Going Back to School

Last year I worked with my manager and created some lofty goals for the fiscal year which ends in March. One of those goals included getting a specific certification for a product I use on a daily basis. I figured it would be a slam-dunk to take a test and pass it. Then I put off doing anything about the certification until the last quarter of the year (January through March). Now it is time to get serious about accomplishing this goal.

I have never put much stock in professional certifications for myself. Often times it is a matter of someone being able to study for a bit and then having good test-taking skills. I don't know why I felt the need to add a certification at this point in my career. Perhaps it is something new that I haven't tried before. In any event I have spent my own money to get access to a study guide for the test.

The process for my professional certification seems very familiar to when I studied to get my amateur radio or ham license. I purchased a study guide, read through it, practiced with some sample tests, and paid money to take an exam. Today I purchased the study guide for a whopping $20. While my ham license study materials came in a physical book, the professional certification guide is 100% online. That is fine for me as I plan to study during work hours and will be in front of my computer.

I did a bit of studying today and then jumped into a sample test of 60 questions. The real one will contain 100 questions but this one gave me a good sampling of what to expect. I found that my day-to-day knowledge ensured I got 60% of the questions correct. The questions that caused the most problems are the ones with multiple answers. Instead of having a single correct answer you have to select all options that answer the question. On my first run through the test, I managed a 90%. I only need a 75% to achieve my certification but there are 17 more example tests to try.

Part of the problem with learning new things is quickly becoming bored. I am always posting about how we learn by doing things. What I need to do is take the new information and try to apply it in my day-to-day work. That will cement the knowledge and help make the test that much easier to pass when I sign up for it in the next month or so. We'll see how I do. 

Bandwidth Explained

Lately I have doing a lot of studying about ham radio in my spare time. I get a monthly magazine from the American Radio Relay League or ARRL called QST and there are a lot of concepts I don't understand as I read articles. Rather than continuing to read and glossing over the complex subjects, I am trying to understand them more. This has me thinking about bandwidth and what it actually means.

We use bandwidth in our casual conversations with phrases like, "I don't have the bandwidth to work on that right now." That generally means that you are doing so much you don't have room in your schedule to do anything else or that the task consumes more time than you have free. We also talk about bandwidth for WiFi and how much data we can stream to our devices like smartphones, TV's, and computers. Here is a quick history lesson of what that all means and why it relates to ham radio.

When we first discovered that we could send messages over the air without having to use wires or connections, we found that we needed a carrier frequency for the message. At first, we sent messages using Morse code which uses short (dot) and long (dash) pulses of energy to convey a message. To do so, you might use 14.025 MHz as your carrier frequency with the bandwidth of your message only being a hundred Hz wide. What that means is that if someone else tries to send a message at a frequency too close to 14.025 MHz, say at 14.0251, the messages might interfere with each other. To fix this you would spread the carrier frequencies further apart. Perhaps you might use 14.026 MHz instead.

Now not everyone knows Morse code and so we learned how to encode voice messages in those same radio frequencies. We started with amplitude modulation or AM and later developed frequency modulation or FM. Anyone who has spent much time with a radio knows FM has higher quality sound than AM and so most of our music listening stations are on FM. The FCC has limited AM radio stations to a total bandwidth of 10 kHz. That means if you still use a carrier frequency of 14.025 MHz, your signal will fall in the 14.020 and 14.030 MHz range as AM splits the signal equally on either side of the carrier frequency (5 kHz below and 5 kHz above). In contrast FM signals are 200 kHz or almost 20 times wider than AM signals. It is no wonder that FM signals are higher quality than AM as you can fit more information in that space. It also means that FM radio stations have to space out their carrier signals much further than AM stations. By contrast, FM ham radio signals are only 16 kHz wide as they only need to transmit voice and not music.

Now lets tie this all together with how we think of bandwidth of our Internet links at home. When signing up for home Internet service, vendors like to use terms like 10 mega-bits per second (Mbps) or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). With 10 Mbps it means you will be able to download 10 million bits every second. 1 Gbps is much better as it is 100 times more data in the same second at 1 billion bits every second. Now remember that there are 8 bits for every byte or character in a file so if you have a 10 mega-byte file, it won't take a single second to download it at 10 Mbps, the fastest you can download it would be in 8 seconds but even that is not true. Networks use parity and error correction bits to ensure you get the data correctly. While you are paying for 10 Mbps speeds, you are really only seeing about half that because of how the network works.

