News just in: Yaesu have just relesased their advertising flyer for the FTdx-5000MP amateur radio. It’s available from the dedicated FTdx-5000MP User Group on Yahoo.
Go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ftdx5000mp/join and check the file section.
73
Callum.
Saturday night: Problems two hours from the start suggested I was going to have a hard time. I was at the Scout Hall on my own with zero resources, no tools and a dead short showing when I plugged my old FT1000MP to the Mega-Loop via a long patch lead to the roof. Why was I on the roof? Well, the shack doesn’t exist at the hall right now since we’re re-locating to a multi-multi-room and I had to get everything out of boxes.
To get me out of the isssue, Terry kindly rushed his big tuner and a length of ladder line (another favour I owe Terry!) down and I connected to our stand-by antenna; an 80m long doublet (actually a full-size 160m dipole) in the canopy of the trees at about 70 feet hidden in the woods behind the Scout Hall. It’s fed with ladder line, connected to stainless bolts that come through the wall at 12 feet, near the ceiling. I set the station up right under the bolts and ran the ladder line up the wall. Amazing that it worked bearing in mind these big trees have been swaying rather a lot last few nights with the storms.
With 30 minutes to go, I dashed home with a take-away and wolfed it down, spending “quality time” with the family, only to shoot back with 10 minutes to spare. MX0AAA called in and explained that I was on 1947.20 and that I had a station 3 khz below me on 1944 dead and a station above me on 1950. I was off frequency. What? I thought he was trying to tell me that I splattering on him but I wasn’t apparently, it’s because my freq didn’t end in 00 and he was very concerned about this. I really can’t work out what this was all about and he went off in the huff. I don’t know what I did to upset him. However, it didn’t put me off (my new pills are working well! [I joke BTW!]). Terry was listening in to the conversation and chuckled to me about this later on email.
One mistake (apart from entering) was going S02R for a few moments and sliding up on the 2nd VFO to the fellow on 1950. I carried on CQing until my off times coincided with his off times before giving him a blast. Woops! I bluffed my through the contact since he took rather a long time in repeating everything and I nearly lost my run freq, so half way through his over I started CQing again - and still managed to work out the report! I was logging both him on 1950 and my own contact on 1947.20! I must have sounded deaf to the poor fellow who I kept asking strange question to on my own frequency, to piece together the report at the same time as working the chap on 1950, “Did you say Member or Club”? and hoping for short, to the point answer. Very funny, but I stopped that pretty quickly!
Short and To-the-point in the same paragraph as Club Calls don’t mix, as you will now realise. One needs to get ones brain into an “idle” gear before entering this contest. It’s no good being too competitive, your personal fuse-board will blow. Large fuses are important, particularly when contacting those stations that no matter what I said, thought I must be Norwich ARC or Norwich ARS. Neither, I am DORRIDGE SCOUT GROUP – LIKE PORRIDGE BUT WITH A “D” FOR DELTA SPELT D-O-R-R-I-D-G-E SCOUT GROUP, OVER!
“Ah, are you a Radio Club or Radio Society”?
“NO - WE ARE NOT A RADIO GROUP – THIS IS A SCOUT GROUP – SCOUT GROUP – SCOUT GROUP”.
And then there’s the missing letter. I know I’ve written this before but when I ask for the last letter only – just the last letter, why do they start by explaining to me that I am 5 and 9 (twice) before repeating their complete report all over again. And I can hear them perfectly well, just a blast of static shot their last letter out - and I even say this to encourage them to give me only their LAST LETTER ONLY!). Is it a lack of listening or are they under so much pressure, they’re on the one track? I haven’t got that yet, but it’s clearly a problem. I do hope I don’t get like that!
One last bit of fun is their club station. It sounds like Fullofshitandsuprise Amateur Radio Society. They expect everyone to have heard of this society or club but I really haven’t heard of it. I ask for a repeat of their club name – and say “I hear Amateur Radio Society, I’m just missing the town name”. They spend about as much time spelling out AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY as their town name. One guy actually suggested, “JUST SOUTH OF LONDON MATE” - as if that was going to help me in spelling their club village name?
