Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 1

The OCRA Newsletter—For January 2014

Newsletter contents:

1) Greetings from the Secretary 2) Prior Month’s board meeting minutes 3) Prior Month’s Meeting Highlights 4) President ‘s QRM 5) Articles 6) QSL from members

From the Secretary’s desk

Unfortunately due to work I had to miss the January meeting, but I have heard you managed to get along without me and entrust me with the Club Secretary position. I thank you and will do my best for you again this year.

73,

Adriano (KV7D)

Board meeting Minutes

De—Woody (K3VSA)

OCRA President

Called to order by President at 6:25 pm

Items discussed:

Treasury reported balance of $10,235 - this figure will be larger after membership meeting dues paying

Security being increased at WUNC - increasingly difficult to maintain our access

Balloon launches - payload launched from Durham Bulls Athletic Park was recovered, probably no more launches until springtime

Hillsborough Hog (or Hogg) Day has been eliminated due to insufficient volunteers

Board Meeting adjourned at 7:51 pm

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 2

Notes/Announcements

The OCRA Membership Meeting for February 2014 will be held on Monday, February 10 starting at 1900L (7:00 pm)

at the Orange County Emergency Services Building, 510 Meadowlands Drive in Hillsborough. The Officers and Board

Members will meet starting at 1815L (6:15 pm) at the same location.

General Meeting Minutes

OCRA General Membership meeting called to order at 7:05pm. Present at the meeting were 36 people.

Extensive and very active introduction period took up an hour of the meeting

OCRA elections for 2014:

Woody Woodward (K3VSA) President RELELCTED

Karen Snyder (KD4YSZ) Vice-President REELECTED

Dan Eddleman (KR4UB) Treasurer REELECTED

Adriano Marcuz (KV7D) Secretary REELECTED

New Board Member elected:

Tadd Torborg (KA2DEW)

Gwen Boyles (KF4EUT)

Roger Boyles (KS4VX)

Board Members remaining active:

Mike Carwile (KK4BPH)

Michael North (KK4EIB)

Meeting was adjourned following the elections

De—Woody

K3VSA

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 3

The Presidents' QRM

Well, here it is 2014, so another year has begun for us. If you were unable to attend the December meeting, you sure missed a good feed. Once again, Kelly and his crew did an outstanding job of catering, and the only regret was that our honorable organizer, Lad, W4ORD, was not there because of the untimely passing of close friends and family. We missed you, Lad, and we really do feel your pain.

Our January meeting had the new year beginning on a positive note. We didn't have a formal program, as we elect our officers and board members in January, but it took an hour for the usual introductions because of the many and varied ham activities of our many members and guests. Some were informative and some were entertaining, but they all were interesting!

The elections went off without a hitch or a hiccup. All of our cast of club officers (the usual suspects!) volunteered to serve for yet another year. As your president, let me say here and now how pleased and comforted I am to have them running our organization. They really do yeoman service to you.

We had four new board members take their posts. They are, in alphabetical order, Gwen and Roger Boyles, KF4EUT and KS4VX respectively, Tucker McGuire, KK4UNZ, and Tadd Torborg, KA2DEW. For those of you who are not familiar with them, let me take this opportunity to introduce them to you and tell you why I'm so encouraged to have them as a part of our leadership.

We'll start with KA2DEW. Tadd has extensive experience in Amateur Radio and once led an organization of a thousand stations doing packet radio. He knows computers, and he knows radio, and he has a mind that operates at the speed of light. Before you've even finished explaining a concept to him, he's understood it and has already figured out a better and faster way to make it happen. A case in point: He was talking to a Charlotte ham recently who was building a pack-et network, and Tadd conceived of a different way to build such a network so it would not bog down when the traffic got heavy. He's now working to make it a reality. And he's been successful in unraveling the thorny details on con-verting cheap, surplus low-band Vertex FM radios, and we are now in the process of having a very active and wide-spread six meter population that will bring much needed life to our neglected 52.45 MHz repeater.

