Here are photos from W4BBW taken at this summer's reenactment festivities at Ider, AL.

 

Contest Resources from W4EA

During recent morning discussions of ham radio contests, Dan W4EA, an enthusiastic contest operator,  shared some resources for our consideration. His emails provided web links to various contest calendars, operating tips, and logging software (i.e. N1MM). I've added these links as two new groups in our Bell Ringers Links page. You'll see them in the third row of the matrix there.

Thanks, Dan!

Six Meter Beacon at NØSAP

 
Here is the announcement from NØSAP about his new beacon:

As of Saturday, November 5th, 2011 I have a new Six Meter Beacon on the air.  The frequency is 50.063.5 running 8 watts to a J-Pole with a Alinco DX-70.  I think this is the only six meter beacon in the State of Missouri.  Any reports will be appreciated.  "SAP"  NØSAP

 There is a posting on QRZ.com with many comments. 

 

Pioneers award to TPARCA in 1995

Here is a bit of TPARCA history from 1995.

KE4ID's article in October CQ magazine

Jack's article about restoration of a National NC-81X has been published in the October 2011 issue of CQ Magazine. Congratulations, Jack!

Huntsville Hamfest 2011

Here are two photos from our traditional gathering at noon on Saturday at the Huntsville Hamfest. Thanks to N4OLN for the photos! Click on the photos for an expanded view. A captioned copy of the first photo is posted at the group photos page.

 

VoIP Phone Patch

Below is a drawing of the VoIP phone patch configuration that I have been using for a few months. Click on the image for a full-sized view.

I'm using the phone patch audio input & output jacks of the transceiver. Modern transceivers should work in a similar manner with their line audio input & output jacks. A RIGblaster Pro forms the interface between transceiver and the PC sound card. Many other forms of audio interface can serve the same function.

The vintage SoundBlaster sound card has 4 audio jacks: line in, line out, speakers, and microphone. The line in and line out jacks connect to their corresponding jacks on the RIGblaster. My headset microphone connects to the microphone jack. I've been using the convenient headphone jack on the RIGblaster with my headset earphone(s), but I need to try the sound card speaker jack to see if its performance is any different. This setup provides ample audio levels, except for the audio from the distant phone to my earphones.

The Windows-based audio mixer associated with the sound card provides the ability to combine and adjust the level of my voice along with the distant phone voice when transmitting. I'm able to hear the distant caller's voice and my own (i.e. sidetone), but I'd like to be able to reduce the latter a bit. I can mute my own voice with a mouse click in the Windows audio mixer.

In the receive direction, I can supply as much audio as needed for the distant phone party, using the transceiver's audio gain. This tends to provide more audio than needed for my local earphone(s).

For the VoIP connection to the distant phone, which is connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), I've been using the Google Call Phone feature in Gmail. It is free again this year, and does not max-out the 600 MHz CPU in my ham shack PC. A PC with adequate CPU power can use Skype for the same function, but calls to PSTN phones require a paid Skype subscription. Group voice chat / calls are apparently not supported on the Google platform at this time. Skype has good capabilities for conferencing multiple participants on PC-based Skype clients or on PSTN phones.