It's one week till Christmas!  Most of the podcasts, blogs, and YouTube channels have given you their suggested Christmas shopping lists already, but rather than write up list of products that I think you should want, I want all of you to tell me the top 5 ham radio things you want for Christmas - and remember, if Old Saint Nick is making it in his workshop, cost is no objective!

     I have written quite a bit in the last year about my NPOTA activations and portable operations.  I get the opportunity to do a decent amount of these because I travel a fair bit for my work.  As we move into 2017, I will continue to operate mobile and portable quite often due to my work travels.  With the impending end of NPOTA I figured that I would just go back to operating from hotel rooms and truck stop parking lots during my travels.  As it turns out though, there is another way I can continue to operate portable and do some award seeking at that same time, that I learned about thanks to an interview I heard on 100 Watts and a Wire (if you don't listen to this podcast, you need to start.  Like now.)  What's this amazing, portable operations, award program I speak of?  WWFF, otherwise known as World Wide Flora and Fauna.
     This program works very similar to NPOTA, but has been going on for years and is quite popular internationally (it wasn't big in the US before now, but W3AAX is hoping to change that!)  Each country has it's own sub-group so there are rewards and scoring both in the US group, and internationally.  The international program is known simply as WWFF and the US sub-program is known as KFF, or in US slang, simply Parks on the Air.

     With that bit of introduction, let me get to the point....My travels for 2017 start up again in the first week of the year, so I will be doing my first "pure" KFF activation almost right away (all my KFF activations prior where combo NPOTA/KFF, as nearly all the National Parks are also KFF sites.)  I thought it might be fun to let you in on how I "plan" my activations.  With that thought - here it goes!

     For me, step 1 is the easiest step, because my work schedule dictates the city I'm going to be traveling to.  The offices I support in my job are basically everything the company has east of the Mississippi (I have a co-worker that covers the west.)  Based on business needs, I just scheduled a 3 day visit with our office in the Hudson Valley.  The office is in the town of Harriman, New York, so step 1 is complete - look out Harriman, here I come!  
​     In 2017 I'll be making roughly 2 trips per month, so I'm making it a personal goal to do 30 activations in 2017 because I think I'll be able to hit 1 or 2 parks on each trip.

     For NPOTA there weren't many parks, so at the beginning of the year I had saved every National Park in the states I travel to as a favorite location in Google Maps (Just in case!)  WWFF includes most National Parks, and many State Parks, Nature Reserves, and other "Green Spaces."  Because of the number of sites, I havn't had time to save them all.  I do still start with Google Maps though, just to look and see where the office is.  After I have that pulled up, I open another browser tab and go to wwff-kff.com and scroll down to the map.  I then zoom into the same area of the country, to see what parks are close:

So, In this case the closest parks, and my potential options are:

• KFF-2137 Schunnemunk Mountain
• KFF-2064 Goose Pond Mountain
• KFF-2081 Iona Island
• KFF-2010 Bear Mountain
• KFF-2069 Harriman
• ​KFF-2144 Sterling Forest

     Something I just recently started, with an activation in Cuyahoga Valley, was to try and find lodging inside of a park.  In 2017 I've made it a personal goal to do as much camping as possible on these work trips, instead of doing the standard hotel chains.  With that being said, many state parks close for camping in the winter, but some do have Lodges, Cottages, Cabins, etc.  Knowing that I'm looking for either a camp site (during warm weather) or some kind of indoor lodging (during cold weather) I browse the websites for the parks that I turned up in Step 2.  In this case, Bear Mountain State Park has some Stone Cottages that, based on the website, look pretty neat, so I'll give it a try!

     So, addmittedly, this is the step I skip most often.  Because I'm traveling for work, it's hard to be able to know exactly when I'll be on the air.  Sometimes I even end up working long hours because I only have a limited time in town, so there are cases where I have planned to operate, but then didnt' get to after all. I have vowed to do better this year, and to make sure I post my plans to the Agenda page on the WWFF web site and also on the Facebook groups for KFF and WWFF.  Even when I fail in doing this though, once I'm up and running a quick blast out on social media, or even a self-spot on the cluster, usually gets things rolling.  Even when I don't have cell signal, I've found that once I finally get a bite or two then the calls start to come in as I start to get spotted, etc.  Based on reviews, cell signal in Bear Mountain can be spotty, so I might be relying on good old fashioned luck to find someone to answer my CQ's during this one.

     This is the part of the planning that stays in flux the longest (often right up until I arrive at, and evaluate the site!)  if I'm not staying in the park for whatever reason, I'll use google maps and the terrain feature to try to pick a good spot in the park to stop my car and operate.  If I had to fly into town and I'm not staying in the park, I'll take along equipment and set up they way I did for my activations at Santa Monica Mountains, the Taft Site, and Mt. Rainier.  If I can find a place in the park to stay, I'll set up the way I did during my trip to Cuyahoga Valley.  Lastly, for 2017, I plan on setting up similar to what I did during Winter Field Day last year (and will do again for Winter Field Day this year) but I'll probably use less batteries...
     There is a LOT of other stuff I could write here, like how to decide what equipment to take, how to pack it, etc. but that's a whole post on it's own.  Oh wait....I wrote that post already....

     At the end of the day, this is what it's all about!  For me this is even more important, because Ham Radio is my leisure time activity when I travel for work.  If I can't be with my family I at least want to have something fun to do, rather than just rot my brain by staring at the TV in some random hotel!

     Okay...so you can definately skip this step if you want, but for me, writing about an experience helps to swish everything around in the brain a little bit, and give me some time to reflect.  Sometimes it's so that I can reconcile some problem I had and brainstorm solutions for next time.  Sometimes I do it because for some reason I can't actaully get on the air, so reading and writing about ham radio is the next best thing.  Most often though, I write about the experience because I had so much fun I just want share it!