Then there's KK4UNZ. Tucker is a young man who's on fire for ham radio. He has a lot of enthusiasm and shows sur-prising maturity for someone his age (well, any age, for that matter). When we talked about the possibility of him be-coming an OCRA board member, he expressed his concern that he might not be an appropriate choice, and of course, his sincere and humble modesty immediately made me believe that he would be entirely appropriate. To the best of my knowledge, OCRA has never before had a board member so young. He ought to contribute a unique point of view that can hopefully help us reach more young people for Amateur Radio.

Finally, we have KF4EUT and KS4VX. Gwen is the first YL we've had on our board since Laurie, N1YXU, some years ago. We hereby serve notice that OCRA is, once again, no longer an "old boys' club," so let's act as we ought to when ladies are present. Seriously, Gwen will bring an additional, welcome dimension to our group, and we do desire diversity, don't we?

Roger is the epitome of a gentleman. He reminds me of Commander Whitehead on the old Schweppes commercials: always proper, but friendly and outgoing, too. He's a member of FISTS, one of the groups that advocates the use of Morse code, and he's already thinking about beginning some kind of CW training to encourage some of us no-code folks to learn the oldest and best form of digital communication. This ought to be fun!

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 4

The Presidents' QRM continued

It's significant that both Tadd and Roger had been involved with OCRA in times past, but they were put off because of a less than friendly welcome. Fortunately for us, they chose to come back. I won't name names or go into the details, but suffice it to say that when a new ham gets introduced to our organization, the response of the first few people he or she meets will set the tone of the new person's impression of us. If those first few people are friendly, helpful and non-judgmental, then there will be a positive first impression.

You may be like me and wonder why an OCRA member wouldn't want to make a good first impression. Well, not every-body wants the club to grow. There are some who feel as though we're as large as we need to be, and they don't really want to make the effort to get to know new people. I'd like to use this bully pulpit to say that I very strongly disagree with that attitude. In the first place, we're not as big as we need to be. Take ARES, for example: We have maybe five regular Net Control ops out of a membership of somewhere close to a hundred hams. How many regulars should we have if the goal is to have enough trained operators to staff an emergency around-the-clock? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Then we'd need a base membership of 200, 300, or 400 respectively if the percentage of participation stays the same. It's not impossible. There are hundreds of hams in each of the set of zip codes which comprise Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Pittsboro alone.

Consider something else: Organizations are similar to living organisms in the sense that the end of the beginning is the beginning of the end. In his book, "Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonalds," founder Ray Kroc said it best: "When you're green you're growing, but when you're ripe, you start to rot."

Just imagine what we could do with a membership of that size. Think about the equipment we could have and how our worth to our served agencies would increase. Consider what a typical week's club activities might look like:

MONDAY - OCRA 10 Meter Net with N1LN

TUESDAY - OCRA 6 Meter Activity Night with KK4UNZ

WEDNESDAY - OCRA Morse Code Activity Night with KS4VX

THURSDAY - Orange County ARES Training Night with W3AHL

FRIDAY - OCRA Packet Radio Activity Night with KA2DEW

SATURDAY - OCRA Saturday Morning Net 442.150 MHz

SUNDAY - OCRA-sponsored Worldwide IRLP Net with KV7D and/or D-STAR net with KI4MXP

So, maybe you can understand why I'm stoked about OCRA in 2014. It has the potential to be an outstanding year for us, all of us, so stay on board and enjoy the ride. Or better yet, help shovel some coal into the furnace.

-Raymond “Woody” Woodward K3VSA

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 5

Peaberry V2 Kit Transceiver

by: Steve Jackson—KZ1X

Much has already been written regarding this topic. There is a November 2013 QST product review, for example.

http://www.arrl.org/qst-product-review

It is available for ARRL members. The review provides specs that indicate the Peaberry V2 ranks well within the top-ten in receive dynamic range performance for radios of ANY cost on the market today. It would be #5 on the Sherwood Engineering list, for exam-ple.

