AF0CX

Ham Radio Thoughts and Adventures

The health difficulties that presented themselves in May have been thouroughly beaten down. This is a one shot post with no attempt at revision or refinement. Bear with my rambling if you feel inclined to continue.

I have had some time during the past few months to think about my relationship with ham radio. In the months since my return I can say that it has been, generally, a disappointment.

Much like the time I felt pushed out of the hobby in Cleveland, I have had a few encounters that remind me that I do not feel like I am a strong fit for “ham culture”. In spite of a supposed apolitical nature, I've run into far too much political posturing at local meetups. Unless it's dealing with keeping the spectrum and being advocates for radio technology, I engage with this hobby to get away from that.

The second letdown is the current state of the ARRL. I optimistically signed up for three years of membership. The only communications I've received from them were sent to the wrong mailing address (one I haven't lived at for seven years), and when I went to correct this, the ARRL rep actually divulged (unauthenticated) other private information about myself. Given that they've already had a ransomware event that they paid out, I would think their sense of digital/online security with PII would be better.

The third letdown has been that DX conversations largely seem to just be about getting as many contacts as possible, not meeting people or developing cross-cultural experiences. My whole experience on the bands has felt quite mercenary. I think FT8 has contributed to this in part, much the same way that text messaging has contributed to a breakdown in robust communications. I'm not looking to rag chew, but being given the sense that I'm wasting someone's time by talking slower (I have speech difficulties/impediments) is disheartening.

I'm sure there's varying opinions and I beg you to consider that this isn't a “You should just try CW” or some other band aid. The warmest, most friendly hams I've run across are, ironically online. I hope I find my inspiration at some point, because in less than a year I'm already burnt out.

AF0CX Blog by Chris Wall is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I worry about things like seeming as though I'm going in hot, and then abandoning a blog. It happens, and I've done it myself. It's different this time.

I'll be vague to protect my privacy, but I have had a bit of unfortunate health news the last month. I am entirely focused on resolving that. A side effect of this is that I won't have time or energy to spare for writing about my adventures in ham radio.

Please feel free to reach out to me on mastodon (@af0cx@mastodon.hams.social).

AF0CX Blog by Chris Wall is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I seem to have this down to a bit of a science. By the time I have a 1.0 script that converts the question pool without intervention, I'll be out of tests to make Logseq friendly.

For the curious, this is mostly selecting the syllabus page and pasting into a text file, and running sed to add double brackets and indentations where needed. Then I do the same on the pools themselves, adding the card tag where needed, indenting question answers and adding leading dashes where needed. But before that, there's a horrific for loop like so:

for x in {A..Z} ; do
     for y in {0..9} ; do 
          grep -A 5 -E '^G$y$x' Pool_Dump.txt > G$y$x.md
     done
done

find . -type f -name "G??.md" -size 0b -delete

Could this be better? Of course it could, but perfection is the enemy of good.

Regardless, here's the General question pool: https://git.af0cx.org/chris/General-Study

Update 1: I've also added an Extra Class study guide. We now have: – https://git.af0cx.org/chris/Technician-Study – https://git.af0cx.org/chris/General-Study – https://git.af0cx.org/chris/Extra-Study

Edit 1: Adding bold font to the edit/update notes

AF0CX Blog by Chris Wall is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In the long ago times of two months ago, I had dreaded the idea of re-licensing. Fortunately I found out that I would only need to take Technician instead of taking all three tests. However, I wanted to make sure I still had a hold of the information.

Enter Logseq

If you don't know what Logseq is, you may want to check out logseq.com for full detail. The summary is that it's a personal knowledge management, outliner, flashcard, whiteboard, link-rich, wiki-like tool. It is very powerful and often easy to use.

For my purposes, I decided to take the question pools and mangle them with UNIX text manipulation tools to get them into a format that Logseq would use to make flashcards. This was the start of what became my ham radio personal knowledge base notebook.

Instead of just plugging through the questions, I would find terms that I was hazy on and create links (adding [[]] around the word) or tagging them with a hashtag like #review. When you click a link or tag in Logseq it will take you to a page (whether you've explicitly created it or not) that has linked and unlinked references at the bottom. You can also get pretty graphs that use radial lines to give you a pretty picture of how pages relate to one another: Example graph of the Technican test pool

Sharing is Caring

Since I found (and continue to find) this useful, I decided to create a “starter pack” version. You can find it in my public git repository here.

If you find errors, or have suggestions, please feel free to let me know. My email address is chris @ mycallsign dot org, or on Mastodon at @af0cx@mastodon.hams.social.

Update 1: I now have all three classes Logseq-ified. Logseq'd. However you call it: – https://git.af0cx.org/chris/Technician-Study – https://git.af0cx.org/chris/General-Study – https://git.af0cx.org/chris/Extra-Study

Edit 1: Fixed the link to my Fediverse profile Edit 2: Actually made review a hashtag.

AF0CX Blog by Chris Wall is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A.K.A. What a lovely rabbit hole you've found here

Yesterday I began the final steps of getting myself on the air. My home rig is such a series of compromises that I am sure that none of this will be earth shattering. It will be interesting (to me, at least) to look back to the history.

There are three major limiting factors for my home installation. 1. I rent and do not own my home. 2. The windows to my home, except for one, are all caulked and painted shut. 3. I am surrounded by trees, electrical lines, transformers, and all the detrius of a urban setting.

My solution has been to get a Yaesu ATAS-120A, mount it on a tripod, and throw out radials in my backyard. I went with 16 16.5ft 20awg radials, in 4 groups of 4 using a banana plug system. I straight up stole this setup, minus the alligator clips, from this video.

Last night was mostly about tuning on various bands, and getting used to the new radio (Yaesu FT-991A). All the advertised HF bands were tested and tuned up nicely. 40M, for example, tuned to a SWR of 1.38. This is great since the scuttlebutt has been that this antenna struggles on 40M. I have not tested the VHF bands and feel inclined to skip all that anyhow.

What I have yet to do is actually call CQ. I honestly don't know how well I'll be able to get out from this location. The advantage of this setup is that it's pretty much one good battery away from being a viable mobile installation. I'll also be honest that after all this time I still have ham stage fright. I'll get over it and talk to strangers soon enough. In the meanwhile I heard QSOs from all over the East Coast from New Hampsire to Florida, but struggled with managing noise. This will be an exercise in getting to know my radio.

Regardless, this is a good start for day one.

AF0CX Blog by Chris Wall is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0