Friends,
Some of you will be pleased to know that I don’t have any further time for upsetting the apple-carts in the uk-contest reflector. Here’s the nub of my issues that frustrates me and ruins my pleasure of this hobby:
Having old people with what feels like miniscule amounts of real energy running the management of my governing body is frustrating for me as a grass-roots operator. There’s a few people that need to look in the mirror and work out a real strategic plan to get this show back on the road right now. It doesn’t have to be a hobby for old people – young people will come in but they need to be welcomed. Attitudes need to change and it needs to start at the top. There seems to be absolutely zero quest for helping the new bloody. New people are continually shunned off to the sidelines. This is worse if they verbalise a desire to use SSB. This really is a desperate time for Amateur Radio but most of the culprits will die before the real shit hits the fan in 15-20 years time.
Where’s the clear communication strategy? Where’s the resource to implement? You don’t need money to get things done around here, you need energy! Goodness, this is a technical hobby. Both James and I have commercial grade web-servers that are completely under-utilised. There must be lots of people like us, waiting to contribute.. waiting for someone to motivate us. But what a dull life, I’m certainly not going to contribute to a system where attitudes favour CW over SSB and G4s over M6. It’s discrimination on a grand scale. Look in the mirror.
Most of the communication published either privately to me or via mailing lists bleats on and bloody on about how all this is staffed by Volunteers. Wake up. So is Scouting, Guiding, the local football team and the bloody Village Hall. But essentially, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing absolutely right, whether that be paid or volunteered for. Not a day goes by without me making phone calls or going to meetings for Scouting (or Guiding). I never tell people that the reason I might do a crappy job from time to time is that I’m a volunteer. I either do it well, clear up my act or clear off and let someone else take up the mantle.
Some of you are friends, others I respect due to the authority you have. Most of you have the capacity to make change. Do something about it before it’s too late.
Callum.
July 1st, 2009
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Tonight, I made a post about a real-world test I did for 70 cms two weeks ago, just before my Group Scout Camp since I had a choice to make a 25 meter extension lead out of Westflex or EcoFlex 15 for a walkie-talkie system based on 70cms that I promised to run for my Foundation candidates. I ran both coax types up the tower and tested them out individually on 70 cms with a local station (sub-20 miles) on both 145MHz and 433MHz. The results showed a dramatic difference between the Westflex above 2 meters. Essentially, my test demonstrated that fall-off with the Westflex was dramatic as the frequency became higher. In response to a query on Westflex to the UK Contest reflector, I posted an answer explaining my findings that EcoFlex out-performed Westflex by a large margin.
His reply is as follows:
Hi Callum
That is an astonishing difference!
For the figures quoted @ 432MHZ
25m WE103 = loss 1.88dB
30m Eco15 = loss 1.83dB
So a theoretical feeder difference in your setup of 0.05dB.
Now as an owner of a TS2000 I know the S-Meter on FM is a farce but for a moment lets take it as being correct and an S point = 6dB increase so your 6 S point increase would indicate a signal level difference of 36dB at the radio.
That really stretches the imagination and if correct you should easily become a multi millionaire overnight!
David, I’m not sure how I am to make my money, perhaps you can send me cheques for my experiments?
Callum.
July 1st, 2009
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(This post aimed at our US friends).
I get an email at about once a week from various members of the NordhavnDreamers group asking me more about our narrowboat which we use on the Inland Waterways of the UK. I find myself repeating myself every couple of weeks, so perhaps a high-quality post here will put your taste buds at ease.
Our boat conforms to a 350 year-old 6 foot 10 inch UK canal barge spec. Actually, they were originally 7 feet wide but some locks have subsided by an inch or so over the last couple of hundred years and a 6 foot 10 inch spec has now been agreed.
History is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system
We have a 50 hp Beta Marine engine driving an 18 inch three blade prop via a 2:1 reduction gearbox on a 70 foot 23 ton boat. It’s made of mild steel, built on half-inch base lowering to a quarter inch thick on the top deck. The engine supplies 12v to our 4 x 110 ah house batteries and one starter battery via a pair of alternators and we also have something called “Travel Power” which is a bloody great big belt-drive alternator, supplying a 5kW 240v mains device at the flick of a switch (again off the main engine). When I flick it on, I normally have to hit the throttle a whisker to compensate. The throttle is “analogue”. We don’t have a wing or a generator but no switch = no Travel Power (and when it’s on, it’s clearly sucking up power from the engine). This is supplemented by a 3kW Victron inverter. This means, we can have the kettle and toaster on in the mornings when I’m driving along and it also means that the inverter thinks it’s seeing Shore Power and drives the charging flat out. I can achieve a battery “float” after about 12 hours solid charging which lasts us about 18 hours when we’re “on the hook” (mostly fridge, freezer, Sat and TVs). Washing machine use is restricted to when we’re moving and Wendy checks I have the Travel Power “on”. We don’t have an anchor (well, we do but only for river emergencies), we just stop whenever we feel like it and enjoy the view, the wildlife, whatever. Of course, sometimes we can stop right in city centres.
The sound proofing is nothing like a Nordhavn, there’s just an inch thick ply panel between the engine and the master bedroom so it makes a bit of a racket. We have an 8hp electric bow thruster which isn’t proportional but it hangs off a really massive battery (I forget the spec) and it’s very loud with the steel sounding like a bunch of cymbals going off. I can reverse quite easily by using the bow thruster as a steering device, as long as I don’t go too quickly. Apparently the bow thrusters should not be used for more than 2 minutes in any hour. Very occasionally, I think I might be getting near the thermal but so far, never have (does it work..? More questions than answers as usual). I don’t have staged throttle controls, I’m either in neutral or I’m revving the engine for power (or in gear too). I would love a two or three stage idle, as per Ken’s (and David’s) 68, but eventually you have to realise that we’re only doing 4 knots here and the shore is normally within about 12 feet(!), so not much can normally go wrong bar ones ego!
