This weekend I attended the northeastern Wisconsin “YoYo Net” annual picnic and met some of the locals that check into the net.  It makes a nice Saturday afternoon, but how many great ham radio stories would you hear at such a local event?  Not many I thought.  WRONG!

I met a newer local ham that had a decided southern accent.  And what a story he had to tell.  He explained how he got into ham radio – I forget exactly how many years ago – let’s just say “back in the day…”.  Great story – here it is:

This gent was sitting in church one Sunday listening to the sermon and was picking at some sort of wort or other skin issue he had on his finger.  He explained that the person sitting next to him told him to stop picking at it and that he would cure his skin problem after the service.  The story goes that this stranger explained that he was a ham radio operator.  He advised my new friend to place his finger near, but not on, his car’s ham radio antenna.  “After it gets warm, move it away from the antenna…”.  So after the stranger started the car – he did.  And he said you could see the arc and that it did in fact burn the wart or whatever off his finger.  Says he still has the scar.  And THAT is why he got interested in ham radio…

Good story???  Wait – it gets better…  Seems this stranger in church was one of the original “spooks”.  Seems he was French-Canadian and served in WWII as a paratrooper and was “employed” by the OSS – the fore-runner of the CIA.  He was a spy!

So there’s the story.  Best stories on HF only?  I stand corrected!

Stay radio active!

Jon E. Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

But back to ham radio.  Saturday brought a test activation of the Outagamie County, WI A.R.E.S. http://www.wi-aresraces.org/ .  For this activation we met at a local fire station which was the simulated emergency command center.  There we received our briefing and assignments.  The simulation specifics are not important.  My assigned task was to establish ham radio net communications at a large local hospital.  I had never been in that hospital before and was a relative newbie in town, so it was an interesting event.

Road construction along the way slowed me down a bit.  I stopped into a local pasty shop along the way to get specific directions which turned out to be spot-on.  At the hospital, after realizing that the power supply had variable voltage I was able to establish good communications as required by the test activation.

The test activation allowed me to work with some nice professional people at the St. Elizabeth’s hospital in Appleton, WI.  But it also allowed me to meet the cook at the local pasty shop.  Seeing that she had done me a favor with providing good directions for free I felt that I owed her something.  So I “HAD” to go back and buy four pasties – one of which was devoured for lunch that day!

I felt good when I got done.  I learned something about my city, something about some ham radio equipment, something about a local hospital and I bought myself a reward (the pasty) for my efforts.  I hope that everyone that reads this will participate in some sort of activities that better their community and builds their skills.

Stay Radio Active!

Jon E. Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

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On a normal morning my wife, Jane (kd8krs) and I go to church and then have lunch and do projects or watch a Packer game in the afternoons.  This Sunday Jane went to church while I went to participate in this communications support event.  It was a dark, dreary, cold, VERY windy day with heavy rain.  The rain drops were so big and were driven by the wind so hard that when they hit the windshield of the car it made me wonder if they had some slushy snow in them.  But it was a bit too warm for that.  I’m not sure what the wind-chill was, but I was glad that I was going to be sitting in a nice warm car for the event.

Before I went to the event I checked my e-mail and listened to my police scanner for any 2 meter repeater traffic.  I wondered if the race would be cancelled since the conditions were so bad.  It wasn’t as far as I could tell.  So I went to the school where we were scheduled to meet.  I soon found droves of people showing up for the event.  Brave souls I thought…

We each were given maps and assignments and I soon departed for my spot.  I had a good location – it was along the long leg back to the starting location.  One of my assigned tasks was to report when the main body of walkers passed my location so the cooks would know when to get the lunch food out and be ready for the walkers when they finished.

The winds this day were at least 30 mph at times.  And the heavy rains did not stop.  To my surprise, neither did the brave walkers.  Hundreds of them!  I honestly was surprised how many brave souls seemed to think absolutely nothing of the weather – all to raise money for those in need.

The other thing that surprised me was how chilled a person in a nicely wind and rain protected car could get after sitting for more than an hour or so…  The warm lunch at the end of the event was a really nice gesture by the race sponsors.  It sure tasted good and helped warm me up!

As for ham radio operations, I had participated in a number of nets over the years and so I felt comfortable operating in this networked environment.  It also helped to polish my skills should I need to use them in more serious times like during Skywarn severe weather nets or worse – after a severe weather event.

