At 44 years old I’ve jumped back into my radio hobby with gusto: But I now find myself living in northern Manhattan in New York City, with no yard, in a second floor apartment that faces an inner courtyard on one side, and masses of urban infrastructure on the other. I can hit the local repeaters with my HT, and even some not so local ones with a 2meter/70cm quad that I built – but how boring is that? I like HF. I like a challenge and the thrill of overcoming a problem with a workable solution.

I started with an indoor doublet. A doublet is another word for dipole, but usually refers to a dipole that is fed with balanced feed line and tuned to operate on the band desired. I got about 70 feet of 23 gauge magnet wire string in a z-shape from one end of the apartment to the other and fed it with TV twinlead. Needless to say, the results were not stellar… buried inside brick and morter, surrounded by many other structures and in the middle of an RF nightmare – from the plasma TV, to my home computer network, and anything else capable to creating interference. I managed to work one or two stations via ground wave but it was nearly useless.

After looking around various ham radio websites, I discovered the Jackite fiberglass pole, which is 31′ long and can be purchased for under $70 online (try E-Bay). It telescopes down to 4 feet and extends out to something resembling an oversize fishing pole, 31 feet long. I got to thinking – there are trees in back of our apartment building in an alley between our building and a small public green space opposite my fire escape. Our neighborhood is in one of the highest elevations on Manhattan – my QTH is around 200-220 feet above the Hudson River. I realized I could get on my fire escape (another 20 feet up) and push an antenna up into the trees.

I built a fan dipole with legs cut for 40, 20 and 10 meters – planning to use it on 15 meters as well which is the third multiple of 40 meters in wavelength. I fastened the vertex outside my bedroom window and pushed the ends of the 40 meter legs up into the trees (with porcelain dog-bone insulators on the end for weight). It was much harder to get the 20 and 10 meter legs in a good position due to their short size, and the distance away of the trees. None the less, performance increased and I worked a bunch of new stations on 40 and 20 using SSB and PSK31.

I decided that the best idea would be to get a simple doublet up in the tree line that sits at around 50 feet above the ground. It would be far easier to manage two legs than six. I could tune it with high efficiency on all bands if I fed it with balanced line. The only drawback was managing the balanced line into my apartment on the second floor – and figuring out how to pull this off since the roof is off limits to tenants – and I doubt my ability to convince the superintendent that my radio obsession is important enough for him to let me up there to do my thing.

Roof tops and trees

The real test was getting it on the air – and it was like having a new radio. The noise level was down. Signals could be heard, and I was immediately able to work stations from Mexico to Wisconsin and South Carolina to Kentucky with S9 signal reports. After weeks of no responses to ‘CQ’, suddenly people were responding!

Success! and if the forces of nature and neighbors allow me to keep my antennas in the trees for awhile I’ll be most happy.

Here, the Daily Show discusses Apple and the recent Applegate incident with the missing prototype iPhone…

I'm Melting... or Ding Dong the Rat is Dead

We use Google Voice for our voicemail. It is really convenient. The transcription feature is kind of cool because you don’t have to check your voicemail, it will email a transcription to your email inbox or text it to your phone. All for free.

We’ve been having a recent problem with rodents in our apartment. Rats actually. Juvenile New York City brown rats coming in through a hole under our sink. We tried a humane trap and planned to let them free outside somewhere with grass away from buildings. Alas, they did not go near the humane trap and we were forced into using the classic spring loaded snap traps and caught three little rat-lings in as many days.

At this point we’re kind of horrified. There is nothing quit like catching a baby rat on top of your stove in the middle of the night to creep you out. We realized it was time to call the Super. Our Super’s name is Sam and I’ve known him for over 20 years now! My wife, who is also on our co-op building’s board left Sam a message that we needed some action ASAP.

Sam returned the call and left a message on Google Voice explaining we needed to put our names on the list for the exterminator Urban Pest Control, I present the Google transcript here:

Hi Kristin, This is Sam. I’m trying to get a chance to get back to you with about 2 miles but you gotta the gym and urban design of the Spirit of God. Well give me a call when you get a chance so we, the last day. Thanks.