Narrowboats, by their very nature have a number of compromises. For instance, the master bed is only a 4 foot 9 inches wide. This means that we get real cosy watching late-night TV or I sleep in the saloon on an extra large double bed pull-down thingy (she kicks me when I start snoring!). 70 feet long is the absolute maximum you can have on the Midlands and Southern Canal systems. Up “north”, they have wide but dumpy locks. This means that to travel absolutely everywhere in the UK, you need a 58 foot regular-width narrowboat. This is too small for us since we have 2 kids, hence the bunkroom with playstations etc and lots of toys (Ken and John would certainly approve!).
Heating is by a) diesel (furnace) Webasto making hot water which is pumped around a skirting board radiator system. Waste engine heat is dumped over the side on a keel cooling section of the hull. I’m currently talking to the yard to salvage the waste heat and dump it back into the living space in the winter (complimenting the Webasto) since it’s pretty silly to dump heat on the one hand and make heat on the other. B) We also have a couple of electric heaters since we have lots of electricity we can use if required (a novelty on UK canal barges by the way). C) We have a log burner. I’ll often stop the boat in the winter by a large oak tree and salvage some wonderful seasoned dry oak which burns long and hot. Condensation in English narrowboats though is a bit of a problem. The portholes, for instance, do not have a thermal barrier between the outside of the brass and the inside. The consequence is that it will act like a cold beer, water will collect and drip. The only way out this problem (and many boat owners know) is to open all the windows and let the heat out! I vicious circle. However, I’m sure I could have paid even more and gotten around this issue with expensive windows, but we only use the boat in the winter for maybe four or five days so it’s really a non-issue.. Maybe our MkII boat will be better (don’t they say that you always have three boats before you get the spec just “right”..?).
We’ve made a few alterations since the main photo-shoot (the kids bunk room is much better now), but it’s still fitted out in the same European and American oak veneer. Apparently over the next 20 years, this wood will darken. Oak-with-narrowboats are very customary in the UK and it’s difficult to get builders to consider anything else.
The helm is outside, on the stern and we have a long brass tiller extension (that we remove when docked - and I have since shaved off my Mohawk!):
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/picture.php?/2952/category/173
and
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/picture.php?/2943/category/173
Various construction photos start here:
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/picture.php?/2799/category/163
Last year, we went to London from Birmingham (and back) on a four-week cruise. The photo shoot is here:
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/175
Sorry for such a long post.
Cheers,
Callum.
June 16th, 2009
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A couple of years ago, I designed a narrowboat using Visio, down to the inch. Visio is cooller than you imagine and can be used like AutoCad as a 2d drawing tool (although AutoCad can do much more). I designed many layouts until I came across the standard called the “floating cottage” design. I had this design made for us. In the UK, narrowboats are only 6 feet 10 inches wide, however it’s amazing how much you can squeeze in.
My friends in the USA can’t imagine what it’s like to travel on the UKs inland waterways where everything was originally designed for a 7 foot width. Canal travelling in the UK is a sociable activity and we meet lots of people every day. Often the locks are double width (14 feet) which means we will share a lock with another boat and their crew. Locks are often in “flights” which means we’ll get a few in a row. The ladies tend to work the lock paddles and gates (with the kids) whilst the men tend to stand on the back of their boats and talk turkey to each other.
I am amazed at how detailed some men can talk about the differences between such esoteric nonsense technical drivel. Many are consumed with amazement at all my antennas. Narrowboaters haven’t worked out yet that they can improve their cellphone or wifi with an external marine-grade antenna.
At the end of the day, the family all comes back together and we share a bottle of wine and discuss all the people we’ve met that day. It is very amusing.
Of course, we also get lots of onlookers. They are called “gongoozlers”. These onlookers can be very funny and they ask lots of questions. Many think we might live on the boat permanently and that we’re some kind of pre-historic or romantic throwback to the canal trade. Others think we’ve hired the boat for a day out. Many are very envious of the laid-back life-style of the canal boat holiday feel. Even funnier, some think that my 28 foot HF SSB antenna (ham vertical antenna) is a sail-mast. Great fun!
Here’s some pics:
Cheers, Callum.
June 7th, 2009
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There are three types of cost:
The annual “owning” costs; insurance, mooring charges, annual haul-out, regular servicing of sub-systems, bottom cleaning & painting etc. It doesn’t matter if you own a narrrowboat (canal barge) or an upmarket motor boat, these “variable” costs will always be there. Call your local marina and insurance broker for the costs, they’ll know locally what it costs to “own” one of these.
The annual “running” costs; these inflate when you actually make trips, fuel, systems servicing, engine oil changes, increased frequency of main engine, wing and generator servicing. Most people here have boats of some form and we all know when you make more trips, the costs go up. Not just fuel, but eating out, trips on the land etc, etc. Right down to fender replacement and all that other gear you own. It all eventually wears away or looks crappy. Buy it again!
The annual “sh*t happens” cost which is normally nailed to how often you use the boat and how well you get to know the boat too; changes to some engineering and design issues that materialise (normally after an engineer tells you he can’t get to that bit!) can blow the odd grand, tank cleaning, air-con servicing, (all/any) systems replacement and the whole electronics issue etc. Of course, on board, there’s every normal household utility from power replication, plumbing, comms, heating, cooling. The difference though is that we have our own generators, water makers, battery power fed by alternators and on through inverters. All these systems need maintenance (as in category 2), but sometimes a part will fail or just wears out gradually (house batteries for instance).
Then, there’s the secret fourth category, but we all pretend it doesn’t exist: the “wish-list”. For me, this is the one that I can blow lots of cash into, for instance: Wendy thinks that we could do with another freezer and she kindly works out where it can be fitted (under the dinette in a “blank space”). It’s only a $3k job but it’s on the wish-list. Sometimes it’s either money - or time. For instance, I’d like a new ham radio *and* main computer linked to all the TVs. I can do this myself. These are projects I enjoy but I don’t have the time. The marina will do this for me at £40 per hour (you’ll have to use an exchange rate calculator as not sure what that is in “real” money). I have also worked out that if the wish-list gets too big, you have a brain-wave to sell the boat and buy one that already has all the toys you wanted in the first place. When you do this, you find you spend the extra money anyhow! Agh! (I hear you shout laughing!).
