Hey, look. I still blog here. Sometimes. It's been busy lately, so this is one of those posts where I post about a bunch of stuff.

Sunday School

I got to church early enough to practice my guitar with the band a few minutes before we had to get off stage because a service was about to start. During the Sunday School hour, I decided to visit my old SS class and catch up with some of the folks over there. I miss them. Today's lesson centered around Deuteronmy 6 (with emphasis on Shema Yisrael). The teacher did a great job, some of the discussion made me thing about some things, and I really enjoyed being with that class again. I'm not going to be a regular visitor -- the folks in class still looked to me for answers when there's a part of the discussion that stumped the teach. If I were a regular, I'd just end up being the "shadow teacher," and that's not fair to either me or the current teacher. I'm probably stop back in for a visit in another few months.

One thing interesting happened. One of the ladies in class pulled me aside and told me that she was in the process of planning her mother's funeral. (Her mother is in fine health for an 80+ year old and the need for a funeral is not expected soon, but it's not a bad idea to plan for these things.) As part of the planning, the daughter wanted to know if I'd participate in it. I was honored, told her so, and agreed. I'm going to try to get in touch with the daughter again soon and find out more of what she had in mind. But, wow. I'm really humbled and honored.

Church

Today's service at The Mount went really well. The band was tight. We had worked up a pretty high-energy set of songs for today's service and it worked out nicely. I especially enjoyed getting to debut my wah-wah pedal in one of the songs. Next week, I'm going to switch with the bass player -- he'll cover guitar and I'll cover bass. We're both really excited about doing that.

We're going to be getting some better lighting for the room soon, too. The current lighting is very harsh and the addition of some theatrical lighting should help a lot.

Today's sermon dealt with making the most of every opportunity, and it was a good message. Our pastor had been away for a couple of weeks and it is nice to have him back.

After church, yarbiedoll and I joined a couple of other worship leaders from The Mount and picked up school supplies for over 20 children that are attending The Mount and would have trouble getting the money together to get supplies on their own. The Mount seems to have (semi-)accidentally started to reach out to a local population of international Christians. Many of these people are refugees from Rwanda and other African countries. It's not the typical demographic that has been at our church throughout the years, and it's really exciting seeing that they are finding a worship home in the service that we're working to provide. It's also great that the church is not just stopping at inviting them to the service, but is supporting them in other ways. It felt really good to be part of getting those supplies together.

Baseball

After getting back home from school supply shopping, I had just a few minutes to get some things together before heading downtown to the ballpark. One of my coworkers was taking his 2-year old son to his first baseball game, and I was happy to have an excuse to go to the ballpark.

I got to the ballpark about an hour early, in plenty of time to see the announcer introduce one of my friends who works with Baseball Chapel, an organization that works to make Christian services available to baseball players and umpires. During the season, it's hard for players and umpires to be able to attend services at their home church (especially when they're the visiting team), so Baseball Chapel helps provide opportunities for players to nurture their faith throughout the season. I headed down to the field to let my friend know I was at the game and he introduced me to his co-chaplain. I headed back to my seat and they headed off to do whatever else they needed to do before the game started.

A little later, I ran into them again and we all sat together. As it turns out, the co-chaplain is also into scoring baseball games. Since I've been teaching myself how to do it over the past several weeks, I was excited to be able to sit next to someone who really knew what they were doing and pick up some hints. I had a great time, and hope to run into him again at the ballpark sometime.

My coworker and his son arrived in the 2nd or 3rd inning. They had a great time and it was really cool to watch a little boy be overwhelmed by the spectacle that is a live baseball game.

The Hoppers lost (no surprise there) 5-2, but the last several innings were pretty enjoyable. I'll be heading to Durham to watch the Bulls next Sunday. And the day after that, I'll be back at the Greensboro game for their last home game of the season.

I'm adding a baseball scorebook to my Christmas list this year.

Ham Radio

One of the other things that has been keeping me busy lately is ham radio. We're in the process of connecting the W4GSO repeater to the Gateway, so it will be able to connect to other repeaters and reflectors all over the world. It's been on the Gateway for about 2 weeks now, and we're still experiencing growing pains. But we're getting there, and I'm pretty excited about it. It's really neat to be able to key up a handheld radio and make a UHF call that ends up getting heard in England.

