So this qualifies as a "Civil Defense Message"...

Some people watching KRTV in Great Falls, Montana got a startling message on their TV screens last Monday, as an Emergency Alert System, or EAS alert came on their TV screens and then a deep-sounding voiceover cautioned that "Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves."

The message advised listeners to tune in to "920AM" and that the TV station they were watching was going to go off the air (after advising viewers to "follow the on-screen instructions").

The KRTV video is below:

KRTV also reports that several stations across the country were also hacked and similar messages were broadcast.

This one was at a TV station in Michigan (garbled audio):

WNMU-TV in Northern Michigan was also affected, and kids watching Barney got a surprise message as well. No video yet that I can find.

At first I thought the National Weather Service's system was hacked and that these messages were broadcast over NOAA weather radio, however it appears that hackers outside the US were able to get into the sites of the stations themselves and then use "default passwords" to get into the EAS equipment and send out the alerts of the undead.

While the whole incident is, at least to some, hilarious, the FCC, however is not showing their sense of humor about the whole brouhaha, even issuing an advisory (.pdf) to all TV stations using the EAS equipment that was the center of the hack to change their passwords immediately.

As more reports of the undead alerts surface, I'll try to post them, and the videos if they arise from the grave.

Tesla over Edison

The Oatmeal had this comic strip back some time back about Nikola Tesla, one of my personal favorite inventors who was generations ahead of his time.

Without Tesla, a lot of technologies would not be possible, from AC current electricity to RADAR and even X-ray technology. I've never been too enamored with Edison to begin with, and the more I read about him, the less I like him. Edison was a charlatan who stole others' ideas and pushed them as his own, while blue-collar tinkerers like Tesla really pushed new technologies and incredible ideas, often from science fiction to science fact. One project I did in vocational school was to create a Tesla Coil, which was a lot of fun.

Part of the comic is below (reduced size, click on link for the full comic).

The entire comic strip is available at their web site. Adult language is included on the comic.

Also, they are trying to organize a fund-raising effort to buy land where one if his laboratories was and turn it into a museum. Click here for that info.

Geminids meteor shower pretty active

I went outside Thursday night in the chilly weather around midnight and the Geminids meteor shower was in full swing. I witnessed a few dozen before having to go to bed.

I'm still trying to find a frequency I can listen to in order to "hear" the meteors as they come into Earth's atmosphere. I posted about my search some time ago and still haven't gotten any success in locating a good frequency to listen.

It was suggested I try an empty National Weather Service frequency for NOAA weather radio, but where I live all available NWS frequencies are in use, either from Morristown or Nashville, and my antennas pick up the ones off in the distance and so any NWS frequency I tune into I can hear something enough to where any attempt to listen is futile.

Since the FCC transition to digital, there are not major TV stations that I can tune in, and the low-power TV stations that remain I couldn't hear, but then again I don't see any listings for said low-power TV stations in adjacent cities.

I'll keep searching, but in the meantime here's a blurb about meteor scatter on boingboing.

Tom Ogle, KE4WFJ, SK

It's with great sadness I report that one of my closest friends, Tom Ogle, KE4WFJ passed away this morning after a brief fight with cancer. He was 52.

He is known to many in the Knoxville ham community, from APRS, chasing high-altitude balloons, DFing QRMers on some repeaters, bike tours, Field Days, and as an NCS for SKYWARN.

Tom (right) with me at Field Day in 2010

I hadn't been in touch with him for a few weeks but invited him to come up this past Friday for SKYWARN Recognition Day but had not heard back from him. I didn't think it was anything serious, but he apparently kept his illness a secret from even his closest friends.
He only found out last Saturday (Dec. 1) that he had Stage 4 cancer that had spread rapidly in his body, and was given just 6-8 weeks. It ravaged him so fast I don't know if it could have been caught early enough, because he claimed he didn't feel any symptoms until a few weeks ago. I was contacted at 7:30 this morning with the terrible news.

He loved ham radio and he was always wanting to help whenever possible. He was also a great friend. A few years ago when I had a falling out with another ham, he was one of a handful who stood by me from the beginning and reminded me what a true friend could be.

Here is his obituary.

RIP Tom. I miss you already.  ..._._

SKYWARN Recognition Day this weekend!

Once again I'll be participating in SKYWARN Recognition Day, Starting officially at midnight UTC 12/1 until midnight UTC 12/2.

