July 2014 – N5ZDT

HF vs everything else

22 Jul

It’s funny and a bit strange to me that things have changed so much over the course of time in amateur radio. I wanted to talk to people around the world to find out anything and everything that was happening in far away places.

Since getting my Technician Class license in February 2014, I’ve spent more time listening to and decoding morse on the 40 and 80 meter bands than anything else. Thanks to the addition of computers and software to the hobby, it now takes very little effort to have the computer decipher those dihs and dahs, giving the operator a nice screen printout of what was sent. An operator can even respond to a call by typing what he wants to say and allowing the computer to do the hard part of transmitting it in morse code.

My very first morse decode, after building a homemade balun/unan and hanging a “long wire” out of my home office window, was one that I’ll never forget as long as I live. Because with all I do know about antenna technology, I still couldn’t imagine something like a piece of rubber covered aluminum clothesline wire running across the driveway, attached to the firewood rack on the other side, picking up anything all that distant. But as I spun that dial through the 40 meter band, I suddenly picked up a relatively strong signal…

…CQ CQ DE TX6G TX6G…

At first I was a bit confused. For a signal THAT strong (S7-S8), I was expecting a more local (at least to the USA) call sign to be decoded. I thought that I must’ve gotten the cursor a little off center of the signal. But after rechecking my signal on the waterfall display, I decided to try doing a lookup on the call sign. The results of my search completely blew me away.

It seems that TX6G is the call sign for a DX Expedition team that was transmitting from Raivavae Island, which is part of the Austral Islands in the South Pacific. When I say “South Pacific”, I mean 5145 miles away. In fact the closest major land mass to the place is New Zealand.

Here is a link to their site: http://www.tx6g.com

Well that pretty much sealed the deal for me. I’ve GOT to find a way around my mental block with learning code. Sure, I could use the computer to be my “surrogate code flunky”. But that really just feels like “cheating” in a way. So I’ve downloaded morse programs to my iPhone, iPad and Mac laptops and am going to give it another stab. Somehow all those “dihs” and “dahs” make sense to other people so I’m going to find a way to get them to make sense to me. Wish me luck!

73,

David

Tower Crazy

21 Jul

Thinking back to my younger years, I was enthralled by those huge radio towers from the time I was a small child. I have a visual image in my head from childhood: I was riding home in the “rumble seat” of a VW bug, with my parents up front. We were coming home from a place called “Cool Point”, a restaurant on Caddo Lake, in Northwest Louisiana. Somewhere out across the darkness were 3-4 towers with blinking red lights all in rows pointing straight up at the sky. I knew they were towers for our local TV stations. They looked like pillars of a huge gateway to the world or into space.

At age 13 I still had a fascination with towers, although now it was more technical in nature. I would gaze with fascination when I saw the really tall towers, with huge directional beam antennas combing the sky. I often watched while passing them, when riding in the car, just to see if I could catch one in motion, rotating to point somewhere else for a chat.

And while I hadn’t achieved my amateur radio license due to the code requirement, I had done what most other people in the United States were doing at the time. I became a CB Radio operator. The nation was engulfed in the CB Radio craze from about the time I turned 12 until around age 16. I fit right in. And although it wasn’t the same as being a “ham operator”, it was more mainstream and therefore less expensive. I made many friends —usually with people twice my age on the other end of the call- and made a few enemies as well.

Much to my folks’ chagrin, I did finally manage to get that tower with the huge 11 meter beam array at the top. I liked to tinker so my grandfather had his welder at the shop add a hinged plate onto the bottom of the tower. It allowed me to use ropes and pulleys to lay the thing down across the back yard and make my adjustments or repairs.

It was an unsightly thing really. And although it wasn’t that tall (30-40 feet), it allowed me to reach places farther away than the distance I was able to ride my bicycle or motorcycle. At the time that satisfied my communication needs. Even though “long distance” communications weren’t allowed on the 11 meter “citizen’s band”, someone forgot to tell the ionosphere. So whether the FCC liked it or not, there were heavy sunspot days where you just couldn’t help but end up talking to someone 500 or even 1000 miles away with a simple 4-5 watt rig. It was amazing and wonderful to me then, as it is now, thinking back on it.

My parents however held back with their wonder and amazement over my technological addition to our yard. For some reason they didn’t see the “wonder”. And their only amazement was possibly being amazed that I would put something like that on the property. In retrospect, I guess it really was an ugly beast. Thankfully they bit their tongues as parents must do from time to time.

When it’s all said and done, my parents will likely be sainted for all they endured during my CB Radio phase. At around age 15-16 we moved into a much nicer neighborhood. And my radio equipment —having been unused for many months- got packed away in boxes and stored. My folks silently breathed a sigh of relief as my tower and antenna left our driveway on the back of a trailer, after I agreed to sell it to a family friend.

Thanks Mom & Dad. Sorry if I didn’t choose a career as a Radiotelephone Technician after all. But that computer phase I went through a few years later? Spot On!

73,

David