I was looking at the calendar today to find out when Easter weekend will be this year (April 4th). You have to do that because Easter is one of those moveable feast holidays and, excuse me, but the precise calculation is a little difficult to commit to memory.

According to the Wikipedia:

Easter is determined on the basis of lunisolar cycles. The lunar year consists of 30-day and 29-day lunar months, generally alternating, with anembolismic month added periodically to bring the lunar cycle into line with the solar cycle. In each solar year (January 1 to December 31), the lunar month beginning with an ecclesiastical new moon falling in the 29-day period from March 8 to April 5 inclusive is designated as the Paschal lunar month for that year. Easter is the 3rd Sunday in the Paschal lunar month, or, in other words, the Sunday after the Paschal lunar month’s 14th day. The 14th of the Paschal lunar month is designated by convention as the Paschal full moon, although the 14th of the lunar month may differ from the date of the astronomical full moon by up to two days. Since the ecclesiastical new moon falls on a date from March 8 to April 5 inclusive, the Paschal full moon (the 14th of that lunar month) must fall on a date from March 21 to April 18 inclusive.

Accordingly, Gregorian Easter can fall on 35 possible dates – between March 22 and April 25 inclusive. It last fell on March 22 in 1818, and will not do so again until 2285. It fell on March 23 in 2008, but will not do so again until 2160. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, April 25, in 1943 and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on April 24, just one day before this latest possible date, in 2011. The cycle of Easter dates repeats after exactly 5,700,000 years, with April 19 being the most common date, happening 220,400 times or 3.9%, compared to the median for all dates of 189,525 times or 3.3%.

Yikes! And tough as that seems to deduce, just wait until one of your grandchildren ask you to explain how the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs are related to the crucifixion of Christ. I’d like to be a bug on the wall to hear you explain that one, but hey, I can at least share with you a little background…

The English word “Easter” and the German word, “Ostern”, come from the same root for “Eastre”.  The ancient word for spring was “eastre” and this was the name given to Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. A festival was held in her honor every year at the vernal equinox.

The Easter Bunny and Egg myths begin with the Goddess Eastre feeling guilty about arriving late one spring and finding a poor bird whose wings had been frozen by the snow.

Eastre saved the life of bird and made him her pet. Filled with compassion for him since he could no longer fly, Eastre turned him into a snow hare, named him Lepus, and gave him the gift of being able to run with incredible speed so he could protect himself from hunters.

In remembrance of his earlier form as a bird, she also gave him the ability to lay eggs in all the colors of the rainbow, but only on one day out of each year.

But we all know that’s just a silly fable taken from a book written so long ago that those who penned it were completely clueless about the physical world and prone to just making stuff up in order to try and make some sense of it all.

Right?

Direct link to the video provides more information on the technique and camera used.

In fact, there are only a few programs that I continue to follow.

One of them, Buzz Out Loud, with Molly Wood and Tom Merritt, is the very best technology podcast that’s currently being produced. By anyone, anywhere. The “podcast of indeterminate length” usually runs around 40-45 minutes daily and it covers a wide range of tech topics. Molly and Tom compliment each other perfectly and they’ve crafted a program that is as enjoyable to listen to as it is informative.

The guy responsible for that Rube Goldberg Machine video that I posted yesterday was interviewed on BOL #1179; you can catch that one to find out how they set that all up, it’s quite interesting.

There are only a couple of other programs that I update regularly on my iPod:

• SETI’s Are We Alone – Science radio for thinking species (weekly)
• The KunstlerCast – the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl with James Kunstler (weekly)

I don’t do video because it demands attention and defies multitasking. You really have to sit down and watch a video program, committing to it your undivided attention. I can’t drive and watch a video and I can’t work on something else while watching a video, so I don’t devote much time to online video productions.

Notable exceptions to that are K7AGE’s amazingly good video offerings along with Steve “the Goat Hiker”, WG0AT’s adventures, but these are produced on an infrequent schedule and I make time to stay up to date with them – if these were offered on a daily basis, I wouldn’t have the time to watch them either.

You might have noticed that I didn’t list any amateur radio related podcasts – I don’t listen to them.

This Week in Amateur Radio, Amateur Radio Newsline, and the currently out of production ARRL Audio News all do a fine job of reporting the news, in a 1980’s sort of way.