I think it’s about time that Contest Chairmen need to get a grip and explain to their membership how to give out a report. There’s no excuse anymore - we are just starting to sound stupid. I could hear everyone 5 and 9 (apart from a guy who was /m) and they just need to tell me everything once. It’s a bit like the chap who told everyone he was a “CLUB MEMBER”. He was both, clearly.
So. 105 in the log and I gave up at 10:30pm after going S&P at 10:20pm and being so dissapointed in the quality of the reporting. I only heard one station giving bigger reports than I, G3TKF (I think) who was giving 113 when I switched off. The rest were in the 80s and 90s.
Actually, I had a fair amount of fun and the doublet at 70 feet worked well.
It’s here, the new FTdx5000MP rig, spotted as an advertisement in QST this morning in the USA.
This author will be very interested to see the specs and look at the costings. Clearly, it’ll be fitting in betwen the FT2000 and the FT9000 series, but exactly where is anyone’s guess. 4 antenna jacks and a Class A button mean it’s probably got proper diversity reception potential as well as a 200W PA. I hope there’s a 100W version since I work amplified and don’t need the extra power of a 200W radio.
What will be funny, is to find out that the advert was accidentally launched to QST and that it should have gone out at the end of Q1 next year! However it’s unlikely.
A Yahoo group has already been formed. A copy of the advert is there.
73
Callum.
We finally built the 40m array on Saturday and conducted a full test on Saturday night, in preparation for CQWW this weekend coming (24th/25th Oct 2009). The good news is that signals bearly audiable on 40m on our standard Mega-Loop came up a few db on the array, to around 5 and 7.
See the new photos here:
The front to back ratio could be higher. Germans were crawling all over us, working Worked All Germany contest which was a good test, but it did hamper our out-and-out gain tests to US. Many of them probably switching off and saving their energy for next weekend. The modelling we went for gave us maximum gain at 10 degrees take-off. We could have gone for slightly less low-angle gain and instead aimed for a very high front-to-back ratio dialing in up to -15dB off the back. As it is, this current antenna only gives us around -6 db gain off the back. There are some benefits though, like working VK “off the back of the beam”, which I’ve never said before on 40m. Great fun.
Essentially, we have the gain of a non-steerable 4-square array so we should have fun into the top end of South America as well as all of North America, right up to Vancouver and Alaska.The proof of the pudding though, is this weekend and needing 40m to work all through the night, from 7 at night through to 7 in the morning - possibly more. This antenna needs to give us 12 hours out of each 24 hour slot, a must for a Multi-Two entry. Station #2 will have 160m, 80m and 20m to play with all night.
Remember to dial your logging program to update GetScores.org. A live scoreboard is hilarious fun for teams and will keep you on your toes all weekend.
Good luck and have a blast.
Callum.
Pics here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/183
We’ve built some large antennas before but never this big; a 3 element 40m vertical array with raised radials. We made it a raised radial system for a) a quick match to 50 ohms and b) it needs to be a “field” system. We can’t permanently leave our antennas in a public park.
First, you need to get into the scaling to believe it: Take a 6 meter scaffold pole of 48mm diameter (21 feet x 2 inch). Stick it upright on the ground and sleeve inside it, an inch and a half (30mm?) 4 meter (13 feet) pole. On top of this, sleeve a 10 meter (30 foot) fishing pole blank.
You will now have a structure that is effectively 20 meters tall (65 feet). Now then, the fishing pole blank will become the vertical part of an antenna which happens to be a quarter wave for 40 meter band. Being a raised antenna, we need radials and since we’re closer to the ground than a wavelength, we need a more than the traditional two radials to counteract the ground losses. We decided that 8 x radials will be about as good as 60 or so regular ground mounted radials. Do we have the maths right? We think so.
