K7JEB AM Log: 16 Oct 2006 - 25 Nov 2006 10/17/Tues eve/144.45Mc Ernie, W7CCC, returns to the Valley after taking a cruise and becoming ill. Quite a bit of that going around, it seems. I buy an LED Maglite flashlight and extol its virtues to the net. It is the first one I've found that actually focuses the light from the LED -- and to good effect. I can light up a reflective stop sign a quarter of a mile away with it. Lock, W1ZD, acquires a Select-o-Ject (remember those?) and announces his intention to interface it to his HRO-60 receiver. More discussion of the FCC R&O expanding the 80-, 40- and 15-meter 'phone allocations. Hanging question -- what about digital voice modes? The ARRL's take on the revision can be downloaded from here (about 900K): www.arrl.org/announce/regulatory/wt04-140/Hambands3_color.pdf 10/20/Fri eve/3855kc Hear Bob, K7AK, recently returned to the Valley on his annual migratory trek, checking his modulation on 3855 at 8pm. I give him a call and before anyone knows it we have a nice little roundtable going with K7SC, WA6TJN and W8QYT. We get Bob's clipping level set for him and sign off after an hour. I switch to SSB, go up to 3895 and check-in with the Collins Collectors' net. 10/21/Sat/3855kc Ken, K6CJA, returns from a week on the Colorado River lakes (Mohave, Havasu) fishing and taking in the fresh air. He reports sighting the International Space Station in the clear desert sky while out there. And having to get fishing licenses in California, Nevada and Arizona. I pass on going to the Tucson hamfest today. Too many irons in the fire. Probably missing out on all kind of screaming deals. All of this FCC band expansion has a goodly number of long-time General- and Advanced-class people thinking about caving in and upgrading to Extra. I know there's something about a General ticket going along with the smell of solder rosin and scorched phenolic, but all that bandwidth on 80/75 is tempting. John, WA6JUS, inherits a LaVoie spectrum analyzer. Sounds like a very nice instrument, and suitably boat-anchorish as well. JUS also reports his '67 Mustang is also burning up his spare time. Greg, WA7LYO, reports picking up a Viking II and other boatanchor goodies from E-Bay with the goal of restoring and reselling them. LYO's refurbished rigs are being heard in some of the better hamshacks in the Phoenix area. 10/22/Sun/3855kc Not too much traffic today. Shep, W5EOE, checks in but loses his transmit audio an hour into the roundtable. Probably a dead battery in an amplified D-104 says K7JEB, doing his usual paranormal diagnostics thing. 10/24/Tues Nite/144.45Mc K7CAX, W8QYT and K7JEB find themselves recuperating from the all-day 'Caliche Capers' at K7POF's QTH in Chino Valley. A good time was had by all, actually, surrounded by all of Bob's Boatanchors. I find out that the thing I missed in Tucson was a bean feed at the QTH of W7QBG. If that callsign sounds familiar, it should be. Steve is the son of George, W8QBG, and is an attorney in Tucson -- which explains his absence in the AM windows, having a real profession and all that. Scott, W7SVJ, advises that he has acquired the ultimate HF receiver, a 600-lb monster made by the Russians for use in their embassies and other critical applications. It has the model number of R155P, a nomenclature that I am assured will be instantly recognizable in the right circles. I believe Scott said it was previously owned by Dr. Ulrich Rohde (of Rohde & Schwarz). Progress on the 2-meter AM repeater continues with W7SVJ ordering crystals for the receiver. 10/28/Sat/3855kc Discussion of FRN numbers and VEC stuff may indicate that upgrades are under active consideration. I freak out Ken, K6CJA, by looking up his QTH on the Google satellite imagery and reporting that I can see cars in people's driveways. I hasten to add that they are only indistinct blobs and nothing can be discerned about make and model. Damon, W7MD, reports continuing progress on his house, garage and antennas. A settler's life is a hard one. 10/28/Sat/7293kc George acquired a T-368 exciter at the Tucson Swap-and-Swindle and is reworking it into a stand-alone VFO and driver unit. Handy thing to have; W7GMK uses one to good effect on his Bauer. I start checking out the Clegg 22er I acquired from Ernie, W7CCC. 10/29/Sun/3855kc Max, K7CAX, listens to KFI in LA over the air on Sunday mornings to get the last hour or so of Art Bell's program. I've tried to do the same, with poor results. There has been an increase in the number of Mexican radio stations on the