So how do kHz and Mbps relate? There is a bit of math that would make this post really long and confusing, not to mention boring. Suffice it to say that when you are talking about radio signals, you generally use kHz and when you talk about data, you use Mbps or Gbps. It all translates down to how wide the radio (in the case of WiFi) or network (in the case of wired connections) signal is needed to provide the information you are trying to receive.

Preparing for the Wasatch 100 Ultra Marathon

Every year my wife and I volunteer to help with the Wasatch 100 Ultra Marathon. We drive our 4x4 up above Brighton and Solitude Ski Resorts where we build a small tent city complete with food, water, computers, and radio equipment. We then help runners as they work their way through a 100-mile running course through very rough terrain. We happen to sit at the 65.3 mile mark, so a lot of the runners are fairly well spent by the time they make it to us.

Our job at the race is to set up a ham radio connected to a computer and transmit the bib number and times as runners come into our aid station. That information is then used by the race organizers to let spectators know where runners are on the course. It is an amazing system but I only use it once a year and so I make sure to practice at home before I am remote and don't have all the tools available to me in my home office. Last night I tested the system and familiarized myself with it yet again.

The technology we use for the race is actually quite ancient. Sure we use nice laptops but we could get by with a 1985-era one. The modem I use to connect the computer to the radio has an old serial cable interface and so I had to get a USB-to-Serial adapter. Then we just use Telnet to connect to the server on the other end. Telnet is a fairly old program and when you do an Internet search the first thing that pops up is how it is no longer considered "secure" and should be avoided. That is fine for our application as we actually want people to know the data we are sharing and not trying to keep it secret.

This year I have to leave the race a bit early as I have another event I have to get to. While the race organizers prefer us to use ham radio to transmit times, there is also an Internet portal where we can get to the master server and interface with it. All we need is a telnet client such as PuTTY. Today I have been testing it out from my Chromebook and working with my buddy who will be able to stick around after I leave. Our aid station sits right underneath a mobile-phone tower and we get great Internet service. I imagine it is only a matter of time before the entire race course has Internet coverage and we lose the ham-radio part of the infrastructure.

Actually the more I think about it, the more I want to ditch the ham radio now. I could leave my extra car battery at home. I also wouldn't have to pack up my antenna nor set it up at our aid station. That could save a lot of time. Maybe I should bring all the radio equipment but not worry about setting it up unless it is needed. I'm seriously thinking about it. 

Dates on Websites

Earlier this week I had a neighbor call me asking about getting his amateur or ham radio license. I explained the 3 levels of licenses and privileges associated with each. I then pointed him at some study resources as getting a license requires passing a test. Next he wanted to know where he could go to take a test. I did a quick Internet search only to find significantly outdated information. When I got my license over a decade ago, you could reliably count on a test being administered on the last Tuesday of each month at a local emergency operations center or EOC. COVID must have put an end to that and the latest information I could find seemed woefully out of date.

This underscored the importance of making sure dates on a website being updated regularly. You may have a website that advertises an event in the seemingly distant future. You send people to the site to provide information about the event as that saves you from having to say the same thing over and over. The event comes and goes but what happens to the website? If it is still up after the event, people get confused. It might be easiest to update the page letting everyone know about the success of the event. Then the site can continue to exist in digital perpetuity.

My preference for dates on websites is to store events in a database and populate the website from it. Then if there are no longer any future events, you have a message that says something along the lines of, "No events are currently planned." It is also fairly easy to add new events to the database and you don't have to worry about deleting old ones as the database logic should not show past events on an upcoming events page.

I continued searching for my neighbor and eventually found an upcoming exam session in March. That seems to be a long time away but it will be March in no time at all. That also gives him plenty of time to study.

Christmas Break Begins

Today I finished up work for the week and don't have to go back to work until January 2nd. I know that kids in school have a week more than I do and that those like my daughter only get one or two days off. I consider myself fortunate to have a week of free time. For me, this is time to relax and take care of some personal projects. The question I have to answer is how many of them are computer related or technical.

