Paul VK2ICQ writes:

I was saddened to hear that ground-breaking comedian and actor Garry Shandling died aged 66 on March 24th.  I wrote a little goodbye on Facebook to the man who changed Sitcoms forever – but what I didn’t know at the time was that Garry was a Ham.  The ARRL published the following news article on the 25th:

Comedian, actor, and TV personality Garry Shandling, ex-KD6OY, died March 24 after suffering an apparent heart attack in Los Angeles.  He was 66.  Shandling became a ham as a teenager in the 1960s, long before he entered show business.

“When I was 13 I had a ham radio set (true!), so I could sit in my room and talk to people the world-over.  Geeky?  Or just ahead of my time!!?”  Shandling had tweeted in May 2011.

Shandling grew up in Arizona and majored in electrical engineering at the University of Arizona.  But went on to earn a degree in marketing and complete some post-graduate work in creative writing.  He worked in marketing for a time, but a script he wrote for “Sanford and Son” turned into his first big break into entertainment.

His most-recent Amateur Radio license — issued to him under a pseudonym, Dave Waddell — expired in August 2009.  The call sign was KQ6KA.  Shandling obtained the call sign under an assumed name, so that he could get on the air without anyone recognizing him as a celebrity.  Shandling had held an Advanced class license.  Prior to that, he held KD6OY under his real name, as well as WA7BKG, which may have been his first call sign while he was living in Arizona.

He had an alter-ego on television as well.  On “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” he played a comedian much like himself.  “The Larry Sanders Show” followed, and in that popular HBO series, he played a late-night talk show host, sometimes parodying or spoofing the real late-night talk shows and their hosts.  Shandling was a frequent fill in for Johnny Carson, and at one time he was considered as Carson’s possible successor on “The Tonight Show”.

Shandling won five Emmy Awards — three for “The Larry Sanders Show” — as well as other awards for his writing and comedy performances.  As a writer, he may be best known for his work on episodes of “Sanford and Son,” “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and “The Harvey Korman Show.”  He won two Peabody Awards. He also appeared in a variety of movies, including “Iron Man 2.”

Watch Garry Shandling and Jerry Seinfeld together in “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” here.  No flipping.  😀

Tom Scott writes:

No, it wasn’t called “hacking” back then: it was called “scientific hooliganism”. Let’s talk about Marconi, Nevil Maskelyne, and a demonstration that didn’t go as planned:

I’m indebted to Sungook Hong’s wonderful book “Wireless”, which helped me track down some of the more obscure sources here — and to the British Library, whose incredible archives and microfilm tapes helped me find the original newspapers and journals you see in the video.

For those not familiar with Tom Scott, he’s a British geek comedian, YouTuber, programmer, and formerly the presenter of Gadget Geeks on Sky One. He lives in London and is originally from Nottinghamshire.  Tom publishes some fantastic science related clips on YouTube, such as:

Bugs, Exploits and Computer Minutiae: Will YouTube Ever Run Out Of Video IDs?

In the URL of each YouTube video is the 11-character video ID, unique for each video. Can they ever run out? Just how many videos can YouTube handle? To work it out, we need to talk about counting systems, and about something called Base 64.

Amazing Places: Inside a Satellite Clean Room

Welcome to Innovative Space Logistics, in the Netherlands: they invited me inside their clean room to see an actual CubeSat satellite that’s going into space soon! (No, this isn’t a sponsored video: I paid my own way there!) Go look at their site: http://isilaunch.com – and if you need to send something into space, get in touch with them!

Visit Tom’s fantastic YouTube channel here.  Follow him on Twitter here and Facebook here.

Paul, VK2ICQ

It’s no secret that a modern radio transceiver has more in common with your average laptop computer than your faithful old TS-440S.  The proliferation of SDR and DSP technologies now enables modest midrange ($1-$2k) transceivers to do things that were once the realm of $10k plus radios that we used to dream would one day (gloriously) adorn our shacks.  Here’s the object of my (unlicensed) desire from my teenage years, the Icom ICR-9000 – Clive Robertson had one, and wrote a special review of it for Amateur Radio Action in August 1991!

If you’d told me back then that in 25 years I’d get most of its features with a $20 peripheral that would connect to my PC, and that all the RF processing would occur in software, I’d have dismissed you as a nutter very, very quickly.

Of course, times change and the march of technology rolls on.  Today we have internet connected digital voice modes, colour touch screen control panels, USB computer interfaces, advanced noise reduction & filtering and colour spectrum scopes – all of which are driven by embedded software (technically software in hardware, aka firmware)

2016 has bought us the first 100% SDR based rig from one of the “Big Three” – have a look at the new Icom IC-7300 – the first direct sampling radio where RF signals are directly converted to digital data before being processed in a FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array).  Direct sampling simplifies circuit construction and reduces noise that can mask weak signals, makes for a smaller radio and gives us a stunning real-time spectrum scope as a bonus.  This radio redefines what’s possible in an $1800 rig in both features and performance, and it’s only going to better as the software driving it is tweaked over time.

