By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ recalls all the friendly faces at the Dayton Hamvention®.
One of the reasons I attend the Dayton Hamvention® each year is to see old friends and to meet new ones. During my tour of Hamvention two weeks ago, I found many new friends: The folks staffing various booths on the convention floor who went out of their way to invite people (i…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ checks out a ham who is developing a handheld radio that’s a cross between a smart phone and an SDR.
The Dayton Hamvention® was last weekend and I drove 735 miles to attend the event for the 25th time. Kudos go out to my smart phone and its map apps for getting me to Hamvention and back without error, as well as getting me around those…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ is impressed with a middle school project involving ham radio.
I wish I was back in school again. When I was a student, the only technical gadget in the building was a cranky 16 millimeter projector that our teachers used to show films like Hemo the Magnificent and The Unchained Goddess. I even got to run the projector on occasion.
Toda…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ visits a website dedicated to QSL cards.
The first QSL card I ever received was from shortwave broadcast station Trans World Radio in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. I don’t remember the first ham radio QSL card I received, but I do recall that I never received a QSL card from my first ham radio contact.
I always enjoyed the QSL card asp…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ looks at the minimalized side of ham radio.
The Dayton Hamvention® is coming up in just a few more weeks. In parallel with Hamvention is the Four Days in May (FDIM) event — a ham radio convention with an emphasis on QRP — which runs Thursday through Sunday of Hamvention week on the northeast side of Dayton (as opposed to the northwes…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ considers spring outdoor maintenance — with wire antennas in mind.
Last week, all the snow finally melted around my house and I started poking around the yard trying to prioritize spring outdoor maintenance. I discovered a dangerous situation: An underground cable popped out of the ground during the winter and invites the blades of my…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ explores the website of the Young Ladies in ham radio.
It’s no secret that men dominate ham radio; women only represent about 15 percent of the US ham population. This demographic is also evident when attending ham radio events, such as the Dayton Hamvention®: The guys are everywhere, whereas the gals are few and far between. But there…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ finds radio parts on a fascinating website.
Back when I began stinking up my parent’s house with the scent of liquefied solder, there were radio and electronic stores in the area where I could buy all the parts to build my projects. But in the 1970s, those stores went the way of the vacuum tube. I had to go the mail order route to buy …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ remembers George Hart, W1NJM, and his National Traffic System.
My first professional job after graduating from college in 1977 was at ARRL Headquarters, working for ham radio legend George Hart, W1NJM.
George ran the Communications Department at the League. While I worked in the department’s Public Service Branch and reported directly t…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
Microcontrollers are gaining a foothold in the ham radio world. Here are some resources to help begin your explorations.
I’ve added a new book to my library: Ham Radio for Arduino and PICAXE, edited by Leigh L. Klotz Jr, WA5ZNU.
No, Arduino is not a new entity on the DXCC list, but rather a single-board microcontroller, that according to the Arduino websi…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ explores the mysterious world of numbers stations.
Norman Wald, W9VQ, alerted me about a new film called The Numbers Station that tells the story of a black ops agent (played by John Cusack) assigned to protect “the security of a young female code announcer (Malin Akerman), code resources and [the] remote station they are assigned to.”…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ chases meteors at the Radio Meteor Observation Bulletin website.
Mike Schaffer, KA3JAW — this week’s guest surfer — wrote the about following meteors.
Several thousand meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these occur over oceans and uninhabited regions, and many are masked by the sunlight. Those that occur a…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ considers 3-D printing as a tool for ham radio makers.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) — also known as “3-D printing” — is the technology that builds “3-D objects by adding layer-upon-layer of material, whether the material is plastic, metal, concrete or one day…human tissue.”
According to the AM website, a computer, 3-D modeling softw…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ hears weak ones, and then identifies them the old way and the new way.
