The HAM Blog

What's New?

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 02:33:00 +0000

Since my last post I have:

Moved house, and ARC - Mt. Beacon ARC
Got very busy with Family
Actually helped teach a Tech class just like the one I took at HOSARC! (4 new HAMS! )

I will elaborate on these things in the future, but I have the flu right now and need rest.

HamRadioNow Special Edition - Steve Mendelsohn W2ML

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:37:00 +0000

Video of the last interview of Steve Mendelsohn W2ML

The Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club was privileged to have Steve Mendelsohn give a very informative talk at one of meetings just a few short years ago. He spoke about his experience with the Jets and Patriots controversy and some of his history in amateur radio. It was my first time meeting Steve, a very kind of man who was very generous with his time and experience. He was a leader in our shared hobby and someone we can look to as a example. We are all richer for having met him.

Special thanks to John Ronan K3AJJ, Jim McCarthy K6BBA, Gary Pearce KN4AQ, Bill Pasternack WA6ITF for all their work on this video.

Field Day 2012

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:03:00 +0000

This year I was only available to help with some of the setup for the HOSARC field day. The guys had worked out a network of diapoles and end fed wires that covered UHF, VHF,& HF. I got a few contacts on 15 meters and we even had a visitor from out of town who came by to operate.

ARRL visual website tour video

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:15:00 +0000

For the November meeting of my amateur radio club, we had Katie Glass, KB1ULQ, the Digital Content Manager for the ARRL give a visual tour of the new ARRL website. This tour included some of the new features of the ARRL website such as social media components and popular older content like accessing the extensive ARRL archives and product reviews. Katie was a complete professional, taking questions from the audience and giving a thorough presentation. Attached is a video I made of the presentation.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:41:00 +0000

This is the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) presentation by Mark Steiner, K3MS. I recorded and edited this video for HOSARC my amateur radio club. The talk was given at the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club general meeting in October of 2011. Mark touched on many different aspects of amateur radio on the ISS, including satellite launches, equipment on board the ISS, and ground stations. What did come out during the Q&A section of the talk was that if you would like to get some your own technology into space, design an easy system to change the Kenwood radio from school transmit mode to repeater mode easily via computer control. Seems the current process for changing the radio includes many more steps than busy astronauts have time for. If you can make it happen quickly, easily, and reliably, you could have your own tech in space! It is a high bar, but how many gear-heads do you know with systems they have designed in space. Please check out the video and leave comments. Full disclosure, the video does have pre & post-roll commercials. All money generated by these commercials will be donated entirety to the club. I hope you enjoy the video.

30 minutes of APRS with Bob Bruninga, WB4APR

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:56:00 +0000

This is the first 30 minutes of Bob Bruninga, WB4APR giving a talk at my amateur radio club HOSARC. It was a very informative talk and I hope to get the rest of this talk in the near future. Bob's presentation was incredibly informative. If you ever get a chance to see him give a talk, run, do not walk. He is a tremendous resource to the amateur radio community.

Greene County still needs help after Hurricane Irene

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:49:00 +0000

Last night I spoke with Len Signoretti, N2LEN. He was tired but still working hard at the Greene County ARES deployment. He is still looking for volunteers and could use all the help he can get. If you have any time this week and are in the New York area, please contact him at: (phone number removed after event) It is a rural area and they have a 2M / 440 local repeater up running for main communications. If you have a good 2M / 440 mobile rig, you are most welcome. Please help out if you can.

Update 9/9/11:
Just spoke to Len this evening. The ARES activation for Greene County was deactivated Tuesday Sept. 6th followed by a one day ARES activation on Wednesday Sept. 7th for area flooding and to fill in for a cellular outage in the area. I called Len on and off during the week and that man was working so hard I doubt he even remembers talking to me. Hats off to everyone who volunteered for the relief effort. Len said he had people coming in from far and wide to help out.

Queens ARES response for Huricane Irene

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:58:00 +0000

If you are a Queens New York based ham who would like to help ARES with the amateur radio response to Hurricane Irene, please contact Jeff Spiro via the following email address: N1JSP[at]arrl.net. Licensed Amateur Radio operators with HTs & Mobile Units welcome.

