Exactly my own experiences with both AndroidPay and Samsung Pay on my Galaxy S6. Maybe one success in five, and each *pay transaction takes much longer than swipe-n-sign. Even using my EMV cards (at the one merchant I regularly buy from that has it enabled) is a much slower process. And of course, even IF the NFC payment is acccepted, you still have to confirm and sign (and accept/decline cash back, etc) on the terminal.
So yeah. Not ready for primetime, and I just can't ever see these methods becoming mainstream so long as swipe-and-sign-only terminii make up so much of the marketplace and they keep the process FAST, reliable and simple; something NFC is not yet, nor will it ever be IMO (if you want it to be secure, that is).
I shot freelance for a newspaper in Toronto during the 80s and 90s. And although the work was a lot of fun, I think its time is long over. Consider the adage from dead tree papers: If it bleeds it leads. How many different, artistic ways can you shoot the following, that hasn't been done a zillion times in the past: 1) Large or medium-sized structure fire--this was my specialty. 2) Personal injury accident. 3) Victim(s) being transported. 4) Reminder to set clocks ahead/back. 5) Look how Hot/Cold/Snowy/Icy the weather was yesterday! 6) Perp walk or subject under arrest. 7) Politician making a speech on in a media scrum. 8) Drug/weapons seizure evidence on the table. 9) Presentation of a giant cheque to a lottery winner or charitable.org. 10) Devastation after a large natural disaster, governor/official doing official tour 11) Sad kid/parent after a bully stole their lunch money, bicycle or all the toys for Christmas presents at the poor house.
Now. Go fetch today's paper (good doggie!). How many of the above items do you see in the hard news section? Now factor this: If it's a major disaster, fire, accident, etc, the news editor will be fielding calls from hundreds of people with photos of the event. Probably some with pro-sumer levels of kit. If that isn't available they'll buy a wireservice image and run it. Everything else mentioned is shootable with a phonecam or a shirt-pocket cam, and the level of knowledge needed to shoot it is somewhere between "f/8-and-be-there," and "push-here-stupid."
Sports is an entirely different kettle of fish, and I don't know how they're going to handle Bulls/Black Hawks/Bears/Cubs/Sox games. Again, probably just buy freelancers' materials or stuff off the wires.
Gone are the days when a newspaper NEEDS actual photographs. Unless you're living under a rock the audience already knows what the governor looks like, what a perp-walk looks like, a building fire, a traffic accident or the President making a speech. We can get that anywhere. The hard news reporting is what I care about (not that there's all that much of it these days). Pretty pictures I can find online. They made the right call.
In who's mind is 2K good enough for theatres? Speaking as a former motion picture projectionist who ran 35mm and 70mm film for almost 20 years, I can tell you the "quality" you get in a 2K auditorium is significantly inferior to what was delivered by a 35mm print, albeit with no jitter or weave. 4K cinematic presentations are actually quite good, even on a 40 or 50 foot screen but I steadfastly refuse to see anything in a theatre that's shown in the 2K format. What's worse, most exhibitors run their 2k machines with the 3D lenses in place when they're not showing 3D, cutting the available light in half. So what the vast majority of patrons experience in a movie theatre today is a dark, washed-out image with lower overall quality than they were seeing just 5 years ago. The only winners here are the companies who don't have to ship 12,000 feet of film (for a 2 hour movie), which weighs about 40-50 pounds per print, to 2000 screens -- and pay to ship it back again at the end of the run. The exhibitors also win because they got the 2k machines for free from the companies and they don't have to employ skilled projectionists to run them either.
So yeah, I'll take 4K home presentation once the price comes down to the level that mere mortals can afford. I have a 53" Aquos screen now that's OK at 9' viewing distance but a 65" class screen at 4K and using HFR would rock my world once content becomes available.
My bet is that flat panel manufacturers are quickly realizing that 3D in the home is a dud and they'll concentrate their efforts into amping up 4K in the coming years, even though content will be quite minimal for a very long time. Since you'll never see anything more than 1080i or 720p from OTA broadcast (6 MHz channel size ain't changing any time soon), it'll only be a selling point for movies or DVDs of TV series. I don't know about everyone else, but 95% of what I watch is broadcast TV dramas, comedies and sports. I don't see the studios converting to shoot and edit to 4k in the foreseeable future, either.
Funny you should post this, but I ran into that scenario's dark side just this afternoon. Back when storage was more expensive than it is today I did as you suggested and downsampled all the 2 megapixel full-size jpegs from a 2001 visit to my best friend's place into 1024 pixel jpegs. The pictures in question were of his kitties romping in catnip. One of them recently passed away and I thought my friend would like to have those pics. Except they were now just at screen resolution with the originals long since lost and printing them out wouldn't have yielded great results. I was able to up-sample with Genuine Fractals with a little success but the results were less than pleasing.
My own photo collection sits on a Web-enabled NAS box with copies on two desktop machines and a Passport USB drive. It's sitting at a mere 64 GB for the moment, though I expect that to at least double later this year. I delete *nothing* and shoot RAW+JPEG now. When you can get a Terabyte hard drive for $50, what's the sense of being miserly with disk space?
