Tag: books

2017 Summer Trip Countdown

The 2017 Summer Trip is just around the corner. I feel a bit more prepared this year compared to the past. Attempting to learn and improve, I have made the following changes with the preparation this year:

(1) Not waiting until the last minute to pack. My clothes duffel is practically complete. I’ve picked through the large storage areas under the main bed and the bunks, getting rid of items not needed. Hitch up and ready to go.

(2) Doing campsite research ahead of time and then being ready to make reservations when sites are first available. Camping at a national park campground is almost always preferable. The price is right and the location puts you near where you want to be. When making a campground reservation you need to know what sites can fit your RV (the smaller the RV, the more sites that are available). Using Google Maps for a bit of reconnaissance helps me take the campground map and figure out which site will work best. Come reservation time, you need to be ready. Most national park’s book their campsites 6 months out… to the day. Usually the reservation window opens at 10am eastern and if you want that dream campsite on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then you need to click the book button at exactly 10am.

(3) I took a course in how to offroad using my 4 wheel drive. I have an offroad capable vehicle but have been hesitant to go on the national park’s 4×4 roads because of my lack of knowledge. A few weeks back, Sarah and I headed to a offroad park for a 4×4 101 class. I was able to learn about all the capabilities of my vehicle as well as my limitations as a driver. I was amazed at the terrain that my vehicle could handle and feel much more confident in adventuring on 4×4 roads in the national parks.

(4) Pre-execution checks. Maintenance at the RV dealership where I purchased my travel trailer is becoming problematic. They have proved themselves untrustworthy with their ability to do basic tasks, despite my willingness to pay for it. I have to start doing most the maintenance myself. Before the big trip, I was able to take the trailer on a few weekend camping trips to make sure everything is working.

(5) Less books. I read all the time. On past trips, I’ve packed a milk crate worth of hardcover books. Piles of guide books had surround my bed. Christa said, “Why don’t you use your Kindle?” Besides the fact that I prefer the advantages of a hardcover book (no power required, easy to bookmark, highly portable). Well, I’m going Kindle for this summer. That should easily save about 25lbs of weight and space.

(6) Bluetooth adapter for travel trailer sound system. I saw a recommendations for a bluetooth adapter to connect an iPod to a trailer’s sound system. In the past I have used a simple patch cable. That was often a pain due to the case my iPod is in, it was hard to get the plug seated properly. Then I relied on a playlist shuffle and preset volume to carry the day. Now with the bluetooth adapter I can keep the iPod with me and adjust what is playing on the fly. The only downside is the battery life of the bluetooth adapter. When it runs out of juice, your done.

(7) Practice cooking. Easily one of my biggest summer trip failings is my inability to throw together decent dinners. Usually it will not take much to convince me to make dinner plans at the national park’s dining concessions. I consistently underestimate the time involved in dinner meal preparation. Therefore, I have been trying to practice cooking some basic dinner meals that I will be able to reproduce while at the campsite.

NPOTA: ARRL’s Best Idea?

The National Parks on the Air (NPOTA) is off and running. Making contact with a handful of stations currently operating from NPOTA locations has made me wonder if the ARRL has had a good idea with NPOTA as a way to help celebrate the anniversary of the National Park Service.

From ARRL: “Throughout 2016, Amateur Radio will be helping the National Park Service celebrate their 100th anniversary. Hams from across the country will activate NPS units, promote the National Park Service and showcase Amateur Radio to the public.”

I am a huge fan of both the National Parks and the National Park Service. Anyone who is interested in the history of our National Parks would be well rewarded to start with the Ken Burns documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Yellowstone generally gets credit for being the first National Park back in 1872. However, the National Park Service was not established until 1916. That period in between provides us a very good reason that there are times when we need a government organization to protect us from ourselves. During that in between period, the Army was given the mission of attempting to protect both Yellowstone and Yosemite. Like most missions the Army received, they were underfunded, under equipped, and undermanned. They did, however, do the best they could to protect these amazing areas. Many Americans saw these new National Parks as areas for economic exploitation. If it wasn’t for many individuals working long and hard for the establishment of the National Park Service, it is very likely we would not be able to enjoy the parks we have today. Stephen Mather and Horace Albright were the two primary individuals who secured the establishment of the National Park Service. Ken Burns talks about these two individuals in his documentary and there are also a few books that do a great job telling the story (Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years and The Birth of the National Park Service: The Founding Years, 1913-33).

Yosemite: President Theodore Roosevelt, left, poses with John Muir for pictures on Overhanging Rock at the top of Glacier Point, near which the men camped in a hollow and awoke to five inches of snow in 1903.

