Soon on the Air......I Hope............!

Shortly after my last post I did something I hadn't done in a long time.  I attended a meeting of a local ham radio club.  I was immediately recognized as a newcomer and welcomed.  My intention was to to check out some other clubs in the area, and I still want to do that, but I think this club I found will be the "home" club.  Several hams in the club have vintage transmitters and receivers like I do, and having some local hams who share this interest will be a great resource if I end up undertaking restoration projects.

Additionally, I tried getting my Yaesu FT-209RH handheld back into commission.  I found out that the batteries will no longer hold a charge (likely due to age), and when I had it in an adapter the audio section died within twenty minutes.  Regrettably it has to be retired, but in one way this is a good thing.

It will be an excuse to make one more trip to Ham Radio Outlet in Phoenix.  I have identified a new Yaesu model handheld that I would like to get, and not only is it more affordable than I thought, it's gotten a lot of rave reviews posted online by other hams who own it.  Yaesu put it on the market in 2004, and it is still in production though it may be "obsoleted" later this year.  That doesn't bother me, as that the thing is built like a tank and will survive being dropped several times if it's out with me on a hunting trip.

What's nice about that new model, the FT-60R, is that not only will it work on 2 meters, it will also work on the UHF band (420 to 450 MHz).  It also can function as a handheld scanner, though it will not accommodate the newer digital technologies that the local police and fire have switched over to.  That's not an issue as that I could still listen to aircraft and weather, and weather would be of interest if I'm out on a road trip.

I've also identified a Yaesu model that I could use in my truck, or as a base station if I decide to get a 12 volt power supply (I don't think the 12 volt power supply I built some years back will provide enough current for the expected load).  I don't operate "mobile", mainly because I've been driving a stick since 1983.  However, we are thinking of a new vehicle next year, and that might end up being an automatic transmission.  In that event a higher powered mobile unit would be nice to have on a road trip.  We would have to take it inside the motel with us if staying overnight, but that's no issue.

Now I'm going to digress for a moment as that there are some other things on my mind re ham radio and repeaters.

For most of my ham "career", I have almost exclusively operated on the HF (high frequency) bands, or shortwave if you will, as that I got into this to talk to other hams around the country and around the world.  My operations on VHF haven't been extensive, mainly because those frequencies are line of sight, though the repeaters are a great help in expanding area coverage.  Some hams might think of the repeaters as some sort of gentleman's CB, but when you think about it it's much more than that.  Local nets may meet on the repeaters per a weekly schedule, and it's a way for clubs that have repeaters (almost all clubs have them) to pass along news.  My favorite part of these nets were the "swap meet" portion of the "meeting" as that it's a great way to acquire parts and/or equipment, or to sell.

But there's something else about the VHF realm which can and is fascinating.  There are lots of hams who have VHF/UHF rigs that cover all modes, and not just narrow band FM.  As stated above, propagation is line of sight........but not always!   Tropospheric ducting and sporadic skip come into play, affording you the opportunity to work stations that are a thousand miles away or so.  Some hams use these frequencies for "moonbounce", which is something I'd like to try sometime as that bouncing signals off the moon in order to talk to a ham also doing that is a real challenge.  There's also meteor scatter propagation, which is as much of a test of operating skill as is using Morse code to talk to someone in Russia (and the Russians are very good operators!)  Heck, I think meteor scatter would be a great deal more difficult than working Russia.

Anyway, some time down the road, I want to give the six meter band a try, and all mode two meters.  Two would be a good way to use a satellite as a repeater, though there are other bands where satellite operation is possible.

Again, I'm wondering why I allowed this hobby to lapse like I did.

Hopefully life will allow me to resume this soon.

The Road Back to Amateur Radio, and a Detour

I've spent some more time going thru boxes in the garage, some of which may have been packed back in Santa Cruz, moved to my townhouse here in Tucson, then on to the house here in Tucson that I'm at now, because I'm seeing some items that I haven't seen in several years.  That's both a good thing and a bad thing.  It's a good thing in that I'm now getting these things organized and a bad thing in that I waited so long to do this.

