Charger Cables and Adapters

One of the less-pleasant aspects of getting older is spending more time in hospitals, whether as a patient with a relative who is a patient. That means at some point you may find yourself needed to charge your phone, tablet, or laptop.

For example, my mother recently had a hospital stay and had her iPhone with her to communicate with the rest of the family and to keep her occupied (she uses the Kindle app a lot). We saw that her hospital bed actually had a couple of USB ports provided so patients could charge their devices.

Unfortunately, the ports were USB-A. Her charging cable is USB-C on both ends. Luckily, it was about 8 feet long and she brought the power brick, and we were able to use a wall outlet near the head of her bed. But this experience got me to thinking and I ordered a couple things to provide more flexible charging options.

• First, a two-pack of Anker USB-C to USB-C cables that are 10 feet long. Long charging cables are handy not just in hospitals, but also when travelling when you might not have easy access to an outlet.
• Second, a two-pack of USB-C to USB-A adapters. One of these would've been handy for my mother.

If you need extra charging bricks these Anker 20W chargers are good. They accept both USB-A and USB-C cables. I have a couple in regular use.

Velcro cable ties or Nite Ize Gear Ties are useful for keeping cables neat when not in use or if they are longer than needed.

The chargers and cables are cheap enough so you can buy a couple and keep one in a grab and go bag kept ready for unexpected hospital stays. Having them around gives you one less thing to worry about in a stressful situation.

Yom HaBiperim and the Threat of Supply Chain Attacks

First of all, "Yom HaBiperim" is one of the funniest things I've read in the past 24 hours. Mad props to @RUOC90177786 on X for coining that one.

On a more serious note, Israel's amazing strike on Hez'balless yesterday should give everyone in security field pause. It demonstrates that if you don't own and control your entire supply chain you are incredibly vulnerable to attack. This applies to pretty much everything that security breaches can impact. It's not just an issue for NGO terrorist organizations, in the age of globalization it's also a major vulnerability for nation states that depend on a vast array of items from other countries. E.g., IT assets, software, or munitions.

The pager attack was a respin of Project Eldest Son. This was an operation during the Vietnam War in which various types of small arms ammunition were modified to explode when a Communist soldier attempted to fire his gun. It was done by replacing one cartridge in a box of ammo with one that was loaded with C4 high explosive, instead of smokeless gunpowder. This caused pressure in excess of what the gun was designed to handle and it would then explode in the user's hands.

Further back, the British did this in the 1890s and 1930s against tribes they were fighting.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Eldest_Son

Even when buying equipment from supposedly reliable vendors, the problem of counterfeit products is severe enough that even Cisco has a web page about it. See https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/legal/brand-protection/identify-counterfeit-products.html

If I was a nation state, I'd look at augmenting IP-addressable hardware with a chip that periodically phones home to a controller, or maybe even sniff network packets for things of interest. It wouldn't have to be a computer or router. It could be a network printer, webcam, or any other device connected to a network. IoT devices in particular are notably insecure out of the box which allows millions of them to be coopted into botnets.

But it's not just network and telco gear.

In the past 10 years or so, China has flooded the world with dirt cheap handheld VHF/UHF transceivers. The Baofeng UV-5R is the most well know of these. They've seen use in Ukraine, Syria, and are extremely popular in the US amongst various groups ranging from Antifa to right-wing militias. They're also popular with ham radio operators. Heck, I have three within arm's reach right now.

The Baofeng is a software defined radio (SDR). That means that much of the RF signal processing that would traditionally be done with hardware is actually done by software running on the radio's chip. That means that within the limits of the hardware, functionality can be added or removed with a firmware update.

For example, until the FCC mandated that Baofeng remove the capability to transmit on FRS, GMRS, and MURS frequencies, the UV-5R could do so even though it is type accepted in the US only for ham frequencies. Baofeng modified the firmware to block transmission on these frequencies on new radios sold in the US, but this didn't affect existing radios.