The National Parks exist for our enjoyment. Generally that enjoyment manifests itself in some type of hiking, camping, fishing, watching for wildlife, or learning about history. This interaction between Park and citizen can be passionate, emotional, revitalizing, inspirational, and an educational experience.

With all that being said, I was a bit surprised to hear stations making contacts for NPOTA locations like it was a contest. Each NPOTA location is identified by a letter-number combination. No discussion of where they actually were. No description, no discussion. It is a bit sad to see there is a Leader Board – which only facilitates looking at NPOTA as a contest rather than an actual celebration.

I also wonder how these activations are impacting those non-amateur radio enthusiasts who are visiting a NPOTA site. Is this putting amateur radio in the best light?

Are these NPOTA activations promoting the National Park Service or showcasing Amateur Radio to the public?

If so, how?

What would Stephen Mather and Horace Albright think about NPOTA?

It will be interesting to see how NPOTA progresses over the coming weeks and months.

Kay Everett Calls CQ

Vanguard Press; First Edition edition (1951)
Pick up your D-104 and Press To Talk for… ADVENTURE! I purchased this book a while back and I finally dug it off the shelf. Kay Everett Calls CQ, by Amelia Lobsenz, is about a young college girl who takes a summer road trip from North Carolina out to the West with three friends, a travel trailer, and ham radio. For me, this book has several things going for it: (1) strong female protagonist (I have two daughters), (2) HF mobile (I need to get my rig installed in my new vehicle), and (3) a travel trailer trip to Yellowstone National Park, Idaho, and the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The plot centers around a jewel thief, who is also roaming the West, and Kay learning about the amateur radio hobby. Ham radio plays a critical role in several places and the author has the main characters explore several aspects of the hobby (… they even go to a hamfest).

The author, Amelia Lobsenz, was an experienced ham, licensed in 1941. After a stent in publishing, she ran her own public relations firm. She based some of the characters on her actual friends, to include Theresa Korn, K7JGU. In the story, Terry, a YL and pilot, takes two of the girls flying over Idaho (aeronautical mobile, where they end up directing smokejumpers into a wildfire). The protagonist, Kay, is named after Ms. Lobsenz’s own daughter.

Ms. Lobsenz used a 1940’s trip out West to serve as inspiration for Kay’s trip. Among the many places the girls go include:
– National Elk Refuge National Wildlife Refuge
– Grand Teton National Park
– Yellowstone National Park
– Craters of the Moon National Monument
– The Great Salt Lake in Utah
– Rocky Mountain National Park

Amelia became a Silent Key in 1992, but I think her written work will live on.

Ever been to Cornbread Road?

My favorite amateur radio blog comes from Jeff Davis, KE9V. If you have been following Jeff’s blog through the years you’ll have seen a constant evolution of his site and content. In addition to his ponderings of the current state of ham radio, Jeff has produced a number of engaging podcasts. Long Delayed Echoes was Jeff’s podcast series that covered a great deal of the early history of amateur radio. It featured selections from Clinton B. DeSoto’s 200 Meters & Down as well as other significant historical sources of ham history. In addition to his written contributions to QST (see the May 2005 issue on page 56) Jeff has also shared his talent for fiction with us. He has several other ham radio related stories that he posts now and again on his blog (… it is worth checking his blog frequently because once in a blue moon he will put links up to his stories… my favorites are QRP Christmas and Tragedy on the Trail).

Besides his blog, Jeff prodigiously uses social media and you would likely enjoy his ham radio musing that can be read via Twitter and Google +.

Jeff combined his podcast talents along with his fiction writing skills with the production of Cornbread Road. All 13 episodes of the serial are currently available and on the 30th of September, Jeff has promised us a final installment. I’m looking forward to that!

A little DX


I spent Saturday filling out QSL cards, stuffing them in envelopes, and putting on $0.98 worth of postage for the USPS first class international air mail rate. To make life easier I ran both the return envelopes and main envelopes through the printer to get my address on. It would be easier to get some kind of mailing label sheets, which I think I will try to find when I get home for Christmas. Any way you slice it, filling out QSL cards and getting them in the mail takes a while. Keeping me entertained during the QSL card envelope stuffing session was the Insomniac Net through my IRLP node.

Sunday I woke up early and put up my Buddipole antenna, configuring it as a dipole for 20M. Exceptional DX catches for the day were:
UN7FU – Kazakhstan
WH0/WH7C – Northern Mariana Islands
FK8GX – New Caledonia Island
CW3TD – Timoteo Dominguez Island, Uruguay

I am continually surprised by my ability to work stations in South America. I’m not sure what path I am getting the propagation from. There is no one single time of day for my South American contacts – some are in the morning, others in the afternoon.