Clearly, all but the first is completely variable and 100% dependant on how the owner likes to use their boat. I gave up how much my own little 70 foot canal barge cost after the first page in the log book. It just wasn’t practical. I do know that it still costs me more than I pretend it does. That’s the same with every boat. If Wendy and I were told point blank what we spend on boating, we would both have a duty to double check the numbers and sell it! We don’t want to know. I know an owner that fanatically does everything himself on an *extremely* tight budget (I’m sure we’ve all met these fellows). Every penny counts. They can maintain their boat for the price of a slap-up dinner but have to spend an inordinate amount of time up to their elbows in grease or calling around for a weird spare part to save scrapping something. I applaud them. I just don’t have the time nor the inclination myself. Guys like him could run an off-shore boat for half the cost anyone here can. That statement alone suggests that people like him blow away any formula that anyone ever comes up with for calculating the price of owning a boat.
How much does it cost to run a boat? It’s unanswerable. (Until the book comes out!)
June 6th, 2009
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I’m currently writing an article outlining the characteristics of the Mega Loop antenna we use for Dorridge Scouts. If you would like a preview of this white-paper, please let me know.
The XXT Mega Loop is the name given for the application of a horizontally mounted delta-loop that has known gain dependant on wavelength size and height above ground.
At quarter wavelength above ground and above, Mega-Loops start exhibiting gain that is proportional to its wavelength and height. A whole series of articles is currently being written by the author, however for the time being, these few articles may help you determine how we operate the Mega-Loop at Dorridge Scout Group HQ.
More information can be found at the following links:
The basic 80m loop:
Firing supports over trees:
The 160m Loop
Some photos of our implimentation of our Mega Loop can be found here:
May 31st, 2009
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Don’t worry, I’ll fix this during the week. I changed some picture gallery directory names so that Google could spider the site properly. The consequence is that around 180 articles are now broken. Grrr. I could put the names back but then my Adsense program wouldn’t work as well.
Hang tight :)
May 31st, 2009
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I renewed our Narrowboat Insurance on Friday for £450. The broker happened to mention that narrowboaters historically had very few claims.
He said that I had to bear in mind that in the main, mild steel at 2.5 knots bouncing off other steel boats (or concrete) rarely does any damage. Most claims are for total loss and in the main that’s fire. Do you have a fire alarm on your boat?
I also checked what the policy would pay out if we really did end up in a total loss situation and he confirmed that it would pay out exactly the figure we had on the policy. Good.
Now then.. how did a narrowboat manage to end up on ther M6 north of Leicester? Easy, it fell off the back of a lorry. It really did. I found the article on the BBC website.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/content/image_galleries/narrowboat_on_m1_gallery.shtml?1
Callum.
May 31st, 2009
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At last, some advertising on my site which I’m fascinated with. I am seriously not expecting to make any fabulous money off this but with nearly 4,000 unique visitors per month, maybe it will pay for the odd meal out with the family!
The reason for the title is to encourage Google to place the right adverts on their ads. I don’t specify the ads, Google does by trawlering the content and working it out for itself. In the main, the ads have been more or less correct but there doesn’t seem to be any Amateur Radio adverts out in the market. Maybe when the big Yaesu, Kenwood and Icom suppliers actually advertise with Google, I’ll get the ads coming through on this site, who knows.
In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed cutting some code and placing the ads in the right place this morning!
{later: I seem to be making about $6 per hour. This is way cool!}
Cheers from Solihull,
Callum.
May 31st, 2009
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I had immense fun the other day in Paint Shop Pro grafting on the flying bridge of a Nordhavn 60 onto the new Nordhavn 63. For those in the “know”, the 63 has only recently been announced by Nordhavn and I’m sure their designer might well have a flying bridge up his sleeve, I just thought I’d beat him to it! See the 63 here: http://www.nordhavn.com/63/
And here’s mine - but with a flying bridge!
May 29th, 2009
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A number of regular readers have been wondering when my next update was to be uploaded. Sorry guys, I’ve been snowed under, mainly with the arrival of four chickens. This is Wendy’s new pet project to deliver about 1,200 fresh eggs every year. I’ve no idea how we will manage chickens whilst we’re on the boat other than the fact that there’s a place near Tamworth where you can take your chickens and put them “on holiday”. Boarding for chickens! Whatever next.
To keep them safe, I have built a one-meter (three foot) fence out of 2×2 wooden postswith 2 inch square galvanised live-stock wire. The chicken coop (house?) was made from a small, single bicycle shed from B&Q (home-improvement store to my US friends!) at a deal price of £83. A few sections of spare timber later and the whole things was a tidy chicken house complete with a fold-down rampart, a-la-English Castle style. Very neat.
The first night, looking for somewhere to bed down for the night, the chickens flew over the fence! A few minutes later and after much laughter, we had ushered them into their new home successfully, however the second night they did the same. By the fourth night, Wendy was becoming slightly impatient since she just wanted them to go back into their little house without prompting. I mean, how the hell are we to get someone to baby-sit these creatures if every bloody night, they have to round the blighters up off the lawn?
Technology came to the rescue. I found on ebay a most excellent toy, a 12 volt electric fence energiser that delivers 1,200 volts in 1 second intervals as well as an instant shock the moment you touch it. All I had to do was design the fence so that only the top was electrified (live). This was slightly complex since to make any sort of circuit, one needs a live and an earth. I ran a new earth line right across the top of the fence posts as the earth and then just above that (about an inch), I ran a clean live wire from the energiser, insulated from earth. Bottom line is that tonight, they finally all went into the house, but not before they had most enthusiastic sing-along as they tried in turn to do their usual trick of flying (jump-flapping?) up to the fence. Every second, the energiser blasted out a little wiggle of electricity and each time, the chicken’s feet got a little blast and they squawked (loudly) before jumping back down to the ground. Well, in the main that’s what happened but two of the birds jumped down wrong side, but we’ve “cured” them without resorting to 6-foot fencing which would look out of place in out trim and tidy English lawn.