The problem from the FCC's standpoint is that because of how that Baofeng implemented the frequency restriction, the radios can be unlocked so that they're capable of transmitting on the forbidden frequencies. A search on YouTube for "Baofeng unlock" gets you the info needed to do so. The actual unlock procedure takes about 10 seconds. I've confirmed it myself.

These radios can be programmed using a special USB cable that connect to a computer and a free, open-source software package called CHIRP. This is probably the most common and definitely easiest way to program in frequencies in the radio's memory channels.

Now imagine that the firmware has a backdoor in it that allows features to be modified or cause the radio to transmit, after receiving a specific RF signal over the air. For example, suppose you are fighting an opponent known to use Baofengs. You want to locate enemy fighters. Broadcast a signal that triggers any Baofeng receiving it to transmit a reply. Because it's an SDR you can write the firmware so that the radio's transmit light doesn't come on, so the user is none the wiser. The force that initiated the ping then uses direction finding equipment to locate the radios and then drone strikes their enemy.

I really don't think this is far-fetched.

Getting Comms Squared Away

This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

After a couple years away from doing anything with ham radio, a coworker has rekindled my interest in the past couple of weeks. He has a GMRS license and is studying for his Technician license. His primary interest is backup comms with family and friends who are within a few miles.

That said, we're hoping that after he gets his Tech license we'll be able to communicate via simplex on 2M with the use of directional antennas at a distance of about 20 - 25 miles. Several years ago a ham friend and I did just that, over a similar distance. I may need to go to a higher elevation, however.

Aside from all that, the state of the country worries me and has had me wanting to setup emergency backup comms with my brother and mom, who live in the same subdivision that I do. It's unlikely that both our Internet and cell service would both go down, but the possibility is non-zero.

Since GMRS covers immediate family regardless of whether they live with you, I've set them up with an unlocked Baofeng UV-5R programmed for GMRS and MURS, for emergency use only. (I am well aware that the UV-5R is not type accepted for GMRS or MURS, so it will not be used for non-emergency commo.)

The variant of the UV-5R that I've owned for years is the discontinued UV-5RA. As far as I know the guts are the same but the case is shaped differently so some accessories like higher capacity batteries are incompatible.

Therefore, today I got a 2-pack of current production UV-5Rs. The package I ordered included:

• 2 radios with standard capacity batteries and antennas.
• 2 3800 mah extra capacity batteries.
• 2 antennas that are better than the regular OEM Baofeng antennas.
• 2 desktop chargers.
• 1 programming cable and a mini-disc with CHIRP on it. (I recommend downloading CHIRP directly from the developer's website.)
• 2 earpieces.

Additionally, I have order in with Amazon for an additional programming cable, 2 battery eliminators (that allow you to power the radio off a 12 VDC outlet), and a 4-pack of speaker/mics.

Much of this will go into a radio go-bag along with extended patch cables and various coax adapters. I'll keep one my old UV-5RAs in my truck, where I also have a Tram mag-mount antenna.

Earlier this week I received one of Ed Fong's J-Pole antennas to improve performance in static situations. J-Poles are one of the more popular options for HT users seeking to improve the performance of their radios, and Ed Fong's has been well-regarded for years. It's very well made. It worked well for reception in my brief test but I've yet to transmit on it. 

I also picked up a 1/4 wave 2M ground plane antenna from Zulu Delta Antennas on eBay. The "Jungle Antenna" is similar, except that this has 4 ground radials instead of the Jungle Antenna's 3. I bought it mainly as a curiosity but from my understanding, J-Poles and 1/4 ground planes perform roughly comparably.

As an aside when I've tried to build a J-Pole I always had problems stripping the twinlead without cutting the conductor. As long as you have a SO-239 bulkhead socket and the ability to solder, I'd find a ground plane antenna easier to build.

