On February fifth 2008 I reported on a new law to take effect in California which could affect amateur radio operators. This law will prohibit the use of cell phones while driving and is to take effect on July first 2008. Quoting from the DMV’s own website I came to the conclusion that it did not affect any PTT radios which were not part of a cell phone system.

The Question they used was: “Q: May I use a dedicated two-way radio while driving?”

The answer they gave was: “A: Yes. The use of dedicated two-way radios such as walkie-talkies and Citizen Band (CB) radios, which are not part of a wireless telephone, is not affected by the new law.”

Bruce left a comment which said: “You have made a misstatement here. There is no exception for a moble ham radio under this new cell phone law. unless you are driving a commercial vehicle. According to the dmv’s statement you may not use a push to talk device in a passenger vechile. this includes a CB radio.”

I checked the DMV website to see why Bruce had drawn this conclusion and found that the DMV had removed the above Q&A from their site and added a new Q&A which was not there in February.

The new Question is: “Q: What if my phone has a push-to-talk feature, can I use that?”

The new Answer is: “A: No. The law does provide an exception for those operating a commercial motor truck or truck tractor (excluding pickups), implements of husbandry, farm vehicle or tow truck, to use a two-way radio operated by a “push-to-talk” feature. However, a push-to-talk feature attached to a hands-free ear piece or other hands-free device is acceptable.”

The above Q&A, I believe, could change the way the law may be interpreted. The DMV website will not be able to be used as a defense and the way the law itself is written it is vague enough to leave it up to the judge to interpreter.

I am going to make this disclaimer. This post along with any other post in this blog or in any of my blogs is not legal advice. This blog and all of my blogs are strictly personal opinion.

Ramsey Electronics has several inexpensive easy to assemble electronic kits. Some are specifically amateur radio related and others are not. The QAMP40, QAMP30, and QAMP20 are 40,30 and 20 meter 20 watt linear amplifier. Being linear it will run CW, SSB, or AM. It can be driven with ½ to 2 watts with a power requirement of 12 VDC at 4 Amps.

The amplifiers have about a 10 DB gain so 1 watt in equals 10 watts out and 2 watts in equals 20 watts out. They were designed to be used with the Ramsey QRP transmitters which run at about 1 watt.
The instruction booklet, as with all their kits I have assembled so far, is very well done and can be followed by anyone even with no electronic knowledge.

Ramsey’s estimated assembly time is 4 hours for beginner, 2 hours for intermediate, and 1.5 hours for advanced builders. I did not time myself but I would say that their timing estimate is fairly accurate.

The instruction booklet, as with all their kits I have assembled so far, is very well done and can be followed by anyone even with no electronic knowledge.

Alignment is very easy. Basically it is just a matter of setting the bias by adjusting a small potentiometer.

The work horses of the amplifier are two P16NF06 MOSFET transistors. They are run in Push-Pull format so as to reduce potential second harmonic output. It has a 3 stage pi network low pass filter output to further reduce the harmonic output. The input and output to the transistor are both through ferrite wideband transformers.

transformers.

The exciter input uses a T-R relay circuit which is operated by a simple diode detector to sense when RF is applied and a two transistors amplifier circuit to drive the relay. If the power switch is not on the relay will not actuate and thus the exciter can be run “bare foot” but when the power is on it will switch on as soon as the exciter is keyed.

When testing the QAMP I found that ½ watts in gave 5 watts out and 1 watt in gave 10 watts output. An IFR service monitor’s power meter was used for the test. The efficiency is about 30 to 35% which is about where a class AB amplifier should run.

The kits require winding three toroid coils and two ferrite bead transformers. They use enamel insulated wire which Ramsey says can be tined to prepare for soldering without removing the insulation. About a year ago I purchased some of these kits and they surprised me because I was able to tin them using Ramsey’s process but recently I purchased a few more and found the insulation would not burn off. Thus scraping off insulation before soldering was necessary before I was able to solder them. I suspect they may have changed supplier of this wire.

