Iceberg reports!
From the damp basement of my cloistered house I was hearing reports from the Arctic. The non-BFO equipped radio made alien whooshing Morse Code sounds while the green cat’s eye winked. Coupling this bizarre sound and exotic content with teenage imagination brought a spark to my heart. I wanted to be climbing mountains, cutting through jungles and riding on the roof of buses, not studying chemistry in high school.
Ham radio was presented to me by my electronics teacher and I jumped into the hobby with alacrity. The age of 15 was a quiet time, before I started working every waking moment with dreams at my doorstep. Ham radio let my dreams go beyond my little world -- but you had to earn it. Train trips to the Federal Building in Chicago, sketching out Colpitts oscillators and other circuits in preparation for my FCC tests and building my Heathkit HW101 transceiver taught me electronics, self discipline and “developed character” as Calvin’s father was always trying to encourage (probably true for the theologian too, but I am of course referring to Calvin and Hobbes).
As a newly licensed ham, I entered my high school’s shack smelling of hot phenolic, ozone and dummy load oil. I tapped out my first CQ and “dah” laden K9HWI call sign and was thrilled when I heard a reply. Technology working in such an intimate way over such an expanse of earth was amazing. I learned about moonbounce, aurora, meteor showers, and OSCAR satellites – I could touch space in a way every Apollo era kid dreamed of. At my college’s ham radio club, W9YH, there were 150 foot towers to be climbed and shiny copper and aluminum to be bent and soldered. Adventure and science mixed, along with friends of the same flock. I would take long walks in college, often with a portable Drake TR 22 two meter transceiver hanging off my shoulder. This radio gave me everything a lonely heart could want: nature, a clear mind and radio friends to talk to all the while. This was a time when “wireless” was an old fashioned term (who would guess of its reemergence?) and my unprotected final had to be replaced whenever my cut coat hanger soldered into a PLH239 connector misbehaved.
Technology kept developing and soon the magic of a 300 baud acoustical modem with cut tennis balls for the telephone receiver was replaced by packet radio and the internet. But that old 2 meter radio was all I had at times. I was a work-study student without a telephone much of the time and changed apartments every semester. It was the radio with which I would join a weekly net when my days were too quiet. I would use it for my Skywarn work when everyone wanted to announce a tornado spotting and we had to fight hard not to wishfully see things so as to be a micro celebrity for a few minutes.
One day, when I was a young and would write lists on how to improve my work efficiency and “great inventions”, I removed my ham gear from my kitchen table and tucked it under the table. I replaced the gear with a white sheet and a nicely arrayed spread of stuffed clams and mixed vegetables. At this converted ham shack I proposed marriage to my girlfriend. She said yes and the ham radio equipment hidden below the dangling “tablecloth” didn’t realize how this change would affect my relationship with it (ham radio, that is).
A wife and kids drew me away from ham radio for a long time. I moved into the phase of life where you divided things up into that which you can change and that which you can’t. A time when you still dream but sense the closure of many doors. This summer I came across my old Drake TR 22 transceiver waiting for me in my garage and in a romantic and nostalgic fit, I dreamed of taking it to one of the most special places I know of in my area – a beautiful cliff is in the McIntyre Wild Area 15 miles north of me. I have enjoyed climbing the cliffs in this area over the years and have taken my kids there for adventure and quiet times. When I am on those cliffs, I feel like I am in a different world, far from everything, much like I did as a college student taking long, long walks off campus or at the top of the W9YH’s radio towers.
On a surprisingly cool summer afternoon, my daughter and I set up my old Drake on the tallest cliff in the area. The cliff scratched its way 60 feet through dense foliage above a cool stream that made gentle oscillations through this vertical world. The radio and battery pack were hung from cracks and the antenna snaked up the crumbly gray rocks. We tried to operate on 146.52 MHz but my old Drake radio didn’t have it in her and refused to work. When I tested it at home, I knew it wasn’t promising but I wished (really hard) that it would operate one last time. My wishing didn’t work. All my day dreams over these months just withered away. But we did enjoy the climb and finally dropped down into the cool stream below, soaking our hot feet as the clear water washed over smooth rocks. I have climbed this cliff with my son but this was the first time with my daughter. It was still a nice time, just not what I envisioned. It was a ham radio experience that melded my past and present, satiated a humble dream and made a great pursuit. The only thing missing was a radio contact. For all but the romantic it was a failure. But shouldn’t all free summer afternoons be in pursuit of whimsy?
Rock Radio
I wasn’t done with cliffs. I wiped off those lovely Drake infused memories and moved into a new chapter of ham radio. Data. I wanted to explore things and learn more about interesting environments. Motivated by Mark Spencer’s, PICAXE based marine buoy (whose design and construction is gratefully acknowledged), I moved to a new chapter of ham radio. With some gentle tweaks to his design and extended thermistor cables, I went on to investigate the microclimates of the cliffs I love. As with the cliff expedition, I routed a ¼ vertical to the top of the cliff. The radio, microcontroller and battery were wedged into a sheltered rock shelf. From this equipment, I ran cables into a couple of interesting cracks and measured rock face temperature and air temperature. I used a pen cap as a radiant shield for the air temperature and foam taped the thermistor to the cleaned rock surface.
I explored the changing temperatures deep in cracks where all sorts of creepy things live. The system worked great and I enjoyed watching data stream in from the comfort of my office chair. This APRS routed sensor data gave me a presence on the cliff in a way only a ham radio operator could understand. This data lets me learn how different rocks, with their differing thermal conductivities and shapes affect interior temperatures.
Kite Radio
I have flown kites all my life and one of my earlier memories is my mom asking if it was too windy to fly my paper and stick kite. “No, it will be fine,” I replied and sure enough the wind broke the wispy kite string and there went my 19 cent kite. Now, kites are made like tanks and can handle almost anything. My kids also have the misfortune to have a father who thinks he knows everything and is more inclined to declarative sentences (“don’t fly your kite”) than my mom’s more gentle inquiry.
I also remember when we learned from our parents rather than YouTube. I recall wanting to make a didgeridoo (an Australian musical pipe) a couple years ago, it seemed easy and I went to my workshop to give it a try. I first booted up my computer and searched for didgeridoo making. I ended up watching other people make didgeridoos to the point I no longer felt like making one myself. Therefore, for the kite project I purposely didn’t look for anything but developed my foam enclosure and parachute recovery in my own mind. All of this has probably been invented before but I enjoyed the process of discovery. I made a trip arm with a flap that would pull out the parachute if the instrument package made a rapid descent. I used masking tape for a limited load fastener -- explosive bolts for poor folks. I then threw it out of my tree house a few times to see that it worked.
Unfortunately, we had the longest windless days that I can remember. My kite system cluttered up our bedroom (my son’s projects had taken over everything else). I kept telling my wife, “I will get the stuff out of the bedroom once we have a windy day.” She was patient with my electronics, winglets, foam and other stuff cluttering up a cozy corner of the room. Now I see why the Wright brothers invented the airplane – waiting on nature can be inconvenient!
Finally, a day arrived with enough wind to send my APRS equipped data acquisition system beyond the water and cliffs and aloft on my power lift kite for a cheap foray into very near space.
I loved “seeing” these environments through APRS routed data. This period of exploration showed that even a middle aged guy who owns textbooks referring to the ether and Heaviside layer, can stick with radio experimentation. Amateur radio connects many of us with our youth – but radio can just as assuredly allow us to enjoy wonderful future pursuits.
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