I have been to Africa 4 times before. Those were short visits of no more than a few weeks. Coming to live here for over 8 months presents more complex logistical issues. Being an American from a highly consumer-oriented society like that in the States, I had become quite comfortable with wide access to goods and services.

Now, to be frank, living 7 years on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands help prepare us for life in Africa. Even though we lived in a US Territory there was a certain shortage of goods and it was not easy to just click onto the net and order something. UPS and Fed Ex regards the islands as an international destination and price their delivery services accordingly. So we learned to order with delivery through the Postal Service or freight forwarders.

Uganda is a step further, a big step further. There are no Home Depots, no Wal-marts, no easy or uncomplicated delivery services. There are shopping malls and lots and lots of shops. Just not exactly the kind we are accustomed to. Kampala has a lot to offer. It does not conjure up images of safaris on the African savannah. It is a busy, contemporary, growing and thriving African city. There are some great hotels here, magnificent actually.

And there are thousands of cars and buses. Traffic is a tangled mess most days, and in certain districts absolutely impossible. If you are driving a car for errands or shopping, it can take most of the day just to get to your destination in the city, and then there will be the impossible challenge of finding a parking place. So most locals forego cars and ride on the back of a scooter piloted by a local driver. There are even more of these two-wheeled wonders. They are called boda boda's here. For a few shillings one hops on the back being careful where you grab on, say a quick prayer, and close your eyes. The boda boda driver pays no attention to one way street signs, no attention to stalled traffic, no attention to pedestrians. He just weaves in and out and gets you there in a hurry.

Boda bodas are all over the country and comprise the most often used form of mass transportation. There are surprisingly few accidents but when there is a collision it is understandably quite serious. The rules of the road, such as they may be, consider them as part of the ecosystem and make accommodations for them. Ugandans are by nature mild-mannered and courteous. They speak softly and with deference. Until they get behind the steering wheel! Then they become maniacs. They will make 3 or 4 lanes out of 1, pass on blind corners and hills, hit speed bumps at breakneck, or I should say, break axle speed. I do not drive in the city or on the major roads. We have a driver who has the nerves and fortitude to brave the streets.

So, life in the city when it comes to traffic takes some getting used to. But there is more to Africa than traffic. I'll post some entries about life in the village and on safari. If you've not been to Africa, you really should come here. It is an experience not to be missed.

        

Several weeks ago I was contacted by Gernot Frauscher in Germany about a WSPR transmitter he developed. You can take a look at his webpage here. The basics are these:

• It will cover the bands 80, 40, 30. 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10m
• TX power is 1W
• It will TX continuously. 2min on each band, so the repeat interval will be 16min for each frequency.
• The beacon is set to GPS timing and location mode, so one need only connect everything and turn it on. It will get timing and locator from GPS.

When I came to Uganda I not only wanted to work SSB phone, but I am very interested in QRP and QRSS. A beacon seemed a great idea and I am delighted to have been contacted by Gernot.  As our correspondence grew, we developed a plan whereby Gernot would supply his WSPR transmitter and I would put it on the air using my license and call sign here in Uganda. He is part of a team that is going to be installing a network at a university in Mbarara, a city about 3 hours south and west of Masaka. Alexander Wuerflinger, an advance team member is scheduled to visit Uganda the week of March 5 and is bringing Gernot's WSPR transmitter with him. I will supply the antenna, a battery, and power supply. Should have everything on the air in a few days.

WSPR is a fascinating mode. Take a look at the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter Network if you want a deeper explanation. You can also checkout G4ILO's blog here. The cool things about Gernot's transmitter are that it runs independently of a PC and that it is a multi-band unit. With a simple car battery as backup power, this propagation beacon should run uninterrupted from Southwest Uganda!

It is a wonderful and generous act on the part of Gernot and his friends who are coming to work here in Uganda. Stand by for official notification that we are on the air.

