April 1999 Volume 2 Number 4
Joe, AB7TT has announced the winners of the FYBO prizes and if you haven't heard we won again this year. They included a NC-20 kit, Small Wonder kit by NN1G, a Norcal Paddle kit, York Peppermint Paddies, and AZ Hot Sauce. I'm happy to report that team WQ0RP is a winner of a prize again this year too. For reporting the coldest temp of all field teams we win..................you guessed it, more Hot Sauce....oh well. I still have not opened my bottle from last year. At least we can share the hot sauce!
April Meeting Program Up in the Air
As of this writing the program for this month is a bit up in the air. We are either going to have a program on the new and fascinating mode PSK31 or a program on Antennas including the much appreciated Antenna Video from the ARRL. Elsewhere in this issue is an article on PSK31 with links to get you started. And for those that have seen the Antenna video many have said they would like to see it again and if you've never seen it you don't want to miss it, it's absolutely the best demonstration of antenna principals I've ever seen. I may also present my "10 minute all you need to know to put up a successful antenna" speech too.
Minutes of the MNQRP Society March 6, 1999 Meeting
Dave Donaldson, WB7DRU secretary
Mr. President, Les Bearl, N0PPF, scribed today’s minutes in my absence. It was a well-attended meeting with 26 member present. It appeared to be a very enjoyable meeting with good comments on the email list afterwards. The club drawing brought in $8 for the treasury. The old business was mixed in the new so I will not try and separate them here.
We stomped them again this year in the FYOB contest. Details have gone out on the email list and will not be repeated here (since I did not have them in front of me when I wrote these up).
We will have a table at Midwinter madness in April at the Blaine Sport arena. Steve will be arranging for the table and the club will reimburse him for the cost. It is estimated to be $17. Each member helping at the table will be expected to pay their own way in.
There will be an ARRL Charter party before a future meeting. Pizza will be served with each member eating donating to the cost of the food. The time of the party will be closer to noon then 1:30. President Les will research the cost, pizza delivery and the date for the party and get back to us. Dave still has the charter at home.
A motion was moved, seconded and approve with regards to the splitting of funds received from the monthly drawing between the club and the winner. If there is an odd dollar amount the whole dollar goes to the club rather than splitting it in half. That allows the treasury to be kept in whole dollars.
The club can now handle renewals for the ARRL. The procedure is to give or mail a check to me, Dave Donaldson, 3837 Heather Dr., Eagan MN. 55122. Make the check out to me not the ARRL and I will forward your renewal immediately to the league and retain the amount the club receives for each renewal or new member and place it in the treasury.
We have a new mode at our fingertips that is becoming THE QRP digital mode. PSK31 is a keyboard to keyboard digital mode really designed for ragchewing over the radio. Reports are coming in about how well this works at QRP levels. I have read messages where QSO's from here to Europe have been done with as little as two watts and 100% copy. This mode looks like it could rival CW in it's robustness.
The following except for the PSK31 Documentation:
The basic idea of PSK is that keying is done by phase-shifting (BPSK) the carrier rather than frequency-shifting it. The bandwidth is equal to the baudrate rather than to the shift plus the baudrate. With the chosen baudrate of 31.25, that brings the bandwidth down from the 300-500Hz of other modes down to 31Hz. By using an alphabet similar to Morse with short codes for common letters, the text speed of PSK31 comes out at about 50 wpm. By using the narrowest possible filters in the transmitter and receiver, the performance of PSK31, even without error-correction, is certainly better than most, and has the added advantage for live QSO's that the performance degrades very gracefully as the signal drops. For paths where errors occur in bursts rather than randomly, PSK31 can be switched to use a convolutional code at the transmitter and a matching Viterbi decoder at the receiver. QPSK, with 4 phase-shifts instead of two, is used for this, but the bandwidth and text speed stays the same. The price paid for this robustness is a tighter frequency stability requirement and a delay of 640mS in the decoder.
