TAPR's packetRADIO

After returning home from Hamvention 30 years ago, I wrote the following for ARRL's packet radio newsletter Gateway:

TAPR UNVEILS packetRADIO AT DAYTON

The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) booth at the Dayton Hamvention was buzzing with the unveiling of a number of new packet-radio products including prototypes of the TAPR "packetRADIO," a low-cost (approximately $250) two-stage VHF transceiver designed exclusively for packet-radio applications. TAPR's packetRADIO features 9600 baud FSK and 1200 baud AFSK 2-meter operation with 25 watts output, five crystal-controlled channels and a transmit-receive turnaround time of less than one millisecond (ms).  

The working prototypes displayed at the Hamvention were the result of a six-week crash project by TAPR. Beta-testing will begin soon with the radios expected to be available to the general public in approximately six months.

TAPR's packetRADIO generated a lot of excitement at Hamvention in 1989, but the project was never completed and was eventually cancelled to the disappointment of many packeteers including myself.

Fast-forward 30 years...

While cleaning out the TAPR warehouse, John Koster, W9DDD, found the packetRADIO prototype and brought it to the TAPR board meeting for show and tell. I ended up with it and brought it home to add to my collection of vintage packet radio TNCs.

Hamvention Bound

This time next week, I will be in Ohio to attend Hamvention.

I will be making a short presentation at the TAPR Forum, which starts Friday morning at 9:15 AM in Room 1. Also, I will be staffing TAPR's booths (Building 5, booths 5001-5003) throughout the weekend and attending the TAPR-AMSAT Annual Banquet Friday evening.

If you will be attending Hamvention, I hope to see you there!

Last Call: Contribute to PSR

The deadline for the pre-Hamvention issue of TAPR's quarterly newsletter, Packet Status Register (PSR), is here. This is the last call to send your cards, letters, articles, etc., whatever you have, to me by clicking on the WA1LOU mailbox in the righthand column of this blog.

Thank-you and 73,

WA1LOU, PSR editor

Invitation to Contribute to PSR

The deadline for the pre-Hamvention issue of TAPR's quarterly newsletter, Packet Status Register (PSR), is approaching. Please send your cards, letters, articles, etc., whatever you have, to me by clicking on the WA1LOU mailbox in the righthand column of this blog.

Thank-you and 73,

WA1LOU, PSR editor

Hamvention Transition

Some of the crew staffing the TAPR booth at Hamvention

I attended Hamvention and am happy to report that it was a successful trip. Here are some thoughts on the trip.

The transition from the Hara Arena to a new (to me) venue (Greene County Fairgrounds) was better than I expected. My only complaint is the scarcity of brick and mortar bathrooms and the dependency on portables (I hate portables).  

After researching the matter before the trip, I decided to transition from soldered to crimp-on coax connectors. So I had a shopping list for the parts I needed and returned home with three bags of crimp-on connectors (to terminate different coax cable sizes) as well as crimp-on dies for my Powerpole crimper.

It rained Thursday, Friday and Saturday and my Subaru now sports mud camouflage, but it's all-wheel-drive kept things moving and I avoided the tow trucks.

I saw most of the people I looked forward to seeing and it was great to renew acquaintances in person.

Working the TAPR booth is always interesting and attending the TAPR-AMSAT banquet and the Hamvention Awards dinner was a lot of fun (not to mention that the food was great).

During the 725-mile roadtrip, I entertained myself by tuning up and down the AM radio dial. It was interesting to hear stations during the day that I only hear after dark at home, like CHML, WJR, WLW and WSM.

Over and out.

Xenia Marks the Spot

This time next week, I will be on an Interstate in Ohio heading for Hamvention. Although this will be my 30-something trip to the big show, it will be different this year because of the new-to-me Hamvention venue in Xenia – specifically, the Greene County Fairgrounds.

I will be staffing TAPR's booths (Building 5, booths 5001-5003) Friday and Saturday and I will be attending the TAPR-AMSAT Annual Banquet Friday evening.

If you will be attending Hamvention, I hope to see you there!

Still No Go

Thomas, K4SWL, posted a bunch of photos on his website (The SWLing Post) that he took at Hamvention yesterday as the booths were being set-up. He even had a photo of the TAPR booth, which I will share with you!

TAPR booth, Hamvention 2017 (K4SWL photo)

No Go

I had to cancel my plans to attend the Hamvention this weekend.

