New Camcorder should yield some great videos.

Finally got my first REAL HD camcorder. I tried one of those flip cameras from a Black Friday deal at best buy back about 3 years ago. I think I used that particular camera 4x before it just died. The battery worked fine the camera when you turned it on just didnt power up.

anyhow.. back to the JVC Everio Camcorder.  GZ-E200BUS.




And now I present my first time lapse video with it.

 

Not too bad for out a side window of my house. Through a dark screen and about 10 minutes after removing it from the box.  

A couple observations. 

1. Wow the sun goes down fast when it gets to a certain point. 

2. Didnt know the neighbor was going to cut the grass, sorry Mark. 

Not too bad for 150 dollars shipped off a random Woot.com deal.

My favorite "not so random wire" antenna and what I read to make it.

I have been using a random wire antenna for quite a while now. The first one I created was for Dayton Hamvention where my son and I camped at Buck Creek which is an Ohio State Park. At Buck Creek we threw up the antenna about 30 foot into a tree close to our camping site and with about a s2 noise level we had probably the best radio experience to date. Taking a look back at the geography of the area it is easy to understand why. The camping area is surrounded by lake on 3/4 sides and the whole camping area is about 30 foot above the land surrounding the camping sites. This almost entirely made up for the prevalence of Poison Ivy. 

That was the first experience with the "not so random wire" The second was field day. Same results here. The noise was higher being that we were down at the USS COD downtown Cleveland but we still got out fine and made plenty of contacts. The Ohio QSO party was done with the same random wire in my back yard operating "picnic table" portable. This "not so random wire" operated better than my 80m center fed dipole at the home. The location was the same but performance was now. This year we joined the Ohio State Parks on the air competition and activated Punderson. Another location just like Dayton Hamvention. The spot we picked was a good 500-600 foot above most of the surrounding area. So anyhow. because websites come and go I locked this stuff for my records. Here it is. The document I used to create the cheapest.. AND the best antenna I have ever used.

Here it is in play

Original post was here 

http://www.hamuniverse.com/randomwireantennalengths.html

The "Best" Random Wire Antenna Lengths 
Random wire lengths you should and should not use!

Updated 06-29-2012 

The random wire antenna is probably one of the least expensive, easiest and cheapest HF antennas to use if you have a tuner and you want to get the "most" out of a length of "random" wire without having to pull out that calculator, doing the math, getting the center insulator built or bought, running the feedline, and all the rest that goes with putting up a more elaborate antenna.
All you need for a random wire antenna is some wire, your tuner, one or more supports up as high as you can get them to string the wire from the supports to the tuner, at least one or two insulators and a little time.

One single wire, no solder connections, very simple.... all the way from the tuner to the end support. That's it in a nutshell.....or is it?

Many hams have tried till they are blue in the face to install the random wire antenna that works on most; if not all of the HF bands with terrible results.

Swr usually is all over the place and the tuner will just not do it's job. You can get good loading and low swr on sometimes 2 or 3 bands, but one or more of the bands that you want, just will not cooperate with an swr that can be adjusted with the "tuner".

So after much frustration..down it comes and you go on to a totally different type of antenna....all that time just wasted in your opinion.....until now!

We recently found some good information about random wire lengths that you should and should not use.

Jack, VE3EED, hopefully has solved a major headache we all have when we attempt to go thru the trial and error and frustration with getting the random wire to work where WE want it to work.

He knew that in order for the tuner to "see" a fairly low swr to work within it's range, that the antenna had to be NOT A HALF WAVE ON ANY FREQUENCY that we wanted to us, because a half wave will give us a very high impedance and the resulting swr into a 50 ohm transmitter!

So Jack took most of one day, did the math with the aid of his trusty calculator, several cups of coffee and came up with...............................

In Jack's own words....
"Here's the word on random-wire antennae."

Presented for your consideration by Jack, VE3EED.
The table below represents half wave lengths and multiples that you
DO NOT WANT TO USE!

You have to stay away from a half wavelength on any frequency.
Therefore, we came up with the following numbers to avoid (IN FEET):

These lengths in the table below are the culprits that cause all of the trouble when using random lengths.

Frequency MHz	1/2 Wave	2nd Multiple	3rd Multiple	4th Multiple
1.9	246	492	738	984
3.8	123	246	369	492
7.2	65	130	195	260
10.1	46	92	138	184
14.2	33	66	99	132
18.1	26	52	78	104
21.3	22	44	66	88
24.9	19	38	57	76
28.5	16	32	48	64

So those are the numbers above that we have to stay as far away from as possible when building a long-wire antenna.

