VP9KF Blog

As time goes by more and more people seem to be only using a cellphone and no PC at home. I can’t see how they can possibly do this without going crazy, with touchscreen errors, inconsistent icons and methods! I just never want to touch the things.
However, it signifies that we’re very close to the ‘one device can do all’ mark.
Think about it:
PC platform now forthcoming (‘arrived’ in some opinions) with ARM cores.
All ‘phones running ARM [at least iPhone, Samsung and others].
Just stick it all together!
Apple have a patent which illustrates the concept:

There you go. Detect the phone docking, switch displays and GUI [from phone style to PC/Mac/Linux] style, connect extra processing. What’s the problem?

Recently, G4BUE and I posted a couple of reports of Logger32 being completely ‘blocked’ by telnet activity during major contests. Well, it just cannot keep up with more than about 45 spots per second. In reality the rate coming in is about 75 per second. Worse still, if ClubLog updates or anything else runs while spots are coming in, the spots are sent into a solid block which then has to be processed afterwards. It never catches up. This seems to have started a few versions ago and I think it’s to do with changing compiler versions.
You can use VE7CC client in the telnet link but this shouldn’t be necessary out-of-the-box. The code needs to be fixed, most likely by changing the code that writes the band map, which is where most of the processing goes.

Starlink has promised so much, yet why would it be any better than those that came before, such as Iridium and GlobalStar? The problems are the same. Physics doesn’t change. Both these companies went through 2 rounds of bankruptcy before being valued at well below 5% of what had been put into them by Boeing, Qualcomm, etc. They then ended up as niche, low data rate, specialised systems for those on expeditions or blue water sailing, using mostly Garmin handhelds. Most certainly not high speed, high user number networks.
Starlink, trying to swamp the sky with satellites, is a brute force, highly expensive way of doing it. It equates to each satellite only supporting about 50 users at a time. As the number of users grows, the number of satellites needs to as well, unless you are prepared to trade off data speed, latency and a whole load of other factors.
Something has to give and one factor is the rate at which hand-offs occur from one satellite to the next as they pass overhead. The best case is about 4 minutes. However, think about the difference between being on flat land (Florida) vs. mountainous valleys (North Carolina mountains). You can’t see anything like as much sky in the latter case, which leads to hand-offs in less than 2 minutes. These hand-offs are like flipping a coin and at times when there is heavy load on the system (evenings with streaming or a big sporting event) it will all start to break pretty frequently. This is what users are seeing
Add to that, that any real-time control systems are virtually impossible to keep up 24/7 it’s practicality is only for web browsing and e-mail. Even Skype or Zoom aren’t going to be great. Far from it. They’ll keeping dropping connections.
One of the biggest issues is that the router is built into the back of the phased array antenna and attempts to force you to use ‘their’ set-up with regards ports, services, IP addresses and timing issues. Worse yet is that it’s power hungry at about 50 W most of the time and even more when transmitting (especially over a lossy path) when it can be around 90 W. Consider being in an RV or on a boat, this is 4-5 A, which is pretty unacceptable without a lot of battery back-up and also, probably, with solar.
Ironically, what’s used at the ground end is very advanced and complex to manufacture. What’s up in the sky is pretty simple.

Misnomer (or ‘oxymoron’ in USA). There’s no challenge to setting up and using any of the FT modes. A really silly ‘contest’ and waste of spectrum.

Well, I don’t think this will turn out well. WIA in Australia has published this (I’ve seen nothing from the RSGB!) or, as usual, is WIA spilling beans before real action?

The Commonwealth Contest has been run each year, excluding wartime, from 1931 to date.

The Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) have been the custodians and administrators for the contest for the whole period, although the original suggestion came from New Zealand.
The Commonwealth Contest participants in 2024 have been asked their preferences for the future of the event and they overwhelmingly said that ‘we should engage with Commonwealth Country National Radio Societies to negotiate “shared ownership” of the contest – with the Commonwealth Contest being included on the contest calendar for each society. Responsibility for the contest would be shared by Commonwealth countries.’
On that basis, as representatives of the contest participants, the RSGB are asking Commonwealth National Radio Societies to consider joining a group to share equal ownership of the contest.
The Commonwealth Contest is held for 24 hours in March each year using CW. It is held over the weekend nearest to Commonwealth Day. It was still very popular in 2024, with over 240 entrants and 15 Commonwealth Headquarters stations active.
One of the unique characteristics of the contest is that it celebrates the Commonwealth and facilitates contacts between Commonwealth residents over significant distances, without many of the very loud international contest stations outside the Commonwealth monopolising the contest bands.

The RSGB have approached the National Societies in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the UK to establish a committee.
Proposal for the future
The proposal is that the contest will no longer be called the “RSGB” Commonwealth Contest, but that responsibility would be shared. Governance would be between a group of National Societies by agreement.
Each Commonwealth National Amateur Radio Society who wishes to take part would nominate representative(s) to form a committee to govern the contest and to determine future strategy.
In the case of voting on any issue, a simple majority based of one vote per member society will be applied. Rule changes will be subject to consultation among contest participants. The committee will elect a chair and secretary who will be responsible for calling meetings and recording discussion points. We would anticipate that this will be a committee that meets infrequently, and that dialogue will be electronic due to the variety of time-zones that the Commonwealth enjoys.
On behalf of and under the scrutiny of the Committee, RSGB will publish the contest rules, gather logs from entrants, adjudicate the contest and publish the results as it has done to date. This is to reuse resources that have already been developed and not to impose an administrative burden on the other National Societies.
The Committee would manage the awards which could include the introduction of awards for the members of each National Society.
Each society would include the Commonwealth Contest in their contest calendar and will promote the contest in an equivalent manner to those which they have organised previously, for example through their journals, websites, and social media.
Joint efforts will also be made to encourage participation from Commonwealth countries which have small amateur populations and less representation.
The RSGB would aim for the new Commonwealth Contest Committee to take responsibility as soon as is practical.
The Wireless Institute of Australia has agreed to continue to participate and support the Commonwealth Contest in 2025 and beyond and have indicated support for this proposal to “share ownership” of the Commonwealth Contest.
The WIA are seeking expressions of interest of Interest from members who would like to be considered for appointment to the Commonwealth Contest committee. Please send your expressions of interest to the WIA Secretary for consideration.
We trust that together we can enjoy this historic contest for many years to come.
Peter Clee VK8ZZ
WIA Director and secretary

That comes from the country that has probably just destroyed the Commonwealth Games.

Intel just recently cancelled a new fab in Germany and have been talking about re-organisation along ‘Foundry’ lines. Then, in steps Qualcomm and is making a ‘friendly’ bid for the whole thing [ha-ha, there’s nothing friendly about Qualcomm]. The thing is, Qualcomm is trying to lead the pack in ARM-core embodiment in ‘phones and ‘PCs’ [pushing Microsoft and others HARD to port to ARM/Snapdragon].
I’ve only ever owned Intel based PCs, except for one week with an Apple with Intel in it.
I did, however, do a lot of programming on the NEC V40 which was brilliant to embed without Windows or a GUI, but with DOS and .exe and port access. The only other programming I did in anger was on HP9000 series workstations with 68000/68010/68020/68030 and HP-UX or their own HP-BASIC.

Best of luck with Qualcomm, everybody!

Later [2024-12-06]. Intel is in deeper trouble, having thrown out the CEO.
Other companies; GM, Ford, Chrysler (Stellantis) and Boeing are in very deep trouble in the USA. Add in the crisis in VAG [VW, Audi, Porsche] and there are tough times ahead.

