Those #@$%# Power Adapters

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I was getting ready for a trip. Of course, I need to take along my electronic toys, I mean, necessities. There’s the mobile phone, the iPod, the ham radio gear, the digital camera and lots of other stuff. As I gathered up the toys, I surveyed the required support gear, which includes various forms of … Read more

Ham Radio Report on IEEE Spectrum Podcast

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As an electrical engineer, I’ve always been a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The IEEE publishes Spectrum, which is an excellent magazine for technical topics relating to electrical engineering (EE). They recently added an audio podcast called Spectrum Radio to their program, covering topics interested to EEs. This past week … Read more

FCC Releases Long-Awaited "Omnibus" Amateur Radio Report and Order

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From the ARRL web site: NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 11, 2006 — Ending a protracted waiting period, the FCC’s Report and Order (R&O) in the so-called “omnibus” Amateur Radio proceeding, WT Docket 04-140, was adopted October 4 and released October 10. In it, the FCC adopted nearly all of the changes it had put forth in … Read more

Results of The Free Software Experiment

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Over one year ago, I decided to buy a new notebook computer for use with ham radio and other personal projects. In the past, I’ve been a typical user of Microsoft products, including Windows, MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc. The Open Source movement has been interesting to me and I often wondered about using some … Read more

The Death of (Broadcast) Radio

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Back in April, I wrote about how various sources of audio are Competing for Ears. John Dvorak in his PC Magazine blog recently wrote about The Death of Radio. Interesting, he did put a slight plug in for the “underappreciated amateur/ham radio community.” (Thanks, John.) But his main point is that broadcast radio sucks. I … Read more

USB on Ham Radio Gear?

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One of the really well-done and useful technologies available today is the Universal Serial Bus (USB). If you don’t know what this is, you have been living under a rock or simply refuse to own a computer. The first revision of the USB spec (USB 1.0) was released in January of 1996. The standard has … Read more