These are weekly reports that recap the previous week’s amateur radio news. But for those who read blogs, visit a few Web sites, and subscribe to a few newsletters, it’s all old news. These programs were forged in an era where not everyone had Internet access, and the audio from these were typically played on Sunday nights over the local two-meter repeater – they’re not really timely sources of amateur radio news, in my opinion.

And that’s it – quite the departure from a few years ago when you might have found as many as twenty different podcasts on my iPod. There’s no doubt that the fad has worn off podcasting for me, and I devote much less time to them so now I filter by interest, quality, and value and that has narrowed the field by a considerable margin.

What about you – what podcasts do you value?

Here’s the direct link to the video in case you can’t see the embed above.

But in your heart of hearts, there is a moment of doubt; of reminiscing, where you just have to admit that there’s absolutely nothing like a big old dial on the front of your radio. And in that very moment, a bright light flashes in your head and you suddenly know that you know the truth…

…Real Radios Have Knobs…

The point that I was trying to make was this: we only need one class of amateur license in the United States because we need every new licensee to meet the same criteria.

Once again, let’s break this down. Do you suppose that having passed a certain exam that gives you the privilege of operating CW on 14.026Mhz, but not on 14.024Mhz makes even a little bit of sense? Is it okay to have the knowledge necessary to operate within the law on one frequency and not another?

This is my point exactly … the entire system is upside down at best, and myopic at worst. Very clearly, and without any question, there is more emergency traffic handled on VHF and UHF (FM repeaters) than on all the HF bands combined a hundred times over.

So what does our incentive licensing system really do?

It places those who have passed only the most meager of exams precisely where they can do the most damage. If emergency communication is our forte, why do we do this, and what are we really protecting by keeping lower class operators out of the 14.000Mhz to 14.025Mhz band segment – DXers?

Chasing DX may be fun, and an art form, and taken drop-dead seriously by those who have invested tens of thousands of dollars in it, but it’s still just one trivial facet of this hobby.

I would like to see a single class of license that requires a written examination that thoroughly covers the rules and regulations and general operating practices. In exchange for successfully passing that exam, the licensee would obtain all amateur privileges. Simple as that. It would no doubt be a little tougher than the present Technician exam, and perhaps a little easier than the current Extra exam.

No amount of difficult testing will make a person a better radio amateur, and no amount of study will transform a jerk into a delightful human being. History reveals a multitude of poor ham radio operators who managed to obtain an Extra Class ticket – even when it was much more difficult to obtain than it is today.

We don’t require or expect that a newlywed, twenty year-old couple become ‘experts’ at marriage and relationships prior to their wedding day. The marriage license places them squarely in the endeavor, and then years of experience forges the relationship and everything they learn about it comes after the marriage license.

Ham radio is precisely the same. New operators should have to prove that they know and understand the rules and understand enough about how we communicate to prevent inadvertent interference.

Everything beyond that is simply part of the lifelong adventure that is amateur radio…

Now there is one other thing. In my original post I took a backhanded swipe at the market that has grown up around amateur testing. Let me be less obscure – I see no reason why the licensing system should remain as convoluted as it is simply because it provides an income for various sources of those who publish new “how to get your Technician license” manuals and audio CDs every time the question pool is updated – and sometimes those updates are made at the behest of this same group.

Now, are we clear?

[Opening Act]

Somewhere along the coast of the Black Sea

Dmetry and Olaf walked into a dimly lit tavern and selected a booth far in the back where they could not be easily overhead. Dmetry was a hulking 300 lbs man who had muscled his way into the lower echelons of leadership in the Russian mafia but he was most interested in disappearing a very wealthy man as soon as possible.

“Explain it to me again, Olaf, how will this plan of yours work?” asked Dmetry.

Olaf was almost giddy as he explained his new devious plan to unleash an army of botnets that could be leased for use by underground sources that would make both men wealthy beyond their dreams.

“Our teenage friend, Urmil has created a most ingenious software program. It will be downloaded and installed by no fewer than 100,000 fools” he explained as he crushed out his cigarette with his thick fingers and lighted another before continuing.

“This application includes a Trojan horse; it will offload itself from the primary application upon installation, and play hide and seek with any anti-virus measures that may have been installed” Olaf said as a perverted grin spread across his face. “Then when we are ready, we will have at our disposal 100,000 networked computers that will do our bidding whenever the signal is given”.