The radials have been modelled at 10 meters length each since they are essentially part of the circuit and will have currently on them, hence the quarter wave dimension. They slope to the ground at approximately 45 degrees. We need to attach some paracord to the ends of the radials and extend them down a further 7 meters before we finally hit the ground. Imagine how far away you are now from the original scaffold pole? I can tell you, it’s 13 meters (42 feet). The diameter of just one of these then spans 26 meters (84 feet) and we have three laced together at a spacing of 10 meters each (three element array).
Today, we did all the hard engineering and measured out all the bits and pieces, ready for a trial the week before CQWW. James and I laughed at the thought of how big this monster really is - and then wondered if it actually fit inside the park so as not to distrupt the walklers? Thank goodness we checked. For those of you unlucky enough to have been to our Scout Hut, you will know that when leaving our front doors, you will notice an oak tree in the distance that houses one corner of our mega-loop. James and I measured from the grass outside the doors to the last radial and we were only about 5 meters from the oak tree. Bloody hell!
We’ve had to re-engineer where we had planned to fit this monster into the park since it has a total wing-span of 52 meters (170 feet).
A picture tells a thousand words, so feel free to check the pics.
We’re putting together a Mullti-Two entry for CQWW this year and it’s pretty clear from our experience with CQWPX that we not only need gain to the US on 40m but we need excellent front-to-back ratio. A new antenna was required.
A two element yagi was considered but we don’t have a tower for such a beast. We did though have various 10m fishing rod blanks and a load of aluminium scaffolding tubes. With some analysis, we feel we can build a high gain array utilising Yagi’s principles of a driven element in the middle and a reflector and a director element front and back.
Original modelling was conducted with MMANA however, the team has recently started to convert to modellilng with NEC2. James’s NEC model confirmed my 5db gain using MMANA at 10 degree take-off angle.
High-res screenshots here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/183
The feedpoint for each element will be at 9 meters above ground using 6 meter scaffold pole sleeved with a 4 meter inch and a half steel pole. The 10m Sky Blue Leisure flag poles sleeve to the inch and a half steel poles. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow of the build.
Make no mistake, these will be monsters with 8 raised radials per element. Today, I made the insulated guying blocks for the radials. This is going to wipe the floor!
Watch this space.
Field days seem to whoosh by in a seamless tirade of bodily abuse that starts in the balls of the feet, grows through your hands and wind blown cheeks before reminding you that you are starving hungry and you’ve only just taken over the driving seat.
A very dissapointed 1012s QSO this year and we still can’t work out why we lost ground so fast with the other leading stations, even on 80m where we should have held our own. Certainly having a tribander at only 35 feet is a hell of a penalty to have to suffer every year, but why our 40m and 80m runs were not producing the numbers that the other high-flying entrants were managing? I just don’t know. High probably does mean might. Last year’s 1,000 foot entry was very different on the higher bands to this year. Mostly, we were firing right through a heavy forest. I wonder how much attenuation there is in 500 yards of dense oak trees that are about 80 feet tall? Well, you get my drift.
Filtering this year was amazing. We used a second rig as a dedicated 2nd receiver using James’s new Band Pass Filters, made to Bob Henderson’s designs and we had negligable breakthrough. I can’t wait to use the new permanent multi-two station when we have the stub filters in place too.
Anyway, although I’m gutted that we probably didn’t even make the top three, we still had a good time and achieved some learnings too. Contesting for me is about three things, learning, competing or having fun. Ideally, all those things. This year I had all of them but not at the same time. Knowing that we were beaten within 2 hours of the kick off made me push extremely hard, but we just couldn’t catch the leaders. Grrr.
Oh well, next year we’ll be back, stronger, cleverer and with a better strategy.
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/181
Callum, Team Captain.
Fan Dipoles at 50 feet, 400 watts and lots of atmosphere. We scored just under 100 contacts mostly UK based throughout the UK.
