I don't normally get too political but several things have ruffled my feathers recently.

Below is a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald...

"

A POWERFUL Indonesian parliamentary commission is set to recommend that Indonesia's ambassador not return to Canberra until Australia apologises for the Papuan visa crisis.

In response to John Howard's refusal yesterday to say sorry over the affair, a member of the foreign affairs and defence commission, Djoko Susilo, accused Australia of trying to "hurt the feelings of the Indonesian Government and the Indonesian people". "

 

Hurt the feelings of the Indonesian people! What about the cartoon of the Aussi Prime Minister depicted as a dingo mounting his Foreign minister?? It just doesn't come any worse here than to portray people as dogs...That was really demeaning!

Come on Aussis.....Just tell them to Fuuuuck Ooorrff!

I still remember when a planeload of Aussi tourists were turned around at Bali and sent home because they did not have visas. The fact in those days that Aussi tourists did not need visas for stays up to 60 days was forgotton for a day. Once again the tail wags the dog.

 

"Mr Susilo said the commission would urge the ambassador, Hamzah Thayeb, who was recalled to Indonesia three weeks ago, not to return "any time soon, until we get a satisfactory explanation from John Howard's Government or until after a formal apology for what happened".

 

Let the ambasador stay in Indonesia. If he worth his salt he will tell the commission to grow up and get on with something worthwhile like bringing the bankers who caused the Indonesian monetary collapse to justice.

 

 

And as if to add to the current woes of no DX (Except Australia which doesn't count as DX) Playboy magazine moved in to the 4th floor of the building we occupy. I have a feeling more stones are going to hit us than Playboy!! The riot for hire FPI wanker bastards demanded Rupiah 1 billion to go away. Well they hadn't arrived at that stage because they couldn't find the office. The local Jakarta youth group (Also Muslims) were contacted and arrived en mass to defend the area from the FPI In loose terms FPI means Forum for the Protection of Islam. In reality it is a group of thugs who are paid to go out and protest/attack and terrify whatever and whoever their paymasters decide...all under the guise of protecting Islamic values. They also run a protection racket for businesses which are deemed to be offensive to the Islamic values they serve to protect. Three truck loads of protectors of the faith attacked a restaurant/nightclub in Kemang a few years ago and while terrorizing patrons and trashing the joint removed wallets and valuables from the patrons. The owner of the building confesed he had refused to pay the protection.

Personally I hope the police shoot the pricks and jail the ringleaders. I guess playboy must have paid the money because the police and TV crew have gone and no body seems interested in our office anymore....There are two massage palours and a duty free liquor outlet in the complex....the FPI could have a field day protecting the morality of the masses....maybe thats where they all ended up!

I don't usually feel like this....I must be getting old....

Dinasaurus Radios

I was thinking the other day about how far computers had come in the past 10 years and then hand phones from 20lb bricks you would have to clear a space on the floor for to nowadays when my windows based PDA phone is about the size of two match  boxes and then I looked at my radio collection. There is stuff all difference between the radios of 20 years ago and those on the market today. Sure they advertise more power, (there was 400w valve rigs 20 years ago too) DSP, (Can you really hear anything a well tuned Collins won’t?) and TV screens that won’t pick up much but there has been very few groundbreaking improvements in amateur radios. It is a box with a few knobs and dials that we talk around the world with using a microphone or tap out morse code on a key by hand.

 By comparison on our computers and phones we can tap out the text on a keyboard and send it along with a picture, video clip or whatever. I am talking SMS or MMS  or instant messaging. I believe that you can buy several after market products that you can add to your basic radio and computer, that after considerable study, effortand trial and error may be able to send and receive faxes, emails, slow scan TV  and even small pictures with some HF radios.

Why isn’t this already in one black box? They can put it all into a tiny telephone and sell it for peanuts so all that would be needed for HF is more power and a good antenna. Bandwidth problems? Hardly, the Ham bands are empty most of the time and bandwidth is solved by compression and digitalization techniques and just look at where Skype is at these days and the latest MSN messenger. As far as commercial stuff goes voice communications are a pain in the butt. I would much rather prepare a page or two of text and have that sent and 100% received than try to explain technical stuff with a non native speaker about how things work! Send a document and he can pull up babel fish on his radio/computer at his end and read it in his language. This is where HF radios should be today. Let the computers handle the hard stuff. The technology is definitely out there but ICOM/Yaesu/Kenwood and the rest just don’t want to risk it. I think the market is saturated with radios. There is hardly anything to set them apart. The laboratories can tell that this one is better or worse with their delicate instruments but can our ears? I don’t think so.

