I had always been impressed with the audio quality of these relatively cheap Logitech headphones and microphone. The mic naturally has a strong mid-range peak that I think lends itself very well to HF work and getting heard in a pile-up. But that’s just my theory.

I had been successful wiring up my Kenwood MC-50, using pinouts I found on the Internet. The mic jack for the FT-857 is an RJ-45. The pinout for the FT-857 is as follows:

1 – FAST Scan
2 – Ground
3 – PTT
4 – MIC +
5 – MIC Gnd
6 – +5 Volts DC
7 – Up
8 – Down

The tricky part is figuring out which pin is pin1! If you are holding the RJ-45 plug pointing AWAY from you with the clip side UP, pin 8 is on the right. If you are holding the plug with the clip side DOWN, pin 8 is on the left. I used an old CAT 5 network cable, and I used the following pins, 3, 4, 5 and 6. On my cable, these were white-green, blue, white-blue, and green. Color codes can vary, so double check.

The following site was very helpful to me in getting pin outs for Kenwood and Yaesu: G4WPW Microphone Connections

Here’s what I ended up doing and after a few HF contacts, and some on the local repeaters I’m convinced it works pretty well.

You are going to need a switch for the push to talk. You’ll also need a 1/8″ mono phono plug for the audio out. I used a small red switch from Radio Shack, and put everything inside an old Kodak film can. Cut the two plugs off the headset.

Pin 3, our PTT (my white green) is wired to one side of the switch. Pin 4 is wired to the negative side of a 10uF electrolytic capacitor, the positive side of the capacitor goes to the positive mic lead from the headset. The capacitor will block the +5V from the radio mic input and pass the audio. Pin 5 is our universal ground, we connect the shield from both the headphones and the microphone as well as the other side of our switch. Pin 6 is the 5V for the microphone and is wired through a 2.2K resistor directly to the positive mic wire coming from the headset.

PIN:
3 ——- switch
4——– negative side of capacitor )|+ — headset microphone wire
5——– to shields from mic and headphones, to other side of spst switch
6——– to 2.2K  resistor and from resistor to headset microphone wire

Note the headset wires are VERY small, enameled wire and I had to lightly sand them in order to get a good connection. It would be helpful to breadboard this and test it with different values of capacitor, etc… I just taped it all up with black electrical tape and stuffed it into the film can.

For the headphones, you’ll need a mono 1/8″ phono plug. I only used the positive audio wire. The headphone shield is already grounded through the mic ground. You’ll combine the small enameled wires from the headphones, lightly sand them, and connect them via a short wire to the tip of the phono plug. Doing this, as well as NOT using the pin 2 ground cleared up a nasty hum problem for me. I found it curious that Yaesu didn’t include an audio out pin on the front microphone jack. It is a radio designed for mobile operation and front panel connections or speaker mics could be very useful.

There are a number of designs for this on the Internet.  Just Google “Yaesu Computer Headset”. This was quick, easy and worked for me.

Good Luck

PTT

Headset

We purchased some regulation baseballs and a roll of nylon cord (similar to mason’s line). We used some previously purchased 4 ounce fishing weights, packing tape, and taped a weight and length of cord onto each baseball. This was tied to the loop on the end of each insulated wire. The 9 ounce baseball/weight combo was then tossed into the tree line where it is doing an excellent job holding our wire antenna in place…

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.

Hurray! Time to start working those sweet parts of 20 and 40 meters, and get one of those fancy call signs!

After reading Ken’s pages and shooting him a quick email I realized that I needed to replace the cathode and screen resistors in my TS-530s. Never having owned a Kenwood, and having only some limited experience digging in under the hood of a Heathkit HW-101 I was a little bit afraid. But curiosity prevailed. I was also able to download a service manual for the radio here. I could not find schematics of the 530, but I did find schematics on Ken’s site of the 830 which is similar if not identical in terms of the final board and the rectifier board, which are the two boards where we find the screen resistors and cathode resistors.

I ordered the parts from Ken which arrived in a few days, and then I set out to make my repairs.

Ken told me the cathode resistors would be on the final board, as well as two 100 ohm screen resistors. The remaining screen resistor is a 470 ohm on the rectifier board. It took me a while to figure out what was where, but it was fairly easy to identify the four 20 ohm cathode resistors and two 100 ohm screen resistors on the final board. The 470 ohm screen resistor on the rectifier board sits right in the middle and you can’t miss it.

