QST de N7GMT

OK, this blog has been too long neglected. Those responsible have been sacked, and henceforth the blog will be maintained by llamas.

That said, I had a fun weekend with the SCATeam and ARES out helping with the Pony Express Days concert and fireworks in Eagle Mountain. They held a Tribute to our Troops concert Saturday night. I was working security and traffic control so I didn’t get to hear much of the concert, but I was nigh ground-zero for the fireworks. Always fun having shells going off right over head.

The concert ran a little over … by over an hour. I’m sure those who wanted to hear the band didn’t mind, but those of us standing around waiting for the fireworks …

And it’s absolutely amazing the dumb things drivers will do, even knowing there’s herd of Sheriff’s Deputies standing around just waiting for you to do said “dumb things.” Really, folks, you are not special; you are not entitled. There were three or four cars that ignored directions from uniformed officers, skirted rows of cones and flares to drive through the fireworks drop-zone! Gives all new meaning to the term “Utahrd.” I was stationed where they were headed and the deputy I was assisting gave them a good chewing out. Satisfying.

My 11-year-old neighbor got written up in the local newspaper for earning his ham-radio ticket—and not just his Technician, but all the way to Amateur Extra!

I don’t know how long they keep the article around, so I’ll include it below.

I first learned about Adam when a neighbor called to ask about classes. By the time I managed to get through the phone-tag game, he’d already passed the Technician class and needed help picking his first HT. He then went on to earn his General and Extra class licenses in short order. He’s quite the self-starter and will go far. He occasionally comes over to my shack to operate while he saves money to buy his own HF gear.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s a reprint of the Deseret News article:

Adam Lee, 11, shows off his hand-held ham radio, which he hopes to upgrade this summer to one that can transmit and receive calls from around the world. He passed his exam for an extra-class license in February. (Photo by Jason Olson, Deseret News)

Pl. Grove 11-year-old acquires top ham-radio license

By James Davis

Deseret News

Published: Saturday, March 14, 2009 10:37 p.m. MDT

PLEASANT GROVE — Most people know him as Adam Lee, but the 11-year-old Pleasant Grove boy has another identity: KE7UZK.

The Barratt Elementary School sixth-grader isn’t a spy or secret agent. Adam is a ham radio operator, and KE7UZK is his call sign.

At BYU’s Howard W. Hunter Law Library on Feb. 18, Adam passed the Federal Communications Commission’s extra-class, amateur radio-licensing exam, making him one of the youngest ham radio operators on the airwaves. Extra is the highest of three U.S. amateur radio-licensing classes, and it gives Adam the privilege of operating any type of ham radio on any amateur band.

Adam said he caught the ham radio bug last year while working on the Boy Scout radio merit badge.

“I wanted to learn more about ham radio,” he said. “So I got my technician (license) in July, and then I just kept going and got my general and extra.”

Technician is the lowest license class for ham radio operators, and general is the middle class. Adam said the exam for the technician class focused more on logic, and the general- and extra-class exams become more technical.

For now, Adam is the man around the Lee house when it comes to radios. His dad, Sam Lee, only recently passed the technician exam.

“A lot of adults try to pass the extra,” the elder Lee said. “And it’s not an easy test to pass, so (other operators are) impressed that he’s already passed the test.”

For Christmas, Adam wanted an amateur-extra study manual full of technical information and practice test questions. Prior to taking the test, operators must understand radio-wave propagation, electrical principles, circuit components, signals and emissions, antennas and transmission lines.

From January until his test last month, Adam read the study book three times from cover to cover, evidenced by his book’s worn corners, highlighted pages and bookmarks. Sometimes his father would help by quizzing the boy.

“Without even giving him the choices, he would know the answer,” Sam Lee said. “He just knew this inside and out. It was amazing.”

With new privileges afforded him thanks to his amateur-extra license, Adam has hopes to upgrade his radio this summer. Right now, he has a small hand-held device with a maximum range of about 400 miles. He said the most distant operator he’s contacted was up in North Salt Lake.

“I’m saving for a bigger radio so I can go all the way around the world,” Adam said, adding that he particularly wants to talk to radio operators in Europe.

