I’ve been very busy at work and home and haven’t spent a lot of time on the air lately. This weekend I couldn’t even make it up to the site where my club was operating the VHF contest though I did make 3 contacts with them on the bands I have. In total I made 14 contacts in a few mins of working them and whoever else I could hear at that time. Hopefully I will be able to participate fully in the RTTY contest in 2 weeks.

With the title of this post, the forums and mailing lists were abuzz with news that Simon Brown HB9DRV has made a deal to sell his popular and free Ham Radio Deluxe software. The group making the purchase is http://www.w4pcsoftware.com/ – Mike Carper WA9PIE, Randy Gawtry, K0CBH and Rick Ruhl W4PC.

A lot of the posts I saw were reactions and assumptions around the program likely moving from free (though you could donate) to a paid product. Reactions were pretty upbeat from what I saw with hopes being reasonably priced and continued support/enhancements, where enhancements have been slow to come lately with Simon focusing on a SDR program. When I last looked there wasn’t any official response from the team making the purchase.

I imagine that those where price might be a factor will look elsewhere and those comfortable with the program and seeing a decent value in a modest cost (if it will be a paid program) will likely stay and see how things progress. Of course, the current version would likely continue to work for quite a while and folks can remain on the version they have and wait things out.

A link to a QRZ thread on the topic – http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?312536-Development-to-continue-on-HRD...

Simon produced a fine program for many years and though I tried many others, I kept coming back to HRD. We’ll just have to see what happens in the future.

73,
K2DSL

Spent Friday evening after work and all day Saturday prepping for Irene, removing everything from the yard, prepping a 5700 watt generator, running extension cords, getting flashlights/batteries ready, etc. The rains started on Sat night and it rained and rained and rained. The winds weren’t bad during the storm when it was running. About 3:30am early Sunday morning we had a series of short power losses and just before 4am we lost power. I went outside, started the generator, plugged the sump pump in for myself and my neighbor and couldn’t go back to sleep.

I stayed up throughout the storm and things weren’t too bad until late morning on Sunday when the water in my backyard started. We have a pond and stream behind our house and only one time before was it an issue – Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The stream overflows its banks and that isn’t so bad until the pond also overflows and then all hell starts. The water started to rise and what happens it will start to hit my detached garage before it hits the house and flows like a river around the garage. It got to the garage, but that was it. It was about 4-5 feet deep in the backyard and the when the rains stopped and it was at its peak, the kids were kayaking in it. Within about 60-90 mins after the rain stopped, all the water had receded and other than debris, there was no sign my property was underwater.

The sump pump powered by the generator kept up and there was no water in the basement and no trees came down. That’s much better than many of my neighbors were they had 6+ inches of water in their basement and one lost the top of a big pine tree, though other than the fence around their garden it didn’t damage anything. I spent the day helping the neighbors deal with their homes. Once the rain stopped, that’s when the wind kicked up and when all the tree damage started. We had dozens of HUGE trees down on our side of town with minimal home damage from what I saw but lots of power lines down and streets closed. We had a few neighbors over for an impromptu BBQ. Around 10pm Sunday the wind felt like it was dying down a bit and the storm was really passed us at that point.

There was still no power when we went to bed but I got a call about 4:30am from the neighbor saying the power was back on. Went and unplugged the sump pump and the refrigerator from the generator and put them back in the outlets and shut down the generator. Without the generator it really would have been a mess.  With all the wind, my G5RV and 10/15/20m dipole were blowing like mad, but stayed up. I did need to drop the fan dipole to untangle 2 wires that had crossed but that took 5 mins this morning.

With not being around much yesterday and helping the neighbors I didn’t monitor the repeaters so I hope everyone in the area was ok. I know my county activated at least 1 shelter as I received an email on Saturday before the storm hit asking for folks to assist with communications, but without power I didn’t want to leave the family at home with the generator. I saw lots of emails on rivers in the area 10+ feet over flood stage and areas around them being flooded out.

I missed out on a few contests this weekend so I hope those that got on the air had fun. I’m not sure if having a lot of folks on the east coast not participate was noticed or not. I guess if folks were prepared, and depending on where they were located, they could have gotten in some air time before the storm hit them. I’ll have to read the lists and see how things went.

73,
K2DSL

I’ve been busy at work and at home since returning this past Sunday from Dayton and my first trip out to Hamvention. Posts here from last week note the highlights from each day I was there. This post puts up some pictures I took while there. I probably should have taken more pics, but I will make do with what I have. All pictures below can be clicked on to open a larger view of the image.

