Making yourself clear on the Radio

A few days ago I was putting together a piece of training for our local A.R.E.S. Group and it dawned on me that I should share it with everybody. So after I finished the net I took a little time to flesh out that training and what I ended up with was this article. You are welcome to use this as a basis for training in your group or as a reference for your own self training. Don't forget to let everybody know where you got it.

Speak slowly and clearly

When we say speak slowly and clearly what we mean is sometimes at normal conversational speed  words run together when you are talking on the radio. Most radio equipment doesn't reproduce all the audio frequencies of human speech or hearing. This can make it difficult to understand what someone is saying on the air. When you have some hearing loss it is even worse. I have some low end hearing loss so most of the time I have to add a speaker to my rig that produces more low frequencies to make the speech ineligible to me in noisy environments.

Annunciate. Some people don't consider that when they speak they are trying to convey information. I know several people that just engage there mouth and let the words fall out without giving a second thought as to if the person on the other end of the conversation is having to decipher the noises emanating from their mouth. It is sometimes difficult to understand a conversation when you are in the same room with someone if the are slurring and mumbling their words. It is even more difficult when you are on a noisy frequency or using a narrow band width mode like SSB, or D*STAR. When you add the stress of a net situation people tend to speak faster than they normally would. They also tend not to speak clearly. This makes the problem even worse.

Use Standard ITU Phonetics

Another consideration is the use of phonetics. In most cases phonetics can greatly increase your ability to understand and be understood when conditions a frequency are not optimal. Ham radio operators are as a rule a playful bunch so we do things to make talking on the radio more fun like making up funny phonetics for our call sign. Unfortunately during emergency and disaster communications play time falls by the wayside and these home brew phonetics become more of a problem than an asset. Most of the time these home brew phonetics in no way resemble any of the standardized phonetic systems. When These operators find themselves in a situation where they need to be understood their home brew phonetics really don't help. That is why the ITU Phonetic alphabet is the agreed upon standard for amateur radio emcomm communications. Every radio operator should be able to at least spell their call sign with these phonetics. Memorization of these phonetics is not difficult. Some operators can jump to phonetics without even thinking about it. Since so many letters in the English language like E,B,V,C and others sound so much alike it is very important to know the standard ITU phonetic alphabet.

Do not yell, Don't whisper

Yelling at a microphone is a problem that has propagated down through the hobby. Many of us have come into the hobby by way of the citizens band service. Operating AM on cheaply made and badly maintained equipment in that service. Many others use sideband radios on a regular bases. On AM and Sideband speaking louder into the microphone can give you a small increase in the output power of your radio. Since we are using primarily FM radio equipment this is not the case. Without going off into an explanation of how FM works lets just say that yelling at your microphone causes distortion making it difficult to understand the information you are trying to convey. Since the equipment that we use on VHF and UHF is Frequency Modulated the Amplitude of your voice can cause more problems than you would think.

Whispering into the microphone also has problems. There are some operators out there that speak very quietly into there microphone. This results in a full quieting signal and barely understandable audio. Some times the microphone gain or deviation on your radio may not be adjusted properly. if you do not speak up while transmitting this can make the problem worse. In the case of a Net Control located in a noisy environment it makes your transmissions unusable. It also waste valuable time while the Net Control attempts to take your traffic. We don't always have the luxury of calling a net from the comfort of our home.

Don't eat the microphone.

