Tim Allen – perhaps better known as “Tim the Tool Man Taylor” of Home Improvement – received his Amateur Radio license.
Allen – now known by amateur callsign KK6OTD – stars in ABC’s television program, “Last Man Standing,” on which his character, Mike Baxter, is an amateur radio operator with the callsign KA0XTT.
Congratulations, Tim!
Select ham radio presentations have been posted online at DokuFunk, including the VK9MT Mellish Reef DXpedition that included Kentuckiana’s own Glenn KE4KY.
Lecture in English/Vortrag in englischer Sprache (28.06.2014)
Leslie P. Kalmus, W2LK
© Powerpoint: Courtesy of Leslie P. Kalmus, W2LK
Part I- VK9MT- Mellish Reef DXpedition [PPS , 13.66 MB]
Part II- VK9MT- Mellish Reef DXpedition [PPS , 11.15 MB]
Part III- VK9MT- Mellish Reef DXpedition [PPS , 9.26 MB]
Part IV- VK9MT- Mellish Reef DXpedition [PPS , 14.46 MB]
Part V- VK9MT- Mellish Reef DXpedition [PPS , 10.48 MB]
The 2014 ‘Vette City HamFest in Bowling Green, KY, is coming up in just about one month.
The event, which is held at the Sloan Convention Center, is Saturday, October 4. The event features license testing, the swap meet, free coffee, and more.
Visit the Vette City HamFest website for full details.
The 2014 Greater Louisville Hamfest will be held on September 6, 2014 at the Paroquet Springs Conference Centre in Shephardsville.
For more information, visit the official Greater Louisville Hamfest website.
Via Fox News… Ham Radio: Old Technology Gets New Respect
Seeking reliable backup communication in a crisis, emergency managers are finding new solutions in an old technology: ham radio.
“It’s just another avenue, another opportunity for us to be able to communicate,” said Herb Schraufnagel, public safety captain with Emory University Hospital Midtown.
Emory HealthCare is among a growing number of hospital systems to adopt ham radio. Hospital administrators and government officials took a lesson from Hurricane Katrina, which left some Gulf Coast medical centers isolated from the outside world, as landlines and cell towers failed.
When power, phone and Internet services go down, a battery-powered amateur radio and portable antenna can provide that crucial link to the outside world. Continue reading on FoxNew.com
Mike O’Sullivan
VOA News
LOS ANGELES— The Queen Mary, an ocean liner that once sailed the North Atlantic, is now permanently berthed in Long Beach, California, where it’s a tourist attraction and hotel. In one of the rooms aboard the ship, the tradition of ship-to-shore wireless operations is continued and visitors are introduced to the hobby of ham radio.
A young visitor recently got an introduction to Morse code, the system of dots and dashes once used for wireless communication. Amateur radio operators, called “hams,” still use it today.
The Queen Mary was the pride of the Cunard Line after its 1936 launch, and is now a popular tourist attraction.
The wireless room preserves the ocean liner’s communications hub. Queen Mary Commodore Everette Hoard said it was a lifeline in emergencies, providing two-way messages — ship to shore.
“And not only did they carry several transmitters for transmitting the ship’s business, they also, even in 1936, had radio-telephone service,” said Hoard. Continue reading
A while back, some ingenious radio amateurs figured out that they could pair a $20 USB dongle meant for watching television in other parts of the world with some SDR software and listen to the ham bands (and more).
The “and more” part is what first caught my attention. Much of the area uses digital trunked systems for their emergency communications and something like a TrunkTracker IV, despite being one of the more affordable pieces of equipment in this category, is still a bit out of my reach. As someone who lives close to the site of a HAZMAT train derailment as well as a massive tire fire, and having had police chases that end in stand-offs go racing past my house, the ability to be “in the know” sounds like a good idea. I haven’t got up and running with digital trunking systems yet (watch for a future post?), but I have definitely already got more than my $20 worth of use out of this gadget.
The first thing I did was order a Nooelec RTL2832U & R820TSB dongle. Once it arrived, the package contained the USB dongle (which looks like a fat jump drive), a stubby little antenna with a few feet of coax and a small, mostly useless remote control. I was ready to get started! Continue reading
SKYWARN Recognition Day was jointly created in 1999 by the NWS and the ARRL to celebrate the contributions by volunteer SKYWARN radio operators to the National Weather Service. The 2013 Event will be held December 7. For more details, visit the official SKYWARN Recognition Day page.
View the event in the Louisville Ham Radio Calendar.
In the Louisville, the event station (callsign WX4NWS) will be operating on the 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m, 6m and 2m bands in SSB, CW, FM modes during the following UCT hours: 00:00-06:00Z and 12:00-22:00Z. The Eastern Time Zone is Coordinated Universal Time -4 hours.
Louisville SKYWARN Recognition Day QSL information and requests may be sent to:
NWS Louisville
6201 Theiler Ln
Louisville, KY 40229
Operating Procedures are as follows:
Many amateur radio transceivers allow users to set up memory channels to store their favorite simplex frequencies or repeater information including frequency (such as repeater name, frequncy, offset, tones and more).
Programming memory channels using the radio’s keypad can often be incredibly cumbersome and time consuming.
Using factory or homebrew programming cables can speed up the process but often introduces other issues (on top of the cost of having to purchase a programming cable for each radio). Topping the list of those issues are usually driver problems that prevent the computer from being able to use the cable. This method also means either having to take your radios to a computer or bringing the computer to your radios.
The project outlined in the document below will describe how to make a portable “universal” ham radio transceiver programmer. The total cost of the project is around $40-50 (much less if you use parts you already have) and will yield a programmer that is approximately the size of a deck of cards, weighs only a few ounces and includes the computer and the cables you need to program your radio. This programmer (perfect for travelers, emergencies and more) will connect to any display with HDMI or RCA video inputs and is powered by a standard USB power outlet, computer port or cell phone charger.
Build one today and keep it with your ham radio gear so you can program your radios on the go!
To build the programmer, you’ll need:
To set up and use the programmer, you’ll need:
This one is pretty simple and the idea has been around for a while (see the “St. Louis Switcher”). The idea is to take an ATX form factor power supply (available for free from dead computers everywhere), hack off some wires, add about $5 worth of parts from the electronics store (like MCM Electronics) or the junk bin and end up with a bench power supply that has enough power to run many mobile transceivers as base stations.
To build the power supply, you’ll need:
At a recent hamfest, Chris KK4RZH gave us some info on a handy gadget to make an ATX PSU conversion even easier: A breakout board that plugs directly to the motherboard header pigtail to eliminate the need to all of the cutting, soldering, etc. It should be noted that these breakout boards likely will not supply the current needed to operate a mobile ham radio transceiver. However, they should work fine to charge batteries, operate QRP or other applications which use lower current. Check out the breakout board here.