Four elements on 15m, seven elements on 10m and two elements on 12m up at 85 feet -- plus 1500 Watts. It's about time I put a few more new ones in the log somewhere above 20! I can hardly wait till CQWW this fall if conditions are this good or better. (Of course, I'm still hoping for a good season on 80 and 160 this winter, too!)
One huge advantage of Bluetooth over conventional wireless mice for me is their lack of susceptibility to RF interference in the HF spectrum.
Conventional wireless keyboards and mice operate at about 27 MHz (very close to CB frequencies, just between CB and the 10m amateur band). As an amateur radio operator using high-power HF, if I use my wireless mouse while I'm transmitting anywhere from 18 to 28 MHz, the mouse (or keyboard) loses communication with the base receiver immediately on key-down and takes a while to come back after I un-key. Using bluetooth (which, IIRC, is in the 5.8 GHz range) this isn't an issue.
30m (as defined for the US and Canada) allows pretty much any narrow-band mode; not just CW. No voice or SSTV, but you'll find plenty of RTTY and other digital modes on 30, especially towards the higher part of the band.
In 1976 I heard
language on 80M that was a great exercise in George Carlin's
"7 dirty words"--and most of the speakers were Extra Class
hams (highest license).
Sadly, that kind of garbage is still there. Between the plethora of Rush Limbaugh wannabees (with their own gold-plated RE-20s!!), codgers describing their gall bladder surgery and the 4-land "pigfarmers-with-pitchfoks" types displaying all 20 of their IQ points, both 80 and 20m phone bands are painful to listen to more often than not.
I usually try to catch Riley Hollingsworth's keynote presentation at Dayton, Timonium or some other hamfest every year, and it seems to be a constant - the biggest troublemakers on the HF bands, he claims, are 20-WPM Extras and 13-WPM Advanced-class licensees.
On the other hand, CW is growing in popularity. Look at the recent big DXpeditions; 5A7A to Libya, 3Y0X to Peter the First Island and others. More QSOs in CW than any other mode, and by a large margin. And 40m CW is always the toughest nut to crack in any DXpedition.
As for me, I hated CW when I passed my Canadian Advanced license exam in 1981 (15 WPM sending and receiving, 3 minutes solid copy, 100% accuracy required!). I put my key in a drawer after that and didn't touch it again until about 3 years ago. I'm back up to over 15 WPM now, and I'd say 80% of my QSOs today are in Morse. I may not be great at CW, but I sure enjoy using it. I hope the new codeless operators who get into HF will decide to pick up a set of paddles and come down to the bottom of the band and have a go. It really does expand one's horizons. And if you're a DXer, it's impossible to get your totals up without it!
We already know about the malicious spirits in the sun that shoot balls of plasma at us
Malicious spirits you say? Or perhaps Malicious sprites? I'll have to run this one by Sunspot Louie and The Old Timer.
Everybody, even the QRPers down the hill, knows that Sunspots are whipped up by the Palos Verdes Sundancers every 11 years http://www.geocities.com/k2cddx/sundancers.html. At the bottom of the cycle their leader, Solar Max hauls out the Big Bass Bongo, BIG DX, and so begins the whirling machinations that bring about the arrival of the next sunspot peak, which, as you know, charges the ionosphere sufficiently to allow HF radio signals to be refracted back to earth thousands of miles from their source. CMEs, however, are the flies in that ointment.
We never did consider the source of the CMEs, Type II sweeps, X-10 class flares with all the trimmings, etc. they were just part of the Eternal Enigmas and the Mysteries of the Ages. Malicious sprites indeed. We will have to give this some more thought!
Be a believer! The Golden Days of DXing are at hand; the signs are everywhere. Soon there will be DX for all, although more for some than others. DX IS!
(no, I'm not off my nut. This post is an homage to the late Hugh Cassidy, WA6AUD, and his wonderful DX Stories in the West Coast DX bulletin (and later by Paul Dunphy, VE1DX). If you're into some fun ham radio lore, check 'em out at http://www.geocities.com/k2cddx/dxstories.html. Thanks, Cass!)
I'm a newbie firefighter, and I went to my first real house fire yesterday, and was there for seven hours. It was in the middle of nowhere, and the whole place burned down.
Please correct the following sentence: The fire were put out by the volunteer fire department before any damage could be done.
Corrected, it should read: The fire was put out before any damage could be done by the volunteer fire department.
(Just Kidding!) Sorry to hear your first working fire was the total loss of a house. Hopefully everyone's OK.
The term "X alarm fire" is used to describe how serious a fire is. X refers to the number of fire stations that respond to the fire. So in the story, unless 5 fire stations responded to this blaze, someone is talking out of his arse.
Actually an alarm level isn't necessarily the number of stations involved, although that's a local definition for the most part. Urban and rural definitions can vary in terminology.
In many areas, especially cities and towns, one alarm level would typically bring 3 engines, 2 ladders a chief and a rescue or something similar. Probably at least 2 & 2 plus a chief. If they roll up and see a building fully involved (heavy volume of fire), the senior officer would likely bang out a second alarm on arrival and bring in another set of apparatus similar to the first (another 3&2, officer, etc). In a city, a 5-5 is a seriously major fire; 15 to 20 engine companies, 8-10 ladder trucks, air supply units, mask service units, a bevy of chiefs and officers, probably a canteen and a handful of special-use units. In a rural setting, probably water supply units and relay pumpers if the building involved ins't near a hydrant network, mutual aid from nearby towns, etc.
