Veteran's Day and Other Ruminations

And my sincerest apologies for not posting my thanks on time for all you've done for us.

I would have posted something from work, but TPTB have blocked so many websites that they've basically crippled the Internet for 'normal' use.

ANY and ALL "Online Community" sites have been blocked (like blogger) as well as numerous other technical forums I visit when I need to find out information.

And these policies will be in effect when we're out at sea, severely limiting our after-hours activities.

One of the sites they've blocked is eBay, and since so much of our equipment is old, obsolete, and no longer supported by the OEM, we're forced (or were...) to find replacement units and parts on eBay.

I saved over $3500 by buying bits and pieces for the CCTV "remodel" I just finished, and over the last several years since the company came out of Chapter 11, I saved them well over $25,000 buying equipment, connectors, cable, and other items on eBay.

Yes, I know sometimes it's cheaper to buy things from other vendors than to buy them on eBay, and I always check a variety of sources before I buy something.

The eBay block was supposedly lifted last week, but we still can't access the site.

And they're not too concerned about it, despite the requests from at least ten of us, who gave them written proof of the money we've saved.

This is definitely going to have a severe impact on at-sea morale, as there's only so much to do after-hours (OT is severely restricted, so there's a LOT of "after hours" time), and free access to the Internet made the grind of being out on a launch mission more bearable.

Guess I'll have to buy a book on scrimshaw or knot tying to take with me.....

Great Time On The Iowa Today

And I'm beeeeeat!

We worked several hundred stations, including the Battleship Wisconsin, the carrier Hornet, and the submarine Pampanito.

I spent about an hour on 40 Meters with the Hornet, talking to Scouts who were working on their Radio Merit Badges, and needed some "air time" to fulfill one of the badge requirements.

Took some pix of the event, which I'll post tomorrow, and I figured out why our Disc-Cage antenna hasn't been working to our expectations after the new cables were run, and all the multicouplers were checked.

The two cables were labeled backwards!

The cable marked "4~10MHz" was swapped with the cable marked "10~30MHz", leading us to use the wrong antenna for the frequencies we wanted to operate on.

I wanted to sweep the two sections of the antenna with my RigExpert AA-520 so I could see how well it compared to whatever gear the guys that ran the new cables swept it with. I swept one section of it, and having the results look completely wrong, swept the other section and compared the two graphs.

As soon as I looked at the graphs side-by-side, it smacked me like the proverbial two-by-four up the side of the head that the results were opposite what the labels on the two cables would lead you to believe.

Oh, well.....the only people that actually operate radio gear on this antenna have been informed, and I printed some new labels, with the date on them, that I'll install on the cables the next time I'm aboard the Iowa.

G'night, all......

Busy Day Saturday On The Battleship IOWA!

I'm going to be on the Battleship Iowa all day Saturday to operate the the Amateur radio station we'll set up for the Iowa's "Veterans Appreciation" celebration.

There's going to be a food court, live music, and stuff for the kiddies to do.

If you're active, or retired military, you can get on fro FREE with your ID card or DD-214, so if you're in SoCal, cmon down!

Look for NI6BB on frequencies ending in "61" on the HF bands. We still don't have the VHF/UHF antennas connected, as when they pulled the mast for storage, they torched ( ! ) the cables.

The guys from the Midway radio club will be coming up one of these days to help us reconnect them, and then we'll have a MARS digipeater set up on 2 Meters.

And yes, I'll be taking my camera this time!

Yet Another Post About SDR Using A $20 "RTL" Dongle

There's been a lot of chatter on various blogs and forums about using the $20 "SDR-RTL" dongles for wide-band receivers. For $20, and FREE software, you can hardly go wrong, as long as you keep in mind some of the limitations on these little guys, such as dynamic range, about 50 dB compared to 80~100dB for a "real" receiver, and selectivity. Their sensitivity is more than enough for casual use, and they're really amazing for $20.

