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Handiham World for 03 December 2008
Courage Center's Handiham World Weekly E-Letter for the week of 03 December 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 at the end, or simply email handiham@courage.org. Welcome to Handiham World!WA0TDA: Remote Base Update As we have been reporting, the Handiham Remote Base HF station is on track to go live to member use in early 2009. Stan, W4MQ, is working on some software updates to make the process of setting up and operating the rig control software easier for our blind Handiham members. Our thanks to him and to our beta testers, and especially to Lyle, K0LR, project engineer, and Joe, N3AIN, our expert JAWS volunteer and TS-480 user, for working with Stan to identify issues with the accessibility of the system.
One concern that Lyle and I have had is what would happen to the TS-480, the system computer, and the related interface electronics when the temperature dropped in the "shack", which is unheated. Temperatures have not fallen below about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius) outdoors yet, but we have had no problems thus far. The station is located in the attic of the Courage North dining hall, and the entire building is unheated. In northern Minnesota, which is near the center of the North American continent, dense, cold Arctic air often settles in for long periods of time. It is not unheard of for this part of North America to reach morning low temperatures far below zero. International Falls, Minnesota is used as a testing spot for cold weather operation of new cars. This cold spot was satirized in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons as "Frostbite Falls". How true to life that is! At any rate, we will no doubt experience our coldest temperature at the remote base site sometime in January, about two weeks following the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which is December 21. That is the day of the least sunshine, but there is a two week lag as the atmosphere catches up, which I guess would be because of thermal inertia. Thus, the really telling cold weather should arrive around mid-January and likely linger for several weeks. It is during this period that the station will be most severely tested as we reach the bottom of the operating temperature envelope. Now, here is another development: We would like to invite you to use EchoLink to log on to the remote base in receive only mode. Look for the station callsign, W0EQO-L, node number 261171. Connect to the remote base, and you will turn the radio on automatically, and the audio stream will begin. If you happen to do this while the radio is in use, you may hear stations on frequency immediately. If the radio is in use through the W4MQ software, there may be periods while the control operator is transmitting where you do not hear anything, but upon receive you will hear the other signals. If there is no control operator logged in via the W4MQ interface, you can use the EchoLink text feature to control the radio's frequency. Simply enter a number like 5 into the text box and press enter. The radio will respond by changing the VFO to 5 MHz, and you will hear WWV if conditions are favorable. If you want to listen to PICONET on 3.925 MHz, enter 3925 and press enter. The system does not require you to enter the decimal point. If the radio is in the wrong mode, simply sending a U will change the mode to USB, L to LSB, C to CW, A to AM, and so on. When you log on via EchoLink, there is a possibility that there will be other users logged on already, and they may be listening to a frequency they chose. Be respectful of others and don't change the frequency unless you think the other station might be finished. On the other hand, don't hog the station when someone else wants to use it. Up to five users can listen at once. Oh, and one more thing: Since our TS-480 is equipped with blind-friendly speech frequency output, you will hear the radio tell you what frequency it is on as soon as you make a change. Please give the Handiham Remote Base a try and let me know what happens, and I will share your comments with our engineering team, and possibly even with our e-letter readers and podcast listeners! For your Handiham World, I'm... Patrick Tice, WA0TDA Login to the Handiham website to post comments. Avery's QTH: Keeping time in space
Welcome once again to my humble QTH First, I would like to remind people that we are still looking for Net Controls for our Monday 14.265 net. Anyone interested please let me know. If we have 4 or 5 people, we can always have some around to do the net. Second, I would like to see if I can sneak this by my editor. Last couple of weeks the subject of time and times zones was brought up' so I have a trivia question for you. I have been listening to a rebroadcast of the ISS (International Space Station) which is traveling around the earth at a very fast clip and entering and leaving time zones also very fast. So, my question is: How do the people in ISS keep time? Also, you might figure out how the space probes we have sent out in space to land on other planets and send back data that are so far away from any of our Earth time zones keep time. Well, winter is on the way and with winter the HF bands usually get better so you may want to check them out and see what is going on. Some of the HF nets will be getting more and more check-ins as band conditions get somewhat