Here are other Peaberry V2 resources to read on the web:

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?396857-Peaberry-SDR-V2

http://ae9rb.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/10690

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDnZsVajpkA

The Peaberry V2 kit is almost all surface mount. There are a few through-hole transistors, some connectors that are through-hole,

and of course the various inductors and transformers you need to wind. There is a service that will wind the transfomers and coils

for you, for $45.

The ARRL review was correct in stating that this is not a kit for beginners. Two of the surface mount parts are what is known as 'fine

pitch' which means that the pins are very close together, almost microscopically so. There are simple techniques for installing

them, however.

Remember, surface mount technology is partly why electronic devices can be so small and so cheap today. It also is a technology

designed to be machine-assembled. But, prototypes must always be constructed first, and they aren't done by machine, are they?

Eventually, all electronc parts will be available only in surface mount versions. This will make it such that only people with surface

mount assembly skills will be able to build ham radio kits.

Of course, if there were only ever surface mount parts, nobody would be frightened of surface mount assembly. For some reason,

there is a pervasive assumption that building by hand with surface mount parts is difficult. That's just not so. It is only different

than other techniques.

If you are drawn by the idea you can get a high performance softare-defined tarnsciever kit for $149 ... but discouraged because

you cannot assemble it, there IS a way to garner the skills needed for surface mount assembly.

Check out these low cost kits ... which are useful items, easy to build, and allow one to get some skills before tackling a more ad-

vanced project:

http://www.qrpkits.com/smk2.html

http://ae9rb.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=6

http://wb9kzy.com/smtkeyer.htm

73,

Steve

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 6

Who’s listening?

This article is from a technology newsgroup I belong to.

Adriano (KV7D)

The National Security Agency has implanted software in about 100,000 computers around the world, allowing the United States to surveil those machines while creating a trail that can be used to launch cyber-attacks.

Though most of the software is installed by gaining access to computer networks, the NSA can also employ technology that enters computers and alters data without needing internet ac-cess.

The secret technology uses covert radio waves transmitted from small circuit boards and USB cards clandestinely inserted into tar-geted computers, The New York Times reported. The waves can then be sent to a briefcase-sized relay station intelligence agencies can set up just miles away, according to NSA documents, computer experts and US officials.

The radio frequency technology - which often needs to be physically inserted by a spy, manufacturer or unwitting user - has helped US spies access computers that global adversaries have gone to great lengths to protect from surveillance or cyber-attack.

The NSA calls use of the infiltration software and radio technology - all part of a program known as Quantum - “active defense” against cyber-attacks, though it has condemned use of similar software by Chinese attackers against American companies or gov-ernment agencies.

“What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” James Andrew Lewis, cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told The Times. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”

Quantum targets

The Chinese Army has been the most frequent target of Quantum. The US has accused the Chinese Army of infiltrating American industrial and military targets to often pilfer secrets or intellectual property.

Other Quantum targets include Russian military networks, systems used by Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions with-in the European Union and even allies like Saudi Arabia, according to American officials and NSA materials that show sites that the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”

There is no evidence that Quantum’s capabilities were used in the US. While not commenting on the scope of the program, the NSA said Quantum is not comparable to actions by the Chinese.

“NSA’s activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only against — valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements,” Vanee Vines, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We do not use foreign intelligence capabili-ties to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”

Parts of Quantum were revealed by documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. A Dutch newspaper published a map indicating where the US had inserted spy software, usually in secret. Der Spiegel recently published the NSA’s collection of hardware products used for transmitting and receiving digital signals from computers, known as ANT.

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 7

Who’s Listening Part 2

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 8

Who’s Listening part 3

An NSA advisory panel, ordered and staffed by President Barack Obama to review NSA practices following the Snowden leaks, rec-ommended the spy agency cease exploiting flaws in common software in the name of US surveillance. The panel also suggested the NSA stop undermining vital encryption protections.

