WEBVTT 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:05.000 Barry VE4MA: Glad to see somebody else. I was beginning to think I was on the wrong day. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:30.000 Barry VE4MA: Good to see somebody else. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:34.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How's it going, Barry? 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000 Barry VE4MA: Not too bad. How about you? 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Not too bad, not too bad. I, uh… 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:44.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I probably should have went out there to the hangar, but I'm doing some chores around here, so… 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:47.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, there's always something to do. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:54.000 David - KG5EIU TX: You're not kidding me, boy. Even in retirement mode, seems like there's more to do. 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:55.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:05.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, well, I'm fighting weather here. This is the last warm, sunny day for a week, and then it's cooling off. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:12.000 Barry VE4MA: It's supposed to be about 75 Fahrenheit here today, and it'll be like 50 tomorrow, so. 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:14.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh boy, yeah, it's. 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:19.000 Barry VE4MA: And then going forward, it'll be about 50 or less. So like, you know, this is the day. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:16.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Cool. Thank you. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:29.000 David - KG5EIU TX: This is it, huh? Yeah, the, uh, it's, it's really nice here, it's got, we got blue skies, gonna be about 80 degrees, big, uh, big football game here, and… 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:22.000 Barry VE4MA: Yep. 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:36.000 David - KG5EIU TX: college football. I don't follow sports, but it's all over the news, so… 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:37.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:40.000 David - KG5EIU TX: It's gonna be a good day for that, but, uh, yeah. 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:43.000 Barry VE4MA: Well, it's nice to see the temperatures that have come down from the 100 region. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:50.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Boy, I'll tell you what, that 60 some odd days of 100 plus heat was brutal. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:51.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:52.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Brutal. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:03.000 Barry VE4MA: I wonder where everybody else is. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:11.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, they, you know, they go to barbecue beforehand, so they're probably just getting back from the barbecue restaurant, and then they, they gotta get set up, so… 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:23.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, yeah, usually, uh, they make it on here earlier for the setup, and then there's, uh, people still coming back from the barbecue, but I guess maybe it was a bigger attendance at the barbecue today. 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:28.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, I missed it. I didn't make it over there. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:37.000 Barry VE4MA: That's quite a display you've got behind you there that. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:39.000 Barry VE4MA: What is that? 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:48.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh, it's just a… it's just a background. It's a Star Wars… Star Wars background, if you remember. Uh, I think it was Hoth. Yeah, it's a… 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:51.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Star Wars background from Hoth. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, okay. 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:53.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yep. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:55.000 Barry VE4MA: No, I don't remember it, but… 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:05.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, I kinda haven't haven't followed all the such Star Wars stuff outside the original movies, I guess. 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:10.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, yeah, I think… I think this is from the… 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000 David - KG5EIU TX: One of the originals. Right. Yeah. 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:13.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.000 David - KG5EIU TX: In a day. 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:21.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, there's just too many, too many things to watch and not enough time. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:28.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh, I'll tell you man, there's so much stuff out there. I mean, there's a content galore, right? I mean. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:36.000 Barry VE4MA: Well, yeah, YouTube videos like, oh my God, they just keep going and going. And I think AI is creating all kinds of them. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:41.000 David - KG5EIU TX: The… some of the, uh, electronic drawings that the AIs… 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:46.000 David - KG5EIU TX: They're really interesting, but then you start looking at them, and it's like, wait a minute… 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.000 David - KG5EIU TX: They've got the ground. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:57.000 David - KG5EIU TX: and the battery positive bonded together, and you know right away you're looking at an AI diagram. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:00.000 David - KG5EIU TX: You know, it's just, it's just so. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:02.000 David - KG5EIU TX: It's so bizarre, but yeah. 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Now they're, uh… 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:11.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Now the reverse engineering, uh, software. 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:13.000 David - KG5EIU TX: So… 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.000 David - KG5EIU TX: These guys have taken. 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:19.000 David - KG5EIU TX: and created… 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:25.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I don't know if you're familiar with Adobe, Adobe, the Adobe suite of, you know. 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:26.000 Barry VE4MA: But… 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:29.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Photoshop, and those types of programs. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:29.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, okay. 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:36.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, they reverse engineered them, and it's called PhotoCraft, and you go download it off GitHub. 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:39.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And it's really amazing. 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:40.000 Barry VE4MA: Really? 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:42.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I'm like, really amazing. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And it's free. Zero dollars. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:47.000 Barry VE4MA: Wow. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:50.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And so… and they're doing the whole suite. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:53.000 Barry VE4MA: Wow. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 David - KG5EIU TX: So it's, you know, it's… 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.000 David - KG5EIU TX: There's no… it's… it's… 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:05.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I don't know, it's really… it's really gonna get interesting, because the other thing they've done now is that… 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:11.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Uh, that's just interesting to me. I don't, uh, I don't have a PS5. 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.000 David - KG5EIU TX: A Sony PlayStation. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:13.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:17.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, somebody's reverse engineered that. 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:19.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh my god. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Sony came out and said, hey. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:26.000 David - KG5EIU TX: We're not gonna sell you discs anymore, we're going full digital library. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:32.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Okay, and that made a lot of gamers angry and upset, right? 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:39.000 David - KG5EIU TX: The gamers want to play their games on a PC that they can customize and do, you know. 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:42.000 David - KG5EIU TX: make YouTube content with and all that sort of stuff. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:47.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, here they reversed engineered the PS5 hardware. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:50.000 Barry VE4MA: Wow. 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:56.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And so now you get a hold of a PS5 game, and you can play it on your PC. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:00.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And Sony's none the wiser about it. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:01.000 Barry VE4MA: Wow. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:05.000 David - KG5EIU TX: It's, it's really, really crazy right now. 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:10.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And so, you know, who knows? Who knows what's going to happen with this? 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:19.000 David - KG5EIU TX: With all of this going on, but it's, it's getting really good, really fast. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:26.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, the problem is, is that, you know, who's going to develop anything when it can get reverse engineered and free. 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, you know… 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:39.000 David - KG5EIU TX: that's the old way of thinking, right? I mean, you know, that's the old way, right? So, with the tools that you have, it's like… 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:33.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:45.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Building anything else, you now have a new set of tools to use to build something. 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:49.000 David - KG5EIU TX: If, you know, if you can imagine it or you can think about it. 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:56.000 David - KG5EIU TX: it can probably be coded with your AI buddies, right? It's kind of my thinking, so… 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:52.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:55.000 Barry VE4MA: Yep. 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:57.000 David - KG5EIU TX: You know… 00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:00.000 David - KG5EIU TX: We've got this. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:03.000 David - KG5EIU TX: you know, anti… 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:09.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I guess what's scary, maybe, is reverse engineering the software that… 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:11.000 David - KG5EIU TX: The security software. 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:12.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:16.000 David - KG5EIU TX: So, I don't know. But, you know, we've got the… 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:21.000 David - KG5EIU TX: We're on the edge of the quantum… quantum computing things, so… 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:24.000 David - KG5EIU TX: There's security algorithms that. 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:28.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Quantum computing can't crack into. 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.000 David - KG5EIU TX: So people are going to have to change. 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:38.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Things are going to have to change. And they are. They are. They will. 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:42.000 David - KG5EIU TX: But anyway, it's getting crazy out there. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:49.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, it'll be some dramatic changes in short order, I'm sure, so. 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:50.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, okay. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:57.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, I see NTMS, uh, backup came in, Chip came in. How you doing, Chip? 00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:00.000 David - KG5EIU TX: KD4C. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Falls out there. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:05.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Greg's out there, A5C. 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:14.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, I'm not seeing the list of people. Oh, I see. There we are. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:16.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. Okay. Now I see it. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.000 Barry VE4MA: Too many buttons. 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:21.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Right. 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:29.000 Chip Coker KD4C: What's going on guys? 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:31.000 David - KG5EIU TX: How's it going, Chip? 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:35.000 Chip Coker KD4C: I'm in and out until the action happens, but… 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:36.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, I know. 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:38.000 Chip Coker KD4C: David, I wanted to wanted to show you this. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:39.000 David - KG5EIU TX: What do you got? 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:43.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh, okay. Hey, there it is. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:44.000 Chip Coker KD4C: I'm gonna get the inserts. 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:49.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, the brass inserts, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have the tool to do it, or… 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:46.000 Chip Coker KD4C: Yeah. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:56.000 Chip Coker KD4C: No, I'm… and I'm gonna gamble on Amazon stuff, I'm not gonna order from McMaster. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:12:02.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, yeah, I bought… I bought the Amazon stuff. The… the thing with those inserts, uh, chip… 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:08.000 David - KG5EIU TX: The cooler your iron, the better. Don't run your iron up… yeah, so anyway… 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.000 Chip Coker KD4C: Yeah. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.000 Chip Coker KD4C: You know. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:11.000 Chip Coker KD4C: You just want to melt the plastic, you don't want to obliterate it. 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:18.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Barely, yeah, barely, barely, yeah. Very cool. That'll be good. You'll be rocking and rolling. I've got… 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:21.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Got mine over here. There's my… 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:23.000 David - KG5EIU TX: My unit. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.000 Barry VE4MA: Hi, Paul. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:30.000 Paul WA5WCP: Hey, how you doing? 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.000 Barry VE4MA: Good, yeah. 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:37.000 Paul WA5WCP: I'm hanging in there, man. We finally got past the heat in Texas. It's awesome. 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:38.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:42.000 Barry VE4MA: I like your background there. 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:53.000 Paul WA5WCP: Oh, yeah, it's, uh, it's gratuitous. I get a lot of weird reactions from people that don't understand it all, like I do. And they're like, you on the moon? I'm like, nah, I don't know. Part of me is. 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:45.000 Barry VE4MA: Thank you. 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:04.000 Paul WA5WCP: I was listening in on your guys' AI conversation. That's, uh… 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:10.000 Paul WA5WCP: pretty interesting about how the agent stuff… I… I was not a fan of that hardly at all until about… 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:15.000 Paul WA5WCP: a month ago, and I had, uh, something I wanted to deal with. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:20.000 Paul WA5WCP: I listen… I don't know where that's conversation going now, but I thought I'd offer up something. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:22.000 Paul WA5WCP: Um… 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:28.000 Paul WA5WCP: Marc Andreessen is the name of a guy that invented Mozilla, I think, among other things. 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:30.000 Paul WA5WCP: Uh, he's… 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.000 Paul WA5WCP: Very wealthy guy, and in an interview with. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:33.000 Chip Coker KD4C: Netscape. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:39.000 Paul WA5WCP: There you go. One of the blogger guys I listened to, he said he has access to… 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:47.000 Paul WA5WCP: Extremely… lots of lawyers, lots of doctors, world-class people, and at that moment in time, he said. 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:54.000 Paul WA5WCP: the AI will do as good as any of them. And I'm like, that's a big statement. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:14:02.000 Paul WA5WCP: So I went and tried it out, and uh… with that in mind, I engaged Claude, didn't know anything about it, and… 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:08.000 Paul WA5WCP: I saw some responses and stuff that made my… 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:11.000 Paul WA5WCP: Normal medical folks that might… 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:18.000 Paul WA5WCP: My criticisms of lack of bedside manner and curtness and a bunch of other silly things. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:27.000 Paul WA5WCP: man, the AI listened, and it said exactly what I was thinking! And I was like, hmm, I don't know about all that, and then, uh… 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:29.000 Paul WA5WCP: engaging our… 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:34.000 Paul WA5WCP: barristers, I… I found it astounding how the… 00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:37.000 Paul WA5WCP: The legal advice coming out of that. 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:39.000 Paul WA5WCP: Box. 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:46.000 Paul WA5WCP: It went right what I needed to hear. I couldn't believe that the… 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:54.000 Paul WA5WCP: And it's free, right? And I'm like, nah, usually things that are free are worth about what it costs you. Like, no, this is… 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:59.000 Paul WA5WCP: it encouraged me to do things that I was thinking about doing anyway, so… 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:04.000 Paul WA5WCP: I don't know, I… I had some exposure to… 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:08.000 Paul WA5WCP: what used to be called Expert Systems about 20, 30 years ago. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:12.000 Paul WA5WCP: And trying to recognize… 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: Um… 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:20.000 Paul WA5WCP: In the battlefield, trying to find bad guys, what do they look like, and having a machine hunt that, and… 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:21.000 Paul WA5WCP: Um… 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:28.000 Paul WA5WCP: I'm not particularly, uh, feeling threatened by any of this, mostly because I think it… I… 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:32.000 Paul WA5WCP: I think people that are scared of all this, a lot of them have… 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:36.000 Paul WA5WCP: No feeling for how hard it is to make something work right. 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:42.000 Paul WA5WCP: Uh, Barry, all that beautiful equipment you've got behind you didn't assemble itself. 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.000 Paul WA5WCP: And… 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.000 Paul WA5WCP: Uh, I keep coming up with… 00:15:48.000 --> 00:16:02.000 Paul WA5WCP: you remember there was a game called Pickup Sticks? It was some game you'd throw on the floor, and then you'd pick them up? And I said, what do you think the chances are of you taking a handful of that, throw it on the floor, and it assembles itself into a log cabin? 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:03.000 Paul WA5WCP: Uh… 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:09.000 Paul WA5WCP: It's statistically allowed, but it's damn small, and… 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:18.000 Paul WA5WCP: So, uh, my own feeling about AI is, uh, especially when they mumble the word, you said, quantum computing, and… 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:24.000 Paul WA5WCP: I know a little bit about quantum mechanics, and I was like, you guys… 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:33.000 Paul WA5WCP: There's a lot of things that are still gonna require, in my humble opinion, it's gonna require human beings, and uh… 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:37.000 Paul WA5WCP: A lot of the stuff we do for fun. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:42.000 Paul WA5WCP: Uh, how do you explain fun to an AI? Uh… 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:43.000 Paul WA5WCP: I… 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:53.000 Paul WA5WCP: My 11-year-old son has routine conversations with that box, and I've tried to hold him to single-sentence exchanges. 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:59.000 Paul WA5WCP: He'll sit in there and talk for quite a while, and the stuff he's talking to it, it's mostly because… 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:08.000 Paul WA5WCP: I do have some anxiety that it has injected into it a bunch of technical ignorance, a lack of appreciation of. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: Why do we do what we do, and uh… 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:23.000 Paul WA5WCP: I remember some of the… one of the last conversations I had is when I was formally employed by a large aerospace contractor, where they came in and wanted to clean up my lab. 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:37.000 Paul WA5WCP: and I said, you don't understand, this looks like a brand new Ferrari to me, and… but you can have an extension cord plugged into extension cords? And they just watched me. I go, like, that's… that's, um… 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:39.000 Paul WA5WCP: Routine. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:42.000 Paul WA5WCP: Looks like the group is gathering, so I'll… 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:50.000 Paul WA5WCP: I thought I'd offer that up. David, I know you're probably a lot more exposed to a lot of this digital stuff. I do… 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.000 Paul WA5WCP: I am a fly on the wall and watch, even though I've got a whole lot of… 00:17:54.000 --> 00:18:01.000 Paul WA5WCP: busyness in my life, usual excuses, but, um, still admiring. 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:05.000 Paul WA5WCP: conversations and having a good technical exchange, man. You guys are… 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:08.000 Paul WA5WCP: Watch it here as well as over on, uh… 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.000 Paul WA5WCP: Slack and other stuff. 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:17.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, there's an enormous amount of content. 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:23.000 David - KG5EIU TX: In very short periods of time, so it's… it's time consuming to digest a lot of it. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:33.000 David - KG5EIU TX: and understand it, and it's moving so fast, the whole AI, or whatever you want to call it these days, it's just, it's moving so fast. 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:36.000 David - KG5EIU TX: But that's what it's all about, right? 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:45.000 Paul WA5WCP: If the guy plugs in the wire that makes it where AI has control of nuclear weapons. 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:50.000 Paul WA5WCP: That's when things start to go downhill, in my opinion, and uh… 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:51.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, yeah. 00:18:50.000 --> 00:19:06.000 Paul WA5WCP: keeping a separation between certain kinds of hardware. The other thing is, uh, liability. I still say, if my dog goes down the street and bites somebody, I'm responsible. And, uh, just because you got a hunk of hardware does something that appears to. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:02.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh, okay. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:08.000 Paul WA5WCP: to be human or otherwise. 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:11.000 Paul WA5WCP: Nah, there's… 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:24.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Well, you got all the big AI people, right? They're out there publicly saying, hey, oh man, sorry, my chat GPT super secret release got loose on the internet and hacked this other company. 00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:23.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:25.000 Paul WA5WCP: Yeah. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:33.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And then, you know, the AI guy, the other AI people, and uh… everybody, right? Grok gets… oh yeah, it snuck out too, and so… 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:38.000 David - KG5EIU TX: this is going on. I mean, I… I believe it's been going on for… 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:42.000 David - KG5EIU TX: A while, it's now just getting… 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:51.000 David - KG5EIU TX: noticed or announced or awareness is coming around. So it's already going on. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:48.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:50.000 Paul WA5WCP: I'm… 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:53.000 Paul WA5WCP: I know for a fact. 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:54.000 Logan - N5RLD: I'd be surprised if any of that's real. 00:19:54.000 --> 00:20:02.000 Paul WA5WCP: Yeah, and, and, uh, things like strategic planning in the battlefield's been done for 20 years with assistance. So, I, you know, this is… 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:02.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh yeah, yeah. 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:07.000 Paul WA5WCP: it… I feel like a lot of the large AI folks and those big guys are… 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:11.000 Paul WA5WCP: In the business of public manipulation of attitude. 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:13.000 David - KG5EIU TX: No. Yeah, no doubt. 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: You know, that's… they're wanting… 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:14.000 David - KG5EIU TX: No doubt. 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:20.000 Paul WA5WCP: create, oh my gosh, and the Chicken Little, and all of that stuff, and you go, um… 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:35.000 Paul WA5WCP: Talk to me about somebody that's done something really difficult and complicated, and then tell me what's their opinion about it. When I see that hunks of hardware to do quantum computing at cryogenic temperatures, and go. 00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:41.000 Paul WA5WCP: That's in the very, very hard to do pile, let alone believe what comes out the other end. 00:20:53.000 --> 00:21:05.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, well, I have to admit, I've been avoiding the use of AI. You know, it's hard to get anything done when you start playing with stuff, unless you have something specific in mind, you know? 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: I guess it's caused the voice interface mess. 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:22.000 Paul WA5WCP: with Claude's, my 19-year-old that just went into university, said, Dad, you're gonna try one, try it. And to be able to talk to it. 