These little guys plug in to, and are powered by your PC's USB port, have an antenna connector on the other end, and were originally designed to receive DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial) television signals in countries outside the US. See the article "What Is DVB-T" for more info.

The basic structure of the dongle is a tuner, followed by a detector, usually a Quadrature Sampling Detector, which acts as an Analog-to-Digital converter. The most popular ones use an Elonics E400 tuner (favored because it has the widest tuning range, 52~2200MHz, with a gap between 1100~1250MHz), followed by a Realtek RTL2382U QSD/ADC/USB "Data Pump", which outputs 8-bit I and Q samples to your PC, where the software does it's magic, and out comes audio.

If you live in an area with LOTS of strong AM, FM, and Paging Systems, you might want to look into some filters (more correctly called "Preselectors") to put between the antenna and dongle to prevent the "front end" of the little radio from being overloaded with strong signals.

The dongle I bought from "nooelec" on eBay, and the two software packages I've been experimenting with are Gqrx for Linux, and SDR# for Windows.

From the little bit of experimenting I've been doing, the "best" settings for running these with SDR# seems to be with the RF Gain control set to minimum (-1dB), and the  "RTL AGC" box checked. These settings are reached by using the "Configure" button just to the left od the frequency display.

Here's a screenshot using one of the $20 USB dongles you can buy on ebay, connected to the Discone antenna I use for my scanner, and running under Gqrx on my Linux PC.

The little "radio" is tuned to a local FM radio station, KLOS, on 95.5 MHz.


I've run this same dongle with both packages, and here's a screenshot of the dongle running under SDR# on my Windows 7 machine.

Both programs are displaying the same 2MHz swath of spectrum. The Windows program has more adjustments in terms of what types of filters, sampling rates, and noise reduction is used.

I've also used it with HDSDR, but that program seems to be more suited to "Communications Quality" audio, and although it has a TON of adjustable "stuff" to play with, I couldn't figure out how to get the bandwidth high enough for Broadcast FM.

For the more "hardcore" Linux users there's Linrad, and if you're really a masochist, you can get GNURadio, which I've never been able to figure out, as it's more configurable than EMACS!

I also have a FUNCube Pro dongle, which has since been replaced by the FUNCube Pro+ version. These are much higher quality, with a much wider tuning range, and at a much higher price, currently about $201, depending on the exchange rate with Great Britain.

SO, if you're interested in using one of these for a receiver, you can't hardly go wrong for $20, and some FREE software. They won't replace a good communications receiver, or a scanner, but you can have a lot of fun experimenting with them.

Huge Meteor Seen In The Southwest U.S. **UPDATED**

Reports just coming in on my scanner from Police and news crews.

This is probably from the Leonids Shower which occurs around this time of year.

CORRECTION: The people at the Griffith Park Observatory report that it was from the Southern Taurids, which is associated with the Comet Encke.

More at the L.A. Times website.



I'd fire up my FlexRadio Systems SDR and listen on 6 Meters for some pings, but I'm either too tired, or just lazy tonight.......

A Little Humor

From one of my mailing list buddies that I used to work with at Hughes Aircraft.

My God....is that one scary looking woman, or what.....

OUCH! My Wife Just Got A $9k/yr Pay Cut!

All done through the smoke and mirrors of "Reduction in Hours".

She's the Office Manager at a local magnet High-School, and her schedule is locked in to the Principal's schedule. Her former Principal was a "12 month" employee, so my wife was locked in to that schedule.

WELL.....she retired to take of her mother, who has numerous medical issues, and the school district has declared that all "new" principals will be "10 month" employees, to better match up with when the students are on campus.

POOF! There goes two months of salary for my wife, which is about $9400. They also "front" her the sick leave and vacation allotment for the year, and she might have to give a couple of days "back" to the school district. She rarely uses her sick leave, so I think she'll be OK, but she's going to go through her payroll statements to see what her balance is.

