Brands!

We Just Got a Letter! We Just Got a Letter! And So Forth!

Here, in no particular order, are a few recent e-mail requests for an Official This Week in Amateur Radio QSL Card. The more traditional pathway of writing a reception report and mailing it to: This Week in Amateur Radio Post Office Box 30, Sand Lake, New York 12153 has given way in recent years to an e-mail request sent to n2fnh@capital.net. So, whether you receive the program over your local VHF or UHF repeater, copy the show over WBCQ or download the latest weekly Internet Podcast, you can get your own TWIAR QSL Card by taking pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. either way works!

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OK I admit it. Between QSOs I visited your blog.
73, Harry
W9HGO -SKCC #4647

I have been an active SWL'er since 1960. Passed my General written 10/20/04 and passed my code exam and extra written on 1/23/05. No transmitter at the moment but have a JRC525 on the receive side. My previous radios were a Yaesu FRG 7000 and a Hallicrafters SX-110. I am usually on 10 15 40 or 80 listening for CW to copy or our local repeater here in Chicago, IL (147.15). I like the idea of QRP and looking for an old inexpensive boat anchor to go along with the JRC. Also interested in glow bugs and want to build up an old 1 tube transmitter at some point in the future. At the moment, July 2008, looking for my first HF rig. Finally got my first HF rig a beautiful Icom 765. On August 28th I made my first QSO. I am doing mostly CW and waiting for my digital interface so I can do some psk31 and RTTY. You will find me mainly on 40M. But check out the SKCC sked page http://www.obriensweb.com/sked/ and come and find me. I can do about 5-7 WPM so be patient.

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Hello George,While strolling through the ham radio sites I recently found TWIAR. IT'S FUN!Some of your most important topics are hardly a topic on this side ofthe pond. Distances are much shorter here - you can easily go from oneend of Germany to the other within a single day and there are some82.000.000 people living in this crammed space.Every 60 miles or so you have a town of at least 100.000, quite a few ofthem 1.000 years old and some even 2.000 years. So we had enough time tobuild an infrastructure to last. The last desaster where amateur radioplayed an important role in was the Hamburg flooding in 1962. Besides:As far as I can judge many things are much more buerocratic over here.How does it come that TWIAR has not been mentioned at Wikipedia? Thatis, until today - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Week_In_Amateur_Radio_International.

Let's hope that none of the moderators will delete it. Perhaps you can find a ham or two to polish the article. But you know the Wikipediapolicy: Don't do it yourself...vy 73,AlexanderDL4NO

Now is the Time for Amateur Radio's Best Bargains! W2XOY Serves Up Another Amateur Radio Tale!

This edition of the Random Access Thought continues the thread I started last week with Bill Continelli as guest host. Prior to the story of "W2XOY's Secret Elmer". Bill had dropped by and recorded a feature entitled:"Now is the Time for Amateur Radio's Best Bargains". We did this back in late February, 2005 with production wrapping up on March the 2nd.

The basic premise of the story is that Bill, planning ham radio purchases in 1974, is visited by himself from thirty one years in the future. Bill's elder self launches a discussion in typical certified public accountant's terms just how buying amateur gear in 2005 will actually be cheaper than it was in 1974. Needless to say, this Random Access Thought was extensively post produced with the added feature of some classic motion picture soundtrack music. Mr. Continelli serves up some fairly intense and quite passionate acting while paying homage to "Gone with the Wind".

By the way, if you listen carefully, you may hear jingling bells in the background. Ed the cat, a fifteen pound street feline with the personality of Scooby Doo and the smarts of a doorbell races feverishly from room to room while the microphonium was hot. Ed is one of those creatures who occasionally discovers his tail and chases it!

This installment, like "W2XOY's Secret Elmer" made use of a production scheme best described as Single Track Overlay. While I currently produce the Random Access Thought in multitrack, back then I used the primary voice track as a template. Primary effects and background ambiances were then overlaid or matted under the voice. Under some circumstances, this style of post production could actually be faster and more efficient.

My thanks to George W2XBS for requesting this episode and reminding me that I still had this classic gem concealed deep within the Random Access vaults! Please download this week's This Week in Amateur Radio Ham Service and the TWIARi Broadcast version, or even better connect to: http://www.twiar.org/N2FNH/RATParts Look for file number RAT081008_BARG_BCQ_R1.cab or RAT08008_BARG_HAM_R1, right click and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the select RAF audio WAV file inside!