Best of luck to them in their efforts.

Raspberry PI, a $25 computer could be a great new platform for amateur radio

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:43:00 +0000

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has developed a $25 computer that is just made for hacking. This could be just the platform needed for inventive new APRS, and other amateur digital modes. Think of all the things you could do with the portable processing power of a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM hooked up to a HT or other portable. This device has been geared towards education so the documentation should be open and ready for hacking in the classic sense of the word.
One video port and one USB is all you get as far as ports for now, with both ethernet and Wifi planned. Power usage? 1W at full load. I have attached a video about it below. Update: They will also have a Model B with 256 megs of RAM and a 10/100 Ethernet port, price point: $35.

Update: Raspberry PI will be at the NYC Maker Faire. Looking forward to seeing what they have planned for the unit. Eben Upton, one of the founders will be there to explain the plans for the project.

Update 2: On Availability: From the Raspberry PI website

When will the device be available to purchase?
We anticipate the device will be available to the general public later in 2011 – we were hoping to hit the end of November, but right now December’s looking more likely.

Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, (father of APRS) will be giving a talk @ HOSARC

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sat, 07 May 2011 15:11:00 +0000

On May 10th 2011 at 7:30pm HOSARC will host a very special meeting entitled "What you don't know about APRS" by Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, (father of APRS). Bob has been kind enough to give the meeting via teleconference and we are very much looking forward to learning from the master. I will be attempting to make a recording of the event with a screen-recording program, so there may be video.

UPDATE: HERE IS VIDEO OF THE FIRST 30 MINUTES OF THE TALK:

A Practical Amateur Radio Podcast update!

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:45:00 +0000

Jerry , KD0BIK of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast has released a new mini-episode detailing his future plans for the podcast. I am very happy to see this and look forward to what ever he produces. His podcast has been very helpful and makes for a good resource for anyone starting out in the hobby. Jerry is a good guy and I was especially touched by Jerry's effort to help everyone at HOSARC Save Our station back in 2008. While we lost our station in the end. It was very nice of him to drop everything and put out a emergency podcast at a moments notice. We need more guys like Jerry in our shared hobby. I for one would like to live up to his example. Good luck Jerry. I will be listening.

Amatuer Radio to the rescue of Protesters in Egypt.

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:30:00 +0000

No matter your stance on the student push for democracy in Egypt, it is very exciting to hear that they are using amateur radio and more specifically CW to get the word out on the protests. When all else fails, including the internet,... amateur radio.

Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:31:00 +0000

The H.R.81: Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2011 is a bill in the House of Representatives... "To promote and encourage the valuable public service, disaster relief, and emergency communications provided on a volunteer basis by licensees of the Federal Communications Commission in the Amateur Radio Service, by undertaking a study of the uses of amateur radio for emergency and disaster relief communications, by identifying unnecessary or unreasonable impediments to the deployment of Amateur Radio emergency and disaster relief communications, and by making recommendations for relief of such unreasonable restrictions so as to expand the uses of amateur radio communications in Homeland Security planning and response." This is one long sentence that is great to read. If we can get this passed, it could be a huge help to our collective hobby, both nationally and internationally. If we can successfully integrate emergency services and amateur radio here in the US, it could greatly effect the way Amateur Radio is used in other countries. I look forward to seeing what becomes of this bill.

A very Hammy Tour of the ISS! This is amazing!

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 00:09:00 +0000

HoSARC at the NYC Maker Faire Sept 25 & 26

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 23:03:00 +0000

The New York Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club will be running an exhibit on Satellite communications at the New York Maker Faire on Sept 25 & 26 2010. Our exhibit will cover Home Brew HF stations, our "Go Box" portable stations and live Satellite communications as propagation permits. There will be a special QSL card made just for the occasion and we are looking forward to spreading the word on Amateur Radio to like minded "Makers".

The Maker Faire has been around since 2006 and like its namesake the Make magazine it celebrates "arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset." These are all interests near and dear to any HAM's heart. If you have time this weekend, and you are in the New York area, please come on down. It promises to be quite a show.

FieldDay 2010 Photos.