Several years ago I purchased a ham-radio antenna. It has sat in my office for 2 winters now and I really should put it together and set it up. Then I can play around with talking to people around the world by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere. Almost all of my ham radio experience has been using short-distance and line-of-sight frequencies. That is what I use when I help with the Salt Flats Endurance run and the Wastach 100. It would be good to gain some practical knowledge in other areas of the hobby.

There are also quite a few video games I own that I would like to play. Not having to go to work frees up a lot of time and would allow me to at least start one of them. Perhaps I could finish my Spider-Man game and then justify owning Spider-Man 2. I also have the new God of War game that I have yet to take the plastic off. That could be fun. Then there are countless games I own simply by being a member of PlayStation Plus. While most look like a waste of time, there are quite a few that look very interesting.

With Christmas just around the corner, I have finished most of my 3D printing projects. I have printed up quite a few nativity scenes and Christmas-tree ornaments. I suppose I could take on a new project and perhaps print up the model of a battleship I found when I discovered the silver filament I have is really gray. It really would bring my skills up a level as the attention to detail requires me to up my game considerably.

I also wouldn't mind taking some time to do a bit of reading. I have a stack of technical reading that I have been putting off due to other pressing matters. While some might consider the subject matter an extension of work, I find it entertaining and wouldn't mind using my break to increase my technical skills.

Thinking about self improvement, I have really enjoyed learning to play the guitar using the video game RockSmith. I have thought about doing the same thing with drums and getting a copy of Rock Band. The only problem is they don't sell the game with the drum kits any more. Instead you have to purchase an electronic drum set with a MIDI interface and connect it to the game. That would be fun and I could involve my other family members.

Finally there is one last project I think would be a lot of fun. I am in the midst of coming up with a space-ship cockpit. I am thinking it would be fun for my grand kids to have a control panel with illuminated switches, lights, and dials that mimic a fictitious space craft's instrument panel. I have some of it designed but just need to order the parts and assemble it. I think my 6-year-old grandson would have a blast letting it fuel his imagination of flying across the galaxy.

Yes I have a lot I can do during the next week or so. I won't be able to get to all of it especially since I have family visiting and a healthy amount of skiing planned. I still look forward to starting one or two projects listed above. 

Paper vs. Eletronic Magazines

I have a notice on my desk that I received in the mail a few days ago. It is from ARRL which is the national association for amateur or ham radio. It is time to renew my membership and I have a choice to make. In the past, membership has paid for a monthly printed magazine. Now that will be an additional cost. If I don't elect to receive the printed magazine, an electronic version is available for just my annual membership dues.

I know I am old school but I still like to read printed magazines over electronic ones. Is it worth an extra $25/year and the associated environmental cost (think trees and gas to deliver the magazine)? For me I think it is and I'll illustrate why with examples of magazines I currently receive.

I have a free subscription to an electronic version of a sailing magazine. I'm not sure how I got on the list to receive it. Perhaps because I previously subscribed to the print magazine or because I had an article published in the magazine on ham radio and sailing. I'm not sure why, but I have it. I also have a subscription to the print version of another sailing magazine. Interestingly enough, I read the print magazine cover to cover every time I receive it. I will only glance through the electronic one and never read more than a single article if I read any at all. From this experience, it seems I prefer print.

I also have a subscription to National Geographic which comes in print form but also electronically. Every day I receive an e-mail with about a dozen article teasers. If I see something that interests me, I click on the link and read the article. Sometimes the articles are from a few years ago that appeared in the print magazine with updated information. Other times the articles are from an upcoming issue. When I receive the print magazine, I am finding that I have read about 60% of the articles already. Furthermore the electronic versions of the articles contain interactive presentations or movies that greatly enhance what comes in the print magazine. This experience has me rethinking my print subscription for National Geographic and going with just an electronic one.

I honestly wish all magazines would come like National Geographic. Instead of receiving something once a month, having a daily e-mail with interesting articles to read. I know my ARRL magazine will show up like the sailing one and I am afraid I will stop reading it without the print version. So until they figure out how to send frequent updates with articles found in the magazine, I'll shell out the extra $25/year.