Here they are in order:REVISED: 16 19 22 26 32 33 38 44 46 48 52 64 65 66 76 78 80 88 92 95 96 99 104 110 112 114 123 128 130 132 133 138 144 152 154 156 160 165 171 176 182 184 190 192 195 198 208 209 220 224 228 230 231 234 240 242 246 247 256 260 264 266 272 276 285 286 288 297 304 308 312 320 322 323 325 330 336 338 342 352 361 363 364 366 368 369 374 380 384 390 396 399 400 414 416 418 429 432 437 440 442 448 455 456 460 462 464 468 475 480 484 494 495 496.

Some of these numbers are too close to squeeze in between them.

Here are the final numbers (in my opinion) in green below that would be good for a long-wire antenna: (You may want to make a note of them)

REVISED: 29  35.5  41  58  71  84  107  119  148  203  347  407  423

REVISION NOTE:  We had a note from James, KB5YN, pointing out that one of my so-called GOOD numbers was 220 feet. That is the 10th multiple of a half wave on 15 meters. Well, I didn't think it would make any difference at that many multiples. However, the radio didn't tune up very well on 15 meters.

So, having nothing better to do one day, I re-did the calculations going out to 500 feet. That meant calculating all the way to 32 multiples of a half wave on 10 meters. I won't bore you with all that so the first portion of this still only shows up to the 4th multiple. There are so many new frequencies to stay away from, that it gets pretty tricky for the longer wires. However, the list has been revised and is good for wires as long as 500 feet.
73.... JACK, VE3EED

Dayton Hamvention 2013 - Buck Creek State Park

This year camping at Buck Creek State Park was fantastic the weather was 70 during the day and high 60s at night. Absolutely perfect.

Gave me an absolutely perfect time to operate portable in the best radio enviroment I have ever been in. S1 noise levels because if you look at the map. There is literally NOTHING around you there.

North American QSO Party.

This contest snuck up on my quite quickly. I didnt really know about it until the friday before when it was mentioned at my West Park Radio Ops Meeting. A contest! excellent. I figured I would go for it. No stress just an easy contest to do. I talked to my friend Mark NB8I and he was going to operate from his shack so I decided to go over and see what he was up to. When I got there I finally got to see it live. His Yaesu FT-950 his 50 foot tower and his beam antenna. What a cool setup. I took a video of him spinning the beam around. (This was totally staged by the way)

Now that was cool to see that in real life. It was intestesting to hear him operate too. He has the Yaesu Ft-950 and a bunch of other equipment too like the "LP-PAN" adapter. Now this thing was something cool. Something so cool that it makes me want to upgrade my rig now to get one of these. Basically it looked like the coolness of SDR without your rig being a featureless dumb metal box.

I am sorry that to me doesnt look like a radio. I dont like it. I wont buy it especially how expensive it is. However get a ft-950 and lp-pan and this is what you see

Look at that. How cool. So take your nice ft-950 and make it act like a SDR all for a couple hundred dollars. (The hardware is what costs the software is free) That was cool to see that. Now I can justify the need for a FT-950 in the future. Anyhow cool shack and some interesting equipment. Mark also is able to share comports with multiple devices. I tried the software on mine so I could use N1MM and HRD at the same time. I even got a special comport sharing software. None of it worked.

That is what I did after I left Mark's I was all enthusiastic about participating in the contest so I ran home with the new comport program idea and thinking I woudl be able to use N1mm to log the contest results and then HRD to control the rig.

I spent about 4 hours of contest time trying to mess with the program and it never wound up working the radio would send crazy data to N1MM and the frequency would go to .356 or something. Anyhow abandoned that project went straight N1MM and finished off the contest.

Final results for the North American QSO party was this.

