Jeff, KE9V, has a blog post on an outstandingly good idea for a QSL card display.
In a nutshell, scan the cards you really like, then load the images into one of the new digital photo frames.
Sweet.
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Jeff, KE9V, has a blog post on an outstandingly good idea for a QSL card display. In a nutshell, scan the cards you really like, then load the images into one of the new digital photo frames. Sweet. Here is an interesting twist on a technically sound idea that was ground up and spit out by the jaws of the Politically Incorrect low IQ pitbull watchdogs. Maybe zapping pellets of frozen gas will be less objectionable to the mundanes than the low yield fission devices from the original concept. Interesting that it now appears to be within the reach of current technology. So here we sit fifty years later, still stuck in the bottom of the gravity well, while all of creations’ limitless bountiful resources go spinning around the solar system. Let them eat cake. A bit of divergence into the realm of Internet browsers. I have been moving from browser to browser, since the days before the internet and their initial introduction. I have maintained my ground-floor AOL account(1992?) for email continuity, because it has been disseminated so far and wide. But it must be over ten years since I actually used the AOL software, having switched to Netscape very early on. Internet Explorer in its several iterations has never been high on the favored list, except that most e-commerce is geared towards being compatible with it. [aside: I wonder what a full set of AOL disks would bring at auction on ebay as a curiosity? Enough to cover postage?] The problem is really the ten year old desktop I normally use for web-surfing. Just too cheap to buy a new computer for checking e-mail and web surfing. But the hardware constraints and limitations have brought some performance issues to the forefront as time has marched on. I suspect the main consideration is the 512MB memory limit. [yes, it IS that old] Obviously, I’m about five years past time to upgrade. Alas – I still see no “need”, even with the price of computers now down to, or below, the price of a nice suit of clothes and a good pair of shoes. Desktops cheaper than iPods!….almost. Anyway – I used Netscape rather than AOL’s software(go figure!) for several years and then parted ways with Netscape in favor of IE, mostly due to compatibility issues with the common level of HTML being used at the time. I then adopted Firefox early on, and have seen its level of performance degrade over time as new features have been added. Safari was an improvement over Firefox for a short time, but quickly began showing signs of memory and CPU bloat. Overall, Opera has always been the fastest of the lot. It was also always the least compatible with certain websites that used wonky HTML hacks, or sites that stretched the envelope with latest-greatest HTML techniques. IE8 has recently re-emerged as a better choice than either Firefox or Safari on this brain-dead CPU. On the kids’ faster gaming computer, I still prefer the look and feel of Firefox, and its bloat is not noticeable on a 2.6gig CPU with 3gig of ram. But here on the old-n-busted box, the latest three releases of Opera have been quite an improvement over the other lot. I’ve grown to like some of the look and feel of the Opera browser, and it is still showing the fastest load times of the four currently installed. Safari now sucks so badly on this box, it is virtually useless. It is kinda sucky on the fast box now too, but usable. But the surprise is that IE8 is now the second best performance wise, and is actually better than Opera on pages with Flash content. (Not “good”, but “better”) I have IE8 set to run in “compatibility mode”, and it still has the occasional hiccup, but overall it now beats out both Firefox and Safari. Perhaps the Redmond nerds caught a hint with the smashing success of Vista. Curiously, Opera is also still able to run on Windows 98 and WinME, so it makes a useful tool for a dinosaur set up for shack use. Opera is pretty snappy in the Ubuntu partition too. The Opera version 10 compatibility on any platform seems quite good too. Now we just need to figure out how to describe this exciting new mode, whereby QSO’s are logged via skip off the ionized ice trail being left by cosmic truck drivers when their jug gets full. Pee Skip(PS)? Whiz Mode(WM)? Stratospheric Truckers’ Urine and Funny Flake mode (STUFF)? Yesterdays Odiferous Luminous Linear Organic Waste Supply Negated Over World (YELLOW SNOW)? Amended 9/20: Hah! G4ILO nailed it! Sporadic-P! WIRED has a riff on one of my favorite premises. “Good enough” is good enough.Usually. Engineer the Possible! If you wait until it is perfect, you may never get the thumb out…. 