But gear only gets you so far. Technology without knowledge is useless. I therefore went over how to use the Baofeng with my brother and gave him a reference card for the 3-3-3 radio plan so that we're both on the same page if we need the radios.

For anyone looking to really improve their commo game, ham or not, I highly recommend the book, The Guerrilla's Guide To The Baofeng Radio, by NCScout. While the book contains a large amount of information that is Baofeng-specific, the meat of it is about technique. Beware of and avoid other similarly-titled guides that are knock-offs.

NCScout's other book, The Guerrilla's Guide to Signals Intelligence, is also worth reading. This knowledge may come in handy if there's unrest following this Fall's election.

I urge everyone to get their communication plans in order well before the election.

Using the RTL Dongle and SDR on Apple Silicon

It's been a few years since I played with a software defined radion (SDR). I have one of the inexpensive RTL dongles and on Intel based Macs or Windows and Linux machines, there's a variety of SDR applications you can use. I tried a few but they kept crashing on me so I settled on gqrx.

Gqrx is built for Intel CPUs but it runs OK under Rosetta 2 on my M1 MacBook Air.

To install Rosetta 2 from a terminal prompt type this and hit Enter:

    $ softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license

(Note: The dollar sign is the prompt, don't type it.)

Then install gqqrx using Homebrew. If you don't have Homebrew installed you'll need to do so first.

Install Homebrew:

    $ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install gqrx:

    $ brew install --cask gqrx

When you first start it up you'll need to select your device on this screen:

After it starts check this out for instructions on getting started.

My RTL dongle has a USB A connection so I needed to use a USB A-to-C adapter to connect it to the Mac. For an antenna I used my Comet GP-3 2M/70cm mounted on my chimney.

2M and 70cm were quiet in my area last night but I was able to receive the local NOAA Weather station clearly:

And the FM broadcast spectrum was full. Here it is tuned to WMMR Philadelphia:

I'm thinking about picking up one of the receivers from SDRplay which in conjunction with their software, which is built for Apple Silicon, should perform better and be easier to setup. The SDRplay also receives a wider spectrum than the cheap dongles (which are good for the money).

Thoughts on the Crowdstrike Outage

By now you're probably aware of the massive outages caused by a bug in Crowdstrike. The bug is the result of an update pushed out overnight, which caused Windows systems to become unusable. Unfortunately, Crowdstrike is very widely used by large corporations so the impact is immediate and widespread. A Symantec Enterprise Antivirus update had a similar effect about 12 years ago, but this one is much more widespread.

We are lucky that only Windows systems were directly affected. Crowdstrike also makes endpoint protection software for Mac and Linux. We use it on everthying. Several of my coworkers who use Windows were dead in the water this morning. The fix was to reboot into safe mode and delete the affected file. PCs with Bitlocker disk encryption enabled needed a recovery key from IT. I use a Mac so I wasn't directly impacted but because user authentication servers run on Windows I had trouble accessing some systems.

This could have been a lot worse. If this had affected Linux systems, it potentially could have taken out DNS and NTP servers, and the Cisco Network Registrar systems used to provision cable modems. That would have killed voice, video, and Internet service for any customer's device which rebooted. Recovery would have been greatly impeded because IT personnel wouldn't be able to communicate or get the fix easily.

AIUI, it's taken out several airlines, shipping companies, banks, and various point of sale systems.

It's a perfect example of the dangers of IT software monoculture where one bug can take out a huge swath of systems.

Consider it a sign to increase preparations for grid (power and Internet) collapse.

Radiowavz 40M Dipole Antenna

Today's vacation day activity was to put up a Radiowavz 40M dipole. I got it in trade several years ago for an AR15 lower receiver. :)

Hams know that antennas offer better performance when erected in crappy weather, ideally a New England winter day. Not having one of those handy, hopefully a hot-as-balls SE Pennsylvania day will suffice.