        

Many of you know I am an avid fan of vintage gear. In my shack in Florida I have all vintage stuff - Drake TR3's with its matching VFO and tuner, an old turner mic, even vintage test gear. My sole concession to modern times in that shack is a hybrid Kenwood TS820S. None of the transceivers have DSP. In my shack here in Uganda I brought an Icom IC 718. It is a fairly modern rig cursed with 22 miniscule buttons. It does have a tuning knob however. I was searching through the 20 meter band yesterday and it occurred to me that we possess an unsophisticated form of digital signal processing.

Now, I am fully aware that the generally understood definition of digital signal processing is the conversion of a signal into a digitized form and the application of circuitry to sample the center of the signal, filter out the rest, convert it back to analog form and send it to the audio output (in over-simplified form). It is, in it's purest since, the manipulation of a signal to find the clearest and best output.

So, I was dialing through the band when I had an epiphany. Right there, in my hand was the original digital signal processor. Every vintage rig I own has it. Every rig you own has it too. No electronic signal processing is possible unless it is proceeded by this form of digital processing. Wanna see one in action? Here it is.

By the manipulation of your fingers you find the clearest and best output! Think of it! Drakes, Collins, National, even Heathkit featured signal processing through digital manipulation. Simply tweak the tuning dial until the signal sounds the best and you have it. Digital signal processing in its purest and most accessible form has sampled the signal, found the prime signal in the center of the transmission and sent it to the audio output.

So all of us boat anchor guys need not feel inadequate or behind-the-times any more. Those of us who struggle through the bands without little multi-function buttons and rely on simple rotary dials need not feel like a red-headed stepchild any more. In fact, the more I think about it, the more proud I become.

Micro-processors? We don't need no stinking micro-processors! Those of us who use this form of signal processing do it ourselves, like real men. We grab the signal by the hand(le) and force it through the output. We wrestle the signal out of the air and push it into service for ourselves.

Knowledge is power and I am more powerful today. Digital signal processing has been right there in my hand all this time and I didn't even know it. You can do it too. Don't be afraid of the power in your fingers. Grab that knob and get it touch with your alpha-male (or female) and process that signal today.

        

A few days ago I was on 14.325 MHz with the group from Malawi and the UK. I've been meeting them on the air there for several weeks. They tell me they have been meeting at that time on that frequency for several months. We chatted for about an hour then heard a call from Qatar, a ham who had been listening in and wanted to join. We all gladly welcomed him, exchanged signal reports and call signs. He was keen to work the Malawi station but Harry had already signed off. So I told him when we would be on the air again, time and frequency.

Then the log jam broke and a pile-up began from stations wanting to work my 5X station. This went on for quite awhile. Suddenly, another station spoke up saying the frequency was in use and we should QSY. I replied that I had been on the frequency for well over an hour. The pile-up began again. In another five minutes or so the same station broke in saying the frequency was occupied and we should QSY. I again stated I had been using the frequency for well over an hour.

Now, common, courteous usage of the frequencies says one should listen on a frequency for a few minutes to see if it is in use, then ask if it is in use. If it is, then find another frequency. To break in on a frequency in use and say it is in use trying to move the users off is not courteous use nor is it fair. It is, however, rude. There was no explanation from the break-in station, just a command, not a request, a command that I go somewhere else. If there was a net about to begin, the caller could have said so. He didn't.

There really is plenty of space on 20 meters. It seems to me that if a frequency has been in use for a good long time, and if I want to get on the air, and if I am not a "REGULARLY" SCHEDULED NET, I should just go elsewhere on the band. I suppose my nature comes out here, but I don't give ground easily especially when I am pushed. Being ordered to move doesn't provoke a positive response from most people, myself included. We are not paying for every word we transmit so complete, friendly sentences are no more expensive than short, curt instructions.

We learned it in kindergarten but in these days of faceless communications seem to have disregarded it, be polite. It seems that the more "invisible" the speaker, the more he or she resorts to boorish behavior. They will say things over the phone or, in this case, over the air or they will use a tone of voice and manner of speaking they would never say or use to your face.