I have located some more accessories for ham radio and there are still some items I am trying to locate.  My itch to get back on the air is a great deal more than it was last week, and I am chomping at the bit to get back in the saddle.  I'm clearing a space where I can operate, I'm doing some reading to learn what has changed since I was last on the air, and I've already got an antenna project in mind.  But before I take that step, I've got to finish getting things organized and there are a few other things to do too.

I was talking about this to Sheila yesterday.  I told her that I've been asking myself, why did I leave this hobby lapse?  And as soon as I asked that question, I knew the answers.

There were some adverse circumstances that emerged in October 1998, in the form of two very dramatic life changing events.  I had to get some things in order and then I had to relocate to Arizona.  Before relocating, I did attend one last meeting at the club I was active in at Santa Cruz (I may have made one more meeting in March 1999 when I had to return to San Jose to wrap up some loose ends) and I always meant to return to the air once I was settled down here.

What happened instead was the following.

I got involved in a work project that meant working long hours and weekends.

I got involved with a local singles group, feeling the need to develop social skills and to learn what the "rule" changes were in dating.

I got involved with country & western dance classes at the Maverick.

I went to a lot of gun shows and I spent a lot of time in target shooting, hiking, day trips, and exploring southern Arizona.

I started dating Pam regularly.

I changed jobs at work, but wasn't seeing Pam, but I still did a lot of dating.

I took up hunting, and went out for deer at least three seasons, and out again for rabbits.....and several scouting runs in between.

There were two more ladies.

Then I met Sheila.

Then I had a year-plus exile in Las Vegas, getting married, and a coming home.  And since then, lots of yardwork, organizing, down time, reading, and discovering that handheld that I forgot that I owned.

Well, I'd like to think I'll be back on the ham bands again, but now there's been one more detour, and this one's a fun one.

I discovered a bagful of wheat cents that I forgot that I owned!  These were purchased at a coin shop in Santa Cruz around 1995 or so.  At the time of purchase, I figured I would sort through them, and maybe sell these online.  Right now I'm going thru them when I'm not catching up on my reading (which is including some ham radio magazines) and I've found some goodies.  I have a hoard of wheat cents in a cigar box upstairs and I'm now adding to them.  Some in the bag have some mint luster in them so I'm placing these in 2 x 2 holders and I've still got more than half the bag to go thru.

Oh, and I've got another hoard that was given to me by Birdman some years back.....a whole coffee can full........though 2/3 of those are Memorial cents, with several from the mid 60s having full red mint luster.

In the meantime, a trip to Phoenix for some personal business is on the docket this week, and hopefully the available time will permit a visit to Ham Radio Outlet.  And on Tuesday, a local club is meeting, and I very much want to crawl out of the cave and get involved again with ham radio.

Teach Kids to Smoke!

When I was growing up, cigarette usage was a lot more common among the adult population than it is today.  My parents smoked, my aunts and uncles smoked, and it's possible that my grandparents also smoked though I have no memory of them ever lighting up.  Smoking was the cool thing back then.  I noticed in my first year of junior high school that some of my classmates had taken up smoking.  They couldn't smoke on school grounds, so the new seventh graders would join their friends and upper level classmates outside the perimeter of the campus and light up before the morning classes started.  It was a rite of passage for them; it was the cool thing to be hip, and even though Florida state law did not allow for minors to have possession of cigarettes they somehow got them and used them on a regular basis.

Warning labels, were of course, on cigarette packages in those days.  This appears to have started in the 1960s when the Surgeon General went after tobacco.  I remember health warnings on the cigarette packages back then that said something like "Smoking may be hazardous to your health".  The warnings got more direct as time went on, and while that was going on the faculty of the junior high school started "educating" the students on the dangers of tobacco.  They wanted its use to end and were discouraging it whenever they felt the need.

Smoking of course went on, and it wasn't until the late 70s that the anti-tobacco crusaders decided to amp up their fight against cigarettes.  They pushed for a ballot initiative in California in 1978 which ended up being defeated, but the crusaders weren't going to give up.  Smoking was banned in grocery stores, then in other public places, tobacco taxes were increased, and eventually they succeeded in getting smoking banned in bars (as if people visit the bar on a regular basis for their health).  This spread to other states, and if that wasn't enough, tobacco taxes were hiked by several states and eventually the federal government in an effort to discourage smoking.  Tax increases were sold to the public on premise that revenues collected would go to treat lung cancer and provide health care for poor children.  There was also a multibillion dollar extortion from Big Tobacco, and Joe Camel, who was said to be more recognizable than Mickey Mouse was virtually banned.