Eating the microphone or holding it to close to your mouth is another bad habit that has trickled down through the hobby from the days of carbon microphones and the poor quality microphones of the past. Today the microphone supplied with a standard piece of amateur radio equipment is very good. Eating the microphone presents its own set of problems. Holding the microphone to close to your mouth can overdrive the diaphragm in the microphone and audio stage of the radio causing distortion which most often results in muffled audio. You may also experience Flat Topping of your audio signal that is very similar to clipping in other audio equipment. Over deviation of your signal is also a problem you may experience. Over deviation is a problem because most repeaters are equipped with a band pass filter to eliminate unwanted noise on nearby frequencies. This means that in some cases you could be sitting under the repeater running a hundred watts and not be able to key the machine because your signal exceeds the width of the passband. Another problem that may occur from eating the microphone is known as P-pops or Clicks. These are most common when the microphone is held directly in front of the mouth. These are not only annoying but can also make it difficult for net control to understand the information you are trying to convey. It is always best to hold the microphone off to one side of the mouth. I also like to use what I call the “Thumb Rule”. If I am holding the microphone to transmit I should be able to extend my thumb and lightly touch my chin or lower jaw. This seems to be just about the right distance and works well with most radios including hand held transceivers.

Lastly a word on hand held transceivers. Most HT's come from the factory with the microphone gain turned up higher that mobile radios. So the built in microphones are “Hotter” than one might expect. They are designed to be held a foot to eighteen inches away from your mouth. Eating the microphone on these will cause many of the problems listed above to be much worse. External microphones will depend on the design of the microphone.

Q signals, codes and jargon

Since from time to time we will be transmitting information for use by non-hams such as our served agencies we need to keep Q-Signals, Codes, and Jargon to a minimum. Our served agencies have there own language or jargon and in most cases it doesn't even remotely resemble the jargon that we use as amateur radio operators. The National Weather Service has its own language for describing weather and that is the only possible jargon that we may need to use. That information will be covered at Skywarn School where it will be covered by the folks that know what they are talking about.

Codes and Ciphers are prohibited by part 97 so they are not appropriate for any reason.

Q-Signals are a problem in amateur radio today because everybody wants to sound like a professional radio operator and they think that Q-Signals help achieve that goal. Q-Signals were designed to make cw operation easier and have no place on a phone (Voice) frequency especially during an emcomm net where the transmission and reception of clear and concise information is critical. Lastly, There is a place for Over, Out and Roger in emcomm communications. Most amateur radio operators tend not to use them correctly. My personal opinion is that if you want to acknowledge a transmission the word “Received” works just fine.

These are just a few of the things that can help all of us improve our communications skills. Clarity in communications is always important. It is even more important when we start to deal with Emergency and Disaster communications. Remember we are not transmitting for ourselves. We are transmitting for everybody.

Tales of the Texas Hamfest in Oklahoma

 

 

Well let me see if I can come up with enough words to get all the pictures on this post.

Well October is here and along with the State Fair of Texas in Dallas it is also time for the Texhoma Hamarama in Ardmore Oklahoma. For many years a friend of mine and organizer of this event Henry Allen W5TYD has been trying to get me to make the track to Ardmore and check it out.

 

So I gathered myself up at 4:30 in the morning put a spark to the B.S.S. Improbable and made my way toward the Indian territories. I had really forgotten that the middle of the night was the only time that it is not a total pain to drive through Dallas. A little over two hours later I found myself in Ardmore. As described the hamfest was very easy to find. The shiny almost new convention center was right off I-35 at exit 33. I exited made a right turn then made another right turn and I was there ( I could never be a Nascar driver ).

The parking lot at the Ardmore Convention Center was more than ample and I was able to find a parking space very close to the front door. Not like Ham Com here locally where you have to park on the other side of town and ride a shuttle bus. Due to a mistake on the website I found myself there an hour before they opened the doors. So I spent some time talking to other Hams that had made the same mistake.

After paying a very resonable $8.00 to get in I roamed around looking at all the wonderful items to be had. At the end of the first row I went down I ran into Jimmy (Pinky) Pinston N5WYT from the Texas Baptist Men who was debating on buying some hardline for the freshly installed commercial repeater at the Baptist Mens building in Dallas. We talked about a few things like ARES in Van Zandt county where he lives and the fact that his license expired at midnight that night. Shame on you Pinky.