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:18:00 +0000

Here are a few pictures taken during the HoSARC 2010 ARRL Fieldday. We had a great time and made many contacts, amid the wind and the occasional pileups.

Field Day 2010

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:27:00 +0000

Everyone at HoSARC has put in a lot of time working on this Field Day and it looks like this year will be a great event for the club. We have BBQs dipoles, mono-band Yagis and tons of food. Should be fun.
73,
Patrick KC2RBE

Amateur Radio way to prove you are a human.

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Tue, 18 May 2010 14:36:00 +0000

I was sending a web based E-mail comment about something on the TAPR website and noticed their clever method of "proving you are a human" to prevent spam. The likelihood of an web based CW skimming E-mail spambot is pretty slim, so this looks like a very secure amateur radio based feature for a website. I have always heard that the simplest solutions can be the best, and here is a great example. I am hoping to catch a east coast based DCC in the future as their cutting edge presentations look amazing. Understanding all of it is another story,

Making an animated RSS feed for QRZ & 73s page.

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:22:00 +0000

How to post your RSS feed on your qrz.com or 73s.org page:

Have you ever wanted to keep your qrz.com or 73s.org pages updated with a dynamic widget showing the most recent entries from your blog? Then a RSS feed may be what you are looking for. This simple syndication tool is a very easy but powerful tool for making your website/blog content available in multiple places quickly. In the tradition of amateur radio Elmer-ing, I am writing this post to let you know how I am using this tool. You may find it helpful in your Ham related project also. With some simple copying and pasting, you too can have these automated tools helping you share you amateur radio experience.

Disclaimer:To be clear, I am not a web guru, and all advice here is offered as an example of what I have done and has no warranty either implied or otherwise. My goal is to share what I have learned in order to encourage more amateur radio blogging & twittering because the web is one of our best resources.

One of the easiest way to share your work in "Hamology", as Gordon West calls it, is to start with a blog with an automatically generated RSS feed. Any of the major blogging engines these days have this feature so that is not an issue. (List available at bottom of post) The RSS feed itself is a small XML document listing the titles and URLs of items on your blog in chronological order. Once you have found your RSS feed location, just start a Feedburner account and point it toward the file to take advantage of the options the service provides. The Feedburner help section covers this in much more detail.

What you can do with your feed:
Now that you have your RSS feed setup, you can start leveraging the power of Feedburner to help promote your blog on your qrz.com or 73s.org bio page. Click on the "Publicize" tab of your Feedburner account to find the option we are working with.
Once you are in the "Publicize" tab, just click on "Headline Animator" and follow the instructions to create a animated headline like the one I have at the top of this post.
In order to add the animated headline to my qrz and 73s pages, I selected "Other(just gimme the code)" and posted the resulting HTML code into the pages. In my case I unchecked the " Grab this link" check box from the resulting pop-up window for a cleaner look.

Below I have screen shots of the resulting widget additions to my qrz and 73s pages.
I hope you have found this post helpful.

Resulting 73s.org and qrz.com pages:

List of free blog sites that offer RSS feeds:
Blogger
WordPress
LiveJournal

In the next post, I will cover automatically adding your blog content to your Twitter page. Please share your ideas/corrections in the comments section.

Ham Radio has been "Slashdotted"

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:16:00 +0000

Slashdot is a website I have been reading for years and I was very happy to see it running a story of the NPR report on the changing population of amateur radio operators. This brings together two of my favorite things, nerdom and news. After seeing report after report over the years about the future disappearance of amateur radio, comparing our hobby to a finite product like VHS or 8 track tape, it is so refreshing to see a report about the progress we are making in building our numbers. It is very easy to gloss over the "antiquated hobby" of amateur radio. But when you learn that people are using Morse code and digital modes on their own transceivers built into Altoids cases transmitting across the globe on just 5 watts of power, or working with the military on open source Software defined radio platforms, the argument of amateur radio as a dying hobby does not hold water. This hobby of ours has so much to offer people from all walks of life. Just last month we added a few more people to the ranks of the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club or HoSARC. I have a feeling we will look back on these days as the start of a new era of amateur radio. I can not wait to see what is next for our hobby.