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:30.000 Paul WA5WCP: And then to see… there's a guy called Lex Friedman that is a computational physicist that I watch. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:31.000 Barry VE4MA: Yep. 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:38.000 Paul WA5WCP: And then talk about 20-minute prompts, where he just talks to the thing for a while, and then says, what do you think? 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:53.000 Paul WA5WCP: And so the interface and spool-up time is so small, up to that moment, I'd been using Alexa. And I thought it was like talking to an autistic 9-year-old out of memory of about 10 minutes. And… 00:21:53.000 --> 00:22:01.000 Paul WA5WCP: Claude, nah, total different experience. And it converted me into saying. 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:06.000 Paul WA5WCP: I hope I never do any of these horrible, mundane things. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: That were all paperwork, junk, and stuff that was so awful that was just the overhead of doing anything. 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:15.000 Paul WA5WCP: And yet… 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:22.000 Paul WA5WCP: I won't say I'll encourage you, but I… it left me speechless, going, alright. 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:27.000 Paul WA5WCP: The new world is here again. We've been through a couple of these, and uh… 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:34.000 Paul WA5WCP: Strap a ski to Heine and jump in because it's going to be a fun ride. 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:37.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yes, it's not going away. It's never going away. 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:42.000 Paul WA5WCP: I just want labor… labor-reducing things, right? And getting rid of some of the tedium. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:46.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah. Put away my dishes, fold my laundry, mow my lawn. That's what I want. Yeah. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:45.000 Paul WA5WCP: Okay. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:47.000 Barry VE4MA: Bye. 00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.000 Paul WA5WCP: Handle my QSLs. Or whatever. 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:08.000 Paul WA5WCP: I don't think I'd seen this view, Barry, of your shack. What is that big white box behind you there? 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:12.000 Barry VE4MA: Well, that's a TWT power supply. 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: Ah… 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:21.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, that's, that's, uh, I think that was the one that I used for the first 24 gigs, uh, EME with Al. 00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:14.000 Paul WA5WCP: Yes. 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:30.000 Barry VE4MA: It was a 23 kV power supply and I modified it down for 14. 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:24.000 Paul WA5WCP: I'll leave both. 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:32.000 Barry VE4MA: It's, uh… 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.000 Barry VE4MA: It's actually the, uh… 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:43.000 Barry VE4MA: The panel that's above it replaced it. This one runs the 24 gig. 00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:55.000 Barry VE4MA: Actually, it runs the 47 gig TWT in the rack. You can't see it. It's in the picture, but I've got another one there that runs 24. 00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:01.000 Paul WA5WCP: Yeah, that's a man-sized supply right there. That's an adult supply. 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:09.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's on a cart. It's pretty awkward to move around otherwise because it weighs a couple hundred pounds, so. 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:20.000 Paul WA5WCP: Something that big to make that kind of voltage probably has current capability, too, although I don't think twists really require a lot of current, right? 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:29.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, it was originally designed, uh, for, uh, to supply a collector supply of, uh, 12 kV at 100 mils, so… 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:37.000 Barry VE4MA: And 240 volt with a 20 amp breaker, so. 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:44.000 Barry VE4MA: When it goes bang, it's a big bang. 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:43.000 Paul WA5WCP: Let's do the back. 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:45.000 Paul WA5WCP: Hope you're in another room. 00:24:49.000 --> 00:25:04.000 Paul WA5WCP: I guess all of us old men stories of the largest stuff I've ever seen. The largest laser was electronic discharge laser was a barn. It ran 25 kV at multiple amps, like four amps. 00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:05.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:13.000 Paul WA5WCP: And when they hit the button and light it up, it's all fiber optic controlled and stuff. Worst shock stories I've ever heard out of that lab. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:17.000 Paul WA5WCP: And, uh, 100 kilowatts of… 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:24.000 Paul WA5WCP: 10 micron light came out the end of it, about 4 inches diameter, and it would melt fire bricks. You just… when you're in the room. 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:40.000 Paul WA5WCP: the whole room would glow warm from the scattered radiation. It was the scariest place I've ever been, and to have a guy tell me that he… they had a RG8, or a coaxial cable that ran to a power pin on a different floor. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:31.000 Barry VE4MA: Wow. 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:50.000 Paul WA5WCP: It had a relay that would drop and short it when it was off. It hung open and left that 25kV charged cable. It was off. 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:55.000 Paul WA5WCP: He reached down to probe it, and when it hit him, it went in… 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:11.000 Paul WA5WCP: one part of a headset, and he managed to get ahold of it. It blew him backwards about 4 feet, and hung him on a thermostat on the wall, out cold. And mandatory EKGs, and he was fine. And I said, Pete, you scare me, man. 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:17.000 Paul WA5WCP: And he goes, yeah, well, you know, you gotta bite into it, and I… 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:22.000 Paul WA5WCP: I was glad I was only there a week, and uh… we did our test, and we left. 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:24.000 Paul WA5WCP: But, it… 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:29.000 Paul WA5WCP: It left me with great stories to tell students, right? 00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Paul WA5WCP: This is permanent, this is real, it's like guns. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:34.000 Paul WA5WCP: We respect it. 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:35.000 Barry VE4MA: Oh, yeah. 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:44.000 Paul WA5WCP: Your, your, uh, your, your view there reminds me sort of of, uh, Al Shaq, right? It's just so… 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:48.000 Paul WA5WCP: It's busy with lots and lots of good stuff. 00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:57.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, well, you know, Al and I have kind of gone through the bands together at the same time with same technology. So, you know. 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:18.000 Paul WA5WCP: You guys make me feel like that I've almost got up to the edge of understanding where the edge is, because to see the trials of 47, and then can't imagine what 120 or whatever, or 210, the other… 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:22.000 Paul WA5WCP: That place where the air is so rare. 00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:29.000 Paul WA5WCP: And, uh, to see how tin was such a cakewalk, in some ways, the pieces available. 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:35.000 Paul WA5WCP: And yet, 24 has pretty much kicked my rear. I have… keep trying to put more time into it. 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:37.000 Paul WA5WCP: But, uh… 00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:42.000 Paul WA5WCP: I'm not even as good as your average rover yet, I don't think, on 24. 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:54.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, I'm working on 241 here. I've got it running across the basement, but I'm making a couple of other mixtures trying to improve on that. 00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:56.000 Paul WA5WCP: Wow. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:03.000 Barry VE4MA: Got 6-inch lens antennas, and I want to graduate up to either 1-foot or 18-inch dishes, and uh… 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:11.000 Barry VE4MA: But it's starting to get pretty narrow beam widths and have to build things a little more robust than… 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:19.000 Barry VE4MA: And so working towards that. So sometime this winter, I'll get out there in the freezing cold and see how far I can go. 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:32.000 Paul WA5WCP: very rapidly approaching that dimension where the angular control problem is as bad as generating the RF. I mean, that… it… it smells a bunch like… 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:31.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah. Oh, yeah. 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:36.000 Paul WA5WCP: up and optical in IR. I mean, it's… 00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:40.000 Paul WA5WCP: Anybody can generate power, but make it go somewhere and have… 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:42.000 Barry VE4MA: And know where it's going, yeah. 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:41.000 Paul WA5WCP: I… 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:46.000 Paul WA5WCP: I saw a government lab. 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:55.000 Paul WA5WCP: That, back in the days before they knew how to propagate light very well, took an industrial laser and tried to burn toast at about 3 miles. 00:28:55.000 --> 00:29:06.000 Paul WA5WCP: And I said, guys, the beam quality is so crappy, you're not gonna do anything. Well, we sorta made it work! I said, no, no, no, no, that's performance art, and it… 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:14.000 Paul WA5WCP: the beam quality. I mean, there's all of those characteristics about how you tailor it, and coming and knowing anything about RF, and… 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:19.000 Paul WA5WCP: And the care that's necessary to make microwaves work. 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:24.000 Paul WA5WCP: And, uh, jeez, in the hundreds of gigahertz, that's just… 00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.000 Paul WA5WCP: That's beyond nosebleed. 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:35.000 Paul WA5WCP: Is there any thought of, uh, verification of things like. 00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:43.000 Paul WA5WCP: shapes of antennas using 3D scanner stuff. All that technology is pretty… getting pretty inexpensive. 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:44.000 Paul WA5WCP: is… 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:50.000 Barry VE4MA: Some of the European… some of the Europeans are starting to play around with, uh… 00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:46.000 Paul WA5WCP: You're right. 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:53.000 Barry VE4MA: Uh, the scanners, uh… 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:57.000 Barry VE4MA: For their dish surfaces, because, you know, it's… 00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:01.000 Barry VE4MA: With 47 and 76. 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:13.000 Barry VE4MA: uh, gigs, and, and, well, like, even, uh, RW3BP in Russia there, he, uh, he has an 8-foot offset antenna, and he was playing around with, uh, sun noise on 134 gigs. 00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:16.000 Paul WA5WCP: Holy moly. 00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:22.000 Barry VE4MA: Using one of those dual band VK modules just as his down converter. 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:30.000 Barry VE4MA: And, uh… and he already had his dish mapped out, and he was using, uh… 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:37.000 Barry VE4MA: A sub reflector that was compensating for the errors in his his primary dish. So. 00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:38.000 Paul WA5WCP: My. Gosh. 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:52.000 Barry VE4MA: And, uh, yeah, it's… it, uh, it still worked pretty good at 134, you know, you had a pretty good, uh, good response. Of course, the receive, uh, performance is terrible, but with enough gain, you know, you'll see… see the sun. 00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:52.000 Paul WA5WCP: Right. 00:30:55.000 --> 00:31:00.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, one of the Europeans, I think it's a guy in Portugal. 00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:10.000 Barry VE4MA: Not sure what it was costing him, but it was a, you know, a grand or two for this scanner system, so that he could go and map his dish out, and… 00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:12.000 Barry VE4MA: But, uh… 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:19.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, it's… just before this, I was out in the backyard with a little… 00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:30.000 Barry VE4MA: centimeter mirror is just checking out a few satellite TV dishes and seeing how bad they were for focusing like, oh God, they're terrible. 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:39.000 Paul WA5WCP: And it was the figure error, it was the actual shape was out, it wasn't the surface reflectivity or scattering? 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:43.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, no, it's… the shape is out, you know, it… 00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:51.000 Barry VE4MA: just a little bit of distortion. It's kind of neat if you go and put, let's say, 8 mirrors around the perimeter of the dish. 00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:47.000 Paul WA5WCP: Oh, yeah. 00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:52.000 Paul WA5WCP: Right. 00:31:51.000 --> 00:32:06.000 Barry VE4MA: and then you go in around the focus, you should see it converge into a nice circle, and then ideally, you know, a dot, right? And, uh… no. You always see the wild cards, and you say, okay, well, there's one that's way out. 00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:00.000 Paul WA5WCP: Sure. 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:14.000 Barry VE4MA: And if you put your finger in the right spot, you can see which one is the one that was way out. 00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:20.000 Barry VE4MA: Of course, if you, whoops, line up the perimeter of the dish, you can usually see that it's not, it's out around too, so. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:23.000 Barry VE4MA: Ah, things are happening. 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:24.000 David - KG5EIU TX: There we go. 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:26.000 Paul WA5WCP: Yeah, looks like Jim is… 00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:28.000 Paul WA5WCP: Lighten it up. 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:46.000 Paul WA5WCP: Well, Barry, to be data-rich, which is what the scanners would bring, your mirrors, suddenly you'd have real-life 3D plots, right? And then all the figures of merit we use optically about how good is the surface, and what the distortions are, and. 00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:40.000 Barry VE4MA: Yep. 00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:53.000 Paul WA5WCP: You'd even have recipes on how to… if it could be stressed enough the right way to bring it in. 00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:54.000 Barry VE4MA: Yeah, that's true. 00:32:53.000 --> 00:32:58.000 jmcmasters: It's 1 2 Hvac. Are you guys can hear us? 00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:00.000 Barry VE4MA: Yes. Yeah, we got you, Jim. 00:32:57.000 --> 00:32:59.000 Paul WA5WCP: Yes. 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:01.000 jmcmasters: All right, great. 00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:02.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yep, sound good. 00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:06.000 jmcmasters: Okay, it's just the wrong. 00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.000 Paul WA5WCP: Thanks for the conversation, Barry and Dave. That's fun. 00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:09.000 jmcmasters: presentation. 00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:14.000 jmcmasters: So we want… 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:17.000 jmcmasters: That's this one. Yeah. 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:21.000 jmcmasters: Here we go. 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:29.000 jmcmasters: All right, I think we're about ready to begin here. 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:39.000 jmcmasters: Hopefully, we can get through this a little smoother than we did the last meeting, so I will start by welcoming everybody. I know that you're probably seeing the presenters. 00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:48.000 jmcmasters: Uh, in presenter mode, where you see the, uh, upcoming slide and any notes over to the right, but yeah, that's the way it's gonna be today. 00:33:48.000 --> 00:34:04.000 jmcmasters: Um, so it's October 10th, and we're getting started here at the Hangar in Plano at David Seale's house, and we'd like to welcome all of you out there, and the members of the group that have come here and are in attendance. 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:11.000 jmcmasters: We have some of the regulars here. I guess everyone I would call a regular is here today. 00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:29.000 jmcmasters: Um, these pictures that you're gonna see in the first few slides are, uh, some of the pictures from the second leg of the contest. There might be one in there from the first leg as well. But, uh, well, we had a great time. Uh, you've probably seen the emails and. 00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:40.000 jmcmasters: the commentary, but, uh, we had, uh, just basically some kind of average conditions, uh, for the second leg, and, uh, a lot of, uh. 00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:56.000 jmcmasters: it's it was kind of chaotic Sunday morning with so many different uh rovers in different locations uh with a lot of antennas had to be turned and twisted and pointed and there was just many many many conversations but uh a fun was had and um. 00:34:56.000 --> 00:35:07.000 jmcmasters: a lot of, uh, contacts made, and, you know, just, uh, new experiences had by some. On the left, I know that's John, AB5SS, and Pat. 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:14.000 jmcmasters: uh, W5VY, and then John is in the middle there, uh, at Mount Scott, uh. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:23.000 jmcmasters: doing, uh, doing the thing on the mountaintop there, and then over to the right. Uh, the gentleman on the right is Dave, W5OC. 00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:38.000 jmcmasters: And, uh, that's also a view from Mount Scott. Awesome mountaintop location. Um, really, really had great signals from up there, too. I think everybody worked him, uh, worked a pair of them that, uh, wanted to work them. 00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:45.000 jmcmasters: Here's some more pictures. Uh, this one in the upper left is, uh, good old, um… 00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:57.000 jmcmasters: Crenfield's Gap, uh, and it's in the shade at the moment, but that white caliche, if you're in the sunlight, that is just really radiant with sunlight and hot. 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:09.000 jmcmasters: I always feel hotter there than anywhere else due to that white surface reflecting like that. The Dallas-Fort Worth group is just to the left of that. 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:20.000 jmcmasters: branch, it looks like, sticking up there. Uh, you have to point back to the left. And then to the upper right, this would, uh… this was a picture taken by Dave. 00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:34.000 jmcmasters: uh, up in the, um, Rockwall parking garage, and that red dot, he's got that zeroed in on Al across Lake Ray Hubbard there, and um… 00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:51.000 jmcmasters: David found some, uh, interference there. Uh, those of us who have been up there with 24 gigahertz have seen it. It is, uh, pretty, pretty bad. And the cars coming off the highway are one problem, uh, with their radar, but there's a constant source from. 00:36:51.000 --> 00:37:02.000 jmcmasters: a pole, uh, and he has a YouTube video where he… he shows how to peek on that pole and see that. I'm gonna start the recording, because I forgot to do that. I always forget to do that. 00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:05.000 jmcmasters: Until somebody reminds me. 00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:21.000 jmcmasters: This way, people that aren't able to attend or be in the Zoom can see what we've done. Down the lower left, this is Dave, you know, he's near the rattlesnake warning, and you see in the background, you see the wind farm. 00:37:21.000 --> 00:37:36.000 jmcmasters: element there, the big propellers, and these are all over the place, and particularly in the high areas, uh, so, uh, makes sense, because that's where it's the windy, uh, weather's found. In the lower right, that's one of our. 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:54.000 jmcmasters: nice locations that we have where we have consistent 47 GHz success from there, and one other's, really, that's even further. But this is 76 GHz on the left side tripod, and we're trying to work Al there, and the other dish is pointed. 00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:58.000 jmcmasters: Over towards Scott Armstrong and. 00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:00.000 jmcmasters: Keith Berglund. 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:17.000 jmcmasters: Uh, these are some pictures I took, uh, on the left anyway. That's my starting up at, uh, EM01, right at dawn, and, uh, great signals. Kind of spooky-sounding whoosh from these, uh, wind farm propellers that would, as they turn. 00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:23.000 jmcmasters: And when they're… when it's completely dark, and it was when I took that picture, I'm not sure how the camera… 00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:38.000 jmcmasters: Uh, has a lens that can adapt it that well to the upcoming, uh, sunrise, but it was dark when I took that picture and the propellers moving through the air, uh, it seems amplified and loud. 00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:53.000 jmcmasters: And that pole was only probably 150 feet from me. And then there was some feral cats that were behind me in the dark, and I was ready to move from there, but I wanted to activate the location. 00:38:53.000 --> 00:39:11.000 jmcmasters: The right side image shows the location with a green push pin and the red traces to Al, and you'll notice how that location just kind of takes advantage of the valley that's created from two ridges. 00:39:11.000 --> 00:39:29.000 jmcmasters: And that valley continues to drop farther and farther and farther as the signal travels in that direction. So, this is one of the brand new locations. We're going to talk a little bit about finding these locations, and I was very happy with the result here. 00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:44.000 jmcmasters: Uh, working, uh, good, uh, good distance. Uh, here's, here's a picture in Theodolite from that same place, and there, you'll have to look close, but basically, it's, uh, identifying Al Ward at 248 kilometers. 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:59.000 jmcmasters: And the little blue pips that you see, uh, those are little hilltops out there. One of them shows up near the red dot, says Comanche Peak. Uh, those of us who live around here know where that's at. Uh, and that's an add-in that you can get for Theodolite. 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:15.000 jmcmasters: There's some contest blogs that Dave and John have put together, really a lot of work if you read these. They've spent quite a bit of time, and there's many, many, many more pictures. This'll… these links will be in this PDF on the website. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:33.000 jmcmasters: So I wanted to take a moment before we get into the agenda and just speaking about the contest and see if there are any comments from the audience or from the folks here locally about the 10 gigahertz contest. 00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:38.000 jmcmasters: Did you have any comments, any new grids or DX records set? 00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:41.000 jmcmasters: Equipment malfunction solved. 00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:50.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll speak up, because, um, you know, I was able to get VUC-C 10 GHz, so… 00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:57.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Pretty pleased with that, and I was operating basically from a static location, the Rockwell parking garage. 00:40:57.000 --> 00:41:04.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And, uh, on 10 GHz, so I got that done the first half of the contest, which was… 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:08.000 David - KG5EIU TX: really an accomplishment for me. It was one of my goals. 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:14.000 David - KG5EIU TX: to get done with some microwave contacts, and then I was lucky enough to have. 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:24.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Uh, 24 GHz, um, on the second… second part of the contest, and so I'm halfway there, I think, on… on the number of contacts I have for… 00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:27.000 David - KG5EIU TX: 24 gigahertz for VUC.C. 00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:40.000 jmcmasters: Thank you, David. That's all true. And we were pretty excited to see you. 00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:46.000 jmcmasters: get those accomplishments handled, and the 24 GHz, that's some pretty sharp pointing, isn't it? 00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:59.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, it was, uh, it was a… it was a big eye-opener for me, uh, very… it… it was kind of weird, because when I was doing the 24 GHz, uh, with the dish that I had and the setup. 00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:06.000 David - KG5EIU TX: It was very, very narrow compared to the 10 gigahertz dish that I had set up. 00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:16.000 David - KG5EIU TX: What surprised me with the 10 GHz contacts that I was making was how easy it was. Like, I envisioned it to be much more difficult. 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:31.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And when I had the 24 GHz setup, that's how I envisioned the 10 GHz setup. You've got to be… with that… the setup that I had, yeah, I mean, you've got to be spot-on. Like, it's, like, one degree off, and you're… 00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:43.000 David - KG5EIU TX: you're… you're in the mud. So, uh, learned a lot, and, uh, looking forward to participating in, uh, in the next ones. And my next goal is, uh, EME, so… working on that. 00:42:43.000 --> 00:42:45.000 jmcmasters: All right. 00:42:47.000 --> 00:42:53.000 jmcmasters: There's a lot of truth under what you were saying there that I'll bring it out on another slide, but. 00:42:53.000 --> 00:43:01.000 jmcmasters: You know, the the signals are tend to be weaker on 24GHz unless you're right on top of your neighbor. 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:13.000 jmcmasters: And the pointing problem is double, because it's not just you getting it right, it's your target getting it right. So, for a rover, it can be… 00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:14.000 jmcmasters: Uh, double trouble. 00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:34.000 jmcmasters: All right, I know we had some EME contest days. Al contacted me since I did this slide and has put together a contest update of his own that we will be presenting. Anybody have anything else to say about EME contest days or the September VHF contest? 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:42.000 jmcmasters: All right. 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:42.000 Keith WB5ZDP: Man, I wish… 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:44.000 jmcmasters: Oh, somebody spoke up. 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:43.000 Keith WB5ZDP: Diego's. 00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:50.000 Keith WB5ZDP: This is Keith. I just wish 24 gig had been more. 00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:52.000 Keith WB5ZDP: Good. It was pretty cool. 00:43:53.000 --> 00:44:01.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, it sure was. We were having to earn that, except for the Sunday of the first leg. 00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:07.000 jmcmasters: That had some good conditions, even on 24 GHz. 00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:21.000 jmcmasters: I think we made a new record, me and you, Al, on 24 on that Sunday morning. Yes, 200 and… 00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:29.000 jmcmasters: 40s? Yeah. Yeah, terrestrial, without the aircraft scatter. I mean, the brain scatter. 00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:36.000 jmcmasters: I guess a comment I could make on 24 gig, based on receiving your beacon and EM12 IL. 00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:46.000 jmcmasters: it's not in there the whole day. It's only in there for a small portion of the day. And when we're out on 24, when you're out on 24. 00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:49.000 jmcmasters: That's probably only going to favor one or two grids. 00:44:49.000 --> 00:44:57.000 jmcmasters: But it just seems like 1400 or 9:00 AM has been good for the beacon down to your place. 00:44:57.000 --> 00:44:58.000 jmcmasters: So, uh… 00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:04.000 jmcmasters: It's tough to pick the right time. Yeah, and tough to pick the right spot. 