I snapped the following picture on my drive out I-80 from Northern NJ to Dayton. It was raining most of the morning until about 5 mins before I reached this location right near the PA/OH border. This is the antenna farm for K3LR. The picture was taken as I was buzzing down the highway and I think it came out very well for being taken at *slightly* above the speed limit and out a car window. I cropped it to show the relevant portion. The picture really doesn’t show the vastness of everything that K3LR has at his location.

This next picture is of a spark gap transmitter that one of the hams brought with him and rolled out at the Crowne Plaza Thursday night. It was absolutely gorgeous and it really worked and I recall him saying it was about 1500 hours of work.  The transformer is the top left and to the right of that you’d see some pretty amazing blue lights between the 3 silver balls when the key was pressed down. I didn’t recall the ops call sign, but I did some searching and found a video from last year’s hamvention at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8BTgiSnIzY indicating the op is N4GG.  I think my picture captures the gorgeous look of the transmitter better than the video, but the video shows it in action. I also took a video and just uploaded it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMeF6s7pFPY

Here’s a picture of a very eco-friendly vehicle for Mr. APRS himself that I spotted in the flea market area:

This picture captures Rob KC2RDW (left) and Steve W2ML (right) early the first day of the flea market. KC2RDW was a personal tour guide for me showing me the hamvention ropes. Rob’s a long time attendee at hamvention:

An “portable” AM transmitter located in the back of a pickup truck in one of the corners of the flea market. If I recall it was a Collins transmitter. A computer and mic were located in the back seat of the pickup and if you open a larger view of the picture you can see the wire dipole used as an antenna:

The large MFJ booth which was very busy both days I was at the show:

The Heil booth was stocked and busy. I snapped a picture of Bob Heil who was there as well talking with folks that stopped by:

There was a large group of hams from BARA (Bergen Amateur radio Association) which is my local club in Northern NJ that made the trip out to Dayton. I happened to be by the YL booth when a bunch of the BARA YL’s affectionately known as BARA Babes stopped by. 4 YLs and 1 grumpy OM:

Gordon West, WB6NOA, was there in his booth and would give various demonstrations. I happened to catch him during one of his demos:

Here’s a picture of the main arena floor. I’d say the main arena floor is 1/20th or less of all the inside vendors. The main vendors in this part of the show were Kenwood, Icom, MFJ, DX Engineering & HRO:

The ARRL had a very large area inside with sections dedicated to kit making, kids, DXCC checking, a large store of their products, and other ARRL related sections like LoTW. Next to the ARRL were booths representing various countries such as Germany, China, Japan, Qatar, the UK, etc. It was great to see such an international representation of hams. Here are some pics from that area of the show:

The German booth with a representative from DL land and 9K2CW from Kuwait:

Qatar booth:

If you have $20k to spare, you can pick up a new Hilberling radio. Add in another $1k if you want the gold microphone:

I wonder if my wife & neighbors would notice if I rolled this Luso tower onto my property:

This last picture was taken at a forum on Saturday where Mike K4GMH (right) presented a history of RTTY contesting. In the picture (left) is Ed W0YK/P49X who gave 3 outstanding sessions at Contesting University a couple of days earlier. These are the top 2 RTTY contesters in the world as far as I’m concerned. The pic is a little blurry because it was dark in the room:

I hope you enjoyed a pictorial look at some of the sites I experienced at Dayton.

73,
K2DSL

I set off for the day with a couple of items on my agenda. I wanted to get the ARRL TravelPlus data I mentioned yesterday loaded on my Garmin so that was the first place I went. It didn’t take long and it was loaded up.

I walked around a bit checking things out and I noticed a short line to meet with astronaut Doug Wheelock so I jumped on the line to wait. When I got up there, he was great. We had a little chat as he signed a picture of himself. A very friendly ham in line with me took a picture and a small video. Here’s a picture taken from the video.

Another item on my list for the day was to attend the RTTY forum where Mike, K4GMH was speaking. I work Mike in almost every contest and I have heard great things from NO2T who is in my club and friendly with Mike. His talk about the history of RTTY contesting was great to listen to and some of the experiences you had to go through back then shows how far things have come. After Mike’s presentation I went up and introduced myself.