For a house fire, I would be surprised to see anything more than a second or third alarm unless there were kids trapped, hazmat materials in the shed and a team of strippers running the canteen. My guess is that probably there were five pieces of apparatus* on-scene and that became a Five Alarm job by some idiot reporter not familiar with the terminology.
*The term "apparatus" is used on this side of the Atlantic to describe a fire department vehicle of some kind or another (pumper, aerial ladder, tower ladder, quint, rescue squad, etc). In the UK, they use the term appliance. The first time I heard London Fire Brigade radio traffic requesting three more appliances on a job, I swear I was prepared in my mind to hear the dispatcher reply "Sending two toasters and a blender to your location, K."
A more profound question is the following. What is the point of amateur radio when the Internet has connected most of the globe?
That's easy...because it's FUN!
ITU regs have always stated that amateur transmissions, because of their unimportance and their non-commercial nature, recourse to the public telecommunications infrastructure is not warranted. In other words, it never really was about passing messages to remote islands, etc. Realistically, the amateur service is about learning the science of radio communications, and furthering the radio art.
Yes, it's been used extensively in emergencies (one of the best examples was the VU4 team's handling of traffic after the tsunami disaster in the Andamans last December, to name only one), but that's not the reason for the amateur service's existance -- much to the dismay of many Hamsexy weatherwhackers and stormchasers! No, the amateur service exists to further the art of radio and electronics. One learns and practices good communication techniques, gains an understanding of propagation, antenna theory, interferance mitigation and related best-practices. Hopefully one also learns new (and old) means of communicating.
As to Morse, when I was licensed originally in Canada in 1979 it was 10 WPM solid 100% copy for 3 minutes, sending and receiving. You were required to operate only in CW on HF for a minimum of ONE YEAR before the Department of Communications (Now Industry Canada) would even allow you to sit for the Advanced exam--which was brutally difficult, by the way! 12 Essay questions of which you were required to answer 10 and they chose the 7 best. A score of 75% was pass. The Advanced code exam was 15 WPM sending and receiving, 100% copy for 3 minutes.
In my mind, the self-discipline these exams required led to a good group of operators who were patient, skilled and an asset to amateur radio. The current dumbing-down of the curriculum and now the elimination of the CW requirement is just another step along the "I want it all and I want it NOW" mentaility that's polluting society at large.
Amateur Radio in the United States is about to discover its own version of "Eternal September" once the CW requirement is dropped for full HF access. As it stands now, most of these Extra-Lites that I hear on the bands are a joke. I've had a so-called Extra ask me what CTCSS was for and how to set it up (a younger 20-something who'd been licensed for 2 years). I dread the tought of seeing him or those of his ilk operate on HF.
Would learning (though not using) code cure all that ails the amateur service? No, probably not, but I do think it acts as a bit of a gatekeeper, weeding out those without the self-discipline that really is needed on the bands. For me, I hated CW for most of the 26 years I've been licensed, but the more I enjoy DXing, the more I'm getting bitten by the CW bug.
Now, with this odious NPRM hanging over the head of the U.S. Amateur Radio service, more than ever I'm bound and determined to boost my code to at least the 15 WPM I needed in my 1981 Canadian Advanced exam, and preferably to the 20 that I'd have needed for my U.S. Extra-class back in the day. My goal is to pass a 20 WPM qualifying run and proficiency test in the next 18 months. That way, when the hordes of codeless wonders invades the phone portions, I can settle in comfortably at 7003 and 10103 and have a little fun!
If the pro-morser had been forced to enter morse on a phone keypad instead of his $200 morsing 'bug'
I would also hasten to add it wasn't a bug that Chip used, but rather a Bencher iambic keyer, and they start around $100.
Straight-key morse is somewhat unintuative and I think would wear off quickly. Two-paddle or iambic, on the other hand, is much easier and faster (usually left for dits, right for dahs). I can bang out 40+ WPM in a contest or while DXing with paddles.
I seriously believe this would catch on in some segments of the cellphone-using population -- namely kids who want to send messages fast and those who see it as a cool thing to try, simply because you can.
And of course, it would serve one other function -- to fuel the inevitable war between those who would be pro-code on cellphones and those would be no-coders!
I'm not entirely convinced the technology described in the parent article is the same BPL that's *ahem* current ly threatening HF. While I'm solidly opposed to the QRM from BPL to HF and VHF-low services, I'm not against any BPL technology that does not interfere...if such a beast can exist, of course!
Remember, BPL is the hell is it because it uses miles-long antennae (i.e. the power lines) to wreak havoc. If this is an internal-solution it might not be as problematic, and second, it is much more likely to be stomped on hard by Riley et al under Part 15 rules if it interferes.
Yes be creative and pass the funnies along but please give credit where credit is due.
Oh, that bit's been around a long time before Usenet was all that popular. I first saw it in the early-70s when I was in high school, and my Elmer told me that it was ancient even back then. I made no claims to its originality; just that it's still one of the funniest pieces of electronics-humour I've ever run across.
