Post RIT decisions, my future and miscellaneous stuff....

Hello everyone, just before I start talking this post is going to be very personal. It is going to lament about a decision that i am going to have to make very soon. Also, there is a poll at the bottom of this post which will determine what my next blog post will be about. If you do not want to read this stuff and just vote, just scroll down to the poll.

Anyways,
I have been doing a lot of thinking over this week, so I do apologize for making a very late post. I have recently received my transcript evaluation from RIT, and it is safe to say that it does not look very good.... Based on what I completed at both SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Canton, RIT has decided it will honor only a small percentage of what I have done at both SUNY colleges into their program. Out of the 126 credits needed to earn the degree I desire at RIT: I have only placed down 30 of them, and still in need of 96 more, taking a lot longer then the desired two years that I am willing to spend there. What attracted me to RIT was the vast amount of student support options they have, from their office of disability services to their unique Spectrum Support Program for students with autism spectrum disorder, to the number of student organizations that RIT has, from their anime club, which hosts Tora-con in the spring, to K2GXT, RIT's Amateur Radio Club that I was looking so forward to being a major part of, and hopefully taking an executive board position in, as well as helping the Rochester Amateur Radio Association with their technician license examination classes.... All it it now is just a faint dream....










 (How I really feel when I posted this, just as bad as Little Mac from Punch-Out! When you lose 3 ttimes in one circuit)

However, there is a bit of a silver lining to all of this when you think about it.... I could forward to seeing what SUNYIT could have to offer for me, and it would be a lot easier to have transfer credits honored... I could also have the possibility of starting an amateur radio club there too! I should stop rambling on about my future plans and change things up and talk about a few old TV shows that I used to enjoy as a child/young teenager.

One of the first shows that I watched quite a bit growing up was MXC, or the Most eXtreme elimination Challenge. This TV show aired on Spike from 2003-2007, and was basically a re-dubbing of the Japanese game show, Takashi's Castle from the 1980s. It had some absurd voice acting, and a motif to show a competition between two outrageously different themes, such as Hip-Hop Stars Vs. Horror Film Actors. It had a lot of cheap laughs, thanks to the "hosts," Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship, voiced by Vic Wilson and Chris Darga respectively who bring this show to real life with cheap innuendos and crazy designs. It is a shame that Spike re-branded itself and decided to not show re-runs of this show on their lineup, but I could be wrong. The series itself can be found on DVD fairly cheaply.















(MXC's Original Logo)



Another TV series I watched incessantly was the Gundam anime series, but particularly, Gundam Wing. It aired on Cartoon Network's original Toonami block on March 6, 2000 in the US and ended its original run on May of that same year. The anime's original run in Japan was from April 1995 to March 1996. I was a little too young to remember most of it, but I am just reliving my former experiences with it on Netflix DVD rental, because the DVDs for this series are very hard to find complete. From what I remember it aired in the afternoon, a cut version of the anime that made it suitable for a TV-Y7 FV rating, and an uncut version that aired late at night (this was before Adult Swim existed.) It is centered around a group of young teenaged Mecha pilots who are loosely working together to stop the System Alliance from taking over Earth. I have just recently refreshed myself with the first 5 episodes, and it seems promising. The main protagonist, Heero Yuy, a 15 year old rebel Gundam pilot who arrived on Earth as part of a covert operation known as Operation Meteor, voiced my Mark Hildreth in the English Dub. Maybe at some point when I finish watching the complete anime, which will be no easy task since there are 10 DVDs, not counting the movie, Endless Waltz, to watch.





(cover for Gundam Wing DVD#1)
 
I hope you withstood my ramblings for now. I will be back again soon with some ham history, I will leave a poll for you to happily vote on, which I will tally up the results on Wedensday and I will talk about it. Link to the poll



Until next time, this is N2ASD signing all clear.

Mobile antennas and DBs... What you need to know

Hello hello,
Before I get started on today's blog about what I am going to talk about, I am going to throw one picture out there so that my followers who are not as technically savvy or not as keen on understanding, or who do not understand are warned...

 (You have been warned...)

That is all... I promise to all of my non-technical followers, I will post a special blog up for you all later this week.

Now we go on to today's topic: one which all amateur radio operators should be aware of: the use of antennas and how DB, or decibels work.

Think back to the days when you studied and took the technician examination for your first license... You learned about antennas, and touched ground on the basic concepts of how they work. Today, I will be talking about these in a mobile sense, or in car operation.

As many of you are aware, most mobile antennas mounted on cars are omnidirectional. There are some cases, however, where unidirectional antennas can be used on a vehicle, which are predomintly for VHF and higher, like this one below are predominantly found on rover station for VHF and UHF contesting.


