Areas of Interest
Public/Emergency Service. I lived about 1/4 mile from the Marina District during the earthquake of 1989. Right after the earthquake struck, I was up on the roof with my Yaesu handheld listening to the emergency nets fire up. I was able to help out by providing emergency communications for the first Red Cross disaster site to be set up in the Marina. It was then I fully realized the potential of Amateur Radio, and believe this is the absolute best thing about it.
I'm currently working on building a completely self-contained, portable station that I can use for emergencies. I plan to practice by participating in many of the ARRL-sponsored contests during the year using the station, hopefully from challenging environments like the top of a local ridgeline or remote areas. The goal is for me to be able to hike into an area and set up a fully-operational station within an hour on HF, VHF and UHF. What will make me especially proud is being able to connect to the internet and deliver mail, use satellites for digital communication and provide Slow-scan TV images over the air and via satellite. All this with what I pack on my back. For more info see K6MEC's Emergency Radio Commando page.
Amateur TV. I'm very interested in Amateur TV, and am planning to build a small ATV transceiver to place in one of my model aircraft (and an UAV project my Civil Air Patrol unit is working on). Amateur TV is real-time TV broadcasting using the same mode as commercial stations employ. With ATV I can send my model airplane up and fly by camera, sending a live video stream back to the ground. It's exciting stuff!
Slow Scan TV. Slow scan is another digital image mode used to send still images over radio. SSTV is used by the Civil Air Patrol to relay images of strategic structures and disaster areas to EOCs on the ground to aid Incident Commanders in dealing with ermergencies. It's also a neat way to share pictures without relying on the Internet. Click below to see some sample images I received using my laptop...
Slow Scan TV Examples
Digital. I'm interested in all digital modes, and am working on writing a Mac application to communicate with both my HF and VHF radios. I'm looking into trying my hand at packet, AMTOR, RTTY and PKS31 modes. I've also been playing with the idea of creating a TCP/IP node, which would act as an Internet Gateway for Amateur radio, giving other Hams the ability to connect to the Internet using their radio and packet.
Here's a short list of packet activity I've seen while living in Sacramento (2001): Mike's Packet Page
QRP. QRP is a Morse code keyword meaning "please lower your power" on the air, but in daily parlance covers the low power area of interest. QRP is most often associated with operating at 5 watts or less of power (the maximum for hams is 1500 watts). Operating QRP often connotates using portable gear with portable power. I'm interested in the building aspect of QRP. There are many schematic plans for small, portable QRP transceivers. I'm currently snooping around trying to decide which one I want to build. So far the Spider-70 is leading the hunt!
DF. DF, or direction finding, is an art in and of itself! It is the process of locating a transmitter using DF equipment, which indicates from which direction a signal is eminating. We do a lot of DF in the Civil Air Patrol using commercial DF equipment. I'm interested in building my own!
IRLP/EchoLink. The Internet Radio Linking Project (found at www.irlp.net), connects radios to the internet using VoIP technology. This connection allows repeaters across the globe to be interfaced. It's pretty neat. I can take my handheld radio and, using a local repeater on an IRLP link, talk to another Amateur Radio operator who may be on his handheld walking around in Yugoslovia. :)
AMPRnet. Hmmm...well, this is a whole Class A network (net44) just for Amateur
Radio networking. Pretty cool! That's 16million IP addresses. Perhaps a bit of overkill. Regardless, it amounts to Amateur Radio's own "Internet" of sorts. It's only tied
into the real Internet by an inexpensive router somewhere on UCSD's campus. It's a neat
concept, and I really haven't played around with it much, but I plan to some day. So, just
for such an occasion I've secured my own 2/16-millionths slice of the pie:
- 44.2.0.152 k6mec.ampr.org k6mec
- 44.2.0.153 a.k6mec.ampr.org a.k6mec
Theoretically, I can send and receive email and even surf the web from a radio in the
middle of nowhere, although It would be painfully slow by any measure. Of course, if an emergency situation exists and access to the internet could save lives or property. Then it's the best thing since sliced bread. :)
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Links
Here are some links I find interesting.
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About me
In addition to Amateur Radio, I have quite a few other hobbies and interests I'm involved in. I've spent 17 years in the Army National Guard, and was a First Lieutenant in the Field Artillery. I'm currently a systems programmer, project manager and UNIX Systems Administrator for Apple Computer (don't forget SysAdmin Day!). I am also a pilot. I enjoy flying very much. I am a volunteer in the Civil Air Patrol. I also enjoy photography, hiking, jazz and geocaching.
QSL! Mike's QSL card in pdf format, or SWF format.
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Guestbook/Logbook
Thanks for visiting my site! I really appreciate feedback and comments, so if you'd like to view or add to my Ham Guestbook, click the link below!
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