I'll be at station WX4MRX in Morristown TN during the "graveyard shift". I'm not sure how long I'll be there, as I have to be back home by sunrise.

I've participated in several of these from "MRX" and have enjoyed them thoroughly. Usually I end up all by my lonesome but last year a couple of guys were with me most of the time I was on station.

I'll try to post some pics of the current incarnation of the MRX station.

I'll try to update my frequency via my Twitter accounts @k4hsm and @etskywarn. 

I hope to catch you on the air!

433 MHz Tape Measure Antenna

Stan. Swan (ZL2APS) has an instructional project for building a UHF tape measure antenna (and yours truly makes a special appearance with my VHF-designed antenna) based on the design by Joe Leggio (WB2HOL).

Here are the opening paragraphs of his Instructables project:

This Instructable relates to the design & evaluation of a simple tape measure based 433 MHz 3 element Yagi antenna.  An effective receiver was made by  "persuading" a ~US$4 Dorji 433 MHz ASK (Amplitude Shift Keying) data module into analogue signal reception,perhaps from a companion PICAXE driven tone transmitter.

When used with the tape measure Yagi antenna, DF (Direction Finding) performance over line of sight ranges to 1km was quite remarkable,with a DMM (Digital Multi Meter) RSSI signal strength display allowing extremely fine bearing resolution.

The project, photos, and downloadable PDF can be found here.

Ham Radio business in...TMNT?

Remember the 1990 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The comic book martial arts quartet hit the big screen at a peak in their popularity and the world was introduced to reptilian combat as the four turtles (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, named after famous Italian inventors and renaissance artists, not MPLM modules shipped to the ISS!) battled gangs of ninja thieves plaguing New York City led by the Shredder, a heavy metal bad guy who is intent on ending the pizza-craving turtles.

I was watching it Friday night with my kids when I caught a real quick glimpse of a sign in the warehouse where the "Foot" clan resides, just as their summoned to meet Shredder.

The sign is shown briefly (I only saw it for 2 seconds and stopped and went back on my DVR to look it over) but it apparently advertised a CB/Ham Radio business. See the screen captures I made below:

Screen capture of TMNT just before Shredder (the bad guy) makes his screen debut.

Close-up of the sign

As you can see, the blue part of the sign has a logo (I assume an old Cobra CB Radio logo) and below it the writing states "HAM WORLD" with some indiscernible writing preceding it (I again can only assume it to say "CB & HAM WORLD" but that's just a guess).

If you think I noticed this "right away", I've seen the movie about a dozen times (4 in the last 3 weeks for some reason) and this is the first time I ever noticed it.

If anyone wants to take a guess as to what ham radio/CB store in Manhattan that this belonged to, fire away.

Stanford Ovshinsky, inventor of the NiMH battery, dies at 89

Stanford Ovshinsky, who may not be a household name but was the inventor of the nickel-metal hydride battery, passed away Wednesday night at the age of 89 after battling cancer. Throughout Ovshinsky’s 50-year career, he received over 400 US patents that cover a range of different technologies, including NiMH batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, and thin-film solar cells.

More on Ovshinsky here.

NiMH technology has certainly improved handheld radio performance since its development, and Ovshinsky deserves a special shout out for his ingenuity.

Now THIS is a porcupine

Every now and then when I go to a hamfest I'll see a plethora of vehicles in the parking lot that look straight out of science fiction, what with antennae all over the trunk, the hood, the top, or somewhere in between. They are affectionately called "porcupines" in many circles.

Then there's this guy...

Sometimes I'll catch a porcupine on a web site or two, here's one from People of Walmart:

Even the ARRL has a few porcupines every now and again:

A Google search yielded this beauty:

How do you even SEE out the window?

I think the most antennae anyone I personally knew had on their vehicle was 5. I myself had 2 at the most. Actually, 3. My old pickup truck had a 10m stick on the back bumper, a mag-mount 2m on the top, and a dual-band thru-the-glass mount for 2m/440 (which never tuned correctly).

My philosophy is that if you need to have an antenna on your car, have a radio to go with it. If you have so many radios that people can't get in the car, then you might have therapy in your future...

But seriously, some do go overboard with their passions in life, but as long as it's safe and responsible, then by all means have at it. 

Nothing much going on

Just wanted to drop a quick post to keep things busy around here.