From the RAT Files Circa 2003: The Amazing RadioShack HTX-420!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO for airing Saturday September 27, 2003 as a feature entitled: THE RANDOM ACCESS FILE. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for additional information on this premier amateur radio audio news service.

I had a Sunday brunch with a remarkable Motley Crew of ham radio operators. Among the quorum in session were George Bowen W2XBS, our Technical Guru here at This Week In Amateur Radio and Bill Continelli W2XOY,our Maven Emeritus of the Amateur Radio Archives. We had convened at a nearby Denny's Restaurant in Defreestville, a little half-mile strip of nowhere, planted right in the middle of anywhere, jammed in smack dab somewhere in where ever, upstate New York. Bill was in his best evangelistic form extolling the virtues of his brandspanking new Radio Shack HTX-420 dual band handheld transceiver which he sternly advised was on closeout for a mere $129.00 US. Bill quietly murmured in conspiratorial tones that the very last unit in the area could be located at the Hoosick Street Radio Shack in Troy.

The 420 was a cute little blister, reminiscent of the Kenwood TH-D7A in terms of appearance and keyboard layout. The HTX-420 transmits from 144 to 148 MegaCycles and from 438 to 450 out of the box and offers extended receive from 136 to 174 and from 420 through 512, plus the aircraft bandfrom 108 to 137.

The little HTX might not have been of further interest except that Bill further intoned that this radio could be easily modified to transceive far beyond its respective band edge limits. How easy? This is how easy. On page 42 of the owner's manual, under the heading: CHANGING THE TRANSMIT FREQUENCY RANGE The following statement: "To extend the range, turn off the transceiver. then while holding (the SCAN button) plus (the 9 button), press POWER". With this so-called MOD, the two meter transmit now expands from 142 to 149.88. This is typical Civil Air Patrol and MARS capability and so no big deal. It was the extended transmit from 420 through 470 that caught my attention so let's flag that thought for just a moment.

This is a quite a sea change from previous Radio Shack policies regarding their amateur radio walkie-talkies especially since when they first debuted their HTX-202. That radio was loudly hailed as a two meter-only rig, no extended transmit, no expanded receive. Apparently, this ham-only approach has been slowly tail spinning away from stated doctrine. This keyboard approach is also light-years away from the days when open heart surgery had to be performed on some HTs. I still have my Kenwood TH77A which had to be physically disemboweled. Some highly significant mega-chip had to be unsoldered and physically lifted off the primary board just to further unsolder two microscopic surface mount components hidden beneath. Professionals were needed and secured for the project. This was far beyond my own capabilities. But the job got done. Similar devices such as the Standard C528A did not require the scary circuit board hospitalization but did offer keyboard MODs. However, the prospective owner was required to enter several pages of many PRESS FUNCTION and many PUSH NUMBER in an effort to unfetter and to unshackle. A major-league headache!

My now archaic Alinco F-1 handheld, which in untimely manner became the F-1 MINUS 2 when my son, four years old at the time of the incident, smart-bombed a well-targeted shoe onto the surface of the innocent radio and promptly amputated the bright white little number 2 keypad button which quickly bounced away and got lost forever somewhere in the flibbity-jibbity. And my other assorted Alincos...well, they did make life a bit easier by providing the obvious SNIP HERE bright yellow wire or the obvious CLIP-HERE bright white resistor but even so, the protective covers to the transceivers needed to be undone and their soft and secret internals violated.

But not so with the HTX-420. At the conclusion of our Sunday brunch with the Motley Crew, I decided to take a leisurely tour upstreet to Troy and sauntered into the emporium and put forth my request and the requisite cash-flow. Five minutes later, I had the booty in tow. I was tempted to change tracks and go with a pair of Motorola T-5950 Family Radio Service radios sitting on the shelf, but I held firm which brings us back to my flagged thought. This little HTX by its own design parameters embraces both the Family Radio Service and also the General Mobile Radio Service and this little HTX byits own design parameters transceives very well in both the 462 and 467 MegaCycle ranges. Armed with this sensitive little brick of technology, I was now privy to an amazing microscopic world just outside my ham shack window and just right down the street.