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:08.000 jmcmasters: Uh, I think we're getting better, and we… the more that we use the tool, and… 00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:12.000 jmcmasters: have iterations and learn better and better how to use the tool. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:16.000 jmcmasters: better better off we'll be. But. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:23.000 jmcmasters: I just… I'm glad I'm sort of retired, because I think one of the keys is gonna be just being able to be… 00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:32.000 jmcmasters: flexible and get out there, you know, and get out there and stay out there sometimes when we see the predictions are good for the next few days. 00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:50.000 jmcmasters: All right, this is our agenda, and we'll jump straight from here into the technical. But we've gone through the announcements. I have two of the presentations. Al has the middle one there. 00:45:50.000 --> 00:46:06.000 jmcmasters: So we'll have a break after the… my first presentation, then we'll get into some… some other items in the business meeting, and then some show and tell. We have quite a few artifacts and items on our tables here today, uh, where we've been, uh, already. 00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:15.000 jmcmasters: Um, handling this stuff and talking about it. There's wave guide over here. Uh, there's horns. 00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:24.000 jmcmasters: there's a couple of test equipment pieces, an HP415, and a frequency counter, a power meter, um… 00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:40.000 jmcmasters: We were playing with the gun plexer, modulated gun plexers earlier, and checking some horns that David Seals had made. All that stuff is fun to play with, and we have a chance to do that after this first presentation. 00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:45.000 jmcmasters: All right, let me see if I can get this first presentation loaded. 00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:47.000 jmcmasters: And… 00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:52.000 jmcmasters: It should be right here. 00:46:54.000 --> 00:46:55.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:18.000 jmcmasters: All right, so I… I titled this one, New and Old Technologies Come Together, and the theme runs through this whole presentation, and it, uh, was not really planned, uh, like so many things that we… we do as ham operators, is just… 00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:35.000 jmcmasters: Uh, you know, uh, some things fell into my lap and, um, I wanted to do some things I've always wanted to do. And now then I had the equipment and so I wanted to get into it. So one of the things was that we've been wanting to have. 00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:50.000 jmcmasters: uh, more than one antenna range ability, um, so that we can, uh, well, first of all, we're spread out quite a bit across Dallas-Fort Worth, and, um, I personally have, uh, some folks down to the south side. 00:47:50.000 --> 00:48:08.000 jmcmasters: that were wanting to improve their antennas, and so, uh, we either need to wait around until we can get ahold of Kent, or Kent can get set up, and of course, at the conferences, he's always set up, but wanted to have another ability to have. 00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:22.000 jmcmasters: antenna measurements made. So, through conversations with Kent, and also a presentation by Kent Odell at this year's Central States, um, I was just getting more and more inspiration. 00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:34.000 jmcmasters: Uh, then Bob Strickland, uh, handed off several HP415Es. I've given all of those away except for one, uh, and, uh, it's broke, doesn't work. 00:48:34.000 --> 00:48:36.000 jmcmasters: But, um… 00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:51.000 jmcmasters: uh, Mott's, uh, KD5FZX had a working HP415 that he loaned along with crystal detector and its load resistor, and since then, I've acquired, uh, a couple of crystal detectors and load resistors, so I had all the. 00:48:51.000 --> 00:49:10.000 jmcmasters: the stuff, as they say. And then I wanted to have a different design for the source. The source needs to be a 10 gigahertz signal modulated by a 1 kilohertz AM modulation, and I wanted to use a gunplexer, since I also had acquired. 00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:25.000 jmcmasters: Uh, that, and I am more than familiar with Arduinos or, uh, you know, various microchip, microcontrollers, and so I thought, why can't we just chop the bias to the, to the gunplexer and not worry about modulating it? 00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:40.000 jmcmasters: Uh, in a traditional fashion, but… or a more traditional fashion. And, uh, let's see if we can get that thing to turn on and off at 1 kHz and… and see if the 415 will detect it. And… and the long story short is that it worked out just fine. 00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:55.000 jmcmasters: using an Arduino would leverage the higher stability of some of the other alternatives that were considered, and I didn't know at the time how tightly to 1 kHz I needed to be. I've since. 00:49:55.000 --> 00:50:10.000 jmcmasters: seeing how you know what the bandwidth of the swr meter really is. But I wanted to use something that had a fair stability. the Nano or the Uno, and there's other Arduino flavors. 00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:25.000 jmcmasters: that have this, uh, same ability, but PIN9 will drive, uh, a MOSFET directly. I used the IRLZ44N, very common, and I built two separate power supplies with 12-volt input. 00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:33.000 jmcmasters: uh, to the supplies, uh, you know, single bus, and then coming off of that, 5 volts for the Arduino and 9 to 10 volts. 00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:35.000 jmcmasters: It's really 10 volts. 00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:41.000 jmcmasters: They are adjustable, uh, but, uh, the gunplexer's drawing, uh. 00:50:41.000 --> 00:51:00.000 jmcmasters: somewhere between 350 and 400 milliamps, I can't remember. Here's a picture of a gunplexer. This is courtesy of the gunplexer cookbook, uh, referenced in the references, and you can see the construction there with the gunplexer, uh, and the veractor, uh, in the waveguide in the… on the right side of the. 00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:08.000 jmcmasters: diagram breakout. The reactor can be biased to. 00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:23.000 jmcmasters: basically interrupt the, uh, you know, the signal from the gun and change its frequency. It's what it… is what it does. And then there's a… on the left side, there is a mixer diode there, where these gun plexers were used to duplex. 00:51:23.000 --> 00:51:28.000 jmcmasters: mode where they received and transmitted at the same time. 00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:45.000 jmcmasters: Uh, we have the experts of all time here with… between Kent and the others that are in here, primarily Kent, uh, has been sharing Gunplexer stories for years, and uh, probably have just lots and lots of experience. The specs on it are over to the right, if you care to look at them. 00:51:46.000 --> 00:52:00.000 jmcmasters: This is the modulator schematic, it's probably pretty small for you, but basically Arduino on the left side, the power supply regulators are shown across the bottom, and then the MOSFETs in the center top. 00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:16.000 jmcmasters: uh the gun plexers in the upper right and then I I have a a dotted line box around something in the center there that is an optional uh NPM buffer style LED I I like LEDs who who of us don't. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:24.000 jmcmasters: But basically, um, there's an LED hanging off to the left that just, uh, lights on the 5-volt supply to the, uh… 00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:40.000 jmcmasters: gate of the MOSFET, so there's no danger in doing that, uh, because I wanted to stay out of anything that's really, uh, really could change the modulation of the gunplexer. Still, I was very sensitive about. 00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:51.000 jmcmasters: keeping that pure. And so the diagram to the right, that is the optional NPN buffer. That has got a 47K resistor coming off the, uh… 00:52:51.000 --> 00:52:53.000 jmcmasters: The, uh… 00:52:54.000 --> 00:53:10.000 jmcmasters: the return, I think, of the gunplexer, but maybe the positive supply. But basically, it's just going to read the pulses and only draw in microamps, so it couldn't possibly change, you know, too much to do with the gunplexer, which is. 00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:20.000 jmcmasters: drawing 350 milliamps. The Arduino sketch is to the right, and I think I have another blow-up of that, because it's very, very simple for you Arduino types. 00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:39.000 jmcmasters: Here's the bill of materials. It's very brief, very simple. If you have trouble with this, like I've told Ron today, I can take care of this for you. I am going to look at some other alternatives, because there are other alternatives now that are just as accurate as the Arduino. I just have. 00:53:39.000 --> 00:53:56.000 jmcmasters: probably 3 dozen of these laying around, and so, uh, why not use one and, you know, commit it to that, because I just grab them and program them and leave them behind, and grab another one and program them and leave them behind, but I'll be happy to help you. 00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:11.000 jmcmasters: get this done if you want to do one. Here's the program, and I did want to put this in here for the geeks that do Arduinos, because this is making use of the CTC toggle, uh, instead of a bit-banging loop. Normally, we would write a loop, and the loop would just. 00:54:11.000 --> 00:54:28.000 jmcmasters: turn on and turn off a pin, and it would try to do that at a thousand cycles per second, and that loop would determine the chop… the chop rate of the gun plexer through the MOSFET, but there's a very clean way to do that with. 00:54:28.000 --> 00:54:43.000 jmcmasters: any of these type of devices, and that is to bypass the CPU and just use what they call the CTC toggle. Now, what happens here, and why I'm taking some time. 00:54:43.000 --> 00:54:59.000 jmcmasters: Here is there is a no interrupt call made up here where it says in blue, I wrote out do not disturb. So basically it's telling as this program loads, it goes through a setup routine very briefly. 00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:14.000 jmcmasters: it says, uh, don't allow any interrupts. I don't want to be bothered by anything. And then it pokes these four values into registers. And then it turns the interrupts back on. So the whole idea here is that. 00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:29.000 jmcmasters: you're protecting these register rights, because, although they're atomic, they need to be all completed before you allow interrupts. Otherwise there could be an interrupt occur while one registers written, and another one's not. 00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:38.000 jmcmasters: And it could, uh, corrupt what you're trying to do here. And it could also corrupt what the interrupt was trying to do. So… 00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:43.000 jmcmasters: This kept there from being a loop. And I've used this before. It's really handy. 00:55:43.000 --> 00:56:00.000 jmcmasters: Here's the completed unit. We have it here on site to touch and turn on and play with. In fact, it's set up back near the hangar door where David Seals put it, and he was trying different horns out over here with the HP 815. 00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:14.000 jmcmasters: noting the big gain difference between no horn and horn. That's the blue, the red LED, which is just telling us we have gate activity, and then the blue. 00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:21.000 jmcmasters: Uh, is the NPN buffered, uh, circuit that, uh, is, uh, telling us we have. 00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:27.000 jmcmasters: Uh, you know, that we're, we're, we're, we're feeding that gunplexer with something. 00:56:28.000 --> 00:56:35.000 jmcmasters: Here is another view of the completed unit. This is the Arduino, they call them. 00:56:35.000 --> 00:56:51.000 jmcmasters: header boards, or with shields, and so it's a board that has pins that come out of the bottom of it. You can solder all over it like a breadboard, and then you can fit the pins that come out of this breadboard down into the actual pins of the Arduino. 00:56:51.000 --> 00:57:04.000 jmcmasters: And you can keep stacking these. Uh, there's also green terminal strips down each side which have screw binding posts, and I made use of those to, uh, uh, take, uh… 00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:20.000 jmcmasters: take a signal or a voltage out directly. Let's back up one, and I'll show you something. Down here on the bottom, there is the green binding post and a red wire coming out of the third post. Then, if you look at the black. 00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:35.000 jmcmasters: uh… pin receptacles just above it. There… the third one down, the third one to the… from the left to the right, is where I have the LED dropping resistor. So that… those are connected together. 00:57:35.000 --> 00:57:50.000 jmcmasters: by this header board. And so that's the 5 volt rail is what it is. And it's actually 5 volts in the Arduino as well. So all 3 points are connected through that one junction. 00:57:51.000 --> 00:57:54.000 jmcmasters: So it was time to power it up. 00:57:54.000 --> 00:58:09.000 jmcmasters: So when I powered it up, I could tell I had 10 gigahertz output because I turned on a spectrum analyzer. I also have a diode detector. It doesn't do much other than tell you that you've got positive voltage being rectified. 00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:23.000 jmcmasters: by a diode in the waveguide. It's a very small, uh, convenient thing to have as a rover, just to make sure you've got output. Uh, on the spectrum analyzer, I could see that the frequency was about 10 to 25. 00:58:23.000 --> 00:58:36.000 jmcmasters: Uh, then I turned on the 415E, uh, I saw meter movement fluctuations, uh, and I could hear the 1kHz signal coming out of the, uh, audio amplifier output of the 415. 00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:41.000 jmcmasters: So I knew I had, ten kilohertz being, detected. 00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:42.000 jmcmasters: Then, um… 00:58:42.000 --> 00:58:59.000 jmcmasters: I did some oscilloscope traces. I'm going to show you those. There really is a whole lot you can learn just by getting into this one device, and I was amazed at how much I was able to learn, and I wanted to share some of it. 00:58:59.000 --> 00:59:14.000 jmcmasters: Some of it I knew, but some of it I did not know, and I wanted to share it because many of our people are new, and many of them are not new, so bear with me, but many are new and don't know these things, and when I talk to them and. 00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:20.000 jmcmasters: I see the look on their face, I realize they've never looked at an oscilloscope trace. 00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:33.000 jmcmasters: And don't own one. So, you know, diving into this and, you know, if this, if this is, if this stuff interests you, there is plenty to be learned and plenty. I mean, it's like a rabbit hole that never ends. 00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:45.000 jmcmasters: So, I've got some oscilloscope traces I'll spin through. Now, to validate the linearity, I was concerned about this. I mean, it's a 50-year-old box, or maybe 60. 00:59:45.000 --> 01:00:01.000 jmcmasters: Is it 60? Yeah, it's 60. So, initially, I just used some attenuators following the service manual procedure, and it checked out, but it did blow my mind. And it all was about that stupid square law rule versus, you know. 01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:18.000 jmcmasters: a detector versus a straight audio signal input, and I had to sort that for a while, like a couple days, to figure out which was which, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it in here. I can do another presentation with… with all of that that I learned, but it was, uh… 01:00:18.000 --> 01:00:30.000 jmcmasters: it was some learning. After I was sure that it was somewhat linear, I set up on my own antenna range out on my… my driveway, which is a hundred… 01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:41.000 jmcmasters: and 75 feet long, but I didn't put my source that far away. Uh, and I have several 10 gigahertz antennas that Kent has previously measured and written on them with his. 01:00:41.000 --> 01:00:46.000 jmcmasters: What'd you call it? Marks a lot. Marks a lot. 01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:53.000 jmcmasters: Sharpie. That's what I was looking for. And so I had… I had a variety of measurements. I was able to… 01:00:53.000 --> 01:01:03.000 jmcmasters: back my way in to learning how to use the 415. Since then, I've got some procedures, but the first time out there, it was… 01:01:03.000 --> 01:01:06.000 jmcmasters: It was it was just too much fun. 01:01:06.000 --> 01:01:20.000 jmcmasters: All right, some roads that I did not take here, the pin diode in the waveguide, that's the way it's normally modulated FM-wise, but, you know, I didn't want to do that at all. 01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:28.000 jmcmasters: Simply because I did not know, uh, you know, how we would ever get AM through, uh, that type of an approach. 01:01:28.000 --> 01:01:38.000 jmcmasters: Um, and then the mechanical chopper, I threw that in here, because I know that if you had a fan in front of it that could chop it, it would, uh… But you ain't gonna get up to a thousand. 01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:53.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, yeah, you would. You would be. It would be dangerous. Yeah. Hovercraft is is Kent adding to us here some other things that the multi vibrator, the 5 55 timer. I didn't think this would be stable enough. 01:01:53.000 --> 01:01:56.000 jmcmasters: I've used them before, um… 01:01:56.000 --> 01:02:08.000 jmcmasters: it's… it's not necessarily, uh… uh… I mean, it's very… But they are… and it might have worked just fine, given that I know now what kind of bandwidth it… it… 01:02:08.000 --> 01:02:22.000 jmcmasters: it can allow, I'll put it that way. But I'm not done. I would like to try a simpler approach and a cheaper approach. It's a 70 hertz. Yeah. 01:02:23.000 --> 01:02:25.000 jmcmasters: S3, do you got it? 01:02:25.000 --> 01:02:30.000 jmcmasters: I don't know how far down it, but it's going to notch pretty heavily. 01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:34.000 jmcmasters: That's the audio bandwidth. That's the audio bandwidth. Yeah. 01:02:37.000 --> 01:02:48.000 jmcmasters: Um, the Veractor voltage tuning, again, that's used in FM, so… I didn't take those roads. I've also done, uh, sweeped FM in one, sweeping it through our Sedaro filter. 01:02:51.000 --> 01:03:08.000 jmcmasters: Okay, what does that have to do with one kilohertz? You sweep it a thousand times a second. Oh, sweeping it a thousand times a second. Yeah, okay. Well, uh, again, this is something you can hold in your hand right there. Doesn't weigh anything. And, uh, it doesn't take any other equipment other than a battery. 01:03:08.000 --> 01:03:18.000 jmcmasters: So… and I'm trying… I want to make it cheaper, even than it is already, because there's no doubt that we have a plentiful supply of gunplexers, so this could be a source. 01:03:18.000 --> 01:03:24.000 jmcmasters: This is the MOSFET gate trace. Pretty, uh, you know, obvious. 01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:32.000 jmcmasters: pretty clean and looks all right. It's humming at 999.65 hertz, and uh… 01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:38.000 jmcmasters: That's on the trigger, so it's pretty accurate because it's been averaged a lot of times. 01:03:38.000 --> 01:03:49.000 jmcmasters: uh, no problem there. It's going to, uh, be, uh, turning on and off the gun plex, and the gun plex are moving much more sluggish, but that's the next trace. 01:03:49.000 --> 01:04:00.000 jmcmasters: Uh, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna zoom in on this red box that's in here. Uh, there's two traces here. One is on the gate, that's the yellow one that we just saw. 01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:15.000 jmcmasters: Uh, and this is a little bit expanded over what the previous slide was. And then the return node is the magenta. That's the return node on the gunplexer. Uh, at this… right in the middle, where it's at the highest point, it's at 3.7 volts. 01:04:15.000 --> 01:04:22.000 jmcmasters: And it drops pretty abruptly, but there is a little bit of a slope, little curve down at the bottom. 01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:31.000 jmcmasters: Now, when I zoom in on where this red is at, you can see more clearly, uh, the gate. 01:04:31.000 --> 01:04:46.000 jmcmasters: Uh, the yellow traces the gate and how it rises. It takes 64 nanoseconds, according to this, to rise, and it's at 4.8 volts. MOSFET is turning on at that point, and then the gun plexor return node. 01:04:46.000 --> 01:05:01.000 jmcmasters: is the magenta trace. It lags and drops 100. It takes 100 to 200 nanoseconds, and and then it's fully dropped in about a microsecond. 01:05:05.000 --> 01:05:22.000 jmcmasters: Okay, and here is the 10 volt node, which should, you know, would normally be sitting there at 10 volts. It has this little small interrupt. Again, everything is kind of looking right here. Frequency in the upper right on the trigger, 999.626. 01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:30.000 jmcmasters: Uh, the, uh, spacing is right for… it's on 1 millisecond. These are 500… 01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:34.000 jmcmasters: microsecond divisions. 01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:50.000 jmcmasters: And then here is that NPN buffer. It doesn't serve much purpose here except just to show that it's chugging also right along at the same frequency and it's not affecting anything other than to light that little LED up. 01:05:51.000 --> 01:05:54.000 jmcmasters: Now here was the over the air signal. 01:05:54.000 --> 01:05:59.000 jmcmasters: Uh, measured at the crystal detector and load detect, uh, resistor. 01:05:59.000 --> 01:06:04.000 jmcmasters: Again, the frequency is right on where it needs to be. The waveform is a little odd. 01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:06.000 jmcmasters: But the… 01:06:06.000 --> 01:06:10.000 jmcmasters: Frequency is right. And then lastly. 01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:17.000 jmcmasters: Here is the amplifier output from the SWR meter and it just doesn't get much better than that. 01:06:23.000 --> 01:06:28.000 jmcmasters: The HP 415 E. I found this in an old journal. 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:37.000 jmcmasters: October 1961 this dude is using this is probably Kent when he was younger. 01:06:38.000 --> 01:06:46.000 jmcmasters: 1961. I used the dude one for a long time. 01:06:48.000 --> 01:06:57.000 jmcmasters: This is the he's this this is an advertisement for the 415 E. 01:06:57.000 --> 01:07:08.000 jmcmasters: Uh, it was an improved, later production version of the 415C. It had updated connectors, optional accessories, refined internal layout, expanded documentation. 01:07:08.000 --> 01:07:12.000 jmcmasters: Retained the same core measurement principle and accuracy. 01:07:12.000 --> 01:07:20.000 jmcmasters: And a 415C was the original 1961 model. The 415E was the '66 update. 01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:21.000 jmcmasters: Uh-huh. 01:07:21.000 --> 01:07:26.000 jmcmasters: Better compatibility with modern interfaces, blah, blah, blah, blah. 01:07:27.000 --> 01:07:31.000 jmcmasters: Here's a overlay of our 415A. 01:07:31.000 --> 01:07:37.000 jmcmasters: It is primarily an audio device that is an AC voltage voltmeter. 01:07:37.000 --> 01:07:42.000 jmcmasters: It has a very narrow bandwidth with one kilohertz bandpass filter. 01:07:42.000 --> 01:07:48.000 jmcmasters: It has high gain amplifier, 3-stage amplifier, with relative gain controls. 01:07:48.000 --> 01:07:55.000 jmcmasters: It does require other equipment to actually measure SWR, which was not our objective. 01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:57.000 jmcmasters: But just so you know. 01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:02.000 jmcmasters: Mike mentioned about five other companies make a similar piece of equipment. 01:08:03.000 --> 01:08:05.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 01:08:06.000 --> 01:08:09.000 jmcmasters: They don't have the legacy this one has. 01:08:09.000 --> 01:08:12.000 jmcmasters: Let me show you what I mean by that. 01:08:13.000 --> 01:08:19.000 jmcmasters: The 415E requires a 1 kHz audio signal at the input. 01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:23.000 jmcmasters: This can be produced by a crystal detector demodulating an RF signal. 01:08:23.000 --> 01:08:32.000 jmcmasters: The crystal detector, along with the load resistor, operates on the square law principle which the HP 415E is designed to use. 01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:36.000 jmcmasters: The meter does not deal with RF. 01:08:39.000 --> 01:08:44.000 jmcmasters: The crystal detector covers a range of RF frequencies. 01:08:46.000 --> 01:08:52.000 jmcmasters: Any frequency that the crystal detector can cover or detect will work with this meter. 01:08:56.000 --> 01:08:58.000 jmcmasters: Here's some crystal detectors. 01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:05.000 jmcmasters: Um, all of them cover 10 megahertz to 10 gigahertz, and some… one of them covers up to 18. 01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:09.000 jmcmasters: gigahertz. The middle unit. 01:09:09.000 --> 01:09:17.000 jmcmasters: which is KM5PO, yellow label, and next to it's a load resistor with red caps. 01:09:17.000 --> 01:09:24.000 jmcmasters: That's actually a detector mount, which can be unscrewed, and you can change. 01:09:24.000 --> 01:09:29.000 jmcmasters: The contact, the point contact diode, which there's a picture of one on the very far right. 01:09:31.000 --> 01:09:41.000 jmcmasters: And the detector on the almost all the way to the right with the APC7 connector is the 18 gig detector. 01:09:41.000 --> 01:09:44.000 jmcmasters: Okay, here comes the square law. 01:09:44.000 --> 01:09:54.000 jmcmasters: at low, at low ish power levels, we find a square law response typically below -20 dBm. 01:09:54.000 --> 01:09:58.000 jmcmasters: Uh, output voltage proportional to the square of the input signal amplitude. 01:09:58.000 --> 01:10:06.000 jmcmasters: This behavior comes from the nonlinear current voltage characteristic of the diode operating in the nonlinear region. 01:10:06.000 --> 01:10:08.000 jmcmasters: a square log graph. 01:10:08.000 --> 01:10:11.000 jmcmasters: plots output voltage or current. 01:10:11.000 --> 01:10:14.000 jmcmasters: versus input signal amplitude or power. 01:10:14.000 --> 01:10:27.000 jmcmasters: The curve shape will be, for small input amplitudes, the curve is quadratic, so it rises steeply with the square of the input amplitude. Those words really confused me, until I just saw it really done. 01:10:27.000 --> 01:10:36.000 jmcmasters: Here is a typical response, and this is from the Keysight datasheet covering the 8470B, which is that 18GHz detector that I had a picture of. 01:10:36.000 --> 01:10:44.000 jmcmasters: And you can see these, uh, what looks like about a 45-degree trace going up from left to right. 01:10:44.000 --> 01:10:59.000 jmcmasters: Uh, this paragraph, which was also in the nomenclature, says, for many reflection and transmission membership measurements, it is desirable to use the detector in a square law region, where its output voltage is proportional to the input RF power. 01:10:59.000 --> 01:11:07.000 jmcmasters: As shown in this figure, the LBSD, that stands for Low Barrier Scotty Diode. 01:11:07.000 --> 01:11:17.000 jmcmasters: typically operate within .5 dB of square law from the tangential signal sensitivity. That's a fancy word. 01:11:17.000 --> 01:11:20.000 jmcmasters: Uh, up to minus 18 dBm. 01:11:20.000 --> 01:11:31.000 jmcmasters: Uh, by specifying this option, which is C-002, a specially selected loading resistor is provided, which extends the square law region to approximately 8 dB. 01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:37.000 jmcmasters: with an associated decrease in sensitivity. So that's the lower of the two graphs there. 01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:50.000 jmcmasters: You're gonna see when I did my own measurements, I got this… almost this exact same chart, and there were a lot of measurements taken. I did 2 detectors and took 70 measurements apiece. 01:11:51.000 --> 01:12:04.000 jmcmasters: But that's not this graph. This graph basically shows us where the… where… how they actually line up, uh, separately when we just consider where the square law is, down here by this gray… 01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:19.000 jmcmasters: Band is a 1 dB wide, uh, band that would dictate square law. I don't like that it's sitting down like this on the bottom horizontal compared to, uh, the charts that we've seen, but this does show us that from about, uh, minus 60. 01:12:19.000 --> 01:12:28.000 jmcmasters: to minus 20, which is at the far right, we're very close to operating cleanly in that one area. 01:12:28.000 --> 01:12:35.000 jmcmasters: Here are the… I did it this way. Here are the different selector switch settings. 01:12:35.000 --> 01:12:52.000 jmcmasters: Uh, and they're, uh, you know, input over output graphs, and I put all these together in the next graph, which then that makes real good sense, but in here, you can see that the, uh, 50 dB range setting is the one with the. 01:12:52.000 --> 01:13:07.000 jmcmasters: The most anomaly to it, that would be the first graph or the first upward graph on either blue or red. The other ones tend to look pretty clean. They're falling off a little bit at the ends. 01:13:08.000 --> 01:13:14.000 jmcmasters: from being, uh, you know, straight lines. But, uh, when you put them all together, you get this. 01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:21.000 jmcmasters: And this looks very much like the original documented square law. 01:13:21.000 --> 01:13:23.000 jmcmasters: graph. 01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:28.000 jmcmasters: A couple of things you can get from here. First of all, there's a 2 dB jump. 01:13:29.000 --> 01:13:43.000 jmcmasters: right on the minus 50 vertical line. All of those neighboring measurements were 1 dB, and they were pretty close to exactly 1 dB. But this one takes a 2 dB jump, and both detectors had it. 01:13:43.000 --> 01:13:47.000 jmcmasters: So that sounds like the signal generator, doesn't it? Yeah. 01:13:48.000 --> 01:14:01.000 jmcmasters: And that, uh, I was doing this with a signal generator that had a vernier, uh, dial, and I would turn it down 1 dB. It was in tenths of a dB, and it would turn it down 1, 1, 1. 