Sunday, February 04, 2024

A virtual vacation

You see I am a Ham radio operator and having this privilege I can travel around the world with the turn of a few dials on my radio. Today I took a virtual vacation to some very exotic countries such as China, Argentina, Canada, Japan, Italy, Scotland, S. Korea, and of course several cities here in the USA. And now I think its time for bed, I'm worn out after all that travailing.

Thursday, February 01, 2024

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Origami

This is a Ham Radio opperater (GJ0KYZ) from the Island of Jersey. His hobby other than radio is Origami. You can see other paper folding:
here
.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gj0kyz

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Where have you talked

I get ask all the time where can you talk with the big antennas in your yard ? A picture is woth a thousand words:
Radio station WB9OTX

Click to inlarge

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

A QSL from 50 Yrs ago (Ham Radio)

Yesterday in the mail I received a gift from WN0FAM Danny Lang A fellow Ham that I met some 50 years ago on the air. The gift was a QSL card that I sent to him. We were both Novice operators and we both had just been on the air just a few weeks. We were using Morris code at about 5 words per minute and at a frequency on the 75 meter band of 3.730 Mhz. My antenna was an inverted "V" dipole at 30 foot, I was running 75 watts, the legal power allowed by a Novice license. I'm sure our sending was pretty bad at least mine was. This QSL card was a very welcome gift and meant the world to me. Thank you so much Danny KF0INL. 73, Jack WB9OTX/WN9GOA

Wednesday, April 05, 2023

End Fed Antenna

The antenna behaves like the common dipole but fed at one end. I have installed just about all the antennas, You name it I have had it up. Now please do not get me wrong, The resent end fed will not be as good as a tribander. It will be an antenna for a small yard, an antenna that you will not need an antenna switch, It will work fairly good low to the grown and very easy to install. Most internal tuners will tune it. I have one for 40 20 and 10 meters. After trimming the 40 meter band it has a 2:1 SWR but the 20 and 10 are almost flat and 40 will work fine with the radio's tuner. If you have an external tuner you will be able to work it on all bands 40 up to 10.  40 meters is very good at about 300 miles. I have worked lots of DX stations also, like VK, ZL, YB and tons of Europe. You can build or buy one that will even take 1.5 kilowatt. Mine is a 300 watter and I can run 100 watts on SSB or 50 watts on FT8. All day long. Now everything affects everything when it comes to antennas so try a few ways to hang it, inverted L, vertical, or flat top. Mine tunes best as an inverted Vee at 20 foot. As always higher is better. Just sling it in a tree when operating portable. You can get one for 80 / 10 also.

WB9OTX

Buy one:
https://myantennas.com/wp/product-category/antennas/efhw-multi-band/

Build it yourself :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxhT9uObigs

Read a review by QST:
 https://myantennas.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PROD-REV-MyAnt.pdf

Friday, March 17, 2023

Bad Antennas

It was rainy cold day but I did manage to take the trash out for pick up. I decided to play some Ham Radio. I started on 60 meters, the antenna was a 43 ft vertical. This antenna is way to short so a wide band large tuner was put to use. I sent out a few CQs at QRP (low power) 5 watts. That did not cut it I found very quickly, so I set the power up to 25 watts. This was much better as I contacted several stateside stations, but my signal reports were poor to very poor. Enough of that, I switched to a end fed 63 ft wire antenna that is only 10 foot high. This antenna worked about the same, a few stateside and one in Barbados (8P6).

Now for the faunally, I Stung a wire from the living room to a back bedroom. I started with 10 watts on the 20 meter band. When I transmitted the TV came on and off. I went to 15 meters and the antenna tuned very well and the TV liked it too. A few calls and again about 4 or 5 stations were worked. Not bad with a indoor set up. Now it all came to an end. I do not recommend this set up if you have a wife.

This just shows that a bad antenna is better than none, about anything can  work.