Repent children, The END is nigh!

I thought it would be a fun project to make my own speaking clock for Linux. Here is a very simple project that will get you started with some basic shell scripting and using the crontab.

My first version of the clock used espeak – which is a synthesized voice. It isn’t very appealing. For my second version I went to the AT&T Labs site and used their form to create .wav files of human speech for the numbers one through twelve. I created a .wav for “AM” and another for “PM”. Then I created a .wav that says, “Hello, the time is now: ”

I used the command line application aplay, and output from the date function. It is very simple.

Since I’m kind of lazy, I didn’t bother creating all the minutes. I only want my announcements on the hour and half hour anyway.

I call the script from two crontab jobs, one that runs on the hour and one that runs on the half hour.

You can download my scripts and audio here – check it out and then make your own, but don’t forget to share your success and send me your result!

The basic steps are as follows:

1. Create .wav files of the spoken numbers 1 through 12, the number 30, “AM”, “PM” and “The time is: ”

2. Create a script to run on the hour similar to this example (change the paths to where you saved your files):

#!/bin/bash

aplay -q /home/charleys/time_voice/hellothetimeisnow.wav

HOUR=$(date +%-l)

AMPM=$(date +%p)

EXT=”.wav”

aplay -q  “/home/charleys/time_voice/$HOUR$EXT”

aplay -q “/home/charleys/time_voice/$AMPM$EXT”

#end script

3. Save as hour.sh Make the script executable

chmod +x hour.sh

4. Create a schedule to run the script using crontab

crontab -e

0 * * * * /home/charleys/time_voice/hour_human.sh

5. Repeat the steps above, except you are going to add the “30″ .wav file, like this:

aplay -q  "/home/charleys/time_voice/$HOUR$EXT"
aplay -q "/home/charleys/time_voice/30.wav"
aplay -q "/home/charleys/time_voice/$AMPM$EXT"

NOTE: You MUST use upper case PM and AM for your file name. You MUST use 1.wav, 2.wav, etc for your file names. This is because the file is chosen based on the ouput from the date command. date +%-l outputs only the numbers 1-12 for the hour. Likewise, date +%p outputs either AM or PM. The – just removes the space from in front of the digits 1-9. Aplay only works with ALSA audio I’m told, however there are many other choices in command line audio players you can try.

Enjoy!

It is very easy to install using Synaptic/Apt and is available in the Ubuntu Universe Repository. There are two front ends available using GTK, and QT. The only issue I had to troubleshoot was that the recorded audio was out of sync and choppy. It was very easy to fix by changing the DEFAULT sound option to plughw:0,0.

The software is capable of using a variety of audio sources including Jack audio server. The capture provided an excellent quality file in .ogv format.

If you are sharing the video capture with Windows users, you will need to convert it to a Windows-friendly format for them. I used mencoder - 

mencoder -idx mycapture.ogv -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o mycapture.avi

For a helpful page on installing additional repositories and software in Ubuntu, see here Enabling Extra Repositories. You should also see the following link:  Medibuntu  – to install the W32 Codecs.

This is only required if you need to convert the output into a Windows format like .avi. In order to play the converted avi video in Windows,  I still needed to install this free codec: FFDShow MPEG-4.

Click For Large Image Diagram

I serve a large organization with multiple branch offices in remote places. Typically, these offices are staffed with from one to fifty employees. Most of the offices have a local Windows Domain Controller, which doubles as a file/print server, DNS, and DHCP server.

The larger of the offices are usually connected to the Internet via T1, or DSL via a local service provider. In addition, the offices have a firewall that is connected back to headquarters via IPSec VPN tunnel.

This arrangement has provided a good solution for several years, however there are limitations. Recently, many of our offices have begun providing Internet access for clients – this added network load, in addition to increased usage of high-bandwidth services like You Tube, have placed new demands on us to manage the bandwidth. In addition, configuring servers and firewalls per individual office – and getting local support who can help us on site – is challenging.

