Re: KJ6FOI
Congratulations! When are you going back in for your General and/or Extra? ;) -de N5VB, EM10gi (might at some indeterminate point in the future be up on 20 meter PSK31, but for now is stuck on 2m/440 FM repeaters, fortunately accessible via IRLP) On Feb 25, 2010, at 8:43 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: Permission to brag, er, share good news? Since we're all somewhat geeky here, I'm happy to report that the Federal Communications Commission, in its infinite wisdom, bestowed upon me the amateur radio callsign KJ6FOI (mnemonic: Freedom of Information) today, after I passed the Technician Class test last Saturday. On this one we'd like to think of ourselves collectively as 'da men', sir. -- Toby Ziegler ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Feb 25, 2010, at 9:47 PM, John Williams wrote: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: However, some of the spectrum is still restricted to CW (code) only. Right, the masochist channels :-) Or, perhaps, the apocalypse practice channels. It's a bandwidth thing. :D There are digital modes (like PSK31) that are legal in the code bands due to their narrow bandwidth (assuming your radio's mike isn't live and modulating audio over your PSK signal), and you would not believe how many CW signals can fit comfortably into just a few hundred Hz of spectrum. Plus, you can get out on HF with a couple of 50 cent transistors, an Altoids tin, and maybe a 9 volt battery if you set up your antenna and feedline right. ;) ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Feb 25, 2010, at 9:47 PM, John Williams wrote: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: However, some of the spectrum is still restricted to CW (code) only. Right, the masochist channels :-) Or, perhaps, the apocalypse practice channels. There's actually an interesting tangent here, by the way, on the subject of single sideband (SSB) reception and transmission. SSB effectively translates a slice of spectrum either up from or down to audio baseband more or less intact (inverted in the case of LSB), and it's amazing what your ears can learn to figure out just from what you hear in that slice of spectrum, especially with tuning up and down the dial. And the possibilities only multiply when you feed that audio from the radio into, say, the sound card of a computer, and vice versa. DigiPan is only one of a nearly infinite number of possible examples of that. All the DSP capability of your computer interfaced quite elegantly with that old Hallicrafters tube rig from the attic and maybe an audio interface with an audio-triggered transmit relay. I don't know about you, but I find that thought rather exciting. :D (And an interesting experiment: Feed the I and Q outputs of a quadrature detector to a pair of stereo headphones. Apparently the brain's auditory cortex is wired in a way that takes unique advantage of that format. And you're literally *listening to signals on the complex plane*. What's not cool about that?) ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.netwrote: Congratulations! When are you going back in for your General and/or Extra? ;) The examiners tried to talk me into doing the General immediately, but I didn't. I'm not sure when or if I will... I'll be quite happy on VHF, I think, but we'll see. -de N5VB, EM10gi (might at some indeterminate point in the future be up on 20 meter PSK31, but for now is stuck on 2m/440 FM repeaters, fortunately accessible via IRLP) I just set myself up on EchoLink, but I haven't explored IRLP yet. Nick ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.netwrote: On Feb 25, 2010, at 9:47 PM, John Williams wrote: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: However, some of the spectrum is still restricted to CW (code) only. Right, the masochist channels :-) Or, perhaps, the apocalypse practice channels. There's actually an interesting tangent here, by the way, on the subject of single sideband (SSB) reception and transmission. SSB effectively translates a slice of spectrum either up from or down to audio baseband more or less intact (inverted in the case of LSB), and it's amazing what your ears can learn to figure out just from what you hear in that slice of spectrum, especially with tuning up and down the dial. And the possibilities only multiply when you feed that audio from the radio into, say, the sound card of a computer, and vice versa. DigiPan is only one of a nearly infinite number of possible examples of that. All the DSP capability of your computer interfaced quite elegantly with that old Hallicrafters tube rig from the attic and maybe an audio interface with an audio-triggered transmit relay. I don't know about you, but I find that thought rather exciting. :D Wowza... just read a little about DigiPan. Amazing. Personal computers sure have transformed amateur radio from when I first got interested. I think the first time I ever encountered it at all was in 1968, when my older sister was an exchange student in Columbia and we talked to her via HF at the University of Pittsburgh's radio club. I remember it sort of freaking out my younger sister, the one who died last month. She was only six or seven years old and found the whole thing scary. They patched the audio into a telephone handset and that helped her deal with it. (And an interesting experiment: Feed the I and Q outputs of a quadrature detector to a pair of stereo headphones. Apparently the brain's auditory cortex is wired in a way that takes unique advantage