We're Shaking!

The Great BC Shakeout is underway

At 10:19 an earthquake struck the Vancouver area. Radio Amateurs responded to the exercise scenario in number to offer help if needed.

https://www.shakeoutbc.ca/

Surrey Emergency Program Amateur Radio check-ins are in progress throughout the city and beyond. Amateur radio operators are ready to assist with communications in case the real thing happens.  

Check out our website if you want more information on the program http://separs.net/

Amateur Radio... It just works!

We Now Know What SOS Really Stands For

 Nope, it's not "save our ship." Not even close.

~ Readers Digest

“Save Our Ship!”

“Save Our Souls!”

“Save On Socks (at Sal’s Irregular Sock Emporium)!”

These are all things that “SOS,” the international abbreviation for distress, does not stand for. Best known for its appearances in desert island cartoons, maritime movies, and earworms by ABBA and Rihanna, the letters SOS have been used as a code for emergency since 1905. But what does SOS stand for, actually? The answer, dear readers, is nothing—and that’s exactly why it’s important.

Unlike WD-40, CVS, and TASER, SOS is not even an acronym: It’s a Morse code sequence, deliberately introduced by the German government in a 1905 set of radio regulations to stand out from less important telegraph transmissions. Translated to Morse code, SOS looks like this:

“. . . _ _ _ . . .”

Three dots, three dashes, three dots. At a time when international ships increasingly filled the seas, and Morse code was the only instantaneous way to communicate between them, vessels needed a quick and unmistakable way to signal that trouble was afoot. At first, different nations used different codes. Britain, for example, favored CQD; as the Titanic sunk into the ocean in April 1912, it broadcast a mix of CQD and SOS calls (the resulting confusion helped take CQD out of use for good).

The sequence of triplet dots and dashes proposed by the German government soon became the international favorite for its elegant simplicity. Transmitted without pause and repeated every few seconds, the message of SOS was unmistakable, specifically because it didn’t form any known word or abbreviation.

There was also a visual appeal. While the same series of dots and dashes could also just as easily translate to the Morse code sequences for VTB, SMB, and others, SOS had an instantly-recognizable symmetry. Not only is SOS a palindrome (a word that reads the same backwards and forwards, like civic, deified, and these other everyday palindromes hiding in plain sight) it’s also an ambigram, a word that looks identical whether read upside-down or right-side-up. When carved into a snowbank, say, or spelled out in boulders on a beach, SOS still no looks like SOS no matter which way the rescue chopper approaches.

By 1908, the code we know and love took effect as the official international radio distress signal, and remained that way until 1999, when Morse code was declared all but dead. Today, a ship can signal distress with the touch of a button, the lift of a phone, the launch of a rocket, or—if they’re feeling nostalgic—flashing a good ol’ SOS via light signals across the waves. Remember it fondly, and then memorize these other mnemonic devices that could save your life.

https://www.rd.com/culture/sos-meaning/

Amateur Radio Helps Puerto Rico Communicate

From NBC News

When things went dark and quiet in Puerto Rico, a cadre of amateur radio operators became a lifeline on the island.

About two dozen amateur radio operators on the island helped police and first responders communicate when their radio networks failed completely. Some of the radio operators, or hams traveled on trucks to provide communications to the power company, PREPA.

“It’s a less than ideal solution, but it works and that’s the essence of amateur radio – make it work,” said Tom Gallagher, CEO of the American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur radio.

Now the ranks of operator are about to get reinforcements.

At the request of the Red Cross, the league planned to send 50 radio operators into Puerto Rico with “enormous” radio gear in water proof containers, their own power supplies, new generators and solar arrays. The crew and equipment were to leave Thursday from Atlanta.

Their job, once set up and in place, will be to be the communication pipeline for the Red Cross Safe and Well program, helping people on the mainland trying to connect with loved ones on the island or get news of their status.

“You can relieve a lot of misery by telling people their relatives are okay,” said Gallagher, whose call sign is NY2RF.

The ham operators working with first responders are part of the Amateur Radio Emergency Services, ARES. They regularly drill with police, fire brigades and hospitals and regularly drill and practice what to do in floods, hurricanes or dangerous rainstorms.

More on this story:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-amateur-radio-operators-are-playing-key-role-puerto-n805426

Shortwave: International Radio for Disaster Relief (IRDR)

Humanitarian Aspects of HFCC Activities

HFCC is a non-governmental, non-profit association, and a sector member of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva in the category of international and regional organizations. It manages, and co-ordinates global databases of international shortwave broadcasting in keeping with International Radio Regulations of the ITU. 

