My previous order of 1000 QSL cards back in early 2009 was done by UX5UO (http://www.ux5uoqsl.com/) and they came out great and were a real value. I looked back in my archives here and didn’t see any post about me ordering from Gennady. Well it was time to reorder as I was getting down to a small number of QSL cards remaining and there was no question I was going back to UX5UO for my new batch of ham radio QSL cards.

From my experiences on the air over the last 2 years since my last order and seeing what I liked about what I saw on other hams QSL cards, I wanted to change the back design of my QSL card. I kept the same front of my card which is an old picture of the historic train station in town and focused on the back section. I like to write my QSL cards out by hand even though there’s be no problem having a program print out a label I stick on the back.

Here’s the front of the card:

Here’s the old back of the card:

Here’s the new back of the card followed by what I changed and why:

I moved the callsign of the station I worked to the very top left and underneath it I added a section for the QSL Via operator if they used a QSL manager. Previously I was writing it in red ink along the side of the card and now it will have its own section.

I changed the QSO info to a grid format. I’d say 75% of my QSL cards are for a single QSO but the other 25% are for multiple QSOs and 4 is enough to cover almost any I’d send out.

I was also writing PSE / TNX QSL by hand on my old card so I had it pre-printed on this one with a checkbox. I usually write something on the back of the card and didn’t want to eliminate that completely so there are 2 lines at the bottom of the card which I can still write a brief note.

Gennady / UX5UO at http://www.ux5uoqsl.com/ provides a great service at a great value and works with you to design your cardif you want him to. I would not hesitate to recommend as I have to others who are also extremely happy with their cards.

73 & good DX!
K2DSL

Over the past  week I’ve been notified that I have been mentioned in both CQ and QST magazines. In the March 2011 issue of CQ I’m mentioned in the article on the 2010 CQ WPX CW contest because I ended up in 1st place US in the Rookie category. The article also indicates I apparently receive a plaque for it which is sponsored by K6DBG (Chris) so thanks for that! I’m no longer eligible to claim Rookie status so I was lucky to sneak this in before I get lumped in the middle of the pack with everyone else.

In the April 2011 issue of QST Magazine is an article by WB8IMY (Steve) on the digital mode JT65. In the article Steve mentions my maidenhead grid square site at http://www.levinecentral.com/ham/grid_square.php as the grid square is important for use with the software that is used. Thanks for the mention Steve!

Looks like I might be able to sneak in some radio time in the BARTG RTTY contest but just on Friday evening for a short time. The rest of the weekend and contest I’ll be unavailable and with one of my daughters. I just need to remember to mentally adjust GMT to Daylight Savings Time which kicked in last weekend. The BARTG starts at 0200z which last week would have been 9pm EST and now is 10pm EDT.

73,
K2DSL

Maybe I’m the last actual licensed ham radio operator to watch the movie Frequency, but I did so this morning. I was playing around with searching the TV guide the end of this past week and searched for ham radio and it showed this movie so I recorded it. My wife says we’ve seen it but I wasn’t a licensed ham yet. I didn’t remember it so I watched it again.

There’s a lot of ham radio in it. A few thinks not so real (other then the entire plot) was that they often talked without pressing the PTT button. And of course, the son wasn’t licensed, or at least they never said he was in the movie. Looking this up online the following is pointed out: The radio was a Heathkit SB301 which is only a receiver. The SB401 is the transmitter. He would need both to carry on a conversation.

The call sign of the dad played by Dennis Quaid is W2QYV and is currently the call sign of the Niagara Radio Club in NY State.

Anyway, this probably isn’t news to anyone reading this as I’m sure I’m the last ham to see the movie.

73,
K2DSL

After I started to use a Windows 7 notebook, though it works with Windows Vista as well, I created a simple Windows Sidebar Gadget that stays on my desktop all the time and allows me to quickly take a ham radio callsign and launch the QRZ page for that callsign in my web browser. The widget looks like the following on your desktop:

Installing it is easy and all you need to do is go to Microsoft’s Gadget Gallery at  http://gallery.live.com/LiveItemDetail.aspx?li=eaf00d92-f222-422d-9c59-ea87412383fd and click on the Download button and confirm you want to install the 3rd party gadget. Depending on your browser and setup, it will download the gadget install file or possibly start the install. If it downloads the gadget file to your computer, locate the file called QRZLookup.gadget and double click it to install.