😮 WIRED has a slightly different take on the theme, examining the trend towards simpler user interfaces that provide less than top of the line performance. Which is why the “Beta” format lost out to VHS, and why MP3’s are more common than higher quality digital formats. Everything is a trade off. There will always be a market at the bleeding edge of performance, but it is seldom required to fulfill the purpose for a person looking for value. But those priority trade-offs are highly subjective, aina? At the bottom of this page is an accumulation of some of the SO2R resource materials I used in developing my own custom SO2R solution. My first SO2R post hashes out the thought process involved in choosing the homebrew methodology for hacking together a workable SO2R set up via home brew components. The big issues for customizing an SO2R capability appear to me to be philosophical. It is possible to wear two sets of headphones and manually switch everything, praying you don’t transmit from radio A into radio B. That is a bit TOO minimal, even for me. A minimum SO2R set up for my purpose came down to an audio switch box, a switch for the CW, microphone, and PTT, as well as band pass filters and filter switching(manual and/or automatic). And something like the Array Solutions SixPak to “keep ’em separated”[cue “The Offspring”]. It turns out none of those components are out of reach for home-brewing – if you are willing to compromise. The audio and radio input functions can coexist, but they could also easily be separated into two discrete units. One unit to handle headphone audio and the second for CW/MIC/PTT switching and route band data(if used). Likewise, the filters, switching, and band decoder for automatic antenna/filter switching can all be discrete units. The crucial decision is whether to use USB(New Hotness) versus serial/parallel(old-n-Busted) interfacing. It didn’t take very long to determine that Old-N-Busted was going to be much easier to twist up in the KazShack. YMMV, and it is a VERY subjective decision. For my own uses it is just simpler to use the parallel interface, even if it requires milking the life from a few old computers running un-supported OS’s. But I suffer no illusions that “simpler” equates to “better”. That’s a subjective call, and will depend upon the circumstances and resources available. Building a custom SO2R set-up grew out of my interest in a project by Jim, K4QPL, as well as my interest in filters, both band pass filters and coaxial stub notch filters. Being able to scout a second band will be fun, and it isn’t a great leap from a bit of extra S&P to full two radio operation. I don’t expect to be very proficient at it, but running at low power into mediocre antennas is not terribly productive either. So a full integration of the second radio into the station set-up might be fun. All of those considerations lead to researching the topic. Others have done a good job of documenting certain things via the internet, so I’m just aggregating a few of the links I found useful. Some are ideas I have incorporated, like the band pass filters. The filters merit their own separate treatment. Some of the other SO2R links discuss ideas that seem to have merit, but did not apply to my situation. Some are just good reading. The first set of links are station specific information, posted by folks describing their own SO2R set-ups. My own customized designs will be referenced first, simply because I can. But just so it is clear, my own design is an amalgamation of the work of others, including K4QPL, KK1L, and others. Many thanks to K4QPL. Jim sparked my initial interest in this project via a club program about his own SO2R project, and answered several philosophical questions that led me to my own research and experiments.
The next set of links point to reference materials or other sites aggregating similar links, or some of the commercial sources. Note: There is a lot of duplication and cross linking. K8ND’s site has a good round up of the commercial sources from here in North America.
Hardcopy Reference: 2004 ARRL Handbook, Chapter 22.47, “A Computer Controlled Radio Switch Box” Last Amended 9/20/2009, w4kaz This past 2008 NAQP SSBa week ago was a blast. This is the second year to operate NAQP SSB as part of a multi-2 effort from N1LN, using the NC4KW call. We were able to improve the score over our August effort last year, and I feel really good about that. The NAQP group was N1LN, N1YXU, KA1ARB, NT4D, N4YDU and me. It’s a mix of some really good people who are also good operators. I started the contest on 15m, with N4YDU over on the 20m rig. I had a quick start, but the string of QSO’s on 15m died out rapidly. N4YDU had a much better first hour. I didn’t really keep track of the band changes after that, but laterwhen I returned to the rig for aanother stint at the controls, we used the operator change to put 40m over on the left side of N1LN’s shack to be closer to the control box for the 40m antenna. N4YDU had taken the left chairand 40m, so I did a quick sweep of the other bands from the right radio. NT4D had been trying to get a run started on 80m, but the action had been slow there. After scaning 10m and 15m, I did a quick check on 20m. There seemed to still be some activity there. Since 80m had seemed slow for NT4D, I figured to give 20m another try, at least for ten minutes worth. That ten minutesturned out to be one of the better hours I have worked through. I saw theten minute rate in the high 200’s several times, and N4YDU says he saw it over 300. We had about two hours of solid 140/hr 60 minute rate. Lots of fun. It was a real boost to be called by a ZL1 and a portable /VY1 when running 100w on SSB. THAT won’t happen often at the KazShack. 