Also on his wish list is a new call sign. Amateur-extra operators usually have a shorter call sign than the six-digit identifier he currently uses.

“Right now my call is KE7UZK, but when I passed my extra, I told them to change it,” Adam said. “So I’m still waiting for the new call and my new license to come in the mail.”

The oldest of five kids, Adam excels at school — especially in math. The young ham radio operator participates in Alpine School District’s accelerated learning lab with classmates who learn at a faster pace than others.

School, Scouting and other activities prevent Adam from spending as much time radioing as he’d like — “probably once a week or maybe a little bit more,” he said.

E-mail: jdavis@desnews.com

Kudos, Adam! And remember, I was able to give you almost no help, ya little whipper-snapper!

I got a kewl new logger for my birthday! Whaddya think?

My "new" (used) manual typewriter

OK, so I don’t really plan on logging with it. It’s just a nostalgia kind of thing, I guess:

While I was serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a., The Mormons) I bought myself a little fire-engine red, manual typewriter. I loved that little thing, German key layout and all. I even got pretty good at typing on it—that means typing without many errors, something nigh unheard of in today’s culture of “the easy backspace.”

I have but one regret, regarding that typewriter. As it had a German key layout, I figured I should probably leave it in Germany for the next missionary who wanted a typewriter to use. I wish, wish, wish I had brought it home with me.

My Sweetie found this one for me on eBay, and surprised me with it for my birthday. Thanks so much, Sweetie! Who knows, once I have a real shack, it might just find its way down there, and I might even really do some logging with it. (Don’t hold your breath, though.)

Funk- — of or relating to radio.
Vergnügung — enjoyment, pleasure.
Funkvergnügung would therefore be something akin to operating pleasure.

Ahh — the K3/100 is here! All unpacked, assembled, (troubleshot, sent back, repaired, aligned, reshipped, and re-unpacked,) antennified, and energized.

Operating the K3 — Funkvergnügung!

The first weekend I had it (all healthy and whole) was the CQWW-SSB contest. This is 48 hours of pure DXer heaven — well, for those of us who don’t do CW well enough anyway. Stations from all over the world are on, trying to contact everyone else they can. I only had 58 Qs (QSOs: contacts) in the few hours I had to operate. Many were from Argentina and Brazil, with a few other South American contacts, a few Hawaii and Mexico stations, and a solid contact with a station in Spain!

The crazy thing, for me, was how wonderfully selective the K3 was, as compared to my IC-706MKIIG, and even my K2. Admittedly, I do have some nice roofing filters in the K3, but being able to tune up and down the band and have stations copyable despite the closeness to other stations … sometimes they were less than 1-kHz apart, but still workable, where all of my other radios want the more standard 2.5- to 3-kHz spacing between stations if you want to reliably understand what they’re saying.

Simply amazing.

I love my new K3. I had a chance to do some A/B testing with an IC-756 ProIII at another club-member’s home, and while there were strong similarities in capabilities between the radios, and even though his had some nice features — like the band-scope, being sexier to look at — I’ll keep my K3, and be very satisfied with it.

Thank you, Elecraft, for designing and producing such a nice radio. Not for everyone, admittedly, but I’m one happy camper — erm, ham-mer.

For those interested in the problem:
There was an intermittent solder short from the factory on one of the boards which caused one of the many micro-controllers to fail. Gary, on their tech support staff, was very good to work with, and helped me narrow the problem down over several days (email exchanges being what they are). Elecraft made good on it though, and did all the repair work. They even aligned the radio once everything was working. They want to make sure that all the parts are not just working, but working together in the system as well as they can make it work. That meant I had to be a little patient again, but that’s OK. This radio’s a joy to own and operate!

OK, so whose idea was it to hold the Payson Golden Onion Days Parade in the freezing, hail-laden, nigh-hurricane yesterday?! Seriously wet. And cold. Those poor Queens and Attendants up there on their floats. The Drill Teams, Bands, and other assorted marchers. Yikes!