I think there's something romantic about it that draws geeks towards its coils
Personally I find the capacitors to be that much more erogenous. Especially when they're discharging.
I also like it when they resist a little.
One night when his charge was pretty high, Mike Rofarad decided he would try to pick up a cute coil to let him discharge. He picked up Milli Amp and took her for a ride on his megacycle. They crossed the Wheatstone bridge, around by the sinewave, and stopped on a magnetic field by a flowing current.
Fully attracted by Milli's characteristic-curves, he soon had his resistance at a minimum, and his magnetic field fully excited. He laid her on the ground potential, raised his frequency, lowered his capacitance, then pulled out his high voltage probe and hit resonance. He inserted it into her socket, connecting them in parallel, then began to short circuit her shunt. Finally, Milliamp cried MHO MHO MHO !
With his plate tube generator at maximum plate dissipation, and her coils vibrating from the excessive current flow, Microfarad soon reached his peak also. They fluxed all night, trying various circuits and combinations, until his bar magnet lost all of its strength. Milliamp tried self induction and self excitation, but it damaged her solenoids. With his battery fully discharged, they were unable to excite their generators any further, so they reversed polarity, blew each others fuses, and went Ohm.
This would be one of the times when BPL would probably be either out or turned off.
--snip--
the problem is interference with preparation, drills, and tests. Not to mention the deterrent effect that constant interference would have on amateurs beforehand
Respectfully, NO. These would be secondary or tertialy concernes. The real problem is that nobody in the US or other area where BPL is deployed will be able to hear the emergency, priority or health and welfare calls coming out of the stricken area.
Imagine tuning around 14.191 if you're in range of the disaster comms in a non-BPL area, you may hear something like:
(Received Signal as one might hear it in Anywhereville, USA, today): Please, can you arange to send us 500 doses of anti-malaria vaccine; we have 5 critical patients who need immediate treatment. Health and Welfare traffic: Please advise Mr. John Smith on Elm Street, Anywhereville, that his wife is safe in our shelter. Over.
(Received Signal after BPL is deployed in Anywhereville, USA): BBZZRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTPPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHHTPP PPPPPPPPPBBBBBBBBBBBSsssssssssssssssssszzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzztrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttttttttttt
Get the picture?
With luck, Amateur Radio will always be there as the last, best means to get a signal out when things are at their very worst. The question remains, though, will there be anybody here in the U.S. or Canada able to receive the pleas for assistance because their bands will have been torn asunder by pr0n-surfing mouth-breathers on their must-have BPL connections?
Not to mention that the BPL signals themselves will be radiated into the ionosphere by the miles-long radiators that carry them (power lines act as great big multi-wavelength antennae) and propagated around the world so the stations in the afflicted areas will get some of it back along with their intended replies. Look at the thread above regarding working all continents with 5 Watts and a lightbulb. Imagine all theat BPL energy being radiated by miles of copper wire? Think that will be confined to within a few feet of the pole -- especially once solar cycle 24 peaks again in 2010 or 2011?
At this juncture, I think the best we can hope for is that the cost of deployment will be so high, and the risk of interference complaints so strong that no utility will want to touch it.
I live 1.5 hours away from New York and Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, a place called Bucks County, up in the north end. It's not exactly "rural" but it's still a place where people come to get out to "the country".
Um, lemme see here.
Bucks County Rescue Squad:
45.96
46.0
47.46
Third District Volunteer Hose Company:
46.06
46.1
46.12
46.14
46.20
46.24
46.30
Quakertown Fire Department
46.1
I could go on. This was a ULS search of a few towns in Bucks County with licensed emergency services in the 40-49 MHz range. I'm sure there are hundreds of others in that same range. THEY would all get clobbered by BPL just as HF amateur operations would.
BPL will affect EVERY licensed service between 2 and 80 MHz, including thousands of public safety radio systems in rural regions of the country -- just where BPL is being touted as the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread. These are the areas where BPL will wreak havoc on radio systems belonging to sheriff's offices, rescue squads, fire departments, the electric companies operations themselves, school bus operators, construction firms etc, etc.
Does YOUR county have the budget to replace their trusted and working radio system with some POS trunked 800 MHz "solution" that won't work over long distances? Multiply that by every rural county in the country.
BPL will kill ham radio, yes, but it will literally kill PEOPLE once police, fire and rescue radio systems are rendered useless.
Wanna buy a nice Kenwood TS-570D? Will make an interesting conversation piece, museum exhibit or hold a small vessel in place in calm waters. Selling due to forced obsolescence by the Federal Communications Commission, a moron president who personally endorsed BPL and the greedy corporations who will bluster their way past any degree of responsibility for the spectrum pollution they will inevitably cause.
Good luck to everyone. Please listen for the New York Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club's entry, WB2JSM. We'be operating 4A in NLI, 100W on 15, 20, 40 and 80 (10 if it's open)!
One way to tell if it is not obvious is to look at the steel support ropes. If they are broken along their length with insulators then it is probably a long wave or medium wave antenna. The steel rope is broken in this way to prevent the wire being long enough to become a significant and undesireable part of the antenna.
An even easier way to tell is look where it's installed and how many towers there are.
"AM" radio (actually, MF broadcast) transmitter sites are almost exclusively found in low, wet, marshy land in order to maximize their groundwave coverage and to get a good counterpoise (RF ground).
