Kirt S. Cathey

The New Shack

This weekend has been an exercise in downsizing my home office into something more manageable in limited space that life in Japan requires. After a bunch of scratching my head and deep thought on the subject, have decided to eliminate a lot of old electronics accumulated after nine years of life here. First, get rid of the old dual 450 MHz server that I shipped from Guam when we moved in July of 2000. That particular item has been a color laser computer stand for the past year - and did not use it for five years before that. Then the numerous cellular phones that I have adopted and so coldly abandoned for the next great fad. Then the Handspring, Palms, and Sony Cleo that at one point I clinched to for information has long been laid to rest for the smart phones. The first and greatest of which I owned, the Nokia e61 that after two years of use, was replaced with an iPhone this time last year.

Then there are the little sniffer gadgets, transmitters/bugs, RFID experimental stuff, the medium collection of electronic components, and other stuff that has to be organized…. along with the camera equipment.
After all that is done, then the books. The answer to that is another shelf and not a hard one to fix. You get the picture…. I am now downsizing and growing up! You can only have so much stuff! As shown in the picture, I now have everything I need organized in my own little corner, and now have to abide by the new rule that dictates nothing gets added to the collection until something is removed.
After cleaning up over the weekend, on Sunday I managed to pickup several slow scan television (SSTV) transmissions. This is an interesting way to exchange QSO cards. Going through the DX Clusters, have found a couple niches on the spectrum to pickup some of these images - albeit, not all are received in high resolution.

Apple Rotting?

While in the mountains over the weekend, during a short discussion with a hiking buddy, we were talking about trips to the Apple store which got me to thinking about how many times I have recently had to carry my Mac in for something to be replaced. About six years ago when I went back to using Apple equipment, I purchased an iBook (white was the only color back then) and soon after purchased a PowerBook, then about a year later a Quad G4 PowerMac. All three of these computers never found their way back to the Apple Store - not one problem to this day. My wife still uses the PowerBook, my daughters still use the iBook, and the PowerMac was sold off at the end of a project.

 In 2005 I purchased a 15″ MacBook Pro. One of the first, but not the very first…. learned long ago to stay away from the too bleeding edge. That first MBP found it’s way back into the Apple Store four times during the two years that I owned it. First, the battery recall, then the bending on the case that covers the monitor, then the hooking system that locks the cover shut when the laptop is closed, which ended in another trip to change out the whole top and bottom aluminum casing/cover.

 I replaced that with a nice 17″ MBP with the high resolution LED screen about one year ago. I took the computer into the Apple Store about six months ago due to some bending on the bottom casing. Apple replaced the bottom (keyboard side) aluminum casing.

 Today I will be taking this into the Apple Store due to a problem with the power supply. I do not know if this is another mass recall, but I do see one trend - I am getting very poor uptime performance from a computer system. It certainly is not the nine nines performance that would be expected. All this means is that my system is down for one to three days every six months!

 There is another thing to be inferred from this experience. The quality system that monitored systems before delivery when Apple used PowerPC processors was far better than whatever quality system they put in place when adopting Intel chips. I was one of the people that got excited when Apple implemented Intel chips, despite having invested in PowerPC systems, however, I can see a clear change in quality.

 One last word…. recent trips to the Genius Bar at Apple Stores also reveal this further. In Tokyo, Japan, where there are two Apple Stores to choose from, the average wait for service is from three hours to one day! We know the number of Apple users have increased, but not quite at the rate that the so-called genius’ are being engaged by users with broken systems.

I know some fanboys are going to bash me for this one, but facts are facts. I too am a fanboy - OS X rocks, the development framework is awesome, but while the hardware is cool, it offers less than mediocre performance.