I'm one of the administrators for the Gateway, partly because I have some Linux experience. It's really neat to be able to help out with this. After we get all most enough of the gremlins worked out, I'm looking forward to exploring some of the cool things you can do with the Gateway.


Hopefully it won't be so long between blogging here again....

I've had an ICOM IC-91AD radio for a couple of years and have loved it, but have been disgusted at the lack of support for using a Mac to program the radio. A while ago, I picked up a copy of CrossOver Mac when they were giving it away for free. I tried installing GSAK on it, but that didn't really work. So I haven't really played with CrossOver since.

Today, I wanted to update a lot of settings in my radio, so I really wanted to get the software working on my Mac. Without being able to do it on my Mac, I have to run it on a borrowed Windows computer, which is just not a good solution. I was pleased when the software installed quickly into its own bottle and seemed to start up without any problems.

So, the question is whether or not it will actually talk to the radio.

Of course, I don't have a serial port on my Mac, so I need to use a USB-Serial adapter. I've successfully used this adapter in the past for an older GPSr, so I know that the adapter would work on the computer. However, the RS-91 software didn't want to see it. I suspected the problem might be that CrossOver was not recognizing the USB-Serial adapter as a COM port.

I did a little web searching and found a page at the CrossOver site explaining how to do Serial over USB. Following the instructions on that page worked like a charm, and I was using my programming software with my radio on my Mac without any further problems. I am thrilled!

Specifically, this is the symbolic linking that I did to make it work:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/CrossOver/Bottles/ICOM/dosdevices
ln -s /dev/cu.usbserial-FTCDBTQO com1

If you're trying to get this working, you'll need to replace ICOM with the name of the CrossOver Bottle you installed the RS-91 software in and /dev/cu.usbserial-FTCDBTQO with the value for your USB-Serial adapter. I had two choices (the other being /dev/tty.usbserial-FTCDBTQO) and picked one at random. If it hadn't have worked, I'd have tried the other one (or maybe assigned it to COM2).

If anyone else is trying to do the same thing, I hope my experience is helpful.

I'm hanging out in a hotel room in Decatur, GA, where I've been for the past few days for telephone school. One of the things I like about being in the Atlanta area is the fact that their D-Star repeater is hooked up to the gateway, which means I can talk to folks all over the world on my ham radio.

Tonight, I had a nice chat with 2M0ONW, Kevin, in Scotland.

Technology like this is what's going to keep ham radio fresh and interesting. I'm looking forward to our local repeater getting gateway capabilities.

In other news, I've been sick for the past few days. Cold/flu symptoms. I've been hopped up on Contact medication to try and fight it off. I'm going to be crashing soon -- the nighttime version of Contact knocks me out.

I haven't been doing too much with the ham radio recently. Oh, wait. That's not quite true. I haven't been doing much with the physical radio, but what I have been doing is still lots of fun. And I've been doing other ham-related stuff.

HF Activities

Over the weekend, I pulled the HF rig out to the porch (where I can plug the antenna in, since I haven't brought the antenna into the house yet) to see what I could do on 40m. I heard stations all over the country -- as far away as Washington state and California. I only made a few contacts, but I was really happy with them. I talked with people in MO, OK, WA, and MA. I was surprised by the contacts in the western direction, especially Washington, because I think the way my antenna is oriented, it radiates better in a north-south direction. It's obviously going west, too. Now, the folks out that way had difficulty copying me, even though I could hear them great, so that probably speaks a bit to the antenna's performance. It might also speak a bit to my ability to tune the radio to the antenna. I'm getting better at it, I think, but there still seems to be a bit of magic about it. I think I should get a 50-ohm dummy load to help with the tuning, so I'm not putting a bunch of noise on the bands when I tune.

I also got my QSL card from my contact with the station in Ecuador. That was really exciting.

Fox Hunting

A few weeks ago, I joined some of the local guys for an antenna building party. We built tape measure beam antennas to be used in fox hunting. That was a lot of fun, and it helped me become more comfortable with soldering. It also helped me learn more about the magic of how antennas work. I still don't really understand it, but I'm getting there.

