eHam.net News

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Annual Field Day Unites Ham Radio Operators Around the World:

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 05:59 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36964


Ham radio may be a hobby from the Brady Bunch era, but the retro pastime
has managed to survive in the age of iPhones and internet radio
stations.For two days -- June 25 and June 26 -- ham radio enthusiasts will
gather for Field Day, an annual event designed to test emergency
communication skills and promote interaction with the general public. The
gathering takes place locally at West Delray Regional Park, 10875 W.
Atlantic Ave. "Field Day is the biggest ham radio event of the year," said
Scott Ireland, spokesman for Southern Florida Section ARRL -- the National
Association for Amateur Radio. "Some people are shocked ham radio still
exists. Field Day is about maintaining equipment to see if communication
works properly during emergencies.


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When Everything Else Fails, Amateur Radio Will Still Be There -- Thriving:

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 05:59 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36963


Ham is now a full-fat fabric that can provide Internet access. Why aren't
you using it? It's a good time to be technical. Maker communities are
thriving around the world, tools and materials to create and adapt are
cheaper and more powerful now than ever, and open source hardware,
software, and information mean that if you can think it, you can learn how
to do it and then make it happen. For one group of technological explorers,
this is more than just a golden age of opportunity: it's providing the
means to save one of the oldest traditions in electronic invention and
self-education, one that helped shape the modern world: amateur radio. That
matters. Radio amateurs get a sweet deal, with effectively free access to
many gigahertz of the same radio spectrum that companies pay billions for.
They've earned it. Throughout the history of electronics, they've been at
the borders of the possible, trying out ideas that commerce or government
deem impossible or pointless -- and making them work. One example of
hundreds: Allied military comms in World War II needed a way to reliably
control the radios used by front-line forces, replacing tuning knobs with
channel switches. Hams had the answer ready and waiting: quartz crystal
oscillators. (That's part of computing history too -- you're probably using
about ten of them right now.). The trouble with making a success of
frontier territory is that it doesn't stay frontier for long. As radio hams
colonised new frequencies and new methods, government and commercial
interests wanted in -- and got it. What was useless yesterday can be very
desirable today, and a lot of the ham bands in the once-fallow UHF and
microwave spectrum now look very tempting for wireless data, satellite
downlinks, and the constant chatter of the Internet of Things. Some attacks
on amateur spectrum have been repelled, others have succeeded. More are on
the way.


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Ancient Documents Reveal Sunspots, Auroras, Solar Activity Before Galileo:

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 05:58 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36962


Some references to the phenomena date as early as the seventh century:
Until Galileo kick-started modern astronomy in the early 1600s, the record
of the sun's activities was basically blank -- or so scientists thought. To
shed light on our star's history, researchers at Kyoto University in Japan
have begun to comb through ancient texts. So far they have found dozens of
apparent references to sunspots, auroras and other solar events that date
as far back as the seventh century -- albeit in terms that require more
interpretation than Galileo's drawings. "Although [scientists] can use ice
cores, tree rings and sediments for clues as to past weather and climate
change, things like space weather and auroras leave little or no trace,"
says Bruce Tsurutani, a space plasma physicist at NASA who is not involved
in the Kyoto research. "So we need information that man has taken himself."
To that end, a team of historians and astronomers in Kyoto analyzed
hundreds of handwritten Tang Dynasty documents from China as well as
Japanese and European manuscripts from around the same period, the seventh
to 10th centuries. As reported online in April in Publications of the
Astronomical Society of Japan, the researchers came across the terms "white
rainbows" and "unusual rainbows" again and again. In fact, such spectacles
were written about on the same dates in the documents from all three
regions. Because people in such geographically distant locations
simultaneously reported the phenomenon, the descriptions can only be
explained as auroras, says lead author Hisashi Hayakawa, who is a student
at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Letters. Auroras are caused by
charged particles from the sun colliding with particles in Earth's
atmosphere. They usually occur as rings around our planet's magnetic poles.
Last year the group also published a comprehensive list of what most likely
are sunspots mentioned in the official history of China's Song Dynasty
(10th to 13th centuries), where the spots are described as plums, peaches
or eggs in the sun. Overall they have recorded 38 sunspots, 13 unusual or
white rainbows, and 193 other auroralike events, which are compiled into a
searchable, open database online.


