Mostrando postagens com marcador Ham - English. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Ham - English. Mostrar todas as postagens
quarta-feira, 14 de dezembro de 2011
quinta-feira, 13 de outubro de 2011
segunda-feira, 26 de setembro de 2011
Follow the Drakensberg hikers on amateur radio
Tonight, 25 Sept., a group of South African hikers start on the Grand Traverse, a 12-day hike in the Drakensberg.
Johan Leslie, ZR4CAA, is going with them and he will keep contact with John Longland, ZS6AA, at the base camp.
John will also be active on KwaZulu-Natal 2 m repeaters and he requests amateurs on those repeaters to monitor the repeaters for any possible emergencies and then pass any QSPs to John, ZS6AA.
If any battery power remains at the end, Johan will be available for chats from 07:00 on 1 October on 7,070 MHz.
Go to www.crossroadsadventure.co.za beforehand for details and the communication procedure.
From: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/september2011/follow_the_drakensburg_hikers_on_amateur_radio.htm
Gloucester County 4-H club leader encourages ham radio hobby
Published: Sunday, September 25, 2011, 4:00 AM
When the earthquake hit the region in August, quickly followed by Hurricane Irene, residents across the state realized how delicate technology could be.
One resident says, however, that there are ways to get around these barriers — with the use of amateur, or ham, radio equipment.
“Concerning the earthquake down in Virginia, when an event like that occurs, people realize how fragile our communication system actually is,” said Cory Sickles, an American Radio Relay League member and leader of the Gloucester County 4-H Amateur Radio Club. “Cell phones had too many users overwhelming the system because everyone wanted to check on the welfare of their loved ones. Earthquakes are one of those things that, by and large, demonstrate some fallacies of the communication system.”
In addition to overuse, Sickles said phone lines could be severed or disconnected and similar damage could be seen in floods, hurricanes and — over a slower period — blizzards and icing conditions.
“New Jersey does have a lot of infrastructure, and we depend on it to the point that we don’t think about these situations,” said Sickles. “I’m sure in many of the homes where people lost power from Hurricane Irene, people thought ‘there’s no Internet and no TV, what do we do?’ The advantage hams have is that we don’t have to use those same communication lines, we can communicate radio to radio as long as we have some backup power.”
Sickles said many of the radios operate on low power and can run on batteries. He said other operators hook up to generators or have even explored green power like solar and wind.
“It ties into that whole engineering, how do things work, mindset,” said Sickles.
An ageless hobby, amateur radios are something that Sickles said he’s seen children as young as four learning about.
“There’s an inherent something in those who want to do it,” said Sickles. “Amateur radio crosses many levels. We have engineers, physicians, physicists and mathematicians, but we also have entertainers, reporters, home builders and chefs who participate. It’s for people from any walk of life who have an innate curiosity about how things work and an enjoyment for meeting new people.”
Sickles said, too often, ham radio is classified as an introverted interest. He said that’s just not true.
“You’re putting together a station and sitting in front of a mic and talking to people all over the world,” he said.
Sickles said ham radio operators mostly use voice to communicate but can also operate in a variety of digital modes. When communicating internationally, Sickles said it’s a great way to practice foreign language skills.
“Amateur radio has evolved over the years, though the hobby is more than 100 years old,” said Sickles. “It has followed changes in technology — and in many cases — driven it. Years before cell phones caught on, we had the capability to make calls while we were walking around.”
Sickles said amateur radio is a licensed service with three levels. As an operator progresses through the levels, they are permitted to do things on more bands and frequencies.
The technician — or entry-level operator — allows some high frequency communications privileges and is a license mostly for handheld radios and repeaters. The technician can also take advantage of satellite communications, and though their transmissions can reach hundreds or even thousands of miles, they are limited.
A general class license allows voice communications on more bands which reach greater distances and access to digital modes. And the extra class license offers access to an additional set of frequencies most often used by foreign stations in different regions of the world.
Morse Code, which used to be part of the licensing requirement for hams, is no longer necessary.
“There is no minimum age requirement for licensing, but we find that boys are usually mature enough and have enough focus in their junior high years while girls may be ready by fifth or sixth grade,” said Sickles. “One of the things that attracted me to ham radio as a kid was that there were no age requirements. I discovered amateur radio at 13 when my algebra teacher showed a film, and I was licensed by 14.”
Sickles said he was one of those kids who was always taking things apart and putting them together, the perfect mindset for hams.
“This interest also led me to some career opportunities because I always had a technical background, even in television production which is what I do now,” he said. “It’s just become part of who I am and it opens a lot of doorways to different ways of thinking. You also develop a little more appreciation for what we have here and where we stand in the world by talking to people from other countries.”