Now, building those antennas would be silly if we didn't plan to use them. As luck (OK, planning) would have it, there was a fox hunt this past weekend. I showed up at the parking lot at the appointed time and joined the other four people who showed up to hunt the fox. We ended up going out in three groups -- two teams of two and one singleton. I teamed up with another newly-licensed ham, KJ4FWU, and we had a great time trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing. The singleton team ended up dropping out of the hunt early due to other commitments, so there were just two teams hunting the fox in the end. To no one's surprise, the other team (composed of two very experienced hams) found the fox first, but they all hung out together until KJ4FWU and I were able to find him, too. I thought that was extremely nice of them to be so patient to let us really learn what we were doing by some trial and error. We learned a lot and had a great time. I'm looking forward to the next time there's a fox hunt. I think I'll be better prepared.

Another result of the fox hunt was learning a little about attenuators, also known as magic. We weren't using attenuators, but apparently that would have helped a lot. I think the next group build project might be building attenuators, so I'm looking forward to that possibility.

D-Star

Yesterday, Greensboro got a D-Star repeater up and running on a trial basis. My radio is D-Star capable, so I've really been looking forward to being able to use those capabilities more than just for simplex communication. When the new machine came online, there was a lot of activity with all the local D-Star capable people checking in. The repeater seems to have a pretty good coverage footprint, so I'm looking forward to seeing this mode take off here. It will be even more exciting if they hook up the repeater to the gateway, so it will be able to make contacts to any other D-Star repeater on the gateway.

CW

I've started learning Morse Code. Recently, a new website (lcwo.net) came online that does a great job of teaching code. There are forty lessons to learn all the characters, adding one character at a time. I'm currently on lesson seven. I'm doing pretty well and I really like the way the site lets you go at your own pace. I'm learning the characters at 15wpm, but have it inserting enough space between the characters so that it's effectively 10wpm. I should probably bump up the character speed to closer to 20wpm. I hope that I'll be able to stick with this and learn it. One of my friends at church loaned me a straight key that he no longer uses and volunteered to practice with me on 40m when I'm comfortable. That will be really helpful and fun.

I think that's about it for what I've been doing with ham radio the past few weeks. It continues to be loads of fun.

Been busy lately and haven't had much time to do any posting. So this is a quick catch-up.

I'm still excited about the contact I made to Ecuador on the ham radio earlier this week. That's really cool.

Last night, I felt like I went to Chicago. yarbiedoll and I headed downtown to catch an amazing show by bluesman Carl Weathersby. WOW! That show was absolutely smokin'! If I ever get a chance to see him again, I will. Besides Carl being simply amazing, his 3-piece band (guitar, bass, drums) backed him up superbly. They didn't just play amazing music, they put on a great show. We're talking synchronized "dance" moves, great back-n-forth banter, and just attitude. These guys are tight, and they put on a great show. Highly recommended.

Today, I screwed up my long run. First, I started too late -- about 9:00. It was already quite warm. I ran too fast for the heat. Since I was only planning on eight miles, I didn't bother with bringing any water -- I figured that the water fountains that I encounter along the way would be sufficient. In the end, I only did four miles. I was completely out of steam at that point, and about 3/4 a mile from my next water fountain. I just started walking home instead. I had even tried to help myself by having a bagel with salmon about an hour before I started the run. It wasn't enough. At least I got the four miles in. At this point in my training, it's a little late to be making mistakes like that. I think I'll try to recover by re-attempting the eight miles on Monday. Next weekend's long run is going to be on Sunday, so that should be enough time for recovery. *sigh* I don't like these setbacks.

Wednesday night, I made my first DX contact. It was with HC2FN on 20 meters. He was coming in nice and strong from Ecuador and after about an hour of trying to get through the pileup, I had a short QSO with him. That's over 2500 miles away -- very cool.

Today was a good day for the radio. I received a QSL card from K8T, the special event station in Steubenville, OH that I worked a couple of weeks ago. The were celebrating a "Tribute to the American Soldier" and were the first special event station I worked. They sent me a nice card with a nice brochure about Fort Steuben.

I just got finished working W9IMS, a special event station at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They're celebrating the Brickyard 400 and when I saw that they had a special event station this weekend, I was really hoping that I'd be able to work them. They had trouble copying me (gave me a 55), but I'm just glad that I was able to get through the small pileup that was developing. Everyone I heard tonight was a good, considerate operator. I can't wait to see what the QSL card looks like for this one!

