Friday, 19 June 2009 09:59
eHAM.net
Okay, it's time to come clean - I am a ham. That is, I am an FCC-licensed amateur radio operator, call sign KI6GDQ. I got into it a few years ago because my wife's parents and sister and brother in law are hams, and we all go camping in northern California every summer. Obviously a little hand held ham transceiver is not a bad way to communicate when there's no cell phone coverage, though the range is limited to a few miles in the mountains up there. And, living here in California, which a friend of mine notes is a beautiful land with a decidedly savage side, it's not bad to have a means of communication that doesn't depend on the grid, be it the electric grid or the Internet/phone grid. My in-laws live in Pacifica, south of San Francisco, which is hemmed in on all sides: the ocean to the west, mountains to the north and south, and the San Andreas fault to the east. A big earthquake could easily isolate them from the rest of the peninsula. So my father in law (N6FG) helps run a 2-meter repeater on a nearby mountaintop; he and and my mother-in-law (K6IIP) participate in local emergency response groups. A friend of mine joked that amateur radio is the original social networking tool. (Well, unless you count the postal service.) Early in the last century, when radio was young, the advent of high-power vacuum tubes made it possible for amateurs to build transmitters that allowed them to talk to other hams all over the country, and around the world, ionospheric conditions permitting. At night, when the lower layers generated by solar radiation dissipate, a vast electromagnetic mirror called the F layer forms several hundred miles up. Signals from the surface can bounce off this mirror essentially all the way around the planet. Hard-core DXers still go to great lengths with antennas and legal-limit (1500 watt) transmitters to make contacts with Morse code. (And then there are the truly crazy ones who go on expeditions to remote islands off Antarctica solely for the purpose of making nearly 100,000 ham radio contacts all over the world.) Read more:
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Friday, 05 June 2009 05:17
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
Have you ever worried about driving home after a long night of drinking and partying? Well for these home owners this is never the problem because they decided to turn their 2000-square-foot basement into the ultimate entertainment complex.
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Tuesday, 10 March 2009 03:32
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and while we cant say with any level of certainty that Microsoft Hardware engineers werent toiling away on this laptop cooling stand back in the heyday that was 2005, we highly doubt thats the case.
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Monday, 30 March 2009 05:44
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
You know, the benefits of videogames just keep adding up. According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience, video game training may help people improve contrast sensitivity, or the ability to differentiate between shades of gray.
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Monday, 06 July 2009 04:15
Bit-Tech.net
Yes, we're reviewing a GeForce GTX 260, but this is no ordinary SKU. Armed with a custom cooler, front panel overclocking tool and redesigned power circuitry, this is one of the best GTX 260s on the market. We find out if the premium you pay for extra trimmings is a worthwhile one.  Read more:
Monday, 02 February 2009 06:27
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
Sony looks to drum up a little more buzz for its new ultraportable, the Vaio P, at Grand Central Station. Paul: Theres a Vaio P configuration for every wig-adorned model in your life.
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Wednesday, 25 March 2009 07:07
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
It seems like there is a new pico projector popping up every week. This week Kinyo, in association with ArtDio, has released their first pocket projector, the ArtDio M100 Cuboid projector.
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Tuesday, 09 June 2009 05:49
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
Heres the cute little HPCN22 series headphones from Maxell. Available with a choice of eight colors they offer a 90dB/Mw on a 20Hz-22kHz frequency at a total of just 16g.
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Thursday, 23 April 2009 04:02
Bit-Tech.net
The fastest AMD to hit the streets is here. It's 3.2GHz of Black Edition overclocking friendly badness and we test its wares to see if this AM3 part is worth considering over the already tempting AM2+ Phenom II X4 940 on DDR2.  Read more:
Saturday, 01 August 2009 13:38
www.southgatearc.org
The Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester, is running an exhibition focussed on PoWs during the last war Read more:
Monday, 08 June 2009 01:10
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
Its been two days since the Palm Pre launched, and so far reports of sales have been mixed. Its been reported as selling out in a variety of local outlets, but that fact may be a little misleading.
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Sunday, 21 June 2009 18:17
eHAM.net
TERRITORIANS can this week send a message in the old fashioned way - by morse code. Back to Morse Week is again being staged at Lyons Cottage on Darwin's Esplanade, with former telegraph operators on hand to send a free telegram to anywhere in Australia. Morsecodians controller Barrie Barnes said that when the Overland Telegraph Line first opened in 1872 a telegram of 20 words cost nine guineas. "That was a small fortune at the time," he said. Read more:
Thursday, 22 October 2009 05:44
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
11:52 pm. The witching hour. Its cold, wet, and windy tonight in Plano. Thats an uncommon combination for this state. Most of this week has been dry and warm and then today, of all days, it started to rain.
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Tuesday, 17 March 2009 10:46
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
If you happened to snag one of those Iqua Sun solar-powered Bluetooth headsets a few years back, youll probably have no need whatsoever for this.
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Tuesday, 02 February 2010 18:45
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
A touchscreen smartphone without multitouch gestures is just not acceptable today. Now finally Google took a heart an risks to annoy Apple with enabling multitouch on the Nexus One with a software update.
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Thursday, 30 April 2009 05:03
Bit-Tech.net
The ESA has announced that it will not be delaying the next E3 in any way because of swine flu and that the event will go ahead as planned.  Read more:
Tuesday, 07 April 2009 00:36
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
With all the doom and gloom stories weve seen about PlayStation 3 getting beat by Nintendo Wii, its refreshing to have some good news for a change.