If you ever want to remove it, the gadget gets installed, along with all other gadgets, to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets and you can remove the QRZLookup.gadget directory. Only files are copied to that location and they are all viewable in the Gadgets directory if you want to poke around.

I hope you try the ham radio callsign lookup gadget and if you have any questions please let me know.

73,
K2DSL

I don’t have this specific video game but I do have a Wii system so I’ll have to see if I can borrow this game from someone and hear it for myself. It seems that the video game Wii Sports Resort contains 3 morse code exchanges which are part of the background sounds that occur while playing and passing by the lighthouse. The 3 exchanges are:

Why does anyone use Morse code anymore?
Good question.

Morse code takes forever.
It sure does.

Does anyone out there know Morse code?
Sorry. Use your radio.

No one yet seems to know who on the game development team might have put this in. I’m sure someone will eventually fess up or find out.  Maybe the developer will come out with some video game that innocently teaches young kids morse code in order to progress through the levels.

Here’s a picture I found which seems to match the description of where in the game you might hear the morse code.

73,
K2DSL

UPDATE: A co-worker saw this posting and he had this game at home so he brought it in for me along with the additional controller extension. I put it in Saturday morning before the RTTY Roundup and played just the flying game for a bit. It was fun, and as I approached the tower you could hear the morse code. Now who programmed it?

Happy New Year everyone! I’m just back from a vacation that started on 12/22/2010. Other then the VHF radio in the car during the time I was in the car, I think this was the longest I wasn’t on the air and certainly on HF since I’ve been on HF. But my wire antennas survived a 2 foot snowstorm shortly after we left on vacation so I should be all set for the RTTY RoundUp this weekend.

I often get asked by people that see me wearing them, where I get my shirts, etc that has my ham radio call sign and my name on it. Everything so far has been purchased from CallsignWear at http://www.callsignwear.com and they are great. In the items I have from them which is a great pullover fleece I always wear, a long sleeve t-short and 2 short sleeve t-shorts, I get my call sign and my name embroidered in. In the pile of emails I had waiting for me when I turned my Blackberry back on after getting back to the US was one from CallsignWear with their monthly special being $11 short sleeve t-shirts which happen to be exactly what I’m wearing now. If you are interested, check out http://www.callsignwear.com/item.php?id=4 for a couple bucks off their normal price. Good deal on a good product and I don’t get anything for recommending them.

73,
K2DSL

I noticed a post on the ARUser Yahoo group which is used, among other purposes, to discuss the VE7CC DX Cluster program. The program creates a local DX Cluster on your computer which you can configure to your hearts content. For me, as an example, it shows only spots that are related to North America stations so I don’t see an 80m spot that is posted by a station in Russia to a station in Germany.

The post indicated a user couldn’t get the DX Spot Alerts that send emails to work on Verizon FIOS. Now I had never tried to do that with this program, but years ago I had the same issue/need to send emails on Verizon FIOS from a weather program that did not support SMTP Authentication. SMTP Authentication is a fancy name for having to supply an account & password when you send email. Supplying an account & password to receive email is normal but much less frequently needed on sending email. If the program sending email (VE7CC in this case) doesn’t support supplying an account name and password, it won’t work with mail servers that require it.

A quick search turns up the program I used in the past. It’s called SMTPAuth and is located at http://netwinsite.com/dmail/smtpauth.htm. The web page indicates Windows operating system support through XP. Well, I’m running Windows 7 64-bit and it still works. I don’t have a Vista machine to test on but I imagine it works with Vista as well. I downloaded the program from the page to my desktop. The first time I ran it the install didn’t complete so I needed to re-run the installation as Administrator which the program detected and did for me automatically. I imagine just right clicking the program on the desktop and selecting Run as administrator will do the same thing. The program launches a command window which asks for your mail server. For Verizon FIOS, it is outgoing.verizon.net but if you aren’t using Verizon FIOS, you can check your existing mail program to see how it is setup or check your ISPs web site. You then need to specify your email account name with the ISP and the password associated with that email account. Once you do that, you’ll see something similar to the following:

SmtpAuth Version 1.04 Setup for Windows NT
Initialisation:
Enter your outgoing(smtp) mail server: outgoing.verizon.net
Enter your user name <>: abc123
Enter your password: xxxxxxxx
Saving settings...done
Stopping SmtpAuth...failed
Adding service...done
Starting SmtpAuth Version 1.04...done
Testing Smtp Authentication...
Everything seems fine
SmtpAuth Version 1.04 was successfully installed
In your email client, set up your outgoing(smtp) mail server to be "127.0.0.1"
To uninstall smtpauth, run smtpauth again, and choose the delete option
Press any key to finish
Windows Services shows SmtpAuth Version 1.04 which can be stopped or started as you want.

You now have a local SMTP server running on your PC. Then in VE7CC or whatever program you want to use that needs to send email, you specify 127.0.0.1 as the email server. For VE7CC specifically, you would click on the Configuration menu and select Alarm Setup. That opens a window where on the right side you can specify your To & From email address and the box underneath those is where you enter in 127.0.0.1 for the mail server. That indicates that the mail server is running locally on your machine.

That’s all there is to it. If you have any questions, you can post them here or email me directly and I’ll try to help.

73,
K2DSL

I attended my local radio clubs monthly meeting for September and one of the members received an envelope from a SK’s estate that contained a stack of envelopes from 1964. The envelopes contained purple 5 cent stamps that were post marked from Anchorage Alaska on Dec 15th, 1964. I picked up 3 of them for myself. Below is a scan of the envelope which can be clicked to open up a larger image.

The ham that had them said he did some investigation and there were different pictures on the front, though all his were the same as what I scanned. The ARRL QST archive site search finds a mention in QST of the stamp in the Aug, Sept, Oct & Nov 1964 issues. The September 1964 QST references 3 envelopes to a set, each printed in a different color. WJ8C mentions it but doesn’t show pictures and calls it a #1260.  I found a different picture on a Google image search which brought me to N4MW’s site which shows a different picture. The page also links to a PDF courtesy of WA5CTP that shows a 3rd picture on the envelope. Using 1260 as a search I came across a list of amateur radio postal items which if you scroll to the United States lists 9 different covers. Mine is the closest to fdc 1 though mine doesn’t have any mention of Oscar-1.

Amazing how much can be uncovered using the Internet to find out old info. I was just 18 months old when this was issued and almost 46 years later people are still enjoying what was done in 1964.

73,
K2DSL

I was off from work on Friday and ended up doing a lot of driving. The main reason is my parents were up visiting my brother (lives outside of Philly) for the weekend and we wanted to get everyone together. With what was already planned for this weekend, Fri night dinner was really the only reasonable option.

The first trip of the day was to meet my sister-in-law halfway between our houses to pick up 1 of my daughters who spent the week with her and her kids. Later in the afternoon one daughter, my wife and I set out to head south to Pt Pleasant Beach to pick up my older daughter that was there with a friend and her family. It should have taken closer to 1 hour but with all the traffic it was 2 hours. After picking her up we headed west for 1 hour to Princeton to meet up with my brothers family and my parents for dinner.

After dinner and a great cupcake it was time to take my older daughter back to Pt Pleasant for the remainder of the weekend. After dropping her off, we set off for home and without any traffic it took the appropriate amount of time.  For the day I put 312 miles on the car.  Below is a track from aprs.fi for the day.   The route was pretty much the same going and coming.  APRS coverage was pretty thorough along the routes. I didn’t hear much on simplex other then 1 or 2 short conversations but I was able to hear many of the repeaters I already had programmed into my Kenwood TH-D7A other then along the route between Pt Pleasant and Princeton.  APRS.fi’s data showed packets being received up to 79 miles from me with a couple over 50 miles away. There could be more, but only the 1st station that logs the transmitted packet is recorded.

The things we do so the grandparents can see their grandkids! It was nice to see my parents too, even if for just a couple of hours.

73,
K2DSL