After bumping into my friend Alan (G3LUA) on 80m, he jumped in his car and came to see us with his wife. Alan was one of my instructors at Solihull Amateur Radio Society when I first applied for a license and realised that I couldn’t do the RAE anymore, I had to do a Foundation exam. I did finally achieve my aim though, I took the last ever RAE ever held in Dec 2004 (I think). and passed..!
Anyway, I digress. here’s the pictures from Dorridge Day 2009:
Lovely day, great fun and good excuse to roll out the toys again.
Wendy and her team were also out in force with Girl Guiding. Having both Guiding AND Scouting in the one family can be hilariously funny as we compete with each other. I won the tallest structure, she won the most colourful!
Pictured is James (2E0YOM) running the pile on 80m.
Callum.
For those of you not on Facebook yet, here’s the sequence:
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/180
Callum.
See the high(er)-res pictures here: http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/179
Modern USB Data Sticks don’t seem to come with external antenna jacks these days. This is a real shame for geeks like me who want better signals and are prepared to procure external antennas to ensure high quality signals.
This project is to ensure that we can have 24 x 7 comms on the boat this summer without resorting to hanging USB modems out of portholes. Metal, as most people know, shields RF extremely well so external antennas are the only way to go. I have already made the necessary internal IT mods to the boat to ensure we have connectivity with a new Dell machine and a wireless router, shared on one of the ethernet ports. A second ethernet card connects to the router as a client to put the Dell back on the corrrect subnet as the rest of the wireless laptops (which are on the “wrong” side of the router). A spin off to all this is that our Orange Blackberry’s will connect to the router, delivering a UMA connection meaning that we will have at least four devices connected internally. Voice calls will be almost impossible via UMA unless we have a very smart connection.
Learning from a mutual friend of mine currently travelling from Alaska to Japan on his Nordhavn, we will share out our WiFi connection with our convoy and friends who we will meet along the way. And why not :)
Of course, I already have a good 2.4Ghz antenna for the reception of WiFi signals and this will remain connected to the Dell’s WiFi card if (and when) we manage to secure a good quality marina WiFi signal but the USB stick will supply almost as good as home broadband, depending on availability. Some people will know that I have a deep knowledge of WiFi security auditing and I will, as a matter of course “test” out the security of most of the WiFi hotspots we happen to come across as part of my learnings. And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
Anyway, I digress. What I needed was the facility to have good signal strength to the Huawei E220, hence this successful antenna mod.
If you came here from Google, you will want to know the ins-and-outs. I can tell you this is a genuinely very easy mod if you have prepared all your tools and have an hour to play with. Like all modification projects, the key is not to rush.
First, lever off the protective branded cover. I used a sharp knife to start breaking the sticky seal. Be carefull you don’t cut yourself. It comes off quite easily with a sort of unsticking sound. Ignore the little tab at one end, it’s only a positional tab and doesn’t do anything mechanical.
Next, observe the very small Torx style screw that holds the covers together. Initially, you might find they are covered in a sticky paper washer affair, this is just the remnants of the branded cover. Pick them out with a sharp knife.
Now, even my very tiny, small torx screwdriver didn’t manage to uncrew these torx screws, I reverted to using a tiny jewellers screwdriver which just managed to catch the sides of the Torx screw head and I carefully unscrewed it. I have read that some people have just snapped the case open but I wanted to keep it all in one piece. If you can find a teeny-weeny screwdriver, it is worth trying to get this out.
Next, I took out the SIM card and put a very large screwdriver blade inside the opening and started to snap all the mechanical catches apart. Within a few seconds, I had this apart - it is not difficult. Just be careful and work steadily. You don’t need to be strong, just work slowly.