Sickles said the hobby also doesn’t have to be expensive. Some radios cost less than a video game.
Ham radios also have a public service aspect. This weekend, Sickles and other amateur radio operators were coordinating communications for the MS 150 bike ride for multiple sclerosis.
Sickles encourages anyone interested in ham radio to do some research on the hobby. He suggests checking out the Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club website at www.w2mmd.org or the American Radio Relay League website at arrl.org. For more information, Sickles can be reached at wa3uvv@arrl.net or 856-582-9146.
Ham radio group seeks to help in emergencies
Amateur radio operators like Irwin Litt of Monticello were a lifeline when Hurricane Irene temporarily knocked out power to the Sullivan 911 center.MICHELE HASKELL/Times Herald-Record
MONTICELLO -- Irwin Litt was hunkered down during Hurricane Irene next to his ham radio at home in Monticello when Sullivan County's 911 center lost its phone line.
Meanwhile, Orange County 911 received three calls from Sullivan residents but had no way to get in touch with Sullivan 911.
So, Orange 911, using amateur radio operators stationed at its emergency services center in Goshen, relayed the calls to Litt, who scribbled down the reports of power outages, including a nursing home in Swan Lake.
Then he drove from Monticello to Bethel and delivered the messages, which took roughly 20 minutes.
Then he drove from Monticello to Bethel and delivered the messages, which took roughly 20 minutes.
“They (Orange 911) asked me to physically write the message down and take it to the 911 center, which is not a great way to convey a message. But I was certainly willing,” Litt said. “What we should do is have a radio desk there, so we can communicate.”
Litt, who is president of the Southern Catskill Amateur Radio Society, says the county's licensed operators are willing to help during emergencies — but are not being used.
The county could put up an antenna at the Sullivan 911 center and buy radio equipment for less than $1,000, Litt said.
Ham radio operators don't have a desk at the 911 center at the Sullivan County International Airport in White Lake. And club members haven't met with 911 Coordinator Alex Rau or Commissioner of Public Safety Dick Martinkovic.
The relationship among Orange County's licensed ham radio operators and Orange 911 is just the opposite. The volunteers have a room in the same building as Orange 911 and are under the Division of Emergency Management.
During Hurricane Irene, radio operators kept the Red Cross in Middletown in communication with other offices after it lost power. They backed up St. Anthony Hospital in Warwick for three days.
Members — they're also trained weather spotters with the National Weather Service — also went to some flooded areas, relaying information.
"We have had a great rapport (with Orange 911) for years," said Steven Fleckenstein, radio officer for the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service.
Rau acknowledged that Sullivan's 911 center was unreachable for a short period during Hurricane Irene.
"(Orange County) contacted some local ham operators in Sullivan (who) relayed the information to the 911 center," he said. "By the time they arrived, we had those calls directly."
Rau said the storm knocked out the Verizon switch in Monticello that controls the 911 line. Within an hour, the emergency center established two alternate phone lines and was speaking to 911 centers in Orange and surrounding areas.
He agreed that ham volunteers could be useful, if properly trained, adding that the county does not want people conveying unreliable, exaggerated, information.
Rau said he's been considering how to involve the volunteers. "Amateur radio is a coming thing in emergency services," Rau said. "They certainly have a place."
Litt said that roughly 15 club members could be available in emergencies.
The group recently tested a radio at Catskill Regional Medical Center in Harris. And several members will be at the Rally New York auto rally to be held in Sullivan in October, stationed at points along the route to call an ambulance if there's an accident.
"When I was there (at the Sullivan 911 center), there was a lot of pandemonium reporting outages with NYSEG," Litt said. "They were inundated. It (amateur radio) is an alternate avenue of communications."
terça-feira, 24 de maio de 2011
terça-feira, 29 de março de 2011
Paul Baran, W3KAS, Internet Pioneer, silent key at 84
Paul Baran, an engineer who helped create the technical underpinnings for the Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, died Saturday night at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 84.
In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”
Mr. Baran’s idea was to build a distributed communications network, less vulnerable to attack or disruption than conventional networks. In a series of technical papers published in the 1960s he suggested that networks be designed with redundant routes so that if a particular path failed or was destroyed, messages could still be delivered through another.
Mr. Baran’s invention was so far ahead of its time that in the mid-1960s, when he approached AT&T with the idea to build his proposed network, the company insisted it would not work and refused.
“Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” said Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google who was a colleague and longtime friend of Mr. Baran’s. “AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t participate in the Arpanet project,” he said.
