Steve Mendelsohn, W2ML, is a long time ham and broadcast engineer that also happens to be one of the executive members of my local amateur radio club in NJ.  I noticed today that Steve is featured in The Rain Report podcast this week. You can get to the main site at http://www.therainreport.com/ and the specific audio interview podcast at http://www.therainreport.com/rainreport_archive/rainreport-7-3-2010.mp3 . Steve talks about using ham radio as a means to finding a job.

Also in the same 15 min audio clip is an interview by Bob Heil discussing how he too refers folks to ham radio when they ask him how he got into his field and line of business.

73,
K2DSL

The local club always plans on a big VHF contest weekend heading up to the top of a mountain that was previously a Nike missile base but the threat of thunderstorms has caused us to again cancel the club event. So when I got word it was cancelled, I decided to put up a 2m 4 element beam I picked up about 1 year ago on top of a non-metal military type mast. So my setup for the contest at home is this 2m 4 element yagi where I can run 100w that I can turn manually, my G5RV to try and tune some 6 meter contacts that can also run 100w and my dual band vertical on 70cm that I can run at 35w.

Saturday afternoon when the contest started, things were a bit slow going as all the strong 6m stations with beams were working each other and a low power wire antenna 6m station like myself was only breaking through with the more local stations. 6m though was extremely active and I’m not usually on 6m but folks were ecstatic about how good propagation was. There were longer openings to FL and shorter openings to the midwest though I did get a nice contact with a NM station in the short time I could here him. I also heard a VP9 station in Bermuda but he had a big pileup so I continued to tune around.

2m was interesting as it was the first time that at my house, I had any directional capability, all be with a manual rotor – me running up to the 2nd floor balcony and turning the pole. But it worked well and I had some fun on 2m. I think with 6m being so good, less folks moved to 2m unless they were a multi-op station. If 6m wasn’t so active I think I would have logged even more on 2m.  I was calling CQ on 2m from time to time and was real surprised when a station from Texas that I worked on 6m called me on 2m. He was booming in. I heard the next day that other folks on 2m also worked him and he was booming in to them as well. For me that’s about a 1280 mile 2m SSB contact.

I only made 2 70cm contacts and those were with very local stations. On my low power and vertical, it’s not enough to work much more then the local area. At the end of the first day I finished up with 60 contacts with 33 on 6m, 25 on 2m and 2 on 70cm.

On Sunday things were a bit slower as I worked many of the stations but I kept popping around between 6m and 2m throughout the day. It seemed to me like there were less openings on 6m then the day before and the openings were shorter, but there was some activity. I logged a Nebraska station mid day and even a Bermuda station that had too big a pileup the day before. I did hear a California station which was booming in, but all the high power stations were getting in and he started to fade so I turned the dial.

Late in the evening I called it a night and wrapped things up. It was fun, though I would have enjoyed being with the club, on the mountain, with beams and a KW or so of power. If I’m counting correctly, I worked a total of 18  states + Bermuda. On 6m I worked 16 states + Bermuda and on 2m I worked 7 different states. Below are pictures of the 6m and 2m maps based on 6 character grid squares. That Texas 2m contact really was an exception!

Here’s the N1MM Score Summary:

   Band    QSOs    Pts Grid
     50      50     50   27
    144      51     51   13
    420       2      4    2
  Total     103    105   42

  Score : 4,410

73 and thanks for all the contacts,
K2DSL

Adding to the analysis done in previous posts at Ham Radio Callsign & Call Area Analysis and Ham Radio Callsign & Call Area Analysis – State Stats here’s some more info to review.

Florida is the state with the most differences between the call area (4) associated with the state and the call area of callsigns of operators registered as FL residents. The top 5 callsign call areas in Florida calls that aren’t a “4” are:

Looking across all callsigns that don’t match their geographical location, the following are the top 5:

If you have any questions on call info, send them along to me and I’ll see if the data provides a mechanism to answer them. More to come.

73,
K2DSL

Ham Radio Callsign & Call Area Analysis talks about how I gathered the data and very high level groupings comparing call areas by address vs call areas as derived from a ham operators callsign. I ran some additional queries to show information by state.

The first set of results lists each state alphabetically and how many operators are classified as living in that state, how many mismatches based on the callsign call area and the percentage of mismatches based on that state.  The follow-up data below it shows the top 10 based on # of mismatches and % of mismatches.

