On the Web : August 2005

If you enjoy reading 'On the Web', your ham radio club can publish this column on an exchange basis with SJRA. Contact Ted, , for the exchange details.		Our contributions to the South Jersey Radio Association club bulletin "Harmonics" includes lengthy Web addresses. As the URL's can be difficult or a nuisance to type into your Web browser, the postings here should make it easier to get to the Web sites SJRA members are interested in. Look for the posting at w2xq.com at the time "Harmonics" is scheduled for delivery in the south Jersey area. Questions, suggestions or contributions are always welcome.
		Solar X-rays  Geomagnetic Field  N 3 K L

The 2006 Field Day Rules
The SJRA Field Day Site entrance is on Lower Main Street, Marlton, opposite the Indian Springs Golf Course.
GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates are N 39° 53.162', W 74° 53.486', or use these maps.
Mapquest is almost a 'net standard, but the newer beta Google map looks very good.

Outer space

The SciFi channel started a pretty funny "Tripping The Rift" parody on late-night television (Wednesdays at 10 pm, repeated at other times). It's the adventures of some misfits flying around the galaxy, trying to make a buck and not get cornered by either the confederation or the conferation's enemies. But we recently have a chance to talk through our own spacestation. N2KPC alerted me to two high-altitude orbits of the International Space Station overhead on July 22. We did some further digging.

One of the easier-to-use Web sites with lots of information on the ISS is called the ISS Fan Club at issfanclub.com. It is oriented for the general public, not the radio amateur, and it has links, forurms, audio and video feeds and still pictures to wade through. It is definately worth a trip. One of the links leads to NASA's all-encompassing Human Space Flight (HSF) Web site. If you go directly to the HSF Realtime Data page at eb.cx/70 and enter in your location, the output will display the necessary data to see the the ISS (if twilight). Do take the time to enter your own location. Near the Red Lion area, the calculated times for Trenton, Vineland and Philadelpha can vary as much as 10 minutes or a low-altitude pass of the ISS may not even be shown in your horizon. Given that information, on the evening of the 22nd I made an ISS repeater (437.8 up/145.8 dn) contact, mobible to mobile, with N2KPC. I could clearly hear my calls come back through the repeater; N2KPC heard it less often with interference from 145.8 simplex chit-chat, probably from the Philadelphia area. It is pretty heady stuff as the repeater is flying at 17,215.6 mph. I wonder who gives 'em a speeding ticket?

Additional digging turned up other sources of information. After looking at more than two dozen satellite software and astronomy Web sites, I consider the "AMSAT Online Satellite Pass Prediction" page at www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/predict/ to be the easiest of all orbital prediction pages to to use. WF1F wrote an article on "Getting Started On The ISS Repeater". The essence of the piece suggests programming the FM transceiver with 5 pairs of frequencies, stepping in 5 kHz intervals, with each pair to be used for two minutes in the nominal 10-minute pass. See the table embedded in the article at eb.cx/f2, from the Southgate Amateur Radio Club in the UK.

Where Did That Repeater Signal Go?

T.J. "Skip" Arey, N2EI, is a local ham, a long time friend, who (like me) writes for the magazine Monitoring Times (MT). Skip also attends the annual Winter SWL Festival in Kulpsville, PA; he routinely gives presentations on current radio amateur or listener as gauged by reader feedback. I had a chance to talk with Skip at the Willingboro Area Repeater Group organizational meeting on August 2, and he told me that his monthly MT amateur radio column for May generated several hundred replies. What was it?

The article spoke of a driving trip through a wasteland of repeaters: "What I discovered did not speak well of the state of VHF/UHF repeater activity in 2005, at least in that particular part of the country. I shall keep things nameless and regionless because, I know the situation to be a fact in more than a few locations around the country. As I drove through the area and set up shop in a number of bed and breakfasts and motels during my travels, I found incredibly little repeater activity. On many of the machines my calls went unanswered, even during peak drive time hours. (This does not bode well for travelers in need of aid in an unfamiliar part of the land). Those machines where my call was answered almost always resulted in curt responses, sometimes with an overt indication that outsiders were not all that welcome. Roundtables consisted of a handful of friends talking only to one another and not opening up matters to general discussion. I can recall passing through this area in the past and being invited twice on two different repeaters to meet some local hams for coffee at local eateries. Now I find only dead air or the cold shoulder. Something is not healthy in ham radio land. While most areas are not in as dire straights as this part of the world I was visiting, I think we can all think of one or two machines near our QTHís that are either unfriendly or have been so inactive that dust comes out of the speaker when you key them up."

Skip concluded the piece with suggestions for reactivating repeaters and being more responsive to travelers. It is an interesting read, at www.tjarey.com/radio/mt.html -- and he'd like to have your suggestions on how to solve the problem. Check out the first round of reader comments in the August Monitoring Times -- Dead Repeaters A Live Issue -- available on the magazine stands of the better bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.

Before you leave Skip's Web site, check out the entire Web site to see all the amateur radio, Crystal Radio Society, and electronics projects he has undertaken over the years. A prolific writer, he has a number of radio and electronics books to his credit.

On an exiting note, Skip told me of two interesting project or hacking sites -- not just amateur radio -- that should keep the tinkerer busy. (One recent project was turning a $10 disposable camera into a reusable remote control 20-shot camera suitable for bike riding or flying in a kite.) At deadline, I haven't had the time to check it out yet. When you have a read at makezine.com and hackaday.com, e-mail your comments to me to share with other club members. Thanks, Skip!

Quickies

Have you noticed the very short Web site URLs with the address of eb.cx in this month's column? The shorties are a lot easier to type, and the service from ShortURL -- eb.cx -- is free. Crunch a long HTML URL though their home page, and in a second or two the Web spits back a 2-alpha-numeric "page" to make up the short URL. Some readers will now doubt say "yea, but what about tinyurl.com?" I say both work well but eb.cx/## is shorter to type than tinyurl.com/## and so I use the former...

Follow the bouncing ball amongst Web page links and you may be surprised with what you find. Southgate's page had a audio link to the 14300 KHz Maritime Mobile Net -- 66.0.249.90:6547/l3audio.m3u -- and Google's search results for the net included a page for N2NOV -- n2nov.net -- that included a "Jersey Coastal MilAir" page. I haven't seen or heard of this Ocean County-centric page -- hometown.aol.com/jerseymilair -- before, but it is loaded with seemingly good frequencies for Lakehurst, McGuire, and the 177th Fighter Squadron in Atlantic City. There are many frequencies to choose from. Have a look and tell us what you find.

Club Bulletin Exchange

And finally, an important breaking story involves a massive identity theft ring hijacking confidential data from millions of infected computers. Sunbelt Software, makes of a spyware protection product, made the discovery during the audit of a Windows program called "CoolWebSearch" that hijacks Internet Explorer settings. One account opened to a business bank account with $350,000 in it. Lots of eBay account matchups were found. Read on at www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1845248,00.asp and be careful.

Ted, W2TAG, is interested in doing a club bulletin exchange that would include "On The Web." If you have a friend in a ham radio club elsewhere in the USA, Canada or the world involved in a local radio club, please consider asking that person to read the this column on w2xq.com. Club bulletin exchange details with SJRA can be made by contacting directly. Thanks!

Do you want to ask a question or comment on something in these columns? I'm easy enough to find as mentioned in past months' columns. Don't forget that the current and past columns are posted at w2xq.com for your reading and review. The advantage? The Web links are live. You do not have to type in the URLs.

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Revised 9 August 2005

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