Cheers, Callum!
May 22nd, 2009
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I’m having a bit of fun currently, investigating putting a hot-spot above my house, using a 15dBi vertical antenna, so that we can connect 1,200 meters away from the Scout hut using a 24dBi Andrews Dish.
Using very high quality coax from my vertical antenna to a router in the shack is a very expensive option due to the very high losses at 2.4 GHz. We could use Ecoflex 15, but at £6 per meter and £9 for a connector, it’s a bit rich for a kids experiement.
Better bet is to site the router on top of the mast right next to the antenna in a waterproof box, using just a tiny pig-tail of coax from the antenna directly to the router. Of course, you need power to the router which might mean sending 240v utility power up the mast to the little PSU that comes with the router. Not a good option, having mains dripping off a mast.
How about cutting the low voltage line from the router’s PSU and extending it so that you have just DC running up the mast instead of mains? You can, but why not use the spare data pairs in the CAT 5 spec instead. These are pins 4 & 5 and 7 & 8. Connect the pairs together to lower the resistance (Ohms Law).
Ignore the colours that I have used in my project, this was to make fault finding easy in the future; blue being the negative and orange for positive - although in typical amateur radio style, I got these muddled up so now they’re the wrong way around and I wish I had just used the normal colours for the data now! Grrr.
I made up a 20 meter run of Cat 5 and injected 3.3 V DC from the little PSU that came with the router and pulled it out at the router end, as per the picture. Initially it failed miserably since the voltage drop was too low. The PSU was rated at 3.3V DC and 2A. Essentially, once the Router tried to suck any power down the line, the voltage dropped like a stone and the router wouldn’t boot up.
Throwing caution to the wind, I cut the 3.3V PSU off and substituted a 7V DC PSU which was lying about. My multimeter is currently on the boat, so I just did some rough mental calculations and guessed that the voltage would drop by around half, giving me maybe about 3.5 to 4 volts. Hopefully tolerable by a modern 3.3V device. I’ll measure it sometime, under load as well as no-load conditions.
Second caution to the wind was that when I cut the 7V cable off the donated PSU, I realised that the wires on the new device were not marked. I had no idea which was positive and which was negative. Not having a spare multimeter, I just hoped that getting the negative and positive the wrong way around wouldn’t concrete the damned thing. Luckily, Buffalo G54’s are two-a-penny these days on eBay and all my 2.4 GHz wireless experiments use these excellent devices. It wouldn’t be the first time that I had bricked one. Luck was in my favour tonight though and it all booted up just fine. Remarkable.
To sum up, if you are to do this, use pins 1, 2, 3 and 6 for the data and pins 4 & 5 and pins 7 & 8 for the DC as per diagram. Getting pins 1, 2, 3 and 6 wired up was a weird thing to do since I’ve always been paranoid to wire up every wire correctly. I suppose one ought to since in the future, someone might try and use your patch cable in a POE environment and it fails. Worse still, cabling a whole building and only testing pins 1, 2, 3 and 6!
Have fun.
Callum.
May 5th, 2009
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With the kids having a couple of weeks off, we thought up a new trip and ventured from Calcutts to Stratford. We didn’t make it all the way back and have dropped the boat down by Knowle locks for a few days whilst I work out when I’m going to take it “home”.
The weather was pretty kind to us, managing to rain mostly at night. When the sun did come out, we had fluffy white clouds and large gaps of blue sky. A very English weather for a very English part of the countryside. It must have been relatively sunny since I’ve clearly caught the sun on my face. I have a healthy glow without the radiation treatment that they get “down under” when exposing bare skin to sunshine.
We managed to squeeze in three main meals at three different well-known canal pubs in the first three days of the tip. All come recommended; The Waterman at the top of the Hatton Flight, the Boot at Lapworth and ther Fleur de Lys at Lowsonford. Actually, it all gets mixed up here because one day I managed to squeeze in 6 pints of Guiness spread across two pubs and for the life of me, I can’t remember which one and which day! Yes, I remember now.. the Boot for lunch and the Fleur de Lys for dinner. Thirsty work being a narrowboat driver. We were also lucky to meet Mike and Jackie again on the Narrowboat Wordsworth. A cracking couple and we love them to bits!
Although this trip is full of locks and I counted nearly 75 just to get there, it didn’t seem too bad, although Wendy’s elbow seems to flare up on the really big days. Stratford locks are tough for little ones too. You would expect them to be soft like the Oxford but someone forgot to grease the lot for the last 100 years. I was hauled off a number of times to lend a hand and my woolly mammoth strength to the padddles - or the gates. However a very pleasant journey all the same. I did find the Stratford canal locks tighter than the Oxford too. They are certainly a whisker smaller and a couple of times, I nearly got stuck. I’m in need of a bit of paint now since the rubbing strakes are down to Jonathon Wilson’s bare steel (sorry Pal!).
We had one incident with the last lock gate on the last lock on the Stratford. The bloody gate wouldn’t close completely. I sat there in the boat waiting for Wendy to open the gate and nothing. I shouted across the pound what was the problem. She just said it filling slowly. Clearly there was an issue though since it just wouldn’t fill and when I decided to pull over, I was grounding - an indication that we’d nearly emptied the damned pound! A good old-fashioned leap from me and I was on dry land, investigating the issue. Yes, the last lock gate was jammed open and water was pouring through it. We’d never be able to fill the lock, it was like trying to run a bath with the plug out. A bystander came up with the idea of flushing the lock. In other words, try and fill it but with the front gate wide open for a few seconds. That might shift what ever it was. We tried this and then I realised out boat was worse off, sitting at an angle dry land almost, with the keel exposed - I could even see the propeller!