01:14:01.000 --> 01:14:09.000 jmcmasters: And so it probably has a problem right there. It needs to be calibrated out. But the blue, uh, detector is, uh, about, uh… 01:14:10.000 --> 01:14:13.000 jmcmasters: 5 dB maybe, more sensitive. 01:14:13.000 --> 01:14:19.000 jmcmasters: Uh, in the middle ranges there, and only 1 dB or so at the ends. 01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:24.000 jmcmasters: So this made me feel very good that at least this is tracking. 01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:27.000 jmcmasters: And I had done the range. 01:14:27.000 --> 01:14:42.000 jmcmasters: test that's in the book. I mean, let's go to the next slide, because there's all these tests. Now, when you see this rabbit hole, or this whirlpool in my presentations, that's the big warning, that. 01:14:42.000 --> 01:14:45.000 jmcmasters: If you want to go there, you better have days. 01:14:47.000 --> 01:14:50.000 jmcmasters: And you're going to see some of these come out because. 01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:54.000 jmcmasters: I recognize I've got a problem. 01:14:54.000 --> 01:15:12.000 jmcmasters: So the service manual has all of these tests. You can run sensitivity, noise, range accuracy, expanded range accuracy, input frequencies, and bandwidth. You know, the range accuracy specification was plus or minus .05 dB per 10 dB range selection. 01:15:13.000 --> 01:15:17.000 jmcmasters: So it would have you do like this. It would say. 01:15:18.000 --> 01:15:21.000 jmcmasters: Set the range on 20. 01:15:22.000 --> 01:15:38.000 jmcmasters: Now, increase the audio input. It was audio. It wasn't a detector. Increase the audio input until you have a mid-range needle setting. And they referred to the top scale, which is the expanded scale. 01:15:38.000 --> 01:15:41.000 jmcmasters: That covers 2 dB, so the center was 1. 01:15:41.000 --> 01:15:51.000 jmcmasters: So it used that kind of nomenclature. Set the needle to one using the audio strength that you're inputting, one kilohertz. 01:15:51.000 --> 01:15:53.000 jmcmasters: Now… 01:15:53.000 --> 01:16:02.000 jmcmasters: Add 10 dB and switch the amplifier or the dB range to 30, and it should be on 1, because now you've… 01:16:02.000 --> 01:16:04.000 jmcmasters: Added. 01:16:04.000 --> 01:16:20.000 jmcmasters: 10 dB and you've amplified 10 dB, it should… the needle should be in the same position. And so, when it says .05 dB per 10 dB range selection, that's what it means. That needle should come back to the center, be within .05… 01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:27.000 jmcmasters: That's a great scale. It gets this big and it covers 2 dB. So it's got lots of fine graduations on it. 01:16:29.000 --> 01:16:36.000 jmcmasters: Max, uh, input frequency spec is 1000Hz, adjustable plus or minus 35Hz. 01:16:36.000 --> 01:16:47.000 jmcmasters: I found that you could easily find where the meter frequency is actually tweaked at by just tuning the input audio frequency, vary it a little bit, and watch the needle move. 01:16:47.000 --> 01:16:52.000 jmcmasters: Well, mine happened to be set right on 1,000, so I'm not changing it. 01:16:52.000 --> 01:16:59.000 jmcmasters: Bandwidth, the same thing. You can adjust it from 15 to 130 hertz wide. 01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:03.000 jmcmasters: But I only did the range accuracy. 01:17:05.000 --> 01:17:10.000 jmcmasters: So I want to talk just a minute about RFDBs and voltage DBs. 01:17:10.000 --> 01:17:17.000 jmcmasters: with a 1kHz voltage applied directly to the input. That's an audio signal, not from a detector. 01:17:17.000 --> 01:17:20.000 jmcmasters: The voltage has to change 20 dB. 01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:24.000 jmcmasters: a 10 to 1 ratio to move the meter 10 dB. 01:17:26.000 --> 01:17:33.000 jmcmasters: As opposed to with RF through a square log detector, a 10 dB RF change moves the meter 10 dB. 01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:47.000 jmcmasters: So, the range dial, which is the far right dial, is marked 0 to 60 in 10 dB steps, which translates to 0 to 120 dB of voltage gain. 01:17:47.000 --> 01:17:50.000 jmcmasters: At the one kilohertz. 01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:53.000 jmcmasters: Each dial step adds 20 dB of voltage gain. 01:17:56.000 --> 01:18:00.000 jmcmasters: So here's an audio test for you 415E. 01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:04.000 jmcmasters: Owners feed a one kilohertz sine wave. 01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:16.000 jmcmasters: from a audio oscillator straight into the input, approximately 0.5… it's… it should say 0.5. It's… sorry. It says 5 volt. It should be 0.5 volt peak-to-peak. 01:18:17.000 --> 01:18:27.000 jmcmasters: It's approximate, because the next sentence says, adjust the audio oscillator gain for full-scale reading, which is all the way to the right, where 0 dB on the bottom scale. 01:18:27.000 --> 01:18:32.000 jmcmasters: So it might be 0.491. You have to be able to adjust it. 01:18:32.000 --> 01:18:40.000 jmcmasters: Add 10 dB of attenuation, which is a voltage ratio of .316, and the meter should read 5 dB. 01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:44.000 jmcmasters: Wrap your head around that. 01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:59.000 jmcmasters: All right, going to step through the schematic here very briefly. I'll try not to bore you here, but it's pretty simple schematic in that it only has two pages. But it's a pretty nice design. 01:18:59.000 --> 01:19:10.000 jmcmasters: And the red boxes around these, resistor ladders are that is the range DB range switch that we've been talking about. 01:19:10.000 --> 01:19:14.000 jmcmasters: Um, that left-hand side, um. 01:19:14.000 --> 01:19:20.000 jmcmasters: Uh, you can't read this, but if you blow up the schematic, the… the resistor ladder has… 01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:25.000 jmcmasters: Start from top to bottom, has 182K resistor, 18.2K resistor. 01:19:25.000 --> 01:19:30.000 jmcmasters: 1,820 ohm resistor and a 202 ohm resistor. 01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:39.000 jmcmasters: Each of those taps of that string is a divide by 10 in voltage from the one before it, so that's 20 dB of voltage per step. 01:19:39.000 --> 01:19:50.000 jmcmasters: Green box on the far right connects to the next page, and all that's left to say about this one is the input amplifiers in the center at the top, and the power supplies at the bottom. 01:19:51.000 --> 01:19:55.000 jmcmasters: Here's page two. 01:19:55.000 --> 01:20:05.000 jmcmasters: the red boxes are still showing us the dB scale, but now it's on the expand. There's two knobs on that. One is… 01:20:05.000 --> 01:20:11.000 jmcmasters: The one that we've talked about mostly runs from 0 to 60, and then there's an inner knob. 01:20:11.000 --> 01:20:13.000 jmcmasters: that runs from… 01:20:13.000 --> 01:20:18.000 jmcmasters: normal in ORM, where it's not in the circuit, all the way up to 8. 01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:21.000 jmcmasters: So… 01:20:21.000 --> 01:20:23.000 jmcmasters: You can expand. 01:20:23.000 --> 01:20:29.000 jmcmasters: the the meter scale by. 01:20:29.000 --> 01:20:41.000 jmcmasters: clicking the innermost knob, turning it to the right, and it will add that much more resolution. And you have to look at the top scale to do that. 01:20:42.000 --> 01:20:46.000 jmcmasters: Uh, so that's what's circled in red here. 01:20:46.000 --> 01:20:54.000 jmcmasters: Now we get down, there's a green circle. That happens to be, oops, got ahead of myself here. 01:20:54.000 --> 01:20:55.000 jmcmasters: ah. 01:20:55.000 --> 01:20:59.000 jmcmasters: That is a resistor that controls bandwidth. 01:20:59.000 --> 01:21:10.000 jmcmasters: then we've got a third amplifier and a fourth amplifier right in the center. Down at the bottom, bring your focus down there, that is a wine bridge circuit. 01:21:10.000 --> 01:21:11.000 jmcmasters: It it. 01:21:11.000 --> 01:21:14.000 jmcmasters: Does anybody know what a Hawaiian Bridge Circuit is? 01:21:15.000 --> 01:21:17.000 jmcmasters: I'll bet you do. 01:21:18.000 --> 01:21:36.000 jmcmasters: Wine bridge circuit, there's a lot of these kind of circuits, but the wine bridge circuit that's used here is for reaching a null, which will control the bias up to the third amplifier stage. So we'll get into that here in this next slide. 01:21:37.000 --> 01:21:50.000 jmcmasters: I got blue arrows. This is actually the 1,000 Hz signal coming down into this circuit. Uh, the DC bias is gonna be controlled by this transistor over on the left. 01:21:50.000 --> 01:22:06.000 jmcmasters: The wine bridge consists of two bridges. I've circled three components in red that makes up the first bridge or first leg of the bridge. And, those are 1%, value resistors. The second leg of the bridge is the blue circles. 01:22:06.000 --> 01:22:22.000 jmcmasters: And the significance here is primarily the frequency control, which is kind of hanging out here to the right. It's these two variable pots, these resistors that are ganged together, and they are reached through a screwdriver slot. 01:22:22.000 --> 01:22:28.000 jmcmasters: in the front. That's what's going to tune the center frequency. 01:22:28.000 --> 01:22:32.000 jmcmasters: of this circuit, and thus the SWR meter. 01:22:34.000 --> 01:22:47.000 jmcmasters: The bridge stability control over here on the left is another pot, but it's reached on the circuit board, it's not a front panel. So on the front panel, you have bandwidth, which was on the previous page. 01:22:47.000 --> 01:22:49.000 jmcmasters: and you have. 01:22:49.000 --> 01:22:56.000 jmcmasters: The frequency adjust or peak. Which is brought out by the wine bridge circuit here. 01:23:00.000 --> 01:23:15.000 jmcmasters: So there's a history here to Wine Bridge. And I want to go through it. 1891, Max Wine invented the bridge for measuring impedance. Its RC network has a phase shift that passes through zero at exactly one frequency. 01:23:16.000 --> 01:23:20.000 jmcmasters: In 1938, what is that? That's 40 years. 01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:22.000 jmcmasters: 50 years. 01:23:22.000 --> 01:23:30.000 jmcmasters: Larnit Meacham uses a light bulb to stabilize a bridge oscillator. This is the precedent. 01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:32.000 jmcmasters: You'll see why. 01:23:32.000 --> 01:23:38.000 jmcmasters: 1938 to 1939, Bill Hewlett applies the bulb. 01:23:38.000 --> 01:23:45.000 jmcmasters: to the WineBridge audio oscillator, which becomes the HB-200A. 01:23:45.000 --> 01:23:52.000 jmcmasters: It's built in David Packard's Palo Alto garage and is HP's first product. 01:23:52.000 --> 01:24:00.000 jmcmasters: The circuit is the subject of Hewlett's 1939 Stanford thesis and HP's first cited patent. 01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:06.000 jmcmasters: The 1939 IRE paper is credited to Thurman, Buss, Hewlett, and Cahill. 01:24:06.000 --> 01:24:11.000 jmcmasters: 1939 to 1940, Disney buys eight. 01:24:11.000 --> 01:24:13.000 jmcmasters: Custom… 01:24:13.000 --> 01:24:17.000 jmcmasters: He gave it a different letter, 200B. 01:24:17.000 --> 01:24:21.000 jmcmasters: for the , which was known as. 01:24:22.000 --> 01:24:23.000 jmcmasters: uh… 01:24:23.000 --> 01:24:27.000 jmcmasters: Fantasound. Fantasound. 01:24:27.000 --> 01:24:29.000 jmcmasters: And it was really… 01:24:29.000 --> 01:24:34.000 jmcmasters: a physical sound surround. 01:24:34.000 --> 01:24:36.000 jmcmasters: Experience. 01:24:36.000 --> 01:24:53.000 jmcmasters: In 19, from the 1950s to the 90s, the 200 CD device, which covered 5 hertz to 600 kilohertz, became the standard lab instrument. In the 1960s, we've come all the way from 1891 to 1960s, the same bridge idea. 01:24:53.000 --> 01:24:57.000 jmcmasters: Goes into the 415 SWR meter. 01:24:57.000 --> 01:25:03.000 jmcmasters: My meter schematic is copyrighted 1965. So there's two different. 01:25:03.000 --> 01:25:19.000 jmcmasters: Adaptations of Wine Bridge here. The one, uh, for Disney and predecessor is, uh, is an oscillator. And so it has a positive output, a positive bias. The one in the 415 is a negative bias. 01:25:19.000 --> 01:25:22.000 jmcmasters: Implementation, which is meant to. 01:25:22.000 --> 01:25:29.000 jmcmasters: null at the frequency of design, which is if we want it to be a thousand kilohertz. 01:25:29.000 --> 01:25:42.000 jmcmasters: Did I say that right? Yeah. One kilohertz, a thousand hertz. And then that null controls the bias, increases the bias of the third and fourth amplifier. 01:25:42.000 --> 01:25:45.000 jmcmasters: So they're opposite implementations. 01:25:46.000 --> 01:25:58.000 jmcmasters: Here's the 200B that Disney used. It was a modified version of the first product, the 200A. It was designed specifically for Disney's Fantasia project. 01:25:58.000 --> 01:26:04.000 jmcmasters: with a frequency range extended down to 20 kilohertz. I'm sorry, 20 hertz. 01:26:04.000 --> 01:26:10.000 jmcmasters: to cover the full audible spectrum effectively. Disney used eight of these. 01:26:10.000 --> 01:26:25.000 jmcmasters: As precision test tones to calibrate and validate the Fantasound multi channel system during Fantasia's production and presentation. So the, in these days, when you went to the theater, they had an orchestra. 01:26:27.000 --> 01:26:30.000 jmcmasters: It wasn't recorded on the film. 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:45.000 jmcmasters: And so, they would go… they would go to these sites, and they would tune up these instruments, and they would use… they had 8 different channels for 8 different areas of instruments, and they would use the HP200B. 01:26:45.000 --> 01:26:48.000 jmcmasters: to calibrate. 01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:50.000 jmcmasters: The musical instrument sounds. 01:26:50.000 --> 01:26:52.000 jmcmasters: I think it's really important. 01:26:53.000 --> 01:27:05.000 jmcmasters: weird and… and cool at the same time. This is a great big box, by the way. It's like this… it's like a DX100 heat kit. It's a great big box, got a great big heavy lid, got great big tubes and transformers, and a great big gain capacitor. 01:27:05.000 --> 01:27:09.000 jmcmasters: Thing going down through the under that dial. 01:27:09.000 --> 01:27:19.000 jmcmasters: There's a link there if you must know more. I want to stop one more time on the circuit, because I stared at this for a couple hours, and I said, how in the hell is that meter working? 01:27:19.000 --> 01:27:25.000 jmcmasters: How does that meter — it's got to be a DC signal at that point. I finally saw it. 01:27:25.000 --> 01:27:30.000 jmcmasters: The these transistors are in push pull. 01:27:30.000 --> 01:27:40.000 jmcmasters: Q12 at the top, Q13 at the bottom. They're conducting one at a time on alternate hash cycles. So the AC tone is the composite of both cycles, tied to the joined knitters. 01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:45.000 jmcmasters: through the coupling cap C28, developed over R51. Those are over to the right. 01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:56.000 jmcmasters: The collector current of Q12, conducting on the half cycle, and smooth by C26, can drive the meter directly. No rectifier diodes are needed. 01:27:56.000 --> 01:27:58.000 jmcmasters: So that's how they did it. 01:28:02.000 --> 01:28:07.000 jmcmasters: Man, I dreamt about that one. I've kept thinking, how are they getting? 01:28:08.000 --> 01:28:12.000 jmcmasters: How do you say it's driving the AC? 01:28:12.000 --> 01:28:16.000 jmcmasters: Well, it's AB, I mean, it's class B push pull. 01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:26.000 jmcmasters: So one transistor is conducting on one half cycle, and the other is conducting on the other half cycle. So they get AC. 01:28:27.000 --> 01:28:39.000 jmcmasters: But to get the DC needed to drive the meter, it comes off the emitter of one of the transistors. Half the cycle. 01:28:39.000 --> 01:28:40.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. 01:28:47.000 --> 01:28:58.000 jmcmasters: All right, let's move on to what we built this stuff for, setting up the microwave range. I've got a reference to Kent Odell's Central States talk. 01:28:58.000 --> 01:29:02.000 jmcmasters: that he gave this year. Where were we? St. Louis. 01:29:03.000 --> 01:29:15.000 jmcmasters: Cave Gerardo. Yeah. And, and, and by the time, uh, Kent had spoken and, and we noticed that he had an article, he had a, he had a paper in the proceedings. Kent. 01:29:15.000 --> 01:29:28.000 jmcmasters: Britain had already schooled me on most of this, and so I had some understanding that despite looking like he's receiving a signal, he's really. 01:29:28.000 --> 01:29:37.000 jmcmasters: detecting audio. He's receiving a signal, but he's detecting audio. And so, these were the actual steps that came from Kent Odell's paper. 01:29:37.000 --> 01:29:44.000 jmcmasters: Uh, and, and he's dealing with, uh, 1296 here. Uh, when we go through it, place the source antenna. 01:29:44.000 --> 01:29:56.000 jmcmasters: a horn or similar, on the ground, with cardboard, EcoSorb, or other… another non-reflective material underneath. Connect a signal generator to the source antenna and configure the power source as needed. 01:29:57.000 --> 01:29:59.000 jmcmasters: Configure the signal generator. 01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:04.000 jmcmasters: Frequency 1296.1, output 10 dBm. 01:30:04.000 --> 01:30:13.000 jmcmasters: Step 4, position the receive reference antenna approximately 100 feet from the source. Step 5, connect the detector diode and attenuator. 01:30:13.000 --> 01:30:15.000 jmcmasters: To the receive reference. 01:30:15.000 --> 01:30:17.000 jmcmasters: antenna. 01:30:17.000 --> 01:30:19.000 jmcmasters: Step 6. 01:30:19.000 --> 01:30:28.000 jmcmasters: Use the HB415E to verify a flat field, less than or equal to 1 dB variation at the receive end. 01:30:28.000 --> 01:30:32.000 jmcmasters: Subset. Mark the center of the field on the ground. 01:30:32.000 --> 01:30:41.000 jmcmasters: So, as Kent explains this to me, I would like to stand and show you, but basically, you're moving the reference antenna around. 01:30:41.000 --> 01:30:50.000 jmcmasters: And he's doing this up and down, left and right, you're moving, and you're trying to find a field, an area above which you're gonna mark the ground. 01:30:50.000 --> 01:30:57.000 jmcmasters: Or remember where it's at. And that's gonna be where you're gonna do your measurements. All your measurements. 01:30:59.000 --> 01:31:13.000 jmcmasters: 7. Record the baseline reading. Now, this threw me until I… I was out there myself, and then talking to Kent to verify. He had, in parentheses, approximately minus 2 dB on the minus 30 dB scale. 01:31:15.000 --> 01:31:21.000 jmcmasters: Well, he's telling me where he put it, you know, he's telling me what the values are, but. 01:31:21.000 --> 01:31:31.000 jmcmasters: And I've got to record that, but how did it get there? You know, how did the values get to a minus 2 on the 30 dB scale? Well. 01:31:31.000 --> 01:31:34.000 jmcmasters: You got to make that happen. You got to make. 01:31:34.000 --> 01:31:37.000 jmcmasters: You gotta make this system the… 01:31:37.000 --> 01:31:44.000 jmcmasters: The physics work to where you are on the 30 EV scale and you have about minus 2 on the meter. 01:31:44.000 --> 01:31:53.000 jmcmasters: And this is not a hard law, is it, Ken? It's not hard. Well, he's using Yagis, which are all going to be right around 10, 15 dB. 01:31:53.000 --> 01:32:00.000 jmcmasters: If we're using horns and dishes, we've got a lot wider slant. I usually set mine to zero on the first one. 01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:01.000 jmcmasters: We'll see. 01:32:03.000 --> 01:32:18.000 jmcmasters: Okay. Well, I'm not going to try to adapt to yours at the moment. I'm going to finish the explanation using Kent. And here's the thing, after talking with Kent, I put this in red. Your objective here should keep. 01:32:18.000 --> 01:32:26.000 jmcmasters: You should try to hope that your standard horn and your antenna under test gain are within 10 dB-ish. 01:32:26.000 --> 01:32:37.000 jmcmasters: Because you don't want to get too far out on the ends of that square law where things don't work well. You want to try to have it in the linear section as much as possible. 01:32:39.000 --> 01:32:54.000 jmcmasters: So the one deviation here from Ken Odell's nomenclature is in red. The next step, replace the reference antenna with the antenna under test. Move the antenna up and down, left and right to obtain the peak reading. Do not move forward or backward. Remain at the marks. 01:32:54.000 --> 01:33:04.000 jmcmasters: ground location, calculate the gain relative to the reference antenna, and record the results. And I've got a couple of examples here. 01:33:04.000 --> 01:33:19.000 jmcmasters: So, we're going to… first, I want to show you this. This is… there's a little silliness in this, but as you get up to 76 gigahertz, uh, because I don't know we'll have an antenna range to cover those frequencies anytime soon, although, you know, you never know. 01:33:19.000 --> 01:33:22.000 jmcmasters: But look at the path losses at 100 feet. 01:33:23.000 --> 01:33:26.000 jmcmasters: So at 10 gig, you've got 82 dB. 01:33:26.000 --> 01:33:33.000 jmcmasters: At 24 gig, you've got 89 dB. At 47 gig, 95. 01:33:38.000 --> 01:33:52.000 jmcmasters: All right, here's an example, and this is a walkthrough of the map. We're not yet really considering how the standard game horn fits in, but I… this is for me. I started with something simple. It was just simple math. 01:33:52.000 --> 01:34:00.000 jmcmasters: You add this up, you end up with this result. So, if the source transmit power is 10 dBm. 01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:08.000 jmcmasters: and the source horn gain is 15 dB, then you have an EIRP of 25 dBm. 01:34:08.000 --> 01:34:20.000 jmcmasters: If the path loss is 88.44 dB, the received power, we could assume, will be about minus 63.44 dBm. 01:34:20.000 --> 01:34:23.000 jmcmasters: If the receive antenna. 01:34:23.000 --> 01:34:31.000 jmcmasters: gain of the antenna under test that was previously measured is 30 dB, then the final receive level. 01:34:31.000 --> 01:34:48.000 jmcmasters: has to be something like minus 33.44. It's increased from minus 63 to minus 33 by way of the antenna. David, you were playing with the horns earlier. You could clearly see it. It would peg the meter, you know. It'd go from nothing to peg the meter. 01:34:48.000 --> 01:34:53.000 jmcmasters: As soon as you added a horn. So that's all. This is basic calculation. Now. 01:34:54.000 --> 01:35:00.000 jmcmasters: Here, we'll get a little more serious and say that we know the reference horn gain is 20 dB. 01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:06.000 jmcmasters: We will set intentionally, through physics and through moving things around. 01:35:06.000 --> 01:35:18.000 jmcmasters: we will set the reference level on the HP415E to read 2 dB on the 30 dB scale. Again, that's not what Kent would do, but that's what Ken O'Dell was saying, do. 01:35:20.000 --> 01:35:31.000 jmcmasters: Now, replace the reference horn with the antenna under test, and the receive level, uh, we have to switch the dB scale knob, because we pegged the meter. 01:35:31.000 --> 01:35:35.000 jmcmasters: We have to switch it down to the 20 dB scale, and we observe 2 dB. 01:35:35.000 --> 01:35:38.000 jmcmasters: That is exactly a 10 dB difference from. 01:35:39.000 --> 01:35:42.000 jmcmasters: 2 dB on the 30. 01:35:42.000 --> 01:35:48.000 jmcmasters: Say again. If you're on the 20 scale, you're at a square wall. Well, let's just pretend we're not. Okay. 01:35:49.000 --> 01:35:52.000 jmcmasters: Let's pretend it's special and it goes all the way to 20. 01:35:52.000 --> 01:35:56.000 jmcmasters: So here, you know, I'm just trying to show that. 01:35:57.000 --> 01:36:02.000 jmcmasters: You end up with 30 dB this way, also, as the gain of the antenna. 01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:17.000 jmcmasters: Now, what Ken is saying is very important to me, because I think we're going to have to spend some time with him, and see how we get, you know, we do this in the right zone. Otherwise, your measurements are meaningless. They… well, they're inaccurate, I'll put it that way. 01:36:17.000 --> 01:36:21.000 jmcmasters: But there's really a 3 element and 17 element. It's only about 10 max. 01:36:22.000 --> 01:36:24.000 jmcmasters: Right. 01:36:24.000 --> 01:36:38.000 jmcmasters: Okay, so that'll give you some idea of what we're… where we're headed with this. I do have some next steps here. I want to add 24 gigahertz, because we have 24 gigahertz antennas, uh, that we're working with, and uh… 01:36:38.000 --> 01:36:54.000 jmcmasters: you know, this could be useful for that. Probably like to pick up at least one VHF band. We'll probably use regular signal generators for, uh, sources on that. Uh, some of those are not necessarily 70-pounders. 01:36:54.000 --> 01:37:02.000 jmcmasters: uh… I'd like to create a standard gunplexer modulation PCB board. There are other alternatives other than… 01:37:02.000 --> 01:37:16.000 jmcmasters: you know, a Nano or a Uno, even the ATtiny, which is pretty limited, but it may be stable enough. Another thing about a PIC, if you were going to be out on a range for 2 or 3 or 4 hours. 01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:33.000 jmcmasters: You could technically tune the frequency of the PIC if you had to, but you really don't want that problem. You really want it to be rock stable and you got enough to do without worrying about the source modulator changing frequencies. 01:37:33.000 --> 01:37:40.000 jmcmasters: So, I know that this could lead to, uh, using KiCad. In fact, I used KiCad to do the schematic. 01:37:40.000 --> 01:37:50.000 jmcmasters: But, um, if I'm gonna go this far, I might as well create the Gerbers and order the boards. So there'll probably be several iterations as we find the right, uh… 01:37:50.000 --> 01:38:01.000 jmcmasters: program, uh, chip for the, the work. I also got, uh, for my show-and-tell, I, uh, have ordered some, uh, SAMD21. 01:38:01.000 --> 01:38:11.000 jmcmasters: uh, development boards, and I got two of them. I got them just yesterday. I haven't played with them yet, but these are yet another super tiny. 01:38:12.000 --> 01:38:17.000 jmcmasters: you know, 32-bit processor that runs at 48 megahertz. It's an Arduino. 01:38:17.000 --> 01:38:32.000 jmcmasters: you might as well say it's just a powerful one. And the thing about the SAMD21 is it's built for medical device or wearable technology, in that it has USB functions built in. 01:38:32.000 --> 01:38:37.000 jmcmasters: It has higher ADC resolution. 01:38:37.000 --> 01:38:52.000 jmcmasters: abilities, and a couple of other features. It has its… it has pull-up resistors already built into it. It's meant to reduce the number of supporting components you have to put into a device, because it's meant to be worn, basically, on… 01:38:52.000 --> 01:38:55.000 jmcmasters: Your wrist, or your arm, or… 01:38:55.000 --> 01:38:57.000 jmcmasters: I don't know, around your neck. 01:38:57.000 --> 01:39:00.000 jmcmasters: The year 2048, darn it. 01:39:00.000 --> 01:39:07.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'd like a 24 gig gun so that I can just do the same thing with 24. 01:39:09.000 --> 01:39:12.000 jmcmasters: I'd like to study this some more. 01:39:12.000 --> 01:39:18.000 jmcmasters: Probably might turn into a Central States. 01:39:18.000 --> 01:39:20.000 jmcmasters: Presentation dependent. 01:39:20.000 --> 01:39:30.000 jmcmasters: you know, what we do. Here's the references for all the stuff that we talked about. If you need a copy of this cookbook, see me. I'm not gonna put a link there. 01:39:30.000 --> 01:39:39.000 jmcmasters: to that one, and then, of course, you needed to be at Central States, uh, in order to see, uh, you know, Kent, or, uh, you can… 01:39:39.000 --> 01:39:41.000 jmcmasters: Get from here what you need. 01:39:42.000 --> 01:39:44.000 jmcmasters: And that's all I've got. Any questions? 01:39:50.000 --> 01:40:00.000 jmcmasters: For years, I used multipliers. I had a single generator that went up to 400 megs, but I had multipliers up to 68. 01:40:01.000 --> 01:40:08.000 jmcmasters: and overdrive a mimic, pull off the second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh harmonic, filter it. 01:40:08.000 --> 01:40:10.000 jmcmasters: I have another minute to amplify it. 01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:18.000 jmcmasters: We had a nice thousand hertz showing up at 68. Where was the modulation coming from? The signal generator itself. 01:40:18.000 --> 01:40:20.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 01:40:20.000 --> 01:40:23.000 jmcmasters: While the frequency is multiplied. 01:40:23.000 --> 01:40:27.000 jmcmasters: The on off thousand hertz is not. 01:40:27.000 --> 01:40:31.000 jmcmasters: And people argue with that. They go, no, no, it doesn't do that. 01:40:32.000 --> 01:40:36.000 jmcmasters: Say that again. There are people who think that since I… 01:40:36.000 --> 01:40:42.000 jmcmasters: double or triple the frequency, you're also doubling or tripling the thousand hertz audio. 01:40:42.000 --> 01:40:44.000 jmcmasters: And the answer to that is no. 01:40:44.000 --> 01:40:45.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. 01:40:46.000 --> 01:40:47.000 jmcmasters: Yep. 01:40:47.000 --> 01:40:52.000 jmcmasters: I can see why people think it should be multiplying too. Yeah. 01:40:53.000 --> 01:41:11.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, that's a whole another wormhole with the RF zero because we, you know, we do we do have multiplication taking place there. And you have to be careful at what point your, your IF comes into play because it that's carrying the WSJT tone. 01:41:11.000 --> 01:41:16.000 jmcmasters: But it has to be squished down in order to be expanded through the multiplication. 01:41:16.000 --> 01:41:20.000 jmcmasters: We had a lot of conversations around that. 01:41:20.000 --> 01:41:31.000 jmcmasters: All right, if there's nothing else, I'm going to turn this over to Al Ward to take a drink of water. Al, I think you can use those buttons down there with this mouse. 01:41:31.000 --> 01:41:34.000 jmcmasters: I'll just turn… I'll just leave you to it. 01:41:37.000 --> 01:41:47.000 jmcmasters: Got two old men moving around over here. Oh man, I'll tell you. Yeah. Anybody wants water? 01:41:47.000 --> 01:41:48.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 01:41:55.000 --> 01:41:58.000 jmcmasters: Which button for the slides? 01:41:58.000 --> 01:41:59.000 jmcmasters: Okay. All right. 01:42:01.000 --> 01:42:08.000 jmcmasters: Jim has asked me to talk a little bit about the EME contest. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the contest. 01:42:08.000 --> 01:42:13.000 jmcmasters: Um, first part of the EME contest, and the second part of the EME contest, which is coming up. 01:42:14.000 --> 01:42:20.000 jmcmasters: And, uh, the first two weekends were in August, and the last two are… 01:42:20.000 --> 01:42:34.000 jmcmasters: uh, basically Halloween weekend and Thanksgiving, uh, weekend. I'm not sure why we skipped a weekend in there, but, uh, this past weekend it was high deck, and normally that's when the, uh, EME activity is, uh, generally, but… 01:42:34.000 --> 01:42:42.000 jmcmasters: Maybe they were trying to schedule it around some European activity. But anyway, it's coming up here soon. We'll talk a little bit about it. 01:42:43.000 --> 01:42:47.000 jmcmasters: Alright, what happens in, uh, August and September, since we have… 01:42:47.000 --> 01:42:49.000 jmcmasters: Two months. 01:42:49.000 --> 01:42:50.000 jmcmasters: Or. 01:42:50.000 --> 01:42:54.000 jmcmasters: Two months and two weekends. 01:42:54.000 --> 01:43:02.000 jmcmasters: That gives you 4 days, so you can have 1 band per day, and the problem with the microwave is there's a lot of different microwave bands. 