Thruth revealed about ham radio

It's not true that they're all rotund misfits. That's only like 95% of hams.

The notion that the misfits from CB moved over to be the misfits on usenet makes a lot of sense.

I asserted long ago that well over half of all usenet posters have Aspergers alone, and a huge portion of the rest have outright mental illnesses.

Archie blatantly has some kind of disorder but he refuses to acknowledge it.

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I am just testing the speed at which I am typing this using (at most) two fingers. [20 seconds]

--
Dirk

http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - My new book - Magick and Technology

I took typing for the same reasons, but it was in 1941. I enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942. At one time I was assigned to typing out crypto messages in 5 letter code groups. This will screw up your touch typing quickly. Even worse was typing out the ten number groups used by the German weather stations. Your fingers never left the "number row". (There was no such thing as a "number pad" on those old mechanical typewriters.)

I heard later that the intercepted and decoded weather reports were re-coded and sent to the RAF the same day for use in bombing Germany.

In addition to a ham license, I got a 2nd Class RadioTelegraph right after my discharge. The "suitable for framing" First Class RadioTelephone License I got at the same time is now a little card to be carried in your wallet. Neither one is worth much today!

--
Virg Wall, P.E., K6EVE  (Great sounding CW call sign!)

I thought this was going to be a photo of two Mitrek mobiles back-to- back with someone shouting, "Honey, please bring home some milk". :)

I mean, is there any true innovation in amateur radio anymore, or is it reduced to an off-the-shelf hobby? Disclaimer: I don't have an amateur license, so please feel free to discount my sentiments. At one point, I thought it was a total waste of spectrum (Then I listened to commercial FM and television and revised my opinion!)

- mpm

There is... although hardware-wise much of it is centered around HF, since realistically these days you usually aren't going to be able to compete with the performance of readily available off-the-shelf ICs at UHF/microwave frequencies with some discrete design.

Software-wise there's a lot of continuing development, particularly in the DSP and CoDec areas. (It's a mistake to think that a CoDec that works well in, e.g., a cell phone would automatically be a good CoDec for use in amateur radio.) See, e.g.,

.

Technology has made it possible for far smaller companies (relative to the likes of Kenwood/Yaesu/Icom) to become major hardware players for the core radios themselves; Elecraft would be a good example here, and I'd wager than within 5 years we'll see some small company putting out a mobile rig that's largely software-defined.

I think it's vitally important that a certain chunk of the spectrum is reserved for private certains to just mess around with/experiment on, just as we tend to reserve, e.g., chunks of land as national parks.

---Joel

I liked the photo of a monkey with a soldering gun better. I had one hanging in my bedroom, when I was a teenager.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

That anything transmitted above 60 KHz was a total waste of spectrum...

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

WWVB is at 60kHz, WWV is at, what?, 10MHz? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

      Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed

Sometimes. It depends on the propgation but if you can pick up WWVB, the rest of the WWV transmissions are wasted spectrum.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

Didn't you know? Hams are cheap tightwads.. They fight like hell for the lowest price and the one that gets it, then goes around and brags to all his fellow hams, afterwards!

A lot of them get more thrill of just knowing they got it and the other guy didn't and took the last owner of it to the cleaners! Normally this item may sit idle and not even gain use! But fear not, this proud owner of this useless item will remind you that he has one and how bad he took the guy to the cleaners getting it!

And not let us forget, they'll make sure this item is sitting among their collection of rigs at their fancy looking desk top, built just for the station, taking photo's of it to pass around to their friends, especially one to the guy that tried to buy out from under him.

You'll hear them talk about what is best and if it's free! its the best one of all!

Jamie

In the mid '70's I designed a chip for Bowmar that received WWVB and spit out the time... for automatic setting clocks. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

      Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed

Well, not really.

Frequencies are 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz.

WWV can be received by any shortwave receiver and the time announcements can be understood by anyone who speaks English. There are also occasional maritime announcements regarding weather and even solar flux data.

Not so with WWVB. Mr. Thompson knows what it takes to use the transmissions from that source.

Cheers, John

Here's one that shows the time, projects it on the ceiling and shows the outside temperature via a remote radio link. I got mine for under $20.

Maybe they're using your chip?

--
Virg Wall

How would you use WWVB to calibrate an instrument?

It can be done with WWV's carrier. For example, I have an HP3586C Selective Level Meter which I found to be 2 Hz off by simply tuning to WWV. I also calibrated my Fluke 6061A Synthesized Signal Generator by watching the audio output of the receiver and noting drift of the beat note.

Cheers, John

VWWall wrote in news:T9GdnR_S3pP5YdzQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

You don't even need a license to run a 50KW AM blowtorch, now. I don't think they even have someone at the base of the tower with the Harris DX50's solid state switcher powering the tower any more.

Transmission departments aren't near as proud as they used to be.....

Management's glad they're gone. In the old days, if you pissed off the crew at the tower, you could be talking to yourself if the paychecks weren't delivered properly in a timely fashion!

Funny how a big Continental transmitter is so sensitive to paychecks you can actually cash at a bank......

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in news:xridncOEHYMVld_QnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

one

Tornado is a neat little USB device you plug in between two computers to move files very quickly from one to the other. It even runs its own software on both machines to automate the transfers.

Tornado's best commercial is:

where two computer "experts" with a crossover cable go up against a chimpanzee and 8 yr old girl using a Tornado to transfer one file between two identical computers......very cute.

The chimp plugs in the USB cable in his machine MUCH more accurately than most computer owners I know....who normally try to push it in upside down.

Jamie wrote in news:sIp0p.47147$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe21.iad:

No, he'll carry the item to the next hamfest to repeat the cycle of uselessness for some other ham JUST AS SOON as the ripple effect of his bragging wears off at the local club meeting.

Once they're not in awe of his possession, it becomes moot to be disposed of. Hamfests are full of crap like this....dead tubes from 1947, military radar test sets from 1952...the year that radar was dumped.

If you need the motor-generator for a 1957 Motorola 2-way tube set on 33 Mhz, there's 5 of them at every hamfest.....and the vibrators for the receiver!

Greegor wrote in news:0331537b-68d0-46ce-a6b3- snipped-for-privacy@a3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com:

Those are easy to spot, though. They're all posting from Google Groups, not an NNTP client they'd never be able to boot and use.....(c;]

mpm wrote in news:fbe0fcfb-3ab8-48a0-8ddd-bf7f54924643 @i5g2000yql.googlegroups.com:

You can't waste spectrum noone wants....like 10 meters....6 meters.....75 meters......CB.

Noone seems too interested in lowband VHF TV, now that it's dead, either. Who wants a sellphone with a buggy whip on 54 Mhz?? How silly.