You will see when the device is apart, a weird antanna located opposite the USB connector built around some clear perspex type material. Again, this comes off with the same tiny screwdriver you managed to open the case with via the two torx screws each side of the antenna. I suppose if you had to, you could break this antenna off to do this mod but frankly, if you are a technical sort of person, you should have a teeny screwdriver capable of fitting this torx screw. They came out pretty easily.
For the technical antenna people reading this, I found this antenna really cute. A quarter-wave at 1.9Ghz is around 4cms which is precisely how big the main element is however there seems to be a matching stub or similar very close to the main element. To start with, I thought this was a separate antenna similar to a fan dipole but the jury’s out since this would mean it also operates at around 4 Ghz, way off I think. Upon reflection, the design seems to be a folded monopole fed against the chasis ground - although the smaller antenna next to the main element is a bit weird. If you know how this works, I’d be keen to understand. Please let me know. The only thing I didn’t work out is the soldered ground I used. Is the ground tag that I soldered actually connected to the chassis ground? I don’t know. Perhaps I need to make some checks. If you know, please contact me with details.
Soldering the RG174 was pretty easy and after I had created a cable exit route with a small heated screwdriver that melted the plastic, everything came together. In the end, I didn’t use the torx screw to put it back together. Instead I just used the clips which will mean if I have to maintain this in the future, life will be a little easier.
The outcome is good although I have not used this on the right frequency antenna yet. On the boat, I have a dual band cellular antenna which is 60cms long and will display enormous gain (considering a quarter wave is 4 cms). Working through HSDPA specs, I will achieve almost a perfect match with my transmit signal at or around 1.9Ghz and my receive signal, at just under 2.2Ghz should be a fairly easy trip (HSDPA had uplink and downlink frequencies).
My cellular antenna will therefore be transmitting perfectly although receive may be slightly attenuated due to the narrow bandwidth these cellular antennas display.
However, here’s the worst case scenario: Tonight, I used a WiFi antenna as a benchmark and achieved 2 bars using the T Mobile (Huawei provided) software. Considering that a 2.4Ghz antenna is a terrible match, I am happy that this will perform as planned on the boat.
Before I sign off, I hear you ask; “Where did you get the RG174 and matching N-Type”? Seemples; I bought an SMA to N-Type pigtail and cut the SMA off.
All in all, a successful project. I’m very pleased.
(2 days later: I’m currently on the boat connected via this external antenna pigtail to the dual-band cellular antenna, connected at 3.6Mbps. I’m very pleased!)
Callum.
Here, let me help Google find this in the future:
I periodically test out (M’lud:) various wifi networks with my favorite cracker; Russix, a SLAX based wireless toolkit and auditing system that can boot off a CD using your local PC.
Trouble is though, www.russix.com seems to have gone off line. What’s all that about..?
Darn it because I’m trying to find the user documentation!
Grrr.
Callum.
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.
(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.
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.
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!)
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:
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 :)
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
My Mum died a few years back and Elaine, my psychotic sister took it upon herself one day to get my Mums ashes and scatter them across the beach in Torquay we used to go when we were kids. It must have been a really lovely thing for her to do but she never told me, so I wasn’t there.
My Father called me once after my Mum died. He told me that my Mum had died. Actually, I can’t remember if he called or not. I may have made that up thinking that he was probably really nice and called me to be close to his family. I do know that they were keeping my Mum alive so that I could go and see her in Plymouth but by the time I got anywhere near Plymouth, they’d switched her off. It was probably dinner time and they couldn’t wait for me.
Later I found out that they’d struggled really hard to call me, to confide in their decision to switch her off early because it was dinner time but the mobile phone that I have on me all the time was switched off. They don’t know that I know they didn’t call me. They made that up. When people call me and I don’t answer or if the phone was off (like when it’s new in the box, in the shop!), I get an urgent SMS message telling me that someone had tried to call me. Nobody called that day. My sister, the sister that was closest to my Mum and the one that we call psycho, was very warm to me after my Mum died. She told me that she’d look after me and that she’d find a nice piece of jewellery of my Mother’s so that I could have something of my Mum’s (I guess so that I’d never forget her kindness and warmth) but she forgot to give me anything so I don’t remember.