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Sunday, 12 April 2009 19:26
eHAM.net
Ham radio operators are tech-savvy. "The idea that most everybody has is from the 1950s movies where they see somebody in the basement with a telegraphy key," said Pat Mullet, public information officer for the Midland Amateur Radio Club. "There are guys who still do that because they love playing with the old equipment," he said. "But today we've got radios the size of a couple of VHS tapes, and they can reach around the world." The club plays a role in any kind of emergency response where back-up communications are necessary, most typically when weather wipes out other connections. But club members also provide communications for Great Lakes Bay Region events such as the walk for Muscular Dystrophy or the Dow Run, Mullet said.
"We would have a station along the event course, and if anybody is having physical problems, we can get a call back to the base area," he said. Either way, helping get communications through "is our mandate when we sign up to get our (Federal Communications Commission) license," Mullet said. "We're there to provide cadres of communication experts in time of public need." Technology is drawing the interest of more hobbyists, Mullet said. Read more:
Friday, 05 June 2009 23:39
www.ElectronicsInfoline.com
TomTom White Pearl is a special edition GPS navigation system from the company. They are trying to make their TomTom ONE IQ Routes system more suitable as a gift item.
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Wednesday, 22 July 2009 04:52
Bit-Tech.net
DFI's latest LANParty board is built on the 790FX platform for AMD AM3 CPUs is a yellow and black update to the AM2+ M2RSH. Has DFI changed anything underneath to make it a better buy? Or is it in the same mould with the same limitations? Read on to find out.  Read more:
Friday, 01 January 2010 18:15
eHAM.net
BURLEY -- Two Idaho Falls men were rescued from Mount Harrison by search crews early Thursday morning after spending more than 30 hours in a communications shed during a blizzard. The pair kept in contact with the Cassia County sheriff's dispatch Tuesday night by cell phone and figured they would wait out the storm. Later when the cell phone went dead they were able to use a radio in the building to reach Terry Fletcher of Twin Falls on an all-call frequency. Fletcher relayed information to the sheriff's office for several hours. "When I first heard them, I thought it was either somebody playing around or somebody really in trouble," Fletcher said Thursday. Fletcher said his HAM radio, or amateur radio, is a hobby and he regularly monitors several frequencies. He was just glad to be able to help, he said. "That's a part of why a good many HAM operators do this," Fletcher said. Hawley said he and Wheeler were fairly comfortable and this was not the first time he has been snowed in on the mountain. Read more:
Tuesday, 27 January 2009 06:01
ke2yk
N8ZYA’s recent Blog post about working QRP and making a 2000+ mile contact brought back great memories of the last solar cycle and the fun time I had when I worked a lot of CW / QRP / M. You can find the link to N8ZYA’s Blog on the sidebar.
It was always a lot of fun and a real challenge to make contacts into Europe and many other places on my old Ten-Tec Argosy 525 while driving down the highway at 55+ MPH with the 40 Meter Hamstick flapping around. I made so many contacts with this rugged old timer that I do miss it from time to time. One of it’s best features was the fact that it could be easily switched from 5 to 50 watts when band conditions began to deteriorate. Hey! Got one for sale? Contact me, I’d be interested. I am still kicking myself today for being dumb enough to part with this little gem.
Some years ago, a friend of mine was going to take a trip to central New Jersey to pick up some Collins gear. He was also a CW / QRP / M nut like myself. I ha d some free time that day and took the ride. We were just getting onto the Belt Parkway and I was tuning around on his HW9 when I heard an OM3 calling from Western Slovakia. He was blasting in. Yep, we worked him and got a 539 signal report. Talk about ways to become hooked on a hobby. WOW!
My Ham friend in East Moriches was always the “bah humbug type” when it came to CW and he thought QRP was a total joke. One day I went over for a visit and brought my MFJ 9040 with me. He just “happened to have” a Tri-Band beam up about 20 feet in his back yard. He lived so close to the Atlantic Ocean that he didn’t need much height on the  antenna. I asked him if I could connect the 9040 to his beam. With all that hardware in front of this peanut rig, I knew it would be a blast. It reminded me  of David and Goliath. Anyway, I remember making a bunch of contacts without having to call CQ over and over and good signal reports were of course real easy to get. All of a sudden I got a guy from PA coming back to me. Man, he was hammering the front end of that toy radio. We got into a QSO and he gave me a 599 report. I asked him what I was actually showing on his meter and he told me it was 20 over. My friend and I were both laughing so hard our sides were splitting. I then told the op in PA that I was running 5 watts. There was dead silence for a moment. Then he proceeded to go on and on about my signal from the little old 9040. (I never told him that I was operating through the beam antenna!) I bet he will always remember that contact.
Yesterday I was tuning my Ten-Tec Triton IV Model 544 and heard a guy (not QRP) calling CQ around 7010 from his mobile in Alabama. He worked a GB4 station (Special Event – Isle of Man). That did it, it gave me the bug again! Now I want to start pulling more mobile stuff out of storage. ( I guess I am too easy to encourage!)
There seems to be some signs of life in the low bands again. It appears that the low bands are coming around for more DXing fun. After hearing that QSO I am getting the itch to pick  up some more QRP gear and start banging the paddles again from the mobile.
However, I am older (any maybe a little wiser now) and will park my butt before starting a QSO. Copying a QSO in my head at 55+ is best left to someone younger and more daring than I care to be these days. After hearing news stories about young men and women dying behind the wheel due to text messaging, becoming a statistic is not what I have in mind. There is no DX in the great beyond!
Ever worked CW or SSB / QRP/ M?
If so, why not comment on your best contact or a challenging contact?
Not into CW? Why not comment about your SSB mobile experiences.
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