Now growing up I was very much anti-cigarette smoking, and in my adulthood I too wanted the smokers punished.  I wanted them banished into the functional equivalent of leper colonies.  I wanted taxes on cigarettes hiked.  Yes, I wanted them to pay.

Well, like how President Obama's position on same sex marriage has evolved, so has my position on cigarette smoking evolved too.  I think collecting tobacco taxes to pay for health care of poor children is a very noble thing to do, but my concern is that if everyone quits smoking then there won't be any more taxes collected for this.  The parents of poor children obviously can't pay for doctor visits or trips to the E.R., and if tobacco taxes aren't collected then the health of poor children is at risk.  Some of them may die.  I think this is wrong, and if you're a level-headed person then you'll be agreeing with me on this one.

Now we can't really expect the adult ex-smokers to resume the habit.  Many of them have spent hundreds of dollars in trying to kick the habit by getting medication or hiring hypnotists or even subjecting themselves to electro-shock therapy to kick that habit.  I don't think it's fair to them to tell them that their money and efforts were wasted on that.  They've already spent several years paying their fair share of tobacco taxes, and I think they've done enough.

So if we can't approach the ex-smokers to start smoking again, then what do we do?  The poor children need their health care.  We could start taxing fast food, but we need fast food taxes to pay for the health care costs of the obese who got that way by eating fast food, so that's off the table.  We could tax alcohol, but alcohol taxes have been earmarked for treating alcoholism and rehabilitation of drunk drivers, and it wouldn't be fair to divert those funds to provide health care for poor children.

The obvious answer here is to somehow keep the revenue stream from tobacco taxes flowing.  We do that by recruiting new smokers, and the younger we recruit them then that's more years of them paying tobacco taxes, and thus they are able to better bear the burden of providing this much-needed health care for the economically disadvantaged.   In other words, this problem is solved by teaching our kids to smoke.

Now before anyone flippantly dismisses this idea, we must stop and think about this some.  If parents start teaching their children to smoke, the children will start thinking that their parents are cool and in tune with their generation.  Imagine the family out on the back patio smoking cigarettes after Dad has finished with the barbecue and Mom has done the dishes.  Dad and Junior can light up their Marlboros, and commiserate about what Justin Bieber is up to.  Mom and Sis light up their Virginia Slims, with Mom giving Sis instructions on how to twerk better than Miley Cyrus.  This would be a family bonding experience. 

This would even be better if extended family comes by.  Grandpa lights up his corncob pipe.  Uncle Joe brings his chaw.  Aunt Jane brings a cigar and lights up, showing Sis what a liberated woman can do in this day and age.  Grandma joins Uncle Joe in the chawing, and shows off her skills in projecting used Skoal into the spittoon that's on the corner of the patio.

I think it is time to end the war on tobacco.

I hereby call on school districts nationwide to stop discouraging tobacco use.  Instead, junior high schools and high schools nationwide should have smoking areas set aside, and the teachers should join the students in lighting up during the cigarette breaks so that they can better relate to their students.

It's time.  It's time.  It's time to start teaching kids to smoke.

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LINK

A Return to the Air?

While digging around in one of the closets a few days ago I discovered something that I don't even remember buying.  It was a Kenwood TH-215A handheld 2 meter ham transceiver with scanning capability up to and including the NOAA weather band.  The price tag attached to it was $25, and I'm thinking, I must have picked this up at a ham radio flea market in the late summer or fall of 1998.  What is amazing is that this has moved with me with me forgetting that I ever bought the thing.

I went online to see if I could access the owner's manual for this.  It would be relatively easy for me to commission this thing if I can find the right adapter, which might be had at Radio Shack (if I can get there before they close) or at Best Buy.