It's currently supported on both end but not the middle, which as you can see, sags a bit. The end supports are 5 foot lengths of schedule 40 PVC pipe with an eye bolt on the end. Braided dacron cord is strung through each eye bolt and then secured to the end insulators of the antenna with a bowline knot. The halyards are then attached to a large plastic landscaping stake in the ground.

The feedline is a 25 foot piece of RG-8X coaxial cable running to an MFJ-4602 window pass-through panel.

After it was up and connected I texted a couple friends and we tried it on 80M phone using NVIS propagation. I was able to hear them but they could not hear me, which wasn't surprising.

I'd like to get the middle up higher so I'm going to look into a military surplus fiberglass mast. If I get the center elevated the resulting antenna will be an inverted-V, which will give me better performance.

I haven't made any QSOs on this antenna yet, but this screenshot from pskreporter.info shows the results of calling CQ with 50W on JS8.

And this one from WSPRnet.org shows the results of transmitting 50W on WSPR.

Chance the RF-Enabled Coyote Hunting Dog and the Off-Grid Butterknife Dipole

This weekend I went camping with friends Nick and Ed at Nick's property in Tioga County, PA for some good food, conversation, shooting, and off grid ham radio in the woods. Nick and I hold General class amateur radio licenses, whiled Ed got his Amateur Extra ticket.

Ed got upstate on Friday and so was able to setup early Saturday morning to check in with a CAP net. Unfortunately NVIS propagation on 80M wasn't good and he wasn't able to hear anyone.

Ed's rig: a UK-surplus PRC-320 manpack HF radio. He likes the rugged nature and simple operation.

Meanwhile, Nick and I drove up separately on Saturday morning, arriving around 1530.

Saturday night was spent socializing with the locals and sitting around the fire with some bourbon and Baccarat Rothschild cigars.

Sunday morning we got a visitor: Chance the RF-Enabled Coyote Hunting Dog. He belongs to one of the locals and was out hunting with some pack mates when he caught wind of the sausages we were frying for breakfast. He was very friendly but as a pup, didn't want to return to his master when he got the return buzz through his collar, so we spoke to him when he came to retrieve the dog.

(The antenna is for a GPS-enabled tracker that also allows the owner to transmit a signal to the dog for him to return. The range is several miles.)

On Sunday we hoisted an 80M dipole antenna. But this wasn't an off the shelf antenna, or even a conventional homebrew dipole. Behold the Off-Grid Butterknife Dipole:

We constructed it from aluminum MIG welding wire with plastic butterknives as the center insulator and spaces for the open wire ladder line we fed it with from the antenna tuner.

Prepping the knives:

To elevate the antenna we needed to get suspension lines over trees. To get the suspension lines up we attached fishing line running from a Zebco Dock Demon spincasting rod to an arrow and shot it over the trees on both ends.

Ed has NanoVNA vector network analyzer so he was able to determine at what the antenna was resonant. Before it was hoisted it was resonant at 3560 KHz on the 80M band, very close to what we wanted.

We tried the antenna with Nick's Icom 718 using an Icom AH-4 antenna tuner, as well as with my Icom 7200 with LDG IT-100 tuner feeding a 25 foot piece of coax connected to an LDG 4:1 balun.

Nick called CQ a few times and although we didn't get any replies we were able to confirm he was getting out to the surrounding several hundred miles via monitoring on WebSDR.

(My laptop got Internet access via the hotspot on my iPhone. Not something to be expected in a grid-down scenario, but we were experimenting.)

We switched over to my rig and got these results on WSPR:

(From the WSPR Watch app on my iPhone.)

Monday morning we hooked up Nick's SDRplay receiver to the antenna. 80M was hopping:

This isn't the first field expedient antenna we've setup at the camp. A couple years ago we did a large, random-length loop made from welding wire that at best was about 5 feet off the ground. We were able to check into a North PA/South NY 160M net. We also had a similar 80M welding wire dipole but it was only about 4 feet off the ground. It still worked great as a receiving antenna.

