One of the great things about amateur radio is that there are so many different aspects to the hobby. One can spend years on DX’ing only to become enamored with VHF and then move on to some digital mode.

It’s all learning.

But sometimes, there is simply a lull. A period of time where not much happens. I’ve been through that time here; not much has been posted for several weeks. Most of it is the day job…some stuff that is very exciting is happening and there is even better stuff coming up. But, have all of that going on and then switch to a Mac from Windows for work and your hobby and you don’t have a lot of time to get back into serious hobby work.

I’m trying to get the Mac to talk to my radio through my microHAM interface. I’ve looked at a couple different programs. I’ve tried to make it work. But what I have done is spend a half hour on it and then said…no, more important stuff to do on the day job, so go do it. I’ve asked for some help — and have gotten it. More on that later. But I haven’t had time to do the serious work to get everything working.

In other words, a poor attempt to get stuff set up that doesn’t represent the passion of the hobby. It happens.

Does that mean the hobby doesn’t mean as much to me? Nope. It just means that a hobby is a hobby and sometimes the hobby doesn’t count as much as that which earns you a living.

I need to respect that. And I do. But I feel guilty about it anyway. Wouldn’t you?

Oh…and doesn’t the site’s new look just rock?

Related posts:

1. Paul Rinaldo’s rule of Amateur Radio Progress There has been a fair amount of discussion around how to grow and improve ham radio as a hobby. Most of the discussion — and...
2. 27 Amateur Radio Field Day 2008 Videos Field Day is always a blast. Following the break, all the videos I could find from clubs and Field Day. Enjoy! KH6J:   A promotional...
3. Amateur Logic TV Many hams have taken to podcasts and video to help tell the ham radio story. But Amateur Logic TV focuses entirely on video on it’s...
4. Working on DXCC for the K9JY Site — July, 2008 During the month of July, 65 countries visited the K9JY site. I’m still working on getting it to 100. A true Log of the World...
5. Multi-operator contesting teams and sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation also impacts the productivity and performance of teams. This, from Bob Sutton, in Sleep Deprivation and Group Performance. While the point of view...

You may want to reconsider that notion and just buy another Windows PC. Or a Mac.

I still have an XP laptop and I’d never go through the exceptional hassle of upgrading to the greatness of Windows 7.

Here’s the chart:

Here’s the operative statement to upgrade from XP to Windows 7:

All of the others, denoted by blue boxes, will require what Microsoft calls a “Custom Install,” also known as a “clean install”–a procedure Microsoft doesn’t even refer to as an “upgrade.” For most average, nontechie consumers whose PCs have a single hard disk, that will require a tedious, painful process with the following steps: Temporarily relocating your personal files to an external drive or other computer, wiping your hard drive clean, then installing Windows 7, then moving your personal files back, then re-installing all of your programs from their original disks or download files, then reinstalling all of their updates and patches that may have been issued since the original installation files were released.

Microsoft will provide a free “Easy Transfer” program to assist in this process, but this software won’t transfer your programs, only your personal files and settings.

Not so much. I’ll wait.

Related posts:

1. Thinking about Portable HF Operation While on vacation this week, I was often treated to full size views of Lake Michigan. Not seeing the other side of the lake made...
2. The iMac: Will ham radio be the same? Well, I took the plunge. I bought an iMac. Interestingly, it was over two months ago, but I haven’t gotten around to doing any ham...

You see, if you turn the radio on and have an antenna, you can hear signals on the air!

Now to connect the radio to the iMAC. Hmmmm….

No related posts.

The K9JY site was hacked over the last couple of days and you should have seen some weird screen renderings of the site. All should now be good. At least I hope so.

I’m security-minded

I try and not go nuts on the security stuff, but ever since I started putting out the K9JY WriteLog User Site, people started putting me in their Outlook contacts and you know how that goes. The mail lists get hacked and sends out viruses and other assorted malware and then I get all the hacked e-mails filled with the viruses. So I’ve always been careful and, thankfully, have never had my computers hacked from any of that stuff.

And my passwords are relatively bulletproof. The classic strong password generated and installed.

