Miscellania

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Miscellania

I recently put a new 144/440 MHz antenna on the car. Before we left for Lake George, I took the Jeep to the carwash. While temporarily removing the antenna that I had on the roof, I noticed that repeated openings and closings of the rear hatch had caused the jacket and braid of the coax to become damaged. I didn't replace it with anything too expensive, or tall, as I park in a parking deck. It's a simple Nagoya resonator on a magmount. It does the job. I routed the coax a different way this time, through a path that hardly ever requires an open or close, so I should be good to go.

I also purchased another QYT K-8900D through Amazon.

It's not an Icom or Yaesu, but it's inexpensive and it satisfactorily does what it is supposed to. I had some gift cards from Amazon that were just sitting around and the VHF/UHF mobile that I had in the shack for ARES nets recently gave up the ghost, so I purchased another one of these. The K-8900D that I have in the Jeep was purchased and installed when I still had the Patriot. It has to be at least 4 years old or so and it's given me and continues to give me decent performance, so I went with another. It's not like I'm on VHF/UHF a lot anyway, so it seemed foolish to pop $200 or $300 or more, especially as I want to purchase that QMX later this summer.

I don't think I mentioned that I successfully replaced the coax on that magmount that I intend to use with the Buddistick. I did that on Saturday morning. It wasn't difficult, but it would have been nice to have an extra pair of hands. And how I hate how those tiny pieces of braid can get stuck in the skin of your finger pad. Worse than a wood splinter, by far!

Checking out the connections with a VOM showed a short from center pin of the PL-259 to the hole in which the Buddistick will be screwed into. There was also a dead short between the PL-259's outer shell to the ground of the mount. And happily, there was an open between the center and ground connections. In theory, it should work just fine.

On a disappointing note, Marianne reminded me that we have a family event to attend this coming Sunday. It starts at 1:00 PM and is about 30 or 40 miles south of us at one of my cousin's house. There will be no Flight of the Bumblebees for W2LJ this year. Heavy disappointed sigh.

To end this post on a few high notes, Bill W2AOF, Ron N2LCZ, Marv K2VHW and I met on Zoom this past Saturday evening to collaborate on SPARC's Field Day submission. Bill W2AOF successfully uploaded it to the ARRL before the deadline (which was yesterday) and according to what I was able to tell, we accumulated several hundred more points than we did last year. It will be interesting to see how we placed in the Hudson Division as there were a few clubs that cancelled their Field Day efforts as a result of the dire weather forecasts for that weekend. As it turned out, the weather was pretty much spectacular - until right before teardown, when all Hell broke loose!

Lastly, between several of us who were listening, and by our combined efforts, we were able to correctly copy that crypto Morse Code message from KPH for my friend Tim K0ETH. Tim let us know that he was able to plug our copy into an Enigma machine that he has access to (I guess it helps to be a real life nuclear physicist!) and decode the crypto message. Success!

What was copied was:

DONITZ FRLOOKS 2013Z OKTOBER 7 BT 100 BT DBK WSE BT EVJMZ VISFP CVCBJ SNQDF CVNPL CNFFO EVSLH YOSKU EUWPB QLRGR XRGNW OFQCQ KZRJT AUOLG DVSGM GJFRR OZLRC ANKRI NNTCG WVLRC

This decoded to:

"FORCED TO SUBMERGE DURING ATTACK X DEPTH CHARGES X LAST ENEMY POSITION GRID AJ NINE EIGHT SIX THREE X I AM FOLLOWING".

I was very happy to have been asked to help and am glad that my small contribution aided his efforts.

My Dad served in WWII in the Signal Corp. At the beginning of the United State's involvement, he was stationed in England and was part of the team that were developing and refining RADAR. My Dad never became a Ham, but I like to think that my Amateur Radio genes came from him. Thanks, Dad!