Former KI6QNZ

New ham. From Tech(5/08) to extra(6/08) in nothing flat. I figured just get past the tests. And then have fun learning everything.

I think I will make one last attempt at CW.  Using farnsworth speed of 20/15.   If it does not work, just start selling the key collection.

Electronics Flea Market - July 9, 2011

The Flea market went well.  It is sad to see that frewer are showing up each month this year.  Hope we can fix it.  The Livermore electronics flea market called it quits.  I hope this one does not follow.

Field day 2011

FARS, K6YA, GOTA captain again.  Had more people operate at GOTA, but they mostly got one or two contacts and moved on.  Last year 3 got their 20 contacts.

Sunday we started packing it all in at 10AM.  The extra hour make things easier.  Less heat to deal with.  Next year I wanto to operate.   I am seriously thinking of taking the weekend somewere nice and throwing up the buddipole for a few hours.

Maker Faire 2011

May 21 & 22 at San mateo Event Center

This year our booth is called See and Hear Radio Frequency Modulation. We will use computers to send and receive audio digital signals. Modes will be CW, PSK31, RTTY and others. People will hear what is being sent and see the computer receiving the signal decode the message. We will also demonstrate RF. We will use dummyloads as antennas. This will be good enough for radios that are a few feet apart. We will also have a softrock receiver and use SDR software to act as a spectrum analyzer. We will Fldigi for to display decodes and waterfalls.

We should be in Expo hall, where people go to wonder around and see cool stuff. This should be a much better location than the last two years.

Field Day 2010

FARS, K6YA, GOTA captain again. I hope it will be cooler than last year. It was pretty miserable. This year I had signup sheets instead of taking chances as to who would showup. Folks have signed up for 2 hour slots. I hope more show becuase 2 hours is too long for one person during a contest.

I hope to have one person operating and one persion logging. So I have to find 2 people qualified for the GOTA station for this to work.

We will see how this turned out by Sunday afternoon.

Maker Faire 2010

May 22 & 23 2010 at the San Mateo Faire Ground.

We had another good year. The tesla coils did not cause any interference. We were right next to them.

We showed off more APRS and SSTV technology. The booth is sponsored by the Foothills Amateur Radio Society. The ARRL provided printed material, sample books, signage and shirts for the volunteers. PAARA demonstrated Oscilloscopes.

If you are in the SF bay area and want to show off a ham project at the Maker Faire in 2011, contact me. ne6rd@arrl.net

Kit Building

I am a kit building fiend.

I just finished my first kit with a tqfp-64 chip, the NUE-PSK modem. The modem is mostly SMT. You can see images of the board as I soldered it here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpechner/sets/72157623041407154/

I have built and am debugging a Small Wonder Labs PSK31 20M. I sent it back to Dave. I did not adjust the L4 & L5 inductors correctly. It is working now.

I have built all the measurment tools from M3 Electronixs.

From norcal I've biuld the dummy load and the s1-s9 kits.

From Ten-Tech I'vec bilt the 1253 regenerative 9 band receiver.

I have the AT-Sprint, roftrock(many) BITX 02 na Norcal 2030 waiting in the wings.

Plus general fun LED or Noise kits from various suppliers.

My favorite kit sites can be found here:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddj9vk39_127w529bhgb

Truthfully I feel the Elecraft K2 is expensive. By the time I make it equivilent to my FT-857 it is twice the cost. The base kit is $690. But, the K2 is THE only kit out there that is a full all mode tranceiver. Everything else is single mode more or single band. So, I want to build one. Get the Heath kit feeling. I hope Elecraft never stops making it. But it would be nice of they could cost redice it.

2009 Maker Faire in San Mateo CA

It was a lot of work and worth it. The volunteers had a good time. The show organizers received positive feedback about us. We found that many of the 400+ makers are themselves HAMs.

We were located in the hall with the main stage and store, so this created a lot of traffic.

We will see if we get a few new HAMs out of this event.

Emergency Communications

I am persuing mutliple goals. One is to become an emergency communicator. I have taken ics 100,200,700, 800, NIMS, SEMS. I am in process of joining ares/races in the city where I live and the one where I work.

I have taken CERT training through the city of Palo Alto. I am now a Panda. I spent a day with Santa Clara CERT to join that program, HEAT. So I am a PANDA in HEAT. HiHi.

Digital/Packet/APRS

I played with kantronics, paccomm and tnc-x. I've set up BBS and use outpost and pacforms. I still haven't learned to do kb2kb. I bought and tried 9600. I was told by a number of people that the KPC 9612+ was not a good choice for 9600.

I've setup a couple of aprs stations. Interesting, but I have not had the oportunity to make practical use of it.

I've played with SSTV using easypal and mmtv under someones guidance. Mad Scientists ARC have a Friday net that is fun.

I've gotten hooked on psk31. I do this remotely on w7dxx and on my ft857 using a tigertronics interace to my computer.

I just finished writting a program that takes APRS data captured off my Kantraonics to create a KML file for display on google earth. Here is the data from a jump Mark Meltzer, AF6IM, did on Mark 20, 2010. This is done are part of http://parachuteMobile.org.

Netcontrol

I am taking every opportunity given to me to be net control. SF Bay area 9AM Talk net on Wednesdays and the 3rd Monday of each month for Palo Alto section of SPECS.

Other things I'm playing with

I've setup echolink in all 3 modes.

I am tring to learn CW. Using MDX to learn to send and G4FON to learn to listen. I am able to send all number and letters slooowly. I am up to 9 letters at 7wpm 15 farnsworth. My goal is to operate at field day. We will see. :-D