KB3MIX

One of the blogs I subscribe to had an interesting article about learning Morse Code, check it out:  http://artofmanliness.com/2008/10/09/morse-code/

Unlike Gustav, there are a ton of news articles about ham radio and Hurricane Ike:

• Civic Center opens to accept Ike evacuees
• Ike moves into Anderson County
• Ore. ham radio operators stand by to help
• Local Ham operators prepare for Ike
• Ike getting closer

Thought everyone would enjoy this post over at Modern Mechanix of an article from 1936 about a French listening post.  From the article:

RADIO fans take pride in the number of stations they can “log” and verify, especially if these are at a great distance. Contests for the most successful listening are as popular, now that one may hear Australia or South America, as they were in the days when people sat up in the hope of hearing Pittsburgh or Schenectady. However, the prize for the world’s most systematic listening should go to Mdlle. Marianne (the personification of the French Republic, as Uncle Sam is that of the United States). She has erected the world’s most elaborate receiving station for the purpose of listening to and recording broadcasts, as illustrated here. [more]

I’m kind of surprised that there’s only one news article related to ham radio and Gustav that I could find on Google News Search.

Amateur radio operators prepare for Gustav

One of the neat things I discovered in AGWTracker, and indead WinAPRS also has this feature, is the ability to map the coverage area of a digipeater.  Power-height-gain (PHG) is a relative calculation of a station’s RF range and can be transmitted by digipeaters. Well, turns out this is super simple in AGWTracker, below is a map of just the iGates around me (most of them are being picked up through W3UD-3 at the University of Delaware).

Local Digipeaters

So now we use the View menu and select Draw Coverage Area.

And you should end up with a map like this:

This is even more simple on WinAPRS, simply hit the ‘D’ key and the circles will be drawn, but keep in mind they won’t always be circles if one of the digis is using a directional antenna.

Since I don’t own a TNC and wanted to see what kind of APRS traffic was in my area, I started looking for some software solutions.  Luckily I found the AGW Packet Engine and AGW Tracker which let me use an old scanner and my PC’s sound card to receive APRS traffic in the area.  What’s nice is you can even configure AGW Packet engine to act as a full TNC and get transmit functionality as well.

Step 1: AGW Packet Engine

The first thing you’ll need is the packet engine to turn sound inputed from your microphone port into a

AGW Packet Engine Icons

packet.  Go download here.  One important thing to note is that this doesn’t require installation, just unzip and run the exe.  You will then see something like this in your system tray.  Now its time to configure your sound card, click on the AGW icon (looks kind of like star burst) and select Properties.  One the RadioPort Selection window click “New Port” and you’ll get a window like below.

Add new port window

You’re not really concerned with any of the settings on here except the “Select Your TNC Model” from the drop down you’ll want to select “Soundcard.”  Click OK, you will get a message about needing to restart the packet engine to pick up the changes, so click on the packet engine icon and select Exit.  Now when you run AGW Packet Engine it will take the input from your computer’s microphone port and turn that into packets.

Step 2: Install AGWTracker

Go here and download AGWTracker.  Unlike before, this actually needs to be installed after being unzipped.  But the great thing is once you install it, its already set to use your packet engine to get data.  So hook up an HT or scanner and in no time you’ll get maps that look like this.

Example map from AGWTracker

I have been around radios in some form or another for most of my life. It started when a couple of my friends found their dad’s old C.B.s sitting around in the basement, luckily I found one of my dad’s radios also. We setup a nightly net and talked about everything: schools, girls, whatever. They were great times, and we got surprisingly good range our of our little mag-mounts stuck to whatever we could find, often times the tops of our radios themselves.

Shortly after we started running our net I saw an ad for a Uniden scanner at K-Mart or some place like that and convinced my dad it would make a great birthday present.  It wasn’t long until I was scanning the local fire and police dispatch.  Of course, with my new found friend, the Internet, I found all kinds of great things to scan, including the neighborhood cordless phones (good ol’ 49MHz).  Heard many a risque conversations that way.

I also found a listing of local ham radio repeaters and started listening to them.  This was my first official introduction to amateur radio, listening in to some weekly nets.  Great organized nets including swap meets, talk with a trucker who was in the area for the night and whose TV was busted.  When some of the operators where discussing where they were I was glad to hear that some of them were not far from me.

At the time code was still a requirement for all license classes and I never really pursued ham radio at the time.  I just continued getting newer and better scanners.  I eventually moved away from my C.B. net buddies and moved into a smaller upscale neighborhood that was pretty far removed from anyone else.  I never could get another net going, but kept my interest in radio going.

Once I was out of high school and into college I quickly learned that some of my professors were hams.  This only pushed me further to go for my license.  Despite numerous times reading through the Technician manual I never did schedule myself to go for an exam.  Finally, in my senior year of college I found a test that was relatively close and scheduled for it.

I can still remember going into the Allegheny County Emergancy Services building outside of Pittsburgh.  The test was at the end of a Technician class and everyone there already knew each other.  As a testiment to the friendlyness of hams I was quickly welcomed and had some great conversations and picked up a few pneumonics before the exam.  The test itself was quite easy after studying for at least four years and the examiners convinced me to take the General test after doing so well on the Technician test.  I missed the General test by a few questions; and was actually pretty proud of myself for doing so well.

So I walked out knowing I had finally managed to get my Amateur radio license and anxiously awaited my call sign to show up in the FCC’s database.  To my surprise in a week flat I showed up and was rather impressed to get KB3MIX as a call sign.

For anyone out there still thinking about getting a license, just go for it.  You’ve got nothing to lose by taking the test, only a great community to join.

You never know where you’ll find amatuer radio operators.  I was lucky enough to find out there’s quite a large group of us at work (at lead four including me).  That’s about 1% of the company, now its time to get those numbers up.