The National Silent Key Archive™

Since 2011, the National Silent Key Archive has been online and accepting Silent Key memorials, obituaries, and photographs. The Archive is located at http://www.silentkeyhq.com

All visitors are welcome.

Michael Carroll - N4MC
Founder - The National Silent Key Archive

My Unique Call Lookup™

As it goes, no software is ever finished and there is always an opportunity for tweaking, expanding, and improving. I spent quite a bit of time recently improving my Unique Call Lookup™ at Vanity HQ. Some of the improvements are visible on its web page. Others, however, are server-side modifications which decrease the time it takes to look up a desired call sign.

The overall layout and functionality has not changed for those of you already familiar with my one-of-a-kind lookup program. Like most other call sign lookup tools, just enter your desired call sign, and then click a button. It couldn't be easier. Unlike all other call sign lookup tools, my Unique Call Lookup™ provides a historical trail of call sign ownership, which can be quite complicated and detailed. For example, look up K3DJ, and you will see a tangled mess of call sign transfers that only a computer could keep up with.

In addition to providing a historical trail of call sign ownership, my Unique Call Lookup™ also integrates Silent Key data into the search results, which is presented in a seamless, chronological order. My Unique Call Lookup™ is comprised of three areas:

• A heading, which also includes 8 randomly chosen photos of Silent Keys in my database, with each photo being a clickable link which performs a lookup on that individual.
• The historical listing of your searched call sign.
• Any pertinent Silent Keys that are related to your searched call sign.

Any call sign displayed in the search results that was not your desired call sign is presented as a link, which provides easy access to look up subsequent call signs. This is a sample shot:

Sample Search Results

One of the recent modifications, which is visible on the page, is the grouping of the quarterly databases that begin in 2007. Since 2007, I have been making 4 databases per year, one for each calendar quarter, which provide a finer granularity for those interested in tracking call sign changes.

As time passed, these quarterly updates began to accumulate, and in some cases, extended the physical length of the search results considerably. This wasn't a huge issue now, but it would grow into one as more time passed. For convenience, I added two new buttons, "Open All", and "Close All", which, when clicked, will either open or close all the database years beginning with 2007.

Collapsed 4-Part Database Years

Additionally, each "yyyy-1Q" section is individually clickable to open or close just that one year.

In the behind the scene arena, I spent a good deal of time indexing the numerous databases. The old method was to search through an entire database, which generally took about 20-25 hits before locating the desired call sign. My new method jumps to the appropriate "A", "K", "N", or "W" section of a database using file offsets. This technique reduces the number of hits per database by about half, which means faster searches. Although the size of the historical databases do not change from year to year, the quantity of databases does.

For every call sign search performed, over 34,000,000 call sign records are searched. Many databases are search multiple times in cases when a ham has a previous call sign. With such a large amount of data, it is crucial to keep search time at a minimum. I hope this database indexing technique will prevent accumulating databases from slowing down call sign searches.

Silent Keys

Over the past two years, I have been collecting and organizing Silent Key information, biographies, and photos. Needless to say, this task is huge. It could easily be a full-time job for a team of dedicated individuals. The ARRL sends me the Silent Key information that is sent to their office from around the country, and which is published monthly in QST magazine. This information consists of the basics; call sign, name, city, and state of each Silent Key.

Having "just the facts" about a Silent Key is adequate at best. Compare the following snapshots of Silent Key listings. The first displays just the basic information as delivered by the ARRL, and the others display the same basic information with the addition of birth and death years, a biography, and up to 3 photos.

Silent Key listing that shows the basic information as sent by the ARRL.

A more complete Silent Key listing that was entered by me, and taken from an online obituary.

Another example of a complete Silent Key listing that gives readers an idea of the ham's life.

I think you can plainly see that the third snapshot is a real nice representation of W4AD, and it gives readers a sense of who the man was. This detailed listing allows readers to connect with and know the ham. I like it. My Silent Key database is home to over 17,500 hams. There is always room for one more, though.

As already stated, locating Silent Key (SK) information is a huge task that is well beyond the effort of a single individual. So why do I do it?

