AO-51 was packed tonight. Lots of doubles and people stepping on each other. I had a hard time working any station. I finally managed to work VE2AHD in Quebec right at the tail end of the pass, so it wasn’t a total wash.
Stations Worked:
Worked AO-51 from my car while sitting in the parking lot at the Middleboro/Lakeville MBTA stop. For less then ideal conditions, I did quite well, making three contacts and one half contact. That’s a record. I was able to work the satellite fairly well with 30 degrees elevation, which is impressive considering I was only using my mag mount.
Stations Worked:
Stations Half-Worked:
Well, this was unexpected. During my commute this morning, after being delayed by a schoolbus, I was approaching the train station when my squelch breaks on my radio. Nothing big, but my ears did pick up because it didn’t sound like a regular repeater. A large booming signal, I heard him chatting with someone. I looked down at my radio and saw “435.305″ as the receive frequency. At first I thought it was someone accidently transmitting on the downlink frequency, but then my pre-coffee neurons starting firing and remembered that there was a 7:10AM EST pass of AO-51.
Of course… I jumped at the chance to work some morning satellite, despite my train leaving in under 10 minutes.
I managed to contact one station and heard N1AIA again very weakly into the satellite. The end of the pass was frustrating, as just when I was pulling into my space, a YV6 (Venezuela) station popped in. But I could tell it would have been near impossible to work him, and it would have made me miss the train.
But… I did consider it…
No recording this time, as I would have likely killed myself driving.
Stations Worked:
It was a good night tonight. AO-51 came into contact at about 7:03PM, and I managed to make 2 QSOs, and 2 “half QSOs”. I call them half QSOs because I was unable to get a Grid Square . I don’t think they “count” as it were. I can tell that my Mag Mount radiates more outward and upward, as I had an easier time getting into the satellite during it’s rise and fall rather then it was directly overhead. This makes sense I guess.
The Handi-Tenna continues to work like a champ, and I still find it amazing that I’m bouncing a signal off of a satellite in space. I did have one complaint, and I guess it seems to be somewhat common in satellite operation, is that people don’t seem to listen before transmitting. I’m sure that some of it can’t be helped, and I’m sure I do it on occasion, but I do lay off transmitting when I hear a QSO going on. I’ve seen the term “alligators” use for these folks, as their “ears” are much smaller then their “mouths.” Quite a good description I think. The two “half QSOs” were stepped on by an “alligator” and we just never connected again. Oh well, water under the bridge. If you listen, you can guess who I’m peeved at, though.
But… There will be other passes…
Stations Worked:
Stations Half-Worked:
I’ve recently gotten back into Amateur Radio. Around mid October, I got bit with the bug and have started to get back into the hobby. Over the past couple of weeks, with major help from Steve, KB1MEH, I was able to install a FT-7800R in my car and build a Handi-Tenna courtesy of plans available from K5OE. It’s quite a complicated setup to operate, as I have my FT-60R hooked into the handi-tenna listening to the downlink, while I transmit on the FT-7800, while I sit in my car.
I’m slowly getting the hang of it. I’ve successfully worked a few passes of AO-51 with some success. During one evening, sans, Handi-Tenna I was able to contact N4AC in Georgia solely with my FT-7800. He did fade out just as he was giving his grid square, but I am pretty sure he gave correct one.
I did, however, have my first confirmed QSO with K7WIN in Arizona (DM41), during a moderately high pass using my handi-tenna and my mobile. I haven’t gotten the QSL card yet, but thanks to his web log book I was able to see that it was a success. Go me. I really like the idea of a web logbook. I’m going to take a look at what’s available.
The next step that I’m trying to work out is recording passes. Since I have one hand holding the antenna, the other hand holding the microphone, and my brain trying to pick out call signs out of the noise and making sure that I’m on the right frequency, keep a log book is rather difficult. A constant recommendation is that one should record the passes, and pick out call signs later, so I’m taking that to heart. I have a simple flash voice recorder with an external microphone jack, so last night I went out and tested my setup on a 29degree westward pass:
It worked pretty well, but I’m glad I tested the setup, as I found that the voice recorder transmits a distinct rapid clicking that you can hear for most of the pass. Thankfully, you can only hear the clicking if the recorder is in one of the receive paths of the antenna. Moving it out of them fixed the problem.
Next step, possibly getting a cheap, used, dual band HT solely for satellite work, as I dislike swapping the antenna on the FT-60R due to SMA connector horror stories.