Thinking About a Masters

I am one of the few people in the Research and Development Department without an advanced degree. I don't really mind as continuing in school has not really appealed to me until the past few weeks. My current degree is in Electrical and Computer Engineering. While in school I had the option of focusing on analog or digital. Naturally I chose the digital option as I really wanted to do stuff with computers and not radios. Now that I have an interest in ham radio, I see the benefits of the analog option but am glad that I chose the digital route.

A natural extension for me would be to go back to school and get a Masters in Computer Science or further my Electrical Engineering degree. I could also try for a Masters of Business Administration (MBA). Unfortunately that sounds really boring. When I got my university diploma it never listed anything other than I have a Bachelor of Science degree. I felt cheated. I could have the same piece of paper even if I spent my time playing in college and got a much simpler degree. So now I am thinking about focusing on Outdoor Leadership or Recreational Management.

Follow my logic. My experience vastly outweighs any accolades I would receive from continuing with a technical degree. At this point in my career, a Masters is merely a checklist item on someone's list. Why not focus on fun? I am already spending a lot of time doing things like SCUBA diving, backcountry skiing, and mountain climbing. Should I want to retire from video games or the tech industry, I could switch careers and become a backpacking or heli-skiing guide.

For those of you looking to do the opposite or to go from a non-technical degree and trying to get a Masters in Computer Science, I don't recommend it. There are some fundamental Math and Physics that you will have to review or learn. I would hate to have to go back and learn to do integration by parts, which is something I did frequently in my electronic circuits classes.

Now if I can only convince my company that an advanced degree in Outdoor Leadership is worth our tuition reimbursement program. I doubt it but it is worth a shot.

Carefully Balancing Battery Power

Every week I participate in at least one emergency amateur radio (ham) net. My Sunday evening net usually includes a training item to help us keep our ham radio skills sharp. Our most common topic is making sure we keep radio batteries charged and always have spares. This comes up so much because someone will start talking and then drop off the air with the primary cause being a dead battery. The guilty party will sheepishly rejoin the group and admit to what we already knew: no power.

This evening I find myself nursing the battery life on one of my two mobile phones. I am at the airport waiting to catch my weekly flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. While taking the shuttle bus from my office to the airport, I have been listening to music on my phone. I used my work phone as it is the one paired with my wireless headphones.

For the flight home I plan to watch a movie. Once again I will be using my work phone as it has a larger screen than my personal phone. I just looked at my power meter and I am burning through my battery rather quickly. I decided to turn off my music to help conserve power so I have more than enough to watch a movie on the plane. On my flight there are USB port at each seat to charge electronic devices. Unfortunately I don't carry a charging cable with me for my work phone. I may just want to get a spare for this occasion. Then I won't have to work so carefully to balance battery power.

The Biggest Shopping Day of the Year

Some people think the biggest shopping day of the year is the day after Thanksgiving or Black Friday. Actually it is the day after Christmas. That is when people bring back the wrong size gifts and exchange them for the right size. It is also the day that everything goes on sale and you can find a great deal on something you may have wanted for Christmas but didn't get.

Naturally I try to avoid being anywhere near a store on this day. I don't want to get trampled. I also know that today is one of the busiest ski days of the year and so I even avoided skiing at a ski resort. Once again, I don't want to get trampled. Instead I grabbed my youngest son and we went for a hike . . . with our skis on. We headed out just North of Alta ski area and headed up Grizzly Gulch for a morning of hiking and bottomless powder. We had quite a nice time and avoided the crowds.

After skiing there are some things I needed to pick up. I recently bought a new truck and certain items will make the pick-truck more useful. My oldest son showed up at the house shortly after I did and was more than happy to help me spend money. Remember that I didn't want to go anyplace as the stores can be chaotic. Instead we looked online. I started with a bed cover as I hate shoveling snow and don't want to have to shovel it out of the bed of my truck. I found one online before Christmas but had trouble finding it for the same price after. My son suggested Amazon. Sure enough, a name-brand cover that I wanted was even less expensive than I had seen it previously.

Next I needed to get a ham radio for the new vehicle. I had done my research several weeks ago and went to my usual source: Ham Radio Outlet. I loaded up my virtual shopping cart with the radio, antenna, and antenna mount. Then my son suggested I look at Amazon. This time, the radio cost significantly more and so I stuck with my original source.

