By now you are probably familiar with "Google Earth" and if so you are also aware of a number of Amateur Radio related features offered by this amazing program.  I recently heard a ham in Missouri talking to a mobile station in Lake County and she was actually following along using the APRS overlay.  Even though the satellite photos are a few years old, a station running an APRS setup will appear on them just as if they were new.  Fascinating!

But here's a fairly new application:  Viewing the ionosphere in near-real-time and seeing how the total electron count, from solar radiation is affecting propagation at any given time.  Pretty to look at too even if the band is dead.

Here's the website of the Space Environment Corporation where you can see the Google Earth feature demonstrated and get a download if you should need it.

If you already have Google Earth installed, go to the link above and click on Total Electron Count to see the overlay in action.

Thanks Howard, K6IA

From Bill, KI6GPN we are offered The Early Television Museum.  This Link will take you to their amazing website where you can see just about every television ever produced.  I love the early "News Van" from WGSF, Channel 31, Newark.  It looks like a converted Ice Cream step van and a far cry from the Channel-7 vans we saw in Bill's presentations.

Bill says: 

"My first studio cameraman experience was with Marconi MK-IV at KUDO, then RCA TK-60's at KQED which bought the reliable Norelco PC-70 color camera around 1971.  I remember the Marconi camera's made a good picture but you needed a video engineer to constantly adjust the camera control unit (CCU) because color shift was so bad with them.  On the Norelco's you could color chart them, then switch "ON" the color hold feature and they would stay stable.  I remember KQED's first color studio control video switcher was a COHU.  It was considered state of the art.  COHU Video Systems is still in business today.  It was fun stuff back then.  I wish I had taken more pictures when I was at work now.

I'm rambling again....Bill"

Ramble on, Bill. We can't get enough!  The first TV I remember had a 9" round screen and if I'm not mistaken it was not "black and white"...everything was green.  I believe they called it the "Hoffman easy-vision".  Our first color TV was really a black and white but it had a 3-color cellophane wheel stuck over the screen and rotated, giving the illusion of color. Sort of.  (N6XN)

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DStar update;  Gateway-2 and DPlus.  Gateway-2 or G2 is out and most DStar repeaters are now running it.  When the W6CO system comes on line, it too will be running G2.  DPlus is a software application installed on the Gateway computer which allows a number of new features, the most prominent being the ability to link repeaters and the creation of International Reflectors.  You are already familiar with repeater linking;  The W6CO system routinely links Mt Veeder and Mt St Helena for nets as well as the W6LI repeater in Vallejo for the Thursday night net.  DPlus allows existing DStar repeaters to link without regard for location because the linking is done via the internet.  It's quite common to find the W6DHS DStar repeater in Volcano, California linked to the W0OMD repeater in Ozark, Missouri.  Several of the users on both repeaters chat regularly as well as other visitors linking in via their Dongles.

A very recent addition to DStar, made possible by G2 and DPlus is the world wide reflector system.  Here are some excerpts from the UK-IT (UK Interconnect Team) DPlus Reflector User Guide.

"Okay, so what is a dplus Reflector? A Reflector acts as a central conference hub where multiple DStar
Nodes/DV Dongle users can gather and all talk to each other. There was a recent World Wide
Net; the objective of the net was to see how many D-Star Nodes and Dongle Users could connect to a
Reflector to gauge scalability and performance. Twenty eight D-Star Nodes, and eighteen Dongle
users connected to the Net. The system performed perfectly, and no performance issues were noted."

The User Guide goes on to describe the feature in more detail.  One of the analogies they use for comparison is the "conference room" feature of Echolink.  It works a little like that although in practice it's quite a bit more sophisticated.  Each reflector is divided into 3 modules, referred to as Module-A through Module-C, but unlike the repeater stack these designations do not refer to a frequency band.  They refer to actual subdivisions within the reflector that can be set aside for specific purposes.  For example, Reflector-6 (REF006) in London has Module-B set aside for German language users.  REF005, also in London has Module-A setup for users within the UK and Module-B is setup for French language users.  Any DStar user can connect to any Reflector and module but be prepared to hear conversations in other languages!

Connecting to a reflector is quite simple.  Simply set your radio with the reflector number in the "Your" or "UR" slot and make sure your Rpt2 slot is set up for the gateway you're using.  Here's an example:

To Link:

YOUR:	REF005AL
RPT1:	K6MDD  B     (The B goes in the eighth position.
RPT2:	K6MDD  G     (The G goes in the eighth position.

When you key the mike, an announcement will come back telling you that the reflector is connected.  At this time you move to a different memory location where YOUR is set to CQCQCQ.  It will look like this:

YOUR:	CQCQCQ
RPT1:	K6MDD  B     (The B goes in the eighth position.
RPT2:	K6MDD  G     (The G goes in the eighth position.

Notice that the only thing that has changed is the YOUR call.  RPT1 and RPT2 remain the same.  To disconnect the reflector set YOUR to 7 spaces followed by the letter U, like this:

YOUR:	*******U       (Use spaces, not asterisks)
RPT1:	K6MDD  B     (The B goes in the eighth position.
RPT2:	K6MDD  G     (The G goes in the eighth position.

That's all there is to it.  In many cases the repeater you are listening to is already connected to an interesting reflector.  If that's the case, just set your radio as in frame 2 above and you're all set.  Anyone you hear will hear you.

A lot of this is going to change because there are still a lot of loose ends.  For example, if you connect to REF004, is there a discussion in progress?  You won't interrupt anything if you connect up but you might want to know who's in QSO before you do.  Many more changes are coming.

Read the entire guide at:  http://www.ukit.org.uk/documents/UKIT_dplus_Reflector_User_Guide_V1_1.pdf

Links from previous newsletters:

Photocredits: KE6O "Yountville Mustard"