Since her retirement is based on the highest salary she receives in the last 3 years of employment, she's thinking of retiring in two years at age 59. This would base her retirement on the last year she was a "12 month" employee. If she doesn't, she'd have to work to age 64 to "catch up", and at that time she'd get about $21/month more than if she retires at age 59, making it almost a no-brainer to retire early.

This kind of came out-of-the-blue on her, as she'd had some (verbal) assurance that she and one other staff person would continue to be "12 month" employees, as there's lot of things that go on at schools during the time when the students aren't there, like managing and overseeing various contracts and other activities that are in place to get things done.

We'll just have to take a day at a time for now....

meh....Got Nuthin' Today. Going To "Operation Comedy" Tonight

Just seem to be really full of "meh" the last few days.

Finished the CCTV rebuild, and amazingly, *everything* works! Finished it about 1700 on Friday. The managers should be really surprised at how much better the picture looks.

Went to my radio club's "First Saturday of the Month" breakfast, and then mentored an exam session for Commercial and Amateur radio licensing.

Passed one new GROL (used to be 1st Class Radiotelephone), passed one guy's Radar Endorsement, passed one lady's GMDSS Operator/Maintainer (she works on a cruise ship, and this gets her a promotion), and one young guy about 12 years old passed his Technician Class Ham test with a score of 100%.

Then I came home and took a 2 hour "nap"!

Tonight we're going to meet some friends at the Think Cafe in San Pedro for dinner, and then head out to see "Operation Comedy" at the Warner Grand Theater.

Should be a pleasnat evening with good friends, and good comedy, for a good cause.

Maybe it'll help take my sweet wife's mind off the NINE THOUSAND DOLLAR PER YEAR pay cut she was notified of Friday afternoon.

Post coming on that, just not sure how to write it.....

Tuesday Was NOT A Good Day.......

Just about finished with completely rebuilding the CCTV system where I work.

It was a royal mess!

Honeywell was the prime contractor, and did a beautiful job on the fire and intrusion alarms, but I think they farmed out the CCTV system to "Larry The Cable Guy"!

First, they were using RG-59 cable everywhere, which might be OK in your home (I won't touch the stuff!), but really shouldn't be used in a "Production Environment". It has a copper-plated center conductor, and if moisture is around (and it is in spades where this gear is located) the steel will start to rust, popping off the copper-plating. It's also not shielded very well, and this stuff looked like it was maybe 80~85% braid coverage, which means our signal can leak out, and other signals can leak in, degrading overall system performance.

Second, they used "twist-on" F-Type connectors and BNC connectors which start to degrade the minute you turn your back on them.

Third, even the crimped on connectors they used were of very poor quality, and some of them were rusted! ALL of them had been poorly crimped, in some case nearly crushing the coax. And the coax wasn't even properly stripped to install the crappy connectors. The outer jacket was split way back, the shield braid was hanging out, and the center conductor, which Type-F connectors use instead of a separate center pin in the connector, was way too long on some connectors, and barely long enough on others.

ALL the cable in this rack has now been replaced with Belden 7916A RG-6QS, which has a solid copper center conductor, two braid shields, and two foil shields. Connectors have all been replaced with Thomas & Betts (division sold to Belden) "Snap-N-Seal" outdoor-rated connectors, with O-Rings to keep them sealed.

BUT....the real downer to yesterday is that I sliced my left index finger with my knife while I was preparing a cable for the new connectors I was installing. No stitches were required, and I washed it out right away, but still, I try and be careful around sharp things.

Then 10 minutes later I jabbed my left thumb with my side cutters.....

OUCH! Yell, shout, and bled all over the place. Again, I went to the rest room, washed it out, dumped some H2O2 on it, and bandaged it up.

Now I've bandages on my left index finger and thumb. No sign of infection, but I never realized how much I used those two fingers.

And I'm still not finished with the equipment rack......

