I am troubled by this and do not know what to feel about amateur radio operators who do not have the basic skills to read and write.

I am not speaking of a mastery of the King's English with prose, grammar, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure. (I am, after all, an engineer "yesterday I cudnt spell enjuneer, today I are one"). I do not know how an individual could study the necessary materials to earn a license without some capacity to communicate in the written language.

Now I know that some may apply this to the blind but that is a true handicap and accommodations have been made to allow the blind to study the materials (braille).

I just do not know if ignorance and no formal education is a real handicap. Illiteracy should be overcome with remedial education programs. If someone has an actual disability that prevents them from learning to read and write I do not think that they could effectively communicate by radio other than in voice modes or even read the controls on a radio.

It is rare for me to find someone who is nearly illiterate on the internet but here is an example;

"I am wanying to bild a dule band antina four my shack was wondering if eny one out there knew where i could get plans I am neading to get on 2 meator and 440 can eny one help"

I am not trying to start some sort of fuss or to push peoples buttons. This is a legitimate concern I have. What are your opinions?

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

I have posted elsewhere in this folder the complete settings for the VX-8DR radio. I use the VX-8DR and it works fine.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

This looks like a great radio but when you add up all of the accessories you could get a K2.

http://www.dzkit.com/default.htm

It is reviewed here on eHam.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/8766

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

Interestingly, the tin content has a great deal to do with "whiskers" during soldering. Pure tin solders can grow whiskers several inches long. With the new formulations the tin content of solder can be as high as 95.5%.

I dislike the loss of lead in soldering as the newer formulations do not flow well, do not make a good amalgam with the constituent metals crystallizing out at different temperatures and in some cases require more heat. I know this is an audio-phool thing to do but I had switched out to Cardas solder for spot work and have a spool that will last me for life. In the solder pot I still use the good old standby tin/lead mixture but I have added a touch of silver to the mix. It is great for tinning leads or the edges of a chassis.

I really did not like cadmium for screws and hardware as I think it oxidizes badly over decades. That is more of a matter of an aesthetic when working on boat anchor radios. I have been replacing the old cad-plated hardware with stainless steel. While that would be prohibitively expensive in manufacturing it only costs me a few dollars more on a boat-anchor that is intended for my own enjoyment.

I convinced one of our bench techs that LED lights also work as miniature cameras and that "we" could look anywhere there was an LED and see what is going on remotely. This was a fairly sharp tech (with an associates degree) and I was surprised when I visited his home and saw black electrical tape pieces covering every LED in his house.

I looked at him menacingly and said "it does not matter, we have enough recorded of what you do at home when you are alone".

--------------
I think that Chuck is just trying to stir the pot.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

It is like FRS or MURS where no licensing is required but not like GMRS where a it is.

CB is far down the totem pole from any of these services. If I was a self-respecting CB'er I would move over to GMRS and encourage my friends to do so. At least on the GMRS bands you can find repeaters in some cities. FRS, MURS and GMRS all can use those dandy features like CTCSS or DCS.

I use MURS on my property as I can give someone a Motorola Saber radio and tell them to stick on a specific channel. (hunters, hikers)

<smile> or CB radio needs to move to some type of SelectCall system so you can ignore 99% of the trash.

If CB had stuck to a mostly line-of-sight system there would not be nearly as many "kickers" out there.

Chuck,

Have you considered posting this on www.ecb.net?

I do not know if it matters to most of us what they do with the 11 meter band as long as those folks;

1. Do not interfere with our operations due to excessive power output.
2. Stay in their own damned band and knock off the "freeband" nonsense.
3. Drop their annoying LID behaviors when some of them graduate to amateur radio.

If the FCC wants to try to regulate that wasteland of spectrum then more power to them. It really does not make a difference to most amateur operators.

And why did you post this in elmers? "All these forums are yours, except elmers. Attempt no landings there. Use them together. Use them in peace."

Just my 2 cents,

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

As short as possible with the ground conductors all "home running" back to a single point ground. Use copper or aluminum strap (flashing), copper (or tinned copper) braid or a decently sized ground conductor.

There are some points where resonance of the ground conductor is relevant but it is not particular to 10 meter resonant lengths unless you are operating solely in the 10 meter band.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

At that fuzzy state in the morning right when I am waking up I find myself dreaming things in code. I usually get up around 10 minutes before my alarm clock (no matter what time I set it to, I have this fairly accurate mental clock apparently). It is as if I am dreaming of reading something but I hear code.