better. All that time this last summer you spent on getting HF antennas up and working will pay off as it will now be time to find out just how well you did. There will be more contests to work. Even if you don't want to enter the contest, you can still work stations and send in your log as a check log for the sponsor of the contest. Whatever operating you do in a contest will improve your operating skills and you will have fun at the same time. You may even work a rare DX station that is only operating during contests. Even if you don't operate in contests, when the band conditions are right you can sit and rag chew with someone around the world and get to know them better. Sometimes right in the middle of a contact that station will fade out and another one will pop up in place due to change of conditions as the radio waves bounce off the ionosphere. On CW with break-in keying you are more apt to catch this faster than with voice operation as you may hear the other station fade out between words whereas with voice you may not notice until you send it back to the other person. If you are using VOX on voice, then you may also notice a fadeout a lot faster. These radio waves can do some strange things. One time many years ago I was operating on one of the HF bands talking to someone up in the Arctic. They said they were on a floating iceberg but another station from Waseca, MN was also chatting with them and we could both hear the station out on the ice pack somewhere but we could not hear each other even though we were only an hour's drive from each other. As long as I brought it up the fellow in Waseca had his daughter and one of her friends over so he put them on the air, too. All the guys on the floating ice got to chat with his daughter and her friend. Of course this unique experience made their holiday season a bit brighter. The Waseca station and I had to relay through the iceberg station to make any comments to each other. I never did find out their exact location or if they were really on the ice pack or if they were on board some ship. But did it really matter? No! Not really. What did matter is that a lot of people had their holiday season made a little brighter by having that shared experience on the air. I never receive a QSL card from them either, but again it didn't really matter. So for now… Oops, I almost forgot: The way they tell time in the ISS is by using the time at the Houston Space Center. Whatever time it is at the Center is also the same time aboard the ISS. 73 & DX from K0HLA, Avery
On the air - TIPSnet takes on December CQ Zero Bias editorial
The TIPSnet, a friend of Handihams, meets each Tuesday evening, United States Eastern Time. The net is available worldwide on EchoLink. On December 2nd, guest Rich Moseson, W2VU, Editor of CQ Magazine, spoke about the Zero Bias editorial "What will happen now that Riley isn't watching?" Our blind Handiham members can find the December CQ digest in our members only section, and hear Bob Zeida, N1BLF, read the column. In the December issue of CQ, Rich discusses this problem and its dire consequences, what will happen if we police ourselves but there is no backup when needed from the Feds? Another topic was the CQ acquisition of Worldradio magazine. Rich stated that our best representation in Washington remains the ARRL, an opinion seconded by CT Section Manager Betsey Doane, K1EIC, during the TIPSnet discussion. Handiham members who missed the TIPSnet can listen to the recorded audio. A link will be posted in the Members Only section on Friday. The audio will be part of our regular Handiham-Notify mailing for the Operating Skills online audio lecture series. TIPSnet meets every Tuesday from 7pm - 8pm local time (EST) / 0000z on several repeaters throughout New England, including the SPARC Repeater System and N1NW system in Norwich in Connecticut. National and International connections are welcome via the New England Gateway –
On the Internet - PICONET gets a new online homeThe popular north central United States HF social and traffic net called "PICONET" meets on 3.925 MHz weekdays and Saturday starting at 0900 Central Time. PICONET has a long association with Handihams that even predates our Handiham program becoming part of Courage Center. Pay a visit to the new PICONET website at: We have a PICONET page on the Handiham website, too: http://www.handiham.org/node/21 Join us on the net anytime you hear us on. You need not have traffic or even previous net experience. You can listen through the Remote Base on W0EQO-L. Letters - Kudos To Pat On The Web Site!Pat Tice has certainly done a tremendous job on the new design of the Handiham web site. I really like the simple theme that he chose, and I'm considering "borrowing" it for a family of ham-related sites I maintain for the Eastern Mass. ARRL section. Drupal is such a joy to work with. I'm constantly amazed at the new functionality and software "modules" that developers are introducing daily. There's even one to highlight ham activity authored by WT6X. You can see it in action over at his web site, http://www.wt6x.com/ham/. I was sorry to hear about the cancellation of the winter camp in California. But I'll do my best to make the Minnesota camp in August, if Pat needs me as a volunteer. Having the date moved to early August will help me tremendously, as the end of August is always a mad-house here at Boston College where I work. 73,
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