In 1969, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency built the Arpanet, a network that used Mr. Baran’s ideas, and those of others. The Arpanet was eventually replaced by the Internet, and packet switching still lies at the heart of the network’s internal workings.
Paul Baran was born on April 29, 1926, in Grodno, Poland. His parents moved to the United States in 1928, and Mr. Baran grew up in Philadelphia. His father was a grocer, and as a boy, Paul delivered orders to customers in a small red wagon.
He attended the Drexel Institute of Technology, which later became Drexel University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1949. He took his first job at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia, testing parts of radio tubes for an early commercial computer, the Univac. In 1955, he married Evelyn Murphy, and they moved to Los Angeles, where Mr. Baran took a job at Hughes Aircraft working on radar data processing systems. He enrolled in night classes at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mr. Baran received a master’s degree in engineering from U.C.L.A. in 1959. Gerald Estrin, who was Mr. Baran’s adviser, said Mr. Baran was the first student he ever had who actually went to the Patent Office in Washington to investigate whether his master’s work, on character recognition, was patentable.
“From that day on, my expectations of him changed,” Dr. Estrin said. “He wasn’t just a serious student, but a young man who was looking to have an effect on the world.”
In 1959, Mr. Baran left Hughes to join RAND’s computer science department. He quickly developed an interest in the survivability of communications systems in the event of a nuclear attack, and spent the next several years at RAND working on a series of 13 papers — two of them classified — under contract to the Air Force, titled, “On Distributed Communications.”
About the same time that Mr. Baran had his idea, similar plans for creating such networks were percolating in the computing community. Donald Davies of the British National Physical Laboratory, working a continent away, had a similar idea for dividing digital messages into chunks he called packets.
“In the golden era of the early 1960s, these ideas were in the air,” said Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at U.C.L.A. who was working on similar networking systems in the 1960s.
Mr. Baran left RAND in 1968 to co-found the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research group specializing in long-range forecasting.
Mr. Baran was also an entrepreneur. He started seven companies, five of which eventually went public.
In recent years, the origins of the Internet have been subject to claims and counterclaims of precedence, and Mr. Baran was an outspoken proponent of distributing credit widely.
“The Internet is really the work of a thousand people,” he said in an interview in 2001.
“The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral,” he said in an interview in 1990. “Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, ‘I built a cathedral.’
“Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, ‘Well, who built the cathedral?’ Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.”
Mr. Baran’s wife, Evelyn, died in 2007. In addition to his son, David, of Atherton, Calif., he is survived by three grandchildren; and his companion of recent years, Ruth Rothman.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 28, 2011, on page A25 of the New York edition.
From: NYTimes.com
Charles Dharapak/Associated Press
The engineer Paul Baran.
The cause was complications from lung cancer, said his son, David.
In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”
Mr. Baran’s idea was to build a distributed communications network, less vulnerable to attack or disruption than conventional networks. In a series of technical papers published in the 1960s he suggested that networks be designed with redundant routes so that if a particular path failed or was destroyed, messages could still be delivered through another.
Mr. Baran’s invention was so far ahead of its time that in the mid-1960s, when he approached AT&T with the idea to build his proposed network, the company insisted it would not work and refused.
“Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” said Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google who was a colleague and longtime friend of Mr. Baran’s. “AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t participate in the Arpanet project,” he said.
In 1969, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency built the Arpanet, a network that used Mr. Baran’s ideas, and those of others. The Arpanet was eventually replaced by the Internet, and packet switching still lies at the heart of the network’s internal workings.
Paul Baran was born on April 29, 1926, in Grodno, Poland. His parents moved to the United States in 1928, and Mr. Baran grew up in Philadelphia. His father was a grocer, and as a boy, Paul delivered orders to customers in a small red wagon.
He attended the Drexel Institute of Technology, which later became Drexel University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1949. He took his first job at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia, testing parts of radio tubes for an early commercial computer, the Univac. In 1955, he married Evelyn Murphy, and they moved to Los Angeles, where Mr. Baran took a job at Hughes Aircraft working on radar data processing systems. He enrolled in night classes at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mr. Baran received a master’s degree in engineering from U.C.L.A. in 1959. Gerald Estrin, who was Mr. Baran’s adviser, said Mr. Baran was the first student he ever had who actually went to the Patent Office in Washington to investigate whether his master’s work, on character recognition, was patentable.
“From that day on, my expectations of him changed,” Dr. Estrin said. “He wasn’t just a serious student, but a young man who was looking to have an effect on the world.”