We left the antenna up when we left but realize that due to the weak nature of the construction it may not be intact the next time we go upstate. However, we also discussed raising more durable antennas and running them to an antenna pass-though in the cabin. E.g., 40M and 80M dipoles, and a 160M loop.

Homebrew wire antennas are pretty cheap, so it's not like doing so will be a major investment.

Testing a New Laptop for Ham Radio and WSPR

I picked up a cheap HP laptop at Microcenter on Friday to run ham radio apps on in the field. I'd rather not take my $3,000 MacBook Pro camping, plus it's a fact that a lot of ham radio apps are better supported in Windows. Should something bad happen, it'll be a lot easier to swallow with a $400 laptop.

Anyway, today I was configuring the HP to work with my Icom 7200 using Fldigi, JS8Call, and WSJT-X, and tried out transmitting using the latter in WSPR mode. The antenna was my Hawaii EARCH 40-6M end-fed, strung approximately horizontally out to my back fence. This is far from optimal.

I transmitted on WSPR at 50W a few times and checked propagation using WSPR Watch on my iPhone. Not bad.

Along with a couple friends I'm heaing up to Tioga Country next weekend. We're all hams and off-grid operations are on the list of activities. One thing I want to try is a random-length loop antenna using welding wire, connected to my antenna tuner using an LDG 4:1 balun. My friend did this a couple years ago and it worked great, allowing him to check in on a north PA/south NY 160M net.

Baofeng Digital Interface Cable

Like a lot of hams and preppers, I own a Baofeng HT. Last week on Facebook, Baofeng Tech announced the APRS-K2 digital interface cable for their radios. Note that while BF advertises it as an APRS cable, in reality it's not limited to that. Other owners have reported that it works with DroidPSK, for example.

At $18.79 on Amazon Prime I had to order one to give it whirl. I have a 2012 Google Nexus 7 tablet that I can use for Android apps, but I'm primarily an iPhone/iPad user. So, after I got the cable I grabbed the aprs.fi app from iTunes and loaded it on my iPad Mini 2.

The BF APRS-K2 cable is like the KF5INZ Easy Digi interface for iPads, in that it relies on VOX to key the rig to transmit. I programmed UV-5RA with the 144.39 MHz APRS frequency, enabled VOX, and connected everything. Aprs.fi had no problems keying the rig with VOX sensitivity set to 2.

Unfortunately I don't seem to be within range of an I-Gate, so although the setup was beaconing, there was no way to port it to the aprs.fi website, other than the app's web connection.

I intend to try the cable with other modes and apps, for example PSKer on the iPad and Fldigi on the Nexus. I'm thinking it might work with the speaker/mic port on my later 2013 MacBook Pro, as well.

Finally, the APRS-K2 is not just useful for Baofeng owners. Since Baofeng radios use the same cables as Kenwood, HTs, the APRS-K2 cable can be used with those as well.

WSPR on a Mac

I did some WSPR work out back today using my MacBook Pro, WSJT-X, Yaesu FT-817ND, SignalinkUSB, and my 20M vertical antenna.

Hopefully you find this useful.

New Version of the Harbor Freight 3-In-1 Power Pack

A couple years ago I posted about the Cen-Tech (Harbor Freight) 3-in-1 power pack for portable power. The one I have has served me well on camping trips to power radios and charge cell phones.

The old model looks like it's been discontinued and replaced with an improved version. Improvements include replacing the incandescent work light with an LED, two 12V ports instead of one, and adds a 2.1A USB port for charging cell phones, etc. I'm not going to rush out and replace my old model, but if you're looking for an additional or new portable power source, this looks like a good one.

Camping Trip AAR

This weekend a couple friends and I went on a camping trip to Tioga County, PA. The main activity this time was ham radio. We went up on Friday and came home today.