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China Now Has a Flying Propaganda Machine:

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 05:58 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36961


If war breaks out, the Chinese would try 'to broadcast disinformation,
encouraging troops to desert or surrender,' analysts note. Now Beijing has
a tool to help spread the word. The Chinese military has a new warplane
with an unusual purpose: to beam propaganda and disinformation into hostile
territory. In that way, the new, four-engine Y-8GX7 psychological
operations plane -- also known by its Chinese name, Gaoxin-7 -- is
analogous to the U.S. Air Force's EC-130J, which it says "conducts military
information support operations and civil affairs broadcasts in F.M. radio,
television and military communications bands." A flying radio outpost might
seem rather retro, even quaint, in the internet era. But in many of the
world's worst conflict zones, internet access is limited -- and people
still get much of their information from radio and television.


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Tech Review: Stryker SR-955HPC 10 Meter Ham Radio:

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 05:57 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36960


If you recently passed your technician class amateur radio test, then you
probably know that your new license gives you CW operating privileges on
several HF bands. You also just earned yourself 200KHz of SSB voice
privileges in the 10 meter band. The Stryker SR-955HPC covers a frequency
range of 28.000 - 29.700MHz, has an output power of 70+ watts, and is
capable of the following operating modes: SSB, AM, FM, and CW. It also is
PC programmable via the mini USB port on the back of the radio. By putting
all its controls on the front panel in the form of knobs instead of hiding
them away in a confusing labyrinth of menus, Stryker has made the SR-955HPC
user interface easy to use and even quicker to learn. This should make the
SR-955HPC very attractive to new hams who might prefer actually getting on
the air after passing their test instead of reading a encyclopedia-sized
radio manual. There were several functions, however, that I found to be
quite unnecessary for ham radio operations. These include digital voice
echo, customizable roger beeps, and variable talk back control. Luckily,
the controls for these features do not really get in the way of operating
the radio and can be easily ignored. For a rig that sports only a single
band, it seems a little on the expensive side, but considering it can put
out 70 watts of power, is capable of utilizing 10 meter FM repeaters (with
optional CTCSS module), and has an easy to use interface, this may be just
the radio you have been looking for.


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Ham Radio Operators Play Vital Communications Role in Case of Emergency:

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 12:25 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36959


When all else fails ... That is only half the saying but it remains true
today even with the Internet, wireless voice, text, data and video services
available in many places around the world. Many elected officials have
never used any type of wireless device other than their cell phone or now
smartphone and/or tablet, and they don't understand why any other form of
communications is needed -- even for their own public safety first
responders. First responder networks are generally much more robust than
commercial wireless (cellular) networks, but they can still become
overloaded or a portion of the network can be damaged by Mother Nature or
humans. There Is Amateur Radio! What exactly does that mean? First, when
there is a communications failure or multiple failures, amateur radio
operators, commonly known as "Hams," are available to put temporary
communications systems into place. They bring their own radios, build
temporary networks, and do not have to worry about what had been damaged
and how long it will take to get it back on the air. They are
self-sufficient and, as important, they are communicators trained to
provide communications services. Their job is to move urgent or even
administrative traffic from one place to another.


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Repeater Yaesu DR1 FM and C4FM 50% Off!

Posted: 14 Jun 2016 12:37 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/36958


And if it was the right time to anticipate the migration from analogue to
digital mode of your local amateur radio repeater? There is an offer not to
miss, until 30 June 2016 proposed by Yaesu and Passion Radio Shop : The
Yaesu DR1-XE repeater in 19" rack, dual band 144-430 MHz and dual mode
conventional analogue for FM and digital mode in C4FM (System Fusion ).