Thing of it is, is that I already have a 2 meter handheld.  That one is made by Yaesu, and I bought that in 1986 for about $300.  It's not that I needed another handheld when I bought the Kenwood, but for $25 you can't go wrong.  Operation in the 2 meter band is largely by use of repeaters which will get you good local coverage, and possibly beyond that if a Tucson repeater or two are linked to repeaters in Phoenix (I'll have to check that out).

Anyway, I'm thinking I need get the base charger commissioned, and set up a little "base" station in my garage.  There are a few other accessories I need to locate for the Yaesu, and I've got to learn some more about the local repeaters.  But this exercise will be of one benefit for me........it's an excuse to get active again in a ham radio club.

I was last active in the Santa Cruz County Amateur Radio Club, having become a member in 1996.  I was a speaker at one of their meetings too, giving a talk on communications satellites and explaining the issues and challenges that we engineers encounter in making them work.  The club had an open repeater, and being a paid member gave me phone patch privileges on that repeater.  I wouldn't have much use for a phone patch since I use a cellphone now, but what if I'm out on a hunting trip where I can't get a cell signal?  A 2 meter handheld would allow me to hit a repeater, and if I have phone patch privileges I can call Sheila, or I can ask another ham to call her and relay a message in case I need help.

I'm not as experienced on the 2 meter band as I am on the HF (high frequency) bands, but there are some fun things I could do.  I could chat with some fellow hams, meet up with weekly on the air "net" meetings, and establish a peer network and get some help getting other antennas on the roof (I know "antennae" would be proper English, but in ham English it's "antennas".)

What I hope to do in the next few days is to locate the remote microphone and the whip antenna for my Yaesu.  Also the instruction manual.  And I need to do a lot of listening to get a sense for the local club scene, even if I have identified a local ham club that I'm interested in joining.

After that, I plan to go online and locate accessories for the Kenwood that I forgot that  owned.  I'd love to get that one going.

I really want to get back into the HF bands, and into six meters, but for right now I think it will be 2 meters.  I want do learn more about what I can do with this.

Free Electricity! And from the Radio Station at That!

When I was first getting active into ham radio in the summer of 1974, a friend of mine who was also a ham told me a story.  It had to have been an old story when he told it to me, and when I told Mark the same story a few years later in California he said he had heard that too.  The story goes as follows.

There was this guy who owned a house, and his next door neighbor was a radio station.  He got the idea that if he were to set up a bunch of coils in his backyard, he could run his house off of the electricity induced into the coils by the signal of the radio station, so he did just that.  He set up a collection of these huge coils in his back yard, and set them up so that he was getting his electric power for his house from those coils.  It was all well and good until the radio station figured out what he was doing with those coils, and they didn't like it one bit.

The radio station took him to court.  They argued that what this guy was doing was not right.  He was stealing electricity from the station, and not paying for it like other people were doing.  The court carefully considered the argument, but ruled against the radio station.  The court ruling said that the airwaves were part of the public domain, and that the public had the right to capture the airwves..  In other words, it was the radio station paying to put those airwaves out there for public use, and that they could not expect the consumer to be hit with a bill or any other charge for using those airwaves.

Needless to say, the radio station didn't like this ruling.  Here they are, broadcasting a signal for people to listen to, and this guy next door to them is using them to power his house.  That stuck in their craw, and there was nothing that they could do about it since the court ruled against them.  Or was there?

It is said that the radio station then decided to teach this guy a lesson.  They turned up their power for a few minutes, and then turned it back down.  The result?  The guy's house burned down to the ground.

I remembered this story during a lecture about electrical induction into a coil during one of my physics classes, so I asked my instructor if he knew about the story, which I then went on to tell him.  He said no, what really happened was the that Navy was transmitting radio signals and beaming them northward.  Someone nearby didn't like it, so he set up a bunch of coils to trap that signal.  The Navy's receiving station wasn't getting the expected signal strength, so they investigated and found this out.

And then I've heard another explanation.  It was the Army doing the transmitting, from a station in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and some guy had a bunch of coils in his attic since he didn't like what the Army was doing.  Recollection gets fuzzy here as that the person that told me this might have said that this was when World War II was going on, and the guy with the coils was trying to help the Nazis.

