Often, it seems that in interviews with my guests, we do not cover all of the bases in the first hour.  It was only after the end of the first hour with Hans Summers, G0UPL that he mentioned the work he is doing with high altitude balloons.  Since I was still recording, I added this segment to this week’s podcast.  Hans captured my imagination and filled it with new possibilities. 

​We have had other balloonists on the QSO Today podcast including Keith Kaiser, WA0TJT, in Episode 82, who uses the large latex weather balloons which require large amounts of helium to take these balloons in the stratosphere where they break and fall back to Earth.  The cost of these launches can exceed one-thousand US dollars.  These, often one-day high altitude events, involve chasing the balloon to the place where the payload eventually lands by parachute. ​
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​Hans shared with me another idea.  What if you could make the payload so small and so light that you could use the Mylar party balloons sold in gift stores to do a high altitude balloon launch that stays in the sky for weeks, traveling around the world?  Furthermore, rather than using a VHF radio, what if you used a HF transmitter/beacon that leverages the world wide amateur radio network of WSPRnet receivers to track the balloon location and altitude to display on a website for the balloon launch?   This is exactly what Hans is doing with VE3KCL in his balloon launches.  Hans has leveraged the WSPRnet network to track these high altitude world traveling amateur radio balloons.

​One of the greatest aspects of our amateur radio hobby is our ability to make friends across the world around our common interest of amateur radio and electronics. This has been pointed out in many of the QSO Today episodes by my guests, that we are a “fraternity” (includes YLs and XYLs) with a shared interest in all things radio. As we travel around the World, some of us will knock on the doors of homes and apartments where we see ham radio antennas just to meet another ham radio operator. Often these meetings result in lifelong friendships. I still stop and introduce myself on my travels around Israel when I see a ham radio antenna. These days, I do not see many. In fact I made a mental note of an inverted V that I saw on the side of the road in my travels last week. I need to stop there on my next pass. “Do you have a ham radio operator in there?” I say on the intercom. “I am Eric, 4Z1UG. Can I meet you and say hello?” Most of the time, the answer is a resounding “YES”. 
 
It is with this in mind that my meeting with Eddie Leighton, ZS6BNE, my guest in Episode 28 of the QSO Today Podcast, was like the meeting of two old friends last month when I was visiting South Africa with my wife, Karen. Our friends in Johannesburg, where we stayed, were only too delighted to allow me to invite Eddie to their home so we could meet in person, catch up on ham radio, and to operate Eddie’s RaDAR (rapid deployment amateur radio) rig on the outside patio. I was grateful that Eddie agreed to drive almost three-hundred kilometers to meet with me from his home QTH in Lichtenburg. It was a great afternoon and I hope that I will meet Eddie again on our ham radio travels.

​This episode departs from my normal format as the audio is the conversation and demonstration of Eddie’s “minimalist” RaDAR backpack. This tiny but simple system allowed us to make an 800 kilometer SSB QSO with another ham in South Africa using five watts and a 40 meter end-fed wire. I picked up a Zoom H5 audio recorder, thanks to your support, and used it for the first time to record this “eyeball” QSO. I hope that you enjoy it as much as we did. 

​Some of my earliest ham radio memories were of a group of hams in the Newport Amateur Radio Society who would spend their Saturdays at the electronic surplus stores of the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. In the 1970s there was a lot of military surplus electronic gear that could be purchased by the pound if you were willing to haul it away. I remember these hams stripping this gear down for its modules, relays, panel displays and switches that would cost a king’s fortune if purchased from an electronic store. These homebrew projects were not only functional but beautiful to look at in their custom cabinets and rack panels.

I remember Leroy, W6SYC, had a four channel Motorola tube station in a Motorola “J” cabinet where he controlled the channels with a touch-tone pad inside the cabinet next to a Western Electric 247B DTMF decoder chassis. This was his primary two meter base station and it was beautiful to look at and of course it sounded great on the air.

These are the memories that stirred in me during my conversation with Jim Veatch, WA2EUJ, who is my guest this week on the QSO Today Podcast. Jim is a homebrewer who uses what he has on hand, often from surplus gear, to build his projects. As a three time winner of the ARRL Homebrew Challenge, Jim’s solutions are not only clever, but the end products are beautiful in form and design. I hear some of ham radio’s leaders lament the loss of the homebrewing art. They may be right in terms of the homebrew single tube Novice rigs that everyone started with 60 years ago; however, it seems that homebrewing has morphed with the times as the World War Two surplus parts are less available. Electronic parts and kit companies are proliferating on the Internet with no shortage of low cost opportunities to obtain parts to build almost anything. These are very exciting times to be a homebrewer as you will hear on my QSO Today with Jim. 

I was a big podcast fan before I started creating the QSO Today podcast. I love “on demand” Internet audio programs that are now available as podcasts on just about any subject. The time flies by when I am stuck in traffic while listening to my favorite podcasts and I don’t really care how long I have to sit in traffic, I just go with the flow. Combined with the WAZE application, my stress from driving just melts away. What I most appreciate about these programs are the stories that people tell which help us all realize how much we have in common, how we are connected to one another and how important it is to help one another through the trial and tribulations of life.

My guest this week is Frank Donovan, W3LPL, who has a great ham radio story to tell as you will hear in episode 122. As a ham for over 50 years, Frank’s story is based on the support of his Elmers and amateur radio clubs. When a tornado went through his super station antenna field last June, a freak of nature, it was through his relationships with his ham community that he was able to quickly rebuild his broken antenna farm to be on the air before the Fall contests. This is a great story and an example of the kind of podcast stories that I like to listen to every week. What I discover from doing these interviews is that we all have stories to tell that fascinate and interest others.