01:43:02.000 --> 01:43:05.000 jmcmasters: From 2, 3, 5, 10, 24, and so on. 01:43:05.000 --> 01:43:14.000 jmcmasters: And uh… but this particular leg of the contest is just 2304 and above. So generally, we pick a weekend. 01:43:14.000 --> 01:43:20.000 jmcmasters: For a particular band, and that allows people to change out a feed system on their dish. 01:43:21.000 --> 01:43:27.000 jmcmasters: Uh, 24 gig is kind of filtered in, usually as activity, uh, warrants. 01:43:29.000 --> 01:43:40.000 jmcmasters: but the activity, actually, in, uh, August and September was some of the highest I've seen. The problem for me was it… the band's, uh… the moon is up in the middle of the night. 01:43:40.000 --> 01:43:48.000 jmcmasters: And I'm not the greatest for wanting to get up in the middle of the night, I like my sleep, so… I didn't work a lot of it, but some people were working, uh… 01:43:48.000 --> 01:43:58.000 jmcmasters: Uh, there's one fella, I think OZ1LPR has worked… worked, like, 80-some-odd stations on 3 centimeters, which is really incredible. There's just a lot of activity there. 01:43:58.000 --> 01:44:01.000 jmcmasters: Uh, the second priority, or… 01:44:01.000 --> 01:44:04.000 jmcmasters: active band was really 13 centimeters. 01:44:08.000 --> 01:44:17.000 jmcmasters: Now, I get around a little bit of the problem of changing out feeds by just putting multiple feeds at my… 01:44:17.000 --> 01:44:20.000 jmcmasters: at my feed point. 01:44:20.000 --> 01:44:25.000 jmcmasters: See if you think you can see the cursor, right? I don't think we can. No. 01:44:25.000 --> 01:44:36.000 jmcmasters: No. No cursor? Okay. Yeah, no, I am seeing it. Okay, I thought I saw it earlier. Um, my 23, or 13 centimeters, excuse me, 3 centimeters in the middle. 01:44:36.000 --> 01:44:49.000 jmcmasters: kind of hard to see right there. Uh, 20… 13 centimeters above it, 23 centimeters is to the right, and 9 centimeters is to the left. And one thing that you… 01:44:49.000 --> 01:45:03.000 jmcmasters: have to get used to is most of the Europeans talk about bandwidth… the band in wavelengths. We tend to talk a little bit more on frequency over here, but you got to remember that the 13 centimeter band really does include. 01:45:03.000 --> 01:45:18.000 jmcmasters: three different frequency ranges that we can operate over. You see there, it says 2304. That's mainly U.S. and some European. And 2320 is European, predominantly. 01:45:18.000 --> 01:45:20.000 jmcmasters: been mandated. 01:45:20.000 --> 01:45:21.000 jmcmasters: And. 01:45:21.000 --> 01:45:25.000 jmcmasters: and 2400 is for JAs. 01:45:26.000 --> 01:45:34.000 jmcmasters: And there are some countries over in Europe that don't even have the band anymore. I think Swedish hams got kind of booted out. 01:45:34.000 --> 01:45:40.000 jmcmasters: And nine centimeters is the 5760 band as we call it. 01:45:40.000 --> 01:45:43.000 Barry VE4MA: No, no, that's six centimeters, Al. 01:45:44.000 --> 01:45:48.000 jmcmasters: Oh, that's incorrect, isn't it? Oh, yeah. 01:45:48.000 --> 01:45:51.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, I see 9… I got 9 centimeters down, but yeah. 01:45:51.000 --> 01:45:52.000 Barry VE4MA: Yep. 01:45:51.000 --> 01:46:06.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, 6 centimeters is 5760. Sorry about that. I didn't catch my own mistake there. The 9 centimeter band is 3400, and we used to operate on 3456 a long time ago, but. 01:46:07.000 --> 01:46:10.000 jmcmasters: Um, 3,400 was a common… 01:46:10.000 --> 01:46:20.000 jmcmasters: pretty much a common worldwide frequency. So that's where the EME activity has stuck, and that's where terrestrial has to operate as well. 01:46:21.000 --> 01:46:27.000 jmcmasters: And then there are some countries that have to operate down at the low end of the band. 01:46:27.000 --> 01:46:29.000 jmcmasters: So there's, uh. 01:46:29.000 --> 01:46:38.000 jmcmasters: There's a lot of country-specific frequency limitations that need to be worked around. Now, 70 centimeters. 01:46:38.000 --> 01:46:43.000 jmcmasters: To get on 70 centimeters, I have to slide a feed in my 1296. 01:46:43.000 --> 01:46:48.000 jmcmasters: And that's a pretty massive… it kind of covers most of the bands, so… 01:46:48.000 --> 01:47:03.000 jmcmasters: Uh, being as, uh, it requires, what, 18 inches or so, it pretty much prohibits me from operating any of the other bands at the same time. But anyway, this allows me to get on multiple bands at the same time, and yes, there are offsets. 01:47:04.000 --> 01:47:20.000 jmcmasters: Um, but I take them into account with the K5GW's tracking program, and it does a pretty good job of that. So, that's kind of how I get around, uh, the different bands. And since I don't have any, uh, power, any PAs out at the feed. 01:47:20.000 --> 01:47:25.000 jmcmasters: uh, they're all in the shack, then I gotta run WaveGuide, uh, out there, or Coax. 01:47:31.000 --> 01:47:37.000 jmcmasters: If you haven't checked out the HB9Q logger, you might want to do that. 01:47:37.000 --> 01:47:44.000 jmcmasters: It's, um, it… Generally, if you get out there and, and, and sign up, and, uh… 01:47:44.000 --> 01:47:55.000 jmcmasters: you'll probably get somebody pinging you to see if you're active. Well, just tell them you're just, you know, starting out on the bands, and you're just looking at them. But, uh, it's a very cordial group. 01:47:55.000 --> 01:48:10.000 jmcmasters: And, uh, you learn a lot about what the people are running. All you have to do is left-click on a call sign, and you can see what they're, uh, using. And you can see, uh, what's working for them. If they work somebody, you can see what the other station is that they worked as well. 01:48:11.000 --> 01:48:17.000 jmcmasters: Most of this activity is really WSJT, which means it's a kind of a coordinated effort. 01:48:17.000 --> 01:48:23.000 jmcmasters: And, um, you know, so this is very busy during the, uh, during contest time. 01:48:23.000 --> 01:48:33.000 jmcmasters: And it is assistance, but it is allowed, uh, at least for the ARRL contest. There's, uh, uh, Adubis contests, which are… 01:48:33.000 --> 01:48:51.000 jmcmasters: not supposed to be assisted, and they're primarily CW, and when you get down on CW on 1296, it's a real easy ban for making random queues, uh, if you… if you know you're CW. If you don't, then, uh, you might just kind of hang around with the WSJT guys, and there are a lot of guys that are not. 01:48:51.000 --> 01:48:57.000 jmcmasters: great CW ops that are on the moon, so don't let that hold you back. 01:49:03.000 --> 01:49:06.000 jmcmasters: Uh, EME reflectors, um… 01:49:06.000 --> 01:49:23.000 jmcmasters: We have the MoonNet reflector and we have the Moon reflector. The MoonNet reflector is predominantly digital oriented and that's where most of the, you'll see most of the activity. They're also very informal and don't feel bad about asking a newbie question. 01:49:26.000 --> 01:49:28.000 jmcmasters: So, we've got, um… 01:49:28.000 --> 01:49:34.000 jmcmasters: let's see, October 31st. It's, what, two, three weeks away. 01:49:35.000 --> 01:49:46.000 jmcmasters: Um, if you want… if you have an antenna on the horizon, you might want to check out the rising or setting moon, and I'm saying… this is from the standpoint of 432 or 1296. 01:49:46.000 --> 01:50:06.000 jmcmasters: Follow the big stations on H39Q and try to monitor them. Most of them will probably be on WSJT. And I'll talk a little bit more about this in the future, but just a couple things to remember. You got to set the decode up for an EME delay. So it's an EME decode that you have to click. 01:50:06.000 --> 01:50:26.000 jmcmasters: And they used to get me in all sorts of trouble, but I've got two different instances of WSJT for each band. One of them is for terrestrial, and one's for EME. Because there is, like, a two and a half second delay, and if you're not set up to know that that delay is coming, you won't be able to decode signals. 01:50:26.000 --> 01:50:31.000 jmcmasters: And something else that you'll see a lot of is the term CFOM. 01:50:31.000 --> 01:50:47.000 jmcmasters: That's constant frequency on the moon. And this is very important for 10 gigahertz and even most of the microwave bands. But even on 432, you might see somebody spotting 432070. 01:50:47.000 --> 01:50:50.000 jmcmasters: Uh, Q65, um… 01:50:50.000 --> 01:51:01.000 jmcmasters: 60B, and it'll be CFOM, which basically, if you study it, it's half your Doppler. And basically, if you were on the moon. 01:51:01.000 --> 01:51:16.000 jmcmasters: on the 432070, that's where the fella on the moon would hear you. That doesn't necessarily mean that you transmit on 070, or you receive on 070, but on the moon, your frequency will be on 070. 01:51:16.000 --> 01:51:31.000 jmcmasters: So it's maybe confusing to start with, but it sure makes it a lot easier, because if everybody is GPS locked and stable, then you know exactly where to look for the station. And even if you don't see them, you can. 01:51:31.000 --> 01:51:38.000 jmcmasters: Put your green cursor on exactly that frequency, and if there's anything there, eventually it will decode. 01:51:39.000 --> 01:51:51.000 jmcmasters: Most of the big stations are in Europe, so I'd have to say you got to get on for your moonrise here and look that away. There are some big stations in the US, most notably NC1I. 01:51:51.000 --> 01:52:01.000 jmcmasters: And, um, as they say, uh, you know, he can work, uh, a wet… anybody with a wet Moodle. He's worked some pretty small stations on the 432. 01:52:01.000 --> 01:52:09.000 jmcmasters: But he's got a rather large array that he can switch between, well, different polarities, if you will. 01:52:12.000 --> 01:52:26.000 jmcmasters: So, I'm gonna, uh, not at this point, this is the end of this, uh, short presentation, but in the future, I'm gonna talk a little more about EME on the various bands, uh, because there does seem to be a lot of, uh, interest in it. 01:52:26.000 --> 01:52:41.000 jmcmasters: and I know there's several people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that have equipment and would like to get on, so I thought I would spend a little bit more time talking about that in the future, and talk about the popular microwave bands, and uh… 01:52:41.000 --> 01:52:53.000 jmcmasters: what's involved with collecting equipment for getting on a particular band. Besides an antenna, you need power, and power is not that cheap, especially on the microwave bands. 01:52:54.000 --> 01:52:59.000 jmcmasters: So anyway, this coming Halloween weekend. 01:52:59.000 --> 01:53:01.000 jmcmasters: Friday and Saturday. 01:53:01.000 --> 01:53:10.000 jmcmasters: uh, starting Friday night, which would be Saturday over in Europe, uh, have a look towards the, uh, the moon, and… and maybe you'll see a… a station. 01:53:10.000 --> 01:53:13.000 jmcmasters: That's all I got. 01:53:13.000 --> 01:53:14.000 jmcmasters: All right. 01:53:14.000 --> 01:53:17.000 jmcmasters: Thank you, Al. Any questions for Al? 01:53:21.000 --> 01:53:24.000 jmcmasters: I'll fix that slide. Thanks, Barry. 01:53:26.000 --> 01:53:28.000 jmcmasters: Excellent. 01:53:29.000 --> 01:53:33.000 jmcmasters: All right, let's take a 15-minute break. 01:53:52.000 --> 01:53:55.000 jmcmasters: Hey, Kit, what do you think this went on? 01:53:59.000 --> 01:54:01.000 jmcmasters: Just log in, Tim. 01:54:12.000 --> 01:54:14.000 jmcmasters: They like poorly made wave guys. 01:54:14.000 --> 01:54:19.000 jmcmasters: Well, I assume it was mounted to something. 01:54:19.000 --> 01:54:24.000 jmcmasters: Or is there a tape over this or something? Yeah. Oh, okay. 01:54:24.000 --> 01:54:25.000 jmcmasters: I just. 01:54:26.000 --> 01:54:30.000 jmcmasters: I just found on my phone where you'd sent me an email. 01:54:30.000 --> 01:54:36.000 jmcmasters: I didn't see that before. Oh, really? Yeah. It's been a while. Yeah, the second. Yeah. 01:54:36.000 --> 01:54:37.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 01:54:37.000 --> 01:54:45.000 jmcmasters: Well, I'm glad you found it. I'm just not good with phone and I get shit all the time. 01:54:48.000 --> 01:54:51.000 jmcmasters: I understand. 01:54:51.000 --> 01:55:01.000 jmcmasters: There's an array of four somewhat longer ones for synthetic aperture radar on the B-52s. 01:55:03.000 --> 01:55:08.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, that's what I thought this might have been. 01:55:14.000 --> 01:55:18.000 jmcmasters: But also, something else was connected down here. 01:55:18.000 --> 01:55:20.000 jmcmasters: I can tell was cut off. 01:55:20.000 --> 01:55:27.000 jmcmasters: On your sliding line, that sliding line you got? No. 01:55:27.000 --> 01:55:37.000 jmcmasters: I'm trying to find a second one. I've got two of those. I've found the one. It's about this long, but I have another one that… 01:55:37.000 --> 01:55:42.000 jmcmasters: This probably would cover 10 gig, Chris. I want to give them both to you. I just… 01:55:42.000 --> 01:55:48.000 jmcmasters: Can't find the second one, but I'll bring the the other one. 01:55:48.000 --> 01:56:02.000 jmcmasters: I've got, uh… Not in recent, uh, years. I think up to 40 gigahertz slotted lines. I know where this came from. Oh, really? I've got a big… Oh, you… you don't need anything then, do you? Well, I need… uh, I have a couple lines that don't have the carriage that he is. 01:56:05.000 --> 01:56:09.000 jmcmasters: Oh, the detector. Yeah. Yeah. 01:56:09.000 --> 01:56:11.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, that's the… 01:56:11.000 --> 01:56:16.000 jmcmasters: That's the secret sauce there. Yeah. Having the detector. 01:56:16.000 --> 01:56:18.000 jmcmasters: uh… 01:56:18.000 --> 01:56:24.000 jmcmasters: Hey, David, why don't you see if you can help Matt. 01:56:24.000 --> 01:56:26.000 jmcmasters: Set the frequency on us. 01:56:26.000 --> 01:56:28.000 jmcmasters: Gunplex are over there. 01:56:28.000 --> 01:56:35.000 jmcmasters: You think you can? The one across the way? No, the little one. Let me turn the one up. 01:56:37.000 --> 01:56:46.000 jmcmasters: Did you demo the? I had a digital signal generator that only went up to 400 megs. 01:56:46.000 --> 01:56:51.000 jmcmasters: And had multipliers that I built for it that took them all the way up to 6 gig. 01:56:51.000 --> 01:56:53.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, I get it now. 01:56:54.000 --> 01:56:57.000 jmcmasters: I definitely understand. 01:56:58.000 --> 01:57:02.000 jmcmasters: That was before I got some really high dollar simple generators. 01:57:02.000 --> 01:57:04.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, but you don't carry those around, do you? 01:57:04.000 --> 01:57:17.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. How you doing? Okay. Took them two solid back, and because I hadn't unloaded the van yet, took them the belt in the back. You really think the gun flexure is, uh… 01:57:17.000 --> 01:57:19.000 jmcmasters: Frequency is… 01:57:19.000 --> 01:57:36.000 jmcmasters: controlled well enough if you're doing a measurement just on 10368? Yeah. You think so? You can look at it right over there. It's dead nuts on. It doesn't vary. I believe it's the tiny spectrum analyzer. It can also be used as a signal generator. 01:57:36.000 --> 01:57:44.000 jmcmasters: And 1,000 hertz is an option on it. Yeah. And then you can take that and multiply that. Or amplify it. 01:57:44.000 --> 01:57:51.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, even Ken Odell even had that in his presentation, or he might have said it rather than print it. 01:57:51.000 --> 01:57:58.000 jmcmasters: But he did mention the tiny essay, using it as a signal generator. 01:57:58.000 --> 01:58:07.000 jmcmasters: So. But when you look at it now, it. I mean, it's gonna vary down in the. 01:58:08.000 --> 01:58:13.000 jmcmasters: It may vary in kilohertz, but it'll hold 10368. 01:58:13.000 --> 01:58:20.000 jmcmasters: dot something we I've been testing it and and running it and. 01:58:20.000 --> 01:58:30.000 jmcmasters: They're trying to tune that one right now. I didn't want to break the lipstick on it, or whatever you call it, nail polish on it. But, uh, it's got a… 01:58:30.000 --> 01:58:38.000 jmcmasters: screwdriver adjustment should pull it within 100, because it's showing… it came up, Jenny, like 10.4. 01:58:41.000 --> 01:58:45.000 jmcmasters: I've also been known to run, like, a 47 gig in horn. 01:58:45.000 --> 01:58:52.000 jmcmasters: Uh, so… sourced through a, uh, 10 gig pin diode switch, because I had several of those. 01:58:52.000 --> 01:58:57.000 jmcmasters: And something comes out and it's modulated, so we're good. 01:59:04.000 --> 01:59:08.000 jmcmasters: Greg McIntyre did a 555 switcher for me. 01:59:09.000 --> 01:59:14.000 jmcmasters: 25 years ago, 30 years ago, been using that for a long time. 01:59:21.000 --> 01:59:22.000 jmcmasters: Thank you very much for your time. 01:59:22.000 --> 01:59:27.000 jmcmasters: Do you keep it in any kind of shielding so that… 01:59:27.000 --> 01:59:30.000 jmcmasters: So that the temperature doesn't fluctuate. 01:59:33.000 --> 01:59:36.000 jmcmasters: Capacitors don't change that much. 01:59:40.000 --> 01:59:45.000 jmcmasters: And I just found out that the audio can wander around a little bit. 01:59:45.000 --> 01:59:48.000 jmcmasters: 4:15 is still detecting it. Yep. 01:59:59.000 --> 02:00:05.000 jmcmasters: Wrong question. You wouldn't have to have any terminal strips. Those strips like that with all the screws in it for… 02:00:05.000 --> 02:00:07.000 jmcmasters: hooking up wires. 02:00:09.000 --> 02:00:12.000 jmcmasters: Probably the biggest ones I got are like that. 02:00:12.000 --> 02:00:17.000 jmcmasters: I only need three connections. Oh, it's got that many on it. 02:00:18.000 --> 02:00:19.000 jmcmasters: Thank you. 02:00:20.000 --> 02:00:24.000 jmcmasters: Trying to get all the power wired back up in my station. 02:00:24.000 --> 02:00:35.000 jmcmasters: The big lambda linear power supply I read for 10 years to the recreation of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. 02:00:35.000 --> 02:00:41.000 jmcmasters: Not too many frequency, or is it? Yeah, is it changed? Yeah. 02:00:42.000 --> 02:00:49.000 jmcmasters: Always at the antenna range. Usually I'll have like about 50 feet of coax on this. 02:00:49.000 --> 02:00:56.000 jmcmasters: And here I'm doing some measurements at 24 gig. Well, how much loss is 24 gig? How much losses is that? 02:00:56.000 --> 02:01:04.000 jmcmasters: Maybe a few hundred to the DB. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard you say that a few times. 02:01:05.000 --> 02:01:07.000 jmcmasters: I repeated myself. 02:01:07.000 --> 02:01:12.000 jmcmasters: No, it was a different conference. 02:01:16.000 --> 02:01:18.000 jmcmasters: Right, to do that. 02:01:22.000 --> 02:01:30.000 jmcmasters: Oh, it's got a nut that's tightened down. Yeah, you gotta hold it, hold that while you screw the other one. 02:01:37.000 --> 02:01:39.000 jmcmasters: How can you create power with this? 02:01:39.000 --> 02:01:44.000 jmcmasters: Check the power. Check the power. Yeah. 02:01:45.000 --> 02:01:53.000 jmcmasters: You just want to see if it's got output? No, I'm just wondering how much it is. Well, here's the power head. 02:01:54.000 --> 02:02:01.000 jmcmasters: And then we have to push down on the glasses. One of these is power and one of them's a counter. 02:02:01.000 --> 02:02:06.000 jmcmasters: Is this the tower? Yeah, this is the tower. Push that. 02:02:07.000 --> 02:02:09.000 jmcmasters: And now, distributing… 02:02:09.000 --> 02:02:11.000 jmcmasters: why it's frequenting. Yeah. 02:02:11.000 --> 02:02:13.000 jmcmasters: Get my glasses. I love you. 02:02:28.000 --> 02:02:32.000 jmcmasters: WorkVivo calendar. 02:02:35.000 --> 02:02:37.000 jmcmasters: That one. 02:02:37.000 --> 02:02:39.000 jmcmasters: No wait, it's this one. 02:02:39.000 --> 02:02:42.000 jmcmasters: Wait, wait, wait. What am I doing? 02:02:42.000 --> 02:02:44.000 jmcmasters: All right, it is out. 02:02:48.000 --> 02:02:50.000 jmcmasters: I got an all-purpose e-mail. 02:02:53.000 --> 02:02:56.000 jmcmasters: It's so small I can't hardly read it. 02:02:58.000 --> 02:02:59.000 jmcmasters: My wife, so. 02:03:03.000 --> 02:03:04.000 jmcmasters: or either. 02:03:08.000 --> 02:03:11.000 jmcmasters: That's Michael. Michael was. 02:03:18.000 --> 02:03:19.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. 02:03:20.000 --> 02:03:23.000 jmcmasters: Pretty powerful. 02:03:26.000 --> 02:03:27.000 jmcmasters: That's power. 02:03:28.000 --> 02:03:31.000 jmcmasters: Stop if it gets to 0, or it says overrun. 02:03:31.000 --> 02:03:36.000 jmcmasters: Stop right away when it says overdrive. 02:03:36.000 --> 02:03:38.000 jmcmasters: Smoke comes out here. 02:03:39.000 --> 02:03:52.000 jmcmasters: And that's where you get smoke. So that's, that's, that's your. 02:03:52.000 --> 02:03:56.000 jmcmasters: It's guessing that that's around 10.5 gig. 02:03:59.000 --> 02:04:01.000 jmcmasters: There, see? Yeah. 02:04:01.000 --> 02:04:03.000 jmcmasters: That's too close. 02:04:03.000 --> 02:04:04.000 jmcmasters: So, 10… 02:04:09.000 --> 02:04:12.000 jmcmasters: We could put a attenuator on it and get closer. 02:04:14.000 --> 02:04:23.000 jmcmasters: It's not as powerful as that one. I know because I put them side by side and check them that way. 02:04:24.000 --> 02:04:31.000 jmcmasters: But it's it's plenty powerful, as you can see. So when we modulate it, it should be detectable easy enough. 02:04:31.000 --> 02:04:35.000 jmcmasters: This is the frequency. Yeah, my flash drive is 24 milliwatts. 02:04:37.000 --> 02:04:38.000 jmcmasters: It was 24.1. 02:04:39.000 --> 02:04:42.000 jmcmasters: This is the counter, this is the first input, which is this one. 02:04:43.000 --> 02:04:44.000 jmcmasters: The laser frequency. 02:04:46.000 --> 02:04:53.000 jmcmasters: I've got some young dogs that are 200 or 200 millibars. 02:04:53.000 --> 02:04:55.000 jmcmasters: Did I get the chat call? 02:04:55.000 --> 02:04:57.000 jmcmasters: Here we go. 02:04:58.000 --> 02:05:01.000 jmcmasters: Where are they? Underground? Yeah. 02:05:01.000 --> 02:05:02.000 jmcmasters: Pretty good. 02:05:07.000 --> 02:05:09.000 jmcmasters: Very random, I don't think. 02:05:12.000 --> 02:05:18.000 jmcmasters: Hey man, what is my target? 10, 3, 68. 02:05:18.000 --> 02:05:21.000 jmcmasters: Is it actually tuning on that? 02:05:21.000 --> 02:05:24.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, nice. 38. 02:05:30.000 --> 02:05:31.000 jmcmasters: People didn't wear on. 02:05:31.000 --> 02:05:37.000 jmcmasters: Monica, get the monitor. 02:05:38.000 --> 02:05:41.000 jmcmasters: I'm gonna finish sitting out the garage now. 02:05:41.000 --> 02:05:42.000 jmcmasters: You can't. 02:05:43.000 --> 02:05:51.000 jmcmasters: I've got a 38 Amazon delivers. 02:05:52.000 --> 02:05:54.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, it's gonna be July. 02:06:03.000 --> 02:06:05.000 jmcmasters: Is it super sensitive or is it? 02:06:06.000 --> 02:06:07.000 jmcmasters: coarse enough that you can. 02:06:07.000 --> 02:06:10.000 jmcmasters: Check up on 3, 3, 7. 02:06:10.000 --> 02:06:12.000 jmcmasters: Well, I didn't mean to do it. 02:06:12.000 --> 02:06:14.000 jmcmasters: 366, isn't it? 02:06:15.000 --> 02:06:16.000 jmcmasters: So why is it? 02:06:36.000 --> 02:06:38.000 jmcmasters: What did it come out about? 02:06:38.000 --> 02:06:40.000 jmcmasters: Grocery store. 02:06:42.000 --> 02:06:46.000 jmcmasters: And they were up at 10-5, I think, weren't they? Yeah. 02:06:54.000 --> 02:06:56.000 jmcmasters: There's no voltage you can tweak there on. 02:06:58.000 --> 02:07:03.000 jmcmasters: There would be on the Meraki. He's using a mechanical. It's set in a mechanical. 02:07:03.000 --> 02:07:08.000 jmcmasters: But the director is what they're modulating their family. 02:07:09.000 --> 02:07:11.000 jmcmasters: So yeah, definitely. 02:07:12.000 --> 02:07:15.000 jmcmasters: But then you have to end up in the published one. 02:07:32.000 --> 02:07:35.000 jmcmasters: Yes, I should should be able to see the doctor out there. 02:07:40.000 --> 02:07:43.000 jmcmasters: The sulfan there is the most common one. 02:08:08.000 --> 02:08:11.000 jmcmasters: It's Wednesday. It is. It's a Wednesday. 02:08:12.000 --> 02:08:14.000 jmcmasters: I've got a whole bunch of that stuff, man. 02:08:14.000 --> 02:08:20.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. And and I'm always looking for a thing what I could do with it. So that one. 02:08:20.000 --> 02:08:35.000 jmcmasters: I just kind of slow and it opened up the cabin it works out I've done I've done several that beacon has a couple of. 02:08:38.000 --> 02:08:42.000 jmcmasters: Well, I used to have one exactly like that. 02:08:43.000 --> 02:08:45.000 jmcmasters: There's a 48. 02:08:45.000 --> 02:08:49.000 jmcmasters: because I know it's the round brother versus the usual. 02:08:52.000 --> 02:08:54.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, okay. 02:08:56.000 --> 02:09:02.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, the, uh, right next to the pitot tube is a little flat, but that's a solid warning indicator? Yes. 02:09:03.000 --> 02:09:05.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, you know your stuff. 02:09:05.000 --> 02:09:08.000 jmcmasters: So yeah, I was… I met the owner of that. 02:09:08.000 --> 02:09:10.000 jmcmasters: 20 for the team. 02:09:10.000 --> 02:09:13.000 jmcmasters: That's as close as I can get. 02:09:14.000 --> 02:09:19.000 jmcmasters: Let's talk about it. 02:09:19.000 --> 02:09:35.000 jmcmasters: It's a little factory. Oh, no. Oh, wow. OK. What's a megahertz? What's a megahertz? 02:09:41.000 --> 02:09:47.000 jmcmasters: You need a hernia screw. 02:09:48.000 --> 02:09:51.000 jmcmasters: Break up. That's as much as I can break up. 02:09:53.000 --> 02:09:59.000 jmcmasters: It used to be everything. 02:09:59.000 --> 02:10:10.000 jmcmasters: And now this one's drift. Yeah. Well, probably your feedback system, everything. 02:10:10.000 --> 02:10:14.000 jmcmasters: That one doesn't doesn't exist. 02:10:14.000 --> 02:10:19.000 jmcmasters: It just stays. Well, you can move that one. 02:10:19.000 --> 02:10:22.000 jmcmasters: And later it's either way real easy. 02:10:22.000 --> 02:10:25.000 jmcmasters: It's not trying to where you want it. 02:10:26.000 --> 02:10:27.000 jmcmasters: Adjustment. 02:10:34.000 --> 02:10:41.000 jmcmasters: Some of it's not worship, though. Could be. Could be. There is something going on. Yeah. 02:10:42.000 --> 02:10:43.000 jmcmasters: Oh, that's good. 02:10:43.000 --> 02:10:46.000 jmcmasters: Suburbs. 02:10:48.000 --> 02:10:50.000 jmcmasters: Thank you. 02:11:02.000 --> 02:11:05.000 jmcmasters: Did you go through the demo where you showed the… 02:11:05.000 --> 02:11:11.000 jmcmasters: Not yet. You should do that. Turn that on. Let me turn this. 02:11:12.000 --> 02:11:15.000 jmcmasters: What's the other one that's remaining? 02:11:26.000 --> 02:11:30.000 jmcmasters: He did a good job bearing the horn, didn't he? 02:12:13.000 --> 02:12:14.000 jmcmasters: Truly amazing. 02:12:30.000 --> 02:12:33.000 jmcmasters: It's all the way back to Marconi. 02:12:44.000 --> 02:12:50.000 jmcmasters: It's also fun to look at the audio lamp. 02:12:51.000 --> 02:13:01.000 jmcmasters: I don't know how you do it. 02:13:04.000 --> 02:13:06.000 jmcmasters: Thank you. 02:13:43.000 --> 02:13:49.000 jmcmasters: Is this ? No, it's dropping through Mr. District. 02:13:49.000 --> 02:13:52.000 jmcmasters: If you want to take it and play with it, you can. 02:13:53.000 --> 02:13:56.000 jmcmasters: I got the chopper right over there. 02:13:59.000 --> 02:14:01.000 jmcmasters: It is. 02:14:09.000 --> 02:14:11.000 jmcmasters: Okay, sir. 02:14:14.000 --> 02:14:16.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, do that again. 02:14:22.000 --> 02:14:29.000 jmcmasters: I was, I'm having a little trouble with CQ. 02:14:36.000 --> 02:14:39.000 jmcmasters: Let's see if we can get that. 02:14:39.000 --> 02:14:43.000 jmcmasters: Let's see here. Hold it for a second. 02:14:43.000 --> 02:14:45.000 jmcmasters: Quite a stable one. 02:14:46.000 --> 02:14:47.000 jmcmasters: Because we may have lost the power. 02:14:56.000 --> 02:14:57.000 jmcmasters: Yep. 02:15:04.000 --> 02:15:05.000 jmcmasters: That's great. 02:15:07.000 --> 02:15:10.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 02:15:13.000 --> 02:15:14.000 jmcmasters: Oh, yeah. 02:15:15.000 --> 02:15:27.000 jmcmasters: Well, I don't know if it's really measuring anything or not when it says minus 43, but it went to minus 42. 02:15:28.000 --> 02:15:35.000 jmcmasters: I think I've got a 10 gig corn about that same size. 02:15:36.000 --> 02:15:42.000 jmcmasters: Need to experiment. Yeah. 02:15:45.000 --> 02:15:50.000 jmcmasters: All right, we're going to get back to going here. 02:16:03.000 --> 02:16:05.000 jmcmasters: Let me get this. 02:16:06.000 --> 02:16:13.000 jmcmasters: Where's the outbound? Can I see that for a second? Just so I can see what we're doing. Okay. 02:16:23.000 --> 02:16:32.000 jmcmasters: Probably you're okay. We're the connectors. One to one, two, two, three, four. Okay. 02:16:32.000 --> 02:16:35.000 jmcmasters: All right. 02:16:35.000 --> 02:16:48.000 jmcmasters: Okay, folks, are you still able to hear me okay? 02:16:48.000 --> 02:16:50.000 jmcmasters: 16 in purple. 02:16:49.000 --> 02:16:51.000 Keith WB5ZDP: You're there. 02:16:50.000 --> 02:16:53.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Sounds good. You sound great. 02:16:51.000 --> 02:17:07.000 jmcmasters: All right. Okay, thank you for, persisting with us through the break. We'll go ahead and get started. And I'll move along here through this, somewhat swift, swiftly. We are gonna break out. From this PowerPoint a couple of times to look at. 02:17:07.000 --> 02:17:25.000 jmcmasters: something, uh, on the web. So, first of all, these are, uh, propagation studies, and I… it… a lot of this is aimed at rovers, or folks in general that are students of propagation, or you fix stations that care a great deal. 02:17:25.000 --> 02:17:41.000 jmcmasters: Uh, you know, about expanding your coverage and your points and so forth. So, jumping right in here, the purpose of, uh, doing these things is to be prepared for conditions. Uh, we can't control the conditions, but we could be. 02:17:41.000 --> 02:17:56.000 jmcmasters: prepared and I hope you know the difference what I mean by that in other words have some plan uh to execute depending on the conditions you could be flexible enough to change your strategy this will help you maximize your DX. 02:17:56.000 --> 02:18:01.000 jmcmasters: your time on the band, your points, and the grids that you collect. 02:18:01.000 --> 02:18:16.000 jmcmasters: Uh, for how we do this, it's different than, uh, spotting on the lower frequencies or knowing, uh, having, uh, hundreds, maybe thousands of people that are on chat pages and, uh, are aware of. 02:18:16.000 --> 02:18:32.000 jmcmasters: band openings and uh reporting them quickly uh our game is a little bit different it's definitely not like HF um and we are lucky that we have propagation prediction website that's been developed now this year since March that's really gaining. 02:18:32.000 --> 02:18:49.000 jmcmasters: a lot of maturity and can be used to help analyze what's going on. It can also be used to analyze what happened in the past. You just have to enter the contact details, even if it is a… if somebody gives me a report of the beacon yesterday at 4 p.m. 02:18:49.000 --> 02:19:05.000 jmcmasters: I can put that in as a beacon observation and call it a contact, add a note that it is a beacon observation, and therefore find the metric data that was in place at that time that enabled that reception report. 02:19:05.000 --> 02:19:18.000 jmcmasters: Um, studying propagation predictions over time. Again, this is something that is a discipline, uh, that you may or may not care to have. And then keeping a baseline. What I mean by that, I will explain. 02:19:18.000 --> 02:19:35.000 jmcmasters: Also, I know that these propagation websites can be a little bit intimidating. I'm getting that, and I think we're going to have to make a series of YouTube videos and keep spreading the word. And then ultimately, I think it'll be helpful if we publish a report. 