After that, I walked around the vendors for a while and decided to upgrade my car antenna so I picked up a Diamond SG7500 with NMO connector and a large magnetic mount for it. I’ll give it a test out on the ride back home tomorrow. I then went back to the hotel to pack up a little and rest a bit before the Contest Dinner over at the Crowne Plaza.

I got to the contest dinner and had a beer before they opened the doors and I picked a table to sit at. I sat with folks from NM, FL, OH & MI. The master of ceremonies was K1AR, the main speaker was K0DQ and VE3EJ was elected into the CQ Hall of Fame. Just before everything got started, I noticed Scot, KA3DRR walking in and sitting at the table next to me so I got up and introduced myself. Scot posts on his Radiosport blog at http://ka3drr.blogspot.com/ which is how I first knew of him. I’ve worked Scot in at least one contest and maybe a couple more. It’s always nice to run into folks you’ve met online or on the air. At the dinner there were lots of prizes with the grand prize of an Icom-7000 going to KL7RA. I’ve worked KL7RA on 15, 20 & 40m bands in CW, SSB & RTTY.

All that is left now is to drive the 10+ hours home on Sunday. I’ll be xmiting APRS as K2DSL-7 if you are really bored and want to track me on APRS.fi. I will have more to post during the week as I look through the pictures I have and post some that are meaningful and at least somewhat in focus. My first trip to Dayton was a resounding success starting with Contest University, the flea market, vendors, meeting many folks I have met on the air, and topped off with the Contest Dinner. I’m not sure I’d come back every year, but I’d definitely come back.

73,
K2DSL

Friday kicks off the flea market and vendors inside Hara Arena. The less than stellar weather from the past few says was gone and it was mostly sunny and going to be in the 70’s all day. I got to arena around 8:30 and was in awe of what I saw and not really sure of how to describe it. The entire outside of the arena in the parking lot is vendor after vendor sending everything, though mostly ham related items. I don’t know the total number of vendors in the flea market, but it’s probably thousands. I hooked up with Rob, KC2RDW, a long time hamvention attendee, and we walked the aisles for a bit. We ran into some folks Rob knew from previous trips to Dayton and we ran into local members of our club.

I had won a free hamvention t-shirt as a giveway for the hamvention facebook page, so I got a call I could go over and pick up the shirt from their booth. We walked around a bit more and found one of the sellers with radio dust covers and I picked up one for the TS-2000.  I decided to head into the arena where the commercial vendors are. I probably saw 1/3 of the outdoor flea market vendors before I went into the arena. Inside the arena were recognizable names like MFJ, HRO, DX Engineering, Kenwood, etc. I walked through and checked out all the vendors on the main arena floor before heading off to one of the adjacent areas. There are multiple large sections similar to most any trade show, but the sheer volume of ham related vendors was amazing. To give an idea of the size, I spent the entire time from say 10:30-4:30 inside without browsing the flea market.

Some of the vendors are smaller “mom and pop” types and others are large commercial companies. There are vendors selling parts, organizations of all types from QRP to CW to regional clubs, large manufacturers like Elekraft, Flex Radio, Yaesu, etc. The ARRL has a huge area with products, DXCC checking, kit building, etc. It goes on and on in a series of large rooms you walk through with hundreds of vendors.

During the day I ran into ZS2DL, Donovan, who was picking up some equipment I had to deliver to ZS2EZ. I was also spotted by K8SM, Scott, who I spoke with on the phone a couple of times assisting him with getting N1MM and MMTTY working on his home setup. There were a lot of ops from outside the US. Germany, Japan, Qatar, RSGB and others had areas set up and I snapped some pics I’ll upload after I get back. I also was checking out some radio direction finding equipment and it turns out the fellow giving me the demo lives in the town next to me.

Something I found very interesting when walking around the ARRL booth was they just released a product where their TravelPlus repeater data is able to be downloaded onto a Garmin GPS. As you are driving around, you can go to a screen and see all repeaters for that area or repeaters for a specific band. I’m going to bring my GPS in tomorrow and have the new product installed on my Garmin.

I also hooked up with W2CYK, Bob, and his son W2EEO. Bob is the creator of Rfinder, an Android application that contains worldwide repeater data. It uses the GPS in your Android smartphone to determine your current location and download repeater information to your phone. I had spoken with Bob a few times since I downloaded his app from the Android Market. He’s done a great job enhancing the program and providing a way for users to submit info on repeaters to help maintain the data. Check out the app in the market – it’s a solid product!