But you can’t prevent everything

In the relatively newest version of the software I use on this site, there was an “XSS” vulnerability identified. On Monday night, I first saw the updated version of the software that fixed the vulnerability. Tuesday morning I was going to install it since installing software at 9 PM in the evening after enjoying wine and company is not exactly the smart approach to doing upgrades.

But, the time I tried on Tuesday morning, it was clear something was not working right — I couldn’t access the admin panel, I couldn’t get any of my posts listed, nor could I list my installed plug-ins. Like, hosed.

Plus, the site, to visitors, would load great. Or not. Or sometimes.

Looking at the server error messages, there were many. With some good help from my hosting company, we eliminated the possible server issues and concluded I’d been hacked. First time ever.

The K9JY Rule of Troubleshooting

That troubleshooting rule is simple: the first thing you fix will reveal the other two things that went wrong in the first place.

So it was here. I couldn’t do the automatic upgrade to the software because I couldn’t access the admin panel to do it. So I quickly learned how to manually get the software, download it, unzip it and then carefully follow the directions to do the upgrade.

Sounds easy and I’ve done this before with other software. But, when it is this site, you get a bit chilled when the first words in the instructions are “delete all XXX files except those you’ve modified.”

The instructions don’t tell you that when the software was originally installed, there were passwords to access the databases for the application. And the database names for the application. Fortunately, I knew that there was a file that had that information in it and downloaded it via FTP to a nice safe place. It was a big potential gotcha. Whew.

Then, I carefully deleted all of the files and kept all of the other non-related platform files, like the layout of the site (called a “theme”) and some plug-ins that make things show up right (like the listing of the most popular posts in the sidebar is done via a plug-in).

Finally, I uploaded the new upgrade, hit the upgrade executable and logged in.

The upgrade was a success. But the problem didn’t go away.

When I logged into the dashboard, I could see that I was on the new version of the software. But I still couldn’t do anything.

So then I re-installed my Theme. Nothing changed.

Then I went to the Plug-ins. I couldn’t see the entire list of installed plug-ins (I wanted to deactivate all of them to get to a vanilla installation), but I could individually click on the plug-in name and go to the settings page for it.

Finally, a plug-in that searches Flickr so I can insert cool pictures on the site (like the pics for Sunspot Saturday) said it needed authentication before it could work. And since I’ve had that plug-in authenticated for about 18-months, something was up. When I went to authenticate it to Flickr, my Flickr account opened and politely told me that something was trying to authenticate with it, but what it was sending to authenticate was crap.

I went and deleted the plugin that interfaced to Flickr and then…finally…all was well.

The admin pages loaded correctly and so did the site. After looking through everything and updating all my stuff in the Theme that was reinstalled, I declared victory.

Another day lost to software infrastructure problems, that thing that is supposed to make us more productive.

The lesson?

The software people are really good at quickly identifying security issues and putting out fixes. Rare that it happens now as the security sweep is part of the overall testing. But hackers love to hack. I just hope that my sites (all the rest were fine) don’t fall into the IP address range the hacker is attacking before installing the fix.

And, yes, I have several weeks of backups, so if push came to shove, I could get all of it back. But, that’s a pain in the rear as well. And takes time and resources to do. And to verify once the backup is done.

But, all is well. At least I learned how to manually upgrade the software and I added a few things to my upgrade checklist.

Now, to turn on the radio.

Related posts:

1. K9JY Site Updates — November 24, 2007 Well, what started off as looking for the problem with a database error I was receiving upon upgrading to the latest version of WordPress software...
2. New Hosting Company for K9JY.com Outside of taking a break from writing as much during the holidays, I have given the posting a break because of a problem: my previous...

Well, I took the plunge. I bought an iMac. Interestingly, it was over two months ago, but I haven’t gotten around to doing any ham radio stuff with it yet. Too busy getting the rest of it setup for the business (Cube Rules).

I’ve seen a bit of software out there for ham radio on the Mac, but I haven’t tried any of it out just yet. What I have seen looks compatible with my interfaces I already have, including Log of The World — but I haven’t tested any of it yet.

Why Apple?