After a bit of hydromatics (new word, I just made it up!), we agreed to call British Waterways and they turned up fairly rapidly to see what they could do. A longer wait and mega-man Ian turns up. Blimey, he’s a strapping bloke this Ian! Massive. He ends up in the drink with his dry suit on and finds a log jamming the gate. Eventually we’re on our way again.
So, after three days in Stratford, moored next to Mike and Jackie - and having dinner with Marcus and Tracey and the following night with John and Lutty, we untied and went on our way. However not only had my mascot duck been kidnapped (which is rather funny and I got it back) we had to endure a bloody racket from some Univerity students who had drunk far too much. They were still dancing on the roof at 4:30am in the morning. One even went to sleep up there. We followed them home for a while back up the lock system. They were still partying!
Just before leaving on Sunday, we managed to grab a quick pump-out, fill with water and cruised up the Avon for 20 minutes. Finally at about 2:00pm, we made our way through the first dozen or so locks, leaving us with one big push on Easter Monday where we managed to get all the way to Knowle locks.
In terms of engineering issues this trip, the bloody toilet seems to get stuck on every second flush or so. I’ve no idea why. I did find some wire shoved up the kitchen sink drain-away pipe, there was some plastic bag ties pushed hard up the pipe. I’m wondering if the breather pipe for the black water system might have been tampered with too which means that maybe the tank gets put under pressure and it doesn’t want to accept any more debris until the system has equalised. I have just thought that first flush of the day normally works. I think I’m on to something here. I’ll work out a way of checking this.
There’s still an odour from the master bedroom. This is where we had the leak last year. It dried out but still causes this stale smell. I wonder how long it will keep up?
I want a battery management information system. I have little idea about power consumption because I don’t have a power meter. Victron Energy do a really cool meter called a BMV-600 with is just ideal. It has a programable relay so there’s some interesting thoughts working in my head about starting the engine automatically if the house batteries start to run dry. Watch this space.
Pictures: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/173
Cheers for now,
Callum (Wendy and the kids).
April 15th, 2009
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James (M3YOM) has just emailed me after discovering something worse than fitting 90 or so PL259s last week; it’s winding quadrifilar wound toroids. Pictured is a completed L1 winding for the 40m filter. He says that it’s a T130-0 core with 7 quadrifilar windings which should give around 3.96uH and there are two in the filter box he’s making from a kit supplied by Bob Henderson.
Since James took on the job of producing a fully filtered Multi-Two station, he’s soldered nearly 100 PL259s and not one of them was faulty on the day. Good job OM!
James, the wire looks like that stuff we made the MegLoop with, is it?
James says:
“It’s not the megaloop wire, the Lo-Z winding (yellow wire) is 1.25mm solderable enamelled wire and the Hi-Z winding (Red wire) is 1mm solderable enamelled wire. The enamel is designed to burn away at low temperature so you can solder it directly without the need for striping it back first.
Incidentally, Bob’s callsign is 5B4AGN (he used to be a G3 before he moved) ”
Bob, I’m sorry you used to be a G3. You should know that I’m forever poking serious fun at G3s, as they poke fun at M3s. Maybe you and I can form a truce and make the world a happier place?
73 all, particularly my new G3 friends.
Callum.
March 31st, 2009
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My thanks to Lee (G0MTN) James (M3YOM) Terry (G4MKP) and Aidan (M6TTT, Scout) for getting our new station on the air for a first-time-out on WPX.
We also roped in Chris and Dan, two new foundation student contest Scouts for the spotting on the Mult Station. Barry M0DGQ also gets a big thank you for supplying hundreds of meters of 75 ohm coax for James’s stub-filter project and Charles at Moonraker for sponsoring the large number of required PL259 and T pieces.
Pictures here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/131
We ran a pair of very old Yaesu FT1000MPs (non-Inrad versions) which were completely swamped by QRM to a number of interesting antennas including our new super all-band Mega-Loop (horizontal delta loop at 85 feet) delivering about 12dbi on 20m to US at 10 degrees elevation (more on higher bands). However, it also delivers 10dbi to EU and most of Russia at a very low angle, hence QRM flooding. James’s stub filter project worked but still needs some tweaking. Thanks to K1TTT for helping James get his head around this. Next time, James will have finished Bob Henderson’s filters as well which should sort out any final interference between bands. Poor James soldered nearly 100 PL259s last week. Don’t worry James, fingers should re-grow by CQWW!
The mult station ran Terry’s A3S at 30 feet on my hydraulic tower and also switched in a 200 foot doublet at 80 feet across the tree canopy behind the Scout Hut for the low bands (which worked great on 40m DX but rubbish for 40m NVIS). Need some switchable low dipoles for EU.
We had an initial target of 2,500 QSOs and 1,000 mults and just missed both by a whisker.
Band QSOs Pts WPX
1.8 152 301 50
3.5 574 1513 313
7 866 2203 264
14 722 1378 269
21 102 254 63
Total 2416 5649 959
Score: 5,417,391
We had two breaks of 30 minutes each to sit and have dinner / lunch as a team, an important lesson to keep morale and spirits high. Some day we might not be able to afford time off, however whilst we’re still novices and part-time, we can afford to have a lazy lounge around. We sent our score to GETSCORES every 5 minutes automatically fed by N1MM on a local wireless LAN picked up from my house about a 900 meters away. S51A and ourselves played ping-pong on the scoreboard for the whole 48 hours and we’ve since become competitive friends.
We particularly liked GETSCORES since it’s a way of interfacing with the rest of the world and having even more fun. I don’t understand why more stations don’t use this system. The USA seem to embrace this stuff quicker than others.
There were many highlights. Working VK on short path AND long path on both days on 40m was a privilage. Many more experienced contesters might have done this before but at last a first for me. Having the young non-licensed Scouts successfully finding some RED mults on N1MM was cool. Being called in just to work them was even cooler! Handing the headset over and telling them, “Great. Find some more!” was even better than cool! James’s run into South America was nice on 15m on Sunday, as was the long run on 20m band. Being spotted three times in 5 minutes from the West then the East then the West again was like using a very high gain vertical (which was the bloody trouble actually since we couldn’t dial out the QR Mary).
