  

DL1YC's Flat Moxon with Armstrong Rotation

DL1YC Moxon

I had a very nice contact on 17 meters yesterday with Jan DL1YC.  It was a rare Moxon-to-Moxon contact, with homebrew 17 meter Moxons on either end.  Jan's is a bit cooler than mine:   His is flat, without the "blownout umbrella" support that we see in mine (below) and in the Hex Beams.  Jans told me that he achieved this flatness by starting out with very long telescoping fishing poles -- he discarded the the thin portions of the pole and used only the more rigid pieces.  (I used 16 foot, 5 piece Shakespeare Wonderpoles from Amazon.) I think he also used thin wire for the elements.  The crossbar that you see in the picture above is there to support a balun at the feed point -- without the cross bar the balun and the feedline would cause the balun to droop. 

I couldn't resist a little front to back testing.   Jan's antenna does not have a rotator -- he used the "Armstrong" method of antenna pointing.  I didn't want to make him go outside to spin the thing around by hand, so I just turned mine and asked him to take note of the difference front to back.  He saw 3 S units.  18 db.  Not bad.   

Jan said his antenna weighs about 8 pounds -- mine is very similar at 9 pounds.  Jan expressed some concern about UV deterioration of the fishing pole fiberglass.  Mine has been up there three years without any problems.  

Like me, Jan had considered "nesting" an element for another ban (perhaps 20 or 12) but -- like me-- had concluded that this would be too difficult. 

N2CQR Moxon