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The Handiham World for 18 June 2008
This is a free weekly news & information update from Courage Center's Handiham System. Please do not reply to this message. Use the contact information below, or simply email handiham@courage.org. Contact us at: Courage Center - Handiham System Website: http://handiham.org Welcome to Handiham World! Image: Pat in the sunny Courage Center cafeteria one morning, holding Handiham coffee mug. Photo by K0HLA. It's almost summer, so how about a dip in the pool? Of course I mean the question pool, since this is about ham radio. Recently we heard from a Handiham member who visited the Question Pool part of our website and noted, "I visited that website, but my JAWS screenreader is not reading any of the correct answers, just the choices. I need both." What was really happening was that he was encountering the answer but hadn't realized it, since the pools are formatted with the question number, followed by the correct answer in parentheses, then the related FCC part number in brackets. We probably SHOULD re-do these so the correct answer appears like this, so that a screenreader user can read through all the answers then get the correct one. Here is what I am talking about: OLD WAY: E1A03 (A) [97.301(b)] NEW WAY: E1A03 [97.301(b)] What do you think? Can we simplify it further, like this: Question E1A03: Notice that I have eliminated the FCC part number to help it read better in JAWS and avoid confusing the screenreader user. Also, I have placed the correct answer after all the possible answers, which makes far more sense when you are trying to study and quiz yourself about the pool questions. Please email me and let us know what you think about this if you are a screenreader user yourself. Also let me know if you are reading this on the website because you are not getting the Wednesday mailing as expected. Patrick Tice We can do it, too!
Handiham Field Day in Southern California This year our local ham club Palomar Amateur Radio Club has given us (the Handihams and others with disabilities) the position of manning the 10 meter slot for field day. This is a first for us and a real feather in our cap for Handihams. We also will be using the 17 meter just for fun. I hope we can talk to all the Handiham members who are on the air for Field Day, as we need as many contacts as we can get. It is very important that we make a good showing. We have adopted the phase that "We can do it Too!" as our motto. We have five active Handiham members and three volunteers to staff the station and put up our 55 foot tower and antennas and run cables and get the generators going! This is very exciting for those of us who are sometimes overlooked in the club. Our President has given us a lot of support and fielded any objections. We will send pictures and accounts of our progress. 73 from Bill, N6HBO, and Guide Dog Heldy! Avery's QTH: Be Prepared
Image: Avery, K0HLA, sends Morse code at Handiham HQ station W0ZSW. Welcome once again to my Humble QTH: This last weekend was not a very good one for me in a couple ways. What I am going to tell you about took place right in my apartment as I was just sitting there minding my own business. We had a thunderstorm go through at a very high rate of speed. It was a rather large cell. Lots of lightning. This was about 9:30 or 10:00 PM Minneapolis time. I was just sitting there reading my mail when everything went dark. No warning. No noise. Just darkness. I had heard on the news we might get a little weather so I had made it a point to have a flashlight close by. After feeling around where I thought it would be I finally found it . I made my way to a window and looked out. Sure enough, everything on this side of Main Street was dark. All the electrical power was out, so out come the candles and matches. Being very careful where I placed the candles, I lighted them. Now I didn't have to worry about the batteries going out in the old-style flashlight I was using. I do have a couple of those new LED flashlights that draw very little from the batteries and last a very long time, but I wanted to save those for backup in case the power stayed off for many hours. Many people who did not have any emergency lighting thought, "I will just go down to my car and drive out of the underground garage using the radio and lights in my car", but they forgot one little thing: No power means no elevator and no garage door opener. I know that it takes four or five very strong people to lift that door, as we had to do it one other time. There was no light in the garage either. The back up system was out too. So, most people just sat in their apartment in the dark. Since the winds had passed and there would be no more damage due to the storm, I turned on my AM/FM shortwave battery-operated radio and listened to my favorite FM station. I had plenty of light, so I finished reading the material I had started and with nothing much else to do turned on both my HT-style battery operated scanner and my battery operated handheld radio. Gosh! I heard that about 8,000 people were without power in the Hopkins, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, and Edina Minnesota areas. Many, as it finally turned out, were without power for 24 hours! About 11:00 PM I decided it was time to get some sleep so I was about to put out the candles and turn off all the radios when what do you know? The power came back. At almost that same