Like all (good?) contest teams, we’re now working on massive improvements since the station only came together on the Thursday and we started transmitting essentially 90 minutes before the off. Everything worked, nothing broke. Amazing.
73
Callum,
March 31st, 2009
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The RSGB 80 meter club championship contests have been running for a few years now and I would have thought that the original learning curve might have been satisfied, but no. The same old mistakes are being made, all the time. It’s kindergarten stuff and I’m becoming thoroughtly bored with it.
Tonight, I had a new selection of the phonetic alphabet. I for India was given to me as I for “International”. Yes, Inter-fnuking-national! What planet are these ops on? Of course, the old favorite alternatives are there too; G for George, B for Baltimore, C for Cant-bloody-hear-you etc, etc. Why-o-why do people have to use these weird alternatives? Some of these guys are marginal signals with wall-to-wall QRM and off they go with some weird pre-historic alphabet that was invented just after the 1st world war - worse still, they just make their own up! I attempt to correct the worst offenders. Why do I bother though.. I can’t understand these guys. What purpose do they think it serves, to make up new phonetics. I really and genuinely can’t fathom it. Maybe if the fellow at the other end can’t hear one of your letters, perhaps fire a few different phonetcs at him in blind hope he might be able to piece together what the hell you are trying to shout, Alpha, America, Arsehole, Angry, Apple, Ant, Another Twat on the microphone..
Then there’s that Matron woman? Who the hell is she? Not only can’t she tune to the frequency you’re on, she is such a condescending bird. The G for George 3s lap it up.
Then there’s the missing letter man.
“G3AB.. pop bang QRM whoosh” (I hear him calling me)
“G3AB question mark, you are 59, serial number 75 over” (I say)
“Er, M0MCX, thank you for your number 75, my report is 59 Zero Zero two, that’s zero.. zero.. QRM (pop-whizz-missing number but I think I heard two so I’ll run with it)”
“QSL G3AB questionmark, I need the last letter only of your callsign, what’s the last letter?”
“Thank you M0MCX, yes, er, my number is zero zero two, Zero Zero two and er my callsign is Germany three, George Three, Gee three, Arsehole Bottom crsahhhiss-pop-dunk Q R M again…. ”
Are they all in the same olde-fartes club or does each club have a social responsibility to have at least one - and then not teach him how to work a contest? Have these olde-fartes ever read the letters page in RadCom? Can’t they take a hint?
It sounded like the tubes on G3OLB’s amplifier were cracking under the strain. Not only was he the loudest station in the UK at 45db over S9 but I could hear the splatter easily 5 kHz up and down from him. Did you not wonder why nobody could get near you Tom?
Lastly, is the story about GW4BVE who lands 900 hertz away from me, presses a few buttons on his FT one-million-trillion radio and starts happily running, giving me +35db splatter. When I move my VFO a quarter-of-half-an-eighth-of-an-inch and explain that he’s completely blowing me away landing so near, he says, “Oh - is that you? I did have one station very close and I notched him out, you’re five and nine, thirty”. Hang on mate, “Can you not move down a teeny bit more?”. “CQ contest” he replies. Welsh **** (make up your own phonetics).
Now to the lady in the photo. She is Neva Heckman, KC7MWB. She’s over 100 years old and actually the oldest Ham Radio operator in the world, so says an ARRL news article. I’ll bet she can give her callsign in standard international phonetics and not repeat the whole thing when I only need the last letter.
March 19th, 2009
Posted by
callum |
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A new Contesting Forum has recently been launched to discuss Contesting, aiming at the less stuffy side of ham radio. If you have a modern vision and enjoy contesting come and join us.
Already, we are discussing:
- Power levels
- Euopean competitors
- UK Rules
- CQ WPX
- Running -vs- S&P strategies
73
M0XXT Contest Team
March 19th, 2009
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I need a NordhavnDreamers logo for my love of all things Nordhavn and tried hard tonight to come up with something. My skills are not quite up to the standard that I would expect of a professional graphics guy so if you are out there and can spot what I need, please help me out!
See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NordhavnDreamers/
Callum.
March 15th, 2009
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I have an article brewing in me which is all about matching a low dipole for 160m to regular 50 ohm transmitter. The dipole I had in mind will be about 15 meters off the deck. My impedance will be about 20 ohms, maybe 25 if I can get it a bit higher. Basically, this is unnaceptable to me since I like to match things nicely.
Chris (G0EYO) sent me this link http://www.qsl.net/w4sat/qtrwavtr.htm which tells me that I need to insert a quarter-wave piece of coax that has an impedance of 35 ohms. Well, I don’t know about you, I don’t often have 35 ohm coax lying around, however a pair of 75 ohm quarter wave stubs will reduce the impedance of 75 ohms to 37.5 ohms. Near enough? I think so.
Thanks Chris, I think I worked it out now.
Callum.
March 6th, 2009
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In the picture, Wendy is tickling Dicks tummy, just last month on our Narrowboat. He was never one for much fuss but occassionally, allowed you to pet him for five minutes before strolling a few feet away for a quiet sleep. He had a lovely hello noise he made when he saw you, particularly if you woke him from a sleep. He had a large head, the biggest of the three triplets with alert ears and clear eyes.
Today, he’s dead, found 100 yards from the house in perfect condition. Wendy reminded me that he had a hole in his heart and it probably gave out. He was the healthiest looking, the strongest and the one with the real wild in him. He did all the mousing - he lived for his hunting. He used to go across to the woodland and spend hours doing what came naturally, hunting his food in the form of mice and rats. He would have made a superb feral cat – possibly the only one I know that could have actually been capable of feeding himself in the wild. But his heart gave in it seems.
Dick was independent, strong, elegant and even tiger-like. He calmed the others and somehow helped to solve some of the complex relationships that developed between our older cats and the kittens (who are now nearly 2). He was the only one that our big black battleship of a cat (Sox) only recently would tolerate. Just over the last week or so, Sox had grown fond of Dick but tonight, she settled late, obviously wondering where he was. A sad day indeed.