WB9OTX Jack

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Radio Propagation Beacon

Being a Ham for over 50 years I have experimented with about all the perks of the hobby This included all digital modes such as SSTV, RITTY, JT65, Jt9, WEFAX, and more. I worked all over the world with QRO and QRP. I tried just about all the antennas  in the ARRL books. I even was successful bouncing signals off the moon (EME). One day I read an article about a 10 meter beacon  station, and wow a light bulb lit in the 'ol knogan. I had never tried that. There were lots of articles written on the web, I read about all I found and found out its not to costly or hard to get one on the air. I had a couple of tranceivrs  that I could use but I did not want to dedicate one of these to full time 24 - 7 use. Most beacon transmitters use the Radio Shack HTX100. This little rig is no longer produced, but many were sold and still going strong. You can find them on eBay, eHam, and Ham Fests. I bought mine from a wanted to buy ad on eHam. This is a 12 volt radio so you will need a power supply. I had a 12 amp that I used on it. This is a little over kill but it is what I had. Now you need some way to key the CW transmitter. I found an ID-O-Matic repeater IDer that was already put togeather and the Ham pre-programmed it for me. Now you need an antenna, I started out with a dipole but I wanted the antenna to be non-directional. I soon bout a 1/2 wave CB antenna and mounted it at ground level with 3 1/4 wave radials. I soon found the antenna worked just as well with out them, so they were removed. The coax I had on hand was RG58 and was berried from the house to the antenna, about 50 foot. Yes, I know RG8 would have had less loss but I knew several beacons were running only millowatts of power so my 5 watts at the transmitter and the gain of the antenna would do fine. Now for the fun part, getting the reports. The first month I only received reports from East and West. I was being heard almost daily in Europe and California, even in Japan, but never North and South like Canada or Florida. But as the season changed the E skip in November and December came to be and my little beacan with F2 & E prorogation became readable in all directions. I can tell you it became fun getting the mail and finding QSLs from the people that hears it. If you want to copy some beacons, listen from 28.1 to 28.3 most run about 10 WPM CW and on a good propagation day you will hear many - may be me at 28.2033.

Jack Demaree Versailles, Indiana WB9OTX/B  Grid EM79ib

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

10 Mhz Bragging

With the bands being good but not great this morning and

with 25 watts and a 43 Ft vertical antenna I contacted

VK6 (western Austraila),JA (Japan), and YB (Indonesia) in

a time period of about 15 minutes. I was using a digital

mode called FT8. Either one of these countries are not rare

but between 6000 to 11000 miles from Versailles, Indiana.

Very good for only 25 watts of power from my transmitter.

Isn't Amateur (ham) radio a fun hobby ?

Radio Station WB9OTX Jack Demaree

Saturday, February 18, 2023

Wednesday, February 08, 2023

 Radio Station WB9OTX
Versailles Indiana

International Amateur Radio Month is celebrated in April. Hundreds of thousands of radio amateurs worldwide go on air to celebrate International Amateur Radio Month. Ham radio is useful and, in some cases, vital because you don’t need a cell phone network or the Internet to use it. Operators are especially important in a disaster when normal communication channels fail. Read MORE

Thursday, February 02, 2023

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Cpl. John C. Bishop Tribute

 


Cpl. John C. Bishop, 25, of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina passed away Wednesday, September 8, 2010. Cpl. Bishop was serving with the 2nd Battalion 9th Marines and was killed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. John was a member of the American Legion Versailles, Indiana.

Please click the below link to view his Tribute via YouTube Tribute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqlDfrRBVaA

Please donate to

John Bishop's children fund

c/o Stratton Karsteter Funeral Home

P.O. Box 84

Versailles, In. 47042


Video Produced and edited by:
Jonathan (jack) Demaree

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Monday, January 02, 2023

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

Pearl Harbor Day - December 7, 1941

 

.