Today was the first day using my MicroHam USB III. The device is small, just larger than a pack of cards. The radio cable, which comes with the interface, is very well shielded. I used the USB III for both CW and PSK – the device worked well in both modes. Is the MicroHam USB III better than the West Mountain Radio USB PnP RIGBlaster? From a performance standpoint, I think it does a better. With PSK streams, I was able to detect and have QSOs with much weaker signals using the USB III. The fact that the USB III has its own soundcard is a big plus.


Almost done reading A Year of DX by Bob Locher, W9KNI. Bob details his year-long run in the CQ DX Marathon. The reader gets to sit side-by-side with Bob as he uses his Elecraft K3 and DX cluster alarm to work country after country. Bob demonstrates the importance of researching the various rare entities, determining when they might become active and how best to work them. The book is divided month by month, detailing the QSO with each new entity. Between the month chapters are useful chapters concerned with amplifiers, SSB phone techniques, and an amusing Walter Mitty-esque short story themed around DX contacts. I’m enjoying the book and recommend it (…potential stocking stuffer!).

Chasing MARS…

I’m continuing my research of piecing together the history of MARS starting back from the early days of the Army Amateur Radio System (AARS). The process of research is as enjoyable as the information I’m digging up.

– Jeff, KE9V, had a post on his blog the other day that featured a humorous cartoon of different styles of keying and he sited it from a 1952 MARS Bulletin. The “MARS Bulletin” reference caught my eye, because I had not yet heard that there was such a bulletin. Additionally, the time frame of the bulletin in 1952 was near the time when MARS had been reincarnated from the ashes of the pre-WWII AARS. Jeff said he had got the picture from Dr. Kristen Haring’s book Ham Radio’s Technical Culture, published back in 2006. I contacted Dr. Haring (she’s a professor at Auburn University) and asked if she could provide me any additional information on the MARS Bulletin. Dr. Haring told me that she had accessed the MARS Bulletin while conducting research at both the Library of Congress and Columbia University’s library. She also recommended a search tool called WorldCat to help locate copies of the MARS Bulletin nearby. WorldCat is a great tool (it would have been helpful to have had this earlier on in my research) and I was able to locate copies of the Bulletin at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology located in nearby Kansas City (with the next closest source at Indiana University which is some distance away). The library here at Fort Leavenworth is top notch – its official title being the Combined Arms Research Library.

But I am sometimes surprised that they lack items like the MARS Bulletin. Tomorrow I will head down to Kansas City and see if the MARS Bulletin can help explain why MARS was resurrected after WWII and what was the military’s intended mission for the organization.

– Following another lead for QST, I found a letter to the editor in the October 1998 issue from a gentleman by the name of Robert Gabardy, K4TJ. In the letter, Mr. Gabardy explained how he was part of a team which formed to bring MARS back to life back in 1949 and explained how they arrived a the new name for the organization. I was able to contact the retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gabardy, who served in the US Army for a period of over 23 years and is a veteran of WWII. He was able to give me a bit more background and also agreed to respond to some additional questions that I am developing.

– My last hot lead comes from another QST letter to the editor from the June 1998 issue that had caused LTC Gabardy to write in. This letter was from George Hart, W1NJM, a former staff member of ARRL… but also a former member of the AARS and also an Army veteran of WWII. From what I can tell now, Mr. Hart is in a retirement facility in Connecticut. I am going to try to reach him tomorrow and see if I can conduct a telephone interview with him. He would be an amazing source of information into how AARS functioned. I am particular interested in trying to determine why the US Army failed to directly draw from the pool of trained AARS operators to fill the ranks of the Signal Corps after Pearl Harbor. Equally confusing is why the Army didn’t maintain the organization to continue to fulfill its domestic responsibilities of acting as an auxiliary communications network. Instead AARS disintegrated within hours after Pearl Harbor, but only to be replaced later by the Wartime Emergency Radio Service (WERS).

I am hoping tomorrow will be a productive research day.

The Geek-Nerd Singularity

I have been reading a few of books lately that have focused on the geek/nerd subculture. Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People does the best job of providing an overall examination of the subject. His conclusions say that nerds like a rule-bound world and sites examples that include amateur radio operators (to include those who favor Morse Code).

Two other books focus on the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing culture. Mark Barrowcliffe’s The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange is an autobiographical look at Mark’s adolescent life growing up as a roll playing enthusiast who takes his gaming desires to a bit of an extreme.

Ethan Gilsdorf’s Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms is the latest. Ethan is a journalist and former gamer who, when he stumbles across his old stash of Dungeons and Dragons material, turns his journalistic talents towards a journey of self-reflection through the current growth (and acceptance(?)) of the gaming culture.

I rented this on my Apple TV: Monster Camp. A hilarious documentary about folks who take role playing to the extreme – leaving the table top and miniature figures and donning the garb of their character to spend the weekend bringing fantasy gaming to life.