instant, I heard someone on one of the repeaters say, "the power is back." It was only out for about an hour and a half in my area. For me that was not a very big deal, but for some that was a very long time sitting there in the dark. Yes! This is a true story. It happened to me last weekend. The Boy Scouts say "Be Prepared" and it is a very good motto for Ham radio operators as well. An emergency is no time to find out your batteries are not working. Have spares ready to go. Have other sources of communications like your ham rig working on some sort of emergency power. Have all your emergency supplies in a grab and go container so you have just one place to find everything. Had there been a serious emergency, I had the ability to get communications out. The Ham HT, a cell phone if the cells were working, a wireless laptop battery-operated computer, and I could monitor many different frequencies with my AM/FM shortwave receiver and my scanner. So, until next time 73 & DX from K0HLA, Avery. You can reach me at: From KB3LLA: U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Ham Radio Operators "Show Off"
Image: KB3LLA on the air Handiham volunteer instructor Ken, KB3LLA, writes to inform us about an upcoming United States Coast Guard Auxiliary ham radio event. Flagstaff, AZ - Arizona's Coast Guard Auxiliary Amateur Radio operators will show off their emergency communications capabilities June 28-29 at the Pine View RV Park at Camp Navajo in Bellemont, Arizona twelve miles west of Flagstaff. The public can meet and talk with these radio operators and learn what amateur radio emergency communications and the Coast Guard Auxiliary is about. Amateur or "Ham" radio operators provide critical communications in emergencies. During Hurricane Katrina, ham radio - was often the only way people could communicate. When trouble is brewing, ham radio people along with the Coast Guard and Coast Guard Auxiliary are often the first on scene and able to provide critical relief and communications. This annual "Field Day" climaxes "Amateur Radio Week" sponsored by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the national association for amateur radio. With emergency power supplies, ham operators will build emergency stations in parks, shopping malls, schools and back yards around the country. Their slogan, "Ham radio works when other systems don't!" is reinforced since they send multi-format messages without use of telephones, internet or other "normal" methods. More than 30,000 amateur radio operators across the country are expected to participate in this year's event. "We hope that people will come and see for themselves. This is not your grandfather's radio anymore", said Stan Klock, the Coast Guard Auxiliary's Communications Officer from Mesa, Arizona. "Communications networks that ham radio people can quickly create have saved many lives when other systems failed or were overloaded." There are 650,000 Amateur Radio licensees in the US, and more than 2.5 million around the world. Through the ARRL's "ARES" program, ham volunteers provide emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies, all free. To learn more about Amateur Radio, go to: http://www.emergency-radio.org. The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary is the uniformed civilian component of the United States Coast Guard. Created by an Act of Congress in 1939, the Auxiliary directly supports the Coast Guard in all missions, except military and direct law enforcement actions. The Coast Guard Auxiliary is an integral part of the United States Coast Guard. For more information visit: This week at Headquarters Vintage QSL series: W0AA special event
This vintage QSL card, discovered in an old file at Handiham Headquarters, is from the W0AA U.S. Olympic Festival special event station in 1990. The card is blue and red ink on a glossy white card stock, creating a wonderful red, white, and blue effect. We will bet that you have vintage QSL cards, too. If you can send a scan or photo of your vintage QSL cards, we will feature them here. What the heck - the HF bands are still pretty poor, so we might as well keep ourselves busy with vintage cards! Please send the images to wa0tda@arrl.net along with a few words, if you wish, explaining the card or perhaps recalling those days when you were sending lots of these out. We will also feature your comments and callsign in the story. *** Website Maintenance: The main Handiham.org page was offline yesterday while maintenance was performed. Users got a "down for maintenance" message, but could still use the members and manuals sections, and hear audio lectures, provided that they had already bookmarked those sites. The main public website has returned to service following the web work. We apologize for any inconvenience. *** Handiham members who pass their Technician license exams at Radio Camp this summer will receive new handheld radios. If you know a person with a disability who would enjoy ham radio, please send them our way. We want to get those new hams on the air! Camp begins on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 and finishes on Wednesday, August 27. Both Wednesdays are travel days. *** Stay in touch! Be sure to send Nancy your change of address, phone number changes, or email address changes so that we can continue to stay in touch with you. You may either email Nancy at hamradio@courage.org or call her toll-free at 1-866-426-3442. Mornings are the best time to contact us.