My relationship with my Dad was always strained. A miserable whiskey drinking bully if there ever was one. I thought I would try again with him and give him a second chance, now that he had a new lady, a few weeks after Mum had died. I took my own family to stay with them and we had a lovely weekend. Then psycho discovered this and sent me an email full of swearing and shouting. She told me that I didn’t care about her.
My Father had been giving psycho’s children a monthly allowance for their university schooling budget and I thought it would be a good idea to discuss how this arrangement might fit with my children. We had taken them out to dinner, this time to the Grand Hotel in Torquay and I broached the subject after a couple of bottles of expensive red wine. He wasn’t pleased that I had discussed this with him. He told me that the subject hadn’t crossed his mind and that he’d have to think about it.
Well, that was two years ago and the telephone hasn’t rung and no letters have arrived. He must still be thinking about it. Maybe I shouldn’t ask awkward questions. Actually, we haven’t talked at all in that time, so he must be thinking really hard about that one.
As a small boy, I had a real mummy, just like everyone else’s except mine was better. She was pretty, she smoked long cigarettes and everyone loved her. She was certainly very clever even when she shouted at me. Some days she would hold me and make me feel all loved and I would just gaze at her in wonderment that I was so lucky to have the best mummy in the world. Other days she smacked me across my head, making me deaf for a moment.
But we would spend time together, just her and I. She was everything to me. When I was sent to boarding school, I missed her so much. I remember writing to her, tears rolling down my face on to the writing paper, pleading to come home and that I missed her so much. She told me that boarding school was a privilege and ten year olds like me should love it. If I was strong and grown up then I’d enjoy the school.
Once in a while, she would come and visit to take me home for a long weekend or holiday. I would count down the days. Each night, I would bore my dorm mates about my Mum and how she would be coming to see me soon. Finally, on the day in question, I would be frantic, waiting by the road, sometimes soaking wet in the rain and I wouldn’t go inside in case she thought I wasn’t happy to see her. I would watch every car in case it was my Mum. Eventually, I would see the car, with my very own Mum driving it. I would start waving frantically, my heart exploding out my chest. I would be so very excited to see her. I knew she would be so happy to see me too but often she was in a rush and held back her love courageously so that I would have to catch my breath and wait for the love to come out later – or even another day. Or never.
Over time, I realised that the love that she gave to me when I was a little boy, and the love that I gave to her when I was a child had all gone. I didn’t know where it went. It was dead. It all magic’d away. It never came back and I tried so hard, even shouting like she did, but it didn’t work.
Now it’s like a dream. It’s like it happened in a previous life. I can’t believe that once I really did have a wonderful Mum who would hold me, laugh with me and tell me that I was beautiful. But she stopped doing those things and it all went away. I was alone. All the love gone. She had no idea.
And then I never had a Mum.
Post Script
The woman who claimed to be my Mother, financially disowned me and my elder sister by writing us out of her will. Actually, that’s a technicality, we were left 5% each. She never told us though and we carried on with our fake relationships until the day she died. The man claiming to be my Father together with Psycho never told me about the will. My wife wrote to the probate office only recently and paid for a copy of the will because as she put it, she “smelled a rat”. In any case, the part of the Will that demonstrates her “love” for me wasn’t executed because the man claiming to be my Father, outlived her and is apparently still alive. 70% would have been inherited by Psycho (for accuracy, see note at the bottom of page), who had spent the previous 50 years of her life plotting and scheming against her siblings. A Cuckoo.
So. Help me put some love back into the world. Hug your spouse, hug your friends and hug your lovely children.
Callum xx
NB: The Will split the estate 50% to Psycho and 10% each to her two children (70%). My elder sister and I would have inherited 5% each with the remainder of the estate being split amongst the remaining Grandchildren at 5% each.
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).
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