Another problem I have is they supply the MOSFET transistors in plastic envelopes that do not appear to be ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) protection packages. They also do not recommend ESD caution be taken during construction which makes me wonder how many of these transistors are destroyed by electrostatic discharge by builders who are not aware of the danger.

Over all, considering the cost, they are very great little amplifiers to boost the power of your QRP rig.

Recently I received an email from my daughter with an invitation to join Yuwie. After looking at it, at her recommendation, I joined but then tried to understand what it was I joined. After becoming totally confused and receiving several emails from strangers wanting to be my friend I called my daughter and asked her what it was. She said she didn’t know either and she had not received all the emails.

Finally I wrote to Yuwie support and asked them. I received, in part, the following reply, “Yuwie is a social networking site that pays its users. We share our advertising revenue with our members… Basically we pay for page views, yours and those of your referrals.”

The best I can understand is it is a way for people with common interests to maintain contact and pass information. They have people who advertise on their site and when someone visits a member’s page they pay that member part of the commission they receive from the advertiser for showing the page.

There is a profile page and after people read the profile page if they share common interests they can invite them to be a friend. I received over 45 requests to be a friend but after looking at their profile pages I don’t think most of them read my profile page because I could not find any common interests. My daughter said she did not fill in the profile page and that may be the reason she did not get all those requests.

After all that is said I come to the point. It might be fun to develop a group of friends who share my love for ham radio. We can swap stories, pictures, advice, and just have fun. We may make a little money along the way and that is ok with me because I could use some new ham equipment. If making money does not interest you that is fine because you could donate a worthy charity.

If you are not yet a ham but you are interested in becoming one this will be a way you can get some help.

You can learn more by going to http://r.yuwie.com/wa6ohp and view the video.

While doing some work on my computer my good old R-390 receiver was running tuned to 40 meter CW which was fairly quiet. Suddenly there was a pile up. I am not sure who or what the station being called was but it did show that the band was not really dead. While everyone was giving their call hopping to be the next one called I heard those three little letters LID sent by a 599 signal. I had to laugh when I heard it because the real “LID” just announced to the whole world that he himself was one.

First things first, some readers may not know what is meant by the term “LID.” The term is older then radio; it dates back to the early days of telegraph. With CW we have a nice tone to copy but the telegrapher only had a clicking sound to copy. The armature would go from up to down making a click then back up making another click. The length of time between the down click and the up click determined if it was a dot or a dash that was being sent.

As the number of operators grew they would operate side by side and while the older operators could copy their sounder the newer operators found it difficult to distinguish between clicks of their sounder and the clicks of the sounders next to them. The problem was solved by placing a tobacco can lid between the armature and the coils of the sounder. By bending the lid it would sound different to the other sounders near by because they too would bend their lids to give a distinctive sound. The older operators would laugh at them and say they should be able pick out their own sounder and not have to use a lid. Thus the older operators would call newer operators lid operators as a derogative term.

As the telegraphers became radio operators they carried the term with them as a reference to any bad operator. I really don’t know when, where, or why but the comma sent by itself (da da di di da dat), usually at a slower then normal operating speed, became the accepted abbreviated expression for LID. As a CW operator in the United States Coast Guard I heard that comma frequently sent over 500 KHz, the distress and calling frequency for ship shore CW.

Someone might make a call during silent period (15 minutes before and 15 minutes after each and every hour lasting for 3 minutes). This would almost always prompt a comma being sent by one or more self appointed airwaves critic who by the mere act of sending that comma broke proper radio periodical. The first 2 minutes and 45 seconds of a silent period are for distress signals only and the last 15 seconds may be used for emergency or safety messages. This action would almost always prompt a reply of “U” (di di dat) either from the original offender or from another self appointed critic.

The operators on 500 KHz were professional radio operators yet, in my opinion, when they sent the infamous comma they were acting very unprofessional. This is not a practice we need to follow on the Amateur bands. People make mistakes lets learn to get over it and go on because some day, some where we are going to make a mistake too, maybe even more then one.

If you are like most hams, including myself, you drool over the new pieces of ham equipment out there but it just is not in the family budget to purchase one. Today I would like to show you a way you may be able to get the money to purchase that rig and not have to stress the family finances.