National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, also referred to as Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day or Pearl Harbor Day, is observed annually in the United States on December 7, to remember and honor the 2,403 citizens of the United States who were killed in the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.
Read MORE

Tuesday, June 07, 2022

James (Jim) Colingsworth


  •  James (Jim) Colingsworth 
  • He died at the age of 19 during WWII Normandy Invasion 1944 

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

ENIAC Computer


 







On 14 February 1946, journalists gathered at the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania to witness a public demonstration of one of the world's first general-purpose electronic digital computers: the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

Monday, February 14, 2022

Tuesday, February 01, 2022

Friday, January 28, 2022

CRIPTO


There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenomenon—all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through. Now, until this point, no one ever thought of allowing the police to spy on someone’s home, but the new technology made this tempting. This being a civilized country, however, warrants were required to use binoculars and watch someone in their home.  The police, taking advantage of this, would get warrants to use binoculars and peer in to see what was going on. Occasionally, they would use binoculars without a warrant, but everyone pretended that this didn’t happen.

One day, a smart man invented paint—and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn’t watch all your actions at will. Things would go back to the way they were in the old age—completely private.

Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. “After all”, they said, “with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn’t mean that the police get any new capability— they are just keeping the old one.”

A wise man pointed out that citizens were not obligated to make the lives of the police easy, that the police had survived all through the mud hut age without being able to watch the citizens at will, and that Ruritania was a civilized country where not everything that was expedient was permitted. For instance, in a neighboring country, it had been discovered that torture was an extremely effective way to solve crimes. Ruritania had banned this practice in spite of its expedience. Indeed, “why have warrants at all”, he asked, “if we are interested only in expedience?”

A famous paint technologist, Dorothy Quisling, intervened however. She noted that people might take photographs of children masturbating should the new paint technology be widely deployed without safeguards, and the law was passed.

Soon it was discovered that some citizens would cover their mouths while speaking to each other, thus preventing the police from readingtheir lips through the video cameras. This had to be prevented, the police said. After all, it was preventing them from conducting their lawful surveillance. The wise man pointed out that the police had never before been allowed to listen in on people’s homes, but Dorothy Quisling pointed out that people might use this new invention of covering their mouths with veils to discuss the kidnapping and mutilation of children. No one in the legislature wanted to be accused of being in favor of mutilating children, but then again, no one wanted to interfere in people’s rights to wear what they liked, so a compromise was reached whereby all homes were installed with microphones in each room to accompany the video cameras. The wise man lamented few if any child mutilations had ever been solved by the old lip reading technology, but it was too late—the microphones were installed everywhere.

However, it was discovered that this was insufficient to prevent citizens from hiding information from the authorities, because some of them would cleverly speak in languages that the police could not understand. A new law was proposed to force all citizens to speak at all times only in Ruritanian, and, for good measure, to require that they speak clearly and distinctly near the microphones. “After all”, Dorothy Quisling pointed out, “they might be using the opportunity to speak in private to mask terrorist activities!” Terrorism struck terror into everyone’s hearts, and they rejoiced at the brilliance of this new law.


Meanwhile, the wise man talked one evening to his friends on how all of this was making a sham of the constitution of Ruritania, of which all Ruritanians were proud. “Why”, he asked, “are we obligated to sacrifice all our freedom and privacy to make the lives of the police easier?  There isn’t any real evidence that this makes any big dent in crime anyway! All it does is make our privacy forfeit to the state!”


However, the wise man made the mistake of saying this, as the law required, in Ruritanian, clearly and distinctly, and near a microphone. Soon, the newly formed Ruritanian Secret Police arrived and took him off, and got him to confess by torturing him. Torture was, after all, far more efficient than the old methods, and had been recently instituted to stop the recent wave of people thinking obscene thoughts about tomatoes, which Dorothy Quisling noted was one of the major problems of the new age of plenty and joy.


end of story

Richard Crisp

Cupertino, Ca.

crisp@netcom.com