I decided to move my rigs around, and now I have easy access to the HF rig instead of having to run halfway across the room. I love it!

What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Olivia is the sun…
Er… ok, maybe not, but these last few days, I had been experimenting with listening to radio transmissions sent using OLIVIA, a highly error-proof digital mode. It can even be copied when the signal is 10db below the noise floor, meaning you don’t even have to hear it to copy it. So, I fired up FLDigi, and set it to OLIVIA, and started decoding QSOs.. it was so cool to have errorless text show up on your screen when there’s barely a signal! So, I heard someone calling CQ tonight using it, and the temptation to answer back became too great! I put my microphone in front of my computer speaker, and answered back.. and the rest went sort of like this…

kc2spy kc2spy de WB8ROL tnx for call om and ge
RSQ :  599 599 nice sig
QTH : Ludlow Falls, OH - near Dayton
LOC : en70xb
Name : Gary Gary
So BTU - hw cpy ? - kC2SPY de WB8ROL KN T”bpvV`q2kwb8rol DE KC2SPY Good copy here, I don’t have a rig interface, just a microphone
up to the speaker. 599 copy here too, name is Max in Webster, NY near Rochester. FN13GF
This is my first OLIVIA contact… it’s pretty cool! So, back to you, Gary. WB8ROL de KC2SPY@@@gn7
… kC2SPY de WB8ROL - 100% cpy Max - FB on the microphone hi hi As long as you don’t sneeze no problem hihi Really sounds good - would NOT hv known if you hadn’t told me. Glad to be ur 1st Olivia QSO!  It’s my favorite mode and spend 80% time on it. So some DominoEX FEC, THOR, and ALE400 too. Run 40w hr to 115ft CF Dipole fed with ladder line. FLDig software on Linux + SignalLink USB interface. BTU Max kC2SPY de WB8ROL KN
HZO?    [N
>*$WB8ROL DE KC2SPY Very good Gary, and thanks for the compliments. I think
this mode will quickly become one of my favorites, and less troublesome after
I wire something up Very good on the 40w at 115feet.. I have 100w on a G5RV
at 25 feet.. sorta evens things out. I too am using FLDigi on Ubuntu Linux.. what
distro are you running over there? BTU WB8ROL de KC2SPY@@@l*$.. kC2SPY de WB8ROL - perfect print agn Max - Using the Kubuntu 8.04 hr - Really like KDE but so far KDE 4 looks crappy to me so sticking with 3.59 KDE on Kubuntu 8.04. Been on Linux for 6 years - prefer it to Windows BUT don't hate windows hihi . Age hr is 58 - ham since 1963. On digi since 2003 and discovered Olivia 14 months ago. Last 14 months hv had 831 Olivia QSO's and 4 PSK hi hi - BTU Max kC2SPY de WB8ROL KN (e
h"1SWysCVWB8ROL DE KC2SPY Agn good copy as usual Gary.. turned down power here
a little bit, now at 40w like yourself.. I do enjoy having final transistors I have
regular Ubuntu 8.04, but have installed XFCE4 here.. a bit more lightweight than
Gnome and KDE. I've been on Linux for probably... 3 years, maybe? All computers
in the house (around are on various distros, except for 2 windows-only machines.
I'm 15 yrs old here, been  aham since Dec 21 last year and on digital since.. 5 mins
ago, LOL. Back to you! WB8ROL de KC2SPY@XR.. kC2SPY de WB8ROL - 100% agn Max - I started on RedHat yrs ago, then Mandrake, Mandriva, Mepis, and now Kbuntu. SO glad I changed to Debian based distros. I also play with Slax and Puppy linux too. I figure I hv dual core Athlon 5000+ and 2gb RAM so I like desktop with most fuctionality. XFCE too lite weight for my tastes hi hi. Plus I do C++ programming and KDevelop only great Visual IDE on Linux that is free.  FB on being 15 yrs old! - I am slightly older hi hi X 4 almost hi.  Really love this digi stuff! - BTU Max kC2SPY de WB8ROL KN (V>oWfy:
$:I9vR
KMAWB8ROL de KC2SPY very good Gary, I started off with Fedora a while back
when I discovered a book  on Linux around the house (my Mom's?) from the
90s, had a very old version of Slackware on it, but I couldn't get it working. So,
I downloaded Fedora Core 2, and got that working.. Then from there, I think I
went straight  to Ubuntu, when it was 5.10, and then to Debian, but was unhappy
with PKG selection avail. so back to Ubuntu again at 6.10ish.. Gotta love apt! RedHat/
Fedora has yum, which I think is similar, but not as good.. I have a P4 2.6ghz with
1g RAM... meager by today's standards.. it does sometimes tend to get bogged down,
so XFCE helps a little bit. I do a little bit of PHP and MySQL web stuff every once in a
while, but I use simply Scite, which just does syntax highli. I'll be sending a card along
your way, once I find a pen to fill it out BTU, sorry for the length. WB8ROL de KC2SPY@Adl.. kC2SPY de WB8ROL - 100% Max though sig is decreasing - Apt and Synaptic is why I like Debian based distros like Kubuntu!!  RPM and YUM NOT so yummy hi hi  With RPM used to be REAL easy to HOSE up an installation. Apt-Synaptic really cooks. I do a little PHP, MySQL too - have 6-7 virtual machines (VMWare) and 2 of those are web servers for sites I maintain. Also do Flash programming (action script).  I love my computer and hi speed internet even more than ham radio. Well, better not hold it too long - band may be changing - Out of QSL's hr BUT will get some soon! - BTU - I'll sign out on next over - kC2SPY de WB8ROL KN in"^[-*lWB8ROL de Kc2spy very good again gary, yes,  I love apt, and I'm actually doing a dist-upgrade
right now to take advantage  of the new version of FLDigi in Intrepid. Very nice  onthe VM's.. that's cool stuff. I used to do a whole lot more stuff on the computer, but sorta got bored w ithit, and now I'm on to radio stuff and electronics and building things. MaxKelley.com is my site, which is run by Wordpress, but I used to have my own custom PHP cms running it. Very good on the flash, too.. I did a little bit with flash, but not much with ActionScript. Thanks again for the contact, and I hope to hear you on again some other time...73s!  WB8ROL de KC2SPY seeya!@@@ywd.. kC2SPY de WB8ROL - FB Max - If you get a chance look at pdoodle.com - It's my XYLs web site - she's an artist. But I do the programming hi pdoodle is short for our favorite cat who's nickname is Punky Doodle. I hp cuagn on digi Max - enjoy yakking with other Linux users! Take care - hv a great holiday season - best 73 for now Max kC2SPY de WB8ROL SK 4E;m8
R:    ^cr3WB8ROL de KC2SPY will check it out! Thanks again Gary, and enjoy
the holidays as well.. nice full-duty digital modes keep the shack warm
in the winter! 73s WB8ROL de KC2SPY SK@$uz]p$… energy efficient! 73 dit dit