Just by the fact you are reading this post may indicate you already have a blog. I say that because most readers of blogs are bloggers themselves but not all. If you don’t have a blog or some other website where you are the webmaster you can start a blog for free at https://www.blogger.com/start as well as several other places. Blogger.com, in my opinion, is one of the easiest formats to use if you are not familiar with building a web.

After starting a blog you need a means of making your site profitable. There are several opportunities that will allow you to do this. One is Adsense, which is part of Google, but you have to be very careful how you bring people to your site with Adsense. For some reason, though I have asked they will not tell me why, after I started receiving money from the ads in Adsense they dropped me and kept over $200 I had earned. I think it was because I added Blogrush but I don’t know because like I said they will not tell me why they dropped my sites.

I recommend Pay Per Play because they will pay you each time an ad plays from your site and those ads play every time some one clicks onto your site. What I am talking about is the five second ad you heard when you clicked on this site. You can add Pay Per Play to your site by first going to http://www.sellingppp.com/a.cgi?ppp=1216575783 and joining. They will give you a javascript code for each of your websites. You must then add the javascript code to your site (a very easy project with Blogger.com). (You can also go to Pay Per Play by clicking on my banner at the top of my site.)

Next you need a way to bring people to your site. One way is to tell friends and family. Another way which I have found very easy and efficient is to add Blogrush to your site (again a very easy process on Blogger.com sites). Blogrush can be found by going to http://www.blogrush.com/r13211748 or by clicking on the tab at the bottom of the Blogrush widget in the top right hand corner of this page.

You are not going to become rich with this program. It is not a way to retire early in life. The amount you are paid for each ad varies over a wide range and it takes time to grow the number of readers you have but in time you will receive a few dollars a day and that money you can use for mad money or for purchasing a new rig or what ever you want without stressing the family budget.

I am sorry for being so long about posting. I have been trying to come up with some way to pay for this site.

There are free sites and I have several but I really wanted on with my own domain name and that costs money. I would also like to receive a little compensation for my time. That is why I added AdSense but for some reason they dropped me I think because I use Blogrush but they won’t say why. I have been looking for some other way to make this site pay for itself. Pay Per Play has provided a way which may help me accomplish this and so I am testing it.

Pay Per Play gives a five second audio ad when you click on this site. That is what question in the title is referring to: it is a five second ad to pay for this site. I hope it is not too anointing.

If you have a site or are thinking about making a little money at home click on the banner at the top of the page and you too can make a little cash. You will not get rich but you could make enough to support your ham radio habit and purchase some new radio equipment.

Sense I started this blog I have tried to post 6 post per week. I write a course on ham radio starting with the Technician Class and proceed through Extra Class with the hopes of publishing. Because of the need to focus more time and effort on the course I am going to reduce the number of posts here per week at least until that project is complete.

73 and thank you for reading.

On December 29 Reg Rapson KC8YCZ, in Deckerville, MI and Stephen Smith, WA4VWV of Pawcatuck, CN responded to a call for help they received via the Missing Lynk Echolink interconnect. The call for help was from James Caldwell G4WDI of England. Along with the help of several other operators who were located in Arizona, Washington and Indiana paramedics were dispatched to James’ QTH. G4WDI was suffering a heart attack while he was in his shack.

The rescue was completed and all appeared well and it was reported that James was recovering from his ordeal but a report on handi hams (http://www.handiham.org/pipermail/handiham-text-list/2006-August/000152.html) said that, unfortunately, James is now silent key. No reason was given so only assumptions could be made. Also no time frame was given between his 12/29 episode and his death.

This is the first report I have seen where amateur radio internet operations has been used to assist in this type of long distance rescue operations but I have read and even been personally involved is long distance rescue operations using HF radio. The means is not the critical part it is just a great feeling when you can assist in saving someone’s life whether locally or thousands of miles away.