I take the MBTA commuter rail into Boston every morning. I pick up the train from Middleboro and ride the whole line into Boston. Normally, it’s a time to take a nap. Today was a little more interesting.
I got on the train at 7:10, and sat down at my seat. I am highly trained, so I was out cold by the time we pulled out of the station at 7:20. I awoke from my slumber as we pulled into the JFK/UMass stop. (Note, I have no idea HOW I do this, but I seem to have an uncanny ability to wake up before we pull into South Station. Again, I’m highly trained.) We pulled into the railyard, and came to a stop as we waited for our usual “Terminal Congestion” to clear up. All seemed normal.
All of a sudden, the conductor comes rushing through.
“Excuse me! Coming through! Need to get through!”
Odd… thought I; I wonder where he is going… I continued to wait for us to pull in the station…
Then, the engineer comes rushing through, much in the same manor.
“Excuse me! Coming through! I need to get back to the engine!”
For those of you who don’t take the train. The engineer coming through the car is roughly the equivalent to the pilot running through the plane with a worried look on his or her face, just not as bad. At this point, the passengers realize something is wrong, and the murmurs start. I realize we’re going to be stuck here for a bit.
About 5 minutes later the PA system comes on
“Excuse me, folks… The engine is filling with smoke, so we’re going to get everyone out of the last car so they don’t have to deal with it”
OK… Smoke + Train engine = Not good
People started filling up into my car and some looked genuinely nervous. I figured there was nothing to really worry about, but, I was happy to see that I was located at the emergency exit window. We continued to sit there, and wonder what was going to happened when the PA came back on.
“Mmmmmrrrffrrr murffrummmrrr mrrr fuuu mrrrr”
I still have no idea what they said. They were probably making some kind of real announcement, but they were so quiet, no one could hear it. I only heard that because I was right underneath a speaker. I had to actually shoosh people to try and make out what was being said.
Soon after, word came through the crowd that we were getting off. We assumed we would be walking down the tracks, because, after all, we were literally a stones throw away from South Station. Nope. Another train pulled up on the track to our left.
At this point, I sent a message to my wife, who works in one of the towns I pass through on the train. I figured there was a non-zero chance that she might here some kind of rumor.
If you here something about a train filling with smoke and people being evaced, that would be me. I’m fine. Love you.
People started getting off and filling the other train. When I walked out, I did glance behind me at the engine, and failed to see any kind of smoke. After getting on the other train, everyone thought that they could just stand up and everyone would still fit, leaving angry conductors yelling at people to move in, but people having no where to move. I was smart and sat down, allowing me to avoid being squished and not have to stand for another 15 minutes while people shuffled on.
We pulled into South Station around 9:15, about 60 minutes from when we broke down, and 2 hours from when we left Middleboro. Hooray MBTA. The one bit of good news from this is that I made $15.50 because I was over 30 minutes late, which I will be submitting today. IC-2200H, here I come.
So, like other hard core political junkies, I was watching the election results of the Iowa Caucus last night trying to get the latest results. I went to surf around 8:45PM EST, looking to get the results trickling in.
The Iowa Democratic Party website was zippy, automatically updating, and from what I can tell, AJAXified.
The Iowa Republican Party website… Well… Not so much.
Apparently my fellow political junkies flooded the Iowa GOP website off the tubes. I’m seeing some more frazzled SysAdmin who thought “Hmmm! Two T1s and a server should be find for my flash heavy, graphically intensive website!” and then cowering when hundreds of thousands of users descended onto his or her server.
Meanwhile, the Iowa Democratic website had the foresight to realize how many people will be clamoring to get to the data. They put a streamlined results page on, and moved it to Amazon’s S3 service which saw our requests and laughed as we made hardly a dent in their bandwidth. I think someone reads Jeff Atwood.
The end result is that I was on the Iowa Democratic Website almost all night, and had to turn to other sources to get the GOP results. Way to go guys.
So, I’ve been messing around with the layout here and have further went down the rabbit hole of Web 2.0. I borrowed Ryan Grove‘s super cool Flickr loading code and also added Technorati blog reactions which are like trackbacks,
>but without all the suck that goes along with them.
Maybe at some point I’ll add some content…
Apparently, in order for me to claim my weblog on Technorati, I need to smear their link feces on my weblog in a visible manner.
You fail, Technorati, but here it is anyway:
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