Not much happening on the amateur radio front these days. There was the Tennessee QSO Party last weekend but I didn't participate, which sucks because I like that event. It used to be the weekend of my wedding anniversary, but a certain someone wasn't enthused about me participating on that particular weekend. Now that it's earlier in the month I can enjoy it. I sent an email to some friends asking if they wanted to get something together (last second deal) and never even got a reply from any of them...I'll take that as a "no"......

The next big event (for me at least) will be SKYWARN Recognition Day in December.

Even SKYWARN has been rather lackluster. I called a net SKYWARN training net on a Sunday in July and after 5 minutes of talking and going through the preamble and announcements, not a single check-in came back. Since check-ins were getting thin the last few weeks, we ditched the training net.

On another note, yesterday I took the family up to the mountains for a picnic and on our way up I saw a car with the ham tag "VE6EV". I recognized it as a Canadian callsign. It said it was a ham tag (Tennessee's have "EMERGENCY" on them) but when I looked at his call on QRZ he's listed with a Canadian address. I dunno, maybe he has a winter home here in the US. I'll look for him on the local repeaters.

Troubleshooting WiFi can be tricky...

Don't you hate it when your interwebs goes down? It's been happening to me a lot lately where I would lose all connectivity, yet my cable modem and router both say everything's fine, and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out the source of the problem.

Like many, my first reaction was to call tech support. When I called, I asked if there was an outage in the area, since it seemed as though I was connected to my router but not pulling any web sites, I assumed it was an outage. Having worked tech support for a living, I'm sure my ISP's support was going to love my call.

When I called about a week ago, the tech said he saw a "lot of packet loss" on my cable modem, and there wasn't an outage, so I had the option of having a tech come out or visiting the office and having my modem replaced. My wife was on the cordless phone so I couldn't ask her what time she'd be home to send a tech out, so I chose the latter. 

But after I hung up, I got to thinking more about what might be the lowest common denominator to the problem, and it did occur to me that it was raining when these outages occurred, so I went outside to where the box was connected from the main line to the house and noticed a lot of growth from an untrimmed forsythia bush around the box (along with a spider or three), so, at 10PM at night, after a monsoon, I grab the trimmers and decide to prune the forsythia away from the outside box. My wife had hung up the phone and came out holding the flashlight wondering what the hell I was doing...

Once I completed the pruning, my internet connectivity was back. So I was happy that I might have fixed the problem. But I noticed the issue return last weekend. It had rained briefly but not a lot to make me think there was the same problem as last time.

One of my kids was on the phone and asked if we were having internet problems because her friend was having the same issues. So, I chalked it up to an actual outage and tried again an hour later, and it was fine.

So earlier tonight, it happens yet again. No internet. I was at my ropes end this time. I called tech support on my cell phone (I couldn't use the home phone because my wife was talking to a friend about a rash on Lauren's head) and had to wait 5 minutes for a tech. I ran outside to check the box (it hasn't rained since last Friday) and all was fine. I went downstairs and rebooted the modem and my WiFi router twice. Then, as my wife hung up the phone and asked me what was going on, the tech came on the line and miraculously my internet came back up.

We spent a few minutes with tech support discussing my options, and once again I decide I probably need to swap out the cable modem, so I get off the phone with tech support, then it hits me...the home phone!!!

Now I start to replay all the outages and sure enough, the HOME PHONE was in use every single time. I have bundling through my cable provider for TV, internet, and phone service. My initial instinct was that one service was screwing up another.

I hop back on the phone with tech support and tell them about my discovery. But the tech support guy had one up on me that I hadn't considered, yet should have thought about first. He simply asked "do you have a CORDLESS phone?"...

And that's when it struck me, my 2.4GHz cordless phone was interfering with the 2.4GHz WiFi router I just acquired 3 weeks ago.

It appears that they're on the same channel and when I get a phone call, the cordless phone is transmitting a more powerful signal between the base and handset and simply kills my WiFi.

So I was foiled by my own cordless phone. And I'm left with a decision. Get a different phone, set my WiFi router to a specific channel that may not be covered by the cordless phone, or perhaps ditch the home phone entirely, which we've thought about doing anyway.

But I'm still trying to figure out the "packet loss" from the first call. Lazy tech near the end of his shift perhaps? Or was there was some legitimate issues with the outside box and the forsythias?

To be continued?

EDIT: Changing the wireless channel on the WiFi seems to have done the trick.