The best part of this new mode is it's free. Software that operates with your computer soundcard under Windows and Linux can be found at this URL http://aintel.bi.ehu.es/psk31.html . I directly connected by soundcard to the in and out phone patch jacks on my TenTec OMNI and have had good success. A suggested interface can be found at this URL http://www.qsl.net/wm2u/psk31.html which I intend to build as well. This will isolate the computer from the radio and provide a PTT signal for the radio. I'm currently using the VOX for transmit/receive switching.
Support for this new mode and software is available via an email list. You can subscribe to the list by sending a message to listmanager@n2ty.org in the body of the message type:
subscribe psk your@email.address
Needless to say, due to the narrow bandwidth, frequency stability is a necessity. The program will automatically track a signal once it's receiving, and change the transmit tone frequency to match but if both stations are drifting you can end up roaming around the band and your receive audio frequency can shift out of your receiver's narrow filter passband. This tracking capability can be turned off.
Well if you were there you know what a great success this was and if you weren't there it wasn't anything kinky! Last meeting we had a "Bull Session & Swap Meet. It was a fun time for all. Last meeting's turnout, 26, was almost a third of the club! There were rigs, kits, books, parts, cable and more. Some stuff for free other stuff for sale and swap. We also had many items there just for show. And of course there was an abundance of bull flying around the room too. Just what these MNQRP meetings are for. Where else can you go and discuss your hobby and find others that are really interested!
Jesse Puts Headlock on Antennas!
If you haven't been following the happenings around the Minnesota Capitol you surely missed this one. In fact, even if you have you probably missed this one. Governor Ventura signed a bill into law that will require all future antenna construction to be underground! This bill was crafted in such a fashion that PRB-1 couldn't be used to repeal it. The bill was brought about by the increasing problems local municipal governments have been having getting antenna height restriction ordinances. Jesse was quoted as saying, "You can't fight a height restriction if there is no antenna height at all!" Why haven't you heard about this until now. Simple, remember when Jesse was in the news for his appearance on the David Lettermen Show? This was not the foot in the mouth, stupid drunken Irish slam that it appeared to be. Governor Ventura and Mayor Norm Coleman of St. Paul conspired together to create a news media frenzy intended to draw attention away from the passage and signing of this bill.
Sources at the St. Paul Pioneer Press have leaked to me a report that Mayor Coleman has financial interests in Untenna, Inc. a Duluth firm the holds several patents on underground antennas. It is also suspected that the Governor himself may be a stockholder. They are waiting for "confirmation" and perfect timing before they publish this story. Much like they did on the U of M Basketball scandal of recent weeks.
Two engineers that were the principal designers of the large submarine antenna array covering a large section of northern Wisconsin started Untenna, Inc. three years ago. Although they report only moderate success with the underground antenna, they have discovered a wonderful side effect of this type of antenna installation. When you transmit all the nightcrawlers come to the surface making bait collection extremely cost effective for the northern Minnesota Bait and Fishing industry. Professor Willie Thincrite, president of Untenna, Inc has assured the Governor and Mayor that the antenna will be ready when the new law takes effect April 1, 2000.
FORSALE (2)Norcal Paddle Kits and 38 Special!
I have decided to sell the following items, and thought I would give the MN QRP group first chance. They appear to be hot items on QRP-L right now.
1) TWO NorCal Paddle kits - $35
each
These are the original version paddles, with the wider spacing.
Untouched.
2) NorCal 38 Special Transceiver
- $35.
I have built this 30-meter transceiver but it is not in a case.
It has the published 5-watt modification installed. It works fine,
but does have the infamous "thump" when switching from
transmit to receive. I have the original documentation and about
80 saved QRP-L messages regarding this rig. This is quite a novel
transceiver with no discrete transistors except the 5-watt final
from the mod. If someone wants to tinker with it, it is available.
73,- Craig, AA0ZZ aa0zz@yahoo.com (651) 483-3143
*** Events and Happenings Around April ***
Please send in upcoming events to the editor.
We can’t show them if we don’t know them!
Events maybe you missed! |
April Happenings! |
Good Stuff coming up! |
March 99 1 Spartan Sprint |
April 99 1-5/31Canadian Spring Bouquet |
May 99 1 Superior Hamfest |