Amazon has great prices on certain things and can be a great place to shop. Sometimes there are better prices elsewhere and so it pays to do a bit of looking around. Fortunately it doesn't require driving to a different store or even any walking. You can do it all from the comfort of your couch.

Using my Chromebook with my Ham Radio

Last weekend I had the pleasure of staying up all Friday night and helping with the Wasatch 100 ultra marathon. It is something my wife and I do every year around this time. We volunteer our evening and help provide the race officials with the times that runners enter and leave our checkpoint at the 63-mile mark known as Scott's Peak.

I have a portable ham-radio box that contains 2 different radios. One radio we use to communicate with race officials using voice. The second radio is connected to some additional equipment that allows us to send data to a server. Using both radios allows a lot of flexibility. Rather than tie up the airwaves speaking racer numbers and times, we just enter that into the computer and transmit it more efficiently. We still make a few mistakes and have to correct them but it is a lot better than doing everything by voice.

In years past, I have used a full-blown laptop as the computer to connect with the ham radio. This is because I have needed special software to interface everything. I started noticing others talk about using tablet computers and figured I could probably get away with using my Chromebook. While my laptop has a good 5-hour battery life, my Chromebook has more than 3 times that amount.

Using some spare time over Labor Day weekend, I connected my Chromebook to my radio gear and worked through all of the bugs to get everything functioning properly. I had to run through a number of different terminal programs as some will not interface directly with my USB connection but eventually I found one that worked. After using it for the evening, I will try to find something else for next year as it did have a problem or two. The most glaring one is that I could not set the backspace key to control-h like the radio software expected. Any time I made a mistake typing, I had to use the control-backspace combination and sometimes that didn't work. Given a bit more time, I'm sure I could have found a terminal program that worked better and will look into that for next year. On the PC I can just use Putty.

I have to say that I am happy I did a bit of playing around before the race. My Chromebook is significantly less expensive and much lighter than my laptop. It worked almost as well and we got our runner times entered efficiently. I wonder what I can do next year to improve our setup? I'm sure I will come up with something.

Inspiration From a Hobby

On Monday I met with our company lawyers to start the application process for another patent. This will be my second with my current company. I can't really go into the idea as it will take some time to get the application completed and it is best not to say anything about it until that point.

I can write about the inspiration for my idea though and where it came from. At the start of my career I took a class titled, "Thinking Outside the Box." There were a lot of people with many different careers and so it was kind of fun to find out what other people did and why they were there. During the course of the class we all talked about our hobbies. Our instructor mentioned that we might find solutions to our work problems from other sources, including our hobbies. For some reason, that idea stuck with me. I still can't figure out how to get good ideas from skiing, but the idea for my patent came from another hobby: ham radio.

I have been given a new project at work and started thinking about how to break up a really large task into smaller ones. In working with machine learning (ML), one needs a large training data set. So before you can really do anything with ML, you need to gather data. While thinking about how to get this information for my project I started thinking about the data gathering process and realized that something I do with ham radio could be used to help with my project. I immediately sat down with one of our patent agents who agreed my solution could be used to solve a number of problems and so he set up an appointment with our lawyers.

I used to think that the best way to get ahead with my career was to focus on computers and even make it my hobby. After 30 years in the computer industry, I can say that is a recipe for career burnout. Instead take the time to pick up a hobby or two. You never know when it will be the source for a brilliant idea.

Poor Use of Technology

Last weekend I helped out with the Wasatch 100 ultra marathon. Basically about 400 people signed up to try and run 100 miles in a 36-hour time period. I help with 2 such events every year, with this being the second one. I get to hang out with my wife and a few friends all night on Friday recording when runners come through the 64-mile aid station. We then send the runner number with arrival and departure times to the race organizers who make the information available on their website. This helps friends and family know where runners are but it also helps if we need to do any search and rescue for overdue runners.

I have been helping with the Wasatch 100 for about 4 years now and taken a primary role for the past 2. We use packet radio to transmit the data and that saves a lot of time over sending the information by voice. Both can be done with ham radio and both work well for us.

Last year I was asked to set up a new ham radio technology called a mesh network. The primary radio person before me had tried for 2 years to get it working only to have it fail. I didn't have enough time to work with the organizer ham radio operators to get it set up before the run started and so we went without it. Besides, we had a perfectly reasonable solution with packet radio. Sure it is slow, but it works.