I also started using a software logging program: RUMLog. I've already got a few things about it I don't like, but it's the only Mac program I've found so far that comes close to what I'd like. Maybe as I get more experience, I'll like it (or some of the other programs I've tried) better. I definitely want to find a software logging solution that I like before I get too many entries in my logbook. Right now, I've got 26.

Until tonight, the 40m dipole I put on the roof had legs that just were laying on the roof. Tonight, sidelobe came over after work and helped me raise the arms so that they were flat. OK, he did most of the work -- I was really helping him. But we got it up. When we hooked the radio up to it, I wondered if I'd be able to notice an improvement. Immediately, just listening, I could tell that it was better. As I tuned around the band, I could hear people talking all over the place. Most of them were too weak to make out, but I could hear the voices there. I called CQ a bit, but didn't get any takers. I did hear someone calling CQ just below where I was calling, though, so I tuned down and responded. He could hear me fine, too. He was in Lexington, MA, which is about a 750 mile drive from here. That's the farthest I've talked, and I'm sure that the more properly oriented antenna had everything to do with that. We had a nice ten minute or so chat and then I packed the radio up and went inside since the mosquitoes were pretty bad.

I'm looking forward to making more contacts with this radio. Very exciting!

I just made my first HF contact on amateur radio! Very exciting. More later, when I'm not on vacation and my Internet connection is more reliable....

I really had a blast yesterday participating in the 2008 NC QSO Party. Several of the experienced hams in the area gathered at the Natural Science Center where we have a station set up: K4NSC (Kids 4 Natural Science Center). They have two HF radios set up and any licensed amateur can operate them.

This was my first time on HF, so it was all new to me. One of the guys there gave me a good tutorial on how to operate the radio and what contesting etiquette is. He said "OK, I'm going to just assume that you don't know anything and start from there." I *really* appreciated that, since I really didn't know anything about that kind of operating.

I was only there for about 2 hours (out of the 4.5 hours they had the station running). During that time, we made contacts with people all over the country: Michigan, Kansas, Maine, California (a guy on a cruise ship), Wisconsin. I think the coolest part was that we made a contact with a guy in Cuba! All of our contacts were brief, but it was still a lot of fun.

I'm really looking forward to doing more HF work. I think it will be fun to do some HF that isn't related to contesting -- so the contacts can be more leisurely and more of a chat instead of a quick exchange of information and moving on. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm able to get the HF rig that my uncle lent me set up at the house. Until then, I think I'll try to make a point to stop by the science center from time to time and try to make contacts from there.

I'm glad that I finally got into ham radio -- it's so much fun!

One of the things about Atlanta that I took advantage of yesterday is the fact that there is a retail store for HRO. After attending a beautiful baptism yesterday, I headed up to the store and looked around.

Wow. It must be neat to be a Ham in Atlanta and be able to actually go look at the equipment in the store instead of just looking at catalogs and/or internet pages about it.

After spending some time browsing around, I picked up what I came to get: an Icom 91-AD. One of my friends has this radio and likes it and it's an HT that will be able to serve me well for years and years to come.

I finally finished through reading the owner's manual this morning. I might have understood about half of it. But I figured it out enough to be able to listen to a few of the repeaters and even make a short D-Star contact via one of the repeaters.

I think yarbiedoll agreed to drive back home, so I'll be able to play with the radio on the drive. That'll be fun!

This weekend, my uncle lent me some of his currently unused ham equipment. So now I'm in possession of a good dual-band mobile, a mag-mount antenna, and a very nice HF rig. Driving back yesterday, I tried to get on some repeaters and it seems that the mobile set-up works good on 70cm, but I have difficulty getting into a 2m repeater. This afternoon, I drove out towards the repeater in town and determined that if I am within about a mile of the repeater, transmitting on high power, I can get into it. Otherwise, I'm out of luck.

I don't know much about how to troubleshoot this sort of thing. At this point, I'm guessing it might be the antenna. There are a couple of places where the coax is cracked -- I wonder if the line is sound. Perhaps after the holidays I'll have some time to find a local ham who has some time to help me troubleshoot it -- swapping out my antenna for a known good one, trying my antenna on a known good transceiver, etc.