QSO: 14000 PH 2012-08-18 2105 NA8Y            John       OH  NB8I            MARK       OH 
QSO:  7266 PH 2012-08-19 0054 NA8Y            John       OH  NT8Z            SCOTT      OH 
QSO:  7250 PH 2012-08-19 0056 NA8Y            John       OH  WW9R            PAT        WI 
QSO:  7270 PH 2012-08-19 0100 NA8Y            John       OH  N8BV            BRUCE      OH 
QSO:  7263 PH 2012-08-19 0101 NA8Y            John       OH  K4RO            TOM        TN 
QSO:  7254 PH 2012-08-19 0103 NA8Y            John       OH  KF4GDX          ROBERT     SC 
QSO:  7244 PH 2012-08-19 0106 NA8Y            John       OH  W9IMS           BILL       IN 
QSO:  7234 PH 2012-08-19 0108 NA8Y            John       OH  NW3H            BILL       PA 
QSO:  7229 PH 2012-08-19 0110 NA8Y            John       OH  WX3B            JIM        MD 
QSO:  7226 PH 2012-08-19 0114 NA8Y            John       OH  W0IW            JOE        IA 
QSO:  7223 PH 2012-08-19 0116 NA8Y            John       OH  K9CT            AL         IL 
QSO:  7203 PH 2012-08-19 0121 NA8Y            John       OH  NN3W            JACK       VA 
QSO:  7200 PH 2012-08-19 0122 NA8Y            John       OH  AB9H            JOE        IL 
QSO:  7197 PH 2012-08-19 0124 NA8Y            John       OH  K4YP            ED         NC 
QSO: 14283 PH 2012-08-19 0132 NA8Y            John       OH  NX5M            BOB        TX 
QSO: 14265 PH 2012-08-19 0136 NA8Y            John       OH  VE3PUX          JOHN       ON 
QSO:  7183 PH 2012-08-19 0146 NA8Y            John       OH  K0RH            JIM        KS 
QSO:  7192 PH 2012-08-19 0156 NA8Y            John       OH  NX5M            BOB        TX 
QSO:  7201 PH 2012-08-19 0200 NA8Y            John       OH  W4DXX           ERIC       GA 
QSO:  3779 PH 2012-08-19 0234 NA8Y            John       OH  WW9R            PAT        WI 
QSO:  3773 PH 2012-08-19 0236 NA8Y            John       OH  KS3D            JIM        DE 
QSO:  3824 PH 2012-08-19 0237 NA8Y            John       OH  VE3PUX          JOHN       OH 
QSO: 14264 PH 2012-08-19 0248 NA8Y            John       OH  W0BH            BOB        KS 
QSO: 14250 PH 2012-08-19 0411 NA8Y            John       OH  WO4DX           GARY       GA 
QSO: 14253 PH 2012-08-19 0415 NA8Y            John       OH  KL7RA           RICH       AK 
QSO: 14220 PH 2012-08-19 0451 NA8Y            John       OH  KK7PR           RALPH      OR 
QSO:  3802 PH 2012-08-19 0455 NA8Y            John       OH  WX3B            JIM        MD 
QSO:  3794 PH 2012-08-19 0503 NA8Y            John       OH  WB4OMM          STEVE      OH 
QSO:  3784 PH 2012-08-19 0511 NA8Y            John       OH  K0EA            TERRY      MN 
QSO:  3756 PH 2012-08-19 0515 NA8Y            John       OH  KK9V            MIKE       IN 
QSO:  3756 PH 2012-08-19 0516 NA8Y            John       OH  K4HTA           TED        VA 
QSO:  3756 PH 2012-08-19 0520 NA8Y            John       OH  KD9MS           CRAIG      IL 
QSO:  3756 PH 2012-08-19 0521 NA8Y            John       OH  WM9Q            RON        IL 
QSO:  3500 PH 2012-08-19 0527 NA8Y            John       OH  W8TM            PAUL       OH 
QSO:  3500 PH 2012-08-19 0528 NA8Y            John       OH  VE3KP           KEN        ON 
QSO:  3500 PH 2012-08-19 0530 NA8Y            John       OH  W8TOM           TOM        MI 
QSO:  3500 PH 2012-08-19 0535 NA8Y            John       OH  W9AV            CLINT      WI 
QSO:  3500 PH 2012-08-19 0536 NA8Y            John       OH  W0IW            JOE        IA 
QSO:  7000 PH 2012-08-19 0543 NA8Y            John       OH  K7RL            MITCH      WA 
QSO:  7000 PH 2012-08-19 0548 NA8Y            John       OH  N2BJ            BARRY      IL  

40 contacts only and
CLAIMED-SCORE: 1320

Not to shabby. Not my best performance but I had some fun. The dipole is really limiting me here. The noise level on 80 and 40 is really high.. sometimes as high as 20 over. I am not sure if that is where I live (inside the city) or some flaw with the antenna. I will have to figure that out here sometime soon.

APRS on the Cheap. My next project for the motorcycle.

Learning Morse Code as an Amateur Extra Class "No-Code" Operator

I have been a Amateur Radio Operator for over 2 years now and while I have enjoyed the phone parts of the bands I hear things in the morse code section way more frequently than than the phone bands. I have done the digital modes before too but I yearn to understand the simplicity of CW. I dont need a computer all I need is my radio gear and my straight key.