"Dark Harbor" at The Queen Mary

It's basically a bunch of "Spook Houses" with a food court, trinket sales, and a bandstand where some head banger band was playing all night.

I took my wife there several years ago when we were dating (What? Old people date?), and I got a special offer email, so I bought the tickets, and we went again.

We got there shortly before the gates opened so we could get home early (there's that "old people" thing again....), and paid the extra $5 for "preferred" parking ($25 total) so we could park MUCH closer, what with my walking ability being impaired and all.

WELL....my wife's friend who came along had "forgotten" to print her ticket after she bought it and received the email, so we spent about 20 minutes at Customer Service where they were able to look it up, and give her a replacement ticket.

We then proceeded to the entrance, where EVERYBODY who came into the event had their picture taken.

EVERYBODY.

Full face.

AND a right-facing profile.

While this was ostensibly to provide you with a souvenir (which you had to BUY for another $20), I was pretty steamed about it, as they would NOT let you pass without it.

Or so the guy taking the pictures told me.

Hmmmm....so now I'm probably in another database somewhere, in the name of stopping "terrorism" or something.

ANYWAY.......

The Spook Houses were pretty good, although you get pretty tired of somebody popping out of a dark corner trying to scare you, people banging on the walls, and the ever present thick clouds of good old Rosco Fog Juice, but the ladies enjoyed it.

One thing I'd never seen before was pretty neat. At the entrance to two of the "mazes", there was a large canvas "bag" on each side, filled with low-pressure air, and you had to force your way through very small gap between the two bags to get into the maze.

There were seven mazes (three of them took you on the ship to some spaces not normally open to the public) throughout the site to navigate, but at number five, I had to take a break, as my right hip was acting up, and I just couldn't comfortable navigate several more flights of stairs at the time, so I sat that one out while the gals walked through the "Hellfire" maze.

The next to last one was called "Submerged", and took you through the swimming pool/spa area on The Queen. I'd never seen that part of the ship before, and it was amazing. The original swimming pool is there, in very bad repair, but all the ceramic tile walls and floor of the area around the pool, as well as all the Art Deco lights, are still there, along with some signs on the wall explaining how the pool area operated, and what the cost was back in the 1930's.

As an aside, a British Pound was worth $5US back then, and I think it's something like $1.80 now. I don't know whether that says more about the Pound, the Dollar, or both!

SO...after stumbling around the entire site for about 3~3-1/2 hours, we'd seen everything, and the crowds were really starting to build up (along with an astounding assortment of female eye-candy out on the prowl for the night), so we left.

The extra $5 for the preferred parking was well worth the money, as we had parked within 100 feet of the park entrance/exit, and very close to the road leading out to the freeway, and we were out of there, and on the freeway, within 10 minutes, watching a huge line of cars from the other parking areas wind their way through the parking lot to even get close to the exit.

And I'm still pissed about being forced to have my picture taken......

Really Beat.....Overdid It This Weekend

Whooo-Boy!

Spent 9 hours (in the sun)  on the Iowa Saturday, and then spent 8 hours at the Cabrillo Aquarium "Sea Fair" on Sunday where my club had an exhibit.

Ran the same setup I did on the Iowa, and it worked equally well, but the band conditions were better, with 12 and 10 Meters being "wide open" all day.

Got home early from work today (had trouble staying awake!) at 1500, and went face-down on the pillow for a couple of hours.

At least I'm feeling like doing stuff again, but still have to pace myself a bit better.

And I was planning on getting back to work on the Yaesu FT-726, and then a friend called with a blown out PC and wanted to know if I still had one for sale.

Out to the garage to get the one I built, bagged, and boxed a few months ago that nobody wanted.

I built it out of the leftovers I had in the PC I use to run my FlexRadio Systems Software Defined Radio after I upgraded that machine, so it's got plenty of horsepower, but suffered a bit in the internal "latency" department.

2206 here, and time to hit the hay.

Goodnight, everybody!