Contents
- Fox Hunting
- Norfolk Island. WIA (Wireless Institute of Australia) AGM 2016
- Arlene “Buddy” Clay, KL7OT
- Samuel Morse - LOL in the age of the telegraph
Radiosport
No matter if you call it T-Hunting
[Transmitter], Fox Hunting, Hounds and Hares, Radio
Orienteering, Bunny Chasing, Amateur Radio Direction Finding
(ARDF), or Radiosport, one thing you are sure to find is that
hunting for a hidden transmitter translates into a lot of fun.
T-hunting emerged as a school
activity in Northern England in the 1950's. By 1961 the
activity had spread across the continent and co-mingled with
the Scandinavian activity of "orienteering" and the first
European Radiosport Championship was held in Stockholm,
Sweden. Under the auspices of the International amateur Radio
Union the activity has been an international competition ever
since.
Besides being a hobby/play
activity, Radio Direction Finding has a serious side. RDF is
used to find downed aircraft Emergency Locator Transmitters,
lost persons (hikers, climbers), also useful for tracking down
sources of electronic interference. RDF can be used for ground
recovery when tracking an APRS balloon.
What does it involve?
Fox hunting, also known as hidden
Transmitter hunting is fun, like going on a treasure hunt or
playing hide and seek. A fox-hunt starts with a transmitter on
the 2-meter band that is hidden and is “hunted” or located
using radio direction finding techniques. The transmitter is
usually on the air intermittently and automatically identifies
itself in Morse code. When the transmitter is on the air, the
hunters “take bearings” using directional antennas by
determining the direction where the signal appears to be the
strongest. This is done throughout the hunt until the
transmitter is found. The “winner” of a T-hunt is the person
who finds the hidden transmitter first. The winner (the hound)
is then the person who will hide the transmitter on the next
hunt, becoming the fox. The hidden location is usually a good
place to hold a 'braai' (BBQ).
Hams Chase Radio Foxes on a
Special Weekend
CQ Worldwide Fox-hunting Weekend
(CQ WW FW), 14-15, May 2016.
This is the 19th year that CQ Communications has sponsored a fox-hunting weekend.
It's not a QSO contest, just a
time for clubs, schools and Scout groups to try this exciting
radio-sport. There's no license requirement to receive, so
everyone can participate. (Keeps the costs down too).
On-air competition is a ham radio
tradition dating back nearly to the birth of the hobby and
fox-hunting has been part of that tradition for at least 60
years. Fox-hunting may be done by car or on foot, and the
magazine is encouraging ham groups to use either one or both
during the CQ WW FW.
Norfolk Island.
WIA (Wireless Institute Australia)
Annual General Meeting 2016 - May 27, 28, & 29
Norfolk Island is an external
Australian territory in the Pacific Ocean about 1,600km
north-east of Sydney. In addition to being one of Australia's
most geographically isolated communities, it is also one of
Australia's oldest territories. Passports are required to
visit Norfolk.
Norfolk Island's total population
in 2011 (excluding visitors or tourists) was 1796.
VK9NT Norfolk Island - A team of
Australian radio amateurs will activate Norfolk Island from
20th May until 31 May 2016 to coincide with the Wireless
Institute of Australia’s 2016 Annual General Meeting and
conference, also being held on Norfolk Island.
WIA Commemorative Station VI9ANZAC
will also be activated over the AGM weekend.
There will be plenty of activity
at this DX entity in what is believed to be the biggest
Amateur Radio DXpedition of its kind.
It is hoped that Mt. Bates will
be a SOTA Activation and Jacki Jacki peak on nearby Philip
Island.
Silent Key Arlene
“Buddy” Clay, KL7OT, died on February 11, 2016. She was 103.
In 2015 at age 102, "Buddy" was
inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame for her work in
rural justice administration among the Yup’ik people.
