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!

KA6M/R

KA6M/R, the first digipeater (Source: www.pprs.oprg)

Following up on yesterday's blog post, here is what I wrote about KA6M in my first book Your Gateway to Packet Radio in 1987:

"The United States amateurs did not let grass grow under their feet. Once the FCC gave the go-ahead, packet-radio experimentation south of the border forged ahead. The first US packet demonstration was conducted at the 1980 ARRL National Convention in Seattle, Washington. Most of the initial experimentation involved building and tinkering with the VADCG TNC*, but on December 10, 1980, the first "made in the USA" amateur packet development hit the airwaves: Hank Magnuski, KA6M, put a simplex digipeater (KA6M/R) on 2 meters in San Francisco. Hank's system used a home-built TNC based on the Z80 microprocessor and a Western Digital 1933 HDLC IC. Like packet radio north of the border, Hank used a Bell 202 compatible modem on his TNC because the modems were readily available as surplus equipment. As a result of Hank's operations, a group of interested amateurs joined him in the founding of the Pacific Packet Radio Society (PPRS)." 

* Canadian amateurs got the go-ahead to do packet radio in 1978, two years before amateurs in the USA. Vancouver Amateur Digital Communications Group (VADCG) developed the first TNC, which was available as a kit and became known as the "VADCG TNC."   

 

Handie History

Until I saw this 1944 Motorola advertisement, I had no idea that "Handie Talkie" goes back to World War II.

"The first radio receiver/transmitter to be widely nicknamed 'Walkie-Talkie' was the backpacked Motorola SCR-300, created by an engineering team in 1940 at the Galvin Manufacturing Company (fore-runner of Motorola). The team consisted of Dan Noble, who conceived of the design using frequency modulation, Henryk Magnuski who was the principal RF engineer, Marion Bond, Lloyd Morris, and Bill Vogel.

"Motorola also produced the hand-held AM SCR-536 radio during World War II, and it was called the 'Handie-Talkie' (HT). The terms are often confused today, but the original walkie talkie referred to the back mounted model, while the handie talkie was the device which could be held entirely in the hand (but had vastly reduced performance). Both devices ran on vacuum tubes and used high voltage dry cell batteries. (Handie-Talkie became a trademark of Motorola, Inc. on May 22, 1951)." (Source: Wikipedia)

The name Henryk Magnuski, principal RF engineer of the walkie talkie, rang a bell. One of the packet radio pioneers was Hank Magnuski, KA6M; in 1980, his callsign was used for the first packet radio digipeater in the USA, KA6M/R in the San Francisco Bay area.

And it tuns out that Henryk Magnuski is Hank Magnuski's father!

That T in TAPR

TAPR is the initialism for Tucson Amateur Packet Radio, the ham radio organization that has been at the on the cutting edge of digital radio technology for over 30 years.

I have been a member of TAPR for almost as long as it has been in existence. Presently, I am on its board of directors, serve as its secretary and edit its quarterly newsletter, PSR.

Every year, I staff TAPR's booth at the Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio. And invariably, every year a handful of attendees will come up to our booth and ask, "How are things in Tucson?" or something similar indicating that they believe that TAPR is a ham radio group out of Tucson, Arizona.

In truth, TAPR is related to Tucson in name only. The organization was founded there, but is not headquartered there. TAPR's mailing address used to be a post office box in Tucson, but that has not been the case for awhile.

None of TAPR officers or directors live in Tucson and although TAPR does have members who reside in Tucson, the majority of TAPR's membership are scattered all over the world.

And by the way, TAPR is no longer involved in "amateur packet radio," and has expanded its horizons to become a “community that provides leadership and resources to radio amateurs for the purpose of advancing the radio art.”

Surfin’: Moving Packets with DDP

This week, Surfin’ looks at a new protocol for moving packets through the ether.