Ham Radio Data Center

Stories covered and special features in This Weeks edition: 01. A California jury recommends the death penalty for killer of amateur radio couple, KD7VWK and KD7VWJ. 02. Ontario Canada hands-fress cellphone law is on hold pending exemptions for amateur radio operators. 03. Mike Durroughs "Save Delano VOA" effort sparks YouTube tribute video 04. The FCC approves wireless devices in digital television channel white spaces. 05. The first Hawaii to U.S. mainland packet QSO record is claimed. 06. Richard Garriot, W5KWQ, returns to earth and thanks amateur radio. 07. A group of hams are planning a special event station to mark channel two analog television going off the air, making six meters ultra-quiet. 08. The ARRL VEC plans an exam price increase due to sagging economy. 09. Riley Hollingsworth K4ZDH is appointed as an Assistant Director in the Atlantic Division. 10. The ARRL NTS Region 2 Traffic Net expands to include provinces of Canada. 11. The FCC creates a tussle at 1080 kilohertz. 12. The FCC cancels the fine against a Boston Police radio jammer due to age. 13. The Supreme Court is hearing broadcast television indecency. 14. California is planning an simulated earthquake drill to end all drills. 15. The FCC is investigating cable television digital transition fees. 16. Sony recalls thousands of laptop batteries due to overheat potential. 17. NASA scientists say Cycle 24 sunspots are on the rise. 18. Monthly Propagation Forecast & Commentary with Steve Nichols, G0KYA. 19. Crozet Island to be activated in late 2009. 20. The Random Access Thought with Bill Baran, N2FNH. "EZLR" 21. Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO. 22. The staff of TWIAR is now on Twitter. Follow us! 23. Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte. 24. Courage Handi-Ham System update with Pat Tice, WA0TDA. 25. TWIAR QSL Cards are now available. Just send us an e-mail. 26. Special event station listings. 27. Gateway 160 Meter Net Report with Vern Jackson, WA0RCR / Contesting 28. Skywarn Recognition Day is scheduled for December 6th by national weather. 29. D-STAR arrives in parts of Australia and in the remote Azores. 30. Ham Radio Outlet, Anaheim, has a D-STAR repeater on the air. 31. The ARRL Auction is now over for 2008. Going..going..gone! 32. Four hams will be aboard the next space shuttle launch. 33. The great Firewall of China is now available to you in a Firefox plug-in.

Read more: This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast

Stories covered and special features in This Weeks edition: 01. Ohio amateurs discover and fix "The Ditters" on the forty meter band. 02. Richard Garriot W5KWQ, says thank you to the worldwide amateur community. 03. Mike Dorrough, KO6NM, is trying to save the Voice of America transmitter site in Delano, California. 04. Amateurs in Ireland get new allocations at five megahertz. 05. Amateurs in Spain get new allocations at 1.8 and 70 megahertz. 06. Skywarn Recognition Day Simulated Emergency Test is set for December 6th. 07. A new amateur radio digital desktop from Creative Services Software. 08. Microsoft is ready to unveil the test version of Windows 7. 09. The FCC amends the experimental license of WE2XRH to keep digital broadcasting off the amateur bands. 10. The cross-band repeater is now active on-board the Space Station. 11. The FCC is now in the planning stages for the upcoming World Radio Conference to be held in 2011. 12. Why is the ARRL located in Connecticut? 13. John Paoli, KG6GCB, Chief Engineer for KFI-AM in Los Angeles, SK. 14. A Washington AM broadcast will become the next 50 kilowatt outlet. 15. The ARRL-VEC is more than just amateur radio exams. 16. The Expedition 17 crew returns to earth from the Space Station. 17. Richard Garriot lands in Star City Russia with Expedition 17 crew. 18. The Expedition 18 crew takes command of the International Space Station. 19. The Random Access Thought with Bill Baran, N2FNH "SETI-Don Ecker #2) 20. Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte. 21. Courage Handi-Ham System Update with Pat Tice WA0TDA. 22. The FCC is reviewing possible FM IBOC power levels in new proposal. 23. The TWIAR Staff is now available on Twitter! Follow us! 24. Special event station listings. 25. The Gateway 160 Meter Net Report with Vern Jackson, WA0RCR. 26. Weekly propagation forecast. 27. The first Chinese amateur radio satellite, XW-1, scheduled for launch. 28. TWIAR QSL Cards are still available. Do you have one? 29. ARRL invites nominations for the 2008 International Humanitarian Award. 30. The Global Simulated Emergency Test is scheduled for next week. 31. Celebrating the life of Lenore Jensen, famous actress/ham, W6NAZ. 32. HD radio is highlighted at the Consumer Electronics Design Expo. 33. Stow-aways are aboard the new NASA probe to the Kaiper Belt. (Pluto) "This Week in Amateur Radio" is a weekly amateur radio audio, on the air, news magazine/bulletin service, produced by a lot of dedicated volunteers, by Community Video Associates, Inc., a New York State not-for-profit corporation. The mailing address for our support fund is: This Week in Amateur Radio Support Fund P.O. Box 30 Sand Lake, New York 12153