I set out on this quest over a year ago. The target was Dayton Hamvention 2012. Why? because when I went to Dayton Hamvention 2011 two friends I was with K8VIT and W8ZIP were at a display of morse code keys and playing around with them. They were sending morse on the keys and then laughing hysterically at themselves. I didn't understand what they were keying out but I was definitely intrigued. I set a goal for Dayton Hamvention 2012 as the date where I would become 'functional" with Morse Code.

To accomplish this goal I downloaded the app from "JustLearnMorseCode.com"

http://www.justlearnmorsecode.com/

 I set the pitch for 900. I set the words per minute to 5/18. Everything was fine up until I hit about 15 characters. I tried this method 3 times and each time around 15 characters they would start all sounding the same. I would get frustrated and stop again. This program was a great app but it just seems like I am repeatedly hitting a wall for some reason. I am not making progress and I stop. The period between stops gets longer and longer too.

To that end I am looking for other programs to learn morse code. I am going to try some different methods too, to see which if any work better for me and my learning style. It sure is great having the computer to aid me in my quest for CW "ability".

I have downloaded an application called Morse Machine today, the difference in this application is that it waits for you to type the character before proceeding.

I think I like that more. I dont like letting them pass me then hitting delete and trying to type in letters. I realize that you just are supposed to skip the ones you miss, I just have trouble at this point thinking that is good for learning since I am 100% new. I also know that my Yaesu FT-2900s all have morse code training inside them.

 I have never tried the "cassette tapes" method either which I am sure would be enhanced by the ability to use the computer or play MP3s.

I am going to keep plugging away and try to remember that learning this new language is supposed to be fun and I should enjoy the process. I am not learning for a test or a deadline. I am learning for my own enjoyment. At 41 years old today I have a lot of time left to enjoy Amateur Radio and morse code, with all these solar storms affecting phone conversations in the Amateur Bands CW still gets through. Onward and upward I say.




If you have any hints or ideas I would love to hear the other methods that can be used. I am not sure the Justlearnmorsecode.com way works for me. The jury is still out on the "Morse Machine" way of doing things. I could easily be convinced to listen to recordings too.

Mountain Biking Finally Comes to Cleveland.

The perfect water resistant and protective case for the Yaesu FT-840.

I use my FT-840 portable when camping or this coming next week during field day. I have been looking for some protective case to haul my Yaesu FT-840 for quite a while so I carried the measurements of the receiver in my blackberry in case I came across a suitable case. Yesterday I came across a plastic case by "Really Useful Box" It was the 8.1 Liter size. (Yes they are a Euro company) It was stocked in my local Staples store and made for #20 sized envelopes.

I checked the measurements by grabbing a ruler from a different aisle. To my surprise it fit almost perfect width wise and height wise.

What is nice about it is I am certain the way the top fits it will actually be fairly water resistant. You will never be able to throw it in a lake but if you get caught in a downpour it will protect the rig from the rain. I am thinking a good characteristic on field day just in case of the weird freak rainstorms in the afternoon we seem to have in Northern Ohio right around 4:30 - 5:00 almost daily.

Pretty snug, the only way this is going to move is front to back. It wont move up and down or side to side much. There is plenty of room in the back for the hand mic to lock it into place.


Nice sturdy corners to absorb some josteling. My three year old bumped into one of these when nothing was inside. It fell abotu 5 foot to the floor and didnt shatter. That is a new one for me. Well constructed and exactly what I was looking for.

They also stack nicely inside of each other. Incidentally the measurements fit my MFJ-969 perfectly too. So I bought two for portable operation.

I am pretty sure my Icom IC-728 will fit nicely in this box as well. I am probably going to wind up with 4 of these boxes.

Link to the box at Staples
http://tinyurl.com/boxft840

And their USA version webpage 
USA - Really Useful Boxes Website 

The Yaesu FT-840 R2213 Resistor Replacement

The R2213 resistor in the Yaesu FT-840 is the one design flaw which will eventually take your rig down.

The existing resistor is 3w and it gets SUPER hot and starts burning the board. Eventually it will blow up and take nearby parts with it. Maybe the whole board. So the fix is simple.. replace it before it becomes a problem. The new resistor is 30w and anchored to the case so it displaces the heat. Now the case gets warm in that area but no where near hot. I cant imagine how hot that part was inside the case.

 The part is a 4 dollar resistor and the repair is pretty easy to do. I have two FT-840s and I love them both. Whatever I can do to prolong the life of these rigs is good for me.

First things first.