     So, now that you know my top secret trip planning method, listen for me on the air from Bear Mountain State Park, unit KFF-2010 on January 3rd and 4th (and maybe 5th, if I wake up early enough to get some operating in before I have to leave...)  I hope to hear you on the air!

     A couple posts ago I tacked a short survey onto the end, asking what the strangest thing you.ve ever used as an antenna was.  For me, it's my downspout/gutter inverted L that I wrote about previously.  Some of you really had some doozies though!  Before I get to those, here's the survey results:

1. Other 65% (I guess it doesn't surprise me to see this as the top choice - the strangest antenna's are things you wouldn't think to put on a survey form!)
2. Flagpole 24%
3. Rain gutters 12%

     So, ignoring the fact that these numbers add up to more than 100% (thank you rounding errors!) here are some of the more interesting "Other" antenna's that popped up in this informal survey.  Thanks to those that shared them!

So, after reading some of these, my rain gutters don't sound so unusual after all......

73!

     "I am the law" - Joseph Dredd (Sylvester Stallone, in Judge Dredd - 1995)

     We've all heard it - the person tuning up on top of someone else.  This specific activity is pretty easy to sum up, because Part 97 is littered with references stating that we must not "cause harmful interference to..."
     Part of the definition of Harmful Interference is "...obstructs or repeatedly interrupts a radiocommunication service operating in accordance with the Radio Regulations." 

     It's really about tuning up, and station ID requirements.  There might be some minutia here, but the idea of tuning up always made me question how this type of transmission applies to the ID requirements.  Don't I have to ID every 10 minutes, and at the end of a transmission?  When I'm done tuning do I need to ID?

     To answer these questions, let's break it down.  First - it is clear that we are allowed to do short transmissions, where we don't expect an answer, in order to adjust our equipment.  This is covered in 97.111 where it talks about allowable transmissions.  Specifically this part: "(1) Brief transmissions necessary to make adjustments to the station."
     Okay, so I'm allowed to tune - good to know.  There are all kinds of scenarios that pop up after that but the ones I've been thinking about these:

• ​An operators tunes up, but then doesn't call CQ, or talk to anybody.
  • ​In this case, the operator "broke the law" (watch over your shoulder for the Judge!!)  This is because tuning up does transmit a carrier, so you have in fact made a transmission.  The instant we make any kind of transmission, we fall under 97.119 which states that the station "must transmit its assigned call sign...at the end of each communication, and at least every 10 minutes during a communication."  If we tune up, and aren't planning on talking, we still need to ID ourselves.  A good practice to use might be to just give a quick "tuning complete N3VEM" at the end to keep Mr. Dredd off our backs.
• An operator, being courteous, has moved down from another station a few kHz to tune, and then moves back up to the original frequency in order to answer the calling station.
  • So, this is an area that could get a little goofy.  We tuned up, but then we announced our call-sign as we attempted to answer the other station.  But we didn't announce our call sign on the exact same frequency that we tuned on.  Is that a problem?  The wording of Part 97 could be a bit gray, because it says (also in 97.119) that the station "must transmit its assigned call sign on its transmitting channel."  Well, Whisky Tango Foxtrot does that mean? Channel?  This is ham radio, not CB, and not TV - what on earth do they mean by Channel? As long as I'm still in the same band, is that my "Channel?"  Normally in any type of code, we just go to the definitions sections for questions like these.  Unfortunately, the FCC conveniently uses this word "Channel" all over Part 97, without defining it.  In these cases, the "suits" will generally tell you to reference the good old fashioned Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  The part of the definition that applies to us, is this one: "a band of frequencies of sufficient width for a single radio or television communication."  So basically, the bandwidth of our transmitted signal is our "channel".  This means that if we move far enough away from someone to keep from interfering with them, we probably moved far enough away that we are now considered to be in a different "Channel." For that reason, we probably need to ID ourselves when we're done tuning, before moving back up to the original frequency to answer the calling station.

     Not to be out-argued, someone who wanted to take the counter-point on my tuning argument could point out the fact that the statement that each station "must transmit its assigned call sign on its transmitting channel at the end of each communication, and at least every 10 minutes during a communication" uses another undefined word - communication.  Doesn't Mirriam-Webster say that communication is "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals?"  If i'm not talking to another individual, and I'm just tuning, I'm not actually communicating, so I don't have to ID...right?
     To that I would say "Nice Try"  because the full definition of communication includes some potentially, quite applicable alternative definitions, like "an act or instance of transmitting" which would imply it doesn't have to be a 2-way street.  Also, Part 97 includes in the section on ID requirements the phrase "No station may transmit unidentified communications or signals" which implies it isn't just "communication" that needs an ID, but any signal you put out on the airwaves.

     I'm done.  I'm so glad I'm not a lawyer because these circular arguments could around and around.  If I had to argue in circles like that in front of Judge Dredd I'd probably get sick on his shoes.  Blech.

     I used my RigExpert antenna analyzer to make sure it was good to go, but I still wanted to make sure it worked, so I called out on the local repeater.  Luckily, one of the professors at Millersville University (which is close to us) is a ham, and he heard me, so he ran up to the University's station, and we had a quick chat on 10 meters, and I got to put WA3MU in my log!
     Here's the best (worst? most amusing?) part...till Net time came around, the littlest operator was just refusing to fall asleep. I took him for a ride in the car, so he would fall asleep, and I ended up checking in from my mobile instead of using the Buddipole anyway.  Oh well - such is life when you have little people in the house!