This year, the organizer ham radio operators enlisted the services of a new guy to try and set up the mesh network again. The new guy let me know his plan and I welcomed him onto the radio team. I also filled him in on previous years and the attempt to get the new technology working. We all showed up and started getting things going. The packet radio worked as well this year as it did last and the new guy never could get the mesh network completely running. When it came time to take down our equipment, the new guy had a lot of hardware to pack up and fit in his truck. We just had a tiny little radio, laptop computer, and an antenna.

The new guy summed up his experience with using a mesh network instead of packet radio by saying, "It is a complicated solution to a problem that has already been solved." My fellow ham radio operators at our aid station couldn't agree more.

Waking Up Early

Every time I think I have this jet-lag thing figured out, I prove that I don't. I got home from Japan Friday evening and immediately went to bed. I woke up at 4:30 am and started the day as I couldn't fall back asleep. That gave me time to go through all of my accumulated e-mail and postal mail before the family got up and we went skiing.

I stayed up as late as I could on Saturday evening yet found myself asleep at 8:30pm. I thought I would sleep through the night but was up at 1:30am, unable to do anything more than force my eyes closed. I got out of bed at 3:30am and did a few quiet projects around the house.

Last night I stayed up and made it to 10:30 before I fell asleep. Then I was up this morning at 4:30 ready to go. The nice thing about being up so early is that I was able to get an early start on the day. I finished watching a YouTube video from a recent ham-radio conference. Then I read my e-mail from the weekend. When my wife woke up to get ready for work, I talked to her. I really felt like I got an early start on the day and appreciated what seemed like extra hours in the day.

Unfortunately it is only 5:30pm and I am ready for bed. My wife got tickets to go see a high-school play this evening in support of our niece. I hope I actually get to watch it and I don't end up taking a nap. Stupid jet-lag.

A Case For Wearing A Wrist Watch

Recently I had the chance to help provide radio support for the Salt Flats 100 Endurance Run. My radio buddy and I got to our assignment at aid station 13 just after 8pm as the sun was setting. The road we traveled was more of a nasty Jeep trail that was impassable in any vehicle without high ground clearance. We'd been given this spot as we had such a vehicle that was more than capable to get to such a remote destination. Even though most of the race is held in the Salt Flats of Utah, this particular checkpoint was actually in Nevada.

My buddy and I arrived and met the helpers at the station before setting up our radio equipment. Once we turned on the radio, we started getting reports from station 12 which straddled the Utah/Nevada border. As is the fad these days, they were using their mobile phones to provide the times that the runners arrived and departed. Unfortunately the close proximity to the Mountain and Pacific timezones was wreaking havoc on their information. One runner would come in at 11:20 pm and then leave at 12:30am, but was only stopped for 10 minutes. Worse was when someone would come in at 12:30am and then leave at 11:40pm. Eventually they figured out what was going wrong and radioed the correct times to the start/finish crew.

We didn't have that problem at aid station 13 as we were so remote, we didn't get mobile phone service. To keep my battery from running down, I just turned off my phone. When it came time to provide times for the runners, I just used my wrist watch. It may not have been as accurate as the time kept by my phone, but when you are measuring times in hours, a few seconds difference is no big deal.

For the record, the winning time was 17 hours 59 minutes and 30 seconds. His next closest competitor came in at 19:13:36. I'm fatigued from the event and I had the luxury of riding around in a Jeep. I can only imagine how tired they are.

Online Purchase Problems

I was finally able to get my taxes done and discovered that I have a few dollars coming back to me. In anticipation of my refund, I have made one or two online purchases. If you know what you are looking for and have the correct size information, it can be a very economical way to buy things. Yesterday I got bit by the size bug.

Last month I purchased a new ham radio capable of talking with people all around the world. Unfortunately the radio is the simplest purchase as there are a number of other accessories also required. The most important accessory is the antenna. While I could buy one, I thought I would try my hand at making a number of different types. I picked up a bunch of wire from Home Depot and have been having fun making dipoles for several different frequency bands. I am experimenting at this point and so my antennas are not that robust. In other words, they keep breaking. In an attempt to create a more permanent antenna, I went online and ordered a few parts.