• Fair frequency use is fair, allowing participation by all. Some operators treat a frequency like they possess a deed to it.
• Fair frequency use means accommodating shared use among several operators.
• Fair frequency use means not trying to bully someone off a frequency because you want to use it.
• Fair frequency use means that propagation may change and you might be able to hear someone on "your" frequency that you could not hear before and it just might be that they were on that frequency well BEFORE you heard them.
• Fair frequency use means being polite and courteous even when someone infringes on the frequency you have been using. Reasonable people can work things out, well, fairly.

So, let's be fair. Give way when we are infringing, find another frequency if the one we want is in use, always consider propagation, speak politely and completely. We all encounter too much boorish behavior on the streets, we don't need more of it on the air.

        

I am up early and I was walking from my quarters to my office one morning when it was yet misty. I took this photo. Then , later in the day I shot these other pictures. The leaning tower of Masaka is a tower on the grounds of Uganda Telecom, the telephone company. The little blur on the left side of the tower near the upper cross piece is what appears to be a VHF antenna. The tower base has suffered a collision with a large moving object, probably a truck, and therefore leans to the right a few degrees. It appears there is no 2 meter amateur radio here in Uganda.

        

It was contest weekend just past so many were competing. I am a rag-chewer, not a contest hound, so I was mostly off the air. On top of that, the power was off for most of the week. It did come on sporadically for a few minutes at a time, but it was mostly out. Inconsistent power is almost harder to deal with than no power. At least with no power I could plan for a permanent source. But here it has been so sporadic - on for a few minutes, off for a few minutes, off again for awhile, on again for awhile. We have a large diesel generator which makes thunderous racket and has been around a few years so it is not an efficient machine to run. We seldom use it for those reasons. So we have a small Honda generator that we use to recharge laptop batteries and run the printers when we need to.

I found out this weekend that my antenna, even though it is a skinny vertical, has caused quite a stir in the village. We are located in Kiijaabewme (pronounced Chee-Job-Way- Mee), a small village on the outskirts of the city of Masaka. There are lots of small homes just around our compound. Well, I discovered this week that some of the residents have been scanning their radios trying to find my station, convinced I am a new broadcast radio station. There is a Baptist mission on the other side of the city that has its own radio station and the people here assumed I am doing the same. So I can imagine what stories will circulate once I put up a 40 foot tower and a log periodic with a long boom!

There is an informal net that meets at 14.325 each afternoon at 1500 UTC which I have been joining. The net control, as it were, is 7Q7HB in Malawi. Harry is that operator and he is at a hotel on Lake Malawi working as an engineer. The other two regulars are Allan, G0IAS, in Nottinghamshire, UK, and Graham, G4YRU in Sheffield, UK. Those three are old friends who keep in touch over the radio whenever Harry, who is also English, is working in Malawi. Graham worked in Uganda back in the 80's building a highway from the center of Kampala 20 kilometers out towards Jinja, the city at the headwaters of the Nile. All three of them are well-versed in dealing with the peculiarities of ham radio in Africa.

        

When Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States, he made trips to the Republic of Viet Nam to confer with that nation's military leaders and government officials. Since Viet Nam is on the other side of the globe from Washington and because his trips were short, President Johnson determined to escape the perils of jet lag by maintaining the same time zone inside inside Air Force One as is in Washington. Local leaders were forced to meet with him in the middle of the Viet Nam night.

It is not unusual for all of us to consider our country to be the one by which all others are measured and to which all others must conform. I was in Japan a few years ago. On the wall of the home in which we stayed hung a world map. I knew it looked different somehow but did not immediately recognize why. Then I realized that Japan was in the center of that map. North America was off to the right, Asia and Europe sat over to the left. It seems we all consider ourselves to be at the center of the world.