I have been having a lot of fun this winter chasing DX on the AM broadcast band. I am always surprised when I am able to log a new one that is transmitting low power. For example, on Monday I logged two traffic advisory radio stations run by the Connecticut Departm…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ repositions an airplane finder app to APRS-equipped vehicles.
I downloaded a free app for my iPhone: Plane Finder AR. You simply point the iPhone camera at an airborne airplane and the app displays the plane’s flight number, aircraft registration and distance from your location. A $ 2.99 version of the app displays more information inc…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ visits the ARRL’s Evolution of Amateur Radio Exhibit — virtually and in person.
I visited ARRL Headquarters this week and my intrepid editor, Khrystyne Keane, K1SFA, gave me a tour of the facilities. Although I live less than 20 miles away, I don’t get over to Newington that often, so a tour to see what is new was in order. I joked w…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ adds an antenna “booster” and an iPhone to the AM DXing tool kit.
I received two tech gifts during the holidays: a C. Crane Twin Coil Ferrite AM Antenna Signal Booster and an iPhone 5. I am very pleased with both gifts and thank my family (you know who you are) for their generosity.
The C. Crane Twin Coil Ferrite AM Antenna Signal Boos…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ revisits RigReference, RigPix, and Flickr and finds more radio photos (but none of Cosmophone).
Elmer Torensma, PH5E, is the ham behind RigReference.com, which I wrote about here two weeks ago. Elmer e-mailed me to mention something I missed in my write-up about RigReference: a nifty little feature of the website called “collections.”…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, the end of Surfin’ is the least of your worries.
After 622 installments of Surfin’, this may be the last.
In case you have not heard, a Mayan calendar predicted that today — December 21 — is doomsday. To mark that final event, N0D, a special event station “celebrating the end of the world” will be on the air until the bitter end.
The N0D webs…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ recalls old radios with new clarity.
Recently, I tried to build a list of all the radios I have owned, but I got stuck. I could picture radios in my mind that I had long ago, but the pictures were a little fuzzy and I could not make out the model numbers (if you are a certain age, I think you know what I mean).
Searching the Internet, …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ explores the Internet world of online tools for Amateur Radio.
My maternal grandfather was a toolmaker. When he died, my father inherited my grandfather’s tool collection and added it to his own tool collection. When my father died, I inherited my father’s tool collection and my grandfather’s tool collection and added it to my own too…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ urges readers to share their ham radio adventures by blogging.
Do you blog?
According to www.dictionary.com, a blog is “a website containing the writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc, and often having images and links to other websites.”
Many members of the ham radio community blog about what they a…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ considers high-altitude ballooning with Amateur Radio payloads.
Some things never change.
When I was a kid, I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to see the big balloons float down Sixth Avenue. As an adult (also known as a “big kid”), I still watch the parade to see the big balloons float down Sixth Avenue.
I also watch hot air …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
In honor of the holiday, Surfin’ offers a ham radio horn of plenty.
Maybe I need to get out more.
Back in grade school, I remember images of cornucopia gracing the bulletin boards around the premises this time of year and I am sure that during art period, we drew a cornucopia with our crayons, but in my six decades on this planet, I have never seen a corn…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ looks at radios that are very pleasing to the eye.
Tom Kipgen builds designer radios.
You may ask, “What’s a designer radio?” It’s a radio that not only works well, but looks good.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so I direct your attention to Tom’s Designer Radios website where you can view photos of Tom’s designs (representing ten…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ considers portable power generators in the wake of another horrific storm.
Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy barreled through here Monday, but I was lucky: The tree man had done his work last month, so there was no tree damage on my property, except for a few small branches that landed without incident here and there. And my home lost po…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
Ghosts and Halloween go together, but what about ghosts and radios?
Last week’s episode of Surfin’ — An Extremely Long Delayed Echo — revealed that a famous long delayed echo (LDE) was actually a hoax. But what about other LDEs? Are they real and if so, what causes them?