And that was that! It was a very cool QSO… It took quite a bit longer than it seems because of transmission speed, about 1 hour.. but it was well worth it.

Well, I decided, this weekend, to contact K2NNY, a station operated from Northern New York by some members of the Rochester DX Association for the 2008 ARRL Sweepstakes Phone. So, I heard them, and tried to call them, but they weren’t answering, so I decided to make some contacts and try later. Before I knew it, I had 144 contacts, and it was the next day!

So, without further ado, here are my stat’s from this year’s sweepstakes, my first ever:

Contacts Made: 144

Bands Operated: 80, 40, 20

Sections Worked: 45 unique, as follows: 18 VA, 16 MDC, 10 IL, 9 OH, 7 MI, 5 MO, 5 IN, 4 WMA, 4 WI, 4 STX, 4 NC, 3 SD, 3 MR, 3 ME, 3 LA, 3 ENY, 3 EMA, 2 WNY, 2 TN, 2 SNJ, 2 SJV, 2 SF, 2 SCV, 2 RI, 2 NH, 2 MN, 2 GA, 2 CT, 2 CO, 2 AL, and singles from WWA, WVA, WPA, WCF, SDG, NTX, NNY, NNJ, NM, NJ, KY, KS, EPA, EB, and BC.

So, I had quite a bit of fun! They have all been added to the ham radio log page on this website. A full list of the contacts made during the contest follows the break.

Well, my dad decided to wash his cellphone, except I think he really didn’t mean to.. well, the upside is that I got to gut the phone in drying it out, and it’s actually working, somewhat.. there’s some leftover rubbing alcohol in the screen which is drying out (I used alcohol to displace the water) but I think the mic might be busted, kinda killing the whole phone aspect of it

Enjoy the pictures, tho!

I saw this interesting error on Facebook when going to view a video that was commented on by someone in my friends list, resulting in it being bumped to my attention. This message.. I don’t know, sorta makes sense, sorta doesn’t Sure, alpha does, but alpha console? It sounded rather… spaceship-jargon like. Like… here’s an alpha console:

Just a curiosity I thought I would mention

Well, long time since an entry, and I have to attribute the inspiration/motivation to write this one to N2QDK, Mike Wren for giving me the idea to write this entry (ok, he told me to write it..) Anyhow, this weekend was the CW Sweepstakes, a contest on the radio using CW (Morse-code, for those non-radio types). Now, I’m of the newer generation of hams, who didn’t require a morse code test to get their license, but nevertheless, I have been attempting to learn my code. This weekend, Paul Mackanos, K2DB, was operating from his station in the Adirondacks, K2NNY, and he encouraged the members of a local club, the Rochester DX Association (which I am a member of..) to contact him. So, feeling lucky, I decided to try and make a contact with Morse code with him. Without a Morse code key.