air, particularly on U.S. clear channels such as 640 kc, and nighttime reception of such stalwarts as KFI has been seriously compromised in the Southwestern states. Very reluctantly I have come to embrace an alternate solution for seriously listening to out-of-town radio stations -- Internet radio. KFI has a streaming audio channel, as does KNX, WSM, WFAN, WOAI and the other stations I listened to as a kid. It doesn't have the romance of hearing the signal bounced off of the ionosphere with lightning crashes and selective fading, but when the content is halfway important, it does the trick. However, the realization comes slowly that this trashing of the medium of ionospheric radio propagation by commercial and governmental interests isn't restricted to broadcast radio. Witness what a full roll-out of BPL would do to the HF spectrum that we amateurs have embraced for almost a century now. Anyway, I send Max the URL for KFI's streamer and he's a happy camper. Whatever works. Other miscellaneous: The local 34/94 machine is tied up with comms from the MS150 bike ride; Bob, NA7RH, tries out two different mikes -- both sound good; QBG and CJA get into a long colloquy on 'sleeper' hotrods and dragsters; WA7LYO wants to know what's happening on the 2-M AM repeater; Rundown on local hamfest dates: Mesa - Dec.2, Glendale - Jan.13, Scottsdale - Mar.10; hear from Red, W7JQW out in Cave Creek. 10/30/Mon/7293kc W8QBG, George, continues to work on getting the T-368 exciter straightened out. Tom, AE8O, reports not being able to unload a National NC-110 on EBay and reluctantly concludes that he will have to restore it instead. 10/31/Tues (Halloween) night/144.45 Mc Since I don't do trick-or-treat, I meet the 2-M AM net in a darkened front room trying to convince the pirates and witches that I'm not at home. Lock, W1ZD, reports a good noontime get-together on 7293. Maybe we are coming out of the woods sunspot-wise. George, W8QBG, laments the disappearance of the new oldies FM station on 97.5 after only 6 months of operation. He also wonders aloud about the possibility of "plate" modulating the final transistor in a VHF FM rig to make AM. I opine that the el cheapo bipolars they use in those rigs probably would have BVceo problems with a doubling of the collector supply voltage. It is an intriguing thought, though. 11/1/Wed, 11/3/Fri W6OM publishes the West Coast AMI Roster and I make a webpage on Arizona-AM for Art, WA6IPD. 11/4/Sat/3855kc I get my money's worth out of Cox Cable's Internet connection by downloading 450 Megs of soundcard drivers for Ted, WA6TJN, from Creative Labs' website. Burned the whole mess on a CD-ROM and put it out for the postman. Nothing like data overkill. K7CAX still enjoying listening to KFI over the Internet. I'm reminded of George Gilder's proposal for creating a virtual ionosphere using 'dark fiber'. WA6TJN advises that Whitley Streiber's program 'Dreamland' is also available on streaming audio. 11/4/Sat/7293kc AE8O reports good weather in New Mexico after a very wet summer. Discussion of E-voting and early voting. Mike, W0FD, comes up on frequency and invites everyone to check in with the Colorado group on 3875. Don, K4KCL, is working on his Kahn compatible SSB system for 80 meters. WA6WRF describes a rather peculiar filament line short on his 32V3 where the side of the case rubbed against one of the transformers. NA7RH and I remember campus radio stations using carrier-current at UTEP and NMSU waaay back then. 11/05/Sun/3855kc K7CAX looking at his modulation out the B&W 5100. It does seem to have a bit of treble boost and this might be causing trouble to adjacent SSB QSO's. W8QBG is still working on the stand-alone T-368 exciter. It sounds like George is doing a first-class job on the unit, putting it in a well-crafted wooden case. Randy, W7CPA, is enthusiastically going to see the "Borat" movie. Reminds me of the Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff. W7MD discusses robot sex for some strange reason. Personally, I'll take the Bladerunner android option myself. 