Normally this is harmless and insignificant. Being a foreigner here in Uganda, I have been learning to speak English with a Ugandan flair. Uganda is a former British colony so English is the official language but it is spoken here with some distinction from the English I know in the US. Here is a glossary and pronunciation key for a few Ugandan English words.

• Wads - (wahds) = words
• Babecue (bah-be que) = a meal cooked outside, barbeque
• Vanish (vah'nish) = clear oil-based finish coat for wood , varnish (I have seen this spelled "vanish" on signs at paint stores)
• Chahch - (chaahch) = church
• Massy - (mahsy) = mercy
• Papus (pah'pus) = purpose
• Thod (thahd) = third
• Fast (fahst) = first
• Widith -(wi'dith) = width
• Tweluv - (twe'luv) =twelve
• Clothis - (clothe' us) = clothes

Then there is the usage of words, the unusual (to me) construction of sentences Like:

• "The cook is in the chicken smashing the Irish" which means "the cook is in the kitchen making mashed potatoes."
• "Assist me with the keys" which means "May I borrow your keys, please?"
• "The Peps is finished" means " We are out of Pepsi Cola." This actually makes some sense when one understands the Lugandan language. The plural indicator in English is "s" but in Lugandan it is "i" pronounced "ee" like the final sound of Pepsi. So, when Ugandans speak English they sometimes get the plural indicators  a bit turned around. Mahogany, the species of wood, will be called mahogan, no "i" sound at the end. A Pepsi Cola will be shortened to "Peps" unless one is orders many of them. 

This is a delightful place to learn English again even though I have been speaking it for 59 years. DXers are no strangers to unusual pronunciations and have come to appreciate regional differences. We use a phonetic alphabet to understand and be understood. It is a big world and we are only one of the many billions who live here. Learning to understand and to be understood takes an open mind and a flexible tongue.

        

I was working with a local carpenter getting him to build a staircase in the children's main bedroom. Wooden staircases were stock in trade for us out of my shop in St. Croix but something of a rarity here. Most internal structures are made of the same stuff as outside - concrete. So I was giving a class in how to lay out the run and rise of the stairs. We were getting to the point of designing the balusters, which were going to be simple wooden slats attached to the stringer of the stairs and the flat wooden railing.

I am accustomed to cordless drills and either Philips head or square drive screws. I had brought a few Philips head screws with me and sent the carpenter into town to buy more. There are no large hardware emporiums like Home Depot or Lowe's, only little hole-in-the wall shops stocked to the rafters with an assortment of tools, paint, glues, and screws. Masaka is a reasonably big city for Uganda, around 50,000 people call it home. I was hopeful the carpenter could find what I needed.

An hour or so later he returned with a handful of screws, all of them with slotted heads. "I am sorry, sir," he explained, "there are no stars, only minuses."

"Stars? Minuses?" I wondered for a moment what he meant. Then I realized what he was saying. Stars are Philips head screws in the vernacular of one who had never, not once in his life, ever seen one. The Philips design looks just like little stars, millions of which light up the African night. Minuses are, of course, slot head screws. In Ugandan vernacular, a screw is a screw is a screw. They all have slotted heads so there is no need to distinguish between head designs. There is only one head design - a minus. Need a slotted head screw, just ask for a screw.

Now, I have found one tiny little shop at the end of a street lined with hardware shops that sells nothing but screws. It is owned and operated by an older Muslim gentleman who is always helpful. In his stock of thousands of regular screws, he has a couple of small bins, maybe 6 inches square, with Philips head ones. But his shop is new and not well-known yet. Not even our local agent here knew of it. I happened across it one day as I was determined to discover what resources are at my disposal and was walking the streets of the city looking things over.

Well, back to the staircase. I also am addicted to power tools even though power is often absent. I bought an Italian-made electric drill to assist in the construction of the staircase. The carpenter had never seen one, didn't even know such things existed. He drilled holes in wood with a brace and bit using auger bits, the kind quite common a hundred years ago in the US. Other carpenters who make furniture in quantity do something different.

