Category: history

What’s been going on with AD7MI?

It’s been a busy summer so far.

– Memorial Day: I really enjoyed the special event station operation – W4M. I operated from Fort Monroe on Saturday and Sunday from a WWII coastal artillery battery overlooking the Chesapeake, wonderful weather and some great contacts. I setup a G5RV for the antenna and used a portable generator for power.

– The Smithsonian, NN3SI: During my trip to Washington DC, I had the opportunity to be a guest operator at the Smithsonian’s own amateur radio station, located at the Museum of American History.

– Lighthouse Activations: Enjoyed a relaxing few days down in the Outer Banks, NC and was able to activate the Bodie Island Lighthouse (USA-067) and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse (USA-212). Link here to the Outer Banks Repeater Association: http://obra.aginet.com/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From : W2EHD
To : ad7mi
Subject : Re: 442.850

Scott – It was a pleasure to meet you – if only on the air.
Re: the the UHF side of the mobile radio. Might consider selecting medium or low power when running mobile – especially when the repeater of choice is not far away.
–
I am sending along a URL for a tape measure beam. Originally, I think the author meant to use it in DFing – Direction-finding – competitions – but despite the fact that it’s rather ugly and makes lots of noise when the wind blows the elements – it seems the ideal solution for accessing a repeater from a remote (vacation) location.
I bought an el cheapo grande 25 ft. tape measure a few years ago, and 8 bucks worth of the PVC tubing he recommends.
There are several of these antennae in my workshop. One thing I did was to cast a couple of concrete bases – using galvanized pails that I bought at ACE.
One 60-odd bag of Sak-Crete will let you make a couple of bases. Glue some scrap carpeting to the bottom and you’ve got built-on floor protection.

As presently described, the tape measure antenna is only good on 2 meters. The author mentions that it may well be possible to change the element dimensions and spacing to put it into the UHF portion of the spectrum. I may try one out on 70 cm, with a watt meter in the line, just for grins.
Keep in touch.
If you wish, I will add your address to the OBRA email list, which will keep you informed about major doings around here. You would not get a lot of mail from OBRA, believe me.
73,
Jack
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next project: I’m working on a portable HF/VHF/UHF system. Intent is to build a complete setup (rig, power supply, tuner, SWR meter, NOMIC RigBlaster, etc.) into an easily transportable box.

28th Anniversary of Packet Radio

At around 9PM on May 31, 1978 were the first KNOWN transmissions of Packet over Amateur Radio. The location was Bill Wong’s Restaurant in Montreal, Canada.

The Montreal Packet Net Group C/O:

Bob Rouleau VE2PY; Norm Pearl VE2BQS; Fred Basserman VE2BQF; Bram Frank VE2BFH; Jacques Orsali VE2EP; Ted Baleshta VE3CAF; Ian Hodgson VE2BEN; among others not mentioned.

They operated on a single 220Mhz channel using start-stop ASCII with the Ethernet CSMA/CD protocol. The protocol was modified for amateur applications by Robert T. Rouleau, VE2PY, and implemented by Fred Basserman, VE2BQF. Montreal Packet Net (MP-Net) Operated at 2400 bit/s using home-built modems.

A detailed description of the Montreal Protocol and hardware used in the experiments is given in the TAB book #1345 “PACKET RADIO” by Bob Rouleau and Ian Hodgson published in 1981. An interesting note is that the Montreal Modem design used the Exar XR-2206/2211 chip set. I am told that a sample of the Montreal Modem was sent to the Vancouver group (VADCG) in the fall of 1978 and it is probably no coincidence that the same chip set appeared in the TAPR TNC modem of which Doug Lockhart of VADCG had a hand in designing.

After an initial spurt of activity in amateur packet, Bob Rouleau and several others in the group turned to commercial applications for packet radio. The resulting company, DATARADIO Inc, today is building and marketing commercial packet radio systems around the world. A typical application is the Canadian Weather Radio packet service introduced some years ago using DATARADIO equipment specially designed for the application.

Bob was inducted into the CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame in 2003

To Commemorate this 28th anniversary listen for W4P from May 26, 2006 – June 4, 2006

Operating will be on both CW and SSB on the “normal” frequencies, i.e.

SSB 3.790 – 7.190 – 14.190

CW 3.520 – 7.020 – 14.025

+/- QRM

Certificate available for a Large SASE

QSL to NA4DR

Shore thing Virginia Beach lighthouse is a beacon of history

By KRISTIN DAVIS

Old Cape Henry Lighthouse should have disappeared when its lantern went black more than a century ago.

Cracks split through its stone face and inspectors deemed it unsafe. A newer, more modern one beamed a few hundred feet away, safely beckoning ships into the Chesapeake Bay.