RSA Presentation Complete, Extra Exam Coming Up In August

Yesterday afternoon I finally completed the English version of the wireless security presentation that I have been drafting for the upcoming RSA conference in June. Now all I have to do is put this into Japanese, which I will complete today. The research that went into this work extends to about a year back, when I was developing, designing, and basically trying to break as many proximity RFID systems as anybody would allow…. there are legal implications and the proper sign-offs are required when you do this kind of thing.
Yesterday alone, Akismet filtered out 12 spam comments that I did not have to deal with. This is certainly a reward for the setup process.
I was looking through the ARRL web site yesterday and noticed that there is an amateur radio exam scheduled for August 1st at the YCAC - walk-ins allowed. I’ve decided to target that exam opportunity to sit for the Extra examination, then probably go ahead and sit for the GROL (elements 1, 3, and 5) right after that. The only catch with the GROL exam is that I cannot find a place to take the examination. If anybody has any experience taking this exam in Japan, please comment.

Akismet - Breathes New Life Into Having a Blog

For the past couple months, since setting up this new(er) blog, I have been sifting through email after email to make sure that I did not allow a spammer to slip in an approved comment on one of my blog entries. A couple years ago I used Akismet but still had a bit of spam coming through, but last week I enabled Akismet for this blog. I must say that the filtering technology has come a long way… have not had a spam comment to check since!

Over the weekend I put the G5RV across the roof of my house with somewhat mixed results, but overall, an improvement to what I had before. Need to buy a new house in the country on a mountain top.

Spammers Die!

Have recently had an email exchange with a Japanese guy that I met on Guam several years ago when I was living there right after college. This person has grown a bit older, married, and has kids. I asked him what he was doing for a living in my first email a couple of weeks ago and he said “marketing” and “market research”. Well, I got him on the phone yesterday evening and we had a short discussion - a discussion that was incredibly shortened when I found out what he did.
It turns out that he works for a company that does cell phone spam. Hmmm…. I thought that this was illegal? ‘So how are they doing this?’, I wondered. After a bit of research, which is going to turn into much more research, I have found that there are STILL loopholes in the law that still make this possible. One of the laws that enables this is the recently enacted Privacy Law…… more to come on this subject as more facts are revealed.

Another Monday….

I spent all weekend trudging around in the Okutama mountains in the rain only to start this week with a beautiful and sunny Monday! Well, it’s at least that.
This past weekend was a bit of a treat while doing some mountain-topping radio scanning. This time I did not take a big camera, but a little radio, which proved to be just as time-consuming when I got settled at the camp sites. I lugged a tent up the mountains, as I always do, but never had to use. In fact, I don’t think I’ll take my full tent gear to Okutama any more, since all the emergency shelters are so nice! From now on will just take a light tarp to build an emergency lean-to or tent when I have to have one.
But now that I’d like a full 5 watts of transmit from my little vx-7, I need to look into a light rechargable 12V battery pack if such a thing exists… and a bigger backpack. I have a 35 liter that I pack to explosive limits when I go for two or three days outings, so think I will look at an 85 liter for my next camping purchase in order to fit a battery pack, some kind of mini solar panel, and all the other essentials. The reception from the top of the mountains is addicting though. When I came home last night and was driving in the car with the magnetic mount antenna, it was depressing compared to how just about every frequency I dialled up on the mountain had some kind of activity.
I started by walking at about 12:15 p.m. from Okutama Station and heading for MutsuIshi, then headed toward Takanosu (Hawk’s Nest) Mountain. I arrived at the Takanosu Emergency Shelter on the west side of Takanosu Mountain at about 6:00 p.m. A very nice shelter that has delicious spring water near-by. The mountains up in that area are clear of snow and the days are very Springy, but the nights are still cold, so should still pack a winter-rated sleeping bag.
The next trip I am planning will be up in the Chichibu region.

NH2GX - My New Name…

Was just noticing the date of my last blog post and reflected on how much as happened since then. Golden Week for starters, during which I took the technician and general amateur ham radio examinations in one sitting. A great experience and a very good review of some old knowledge that I am starting to use more and more these days. Have been piecing together a presentation for the upcoming RSA 2009 Conference in Japan - I’m covering wireless security. Not just WLAN, but bluetooth, cellular, and RFID as well.