And there's one more explanation.  In the early 1980s I asked a longtime ham radio operator that I was talking to about this.  He had been active since the mid-1930s, and maybe he would know.  He suggested that it may have originated from when WLW of Cincinnati was using a 500 kilowatt transmitter (the maximum allowable stateside has been 50 kW for several years though WLW was grandfathered), and that the WLW signal was overpowering their neighbors and causing some strange things........which did happen by the way.

I also seem to recall reading that the military had an Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) station in northern Michigan, which would be remote enough for the antenna length needed for that kind of frequency band.  I'll have to do some research, but I think this transmitter is still active, and sending messages to submerged submarines for low data (short) messages that the subs can receive without having to surface.

No matter where this comes from, it's an urban legend, and the version that I heard can not be true.

One, electric current can be induced in a coil from a radio station.  That's what pocket transistors and older tube type superheterodyne receivers have done for years.  If you're next door to a radio station, you get a much stronger signal and your receiver might overload, but it won't catch fire.

Two, the current will be miniscule.  We're talking microvolts here with a current of microamperes.  You can use a transformer to step up the voltage, but the tradeoff here is that you step down the current and you simply will not have enough juice to run your house.  Now I'm sure that lights next door to WLW during the 1930s would glow, but again, not to the point of catching the house on fire.

Three.  If, and I said "if", the radio station had turned up their power and burned the guy's house down, what do you think would have happened?  They would have been sued, and they would have lost.

I haven't heard this story for quite some time, but it is one of those fun urban legends to kick around.  I have tried running this down some and found chatter about people setting up coils next to high voltage towers to steal electricity, but nothing conclusive.  That may have come from the guy next to the radio station, or maybe the story went in the other direction and morphed into someone doing this while living next door to a radio station.

Whatever, it's fun story, even if it is a contrived work of fiction that may or may not have been generated from a military experiment.

So What Are They Really Trying to Do Here?

Over in our neighboring state of California, often derisively referred to as "the People's Republic of California", legislation of a kind that I've never heard of before is being introduced.  Senate Bill 464, as introduced by state senator Jerry Hill, will mandate increased security at gun stores throughout the state.  If you read the article linked below, what we have here is legislation inspired by the brainchild of Anthony Lazarus of Redwood City as a result of a gun theft which the article implies occurred not too far from where he lives.

Of course, Senator Hill and Mr. Lazarus want to make it harder for criminals to get access to guns.  Having once been the victim of a gun crime myself many years ago, I don't want criminals to have access to guns either.  I'm going to go on record as supporting that one part of the Gun Control Act of 1968 which says that a felon cannot have a gun.  I don't personally think that provision is going to make Joe Criminal go down to the police station to turn his gun in, but I want it there.......and I want it enforced.  Hold that thought on enforcement because we'll get to that later.  Let's get back to SB 464 for a moment.

Now no sane person wants a gun store to totally lack security.  But do we really want to make this a law?  Let's look at this in another light.

Do you think it might be in the interests of the owner(s) of the gun store to have theft deterrent measures in place as a matter of business practice?  Do jewelry store owners, pawn shop owners, auto stereo store owners, and computer store owners practice what you would call lax security?  Do these other business owners really need a law to tell them to lock their stuff up at night and secure the premises?

OK, some of you are saying that "gun stores are different!"  Fair enough.  They are.  It would seem to me that they are alarmed with all sorts of high tech sensors to protect their inventory.  Securing the inventory when they're closing up shop makes for good business sense.  What I'm raising here, is the question of whether or not we actually need a law to tell them to do this, and to tell them how to do this.  The how specified in this law isn't exactly timeless.  Security technology advances over time, as that where there are measures there are also countermeasures, and the how of securing this inventory is going to have to be revisited eventually in order to counter the countermeasures.  What I'm saying here, is that if you pass this law and it contains micromanagement of the how, then you're going to have to come back and amend it at some future point.

I have a suggestion as to addressing the concerns brought forth by Mr. Lazarus, but first let's get back to that thought on enforcement.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 is a federal law that among many other things, says that a felon can not legally possess a firearm.  California has a law saying the same thing, as does Arizona, Nevada, and every other state.  This might seem like a needless duplication of those state laws, and I can entertain that argument, but as I've stated I favor that provision at this point in time........with one proviso........that we enforce it.

