QST de N7GMT

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now normally I’m not into re-posting EweToob stuff, and I typically abhor Flash movies … but I found this roll-on-the-floor funny. Thanks, Wes!

{wanders off humming the Mahna-Mahna song to self}

The last full weekend in June is ARRL’s Field Day 2008 (yes, I’m just that slow posting). This year my boys and I joined UDXA in their FD outing up on Skyline Drive near Fairview, UT. They boys aren’t yet licensed but I figured this would be a good year to have them work on the GOTA station. This station is specifically meant to let folks get acquainted with Amateur Radio … and hopefully to get them bitten by the Ham bug!

Warming up in the sun while eating breakfast.

The boys had a blast! They each made about twenty-five contacts with folks from all over the States. One YL had already worked our station, but wanted to work us again, just because we had young folk on the radio. My boys are nine and six.

My nine year-old, the Gamer, was working stations almost without prompting from the get-go. He is my Ham buddy and has worked a contest or six with me before. He’s getting quite good, actually. Once he has listened to me give a contest exchange several times, and has done a couple of them himself, he settles right down and works like a veteran. Several of the UDXAers commented on how well he did and how impressed they were with his operating skills. We <cough>I</cough> need to get him going on getting his license so he can join me more regularly.

This was the first serious radio event for my six year-old, the Etymologist. He was a bit nervous and a bit shy at first, what with everyone wanting to help him. Once he warmed up, he did really well, though — especially once he got his “outside” voice going. (Not his real outside voice, which he occasionally uses on a festering, ingrown sibling, but his normal voice with enough punch behind it to bust a pile up! I was very proud of him.) He turned out to be the darling of the GOTA tent; every shutterbug in camp wanted their turn to get pics of him with the headset and boom mic on.

The night before, my boys and I wrangled ourselves some radio time over on one of the rigs just to see if maybe we could make a few contacts for fun. Thanks to Hal, WA6ZHK up in Roseville near Sacramento, CA; and to Craig, N7CAL, up in Custer, Montanna. The boys were especially excited to talk to Craig: he lives and works on a spread up there in big sky country, where they ride four-wheelers and horse to help run about 900 head of cattle. To a couple of suburbanite boys, that sounded like heaven! (Craig was going to be having a different kind of field day; he was expecting a “water turn.” Having cousins who had to herd cattle and help with the water turns, I know it can be fun — for about one day, then fun it is&nbsp;&hellip; not quite so much. Brought back fond memories though. Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Craig!)

Sunrise behind the SSB tower.

The club was running 3A — which means three full-time stations running on generator power. We had a dedicated CW station (operating Morse code), a dedicated SSB station for voice contacts, and a “mixed” station for working either CW or SSB on whatever band seemed to be hopping and would help us get the most points. This group is incredible; they had two huge towers up there on Skyline Drive. Oh, and they call it Skyline for a reason. the horizon up there is (at or lower than) straight out pretty much in all directions. It’s a beautiful area. There were virtually no flying critters (we saw a few ’skeeters and a fly or three) and the temperature was pretty mild at 9100 ft. (2770 m) ASL. There were lots of ants and old mole trails, but that was just for effect.

Cereal at 9100 feet ASL.

All in all, it was a very pleasant weekend. We only stayed the one night and left about six hours into the actual operating event, but even that little bit was a bunch of fun. I certainly wouldn’t mind going up again next year; maybe this time we can stay long enough so my boys’ dad can get some operating time in himself.

Go Team!

So my buddy is in China. Normally he is someplace much less exotic but this summer he decided that the family togetherness activity should be “live in China for two months.”

This isn’t actually as bizarre as it might sound. Each year our company has us set, well, personal growth goals might be an appropriate description. We have a portion of our yearly bonus tied to these … things. (I HAET the word “goal.”) Anyroad, my buddy decided a couple of years back that he was going to learn Mandarin Chinese, as he was going to be in charge of one of our development teams in Beijing. He did quite well, actually. On his trips over there he was able to hold his own in the little markets and managed to purchase interesting snacks like fried scorpion (yes, on purpose; he says they taste kind of like popcorn. We share this love of funky food, btw.) His wife even got on board and started learning Chinese as well.

To cut to the chase, they decided to take the whole family (four boys ranging from about eight to 17, and known collectively as The Busters), rent an apartment in Beijing, and live there for two months. He will spend the week in the office, more or less, and they will spend weekends (and some evenings, I’m sure) exploring bits of China and havening [sic] what, IMO, could be best described as “a blast.”

Wait, I still haven’t gotten to the point of this post. I mentioned he’s kind of in charge of one of the software development teams in our Beijing office, right? Well, not so much for the project we’re on, but he is one of our senior developers and well versed in some of the more important “good engineering practices.” So one of his primary tasks, while in Beijing, is to train our coworkers there in some of the techniques we’ve been learning here. Mostly it’s stuff we’ve been (slowly) learning from Ye’ Olde Skool of Harde Knocks, but we’ve had some formalized training (read “paid good money for”) in things like design patterns, test-driven development, Qualities, the importance of automated testing, and a whole bunch of other things.

[When is he going to get to the point?!]

One of the Qualities of good software design is proper use of cohesion and coupling — that is individual chunks should be highly cohesive (all the little bits should be highly related to each other and do exactly one primary thing), but have low coupling (the chunk should not require extensive knowledge of other chunks, and the chunks they do use should be easily replaceable with other similar chunks). He was trying to explain these concepts, in English and broken Chinese, to his Chinese co-workers — who, coincidentally, speak excellent Chinese, but speak levels of English ranging from “broken” to “conversational.” Many were unfamiliar with the English term cohesion so he asked one of the senior Chinese developers for the proper Chinese word used to convey this software engineering concept. Everyone seemed to be more comfortable with the concept after that.

Not to be left out, however, my buddy had to know the etymology for the Chinese word (for cohesion) and how it translated back to English. The Chinese-English dictionary software he was using provided him with the word coacervate.

I quote from dictionary.com:

co·ac·er·vate – [n. koh-as-er-vit, -veyt, koh-uh-sur-vit; v. koh-as-er-veyt, koh-uh-sur-veyt] noun, verb, -vat·ed, -vat·ing.]

–noun

1. Physical Chemistry. a reversible aggregation of liquid particles in an emulsion.

Pretty wild, eh? How about this one:

co·ac·er·vate (k-sr-vt)
n.

1. A cluster of molecules.
2. A cluster of droplets separated out of a lyophilic colloid.

and one more:

Main Entry: co·ac·er·vate
Pronunciation: kO-'as-&r-"vAt
Function: noun
: an aggregate of colloidal droplets held together by electrostatic attractive forces

But personally I like the definition my brother graciously volunteered when I informed him via IM that coacervate was the word for the day:

definition: a soothing cocoa based bromide

So there you have it. Coacervate is a whole bunch of things kind of like cohesion … or possibly something soothing involving the same stuff from which chocolate is made.

Which one will you remember?