Windows started to fail with the advent of the iPod. It was the first sense I had that Apple was about cool tools and not about big platforms. Windows was always about platforms, not making things work.

And work it was — I spent a great deal of time getting anti-virus software, cleaning registry software for performance, getting hard drives taken care of and chasing quirky problems that always showed up at the wrong time. Months would go by while searching Google for the Forums where someone finally came up with a solution that really worked. After searching hundreds of entries with the same problem identified as I would have — with no answers.

Usually the answer for a Windows problem was simple: reformat the hard drive. Right. Just what I want to do…

Then came the iPhone. The iPhone made it quite apparent to me that I didn’t need my Windows laptop with me when I went away except for DXpeditions and to access my business sites to enter in articles like this and doing maintenance work (which, of course, the passwords won’t export over to Windows so the K9JY site was down much of my vacation…).

Then, in a ThinkPad (I’ve always had ThinkPads here) that Kate uses started to simply lock up for no reason. First it was once or twice a day. Then it was every hour. Once it hit every hour, we made sure we had everything off the computer (I have always done backups, but when you have time to really look, you discover other stuff that needed backing up!).

Finally, the thing wouldn’t boot up at all. In the meantime, over the month this was happening, we had done everything except reinstall Windows and replace the drive. Well, once you get to that point, you have to seriously reconsider your assumptions about your platform.

And, to be fair, Kate and I decided not to go to Windows with the next computers we would get. As soon as we were ready to replace the laptops — in a couple of years — that would be that. I had no intention of going to Vista or whatever else comes up out of Microsoft. But the laptop giving up the ghost in just over a year means (to me) that everything is coming up crap — sure, Windows computers are cheap, but everything is so fragile in software and hardware components that the probability of failure is extremely high.

So, we walked into the Apple store and got an iMac. Then, two weeks after that, my laptop started having intermittent issues. Here we go. Except I went to the Apple store and bought another iMac for me. And, when we get enough dollars, we are getting two Apple Notebooks and that will be that.

And good riddance to the Windows stuff as well.

My level of stress in administering my business is much less since Apples arrived. I only have to deal with the infrastructure of the web sites and updating that software. Not updating Windows and the five thousand programs you need to really manage Windows. Not chasing after intermittent problems Windows cause that drive you crazy because all you want to do is your work, not administering Windows maintenance and troubleshooting.

Apple, of course, is not perfect. No company or software is. But the approach is quite different with Apple: a bulletproof operating system (yes, I know it isn’t bulletproof, but that is the approach…) with a set of other tools to get stuff done. It has been both more difficult to make the transition to an Apple (why, for example, does Office for Mac not look anything at all like Office 2007 and why doesn’t Microsoft offer Outlook in the package? Just mystifying…) and much easier to transition. It’s easier to transition because once you get the hang of the tools and get over that learning curve, you aren’t worried about whether or not the operating system will fail.

One of the last issues holding me back from making the transition to Apple was the fact that most ham radio software is built to run on Windows. And since I am much associated with WriteLog, even though I didn’t write the program, the whole DXpedition, contesting, writing about WriteLog becomes much more interesting.

But, all of that wasn’t enough to overcome my constant frustration with Windows and all the setup the software requires you to do to get anything to work. And, trust me, I know more about computers than your average bear. For me to get that frustrated tells you a lot about the state of the PC world.

So I’ve jumped the Windows ship and now look to do ham radio with a Mac. Any good suggestions on software to get going? I need it all — contesting, logging, Log of The World, digital modes, controlling a Yaesu FT-1000 PM and more. I’m ready to dive in.

Any suggestions?

Related posts:

1. If you were thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 for ham radio You may want to reconsider that notion and just buy another Windows PC. Or a Mac. I still have an XP laptop and I’d never...

When taking notes at the end of the contest — what went well and what could have been better — what should you consider for inclusion?

Here’s a short trigger list for what you can learn from every contest:

Equipment

• Radio working properly
• Amplifier working properly
• Keyer working properly
• Computer issues
• Contesting software issues
• Interface issues
• Rotor box issues

Antennas

• Each antenna, each band notes
• Directional weakness and strengths
• Listening antenna performance
• Feedline issues

Contest Performance

• Right band, right time
• Right frequency for the band
• Missed band openings
• Propagation challenges
• Performed handling runs well
• Performed S&P well

Support Performance

• Meal breaks
• Forced time off at right times?
• Completed contest submission on time

Once you have all of your notes, you build a to-do list for the next contest and start to complete those items.