80 meters never did become veryproductive. There were low levels of activity, and the QRN was unpleasant. The rates were slow at times, but slow is a relative term. Post contest monitoring of 3830 shows W5WMU with a great August score, and their 20m total number of QSO’s is fantastic. The NX5M M/2 group was close to its score from 2008. Sorry now that I missed operating NAQP CW for the full ten hours allowed. Tomorrow is NAQP SSB, and I’m going to get a chance to operate as part of the NC4KW multi over at N1LN. Sweet. Except the WX may be terrible. Not so sweet. Only a partial part-time effort for the CW NAQP two weeks ago. After re-assembling most of the station following its dis-assembly for Field Day and IOTA, the NAQP CW was a bit of a non-event. A low motivation level and family plans also interdicted what is normally a favorite contest. There’s a bit of August thunderstorm induced shyness at work too, but that part bypassed the KazShack QTH his year. Running was never seriously attempted, and the one short run showed a slow rate. I was happy enough to bail on running – low motivation. On the other hand, two radio Search and Pounce shows a lot of promise, and will be especially fun if propagation conditions improve to the point where there are good solid openings on multiple bands. Even so, the SO2R S&P showed rates that are better than my normal run rates. I easily had a 40 QSO hour, and the 10 minute rate hit 61/hr once, and was in the 50’s several times. Nothing great, but a substaial improvement for emanations of the KazShack. My previous best CW S&P rate with a single radio seldom climbed above the 45/hr 10 minute rate. Interesting. The conclusion I draw is that SO2R is a genuine advantage, even to a mediocre unmotivated operator. It is easy to see how the genuinely skilled operators can benefit even more from a second radio. Probably helps keep them from dying of boredom too. It was also a nice changeto catch a few QSO’s on 15m. It would be fun to see 15m become more reliable again, it is a fun band. The station needs to be examined, because it seems there was a new RFI problem. During NAQP, the internet connection dropped several times. Need to test each radio/antenna/band combination to find the culprit, and hopefully it isn’t everywhere. Also need to check all of the station connections. Something is not right since station re-assembly, as this problem did not occur during CW WPX in May. It seems likely I missed tying in a ground connection somewhere. Also need to check the ethernet hub and shack cables. On a coincidental note, N4AF was my first QSO, and AA4XX was the last. N4AF founded the NC PVRC chapter, and has been a PVRC member for over 50 years, and AA4XX is our chapter’s newest member, having joined the chapter at the July meeting. No cosmic perturbations have resulted from this mystic alignment – I just love a good coincidence. Summary: Band QSOs Mults ------------------- 160: 80: 37 20 40: 26 21 20: 20 17 15: 17 7 10: ------------------- Total: 100 65 Total Score = 6,500 Another season of field operation bites the dust with the completion of the IOTA contest. This year we operated again from the South Core Banks location near the Cape Lookout lighthouse as part of our N4A activation of the Core Banks. Our team for 2009 was N4YDU, W0UCE, N3ND, and W4KAZ. Radio conditions were quite horrid during the first eight hours of the contest. Very high levels of QRN(noise) on 40m and even on 20m. We were seeing storms pass to either our west or our east for much of Saturday morning and afternoon. We were fortunate none developed directly overhead, but the surrounding static crashes made copy difficult. 20m also had a lot of QSB(signal fading), adding to the copy problem. 10m and 15m were completely unproductive both before and during the contest. Our cabin was different from 2008, and the amount of space around it was less. That resulted in our antennas being a bit closer to the ground than they might have been otherwise, but we worked within the space available. The run station had an 80m dipole and a 40m dipole, with the 40m dipole oriented to favor europe. The dipoles were at about 33 feet. The mult station sported a half sized G5RV, and its apex was at about 24 feet. While radio conditions were less than optimal, or even less than the past year, the creature comfort level improved quite a bit. W0UCE provided food fit for royalty, and “Chef Archie” gave us several quite enjoyable meal creations. Despite poor conditions, we managed to log approximately the same number of QSO’s as our official score from 2008, and possibly a few additional multipliers. I would expect to lose some in log checking, so no guess about final score. Fun. Looking forward to another expedition to activate Cape Lookout. Our expedition will again use the N4A call sign. We hope to be QRV before 6:00pm Friday, and will operate through Sunday. This year the crew is W0UCE, N3ND, N4YDU, and myself. Friday evening we will probably concentrate on operating from 6m down. If we are lucky enough to get any Es openings Friday evening, we’ll spend as much time as possible on 6m or 10m. We will be handing out the NA-067 multiplier during the RSGB IOTA contest. We have three good CW ops(them, not me!), so the best chance to catch us on SSB will be during the afternoon Saturday(around 18:00z), on either 20m or 40m. |
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