Latest Post -- June 2019

Sooo...I haven’t posted much lately--not because I haven’t been doing any ham radio activities--I guess it’s just that I don’t know if anyone is reading my blog.

I started this blog a few years ago while I was living in Utah. I knew it would be awhile before anyone would find it on the Internet, particularly because I don’t advertise on any social media websites. I have a link on my ARRL profile and a link on my QRZ page and that’s it.

If nothing else, this blog will serve as a journal of my radio activities for my own pleasure. It would be nice, however, if you out there in the big world of ham radio would find your way here once in awhile. You might even find some of my entries interesting.

Any kind of feedback would be nice. It would probably motivate me to add entries more regularly if I knew they were being read.

So...if you who are reading this would be willing to drop me a short email message--even just to say ‘hi’--that would be much appreciated.

My email address is n7dn@arrl.net

I do have a few more entries in the works I will post as soon as they are completed. My original intent was not to write my entries in chronological order, that way I can tell my experiences as they come to mind and mix things up a bit.

Thanks for taking the time to find your way here.

73

Finally!

During the weekly net for the Eagle Rock ARC on December 4th, someone announced there would be a test session in Rexburg the following Saturday, December 8.

I figured this would give me just enough time to take a whole bunch of practice exams for the Amateur Extra class license so I can finally accomplish upgrading my amateur radio license. So that is what I started working on.

Saturday morning rolled around and I got up early enough to be at the city offices in Rexburg by 9:30. Boy, morning is a tough time to be taking a test of any type--except maybe a urine test (you old OMs will know what I mean). When I arrived, there were the 3 VEs and 3 people taking exams. Todd Smith, the exam session coordinator came to me, introduced himself, and had me fill out all necessary paperwork and pay the examination fee.

It has been 18 years since I upgraded from technician plus to general. I haven’t really had a lot of incentive to upgrade for the sake of more frequency segments on HF, however, I figured since I tested for and was granted a General Radiotelephone Operator License in March 2017, I should take the Extra exam before I forgot what I learned for that license. Besides--if I could pass two exams totaling 130 questions--a 50 question exam should be a snap.

Well...maybe not a snap...but three days of study was enough to squeek by and pass the Extra exam. Like I figure--pass is pass!

So on December 10, 2018, the FCC granted me an upgrade to my Amateur Radio Service license from General class to Amateur Extra.

Time to celebrate!

It Has Been Awhile

The last 13 months have been super crazy for my wife and me. In just less than a year, we have lived in 3 states, which means we have moved twice.

In October of 2017, I was offered a job with Day Wireless Systems in Lacey, Washington (next to Olympia) as a Radio Technician. We had three weeks to pack, move, and get settled in to start work. It didn’t quite happen that way, but I’ll spare the gory details.

I started my new job on October 30, 2017. I spent most of my time programming radios and doing bench testing. Since I was the only radio technician in the office a lot of the time, I also answered a lot of technical questions.

In August of 2018, I was asked if I wanted to transfer to the Day Wireless office in Idaho Falls. I immediately said I would. They didn’t have a technician there, so within three weeks, Terri and I packed up, moved, settled in, and on September 10th, I started my job in Idaho Falls.

Between a somewhat demanding job and some health problems, I didn’t spend much time with amateur radio activities in Washington. I tried to do some portable HF QRP, but I had a really hard time finding a place to setup. In case you didn’t know--Western Washington is covered with trees! Tall ones, too!

So...finding a place that didn’t have trees to interfere with propagation, overhead power lines, and too close to people and traffic, was nearly impossible.

I did go to a couple of meetings of the Olympia Amateur Radio Society (OARS) and I also checked out their Field Day setup in June. They have a great bunch of guys and do a lot of great activities.

I have been in Idaho for about three and a half months now, so I’ve decided to get back involved in ham radio activities. I’ve checked into a few different nets and have attended the Eagle Rock Amateur Radio Club meeting a few times now. I’ve also been checking into their weekly nets regularly. I also signed up with the ARES/RACES group and the LDS Church ERC in this area.

While writing this blog entry, I’ve been listening to the 146.850 repeater (which is part of the Intermountain Intertie system) where ham operators at National Weather Service offices are calling CQ to make contacts for the annual Skywarn Recognition Day.

I met a number of licensed hams in Washington and even worked with a few. I got on a few 2 meter repeaters from time-to-time, but just didn’t get involved in any group activities. I’ve really been itching to build some radio equipment, mostly HF QRP radios and some other odds and ends. I’ve been collecting electronic parts for awhile, so I think it’s time I do something with them. I also need to check out and get involved with some organizations like I have in the past, such as ARES, RACES, QCWA, and a local club or two.