Not just that, but many "AM" transmitter sites -- though certainly not all, however -- encompass a number of similar towers in an array, not just one or two. This is done in order to direct their signals in certain directions and to null out their signals in other directions (since MW broadcast signals carry over somewhat great distances after dark).
VHF Broadcast ("FM") and television trnasmitters, on the other hand, are located on high towers on the highest ground available. VHF and UHF are line of sight, hence the higher the better.
As previous posters have stated, "AM" transmitting antennae are the towers themselves. Using the equation 468/f (MHz), a quarter wavelength for 1000 kHz is 468 feet high! VHF antennae, on the other hand, are MUCH shorter and are mounted atop supporting towers.
That was you Peter? I thank you, and my weird friends thank you. My brother thanks you, and my brothers weird friends thank you.
Heh. Well, me and about 250 other members of IATSE Local 173. I was in it from November 1983 till August 1999, and on permit for two years before that.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly my own experiences with both AndroidPay and Samsung Pay on my Galaxy S6. Maybe one success in five, and each *pay transaction takes much longer than swipe-n-sign. Even using my EMV cards (at the one merchant I regularly buy from that has it enabled) is a much slower process. And of course, even IF the NFC payment is acccepted, you still have to confirm and sign (and accept/decline cash back, etc) on the terminal.
So yeah. Not ready for primetime, and I just can't ever see these methods becoming mainstream so long as swipe-and-sign-only terminii make up so much of the marketplace and they keep the process FAST, reliable and simple; something NFC is not yet, nor will it ever be IMO (if you want it to be secure, that is).
I shot freelance for a newspaper in Toronto during the 80s and 90s. And although the work was a lot of fun, I think its time is long over. Consider the adage from dead tree papers: If it bleeds it leads. How many different, artistic ways can you shoot the following, that hasn't been done a zillion times in the past: .org.
1) Large or medium-sized structure fire--this was my specialty.
2) Personal injury accident.
3) Victim(s) being transported.
4) Reminder to set clocks ahead/back.
5) Look how Hot/Cold/Snowy/Icy the weather was yesterday!
6) Perp walk or subject under arrest.
7) Politician making a speech on in a media scrum.
8) Drug/weapons seizure evidence on the table.
9) Presentation of a giant cheque to a lottery winner or charitable
10) Devastation after a large natural disaster, governor/official doing official tour
11) Sad kid/parent after a bully stole their lunch money, bicycle or all the toys for Christmas presents at the poor house.
Now. Go fetch today's paper (good doggie!). How many of the above items do you see in the hard news section? Now factor this: If it's a major disaster, fire, accident, etc, the news editor will be fielding calls from hundreds of people with photos of the event. Probably some with pro-sumer levels of kit. If that isn't available they'll buy a wireservice image and run it. Everything else mentioned is shootable with a phonecam or a shirt-pocket cam, and the level of knowledge needed to shoot it is somewhere between "f/8-and-be-there," and "push-here-stupid."
Sports is an entirely different kettle of fish, and I don't know how they're going to handle Bulls/Black Hawks/Bears/Cubs/Sox games. Again, probably just buy freelancers' materials or stuff off the wires.
Gone are the days when a newspaper NEEDS actual photographs. Unless you're living under a rock the audience already knows what the governor looks like, what a perp-walk looks like, a building fire, a traffic accident or the President making a speech. We can get that anywhere. The hard news reporting is what I care about (not that there's all that much of it these days). Pretty pictures I can find online. They made the right call.
In who's mind is 2K good enough for theatres? Speaking as a former motion picture projectionist who ran 35mm and 70mm film for almost 20 years, I can tell you the "quality" you get in a 2K auditorium is significantly inferior to what was delivered by a 35mm print, albeit with no jitter or weave. 4K cinematic presentations are actually quite good, even on a 40 or 50 foot screen but I steadfastly refuse to see anything in a theatre that's shown in the 2K format. What's worse, most exhibitors run their 2k machines with the 3D lenses in place when they're not showing 3D, cutting the available light in half. So what the vast majority of patrons experience in a movie theatre today is a dark, washed-out image with lower overall quality than they were seeing just 5 years ago. The only winners here are the companies who don't have to ship 12,000 feet of film (for a 2 hour movie), which weighs about 40-50 pounds per print, to 2000 screens -- and pay to ship it back again at the end of the run. The exhibitors also win because they got the 2k machines for free from the companies and they don't have to employ skilled projectionists to run them either.
So yeah, I'll take 4K home presentation once the price comes down to the level that mere mortals can afford. I have a 53" Aquos screen now that's OK at 9' viewing distance but a 65" class screen at 4K and using HFR would rock my world once content becomes available.
My bet is that flat panel manufacturers are quickly realizing that 3D in the home is a dud and they'll concentrate their efforts into amping up 4K in the coming years, even though content will be quite minimal for a very long time. Since you'll never see anything more than 1080i or 720p from OTA broadcast (6 MHz channel size ain't changing any time soon), it'll only be a selling point for movies or DVDs of TV series. I don't know about everyone else, but 95% of what I watch is broadcast TV dramas, comedies and sports. I don't see the studios converting to shoot and edit to 4k in the foreseeable future, either.