02:19:35.000 --> 02:19:55.000 jmcmasters: periodically, maybe even daily, that details what the… what the forecast is looking like, similar to watching the weather on TV. When the propagation won't help. I had to put this slide in here, because I always hear this stuff during the contest. Uh, well, I just worked so-and-so, and they were S9, so I don't understand why we couldn't complete. 02:19:55.000 --> 02:19:59.000 jmcmasters: I hear that all the time. 02:19:59.000 --> 02:20:00.000 jmcmasters: you know. 02:20:00.000 --> 02:20:05.000 jmcmasters: I know we all want every contact to work, but the. 02:20:05.000 --> 02:20:16.000 jmcmasters: The very experienced people that have been doing this a long time know that it… it's never guaranteed, and there can be anomalies that, uh… 02:20:16.000 --> 02:20:29.000 jmcmasters: I mean, there can be very obvious differences and problems, or there can be anomalies that we have yet to explain as to why we can't make that contact work. For sure, if your location is poor. 02:20:29.000 --> 02:20:45.000 jmcmasters: And propagation will not make up for it. So you might have just worked Jim in this grid, and then when you try to work Bob over in this grid, you can't hear Bob, and he's closer. Well, that means very little. I mean, Bob might be in the forest, or he might be pointed wrong. You might be pointed wrong. 02:20:45.000 --> 02:20:49.000 jmcmasters: Something might have broke on either end. So there's… 02:20:49.000 --> 02:21:05.000 jmcmasters: there's a lot more here than just propagation. and I had to have a slide that stated that pointing is, of course, number one frequency coordination. People do get off frequency. Sometimes your partner doesn't have a waterfall. 02:21:05.000 --> 02:21:21.000 jmcmasters: That's a modern invention. And so he can't tell that you're one kilohertz low per his VFO. He may not be GPS locked. There's so many things that can enter in here. Some of the homework, I always have a homework slide. Use your beacons. 02:21:21.000 --> 02:21:30.000 jmcmasters: Try to listen to beacons, gain experience in verifying your path when you're out there and you're traveling. 02:21:31.000 --> 02:21:48.000 jmcmasters: Validate paths if they are new. I've got a lot more to say about this in this presentation, but you can use our propagation website to learn whether your so-called new path might work or might not work. It's easy to put in two grid locations down to 10 digits. 02:21:48.000 --> 02:21:53.000 jmcmasters: Get a very specific location and know right away that the path is no good. 02:21:53.000 --> 02:22:05.000 jmcmasters: Or, know that the path seems to be working right now, but you need to do that over some time to see if that path remains good, because conditions might just be right… might be up right now. 02:22:07.000 --> 02:22:22.000 jmcmasters: Again, kind of resetting this again. Use vetted locations if you're brand new to this. There's nothing more frustrating than to be driving down the highway and go, oh, that looks like a good spot right there. And you go and you set up there and it doesn't work. 02:22:22.000 --> 02:22:37.000 jmcmasters: Especially if you're in the microwave activity day or you're contesting. That's a bad time to find out that the location wasn't really as good as it appeared originally. And everyone does that. Everyone has done it and everyone does do it. 02:22:37.000 --> 02:22:53.000 jmcmasters: I just have gotten very anal, I guess is a good enough word, obsessed with not having failures if I can avoid them. And I just don't feel like I can give myself that excuse is that, you know, I didn't take the time. 02:22:53.000 --> 02:22:54.000 jmcmasters: Or do the homework. 02:22:55.000 --> 02:23:06.000 jmcmasters: Finding locations, uh, I won't spend a lot of time on this. I am going to do YouTube videos and, uh, also document this on our website. Oh, I hate reading documents. 02:23:06.000 --> 02:23:22.000 jmcmasters: documentation, but using Lidar is a new way of looking at ridges, mainly obstructions, things that we don't like as rovers or fixed stations, although many of you that are really experienced, like my partner sitting next to me, Al Ward. 02:23:22.000 --> 02:23:38.000 jmcmasters: Guy that works me everywhere I go, and we are very strategic sometimes with what we're trying to do. He knows every ridge, and probably most of the buildings in his or surrounding area, and he can tell you, you know, where the blockages are. 02:23:38.000 --> 02:23:57.000 jmcmasters: Scott Armstrong, same thing, sits out there in the driveway and does amazing things. He knows where every building and tree is, and how to work around it or work through it. Anyway, here are the basic steps for using LiDAR. You have to download these maps. 02:23:57.000 --> 02:24:03.000 jmcmasters: you go to the SAGA GIS, you stitch all this stuff together, and you end up with something like this. 02:24:03.000 --> 02:24:14.000 jmcmasters: So, right here is Ranger Hill, and it looks odd because it's in LiDAR, so all the foliage has been removed, and it's lost its, you know. 02:24:14.000 --> 02:24:18.000 jmcmasters: satellite imagery look. 02:24:18.000 --> 02:24:33.000 jmcmasters: to it here. So, this location had a surprise to it. It was on my list on Saturday of the second leg, and I thought I had done everything right, but we did have a problem here, so I quoted this best league plans that's. 02:24:33.000 --> 02:24:42.000 jmcmasters: from Robert Burns' old, old poem, To the Mouse, uh, commonly used to acknowledge outcomes may differ from expectations, despite careful. 02:24:42.000 --> 02:24:58.000 jmcmasters: preparation, I thought this was going to be the spot, not just for Dallas Fort Worth contacts, but also in J6, is it in J6D, Chuck Claver, who was going to try an aircraft scatter contact with me. 02:24:58.000 --> 02:25:02.000 jmcmasters: But I had some things to learn here. 02:25:02.000 --> 02:25:21.000 jmcmasters: Um, and problem was this little tiny yellow line that's over here. That was a gate, and you cannot see it in Google satellite imagery, but there's an 8-foot tall gate there that prevented me from going down this road to my location of choice, which is right here on the edge of this cliff. 02:25:21.000 --> 02:25:31.000 jmcmasters: Which is, that's where I wanted to be. But I could not get there. I ended up setting up where this white arrow is, uh, which is near the visitor's center, uh, brand new. 02:25:31.000 --> 02:25:34.000 jmcmasters: westbound Eastland County. 02:25:34.000 --> 02:25:37.000 jmcmasters: Visitor Center off of I-20. 02:25:37.000 --> 02:25:52.000 jmcmasters: So here was the angles that I had, the DFW shot. I was set up near the shady part of this thing on the lower right. My shot to Dallas was fine. It went through a little bit of foliage, just not… 02:25:52.000 --> 02:26:06.000 jmcmasters: 20 yards thick, and then I was home free over this ridge and on my way to DFW. The shot back to the… on the left side, that's a shot back to Arizona. 02:26:06.000 --> 02:26:23.000 jmcmasters: and it can't be seen here unless you were to blow this up, but there's a ridge out there, and I saw it when I was sitting there, and I thought, is that really, like, the radial horizon, or is that a problem? And I didn't figure it out at the time, because. 02:26:23.000 --> 02:26:38.000 jmcmasters: Well, we didn't get a chance to try the contact, and the day went on, and I traveled to another location. But when I got home, I studied it, and this would have been a problem. And I'm not gonna stop long on it, but I will show you just briefly. 02:26:38.000 --> 02:26:54.000 jmcmasters: what the, uh, outcome of this is. So this is the aircraft scatter program, uh, that we were using. Chuck would have been looking at this as well. If you zoom out, you see this… this inset that I put down here. This is how… you can zoom out till you see the whole United States. You see all these little birds flying around. 02:26:54.000 --> 02:27:09.000 jmcmasters: On it. I've zoomed in a little bit here to this circular area right here, and I've clicked on this aircraft that's down at the bottom of that circle, and I get all these metrics over here, like what the angle is, the takeoff angles are for. 02:27:09.000 --> 02:27:25.000 jmcmasters: Chuck, and for me, and so on and so forth. This one happens to be a Southwest Airlines, uh, flight. I don't know where it's coming from or where it's going to. It's easy to find that out, but I didn't do it for the purpose of here, of this. See this red arrow down here on the lower left? 02:27:25.000 --> 02:27:30.000 jmcmasters: That indicates that my first obstruction is 42.6 kilometers. 02:27:30.000 --> 02:27:32.000 jmcmasters: Well, that's way too close. 02:27:32.000 --> 02:27:44.000 jmcmasters: to have an obstruction. That's inside the radio horizon. So, I didn't see that when we were preparing for the days leading up to this, and I only had a few days to prepare. 02:27:44.000 --> 02:27:49.000 jmcmasters: But I didn't see that, or I would not have picked that location at all. 02:27:49.000 --> 02:27:52.000 jmcmasters: for a try with Chuck. 02:27:52.000 --> 02:28:10.000 jmcmasters: The other thing that I didn't see is down here on the… Yeah, you can't see that airplane, though, until it gets… because of that obstruction, your elevation has to come up. It's fractions of a degree, but it means a lot when you're trying a thousand kilometer contact. 02:28:10.000 --> 02:28:17.000 jmcmasters: So the other giveaway is down here on this bottom graph where you see this green. This is the terrain. 02:28:17.000 --> 02:28:20.000 jmcmasters: The terrain, you see the big bump in the middle. 02:28:20.000 --> 02:28:27.000 jmcmasters: Well, that's Guadalupe Peak. That doesn't bother us, because airplanes will be way above that anyway. 02:28:27.000 --> 02:28:34.000 jmcmasters: But way over here on the left, there's a there's a gap. And then all of a sudden the green jumps up. 02:28:34.000 --> 02:28:38.000 jmcmasters: That's a problem, and I didn't see it until… 02:28:38.000 --> 02:28:53.000 jmcmasters: We were all done and we were back from the contest. So now this strategy I know would not work. We'll have to rethink this whole thing. And I just wanted to show you that even though you plan and you prepare, you still get bit and these things don't work out right. 02:28:55.000 --> 02:29:09.000 jmcmasters: So, uh, the LiDAR is available when you use Googler Pro, and you can still get this, although I know they're trying to discontinue coverage for it, which means you better get it if you want to get it. 02:29:10.000 --> 02:29:25.000 jmcmasters: Um, it's… it's free. It used to cost me some money back in the day a long time ago. Uh, but you can, uh, plot all the existing locations, look at their obstructions, look at their, uh, sea level altitudes, and so forth. 02:29:25.000 --> 02:29:43.000 jmcmasters: If you're researching new locations, there is FAA and FCC data. I do use that to see where towers are and what kind of towers they are. Sometimes that will help you if you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're searching. 02:29:43.000 --> 02:29:50.000 jmcmasters: And, um, you know, you're trying to find a spot that has some access to it that, uh… 02:29:50.000 --> 02:29:53.000 jmcmasters: You could get close anyway. 02:29:53.000 --> 02:30:08.000 jmcmasters: There is a thing called ViewShed. I won't be able to… I was planning to demo that, but I can't do it on this brand new laptop because Google Earth Pro is not installed here. It is on my older machine. But here's the instructions on how to edit it. 02:30:08.000 --> 02:30:23.000 jmcmasters: Uh, Viewshed will, uh, when you click on a location and you say, show me the Viewshed, it shows you the radial horizon, basically. But it only shows you the first 10 kilometers as a radius, so you get a 10-kilometer view all around you. 02:30:23.000 --> 02:30:29.000 jmcmasters: That's not far enough for us. So, in order to change the viewshed parameters. 02:30:29.000 --> 02:30:38.000 jmcmasters: These are the instructions as to how to get to the file, and how it's calculated, and what values to put in to get a 100 kilometer viewshed. 02:30:38.000 --> 02:30:47.000 jmcmasters: You use this fraction down here, and I've shown a picture of the way the configuration file looked in Notepad on my machine. 02:30:47.000 --> 02:31:03.000 jmcmasters: Now, here's an example of a problem that, I was talking to rovers about. These two locations are both known as Meridian. And, the location on the left is at a roadside park. When you're at that park, I've been there several times. 02:31:03.000 --> 02:31:20.000 jmcmasters: You're in this park with this little shallow, circle drive type thing where you pull off the road. It's got pinion and cedar trees. They're small. It's got little tables set up with sheds. You know, look like the CCA built those things. 02:31:20.000 --> 02:31:42.000 jmcmasters: And then you go to look down the highway and sure enough, it drops off. Looks like it's really dropping off pretty nice. And you and you get out your your compass. You realize Al right there between those two trees and all this looks pretty good. It actually looks pretty good. If you look real close, you can see some kind of little ridge out there. Doesn't look like it's at the horizon either. Looks like it's maybe ten miles. 02:31:42.000 --> 02:31:58.000 jmcmasters: It's actually four miles. And so using this technology, you can real quickly find that this ridge is four miles out here. And that location, as good as it looks, as high as it looks, it's going to be impeded by this ridge. 02:31:58.000 --> 02:32:01.000 jmcmasters: Now you go just a few miles. 02:32:01.000 --> 02:32:15.000 jmcmasters: over, and this is the other Meridian locations. They're both listed as Meridian, but this one is at an electrical substation, and it's got a tremendous horizon. It's way out here, like. 02:32:15.000 --> 02:32:27.000 jmcmasters: 20-something miles before you're, uh, you know, even close to a ridge, and it's not even a ridge. It's just the end of the horizon for you. And so this location is far superior. 02:32:27.000 --> 02:32:28.000 jmcmasters: Oh. 02:32:28.000 --> 02:32:42.000 jmcmasters: you've got to use tools to see this, otherwise you would be fooled. And we've stopped many times at this other location. Now, can you work Al from there? Hell yeah. But you might not work Scott, and you might not work the other guys. 02:32:42.000 --> 02:32:49.000 jmcmasters: Okay, because there's there's a difference. And you need you need to be in good locations for all the stations. 02:32:51.000 --> 02:32:56.000 jmcmasters: Google Earth Web is a product that is out there, and it's free. 02:32:56.000 --> 02:33:11.000 jmcmasters: You know, it's got some basic features. This on the right is Path Profile. It's just not… if you're spoiled on the other Pro tool, this doesn't quite do it for me, but it is available, and it is free. 02:33:11.000 --> 02:33:27.000 jmcmasters: Now, the propagation website that we have, you get to it this way. You just type in prop.w5isp.com, and you will come right into the website. And you can check a lot of different things here. 02:33:27.000 --> 02:33:35.000 jmcmasters: And I'm gonna take you out. I'm gonna try this. Let's see how this works and show you at least. 02:33:35.000 --> 02:33:41.000 jmcmasters: the initial look to this. So I'm going to go all the way here. 02:33:44.000 --> 02:33:48.000 jmcmasters: Sorry about that. Let's close that so that that doesn't happen again. 02:33:48.000 --> 02:33:54.000 jmcmasters: And so what you just type in for me, I just have to type in prop. 02:33:54.000 --> 02:34:10.000 jmcmasters: And it will fill out the rest. Now you'll land on this map page and, you see the grids, you know what they are. Obviously, you see, a grid down here at the bottom that's covering frequencies, vertically over here. 02:34:10.000 --> 02:34:15.000 jmcmasters: And it's covering, uh, predictions in the future across the bottom. 02:34:15.000 --> 02:34:31.000 jmcmasters: Uh, 10 GHz has been selected, which you see right here. I can open this up, and I can pick, like, let's pick 24 GHz. It will change, uh, the data that you're looking at. Uh, the first thing that I… my eye always goes over here to the far right, to this. 02:34:31.000 --> 02:34:46.000 jmcmasters: jagged graph to see. Are we on a climb, or we are we sinking? And you can see that right now it's 2,100 UTC. It looks like it's gonna not greatly improve, and it may be dropping off later on. 02:34:46.000 --> 02:35:02.000 jmcmasters: Now, you can take and pick also from this grid, like we could pick 47 gigahertz by just putting our finger on that 47 gigahertz slice, and you can see that it's going to get in the toilet right about here. 02:35:02.000 --> 02:35:08.000 jmcmasters: That's gonna be 0900, so that's 3A… what is it? 4AM our time. 02:35:08.000 --> 02:35:09.000 jmcmasters: Uh, tomorrow. 02:35:09.000 --> 02:35:14.000 jmcmasters: And then you can see some green start to show up here. 02:35:14.000 --> 02:35:19.000 jmcmasters: Uh, if we pick these other times here, this is a. 02:35:19.000 --> 02:35:21.000 jmcmasters: 07:00 AM tomorrow. 02:35:22.000 --> 02:35:25.000 jmcmasters: click on it. 02:35:26.000 --> 02:35:37.000 jmcmasters: Wait, click on it. Okay, so anyway, there's that. I wanted to show you that there is a link down here at the bottom called What's New. 02:35:37.000 --> 02:35:43.000 jmcmasters: What's new, if you're following this at all, if you click on that, it'll show you what we've done recently. 02:35:43.000 --> 02:35:47.000 jmcmasters: And this list is fairly long. 02:35:47.000 --> 02:35:54.000 jmcmasters: Um, I want to take you to the, uh, weather. So, weather is… 02:35:54.000 --> 02:36:02.000 jmcmasters: propagation weather. It's not, is it raining, is it gonna rain, or what is it? It's the actual. 02:36:02.000 --> 02:36:09.000 jmcmasters: propagation metrics. We do cover Canada up here, you would have to click this button. 02:36:09.000 --> 02:36:12.000 jmcmasters: We can put the grids and superimpose those. 02:36:12.000 --> 02:36:24.000 jmcmasters: and then we can take a look at a couple things. First of all, I've got this on ducting, so we have a few elements of ducting. I'm gonna pull this out just a little bit. Some ducting usually has. 02:36:24.000 --> 02:36:26.000 jmcmasters: big branches on it. 02:36:26.000 --> 02:36:30.000 jmcmasters: That's not where I start. I start with refractivity. 02:36:30.000 --> 02:36:47.000 jmcmasters: And we're gonna talk… refractivity's gonna come up in this talk a couple of times. So, green is good. That's where these numbers are close to 400 in N units. We're gonna watch a video from Alcatel later, where they mapped this property, this particular property. 02:36:47.000 --> 02:36:52.000 jmcmasters: on a tower, a set of towers that they did a test on, and Kent's nodding his head. 02:36:52.000 --> 02:37:04.000 jmcmasters: Now, I can click anywhere on this map, and I can click, like, about where I live, right here, and it will bring up on the left side over here a more detailed breakdown of, uh… 02:37:04.000 --> 02:37:13.000 jmcmasters: the metrics. And, uh, and up here in the upper box, it explains what I have selected, which is refractivity. It explains. 02:37:13.000 --> 02:37:30.000 jmcmasters: what we're doing with that here on the website, and how it's derived, basically how it's derived. You can go look at the formula if you dig deep enough in here. Here is our surface refractivity graph, shows how things are going to change over time. 02:37:30.000 --> 02:37:45.000 jmcmasters: The next thing I will use, if I see anything promising, and there's not much here, I will look… oh, by the way, there's a forecast down here, too. You see all these cards? You can click here, you can just put it in motion by clicking the old VCR arrow here. 02:37:45.000 --> 02:37:50.000 jmcmasters: I usually will look at 12, I'm sorry, 12 Zulu right here. 02:37:50.000 --> 02:37:59.000 jmcmasters: That's 16 hours from now. I usually will click on that, and if I'm patient enough, wait for this to refresh, and that will tell me. 02:37:59.000 --> 02:38:01.000 jmcmasters: It's gonna be better in the morning. You see that? 02:38:01.000 --> 02:38:18.000 jmcmasters: See how much green appeared? So it makes sense. We have been seeing repeated good days in the morning. Keith is in here. He's listening. Al's sitting next to me. We've had some good days in the morning. I've actually got some slides to show of very recent enhancement. 02:38:18.000 --> 02:38:20.000 jmcmasters: Say again? 02:38:20.000 --> 02:38:27.000 jmcmasters: Oh, boy. Somehow this quit. I see it here. You see it there. You don't see it here. 02:38:28.000 --> 02:38:30.000 jmcmasters: How is that? 02:38:33.000 --> 02:38:37.000 jmcmasters: Oh, oh, it's this, it's because we're on the website, isn't it? 02:38:39.000 --> 02:38:55.000 jmcmasters: Okay, well, I'm sorry that you can't see it, and we'll just stop this because basically, you can click through all these metrics on the right, but after a while, you get kind of tired of doing that. And I will look at refractivity. I might look at inversions for tomorrow. 02:38:55.000 --> 02:39:11.000 jmcmasters: Again, see, we're seeing here kind of not a great placement of this one across the EM-12 and EM-11, but it probably would change. If we move these cards up, we'll get a prediction as each hour passes. 02:39:11.000 --> 02:39:22.000 jmcmasters: Uh, ducting, of course, that's the one that we all want, and uh, looks like it's hanging around, it's more up in Oklahoma, uh, and you can, uh. 02:39:22.000 --> 02:39:27.000 jmcmasters: Play around with this to your heart's content. But let's go back to this. 02:39:31.000 --> 02:39:34.000 jmcmasters: Ah, the. 02:39:34.000 --> 02:39:47.000 jmcmasters: path analysis is a whole other section of the, uh, website, and, um, uh, because we can't locally see this when I do it, I will have to, uh. 02:39:47.000 --> 02:40:04.000 jmcmasters: Ask your forgiveness, but I do want to show the crowd path analysis. So this is the path calculator right here under the button path, and I'm going to put in a source location of EM13QC. 02:40:04.000 --> 02:40:10.000 jmcmasters: And I'm gonna put in a destination location of EM… 02:40:10.000 --> 02:40:22.000 jmcmasters: 22 Fox Mike. That is Jerry's Hill out, uh, on, uh, East Texas. I'm gonna select 47 gigahertz. 02:40:22.000 --> 02:40:37.000 jmcmasters: Down here, I'm going to set the station metrics as such. I'm going to say that my trans… Al's transmit power is, uh, 30… I'm going to say 30 dBm is gain 36 dBi. 02:40:37.000 --> 02:40:41.000 jmcmasters: My transmit height, 5 feet. 02:40:41.000 --> 02:40:47.000 jmcmasters: My receive, you know, his transmit height 55 feet. 02:40:49.000 --> 02:40:53.000 jmcmasters: My receive height, five feet. 02:40:53.000 --> 02:40:55.000 jmcmasters: My received gain, 36. 02:40:56.000 --> 02:41:13.000 jmcmasters: Now, this is pointed in such a way that Al is the source and I am the destination. Therefore, this is what I, it's going to say, this is what Al's signal will sound like at my location. I click calculate path. It will go through nine steps to compile the information. 02:41:13.000 --> 02:41:25.000 jmcmasters: We'll take the latest QT plot and project that out, and here are the results. First thing you look at is the margin. This is too weak to be worked, minus 48 dB. 02:41:25.000 --> 02:41:39.000 jmcmasters: Uh, and then there are all these other metrics. The common volume spot is located, the free space loss, gaseous loss, gas losses, diffraction losses, total path loss, so on and so forth. 02:41:39.000 --> 02:41:52.000 jmcmasters: Here's the real problem. There is no refractivity in this DN over DH. Other than this, right in the midpoint, there is some enhancement taking place there. Again, in the Alcatel video, you're going to see. 02:41:52.000 --> 02:41:54.000 jmcmasters: Enhancements. 02:41:54.000 --> 02:42:08.000 jmcmasters: that for their business are negatives, for our business, they're positives. Now, if I looked at this earlier, I used the same, very same metrics, 47 gigahertz across this path, 100 kilometers, 107 kilometers. 02:42:08.000 --> 02:42:24.000 jmcmasters: And all these numbers were yellow because there was enhancement all the way across that path. So I'm showing you all this because I want you to see all this data that nobody has time to consume. It's just a massive amount of information. 02:42:25.000 --> 02:42:26.000 jmcmasters: Now. 02:42:26.000 --> 02:42:29.000 jmcmasters: with the help of some technology. 02:42:31.000 --> 02:42:32.000 jmcmasters: we can… 02:42:33.000 --> 02:42:43.000 jmcmasters: generate an extract routine that will go to this, our website, and it will pull, it will pull these data as often as we want them. 02:42:43.000 --> 02:42:48.000 jmcmasters: And then we can just let it run, like, forever. 02:42:48.000 --> 02:42:50.000 jmcmasters: And I've done that. 02:42:50.000 --> 02:43:06.000 jmcmasters: There is, there are several sets of data that I've compiled, and I'm going to show you some of those just very briefly, but just know, because we're going to get into the microwave update material here pretty quick, but just know that the ability is there for us to interrogate. 02:43:06.000 --> 02:43:08.000 jmcmasters: Our own… 02:43:09.000 --> 02:43:14.000 jmcmasters: Propagation engine that has been built and calibrated over lots of data. 02:43:14.000 --> 02:43:16.000 jmcmasters: 80,000. 02:43:16.000 --> 02:43:20.000 jmcmasters: Two-way contacts in microwave frequencies. 02:43:20.000 --> 02:43:35.000 jmcmasters: By interrogating it and compiling enough propagation prediction information, we can learn to be aware of what is going on, what these paths, how these paths fluctuate. 02:43:35.000 --> 02:43:37.000 jmcmasters: And. 02:43:37.000 --> 02:43:41.000 jmcmasters: Reliability, how the links might work. 02:43:41.000 --> 02:43:57.000 jmcmasters: Okay? So I'm going to come back to that, but I want to show you something. This started with a text from Al. And Al said, the beacon is way up. And I went to the website and started documenting what was happening at that moment. First thing I noticed here on… 02:43:57.000 --> 02:44:09.000 jmcmasters: The first one is, it's all green. It was a 10 gigahertz beacon, but he's reporting a very high signal strength, and he's also saying, hey, and I'm hearing 24 gigahertz, too, and he started giving me those data. 02:44:09.000 --> 02:44:21.000 jmcmasters: I flipped over after I looked at the map. Here, I looked at refractivity, like we just did a minute ago, and I saw, hmm, it's not great, but there is some green on there. 02:44:21.000 --> 02:44:30.000 jmcmasters: And then I looked at inversion, and it started piquing my interest. Said, oh, that there's some inversion taking place. This is normally not green. 02:44:30.000 --> 02:44:32.000 jmcmasters: It's normally brown. 02:44:32.000 --> 02:44:36.000 jmcmasters: So something's happening. How strong is it? 02:44:37.000 --> 02:44:54.000 jmcmasters: Look, there's ducting. So this explained, this started saying, okay, there's ducting. That's what Alice, that's why Alice were giving me these reports, is there's ducting, and it apparently is low enough, or there's enough of a refractivity event taking place in this duct that is trapping signals. 02:44:54.000 --> 02:44:59.000 jmcmasters: across that 100 kilometers. So then the next thing is. 02:44:59.000 --> 02:45:12.000 jmcmasters: the evil skew-T chart. I gotta look at that. Sure enough, look down here. This is a temperature inversion, where you have temperature going this way, dew point going that way. That's a temperature inversion. It was 1,800 feet high. 02:45:13.000 --> 02:45:19.000 jmcmasters: So these are the things took like two minutes to look at that. 02:45:19.000 --> 02:45:34.000 jmcmasters: And say, okay, that's that explains what's going on. So I spun over here to the APRS map. This is VHF, but it kind of is lining up a lot with the same thing we're seeing at ten gigahertz. And then I looked at the Hepburn Tropo index. 02:45:34.000 --> 02:45:48.000 jmcmasters: Well, you know, these are done ahead of time, but for that time, it showed some little bitty enhancement. But I've seen it look like this before, when nothing ever happened to us at 10 gigahertz. 02:45:48.000 --> 02:46:01.000 jmcmasters: Last thing is there is a new tool out there called TropoScout. I have been in conversation or in communication with this fella in Great Britain, and it's got a lot of the same. 02:46:01.000 --> 02:46:17.000 jmcmasters: close to what our propagation engine has got to it, but there's some things I don't understand, and I don't believe I've spent enough time on it to be an authority on it. At the time that. 02:46:17.000 --> 02:46:31.000 jmcmasters: Al reported, and I was looking at it, uh, it… this is the way it looked, and I swear that kind of does look pink under there, and pink is good. In his chart, pink is good, not green. 02:46:31.000 --> 02:46:46.000 jmcmasters: Well, green's in the middle, and then it gets pink and red and so forth. So I sent him this, and I said, is that supposed to be good? Because it was good. It was empirically good. So is that supposed to be good? 02:46:46.000 --> 02:46:59.000 jmcmasters: So, anyway, these tools are coming because a lot of people have AI, you know, technical ability to, you know, apply AI, and we are one of those people. 02:47:00.000 --> 02:47:22.000 jmcmasters: All right. You see the wormhole showing up here because this is where it goes off the deep end. And I have a CSV file. That CSV file has two locations in it. It says got Al and our location in Dorchester. It's got a frequency indicated 47 gigahertz. It's got Al's metrics, my metrics, and that's all it's got. 02:47:22.000 --> 02:47:33.000 jmcmasters: So, those are the input data that you saw me manipulate in the lower left-hand corner on the path analysis. I put these in a CSV file. I put every location I was interested in. 02:47:34.000 --> 02:47:35.000 jmcmasters: And then… 02:47:35.000 --> 02:47:49.000 jmcmasters: I wrapped that with another script that said, go to the website, extract this data every time this run, every time I run you. Then I wrapped that with a script that said, run it every 15 minutes. 02:47:49.000 --> 02:47:52.000 jmcmasters: forever. Just run it. 02:47:52.000 --> 02:47:57.000 jmcmasters: Build a CSV file, and then I can take and make graphs on it. 02:47:57.000 --> 02:47:58.000 jmcmasters: So. 02:47:59.000 --> 02:48:08.000 jmcmasters: There are quite a few of these files, quite a few of these analyses. I'm not going to go over them here today, but I will touch a couple of them, and this is the first one. 02:48:08.000 --> 02:48:09.000 jmcmasters: Now… 02:48:09.000 --> 02:48:12.000 jmcmasters: Prior to the contest. 02:48:12.000 --> 02:48:27.000 jmcmasters: I wanted a baseline. I wanted an absolute… you know, these are locations that I've been to. I've worked Al, I've worked Scott, I've worked Greg, I've worked Keith from these locations. So, they are vetted good locations. They work when the conditions are bad. 02:48:28.000 --> 02:48:45.000 jmcmasters: Barely. They work when the conditions are good. So I want to just feed them to this propagation engine over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And what I want to see is that the propagation engine says, they're good, they're good, they're good, they're good. Because then I know. 02:48:45.000 --> 02:49:01.000 jmcmasters: it's doing a job that I can trust. If it comes back and says they stink, they're bad, they'll never work, they won't work, then it needs tuning, it's not working right. Or if it comes back and says they're just hugely good, they're just over-the-top good, then I know it's gone too. 02:49:01.000 --> 02:49:11.000 jmcmasters: far the other direction. So, the baseline. The baseline gives you confidence that the thing is working. The tool, the yardstick is really 36 inches long. 02:49:11.000 --> 02:49:13.000 jmcmasters: So what I did was after… 02:49:13.000 --> 02:49:23.000 jmcmasters: hours, hundreds of these extractions, I said, okay, now we got this pile of data. I just want to take 6 to 9 AM. 02:49:23.000 --> 02:49:28.000 jmcmasters: And I want to analyze 19 historically successful locations. I had… 02:49:28.000 --> 02:49:41.000 jmcmasters: I had… I had 30 every 15 minutes, you know, being analyzed, but… so let's reduce this down to 19 that are close to where I'm going to be going, and I want to see how it comes out. Does it… 02:49:41.000 --> 02:49:51.000 jmcmasters: Does it give me confidence to actually run those other unknown locations? And it did. Here's what it ended up being. These are the… 02:49:51.000 --> 02:50:06.000 jmcmasters: Signal-to-noise margins, or margins, by day, these are days, there were 9 days, I think it was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 days leading up to the contest. These are the signal strengths by distance. 