But from the time Old Cape Henry went up in 1791 until its replacement was lit in 1881, the lighthouse was more than a guide. It was a landmark, a symbol of a young country’s progress.

So Old Cape Henry stayed.

That’s a lucky turn of history for me and dozens of others who climb its winding staircase on this warm March day. And lucky for the thousands of others who’ve followed in the keepers’ footsteps over the years.

This is my second visit to Old Cape Henry, one of a dozen lighthouses I’ve visited in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina. I do not collect miniatures or wallpaper my house in the bricked, painted and patterned towers, but they do intrigue me.

Lighthouses represent another age, when sailors relied on stars and simple instruments and beams of artificial light to guide them. They represent a time when a man or woman spent years by the lonely sea, climbing hundreds of steps in heat and cold and storms.

Today Old Cape Henry Lighthouse is just two miles from Virginia Beach’s hub, but getting there isn’t easy. Because it sits on Fort Story military base, visitors must first pass through security. This could involve a car search.

Once you are on the other side, away from the glittery allure of shops, restaurants and million-dollar beach houses shoehorned along the shore, you’ll find a largely unspoiled landscape–much like it was when light keepers lit Old Cape Henry’s oil lamps.

U.S. history here is nearly as old as it gets. The first permanent European settlers landed at Cape Henry in 1606, made their way up the James River and founded Jamestown.

Old Cape Henry lighthouse overlooks the place they first stepped ashore. Old Cape Henry came along 185 years later, after Virginia had gone from colony to state.

By then the beacon was long overdue. For half a century the Colonial governments of Maryland and Virginia got tangled in “red tape” over its construction. When the materials were finally bought and delivered, the Revolutionary War intervened.

The lighthouse was among the first orders of business when the very first Congress of the United States met in 1789. It was also the first federal work project.

Cape Henry Lighthouse took about a year to build and cost $17,700. (“Old” was added when the new one opened in 1881.)

The slim, octagonal tower was made with stone from our very own Aquia quarries in Stafford County–the same sandstone used in Mount Vernon, the White House and U.S. Capitol. You can also find it at Kenmore, home of George Washington’s sister Betty Lewis and her husband, Fielding Lewis, in Fredericksburg.

Workers had quite a time hauling the heavy, awkward sandstone all the way to the coast by way of the Rappahannock River.

Today the 90-foot lighthouse stands as tall and imposing as it must have in its early days, though I imagine salty winds and rain have faded it.

The light that warned ships is more than 100 years gone, but visitors can stand inside its lantern and see where oil lamps–and later, reflecting Argand lamps–once glowed.

It costs $4 to climb Old Cape Henry. A friendly staff sells tickets inside a quaint gift shop where lighthouse coins, books, coasters and shirts line shelves.

The shop’s back door leads outside, where Old Cape Henry stands at the top of a steep set of stone steps.

It is early March, but the weather feels more like midspring. The sky is soft blue, and warm breezes blow in from the bay.

Old Cape Henry is dim and cool, retaining its winter chill thanks to the stone exterior and brick lining added a few years before the Civil War. The black iron staircase spirals up like neatly positioned dominoes.

The view from the bottom is dizzying. I climb anyway, counting the steps as I go.

The original stairs were wooden–and flammable. They remained for 60 years without incident and were replaced during a renovation.

When I reach the platform where a vertical ladder leads to the lantern, I’ve counted 85 steps. But I can’t be sure because three little windows have distracted me along the way.

It is warm and bright inside Old Cape Henry’s small glass crown. I take in the unobstructed, 360-degree view.

This would have been a good day to be a lighthouse keeper, standing as high as the birds over a sparkling blue bay.

To reach KRISTIN DAVIS:540/368-5028
Email: kdavis@freelancestar.com

What: Old Cape Henry Lighthouse, the United States’ first. In operation from 1792 until 1881, when the New Cape Henry Lighthouse replaced it.
Where: 583 Atlantic Ave., Fort Story, Va., 23459. Virginia Beach is just a couple of miles away.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: $4 for adults, $2 for children 3 to 12
Info: 757/422-9421 or on the Web at apva.org/cape henry

200 Meters & Down — The Story of Amateur Radio

I’m really enjoying this book by Clinto DeSoto. First published in 1936, the book chronicles the development of amateur radio. From spark gap and continuous wave, the formation of ARRL, congressional battles to outlaw ham radio, homebrew equipment, and much more – this book is a great read and gives a wonderful history of amateur radio. From pre-WWI radio contacts ranging from coast-to-coast followed by progress in the years shortly after the war with regular contacts around the world. By reading the early history of ham radio, I now have a better understanding of why things are the way they are; procedures for traffic handling, Q signals and CW shorthand, and the amateur spirit of elmering, experimenting, and the pride of homebrewing.

