Bird Dog [031]

Seasons greetings...

Made in Midjourney. Prompt: Christmas card made for amateur radio operators

HERE

I’m in the shack. First time in a little while. With the energy companies in the UK holding us all to ransom, it’s been cheaper for me to sit and write in the house. Not the best place for listening or chatting on the radios.

Also having just had smart meters installed for both gas and electricity, our usage is very visible. The screen has turned saving energy into a game between us and the fat cats reaping the profits.

I can power and charge most things in here with solar power. Everything but the heating, which is a small storage heater. If prices don’t stabilise I might put a little wood burner in the corner. (Or one of these). The shack is well insulated and it would take very little to get toasty.

The whisky cabinet only provides so much central heating.

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THERE

Last week I was cycling the Isle of White. A small island off the south coast of the UK. It was tough going on our chosen vehicles. It’s all documented in my regular dispatch.

I was travelling light but still took my FT5D. Radio contacts were thin on the ground. While on the road, in the few moments I had, I listened to and put a shout out on GB3IW and a repeater I forget the call. It was situated near Ryde. Nothing heard. I was later told there were extra steps to get access as there had been some abuse on air.

The friend I was travelling with found it hilarious every time I snook the radio out to listen. It was the same when we were riding motorbikes in the US earlier in the year. He’d put on a southern American accent and say things like “You got the bird dog on?”

On this trip it was things like “Anything happening on the bird dog?” He’d then laugh.

It was funny the first 13 times, but after that I had to ask why he called the radio the ‘bird dog.’

He said he thought that’s what people called CB radios. I then tried to explain the difference between CB and amateur radio. Hard with someone not the slightest bit interested.

I then looked up bird dog just in case it was CB slang. Apparently it used to mean a radar detector for spotting police speed traps.

After a little more searching I found that ‘bird dog’ was the nickname of someone in the TV series “Quantum Leap” and in an episode called “Ghost Ship” aired in 1992, ‘Bird Dog’ was the name of a radio directional finder fitted on a plane. It would aid navigation by finding land when flying over large bodies of water. Perhaps this was where he first heard the term. Even the Dukes of Hazzard were at it.

And so ‘bird dog’ was forever embedded in his brain to mean radio.

I think it was this constant subliminal barrage from all kinds of sources. Little radio references. A bird dog here and a bird dog there. Not enough to form a whole concept. Just enough to annoy me.

Thanks to my Apple Music app delivering me random songs I was stopped in my tracks when I heard ‘Guitar Town’ by Steve Earle…

The lyrics go…

Hey pretty baby are you ready for me,
It's your good rockin' daddy down from Tennessee.
I'm just out of Austin bound for San Antone
With the radio blastin' and a bird-dog on

My friend is a fan of Quantum Leap as well as Steve Earle.

Now that I know his brain is broken, I can put the thing to rest and focus on pitying him. Next time I fire up the handheld and he whoops “He got the bird dog working! Any body out there?”

I will just smile to myself. Comfortable that everything my friend knows about amateur radio communication he learned from Quantum Leap, Steve Earle and The Dukes of Hazzard. Thus is all wrong. :-)

Anyway. Once we got to a bed and breakfast in Ryde I finally managed to have a longer play on the radio.

As I snapped this photo a voice from back in the room pipes up “What’s happening on the bird dog?”

There was more marine activity than anything else. I did manage to find some nodes for APRS and could easily pick up pings from the mainland.

At one point the radio showed activity on the pre-programmed GB3RB. I had no idea where it was and put out a call. I got in but it appears that GB3RB (way up in the middle of England) shares frequency, shift and CTCSS with GB3SU which was just over the water in Southampton. So that’s what I was getting in to.

I managed a quick QSO with Peter M1PVF who was working in the docks. I think he was offloading a ship.

So… On this lovely little island with cliff drops to the ocean, this was all the radio chat I managed. Next time I head out there I’ll pack the HF gear.

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GEAR

This was the second attempt at making a Ham radio inspired Christmas card.

I bet a few of you would bid on this device if you saw it on eBay.

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I’ve still not got a drone. I think i’d like a drone. Mostly for video and photos but if I got something a little bigger perhaps I could use it for putting antennas up.

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I like the look of these rectangular loop antennas.

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ONAIR

As I mentioned up top, it’s been way too cold to comfortably sit in the shack, so outside of the 4m nets I religiously attend, I’ve been listening to and occasionally joining in with the daily nets. In the space of one hour this week I managed to clear a backlog (pun intended) of some logs I needed to split. Everyone on the radio was complaining about the cold, but I felt pretty warm with all the work.

I was also listening to GB3PI (2m) recently (the first amateur voice repeater in the UK) and heard G4DEE (Tony) put a call out to see if he was getting in. He was. From 143 miles away. Unsure if the repeater was linked, I asked him if he was getting in via the Allstar node. He told me he was just on a hill. Conditions have been interesting recently.

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ELSEWHERE

• An interesting portrait of a pet from Dad Dog Designs.

  

• I loved having an electric car. We had two but they went with my wife’s job and I miss them terribly. I never experienced RF interference but was only really operating FM mobile in mine. This article in the NYT discusses how Tesla, Audi, Porsche and Volvo have removed AM radio from their electric vehicles. Reception is bad due to RF noise from the motors, but rather than spend a little extra to add screening they’re just ditching the band.

  47 million Americans listen to AM radio. I bet some of them are HAM radio operators. If I was in the US I’d be pushing the manufacturers to start screening. Anything causing RF on the MW frequencies could be doing the same on the HAM bands. It’s probably happening here in the UK but I don’t think we have enough radio operators to make enough noise. We have more than enough to throw a hissy fit over electric cars (almost everyone round my way) but even though they’d push for an outright ban, that’s not going to (or should) happen. Blocking manmade EMI is the key.

• No escaping the Bird Dog. It was also a radio tracking device used by private detectives and police departments.

• Here is a little ham radio news in audio.

• I have some photos here on Flickr, or search Documentally@octodon.social to find me on Mastodon.

• I’m certain that Santa could not coordinate his global delivery service without the help of radio. So I have created this picture hinting towards what it might look like.

  

  Initially, figuring that he’d need to chat back to base, I thought the elves would have built a rectangular loop antenna surrounding the reindeer and built into their harness. But if he is at altitude and only needs to chat with NORAD, elven ground crew and air traffic control, I’m guessing a simple 2M set up will work fine. Let me know if you have any thoughts on this.

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FINALS

Thanks for reading and I hope subscribing.

Please share this wherever you think it might resonate. If you have any radio stories you would like to share in text, audio or video let me know and perhaps we can share them here.

At time of writing there are 120 subscribers to this email. You are some of the more curious people in radio ;-) And I thank you.

Don’t forget you can like and comment on the web version of this post. I will always reply.

Have a great holiday. See you on the other side.

Over

73 de Christian G5DOC

_._