Spring Sprints Starting April 9th, 2012

Here is the schedule for the Spring Sprints, 2012:

The 144 MHz Sprint will be from 7 PM until 11 PM local time on Monday, April 9, 2012.

The 222 MHz Sprint will be from 7 PM until 11 PM local time on Tuesday, April 17, 2012.

The 432 MHz Sprint will be from 7 PM until 11 PM local time on Wednesday, April 25, 2012.

The Microwave Sprint will be on Saturday, May 5, 2012, from 6 AM until 1 PM local time. This includes all Amateur frequencies above 902 MHz. Please include band data in summaries and logs. NOTE: use of Liaison Frequency is encouraged.

The 50 MHz Sprint will be from 2300Z Saturday, May 12, until 0300Z Sunday, May 13, 2012.

For more information, please check go visit the Amateur Radio VHF & Up Spring Sprints website. This is sponsored by the good folks at the Central States VHF Society.

Paper Accepted!

My paper, “A Novice Attempt at Building a W1GHZ 902 Transverter” was accepted for publication in the Southeastern VHF Society Conference Proceedings! Make sure to attend the conference in Charlotte or purchase a copy of the proceedings in April!

Upcoming Projects and Other Transitions

Lot’s of irons in the fire!  I’ve got many things going on which I will be reporting on shortly.  In the meantime, let me give you, dear reader, a quick situational report.

*1) The ABPM from DEMI has been put together, but has been found somewhat lacking.  I may have burned up a detector chip inside- this build and build notes are waiting for further testing before I chime in with my final thoughts.  After all, if I burned something up, it is hardly DEMI’s fault, right?

*2) The 902 W1GHZ project is shortly going to bed.  Now that I have a radio, interfacing is the last main issue.  I have all the parts needed; once interfacing is done, I’ll be able to transfer it to a suitable container.  Of course, if I had done this correctly, the container would have been the first part I had considered.

*3) I’m continuing work on the paper for the SVHFS conference publication.  This will be ongoing until January.  I also have an idea I am semi-working on for QST.

*4) By the grace of K4CSO, I came into a power meter cheaply and I hope to have a photo montage of it for the reader soon.

*5) I’m working on my Cookery pages to share recipes and, specifically, am currently working on delivering Grandma’s Vegetable Soup as a free recipe for all.  Also, I have some thoughts about cornbread I would like to share.  And Jello- I’m bringing back Jello.

*6) The 900MHz. amp is in as good a condition as I can make it- but no news on its stats yet.  I had a couple of these at one time due to an eBay over bid and I got rid of all but one.  Wish I hadn’t done that.  That said, the old guard of uWaves don’t play on 900, as it is a band which either “shouldn’t be” or “worth having.”  Which came first, the constructor or the contester?

*7) Recently taken advantage of a good deal and have some 10GHz material.  When it gets here, I’ll have a better idea of its nature.  At least, going to need an LO.  Which reminds me- W7BAS never did come up with a 1296 transverter- but don’t take this as an indicator of the quality of the LO he produced, or any of his other projects- he is just very busy.  Of the one LO I’ve received, it was really quite well done.  But for now, scratch the 1296 xverter from W7BAS.  It’s a no go (but maybe next year, if he gets some time to devote to the project!).

*8) All of this belittles the work I have been doing regarding t-shirts.  I realize that may not mean much to you, but for those of us who buy them and use them over and over- and understand what the word piling means in regards to said- I’ve designed a t-shirt comparative.  Because if I called it a t-shirt competition, well, where to go from there?

So, as you can see, lots of things going on.

More assembly of the 902/3 W1GHZ transverter

Hammond Die Cast Box 1590BB
Hammond Die Cast Box 1590BB

How are you going to do it?  How are you going to build a 902/3 MHz. transverter so that you can activate a little used band and thereby increase your score in the VHF contest in which you are competing?  Why would you do so?  Since it isn’t a world wide allocation, there isn’t going to be any interest from abroad and very few US bound hams populate the band. More than that, how would you approach such a project if you had never done anything like it before?  Where do you learn to be creative in your solution to your radio goal without having the requisite experience or training? Of course, if you had the experience, you’d have learned how to be creative in your answer about building a transverter and the question would be moot.