I wondered, in the morning, if the effort would be worth it on such a lousy weather day.  To my surprise, it very much was!  My personal reward, other than the good warm lunch, was a personal thank you from a family member of one of the walkers.  She took the time to thank me for the support as I walked in to the commons area of the high school where the lunch was being served.  That gave me a good feeling that I had helped a large group of people in some small way to accomplish their goal of helping those in need.

It was a good day!

Stay Radio Active!

Jon, AB9NN

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

As part of the Outagamie County (Appleton, Wisconsin area) A.R.E.S. group I participated in three events this week.  One had enough humor in it to write about.  The other two were just good ‘ole ham radio stuff…  First the other two.

On Thursday there was a state-wide simulated tornado event / drill.  As part of that exercise there was a simulated SkyWarn ham radio net activation for trained storm spotters such as myself.  I happened to be driving back from lunch with Justin (K0RPL) in Appleton, WI.  I heard the net activating and so I checked in and advised net control that my A.P.R.S. tracker was active.  Net control responded that my APRS track was a good one.  Once I got back to work I checked out of the net.  I think that net control appreciated having someone on APRS to track to practice with.  For those new to APRS, it is a little tracker about the size of a silver dollar (GPS sensor) and a cigarette package (data converter known technically as TNC or Terminal Node Controller).  This device sends my GPS coordinates and speed and direction, etc. data out over ham radio frequency to listening stations.  Those stations take the data and send it down the line to the internet servers.  My track is then instantly displayable by anyone on the internet via www.APRS.FI as long as they know my FCC callsign.  I am tracked as AB9NN-9.  The AB9NN is my FCC call sign (for ham radio) and the -9 signifies that the transmissions are from my car.  I might use -7 if I were on foot, etc…

That evening there was a siren test.  I wasn’t going to participate but was just finishing dinner when it started on the police scanner.  YUP – I can get 2 meter ham radio on my regular police scanner!  You can get one for around $100 or less at places like Radio Shack.  I wandered out to the car and checked in.  Turned out there was a siren near our home in Appleton, WI that had not been checked.  I wasn’t quite sure where it was but managed to get to within a couple of blocks of it when it went off.  That sure helped me locate it exactly!

Saturday we had another siren test.  I had figured on checking another siren near our house but when I got into the truck and checked in to the net I learned that it was already assigned.  Drats!  Well – I looked at the list of sirens and found one location that I recognized so I volunteered for that one.  It was near a school and I found it quickly.  Probably too quickly.  The sirens were set to go off at noon and here I was all ready to go and it was only 11:33.  What to do?  Drive around a bit?  Nah – waste of gas.  I figured I’d listen to the ham radio net operations.  Well, everyone checked in and then the net was silent waiting for the sirens to go off – so that got old quickly.  OK – time to check-out the HF bands.  I was figuring I would go to 20 meters and see if there was any DX.  I changed modes from memory mode to VFO mode on my 857d radio but we had decided to lower the ATAS-120 screwdriver (motorized) antenna when we put it into the garage the other night.  We left it on 6 meters (50 Mhz or so).  Since I had time and was not driving I decided to spend some time manually tuning through the band.  To my surprise I quickly found a number of ham radio operators working some good 6 meter ham radio contacts.  There was a 6 meter band opening!  The 6 meter band comes alive spring, summer and fall and then goes to sleep for the winter.  It has to do I believe with the tilt of the earth and charging of different levels of the atmosphere to the point that our ham radio 6 meter signals reflect off of it and back down to earth far away…  So I was able to make my first 6 meter contact – that was fun and worth a blog post of itself… but here comes the funny part…

While I was on 6 meters I notice a young lad dressed in tree / grass like camo diving onto the grass across the street from me.  Every time I looked away he covered his head!  It was a cold day and the grass was wet – but he laid there for a good 20 minutes or so.  I never did find out exactly what he was up to.  My theory is that maybe he wondered why this strange truck was parked in his neighborhood and some older guy was watching the school playground (tornado siren, actually) so intently?  After the siren sounded I left to drive around the block to verify that all four horns on the stationary siren were working.