Funny you should post this, but I ran into that scenario's dark side just this afternoon. Back when storage was more expensive than it is today I did as you suggested and downsampled all the 2 megapixel full-size jpegs from a 2001 visit to my best friend's place into 1024 pixel jpegs. The pictures in question were of his kitties romping in catnip. One of them recently passed away and I thought my friend would like to have those pics. Except they were now just at screen resolution with the originals long since lost and printing them out wouldn't have yielded great results. I was able to up-sample with Genuine Fractals with a little success but the results were less than pleasing.
My own photo collection sits on a Web-enabled NAS box with copies on two desktop machines and a Passport USB drive. It's sitting at a mere 64 GB for the moment, though I expect that to at least double later this year. I delete *nothing* and shoot RAW+JPEG now. When you can get a Terabyte hard drive for $50, what's the sense of being miserly with disk space?
Four elements on 15m, seven elements on 10m and two elements on 12m up at 85 feet -- plus 1500 Watts. It's about time I put a few more new ones in the log somewhere above 20!
I can hardly wait till CQWW this fall if conditions are this good or better. (Of course, I'm still hoping for a good season on 80 and 160 this winter, too!)
Lehrerium!
One huge advantage of Bluetooth over conventional wireless mice for me is their lack of susceptibility to RF interference in the HF spectrum.
Conventional wireless keyboards and mice operate at about 27 MHz (very close to CB frequencies, just between CB and the 10m amateur band). As an amateur radio operator using high-power HF, if I use my wireless mouse while I'm transmitting anywhere from 18 to 28 MHz, the mouse (or keyboard) loses communication with the base receiver immediately on key-down and takes a while to come back after I un-key. Using bluetooth (which, IIRC, is in the 5.8 GHz range) this isn't an issue.
Ummmm. No.
30m (as defined for the US and Canada) allows pretty much any narrow-band mode; not just CW. No voice or SSTV, but you'll find plenty of RTTY and other digital modes on 30, especially towards the higher part of the band.
Sadly, that kind of garbage is still there. Between the plethora of Rush Limbaugh wannabees (with their own gold-plated RE-20s!!), codgers describing their gall bladder surgery and the 4-land "pigfarmers-with-pitchfoks" types displaying all 20 of their IQ points, both 80 and 20m phone bands are painful to listen to more often than not.
I usually try to catch Riley Hollingsworth's keynote presentation at Dayton, Timonium or some other hamfest every year, and it seems to be a constant - the biggest troublemakers on the HF bands, he claims, are 20-WPM Extras and 13-WPM Advanced-class licensees.
On the other hand, CW is growing in popularity. Look at the recent big DXpeditions; 5A7A to Libya, 3Y0X to Peter the First Island and others. More QSOs in CW than any other mode, and by a large margin. And 40m CW is always the toughest nut to crack in any DXpedition.
As for me, I hated CW when I passed my Canadian Advanced license exam in 1981 (15 WPM sending and receiving, 3 minutes solid copy, 100% accuracy required!). I put my key in a drawer after that and didn't touch it again until about 3 years ago. I'm back up to over 15 WPM now, and I'd say 80% of my QSOs today are in Morse. I may not be great at CW, but I sure enjoy using it. I hope the new codeless operators who get into HF will decide to pick up a set of paddles and come down to the bottom of the band and have a go. It really does expand one's horizons. And if you're a DXer, it's impossible to get your totals up without it!
Malicious spirits you say? Or perhaps Malicious sprites? I'll have to run this one by Sunspot Louie and The Old Timer.
Everybody, even the QRPers down the hill, knows that Sunspots are whipped up by the Palos Verdes Sundancers every 11 years http://www.geocities.com/k2cddx/sundancers.html. At the bottom of the cycle their leader, Solar Max hauls out the Big Bass Bongo, BIG DX, and so begins the whirling machinations that bring about the arrival of the next sunspot peak, which, as you know, charges the ionosphere sufficiently to allow HF radio signals to be refracted back to earth thousands of miles from their source. CMEs, however, are the flies in that ointment.
We never did consider the source of the CMEs, Type II sweeps, X-10 class flares with all the trimmings, etc. they were just part of the Eternal Enigmas and the Mysteries of the Ages. Malicious sprites indeed. We will have to give this some more thought!
Be a believer! The Golden Days of DXing are at hand; the signs are everywhere. Soon there will be DX for all, although more for some than others. DX IS!
(no, I'm not off my nut. This post is an homage to the late Hugh Cassidy, WA6AUD, and his wonderful DX Stories in the West Coast DX bulletin (and later by Paul Dunphy, VE1DX). If you're into some fun ham radio lore, check 'em out at http://www.geocities.com/k2cddx/dxstories.html. Thanks, Cass!)
Please correct the following sentence:
The fire were put out by the volunteer fire department before any damage could be done.
Corrected, it should read:
The fire was put out before any damage could be done by the volunteer fire department.
(Just Kidding!)
Sorry to hear your first working fire was the total loss of a house. Hopefully everyone's OK.
Actually an alarm level isn't necessarily the number of stations involved, although that's a local definition for the most part. Urban and rural definitions can vary in terminology.