Alphabetical listing by state:

Top 10 states by # mismatches:

Top 10 states by % mismatches:

More stats to come,
K2DSL

There was a discussion on the QRZ.com forums about ham radio callsigns and call areas that got me thinking about facts vs assumptions. The FCC provides the US ham radio callsign data that it uses on its ULS site as downloadable data – see http://wireless.fcc.gov/uls/index.htm?job=transaction&page=weekly . I downloaded the full data which is just under 100MB (zipped – 370MB unzipped) and using the MySQL database which is on one of the webservers I host sites on, I loaded up the relevent info.

In a quick look at the data, I cared the most about the callsign, active records, the state associated with that callsign based on the current address the FCC has on file, the FCC assumed call area based on that address and whether the callsign was systematically assigned or a vanity call. With that info I noticed that there were a few ‘states’ associated with military users such as APO/FPO so ignored those for these results. I then pulled the call area out of the callsign taking into account Alaska, Hawaii and the islands such as PR and Guam. I am now able to easily compare whether an individual’s home call area based on their address with the FCC matches the call area represented in their call sign.

I only had a little time to run some queries against the FCC data and here are the statistics:

731,258 total records ignoring military addresses
644,387 match the call area based on address vs callsign- 88% of total
86,871 don’t match the call area based on address vs callsign – 12% of total

Split of data by service code (HA = FCC assigned / HV = Vanity):
HA 645,136 (88.3% of all records)
HV 86,122 (11.7% of all records)

By service code where call areas match:
HA 573920 (88.9% of all HA records)
HV 70467 (81.8% of all HV records)

By service code where call areas don’t match:
HA 71216 (11.1% of all HA records)
HV 15655 (18.1% of all HV records)

It does show that vanity callsigns have a bit higher rate of representing a different call area then the actual address on file.

Before I left for work I did a quick search by state and it looks like FL represents the state with the largest number of licensed ham radio operators that list their residence being in FL but don’t have a 4 call area callsign.

More to come…
K2DSL

Over the next few days, as a swarm of ham radio operators converge on Dayton, OH, you can monitor the APRS activity in the area. Go to the APRS.fi view of Dayton to see all the action. If you really want to zoom in, here’s an up close view of the arena area.

You can also view various messages being passed through at http://aprs.fi/?c=message&call=

Maybe I’ll get there next year. It would be great to meet the contesters that I’ve made so many contacts with over the past couple of years.

Sample activity from Sunday morning 5/16/10 (click to see larger view):

73 and drive safely,
K2DSL

In this month’s QST magazine there was a reference to an “old” article from May 1994 about the evolution of ham radio call signs in the US from the the beginning (before call signs) to the present. Even though the present is 1994 when the article was written, I think it is the same as it is now.  I found it enjoyable to read about the changes throughout the past 100 years.

ARRL members have access to the magazine archives such as QST, etc. The URL of the archives search is http://www.arrl.org/arrl-periodicals-archive-search . The article is titled An Overview of Amateur Call Signs — Past and Present from the May 1994 issue. Once you are logged in, assuming you are an ARRL member, a direct link that should work is http://p1k.arrl.org/pubs_archive/90373 and if not, go to the archive search page and select all the articles from the May 1994 QST issue and page through until you find it. Open the PDF and read it online or print it out.

73,
K2DSL

I think it is a terrific idea that the ARRL is now sending out their code practice and bulletins via Echolink. The Echolink node is W1AWBDCT and ARRL broadcast schedule is online at http://www.arrl.org/w1aw-operating-schedule

A bit more info in the ARRL posting at http://www.arrl.org/news/w1aw-offers-code-practice-bulletins-via-echolink

73,
K2DSL

The ARRL web site has been redesigned after a very long development cycle and a couple of unsuccessful launches. Now I am typically much more about content then I am about presentation and I would rather have an effective presentation and efficient navigation and search on a site then pretty colors, rollovers and eye candy, especially on a site that I consider a resource site such as the ARRL web site.

When the latest launch of the site was unveiled on Tuesday April 13th I started to find some issues, all of which I have reported to them via their Contact page. Before I speak about what I don’t like, I do like the color scheme as it makes the site very modern. I do like the larger font – even at 46 I can appreciate it. I think some of the new personalization allows or will allow for a more engaging site.

Below are some of the more frustrating items I’ve run into.

The site login is probably the biggest problem I’ve encountered. The old site used to leave you logged in session after session and that was fine. The new site is logging folks out quickly and definitely whenever the browser is closed and re-opened and you need to re-enter your id (call sign) and password. In the old site it was a bit less relevant because there wasn’t a lot of personalization but as this site provides more personalization including feeds on the front page, if you are logged out you don’t see the feeds. So the decision, if it was a conscious decision, to time folks out is a bad decision and needs to be changed. If they dont’ want to default it to persistent, then allow the user to specify how long to persistent the login.