Cool call sign, eh? Well after taking the exam about ten days ago, a friend of mine noticed that my call sign had been issued. It had to happen between about 7:30 p.m. last night and this morning. Looking forward to being able to transmit…. so now onto the Japanese call sign application.

Climbing into Okutama this weekend. Plan on hitting the trail late tomorrow afternoon and getting to the top of TakanoSu for dinner and relaxation, then onto Kumotoriyama (again) on Saturday.

Hamming and Rigging

We’ve got the DX bug…. but are stuck waiting on a few things. All the rigs are set for myself and a friend. The friend went into the ham shop this past Saturday to buy a nice antenna for all the HF frequencies and 50 MHz, intending to at least get all of his scanning equipment setup to at least hear more than he has in the past. After almost three hours in the ham shop in Yokohama, we walked out of there with over $2,000 worth of gear. He picked up an IC-7400 while there, then of course, had to grab a power supply, extra SWR meter, cables, and the antenna he originally set out to buy.
Now he’s waiting to get his Japan station license, but wants to sit for the Extra examination this Sunday before going through the application process. At the same time, I will sit for the General exam, then apply for the Japan station licenses. We are all set in gear, now we need to legalize so we can transmit.
If you are looking for a cheap CI-V interface for an Icom radio, go to Sengoku in Akihabara and pickup a UP-12C cellular phone to computer interface cable for 570 yen, then pickup a 3.5 monorail plug for 40 yen right next door. Cut off the cell phone adapter end and splice. Solder the black wire and shielding wire together, then solder the green and white (send, receive) wires together. Then solder the shielding and black combined leads to the grounding outside part of the 3.5 connecter, and solder the green and white leads to the center 3.5 connector. Walla! A 610 yen CI-V interface. If you are using an IC-7000, do not worry about the PTT interface, since Ham Radio Deluxe will take care of that for you. If you cannot get to Akihabara or Sengoku, order on online here.
After sitting for the exam this Sunday, I’m going to head out to Okutama for a couple days of mountain climbing, serenity, exercise, and listening to clear signals with great line-of-site for the VHF bands.

Weekend Antenna Project

As a prelude to the upcoming amateur radio license exam that i will be sitting for at the first of May, I spent a few hours late last week shopping for some ham radio equipment - a good transceiver, tuner, and antennas to cover most of the interesting stuff out there. Since the next three weeks will be limited to scanning and listening, I decided to focus on the antennas for now and spend some time evaluating my house for possible dipolar wire antenna setups. I must say that when I got home with all the gear, it was much harder than what i had envisioned in my mind while pulling items off the shelf at the local ham shop.
This brings up a good plug opportunity - while reading through CQ Ham on the train last week I noticed a ham shop in Yokohama called ‘Hamers‘. While not having the broadest selection of radios available, they have all the best stuff for just about any category of radio and a lot of antenna gear. The service was very warm and one of the sales persons even spoke fairly fluent English. I picked up the IC-7000 and am still learning how to use it…. as a scanner still for a couple weeks.

This radio is a nice little portable rig. It can be used as a mobile device or for the base station rig - especially if you’re a budding beginner as I am. Plenty enough functionality to keep me learning over the next couple weeks until I pass the license examinations. Also, it sports a built-in SWR meter so that I can prevent a blow-out when I finally do start transmitting in the lower bands. If any body knows of a good mod that will give me the US bands, please send an email or comment with a link. I’ve looked at a couple of the mods available on the internet and it appears that most people only want to mod this thing so that they can watch television through the control panel. This feature is standard in the Japanese version. Of course, not that I would mod this radio while in Japan - only when I am in the US.
I also picked up a Comet 70 cm and 2 meter dual-band antenna. Using the rail mount that I was using for satellite television (we converted to fiber television a few months ago), I managed to mount this from a PVC extension that put the rig well above the surrounding power lines. I must say, a little antenna goes a long way.