But the signals...................................
They are so small..............................
And the signals..................................
They are so much higher in frequency..............
That you can just barely hear them...................
Outside your window...........................................
........................much less right down the street.
And the radios that are being used....................
They are so small.................................................
That they..............................................................
Like the cellphone................................................
And the pager.......................................................
.................could easily be dropped into a toilet.

So on my own city block where I live, lots of little kids have lots of these little 500-milliwatt FRS radios that you can grab for nine bucks at the WalMart. An endless chaotic stream of beeping noises can be heard in the late after-school hours, playing endlessly between dinner-time, homework-time and bed-time. Legal issues aside, I decided to attempt first contact with the pre-teen street population using the the amazing HTX-420 on high power and much like the CB of yesteryear, lines like "Hey, what's your 20???" were still very much part of the working vernacular.

I immediately met resistance when I asked them what they were doing on MY channel. Perhaps I was a bit forward with this unsubstantiated claim.

"Who are you?" They demanded.
"I am the King!" I asserted.
"You are not the King!" They challenged.
"How can you say that?" I stated in self-defense.
"Because the King lives in Egypt!" They argued.
"But I am from Egypt!" I lied.
"No you are not!" They theorized with obvious knowledge and truth.
"How can you tell?" I wondered aloud.
"Because you are here in Albany on my street!" They assured me.
"I am the Queen!" Said another, far more adult, far more feminine and far closer to my age.
"You are?" I stammered.
"Yes, I am a nurse too..." She purred.
But I was not sure if this was an act of seduction or an offer of mental health therapy, so I put the 420 down and continued to listen to the on-going drone of the beeps, the boops and the blips while the Queen called for the King several times more but to no avail. I did learn a few hours later that the Queen had a late-night working spouse who might not appreciate HIS Queen getting it on with the King.

And later that same evening just a few minutes east of midnight: "The King is here!" I announced to the pre-squelched static rush and to no one in particular.

"Hey man...!" An anonymous young male voice countered.
"Yes?" I responded with guarded concern.
"Hey man, where are the girls?" He cooed with a edgy, wicked smile.
"I don't know." I waffled, caught off guard.
There was no more chit-chat to follow. My answer clearly was incorrect and it appeared to the young fellow may have sharked his way on to another channel in search of the "girls". Quite a departure from the kiddie-talk six hours earlier.
But better than cable TV just the same.

Now far be it from me to suggest that you or anyone employ non-FCC type-accepted RF equipment in the service of the 21st century CB lest some well-meaning but most-likely over-intentioned FRS or GMRS user freak out and spew government regulation dogma out through your speaker grill but I did have some fun. By the way, I did go back and picked up those Motorola 5950s at the same Radio Shack a few weeks later so now when the moment strikes me, I can jockey back and forth between the radios in an effort to keep mycantankerous audience at bay. Should you try this yourself? Only you...can answer that question! -30-

Marks!

W2XOY'S Secret Elmer! The Subject? Yes!

This week's edition of the Random Access Thought takes on an air of high tech mystery and political intrigue as Bill Continelli W2XOY relates the story of "W2XOY's Secret Elmer". By today's broadcast standards, this is a truly vintage recording, first produced in December of 2005. It has become fairly standard that if Bill has a topic he desires to cover that falls beyond the realm of his popular Ancient Amateur Archives, he will, in effect, franchise time via the Random Access Thought as a guest host. While Bill's Ancient Amateur Archives are presented "dry", that is without any audio enhancement, hosting a RAT freely allows these stories to be fully developed with sounds and environmental backdrops that expand the theoy of "theater of the mind". This production was fun to do. I kept going back and adding more and more effects to fully document Bill's tale!

Mr. Continelli has performed in a number of other Random Access features, including "CQ MARS! CQ MARS!" and "The Story of Reggie". In addition, Bill has offered a number of custom recorded vocal effects which are now part of the ever-growing N2FNH Sound Effects Library.