I had to work on Friday but was able to cut out a little early. By the time I got on the road it was rush hour, so it took me a full four hours to get to my friend's land. By the time I arrived it was 9:30 PM. Before I got there, he'd put up an 80M dipole antenna made from aluminum welding wire, electric fence insulators, and some electric fence posts from Tractor Supply. The feed line was the welding wire, formed into an open ladder line held apart with pink duct tape.

This dipole worked well and pulling in signals on 20M, 40M, and 80M. A number of the calls we logged were from within Pennsylvania, demonstrating the viability of NVIS communications.

We're fans of the digital modes. He has an Icom 718 with which he uses a Donner Digital Interface at home. Since he's not going to schlepp a desktop PC with him, he used PSKdroid running on an LG Android tablet, using audio coupling. I also setup my Apple iPad Mini 2 running PSKer to try and pull some signals from the aether.

We were able to copy quite a few transmissions even without a digital interface between the tablets and the rig. We probably would've copied some more, but for the bourbon. ;)

On Saturday I setup my portable vertical antenna, Yaesu FT-817ND, and iPad.

As you can see, we setup inside his 16' x 24' pavilion, which was a godsend this weekend due to the weather. It rained on and off all weekend. There was little to no wind, so the open ends weren't a problem. We even setup my tent underneath the roof so it stayed mostly dry.

As you can see, I have my antenna feedline connected via the FT-817ND's front, BNC connector. As I understand it, using this instead of the SO-239 on the back reduces power consumption.  Also note that the feedline is connected straight to the rig, with no tuner. The vertical is resonant on 20M. Using a resonant antenna instead of one connected through a tuner increases your effective radiated power, and when operating QRP, every little bit helps.

The iPad is connected to the rig with one of KF5INZ's Easy Digi interfaces.

Pic of my vertical antenna:

The objects to the right of the antenna are steel gong targets set out at about 25 yards.

I mostly operated PSK31 and using the antenna above was able to reach the west coast.

I grabbed the above from pskreporter.info using my iPhone. Later, my signal was also reported in Washington state, but I forgot to get a screen shot.

After doing PSK31 for awhile I changed over to WSPR, using iWSPR. This was my first time trying this digital mode and it's amazing. The signal reports below are after transmitting for awhile on 5 watts.

Numerous hits in Great Britain, Western Europe, and Germany. WSPR basically acts like a beacon, transmitting your callsign so that other hams with Internet-connected rigs can upload signal reports. With some creativity I think it could have other applications.

We took time off from the radio to have a nice lunch of venison sausage and onions, sauteed in a red wine reduction. Yeah, we eat good when we go camping.

Saturday night's dinner was venison chili washed down with Yuengling Lager or Guiness Stout.

I also took a break from radio in the afternoon to do a little shooting. I first shot my Cowboy Pimp Gun, AKA a Ruger Single Six in .32 H&R Magnum which has a color case hardened frame and faux ivory grips. It's a fun little blaster but needs a trigger job. I put a bunch of Prvi Partizan .32 S&W Longs through it, which made a nice little tink when they hit our steel gongs.

I also put 70 rounds of .44-40 through my Cimarron 1873 Sporting Rifle.

Fifty of those were black powder loads with 35 grains of Goex 3Fg under a bullet cast in my Accurate Molds 43-215C bullet mold, and they really smacked the gongs around. If you click on the picture to view the full sized version, you can see some smoke coming out of the rifle's ejection port. I was doing an 1870s-style mag dump. Off to the left, you can also see the gong that I just shot swinging from the impact.

After I finished shooting my other friend put up about 500 feet of aluminum welding wire in a loop, all around our campsite. We got back to radio after nightfall and the loop turned out to work well for receiving 80M and 160M, and they both wound up getting 160M phone QSOs. Because the antenna height ranged from only a couple feet to a max of 5 feet, they were NVIS to other hams in northern PA and southern NY.