Another rig that’s really popular in our club is the Yaesu FT-991.  It ticks all the boxes with its all-band all-mode design, advanced DSP, compact size, inbuilt tuner, C4FM digital support and colour touch screen (all for around $1600).

It’s a good performer, but it was plagued by software issues in its early days which have been addressed over time with the release of upgraded firmware that’s able to be applied by the end user.  The FT-991 has no less than 4 firmware components: Main, DSP, TFT Display & C4FM.  To date there have been 8 revisions of the firmware with countless bug fixes, performance improvements and some notable feature additions.  If you haven’t upgraded, you’re missing out.

If you’ve got a modern radio (base, mobile or handheld), particularly from the “Big Three”, then be sure to regularly check the manufacturers webpage for firmware updates.  After all, it’s a free upgrade for your precious (and no doubt expensive) rig.  When applying upgrades, read the firmware update instructions (twice!) before commencing an upgrade and it’s always a good idea to have a PC based backup of your rig’s settings on hand (as a firmware update often requires a factory reset on completion).

It’s a brave new world.  If it’s driven by software, it can be upgraded, improved, bugs can be fixed, new capabilities can be added and (for better or worse) it can be hacked.

Paul, VK2ICQ

TEDTalks are undoubtedly one of the best things to have graced the internet in the past decade.  If you’re not familiar with TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), they hold conferences where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give talks of 18 minutes or less on any subject of their choosing, which they then publish via YouTube for anyone with an internet connection to watch for free.  There’s over 2100 talks now available – if you haven’t seen them you should venture down the rabbit hole (but have some free time)!

TED have now created TED-Ed, its youth and education initiative.  Every TED-Ed Original Video represents a creative collaboration between experts.  Such experts may include TED Speakers and TED Fellows, as well as educators, designers, animators, screenwriters, directors, science writers, historians, journalists and editors.  These original animated videos, paired with questions and resources, make up what they refer to as TED-Ed Lessons.

These too are fabulous!  Several videos relevant to our hobby include:

Is Radiation Dangerous?

Electric Vocabulary

Light waves, visible and invisible

And, as the final mindbender – the best explanation of Space/Time I’ve seen – how are you on Galilean transformations, Lorentz transformations & contractions and time dilation?

The fundamentals of space-time

Part 2 is here, and finally part 3 is here.  Venture down the TED-Ed rabbit hole here, I guarantee you’ll learn something interesting!

Republished from March 2016 Oxtales.  Review by Henry VK2ZHE.  This radio is also sold overseas as the County Comm GP-5/SSB.

The Tecsun PL365 radio is a recently released compact hand held multiband radio receiver covering 150 kHz to 30 MHz plus the FM broadcast band from 76 to 108 MHz.  Like many modern radios the PL-365 uses DSP technology to achieve state of the art performance.  Of interest to Radio Amateurs is the excellent SSB reception with selectable upper and lower sideband.  The frequency stability is outstanding as the radio uses DDS to provide 1 kHz tuning steps on the HF bands.  In the SSB mode it has fine tuning in 10 Hz steps to enable transmissions to be perfectly resolved even if they are not on an exact kilohertz frequency.  The AM reception is excellent.  On the FM broadcast band the FM quality is very good on the internal speaker in mono but excellent FM stereo may be heard by plugging in the supplied external earphones.

The Tecsun PL365 is very sensitive with surprising HF reception using just the in built short telescopic whip antenna.  The radio is supplied with a 5 metre long wire antenna which may be clipped onto the telescopic whip to improve reception when signals are weak.  The receiver has a 3.5 mm phono external antenna socket on its top panel so an external antenna can easily be connected.  I have used a 3.5 mm phono plug to BNC socket adaptor to connect the radio to my HF station antennas.  The PL-365 could hear any signal that could be heard on my station receivers.  The adaptor is not supplied with the receiver but are readily available.  It is a suggested accessory available from Tecsun Australia.

Reception in the AM mode is excellent with particularly good quality.  However, it is the outstanding SSB reception capability that sets the PL-365 apart from other portable receivers.  The PL-365 has selectable USB and LSB modes with fine tuning in 10 Hz steps to enable transmissions to be perfectly resolved even if they are not on an exact kilohertz frequency.  The DDS tuning accuracy and stability is outstanding.  I found that SSB stations which are on an exact kilohertz step are perfectly resolved without having to be fine tuned.  This is the case with marine and aviation transmissions.  These days, most Amateur stations operate on exact kilohertz steps so most stations en countered when tuning the bands will be perfectly resolved without having to be fine tuned.  Being a DSP radio the SSB band width is automatically set.  While not as selective as the receivers in good quality Amateur transceivers, the PL-365 acquits itself very well on busy Amateur bands.  The quality of the recovered audio is very acceptable with a noticeable absence of the “pumping” effects exhibited by most analogue portable radios. Continue reading →