Doug Wheelock, the astronaut that I made my ISS contact with, was at the ARRL and AmSat booths today. There was a long line so I didn’t wait, but I did snap some pics I’ll post after I get home. Maybe I can get on line tomorrow to shake his hand.

I was checking out the hex beams as a few club members have them and really like the performance they receive. I was also checking out a new dual band Diamond Antenna for the car. We’ll see what Sunday brings.

73,
K2DSL

This morning I woke up at 5am, showered and hit the round around 5:30am on a 635-ish mile drive from Northern NJ to Dayton OH. This is my first time to Dayton and I’m looking forward to what the next few days will bring.

It was raining most of the morning for the ride on I-80. I had the radio xmiting APRS for K2DSL-7 and I had the other channel on 146.52. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, I heard a short conversation between 2 stations. 1 station was dropping out for me but the other was strong. After they finished, I called WE1M who happened to be just a couple vehicles behind me and travelling to Dayton from CT. I spoke with Gary, WE1M and Tom, K1TMM who was travelling with Gary for quite a while before we decided to find a place to eat. We pulled off of  I-80 and into a Denny’s. We had a good chat and they gave me some advice for a first timer to consider while we had a nice breakfast together. When we finished, I took off a bit ahead of them and didn’t hear them again for the rest of the ride. I’ll keep an eye out for Gary & Tom during the rest of the week.

As I approached the end of PA, I was keeping an eye out for the K3LR antenna farm that is right along the highway. I’ve never been out this far on 80 so I never passed it even before I became a licensed ham radio operator. As I was probably a mile away, I was pretty sure I spotted a couple of towers and I was in complete amazement as I passed by. I have seen ham radio heaven and it is K3LR. Here’s a picture I snapped out the window as I zoomed by (click to see a larger view)…

I’ll see if I can snap a better picture on the ride back home on Sunday.

Got to Dayton without any issue and without too much traffic. I found the Doubletree Hotel very nice when I checked in. I unpacked and relaxed for a bit before heading out around 7:30pm to the Crowne Plaza to check in for tomorrow’s Contest University and to visit the Contest Supersuite.

Weds night the Contest Supersuite was relatively calm. As I was checking in and gave them my call, the person in front of me turned around and it was Amir, K9CHP, who I’ve communicated with a bunch online via blogs/emails and even an on-air contact back in Feb. We spent the night chatting and we were joined by NT9F, Kelley. At 10:30 the pizza arrived and we all had some before calling it a night as we have to be back there before 8am for Contest University.

73,
K2DSL

I’m about to embark on my first trip to Dayton, OH for Hamvention 2011. I guess my excitement is similar to telling a 6 year old they are going to Disney World.

What I’m most looking forward to over the next few days are the following:

Contest University – A full day of seminars and interacting with the ops I have made many contest contacts with, weekend after weekend. The seminars look to be informative and I hope to walk away with insight from those that astound me with their abilities.

Doug Wheelock – AMSAT will have astronaut Wheelock at their booth. KF5BOC was the astronaut aboard the ISS (NA1SS) when I made my first contact.

Contest Dinner – Sat night will be the big banquet and I again look forward to interacting with those I have met over the air.

Nightly gatherings for pizza/friendship in the suites at the Crowne Plaza and some NJDXA gatherings. Though I’m not a NJDXA member, they are the incoming QSL bureau for the 2 call area and many members of my club are NJDXA members.

The enormity of the flea market and the indoor vendors will probably blow me away. Since I’ll be in Contest University on Thurs, I’ll have Fri & Sat to walk around and see the vendors. I know those 2 days will wear me out.

I’ve got a 630 mile ride out on Weds and back home on Sun. I should be transmitting via APRS as K2DSL-7 during the long trips and listening on 146.52 as well.

I’ll post some updates during my time there. K2DBK (Dave) has a good summary in case you don’t want to wait.

Wish me luck!
K2DSL

I have a Verizon Motorola Global 2 (Droid 2) Android smartphone. My phone is NOT rooted so you don’t need to do anything special to your phone to make this work. I’ve wanted a way to be able to view my contacts on the phone but hadn’t found a usable method until today. I had tried using Android based database applications such as Memento but I was unable to successfully import the Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) database in without it crashing. I use Microsoft Access as the underlying database in HRD v5  so if you are using MySQL, your steps might vary slightly. The solution below might not be viable for all folks but if you a little technical or willing to experiment and have some SQL knowledge it could be a very useful solution. Everything below is free and requires nothing to be purchased. The first steps are only necessary the first time to get things setup/installed.