Finally, I took this picture of my iPad which looked like it was detecting Space Invaders on the waterfall.

Even though the weather this weekend was crappy we had a great trip. We got some good field radio practice in, plus a bit of fun shooting.

FT-817 Legs

The Yaesu FT-817 is a great all band, all mode QRP rig, but one feature it lacks is a set of legs to prop it up so the face is at a good viewing angle. My previous solution was a stand made from a CD jewel case. A nicer fix is to add folding legs.

Back on October 17th, I ordered a set of "Black Edition Carbon Fiber Sport Legs" from eBay seller radioshackus (not to be confused with Radio Shack). Anyway, they arrived today from Hong Kong and I installed them tonight.

They came sans instructions but after looking at the pic on the eBay listing I figured it out. I'll note that if you get these legs or something similar, you will need a good, properly fitting Phillips head screwdriver to remove the OEM Yaesu screws holding on the carry strap brackets. They are in tight.

A couple of pics of the legs as now installed on my radio:

If you prefer to order FT-817 legs from a US vendor, see here. Note that while the seller is American, these are made in Germany.

Compared with an external stand, the folding legs are a lot more convenient and add no noticeable weight to the radio.

Choosing your first police scanner

Sparks31 has advice on choosing your first police scanner. Read it here.

Free Book Download from Sparks 31

I've been following Sparks 31's blog for awhile now, and bought his book Communications for 3%ers and Survivalists. He's decided to make the full text of that book and his other tome, The Modern Survivalist available as one PDF, for free.

https://sparks31.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/free-book-download/

It's worth a gander.

AlexLoop Walkham Antenna

One type of antenna I've wanted to try for HF has been a magnetic loop or magloop, for short. For portable operations they have a few advantages: small size, light weight, and fast setup and takedown. The disadvantages of small, non-resonant magloops include lack of efficiency and very narrow bandwidth (although the latter can be advantageous in certain circumstances).

In particular, one that gets almost universally excellent reviews is the AlexLoop Walkham by PY1AHD. It's a QRP antenna limited to 10W PEP but for use with my Yaesu FT-817ND that's not an issue. (The FT-817ND's max output is 5W.)

I was down in Delaware for work today at a site about mile from the New Castle, DE Ham Radio Outlet, who carries the AlexLoop. One came home with me. After work I set it up out back on my patio.

I had it sitting on the same camera tripod I used with my Arrow 2M yagi antenna.

Close up of the control box:

You use the knob on the bottom to tune it. The way I did so was to tune for maximum noise. Because it is very narrow banded, if you change frequency even a few kHz, you must retune.

Although it says right there on the box that you should have an SWR meter inline, dummy me forgot to get a BNC-to-UHF adapter so that I could do so. Instead, I configured the FT-817ND to display rough SWR readings on transmit, which allowed me to fine tune the antenna.

So how's it work? I'd say it's promising. On 20M PSK31, here are the signals I received in a couple hours that Fldigi reported to pskreporter.info. I saw more than these on the waterfall, however.

And here's what I received.

Not shown were the several European stations I saw on the waterfall, including Spain, Italy, Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland.

I completed two QSOs, one with a ham in MO about 815 miles away, and another with an operator in Italy, 4348 miles away. For whatever reason, he didn't show up as receiving me on pskreporter.info.

I also tried 40M for a few minutes but the band was dead.

The AlexLoop should be a good choice for portable operation, especially when camping. It collapses down into a small, light package, and came with a nice carrying bag. Setup is easy and quick, and unlike my portable vertical, it doesn't require any counterpoises to be laid out and gathered up. It wasn't cheap, but it's well made and should last a long time.

If you're looking for a portable antenna for QRP HF, the AlexLoop Walkham is worthy of consideration.

Got Comms?

Sparks has recently posted  about Internet service interruptions, some of which are the result of intentional action. See this post, too (and my readers may recognize the picture of the FT-817).