 

Went and sat in on the OK section ARES presentation. Then went and sat in on Andy WY5V's amateur radio in the park presentation. Andy is king of amateur radio these days. King of ARES in Dallas. Big Chief at the VHF-FM society everything. Spent some time visiting with folks that I have known for years David Kaun N5DBK, Tim KD6FWD, and my little buddy Paul KD5TKO.

 

I really didn't come home with anything except some good memories but we had a great time in Ardmore and I expect to go back many times in the future. Russ was not in attendance but you all know how he is.

 

73 everybody

IT Safety Inspection

To:              Manager - Health, Safety, Environmental
From:        Bill, Manager - IT
Date:          April 1, 2010
Subject:    IT Safety Inspection

It's been another harrowing month in the Information Technology department.  Fortunately, no lives were lost in March due to unsafe practices, so we've got that going for us.

There was a loose network cable, which caused a number of lost packets.  If the packets are primarily zeros, there is little danger as they tend to roll into the corners.  The ones, however, have a tendency to fall pointy side up, which can be quite painful.  I was able to clean them up with an Ethernet.  I did consider blocking the area with a firewall, but a wall of fire in the workplace just didn't seem very safe.

There was a concern about the Conficker virus, so I wiped down all the servers with hand sanitizer.  This seems to have been effective, as no new virus infections have been reported.  It does make the servers a bit slippery, though.  That could be an issue for next month's inspection.

No server crashes were reported in March, though we kept our hard hats on, just in case.  I'll need to order new steel-toed boots, as the rack-mounted servers are harder to boot than servers sitting on the floor.  I've cautioned everyone in IT to stretch before attempting to boot the servers that are higher in the rack, as we don't want anyone to pull a hammy.

There were a couple of instances of CD-image burns, which were treated with ice.  No blistering was evident, but the CD drives did spark a bit as the ice melted.

It was suggested that alarms be installed on the servers to indicate when they are backing up.  We wouldn't want anyone hurt and the alarms should provide sufficient notice to get out of the way.  Flashing lights are already in place.

Respectfully submitted,

-Bill
Manager, Information Technology

WSPR2 on Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10

Written by Eddie, G3ZJO. Used with permission.

Well from the talk on the WWWeb I was hoping for better things I must admit. I have been away from Linux for a time. There are things in Ham Radio still that you just can only do with Windows. I did install Ubuntu 9.04 and ran WSJT that is in the repository it worked fine all be it an old version..

I have done plenty to promote the use of Linux in the Ham shack and with Fldidgi you have a wonderful piece of stable software that does everything just as well on Ubuntu etc. as it does on Windows.

I have compiled and modified WSPR to run on Linux very well so when the WSRP2 version for Linux was released I was so pleased to hear that Mr Average Ham in his shack with Linux on his machine could now fetch and run WSPR easily.

Last night I tried WSPR2.00 rev1714 on my Ubuntu 9.04. All went well, this is just what we have been looking for I thought. Then the annoying flickering of the green RECEIVING box caught my eye, obviously as processing is going on in the machine that display gets starved or something. I have seen this before it makes the software look unstable, shame that.

Decodes went ahead fine, however, those Labels are still miss aligned UTC dB DT Freq Drift, I was decoding my own beacon on 500Khz this software plainly indicated Drift - G3ZJO, no that is my Call Sign, not a drift value, if I were to run this version on Linux I would have to go in and modify the labels as before, such things just annoy me to death. But hey it works doesn't it, 'though you don't have to accept these things with Fldigi.

Then Ubuntu 9.04 informed me of the software update to 9.10, they say that WSPR runs fine on 9.10 so I went ahead with the install. Time to take a look at WSPR2 on Ubuntu 9.10, ERROR access denied. Oh yes, well it worked before, lets try WSJT, no go, try Fldigi all is fine, works great.

I know what has happened Ubuntu update has thrown out some of the libraries needed by WSPR, we are back to 'old days', I have done it all a hundred times, do I want to bother now, will Mr Average Ham in his shack want to bother? Still, Linux and WSPR has further to go before it is as easy and as acceptable as Windows, shame.