Read more: This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast

Stories covered and special features in This Weeks edition: 01. The FCC amends WE2XRH experimental digital broadcasting license to exclude the amateur 40 meter band. 02. A California jury finds Skylar Deleon guilty of the murder of a ham radio couple at sea. 03. The next round of PAVE-PAWS radar interference mitigation begins. 04. Change the clocks. Back one hour next weekend. 05. The Expedition 17 crew returns to earth with Richard Garriot, W5KWQ. Expedition 18 takes over the space station. 06. Members of Congress push for all digital radio broadcasting. 07. Broadcasters file emergency objection with the FCC regarding the proposal to allow unlicensed devices in "white spaces". 08. The South Carolina prison system wants to install cell phone jammers. 09. The ARRL Doctor answers a question from his mailbag on TWIAR. 10. The FCC proposes yet another inter-operable national radio system. 11. Mike Dorrough lends his voice in saving a VOA transmitter site in Calif. 12. The ARRL announces a new youth editor. 13. ARRL hosts a special classroom event for USTTI students from around the world. 14. World Radio and Technology News Round-Up SOUTH AFRICA..........OCTOBER EXAM HITS CLOSE TO RECORD APPLICANTS IRAN..................IRAN OPENS 4TH TALLEST RADIO TOWER BELGIUM...............HIGH VOLUME ON MP3 PLAYERS CAN CAUSE HEARING LOSS GERMANY...............LOOKING FOR HORKHEIMER 2009 15. A new California law may enhance Emergency Communications in that state. 16. The FCC fines BK Towers for not monitoring tower lighting. 17. The FTC busts a world-wide SPAM e-mail ring. 18. The FCC plans a nationwide free internet network for low income families. 19. Radio signals guide the Rosetta Stone probe past an asteroid. 20. Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte. 21. The Random Access Thought with Bill Baran, N2FNH. "Ouija" 22. The Ancient Amateur Archives with Bill Continelli, W2XOY. (02R) 23. TWIAR Staff Blogs are now on-line. Visit them today. Or else. 24. Courage Handi-Ham System Update with Pat Tice, WA0TDA. 25. TWIAR QSL Cards are now available for something as easy as an e-mail. 26. Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO. 27. Special Event Station Listings. 28. The Pension Protection Act streamlines charitable donations from IRA's says the ARRL. 29. The Gateway 160 Meter Net Report with Vern Jackson, WA0RCR. 30. The ARRL 500kHz experimental station, WD2XSH, wants to hear from you. 31. TAPR announces a new software defined radio board. 32. An amateur radio club in Idaho fills a wilderness gap with RF. 33. India plans to launch its own un-manned moon mission. 34. Scientists discover that un-rolling Scotch Tape produces X-Rays!