ARRL.org redesign getting off the ground soon!

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:01:00 +0000

As per the ARRL website the redesign and launch is headed toward completion! I for one am looking forward to the new site. They have been working on it for some time and it promises to be a big help for promoting our hobby. I was calling ARRL regarding an unrelated matter and a member close to the project was nice enough to tell me that this weekend should see a change in one of our favorite web watering holes.
Update:4/8/10
Looks like April 12 is the new go live date.
The new www.arrl.org is now live!
And it looks great! The interface looks smooth and up to date. Each day you can see that they are adding new features and tidying up loose ends. It was not a small job, but I think it is a significant step in the right direction. The archive information is easier to find and access. They even tell you how many days are left on your subscription! Nice job all around.

Hams, Twitter, and the Web 2.0 social media.

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:02:00 +0000

Just read a great ARRL article concerning the Web 2.0 social media phenomenon and on Twitter in particular. I have a few experiences of the speed and power of twitter myself. In addition to Amateur Radio, I am active in the Open Source community, in particular the BSD operating system. Last week I made a video recording an interesting talk about PFSense. On the way out the door to make the recording I "tweeted" about making the recording. I was surprised to see within a few minutes, Scott Ullrich the co-founder/developer on the project, had "re-tweeted" my message to his thousand plus followers.

I can not wait to see how this very powerful tool will be used by inventive Hams. One use for twitter is the ability to dispense very important information quickly. Some of the first pictures of the "Miracle on the Hudson" actually came from TwitterPic the twitter picture sharing service. I would not be surprised to see a version of this used over D-Star network to get information out of emergency zones. Of course to be used responsibly, there will have to be controls in place, and that will come in time.

No two people will use this information tool the same way, but it is good to know it is available to us should we need it; kind of like amateur radio.

qrz.com has a fantastic HTML editor!

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:02:00 +0000

I have long wished to have a more interesting qrz.com bio page and tonight I finally did something about it. While logged into qrz.com, I selected the "click for more detail..." green bar and selected the "Edit Record" button noted in the image above. In resulting page, I clicked on the "Add or edit your biography text, fonts, etc." link and found the following simple HTML editor that is great for adding details to any QRZ bio.

With the advent of "Web 2.0" and all the online media options many people would like to add more than text and an image or two. In that case qrz.com has you covered. If you look toward the bottom and select the "Advanced" button you get a HTML editor with much more power and advanced options.

Embedding videos, editing the actual HTML code, it's all there. I particularly liked the ability to toggle between regular webpage and full screen editor mode. They even have multiple pasting options for copying your data into the page. I feel I have only scratched the surface on this powerful FREE tool, but I can assure I will learn more and report back here. Below I have attached before and after pictures so you can judge the abilities if this editor for yourself. Just click on any of these images for a larger view. I am not a web designer by any stretch of the imagination, but the this well engineered website has me thinking I could be! QRZ relies on contributions from the amateur radio community and I will be making one soon, hope you can too.
Update:
I have traded a few emails with Fred L Lloyd AA7BQ and found out that the advanced HTML editor software is the open source Java based TinyMCE, the platform you would expect from a long-time Sun man like Fred.

Before &After:

Amateur Radio emergency comunications in action!

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:36:00 +0000

I was listening to a few hams using the LIMAC repeater for an interesting talk on Physics. Just as they were about to sign and clear there was an emergency break-in call. It was Raymond Larsen, N2ZEM asking for someone to place a Suffolk Police 911 call as he had just witnessed an auto accident in which a woman was injured. It was the first time I had heard something like this and the receiving operator (KC2QIQ I believe) snapped into action and handled the call like a pro. It is one those moments that really makes you proud to be a part of such a civic-minded hobby. Even if you are just monitoring.

New Year, New QRZ Forum update.

noreply@blogger.com (KC2RBE) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:03:00 +0000

Seems QRZ.com is getting into website upgrade activities in addition to the ARRL. I just tried to update a post I had made on the QRZ forums and was greeted by the page you see below. Looks like 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for Amateur Radio. If you would like to see a larger version of the picture, please double click on it.