In many areas, especially cities and towns, one alarm level would typically bring 3 engines, 2 ladders a chief and a rescue or something similar. Probably at least 2 & 2 plus a chief. If they roll up and see a building fully involved (heavy volume of fire), the senior officer would likely bang out a second alarm on arrival and bring in another set of apparatus similar to the first (another 3&2, officer, etc). In a city, a 5-5 is a seriously major fire; 15 to 20 engine companies, 8-10 ladder trucks, air supply units, mask service units, a bevy of chiefs and officers, probably a canteen and a handful of special-use units. In a rural setting, probably water supply units and relay pumpers if the building involved ins't near a hydrant network, mutual aid from nearby towns, etc.
For a house fire, I would be surprised to see anything more than a second or third alarm unless there were kids trapped, hazmat materials in the shed and a team of strippers running the canteen. My guess is that probably there were five pieces of apparatus* on-scene and that became a Five Alarm job by some idiot reporter not familiar with the terminology.
*The term "apparatus" is used on this side of the Atlantic to describe a fire department vehicle of some kind or another (pumper, aerial ladder, tower ladder, quint, rescue squad, etc). In the UK, they use the term appliance. The first time I heard London Fire Brigade radio traffic requesting three more appliances on a job, I swear I was prepared in my mind to hear the dispatcher reply "Sending two toasters and a blender to your location, K."
As to their comment about scanners being made my Uniden, most of them are in fact made by GRE (well, the good ones at any any rate).
That's easy...because it's FUN!
ITU regs have always stated that amateur transmissions, because of their unimportance and their non-commercial nature, recourse to the public telecommunications infrastructure is not warranted. In other words, it never really was about passing messages to remote islands, etc. Realistically, the amateur service is about learning the science of radio communications, and furthering the radio art.
Yes, it's been used extensively in emergencies (one of the best examples was the VU4 team's handling of traffic after the tsunami disaster in the Andamans last December, to name only one), but that's not the reason for the amateur service's existance -- much to the dismay of many Hamsexy weatherwhackers and stormchasers! No, the amateur service exists to further the art of radio and electronics. One learns and practices good communication techniques, gains an understanding of propagation, antenna theory, interferance mitigation and related best-practices. Hopefully one also learns new (and old) means of communicating.
As to Morse, when I was licensed originally in Canada in 1979 it was 10 WPM solid 100% copy for 3 minutes, sending and receiving. You were required to operate only in CW on HF for a minimum of ONE YEAR before the Department of Communications (Now Industry Canada) would even allow you to sit for the Advanced exam--which was brutally difficult, by the way! 12 Essay questions of which you were required to answer 10 and they chose the 7 best. A score of 75% was pass. The Advanced code exam was 15 WPM sending and receiving, 100% copy for 3 minutes.
In my mind, the self-discipline these exams required led to a good group of operators who were patient, skilled and an asset to amateur radio. The current dumbing-down of the curriculum and now the elimination of the CW requirement is just another step along the "I want it all and I want it NOW" mentaility that's polluting society at large.
Amateur Radio in the United States is about to discover its own version of "Eternal September" once the CW requirement is dropped for full HF access. As it stands now, most of these Extra-Lites that I hear on the bands are a joke. I've had a so-called Extra ask me what CTCSS was for and how to set it up (a younger 20-something who'd been licensed for 2 years). I dread the tought of seeing him or those of his ilk operate on HF.
Would learning (though not using) code cure all that ails the amateur service? No, probably not, but I do think it acts as a bit of a gatekeeper, weeding out those without the self-discipline that really is needed on the bands. For me, I hated CW for most of the 26 years I've been licensed, but the more I enjoy DXing, the more I'm getting bitten by the CW bug.
Now, with this odious NPRM hanging over the head of the U.S. Amateur Radio service, more than ever I'm bound and determined to boost my code to at least the 15 WPM I needed in my 1981 Canadian Advanced exam, and preferably to the 20 that I'd have needed for my U.S. Extra-class back in the day. My goal is to pass a 20 WPM qualifying run and proficiency test in the next 18 months. That way, when the hordes of codeless wonders invades the phone portions, I can settle in comfortably at 7003 and 10103 and have a little fun!
I would also hasten to add it wasn't a bug that Chip used, but rather a Bencher iambic keyer, and they start around $100.
Straight-key morse is somewhat unintuative and I think would wear off quickly. Two-paddle or iambic, on the other hand, is much easier and faster (usually left for dits, right for dahs). I can bang out 40+ WPM in a contest or while DXing with paddles.
I seriously believe this would catch on in some segments of the cellphone-using population -- namely kids who want to send messages fast and those who see it as a cool thing to try, simply because you can.
And of course, it would serve one other function -- to fuel the inevitable war between those who would be pro-code on cellphones and those would be no-coders!
Remember, BPL is the hell is it because it uses miles-long antennae (i.e. the power lines) to wreak havoc. If this is an internal-solution it might not be as problematic, and second, it is much more likely to be stomped on hard by Riley et al under Part 15 rules if it interferes.
Oh, that bit's been around a long time before Usenet was all that popular. I first saw it in the early-70s when I was in high school, and my Elmer told me that it was ancient even back then. I made no claims to its originality; just that it's still one of the funniest pieces of electronics-humour I've ever run across.