Today, I ran across this story on Ars Technica, reporting a fiber optic cut near San Francisco which was the twelfth such interruption in that area this year.

A sufficiently motivated party could cut several such fiber optic lines, or take out a colo facility in which many such lines pass through, and thereby cut off comms for a large number of people for a significant period. Given our current dependence on the Internet and telecommunications, this could be disastrous for those affected.

BTW, from the viewpoint of someone who's worked for an ISP for nearly 15 years, if somebody takes out a colo facility, Shit Just Got Real.

The Internet was designed to route around breaks but as it has grown in the past 15 years, the level of overall redundancy has dropped in many areas. Too many parts of the infrastructure are vulnerable to intentional disruption. With Islamic terrorism happening more frequently on US soil, I am concerned that at some point they'll go for infrastructure.

This is why I highly recommend getting at least a General Class amateur radio license. The General Class license gives you operating privileges on most of the frequencies allocated to ham radio operators in the US, and isn't much more difficult to get than the entry level Technician license, now that there is no Morse Code requirement.

There's a lot of overlap in the Tech and General exams, but you get a lot more privileges on High Frequency (HF) with the General ticket. HF is what's needed for long distance communications, or certain kinds of regional comms (see, NVIS).

The ARRL maintains a web page with info on getting licensed, including training and finding an exam, here.

You need to get licensed now, before you need comms, because you need to know how to operate your radio, and understand on-the-air procedure. You cannot expect to be able to turn on a ham radio, press a button, and talk to someone like you're using walkie talkies. Just like having an AR-15 doesn't make you a Navy SEAL, having a radio doesn't make you a competent operator. It takes practice, and the only way to get it is to get on the air.

If you're not licensed, don't expect to be able to get on the air with a fake call sign. Not only will licensed hams not talk to you, they may very well track you down and sick the FCC on you. The penalties for unauthorized transmissions can include $10,000 fines.

It's not a bad idea to have unlicensed communications options available, as well. FRS and GMRS* are good for local comms, as is CB Radio. See Dialtone's posts on the "Jungle Telegraph," here and here.








* I know, GMRS requires a license. However, I'll bet that 90% or more of bubble pack FRS/GMRS radios are operated without one.

"Technical Glitches." Uh huh.

Unless you were under a rock, you know about the following three things:

1. The Chinese stock market dive.
2. "Technical glitches" grounding all United Airlines flights in the US yesterday.
3. "Technical glitches" causing all trading to be halted for several hours on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

On Tuesday, this was tweeted by Anonymous:

Unless the network and system admins at UAL and the NYSE are totally incompetent, they have major redundancy in place to prevent shutdowns like this from happening. There's simply too much money at stake to have single points of failure.

Now, was Anonymous responsible? Perhaps it was someone looking to divert attention from the Chinese stock market meltdown. Whatever really happened I doubt that the powers that be would share the truth, for fear of upsetting the apple cart.

My tinfoil hat feels a bit warm. It would be a good time to revisit your emergency preparations.

How To Make an Off-Center Fed Dipole AKA Windom Antenna

On Arfcom, here.

Plans for an Arrow Antenna

Over on Bushcraft USA, another member linked to this PDF version of an article from the April 1992 issue of 73 Amateur Radio Today by KA0VFF and N0IMW on how to build a 2M Yagi antenna using aluminum tubing and aluminum arrow shafts for the elements. In the thread discussing it, the poster mentioned being able to check into a repeater on Greens Peak in AZ, from Flagstaff, a distance of about 150 miles using 50 watts. Pretty damn good, IMO. (The thread is here, but I think you need to be registered with BCUSA to view it.)

As a 4-element design, it should have a little more gain than my 3-element Yagi from Arrow Antennas. This will manifest itself only under extreme conditions, however.

With suitable weather sealing, it looks like this design would be a good choice for a permanent mount.

Finally, N5DUX's site has a good collection of ham-related PDFs. It's worth checking out.