Landles, GM4XZZ, SK

Much loved local amateur Landles Fairbairn became silent key on Wednesday.

My thoughts are with Jan and his family.

However, it would be wrong, I think, not to mark Landles passing with a few more words.

For those of you who never met Landles, you may think this is a bit of a diversion. However, let me assure you that Landles was one of the nuggets of gold in our hobby. We all know one, but do we value them? Do we take them for granted and we will miss them sorely when they are gone?

Landles was a bear of a man. His QSL card above shows that. Tall, broad shouldered, with a rangy look, you might think he would make a good boxer. In fact he had retired some years ago from the cement factory where he worked. He described himself as "mechanic to trade, explosives expert by occupation".

If you ever take the train from Edinburgh towards London you pass through the cement works at Dunbar. Amid the industrial scene of rail wagons being loaded and stone being crushed, you cannot help being amazed by the huge hole in the ground. The railway is now on an embankment, with vast quarries on either side. This enormous scar in the rock was made by Landles and his colleagues over many years, created by steady blasting away of the shale. Landles knew more about explosives than anyone I ever met (well, since I left GI anyway).

He was an intensely practical man, in the way so many amateurs can be. It just came naturally to him, or so he made it seem. We shared an interest in motors and engines. We used to spend hours on the local repeater going on about Stephenson valve gear for steam engines (a particular love of his). He once surprised me with a detailed knowledge of the English Electric 12SVT motor in the British Railways Class 31 diesel locomotive (not a subject I know much about). His email address featured the name of a maker of early marine diesel engines in Glasgow. I knew I had a lot to learn from this man.

Landles had seen service with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, maintaining the motors in the Eyemouth lifeboat. There was not much about engines he did not know, and we spent hours and hours monopolising the repeater talking about that. Or actually anything, including a detailed discussion of the route of the old branch railway line from Burnmouth to Eyemouth, or the Stirling engine, or meteor scatter. The scope of his knowledge was colossal. We rambled on about Bolinder semi-diesel barge engines, or a Lister-Petter engine I had found in a boatyard in Greece. Sometimes some other amateur would call in just to say they were amazed by the discussion, but leaving us to carry on.

When it came to radio Landles approach was simple. No fancy rigs, no complex antennas. He had conquered a speech impediment which he had from his early years. At first he stuck to CW, but later, after many years of effort on his part, he got over the worst of his problems and appeared on voice. Mastering his speech stands to his credit, and I admired him for the efforts he made. However, after his CW years, his first love remained data modes and in particular slow scan TV. He had been a part of the development of the FLDIGI software. He was so prolific on CW at one time he was one of those few amateurs who had his own envelope at the famous Box 88 Soviet QSL bureau.

He operated from a shed in his garden in Eyemouth. I would often bump into him during his daily walk, something we both did. When we were let down by an exam invigilator for a Foundation Exam, Landles cheerfully stood in. "I quite enjoyed that" he said afterwards, and I would have loved to use him again but the club decided not to have any more training.

I last met Landles on the bus to Berwick. He was off to Aldi to do his weekly shopping. We had a good talk about free over-60s bus passes, the band conditions, and what good value small retail chains now offer. That was it about Landles. He had a habit of turning up and engaging you in complex and wide-ranging discussions. It was as if your last conversation had been five minutes ago, or perhaps the conversations never actually ended, just had small gaps.

So you can gather I will miss Landles. His was a towering presence and he really knew his stuff. I respected him and I called on him when I needed him, and he helped in any way he could. When he heard I needed a grid dip oscillator, he turned up at the house with a grid dip oscillator. A true amateur.

I really value the friends and acquaintances I have in this hobby (though there are a few troublesome ones of course). But I think I need to value them more. They may not be around for ever. Landles' early retirement was cut short. He never got the chance to move to his beloved Tiree, where he loved to go for holidays.

Landles was my age and that does raise a certain unease about what I take for granted. This hobby is losing great characters, so we need to recruit some more. But really, Landles passing makes me value more all those of you who simply do your thing by communicating your ideas and working to keep the hobby ticking.

Landles Fairbairn, R.I.P.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

Why are Amateurs so reluctant to change? plus IC-7300 versus Red Pitaya

I used to work in a small team dedicated to promoting equality of opportunity within our organisation's workforce. If I learned one thing, it was that generalising about a group in society is the first step towards treating them unfairly.

So off I go describing "Amateurs" as a generalised group. Underlying this must be the idea that "they" are stuck in the mud, and I am a saint. Well, that's about it really.

When I started in this hobby I worked quite a few amateurs who derided commercial gear. By extension this applied to SSB generally, as although they could make their own AM and CW equipment, SSB was beyond them. So they pooh-pooed all those operators using Drake, Collins and KW equipment, and they ran down SSB too. "This'll see me out", one of them said about his AM transmitter, and so it did. He never got around to SSB before he became silent key.