11/05/Sun/7293kc Damon, W7MD, returns from the Sierra Vista swapper with a so-so report. He also mentions that he is still fighting a stuck rotator on his higher tower. Lock, W1ZD, goes to the antique radio (AARC) swapper and has a good time with some of the AM notables. Software gypsy and VMS expert Dino, WA1KNX, checks in from his mobile somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix. Also heard - WA7HDL in Salmon, Idaho running a homebrew 380-watt xmtr and an NC-183D receiver. Ron, K0ETD, is working out the bugs on his latest project, a QRP transmitter. It seems to have chirp problems on CW. 11/07/Tues/7293kc K0ETD reports QRP transmitter close to being finalized, chirp problem apparently resolved. W8QBG's XYL goes in for eye surgery tomorrow, of particular interest to me since my cataracts are getting worse. W7HB, Bill, up in Utah is working on getting a 6-meter station together and will be looking for AM contacts on 50.4 via Es propagation. He also reports sparse but very good DX on 10 and 15. 11/07/Tues nite/144.45Mc Some discussion of data density. Capacity of a basic DVD is 4.7 Gigabytes; a Blu-Ray disk holds 25 GB. 11/11/Sat/3855kc I discover that my Clegg 22er isn't making any modulation. I have to put it aside until I can get a bench set up to take it apart and get to the bottom of this problem. W8QBG reports XYL eye surgery highly successful. George gets back to ham radio projects by tracking down a very weird problem in finding a high-resistance path to sleeve on a phone plug. Greg, WA7LYO, is currently working over an NC-183 (no "D"). I'm interested since I have one of those as a bedside radio. W7MD is doing a colorimetric study of house trim paint, having come to the conclusion that bluebird blue doesn't fit into his current desert environment too well. Something about using hydrofluoric acid to etch back crystals. Ugh! Evil stuff. There have been some horrible accidents with it in the semiconductor industry. 11/12/Sun eve/3890kc AD5VO hears me in suburban Dallas on a consumer SW radio using a window screen for an antenna. Nice little roundtable with W0FD and some guys in Texas. Needed that AM fix after missing the morning get-together. 11/14/Tues noon/7293kc Tom, K0QIG, checks in with an Apache he rescued from a CB radio shop for a $10 ransom. Sounds good after a bit of work. Thank goodness Apaches don't cover 11 meters. Bill, W7XH, reports his 160- and 80-meter antenna down due to high wind, but his R7 vertical is still serviceable and he is working stations on 10 meters with it. 40-meter dipole apparently is still up. Ted, WA6TJN, is looking for George, W8QBG, for some automotive advice after suffering a massive automatic-transmission failure. I receive some shack pictures from AE8O shot under bad lighting conditions at 640x480 resolution. This is gonna be tough. 11/14/Tues eve/144.45Mc W8QBG pronounces his latest BC-610I now ready for primetime. He's still doing some work on the associated BC-614, however. W1ZD directs my attention to a very intelligent (and rather expensive) HF wattmeter designed, produced and marketed by N8LP. This unit is actually a network analyzer that reads out the terminal impedance it sees as the RF flows through it. This is of particular interest since the usual antenna analyzers go belly-up at my QTH due to the 50 kW BC station down the street from me. Using a 100-watt transceiver as the "signal generator" for a bridge would eliminate this problem. The $410 price is a bit of a gasp (the kit is $310) but this is a very capable station accessory. (http://www.telepostinc.com/n8lp.html) I'm advised to swap out the 6AQ5's in my Clegg 22er for 6005's to cope with the higher plate voltage in the unit. 11/18/Sat/3855kc John, WA6JUS, checks in from the SCARS swap meet in Carlsbad, California using a Galaxy transceiver in his motor home. Not bad for a vertical. He later switches to an ARC-5/BC-348 combo with likewise good results out here to Arizona. Unfortunately, verticals are not friendly to poor short-skip conditions, so he wasn't heard well in Southern Cal. John's "find" this time out: 2-111D Bell Telco repeat coils (really high-quality 1:1 audio transformers). Shep, W5EOE, has usual good signal from Colorado. He is working his way through a new laptop, having made the assessment that his old, broken one couldn't be revived. We have a conversation about getting some of his shack photos on the Arizona-AM 'site. I also pass him the link to Jim Tonne's free-software site (www.tonnesoftware.com) 11/18/Sat/7293kc W8QBG and I get into some kind of dialogue on Q/A methodologies at GM and Intel. What brought that up anyway? Interesting stuff from George about qualifying suppliers at GM though. AL0F, Tim, comes up on-frequency using a low dipole, as opposed to his usual large loop. It seems to be doing the job for him on the short-skip conditions on daytime 40 meters. About this time Wes, W7UO, Tim's neighbor in Arivaca, also checks in and asks for an A/B comparison between his log-periodic and dipole. Wes, both had my S-meter pegged. Sorry. WA6WRF, Jim in Santa Maria, also advises he has recently reworked his antenna and it seems to be doing a good job for him this day. W6VZI, Jim in Huntington Beach, is on with a very nice-sounding homebrew pair of 813's, modulated by a pair of 811's, but has to sign-off when he gets an RFI complaint from either a family member or neighbor. 