Xenia Marks the Spot

This time next week, I will be on an Interstate in Ohio heading for Hamvention. Although this will be my 30-something trip to the big show, it will be different this year because of the new Hamvention venue in Xenia – specifically, the Greene County Fairgrounds.

I will be staffing TAPR's booths (Building 5, booths 5001-5003) off and on Friday and Saturday and I will be attending the TAPR-AMSAT Annual Banquet Friday evening.

If you will be attending Hamvention, I hope to see you there!

What I brought home from Hamvention

Hamvention

HARA

The Dayton Hamvention is this weekend and I will be there attending forums, buying ham radio necessities, receiving the Hamvention's Special Achievement Award and staffing the TAPR booths (451-454) in the Ball Arena of the HARA complex.

During my commute to and from and around Dayton, I will be running OpenAPRS from my iPhone, so watch for me on your APRS maps.

WHLM: News Radio 930

Monitored 930 kc during the morning commute and heard two stations, one already in the log and one new logging. WBEN out of Buffalo, NY, was already in the log, WHLM "News Radio 930" was a new one. WHLM transmits 2,000 watts from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, 190 miles to the west-southwest.

Coincidentally, WHLM and my previous new logging, WZMF in Nanticoke, PA, are right along the route I take for my annual roadtrip to Hamvention in Dayton, where I will be one month from today.

Hamvention Special Achievement Award

This news appeared yesterday on the ARRL website:

The 2016 Hamvention Special Achievement Award will go to Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, of Wolcott, Connecticut, for advocating cutting edge technologies now commonly used in Amateur Radio. Horzepa has authored five books and written more than 1200 pieces for ARRL and TAPR, evangelizing the use of home computers, packet radio, APRS, digital signal processing (DSP) and software defined radio (SDR) in Amateur Radio. Licensed in 1969 as WN1LOU, Horzepa has sampled almost every entrée on the ham radio menu and has served in a slew of roles, including ARRL Connecticut Section Manager. Presently, Horzepa is a director and secretary for TAPR and serves as editor of TAPR’s newsletter, PSR. “LOU” has driven the 735 miles to Hamvention most years since 1978, and looks forward to doing so forever. “My fondest memories of ham radio are rubbing elbows and making friends with the makers and shakers of our hobby who show up at Hamvention every year,” Horzepa said.

I am very honored to receive the award and look forward to going to Hamvention for the award ceremonies!

Hamvention

I had a great time at Hamvention this year. 

Our booth (TAPR) had more visitors and more sales than in the recent past and my guess is that Hamvention's overall attendance topped last year's 24,873.

In anticipation of Hamvention, I sold some ham hardware earlier this year to fund my shopping list and I bought an Elecraft KX3 at the show. Actually, they were out of stock by time I got to the Elecraft booth, but they offered an incentive to order the equipment for post-Hamvention delivery: no sales tax and no shipping charges. So I placed the order and expect delivery next week.

(In addition to the KX3 kit, I am also getting the optional PX3 panadapter, as shown above, KXFL3 dual passband roofing filter, KXAT3 automatic antenna tuner, KX3-2M 2-meter module and assorted optional connectors and cables.)   

By the way, the roadtrip to Hamvention this year convinced me that I am getting too old for the Hamvention roadtrip and this year's trip is probably my swan song. 

Next year, I fly.

Hello from Hamvention

I will be at Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio, this Friday and Saturday. When I am not attending forums, roaming the halls, and buying stuff, I will be staffing the TAPR booths (451-454)  in the Ball Arena of the HARA complex, so stop by and say, "Hello."

During my commute to and from and around Dayton, I will be running OpenAPRS from my iPhone, so watch for me on your APRS maps.

Since my last post, I added two new stations to the AM radio log, both broadcasting from the City of Brotherly Love:

• WHAT on 1340 kc heard on April 3 at 2300 UTC transmitting 1 kW 164 miles to my southwest
• WKDN on 950 kc heard on April 4 at 0300 UTC transmitting 21 kW 163 miles to my southwest

Both were heard using my CC Radio 2E barefoot.

I have heard plenty on the car radio during my morning commute, but nothing new to report.

Looking forward to the Dayton Hamvention next month. I will be staffing the TAPR booths (451-454 in the Ballarena). Stop by and say, "Hello!"