Husband
Earl and Arlene Clay came to Alaska after reading an ad in QST
- a monthly magazine dedicated to amateur radio - that the CAA
was looking for husband-and-wife teams to join the Civil
Aeronautics Administration. She was 32 and World War II was
raging when they arrived in Alaska in 1944 The couple spent
the next decade fishing for food in the summers and travelling
the region by sled-dog team in the winter. After Earl's death
in 1956, she stayed in their cabin near Aniak and went to work
to support herself and the dogs. She drove dogs for 35 years.
She was as a magistrate for 18
years, travelling thousands of miles from village to village
in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska.
In 1986 the stove in her cabin
exploded and caught her and her house on fire. She had
extensive skin grafting, but both her feet had third-degree
burns, and as a result she used a wheelchair to get around.
She lived in the cabin they built
overlooking the Kuskokwim River for 67 years - before health
issues forced her to move into the Primrose Retirement
Community. Buddy the only Ham radio operator at the Wasilla
retirement community, said during an interview: "That's the
reason I decided to come to Primrose, because they let me have
my radio with me,"
The couples' first Ham radio set
was a "Homebrew" rig built on an aluminum cake pan running 10
watts powered by a 1.5-volt dry pack.
Buddy has been KL7OT since she
earned her license in 1948 and began calling the Thursday
night 'Snipers Net' for the Matanuska Amateur Radio
Association. She called this net each week from her
retirement home in Wasilla, it was her voice you would hear
taking roll on the Snipers Net. Tom Rutigliano delivered the
roster of net members to Buddy each week and helped install
the antenna for her Ham radio at Primrose.
http://snipersnet.kl7.net/photos.php?gallery=17 Some
great pics of Buddy and friends.
The Snipersnet has been on the air
continuously, every night, seven days a week since February
24, 1973. It now holds the distinction of being the oldest
continuous net in the state of Alaska.
6PM local Alaska Time on 3920 kHz.
================
International Morse Code Day is
celebrated on the birthday of Samuel Morse (April 27, 1791 –
April 2, 1872) who contributed to the invention and the
commercial development of the telegraph system and was a
co-developer of the Morse code.
LOL in the age of the
telegraph
September 1, 2015 http://theconversation.com/lol-in-the-age-of-the-telegraph-42578
From “lol” [laugh out loud] to
“brb,”[be right back] the internet and text messaging gave
rise to a unique form of short form language – “text-speak” –
in which almost all of us are well-versed. But long before the
internet revolutionized communication, humans experienced a
different sort of technological innovation: the telegraph.
In
1837, the first commercial telegraphs were released by Samuel
Morse, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, and
this machine – as journalist Tom Standage argues in his book
The Victorian Internet – mirrored the impact that the internet
has had in modern times. The result was an entirely new way to
wield language – one that, in a number of ways, resembles
today’s text-speak.
Using electricity, the telegraph
could communicate quickly over long distances – at speeds
unheard of. Soon it was developed for both government and
commercial use. And because we were suddenly able to transmit
interactions over large distances, new types of language were
created to fit the medium. One of the forms of communication
developed for the telegraph that’s still familiar today is
Morse code, which used sequences of dots and dashes (or dits
and dahs) to represent letters and numbers. More than just a
cipher, Morse code had its own short forms and abbreviations
to make messages as concise as possible; in this way, it’s an
early predecessor to today’s text-speak.
Telegrams were written
communications in Morse code sent over a wire (or, later,
radio waves) across great distances, which were then
translated into written language for the recipients.
But if you wanted to send a
telegram, companies like the Electric Telegraph Company and
Western Union charged by the word, with messages of 10 words
costing as much as 10 cents (or US$2 in today’s money) –
significantly more than current standard texting rates!
So as you can imagine – just like
with modern character-constrained mediums like Twitter –
people developed short forms to get their message across in as
little space (and, consequently, for as little money) as
possible.