The site seems to have an abundance of +/- spots to collapse show various sections. There isn’t enough content to make it worthwhile.  It also isn’t persistent so collapsing a given section and refreshing the page expands all the sections again. It seems a needless feature as it exists today on the site. The site is also very click intensive in that I seem to have to click multiple times to actually get to the content. As an example, if I wanted to find the latest Contest Update newsletter on the old site I could get it I think right off the main nav or at most 2 clicks. Now on the new site, you click On the Air main link, then click on Contests then click on Contest Information and then click on Contest Publications then on Contest Update Newsletter and THEN click on Contest Update Issues. That is 6, yes 6 clicks. Yes, you can make it a site favorite so it is in your favorite drop-down at the top of the page, but you should never have to click that much and because you need to log in over and over it minimizes the benefit of favorites.

I’ve found a few instances where the content is missing or placeholder text is still displayed. With how long it took to launch, you think all the main subject pages would have relevant content.

Search results are showing the title only. No section/context/description and lots of space between each result. Results also aren’t good. Doing a search for Field Day Locator doesn’t return the page http://www.arrl.org/field-day-locator . Doing a search just for Field Day doesn’t even show http://www.arrl.org/field-day . Performance is also sub-par and I don’t know if it’s just search or overall site performance. But worse then slow performance is poor results. The site currently fails on both accounts. The magazine search seems to be returning relevant results.  But magazine search isn’t listed in the main search drop-down and it seems to be many clicks and hunting and pecking to find it.

The contest calendar page at http://www.arrl.org/contest-calendars-events allows for you to move between months. Every time you go to the next month it scrolls back up to the top of the page. If they are refreshing the entire page as it seems they are, they should use an anchor tag to move the page to where the calendar is at the top of the page.

I’ve found a few broken links throughout the site. There are free downloadable programs that would go through an entire site and find broken links. There’s no reason that shouldn’t have been done here.

The Field Day Locator page looks like it was reset and all the info is gone. At least our clubs info isn’t there and when the site was first launched and I went to the page there were 3 sites listed.

At the top of many pages is a large image and often multiple images which will scroll through. The current delay is way too long. It should scroll through the images much quicker and either continue to cycle or go back to the 1st image and stay there. No one will stay on any page long enough to see all the images so if they are relevant enough to highlight, they should scroll through them much quicker.

The license test session page is messed up too. It shows “no walk-ins” for all tests. That isn’t the case so something isn’t right there. Our club has a test session on 4/16. If I search for test sessions in the Hudson Division or Northern NJ it doesn’t show up. The zip code isn’t completely accurate for our listing which is possibly the cause, though I don’t know if their searches by division/section using zip code which might possibly be the cause.  The hamfest listing for our clubs upcoming hamfest is listed properly but there isn’t much info shown such as hours, cost, etc. I’m pretty sure the old site had more info.

I’m sure you’ve found some of your own annoyances and I’m sure I’ll find more. Hopefully they will get things buttoned up quickly, at least for the more important items such as login, testing and hamfest info and the poor search.

73,
K2DSL

I haven’t used IRC’s when sending direct for a QSL mainly because my local post office doesn’t offer them. I also have had decent luck with sending $2 or 2 greenstamps or 2 GS as they are commonly referred.

In the US we can get an international stamp for just under $1. Return postage is usually $2 though I check QRZ or even email the other operator if they provide and email on QRZ before I sent direct. An advantage of emailing is I can also confirm I am indeed in their log before spending $3.

In most cases, $2 will work but sometimes they don’t want the cash or request an IRC. I had normally sent those via the bureau which are now just slowly starting to come in. For these exceptions or for folks not comfortable sending cash, and IRC is a viable option.

I have read in the Daily DX that the US post office now provides for ordering IRC’s online. The cost, at the time of this posting is $2.10 each which is the normal price + $1 priority mail shipping. I wouldn’t order just one but 10 of them would cost $22 and you don’t need to go out in the rain. The link, again at the time of this posting is Post Office IRCs. That link looks likely to change over time so you should be able to go to http://shop.usps.com and search for International Reply Coupon and select it from the search results.

So for those folks that want IRC’s and have run into issues in the past at their local post office, maybe this will work out better for you.

73 and good DX,
K2DSL