Are there inmates in federal lockup right now serving time for violation of this part of the law?  I wouldn't doubt that there are, but I'm unclear as to whether any of them are serving time for that kind of violation and no other violation of federal law.  That's something that I should research some time.

I am aware of criminals being charged by local police for violating state laws prohibiting felons from having firearms.  I look at the mugshot photos from time to time of those caught in southern Arizona, out of a curiosity as to what they were busted for.  Some of them have multiple charges, and one of them that I see from time to time is having a firearm while being a "prohibited possessor".  As to whether or not these are dropped in plea bargaining is also a good question, and the way I see it is that it might be.

Now for my suggestion as an alternative to what SB464 is setting out to do here.

Instead of placing the burden of mandating security at a gun store, what would be wrong with a mandatory additional five year sentence of stealing a firearm that is not subject to parole or any other kind of early release?   Or how about an additional five years for driving a car through a storefront in order to steal any kind of merchandise?  We already have sentencing enhancements for what they call "hate" crimes.  Why not have them for stealing guns and smashing cars through storefronts?   And why not have these sentencing enhancements mandatory, so that these criminals are kept off the streets?

There is no doubt in my mind of the sincerity in Mr. Lazarus wanting Redwood City to be safer.  I'm with him on that.  I have occasion to visit Redwood City once or twice a year to visit a good friend of mine, and as far as I know I'll be there again later this year.

The sincerity of the state senator is another matter.  I don't think that keeping felons off the streets is one of his top priorities.

I think what he's really trying to do here, is to make it harder on the gun stores to remain in business, and this is one incremental step to drive them all out since he can't overturn the Supreme Court's Heller decision.


LINK

Valentine's Day 2017

This evening marks the fifth Valentine's Day I've had with Sheila.  We're going to formally celebrate it tomorrow for two reasons.  One, her oldest daughter is out with her boyfriend, and two, it gives me one more day to rest up from this awful cold that a lot of us have been having.

At my end, I could complain about my situation, but from what I know of some others, it's not like I have a right to.  I've always known that yes, there are others out there who have it worse than I do, but it remains on the back shelf of your mind until you get a phone call or you hear of one of those other situations, at which point I realize that I shouldn't be grousing about anything.  Yes, I'm frustrated that I haven't gotten a start date yet from my new employer, and that is dependent on a background check that I have no way of knowing how far along it is.

And after another visit to San Jose and back, I'm really ready to end this sabbatical and to get back to doing some work.  I didn't have a lot of time for "fun" in San Jose as that I was helping out with a situation there, and when I could get out of the house there was inclement weather or bad traffic or both.  Usually bad traffic all of the time.  Inclement weather only some of the time.

While I was there, I thought about posting from San Jose about San Jose, but it might have been a depressing post.  A lot of people I knew there have since moved to other states.

* * * * * * *

One thing I really enjoyed about this trip was taking a different way back to Tucson.  I reprised my passing thru of some small towns.  Gasoline in Los Banos was significantly cheaper than the truck stop at Santa Nella, and I wandered around the supermarket in Firebaugh since going in there was like going back in time.

I took the left turn in Mendota, and continued on to state highway 99.  I saw the Voice of America towers in Delano (my next time there I really need to get off the highway and take some pictures of it before they tear it down).  Bakersfield wasn't the most pleasant place but tanking up in Delano meant not having to stop for gas there.

The stretch of highway 58 that has you drive thru Tehachapi is my most favorite part of the trip.  I-10 between Coachella and San Berdoo is my least favorite part of the trip.

* * * * * * *

Now that I'm back home, I've been catching up on things and have found some time to tune the radio spectrum at night.  KMOX was coming in at local 7:00 PM two nights ago (I did hear them again the next night after I posted about them).  Omaha was also coming in, and although I had a signal on 870 kHz I didn't know if it was really WWL in New Orleans.  I'd really like to get that one logged, as well as one of the Chicago stations.

There's not much on the shortwave bands.  I am thinking of putting up a long wire antenna to see if that will help.  I've also thought of constructing a home brew antenna for the medium wave stations, though if I'm getting KMOX then that portable is sensitive enough for the AM broadcast band.

* * * * * * *

And that is it for now.