Read more: This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast

Stories covered and special features in This Weeks edition: 01. An FCC report brings the United States one step closer to a free nation wide wireless network. 02. Get ready for Jamboree On The Air JOTA, and Jamboree On The Internet JODI 03. The FCC releases its findings on white space devices. 04. Richard Garriot W5KWQ is now on the air from the Space Station! 05. The City of Manassas takes over operation of the citys BPL system. 06. Fourteen new Section Managers journey east to ARRL Headquarters. 07. Copper theft is now a worldwide problem as thiefs steal live electrical distribution cables in Australia. 08. A regular amateur QSO leads to a rescue at sea. 09. The Nevada SET, a simulated earthquake scenario, results in some great press for the amateurs of Nye County. 10. President of radio league in India wants amateur radio taught in schools. 11. A new Solar Cycle 24 spot appears on the solar disk. No kidding. 12. The New Zealand Radio DX League celebrates its 60th anniversary. 13. World Radio and Technology News Round-Up SOUTH AFRICA...........RUSSIA TO LAUNCH SOUTH AFRICAN HAMSAT UNITED KINGDOM.........ICOM DONATION SUPPORTS GRAMMAR SCHOOL CAPE TOWN..............HAMS ASSIST IN CELL JAMMING CASE 14. Pennsylvania becomes the 27th state to have PRB-1 type legislation. 15. The ARRL General Class Instruction manual is now available on CD-ROM. 16. KABEL-X develops technology to take core out of cable hard-line for fiber. 17. The league warns of a new e-mail phishing effort on the internet. 18. The Ancient Amateur Archives with Bill Continelli, W2XOY. 19. The Random Access Thought with Bill Baran, N2FNH. "Don Ecker UFO #1" 20. TWIAR Staff Blogs are now on-line. W2XBS needs help with his. 21. Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte. 22. The Courage Handi-Ham System Up-date with Pat Tice WA0TDA "Computer Sound" 23. Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO. 24. TWIAR QSL Cards are now available. Everyone wants'em. Get yours now! 25. Tower Climbing and Antenna Safety Tips with Greg Stoddard, KF9MP. 26. Up-coming Special Event Station Listings. 27. The Gateway 160 Meter Net Report with Vern Jackson, WA0RCR. 28. Well known contestor/DXer Paulo Cortesz, SK. 29. New generation of national emergency alert system on the horizon. 30. Next global Simulated Emergency Test is scheduled for early November 2008. 31. WinAPRS author seriously injured, one dead in balloon crash in Albuquerque 32. Scott Fybush Tower Calender for 2009 is now available. 33. K7BV announces a return trip to San Andres Islands for 6 meter ops. 34. Technical problems continue to plague the Hubble Space Telescope. 36. OLED Technology will bring those Star Trek light panels to market.

Read more: This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast

Stories covered and special features in This Weeks edition: 01. Pennsylvania becomes the 27th state to enact PRB-1 type legislation. 02. A Pennsylvania amateurs tower permit is appealed for the second time. 03. A hot air balloon accident in Albuquerque leaves an amateur seriously injured, and another non-ham dead. 04. Richard Garriot, W5KWQ, prepares to head to the Space Station. 05. The trial of accused ham radio couple murderer Sklar Deleon takes a strange twist as the trial gets underway in California. 06. The ARRL says it has more work to do on amateur radio spectrum defense. 07. The league prepares for World Radio Communications Conference 2011. 08. American amateurs plan to lead a DXpedition in 2009 to Desecheo Island. 09. Cape Town tow truck operators are accused of running cellphone jammers. 10. The 2008 Orionids meteor shower should be better than expected. 11. Singapore announces it will issue temporary ham radio licenses for visting amateurs. 12. CERN builds a new computer grid to help support Collider data crunching. 13. World Radio and Technology News AFGHANISTAN.......DXPEDITION ON HOLD CALIFORNIA........FOUR CALIFORNIA CITIES TO GO INTEROPERABLE SOUTH AFRICA......SARL CANCELS TAKE AMATEUR RADIO TO SCHOOL PROGRAM 15. Members of the ARMY amateur radio club in Iraq is rotating home, and is looking for new amateur personnel to take over. 16. More people are on-line than listen to the radio, but more watch their new high definition television. 17. The RSGB is not happy with Ofcom. South Africa looks at BPL again. 18. The first ARRL textbook is published and released in China. 19. China prepares to launch its first ham radio satellite. 20. There is a new morse code trainer on the net from New Zealand. 21. Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO. 22. Scientists put forth a new theory on Noctilucent Clouds. 23. Tower Climbing and Antenna Safety with Greg Stoddard, KF9MP. 24. Weekly Propagation Forecast with Geramy Boot, G4NJH. 25. Google pitches the use of white spaces to the FCC. 26. Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte. 27. TWIAR Staff Blogs are now on-line. E-Mail W2XBS with topics for his. 28. Courage Handi-Ham System Update with Pat Tice WA0TDA "Remote Base Update" 29. TWIAR QSL Cards are now available. Send and e-mail, get yours today! 30. The Gateway 160 Meter Net Report with Vern Jackson, WA0RCR. 31. Special event station listings. 32. The FCC will host its first of a series of speaker forums later this month 33. Peha is named Chief Technologist for the Federal Communications Commission 34. Popular french communications magazine "Megahertz" ceases publication. 36. Icom donates top of the line digital transceiver to UK school. 37. Ham radio makes a cameo appearance in the new "Get Smart" movie.