I feel looking back now that, as they could not get their heads round SSB, and maybe could not admit to not being able to master the technology, they would have preferred if it was stopped "for the good of the hobby". If that failed, they would win the moral argument anyway by not using it and insulting everything to do with it.

The argument moved on to the 2meter band (or "VHF" as they called it then) where Tokuzo Inoue was revolutionising the VHF market with cheap reliable FM gear (later called "Icom") and Yaesu, Standard, FDK, Trio and the others followed. My first 2m rig was a tunable receiver and an AM/FM transmitter. The transmitter was entirely valvised and there was not a single transistor in it. Nobody in my area used FM, they were all on AM. These new "foreign" rigs were transceivers (gasp) with Standard even making one where you only had to buy one crystal for both tx and rx operation. And they were all transistorised too!

I sat one night listening to a couple of old stagers on 145.8 MHz with AM valve rigs complaining about the Liner 2. "£100 for a Japanese rig which only covers one band, and that is only VHF! Who would pay that?", they rumbled, just as Liner 2s were flying off the shelves. They doggedly stuck to AM. No doubt resisted change in every aspect of life (TUT - prejudice, Jim!).

So my argument is already weakening. Only some amateurs resisted change then, and only some do now. However, it seems like a rather large proportion. It is not just about age. I am not especially young myself, but I do try to embrace change. It is just (what seems to me) to be a view that "those people" are happy in their little corner of the radio world and they would really like the rest of us to be banned just in case it disturbs their peace. Or at least we must give up progress and do exactly what they do. Actually, what they have always done, of course.

There is also another strand in this which never seems to change. The nay-sayers always seem to blame the radio brand for progress, in other words it is Collins fault, or the Liner 2's fault, for the technical progress which the brand is exploiting. And of course there is an underlying put-down for the country from which the equipment comes (provided it is not their country of course). As if the tide of SSB expensive black-box complexity could have been resisted if we banned Japanese rigs in the 1970s. But I heard it seriously suggested that Japanese rigs should be banned from entering the country (though no doubt Yaesus re-branded as "Sommerkamp" would have been allowed in).

As you may have gathered, I find this reluctance to change very strange for a technically minded hobby. If we had not had progress in radio technology, then all those duffers who wanted to stay on AM would never have had AM transmitters in the first place - we would still be using spark. I may not want to take part in some aspects of progress, but I do not feel threatened by them. The other group seem to want any aspects of the hobby which they do not appreciate to be banned immediately.

And so it is again, but now with "digital voice" or internet linking" or "remote operation" or whatever aspect of radio progress we have now. Or all of it, I suspect. Now these nasty innovators seem to make their rigs in China, so that seems to be a point to which to direct anger. Nasty foreigners developing new technology again. Of course, these "foreigners" are just applying the new technology, but let accuracy not stand in the way of this debate.

Someone rubbished Chinese manufactured rigs on a board I was reading, stating that he had bought a good Japanese FT-2900. Try turning that over and seeing where it was made. Even the microphone is made in a second country (clue: neither one is made in Japan). Why does it matter where this gear is made? Making radio equipment now is largely robotic and employs few people. And anyway, as Japanese gear was rubbished before, why is it so good now?

When I read a letter in the RSGB's magazine "RadCom" from someone asking whether he should be categorised a "dinosaur" for preferring direct rf communication to internet linking, I was spurred to reply. The RSGB published my reply in which I said that there is nothing dinosaur-like about that. What makes a dinosaur is not being tolerant of others doing amateur radio the way they want to. You are a dinosaur if you want amateur radio for you and not for others who are trying to develops their skills in a way you cannot not tolerate. In my humble opinion of course.

I respect dinosaurs as full members of the amateur community. What annoys me is that they seem to want people with other opinions (including me I suppose) to be eradicated from the scene. And if they cannot get rid of us, they simply denigrate us instead.

I do not follow every aspect of this hobby. Why should I? But I am not intolerant of the aspects I do not follow. In fact, I am interested in most of them. Why would I want to stop other amateurs using complex new technology? Because it threatens me and then I feel like a dinosaur?

Get over it.

I heard the same argument years ago about repeaters (people who use them are not "real amateurs", they make amateurs lazy, etc). All true to some extent I suppose, but what problems do repeaters cause me? None. Nor satellites, nor WIRES, nor RTTY ... well, RTTY I do not like and it might be one thing I would discourage (but not actually ban). But that is another story. And it doesn't matter anyway because my voice counts for nothing. Which is right and proper. Dinosaurs seem to feel that the world should care about their views. Fundamentally, I don't care about their views any more than they care about mine. Which is nothing. So all square there then.

The main feature of the dinosaurs is that they went extinct. So will the dinosaurs in our hobby. Sadly based on my experience, there will be more along in every generation. They are as wrong now as they ever were.