Over the years, I’m sure he would have turned into one of those big fit looking cats. He had tall shoulders, bright eyes, slim and alert. He looked clever too, and he was. The head cat, it turned out. We are now leaderless.
I wrapped his stiff body in a towel and gently put him in a bag. His normally flexible body, now springy and uncomfortable. Wendy commented on his “dead” weight. We took him to the vets and asked for a decent cremation.
I miss you.
:(
March 6th, 2009
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If you have never heard about the Kef 104/2 (104-2) loud speakers, you have missed a life-time treat. I am lucky enough to have the gold plated, bi-wired version. In fact, I had the factory make these for me in the mid-90s, nearly three years after production ended since I missed mine so much. They really are the last pair of 104/2s ever made. Kef upgraded all the components for me and made me brand new Rosewood shells from new veneer. Fabulous looking.
Now. There was originally a weak point with these speakers which was the tweeter. It wasn’t the speakers fault, but the user. I used to blow the tweeters on my first pair of 104/2s too regularly, however replacements were about £15 each so I just used to order a new set and start again. Blown tweeters normally happened when the amp would clip over a long period of time and gradually heat up the tweeter coil. Two things might happen. The cylinder would either warp or the coil would melt. This was not a speaker issue but the user. Basically, turn the volume down. Easier to say than do since mid-party in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to over drive stuff (hence why I now run a 3kW rig, just for party nights - it’s true).
Anyway, let’s correct a couple of worries out there on the internet to do with the replacement tweeter issue. Last year, I thought I had lost a tweeter and called the factory. Contrary to popular opinion, Kef have sourced a fabulous replacement tweeter and they sell them in pairs very ecconomically for 104/2 speaker systems for about £30 a pair. I ordered them up and fitted them. It transpired that I hadn’t lost a tweeter, it was my graphic that had gone AWOL, however the new tweeter is better for a number of reason - not only do they sound great but apparently have better resistance to warping and coil metdown. These days, I just tickle mine with a Crown K1 and they sound marvelous. I ran them as a spare pair at a party last month in the conservatory at half-volume and a couple of people remarked how enormous they sounded.
If you want a speaker to sound four times the size that it really is, buy a pair of these, massive sound stage, big presence and even vertical sound balance. I have no idea how this happens but it does. Stunning. Did I mention massive low frequency response? Amazing for films and rock. Amazing for anything actually! You can pick up non-bi-wired versions from as little as £300 on eBay. The bi-wired versions were essentially upgraded versions with a bi-wire system which I call the Mk2s. These retailed for £2,000. Massive price back then! Starting price for used versions of the Mk2s will be around the £450 mark, perhaps up to £800 for top condition Rosewoods. Always check for matching serial numbers.
March 1st, 2009
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To Terry, Chris, Chris, Barry, Lee, Chris, Aidan, Tim, James and Lynn (M6FAB!). Thanks for a great time. Let’s do this again soon! (Did I miss anyone?)
Picture shows Aidan, M6TTT running his first pile-up from the Hut. First class Aidan, you really got the swing of this on Sunday. Fabulous effort.
We put nearly 800 QSOs (contacts) in the log and there are so many highlights, I can’t begin to mention them all. My peronal highlight was working VK3FT at lunchtime today with a land-line quality copy on the 20 meter band. Keith spotted us which probably accounted for flurry of VK stations immediately afterwards from Australia. Thanks Keith.
We got spotted 25 times over the weekend which is certainly our personal record. Thanks to those stations that helped us maintain the pile up!
We had a great time and I’ve put some of the best pictures from Chris’s camera (and mine) here:
As usual, we used the MegaLoop (delta-loop) antenna, see this page for details:
Cheers all!
Callum.
February 20th, 2009
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This trip was all about discovering the North Oxford canal via Braunston. Family rules dictate that we were to turn around when we get bored - which we did pretty quickly because there’s nothing to see up the North Oxford! We did a U turn on the morning of Day 2 and spent a pleasant 6 hours cruising back to Braunston, booking a table for 4 at the Old Plough.
During the trip, a couple of interesting moments are worth mentioning. We stopped just after Hillmorton Locks (I’ll have to check this name but I don’t have the navigation book to hand) to fill with water and just as I was leaving, a hire boat came bombing past. Most hire boats are in a rush so it didn’t bother me. I’ve rarely been held up by one. However this one was different, he kept crashing into the banks! Had it not been dangerous, it would have been very funny! Luckily, narrowboats are made of steel that bounce rather well but it just amazed me that this guy kept getting his lefts and rights wrong. This is quite possible to do of course, but most people’s brains switch pretty rapidly so that their tiller arm becomes second nature. He was sharing the responsibility of getting this right with his teenage son and they both kept getting it wrong. His son would drive towards the bank and his Dad would intervene and make it worse! In the end, I made my excuses and asked in a loud voice if he would allow me to pass. He politely smiled in a way only an embarrased chap could and I skirted around him.
We run a walkie-talkie system on the a boat. I have the TS2000 permanently plumbed in at the helm and I leave a number of rechargeable PMR446 hand-helds lying about the place inside. Yesterday after giving a running commentary to the crew inside the boat I waited on a response and got nothing. I gave another shout and then another. I was asking them for my gloves that I had left on the well-deck (bow) when we filled up with water but I soon realised that someone had switched the radios off so I started using the air-horns. Beep Beep. Nothing. Normally, I get a head out the bow doors looking back at me asking what I want. Ziltch.
Then I had a brain wave. I had recently taught Emily her radio exam (which she passed) so I thought I’d put some morse code into the horns, she’d know that! Bip Bip Bip - Beeep Beeep Beeep - Bip Bip Bip. Yes, I was transmitting SOS on the horns. After the even louder set of blasts, I was worried that some old 2nd world war veteran from the Royal Signals would hear me and call the police so I snapped into reverse and stopped the boat in the middle of the channel and made my way inside. Wendy and Lochlan both had headphones on either watching TV or playing computer games so they didn’t hear but Emily was up and about. I asked her why she didn’t come and see me after hearing SOS on the horns? She said that she just thought I had a lot of boats that I was having problems with. Agh!
