KØNR: Radio Enthusiast

You probably know that this weekend marks the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the US. While I despise the idea of losing an hour in the spring, I do appreciate the concept of sleeping in another hour in the fall.

Actually, I think the whole concept of DST is bogus. In fact, the concept of time zones makes no sense in the 21st century. Modern life is a 24/7 experience without the need to tie it to the “noon is when the sun is overhead” paradigm.

DST is obsolete.

My proposal is to take the best of DST, which is gaining an hour in the fall, and expanding it for maximum  benefit. Therefore, we would never do the “spring forward” part of DST but always just slip an hour in the fall. I recognize that this will work great the first year but over time we’ll accumulate quite a bit of clock skew.

To keep this from being a problem, we’ll abandon local time all together and just rely on UTC (Coordinated Universal).  Businesses, schools and government agencies would need to translate UTC to the needs of the local situation. Instead of starting work at 8:00 AM local time, enterprises in the US would start work at, say 14:00 UTC. It is a simple matter of doing the math and keeping things straight.

Then every year in the fall, we’d slip UTC by one hour to give us another hour of sleep. How can anyone object to that?

- 73, Bob K0NR

Here is a funny comic that I came across recently (thanks Kelly AB9RF):

“Spinal Tap” is a reference back to the classic Rob Reiner film This is Spinal Tap, where Nigel explains the value of an amplifier gain control that goes all the way to eleven.

For more fine, sophisticated Spinal Tap culture, see the fan web site or the official Spinal Tap site.

73, Bob

You’ve probably heard that RadioShack is rebranding itself to be The Shack. This has triggered another round of criticism of RadioShack stores, with the usual tired references to “Rat Shack”, “Radio Schlock”, or worse.

Apparently, RadioShack has failed to live up to the expectations of the technorati. Well, it is true: RadioShack is the worst chain of electronics store in the US. It is also the best chain of electronics store in the US. That is, it is the only one we have with any breadth of coverage. (The RS web site claims that 94 percent of America lives or works within 5 minutes of a RadioShack store or dealer.)

So what’s going on here? Electronics experimenters, computer geeks and ham radio enthusiasts all lust after having a local store that stocks all of the parts and trinkets that they’ll ever need, with knowledgeable staff and reasonable prices. We want RS to be the electronic equivalent of the local hardware store. In reality, RS is more like the local Walgreens store than a hardware store — offering up what sells quickly and not always what we want.

So now remove RS from the picture — imagine that all of their stores closed overnight. Would our access to electronic treasures improve? I don’t think so. In fact, we’d really be hosed in most parts of the US. (If you have a great electronics store nearby, count your blessings.)

There are some RadioShack stores that operate above the norm — they are usually the franchise stores that are not owned by the RS corporation. These stores augment the RS product offering with product that serves their local community. One example is my local RS: Tri-Lakes Electronics in  Monument, Colorado. They do a pretty decent job serving their customers and I try to give them business whenever possible.

You might hypothesize that something better could evolve out of today’s RS (something more substantial than a “rebranding”). When I think of this possibility, I imagine larger stores and better product selection. I don’t think it is realistic to have a deep stock of every possible transistor, capacitor, resistor and integrated circuit… this might work in San Jose but not across the US.  I do think RS could be a stronger supplier of computer networking gear, connectors, cables and adapters (the things that it takes to make all of the electronics stuff work). A bit more like Fry’s Electronics but without the appliances and Jolt cola. (Interestingly enough, Fry’s has plenty of detractors, so serving the ‘tronics market appears to be a tough gig.) I also think some (not all) of RS products need an upgrade in quality (e.g., their RG-8 cable is lean on shielding…and where is the 9913 Flex equivalent?). A thorough scrubbing and makeover of the product list could really help.

So if you were in charge of RadShack, how would you change it?

And would you make any money at it?

73, Bob K0NR

The February 2009 shutdown of analog TV is approaching fast so I am actually starting to prepare for it. I previously wrote about this topic in Here Comes Digital TV. The FCC has asked the ARRL (really the amateur radio community) for help in getting the word out. This request emphasizes information sharing, not hands-on installation and troubleshooting of DTV systems. This is going to be interesting to watch….people that are served by cable or satellite are likely to be buffered from this change. The Over The Air User may have a different experience.

The FCC is pushing these settop converter boxes that allow people to convert their old analog TVs to digital. They will probably work fine for many people, especially if they have some technical knowledge. I really wonder about the less sophisticated consumers that are already struggling with their VCR and TV combo….now with a converter box in the middle of the system. “Let’s see, to record off the air I set the VCR to Channel 3 and the converter box to Channel 8 and then….” I am thinking there will be quite a few analog TVs headed to the trash heap. (Please recycle responsibly.)

An additional wrinkle that I just realized is that many of the VHF television stations are are moving to UHF for digital….but they will keep their existing channel designator. It turns out that the DTV system is defined such that the channel number that the user sees has nothing to do with the actual over-the-air channel that is used. For example, an analog TV station on VHF Channel 4 might move to UHF channel 35 for DTV but still be called “Channel 4″ on the DTV screen. This is supposed to keep things simple for the consumer. This will work out OK if the consumer has a TV antenna that handles both VHF and UHF. However, in some regions VHF is so dominant, people may not have bothered with a UHF-capable antenna. They will have to make an antenna change to receive the new DTV signals.

In Denver it is going to be even more interesting. Channels 7 and 9 are starting out on UHF for their digital broadcasts and then will move back to VHF after the analog signals go off the air. This leaves them on their original VHF channel after the dust settles. So a viewer watching digital Channel 7 needs to view them on UHF Channel 17 right now, but it will be referred to as Channel 7. Later, their DTV signal will move over to the “real” VHF Channel 7.

This is going to be interesting.

73, Bob K0NR

Update 22 Dec 2008:

Take a look at this humorous video about the Digital TV transition:

http://www.wca.org/davidw/digitalconversion.wmv

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Having recently commented (whined?) about the huge about of email spam clogging the internet, I now turn to the same issue with POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). At our house, we use caller ID and answering machine call screening to deal with most solicitors. This has been remarkably effective. With the election growing near, the politicos are spending a ton of money on these robot autodialers (robocall) that call and leave a recorded message. Although I don’t have to listen to these idiotic messages, they do fill up the answering machine.

Before you tell me to register with the United States Do Not Call Registry, don’t bother. We are registered but it doesn’t apply to political organizations. (Seems that Congress thinks there is some special Freedom of Speech issue here.)

Here is an idea that I have tried and it seems to help. The telephone system has a number of special signaling tones that indicate the status of a phone line, called Special Information Tones. These tones basically tell the calling device that the dialed number has a problem. I recorded these tones at the beginning of our outgoing voice message, followed by my usual “Sorry we can’t take your call right now” greeting. The idea is that a machine calling will hear the tones and give up, while a human will ignore them and listen to the message.

Click here for the sit-tone

I’ve had this running for a few days, and the success rate appears to be about 80%. I still see incoming political calls on the Caller ID but most don’t make it to the answering machine. A few still get through…probably because the calling device ignores the SIT tone.

This is Bob K0NR and I approve this message.

73, Bob K0NR