The last time they went up was 2023-01-31. The problem is, that this time, they aren’t saying by how much in advance and they’re not all going up at the same time, but spread out ‘after October 1 2024’. There’s a pretty good chance it’ll be in the range 5-10%. Monitoring K4 sales rate shows them dropping off significantly since the start of 2024. You’d think putting the price up wouldn’t help that. Furthermore, Flex Radio must’ve taken away lots of potential sales with a new 8000 series and [finally] a new Maestro/Panel at a lower price than the K4, announced in May. NOTE: After just 4 months, Flex are shipping new 8000 series rigs!

It’s pretty obvious that going digital is noisy. It’s the fast ‘edges’ required between 1 and 0. Simple as that. However, things aren’t helped because of bad design and bad ideas. Where this matters is as follows:
TVs, microwave ovens, power supplies, mini-split HVAC systems, TVs, internet, streaming, VoIP. It all adds to radiated noise in the electromagnetic spectrum, lifting the general noise floor. This makes conventional communication modes less effective, leading to even more digital modes which increase the problem elsewhere. This is quickly killing off radio in the low end of the spectrum and can only get MUCH worse with high power switching in electric vehicles and especially wireless charging [what could possibly go wrong?!]. As an extreme, amateur radio is suffering terribly – making radio usage in cities, towns and even villages almost impossible. Add solar power and wind power generation electrical processing and switching and it moves into the countryside. There’s no escape.
Satellites are a major contributor. This affects both light pollution and radio pollution. Two of the major optical telescope manufacturers have recently closed and astronomers at all levels are having to ‘go remote’ with shared telescope facilities. This in turn removes the variation between different locations and equipment, making discoveries less likely. There’s also the problem of RF pollution from thousands of Starlink and other satellites seriously causing professional radio astronomers ‘into the noise’.
It’s high time that standards of design, monitoring and international laws were enforced and added to, before we rapidly descend into a whole lot of problems being unfixable.
Oh, this sounds familiar with chemical pollution of the environment and also climate change in the atmosphere. Wake up!

The only ‘planes they have in production in any way are:
737 MAX 8 [very stop and go with large problems]
767-300F. The last of the 767 being built as freighters
777-F. The last of the 777 being built as freighters
787-8/9/10. Stop and go slow production in Charleston SC.

Now their workers have gone on strike because they have low pay, very poor health insurance and very low morale derived from a “couldn’t care less” attitude to assembly and QA. Boeing is hugely important to the USA economy and has a knock-on effect all around the World. Is it savable? Are ‘legacy’ car manufacturers savable? The jury is out on both situations!

LCDs first came out of a Malvern Hills research lab in the UK in the 70s. They very quickly became hugely popular for displaying just about anything. They were in watches, calculators, instruments, transceivers, etc., etc. because of their low cost and low power consumption. That was until colour and brightness were needed in PCs which led to the era of TFT displays. Crank things forward to now. Very few new transceivers are using LCDs because the technology was (as usual) exported to mainland China. China follows the trend with its manufacturing. If LCDs are required less, they virtually kill the ability to get ultra custom ultra small displays, for example. If BEVs are ‘in’ they spend billions of dollars getting new shiny factories built. A YouTube video I saw this week on just one of the new BYD car plants was mind boggling. All new, spotless and VAST. Probably 5m sq.ft. [500,000m²]. As big as VW Wolfsberg or Audi Ingolstadt. Maybe more.
I was trying to find a replacement watch with an analogue and digital display this week. There’s basically nothing new available, leaving me to buy the last of a watch that was designed in 2004! Just about the only surviving LCDs are those in very cheap DMMs, some weather stations and the like. The vast majority manufactured are repetitive vast display panels for TVs. One exception, I hope, the 1 x 16, 2x 16, etc. LCD modules driven by Hitachi chipsets are unlikely to go away. Long live QRPLabs!
So, this week’s advice is ‘beware the disappearing technology’. Don’t assume that something can be replaced by what you had and loved.
Next warning: beware the disappearing USB-A connector……