K4CSO runs the drill press!

But it isn’t moot for me and building my transverter is still an ongoing process.  I don’t have a drill press, for instance.  If I did, what I could do with a couple minutes worth of measuring and using the right tool would save me weeks of time.  I can’t journey up to see Charles but every so often and he can’t see me every day, either.  So, you do the best with what you can regarding scheduling.  Putting one of these together isn’t hard in terms of doing the soldering.  But, this isn’t a case of having the right wire strippers and being able to make progress. When you use the wrong tool- impatience and a hand held drill in my case- you won’t get the clean results that you had previously (please note, the enlarged holes are the result of one wobbly bit which offset all other measurements. Use the right tool for the job!).

Wobbly bit drills everything out of round.

Even so, it isn’t the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.  I decided on the Hammond box to be the enclosure for both the LO and transverter board.  The LO doesn’t need to make any external connection through the wall of the box, so I put it in first (on the proper stand offs).

Of course, the LO had to be modified somewhat to interface with the W1GHZ transverter. The SMA connector was desoldered from the LO and new power lines and toroid were installed.

In place of the SMA connector from the LO, coax was installed which will directly interface (that is, be directly soldered) with/to the transverter board.  Here this build gets down to brass tacks- the questions about how to engineer a 902/3 MHz. W1GHZ transverter now relies upon what sort of radio is going to be used, what sort of sequencer is best to run everything (I picked the TCK model from Down East Microwave, based on the coax relays I am going to be using- there are cheaper ways to go) and how best to interface all of these choices into one singular device.  There is more to be said about this project, but can’t be without the proper pieces coming into place.  Stay tuned!

In other news, it may behoove the reader to use a bit of coax shield in the trench around the lid of the box.  It helps to make contact between the lid and the body and will perhaps help you avoid producing or being receptive to RFI.

NCJ Sept./Oct. 2011 Contest Ethics Article

In the September/October (Vol. 39 N. 5) issue of National Contest Journal, Hal Kennedy N4GG writes on page 3,

A lot of things are legal but not ethical. For example, in all but a few circumstances, it is unethical for me to lie to you, but it is not illegal. It’s far easier to operate within legal boundaries than it is to operate within ethical boundaries.  An important consequence, is that when you act ethically you can be assured that you are acting legally (emphasis mine). It is important to understand this distinction.  Not breaking the law does not make what you are doing okay.  That’s not good enough.  It’s also the wrong focus.  Act ethically, and legality will take care of itself.

In fact, you are not assured that you are acting legally when you are acting ethically.  For instance, it may well be within your ethical framework to help a terminally ill family member find an appropriate assisted suicide solution at the end of his or her life, though this practice is quite often illegal.  And you don’t even have to go to such a controversial extreme to find an exception to Kennedy’s position- “the golden rule” may be an ethical principle which all should follow, but it certainly isn’t codified as law in any legal jurisdiction, nor is it likely to be any time soon.

When Kennedy says, “Not breaking the law does not make what you are doing okay,” he fails to provide any real justification for this point; and in fact, he seems to be making a bigger claim: that pushing the boundaries of the law, while not illegal in and of itself, is nevertheless not acceptable ethical behavior.  Ignoring his larger claim, my concern is that if you aren’t breaking the law, what difference does it make what you are or are not doing? Put another way, his position is that it is acceptable to do certain acts with regards to the law, while it is not acceptable to do certain others (pushing boundaries, for instance), both of which are legal.  But if both acts are legal, how can one be privileged over the other?

