N9DD's Web Page QRP CW Ham Radio

Amateur Radio Station N9DD South Bend, Indiana

Still radio crazy after all these years...

Tom Frisz
4148 Spring Hill Ct.
South Bend, IN 46628
USA

St. Joseph County
Grid EN61ur

N9DD@comcast.net

"Elmer"
Original artwork by Merrils Scheffer N6PON
The Logo of the Tech Bench Elmers Amateur Radio Society ©1992

FISTS - 11672

QRP ARCI - 8081
- - -
10-X - 41235
SKCC - 2634
NorCal QRP - 342
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QSL Direct, via Bureau, eQSL, or
LoTW (preferred)

N9DD Home	N9DD Biography	My Station	Radio Restorations	QSL Card Gallery
I'm a runner!	Frisz Family History	South Bend Weather	Online Logbook	Guestbook

New! Check out my Non-Directional Beacon Page!

Welcome!

I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It might have been one night while twiddling the dial on the old GE clock radio my parents kept on the kitchen counter. Maybe it was when I got a pair of walkie-talkies as a gift and discovered that there were "other" people out there I could communicate with besides my friend with the other unit. Maybe it was while reading the pages of Popular Electronics. It was probably a done deal when my dad and I finished a Knight Kit Star Roamer and I discovered the joys of listening to the world on shortwave. Yep, I'm radio crazy, and there seems to be no hope for a cure...

It has been quite a ride - from radio-dazed young teen, through electronics school, a career in electronics, and now, a crusty middle ager still calling "CQ" and waiting in anticipation for an answer. The radio hobby has been good to me.

I started these pages a long time ago. I wanted to teach myself a little HTML and see what this "web" stuff was about. My pages have been through a few changes. What you see now is the latest reincarnation, brought about by a renewed enjoyment of ham radio with a new rig. Take a look around. Drop me an email or leave a message on the guest book. I'd love to hear from visitors!

The Latest Happenings at Amateur Radio Station N9DD...

Chasing States - The ARRL "Triple Play Award"

I've had a great time on the radio the last couple months. I've gotten into several contests, joined the Society of Midwest Contesters, and have been having great fun chasing the ARRL's new Triple Play Award. In order to get the award, you have to confirm via Logbook of the World, QSOs with all 50 states using CW, Phone, and Digital modes - a total of 150 contacts. Only contacts on or after January 1, 2009 count.

It was easy getting the digital contacts. I entered the RTTY Roundup the first week of the year. RTTY operators are reknown for being enthusiastic users of LoTW. Within minutes of submitting my contest loggings to the LoTW page I had a couple hundred confirmations! The next weekend I entered the NA QSO Party on CW, and then the NA QSO Party on phone and picked up most of the rest of the QSLs I needed. For the remaining needed stations I used the K3UK LoTW sked page.

The result? Triple Play Award #86! Here's the listing of confirmed QSOs from the ARRL LoTW Awards page and a few pictures of some of the great, helpful hams I met along the way:


Jose N1BAA	Dwayne WY7FD	Nels W0TUP
Al NH7O	Tony N0NI	Norm K1DG
Bryce K7UA	Gene KB7Q	David K2DBK
Andy K3UK	Cris GM4FAM	Norm W4QN

QSOs with Hell

No, I haven't been making radio contacts with the devil. I've been playing with an intruiging mode known as "Feld Hellschreiber," "Feld Hell," or just plain "Hell." It is a digital mode that has its roots in 1930's German technology. It was invented by Rudolph Hell, who patented this early method of facsimile in 1929. Hellschreiber was the first successful direct printing text transmission system, and was very popular at a time when teleprinters were complex and expensive, because the Hell receiving mechanism had only two moving parts. At first the Hellschreiber was mostly used for land-line press services. During WWII, Hellschreiber was widely used for field portable military communications, for which it proved to be very suitable because the equipment was simple and robust.

Feld Hell is different from other digital modes I've tried. What you see on your screen is an image of the characters being sent by the other station. They are "painted" across your screen in double rows. You can't click on a call or name and have your logger load it, you'll have to type the info in yourself. Still there are lots of advantages to this mode. First, it is very easy on the rig! The duty cycle is very low. Unlike PSK or RTTY, you aren't sending a constant carrier. It is more like sending 130 WPM CW.