11/19/Sun/3855kc Ken, K6CJA, picks up a Collins 32S3 S-line transmitter at the Fontana swapper. Sounds like a pretty good deal. But Ken is only vaguely aware of how this can lead down the road to complete Collins-collector captivation. We'll see. W8QBG has a 160-meter antenna problem, just in case anyone is wondering what happened when he disappeared from 1885 this morning. WA8ULG, Ted up in the high country of Parks, AZ, has his newly acquired Collins 820D making full power on 1340 kc, its original broadcast-band frequency. He advises that he is gathering the tank components for the conversion to HF, including motor drives for plate tuning and loading. To keep this beastie tamed modulation-wise, Ted is also revamping a vintage General Radio 1931 modulation monitor along with the transmitter mods. 11/21/Tues eve/144.45Mc Larry, KO6SM, gets fed up with the poor conditions on 40 meters and installs a 75-meter loaded dipole in his attic. He inquires as to where and when the AM nets, or whatever they are, happen on that band. Jim, K7SC, wants to know if anyone has used that staple of CATV installations, RG-6, for VHF/UHF amateur-radio applications and if so, how was the 50/75-ohm matching problem addressed. This is more of a discussion topic for the net and various views are expressed. I wonder if the delicacy of the foil shield in that stuff prevents the usual rough-and-tumble use ham radio. Also, seems it would be hard to use PL-259's on the stuff. Advantage of using RG-6? Good specs up to 1 GHz. George, W8QBG, reports working the Libya DXpedition on 75 meters phone (yipes!). He also is pining for his recently deceased oldies station on 97.5. I suggest Live365 Internet radio as a possible solution (www.live365.com). 11/23,24/Thurs,Fri/7293kc George gets a 110-volt/24-amp Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from his son Steve, W7QBG, in Tucson. Well, OK, that ought keep super-station W8QBG on the air for a while in a blackout. W7QHO, Dennis, swaps out the carbon button in a T-17 for an electret element. It sounds very good on the air with treble no stock T-17 ever thought of having. Ron, W6OM, is making nominal power with his DX-100, but with no indication of plate current. Hmmmm. Don, K4KCL, is continuing to work on the Kahn CSSB system. 11/25/Sat/3885kc Work W4QCU, Dave, in Oak Ridge, Tenn, by checking into the East Coast Mil Net. Also run into N3RZU, Norm, out Wickenberg way and invite him to join us on 3855 when he gets a chance. Norm apparently is quite the mil radio collector, but admits that he spends most of his time prospecting. 11/25/Sat/3855kc I get two photos of the W5EOE antenna farm up on Arizona-AM as well as re-doing the K0ETD shack photos in the Tucson section. Sometimes I feel like I'm living on the Internet. Both pages worth a look, though. Here's the URL's: http://www.arizona-am.net/OUTOFSTATE/W5EOE/index.html http://www.arizona-am.net/TUCSON/K0ETD/k0etd.html W8QBG is on with his ART-13 this morning. That rig is still the sweetest-sounding of all George's transmitters, the Bauer included. Wonder what his secret sauce is? He's running it a little on the hot side with 1800 volts on the 813 and 811's. Shep, W5EOE, wonders about that, running his ART-13 at a more conservative 1300 volts. Larry, KO6SM, comes up on frequency with his newly installed 75-meter attic antenna and, WOW!!, it is a real winner. He is copied nicely throughout the state as well as in Southern California and New Mexico. Welcome to the band, Larry! AM HONOR ROLL... (stations logged this period) W7CCC_____ W8QYT______ W8QBG______ KO6SM W1ZD______ K7SC_______ K7AK_______ WA6TJN WA6JUS____ K6CJA______ WA7LYO_____ W5EOE W7SVJ_____ N6IME______ K7CAX______ W7MD NA7RH_____ W7PLR______ W7CPA______ W7ISJ W7JQW_____ W0OGH______ N6IJF______ W6MAU WA6WRF____ K0ETD______ K1IY_______ AE8O W0FD______ K4BHL______ K4KCL______ K0OJ AL0F______ KC9GQ______ WA7HDL_____ WA1KNX W7XH______ W6OM_______ W7HB_______ KE7ATB KE7HMO____ KA5MIR_____ AD5VO______ WB5OXQ W7FG______ K0QIG______ WA6FIZ_____ N7IOK WB6QWC____ W6VZI______ W7UO_______ W6OOQ WA8ULG____ W0NW_______ KG6AMW_____ W4QCU N3RZU