Next Wednesday, the Eagle Rock ARC is having their annual Christmas get-together at a restaurant called "Leo’s Place." You just can’t beat getting together and socializing with a bunch of great guys over food. And...bringing the "better half" along lets her know that we’re not just a bunch of OMs out causing trouble, one night a month.

Civil Air Patrol Celebrates 75 Years

CAP CELEBRATES 75TH ANNIVERSARY WITH GALA AT NATL. AIR & SPACE MUSEUM's UDVAR-HAZY CENTER

Civil Air Patrol marked its 75th anniversary Thursday night in an appropriate setting – the aviation history on display at the Smithsonian Institution Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia.

For the rest of the article, click here. (Sorry-link no longer available)

Talking to Airplanes and Helicopters

Sometimes I feel kind of strange telling people that I am in the Civil Air Patrol.

First they ask, "What is that?" Then when I tell them, they ask, "Oh, do you fly?" Then I have to tell them that I'm a wimp and that pretty much what I do is talk to the airplanes... well, the pilots anyway.

I don't mind too much. It really isn't that I don't like to fly - it's just that I get motion sick really easily. I always have. So, I just pretty much stay on the ground and keep track of the airplanes in the air.

Thursday was one of those days.

The Utah Wing of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) planned a joint exercise with the Utah Air National Guard (ANG) last Thursday afternoon, November 17. It was to take place on the border of Utah and Tooele counties, out in the desert.

A few days prior, it was debatable whether the exercise would actually take place due to a winter storm coming in late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. Everyone involved was watching conditions so we would know whether to continue with the exercise as planned or make modifications since the aircraft wouldn't be able to fly in stormy weather.

Luckily, the storm subsided by late morning and the exercise was a "go."

Thursday's Weather

This exercise was designed to test our ability to find an aircraft that had gone down using a technique called Radio Direction Finding (RDF). The objective was to search for a Blackhawk helicopter on the ground ("the target") and use two ground teams made up of cadets and their leaders, a CAP aircraft (Cessna 182) flown by personnel from Phantom Squadron out of Spanish Fork, and an AH-64 Apache helicopter from the ANG. In addition, there would be communication personnel from the Wing and a couple squadrons in a communications vehicle (comm van), and command personnel at Wing headquarters in Salt Lake City, near the International airport.

Ground teams being briefed before search

The CAP airplane and the Apache helicopter, along with the ground teams, had radio direction finding equipment, which is used to locate the target. Typically, the aircraft would fly overheard while listening to a beacon from the disabled aircraft on the ground. Once they get in close proximity to the target based on the signal they receive from the beacon, they will radio in coordinates of the target's approximate location. Then, ground teams are sent in the direction of the target to search until they find the target on the ground. Many times, the aircraft is able to get close to the beacon signal, but might not be able to see the target from the air due to the terrain and environment. It is at that time the ground teams will locate the target, check for survivors and casualties, and then act accordingly.

Utah ANG Helicopter flies overhead.

While the search aircraft and ground teams are out doing their thing, there needs to be personnel and equipment at a location nearby that will coordinates all the efforts. This is usually referred to as the "Command Post." Depending on the size of the event, the command post can be anywhere from a single vehicle with one person giving orders, to a whole team with many responsibilities assigned to each individual. One of the main components - and this is where I come in - is communications. Sometimes, communications is in the same vehicle as most of the rest of the command group, and sometimes it is in a separate vehicle set aside strictly for communications. This is referred to as the "Comm Van."

"High Desert-88" - Utah Wing's Communications Van

For this exercise, members of wing communications drove the comm van from Salt Lake down to the location of the event. This comm van happens to be an older ambulance-type vehicle that has been converted for strictly communications use. While it has the capability of almost any communication means necessary, for this exercise we used one CAP VHF radio to talk to our airplane, and a cross-band unit that patched the ANG's high-band VHF FM (138-144 MHz) radio to the low-band VHF (30-88 MHz) radio used by the Apache helicopter. This allowed direct communication from the comm van and aircraft to the Apache helicopter. We also tested HF communication at one point.

My assignment for this exercise was to keep track of the ground teams and CAP aircraft. Since our Incident command is almost always located at wing headquarters, I was in contact with them, also.

So what I did was spend several hours talking to ground and air units, kept a paper log of all communications, and entered all entries into a digital log on a computer. I also coordinated with other personnel at and near the comm van, including the radio operator assigned to the patch. I was busy the entire time spending about half the time on the radio and the other half on the logs.