In the mean time, I can listen to my hearts content on 2m and 70cm. If I'm feeling adventurous, I can try to get someone to talk with me on 70cm. I managed to do that yesterday afternoon as we drove into town and I identified myself like this: "KJ4AED, mobile. Driving through Burlington without 2m capabilities." Someone answered immediately saying that with an identification like that, he couldn't resist a short chat. It was pretty funny.

I found the manuals for both of the loaner radios I have now. I've read through the one for the mobile radio, but had already figured out most of how it operates. I've briefly scanned through the one for the HF radio. Getting that radio working is going to be another candidate for finding a local ham to help -- before I start trying to get an HF antenna around here, I'd like to take this radio to a known good antenna and see how it operates.

Anyway, there are definitely fun times ahead as I continue to get more involved in ham.

I just fired up EchoLink and had a quick chat with Robert in Scotland. Unfortunately, I only caught part of his call -- they were experiencing weather in Kilmarnock and he was on an HT, so his signal was difficult to hear at times (maybe I should get headphones for this). He did correct my pronunciation of Loch Lommond, so I learned something today.

Very cool. I just used EchoLink to talk to a station in Long Island through a conference server in Anchorage. I received a warm welcome.

Edit: Then, before going to bed, I fired it up again to show yarbiedoll how it works and ended up talking to a guy in Taiwan, some guys in New York, a guy in Colorado, and a guy in Bakersfield.

I'll be doing this again.

I took the test to upgrade my Ham License to General this morning...

...and passed!

They offered me the Amateur Extra exam for free afterwards, which I failed miserably. I hadn't looked at any Extra material at all, but hey -- no harm in trying. Anyway, after taking the test, I've decided that it's something that I can definitely study for and pass. I think the current Extra pool is good until next year, so if I think I'll be able to carve out some study time this spring, I'll try to go for it soon. Otherwise, I'll wait until the new question pool is in place, and new study material is available.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about upgrading to General. Now I just have to find a way to install an unobtrusive antenna and start trying to work some distant stations....

In other exciting news, yarbiedoll passed her Technician exam!

Last night, before going to bed, I listened in on the local ragchew net on the ham radio. I hadn't listened to it before, and wasn't planning on checking in, but it was informal enough that, with yarbiedoll's encouragement, I decided to check in. I had a little bit of mike fright, but worked out OK. Sounds like a good group of guys, including one guy who I think I know from church, but it's on Wednesday nights, so I'll probably not be a regular on that one since I'm usually at church on Wednesday.

This evening, my buddy who told me about last month's class sent me a text message telling me to get on the radio. Kinda funny. I did, and we chatted for a bit. One of our instructors joined in for a bit, too. I'm starting to get more comfortable with it.

My ticket from the FCC arrived in the mail today. So now I'm completely official and everything. I need to find someone with a laminating machine who can laminate the pocket-sized card for me.

Finally, the other thing that came in the mail today was my study guide for the General test. I don't know if I'll be able to learn the material in time for the next testing session, which is in nine days, but I may be able to do it. If not, the next opportunity is on December 8, but it conflicts with a geocaching event that I want to go to, so I'm really going to try for the one next week.

If anyone wants to give me a bunch of money so that I can buy my own equipment, feel free to PayPal it to me. Or, if you happen to have unused equipment, I'll be happy to cycle the batteries for you indefinitely. Just get in touch with me. ;-)

I got the loaner radio this evening. As soon as I got home, I fired it up to the local repeater and listened. And no one was on the air. yarbiedoll told me to go ahead and throw my call out. But I didn't have anything to talk about! As excited as i was about it, and I couldn't think of anything to say!

Well, I got over that pretty quickly, as I soon heard some other people start talking. I listened to their conversation, and when one of them needed to go home, I threw my sign out to see if the other person would pick it up and chat a bit. Sure enough, KE4FCW was happy to chat with me for a bit. He was one of the instructors for the class, and the class organizer. Soon, we were joined by K4HC (one of the other instructors) and N4BYU (one of the volunteer examiners). I chatted with them for a little less than ten minutes before signing off. It really was pretty neat to be able to do that.

Anyway, it's fun meeting these guys and chatting with them. I'm really looking forward to getting to know the local guys better, and get more involved in the hobby.

Wow! I wasn't expecting to find out 'till Monday, but I'm already licensed: KJ4AED.

Now I really want to get that loaner radio tomorrow!

I just passed my Ham test. I've arranged for a loaner radio. I should be in the FCC database by Monday.