LDEs are a fascinating subject and the responses I received to last week’s Surfin’…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ discovers the truth about a radio urban legend that was too good to be true.
You can thank my editor, ARRL News Editor S. Khrystyne Keane, K1SFA, for this week’s installment of Surfin’. She put a bug in my ear about a radio urban legend that I had heard about back around 1960, and I could not resist writing about it.
Hopeville Elementa…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ tries out a new app on the iPod Touch and revisits a blog of historic proportions.
Distance and Bearing App
Tommy Sullivan, W1AUV, created DBHam, an app for the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to calculate distance and bearing between six-digit Maidenhead locations. It is free at Apple’s App Store.
DBHam is useful for any ham; however, it i…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ reveals a cool radio trick for measuring distance with Google Maps.
Whereas, last time, the topic here was performing radio tricks using Google Earth, this time, the topic is performing radio tricks with Google Maps.
One of my radio pastimes is DXing on the AM and FM broadcast bands. It is something I can do with radio when I don’t hav…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ features guest columnist Mike Schaffer, KA3JAW, of September 7 Surfin’ fame.
Upon posting my rare, out-of-season Costa Rican analog television Sporadic-E 1240-mile distance video on YouTube, I was curious about the broadcast towers’ location and appearance.
In my pursuit of this quest, I visited Wikipedia to obtain some information; how…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ can begin antenna maintenance now that the trees are out of the way.
The tree man finally showed up on Monday and cleared the area around my crank-up/down tower, so I can now lower it without the antenna hitting any branches on the way down.
The antenna is a log periodic and is the actual one Bart Jahnke, KB9NM, reviewed way back in the…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ discovers a new way of fixing radios.
I won a Radio Shack Realistic Astronaut 8 circa 1972 multiband receiver at an auction for $ 1 a few years ago. It had minor cosmetic wear and tear, but functioned like new after I sprayed all the switches and pots with an electronics cleaner.
It had been my garage radio ever since, and sits on top o…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ literally takes a look at Sporadic E propagation on YouTube.
Last week’s “Got Tropo” got me an e-mail from Mike Schaffer, KA3JAW, located in Tampa, who directed my attention to his recent YouTube video that illustrated the following:
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 0045-0116 (UTC), Mexican XHTAU, Azteca-7 relayer analog channel 2 from…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week’s installment of Surfin’ previews the 2012 Digital Communications Conference.
The annual ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) is on the move again and this year finds the DCC in Atlanta, Georgia on September 21-23. Typically, the DCC venue is in a hotel conveniently located near an airport and this year is no different with th…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
The sky is falling, but that could be a good thing or a bad thing, according to this week’s installment of Surfin’.
The trees on my antenna farm are getting out of hand. They are encroaching on my antennas, including the log periodic beam at the top of my 55-foot tower.
I trim what I can with a pole tree pruner saw, but there is a lot of wood up there th…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, your Surfin’ conductor considers the reasons why his car radio is acting funny.
My normal Saturday morning mission began as usual: Driving my Subaru with my wife on board to go buy groceries. As we headed north over the top of South Mountain, I tuned the car radio to 102.1 MHz and expected to hear the vintage rock sounds of WAQY.
At that point…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ considers another replacement for HyperTerminal and a new blog that digs up the low-down on DXCC entities.
The DXCC Sleuth
I wrote last week’s Surfin’ in response to an e-mail from Rich Holoch, KY6R, who was looking for “an in depth account of the history of the DXCC program.”
I found a few items online and mentioned them last week, but…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ searches the Internet for the history of the DX Century Club.
Rich Holoch, KY6R, e-mailed me: “I would love it if someone would write an in depth account of the history of the DXCC program.”
Searching the Internet, I found the A, B, Cs of DX: Fundamentals of the Art of DXing (An Interactive Tutorial) by Don Boudreau, W5FKX, which appea…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ reaches the 600 mark and commemorates the event numerically.
Let me recount the ways that the number 600 has figured into my radio world.