On Sunday I will help our Appleton, WI ham radio club provide ham radio communications support to the MS Walk in Appleton.  It’s nice to be able to use a skill of mine to help others accomplish the goal of helping people in need!

Stay Radio Active!

Jon, AB9NN-9

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

Your email:

I had a dentist appointment in Green Bay, Wisconsin recently and the 30 mile or so drive from Appleton, Wisconsin gave me time to do some HF work with my mobile HF radio.  Running just 100 watts into a less than sturdily mounted “ham stick” antenna on 20 meters I made an outstanding contact with a ham radio base station in France!  For some time after that I nearly gloated to myself about how lucky I was to be able to enjoy this hobby and how everything was working so well.  Bad move!

A couple of weeks later I was driving home from work and flipped from 2 meters over to 20 meters.  The band was surprisingly quiet!  Was it due to low solar activity?  AND – there was surprisingly little traffic on the band.  A few people, but not many.  Hmmm…  I started to get a bad feeling…  I went to an open part of the band and made a quick transmission with my call sign with one eye on the SWR indicator on the radio’s display mounted on my dash.  There it was – a flashing “SWR” – I probably had an antenna problem.

Well, I had mounted the antenna on the trunk in a snow storm and tuned it when it was around zero degrees Fahrenheit…  Not a time that LockTite epoxy would work on the mounting set screws.  Surely the mount had lost it’s ground connection.  So I popped the trunk and checked it out – good tight connections…  hmmm…

When I closed the trunk I noticed – the tunable radiating element (the adjustable length whip at the top of the antenna) had become a LOT shorter.  A closer inspection showed that the two set screws that held the antenna to the tuned length at the top of the antenna had been shaken or vibrated out.  Made sense.  That antenna is quite long and whips around in the wind at highway speeds quite a bit.  So I presumed I would be in HF withdrawal until I could find someone with an expensive antenna analyzer that could help me re-tune the antenna.

Ahh but I was wrong!  On another drive back from Green Bay, Wisconsin I decided to just listen on 20 meters.  Surely I would hear nothing, but I was bored…  To my surprise I listened to some quite strong and clear traffic between Georgia, USA and Vancouver, Canada during the 2010 Winter Olympics!  To my mind – it shouldn’t have worked, but it did…  It was quite a surprise.  And it gave me cause to check other bands, including shortwave bands, to see what else I was missing!

As of this post, I still have not found the correct size replacement set screws for the antenna…  grumble grumble…  The good news is that the air temps are warming and it will soon be warm enough to cement the set screws in place once I do acquire them.

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

This site looks to have about 60 radios that you can use via the Internet.  It does require that you create a user account and it does require approval by an administrator.  That is a bit of a disappointment for an eager radio enthusiast that wants to get started using the radios right away.  But, all good things come in time they say.

This will be a quick, short post to let any ham radio operators and short wave listeners or just those that wonder what it’s all about know that this resource is available.

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

I hope that you will take a fresh look at your ham radio operations.  The hobby is so diverse and can be so technical that no one should ever feel they “know it all”.   Find those areas that you don’t know much about and find out if they are of interest to you.  I see many hams not doing this.  They become bored and drop out… With that said…

Stay Radio Active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN

Your email:

My wife and I attended Green Bay National Weather Service’s (NOAA) SkyWarn Appreciation Day on Friday December 4, 2009.  This day is a “thank you” to trained severe storm spotters that also use their ham radio training to form a many-to-many communications network of trained spotters that help provide real-time intelligence to the National Weather Service.  The National Weather Service says this information is quite valuable.

I had been to several of these events over the years, and this one was as interesting as any I had been to.  I have been a trained SkyWarn spotter now for about three years.  I joined when I realized that I would be spending close to two hours a day commuting in an area that sees tornadoes each year.  I also would be going on fishing trips, etc..  Why not 1) be tuned in to a network of trained spotters for my own safety and 2) be trained to relay what I see if I should stumble into some severe weather?

Jane, Kd8krs (my wife) has recently been trained in severe weather spotting by the National Weather Service in lower Michigan.  She had never seen a forecast office and I thought this would be a nice addition to her training.  I also had a few questions to ask, as usual.