200 Meters & Down — The Story of Amateur Radio is available from ARRL: http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?item=0011

QSL Card

From : Fred LeBlanc
Sent : Monday, January 23, 2006 6:34 PM
Subject : QSL Card

Hi Scott
This afternoon I received your QSL card pertaining to our contact on PSK.
I visited your website, very interesting information.
I see you had a similar situation while posted away from home as I had.
I was in the Royal Canadian Signals from 1953 to 1969 (one of my trades was a teletype operator) and during that time I was posted as a peacekeeper in the Congo in 1962 and the only way I could get to talk to my wife and children was through the Amateur Radio patch to Trenton Ontario and them to Fredericton New Brunswick, unfortunately I was able to do it once as I was sent to other parts of the Congo when they did not have communication except the ones through United Nations.
How technology has changed, now they can communicate with home just about everyday.
I did get an introduction to hamming in 1954, was interested in it but not enough to get my licence until 1974 and haven’t looked back since.
For the past few years I seem to be on the digi modes more than anything else, I enjoy being able to make wonderful contacts in lower powers.
Will get a card out to you in the very near future.
Thank you very much.
Take care and have a nice evening.
73 de Fred VE9UN and VE9SIG

Cold War Phone Patch from Europe to US

A ‘ham’ makes a transatlantic love connection
Friday, January 20, 2006
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

I can’t believe that it has been 51 years since I served in the U.S. Army at the age of 21.

My mind is aging faster than my body at this particular juncture in my life. But my observation of my army stint was brought into clear focus this week when I was reading about our brave men and women who are serving in the Middle East. Modern technology allows them to be in instant touch with their relatives and friends via e-mail and satellite communications. When I was in the service, the average soldier had to rely on air mail as the fastest form of communication with our loved ones at home. It got me to thinking how things have changed since that cold and snowy December in 1956 when I was stationed in the Bavarian Alps as a Morse code intercept operator. I had contacted the local base communications officer and found that a transoceanic phone call to my wife in Hamilton Township would cost $12.95 per minute. When you are a lowly corporal sending an allotment home, the balance in your pocket leaves pitifully little to spend on such luxuries.

I was about to encounter the fascinating world of amateur radio. One of my bunkmates was a “ham” from West Virginia. He heard me mention the high cost of a phone call to the states. It turns out that the army brass let him utilize the amateur radio station which the signal corps boys had set up in the control tower of the Luftwaffe airfield where we were stationed. He offered to attempt a “phone patch.”

For my non “ham” readers, a phone patch is a bit complicated. Let me explain. We amateur radio operators are allowed to freely operate on radio frequencies designated by the Federal Communications Commission for amateur use. In this case, the frequency range was “40 meters,” or the amateur frequencies in the 7.200 area of the radio spectrum.

I wrote to Judy well in advance and told her I was going to attempt to contact her on a prearranged evening and time, and that she should be near the phone just in case we succeeded in accessing a patch. So, at 1 a.m. on that below-zero morning in 1956, we trudged through the snow to that old Luftwaffe control tower.

I was about to fall in love with amateur radio. My ham buddy Al Poland took his seat near an impressive Collins “KWS-1” transmitter and an adjacent 75A4 radio receiver. He flipped a couple switches, waited for the radio to warm up, and began speaking a strange language: “CQ, CQ, CQ central New Jersey, Hello, CQ, CQ Central New Jersey area, this is DL4RK portable W8 looking for a phone patch to Trenton, New Jersey.”

With bated breath I waited for a reply. Nothing was heard except for the substantial interference from other stations on a typical evening on “40 meter phone.” Al repeated the “CQ” which is amateur radio for “hey, anybody out there hear me?”

And then it happened!

“DL4RK, DL4RK, this is W3XXX . . . . Downingtown, Pennsylvania.”

(I don’t recall the answering station’s call sign). The contact was made, and the incoming signal was very strong. Hams call each other “old man,” and a lady is known as an “XYL” for ex-young lady.

“Thanks for answering the call old man, the name here is Al. Any chance of a patch through to Trenton?”

“No problem, Al,” came the answer, “Let me have the number.”

The number is JU7-0009 I repeat, J for Juliet, U for Uncle, seven, zero, zero, zero, niner.”

“Stand by, Al, I’m dialing now.”

Over that Collins 75A4 I heard a telephone ring. Once, twice, and then, “Hello?”

“Is this Judy Glover?”

“Yes it is.”

“I have your husband Tom on the phone from Germany. He’s calling from an amateur radio station over in Germany. Will you accept the charges from Downingtown, Pennsylvania?”