Sun going down over Utah's West Desert

It was a lot of fun being out in the desert away from the city, with CAP and ANG personnel, and hearing the airplane and helicopters fly by (sometimes only several tens of feet above ground). I also enjoyed using my communication skills, both on the radio and face-to-face with the others. I hope as I continue to do these exercises that my communication skills will continue to improve.

...and gone. "Fairfield Mission Base...out."

Radio Parts in the Mailbox

When I decided to start this blog, my thought was to keep it limited to topics most closely related to my adventures with Amateur Radio and Civil Air Patrol.

However, some experiences - large and small - are just too funny or unique to not share. Again, I realized that an experience I had that I would like to pass along, IS in fact related to ham radio.

So here goes again...

Last week while searching online for who-know's-what (that part isn't important) I fell for Amazon's marketing trap, where by "stealing" your search words they target you with advertising, I came across an ad for a popular Air Variable Capacitor. It just happened to be one that, if I was actually looking for an air variable capacitor at that particular time, I would have picked this specific one (who knew, right?) It was a good price, so I ordered it... along with a high-impedance earphone and some 1N34 diodes.

You know - deals just TOO good to pass up. So I didn't.

Well, they were delivered to my mailbox Saturday via the good ol' US Postal Service.

Now - in the 16 years I have lived here, I haven't had much to complain about regarding the mail carriers I've had. My only real complaint was wondering how soon the HOA would replace the mailboxes (where mine is located) that were "taken out" late one night ... as in ran into and knocked to the ground. (If anyone happens to be privy to this information - please share - I would really like to hear the story).

So on my way to pick up my wife to go to a play in Springville, I stopped at the mailbox to get the mail. I pulled up, rolled down the window, unlocked the little mailbox door, and saw there was a cardboard box in there.

Woo-hoo, my parts came.

A little puzzled, I reached in to pull the cardboard box out. After struggling for a few seconds and realizing I wasn't going to be able to get it out, I pulled my car up a bit so I could get out and go back to the mailbox. At this point, I'm thinking that the mail carrier must have thought to himself,

"Hey...this cardboard box just fits in the mailbox! I don't have to walk it all the way to the door."

So he put it in there with the Galls catalog and an envelope, which were both kind of crumpled up.

Here is my dilemma. While the back opening to the group of 16 mailboxes with a single door was large enough for the cardboard box to go into, the front opening isn't as large because each mailbox has its own door. In addition, there wasn't anything to grab onto with my hand.

So the first thing I tried was to stick a key into the side of the cardboard box, twist, and pull it out. It was at this point I realized the cardboard box was wider than the doorway.

What I ended up having to do was take my trusty 5.11-Tactical folding knife and carefully cut the side of the box open and pull out the contents. Luckily, I knew what was in it so I knew about how careful to be.

I was kind of in a hurry so I decided to leave the box in there (without writing something nasty on it) in hopes that maybe - just maybe, the mail carrier might get the hint that he wasn't as smart as he may have initially thought.

Hmm... we shall see.

Wednesday afternoon rolled around and I decided to go get the mail. I mentioned to my wife before going outside that I wondered if there would be any mail, or if the mail carrier figured I hadn't retrieve my package, or just what I would find. We chuckled a little, then I opened the door to go out.

There sitting on the front porch was the box and packaging paper that I had left in the mailbox. The same one that I left, hoping the carrier would figure out my struggle retrieving from my end of the mailbox.

We had a good laugh over that one.

I've decided I'm going to believe that he got the hint and that I will never have to struggle with getting my mail out of my mailbox ever again.

At least not until the next time it happens.

Lawyers and Mobile Phone Carriers

I've got a little story that just makes me want to shake my head. In fact, I wasn't going to post it because I didn't think it was radio related - then I thought - it is so. After all - it has to do with my mobile phone carrier - and a mobile phone is a radio - right?

So here goes...

I came home from having lunch with my wife today (she works most Saturdays) and I stopped at the mailbox to pick up the mail. There was an envelope that looked kind of official, meaning legal, or scary or something.

I opened it up and - low and behold - it was a check from a class action lawsuit I've been waiting for, that some lawyers filed against AT&T! (um, not really - that was sarcasm).

Now let me tell you - for the most part - I detest class action lawsuits because it's just an easy way for a bunch of lawyers to make a HUGH sum of money, because of something slimy some big corporation did, thinking they could get away with, that affected thousands, if not, millions of people, where each person ends up receiving a very small portion of a small percentage of billions of dollars, where the larger portion is split between far, far fewer lawyers, that ended up being a pretty sure thing for them, i.e., not much work. Pheeewww.....

So - here's my portion:

See why I've been waiting very patiently, with baited breath, and with huge amounts of anticipation, for months and months and months for this check? (NOT!)

Gee - can I buy a resistor with that amount?