One unique characteristic of Ugandan business is that it is very common for like business to be located side-by-side on the same street. There will be an entire street filled with hardware shops, or plumbing supply shops, or office supplies or ... One street we frequent offers "factory" made furniture, factory being the rather ambitious label for craftsmen's small shops. We were in the market for some ordinary wooden chest-of-drawers, like the kind you would find in an unfinished furniture store in the States. On the street where these are made, in business after business, they all hire young men to drill holes in the drawer fronts and install knobs on the drawers. No drills here! Not even braces and bits. No, the young men squat on the ground with a bent nail and twist it back and forth drilling a screw hole for the knob. A bent nail!

In my last post I wrote about living close to the land here and using resources at hand. I would like to teach radio to some of the kids who live here at the project. I brought with me a handful of diodes (I know we could use razor blades and there are plenty of them here, but I had the diodes and they took up no real space to bring them along) and a sack full of high impedance ear phones. I've been saving cardboard toilet paper rolls (I actually had more than enough saved up but the young man who helps with the cleaning threw them out. It was logical in his thinking. After all, why would anyone want to keep a bagful of cardboard TP rolls?) We have a couple of dead computer monitors (voltage spikes are lethal) from which I can cannibalize the degaussing coil for enameled wire to make coils. The rest of the stuff we need to make foxhole radios we can scrounge for - wire to connect the parts and make the tuning mechanism, a board for the chassis, screws (most likely minuses not stars), and lengths of wire for antennas. It gets us started and provides a platform to begin to teach radio theory.

We'll get the boards ready (gives new meaning to "breadboard" construction doesn't it?) and prepare by pre-drilling the screw holes for mounting the components. Wait a minute! The power is off again. Now, where did I put that bent nail?

        

Just over one hundred years ago the prevailing design philosophy of the day came about in reaction to the excesses of the Victorian era. The "Arts & Crafts" movement focused on simplicity of design, a complete lack of applied ornamentation, and the use of readily available on-site natural materials. Architects later in the century like Frank Lloyd Wright picked up on the theme. The beauty of designed objects manifest itself in the skill of craftsmanship, the joinery and assembly themselves being readily seen, put on display if you will as part of the attraction of the object. The usefulness of the device, whether it be a house or piece of furniture, added to an objects appeal. Gone were the flourishes and foo-foo of Victorian design. In came simple lines and pride of craftsmanship.

What, you ask, has this to do with radio? Well, truthfully I never gave it much thought until I came to Uganda. When I made my first trip here in the autumn of 1999, you will remember the rest of us were in the run-up to Y2K and being bombarded by voices predicting doom and meltdown. As I drove through the Ugandan bush, it occurred to me that if the world were to melt-down, it would have NO EFFECT here. The way of life for most in the country is so close to the land, nothing that happens in every day experience would have any impact if computers failed to work.

It is a little more connected these days. Mobile phones are cheap and everywhere. There are lots of Internet cafe's and more televisions than before. But electric bills are still processed by hand, the meter readings are written into a tablet and recorded by a clerk in an office. The bill itself is delivered by a courier, not the mail. Most things are still made by hand. When I needed a ladder to climb onto the roof and install my antenna, I had to have one made by a local carpenter. There is not a factory-made ladder to be had in the entire city!

Now all of this seems strange to me because I am writing this on a laptop computer connected to the Internet via a 3G stick provided by one of the wireless phone companies here in Uganda. So I am not condemning by any means the use of contemporary devices. Even the craftsmen on the Arts & Craft era a century ago used modern tools. They just used them as extensions of themselves. The character of the craftsman was illustrated in his craft. This same philosophy carries through in our pursuit as well.

I have been especially confronted with this by the sheer volume of hand-made goods in Uganda. Using resources at hand is not an indulgence, it is an imperative. My intention to build a log periodic antenna has come face to face with reality. No aluminum, no log periodic antenna. Rather than being frustrated, I am actually enthused about this.

