Surfin': Hats off to ALL CAPS!

 
The U.S. Navy has decided to stop using all capital letters ("all caps," for short) in its official communications, according to this story from the Wall Street Journal. U.S. Army personnel hope that the Army will do the same.

I was very active on RTTY during the 1970s and quickly got used to the all caps communications afforded by my Teleptype Model 28 ASR.

What a behemoth! Getting the 28 up one flight of stairs to my bedroom ham shack in my parent's cape was a major achievement. When it was printing full speed ahead, it seemed to shake the whole house.

My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1.

I vividly remember buying the TRS-80 in 1978.  I was the very first computer customer at the Radio Shack store where I purchased it. The Shack salesman could not fathom why anyone would want to buy a computer, but he was happy to sell me one. And the TRS-80 was all caps out of the box.

"In order to display lower case, one had to add an eighth memory chip. This modification became a popular third-party add-on, along with a character chip with descenders for the lowercase letters. Later models came with the hardware for lowercase character set to be displayed with descenders." (Source: Wikipedia)."

Radio Shack offered to install an upgrade kit for a nominal price and that is the route I took to unstuck all caps.

Coming full circle, I traded in my all caps Model 28 ASR for a Model 33 ASR because the 33 did ASCII and was a perfect printer for my upper and lower case enabled TRS-80.

Thank you Norman Wald, W9VQ, for passing along the Navy story.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Stats

Lately, I have been chasing DX on the AM and FM broadcast bands and the LW mixed-use band. I have been concentrating on AM and LW and visit FM when the band is open.

Here are my stats for the three bands:

LW - 56 stations logged - best DX: BBC4, London, UK, 3375 miles
FM - 13 stations logged - best DX: WOMR, Provincetown, MA, 147 miles
AM - 152 stations logged - best DX: WWL, New Orleans, LA, 1256 miles

Here is my radio equipment for the three bands:

Receivers:
   2007 Subaru Outback Sport standard radio (for AM, FM)
   Crane CCRadio-SW  (for AM, FM)
   Crane CC SW Pocket (for AM, FM) (see photo)
   Kenwood TS-440S (for LW, AM)

Antennas:
   40-meter inverted Vee  (for LW, AM)
   Built-in whip antennas on the Crane radios (for FM)
   Built-in ferrite antennas on the Crane radios (for AM)
   Built-in antenna on 2007 Subaru Outback Sport (for AM, FM)
   Crane CC Twin Coil Ferrite (for AM)
   Terk Advantage (for AM) (see photo)

K1EM RIP

I was shocked when I read in Friday's newspaper that K1EM had died on Tuesday.

K1EM, Clem Paskus, and I go back a long way. I first encountered Clem during a VHF contest back in the 1970s and I probably logged him in nearly every VHF contest I participated in after that.

Clem lived in Terryville in my grandparents' neck of the woods and when I moved to Compounce Mountain, we were only four miles apart as the crow flies, but I usually only saw Clem face-to-face at the Dayton Hamvention, 605 miles away as that same crow flies.

Another time I ran into Clem was at a big polka bash here in town, where he was attending with his wife. I was not surprised to see Clem there because Clem and I were Poles; he often called me "Stash" or "Stashu."

Funny how you become friends with someone you meet on the air, but you have no idea what they do in the real world. Back about 15 years ago, I was changing channels on the cabled television and while passing by the public access channel, I noticed someone who looked like Clem. So I hung back to see if it was my old radio friend and indeed it was. Clem was speaking at a town meeting and he was wearing a police uniform. Turns out that not only was he a policeman, but he was the chief of police!

I missed Clem on the air and at Hamvention the last few years. Little did I know he was seriously ill. Now I will miss him forever.

Do widzenia, K1EM.

Fill the Gap

UPDATED BELOW

Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, sent out a call for help to fill the gaps in the Appalachian Mountain chain of APRS stations attempting to achieve the coveted Golden Packet on Saturday, July 20.

Here is the text of WB4APR’s e-mail:

We have an urgent need for Ham Packet Ops on mountain tops in New Hampshire, Mount Greylock, MA, Sams Point, NY, Clingmans Dome in the Smokie Mountains and Roan Mountain NC.

This is a 4 hour event making our annual attempt at the Golden Packet, an APRS packet message from Maine to Georgia along the Appalachian Mountain Chain on Saturday 20 July.

All  you need is an APRS radio that can digipeat (D72, D700, D710) and a power source and antenna. (and Know how to operate it!)  All of these sites are “drive  up” except Sam’s point in New York.  The attempt is from noon to 4 PM.  Remember, Tim, KA1YBS has to begin in the dark to climb a full MILE straight up to get to the top of Mt Katahdin in Main and then get back down before sunset.  Hence, the 4 hour window.

This is our 4^th annual attempt and last year we were successful except for only one broken link in NH.  Will you be available to help make history?  The Golden Packet was proposed back in the early 80’s. It has never been claimed since the rise of the Internet that has eclipsed all DX packet attempts.  We will do this every year even beyond success.  It is a good test of emergency long distance packet techniques.

If you can activate one of the above 5 sites, please see detail links on this page for each site and learn all you can:

http://aprs.org/at-golden-packet.html

Think of this as Packet Radio FIELD DAY!  These 14 sites have been well surveyed and we know the links will work, if everyone can get in place and KNOW how to operate their radio.

Other secondary sites are also invited on Stone Mountain, GA, Lookout Mountain TN, and Huntsville Mountain.

Update: Bob indicated this morning that there are only two mountains remaining to be covered for this event: Killington, Vermont, and Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Surfin': Lemonade on Independence Day

In response to the ARRL's decision to drop his online column The Amateur Amateur, Gary Hoffman, KBØH, has relaunched his column independently at the-amateur-amateur.com.

The staff here at WA1LOU wishes Gary the best of luck with his new venture!

And this blog post represents the relaunch of my column Surfin', which was also dropped by the ARRL.

As I wrote in the first installment of Surfin' way back in December 2000, Surfin' discusses webpages related to ham radio. In each installment, I will strive to identify and describe interesting and unique websites devoted to hamming. If you have any suggestions, please send them to me and I will consider them.

Anyway, enough with the preliminaries and on with the relaunch of Surfin' --- long may it wave.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!