Here, let me show you what I mean:

Incoming storm (with reports of hail on its way)

Color Guard at the head of the Parade
(They’re not going to let a little rain and wind stop them!)

National Guard (hopefully dressed for the weather)

After that, it got down-right nasty out there. The winds were whipping along, rain was coming down in sheets. Nearly everyone stayed right on parading though:

A soggy marching band

A soggy float

Soggy pipers

Not everyone let a bit of damp get their spirits down. Apparently they grow them plucky down in Santaquin. Here we see Miss Santaquin and her Attendants really doing their best to show us they’re having a grand time, the sassy wenches! Way to go, gals!

Miss Santaquin and her “Attitudes”

We were operating at the announcer booths so we could feed them line-up changes and call in any problems. I was actually under the Push-Up shelter thingy for the announcer, so I only got wet from the waist down (about where my rain-coat stopped), but with the temperature drop and the wind-chill from 20-50 mph winds, I can only imagine how miserable some of those parade folks were.

As it was, we lost the mountain-top repeater for a bit — possibly due to the lightning in the area — and had to switch to a backup frequency. Other than that (and the weather) the parade went very smoothly.

Certainly not something anyone will be forgetting any time soon.

Oh, and do you know what puncture weeds are, or “goats heads”? These little beggars completely covered the empty lot where we were setup. A few folks came through in flip-flops — which, given the weather, I thought was insane anyway — but no one seemed to get stuck very bad. It took me a while to pull out all the goats heads stuck to the bottom of my shoes when I got home, and longer to pull out all the broken off spikes. These things are vicious! Take a closer look at the tires on this pickup that had backed up to the sidewalk so they could watch the parade from the bed.

A young man in my neighborhood went down to the Utah County ARES Field Day outing. They were setup to teach the Radio merit badge. He got so excited about the whole thing that he went, found himself a book, studied, and took and passed the test!

By the time I met up with him, he had his license (Welcome aboard!) and was looking for help deciding which radio to get first. I went over to their house one evening and … well, you know me, I explained and enthused and went on about the hobby.

He and I have been corresponding via email and talking on the phone whenever he has a question. I invited him and his parents to come over anytime to get on the air to experience a little HF.

Today, about half-an-hour before we left for Day 3 of the DeHart family reunion, he called to see if this would be a good Saturday to try HF. We were pressed for time, but it gave me an excuse to <ahem> unpack my rig that had been packed since Field Day. I got it setup and we started dialing around.

We tried a little CQing on 20 meters but had no takers. (Probably a little early in the day.)

We moved down to 40 to try our luck there. We found a couple of conversations in progress, so we slid down a little further to find a free frequency. I had been doing all the calling up to this point, to show him how it was done, but now it was his turn. I wrote out how to call, using my callsign, and handed him the mic.

I think he was a little nervous, but like a trooper, he keyed up and called.

CQ CQ from N7GMT, November Seven Golf Mike Tango…

He only called two or three times when we got an answer:

N7GMT N7GMT this is KF7FA, over

I could almost read the question in his eyes, “Yikes! Now what do I say?”

I whispered to him some simple things to say, and KF7FA, Larry, was very friendly and helpful, holding up his end of the conversation. We found out he lives in Lake Davis, CA, which is about 45 miles north of Lake Tahoe. We did the basic first-contact stuff, exchanged weather and such. He encouraged my young friend to start studying for his General license, to which he responded that he already was. We thanked him for returning our call, wished him well and signed off.

Afterwards there was that little gleam in both our eyes. That is what Ham Radio is all about. Sending your voice out into the aether and having someone else answer you, and you hold a conversation. Total strangers, becoming acquainted, and sometimes becoming life-long friends — even if they never meet face-to-face.

For the log:

30.Aug.2008 16:50Z (10:50h local) - KF7FA, Larry, Lake Davis, CA; Weather 72°F and clear.

Thanks again, Larry! Congratulations and come again, A.

Well, that was a thing. We took the day and went to Lagoon as a big family. We managed to convince my brother-in-law and sister-in-law to come, too! A bit warm, but if you know how to deal with it, it wasn’t too bad, I guess.

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