Fully attracted by Milli's characteristic-curves, he soon had his resistance at a minimum, and his magnetic field fully excited. He laid her on the ground potential, raised his frequency, lowered his capacitance, then pulled out his high voltage probe and hit resonance. He inserted it into her socket, connecting them in parallel, then began to short circuit her shunt. Finally, Milliamp cried MHO MHO MHO !
With his plate tube generator at maximum plate dissipation, and her coils vibrating from the excessive current flow, Microfarad soon reached his peak also. They fluxed all night, trying various circuits and combinations, until his bar magnet lost all of its strength. Milliamp tried self induction and self excitation, but it damaged her solenoids. With his battery fully discharged, they were unable to excite their generators any further, so they reversed polarity, blew each others fuses, and went Ohm.
--snip--
Respectfully, NO. These would be secondary or tertialy concernes. The real problem is that nobody in the US or other area where BPL is deployed will be able to hear the emergency, priority or health and welfare calls coming out of the stricken area.
Imagine tuning around 14.191 if you're in range of the disaster comms in a non-BPL area, you may hear something like:
(Received Signal as one might hear it in Anywhereville, USA, today): Please, can you arange to send us 500 doses of anti-malaria vaccine; we have 5 critical patients who need immediate treatment. Health and Welfare traffic: Please advise Mr. John Smith on Elm Street, Anywhereville, that his wife is safe in our shelter. Over.
(Received Signal after BPL is deployed in Anywhereville, USA): BBZZRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTPPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHHTP
Get the picture?
With luck, Amateur Radio will always be there as the last, best means to get a signal out when things are at their very worst. The question remains, though, will there be anybody here in the U.S. or Canada able to receive the pleas for assistance because their bands will have been torn asunder by pr0n-surfing mouth-breathers on their must-have BPL connections?
Not to mention that the BPL signals themselves will be radiated into the ionosphere by the miles-long radiators that carry them (power lines act as great big multi-wavelength antennae) and propagated around the world so the stations in the afflicted areas will get some of it back along with their intended replies. Look at the thread above regarding working all continents with 5 Watts and a lightbulb. Imagine all theat BPL energy being radiated by miles of copper wire? Think that will be confined to within a few feet of the pole -- especially once solar cycle 24 peaks again in 2010 or 2011?
At this juncture, I think the best we can hope for is that the cost of deployment will be so high, and the risk of interference complaints so strong that no utility will want to touch it.
Um, lemme see here.
Bucks County Rescue Squad:
45.96
46.0
47.46
Third District Volunteer Hose Company:
46.06
46.1
46.12
46.14
46.20
46.24
46.30
Quakertown Fire Department
46.1
I could go on. This was a ULS search of a few towns in Bucks County with licensed emergency services in the 40-49 MHz range. I'm sure there are hundreds of others in that same range. THEY would all get clobbered by BPL just as HF amateur operations would.
BPL will affect EVERY licensed service between 2 and 80 MHz, including thousands of public safety radio systems in rural regions of the country -- just where BPL is being touted as the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread. These are the areas where BPL will wreak havoc on radio systems belonging to sheriff's offices, rescue squads, fire departments, the electric companies operations themselves, school bus operators, construction firms etc, etc.
Does YOUR county have the budget to replace their trusted and working radio system with some POS trunked 800 MHz "solution" that won't work over long distances? Multiply that by every rural county in the country.
BPL will kill ham radio, yes, but it will literally kill PEOPLE once police, fire and rescue radio systems are rendered useless.
Please, PLEASE may I be wrong!
Wanna buy a nice Kenwood TS-570D? Will make an interesting conversation piece, museum exhibit or hold a small vessel in place in calm waters. Selling due to forced obsolescence by the Federal Communications Commission, a moron president who personally endorsed BPL and the greedy corporations who will bluster their way past any degree of responsibility for the spectrum pollution they will inevitably cause.
Election day is coming!
Good luck to everyone. Please listen for the New York Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club's entry, WB2JSM. We'be operating 4A in NLI, 100W on 15, 20, 40 and 80 (10 if it's open)!
An even easier way to tell is look where it's installed and how many towers there are.
"AM" radio (actually, MF broadcast) transmitter sites are almost exclusively found in low, wet, marshy land in order to maximize their groundwave coverage and to get a good counterpoise (RF ground).
Not just that, but many "AM" transmitter sites -- though certainly not all, however -- encompass a number of similar towers in an array, not just one or two. This is done in order to direct their signals in certain directions and to null out their signals in other directions (since MW broadcast signals carry over somewhat great distances after dark).
VHF Broadcast ("FM") and television trnasmitters, on the other hand, are located on high towers on the highest ground available. VHF and UHF are line of sight, hence the higher the better.
As previous posters have stated, "AM" transmitting antennae are the towers themselves. Using the equation 468/f (MHz), a quarter wavelength for 1000 kHz is 468 feet high! VHF antennae, on the other hand, are MUCH shorter and are mounted atop supporting towers.
Sounds like something you'd see in the April issue of QST. Read the comments on e-Ham!
Now, if it's for real, look out ye topbanders - y'all are about to be invaded!
Heh. Well, me and about 250 other members of IATSE Local 173. I was in it from November 1983 till August 1999, and on permit for two years before that.