Dmetry wasn’t easily convinced. “But why, why should these people be willing to install this botnet?”

Olaf replied, “They have no idea what they are doing. Urmil has written an application for radio amateurs, maybe you’ve heard of these radio ‘hams’, no? They love to play with their computers and their radios but they know little about the technology behind it all. This new application will be software that permits their computers to communicate via HF radio, they are crazy for free software and shiny new baubles to play with.”

“We will tell them that this software is for a new mode of communication and it will spread like wildfire in their community. They will never be the wiser…”

Dmetry began to protest but Olaf stopped him short, “Relax old friend. In a few months you and I will be rich beyond our wildest dreams”.

[Act 2]

One Week Later :: Manila, Phillipines

Yoshi was amazed at how quickly Urmil had created the new program. It was very polished and when run while connected to an HF transceiver it provided a waterfall like display where RF signals of this new mode were displayed. Communicating with stations that were received was as simple as clicking on the signal in the waterfall and initializing communication. From there, the two stations could communicate by sending and receiving text back and forth from the two computers. It was no different than text messaging really; except that the link wasn’t via TCP/IP, it was via the RF generated and received by the radio equipment.

Urmil explained, “…this wasn’t difficult Yoshi. Radio hams already have dozens of such digital modes. I simply copied one of the more popular methods and made a few insignificant updates to the user interface. These people, they love pretty looking applications more than the inner workings of the software”.

“But what will compel them to install this application if it is based on already existing modes of operation?” Yoshi asked with a look of concern on his brow.

“Look, I have given this “new” mode a name. Most of them will never figure out that it’s no different than the modes they already have, and besides, by the time any of them do figure it out, the Trojan will already have been implanted.”

“Besides”, he continued, “the real genius of this work is that we can activate the Trojan from the RF side of the interface. If we find the signal from just one ham who is using this software, we can send him the signal and unleash the bots. That PC will signal all the others over the Internet. If the authorities ever try to track this down, the originating computer will be that poor bastard that we made a contact with first.”

“When that happens, I think I will send him a QSL card for that special contact”….

“Leave this all to me”, concluded Urmil, “and tell the others that the distribution begins tomorrow night”.

[Act 3]

A New Message Appeared on the QRZ.COM Web Forum Last Night

ATTENTION ALL RADIO HAMS: Urmil Shah of the Bangalore Radio Foundation proudly announces the development of a new digital mode of operation. This new mode, called UT17, utilizes half the bandwidth of PSK31 to deliver highly reliable HF connectivity even during periods of extremely poor band conditions. A new application is available for free download that permits users to make use of UT17. Supported operating systems include Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Additional operating systems
will be added in the future. Download and install and give UT17 a try today!

[Act 4]

In an Online Chatroom on a Private IRC Channel

Olaf: I like what you’ve done Urmil, but what is this ‘UT17′ business, what does it mean?
Urmil: The mode needed a name, UT17 = Urmil’s Trojan … and I’m 17.
Olaf: Excellent, I like your sense of humor!
Olaf: How goes the distribution?
Urmil: 44,000 downloads in the first three days, and the botnets are already beginning to “phone home”.
Olaf: Excellent, excellent…

[Act 5]

Two Weeks Later on a Popular Ham Radio Mailing List

One ham writes:
“Have you guys tried this new UT17 mode yet? Wow! It is the best digital mode I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried them all. I think this will eventually replace PSK31 in this shack. We need to arrange for a contest using UT17 very soon. Spread the news, tell everyone you know to snag the application. It’s free!!!

Another ham replies:
“It may just be me, but UT17 seems to use as much bandwidth as PSK31 and it seems no more effective in poor band conditions, what am I doing wrong?”

Three other hams reply in unison:
“You’re crazy! Here this ham in India has given us a brand new mode of operation and graciously made his software FREE for anyone to download and all you guys can do is bitch about it. That’s it, I’m outta here! This is why ham radio is dying, you guys never want to give something new a chance to succeed!”

[Act 6]

A Month Later Overheard on a Nightly 75M Roundtable Discussion

“Hey Bob, have you tried that new UT17 mode, it works pretty well here.”

“Yeah, I installed it about a month ago. It really works well but I haven’t been using it these last few weeks. My computer seems to be slowing down. That damn Bill Gates and his friggin’ Windoze program chafes my hind end. One of these days I’m going to dump that sorry OS and install Leeenucks.”

