Meanwhile, in the World of Ham Radio...

The following is a news & loose items round-up while I try to think of something of more import to post.

(1) Over the years I've observed various hams carefully cutting radial wires to resonant lengths and then burying them in their yards, curling them into shapes better described as "axials" than radials.  I've held my tongue, shaken my head, and moved on because, really, it's hard to make an antenna not work.  And they're happy with their results.  Still, it's interesting to see that this topic has been addressed at least as far back as 1937, as shown in this article at eham.  All I can add is that (a) the resonant length of any wire will change when you bury it, or even lay it on top of dirt; (b) that 234/f free-space length sure isn't it; (c) the resonant length will change again next time it rains; and (d) just cut as many radials as you have patience and wire for, run them radially as far as is practical in your yard, and you'll do fine.  Because Method of Images.  That's what makes an on-ground plane work, all the rest is voudou & gris-gris.  (Idle though for a rainy weekend: Is there a uniqueness proof for the RF analogue of Poisson's Equation?  Bet there is, bet it's not too hard to show.)

(2) In another article at eham, Fishing Where the Fish Are, presents a refreshing approach to recruiting new hams.  TLDR: Empty-nesters have the time, money, and increasing lack of fitness to pursue the hobby.  What's more, there's an endless supply of older people, Father Time is making fresh batches every day.  It may make more sense to recruit there, rather than trying to complete with the distractions that the pre-empty-nesters face.

(3) In spare minutes these last two weeks, several friends and I have been fooling with Yaesu's Fusion digital voice mode.  It's impressive, giving good clear VHF performance over 20+ miles without needing repeaters or extraordinary towers.  It doesn't give magic over-the-horizon performance on VHF, nothing can do that, but it is way better than FM.  In communities without repeaters it seems likely to give similar useable coverage, at least for most users.  Will have to experiment more on this in the coming years.  Why hasn't Fusion caught on faster?  Mostly due to Yaesu's bucket-of-everything marketing (example) and incoherent manuals.  But overall, yeah, Fusion station-to-station ("simplex") digital voice mode couldn't be easier, and it's damn near magic.

The crazy thing is that I've had a Fusion-capable radio for nearly a year, and lots of friends have them too, but the manuals are such crap that we've all just been using them for FM!  In the end though, Fusion digital voice simplex is very easy to use and a phenomenal performer.

(4) Over at his blog (currently off-line due to who-knows-what, but here's the link) Bob K0NR ponders the question: Why the fuse on the negative power lead on most (but not all) ham radios?  His conclusion is that it's generally a bad idea in car installations, because if the ground fuse blows there's always an extra path to ground through the coax shield.  Yikes.  He also adds that it's probably not that big a deal, but he won't be installing things this way in the future.  There is always, always a failure mode you haven't thought of, that some other smart dude can point out.  Still mulling over the consequences for stand-alone solar powered radios.

There, that should get your weekend off in good nerd-tastic fashion.  Catch you on the air.