If Ambrose Bierce had been a ham...

Ambrose on 20m phone in 1875

Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran and a writer. His experiences at the Battle of Shiloh provided fodder and inspiration for numerous stories that would be written 25 years later, in the 1890's.

Most of these stories were written metaphorically, to capture the somber essence of war rather than its literal realities.

As such, they are dark, moody and macabre, with Bierce's writing often being compared to that of Poe.

His best-known story is Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge which, 70 years later, was made by Rod Serling into an episode of The Twilight Zone (you can watch that episode here).

Bierce's cynical wit (and refreshingly sardonic humor) can more quickly be discerned by a quick read of a few examples from his Devil's Dictionary:

• Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
• Circus: A place where horses, lions and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting foolishly.
• Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
• Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
• Egotist: A person of low taste; therefore, more interested in himself than in me.
• Funeral: A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching their undertaker.
• Guillotine: A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders, with good reason.
• Imagination: A warehouse of facts, with Poet and Liar in joint ownership.
• Marriage: A household consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
• Noise: A stench in the ear. The chief product of civilization.
• Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

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If ham radio had existed during Bierce's time, these might have been his observations:

QRP rigs, pricing, and what's missing from most of them

A search of the mythical Ideal QRP Travel Rig For Vibration-Rich Environments has me, once again, pondering what's out there and coming to the same old conclusion:

That the Elecraft KX2 - manyyears (yes, one word) after its introduction - still has no peer. Eight years old now - a virtual eternity.

Like others, I watch the YouTube infomercials of the latest offerings, hoping to find my unicorn. But lately, rather than compelling me to open my wallet, they reaffirm the value of the radio released back in 2016.

Here's where I'm coming from vs. what's out there - a bit of a backstory (please bear with me):

Nine years ago, I rode most of the off-road motorcycle trail known as the TAT that stretched (at the time - it's longer now) from Tennessee to Oregon, on a single-cylinder Suzuki DR650. Single-cylinder bikes are often called "thumpers" for good reason. I made it to Utah before the obligations of still being employed called me home. That fact bugs me like you have no idea. I almost finished - but didn't.

I had two radios with me: an MTR-3 and an Elecraft KX2. Both performed admirably and survived single-cylinder vibration and the bike being dropped three times on Colorado's Ophir Pass.

Want to operate from Iceland?

The mobile shack

Operating from Iceland was easy and fun. Since returning home, several emails have trickled in from people who are either going or want to go to Iceland, all generally asking the same questions regarding travel to the country with radio gear.

Here are my answers to those questions.

Are American hams allowed to operate in Iceland?

Yes, and easily. This page contains all you need to know. Americans do not need a Visa.

Did you meet any Icelandic hams?

A few days before our trip I received a very nice email from Yngvi TF3Y.

Yngvi told me that Reykjavik area hams meet on Thursday evenings at their club station and invited me to attend if I was in the area on a Thursday. Unfortunately, our itinerary was such that this was not possible. It would have been very enjoyable to meet the group (several members of whom I've worked) but I was not able to do so.

What radio & antenna do you recommend for easy travel?

The final death of CQ Magazine

The website for CQ Magazine has been down for several days now and users of their domain for email addresses now report that those addresses are no longer functional.

One columnist reports that they have been on hold since October 2023.

The demise of CQ Magazine has been a long time in the making with intermittently missed issues being the norm for over four years now. 

I had an online subscription to the magazine for two years and thoroughly enjoyed each issue. The articles were top-notch and covered a more diverse range of topics than QST. It was also refreshingly clean of the politics of ham radio - I'm not so much put-off by that topic but am bored to tears by it, and probably won't be renewing my ARRL membership.

So "good-bye" to CQ, now gone the way of Ham Radio, Ham Radio Horizons and 73 Magazine.

The good ones die off; mediocrity lives on.

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Titanium as a pressure hull? My $00.02 on the loss of the Oceangate Titan

I'm no expert on submarines and know next to nothing on metallurgy - but I do know enough that a red flag is raised in my head as I read reports about the Oceangate submersible, Titan.

The Titan commenced a dive early Sunday morning and maintained contact with its support ship for the first 1h 45m of the dive.

Since then, nothing.

Just about all of the available media now available is focusing on the results and procedures of the search. My interest is in the submersible itself...how does it dive, how does it surface and what redundancies are in place?

When I learned of the hull material - carbon-fiber and titanium - I immediately recalled a conversation that took place onboard another submarine during a mid-watch somewhere beneath the Pacific Ocean.

This was in the 1980's and the Soviets had just commissioned an Alfa-class submarine. Our engineering officer, a Naval Academy-degreed nuclear chemist, was commenting on the operational cost of using titanium as a pressure hull, as was the case with the Alfas.

Thoughts on the Penntek TR-35 QRP transceiver kit

Boards completed. Plenty of room for easy assembly

UPDATE: The TR-35 is reviewed in the December 2022 issue of QST. 

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I've only had the Penntek TR-35 exactly one week, but during that time I've:

• built the kit
• activated a park
• made a fair showing in the ARRL DX Contest

and had many ragchews (and park huntings) on all four bands. I've also made selectivity, spectrum and MDS measurements.

Be forewarned - the following may sound like an advertisement, but it is not. I paid full price for the kit and have had no other communication with the kit's designer, John WA3RNC.

Now that that's out of the way, here is a fleshing-out of the notes I took during the week.

The Build

In 40 years of building kits, I've never seen one that is designed to prevent potential problems to the extent of the TR-35.

First off, the kit arrives about 70% pre-built and pre-aligned. Numerous SMD components are already installed and even the tedium of parts inventory has been rendered as mostly unnecessary due to how the parts are packaged. They come in three sleeves - one for each of two boards, plus the final assembly components (knobs, jacks, plugs, etc).

Within each sleeve, the components for each assembly step are each in their individual pocket. There are anywhere from 1 to 5 components per pocket.

A perspective on taking expensive rigs outdoors

And the Peovi brand is $135

Every now and then I see a posting from someone with a radio like the IC-705 who is hesitant to take it outdoors due to the "cost of the radio".

If they do take their expensive radio to such a harsh locale, they first must take the precaution of embedding it into a metallic frame that adds to the inconvenience of operating the radio and makes it a bit less portable - but provides the illusion of protection.

I suppose some actual protection is offered if the unlucky IC-705 owner is considerate enough to drop the rig in such a way that it hits the ground in the correct orientation.

On my recent trip to Colorado I met a lot of other people who, like me, were there specifically to photograph the beautiful scenery. Many of us had traveled from other states. None had cheap cameras.