Later, we met a boat in the middle of the channel. I kept to the right and finally he kept to his right too. As we crossed paths, he asked me, “am I correct in thinking that we keep to the right - I’m new to this”? Cor blimey, a bit late to discover that!
In the afternoon of day 3, Emily and I were on the stern happily driving along chatting away. We turned a corner and spotted a small 20 foot fibreglass cabin cruiser coming towards us with a little outboard aiming for the centre of a bridge driven by woman who was visibly puffing and straining. She had right of way since she would have been first to the bridge. I dropped to dead slow, my 23 tons to her few hundred pounds. Eventually I was just sitting there at a stop as she came through the single-pass bridge and then aimed at a nasty low tree on my port side - even though there was space for her to come much closer to me, by about six feet. She preferred to aim her cabin cruiser (with brand-new immaculate pram-top roof) into the horthorn tree which nicely scratched her new roof. Swearing and blowing, as she scratched past, she scowled at me in a way only a pretty woman with a damaged ego could, “you could have f*cking moved over a bit!”
Her little husband kept his mouth shut and averted his eyes as I did one of my special anger management situation demonstrations - but failed to cope this time and gave her the war that she wanted. I would have preferred to put a couple of shotgun shells at the waterline to give her something to scream at! Can you imagine?
One experiment this trip was taking the three kittens with us. They’re not kittens anymore of course, but more like small tigers. Two of the three are extremely docile and follow Wendy about like a dog (really!) but the third is a throw-back to the wilder side of cats and longs for freedom even though all our (five!) cats are neutered. We have decided next time to only take the two docile ones and leave the third at home with his two older sisters. We are confident that once they understand, we’ll be able to let them wander off for a few minutes at a time which is what they do at home.
On our last night, we went for dinner at the Folly, bottom of the Oxford flight of locks. If you know that area, I turned around at the winding point (turning place) and reversed 300 yards down the canal using the bow thrusters as a kind of rudder. This is way cool since narrowboats don’t have any steering at all in reverse. See http://tinyurl.com/cfjnpe to see where we turned - and as a guide to our size, our 70 foot boat only just clears this turn by a few feet. The chef at the Folly is very funny. She’s got a nick-name of Tick-Tock. I’m not kidding. Her flat-mate in the village is a little Philipino girl and they call her Tic-Tac. Crazy girls.
A couple of issues this trip. First one was condensation on the stainless water tank. I’ve never noticed before but sticking my head inside the well deck, I saw a little bit too much water lying around and dripping off the tank. I confided in the Narrowboats Yahoo Group and David came up with the idea of sticking cork tiles or similar over the surface. The trouble is I can only get to around 30% of the surface area of the tank because it’s supposed to be maintenance free and you just can’t squeeze inside to do these things. So although it’ll probably work, it’s impractical. He’s since thought that I could use spray-foam. This is a permanent solution and if I get it wrong will be a bloody nightmare to remove, if not impossible without cutting the bow off! However, done properly - this would be an amazing solution and would cure the worry of having a frozen tank for good. Allan suggested shoving loads and loads of Rockwool insulation into all the gaps. Builders use this for attic insulation and cavity wall insulation. I believe this might be a superb solution and I’ll look into it, thanks Allan. I’ll report on this another day.
Lastly, I managed to temporarily block the toilet at the same time as everyone else needed to go. Typical. There’s too much detail to go into here so I’ll leave much of this to your your own imagination. The toilet is one of those propeller chopper-upper toilets with the sucker noise. Sounds like an aircraft loo. I don’t know the name of this damned expensive thing but too much debris in one flush seems to cause it all sorts of issues and it stops working. It still makes all the fabulous sucking and spinning noises, and you still get all the water but nothing happens, it just fills up with more water (and debris!). I found a plastic drinking glass (tumbler) and used it like an old fashioned plunger whilst at the same time hitting the flush button. This eventually cleared the issue but I had a heck of a lot of lumpy water that wouldn’t go down the toilet each flush, growing each time. I hit on the idea of taking a glass window out of the port-hole next to me and chucking pints of trashy water out the window. I laughed out loud at one point, considering visions of some poor chap on an old boat getting a lump of sh*t on his head! It was a seriously nasty morning. Anyway, it’s fixed now and seems to flush everytime at the expense of emptying my water tank and filling my toilet tank!
x
Pics here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/165
Callum.
February 17th, 2009
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I like to keep my eye on my old host, Milamba IV, since renamed to Lady Andrea.
Yachtspotter.com have a page for this little ship that is periodically updated, depending on who sees the old girl.
The page is here:
http://www.yachtspotter.com/ysp2_ycard.php?foo=20090628
I notice at the end of last year, she’s moved across to Fort Lauderdale. I wonder when she’ll be seen again?
If you do see this girl, please drop me a mail and a few pictures, thanks.
Callum.
February 13th, 2009
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Tonight, my Cubs are doing the “Astronomer” badge. I thought it might be rather nice to give them an idea of the local solar system before moving on to the Big and Little dippers - and of course, how they can find the north star, Polaris.
For reference, I thought I would stick a British 2p coin on the wall as the Earth, and work out towards the sun via the moon.
It turns out (and I didn’t know this) that:
- The Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter
- The moon is around 2,000 in diameter
- The Sun is about 850,000 miles in diameter
The long and short of it is this: If I stuck a 2p on the wall, the moon would be 78cms away away (about 2′6″) and the size of a pea. The sun would be 310 meters away, and 2.6 meters in diameter (7 feet or so).
Good, eh?
It was a good night. If you fancy doing this badge with your cubs, let me know. I have some flips you can have. If you are local, I also have an overhead projector which is great for displaying “real” stars on the wall :)
Callum.
February 11th, 2009
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