I have been reading a lot of antenna building instructions and wanted to pick up some insulators. They are used to help hang dipole antennas without having the support structure become part of the antenna. I located some nice dog-bone insulators that looked to be the right size and ordered them from a reputable online store. They arrived yesterday and surprised me with how big they are. The online picture had no reference and so I assumed they were about an inch long. It turns out they are not 1 but 3 inches long. I didn't realize when I ordered them that they would be the size of an actual dog bone.

The insulators were only a dollar each and will work for my project. Furthermore they are very robust and will help me create an antenna that should survive a hurricane. I'm glad I wasn't ordering a shirt as I would have gotten a tent.

Software Define Radios

I have found my new favorite website. It is www.websdr.org and allows anyone with a Java and Javascript enabled browser to tune into a personal ham radio. You don't have to have an FCC license to use it because you are only allowed to listen and not transmit. However for someone interested in learning about amateur radio, it is a great tool.

The technology that allows each user to individually tune the radio is a software defined radio (SDR). That means that there is an antenna connected to an analog-to-digital converter. The converter listens to the entire frequency band and the user uses software to focus in on a small section of that band. Otherwise it would be impossible to listen to all of conversations at once.

One nice thing about SDRs is that you can create a waterfall display. That makes it really easy to see where others are talking and tune in. On a conventional radio, you are stuck tuning yourself or using an automated scan. It is cumbersome and noisy, not to mention it takes forever to find anyone having a conversation.

When I came across the website, I thought the waterfall display required expensive radio equipment that I couldn't afford. Then I looked into one of the sites and saw that radio receivers are only $20. Now that is really amazing. I may have to get one.

Finding Bugs

Recently I purchased a new Ham radio. It isn't anything special, just an inexpensive hand-held unit used to help with local events or emergencies. This new radio has the ability to program 128 memory channels using a personal computer. The application runs on Windows and presents you with a spreadsheet-style interface. You fill out specific parameters for each of the memory locations and then upload the information to the radio through a USB cable. This is much simpler than entering all of the information by hand using the radio's cumbersome menu system.

I don't think the software to program my radio was ever fully tested. It took me a good hour to figure out how to use it. Now that I have figured it out, it is really simple to use. The problem was that you have to do things in a certain order. If you don't then the software freezes or refuses to communicate to the radio. It was frustrating while I was figuring it out and I almost sent back the radio.

Testing is very important and something that I have to do on a software project I am working on in my spare time. Since I spend most of my evenings away from home, I have three or four hours a night to work on the software and it is coming a long nicely. When I was home in Utah this weekend, I took the opportunity to show it to my wife. I noticed several problems during the course of my demo and was able to get them fixed immediately.

Most commercial software companies have formalized methods they use to ensure their products live up to expected levels of quality. One method is using someone who didn't write the software to test it. For smaller organizations, such as a guy working on software in his basement, garage, or boat, the demo to spouse or kids can serve a similar purpose. If only the company that wrote the software for my new Ham radio had been so careful. Then I wouldn't have blown a Friday evening trying to figure out how to get their software to work.

Where are all the Hobbyists?

There is not much to do in the evenings on a sailboat once the sun goes down. I really only have 3 choices: go out, watch TV, or read. Lately I have been studying electrical engineering. While I was in school getting my degree, I took a lot of different courses and was presented with a lot of information without any context. I remember having one class on feedback systems and kept trying to get the instructor to explain a real-world application for this information. It is only since I have gotten my amateur radio (ham) license that I have seen useful applications for all the stuff I learned in school. Why couldn't one of my professors just drawn a block diagram of a radio receiver and showed us a practical application for what we were learning? My gut tells me that they didn't have a clue either.

While I was going to school, I had a good friend that had gotten his ham radio license while in the Boy Scouts. He seemed to understand all of the principles being taught every day and had the best grades in all of his classes. Now it makes sense, he had a practical application for everything he was learning. While the rest of us were just trying to get the math right, he knew where the circuit would be useful and why we were designing it that way. Getting my ham radio license when I was in the Boy Scouts really would have helped my college career.