 (5 Element yagi pair used for direction finding)

Now that I talked a little about antennas, I want to now talk about the factor that drives antenna, or gain. Gain is measured in the unit decibel, which is very similar to sound. It is a logarithmic measurement of the intensity given to a specific reference point, and in the case of amateur radio there are two of them. dBi, or decibels to an isotropic radiator, or theoretical antenna that radiates the same intensity in all directions, or dBd, or decibels to a half wavelength dipole. dBd is approximetely 3.1 dBi. Most antennas that are used in VHF mobile operation range from about 2-4 dBi, and 3-7 for UHF. Common ways to mount such antennas is via a magnetic base, which was commonplace for a while, and lastly NMO mounted, or those who do not want to use a magnet to stick their antennas on their cars and mount them somewhere, usually on the trunk or off to the side of the car. I am going to answer right away how you can improve your overall gain on your VHF mobile antenna setup. First of all, if your car can support it, always try to purchase a 5/8 or 3/4 wavelength antenna, since they will provide more gain then the usual ones out there in comparison. Second, try to mount the antenna at the highest point on the vehicle if possible, being careful to take in account low clearance areas that will not hit your antenna. My rule of thumb is to keep it below 7', since most drive-thru clearances are about that height.

That is all I have to say for now, until then this is N2ASD signing you clear.

RIT Visit wrap-up and Kenwood TM261A Mobile Review

Hello Everyone,

Yesterday I visited the Rochester Institute of Technology, or RIT for short to learn more about the campus and possibly make a decision on transferring there in the upcoming fall semester. I was most pleased by the campus as a whole; the environment, the student body, the vast amount of extracurricular activities such as student clubs and events outside of class, and the support services that they have to offer.

(Time to roll out the welcoming mat?)

 I felt very excited and willing to accept RIT's offer for admission, but the one thing that is worrying me is the cost. RIT, being a private school, has a very high tuition rate, which makes it hard for people from lower echelons of society to attend. Even with my honor standing from SUNY Canton and they scholarships I received with my acceptance letter, I may still be about $15,000 or more short each semester. If push comes to shove, I may fall back and decide to stay within the SUNY system and attend SUNYIT in Utica next fall instead of the prestigious RIT. I will keep you all up to date as my decisions develop and I finally make a decision.


And now it is time for everyone's favorite part of the blog, an EQUIPMENT REVIEW!!!

The Kenwood TM261A is a decent 2m (144Mhz.) mobile transceiver that has a lot of nice features right out of the box, beside being a simplistic radio made around the late 1990s and discontinued around 2003 or 2004. It offers power settings at 50W, as well as two lower settings at 10W and 5W. What sets the 261A apart from other radios at the time was its ability to recieve the air band (110-136Mhz) in amplitude modulation, or AM, which set it apart from other radios at the time. Other features included were 61 channel memories that are able to store the PL tone to your repeaters plus calling frequency memory. It also has automatic repeater shift for the default configuration on the band plan, so no more having to remember what the shift is for repeaters down the road, unless it is an oddball! It also has a modular microphone plug that uses an RJ-45 connector, similar to those on Ethernet cables, which makes plugging it into a terminal node connector a breeze for digital packet use.

(Small and mighty, this mobile fits the bill)

For a basic 2m radio to install into a car, I would definitely recommend it due to its simplicty in design, an modular microphone jack. The only drawback is that for most 2m mobile radios nowadays, 55 or 60W on high power seems to be the norm, but it all comes down to preference. A good price for one of these used would be about $100, which is how much I paid for my own exactly. I had very good signal reports on many of the repeaters in the Syracuse and Rochester area traveling down Interstate 90 on my way to RIT.

Next week, I will be talking about mobile antennas and how to improve your dee bee's or to put it simply; gain. Until then, this is N2ASD. Clear.

Triple F

Instead of boring you all with a long length equipment review or a personal reflection, I have decided today that I will post Funny or Freaky Fotos today, hence the name Triple F with a ham radio or technological theme.


















Enjoy the weekend, because I will surely do the same too! Until then, this is N2ASD. Clear.

ARRL DX Contest wrap-up and "Spotting"

Hello all,

It is glad to be back on and talking about something that is relevant to the hobby of amateur radio. Last weekend on March 2nd and the 3rd, The ARRL sponsored their annual DX Contest. People wonder: "What is the big deal with contesting DX stations?" To put it simply, DX stations are international stations or stations that are very elusive that are on the air. In the DX Contest, for US (Lower 48) and Canadian stations, they have to work as many as the other stations out in the world as possible, while the DX stations have to work as many of the US and Canada stations as they can. It can be very fun, but very hairy due to many operators being stack on top of each other, trying to get the same station. This phenomenon is known to the amateur community as a "pileup", and is common in contests due to rare stations being out there to get all  of the possible regions needed to clean sweep the contest. The DX contest is heavily dependant on the solar cycle and sunspot activity, so if you plan on entering that contest, it would be wise to look up this information a few days before...

Also, I want to talk about the use of "Spotting", or the use of a packet or telnet network to solicit yourself on during amateur radio contests. During the November Sweepstakes last year, I did not use it due to stigma of being not as valued as a contact. However, during the DX contest I found spotting to be a major help into finding those ever elusive stations that are on the air and can pass this information to other operators in look for those contacts by spotting such DX stations. There is a drawback to using spotting networks, in most contests, your category of an operator will usually change. For instance, in the November sweepstakes, unassisted operators are listed by power level, ranging from QRP for less than 5 watts, to High for operators who use more than 150 watts. If using a spotting network, you are listed as an unlimited station, because of the use of these protocols. There are many ethics to spotting, such as the distasteful act of self spotting, or posting your own callsign to these networks, which is very heavily frowned upon and could lead to disqualification in some contests.

That is all I have for now, this is N2ASD, clear.