I can’t explain the thrill I experienced as Judy and I spent 10 wonderful minutes conversing on the telephone via transatlantic radio, with only an occasional fade of the signal. As we signed off, that wonderful gentleman in Downingtown told my wife that he was picking up the toll call from Downingtown to Trenton. As an ex-G.I. he said he was more than happy to pick up the tab.

As we walked back to the barracks that evening, Al explained the “ins and outs” of amateur radio, and when I mentioned how nice it was that the Downingtown gentleman paid for the phone call, Al said most amateurs are known for their courtesy and generosity. He also told me that my 30-word-per-minute proficiency in Morse code would hold me in good stead if and when I decided to go for an amateur radio license.

As it turned out, it would be another 15 years before the bug bit me again, and I became an amateur radio operator with the call sign, WA2RVU, which I hold to this day. To my mind, the amateur radio fraternity is much like a college fraternity, only on a worldwide basis. We all seem to make instant friends with the many contacts we make all over the globe. I have spoken to amateurs in South Africa where the temperature was in the 90s, when outside my Hamilton window the snow was six inches deep and the temperature in the teens. I spent a few minutes conversing with the late Larry Ferrari of WFIL fame, a fellow amateur, and with numerous stations from Great Britain to South America.

Amateur radio: An absolutely fascinating fraternity of men and women.

— — —

Anyone interested in Mercer County history can view my Web site, “Tom Glover’s Hamilton,” at (www.glover320.blogspot.com).

NOTE: Born and raised in Hamilton, Tom Glover has had a lifelong interest in history and newspapers. Past president of the Hamilton Township Historical Society, he is an archivist on local history at the Hamilton Township Public Library.

Lightship PORTSMOUTH

The U.S. Lightship Service was started in 1820. Like lighthouses and buoys, lightships were navigational aids. The lights atop their masts were similar to those in lighthouses, but their portability made them much more versatile.

The Lightship PORTSMOUTH was built in 1915. She served for 48 years off the coasts of Virginia, Delaware and Massachusetts helping mariners avoid dangerous shoals or enter safely into harbors at night. Typically, the ship would anchor at a strategic location at sea and remain there for months at a time. The maximum crew for the Lightship PORTSMOUTH during her half-century in service was 15 men.

In 1964, she was retired to Portsmouth and renamed according to the custom of naming lightships after the site where they are stationed. In 1989, the Lightship PORTSMOUTH was designated a National Historic Landmark. Now a museum, the ship’s quarters are fitted out realistically and filled with fascinating artifacts, uniforms, photographs, models, and more.

ARISS-Russia “Space Patrol” holiday operating event set

ARISS-Russia “Space Patrol” holiday operating event set (Dec 22, 2005) — ARISS-Russia’s Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, has announced that his team and Russian Space Agency Roscosmos/Energia will sponsor “Space Patrol,” a space-related operating event, December 25 and 26. The activity will be both space-based and ground-based and on HF as well as VHF. International Space Station Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev will take part from space via RS0ISS. Special pass times are December 25 at 2056 UTC, and December 26 at 1947 UTC. Western Europeans should listen 10 minutes prior. RS0ISS will use 145.99 MHz FM simplex (145.55 MHz FM simplex will be a back-up frequency). Worldwide earthbound ham radio operations on HF will begin December 25 at 1200 UTC and continue through the following day. Frequencies are on or about 7.080-7.090 MHz (transmit) listening on 7.290 MHz, 14.180-14.290 MHz and 21.280-21.390 MHz. Hams and cosmonauts will be on the air from Energia’s R3K in Korolev and from RK3DZB at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. Cosmonauts planning to participate (most likely on December 26 from RK3DZB) include Mir and ISS veterans Sergei Krikalev, U5MIR; Yuri Usachev, RW3FU; and Alexander Kaleri, U8MIR. The activity commemorates the first anniversary of the death of cosmonaut Gennady Strekalev, U6MIR. “Space Patrol” participants are eligible for a certificate and a commemorative QSL card. Details on how to obtain these will be announced.

Old Point Comfort Light, Fort Monroe, Virginia


The oldest standing structure at Fort Monroe, the Old Point Comfort Light was built in 1802. The adjacent Victorian keeper’s dwelling was added in 1900. The tower is 54 feet high, and still retains the 4th order fresnel lens that was installed in the 1850’s.

Old Point Comfort is still an active aid to navigation, standing lookout over Hampton Roads Harbor. The second-oldest lighthouse on the Chesapeake, Old Point Comfort witnessed the battle between the Monitor and Merrimack during the Civil War.

Fort Monroe is open to the public, and the lighthouse grounds can be easily approached. You can also explore the WWII gun placements near the lighthouse.

ARLHS #USA 567, 37°00’N 76°18’W