All of this studying combined with Lance Armstrong's bad luck in the Tour de France this year has gotten me thinking about the old Radio Shack store. If you don't know, Lance rides for team Radio Shack, which is trying to shake off 20 years of declining popularity. When I was a boy, I used to go to Radio Shack and look at all of their neat electronics kits. You could buy things like resistors, diodes, and capacitors. Even though I had no clue what they did, I wanted some. I had visions of creating wonderful electronic devices in my garage, as did many other visitors to the store at that time.

Now when you walk into a Radio Shack, it is like a ghost town. I don't know how they stay in business because nobody is ever there. Sure they sell things like mobile phones, but so does every other store. I'm just waiting for Starbucks to add them to their list of goods. If you go to the back of your nearest Radio Shack, they still have individual electronic components but I never see anyone back there.

This has me asking the question: Where are all of the hobbyists? Have they disappeared or are they still out there?

5-0 Radio for the iPhone

This past weekend I got the chance to help my nephew with his Eagle Scout service project. He is part of an Explorer Post that specializes in HAM radio. So for his project, he helped out with radio support for the Squaw Peak 50 Mile Trail Run. People actually start running at 5:00 am and run all day long until about 11:30 at night. There are 10 aid stations along the way. My job was to help staff one of the stations and record when the runners came in and when they left. I would then relay this information back to the start/finish so they could post the times online.

It was a lot of fun and I was glad to be able to use a skill for something other than just playing around. When the last racer left my station, I jumped in a 4x4 and headed back to the start/finish. I was having so much fun, I decided to help there and stuck around for another couple of hours.

On Sunday evening I was able to participate in a HAM radio emergency practice drill that takes place every week. It only took 10 minutes of my time and was something I could do while packing to leave town.

Yesterday I must have been going through HAM withdrawals because I did an Internet search for the Amateur Radio Disaster Services (ARES) group that is responsible for the area where I keep my boat. I discovered that they do their weekly drill on Monday evenings. Unfortunately I don't have my HAM radio with me and so I couldn't participate. Then I remembered that I have an application on my iPhone called "5-0 Radio." It allows me to listen in on a large number of HAM radio conversations. I did a quick lookup and the Monday evening drill was available to listen to. So I sat down on the couch in my boat, put my earphones on, and listened to the drill. I couldn't talk as the application only allows users to listen. However, I probably wouldn't have talked anyways. I just wanted to get a feel for how the drill was conducted and to make sure my own radio etiquette is as it should be.

When you see the Apple iPhone commercial and listen to them list a bunch of different applications, they aren't lying. If you have a need for any type of information, there probably is an app for that. Now if I can just get my iPhone to do my laundry . . .

Ham Radio License

On Tuesday evening I went with my youngest son Nathan to take my Ham radio test. We both passed the technician portion and I also passed the general. That means we are both licensed Ham radio operators.

The FCC currently has three levels of licenses for amateur or Ham radio: Technician, General, and Amateur Extra. The first level is Technician and allows you to get your proverbial feet wet. The next is general and opens up several more frequency levels. Amateur Extra opens up all of the frequencies set aside for Ham radio.

The tests are fairly easy if you study the correct material. When you are done taking one test, the administrators hand you the next level test that you can take without paying any additional fees. If you pass all three, you can save yourself some money. The problem is that there is a lot to learn. I will probably study for the next two months and try to take the "Extra" test at the end of January.

My son and I came home and were very pleased that we both passed the tests. All we needed to do was wait for the FCC to enter our information in their database and assign us call signs. The government is not known for being efficient and with the Thanksgiving weekend, I didn't think we would see our call signs until next week. Even though we have passed our tests and have a radio, we can't transmit anything until our names and call signs show up in the FCC database.

Wednesday afternoon I felt optimistic and logged onto the FCC website and did a search for my name to see if my call sign was available. It wasn't. I did a bit more work and spent some time with the family. Before going to bed, I thought I would give it one more shot. Rather than searching for my name, I searched using my FCC Registration Number (FRN) that I signed up for several weeks ago. Surprisingly, I found my license and call sign properly recorded. I was amazed.

Next I had to find my son's information. I tried doing a look up on his name but didn't find his record. Next I did a look up on our zip code and last name. There it was located with mine.

Before the Internet became a household utility, it would take weeks to process Ham radio licenses. It took my son and I less than 30 hours to get our licenses and be able to start using our radio. I think that is awesome and an example of one huge that the Internet has provided for our day-to-day lives.