Dayton’s WONE

I go to the Hamvention in Dayton every year, so it was cool to log a Dayton AM radio station last evening at 2247 UTC: WONE transmitting 5 kW on 980 kc, 656 miles to my west southwest. Signal was S0 to S2 into the CC Radio 2E and Terk Advantage external antenna. WONE’s transmitter is located in Woodbourne, a suburb south of Dayton, just about one mile from the banquet hall where I attend the TAPR-AMSAT annual banquet each year during Hamvention.

At Hamvention 2014

The 2014 installment of the Hamvention was a memorable one.

I have been attending Hamvention regularly since 1978 and this year, we had some of the worst weather I have ever seen at Hamvention... even worse than when the event was held a month earlier when the potential for lousy weather was higher.

It rained, sleeted and hailed on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Morning temps during those days started in the high 30's and did not get much above 50. I knew precipitation was in the forecast, but I did not expect it to be so cold and I did not dress appropriately. Luckily, I had a hoody to keep me warm when needed.

My family likes to watch my progress to and from Dayton via APRS, but I do not have a ham radio installed in my vehicle, so APRS was not an option. However, I do have an iPhone and there are some APRS apps for it. So I bought an app called OpenAPRS and it filled the bill as can be seen by my tracks as displayed on aprs.fi  above.

As I wrote in my previous blog post, "I always staff the TAPR booths on Hamvention Fridays and Saturdays, so if you make it to Hamvention this year, stop by... and say “Hi.” Well, at least one of you did just that: Dave = WA1OUI, who has been one of my most loyal readers and is also a long-time friend going back to the FM repeater wars of the 1970s. Dave was working in one of the ARRL booths just up the aisle and I returned the favor and stopped by his booth!

I ran into a lot of other old friends during the weekend --- not sure if they read this blog or not. Some showed up at the TAPR booth and some I bumped into on the convention floor; folks like Al = N8DHF, Bob = WB4APR, Craig = K1QX, Dave = K1ZZ, Guy = KC5GOI, Harold = WJ1B, Joe = K0NEB, Rich = W2VU, Steve = N8GNJ, Tom = K3IO and many others.

The TAPR booth was very busy all weekend, busier than its been at recent Hamventions probably because we had a lot to show this year. John = N8UR was showing his high precision timing projects, Jeremy = NH6Z and Scotty = WA2DFI were demonstrating SDR, Mike = No-Call-Yet had his HackRF attracting a lot of attention, Chris = KD2BMH was with his WhiteBox SDR handheld transceiver, and there was a big crew staffing the digital voice demo. I fielded packet radio and APRS questions and filled in at the cash register and elsewhere while others took breaks.

Touring the Hamvention floor on Saturday, I stopped by the booth of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. Since I dabble in both radio and astronomy, I thought that the booth would have something that interested me and I walked away with a radio telescope kit to receive signals from Jupiter, the Sun and the galactic plane. I will have more to say about this after I build the kit and get it on the air.

I hate the drive to and from Dayton, but I am already looking forward to doing it again next year!

About 750 miles west

As I mentioned here last month, I will attend Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio, this weekend.

This has become an almost annual trip ever since my former boss at ARRL headquarters, Ellen White, W1YL, pushed me out the door at 225 Main Street to attend my first Hamvention in 1978.

I estimate that I have attended about 30 Hamventions in the ensuing 36 years (I should have kept a log), which is kind of impressive since it is not a local event. Rather, it entails traveling about 750 miles west over some of the most boring Interstates (I won’t mention numbers) this side of the Mississippi River.

I have a lot of great memories and a lot of amusing stories – some of which were not so amusing at the time – from those 30-some visits. The opportunity to meet the superstars and makers and shakers of ham radio in person is a real treat as is the opportunity to get reacquainted with ham radio friends from around the world, who all show up in mid-May in the Gem City. (That’s me in the photo above at the 2009 Hamvention meeting Astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, the first person to operate ham radio from space .)

I have been attached to TAPR for some time now, originally as just a card-carrying member, but eventually becoming their newsletter editor, secretary and a director on their board. And I always staff the TAPR booths on Hamvention Fridays and Saturdays, so if you make it to Hamvention this year, stop by our booths (numbers 451 through 454) just down the aisle from the ARRL and say “Hi.”

Hamvention Bound

One month from today, I will hit the road and head west to Ohio to attend Hamvention, the biggest ham radio show this side of the Arctic Circle.

I attend most years and this year will be no exception. And like most years, I will be staffing the TAPR suite of booths (numbers 451 through 454) Friday and Saturday.

If you are going to “Dayton,” stop by and say “Hello!”