This is a great way to continuously improve your contesting skills while learning your station’s strengths and weaknesses. This also helps you see your improvements in your contesting and that provides further motivation to improve.

Any other items that help us learn from every contest?

Related posts:

1. 30 Ham Radio Contest Tips — Learn a single band This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Learn a...
2. 30 Ham Radio Contest Tips — Learn from contesting pros This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Learn from...
3. 30 Ham Radio Contest Tips — Work a contest one month before the real contest This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Work a...
4. 30 Ham Radio Contest Tips — Test Equipment Before Contest This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Test Equipment...
5. 30 Ham Radio Contest tips — Contest on your terms This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Contest on...

The Kansas City DX Club Pileup Contest is an annual bragging rights event for the serious CW operator in ham radio. This year’s contest offered up a bit of a different competitor — CW Skimmer, that often maligned software program that attempts to copy Morse code using digital dits and dahs wrapped in binary computer code. Since Morse code and computer code are both binary in nature, you’d think our computer binary friends would get along well. And they did.

The big 2009 winner of the Kansas City DX Club was Skimmer, with 61 accurate calls counted in the pileup contest, besting the number one human form of VE3DZ with 51 accurate calls.

Skimmer is still controversial in contesting circles. But a tool like that in a DX pileup is a cool thing to have. Even in contests.

Related posts:

1. Dayton — Time to Move the Hamvention? In case you have missed it, Steve, K9ZW, has a great post that suggests Dayton’s days are numbered for hosting the Hamvention. Not the club,...
2. Dayton Hamvention Forum Presentations For many of us, getting to Dayton is tough, especially from the West Coast where I live. Fortunately, generous hams post the Dayton presentations for...
3. Club Program Ideas: CW Skimmer In this first of a series on Club Program ideas, you might as well strike while the controversy is hot! CW Skimmer is a program...
4. ARRL Dayton Hamvention Blog is up The ARRL Hamvention blog is up and in operation. There are some good videos and pictures available from Dayton as well. Take a peek. Looks...
5. More Videos from Dayton Hamvention 2008 There are more videos up from the Dayton Hamvention 2008. Here’s the latest  batch. Gotta love the Three Ham-igos from Gary, KI4LA: K9IED — Bob...

Sleep deprivation also impacts the productivity and performance of teams. This, from Bob Sutton, in Sleep Deprivation and Group Performance. While the point of view of sleep deprivation is on business teams, I think it directly applies to ham radio multi-operator contesting teams as well. Especially those that have not operated together often enough to bond as a team.

Not much research has been done on sleep deprivation and teams, so the article he cites is both ground-breaking and needs more confirmation. The article is not linked (it’s an academic article, so I don’t think it is on-line…), but the basic points are these:

• The individual impact of sleep deprivation — “reduced ability to process information, reduced ability to learn and perform novel tasks, irritability, and impatience” — disrupt team performance as well.
• If the team is set up as a hierarchy, overcoming the leader’s errors is very difficult.
• “…when people on a team are sleep deprived — regardless of their personalities — the resulting irritability and grumpiness is likely (regardless of personality) to cause the kind of nasty interpersonal conflict associated with poor performance and decision-making”

If you have operated on a multi-operator contesting team, even a team of two in the middle of a Saturday night of contesting, you’ve seen these effects in play.

Has sleep deprivation distrupted your multi-op team?

Related posts:

1. Contesting and Sleep Most people operate contests in what would be considered a “casual” manner. They operate on Friday night, or Sunday afternoon, or devote a day of...
2. Club Program Ideas: What Makes Multi-Two Contesting Different? In this series on Club Program ideas, I’m providing possible programs for clubs to use in their meetings. You can find a full explanation of...
3. 30 Ham Radio Contest Tips — Participate on a contesting team This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Participate on...
4. 30 Ham Radio Contesting Tips — Find joy in contesting This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Find joy...
5. 30 Ham Radio Contesting Tips — Join a contesting club This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Join a...