“Holes in encryption software would be more of a risk to us than a benefit,” said Richard A. Clarke, a former intel official and mem-ber of the review group. “If we can find the vulnerability, so can others. It’s more important that we protect our power grid than that we get into China’s.”

President Obama is scheduled to announce Friday what portions of the panel’s recommendations he is accepting. Reuters reported Tuesday that one policy suggestion from the panel received criticism from an unlikely place recently.

In a letter sent to Obama on behalf of the federal judicial system as a whole, former federal judge John Bates, the director of the Administrative Office of the US courts, warned against a possible "Public Interest Advocate,” which would represent privacy and civil liberty concerns before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The secretive FISA court approves US government spying re-quests.

100,000 implants worldwide

A 2008 map, revealed in the Snowden leaks, offers 20 programs to gain access to major fiber optic cables in the US and places like Hong Kong and the Middle East. The map indicates that the US has already conducted “more than 50,000 worldwide implants.” Though a more recent budget document said that by the end of 2013, the figure would be at around 85,000. A senior officials told The Times the figure was more like 100,000.

Officials told The Times most of the implants, by far, were for surveillance and to serve as early warning for a cyber-attack aimed at the US. One official likened them to buoys used to track submarines.

The US has targeted a Chinese Army unit thought to be responsible for most of the bigger cyber-attacks wielded against the US. Doc-uments from Snowden’s trove show the US has two data centers in China from which it can insert malware into computers.

The US maintains Quantum is not used for economic purposes, as it has complained that Chinese attacks have done.

“The argument is not working,” said Peter W. Singer, co-author of a new book called “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar.” “To the Chinese, gaining economic advantage is part of national security. And the Snowden revelations have taken a lot of the pressure off” the Chi-nese.

The radio-transmission technology employs many gadgets revealed by Der Spiegel in December. Among them is Cottonmouth I, a normal-looking USB plug with a small transceiver that transmits information from a computer “through a covert channel” that allows “data infiltration and exfiltration.” Most of the revealed products are at least five years old, The Times reports, but have been updat-ed to make the US less dependent on hardware installation in its surveillance operations.

The NSA would not discuss the devices despite publication of the documents describing them by the European news outlets.

“Continuous and selective publication of specific techniques and tools used by NSA. to pursue legitimate foreign intelligence targets is detrimental to the security of the United States and our allies,” said Vines.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of US House lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require President Obama to unveil budget figures for all 16 spy agencies. The secretive “black budget” for US intelligence agencies was reported to be $53 billion for fiscal year 2013, based on documents from Snowden reported by The Washington Post.

73,

Adriano

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 9

SDR Sharpe Software and RTL driver installation on windows 64 bit OS

by: Dan Eddleman —KR4UB

Installing the software for SDR radios can be more of a challenge than assembling the relatively few pieces of hardware required.

This article is a tutorial for installing the SDRSharpe Application and RTL driver on the Windows Seven 64 bit Operating System. It has been previously reported that SDRSharpe has been successfully installed on Windows Seven 32 bit, but what about Windows Seven 64bit?

At the end of this article there is a link to the complete article. Many of the screen shots shown are taken on a system running Win-dows XP Professional. But this article is about installing SDRSharpe on Windows Seven 64 bit. Why did I leave these photos from XP rather than re-doing all of them on the Windows Seven 64bit system?

To make a point… The procedure, and the same SDRSharp Software AND the RTL USB driver code that ran on XP Pro runs on Win-dows Seven 64 bit with no change.

Lessons Learned from the Windows XP install experience and the Windows Seven 64bit Installation….

The "install" process for the SDR software and drivers is not a full blown Windows install process, but a simple ".bat" file execution with the end result that all required files for running SDRSharpe, including the RTL driver will be loaded into one subdirectory. No Windows registry entries are made, nor are driver files installed in the Windows\system32, Windows\sysWOW64, or other windows operating system driver directories.