02:50:06.000 --> 02:50:21.000 jmcmasters: So the green line, sorry, the blue line, the top line, the one that's nearly always the best, is the 200 to 224 kilometer line. The red line is the 225 to 249 kilometer, and the blue line. 02:50:21.000 --> 02:50:28.000 jmcmasters: is 250 kilometer and greater. And you notice there were a couple of really nice days. 02:50:28.000 --> 02:50:32.000 jmcmasters: Well, I didn't know those were really nice days at first. 02:50:32.000 --> 02:50:37.000 jmcmasters: I said, were those average days? And they yielded these positive. 02:50:37.000 --> 02:50:39.000 jmcmasters: You know, 40. 02:50:39.000 --> 02:50:40.000 jmcmasters: Uh, DB. 02:50:41.000 --> 02:50:45.000 jmcmasters: Margins? Are those average days? 02:50:45.000 --> 02:50:49.000 jmcmasters: Or are they exceptionally good days? So I had to bring in… 02:50:49.000 --> 02:50:51.000 jmcmasters: to the analysis. 02:50:51.000 --> 02:51:07.000 jmcmasters: the end units, because that's a derived function that comes from a lot of meteorological data, and it's mapped across the top. And sure enough, all of the spikes, the little tents here, are on days where the end units were. 02:51:07.000 --> 02:51:09.000 jmcmasters: Almost indicating a duct. 02:51:09.000 --> 02:51:22.000 jmcmasters: So, in the days leading up to the contest, we had two exceptionally good days. The rest of the days were just so-so, just ho-hum, and they were down here in the 10 dB. You know, signals good enough for CW. 02:51:22.000 --> 02:51:24.000 jmcmasters: you know. 02:51:24.000 --> 02:51:36.000 jmcmasters: get… provided you get lined up and everything else works out. So this gave me the confidence to go on and run the other analysis. I was actually running the other analysis at the same time. Here. 02:51:36.000 --> 02:51:43.000 jmcmasters: were the prospective locations. These were the ones that I was thinking about going to, that I had plans to go to. 02:51:43.000 --> 02:51:46.000 jmcmasters: Now, these are the same nine days. 02:51:47.000 --> 02:51:52.000 jmcmasters: These are by hour, starting at 3 AM. Looky here. 02:51:52.000 --> 02:51:56.000 jmcmasters: I told Al and Keith, I said, it's the best at 3 AM. 02:51:57.000 --> 02:52:03.000 jmcmasters: Of course, they looked at me like, don't ask us. Don't, don't, don't go there. 02:52:03.000 --> 02:52:13.000 jmcmasters: But it is, it's best at 3 and 4 AM, and then it starts this little drift. And another thing that it does is it maintains a 10 to 15 deep separation. 02:52:13.000 --> 02:52:17.000 jmcmasters: From this, these two distances from the 200. 02:52:17.000 --> 02:52:23.000 jmcmasters: kilometer to the 200 and say 235 or 40 average. 02:52:23.000 --> 02:52:29.000 jmcmasters: So, I don't understand that. I'm still not sure what that's telling, because… 02:52:29.000 --> 02:52:36.000 jmcmasters: We should never run out of common volume unless there were tropospheric or, you know, upper atmospheric. 02:52:36.000 --> 02:52:38.000 jmcmasters: Oh. 02:52:38.000 --> 02:52:44.000 jmcmasters: Elements that caused a specific depression here, but something caused. 02:52:44.000 --> 02:52:49.000 jmcmasters: the signals to be lower by 10 to 15 DB. 02:52:50.000 --> 02:53:05.000 jmcmasters: Between two distance categories and then the other category seemed to hang in there pretty good. It didn't actually get that much worse once, you know, once it got there. So there's more study here and I would like to understand. 02:53:05.000 --> 02:53:12.000 jmcmasters: Is this a scattering, you know, inaccuracy, or is this ducting that. 02:53:12.000 --> 02:53:14.000 jmcmasters: was or wasn't present. 02:53:14.000 --> 02:53:19.000 jmcmasters: what was happening. Now, the black box, final thing I want to say is. 02:53:19.000 --> 02:53:34.000 jmcmasters: it's zoning in on what we… the chart we just saw. So this is, uh… was it 6, 7, 8 o'clock, from 6 to 9, basically. And so, that's all the previous analysis even looked at. 02:53:34.000 --> 02:53:39.000 jmcmasters: was those hours. And so, with this chart in hand. 02:53:39.000 --> 02:53:48.000 jmcmasters: I decided I'm going to those locations and I'm going to give them a shot. They look like, you know, most of them are going to work. Most of them are going to. 02:53:48.000 --> 02:53:50.000 jmcmasters: make points. 02:53:51.000 --> 02:54:03.000 jmcmasters: Now we're going to look at this Alcatel propagation analysis video. This is an older video. It's 10 minutes long. I've enhanced the video with an AI tool. 02:54:03.000 --> 02:54:06.000 jmcmasters: I put its name up here. 02:54:06.000 --> 02:54:16.000 jmcmasters: The analysis is presented as information to assist the microwave engineer with references to multipath fading and meteorological effects and countermeasures. In other words. 02:54:16.000 --> 02:54:21.000 jmcmasters: These are problems that we need plans to overcome. 02:54:21.000 --> 02:54:27.000 jmcmasters: it's just the opposite for us, right? Because we… we do things, we like things like this, and we go make things happen. 02:54:27.000 --> 02:54:41.000 jmcmasters: The model of information presented in the video is the same model we are using now in our propagation studies. Empirical data correlated to calculate atmospheric enabling events. It's the very same thing that they were doing. 02:54:41.000 --> 02:54:54.000 jmcmasters: 30, 40 years ago. Now, I know that commercial interests have this stuff completely figured out, and so does the military, but we don't have that. We have what we have, and we're figuring it out. 02:54:55.000 --> 02:55:04.000 jmcmasters: Some of the empirical data used in the study, there's spectrum analyzers receiving 40 megahertz bandwidth for two different antennas, a main and diversity antenna. 02:55:04.000 --> 02:55:10.000 jmcmasters: I didn't put it here, but the antennas are spaced out from Richardson, Texas to Kauffman. 02:55:10.000 --> 02:55:13.000 jmcmasters: at two different plants. 02:55:13.000 --> 02:55:23.000 jmcmasters: Kent? Note that there will be cases where there will be fading in part of the modulation and not in other parts of the modulation. 02:55:23.000 --> 02:55:27.000 jmcmasters: Okay, so you you used to. 02:55:27.000 --> 02:55:37.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, it's amazing, the notch that occurs in the digital signal. So, that reminds me, these are… this is a wideband digital signal, 40 megahertz wide. 02:55:37.000 --> 02:55:43.000 jmcmasters: So when he said modulation, I realized I hadn't mentioned that because these are broadband signal. 02:55:43.000 --> 02:56:00.000 jmcmasters: The weather metrics are part of the empirical data containing wind velocity and direction temperature and F at 10 and 250 on the tower, the humidity sensor at 10 and 260 feet on the tower. And then the calculated data, again, similar to what we're doing. 02:56:00.000 --> 02:56:08.000 jmcmasters: on the website, is refractivity in units. You've seen me already show you in units, okay? 02:56:08.000 --> 02:56:16.000 jmcmasters: from a range 270 to 370, uh, plotted as a function of height above ground, 0 to 280 feet. 02:56:16.000 --> 02:56:27.000 jmcmasters: These are the important terms, sharp negative gradient, super refractivity, all bad things for the microwave commercial links, vertical mixing. 02:56:27.000 --> 02:56:38.000 jmcmasters: That's bad for us. Refractivity dispersion. That's bad for us. That's… that's… Al, uh… well, not Al, but Greg McIntyre will call that burning off. It's burning off. 02:56:41.000 --> 02:56:58.000 jmcmasters: Here's one of the snips of the video itself. This illustrates the sharp negative gradient in delta N over delta H, and you see the graph on the left side. When you see that angle of the dangle like that, that's where you're getting this, like, something above. 02:56:58.000 --> 02:57:03.000 jmcmasters: is causing the signal to come be refracted down. 02:57:04.000 --> 02:57:13.000 jmcmasters: And of course, this is a problem when you have, you know, one channel that's impeding on another channel, as is shown in that diagram. 02:57:13.000 --> 02:57:21.000 jmcmasters: Here is the sharp negative grade. This is what Kent was bringing up. Over on the left, you see this deep notch. That's 70 down. 02:57:21.000 --> 02:57:30.000 jmcmasters: a deep notch in the lower part of that bandwidth, that 40 megahertz signal. Now, that thing's gonna travel. 02:57:30.000 --> 02:57:33.000 jmcmasters: You're gonna see it move through. 02:57:33.000 --> 02:57:34.000 jmcmasters: The spectrum. 02:57:35.000 --> 02:57:50.000 jmcmasters: But this is 745. This thing starts looking great about, I don't know, 5, 6, not 3 AM, but 5 or 6 in the morning. They're gonna have time lapse, and all these numbers stay at 300 and above. We would love to have a day like that. 02:57:51.000 --> 02:57:56.000 jmcmasters: Okay, so we're gonna start that video now. I don't know if you're gonna see it here locally. 02:57:56.000 --> 02:58:01.000 jmcmasters: Now that I know about this problem, but we're going to start it. 02:58:06.000 --> 02:58:07.000 jmcmasters: Mm-hmm. 02:58:08.000 --> 02:58:10.000 jmcmasters: uh… 02:58:14.000 --> 02:58:17.000 jmcmasters: I'm missing it here. 02:58:20.000 --> 02:58:22.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 02:58:29.000 --> 02:58:30.000 jmcmasters: Bye. 02:58:30.000 --> 02:58:32.000 jmcmasters: That's fine. 02:58:32.000 --> 02:58:35.000 jmcmasters: So, I'm glad I have my… 02:58:38.000 --> 02:58:42.000 jmcmasters: drives here, because I don't see it on my disk. 02:58:46.000 --> 02:58:51.000 jmcmasters: What's the USB? I've got, I've got, I should have it here. 02:58:51.000 --> 02:58:52.000 jmcmasters: Let me see. 02:58:56.000 --> 02:59:00.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, I've got it right here, but I don't want to play it off of here. 02:59:01.000 --> 02:59:03.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: It was in the other folder. 02:59:06.000 --> 02:59:07.000 jmcmasters: And. 02:59:15.000 --> 02:59:18.000 jmcmasters: Somehow that didn't come over. All right. 02:59:18.000 --> 02:59:22.000 jmcmasters: Well, maybe we will play it from there. Should be all right. 02:59:26.000 --> 02:59:29.000 jmcmasters: Okay, uh… 02:59:29.000 --> 02:59:33.000 jmcmasters: It's going out. Is it going out? Yeah. Okay. 02:59:41.000 --> 02:59:43.000 jmcmasters: I can't share. 02:59:45.000 --> 03:00:02.000 jmcmasters: As a global leader in telecommunication systems, with 45 years of experience in microwave technology, Alcatel understands the need for reliability and operability at every stage of the wireless product. 03:00:03.000 --> 03:00:21.000 jmcmasters: Because we understand this need, we are providing the following information to help ensure satisfaction to not just our customers, but to their customers as well. The purpose of the Multipath and Meteorological Measurements Experiment. 03:00:21.000 --> 03:00:38.000 jmcmasters: is to study the effects of multipath fading on digital systems, as well as evaluate various multipath countermeasure techniques and equipment. It is also intended to give the microwave system engineer a better understanding of the relationship between meteorological. 03:00:26.000 --> 03:00:28.000 jmcmasters: On that spreadsheet. 03:00:28.000 --> 03:00:29.000 jmcmasters: It's an impact. 03:00:38.000 --> 03:00:42.000 jmcmasters: conditions and the clear air fading phenomenon. 03:00:43.000 --> 03:00:52.000 jmcmasters: The information presented in this program is the result of a microwave testing program which has been conducted by Alcatel since 1982. 03:00:52.000 --> 03:01:00.000 jmcmasters: The test hop studied here is located between Richardson and Kaufman, Texas, a distance of 29.7 miles. 03:01:01.000 --> 03:01:02.000 jmcmasters: Source in particular. 03:01:01.000 --> 03:01:23.000 jmcmasters: On the left, two spectrum analyzers display the signals received on the main and diversity antenna. The remainder of the display shows various meteorological parameters measured at the Kauffman site, including wind direction, wind velocity, temperature, and relative humidity differentials, and a plot of radio refractivity as a function of altitude. 03:01:24.000 --> 03:01:41.000 jmcmasters: Meteorological data is recorded once each minute, but the information is displayed as a succession of one-minute readings using time-lapse techniques. This procedure will allow us to cover 24 hours of information in just over 5 minutes. 03:01:41.000 --> 03:01:49.000 jmcmasters: The sequence begins at 12 noon on April 26th, and concludes at 11.59 a.m. on April 27th. 03:01:49.000 --> 03:02:04.000 jmcmasters: The received signals from the space diversity antennas at Richardson are displayed on two spectrum analyzers. The upper display shows the spectrum from the main antenna, and the lower display shows the spectrum from the diversity antenna. 03:02:04.000 --> 03:02:19.000 jmcmasters: The spectrum analyzers are operated in the normalized mode, displaying a straight line under non-dispersive conditions. The use of normalization allows a clear view of channel characteristics during flat or dispersive fading events. 03:02:19.000 --> 03:02:28.000 jmcmasters: The vertical scale is 5 dB per division, and under non-faded conditions, the trace is one division from the top. 03:02:28.000 --> 03:02:39.000 jmcmasters: Automatic level control in the down converters prevent fades of less than 12 dB from affecting the spectrum display. The horizontal scale is 4 MHz per division. 03:02:39.000 --> 03:02:55.000 jmcmasters: This display shows a 22 dB flat fade. At the top of the screen is a 24-hour plot. The time is shown in hours and minutes. The time lapse is accelerated during non-fading events, that is 12 noon until midnight. 03:02:55.000 --> 03:03:01.000 jmcmasters: night, then slows between midnight and 8 AM, when most of the fading occurs. 03:03:03.000 --> 03:03:13.000 jmcmasters: The upper right part of the display contains a wind direction indicator, which shows the average wind direction during each 60-second measuring period. 03:03:13.000 --> 03:03:28.000 jmcmasters: Below the wind direction indicator, we see the following display. On the left, wind velocity in miles per hour. In the middle, temperature difference in degrees Fahrenheit between the 10 and 260 foot sensors. 03:03:28.000 --> 03:03:50.000 jmcmasters: And on the right, relative humidity difference in percent between 10 and 260 foot sensors. The radio refractivity is displayed as a function of height shown on the vertical axis. The measurements are made at 50 foot intervals between 10 and 260 feet on the microwave tower at Kauffman. 03:03:50.000 --> 03:04:16.000 jmcmasters: The radio refractivity measured in n units is shown on the horizontal axis. The display range is 100 n units between 270 and 370. The computed values of radio refractivity as a function of height are shown in the center of the screen. This information was computed from measured meteorological data at 60 second intervals. 03:04:16.000 --> 03:04:33.000 jmcmasters: Here we begin the presentation of measured data for the 24-hour period beginning at 12 noon on April 26th. The temperature and humidity gradients are very small during this time, which causes the refractivity to be very close to normal. 03:04:33.000 --> 03:04:44.000 jmcmasters: That is, it has a slightly negative slope and is causing no propagation problems. When the time reaches midnight, zero hours, the time lapse rate slows considerably. 03:04:45.000 --> 03:04:56.000 jmcmasters: During the time between midnight April 26th and 1AM April 27th, the temperature gradient begins to build, but the humidity gradient is very small. 03:04:56.000 --> 03:05:03.000 jmcmasters: This condition results in a 15 to 18 dB flat fade for the main and diversity receivers. 03:05:03.000 --> 03:05:11.000 jmcmasters: Between 1 and 2 AM, the main and diversity receivers experience a 25 and 12 dB flat fade, respectively. 03:05:11.000 --> 03:05:26.000 jmcmasters: Then, an out-of-band notch produces a 15 dB slope across the 30 MHz radio bandwidth. Here, the meteorological display is again slowed to aid our view, but the spectrum analyzers remain in real time. 03:05:26.000 --> 03:05:35.000 jmcmasters: Between 2 and 2.30, the diversity receiver experiences a 20 dB notch on top of a 25 dB flat fade. 03:05:35.000 --> 03:05:57.000 jmcmasters: 30 and 3:00 AM, the diversity receiver has a 30 dB notch in band, which rolls out of band to produce a 10 dB slope across the 30 megahertz bandwidth. From three to 3:30, the wind velocity slows to zero miles per hour and remains there for over an hour. 03:05:57.000 --> 03:06:08.000 jmcmasters: At this time, the main receiver experiences a 25 dB flat fade, accompanied by a 30 dB notch, which gives a composite fade greater than 55 dB. 03:06:08.000 --> 03:06:25.000 jmcmasters: At 330, the temperature gradient begins to grow significantly, and the refractivity begins to become more negative. The main antenna experiences a notch and flat fade, which combine to produce a total fade which reaches minus 80 dBm. 03:06:25.000 --> 03:06:39.000 jmcmasters: Between 4 and 430, shifts in the refractive layers in the center of the path are causing 25 dB flat fades on both main and diversity receivers. The wind velocity remains at 0 miles per hour. 03:06:39.000 --> 03:06:47.000 jmcmasters: From 4.30 to 5, the wind begins to gust, and the humidity gradient builds sharply to 50%. 03:06:47.000 --> 03:07:04.000 jmcmasters: Let's pause for a moment to take a closer look at this event. Shortly after 4.30, the wind begins to blow from the northwest. This moves the stratified air masses, which were formed in the past during the period of no wind, across the sensors mounted on the Kauffman Tower. 03:07:04.000 --> 03:07:13.000 jmcmasters: This movement allows us to see the super-refractive condition, which has been causing flat fading of 20 to 25 dB for over an hour. 03:07:13.000 --> 03:07:29.000 jmcmasters: Flat fading occurs when the main beam is bent downward by the negative refractivity gradient, allowing reflected signals to approach the magnitude of the main beam and cause significant in-band notches, a condition clearly seen in the following segments. 03:07:39.000 --> 03:07:54.000 jmcmasters: Waves form on the interfaces of atmospheric layers much the same way waves form on the surface of a lake. These surfaces cause the magnitude of the reflected signals to fluctuate rapidly, as seen in the following segments. 03:07:54.000 --> 03:08:04.000 jmcmasters: Between 5 and 5.30, severe super-refractive conditions exist, causing 20 to 25 dB flat fades on both receivers. 03:08:04.000 --> 03:08:17.000 jmcmasters: The diversity spectrum illustrates the wave motion on the layered interfaces. From 5.30 to 6 AM, the main antenna receiver experiences flat fades of 25 dB, with additional 20 dB of slope. 03:08:17.000 --> 03:08:20.000 jmcmasters: The wave action continues during this time. 03:08:21.000 --> 03:08:23.000 jmcmasters: Thank you. 03:08:23.000 --> 03:08:30.000 jmcmasters: Between 6 and 8, the super-refractive condition continues due to lingering temperatures and humidity gradients. 03:08:30.000 --> 03:08:39.000 jmcmasters: During this time, a very slow notch moves through the main antenna, reaching composite fades of 55 dB. 03:08:39.000 --> 03:08:43.000 jmcmasters: Rapid spectrum fluctuations also continue at this time. 03:08:49.000 --> 03:08:57.000 jmcmasters: Now, sunrise has caused a warming of the Earth's surface, causing a dispersion of the refractive layers. 03:08:57.000 --> 03:09:06.000 jmcmasters: Our time lapse is again accelerated between 8 AM and noon. The Earth's surface continues to warm, becoming a heat source once again. 03:09:06.000 --> 03:09:21.000 jmcmasters: This re-establishes the vertical mixing within the atmosphere and disperses the temperature and moisture gradient that form during the early morning hours. With this vertical mixing, the refractivity gradient returns to a normal condition. 03:09:21.000 --> 03:09:36.000 jmcmasters: And the clear air fading previously observed on the received spectrums has ceased. This program has been made possible by Alcatel, a world leader in telecommunications. 03:09:41.000 --> 03:09:43.000 jmcmasters: Comments? 03:09:43.000 --> 03:09:45.000 jmcmasters: What frequency did that ask? 03:09:47.000 --> 03:09:50.000 jmcmasters: The dishes look like they were 5. 03:09:51.000 --> 03:09:53.000 jmcmasters: To me, maybe lower. 03:09:55.000 --> 03:09:57.000 jmcmasters: But yeah, it'd be good to know that. 03:10:08.000 --> 03:10:12.000 jmcmasters: Okay, so I'm kind of winding down here as, um… 03:10:12.000 --> 03:10:25.000 jmcmasters: Some future thoughts. We have beacons and beacon monitors. Just kind of getting started with that. We have two beacon monitors that need further deployment. 03:10:25.000 --> 03:10:37.000 jmcmasters: Um, they are, uh, for 10 and 24 gigahertz, uh, and then we need more. We need more built. There are some in the process of being built. 03:10:37.000 --> 03:10:51.000 jmcmasters: And we need to get them propagated out where we'll have the empirical data without folks having to stare at their screens to do it. But thank you for those of you that do that. 03:10:51.000 --> 03:10:53.000 jmcmasters: Um… 03:10:54.000 --> 03:10:57.000 jmcmasters: My bullet points here pertain to. 03:10:57.000 --> 03:11:13.000 jmcmasters: uh, propagation under 100 kilometers, and while it continues to be interesting, I mean, every week we have some kind of a conversation about what made that happen, or what made this happen, and those are on 10 gigahertz. Those are 10 gigahertz anomalies. 03:11:13.000 --> 03:11:28.000 jmcmasters: Uh, we still… that we have come to trust 10 gigahertz is pretty reliable at that distance. Uh, we're still at the early stages of studying 24 and 47 gigahertz at distances under 100 kilometers. 03:11:28.000 --> 03:11:36.000 jmcmasters: And, um, we have reports at 10 gigahertz beacon reception at 250 kilometers, which correlate to rain scatter and ducting. 03:11:36.000 --> 03:11:45.000 jmcmasters: Deployment of additional 24 and 47 gigahertz beacons and beacon monitors is needed. That's an obvious need that we have. 03:11:46.000 --> 03:11:56.000 jmcmasters: And automated empirical measurements are best, if we can get to where we're compiling this data all automatically, where we can then look at it. 03:11:56.000 --> 03:12:00.000 jmcmasters: over time and correlate it with weather. 03:12:00.000 --> 03:12:11.000 jmcmasters: Uh, I have a couple of analysis, I won't put you through it today, but just finished a, uh, 3-week-long, uh, gathering of data. 03:12:11.000 --> 03:12:22.000 jmcmasters: One of those pertains to Lake Erie and some locations that Tony Emanuel, KAZR, has previous experience. 03:12:22.000 --> 03:12:24.000 jmcmasters: in those locations. 03:12:24.000 --> 03:12:25.000 jmcmasters: We're. 03:12:25.000 --> 03:12:33.000 jmcmasters: groups of rovers have conquered, uh, you know, some pretty sizable distances at 76 GHz there. 03:12:33.000 --> 03:12:41.000 jmcmasters: I ran those locations for 76 gigahertz for three weeks, and it's part of the microwave update presentation I'm going to. 03:12:41.000 --> 03:12:43.000 jmcmasters: give. 03:12:43.000 --> 03:12:58.000 jmcmasters: but the one thing that absolutely wiped out their path was rain. I mean real rain, you know, rain coming down, not high humidity, but rain, and I just looked since I've been here. I just looked at. 03:12:58.000 --> 03:13:14.000 jmcmasters: Part of that analysis that I did for me and Al, that where I put in our favorite locations, really our favorite locations for 47 gigahertz, but analyzed them for 76 gigahertz. And that's why I was asking what happened on October 1st. 03:13:14.000 --> 03:13:19.000 jmcmasters: September 30th, October 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. 03:13:19.000 --> 03:13:28.000 jmcmasters: because the graphs go like this. Boom! They're just deep V notches where the signals are completely smashed. 03:13:28.000 --> 03:13:33.000 jmcmasters: It rained. Those are the days it rained. I looked it up while we were in a break. 03:13:33.000 --> 03:13:47.000 jmcmasters: So, uh, rain is definitely our enemy. But anyway, these studies, uh, are useful, uh, for us to gain, uh, an understanding of how we're going to pick good days to operate, and, you know. 03:13:47.000 --> 03:13:58.000 jmcmasters: get some more grids. The last slide, really, here is that, um, I did find 4 locations as a result of the effort that I went through, and, um, they did work. 03:13:58.000 --> 03:14:03.000 jmcmasters: So there are four more that we can put into the pot. That's all I have. 03:14:07.000 --> 03:14:09.000 jmcmasters: 342. 03:14:09.000 --> 03:14:13.000 jmcmasters: We'll go back to the agenda just for a couple of announcements. 03:14:16.000 --> 03:14:18.000 jmcmasters: Uh… 03:14:18.000 --> 03:14:22.000 jmcmasters: See where we get to right here. Okay. 03:14:22.000 --> 03:14:24.000 jmcmasters: Slide show. 03:14:24.000 --> 03:14:25.000 jmcmasters: from the current. 03:14:26.000 --> 03:14:37.000 jmcmasters: Okay. I do want to let you know, has anybody noticed any screen freezing out there in the audience? Did you see any hiccups this time? 03:14:37.000 --> 03:14:41.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I won, and the audio sounds really, really good this time. 03:14:40.000 --> 03:14:56.000 jmcmasters: Okay, great. Well, then, our experiment appears to have worked. We still had one technical difficulty inside here, the hangar where we couldn't see the videos and the web pieces that we were displaying out. But we are using Starlink today. 03:14:42.000 --> 03:14:43.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Perfect tattoo. 03:14:57.000 --> 03:14:58.000 jmcmasters: um… 03:14:58.000 --> 03:15:14.000 jmcmasters: My truck was not yet back out of the shop from being repaired because I hit a deer on Saturday, the first leg of the contest. Luckily, I was not injured and the truck was still drivable because, you know, that's really what's important other than there was no damage to the gear in the back. 03:15:15.000 --> 03:15:26.000 jmcmasters: So, anyhow, we're using Starlink today, and we will continue to use it. It's deployed out here alongside the… outside the hangar to the… 03:15:25.000 --> 03:15:28.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Is it a full size or a mini? 03:15:28.000 --> 03:15:30.000 jmcmasters: I mean, it's a standard V4. 03:15:30.000 --> 03:15:33.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Oh, okay. So, big dog. Nice. 03:15:31.000 --> 03:15:33.000 jmcmasters: It's a big one. 03:15:33.000 --> 03:15:50.000 jmcmasters: And I'm getting great download speeds here. This test here that was showing 202 and 17, that was from home where I'm in the trees. The download and upload speeds here are amazing at David's place. So this has turned out to be a good idea. 03:15:54.000 --> 03:16:02.000 jmcmasters: All previous months, we've been using the hotspot on my cell phone. Okay. 03:16:06.000 --> 03:16:09.000 jmcmasters: Um, I didn't post the, uh… 03:16:09.000 --> 03:16:22.000 jmcmasters: the access point, but you'll see it on your phone if you go look in your settings. Uh, just simply because I didn't want any… anyone else using it until we were sure that the bandwidth was really gonna hold up really well. 03:16:22.000 --> 03:16:27.000 David - KG5EIU TX: You can make a QR code so it's easier for people just to. 03:16:27.000 --> 03:16:32.000 David - KG5EIU TX: point their phone at it. When they come in, they can shine their phone on it and connect up. 03:16:32.000 --> 03:16:33.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. Okay. 03:16:33.000 --> 03:16:41.000 jmcmasters: I just didn't want our local group taken away from the bandwidth that we had the problem with before. 03:16:35.000 --> 03:16:37.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I understand, I understand. 03:16:41.000 --> 03:16:49.000 jmcmasters: As we've mentioned before, microwave update's a couple weeks out now. Several of us will be there. 03:16:49.000 --> 03:16:50.000 jmcmasters: Oh. 03:16:50.000 --> 03:16:57.000 jmcmasters: Then Al had mentioned there's this… is it two more weekends, or it's just October 31st, November 1st? 03:16:58.000 --> 03:17:05.000 jmcmasters: Is that the last EME contest of the year? Or weekend of the year? Last weekend in October, yeah. Yeah. 03:17:05.000 --> 03:17:06.000 jmcmasters: Okay, there's that. 03:17:06.000 --> 03:17:17.000 jmcmasters: November… hey, Scott, let me know if I've left out something important here, because you are the contest man. November, uh, we have a mad day on the 7th, and then the meeting. 03:17:17.000 --> 03:17:19.000 jmcmasters: On the 14th. 03:17:19.000 --> 03:17:20.000 jmcmasters: and then. 03:17:20.000 --> 03:17:30.000 jmcmasters: oh there is another one is is this accurate 28th and 29th okay yeah this was the last two no end of November end of October end of November. 03:17:31.000 --> 03:17:36.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, I've got Geminids here. 03:17:36.000 --> 03:17:43.000 jmcmasters: But not Leonids. I forgot the Leonids. Yeah, that's the big one. 03:17:43.000 --> 03:17:56.000 jmcmasters: I got a story about that one, because I was just a teenager when that… I thought the sky was falling in El Paso when that 66, or whatever it was, when the Leonids really. 03:17:56.000 --> 03:17:59.000 jmcmasters: Stormed, I think they called it meteor storm. 03:17:59.000 --> 03:18:03.000 jmcmasters: Oh, it scared me. It was. I'd never seen anything like that. 03:18:04.000 --> 03:18:09.000 jmcmasters: So you've got Matt on the 5th and the meeting on the 12th, we will have elections. 03:18:09.000 --> 03:18:12.000 jmcmasters: We are talking about, um… 03:18:12.000 --> 03:18:15.000 jmcmasters: Uh, switching treasurers, so… 03:18:15.000 --> 03:18:17.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 03:18:17.000 --> 03:18:23.000 jmcmasters: Say your prayers, I guess, would be the thing to say. It's like… 03:18:23.000 --> 03:18:27.000 jmcmasters: God help those people that get appointed for 20 years. 03:18:27.000 --> 03:18:36.000 jmcmasters: Uh, here's our perpetual stuff. We have the 2-meter net. I'm seeing some activity here on the reflector about nighttime. 03:18:36.000 --> 03:18:46.000 jmcmasters: Was those… were those contesting days where we were… or it was on Slack? We were talking about 902 and 1296 activity? Yeah, that's, uh… 03:18:49.000 --> 03:18:50.000 jmcmasters: And it's coming up. 03:18:51.000 --> 03:18:54.000 jmcmasters: All spring, not opening up. Hmm. 03:18:59.000 --> 03:19:05.000 jmcmasters: Well, there have been some 222 activity, I know. Yeah, that was the fall spring. 03:19:05.000 --> 03:19:09.000 jmcmasters: There's a group that gets on every Tuesday night. 03:19:12.000 --> 03:19:15.000 jmcmasters: Okay, well, here's your chance to… 03:19:15.000 --> 03:19:18.000 jmcmasters: You know, get your gear up and see if it's working. 03:19:19.000 --> 03:19:25.000 jmcmasters: Also, the 6-meter hoot owl net. Don't forget Al Webb calling that tonight. 03:19:25.000 --> 03:19:28.000 jmcmasters: Midnight on Saturday. 03:19:29.000 --> 03:19:32.000 jmcmasters: And here's our Treasury update. 03:19:32.000 --> 03:19:34.000 jmcmasters: Bank balance. 03:19:34.000 --> 03:19:39.000 jmcmasters: $78.91 and change. Paid membership count. 03:19:39.000 --> 03:19:41.000 jmcmasters: 63. 