Greetings all, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Well this time last year I was writing about my experience with treatments for my head and neck cancer that was affecting me then. I am so glad and grateful to God and my doctors for the healing and at this time I am still cancer free and loving life.  This only gripe I have: winter has come to CO and it has been COLD!  No riding the motorcycle.  Oh Well!  I am alive and happier than I have ever been and just grateful to be here working, loving my family and God!

 

As I wrote about last month check out the newly available Xiegu X-108 HF Radio (Wouxun built I believe)

http://www.wouxun.us/item.php?item_id=346

The Xiegu X-108G HF 1-20 watt Transceiver also available with a companion portable HD Multiband antenna. .5 to 30 MHz, Really looks pretty cool.

And here is a video (there are a few) comparing this new radio to the Yaesu FT-817ND. Our friend Ralph, AA6GM and Arizona area EMF/K-Love Air1 engineer picked one of these up, and I hope to hear a report on his experience with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFhxoagp8M8

 

Have you noticed that the Weather Channel has started naming winter storms now and using this feature in their reporting? Yes we have named hurricanes forever, and now I guess someone figures that this is a good marketing ploy to generate drama.  That’s what I think anyway.  It isn’t enough now that we get to see Jim Cantore and his colleagues soaking wet or getting blown around or frozen.  We gotta have these regular winter occurrences named too!  I am laughing out loud as I write this!  Here is a shot I took off our TV during one of the winter blasts that occurred in December!

I am still laughing at this. Really folks, come on!

 

Well it took a while but I finally have APRS going again for KE0VH-2 in the truck. Looks like I have a bad GPS antenna on the Tacoma.  I got it to work for a while again before switching over to my better Motorola GPS antenna on the Ford F-250 (Truckzilla).  I changed this out and you can track me again in real time at APRS.fi, (no www) by putting KE0VH-2 into the “track call sign” box.  Or you can see it at map.findu.com/ke0vh-2 but you have to refresh that page to get updates.

 

Speaking of APRS, I am getting ready to deploy KE0VH-10 up at our Sterling site to cover that part of NE CO that has no real APRS coverage. The Ubuntu Linux unit will act as a receive only IGATE and will fill in a huge void in coverage in that area.   I actually started working on this last year, but didn’t have much time in the last few months to learn my way thru the Linux commands.  Art, KI4GYZ came and helped me out and has become my Linux guru.  In a couple of hours he had the IGATE computer and the KPC3+ talking to the computer and now you can also see KE0VH-10 at its location east of Sterling CO.  While as of this writing it isn’t deployed, I really hope to do it in the next month so it can be activated.  This also will help out the Edge of Space Sciences (www.eoss.org) group that flies & tracks high altitude balloons and scientific payloads.

Art, KI4GYZ working on the Linux commands

The site near Sterling in NE CO along I-76 with no current coverage

And a zoom in on the beacon information

 

My buddy Steve, K0TTT here in Denver has a beautiful old restored Grunow Super Teledial console radio that is just amazing. During a really relaxing evening at he and his wife’s house during the Christmas Season my wife and I enjoyed a wonderful time listening to Christmas music on Denver’s 1430 KEZW thru this radio as we visited.  Very nostalgic and pleasant way to spend part of the season.  Thanks Steve and Laura for a lovely evening!

The dial has radio call signs such as KOA, KSL, KOMA, and many more “voices from the past! Amazing find Steve!

And this past month, we had a failure in the who knows how many year old breaker box in our home. The old breakers were of a brand that most electricians these days recognize as a fire hazard anyway.  The one that was on our refrigerator and garage circuit one night started (while we were at home thank God!) arcing instead of breaking the circuit.  And there was NO problem on the circuit.  You can see in the picture the age of the box and breakers.  So long story short, (and part of the reason I include it here) is since our house was built in 1960, it was most definitely time to replace it, and I even put in a complete new 20 amp circuit for the KEØVH Hamshack!  All on its own dedicated breaker now.  My brother in law Jason, and his buddy Nathan not only recommended the upgraded Siemens box and breakers that would make our home safe, but did an amazing install job in just one day!

The old box. The red 20 breaker was the bad one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old outside meter box and the wall after it came off

 

 

 

Jason installing the new meter box and he and Nathan installing the new breaker box inside

The new box in the wall inside, and Nathan wiring it up. Notice the yellow wire in the left hand pic.  That is the dedicated feed to the Hamshack!

Nathan wiring the feed to the house back up. New roof pole and weather hood too.  GREAT JOB GUYS!  THANKS!

Don’t forget the IRLP (and Echolink) Hamnet, every MONDAY EVENING

At 7pm Mountain time (9pm Eastern) for radio discussions, both

Broadcast engineering and amateur radio. The first and

3rd Mondays are also SBE Chapter 73’ of the Air NET nights. Details on how to

Join are at http://www.ke0vh.com/net/net.html. I hope

You will be able to join us and share your engineering and

Ham exploits!

73’ & God be with you. See you next time! De KEØVH