Following what he says logically, if you are doing something ethically, you aren’t doing anything illegal.  And if we can be assured that we are acting legally so long as we are acting ethically, as he says, then it is reasonable to assume that it is the case that performing a non law breaking act is acceptable behavior.  But since that can’t be by his reckoning, the contradiction that results shows how poorly he has argued.  I’m sure he wouldn’t like the consequence of what he wrote to be used in this way, but it is undeniable that his position is inconsistent and does not follow logically, as I have shown. This isn’t an unusual result of someone who is “ethically trained” in a business setting. Where they go wrong is trying to take this training and apply it to something other than a business setting- they have no experience with anything other than where and in what they were trained- its what they would have us believe, after all, about their ability to do their own job.  It’s a very common mistake to make, one which I am sure I’ve made myself.

So, while his argument fails as a logical matter, how does the spirit fare?  I don’t see why anyone would in principle disagree with his main thesis- let’s get rid of cheaters- but really, who would disagree?  The only way to solve cheating in radio contests is to make it a real time scored event, such that the possibility for cheating will no longer exist because all participants are judged at the same time and for the same individual events that comprise the whole of the contest.  Since the nature of radio contests is such that this is practically impossible (but in principle, it is not impossible as using internet real time scoring could be developed), the only way in which to otherwise check for cheaters is the one that is already on record- the check log.  I do also concur that cheaters should be kicked out.  The usual reason given for not doing so is because of libel issues- but really, what’s the problem?  If someone threatens to sue you over a trophy and recognition (no money is awarded for placing in any radio event), this person is a bully.  A bully is a coward and a coward never follows through on threats. Of course, that’s easy for me to say. So long as the accusation of cheating isn’t made public, libel is avoided- a better solution is probably to “lose” logs from time to time. I imagine that solution has its own set of problems; and in any case, determining who is cheating isn’t difficult from an accounting stance using check logs.  But the other manners of cheating that surely go on, such as too much power, cannot and will not be caught.  If this is the case, then why worry about it?

From Sundials to Atomic Clocks

When I was studying for my M.A. in Philosophy, I had to take the requisite Metaphysics courses.  I should warn the reader now that the word Metaphysics as I use it has a very long and storied tradition to signify talking about a certain group of topics within the discipline of Western philosophy.  It is not to be confused with people who use the term to refer to something other than this.  As it happens, there is a metaphysical bookstore down the street from me, and I often get a chuckle when I drive by- in the sense this store means “metaphysical” is a sense by which I envision a recent divorcee who, having been rejected from their former partner, decides to withdraw from reality and entomb themselves with crystal dragons, incense and dates with people who don’t bathe frequently.  There may also be a lot of yoga.  In any case, I think of these places as the refuge for people who have become disenfranchised with reality (because of rejection, loss or some other reason) and instead prefer to have a land of make believe which conforms to their current desires and wishes, whatever they may be.  Oddly, they are on the right track in using the word- to describe something fundamental about reality- but they attribute many things as being fundamental which are not.

When I think about Metaphysics (what Aristotle would have called “Ta meta ta phusika” or “after the physical world”- things to be studied once all the physical objects of the world had been accounted for and sorted; what’s left are these sorts of unchanging items which need to accounted for, such as how to account for the process we know as “change”) the topics that come to mind are such things as mereology, qualities, abstracta, concreta, causation, free will, realism and, of course, time.  Time is a funny creature, as these things go, and some people have even argued that time is unreal- that time itself does not exist and that how we view change is actually an illusion.

So it was with great interest that I saw a posting over on the Time-Nuts mailing list, pointing to the NIST monograph on time, From Sundials to Atomic Clocks: Understanding Time and Frequency.  It’s a very interesting piece which puts together what time is, how it is measured, its properties and so on.  The download is free- why not check it out?  It is written for the layperson- you don’t need to have any underpinnings as either a scientist or philosopher to read and enjoy this book.

I recommend it for anyone who has more than a passing interest in time- and the lengths we go to get it right.