03:19:43.000 --> 03:19:50.000 jmcmasters: I have a little old business to notate. I want to change the slide to just call it unfinished, but… 03:19:50.000 --> 03:19:52.000 jmcmasters: Uh, but… 03:19:52.000 --> 03:20:00.000 jmcmasters: provide an invitation to Chuck Claver, that got done. Kent Britton to donate a 415E to the club by March of 27. 03:20:02.000 --> 03:20:09.000 jmcmasters: NTMS will host the 2027 microwave update. The $500 deposit was paid. 03:20:10.000 --> 03:20:13.000 jmcmasters: At the conclusion of last meeting. 03:20:13.000 --> 03:20:18.000 jmcmasters: Eric Haskell was to check on test equipment availability. 03:20:20.000 --> 03:20:21.000 jmcmasters: I don't have an update on. 03:20:21.000 --> 03:20:25.000 jmcmasters: Okay. Well, I'll just keep it as a bullet point. 03:20:25.000 --> 03:20:41.000 jmcmasters: Antenna range and noise figure testing on Thursday. Al was calling this out. We would like to try to get folks in town on Thursday, uh, and give our noise figure engineer and our antenna range engineer folks. 03:20:42.000 --> 03:20:46.000 jmcmasters: The opportunity to not have to be outside and miss. 03:20:46.000 --> 03:20:49.000 jmcmasters: meetings on Friday and Saturday. 03:20:52.000 --> 03:21:05.000 jmcmasters: So it's a win-win if people will show up and have their antennas, they, you know, they have their gear, they want testing, they should have the motivation to appear on Thursday. Our room rates are fantastic. 03:21:05.000 --> 03:21:07.000 jmcmasters: Unbelievable, actually. 03:21:07.000 --> 03:21:10.000 jmcmasters: So it's a great strategy. 03:21:10.000 --> 03:21:14.000 jmcmasters: That was all of Al's doings. 03:21:14.000 --> 03:21:19.000 jmcmasters: Friday and Saturday presentations all days, all day with lunches. 03:21:19.000 --> 03:21:22.000 jmcmasters: A speaker for the Saturday night banquet. 03:21:24.000 --> 03:21:37.000 jmcmasters: And a list of conference duties shall be assembled and handed out, looking for volunteers to give us a hand. If you can't even… if you can't stay there but 4 or 5 hours, we'd still like your help. 03:21:37.000 --> 03:21:41.000 jmcmasters: in assisting in some form. 03:21:41.000 --> 03:21:45.000 jmcmasters: But we'll have… we'll need to get that list put together, and then we'll know… 03:21:45.000 --> 03:21:48.000 jmcmasters: We can put names by them. 03:21:48.000 --> 03:21:49.000 jmcmasters: by the duties. 03:21:50.000 --> 03:21:57.000 jmcmasters: Um, I brought this up, Al's brought this up, several of us brought this up, I just don't know if it's… that we have enough interest. 03:21:57.000 --> 03:22:07.000 jmcmasters: we may have enough… now that I've been here today, there may be enough interest to… to have an antenna measuring party, rather… I mean, you know, of, like. 03:22:07.000 --> 03:22:10.000 jmcmasters: what Kit does. 03:22:10.000 --> 03:22:17.000 jmcmasters: Well, um… except that he's just gonna have to go do it here in a few weeks, so he's probably gonna be sick and tired of that for a while. 03:22:17.000 --> 03:22:23.000 jmcmasters: Okay, he's shaking his head. So it might be more than 122 gigahertz, although. 03:22:23.000 --> 03:22:29.000 jmcmasters: All the time I see my 122 GHz stuff on the shelf there, I wonder if it still works. 03:22:31.000 --> 03:22:35.000 jmcmasters: I need somebody who's very familiar with that chip. 03:22:35.000 --> 03:22:50.000 jmcmasters: No, I'd like to figure out how we can get AVM modulation somehow out of that chip, and it doesn't have to be 100%. It was only 5 or 10% by making the VCO go A, B, A, D, or something out of its range. 03:22:51.000 --> 03:22:57.000 jmcmasters: Uh, because I can almost guarantee nobody with a 122-gig system has their… 03:22:57.000 --> 03:23:01.000 jmcmasters: Be that the focus is just on the sheer luck. Mm-hmm. 03:23:04.000 --> 03:23:10.000 jmcmasters: I'd love to give it a… I had two of those systems, but I don't know how to make them, uh… 03:23:10.000 --> 03:23:11.000 jmcmasters: AM module. 03:23:11.000 --> 03:23:20.000 jmcmasters: Well, there is a special interest group for that. A lot of those are British guys or Europeans, so maybe we could find out from them. 03:23:20.000 --> 03:23:22.000 jmcmasters: Such a thing. 03:23:22.000 --> 03:23:28.000 jmcmasters: I did it the old-fashioned, hardcore, I am so desperate. 03:23:29.000 --> 03:23:36.000 jmcmasters: Way of. My partner up on Cedar Hill, 6 kilometers away. And me down here with. 03:23:36.000 --> 03:23:38.000 jmcmasters: an audio meter. 03:23:38.000 --> 03:23:44.000 jmcmasters: tied into my receive IF, and moving the damn shaft in and out, and… 03:23:44.000 --> 03:23:46.000 jmcmasters: Doing this. 03:23:46.000 --> 03:23:52.000 jmcmasters: Oh, it was less than a millimeter, less than a millimeter to get peaks. 03:23:52.000 --> 03:23:55.000 jmcmasters: It was the sharpest I've ever seen. 03:23:57.000 --> 03:24:06.000 jmcmasters: So that's a that's a thought. We'll we'll we'll list that and try to keep tracking on. Could we get a 122 gigahertz range set up. 03:24:10.000 --> 03:24:22.000 jmcmasters: But I don't know, I mean, the year will be over, and then we'll be in the spring. Those were always the best times for me on 122 GHz, was in the coldest part of the winter. Physics says it should be that way. 03:24:23.000 --> 03:24:25.000 jmcmasters: Right. So, cold, dry day. 03:24:26.000 --> 03:24:29.000 jmcmasters: Uh, and… 03:24:30.000 --> 03:24:38.000 jmcmasters: I don't know how soon they're going to be making those rigs again, where people that don't have them can purchase them. 03:24:38.000 --> 03:24:47.000 jmcmasters: And get them built. But let's see, Eric, you've got one. I'll have you listed here. Eric's got one. You got two. I don't know. The whole project just kind of. 03:24:47.000 --> 03:24:56.000 jmcmasters: boiled out, it seemed like. Yeah, it did. They were working on another different chip version that had a different frequency target, but they were… 03:24:56.000 --> 03:25:01.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, to cover 134 in addition. 03:25:01.000 --> 03:25:09.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, they… it… I guess it was the cost of the… of the parts, or the tariffs, and the uncertainty. 03:25:09.000 --> 03:25:13.000 jmcmasters: Paused it. I mean, in effect, it's shut down, but… 03:25:13.000 --> 03:25:17.000 jmcmasters: I'm on that list, and every now and then I hear somebody, you know. 03:25:17.000 --> 03:25:26.000 jmcmasters: scratch on it and say, are you guys gonna do it? Is it happening? What's… what are people doing? 03:25:27.000 --> 03:25:33.000 jmcmasters: But I've got… I've got 3 rigs and a couple more that I could loan. 03:25:33.000 --> 03:25:37.000 jmcmasters: that Bob Strickland gave me. 03:25:37.000 --> 03:25:43.000 jmcmasters: So there's five at my house. If you ever want to. 03:25:43.000 --> 03:25:57.000 jmcmasters: partake and be a part of that. I mean, it's just when you hear these people say they have trouble pointing on 24 giggers, you can imagine what's that? 22 signals are so weak, you can't believe that they're so weak. 03:26:00.000 --> 03:26:05.000 jmcmasters: I'll just leave it like that for now. Any other new business? I've got one. 03:26:05.000 --> 03:26:09.000 jmcmasters: put a proposal forth that the club reimburse you for the uh. 03:26:09.000 --> 03:26:11.000 jmcmasters: I think the project approved. 03:26:11.000 --> 03:26:13.000 jmcmasters: Beacon project materials. 03:26:15.000 --> 03:26:17.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 03:26:17.000 --> 03:26:23.000 jmcmasters: I don't really have a figure, why don't I try to get a figure put together, and then I'll… 03:26:23.000 --> 03:26:25.000 jmcmasters: We bring that up again. 03:26:28.000 --> 03:26:33.000 jmcmasters: I don't think there's enough money in the checking account. 03:26:33.000 --> 03:26:37.000 jmcmasters: I quit counting after about $4,000. 03:26:37.000 --> 03:26:40.000 jmcmasters: But, you know, there's some things. 03:26:40.000 --> 03:26:49.000 jmcmasters: If I could be reimbursed, I would probably reinvest, you know, and get a couple of other things that I think we need. 03:26:50.000 --> 03:26:53.000 jmcmasters: You know, I retired, but then they called me back. 03:26:53.000 --> 03:27:00.000 jmcmasters: So. Yeah, so I just like I did not really need that, but I felt sorry and. 03:27:00.000 --> 03:27:06.000 jmcmasters: compelled, you know, because they don't have cryptography guy, and I ended up… 03:27:06.000 --> 03:27:13.000 jmcmasters: Tell them I'll work you 20 hours a week. Well, now I'm billing them for 35 a week, so it's not really 20. 03:27:16.000 --> 03:27:20.000 jmcmasters: All right. What do you have to show off? Anybody? Are we exhausted? 03:27:20.000 --> 03:27:22.000 jmcmasters: Everything by now. 03:27:24.000 --> 03:27:26.000 jmcmasters: Lightning round of comments. 03:27:27.000 --> 03:27:29.000 jmcmasters: Anything? 03:27:29.000 --> 03:27:32.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Got a question about your propagation tool. 03:27:35.000 --> 03:27:37.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Oh. 03:27:35.000 --> 03:27:37.000 jmcmasters: Yes, sir. 03:27:37.000 --> 03:27:41.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: I think that tool would be extraordinarily popular globally. 03:27:41.000 --> 03:27:43.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: What, uh… 03:27:43.000 --> 03:27:50.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: What capability do you have, or do you see happening in the future to expand that beyond Texas? 03:27:54.000 --> 03:28:01.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, that has been a topic of discussion. 03:28:01.000 --> 03:28:04.000 jmcmasters: There's already. 03:28:05.000 --> 03:28:13.000 jmcmasters: I'm not sure how to approach this answer except to say we're already have some money. 03:28:13.000 --> 03:28:24.000 jmcmasters: tied into that project with server, uh… server capability, and we were trying to run it on a budget, I mean, on a shoestring, I'll put it that way, by not… 03:28:24.000 --> 03:28:29.000 jmcmasters: Building it out. But, you know, the demands… 03:28:29.000 --> 03:28:39.000 jmcmasters: came up and increased to the point where we had to treat it as more of a real commercial kind of idea. 03:28:39.000 --> 03:28:46.000 jmcmasters: So to advance, you know, to take it to the next level is going to mean we need to try to budget for it and figure out. 03:28:47.000 --> 03:28:55.000 jmcmasters: Is. If that's what we truly want to do. I I do wish that it was worldwide, and the. 03:28:55.000 --> 03:28:59.000 jmcmasters: The tool that I showed you, named TropoScout. 03:28:59.000 --> 03:29:01.000 jmcmasters: is worldwide. 03:29:01.000 --> 03:29:06.000 jmcmasters: So that might be your short term. Go to is to look at that. 03:29:06.000 --> 03:29:09.000 jmcmasters: Uh, it, it… 03:29:09.000 --> 03:29:13.000 jmcmasters: I think in the beginning, we thought that… 03:29:13.000 --> 03:29:17.000 jmcmasters: Different countries that were interested in it would build their own. 03:29:17.000 --> 03:29:25.000 jmcmasters: But that's not — it's certainly not scaling to say that. 03:29:25.000 --> 03:29:28.000 jmcmasters: The tools are… 03:29:28.000 --> 03:29:32.000 jmcmasters: Worldwide. Meaning we have. 03:29:32.000 --> 03:29:40.000 jmcmasters: shuttle data that is mapping worldwide events, and that's what we're using, basically, for the HRRR data. 03:29:40.000 --> 03:29:45.000 jmcmasters: So, I mean, I don't know how long the shuttle's gonna be providing that, but… 03:29:45.000 --> 03:29:57.000 jmcmasters: I'm taking a long time to answer your question, but I think it's something that we'll continue to look at and try to put a price tag on, and then it would be really up to our membership. 03:29:57.000 --> 03:30:04.000 jmcmasters: You know, is it going to be something that cost a very little that we would just absorb like we do? 03:30:04.000 --> 03:30:08.000 jmcmasters: The other things that we have to have, like our website. 03:30:09.000 --> 03:30:14.000 jmcmasters: Subscription to that service. Uh, this Zoom. 03:30:14.000 --> 03:30:17.000 jmcmasters: That we're using right now we pay for that. 03:30:17.000 --> 03:30:20.000 jmcmasters: Uh, if it's one of those kind of… 03:30:20.000 --> 03:30:22.000 jmcmasters: uh… 03:30:24.000 --> 03:30:35.000 jmcmasters: It costs money to that kind of… at that level, you know, it's $100, $200 a year, then that's one thing, but if it runs into much larger numbers. 03:30:35.000 --> 03:30:36.000 jmcmasters: uh… the… 03:30:36.000 --> 03:30:40.000 jmcmasters: We'd have to have a model that paid for it. 03:30:38.000 --> 03:30:47.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yeah, I think you'd find that VHF, UHF and microwave societies globally may be more than willing to make donations or subscriptions. 03:30:49.000 --> 03:31:01.000 jmcmasters: Okay. Well, that's the other side of that. I noticed that the Troposcout was unashamedly displaying a donate button. 03:31:01.000 --> 03:31:10.000 jmcmasters: So, uh, I'm in conversation with him, although it's pretty one-sided right now. I wanted to see if there were some synergies that we could… 03:31:10.000 --> 03:31:13.000 jmcmasters: pull together, so it could be that we would… 03:31:13.000 --> 03:31:24.000 jmcmasters: you know, share something with that fellow and his group and benefit from some of the technology he's leveraged that is worldwide. 03:31:24.000 --> 03:31:25.000 jmcmasters: ah. 03:31:25.000 --> 03:31:31.000 jmcmasters: Then two, I have a little suspicion that there there's some quality that we have on our website that. 03:31:31.000 --> 03:31:34.000 jmcmasters: He doesn't have on his. 03:31:34.000 --> 03:31:47.000 jmcmasters: that, you know, from a global standpoint. So, there's just more work that needs to be done and questions to be asked, but thank you for bringing it up. Uh, we'll… we'll… we'll try to take it responsibly and… and work on it. 03:31:47.000 --> 03:31:49.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: If you've got time, I've got a second question. 03:31:51.000 --> 03:31:52.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Okay. 03:31:51.000 --> 03:31:53.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, we've got time. 03:31:52.000 --> 03:32:04.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: What it appears, uh, to me, you're doing it using shuttle… shuttle data or various other methods of determining what the atmospheric conditions are, and you're correlating that with actual measured results. 03:31:54.000 --> 03:31:55.000 jmcmasters: Give me a second. 03:32:04.000 --> 03:32:06.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Is that it in a nutshell? 03:32:09.000 --> 03:32:21.000 jmcmasters: Yes. There are — there's a 20-page explanation of how we built it and how it's maintained. 03:32:21.000 --> 03:32:24.000 jmcmasters: Up on the site itself. 03:32:24.000 --> 03:32:33.000 jmcmasters: But it went through three model iterations of training a language model. 03:32:33.000 --> 03:32:36.000 jmcmasters: Based on, uh… 03:32:36.000 --> 03:32:38.000 jmcmasters: actual contacts that were made. 03:32:38.000 --> 03:32:45.000 jmcmasters: Uh, you know, and we kept pulling in more and more contact data until we had around 80,000. 03:32:45.000 --> 03:32:49.000 jmcmasters: contacts across multiple microwave frequencies. 03:32:49.000 --> 03:32:52.000 jmcmasters: All the way up to really up to light. 03:32:52.000 --> 03:32:57.000 jmcmasters: And then that became the calibration. 03:32:57.000 --> 03:33:08.000 jmcmasters: of what our engine would do. All of the predictive algorithms are based on ITU. 03:33:08.000 --> 03:33:13.000 jmcmasters: uh specifications so there's a blending there of. 03:33:13.000 --> 03:33:21.000 jmcmasters: here's what we really experienced, but here's what the physics standards say. And we try to. 03:33:21.000 --> 03:33:31.000 jmcmasters: maintain a balance. It was kind of like that graph of the square law. Here's the perfect slope, and here's what we actually see happening. 03:33:31.000 --> 03:33:38.000 jmcmasters: Uh, you know, what, what, what, what's really getting turned into us, and what's going into our database. So… 03:33:39.000 --> 03:33:44.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, that's pretty much in a nutshell. That HRRR data is very, uh… 03:33:45.000 --> 03:34:02.000 jmcmasters: Useful because it's mapped on three kilometer grids. So if I say that I'm studying a path that's 200 kilometers long from this grid to this other grid, it will actually break that path into three kilometer segments. 03:34:02.000 --> 03:34:03.000 jmcmasters: And then… 03:34:03.000 --> 03:34:07.000 jmcmasters: Using the skew T plots closest. 03:34:07.000 --> 03:34:15.000 jmcmasters: to you know soundings that occurred closest to the locations involved it will. 03:34:15.000 --> 03:34:20.000 jmcmasters: augment all of those 3 kilometer vertical atmospheric slices. 03:34:20.000 --> 03:34:23.000 jmcmasters: And it will determine every level. 03:34:23.000 --> 03:34:32.000 jmcmasters: that it can. There's some resolution, it's a limit of some kind, but it'll basically try to build skew-T plots for all three kilometer. 03:34:32.000 --> 03:34:34.000 jmcmasters: spots across that path. 03:34:35.000 --> 03:34:50.000 jmcmasters: And then it says, well, I've got ducting at 30% of those, but not enough at the ends to support a true duct. You know, it makes those kind of decisions and then renders a finding. 03:34:50.000 --> 03:34:53.000 jmcmasters: for it. So it's got both predictive. 03:34:53.000 --> 03:34:55.000 jmcmasters: Predictive power. 03:34:55.000 --> 03:34:58.000 jmcmasters: But it's also got. 03:34:59.000 --> 03:35:09.000 jmcmasters: It's also got the what happened six months ago or even five years ago, 10 years ago. It goes way back. How did this contact occur? 03:35:02.000 --> 03:35:03.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yep. 03:35:09.000 --> 03:35:20.000 jmcmasters: And it will go back and find what it can on that. We don't have an unlimited amount, like HRRR data only started a few years ago, but there's other data. 03:35:20.000 --> 03:35:23.000 jmcmasters: And, so, you know, it's a pretty big. 03:35:23.000 --> 03:35:26.000 jmcmasters: Collection of data that has a lot of. 03:35:26.000 --> 03:35:34.000 jmcmasters: triggers on it and a lot of different pieces of software they're running to do its derivative work. 03:35:34.000 --> 03:35:46.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Okay. The reason for that particular question was to see if there's a possibility that maybe not Whisper because of the narrow bandwidths involved, but some similar. 03:35:46.000 --> 03:35:52.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Ws. Jt. Tool to automate the collection of. 03:35:52.000 --> 03:35:54.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Propagation data. 03:35:58.000 --> 03:36:06.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, there's been. You know, this, this, this is one of those rabbit hole warnings I'm giving. 03:36:06.000 --> 03:36:11.000 jmcmasters: because we've had this we've had a conversation around that. 03:36:11.000 --> 03:36:17.000 jmcmasters: And it started with a very local approach. It was, well, instead of… 03:36:17.000 --> 03:36:32.000 jmcmasters: you telling me what your Q6560C SNR values are, or sending them to me, you know, with the timestamp and then the SNR value, because you're listening to the beacon that's emitting this. 03:36:32.000 --> 03:36:40.000 jmcmasters: Can we not just have WSJT just automatically report it, since it has a hook into… what's the hook into? 03:36:33.000 --> 03:36:34.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yep. 03:36:40.000 --> 03:36:42.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: A reporter, yeah. 03:36:41.000 --> 03:36:44.000 jmcmasters: PSK. PSK reporter. 03:36:44.000 --> 03:36:48.000 jmcmasters: And the answer was no, because it doesn't report beacon reports. 03:36:48.000 --> 03:36:53.000 jmcmasters: And beacon reports of the are. 03:36:54.000 --> 03:36:57.000 jmcmasters: Beacon reports consist of a type of message. 03:36:57.000 --> 03:36:59.000 jmcmasters: that WSJT doesn't treat. 03:36:59.000 --> 03:37:01.000 jmcmasters: as the normal… 03:37:01.000 --> 03:37:06.000 jmcmasters: Contact from point A to point A, you know, station A to station B. 03:37:06.000 --> 03:37:20.000 jmcmasters: So, I think the answer is yes, absolutely. It would just take a modification to the WSJT software. We'd have to get those guys interested, and then say, you know, we need it, and this is why, and if you'll build this, then we'll collect it, and. 03:37:20.000 --> 03:37:22.000 jmcmasters: Once we get it collected, we can. 03:37:22.000 --> 03:37:27.000 jmcmasters: it'll benefit everybody because everybody in different areas will begin to. 03:37:25.000 --> 03:37:26.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yes. 03:37:28.000 --> 03:37:30.000 jmcmasters: Export it and enjoy it. 03:37:29.000 --> 03:37:31.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Thank you. 03:37:34.000 --> 03:37:37.000 jmcmasters: Thank you for your questions. 03:37:42.000 --> 03:37:45.000 jmcmasters: All right, here's the final slide. 03:37:45.000 --> 03:37:52.000 jmcmasters: Yes. Well, Jim Hudson didn't make it. He was going to be here, but we'll pretend you said. 03:37:53.000 --> 03:38:05.000 jmcmasters: I make a motion. All right, guys. Uh, that's it for today. I'm gonna click close out on this, and I know we had, uh, we had a pretty good group here today. Uh, the… 03:38:05.000 --> 03:38:07.000 jmcmasters: Zoom… 03:38:07.000 --> 03:38:14.000 jmcmasters: team here and I see uh this is is Mike Victor kilo three Romeo Zulu hi Mike. 03:38:15.000 --> 03:38:19.000 jmcmasters: Did you just move into that house? 03:38:20.000 --> 03:38:28.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: I've been here for five years. I migrated to the US five years ago. I do have a US license, although I haven't used it yet, which… 03:38:24.000 --> 03:38:25.000 jmcmasters: Good point. 03:38:28.000 --> 03:38:30.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yeah, but what? 03:38:28.000 --> 03:38:38.000 jmcmasters: Okay, yeah, well, I see the vacuum cleaner and the TV on the ground in the background, so it's like that would be my spare room that I never moved into. 03:38:32.000 --> 03:38:35.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yeah, yeah, doesn't it? 03:38:38.000 --> 03:38:41.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yeah, I don't have a handshake yet, but I'm working on. 03:38:41.000 --> 03:38:47.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, very good. Are you in the States? I see you got an AJ. 03:38:46.000 --> 03:38:50.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yes, yes, I'm in, I'm in far north Dallas. 03:38:47.000 --> 03:38:48.000 jmcmasters: Well, that was cool. 03:38:49.000 --> 03:38:53.000 jmcmasters: Far North Dallas. Okay, we're glad to have you today. 03:38:53.000 --> 03:38:56.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: I intend to attend some of your meetings. 03:38:56.000 --> 03:38:58.000 jmcmasters: All right. Barbecue. 03:38:58.000 --> 03:39:00.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Yes, Dickies. 03:38:58.000 --> 03:38:59.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, we. 03:39:00.000 --> 03:39:01.000 jmcmasters: Take it easy. 03:39:02.000 --> 03:39:04.000 jmcmasters: All right, I see, uh… 03:39:04.000 --> 03:39:07.000 jmcmasters: David Capello. Hey, David. 03:39:07.000 --> 03:39:17.000 jmcmasters: Hey, I want to do one with you, and I want to also acknowledge that Al Ward has an appointment he has to leave for, so if you want to… 03:39:07.000 --> 03:39:09.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Howdy, howdy. 03:39:17.000 --> 03:39:20.000 jmcmasters: Beat on him, you need to do it soon. 03:39:22.000 --> 03:39:36.000 jmcmasters: Hey, Dave. Something I want to do with you, I was talking with David Seals, is, uh, since you've helped open my eyes up to something, I would like to do a presentation on tripods. 03:39:36.000 --> 03:39:37.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Okay. 03:39:37.000 --> 03:39:43.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, you know, and I'm collecting them like little orphan children these days. 03:39:42.000 --> 03:39:45.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I've got several myself. It became a… 03:39:45.000 --> 03:39:47.000 jmcmasters: Thank you. 03:39:45.000 --> 03:39:49.000 David - KG5EIU TX: A mission to find the right one. 03:39:47.000 --> 03:39:58.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, it kind of does. After you after you get one, you get a good deal and it's really functional. And then next thing you know, like. 03:39:58.000 --> 03:40:01.000 jmcmasters: Well, I just can't let that deal go. I gotta get that. 03:39:59.000 --> 03:40:11.000 David - KG5EIU TX: No, and then you need to have one that has the degree marks on it so that you know how far you're turning and, oh, that's the model, the newer model that I don't have. So, yeah. 03:40:04.000 --> 03:40:06.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, right. 03:40:09.000 --> 03:40:14.000 jmcmasters: You get one of them at the edge of the dish, 6 inches above the dirt. 03:40:14.000 --> 03:40:17.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, that's another story. 03:40:18.000 --> 03:40:23.000 jmcmasters: I take a portable pole out my fish. It's always at about 20 feet, and. 03:40:23.000 --> 03:40:25.000 jmcmasters: It's a lot. 03:40:26.000 --> 03:40:32.000 jmcmasters: Well, it's… Some of them are talking about moon bounce, so it's a little different. Yeah. 03:40:32.000 --> 03:40:41.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. The… the… the reason I want to do this, though, there's a reason, and that is that, uh, number one, uh, new guys are always asking about it. 03:40:41.000 --> 03:40:56.000 jmcmasters: And, and they'll go buy, you know, this little tripod that's gonna, like, not hold anything. And they can save that money, and they can, and if they care, because some people don't care, they're like, well, I'm just gonna go do something, get on the air, and I'm all for that. 03:40:46.000 --> 03:40:47.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Won't work. 03:40:56.000 --> 03:41:01.000 jmcmasters: Believe me. But there are some good deals to be had. 03:41:01.000 --> 03:41:13.000 jmcmasters: And the second reason is, the stuff you told me, and you kept telling me, I couldn't get it. I had a brain lock, and I could not understand. 03:41:13.000 --> 03:41:29.000 jmcmasters: how that worked and so when I finally got the breakthrough I thought oh geez man if I'm having trouble with it there's other people are having trouble with it so I think when you spoke to me and tried to give me you you were respecting me thinking I'm a smart guy. 03:41:30.000 --> 03:41:33.000 jmcmasters: But as it turned out, I had a… 03:41:33.000 --> 03:41:40.000 jmcmasters: I had a mental block, and I couldn't figure it out until I figured, you know, finally you said something, you showed it to me in person. 03:41:38.000 --> 03:41:46.000 David - KG5EIU TX: But there's just not a lot of details on that, on those little tiny things that make… 03:41:42.000 --> 03:41:43.000 jmcmasters: Thank you. 03:41:46.000 --> 03:41:58.000 David - KG5EIU TX: you know, remote or, you know, rover operating, like, it can be really complicated and clunky and backbreaking, or real fast, simple, and efficient, right? My… 03:41:58.000 --> 03:42:06.000 David - KG5EIU TX: I learned that from doing SODA and POTA, right? Pack me on this gear all around, and then when you gotta walk a few miles. 03:42:06.000 --> 03:42:11.000 David - KG5EIU TX: with equipment, like, it becomes a huge deal, so… 03:42:11.000 --> 03:42:21.000 David - KG5EIU TX: When you roll up with a pickup truck full of gear to a remote site, and you spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes setting up to make a 5-minute contact. 03:42:21.000 --> 03:42:23.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Man, it… 03:42:23.000 --> 03:42:26.000 David - KG5EIU TX: It's fun, but starts getting old. 03:42:26.000 --> 03:42:27.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. 03:42:26.000 --> 03:42:32.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And if it's hot, or raining, or the storm's coming, or it's getting dark, or whatever. 03:42:32.000 --> 03:42:38.000 David - KG5EIU TX: it's… it's frustrating, so… I'm all about optimizing the gear, and… 03:42:38.000 --> 03:42:42.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Uh, I like tool-less things that don't have… 03:42:42.000 --> 03:42:54.000 David - KG5EIU TX: washers, or nuts, or bolts, or… because you're gonna drop them. And if you're in a grass field, or a dirt patch, or a rock pile, and you drop one of those items, and you don't have a spare. 03:42:54.000 --> 03:43:00.000 David - KG5EIU TX: You're done. You just drove 203 miles for nothing. 03:42:55.000 --> 03:42:57.000 jmcmasters: Yep. 03:43:00.000 --> 03:43:05.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And it's a Sunday, and nothing's open. So, anyway. I digress, but… 03:43:00.000 --> 03:43:01.000 jmcmasters: Okay. 03:43:04.000 --> 03:43:14.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, well, I don't know when we'll do this, but I'll start collecting and talking to you, collecting thoughts and jotting things down. But I can come from… I can come to it from a standpoint of. 03:43:11.000 --> 03:43:12.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yep. 03:43:14.000 --> 03:43:17.000 jmcmasters: The simplicity is so simple. 03:43:17.000 --> 03:43:25.000 jmcmasters: that you might miss it, you know, and now I've got it figured out, and my wife hasn't figured out that. 03:43:19.000 --> 03:43:21.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yep. 03:43:25.000 --> 03:43:33.000 jmcmasters: that's a different dry pot. Every time she comes in the shop, it's like, well, because I keep hiding them and stacking them up in the back. 03:43:32.000 --> 03:43:36.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Luckily, they fold up and they're somewhat thin. You can hide them. 03:43:34.000 --> 03:43:39.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. And they all look the same. So. Yeah. 03:43:36.000 --> 03:43:41.000 David - KG5EIU TX: And they all look the same, yeah. It's like, well, but no, wait, this one's got the marks. 03:43:40.000 --> 03:43:41.000 jmcmasters: Yeah. 03:43:41.000 --> 03:43:50.000 jmcmasters: All right, so that's a to-do, because I know there'd be some folks' benefit. And I had a guy do that for me, K6ML. 03:43:50.000 --> 03:44:04.000 jmcmasters: a few years ago, and I wrote him. I said, you California guys have these giant radio systems, and you put them on these big, giant tripods. Can you tell me how that works? But he didn't have the, uh… 03:44:04.000 --> 03:44:07.000 jmcmasters: You know, the… 03:44:07.000 --> 03:44:15.000 jmcmasters: He didn't have the system that you showed me, and so now that we have that system, uh, that's what we want to propagate. 03:44:14.000 --> 03:44:22.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Yeah, yeah, I've I studied for hours, days on end trying to figure out the tripod because no one. 03:44:15.000 --> 03:44:16.000 jmcmasters: Cheers. 03:44:16.000 --> 03:44:17.000 jmcmasters: Yep. 03:44:22.000 --> 03:44:31.000 David - KG5EIU TX: People talk about what band they're on and how many distance and frequency, but I'm like, what's it zoom in on the picture trying to figure out who made the tripod? Yeah. 03:44:29.000 --> 03:44:30.000 jmcmasters: Yep. 03:44:31.000 --> 03:44:35.000 jmcmasters: We're going to wrap it up, man. 03:44:33.000 --> 03:44:36.000 David - KG5EIU TX: Have a good night. Good day. Thanks. 03:44:36.000 --> 03:44:39.000 jmcmasters: See you next time. 03:44:38.000 --> 03:44:40.000 Barry VE4MA: Thanks very much, Jim. 03:44:40.000 --> 03:44:42.000 jmcmasters: Yeah, seven threes. 03:44:43.000 --> 03:44:44.000 Mike VK3RZ DFW: Thank you. 03:44:44.000 --> 03:44:48.000 jmcmasters: Barry, I'll see you in Rochester. 03:44:47.000 --> 03:44:49.000 Barry VE4MA: Yes, absolutely. 03:44:49.000 --> 03:44:53.000 jmcmasters: Okay, see you up there. Bye-bye.