Numerous guides to the telegraphic
codes were published. Many of these shortenings look familiar
even to us today. Take one account from an 1890 New York Times
article, which details telegrams sent between two telegraph
operators who had never met each other, but had developed
their own lingo for their personal messages. You can see a
short form “Hw r u ts mng?” which can be parsed as “How are
you this morning?” It looks a little bit like a long text
message today, or a heavily truncated tweet, from one person
to another.
Some codes from this era remain
with us today, including the distress call SOS, which was
first introduced in 1905 as part of German government radio
regulations.
Throughout its history, Morse code
has undergone its own evolution as different people started to
use it for different purposes. In a 2008 talk, historian Jason
Scott describes this evolution from the telegraph to amateur
radio. Referring to it as the “first social network,” Scott
describes how amateur radio operators sent each other messages
and updates using codes. They also used this technology to
send each other images over the radio using sequences of
characters and codes that were intended to be decoded and
printed out.
These images, sent by slow-scan
television methods, which stemmed from similar technology used
to send images from space exploration, often included the call
signs of their sender and other jargon, and might be an early analogue to online avatars or user profile images.
Thus, as people immersed
themselves in technological innovations, they adapted their
language to new forms and uses.
HI HI: LOL of the 19th century?
Many of the patterns developed by amateur radio users are
familiar to those who use text-speak or online lingo. Ralph
Wallio, an amateur radio enthusiast, shared with the author
the existence of abbreviations in Morse code, specifically one
for laughter. The sequence HI HI, …. .. …. .., is a short form
for laughter and is a favourite among amateur radio
communicators. It could even be seen as an early predecessor
to LOL. HI HI is quite similar to traditional text
representations of laughter hehe and haha, which have been in
use since the time of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Wallio
suggested that using HA HA in Morse code would be read as ….
.- …. .-, which would be more time-consuming to transmit,
hence the use of HI HI instead.
Morse code today has quite a few
of these short forms, and some of them will be familiar to
those who chat online or send text messages today – not the
forms, necessarily, but the things that are being abbreviated.
“Thank you,” which is often reduced to “ty” in text messaging
and other online communication, appears at “TU” in Morse code.
“Please” appears as “PLS” in Morse Code, and “plz” in many
forms of communication online. The phonetic reductions of
“you” to “u” and “are” to “r” are represented in Morse Code as
well.
Short forms have existed
throughout human history of using different mediums to
communicate, and the short forms themselves are representative
of the possibilities that the medium affords.
Some of these have withstood the
test of time, some haven’t; nonetheless, it goes to show how
adaptable language is, and how communication technology almost
always breeds new forms of writing.
B4N - Bye For Now BCNU
- Be Seeing You BFF
- Best Friends Forever
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion IRL
- In Real Life ISO -
In Search Of
TTYL - Talk To You Later WYWH
- Wish You Were Here
See more at: http://www.netlingo.com/top50/popular-text-terms.php
Amateur Radio, the Sky is the limit.
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Calendar
6, 7,8 May
AWA Valve QSO
Party / AWA AM and
SSB Contest
8 May
Mothers Day/SARL
Youth Net
15 May ZS3
Sprint
14-15 May CQ's
19th Annual Fox-hunting Weekend
19 May
Radio Amateur
Examination
20 -21 May Dayton
Hamvention
20-22 May SARL
National Convention 2016, hosts Sasolburg Amateur Radio Club.
22 May SARL
Digital Contest
28 May
AMSAT-SA Space
Symposium, Innovation Hub in Pretoria
28 - 29 May CQ
WW DX WPX CW Contest
27 - 29 May WIA
(Wireless Institute of Australia) AGM 2016 - Norfolk Island.
02 June 64
Aniversary SAWRC (South African Womens Radio Club) Founded
1952
04 June West
Rand Amateur Radio Club Flea market
4-5 June IARU
Reg 1 CW Field Day / RSGB CW Field Day
4-5 June SEANET
(South East Asia Net) Contest (24 hours). Starts Sat. 1200UTC
06 June Start
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Oct 3-10 BYLARA
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