Letters This letter needs a bit of background explanation, so you will know what it's all about. A couple of years ago, I ordered a music CD download from the ham radio group that runs http://www.hamband.com. Naturally they call themselves "The Ham Band", and sing ham radio songs. Their signature song featured a music video of a guy in a tuxedo and top hat up on top of a tall tower with ham antennas. Here is what they wrote: Dear Patrick! We are Lissa and Andrew who wrote and sang the songs on the "Seek You" CD that you bought. We hope you enjoyed the music as much as we enjoyed writing and recording it. You may not know this but we did a music video which you can see on the www.OZ5E.com web page or you can download for free from www.lissa.dk/video.zip - this song is like the "Monday Evening Greyline" song on the CD but it has different words to make it more understandable for non-hams. We recently recorded a completely new song about rebuilding our ham radio station after a fire. It is in a completely different musical style - in fact in 3 styles - French musette, Viennese waltz and German oompah!! This song is the soundtrack of a video and part of this new show can be seen and heard at: An added attraction is that you can learn Morse code just by listening/viewing this show enough times! (Of course perhaps you are a Morse operator already?) Please pass the http://www.hamband.com address on to all your friends. If you are a radio ham and are on the HF bands look out for our station OZ5E on all bands. Best wishes from here in Denmark where we have had the most wonderful and hot sunny weather for the past 4 weeks! 73 de Lissa and Andrew  RekkyTec Links PDF converter on the web
Image: Blind cartoon guy with dog and cane Adobe PDF is a format that is showing up more and more on the Internet, in such things as ham radio equipment manuals, brochures, and even your local ham radio club's newsletters! Publishers love PDF, because it renders their content accurately, and the result looks great on a computer screen, just like the print edition... IF you can see, that is. If you are blind, you may have different feelings about PDF, which sometimes can be confusing to access with screenreading software, not because of PDF itself, but because of the way the publishers who use it do not necessarily understand how a person with a screenreader will use it. Content can appear confusingly out of order to a screenreader, but look great to a sighted user. A new web resource for blind users appears to have a good algorithm to make conversions of PDF to text via a website: This low image site looks to us like an easy one to use, but we noticed that PDF files with big graphics can take quite a long time to upload to the site for conversion. Nonetheless, it may be a good alternative to some other conversion methods. If you are just getting started with PDF and screenreading, you may wish to learn more from one of the web's best resources, "Fred's Head" from APH: http://www.aph.org/fh/index.html Once you are there, use the site's search function and type in "PDF" without the quote marks. You will be taken to a list of excellent links to PDF accessibility ideas. The "Fred's Head Companion" is a blog with up-to-date news, and may also have tips about reading PDF: Finally, thanks to the website http://www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm, source of the news about http://pdftextonline.com. Visit the Tidbits page at http://www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm Free screenreader via the web: $39 Talking Digital Multimeter from a surplus vendor who has some units left: KNFB Reader:
You can write to Elmer with your questions:
Image: Meet our new dues collection agent! A huge alligator grabs Pat, WA0TDA. "Sure wish I'd renewed my Handiham dues sooner." For years Handiham membership renewals were done each July. This year, we are going to a monthly system. If you renew in March, your membership goes until the following March, for example. You will have several choices when you renew:
Return your renewal form and get entered in a drawing for a free Handiham coffee mug! There is a postage paid envelope provided, and of course we will do a drawing from each month's returned renewals. And you won't get a visit from you-know-who. Your support is critical! Please help. The Courage Handiham System depends on the support of people like you, who want to share the fun and friendship of ham radio with others. Please help us provide services to people with disabilities. We would really appreciate it if you would remember us in your estate plans. If you need a planning kit, please call. If you are wondering whether a gift of stock can be given to Handihams, the answer is yes! Please call Nancy at: 1-866-426-3442 or email: Ask for a free DVD about the Handiham System. It’s perfect for your club program, too! The video tells your club about how we got started, the Radio Camps, and working with hams who have disabilities. Call 1-866-426-3442 toll-free. DONATE USED HAM GEAR 1-866-426-3442 toll-free Help us get new hams on the air. FREE! Get the Handiham E-Letter by email every Wednesday, and stay up-to-date with ham radio news.
Handiham members with disabilities can take an online audio course at www.handiham.org: • Beginner
That's it for this week. Pat, WA0TDA
ARRL is the premier organization supporting amateur radio worldwide. Please contact Handihams for help joining the ARRL. We will be happy to help you fill out the paperwork! The weekly e-letter is a compilation of software tips, operating information, and Handiham news. It is published on Wednesdays, and is available to everyone free of charge. Please email wa0tda@arrl.net for changes of address, unsubscribes, etc. Include your old email address and your new address.
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Reminder: Handiham renewals are now on a monthly schedule - Please renew or join, as we need you to keep our program strong!