Read more: This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast

Stories covered and special features in This Weeks edition: 01. Canadian and American amateurs provide a "Textbook Example" of amateur radio emergency communications. 02. Radio amateurs across the extreme northeast United States assist with weather and emergency communications during Hurricane Kyle. 03. Opening statements begin this week in the trial of accused ham radio couple murderer, Skyler Deleon. 04. Richard Garriot, W5KWQ, plans SSTV, and ARISS contacts during his stay as the next private citizen on the International Space Station. 05. ISS astronauts confirm the arrival of new amateur radio gear. 06. The FCC makes decision on contests amateur radio call sign. 07. A NASA space weather scientist declares this years sun the "Blankest in Decades". 08. The ARRL/TAPR Digital Communication Conference is held in Chicago. 09. The amateur radio station in Iraq is looking for military personnel. 10. E-Mails targeting amateur radio address, purportedly from AMEX, are spam. 11. The IARU endorsed booklet promoting ethics, operating practices, and other amateur radio issues is now available for free download. 12. INTEL develops new magnetic electricity transmission system. It works. 13. The Weird and Wonderful File looks at a "Chicken Gun". 14. Follow Up on a unlicensed Florida broadcaster. 15. The Federal Communications Commission says that two equals one. 16. GPS is in and texting is out under new California regulations. 17. A failed transmitter on the Hubble Space Telescope may delay shuttle. 18. Ohio amateurs provide communications for Air Force race. 19. Monthly Propagation Report with Steve Nichols, G0KYA from London. 20. Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO. 21. VOA Russia eliminates certain broadcasts in favor of podcasting them. 22. A new emergency communications software package is released. 23. Dennis Dura, K2DCD, keynote address on Emergency Communications Part #3 24. The Random Access Thought with Bill Baran, N2FNH. "W2XOY's Elmers" 25. Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte. 26. TWIAR QSL Cards are now available! E-Mail us for your copy today! 27. Courage Handi-Ham System Update with Pat Tice, WA0TDA. 28. Staff blogs are now on line! Visit the TWIAR staff blogs. 29. The US ARDF team brings home yet another medal this year. 30. Tower Climbing and Antenna Safety with Greg Stoddard, KF9MP. 31. The Gateway 160 Meter Net Report with Vern Jackson, WA0RCR. 32. Special event station listings. 33. Radio magazine "Megahertz" goes QRT in France. 34. Afghanistan amateurs appear on the HF bands. 36. SHORTWAVE SPECIAL: Radio New Zealand International celebrates 60 years. 37. Develop a new super energy efficient LED light bulb, and win the L Prize.

Read more: This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast

In the past few months, I read several books and several more are in the wishlist. I now use Flipkart to buy books and have never visited any book stores in the recent past. I would happily recommend Flipkart to any book buyer in India. I was waiting for such a service for a long time, as customer service in most bookshops (or any customer interface in India?) sucks. One example that comes to my mind is Gangarams in bangalore. The shop has quite a large number of work force, but getting them to do any work for you is a tough job.

Flipkart offers free shipping to any location in India and also offers some discount. It also has a simple interface, though the search still can improve a lot more.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

Now you can comment on the blog posts on this website without too much of hastle.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

I think I have a version of libjingle which has some bug fixes compared to the 0.4.0. And BTW, these are strictly unofficial release. I have nothing to do with Google.

The main features of the release are:

• dependency on ortp 0.7.1 removed. Can use the distro supplied ortp (latest version). 0.7.1 will no longer be supported.
• updated to use mediastreamer2 (part of linphone, again available in your fav distro).
• Various misc bugfixes to fix crashes etc.
• iLBC support temporarily not available.

Grab the code:

svn checkout http://unshackle.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ unshackle

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

Since this year March, I had been a heavy user of VoIP. I had been trying various options, asking other users on which service works best and so on. If not for VoIP, I would have been spending massive amount of money on Telephone to call home. One of the hard requrement was that it should run on GNU/Linux and should be Free (as in Freedom). But after trying out afew programs, I decided to relax that condition and decided to be a bit more pragmatic, but this requirement was always in the back of my mind. I had been mainly using Google Talk and occassionally Skype. I like the voice quality provided by Google Talk very much and the simplicity of their client program. The only bad part had been that it works only on Windows. I had to boot into Windows (which came pre-installed) on my laptop. Not anymore..

Google released the library called libjingle. I (together with my friend Anoop) was one of the first to try it out way back in 2006 if I remember - in vain. But last week I started looking into libjingle again. The inspiration came from this page and after afew late night hacking, it all works and this post will enable the reader equipped with a GNU/Linux machine to do it too. From now on, I am going (if time permits) to maintain a branch of libjingle and hope to release updated versions and also integrate it with a simple chat client. Those are for later.