In 1959, Mr. Baran left Hughes to join RAND’s computer science department. He quickly developed an interest in the survivability of communications systems in the event of a nuclear attack, and spent the next several years at RAND working on a series of 13 papers — two of them classified — under contract to the Air Force, titled, “On Distributed Communications.”
About the same time that Mr. Baran had his idea, similar plans for creating such networks were percolating in the computing community. Donald Davies of the British National Physical Laboratory, working a continent away, had a similar idea for dividing digital messages into chunks he called packets.
“In the golden era of the early 1960s, these ideas were in the air,” said Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at U.C.L.A. who was working on similar networking systems in the 1960s.
Mr. Baran left RAND in 1968 to co-found the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research group specializing in long-range forecasting.
Mr. Baran was also an entrepreneur. He started seven companies, five of which eventually went public.
In recent years, the origins of the Internet have been subject to claims and counterclaims of precedence, and Mr. Baran was an outspoken proponent of distributing credit widely.
“The Internet is really the work of a thousand people,” he said in an interview in 2001.
“The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral,” he said in an interview in 1990. “Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, ‘I built a cathedral.’
“Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, ‘Well, who built the cathedral?’ Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.”
Mr. Baran’s wife, Evelyn, died in 2007. In addition to his son, David, of Atherton, Calif., he is survived by three grandchildren; and his companion of recent years, Ruth Rothman.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 28, 2011, on page A25 of the New York edition.
From: NYTimes.com
quarta-feira, 16 de março de 2011
If you're having trouble getting in touch with friends or family in Japan, a local group of Ham radio op. may be able to help you!
If you're having trouble getting in touch with friends or family in Japan
, a local group of Ham radio operators may be able to help.
Right now in Japan, many phone lines and cell towers have been knocked out, and internetaccess is hard to come by.
But some local operators using Ham radio technology have already make contact with other Ham radio operators in Japan.
In some of the harder-hit areas of Japan. Generator supported Ham radios are the only way to communicate.
Operators say they can put people in Japan in touch with people from Reno, just as soon as they get approval from the Japanese government.
"With communications being down, there's a lot of folks in Japan who'd like to get word back to their family member or employers here in the United States that they're ok, and that they're having problems and we can transfer that information for them," said Tim O'Shea, Emergency Coordinator for Washoe County.
Operators say some people think Ham radio is a dying form of technology, but it's actually gaining popularity.
They're willing to help you make contact with loved ones in Japan. Contact Ham radio operator Tom Taormina at 775-847-7917 for more information.
From: KOLOTV.com
Right now in Japan, many phone lines and cell towers have been knocked out, and internet
But some local operators using Ham radio technology have already make contact with other Ham radio operators in Japan.
In some of the harder-hit areas of Japan. Generator supported Ham radios are the only way to communicate.
Operators say they can put people in Japan in touch with people from Reno, just as soon as they get approval from the Japanese government.
"With communications being down, there's a lot of folks in Japan who'd like to get word back to their family member or employers here in the United States that they're ok, and that they're having problems and we can transfer that information for them," said Tim O'Shea, Emergency Coordinator for Washoe County.
Operators say some people think Ham radio is a dying form of technology, but it's actually gaining popularity.
They're willing to help you make contact with loved ones in Japan. Contact Ham radio operator Tom Taormina at 775-847-7917 for more information.
From: KOLOTV.com
quarta-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2011
sexta-feira, 18 de fevereiro de 2011
DX on 2 meter VHF band between PU2WHY (Brazil) and FM8DY (Martinique) by TEP
I caught one very very rare DX contact by TEP (Trans-Equatorial Propagation). I'm in GG57AS, operating base with one Icom IC-2200H transceiver and one 3x5/8 GP-7MKII antenna (made in China, bought in Paraguay, this is a vertical cheap antenna).
With 65w I got 58 from FM8DY in FK94MO, Martinique Island, 4268 kilometers away (2652 miles). Radio operator Jean-Louis Maridet. I've recorded this video on hurry, so I don't have the start of QSO, where Jean told me I was 58 to him.
I told him he was 56 for me, because his first signal was 56, and then I didn't looked to my transceiver anymore, I just wrote all the informations of this QSO on my notebook and heard him, this is why I told him he was 56 for me when he really was 52 (I'm sorry Jean). In this video Jean was running 100w on a 16 element Yagi horizontally polarized.
I'm sorry about my ugly station guys, we are overhauling over here, cleaning and opening more space for my "new" Kenwood TS-440S/AT that it coming on the way.
To know more about this rare phenomenon, acess:
English - http://bit.ly/ficFpH
Portuguese - http://bit.ly/htlp0w
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