The Ek’s Files

Up to now I’ve been using XLog for logging ham radio QSOs in Ubuntu, but I gotta say I’ve never really liked it much. The user interface leaves a lot to be desired in terms of being unambiguous. I’d been using XMLog for doing my general logging under Windows–it’s a great free program that allows me to easily import contacts from my contest logger and exports to ADIF for sending to Logbook of the World. So, this morning I decided to see if I could get XMLog to run under Wine in Ubuntu 7.10.

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I was able to steal some time this weekend to construct the 20m shortened vertical I’d been designing using 4Nec2. It didn’t turn out quite like I was planning, but it’s good nevertheless. I used half-inch-dia aluminum tubing and a section of an MFJ prewound coil to build it, and I used construction techniques stolen largely from AD5X’s portable vertical design. The main differences between his design and my implementation are

1. I used a single 6-ft aluminum tubing section on the bottom instead of constructing multiple smaller sections.
2. I used another single 6-ft aluminum tubing section above the coil instead of the telescoping antenna.
3. My coil used only 3″ or so of the MFJ prewound coil, and I used a length of nylon rod instead of wooden dowel. Mine is also tappable with an alligator clip.
4. My antenna has a 30″ brass rod forming a tee at the top of the radiating element, as a capacity hat.

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This is my model (so far) for the shortened 20m vertical I’ve been designing, as visualized by 4Nec2.

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Last week I told you about how I’d gotten a nice free antenna modeling package for Windows called 4Nec2 to run in Linux using Wine. Since then, I’ve been able to create a few models and run them, and I gotta say I’m really impressed with the capabilities of 4Nec2. I doubt I’ve even scratched the surface of what’s possible, but it’s worked flawlessly for me so far. I have experienced a few minor glitches that are the result of running under Wine, but those are minor and easily worked around. Mostly, those glitches are associated with trying to run the help file, and I haven’t spent any time trying to fix those things. No big deal, as far as I’m concerned, and certainly not a knock on 4Nec2 itself.

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Aaarrr, matey! There’s some scurvy dogs afloat would like to shanghai your router!

Network World reports that a new security exploit has been observed in the wild (that’s geek-speak for the real world) where visiting a compromised web page will result in your router or wireless access point settings being changed. In the observed case, the routers were caused to redirect users to a fraudulent banking site instead of the legitimate one. Yikes!

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I’ve already written a couple of times about my efforts to use antenna modeling software to design a new antenna for the back yard. My original plan for a four-band vertical is perhaps overly-ambitious, so I may scale back to designing some sort of short vertical for 20m that’s both sturdy enough and inconspicuous enough to leave erected in the back yard for more than a few hours at a time. In the mean time, I continue to use Phil Salas’ ultimate portable vertical when I get the chance. But I digress.

Since I launched this little project, I managed to sidetrack myself by converting completely over from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux. If you know me (or perhaps you can detect this from my blog entries), you know that I tend to be thinking about several different ideas at the same time, and this often results in my making little or no progress on any of them because I can’t focus on any single idea for very long. Maybe it’s an attention span deficit or something. And such appears to be the case with my antenna project. But while I continue to enjoy learning about the wonders of Linux (and I confess I’m thoroughly enjoying Ubuntu so far), I figured it was time to get back to antenna designing.

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A few days ago I wrote about how efforts to increase the security of U.S. citizens have generally come at the expense of personal privacy. The government feels that collecting large amounts of data on its citizens as well as foreign nationals will allow them to better ferret out terrorists, making our nation safer. But over on ars technica, Jon Stokes makes some pretty convincing arguments that the existence of large amounts of personal data just makes it that much more likely that the data will be used against us.

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If you’ve been following the news at all lately, you’re aware that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller concerning the ban on handguns in DC. This case is expected to clarify the meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which gun rights activists believe guarantees the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, and which gun control advocates argue only addresses the right of the states to arm a militia. This case has reached the Supreme Court because a federal appeals court in March 2007 struck down DC’s ban on handgun ownership as a violation of the Second Amendment.

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There’s an interesting article at The Raw Story about how the U.S. government is drafting plans for surveillance of pretty much everything on the internet. Nobody who’s been following what the Bush administration has been doing in the name of homeland security would be surprised. Perhaps one of the most compelling statements in the whole article is that “Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.” In other words, any policy or action that favors individual privacy has a negative impact on national security, and vice versa.

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My wife, Dot, had been nudging me for a couple of years–heck, ever since we started dating–to go skiing with her. Now, let me start by saying that this was not a Bad Thing; I’ve lived in Colorado now for nearly twenty years, but I had never gone skiing. I was one of those people, the guy who receives stares of incredulity whenever it became known that he had never skied. I admit that I was a little bit ashamed of my status.

So, when Dot suggested that we go skiing, I thought to myself, “What the heck? Let’s go! It’s about time, don’t you think?” And we scheduled a trip to Monarch ski resort. Read the rest of this entry »