This installment, like of many of my early Random Access programs relied on a method of production which might be described as Single Track Overlay. While I currently produce features which are developed though multi-track, in those days, I would use the primary voice track as a template. Primary effects and background ambiances were copied and directly overlaid or matted on to the voice track. Under certain circumstances, this style of post production could actually be faster and more efficient, but I moved to multiple track production when George W2XBS requested stereo versions of RAT, QSL and BLOG promos for TWIARi. Under a multi-track format, elements such as music can be selectly added for This Week in Amateur Radio International but be removed for the HAM Radio Full Service version. I still use Single Track Overlay in the development of certain sound effects combinations where I want two or more effects to be merged but not heard as separate elements. So download this week's This Week in Amateur Radio Ham Service and the TWIARi Broadcast version, or even better connect to: http://www.twiar.org/N2FNH/RATParts Look for file number RAT080930_BOND_BCQ_R1.cab OR RAT080930_BOND_HAM_R1.cab, right click and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the select RAF audio WAV file inside!

From the RAT Files Circa 2003: The Victorian Internet!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for additional information.

Maybe you heard the old saw: "What goes around, comes around".
Maybe you heard the old saw: "History repeats itself".
Maybe you heard the old saw: "Same soup. Different bowl".
Maybe you heard the old saw: "It's the same old dead horse in the bathtub".
No.
You never heard this one.
Only I heard this one.
From my seventh grade socialite math teacher, Miss Joyner.
Never mind.
So a question now:
What technology has become most significant in our daily lives in the last
decade?
There is more than one answer.
But you could easily argue....
That the Internet.............
Matches.......................
The Internet is a new thing...
Is it not....................?
Not necessarily..............!
Well, there was the ARPANET.
A cold war Caesar salad of some GOVs, some MILs and some EDUs.
Triviologists recall the ALOHANET.
A Darwinian precursor to our own packet radio network.
Very esoteric, though.
Our Internet is actually the second coming.
What came around today already has come around a few centuries before.
There was another Internet and the first operational network devices went on
line 200-plus years ago in France at 11:00AM on the 2nd of March, 1791.
But these network devices were not computers.
Not as we know computers to be.
Not digital.
Analog.
They were five foot tall pivoting wooden panels.
Painted black on one side.
White on the other.
Peripherals came in the form of clocks and telescopes.
The operating system was a hand-written codebook.

The first two transceivers were spaced about ten miles apart and two guys, Claude and Rene Chappe reckoned they would call their new communications contraption the TACHYGRAPH, taken from the Greek meaning "fast writer" but quickly the name was modified to another which translated as "fast writer" and the new word was TELEGRAPH! This was the debut of some significant history that would repeat itself 200- plus years later with some better equipment.

Hi, this is Bill Baran - N2FNH - with a history lesson, a book review and a homework assignment from the Packet Radio Junkbox, a monthly feature heard exclusively over This Week In Amateur Radio. Last month, I was loitering in George Bowen's kitchen. George W2XBS is our Techn-Wiz here at This Week. George had dragged out some old Q-Streets that were dumpsterbound for me to peruse and I caught sight of a letter to the editor discussing a recent review done on a volume entitled: "The Victorian Internet", authored by Tom Standage. Catchy title.

A fan of SF magazines such as Analog and Issac Asimov's, it struck me that this might be a title you might see in those august and somewhat mentally enlightening pulps so I sallied forth to the local bibliotech and secured a copy and summarily digested it. "The Victorian Internet" is the story of the telegraph. The Chappe brother's black and white panels gave way to a more sophisticated optical telegraph, a small house with a large swinging arm tower assembly overhead that, depending on how and where the arm was positioned, could be translated into letters and numbers.

"By the mid-1830's, lines of telegraph towers stretched across much of western Europe, forming a sort of mechanical Internet of whirling arms and blinking shutters and passing news and official messages from one place to another". The author goes on to say: "The continental network eventually reached from Paris...to Amsterdam...to Venice with other networks in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Britain bringing the total number of telegraph towers in Europe to almost a thousand".

This continental network was actually a large network of several optical telegraph networks and by extension this is the basic definition of an internet. The first suggestion of a telegraph system making use of electromagnetism to send messages was put forth by an anonymous author identified by the initials C.M. in an article appearing in Scots Magazine dated February 17th, 1753, The title of the article was: "An expeditious Method of Conveying Intelligence". From there, "The Victorian Internet" launches into a three decade-long fast track documenting the emergence of the electromagnetic telegraph, how undersea cables came to be designed and built, how the career of the telegrapher, the men and the women behind the key fed into the maturity of the telegraph here in the United States and overseas, the merging of these systems into an inter-networked global communications web.