The HFCC provides representation, tools and services to its members for the resolution or minimization of instances of mutual interference among shortwave transmissions. Organizes regular conferences prior to the start-dates of seasonal broadcasting schedules that coincide with the dates of clock-time changes for the summer and winter periods. There are two seasonal schedules and their validity is global. The schedule designated "A" corresponds to the summer, and "B" to the winter period on the Northern hemisphere.

From its infancy since 1920s shortwave radio has been associated with its potential of being a communication tool in emergencies. This use of shortwave radio is still
very much present among amateur radio enthusiasts for example, who discovered its long distance properties early in the twentieth century. Amateur radio provides a
means of communication on shortwaves and other frequencies "when all else fails". This role of amateur radio is well recognised, valued and appreciated both by the
public and by the world institutions managing and regulating the use of the radio spectrum.

In contrast the huge technical potential of international shortwave broadcasting that operates transmitter facilities tens, or hundred times, more powerful than those of
amateur radio, remains almost unused in emergencies. At the moment when local and even regional communication and information networks are needed most, they
are destroyed or overloaded and the population suffers from an information blackout. 

Shortwave radio is capable of remaining the only source of information.
Although the life-saving role of radio broadcasting is widely recognised by the public, and confirmed by surveys conducted after the recent disasters - and even
acknowledged by world leaders - no concrete projects have been ever designed and no regulatory framework has been developed.

That is why the HFCC - International Broadcasting Delivery in co-operation with the Arab States and Asia-Pacific broadcasting unions are working on an International
Radio for Disaster Relief (IRDR) project that is based on the system of online co-ordination of frequencies managed by the HFCC in accordance with International Radio
Regulations.

For more information and frequencies, visit their website:
http://www.hfcc.org/humanitarian/

SARC Member Sets UHF Contact Distance Record

Dave VA7THO - 2001 Miles

Our October presentation was given By Dave VA7THO. Dave is particularly interested in digital communications on the high bands. 

One use of APRS is to exchange messages via satellite, sometimes over long distances. Dave set an ISS Digipeater (UHF) distance record recently between himself at White Rock, BC and Jerry W8LR of Middletown Ohio, a distance of 3224 km.

They each used a Kenwood TH-D72 and Arrow antenna. The International Space Station digipeater at that time ran at a frequency of 437.550, but has since returned to its usual frequency of 145.825 so their record may be tough to beat for a while.

Dave talks about the contact

Congratulations on this notable achievement!

Dave's record is included at: https://www.amsat.org/satellite-distance-records/

Ham & Turkey

To all you Hams out there celebrating our
Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend...

Go Well Together

GNUradio Workshop

Our thanks to Kevin VE7ZD for an excellent workshop on designing and using SDR receivers and other devices using GNU radio (https://www.gnuradio.org/). Here is a link to the presentation slides.

The GNU Radio software provides the framework and tools to build and run software radio or just general signal-processing applications. The GNU Radio applications themselves are generally known as "flowgraphs", which are a series of signal processing blocks connected together in software, thus describing a data flow. As with all software-defined radio systems, re-configurability is a key feature. Instead of using different radios designed for specific but disparate purposes, a single, general-purpose, radio can be used as the radio front-end, and the signal-processing software, handles the processing specific to the radio application.

We started out by building a simple audio signal generator and moved on to a full featured FM broadcast receiver. The hardware tuner is the inexpensive RTL2832U + R820T dongle available on eBay and other sources. With a frequency range of  24 – 1766 MHz it is fully 100% compatible with GNUradio and permits building devices across the ham bands.

The USB dongle from eBay                                                  Inside the RTL USB dongle

The dongle is actually manufactured for receiving TV broadcasts on Asian computers, but for us it means that a cheap $20 TV tuner USB dongle with the RTL2832U chip can be used as a software defined radio (SDR). This sort of capability would have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars just a few years ago. The RTL-SDR is also often referred to as RTL2832U, DVB-T SDR, RTL dongle or the “$20 Software Defined Radio”.

Watch for an article in the next Communicator. In the meantime, here are three sites with additional information:

• For general RTL dongle news:  http://rtl-sdr.com
• A signal hacker lady, very smart and she has interesting articles: http://windytan.com 
• A YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nZIvueWDds