 

I want a new radio and this is what I want! 

It has to be incorporated into or based on a fully functional computer. I want to lift the top up and look at a screen just like I do with my laptop. And no crummy 7” TFT’s I want the whole top to be screen plus a monitor plug if I want to watch it remotely or on a really big screen. I want USB ports so I can plug in keyboard/mouse/printer etc at least 6 of them. For marine use an input for a gps signal so it will always transmit present location with every transmission or as programmed.  The computer will take care of everything, The DSP on transmit, receive and audio tailoring at everystage. Already we have software defined radios coming on to the market so hopefully it won’t be too much longer. See the following links for where they are at…

http://www.winradio.com/
http://www.flex-radio.com/sdr1000.htm

One thing the radio will incorporate is an automatic decoder for every kind of digital mode (even morse code) currently available and the ability to update it as new ones come along. The TNC and software will be built in from the ground up. If the radio is the size of an Icom 756 then that’s plenty of room and a pretty good screen size. Should be able to get all the radio controls and settings up on half the screen and the rest taken over for the data decoding, but that can be altered as one wants. So can the colour scheme..just like windows.

The radio can retain the normal knobs as required but there should be a removeable cover over them so they don’t distract us and get in the way. Nothing on the cover except input and output plugs…Mics, keyboards, mouse, video and sound, ext speaker and what else? And more than one of each!
Speakers…The speakers on my laptop computer sound great. Put a couple of  decent speakers recessed in the each side of the radio so they can be swung out and faced forwards. DSP audio and all that good stuff.
Voice transmissions can be normal analog or digitized if the distant station can also decode them. Look at where these AOR people are going…Gotta have this stuff built in..

http://www.aorja.com/ard9800e.html

Built in tuner is a must….
And how about this in case you are worried about your antenna…How about a built in antenna analyzer have to use all that processing power for something..Check out the TZ-900 AntennSmith TM  Antenna Impedance Analyzer here..

http://www.timewave.com/

Power. I think the one thing that should be mounted away from the radio is the final RF stage. Make this one of the variables. It doesn’t have to be part of or built in to the radio..
I think it should be mounted on the antenna along with the tuner unit. And while we are on antennas the package should include one of these:

http://www.steppir.com/

But for secret squirrel band hopping stuff you will need a log periodic…..

Time to go to work and start saving up!

Have a good day.

 

 

 

 

So far as far as TX audio local quality goes....

Lincoln

AR3500

Magnum 257

George

SA 280

S-9

Cobra

 

Rx to my ears only

AR3500

SA 280

S-9

Lincoln

magnum 257

george

Cobra

 

SA 280 could rise up a bit with a tune up and backing off the ALC when I find which pot it is.

Cobra just aint worth a shit but I keep it on hand to let every one to steer clear of it!

One day there may be an easy fix for the audio but still have to fix the -/+5khz and a frequency display that gets out of whack when the clarifier is moved more than one or two khz.

FT817 hooked into a KL200 was also up the top in TX and Rx but has the additional SSB filters installed so hardly fair. Need to get some more CB's to test...

 

AR3500 still sits on the top of the pile ..a position it has held for the past 20 years and not much around to knock it off it's spot.

Well the Astatic mic doesn't quite cure the S-9 cheap audio comments when signals are strong. Still adds depth to the standard mic though.

At S-9 plus 10db it still leaves a lot to be desired. Not that it is unintelligible but lacks the depth of the other radios. But..point it at europe and south america when conditions are weak with the standard el cheapo 1 dollar mic and she will talk over the "nice audios" every time. Never had a far away DX station tell me the audio from the S-9 sounded "cheap" like a Fremantle station did the other day!