A SAFETY note: Danger!! High Voltage!!
“Hybrid rigs such as Kenwood TS-520-820-530-830
have high voltages that can be as high as 800 volts in the power
supply and final section. These voltages can kill you!
This is actually true of any rig with tube finals. Keep this in mind
when working inside these rigs.
After these rigs are turned off, these voltages remain
in capacitors and can still harm or kill you. Most of
these rigs have bleeder resistors that are SUPPOSED to
discharge these capacitors in a short time after the
power is off. These are usually of values in the tens or
hundreds of thousand ohms and are usually placed
across the capacitor to drain it. Are these working
right in your rig? Would you bet your life on it? I
wouldn’t.
As a safety precaution, one should ALWAYS discharge
these voltages manually before touching anything in
the rig. To do this, unplug the rig and let it set for 3 or
4 minutes. If the bleeder resistors are working, this
SHOULD discharge most of the charge. Then using a
screwdriver or a good clip lead, short the
top of the plate choke, to ground. The top of the plate
choke is the place that feeds the two tube caps by way
of parasitic chokes. Discharge the top of the plate choke. The top
of the plate choke is the place that feeds the two tube
caps by way of parasitic chokes. There is enough
voltage stored up in these capacitors to create a high
enough current to stop you heart.”

I removed the top and bottom covers of the case. I disassembled the protective cage around the finals. *make sure you short the I removed the finals, making sure to note which final came from which socket. (I don’t know if this is necessary, but its probably a good idea to not mix them up and alter the adjustment of your radio). I then unscrewed the final board from the bottom and was able to pull it out just enough to remove the old resistors and replace them with the new ones. I did the same for the one resistor on the rectifier board. I then put it all back together and proceeded to enjoy my repaired rig.

See the following illustrations (you can click on any image for a large version):

1) This is the bottom of the radio after removing the case. The final board is in the upper left hand corner and the rectifier board is just to the right.

.

2)Here is a closeup of the final and rectifier boards.

.

3) Removing the plate caps and pulling out the 6146b finals.

.

4) The final board of the Kenwood TS-530s showing the newly replaced resistors. Note the location of cathode and screen resistors.

.

5) The rectifier board showing the single 470 ohm resistor.

I wanted to try the Echolink ham radio application out, and I was able to install the Windows client at home on a Windows 7 64-bit box. My workstation at the office runs Ubuntu Linux, 64-bit and I had a little trouble getting a client to work. Installing under Wine did not work for me, the program just froze after connecting.

Fortunately, I was able to get the QTel client working on my 64-bit Ubuntu Linux desktop, using getlibs to install all the dependencies. I connected to a local repeater KC2CIG-R in Staten Island, NY and had my first Echolink (Internet VoIP to 440MHz repeater) QSO with Carl, WA2IAF.

Here is how I got the QTel Echolink client working on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 64-bit

After this, the application should work on 64-bit Ubuntu or Debian with no issues. Getlibs is a very handy application for installing 32-bit apps on 64-bit.

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!

The book is organized in three parts. Part one begins with an imaginary story of a young woman involved in an automobile accident. She was recovering well in the hospital when suddenly her condition deteriorated. A globule of marrow fat from her shattered femur had lodged in a blood vessel feeding her pancreas. Deprived of its cellular needs of oxygen, the pancreas died. The young woman’s doctor sent a sample of her cells to a laboratory where the nuclei from some of the young woman’s cells were transferred into the inner mass of a fertilized egg whose nucleus had been removed (stem cells). Thus, the undifferentiated cell mass was now genetically identical to the young female accident victim. The rate of division, chemical and physical environment of the cell were carefully regulated to prevent them from growing out of control, or differentiating into a specific cell type other than pancreas cells. The end result is that a pancreas is grown and sent back to the hospital for transplantation into the young accident victim. Since the organ was genetically identical to the woman’s own, there was no risk of rejection from the woman’s body. The new pancreas would not be attacked by her immune system as a foreign body. No dangerous immune suppressing drugs would need to be administered. Thus, the young woman’s life was spared. The story illustrates one possible outcome of stem cell research – as well as some of the sensitivity around the issue including the use of a fertilized egg.

The book goes on to give an overview of stem cell history and a rudimentary introduction to the related biology. One of the first scientists to make observations related to stem cells was the Dutch scientist Abraham Trembley in the 1700’s. Trembley discovered the regeneration and growth features of fresh water hydras. He observed that when cut in half, the hydra would regenerate into two identical hydras. He also observed that the process of regeneration followed the same pattern seen during the gestation of animal embryos. The most fascinating achievement of Trembley involves an amazing feat of surgical skill – he managed to turn one hydra inside out, like a sock, and then using a spike of boar’s bristle he jammed this inverted hydra down the “throat” of a second hydra. Instead of the inside out hydra being digested, the two organisms fused together forming a single, thicker hydra. This paved the path for scientific speculation that perhaps people would one day benefit from the ability to replace dead, dying or damaged skin and organs. The key to the hydra “mutation” is that the two layers of cells, inner endoderm and outer ectoderm, act as stem cells. The cells perform functions such as digestion, but they do not lose the ability to regrow into new tissue or new types of cells. This ability is at the heart of what drives modern stem cell research.