My installation of SDRSharpe on Windows Seven 64 bit has a bit of history. The machine that I did a clean drive install of Windows Seven 64 bit, was in fact the same Intel Core2 Quad Processor machine with 4GB of RAM, that I had previously been running Win-dows XP Pro and had also installed and run SDRSharpe on.

Knowing what is briefly summarized above about the SDR “install” process, and will be described in detail in the article link below, I merely saved the SDR Subdirectory and files that were created during the original installation on my old XP C: hard drive, and copied those same directories onto the new Windows Seven 64bit C: hard drive image.

After that, I reran the “zadig.exe” file which comes with the SDR download package, to associate the RTL USB driver located in the above copied subdirectories to the generic WINUSB Application Programming Interface in the new Windows Seven 64bit OS Instal-lation. The install at this point is now complete and SDRSharpe is ready to run on your new Windows Seven 64bit system.

One caveat… Do not plug in the SDR dongle until you have completed the above sequence. Otherwise, Windows Seven 64 bit plug and play will see the dongle and install a driver for it. But it will not be the driver you want to use. If this has already occurred, simp-ly go into the Device Manager, and uninstall any drivers that may have been installed before you run the Zadig.exe program.

One other item to mention, when you have successfully completed the installation, if you happen to go into the Windows Seven Device and Print-er window or other area where installed hardware is displayed, you will see the dongle, that is the RTL2838UHIDIR device. It will also have the exclamation symbol as shown below indicating there is a driver problem or no driver present issue. Ignore this don’t try to “fix” it.

Click on this link to see the complete article for further detail. http://ncocra.org/articles/kr4ub/sdr/

73, Dan (KR4UB)

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 10

About LPFM in Orange County

LPFM stands for "Low Power FM," which is an offshoot of commercial FM broadcasting. LPFM licenses allow non-profit organiza-tions to operate broadcast transmitters of 100 watts or less within the FM broadcast band, assuming that a frequency can be found which won't cause interference with established broadcasters.

One such station is WCOM in Carrboro. This station has been on the air for some years now on 103.5 MHz and has recently relocat-ed its studio to the new Carrboro Arts Center. And, as of a couple weeks ago, one of our very own OCRA members, Kevin Shields, KB0WFM, has a program on the air Fridays from 1 to 3 pm. It's called "Out of Sight," and it features obscure oldies. Kevin is a very knowledgeable DJ with many years of broadcast experience and a genuine love for recorded music. He takes requests by email and will go to extreme lengths to dig up a track that hasn't had air time in years. I tried to stump him recently by suggesting "Kites are Fun" by an obscure group called Free Design, but he didn't miss a step and was able to find it and play it, much to my surprise and pleasure. WCOM enjoys the technical expertise of a former OCRA member, Bill McClymont, W1REP, whom many of us would like to see back on the OCRA roster.

And now, we have discovered that Hillsborough, also, might be getting its own LPFM station. An organization known as "Hillsborough Community Media" has applied to the FCC for a license on 104.7 MHz. One of the organizers of Hillsborough Commu-nity Media will be well known to many OCRA members. It's attorney Cyrus Hogue III, KS4XJ. Cy says he doesn't know for certain if their application will be approved, but the filing deadline for objections to it came and went with none being submitted, so it's actu-ally looking good. He added that they do have a site selected for the antenna--a water tower on the northern part of town.

Personally, I think it would be wonderful for Hillsborough to have its own broadcast station. The town really does have so much to offer in terms of culture that can be propagated. We'll have to wait and see, but if it's a "go," maybe some of us hams can assist in getting it operating!

73,

De — Woody (K3VSA)

Orange County Radio Amateurs Newsletter Page Number 11

QSL Card of the month

QSL cards by, Jim Wallace

QSL cards by, Roger Boyles