Installing the Android client application:
This step just needs to be done once. I found a program that allows you browse SQLite database files on your Android phone. This program is not one I located in the Android Market so you need to copy the installation file (APK) from your computer to your SD card. First download Android SQLite Manager from http://sourceforge.net/projects/asqlitemanager/ to your PC. Copy the downloaded APK file (aSQLiteManager.apk) to your phone’s SD card. I created a directory on my SD card called SQLite and copied the program there. Using the built in Files program I browsed to my SD card and the SQLite directory I created and launched aSQLiteManager.apk . It asks if you want to Install it so click Install and proceed. You will then have a new program/icon on your home screen called aSQLiteManager.

Installing the Windows PC client application:
This step also just needs to be done once. On the PC side, you want to download a free program called SQLite2009 Pro Enterprise Manager from http://osenxpsuite.net/?xp=3&uid=managementtools . Scroll down a little on the page to find the free version. Download the ZIP and run the enclosed exe to install the program. This program allows you to create/manage SQLite files.

Creating the Ham Radio Deluxe SQLite database:
You want to run these steps whenever you want to refresh the Ham Radio Deluxe database copy on your Android smartphone. Launch the SQLite 2009 program you just installed and across the top you’ll see an icon in the middle of the toolbar that when you mouse over says “Import Data”.  When you click this, you’ll launch the MS Access Import Wizard. You’ll need to know the location of your HRD Logbook. Mine is located in the directory at C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Simon Brown, HB9DRV\HRD Logbook where xxxx is my user name on the PC. In the wizard, select the location and MDB file of your HRD logbook database. The default option selected is MS Access so you don’t need to change that, but if you use MySQL in HRD5, you’d select that option first and then specify the appropriate connection info. Click next and you need to specify the new SQLite destination and filename. I specified C:\Program Files (x86)\Osen Kusnadi\SQLite2009Pro\database\HRDLogbook_2011-05-01.db3 which is the date of the import and the location of SQLite on my PC. Click Next again and select the only HRD Access table called TABLE_HRD_CONTACTS_V01 and click Next again. The database will be create/imported and you’ll just click finish after it completes. I have about 27k records and a relatively fast computer and it took under 1 minute to import the 27k records to build the SQLite file.

The only oddity I noticed is the file was not saved to the directory I specified and instead was saved to C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Osen Kusnadi\SQLite2009Pro\database so look in a similar location under your AppData\Local directory if you don’t find it where you specified.

Now you can copy the .db3 SQLite file from your PC to your Droid. I placed mine in the SQLite directory I created in the first part. My SQLite file was around 27MB for the 27k records.

Using the aSQLiteManager Android program:
Now with your Android app installed and the converted HRD database on your phone, launch the aSQLiteManager program from your home screen. Note the “a” at the start of the name so don’t scroll down looking for it starting with “SQL”. When you launch the program the first time, click the menu button on your phone and select Options in the app. Check off the option to Save SQL in database so it remembers your recent entered SQL, at least until you refresh the database. Click Open Database and select the HRD database file you just copied from your PC and confirm you want to open it.

You can view the table structure, etc but where the value is for you will be behind the Query button. If there was a more user friendly vs developer friendly generic SQLite client for the Android, folks might have an easier time, but until I find one or someone points one out, this is the best solution for now. Behind the SQL button you can enter in or select recently entered in SQL. SQL is the statement which tells the database what you want it to do/retrieve for you. An example of a SQL statement for the HRD data would be:

select * from TABLE_HRD_CONTACTS_V01 where col_call = ‘K2DSL’

and after typing that and pressing the RUN button all records where I was the person you logged would be returned. A more manageable set of results would be:

select col_time_on, col_mode, col_band, col_call, col_country, col_contest_id from  TABLE_HRD_CONTACTS_V01 where col_call = ‘K2DSL’ order by 1

That query, in landscape mode, allows me to see all fields and scroll through the contacts I made with a given operator in the order they were made. If you’re not comfortable with SQL, this could be a bit tough but doable. To see all the column names, don’t use the menu button in the SQL entry window but go to the main window and select table and drill down to see all the columns.

In the SQL window if you click your phone’s menu button there’s an option for Recent SQL which will pull back recent queries you made to save on typing.

This is more of a technical users solution but it works. I’d appreciate any feedback or alternative options you have found. Also as new apps are released, this could only get easier.

73,
K2DSL – David