“Same here Bob, my PC has gotten slow too. I guess Ole Uncle Bill has a gun at all our backs and between that thrashing hard drive and all them blue screens of death, well it’s just amazing that a bozo like that could get so rich”.

“Yeah, Microsoft sucks. They’re stupid. Hardee Har-Har…”

[Closing Act]

In an Online Chatroom on a Private IRC Channel

Olaf: How goes the progress Urmil?
Urmil: 114,000 confirmed installations. Most of them in the US.
Olaf: What about the connectivity?
Urmil: Good news … most of the infected machines are reporting being on high-speed connections.
Olaf: Have you tested the entire system yet?
Urmil: Of course! Over the last few weeks we have done many tests.
Olaf: Do any of the users suspect anything yet?
Urmil: Impossible! Besides, all they would notice is a slowing of their computer while we make use of it.
Olaf: And they will blame this on Bill Gates?
Urmil: They always do…
Olaf: What if they stop using UT17?
Urmil: I have already prepared several new modes that they will suck up without question.
Olaf: Excellent! Your deposit has been made. Enjoy your windfall my friend, you have earned it.

[Curtain Closes…]

Since upgrading to Extra class many years ago, I haven’t paid the slightest bit of attention to the US amateur radio licensing process. I know, it sounds perfectly awful. I’ve never volunteered to be a VE, and heck, if a total stranger asked me what they needed to do in order to obtain a license today, I would have to look that up for them. I suppose that since I know that I never have to take another licensing test, I’ve completely tuned out of the process.

Does that make me a bad ham?

I’ve been licensed since the 1970s and for good or for bad, incentive licensing was tattooed into my DNA. I have held every class of license that was available during my tenure (Novice, Technician, General, Advanced, Extra) with the exception of the Conditional class license.

Back in those days, if you desired anything other than a Novice license you had to travel to a nearby FCC Field Office that offered testing about once every 90 days. Best I recall, the "Conditional" license conferred General Class privileges but the testing was done locally by two Extra class hams — the idea being that this was a convenience for handicapped individuals or those who legitimately had no way to travel to an FCC Field Office.

The concept behind incentive licensing was that each level of license would come with more operating privileges, that was earned by gradually tougher licensing requirements. My amateur life began when I passed a Novice exam given in the home of a local ham. A few weeks later I was issued WD9GCT and I spent the next year patrolling the Novice segments of 80, 40 and 15 meters with an HW-16 transceiver, matching VFO, and a dipole that I installed so close to the high-voltage power lines that ran along the north end of my parents home that some nights I still wake up in a cold sweat dreaming about it.

But this was the 70s and the local radio club had become obsessed with FM repeaters. That was all they ever talked about in meetings and I couldn’t help but notice that 73, CQ, and QST were all pushing FM repeaters like a Baptist minister pushes salvation. It didn’t take long for me to catch the fever and suddenly my Novice license and modest HF station seemed rather cheesy so I upgraded to Technician (N9AVG), bought a brand new Regency HR2B (rock bound FM transceiver), and installed a 2 meter Ringo Ranger ten feet from those same high-voltage lines.

Apparently, upgrading to Technician made me no wiser about personal safety…

I held that Technician license for about a year when a very good friend of mine, who was also one of my high school teachers, decided to retire and move to Arkansas. He made this decision months ahead of actually moving so we made plans … I would upgrade to General. He never took a shine to CW so I decided to become an HF phone operator so we could stay in touch despite the long-distance that would be between us.

That was the toughest radio exam I have ever taken. I had to appear on the appointed day and time at a Federal court house in downtown Indianapolis. There must have been a hundred of us sitting stiffly at long wooden tables. The instructions for copying the code were given — five minutes of random text would be sent at 13WPM. We were to write down everything that we could copy, and then what we wrote down would be examined and one consecutive minute of perfect copy had to be found in order to pass.

Otherwise, it was a long trip back home and a 90 day wait for another shot at it.

The examiner used a 33rpm record player that had a large speaker in the front of the room. He plopped the needle on the record and the exam was underway. You think you’ve copied code through rough conditions — try being a kid worried if you had put enough change in the parking meter while trying to copy 13 words per minute of random text from a loudspeaker in a big hollow room that made even the slightest sound a loud echo.