At the National Weather Service office we were given a personal tour (ok – there were 4 of us in the tour) of the forecast office.  That was pretty cool, but been there done that…  For me the best part was to talk to Pete Johnson, AB9PJ.  Pete is an expert in repeaters and APRS for the local area.  Pete was able to supply us with a neat map showing the various APRS resources in the NE Wisconsin and U.P. of Michigan area.  I was excited to learn that additional people are running APRS “receiving stations” that would provide us with better APRS tracker coverage in the area.

Pete also shared some tower climbing stories as well as some insights into future plans for 10 meter and 6 meter repeaters.  You read that right!  10 meter and 6 meter repeaters.

Pete Johnson also pointed us towards http://www.wvraclub.org/ – this ham radio club in the Wausau, WI area has some good experience with and resources for APRS in the central Wisconsin area.  It was nice to connect with one person that could connect us with other people in various parts of the state to help us educate ourselves in this interesting field of use of ham radio and gps data to track ourselves on the internet.  The National Weather Service wants this capability to add precision to reported severe weather locations.

Pete Johnson advised that we set our beacons to around once a minute and to NOT use “smart” beaconing.  Actual data updated as much as possible is what is wanted for severe weather spotting.  If you think about it, if you are traveling at 60 MPH, that is a mile a minute…  a reporting error of over a mile for a tornado location could prove dangerous for someone…

I encourage ALL hams to participate responsibly in SkyWarn.  Not to CHASE storms, but to position ourselves to SPOT what is happening on the ground.  The National Weather Service advises that weather radar really can NOT see it all…  To get started, go to your local National Weather Service website and find out when the next training is being held.  Do NOT spot without this training.  Your report would not be considered as valid without it.  And, it is for your safety.  Then find your local SkyWarn group.  To find your local SkyWarn group, ask around on your local 2 meter or 70 centimeter repeater or ask your local ham radio club.  To find your National Weather Service web page, go to http://www.crh.noaa.gov/grb/ and enter your city and state where indicated in the white box near the upper left corner of the page.  Most training is in the early spring of the year.  Some training may be available on-line as well.  To review a well-run SkyWarn regional site go to http://www.mke-skywarn.org/  -  for the national SkyWarn site go to http://www.skywarn.org/ .  Even if you decide NOT to join SkyWarn, then at the very least please find the local SkyWarn repeater frequencies and procedures and listen for our spotter information for your own safety.  Also, PLEASE stay off the air during our operations unless you are a trained spotter!  Until then…

Stay Radio Active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN – follow me for blog update notices, etc….

Your email:

This weekend I had the opportunity to change some settings in my HT (hams call them “Handy-Talkies” – normal people call them hand held ham radios).  I normally used my “HT” to scan Green Bay and Appleton, WI area repeaters on one side of the radio while listening to an AM broadcast news broadcast on the other side of the radio.  If I heard the radio stop on a repeater conversation, I’d switch to VFO mode and listen until it was over.  I hadn’t really used all the capability of the scan feature of the radio since I did a quick manual switch to VFO mode on signal acquisition.

Scroll three years later.  A new wife.  A new house.  A new dog.  And new potty walks with the dog.  We take the HT along as it is always interesting to listen to some of the local hams.  And the ham radio has a police scanner built into it.  But there was a problem.  I didn’t understand why right away, but the radio would hear a police call, stop scanning to listen to it, and then resume scanning before the conversation was completed.  I had thought that there might have been something wrong with the radio.  Or maybe some interference blocking the signal?  A weak battery?  Yada yada yada…

A quick tour of the menu settings found the answer.  There was one menu option to set the scan resume mode.  It could be set to be based on time, carrier drop or one other setting.  It was set on time.  I remember when I first saw that, I thought it would work like this.  The radio scans.  It hears a signal.  It stops to listen.  I listens until the carrier drops.  Then a timer stops, and after some set time it resumes scanning.  Guess I was wrong.  It only listened for a preset amount of time upon signal acquisition – then resumed scanning.

A quick change of the setting to “carrier drop” produced the desired result.  Now the radio operates as one would expect and as described in the first scenario above.  Very nice to listen to!

It’s interesting how our use of a set of equipment can change over time and how we can adapt the equipment for that new use.  I encourage everyone to take a quick trip through the menu settings of their radios.  You might be surprised what you might find that could add to your radio enjoyment…

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN

http://www.HamRadioResources.com

http://www.Twitter.com/AB9NN