0. Download the tarball. All the required changes to get libjingle to compile and work, is in this tarball.

1. Install SSL, ALSA libraries, Speex development files (i.e. libssl-dev, libasound2-dev, libspeex-dev). Needless to say, you need to have a working toochain setup. If not install gcc 4.x and its cousins.

2. libjingle 0.4.0 specifically depends on ortp 0.7.1. This will change in future, one of the things in my list is to make it work on the current latest version of ortp. ortp-0.7.1 is included in the above tarball. Do:

./configure && make && make install

This should install ortp libraries and header files into /usr/local.

3. Install iLBC libraries. Do:

$ cd msilbc-2.0.0

$ tar zxvf ilbc-rfc3951.tar.gz

$ cd ilbc-rfc3951

$ ./configure && make

$ sudo make install

iLBC is a royalty free codec, supposedly. But the version of code which is included in the above tarball is not really Free as in Freedom. One can use it only for non-commercial personal use. The specification are however, freely available, for anyone to implement a Free version. Any volunteers?

4. Go into libjingle-0.4.0 directory. Do:

./configure --with-speex=/usr --with-ilbc=/usr/local

After afew minutes of compilation, you will have the library and the programs in the example directories built.

5. Go to talk/examples/call. Run:

$./call

Alternatively, you can do a make install and just invoke call. call -d spits out some of the xmpp traces and debug information which was very valuable in debugging certain stuff.

It will ask you your JID. Give the full gmail ID (for eg: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and give the password. I think the rest of the things are self-explanatory. It has a very simple command system. Type roster to see who is online or away. Use ‘call’ to call someone. Once you are in a call, it gives you another set of commands to hangup or mute/unmute calls.

6. There are afew issues with the program and occassional crashes. We will fix them on the way.

7. Please report success, problems and fixes to my email ID.

8. I have started maintaining my own svn repository of this code with the aim of improving it a bit. Contributors are welcome. I will publish the repository when I have something to show. One of my goals with libjingle is to do remote amateur radio operation. i.e. Control, recieve and transmit the radio sitting at your house connected to a computer and a broadband connection from anywhere in the world. What has been accomplished is just a baby step.

Surprisingly, I found in the initial xmpp capability exchanges that the latest windows build of google chat client is not using speex. It uses a bunch of propreitary codecs which is not supported by the above code, so it switches to the PCM/U at 8kHz sampling rate. [Update: Looks like I was wrong. Speex seem to be well supported. Sorry for misinformation.]

A big thanks to Google to publish libjingle as free software. The libjingle documentation is also a great piece of work. It will be a shame if no one used it to the maximum.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

I am too lazy to update my blog. And there are no station updates from VU3RDD.

I have two life updates. Both are related to startups though.

#0: A new startup is in preparation and it will soon be born. The due date is sometime around June. We are very excited about the whole thing.

#1: I have joined a new startup as employee #3 (and engineer #1) and it is a lot of fun.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

Micro$oft has finally published their Office binary formats. Perhaps many of us, Free Software users see this as a big win. Though OpenOffice supports reading and writing in MS Office formats, these specs from horse’ mouth would surely be expected to make things better. Not so. It seems like these formats are not designed to inter-operate. This post from Joel Spolsky throws the light on why it is so.

I think as Free Software enthusiasts, we should still boycott these formats (or use a subset of these and ensure that they work fine with Free Software) and instead use the ODF instead. A lot of documents have started appearing in the new OOXML (with docx extension). Afew half-baked solutions exist to read these documents as of this writing. But hopefully a fully OO.o integrated solution will appear so that we can read docx files and convert them into saner formats.

Here is another related analysis from FSFE on why Microsoft is publishing these formats at this point of time.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

Today marks five years since I became an associated member of the Free Software Foundation. I have to say that I am very glad that the money I gave to the FSF is well spent.

If you are remotely connected to Software World and are worried about Free Standards, Free Information, Free Software (Free as in Freedom and not price) and in general about Freedom for  computer users, please consider joining the associate membership. It is very easy. Click on the below button. And you can contribute as much as your monthly income permit. Consider the amount of money you waste when you go out to a shopping mall and drain your vallet aimlessly. That money will be well-spent for a cause if you can give it to the FSF.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log

I finished reading this wonderful book two weeks back. It’s a very inspirational book and I think every self-respecting engineer should read this book.

Read more: VU3RDD Station Log