Busy Day at the Museum

It was busy down at the Hands-On Museum yesterday. I goto there a little after 10am, and Eugene, KD8HSU was waiting for me. Eugene, who is an on-again, off-again resident of Ann Arbor hadn’t seen the new rig, so I gave him a quick demo. Fortunately, 20m was open, and we were able to work YT40E (Serbia) on CW right off the bat.

Shortly after, Jim, K8ELR, and Ovide, K8EV, showed up. Then, Quentin, KD8IPF, and his kids arrived. A little later, Ralph, AA8RK, came for a visit, and Mike, one of the students from last week’s class arrived.

K8ELR, who is now our “digital modes specialist,” got all set up to do Hellschreiber. He called CQ a couple of times, and got a few responses, but apparently the band was a little up and down, and was never actually able to complete a contact.

At about 3 pm, I sat down to demonstrate CW for Mike. After QSYing to 40m and calling CQ a couple of times, we connected with Roger, W1OJ. After a nice QSO with Roger, we got a call from Lynn, NG9D. I think I appropriately impressed Mike with my CW skills.

We also were visited by a couple of museum visitors who turned out to be hams. So, overall it was a great day down at the museum.

We Scored 100%!

Not to toot my own horn—at least not too much—but yesterday we scored 100%! That is to say that everyone in our latest One-Day Tech Class at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum passed the test. 17 people attended the class and took the test, including one 15-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl.

To be honest, I was concerned about the two teenagers. Kids don’t seem to do well in the one-day class, and neither of them had done much pre-study. The girl, however, only got two questions wrong; I’m not sure what score the boy had.

Several of  the students were the sons of amateur radio operators. One of them, Ryan, came all the way from Alma (about two hours away), with his girlfriend, Kathena, to take the class. I just received an e-mail from Ryan:

Just wanted to give a big thanks for offering the class. You definitely helped Kathena and I learn all the technical aspects of ham radio. You definitely helped me feel more confident about passing the test. I have been trying to get around and take it for ten years now. Kathena has only been around ham radio for a week and she loves it!

Mel, the executive director of the museum, his wife, and his father-in-law, were also part of the class. Since they all passed, two of the museum’s staff now have amateur radio licenses.

Thanks to my co-teachers and especially to VEs who administered the test. This was quite a large group, but they were able to handle the group speedily and efficiently.

Operating Notes: New Year’s Day Weekend; Sat., January 9

New Year’s Day weekend was pretty busy down at the museum:

  • Friday: I did a bunch of housekeeping. I logged in our recently-received QSL cards and replenished our brochure supply.
  • Saturday: Quentin, KD8IPF, and I figured out how to use the SSTV feature of Ham Radio Deluxe. This was surprisingly confusing. We expected to find SSTV as one of the items in the drop-down menu of the DM780 program, along with PSK, Olivia, and the other digital modes. Instead, to receive SSTV, you have to click on a separate menu item.
    Quentin and I didn’t make any SSTV contacts as band conditions were really poor, but we did receive a couple of pictures. Next, we have to set up a couple of our own templates and then actually make a contact.
  • Sunday: Jim, K8ELR, and I were there, ostensibly to operate Kid’s Day. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many people at the museum, nor could we find any other stations on the air working this event. So, we ended up not making any Kid’s Day QSOs.

On Saturday, January 9, Les, W8LDS, and I met for breakfast before heading over to the museum. There, we met Jim, K8ELR.  After turning on the rig, we heard Tom, K5IRH, Shreveport, LA calling CQ on 40m CW and quickly established our first contact. When we mentioned that we were at a local science museum, he quickly told us about Sci-Port, a science museum there in Shreveport.  I told him that every science museum should have a ham radio station and have e-mailed him information on our operations.

Emboldened by our success with SSTV the previous week, Jim and I decided to give RTTY a whack. Fortunately, there was an RTTY contest last weekend–the Mongolian RTTY DX Contest, no less! Again, band conditions weren’t the best on 20m, but we managed one contact apiece. Mine was with P4OYL in Aruba, Jim’s with EA5FL in Spain.

After that, we decided to pad our QSO statistics a bit, so made a bunch of CW contacts in the North American QSO Party. That was kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, so we quit pretty quickly and wrapped up ops at about 1:30 pm.

Display Debuts at AAHOM

Part of the $10,000 grant we got from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers was to go towards “several tabletop displays.” The first of these has recently made its debut.

This first display is simply a microphone connected to an oscilloscope (see below). Talk into the horn, and the oscilloscope displays the waveform of your voice. It’s simple, but effective. Kids and adults were sitting down to see their voice all day today.

Talk into the horn, and the oscilloscope displays the waveform of your voice.

The scope itself is rather remarkable. It’s one of the new scopes that use an LCD display rather than a CRT. That means it’s less than a foot deep, which is a lot smaller than the CRT-based scopes that most hams have in their shacks (if they have a scope, anyway).

display tableThe “see your voice on the oscilloscope” is the first of three displays that will go on this table. As you can see in the photo at right, there are spaces for two more displays. One of them will be a Morse Code display; the second will be a crystal radio set display.

The display sits just outside the station, and the colors match those of the station. Come on down and see it sometime.