A major point of our current initiative is to make our network locations more homogeneous, and more under the control of IT staff at headquarters. Virtualization has become an attractive option for several reasons: it eliminates the cost of a separate hardware firewall, and it allows us to configure a hardware-agnostic server “image” for use on any local hardware.

My “One Box Solution” allows for the firewall, bandwidth management, and Windows Domain Controller to exist on a single, portable, server.

I recently began piloting such a solution in one of our offices. Not having a current budget for my project, I took advantage of an unused Dell workstation at HQ. I added an additional 10/100 NIC we had lying in our closet. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 server (any version of Linux will work) and VMWare’s latest version of free server for Linux.

If you haven’t been exposed to VMWare yet, go to www.vmware.com and download the free player and one of the free virtual appliances (pre configured workstations and computers). VMWare server is also free and will allow you to build and configure your own virtual machines.

Having built the Linux box and installed VMWare server, I configured one of my NICS as an internal nic, with an address on my local subnet, and the other NIC as an external NIC with one of my assigned Internet IP addresses.

Inside VMWare server, I configured three virtual networks. One network connected to my external interface of my Linux server. The second connected to a host only virtual network, and the third connected to the internal NIC of my Linux server.

The first virtual server I built was my M0n0wall firewall. Note that M0n0Wall is available PRE-BUILT! AS A VIRTUAL APPLIANCE! This means you don’t have to compile or build it. Just download the Virtual Appliance files and open them in VMWare Server.  I choose M0n0wall for several reasons. It is free. It is easy to configure. It allows for QoS, Traffic Shaping, and most importantly the IPSec tunnels that connect back to Headquarters and our DR NOC. The external WAN interface of M0n0Wall was connected to the external virtual network. The internal LAN interface of M0n0Wall was connected to the HOST ONLY virtual nework (we’ll see why in sec…). The WAN and LAN interfaces were configured with appropriate network settings, NTP server settings, DNS, etc. The WAN IP will be on our Internet subnet, and the Gateway will point to our ISP’s router or gateway IP address. The LAN interface will become the internal default gateway for our local network. M0n0wall is a powerful firewall solution for a small office. With the addition of a third NIC, you can easily set M0n0wall up to provide a DMZ, or a Captive Portal for your Wireless users. A Captive Portal will allow you to plug in a wireless device, authenticate users in a browser, and/or use RADIUS for advanced authentication.

The second virtual server is Untangle – also available Pre-built as a virtual appliance! Untangle can install as a bridge – meaning there is no routing involved. It sits between your firewall and your internal network. Untangle can also function as the firewall, but since it lacks the IPSec function for our tunnel back to Headquarters, we choose M0n0Wall. Where Untangle really excels is in Internet filtering and management. Untangle provides a suite of free modules for management and OpenVPN. There are also paid and supported modules available. The free version provides for very granular reporting and a powerful degree of access control right out of the box.

The third server is our Windows Domain Controller. This is the only commercial device which requires a paid-for license. Our virtual domain controller runs inside VMWare and connects via one interface to our internal network.

This arrangement has allowed us to provide a one-box all-in-one appliance to our remote offices that can be built and exchanged as needed, with a minimum of configuration. The Windows server can easily be promoted to a domain controller on site. IP Addresses and other site specific information can all be easily configured through graphical utilities.

Using online backup, such as Mozy Pro, in conjunction with our single box, we have discovered a way to provide highly-available network services to our smaller, budget and staff challenged offices in the field.

Options include using ESXi, which is VMWare’s free version of ESX server. The downside of ESXi is that it requires more expensive hardware. It will not run on a workstation with a SATA disk drive. However, if you have a true server that is on the hardware compatibility list, ESXi will provide a better platform. It installs as it’s own OS. Linux and Windows are not required. The management tools and options are also much nicer.

One additional thing we’ve looked at – and likely something we’ll be hearing more about in the coming months – are WAN optimization appliances such as Riverbed that run as a virtual machine. This will likely become a solution in our most remote offices where slow satellite connectivity is the norm.