Heaps of Aussi skip rolling into 91 div these days and especially good signals out of the west. Somedays WA can stay in all afternoon. Spoke to a station in the country running 2.4kw. Now that pricked my ears up! What sort of amp could that be. A Zetagi B1200 came the reply. No offense but the audio didn't sound too good but I couldn't copy him at all without the amp so still don't know if it was the amp or the radio. I suspect the amp cos my info is that the B1200 is a class C amp which will sound whiskery on sideband. With 8 ea MRF 422 transisters and a 422 driver I fail to see how it can put out more than 800watts. There is only so much a 422 can do! But those amps are being sold as 2kw amps over on the east coast for A$835.00 so best go get one. After all nobody has any idea how much you are putting out so get the bragging rites and join the 2kw club. Pity about the audio but as long as you can be heard who cares...right? 

Why is it the Canary Islands can always get out when the rest of Europe is quiet? If you intend to do a European DX trip start with the canaries...You won't go far wrong DX wize and at least the weather is nice.

Got in some Astatic 636L hand mics the other week and tried one on the S-9.

What a difference. Have yet to hear it for myself but it irons out the trebly sharp audio of the standard mic and replaces it with super smooth big rig audio....hard to believe but even Geoff down there in Darwin couldn't fault it so I am on to a good thing here....now just got to find a cheap source of 636L's.

Good thing about the S-9 is that we can still leave the original mic in place for when we want to bust into a pile up somewhere....not that there are too many of them around these days but we have been getting steady conditions down into West Aus and Queensland so catching up with a few old mates at last.

A mate from down under told me off the other day....He heard me calling the boat on an outback 4wd frequency.

I didn't hear them too good but my call co-incided with the VS737 sched time. Naughty me. He said.."I thought you were a First Class pirate!" Dave. Never really thought about it like that but I guess I am now Pirate: 2nd (or worse) Class. I think it might be time to classify radio pirates.

 

First Class Pirate. Works all Bands, split frequency and mode and only gets heard by the pirate he is talking to. Never uses his real name on the air, Doesn't use his Ham radio while pirating and has several voice muffling mics to switch between.

 

Second Class Pirate. Pirates everywhere except the Ham bands. Uses his Ham radio. Occaisionally slips up and drops his ham or CB call sign into the conversation. Has trouble working out how his radio works so noted for sticking to one or two frequencies.

 

Third Class Pirate Scared shitless of getting caught he only operates late at night or mobile so seldom makes any contacts. Will pirate on any band he can find someone to talk to. Usually has had his equipment confiscated more than once. An expert in long wires and ruining radios. Seldom remains in one place for very long before getting hounded out of town.

 

Fourth Class Pirate This category is reserved for 27mhz freebanders. Frequently the most technically savy of the lot they spend a lot of time building equipment for and monitoring 27.555 USB and making choice long range contacts with 15w on 11m when 10m is officially closed. The most populous of the Pirate fraternity this class is being actively pursued by the amateur radio societies by reducing entry level qualifications to the Ham bands so the authorities can then tax them for talking over the airwaves.

 

Jokes aside..hope others can add some more attributes to the various pirate classes......

 

Anyway more serious stuff...

27mhz is pretty rotten these days and cluster stats are confirming the lack of propagation on our beloved 11m so what to do....

Indonesia realised this problem a few years ago and designated a frequency of 11.415 USB over to CB operators to use for communicating between the far flung parts of Indonesia. Designed more for important and emergency communications it has grown rapidly into a subset of the old CB crowd. Frequencies in use now cover 11.405 through 11.450 in 5/kc steps. 11.415 is still the only official designated frequency. There is no structure and all conversations are in Indonesian but most will switch to english if they hear an English speaking voice. With just a dipole and 100w it is possible to communicate through South East Asia most of the time with strong signals and only breaker stations as interference. Henry in Holland was listening to them the other afternoon and was so impressed he went out and flung up a dipole and worked me in Java with a 5/5 out of Holland with 100 watts. Marco in Italy was also copying us on his 4.5mhz dipole 5/9. Better signals into europe than what I was hearing around 13970 on the same night.

11m...11mhz   way to go. Cut the wires about 6.25m per leg and a tad shorter if you can't get it up very high and join in the fun on 11mhz!