Before I moved here, I owned a custom millwork shop on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. Three of my employees were Filipinos having moved to our island in the past three years. Time after time I would walk through the shop and see how they had improvised a jig for the construction of a complicated project or designed a tool from the resources we had at hand, often a discarded piece of wood or broken tool. It seems to be a propensity of less "developed" cultures to have a knack for improvisation and fabrication.

The green movement today is in many respects not very green at all. For example, solar electrical panels consume far more energy to manufacture than they will ever produce. Green usually means sophisticated devices costing large amounts of money and are often the playthings of the wealthy. Whereas, "green" to me means living close to the resources at hand. And it implies a pride of craftsmanship along with an resistance to run to a catalog to place an order.

I've been reading "Calling CQ," the fine book by Clinton DeSoto. There's a link to a free download site for this in my post called "Cool & Quirky Radio Resources on the net." While reading it I have been impressed with the clever creative ability of amateur radio operators whose accounts the author relates so compellingly. So many were able to fabricate components and circuits from almost nothing.

The junk box every ham accumulates takes on a holy aura. It is the green slime from which life will emerge and eventually evolve into advanced forms. It is the seedbed from which life will flourish. The junk box is more than a reserve of used parts. In it are the building blocks of something not yet in existence. We are amateur radio enthusiasts and such we create devices that do wonderful, almost magic things. When I give a report to one of my Ugandan colleagues here at the project, they are always amazed that I can, through the microphone attached to the radio attached to the antenna on the roof, speak with someone in Borneo, or Qatar, or Malawi. "And you aren't using a cell phone?" they always ask. No, no phone.

So you are probably a green radio person already. Many who read this blog are homebrewers and QRP people. They regularly put little pieces together and make magic. Their creations are extensions of themselves, objects born in their heads but executed by their hands. If you are intimidated at the prospect of building something yourself, or if the ready reserve of resources is getting in your way, I have a spare room here in Masaka.

        

Because I have so few ham radio books here and get an amateur radio magazine only when a visitor from the US is able to bring one, I've burned up a lot of time on my Warid 3G Internet stick looking at radio related sites on the net. Although sites with graphics are very slow to load, I have discovered that downloads on the weekends are somewhat faster. In one of the sidebar boxes on this blog I list some of the blogs and pages I visit most, but here are a few others worth mentioning:

Click here to take a look at Radio Shack catalogs from 1939 -2005. Graphics intensive so you should have a high-speed connection. But lots of great radio parts and gear from decades past. You can't download, but it is fun to browse.

You Tube pages with radio video clips (just click on the description, the clip will open in a new page):

AO-51 Satellite demo

"Ham Radio Today" hosted by Walter Cronkite

Radio Hams film by Pete Smith, cool nostalgic look at ham radio past

Andy Hardy uses ham radio

"On The Air" a 1937 film produced by General Motors on how broadcast radio works

"The Radio at War" a 14 minute film produced by RCA

 

Downloads - copyright free books which can be downloaded and read.

"Calling CQ" by Clinton DeSoto. Available here free in 6 formats including Kindle and PDF, or read it on-line.

"Handbook of Amateur Tube Uses", also available here in 6 formats.

"Electron Tube Design" by RCA available here.

"Wireless Telegraphy; With Special Reference to the Quenched-Spark System (1921.)" OK, this one is a little old, but cool anyway.

"The wireless experimenter's manual, incorporating How to conduct a radio club, describes parliamentary procedure in the formation of a radio club, the design of wireless transmitting and receiving apparatus, long distance receiving sets, vacuum tube amplifiers, radio telegraph and telephone sets, the tuning and calibration of transmitters and receivers, general radio measurements and many other features (1920)" Yes, that's the title but its an interesting look at the very early days of radio. Get it here.

"The how and why of Radio Apparatus: A Treatise on the Principles Underlying the Operation of Wireless Transmitting and Receiving Instruments" another gem from 1920.

If you know of any interesting sites, let me know.