Ham radio is a diverse hobby. It’s a technical, engineering, builder, emergency service hobby. But ask most people about ham radio and you get stories of RF interference or a puzzled look followed by a question about 1950. I mean, the Internet obliterated ham radio, didn’t it?

Over at Innismir.net, there is a great dissection of a traditional media article on ham radio from Michigan. And the article isn’t bad. But the end of the post notes this:

Any press is good press they say and getting the hobby out to the general public is a good thing, so props to the Midland ARC for getting coverage and getting a few juicy tidbits out there. However, we, as a hobby, need to work on some talking points on some of the more “exciting” points of Ham Radio. We also apparently need to work on our comparisons.

So what should our talking points be to the traditional media? Here’s a few suggestions:

Ham radio embraces many interests

If we’re a diverse hobby, it should be an advantage. If you are an engineer, you can design antennas, stations or software. If you are a builder, there are kits. If you like the outdoors, you can take radio with you. If you like competition, we have contests. If you like public service, we have it in spades.

The great thing about a diverse hobby is that if you get tired of one thing (DXing, for example), you can learn about a whole different thing (say digital modes) while still staying within the hobby. It’s not like you love trains, then get disinterested, leave your club and friends there, and start over so you can try out planes. Nope. You just start working in this new area.

Ham radio helps the public

While this is the traditional public service message we have, we need to mix in much more of what we have done to advance emergency work. We have an imbedded methodology through ARES that gives us a good process. We have practice sessions to support local emergency teams. We have built digital communications to improve our work with emergency providers. And, yes, when all else fails, we can still get through because of our multiple frequency antennas.

Whether it is Katrina or the Space Shuttle or the local walk for charity, ham radio operators perform in their role of supporting emergency communications and public service.

Ham radio is fun

Sorry, I’m not into something for the drudgery. The numbing going forward of work on stuff that doesn’t even remotely excite me. Whether it is the friendships you develop over time and on the air or investigating a new part of the hobby or meeting up with your buddies in the ham radio club, ham radio is fun. As soon as it isn’t fun, it’s time to try something else in the hobby…because we have a diverse hobby.

What else? What do you think our talking points need when that microphone gets pointed at us for some answers?

Related posts:

1. Field Day Bonus Points — Club Strategy Field Day always has the opportunity to have bonus points — points that you can achieve that count above and beyond the actual contacts made...
2. Opening up countries to ham radio This month’s CQ Magazine leads off with an article by John Kountz, KE6GFF/T6EE, on finding "The Responsible Person: Bringing Amateur Radio Back to Afghanistan." The...
3. Ham Radio Clubs Need After Action Reviews Ham radio is a hobby, of course. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from others in making ham radio better. In this particular case,...
4. Marketing Ham Radio One of the continuing challenges with the hobby of Ham Radio is adding licenses — and active Amateurs — to what we do here. Attracting...
5. 3 Field Day Press Release Suggestions One of the several categories of bonus points for Field Day is Media Publicity. You get the points by showing the attempt of local media...

Crossing my e-mail was a note that Svalbard (JW) shore operations were approved for July 4th and July 14th of this year. You may work this short operation with radios, vertical antennas and less than a 100-watts. But, that’s not why you should pay attention to this operation.

It is the photography

Breathtaking is the best way to describe the photos that come out of these trips. Whether it is photos of penguins, glaciers, polar bears or other fabulous scenery, these trips will knock your socks off.

Oh, and by the way, ham radio is an integral part of these trips where there are shore stops to operate ham radio.

You can find out about these great trips from the Photo DXpedition website. And the pictures? Here’s a sample of how close you get to the scenery:

Photo DXpeditions

Related posts:

1. 30 Ham Radio Contest Tips — Review Newsletter for Contest DXpeditions This month, I’m providing a ham radio contest tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own contesting activities. Today’s tip: Review Newsletter...
2. Antennas for 100-pound DXpeditions One of my favorite ham radio web sites was 100 pound DXpedition, a look at what it takes to organize and execute a light weight...