of that format. And you're literally *listening to signals on the complex plane*. What's not cool about that? It must be very cool, since don't quite understand what you're saying. ;-) Nick ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Feb 26, 2010, at 1:29 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.net wrote: Congratulations! When are you going back in for your General and/or Extra? ;) The examiners tried to talk me into doing the General immediately, but I didn't. I'm not sure when or if I will... I'll be quite happy on VHF, I think, but we'll see. You only pay for the first one. :D That's how I came out of my last VE session an Extra instead of a General. Hadn't studied for the Extra, but they talked me into taking it anyway, because it was free since I had passed the previous one and there was nothing to lose, and i ended up bashing through it and getting most of the how many degrees will this LC network rotate the phase of this signal questions right, or at least enough to pass. Possibly luck. But I got to sign /AE after the test session. You'll be happy on VHF for a while, but there are a lot of adventures to be had on HF too, and you need at least a General to work 20 meters .. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Feb 26, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: And the possibilities only multiply when you feed that audio from the radio into, say, the sound card of a computer, and vice versa. DigiPan is only one of a nearly infinite number of possible examples of that. All the DSP capability of your computer interfaced quite elegantly with that old Hallicrafters tube rig from the attic and maybe an audio interface with an audio-triggered transmit relay. I don't know about you, but I find that thought rather exciting. :D Wowza... just read a little about DigiPan. Amazing. Personal computers sure have transformed amateur radio from when I first got interested. They've totally transformed it, in many ways. And with DSP only improving with time, we've probably only scratched the surface of what can be done along those lines. http://gnuradio.org/redmine/wiki/gnuradio might give you some ideas. I think the first time I ever encountered it at all was in 1968, when my older sister was an exchange student in Columbia and we talked to her via HF at the University of Pittsburgh's radio club. I remember it sort of freaking out my younger sister, the one who died last month. She was only six or seven years old and found the whole thing scary. They patched the audio into a telephone handset and that helped her deal with it. And yes, there are still places cellphones won't work and phone patches still play a role. Not as big a role now as they used to (especially on VHF/UHF repeaters) but there are places they're still hard to replace. Especially in disaster recovery. (And an interesting experiment: Feed the I and Q outputs of a quadrature detector to a pair of stereo headphones. Apparently the brain's auditory cortex is wired in a way that takes unique advantage of that format. And you're literally *listening to signals on the complex plane*. What's not cool about that? It must be very cool, since don't quite understand what you're saying. ;-) I'm trying to remember which issue of QST I saw it in. The effect is basically stereo single sideband, and signals appear to come from various points around your auditory horizon, making them much easier to isolate than they are if you're listening to a straight detector output in both ears. Haven't heard much about it since then, but it was quite fascinating when I saw it. The term they used was panoramic reception, I think. Listen, when you get home tonight, you're gonna be confronted by the instinct to drink a lot. Trust that instinct. Manage the pain. Don't try to be a hero. -- Toby Ziegler ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
Cool! Congratulations! --[Lance] -- GPG Fingerprint: 409B A409 A38D 92BF 15D9 6EEE 9A82 F2AC 69AC 07B9 CACert.org Assurer ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 6:43 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: This is something I've been thinking of doing for decades. When I started, one of the obstacles was learning code at 5 wpm, which I accomplished. Did you want to learn Morse code? When I got my license year's ago (haven't used it in a while), there was a no code technician license. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:34 PM, John Williams jwilliams4...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 6:43 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: This is something I've been thinking of doing for decades. When I started, one of the obstacles was learning code at 5 wpm, which I accomplished. Did you want to learn Morse code? When I got my license year's ago (haven't used it in a while), there was a no code technician license. I meant to continue that thought... ;-) As you say, the code requirement was dropped for Technican a while back... it has since been dropped for all three license classes. However, some of the spectrum is still restricted to CW (code) only. There wasn't a no-code license when I first started down this long road. Nick ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: KJ6FOI
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: However, some of the spectrum is still restricted to CW (code) only. Right, the masochist channels :-) Or, perhaps, the apocalypse practice channels. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