Had a bit more time to play around with the 7k and do a bit of research on the mic the oft reported audio problems in the mid and narrow Transmit Band Width (TBW) settings. . Needless to say as long as you leave the TBW in wide you won't experience any problems...just nice clear audio. Bob Heil of Heil Sound fame has got into the act and has a fine article on his web site outlining the problem and suggested fix. It concerns a little mic at the bottom of a tube and an offset hole for the audio to get through. More like a placement thing but he did say there seemed to be a problem in the audio amplifier on certain frequencies which didn't help.

I had already set the TBW as follows: wide 100-2900, mid 200-2900, narrow 300-2800 which was OK with the standard mic and fine with the Heil HC-5 and HC-4. I was getting better reports with the HC-4 but had to crank up the compression and mic gain more than with the HC-5 and std hand mics.

The RIT was given me heck as I didn't seem to be able to find it when needed. Now I have it on all the time but I have lost the ability to change between the memory banks without some knob pushing and praying but that is less of a problem as each bank holds 100 memories. The outside knob is now the clarifier unless I am fiddling around with the RX bandwidths which I am slowing starting not to do...novelty wearing off and seldom helps on SSB ...easier to use the 3 preset bandwidth filters of 3.0, 2.4 and 1.8. audio through the headphones a lot better than bult in speaker for sure.

Thought I would sell it but now I am starting to like it.....

 

Anyway..here is what Bob has to say.....Loks like the photos did not come accross. www.heilsound.com

 