Sunspot cycle 24 is here and from what I hear it is suppose to be a very active cycle. Everybody seems so excited about having high sunspot activity there seems to be a lack of recognition that 160 and 80 meters become very noisy during those times and thus they are close to useless. ]

Many hams are excited about the great DX 20, 15, and 10 meters can give and how bad the conditions have been on these bands the past few years have been. 160 and 80 meters are most active when the sunspot cycle is low and at those times DX can be worked on them. One of the big differences in working those two bands as opposed to the higher band mentioned is the lower frequencies work better at night while the higher frequencies work best during the day. That is where 40 meters, my favorite band, comes in because it will usually be open on a short skip during the daylight house when the sunspot cycle is low.

So the days of great DX on the higher HF bands is coming soon but for now if you have room to string an antenna why not enjoy some DX on the lower HF frequencies?

This post is the forth article in a series of articles. If you do not understand logarithm it might be difficult to understand this post but if you will just back up two posts ago and start and follow through it should make sense. Today is when the other three posts will be made practical for electronics.

The difference between two levels of sound energy or electromagnetic energy is calculated in decibels. This is because our hearing responds to variations in sound levels in a logarithm manor. The word decibel latterly means one tenth of a bel. A bel is the amount of attenuation of an audio signal over one mile of telephone wire.

The unit bel was named to honor Alexander Gram Bell who invented the telephone. One l was dropped from Bell so as not to be confused with the bell used as the signaling device for an incoming call on a telephone.

Sometimes the term decibel (dB) is used to indicate a level of audio thus you may hear that it is not legal to have an exhaust system on a vehicle louder then so many dBs but that is an inaccurate use of the term. What the law is speaking of is level of sound picked up at a certain distance from the vehicle is a zero dB reference and the level of noise that is not allowed is any noise above the reference level. Decibels are always, when accurately used, a comparison of one level of energy compared to another energy level. It might be the power of the input to an amplifier from a microphone as compared to the output of the amplifier delivered to the speaker.

The formula for power gain is Gain in dB = 10 log (^P2/_P1). Thus if the input to an amplifier is .001 watts and the output is 100 watts then the overall gain will be 50 dB (¹⁰⁰/_.001 = 100000 log is 5 times 10 equals 50). A power amplifier for a transmitter may have a 50 watt input and a 500 watt output so that amplifier has a 10 dB gain.

Antenna can also be expressed in gain. Antenna gain is in comparison to a half wave antenna. The actual power radiated from the antenna in all directions has not changed the gain expressed by an antenna comes from moving some of the power that would be sent in an undesirable direction and focusing it in a more desirable direction. This may be a vertical antenna where the power that is going up from the antenna is directed down on a more horizontal plane so it is added to the power being sent out over the surface of the earth thus increasing the power seen by those stations on the ground. If an airplane is flying over a gain vertical antenna it would see less power then it would if the antenna was not a gain antenna.

Antenna gain can be in the form of a beam where some of the power from the back and sides are focused toward the front thus making more power to go in one direction and less power to go in the other directions. If the power measured in front of the beam antenna is 10 times higher then the power would be if it was radiated by a half wave antenna then the antenna is said to have a 10 dB gain. That same antenna may have a -3 dB loss off the back and -3.5 dB loss off each side so the 10 dB forward gain can be accomplished. This antenna would have the equivalent of 1,000 watts (ERP) being radiated off the front is it is feed with a 100 watt signal while the ERP off the back of the antenna would be 50 watts.

Then there is loss. If RG-8U coax is used to feed a two meter antenna and it is 100 feet long half of the power will be lost do to the resistance of the coax. If the output of the transmitter is 100 watts the power delivered to the antenna will be 50 watts. To calculate the loss in dB Gain/Loss = 10 (log ^P2/_P1) = 10 (log ⁵⁰/₁₀₀) = 10 (log 0.5). 0.5 has a characteristic of -1 and a mantissa of + .70. To calculate we need to remember that 0.5 is larger then 0.1 which gives us the characteristic number -1 so if we raise the level from -1 to 0 this will allow us to make a negative equivalent of the .70 by subtracting it from 1 leaving .3. .3 X 10 = 3 so the loss in the 100 feet of coax is 3 dB.