When I was sporting my VX-7 with the stock antenna, I thought that as a consequence of where I lived, that I would never be able to pickup any more signals - NOT! I can’t wait to run out and purchase or put together a patch cable so i can plug these antennas into my VX-7 too. Upon powering up my IC-7000 with this Comet antenna, I could hear conversations and repeater broadcasts that were mere scratches or did not even register previously. Interestingly enough, I occasionally receive a strong signal on 430.960 MHz that is a broadcast from Southern California. I know that it is something coming across on a repeater, but would like to figure out if it is closed or not.
The next part of this weekend project is the low bands 2 to 50 MHz. I picked up a G5RV packaged solution produced by MFJ Electronics. When I purchased the rig I ‘imagined’ my house was big enough to mount this thing on! Heh, my property is not even big enough to mount half of this rig on. So I went into Akihabara to Fuji Musen - the worst, cold customer service as expected; but they got a lot of variety so i put up with it, speak loud and make it so they want to help me and send me out the door. At Fuji Musen I picked up another version of the dipolar wire antenna called the BB6W by Diamond.

When I went to mount this thing to the top portion of the second floor patio at my house, that was when i learned that my house is not even 6.3 meters wide! So I put together some laundry poles extended to 4 meters, then extended the wire diagonally down to another mount at a little less than a 45 degree angle. On the low end, this antenna picks up everything from 0.1 through 18 MHz, then either the antenna drops off around 21 MHz or there just were no signals at the time. I am thinking the later since it will pick up what’s available on the 30 MHz band and I was even getting signals on the 6 meter band, although weak. Before going too much further with this part of the project, I want to get another pole installed to bring the lower part of the antenna up a bit more.
A busy weekend getting all this done between studying for the FCC exam, taking the kids to the pool, dying Easter eggs, doing an Easter egg hunt, playing outside with the kids, working out, and running some shopping errands…. really wish the weekends were longer, but like my work too.

Hump Day…. Looking To Easter Sunday

It’s been a few weeks since the last blog entry, so I thought now would be just as good a time as any to put a few thoughts into prose. Yesterday I was at the Yodobashi Camera in Yokohama and saw that they had 128GB solid state 2.5″ hard disks on sale for 25,000 yen! Sounds like a good deal to me, so will probably pick one up tomorrow and try to put it into the Sony Vaio P series. I have already Googled to see if anybody has plucked the hard disk (land lived to tell about it) out of these little machines. I thought the machine that I owned had a solid state drive, but it turns out to be a regular hard disk… better read the fine print better next time! Those drives that are on sale at Yodobashi are 170 mb/sec read, which is slower than the faster 250 mb/sec drives on display for much more, but at that rate, it is still a much quicker read than a conventional hard disk. The writes, however, are much slower in any case. I did pick up the LAN and video adapter for the Sony P and hooked it into a bigger monitor yesterday. I must say that with that adapter for desk work and the small size for putting things down and checking emails while on the go, this machine can become the main system fairly easily. Next week will start looking for a nice 21″ or 19″ monitor to put in the home office for this machine.
Vacation on Guam a couple of weeks ago was a bag of fun, and also an eye-opener to the fact that some things never change in a wannabe banana republic. The roads still have pot holes from where repair had taken place, the power still goes out (but not as regularly), the access to technology is still so limited and probably always will be. After living in Japan this long, I don’t think I can go back to living somewhere that I cannot have immediate access to the latest and greatest gadgets, parts, and general technology.
Well, that’s all for right now. Will keep you updated on the hard disk exchange on the Sony P series.
2009/4/13 Update - Turns out that the hard disk in the Sony P Series is 1.8″ instead of 2.5″ as described here. Forgot the exact part number to lookup the data sheet, but have already seen it. Have to wait another 6 months to a year until Yodo and Bic start selling a Ziff connection 1.8″ drive.