This ability to become different types of cells is called plasticity. The most common designation of plasticity is called pluripotency. Pluripotency regards stem cells that have the ability to become many different types of adult differentiated cells. Totipotency refers to the most precious ability to become any type of cell. Multipotentcy refers to stem cells that are limited in what type of cell they can become. An example of these would be hematopoietic cells, which are found in the blood. These types of cells can develop into many types of blood cells, but not nerve cells or kidney cells or any other type of cells. The least of stem cells in regard to plasticity are unipotent cells. Examples of these are the cells in the epithelium or outer most tissue layer of our skin just below the dead squamous epithelial cells. Current technology allows sheets of skin to be grown from these cells to form transplantable sheets of skin. Future progress holds a great deal of hope for generating cartilage to treat injuries of the knee and elbow.

Totipotent stem cells can only be found in one place – the inner cell mass of a blastocyst. The blastocyst is a hollow mass of cells that is created when the initial female egg is fertilized. The inner mass is called the embryoblast and these undifferentiated cells are the source of the highly controversial embryonic stem cells. As soon as these cells are removed and placed in culture, they begin to change and lose their plasticity. They retain a high degree of plasticity, but the disruption causes them to change into pluripotent rather than totipotent cells.

There are adult stem cells which should not be confused with embryonic stem cells. Typically, these are multipotent or unipotent cells and include cells (listed in order of decreasing plasticity) in the brain, bone marrow, digestive system, internal vessels, liver, pancreas, muscle, and skin cells. These adult cells are less plastic and thus less versatile and useful.

Much of the modern research on embryonic stem cells is the result of developments in invitro fertilization, or IVF in the 1980’s. People such as Dr. Ariff Bongso of the National University Hospital of Singapore developed ways to grow embryos, improve their sustainability, and increase the odds they would survive the transplantation procedure. This resulted in the creation of lines of cells that could be grown into tissues at a later date for treating disease. The cells Bongso worked with grew up until the day 5 blastocyst stage at which point the inner mass of stem cells was removed. It was only a short time after this the cells would differentiate and lose plasticity. Additional research and developments were made by people such as Dr. James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin that allowed the cells to retain their plasticity in the lab. Thomson obtained his cells from the extra human embryos left over from IVF clinics. The IVF process involves the creation of several fertilized eggs, only one of which can be implanted in the patient’s womb. The surplus embryos are either kept frozen or discarded. Thomson was concerned that the research would generate controversy. He mandated that he would only use cells up to about day 5 of the blastocyst phase. He also wished to avoid coming close to the 14th day of embryonic development since this is when the first nerve cells start to differentiate and form the barest silhouette of a nervous network. He intentionally avoided this 14 day mark to avoid any argument that his work could cause an embryo the sensation of pain.

A substantial portion of the mid section of the book discusses the political processes and religious opposition to stem cell research. President George W. Bush announced his administration’s policy in 2001 would be to allow federal funds for research and experimentation on embryonic tissue to only the existing, roughly 60, cell lines – those already cultured and stored in laboratories. In California, they responded by passing a bill in September 2002 allowing therapeutic cloning, which Governor Gray Davis signed into law. Following this bill was the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, or Proposition 71, which made stem cell research a state constitutional right, allocated 3 Billion dollars over ten years, and made embryonic stem cell research a priority. In May 2005, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill allowing federal funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research. Republican senator Dr. Bill Frist broke from the pack to support the legislation, saying:

“Because they have a property called pluripotence — the ability to become almost any other type of body cell — embryonic stem cells could eventually help treat spinal cord injuries, mitigate diabetes, repair damaged organs, relieve pain and preserve lives. Even though cures may take years to develop, I believe that we cannot ignore the promise these cells hold. But I also believe that whatever research the federal government funds should follow clear ethical guidelines and use only embryos that would otherwise be destroyed.”

President Bush vetoed the Bill. The ban on federal funding was lifted by President Barack Obama in March, 2009.

Though Proposition 71 succeeded and established a board called the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), it is unclear if the grants will ever be issued. A lawsuit challenging California’s open meeting laws, and other suits from the People’s Advocate, National Tax Limitation Foundation, and California Family Bioethics Council attack the way CIRM is structured. The suits are tying any progress in knots.

The deadlock on embryonic cell research has led to developments in the use of adult stem cells as well as the use of “cord blood”. An entire industry has grown to salvage and store the blood remaining in the umbilical cord after birth. This blood is one of the richest sources of stem cells and is removed from the umbilical cord and the placenta right after the cord is cut.

The future holds great promise of treatment for cancer and a host of other diseases, regeneration of tissues and organs, grafting of spinal cords. There are many ethical and political hurdles that must be overcome in addition to the medical and scientific ones. Bellomo proposes that once feasible therapies are available for widespread disorders such as sickle-cell anemia, the demand for cures will exceed the opposition. The question then becomes where will these therapies emerge? He predicts such advances and demand within the next ten years.