Where I was told by 2 others to get the part was here.

http://www.digikey.com/

What you are looking for is

Bourns P/N PWR221T-30-8R20F for $3.23

On the digikey page I entered "PWR221T-30-8R20F" as the part number.

and came up with this page.

http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?x=0&y=0&lang=en&site=us&KeyWords=PWR221T-30-8R20F


What that is, is a 8.2 Ohm 30W Power Resistor. The hole on the top of it is designed to be bolted to a metal case or heat sink to dissipate the heat.Afer you install this on the back of the case it will get warm but it will NOT be too hot to the touch. This part takes the heat off the board and uses the case of the rig as a heatsink.

That is the part on my desk ready for the installation.

On to the replacement task.

The first step is to remove the covers.

1. The Top Cover comes off first. Make sure you mark down on a piece of paper exactly where the screws go. They are really easy to strip out and the ones on the sides are 2 different sizes. If you put them back in your will strip the holes out. When you remove the 5 screws (four on the sides and one in the back) The top cover is ready to come off. Take it off gently because there is a connector connected to the internal speaker still under the case. Make sure you disconnect the speaker connector and set the top cover on the side.

2. The bottom cover. There are various screws on the bottom those are the only screws to remove. Make sure to mark where those screws go as well. They seem to all be the same size but it is always safer to put them right back where they came from.

3. At this point the radio should look like this.

The R2213 Resistor is in the bottom left of the picture

Here is a close up with a light below the part.

Underneath the board you will see it stamped R2213. The white cylinder is the resistor in question.

I have two of these rigs and they were both mounted differently from each other.

I measured resistance across the resistor and found they BOTH measured 9.1 ohms. Not 8.2 incidentally the replacement resistor also measured 9.1 before installation.

I saw people remove the resistor a few different ways. I opted for the easier of 2 ways. I saw the two poles coming up to the resistor and decided to use those to solder the resistor wires to.

I gave the resistor a snip on both sides and removed the undersized resistor.

Then I was left with this.

The poles were well soldered into the board and they really seemed to be well attaached to the board. I left them there. If you wanted to mess with it more you could remove the screws on the board (there are about 6-7 screws and then that white connector right below the R2213 resistor is also connected underneath. So be careful of that. I am sure the purists will say to desolder the poles and put the wires right into the board but this worked quite nicely and seems very secure. The heat will be away from this board now so I am guessing that the heat in this area will be non-existent now.

At this point you will need some wire to solder to the leads of the new resistor. Tin the wires on both ends and attach one end to the resistor and then solder the wire to the posts of the old resistor. I used heat shrink tubing on the connectors. I really dont think it would ever touch the case but why even risk it.

So when you get it attached it will look something like this.

Check your solder joints. Mine were rock solid and didnt require any more work. It was attached to the post well and the post was still very solid to the board.

At this point you are going to have to drill a hole in you beloved case. Find a bolt that fits through the resistor, find a nut and I used a lock washer too. Why not? I also colored the head of the bolt with a red marker so it looks different from the other ones if someone else winds up with my rig 30 years from now.

A nice high speed metal drill bit will make quick work of the case. I used the bolt as a guide for the whole size I needed. 

Watch out for those metal shavings. Those things can get magnetic and stick to things only to kill your rig when you spend all this time making this repair only to smoke it with those shavings. This is the position I drilled the hole with that way the shaving fell in front of the case or on the table behind.

Done with the hole ready to mount the resistor.

Once you have the hole drilled route the resistor to the hole and attach it with the bolt. tighten it so that you cant move the resistor you want a good mechanical connection to the case so that the resistor can transfer the heat to the metal case.

Now the resistor is mounted to the case. The heat the resistor generates will use that corner of the case to dissipate the extra heat and save your radio from the dreaded R2213 resistor.


For good measure I threw a zip tie on the wires and attached them to the existing wires in the area. Just to neaten up the job and protect the wires that much better.

Now you put the cases back on the radio and test. I SWEAR I hear people better now. I know that is psychosomatic and not real. It is nice piece of mind to have this resistor replaced. Both my radios are in GREAT shape from looking at the inside and outside of the cases. I really enjoy these radios too. I was a little nervous about cutting that resistor and doing the repair job but not anymore.

I also wanted to document this procedure as detailed as possible so ANYONE could follow these directions and do the mod. This is the spirit of Amateur Radio for me.

Special thanks to all the folks that guided me on this repair.

Tim WO9U  (Thanks your pictures and the words that inspired me. "100 bucks or a 3 dollar part")

Chuck WD4HXG (Thanks for the info on the Yaesu repair info!)

also Splittingwedge off /r/amateurradio who really started me off and piqued my curiosity.

My radios are repaired now. I have been pounding on them for a few days and I am satisfied with the repair now.

First Post from the Summer Radio Room.