HEIL MICROPHONES WITH THE iC 7000 All of our products built for the 706 will work well with the sensational new iCOM IC 7000. The Traveler 706, the iCM with the HSTA 706 adapter and the favorite is the HM-iC HANDI MIC with the Ch -1 iM cable. For the ultimate headset operation any of our IC headsets (BM-10 IC, PRO SET IC, PRO SET PLUS IC, PSQP IC) with the AD-1 icm modular adapter and HS 2 or FS 2. Set the Transmit bandwidth in the WIDE position 200 Hz and 2900Hz. For extreme articulation, contest or DX pileups ups use the MID or narrow bandwidth filters. The IC 7000 has extreme audio capabilities. Here in the Heil lab we have been VERY successful in using the 8 band W2IHY EQ into pins 2 and 11 of the rear accessory socket. Using the PR 40 with this set is absolutely stunning. Transmit Bandwidth set at 100 Hz and 2900 Hz. Jan. 12. 2006 HC 5 on the IC 7000 Because of the lack of mid range and high frequency articulation in the IC 7000, you will discover that the HC 5 will give you the best results. I am using the HM-5 Handi Mic with the CH-1 IM modular coil cable for the 7000. You could use the HM-10-5, the GOLDLINE GM-5 or any of the headsets using the HC 5. You will have to set it up correctly. COMPRESSION On all the time. Set to 4 MIC GAIN sets about 50% - or where the ALC meter is happy WIDE transmit filter set at 200Hz and 2900 Hz. This is actually giving the best results as the HC 5 ads such wonderful articulation. The key to getting decent audio is to set the 7000 low end at 200 Hz. and 2900Hz. on the top. There seems to be some weird anomaly with the mic pre amp section that when hit with lots of low frequency energy from the microphone, the transmitter gets "hollow' or boxing sounding. Moving the transmit bandwidth filter to 200 Hz. (not 100 ) seems to solve a bit of that. The HC 5 helps more as it doesn't start up until 300Hz so it is a perfect match for the IC 7000. When the compressor is used at the low level of 3 or 4 it acts as an additional microphone pre amp. Just what is needed when using low level dynamic elements such as the HC 5. It truly has been the best combination so far. Help is on the way. Stay 'tuned' to this billboard about the IC 7000. We will add additional info during our IC 7000 project. Jan. 13, 2006 Bob: Just a short add-on -- one of my customers bought the Traveler for his 7000 and he is getting tremendous signal reports. Jay, WS1CO at HRO in Denver. Jan 17, 2006 This has been a struggle....and not finished yet, HOWEVER I think that I have a fairly quick and easy modification to bring the iC 7000 transmit audio alive. We all know how incredible the receiver is....but the hollow sounding transmit audio continues to plague all of the new owners. There are several problems. The first being that the iC element in the stock microphone is only 1/8" in diameter and 1/16" thick. This element fits TIGHT into a rubber 'tube' which is part of the 25 button mask. Would you mount a toilet paper tube in front of your GOLDLINE? That is EXACTLY what they did - but that is not all. The toothpick size opening you speak into is 1/4" to the right of this tiny element so your speech goes down inside this tube, hits the p.c. card and reflect back up to the top fact of the microphone, reflecting again back down to 'find' the element. All of this phase distortion is what causes a lot of this 'hollow' and boxy sound we hear from the 25 button microphone. In addition, there is some anomaly in the speech amplifier frequency response giving a rise around 300 to 500 Hz...right where things get 'hollow' sounding. Add these two together and guess what? You got it....Hollow and Boxy sounding ! There is no articulation using this microphone into this fabulous transmitter. In looking at this 25 button microphone, I discovered that our HC 5 or the HC 4 (both which has become THE choice for the DxPedition and contest ops) fits - EXACTLY in the area on the BACK of the stock mic that they intended as a 'hanger'....well thank you, iCOM for doing that AND obviously using our HC element as a mold for that spot! I had to shave just a bit of the 'bar' of plastic for the HC 5 to slide into but the HC 4 fit perfectly. Drill one hole and install a short small diameter shielded wire down to the two points where the original electret was installed. Don't forget the 1 mf non polar decoupling cap. There is some kind of plastic 'fence' molded on the inside of the back plate...they even left a small cut out to run our wire to the original element location ! The two solder points of the original element (outlined in a white square) are located right under the i.C. This is where you connect the shieled cable and de coupling cap. I attached some audio files for you to hear. Interesting....because of the +6dB of 3K rise of the HC 5, I back the transmit bandwidth down to 2700 and 100on the low end becuase it rolls off at 300, thus NOT allowing the internal preamp to be hit with a lot of low end as the stock iC did causing that horrible hollow sound. Use the COMPRESSION - always to get the needed gain and that sets at 4. NOW, the iC 7000 in my statioin lab finally has some articulation. Gentlemen - THIS is the answer !.....well for now. My OTHER project and is REALLY the fix is in our tooling shop as we speak...couple of weeks, I should know about this. We have built our 1982 two band EQ 200 (the gadget that started ALL of this higher quality audio ) into one of our wonderful little Handi mics. Two 1/4" holes on it's back allow you to set the treble and base. THIS is really going to be the answer if all works out. The prototype certainly works well. MUCH more later. Feb. 06, 2006 Step #1 - Mic Apart Step #2 - iC7000 Entrance Step #3 - Top Of Mask Step #4 - Mask Shown Step #5 - Mask with iC element The huge problem with the stock iC 7000 'hand mic' is three fold. First, their electret is VERY small about 1.8" dia and 1/16" thick. It is soldered to the bottom side of the p.c. card. A rubberized 'mask' that is molded to form the buttons and control you push has a 'tube' that seals this tiny element on one end and seals against the top plate where you speak into, thus forming a 1/4" tube from the entrance hole to the element. Think about talking into a tissue paper tube in front of your microphone! But this is not the worst issue. The hole you speak into is NOT centered into that tube. The pencil lead sized opening you speak into is 1/4" to the right of that entrance thus your speech enters the hole hits the p.c. card, reflects back up and eventual finds the entrance hole and back down to the element...all of this roaming around causes severe phase distortion and cancellation of mid range frequencies. Mids and highs goes in a straight line. Period. When trying to reflect these frequencies, all kinds of phase distortion occurs.....thus the 'hollow' sound the iC 700 exhibits. One of the issues is also it's a hollow clam shell 'hand mic' with the element INSIDE. Our Handi Mic technology has solved this 50 year problem! http://www.heilsound.com/amateur/handi_mic.htm All of this can be proven in the attached photos. One of the easiest fixes is to install our HC 5 on the OUTSIDE after removing the teenie electret and soldering a shield lead from those points to our HC 5 AFTER decoupling it with at least a 1 mfd. capacitor. (there is D.C. on those mic inputs for their electret) BOB HEIL, K9EID www.heilsound.com