At this point, I’m sure you’re thoroughly confused, and it’s ok, you should be. But, ingenious as I am, I decided to make my own, using a paperclip and a 1/4inch mono cable (actually, my sister’s instrument cable.. shhh..). It actually worked alright, and I was able to send a relatively clean rendition of my callsign. Now, receiving.. that was a different ordeal. I am horrible at copying at the speeds that Paul was operating at (or copying at all) so I tried to use CW decoding software on the computer. I was able to decode a few of his exchanges, but a good deal of it was garbled, unfortunately, due to machine error. If I knew the code, I definitely would have been able to copy him, as he had a perfectly fine signal. So, I threw my call out there, hoping for the best. Unfortunately, the poor accuracy of the CW decoding software hindered my means of telling whether he actually heard me or not. Oh well, it was fun!

Now, in other news, I was given an ooold Toshiba laptop by Irv, AF2K, to fix, last weekend. He said, “It starts up with a [BIOS] password prompt, and won’t do anything more.” I figured, ok, I’ll open it up and use the reset jumper. “Well, one of the screws is stripped..,” he says. So, to Google I go, searching for a way to get in: backdoor passwords, special keystrokes, floppy images.. nothing of that sort. Finally, I stumbled upon a website that described a special “dongle” that shorted some pins on the parallel port, bypassing the password and putting you in the BIOS setup. So, off I went, constructing what you see above to the instructions below.

Short pins: (1,5,10) (2,11) (3,17) (4,12) (6,16) (7,13) (8,14) & (9,15)

When I was done, I checked the shorted pins for continuity, plugged it in, crossed my fingers… and voila! I was in the BIOS setup! I cleared the password, and booted up to the strangely beautiful sight of Windows XP. Irv had been telling me, “I doubt you can fix it, I’ve had so many other guys look at it, try and get it to work, but to no avail.” I call him, “When would you like to come pick up your laptop?” Needless to say, he was stunned.

That’s all for now, folks.. come back next time!

The Who, originally uploaded by maxkelley.

More on this later

Hello all, it’s been a bit since the last post, but since then, I’ve put up a real-time ham radio contact log, on the Ham Radio tab, that shows my contacts as I put them into the log. I’m using DJ1YFK’s YFKlog and some PHP of mine to do it, which is executed within the Wordpress page using the Exec-PHP plugin. Fun!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I purchased a new antenna, a Diamond RH77CA, for the dual-band HT, which has great reviews on eHam.net, and from what people claim there, has fairly good off-ham-band performance as well, allowing me to use my HT on FRS and MURS. I haven’t yet received the antenna, I just purchased it last night, but maybe I’ll do a review when I get it

And, for those that don’t know, back in mid-July, I purchased a Kenwood HF transceiver, the TS-450S, used off Craigslist, along with an Astron RS-35A power supply and a Mirage UHF amplifier… a stellar buy of $375 for the lot. Here’s the transceiver, with MFJ tuner, in all its glory…

I also made a custom wallplate with SO239 passthroughs for the antenna connections coming into the house. My mom was grateful for this, and not having a hole in the wall with wires coming through.. she would hate that.

I’m pretty sure I was going to mention something else, but when I left to take the pictures of the equipment, I forgot it.. Oh well! Enjoy!

KingCorn, originally uploaded by maxkelley.

I just saw this movie, called King Corn, a documentary about two guys from Boston who move to Iowa to grow an acre of corn to discover exactly where it goes. The film is really quite eye-opening in many ways, because the corn they grow actually is barely edible without processing, and will mostly be used as animal feed, or be made into sweetener (corn syrup). Another stunning fact is that cows fed by corn actually are simply waiting for death, as it is not natural for them to be fed corn-based feed, and it just fattens them up. A cut of meat from a corn-fed cow that has 9g of saturated fat will have only 3.5g fat if it were grass-fed, the natural way. (I believe that’s what the statistic was..)

If you have a chance to see this movie, it is truly worth it, and it just shows how much our economy and our nation is changing. It is nearly impossible to survive as a small family farm that is not a subsistence farm, for, in the case of these two, it actually cost them money to produce and sell the corn, and the only profit they received is from the government paying them because they are producing corn. It should be interesting to see where our nation will be going in the coming years.

On another note, look forward to more frequent, normal posts now… perhaps a few projects, even I plan on repurposing a Dish TV satellite dish for long-range Wi-Fi… stick around

Thanks to KingCorn.net for the photo..