These examinations of the geek/nerd subculture have been very enlightening. The recent ground swell is probably due to the maturity of those who lived through the hay-day of Dungeons and Dragons (late 70s and early 80s) which also paralleled the computer revolution. Whether it is for recreational escape or gravitating towards rule-based environments, the geek/nerd has come out of the high school A/V closet and has proudly integrated as a member of society… no longer on the social fringe.

Finally, Cory Doctorow’s Makers is a book I got for Christmas. I actually thought it was non-fiction… I hadn’t read much about it but I enjoy Cory Doctrow. The book is actually science fiction, based in the not to distant future based around a changing world economy that is driven more by small groups of creative individuals reather than large, corporate monoliths. The book has bogged down a bit towards the middle but I am hoping it starts to pick up again.

Digital Books

I have one of the first edition Kindles that I’ve had since last year. Previously I was using the Sony Reader and enjoyed using it immensely. The Kindle offers the exact same reading experience but with a larger selection of titles to choose from. Jeff Davis, KE9V of Signal and Noise, has previously mentioned The Radio Boys – the title of a series of juvenile fiction books published in the 1920s. Believe it or not, many of their titles are available for the Kindle. I read one and it was pretty entertaining. Another recent find in the Kindle Store was the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien. That’s pretty amazing as the Tolkien books have long resisted being available in digital format. As I’ve said above, I enjoy reading books on the Kindle and it is a huge space saver – but it does not work for me when I am using textbooks. I have found that when I am using a textbook, I need to physically make marks (highlights, underlining, stars, etc.) as well as notes in the margin – it helps me learn the material. Many of the eReaders allow you to make digital annotations… but that is not same (at least for me).

SolderSmoke: A Global Adventure in Radio Electronics, by Bill Meara, N2CQR

SolderSmoke: A Global Adventure in Radio Electronics, by Bill Meara, N2CQR, takes the reader on a journey into the magic of radio and the essence of the amateur radio hobby. The book is both a personal journal and a workbench notebook. Bill weaves together his exploration of radio through both his experiences since joining the hobby as a boy and the continual development of his conceptualization and resulting understanding of the basics of electronics. With a liberal arts education, Bill’s exploration of electronics becomes a passionate pursuit driven by questions not easily explained by standard text book answers. Anyone who has enjoyed listening to a SolderSmoke podcast knows that Bill is a wonderful storyteller. His narrative traces his development in the hobby: early years as a boy, an Army private at Fort Gordon, GA experiencing the Signal Corps school, his reemergence in the hobby upon the start of a State Department posting in the Dominican Republic, followed by tours in the Azores, London, and Rome. Bill’s interests in amateur radio covers many of its facets. He makes contact with a Russian OSCAR satellite, talks to an astronaut aboard MIR, and catches the homebrewing bug – building an AM rig, a dual side-band rig that he uses on 17M and other completely homebrewed projects. His job with the State Department allows him to enjoy the hobby from exotic locations around the globe. The fellow hams he meets (both on air and locals) adds to his adventures. Whether a fellow homebrewer is sending him a hard to get part or he works a local ham in the Dominican Republic via a satellite-based VHF repeater, Bill brings to life the camaraderie of the amateur radio fellowship. His journey takes him beyond the basic equations of electronic theory and explores some of the fundamental questions behind the formulas. I would recommend this book for anyone who views amateur radio gear as more than just a collection of transistors, capacitors, diodes, and solder. SolderSmoke (the book) is one man’s journey into the soul of ham radio. It is a wonderful, amazing quest to unlock the magic of the electron.
The book [softbound, 195 pages] is self-published and available from Lulu or Amazon.com for $22.99.

Another antenna book?

I am really enjoying this book. I have many of the ARRL books on antennas (and there are many) but I have found this book to be indispensable in understanding how antennas work and why. It starts with basic, simple antennas and builds from there. I was especially pleased to read one of the sections by Tom Schiller, N6BT. Mr. Schiller works for Force 12 and is an antenna guru. But more importantly, he is the father of Traci Schiller, one of my good friends from high school. The Schiller’s backyard backed up to Foothill Expressway in Los Altos, CA and you could always see Mr. Schiller’s massive tower. I wish I had been involved in the hobby back then and gotten a tour of Mr. Schiller’s shack. His article in this book is about how every antenna will work, but some work better than others. He does a great job of differentiating between great antennas and antennas that get you on the air. He also shows the rate of diminishing returns you receive at a certain point. I am enjoying Simple and Fun Antennas for Hams and recommend it if you don’t have a firm understanding the basics of antennas and would like to experiment, build your own, and attempt to master the mysteries of the aerial.