Bridgeport’s WICC has been on 600 kHz forever — even back when 600 kHz was 600 kc. Bob Crane — of television Hogan’s Heroes fame — came from my hometown (Waterbury, Connecticut) and was a disc joc…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ finds out which way the wind blows — and which way the propagation flows — at the revamped National Weather Service website.
As hams, we seem to be more interested in the weather than average people. Besides wanting to know what’s falling out of the sky and when, we follow the weather because it affects radio propagation in both a n…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ visits a website that is the host for thousands of free software applications.
SourceForge warehouses free and open source software.
It has competitors, but SourceForge was the first to offer a free centralized location for developers to control and manage open source software development. SourceForge is the host for approximately one-…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ gets ready for ARRL Field Day and ISS pass-overs.
NASA introduced their all-new NASA app for iPhone and iPod Touch. It is the “first major redesign” of the app since 2009.
Being a long-time fan of what goes on in the outer space, I downloaded this free app as soon as I learned of its existence and I have not been disappointed.
For ham r…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ demonstrates how ham radio can be a tricky, but well worth it.
Tricking Out A USB TV Tuner
I have been exploring the world of experimenters who have been combining inexpensive USB TV tuners with Software Designed Radio (SDR) technology to come up with inexpensive SDR receivers.
This is a hot subject. There is a lot of stuff on topic on …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’s contributing editor recounts last week’s excellent adventure at the Dayton Hamvention.
I left home after rush hour Wednesday morning and drove 8 hours/466 miles (I-84, I-81 and I-80) in the general direction of the temporary QTH for thousands of hams every May: the Dayton Hamvention. Traffic was not bad, except for some highway constr…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ reviews what you need for traveling well to the Dayton Hamvention®.
I don’t travel well because I don’t travel often enough to learn how to travel well (it’s a Catch-22). Because I don’t travel often enough to learn how to travel well, I make a list of things to take on my annual road trip to Hamvention. In fact, I save the list on my …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ rediscovers the wonders of open source software.
I am trying to get my ducks all lined up for my annual trek to the Dayton Hamvention in less than two weeks. One duck in that line-up is PSR, the quarterly newsletter of TAPR. In addition to serving as the Contributing Editor of Surfin’, I am editor of PSR and the pre-Dayton issue of tha…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ gets its feet wet with SDR by means of a bevy of online SDR receivers.
On the Software-Defined Radio (SDR) front, Tad Cook, K7RA, mentioned PA3FWM’s WebSDR in the K7RA Solar Update on April 13 and I mentioned it here back in June 2008. It is worth repeating because it is a very valuable online resource and it has expanded greatly since…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ loses the DIY blahs after learning about new ham radio modules that require hacking.
Sometimes I feel like a slug. I get enthused about building something new, buy what I need to build it, sometimes start building it, sometimes not. I never finish building it because life gets in the way or because I lose enthusiasm or because I am a …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ discovers the iPod Touch — and its proliferation of ham radio apps.
My sister Jeanette always buys us scratch-off lottery tickets as Christmas stocking stuffers. This past Christmas was no different — except that I won $ 105 on the first ticket I scratched clean.
I also received a $ 100 gift card from Santa. I never squander money that …
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ discovers that WWV has a new voice — and she is digital.
Time and frequency radio station WWV recently switched to a digital female voice for its 18th minute of the hour geophysical alert broadcasts. A text-to-speech engine from NeoSpeech generates the new voice “Kate,” which was chosen for its clarity and consistency.
The new voice is…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
This week, Surfin’ finds wiring diagrams for all those microphones that are on the loose in Ham Radio Land.
Have mic? Need connection?
Then a visit to the website Roy Frettsome, G4WPW, is just what the microphone doctor ordered. G4WPE’s Microphone Connections website is probably the most comprehensive and up-to-date Internet source for ham radio microphon…
American Radio Relay League | Ham Radio Association and Resources