Having survived that ordeal, I had to face the written exam but by comparison that was a piece of cake. The big payoff came from the relief I felt while driving home as a General class operator and thinking about the many SSB QSOs I would soon have.

Woot!

Years later, another friend had started meeting five nights a week with several of his friends in the Advanced portion of the band. Not wanting to be left out of the group, I upgraded to Advanced and shortly thereafter to Extra.

See how this incentive licensing stuff worked? Each time I wanted more privileges I upgraded, which was exactly how the ARRL intended it when they conceived of the notion back in the 50’s. But now we find ourselves in the 21st century. Morse tests have gone the way of the horse and buggy and only three classes of license remain. Ham testing is done locally by other hams who volunteer to do such things, and you can simply keep taking the test over and over again, on the same day (so long as the VEs are willing to keep doing it), until you pass.

So let me just say this out loud … why don’t we simply go to a single class of license that conveys all amateur privileges and be done with it?

If there is some justification for multi-tiered amateur licensing, beyond simply hazing, it completely escapes me.

The tired old argument that a newcomer might accidentally venture into an emergency net on HF is enough baloney to perpetually stock a delicatessen. 95% of all emergency communication provided by amateur radio takes place on FM repeaters. If this argument ever had a leg to stand on, then access to FM repeaters should have always been limited to Extra class operators; and yet it wasn’t. In fact now all VHF/UHF privileges are granted to the most basic class (Technician) of licensee.

I can almost hear Old DX Dawg saying that these new whippersnappers would wreak havoc in those precious slices of Extra class spectrum in the "most important" bands. But seriously, let’s cut the crap. There are already plenty of Extra class LIDs making more than enough trouble from 14.000 to 14.025 as it is so a special license class is a fairly crappy LID filter.

Besides, do you really believe that a brand new ham who doesn’t know enough Morse to call ‘CQ’ is going to venture down there anyway?

The only legitimate argument I can see against the creation of a single class, winner take all, ham license is that it would slash the market (and resulting revenue) from those who sell license materials for multiple classes. It would probably also cause some consternation for those local radio clubs/puppy mills who have perfected the path to ‘Technician’ into a four hour Saturday morning ‘cram’ session.

I’ve no doubt missed something else, but you’re going to have to jump in here and tell me what it is. But please offer something substantive. Maintaining the status quo for the sake of tradition is worthless.

Tradition frequently needs a swift kick in the testicles just to keep the hobby lurching forward.

“I just received a message from the US Joint Space Operations Center warning that AO-51 will have a close approach to another satellite, FORMOSAT 3-D, tomorrow morning at 1056 UTC. This just happens to be over the Eastern US.”

It turned out that the pass was actually closer than anticipated, but the popular satellite survived the near miss without so much as working up a sweat…

Monday was laundry day at our house; and it was also the night when Mom made a big pot of ham and beans. She always put the beans on the stove in the morning, allowing them to cook all day long while she focused on the laundry. It may sound bourgeois’  but we considered a pot of ham and beans with cornbread and fried potatoes to be just south of culinary heaven.

Truth be told, I still believe that to be true.

I suppose that a bag of Great Northern Beans was cheap; as was a hunk of ham, cornmeal, and five pounds of potatoes peeled and fried in a skillet of Crisco. Mom used a large pot for the beans and after the five of us ate until we were full, there were always leftover beans.

The half-empty pot was put in the refrigerator until Thursday night when it would be resurrected. Mom would add several cups of water and a pile of hand-rolled flat dumplings to the mix. This brought the pot back up to full and Thursday night dinner became beans and dumplings, and if we were lucky, some leftover cornbread.

Leftover cornbread was fairly rare since my Dad had this nasty habit of crumbling up the last few pieces in a big glass of buttermilk to have while watching television in the evening. It left me with permanent dislike for buttermilk though I’ve read that this used to be fairly common…

I figure those ingredients didn’t cost even five dollars forty years ago, and they probably don’t cost much more than that now. It was two night’s dinner for the five of us and sometimes there was enough left for Friday lunch. I look back on it now as having been a stroke of fiscally conservative brilliance on the part of my Mother who turned such simple ingredients into so much good food.

And if you don’t think that’s very impressive, then I double dog dare you to feed your family twice this week for as much as fifty dollars, and then wait and see if one of your kids will still be talking about it forty years from now…