That is pretty messed up.
Tisha, AA4HA

DeOxIt is your friend. (http://www.caig.com/).

I have used it to clean up most dirty pots and intermittent connections. Some of your problems may be in that area.

If you are off of the MW band does the reception problems still appear? Is it truly band specific or is the entire receiver in trouble?

The suggestions about band-specific settings with the filters may be a contributing factor. It sounds like you need to go through this radio from top to bottom.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

I usually do not debate the choice of "to ground" or "not to ground". I prefer to point someone to the proper references and let them make up their own minds.

At the moment I have 45 megabytes of data on grounding and surge protection. If you want to browse and/or download I have put the files up on a file sharing site. You will need to use the referral site at https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTYyNDg4NzA5 and then shoot me an email asking to be invited (Tisha.Hayes@gmail.com). It will open up the entire directory structure of what I have shared on radio technology, product manuals, components datasheets and antenna systems.

BTW, using the referral for dropbox allows me to keep presenting this information for free as the referral grants me additional storage space to put more up there. Right now I have put up 2.5 gigabytes of data but there is around 20 gigabytes of radio data in my collection. My goal is to make it all available.

BTW, I do suggest lightning protection, ground rods, single point grounding and big, fat low impedance ground lines. I work on mission-critical comms systems for government agencies and have seen the results of poor grounding.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

About 20 years ago I worked as a compliance engineer for FCC certification. At the time my concern was FCC only but I was aware of CE and CSA standards and the early efforts that became RoHS;

The standards for lead content, cadmium and many other potential contaminants is also called RoHS. http://www.rohs.gov.uk/

RoHS has been around for about four years and while it is a European standard it has taken an increasing role in US manufacturing as well. One of the biggest changes out of RoHS is the elimination of lead as a soldering agent.

One of the things I disagree with is DoC where a product manufactured for use in the US does not have to pass the rigorous FCC testing by an independent lab and can be given a provisional certification based upon the manufacturers testing. We need to be tightening up on compliance, not making it easier just for the sake of getting a product to market quickly.

I can say that with every instance of product testing to FCC standards we did end up modifying the product to some degree to earn or maintain compliance. Some of the testing was to ensure that the product with remain in compliance even after the abuses of shipping so components would not break off in such a way as to render the product out of compliance. That was in interesting experience to watch your product get dropped a bunch of times in the shipping box, then picked up and tested.

Most recently (until last year) I sort of kept up with UL 508 certifications as the company I worked for fabricated control cabinets where some customers required a UL seal on the finished product. I observed the testing procedures and compared notes with the UL inspector during the process.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

Here is one from Buxcomm (ham store) that is a USB sound adapter that they tested for digital modes.

http://www.buxcomm.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13&products_id=2150

Quote: "We found several makes and models that were not compatible with HAM radio digital modes; so we tested 11 different brands; We found this one to be fully compatible with the RASCAL and similar sound card interfaces...  .., so we bought a few thousand."

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

I keep a bunch of antenna and balun documentation on my dropbox site. If you want to access the data (around 2.5 gig total for everything) you would need to install dropbox    https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTYyNDg4NzA5

Then shoot me an email and I will invite you into the dropbox so you can see, download and upload documents from the site. Much of the site is dedicated to the R-390A and SP-600 receivers but I have many directories on antennas (that includes baluns) and grounding and surge (lots of Polyphaser stuff, military EMP documents and other commercial protection design docs).

Some of the documents I keep in there include;
Amidon balun booklets
Fair-Rite design guides
transmission line guides
the Bryant balun documents
(around 50 other antenna and balun documents).

I collect data.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA

There are a few really good reference works I use for balun core selection, winding, design and testing. Here is one;

http://www.filestube.com/836422ed2251dfae03e9,g/ham-radio-Transmission-Line-Transformers-Handbook.html

Another great reference is found at;

http://www.fair-rite.com/newfair/index.htm

On the top menu bar [technical], [use of ferrites in broadband transfomers] -and- [ferrite materials] This will download a document called broadband.pdf It has excellent details on different ferrite formulations and the frequencies they are good for.

The [materials] section has many listings for what ferrites are useful for RFI suppression and what other ferrites are useful for broadband transformers. You may have several choices for balun materials and '43 may not be the best.

Usually Nickel-Zinc formulations are better for baluns and Magnesium-Zinc is used for RFI or very low frequency transfomers.

Tisha Hayes, AA4HA