These arguments tend to come to the fore when new technology gets ready to revolutionise our hobby. It did when SSB appeared and took the hobby away from the home builders, it did when transceivers appeared and made everything smaller and better, and it did again when repeaters taught us how commercial operators were moving forward. Right now it is internet linking (or VoIP generally), digital voice and the software defined radio revolution.

When I reviewed the IC-7300 (see the review here: http://gm4fvm.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/icom-ic-7300-review.html) I said that I expected that Icom had more developments up their sleeve. As I pondered this it occurred to me that the Flex 1500 has the ability to listen to two "slices" of bandwidth at the same time. It is a bit limited on the 1500, but I did use it to monitor both WSPR and JT65 frequencies at the same time. I guess the IC-7300 could do with that. In fact, no doubt that is someting to be offered on "the rig to come next", whatever that is.

It interested me to receive an e-mail from Bri, G0MJI about the Red Pitaya SDR receiver. Red Pitaya (as well as being some sort of exotic plant) is a name I associate with "Raspberry-PI" type LINUX-based small-scale processors used for test gear. But the Red Pitaya can be used as an SDR receiver. It has been generating a lot of interest in the WSPR community. It can run multiple receivers at once, has multiple RF inputs and allows the user to receiver on several bands at once (up to 8 I believe).

Bri's comment is interesting

The world changes...

Indeed it does. However, the dinosaurs are not prepared simply to look the other way, they want to stop it changing  so that they can continue to ... well, make us all use AM, or force us to abandon repeaters or whatever.

Not that everything is right in the world of progress, of course. By holding back developments for their own commercial benefit, manufacturers may be being exploiting us. Why doesn't the IC-7300 have multiple band receiver? Because that comes later. In the meantime the Red Pitaya has raised the bar. Yes, some really expensive Flex and Anan rigs have multiple slice receivers, but Red Pitaya have made it available for (a  bit) less money. In due course, this is a move which may well be followed by mainstream rigs.

I look forward to what is coming next. I am not fearing progress. Not yet anyway.

As I have no particularly suitable photo, here are my antennas on the main mast as of yesterday. The 6m HB9CV seems to have appeared back on the main mast, even though there is not enough room for it and it makes the whole thing rather heavy. But then, I did drop it when I had it up on the other mast. Progress? Probably not, but we shall see if it all blows over.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

Agreeable little aurora - 09 May 2016

Geomagnetic conditions have been disturbed for a few days now thanks to a Coronal Hole pointing straight at us.

The radio conditions peaked here at about 16:00 on 8 May, though I heard auroral effects for a couple of hours on either side of that time. The disturbance rumbled on for a couple of days and the absolute peak seemed to be at about 03:00 on 9 May - not a good time for radio in Europe.

Still, the peak here brought the usual effects. I heard the GB3NGI beacon on 2m and the OY6BEC beacon on 4 metres, plus various LAs and PAs on 4m and 6m CW. I might even have resorted to CW but I suddenly recalled that the keyer had the wrong plug on it (grrr).

It started with me working GM0HTT on Orkney in IO89 on 2 metres (red on the map). Then GM4NFC (IO75) on the West Coast on 4 metres. I can not work the West Coast direct, so although Alex is only 76km away I can only work him under enhanced conditions. He was also using an IC-7300 for his debut on 4m aurora. The "Southern Uplands" presents as much of a boundary to me as the Highlands. With a chain of hills formed by the Cheviots, the Lammermuirs and the Pentland Hills, the barrier to me working the West of Scotland or the Central Belt is pretty impressive.

After that Andy GM4JR was pretty strong on 4m, but then I had about an hour of hearing just those stations and beacons until at around 17:30 I heard LA and PA stations again on CW. I was hunting around for an adapter or a plug for the keyer when I happened to press the voice keyer key on the rig which sent CQ on SSB. This brought a response from David G4ASR (IO81). After that I worked LA9BM who had heard the SSB contact and switched mode. JP40 is a new square for me on 4m - 4m square number 170 - and a healthy 798km away. It went quiet again and I had still not solved the keyer lead issue when I heard Tom EI4DQ in Cloyne on CW. Still with no key, I replied on SSB. Tom switched mode and we completed a contact at a healthy 592km.

This was as unique an auroral opening as any. As it had been boiling away for a day or so I was waiting for it to peak here. Watching the auroral oval on Solarham gave me a good indication of when conditions would reach here. Although some people in Europe had a few contacts in the morning, by watching the oval I was pretty sure my chance would come around 16 to 17 hours, which it did do.

Although I did reach two stations well south of me, I only heard these two "big guns", who are experts at VHF operation. I did not hear any other southern stations, which suggests it was a fairly limited event. When it opens properly there is always a pile-up from the South! Nice to work JP40, but as usual the lack of activity means I tend to hear beacons and not stations.

Thanks again to GM4PMK for keeping his magnetometer site going. Even with a mechanical excavator in his garden (which caused a huge spike a few days ago) he is sending out useful information.

Once again, what a joy to see these strange events unfold before our eyes.

73

Jim
GM4FVM