But who knew that something as mundane as the quiet humming and clicking of a newlyinvented ticker tape machine would be the harbinger of hands-free operation and the death knell of a choice career in working the key, a doorway into things like fully duplexed, and then completely multiplexed automated transmissions.

And then the ultimate decline and replacement of the electromagnetic telegraph by the equally electromagnetic but much more consumer-accessible "number please" telephone. And of course, along the way, all the names associated with this prehistoric Internet like Francis Ronalds, William Cooke, Samuel Morse and Thomas Edison.

And this is where I will leave the tale to hang because I do not want to ruin the story for you by telling the whole schmear. So run to the library right after This Week in Amateur Radio and borrow this book. And to further entice, you will learn how the worldwide electrical telegraph network gave rise to some rather creative business enterprises, the DOT COMs of the 1800s. Likewise, romance and crime, the bastion of 21st century television and hacking and cracking, the bane of 21st century Internet were also part of the territory of the electromagnetic telegraph network.

After reading "The Victorian Internet", it occurred to me that if the Internet were nothing more than a network of networks, then there are actually all sorts of networks and internets out there. But I'm not talking about Microsoft or MAC or TCPIP or AX25. Nothing so digital. Nothing so electronic as that. What came to mind was Analog networks. Physical networks. Mechanical networks.

Prior to the development of the first optical telegraphs, the news moved as fast as word of mouth, horses, carriages and seafaring vessels could carry it. But there were a few primitive though fully operational communications schemes in place in some seemingly uncivilized localities. Every kid growing up in the 1950's USA knew from watching Davey Crockett on TV that those nasty Injuns were sending smoke signals from one mountain to the other.Tarzan movies taught us kids that those pesky African natives beat on drums or big fallen tree trucks or sometimes even whistled really loud between mountain valleys. Analog long distance point-to-point communications. Using an agreed upon transmission protocol.

If these nasty injuns and pesky natives were so savage and uncivilized, how come those clever Europeans and us feisty Americans didn't have e-mail like that. We can bring this analog network communications theory a little closer to home, maybe even in your own home,especially you live now or grew up in a big city apartment. If your apartment had steam radiator pipes or air vents or even better, a dumb waiter, than Mrs. Blum could shout to Mrs. Cohen and relay all the latest neighborhood happenings and general purpose gossip. The telephone? Why? Shouting down the air vent or the dumb waiter is more organic. More granular. More whole earth.

Mrs. Blum's voice is channeled through several hundred feet of ducting that by its very unintentional design provides considerable amplification albeit with some inharmonic distortion to the receiving party, namely Mrs. Cohen. Internet Phone today is the air vent of yesterday. Pounding a broomstick on the ceiling or banging on the steam pipes to express anger or displeasure is yet another approach to point-to-point communications and not unlike ICQ, AOL or MSN instant messaging except the emoticon is the message and the message is the emoticon. Such a message need not be abrasive or angry, The pop singers Tony Orlando and Dawn offered up a somewhat more positive scenario in a song by suggesting to a girl fiend on the next flight up that she "knock three times on the ceiling if you want me. Twice on the pipes if the answer is no".
Again, we see an inter-connected ceiling and pipe network and a previously agreed-to protocol. Pretty advanced thinking for the 1970's!

And, how about those tubes? I learned in "The Victorian Internet" that pneumatic tube systems were developed during the rise of the electrical telegraph as a means to help increase the volume and distribution of the hand-written message from office to office and building to building. In fact, in localities like New York City and Paris, these tube networks were so vast they covered much of their respective cities. You still see these pneumatic tubes in use at many banks where you may have the choice of the teller's window or access to the teller via pneumatic tube. A kind of A-mail or perhaps a very simple form of A-commerce. That's "A" for what now?

So finally, your homework: To the library! The title: The Victorian Internet The author: Tom Standage. The publisher: Walker and Company of New York City. Don't ask what the Dewey decimal number is. I don't know. Or You could (ick!) Embrace the paid model. As of this writing, the paperback was still available from the publisher. It's not terribly gelt-intensive. About 12 US. - 30 -

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