There are plenty of stations using Feld Hell. I've already worked quite a few states. There are many DX stations using the mode as well. The mode has its own club, the Feld Hell Club which offers membership numbers, awards and lots of interesting reading on their web pages.

I have a feeling I'll be having a lot of Hellacious QSOs in the coming months!

The LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon - I did it, again and again and again and again!

I ran a lot back in the early and mid-80s, but family commitments and other interests interfered and my running became nothing more than occasional attempts to get back in shape that rarely lasted more than a week or two.

In the Spring of 2002 I finally started running consistently again. I built my miles, started running races, and on October 12, 2003 ran and finished the Chicago Marathon. What an awesome experience!

Once just wasn't enough. I knew I could do better. I learned all I could about training. I kept at it and ran again in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. In 2008, I decided to take a break but I hope to be back in 2009 and qualify for the Boston Marathon. Check out my Running & Fitness page where you can see race reports, training run highlights and more.

New! Check out my new running Blog at Blogspot.com!

Antique Radio Restorations

Since my early years as a teen, I've loved everything about radio. I've been a ham radio operator since 1972. In the last year or two, I've started a new facet of the radio hobby and have been buying and restoring old radios. There's nothing like the sight, smell, and sound of an old tube radio. As they sometimes say "Real Radios Glow in the Dark."

You can see pictures of my radio projects on my Radio Projects Page. I've started adding articles describing the radios and their restoration. Check back often!

Listen to Old Time Radio Shows!

Old Time Radio Catalog (OTRCAT.com) is dedicated to the preservation of the golden era of radio (old time radio). You can hear thousands of old time radio episodes online and can stream or download full episodes in Mp3 format. Detailed descriptions of the performers and series broadcast in the era (1920's - 1959) are available to read. In the 'daily downloads', there are the broadcasts of the day throughout history (from the last 50-70+ years). More information about old time radio...

Web Page Building

There are countless great resources on the WWW for anyone wanting to make their own web pages. I started out using John C. Gilson's WWW course on HTML. He suggests using a text editor such as Microsoft's Notepad to write your page. Sure, there are lots of programs to help automate the task of web page building, but I like to have control over all the details on my pages. I get bothered when I use a HTML design program and it throws in all kind of coding that I don't understand.

I also have found that by running my pages on HTML code checkers I can quickly fix errors on my pages and make them work better with different browsers. You can learn a lot by looking at the error reports. Here is a checker that I've been using lately:http://www.netmechanic.com

For a list of Web Page Building resources that I've used, click here. If you want to see a GREAT example of a Ham Radio web page, check out my good friend Mike's page. He's WB9DLC and his showpiece web site is at WB9DLC.com. (Yes, I blatantly copied his menu bar for my pages.)

Jargon Alert!

Jargon Alert! Confused? My pages contain a lot of words and abbreviations that are commonly known to Amateur Radio operators, but not to the general public. To help, I've compiled a list of some of the terms used with brief layman's explanations for each. click here for help.

The Good Old Days

My Novice Rig At the Dayton Hamvention a few years ago, I purchased a copy of Log-EQF, a computer logging program to keep track of my ham radio contacts. It was my first taste of computerized logging. I started out transferring QSOs from my paper log book to the electronic one for the previous year or two, but then decided to get out my old log books and start from day one. I found the experience of reliving those early days in the hobby rather moving. After I was done entering all 780 or so of my novice QSOs from over 26 years before, I felt the need to share the experience with my QRP friends on the Internet QRP mailing list and posted a message to the group on QRP-L. You can see my posting by clicking here

Shortwave QSL Card Gallery

Please check out my Short Wave QSL Card Gallery. I've uploaded all the images from my shortwave broadcast QSL card collection. The cards are from my early radio hobby days back in the late 60's and early 70's before I got into Ham Radio. Click on the image of the Radio Finland QSL card on the left to get started. I hope you enjoy seeing my collection!

The Frisz Family History

My ancestors came to the United States from Northeastern France in the 1840's. My Dad (also named Tom) has put thousands of hours into genealogy research on our family. To visit the Family Tree Maker site for our family's history, click here or on the picture to the right.

CQ CQ CQ DE N9DD N9DD N9DD K

(Yes, really !!)