When I first began collecting and publishing SK information, it was a technical challenge that I needed to conquer. As time progressed and the challenge was conquered, I realized that every Silent Key was a person who had a family, a job, hobbies, and who laughed and cried just like you and I. I also saw that, with relative ease, how a ham can pass away with barely an acknowledgement of his life. Because of the vanity call sign program, a deceased ham's call sign is sometimes thought of in terms how long one must wait in order to apply for it. In essence, a Silent Key's life has been reduced to the value of his call sign with no regard for the person.

There are many websites that have Silent Key pages, or Silent Key memorials, and many clubs, organizations, and individuals do an outstanding job documenting their deceased ham friends and family. I wish there were more, however. I also wish that those of us who want to document our Silent Key brethren could organize ourselves in such a way that pools our resources in order to divide and conquer this enormous and solemn task. Recording our departed brethren's lives should not be a competition. It should be and needs to be a cooperative effort by those who are called to perform this honorable task.

In order to streamline the task of entering Silent Key information, I wrote a Windows program to assist me. This program has one function, and it is laid out accordingly. It takes but a few minutes to create a new Silent Key listing, and even less to edit an existing listing. Birth years are automatically pulled from a 1993 database that lists birth years for everyone in that database. Addresses are also automatically pulled from a database, beginning with the most recent FCC database, and then working back in time until a correct match is found. Many tasks are automated, but some do require me to choose the correct data.

N4MC's Silent Key Manager

The photos, by the way, are automatically positioned inside the biographical text by my Silent Key Manager program, and I do not have to fiddle with positioning pictures or moving text around for appearance sake. This task is done automatically, which saves time, and also presents a more uniform look to the Silent Key listings. The highlighting of key words in the biographical text is also done automatically.

QST...QST...QST... The one thing that would help me the most is whenever you learn that a ham in your circle has passed away, to send me up to 3 photos and biographical information about the Silent Key. Be sure to include the SK's full name and call sign. I know you already have club meeting and field day photos somewhere in the cloud, so send them my way. If you already have a web page dedicated Silent Keys, please send me its URL. I am already set up to receive an email alert whenever a Silent Key's obituary hits the Internet. Many Silent Key obituaries do not list a ham's call sign, but using my nifty Silent Key Manager program, I can easily find their call sign.

And so, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

73,

Michael - N4MC

n 4 m c   a t   v a n i t y h q   d o t    c o m

More Intrusive Government - More Control - Little By Little

Keep your eye on Senate bill 510, "The Food Modernization Act." Follow it here.

Funny thing... This bill came out of committee exactly one year ago, and laid dormant. Now, the Senate is calling for an immediate vote on the bill. Why is this?

Here's a thought: Americans who have guns are probably not ready and willing to give up their guns. Perhaps they would, however, be willing to trade their guns for food. If the government controls all aspects of food production, distribution, and sale, then the government will have the ability to cut off food supplies, hoping folks will give up their guns. Does this sound crazy?

Americans without guns would not be able to organize a well-formed militia.

I'm Not the Only One

Click here to read more...
Fasten your seatbelts!

From the "Fasten Your Seatbelts" article:

A comparison of a number of major commodities, their prices today versus a year ago is as follows:  (http://money.cnn.com/data/commodities/)

                              Nov 2010              Nov 2009     Increase
Oil (light crude)           $86.43 @ barrel          $73.55       17.5%
Corn (Dec Contract)           5.93 @ bushel            3.43       72.3%
Soybeans (Jan Contract)      12.69                     9.00       41.0%
Sugar (March Contract)       31.28                    15.77       98.3%
Copper                        3.91 @ lb                2.89       35.3%
Gold                      1,337.60 @ oz            1,081.00       23.7%

Look at the Wall

Many of us are too often preoccupied with solving the problems of life, or working toward achieving a dream. Others, are preoccupied with trivial, time wasting stuff. How many times have I, and you, seen people playing with their cell phones? They are unable to view the device as a communications tool, and see it more like a pastime or worthwhile activity. Once again, I don't get it.

Another $600,000,000,000 will be injected into our money supply in the coming months. What you will see happen, as has been happening, is the stock market will bubble up into another profit frenzy while the price of commodities (they stuff people need and use for subsistence) will continue to increase.

So why are the prices of commodities increasing? Investors want a place for their money that is safe, but yet offers a worthwhile investment return called interest. Since the value of the dollar is falling due to increased printing of money, the yield, or interest paid to investors, of U.S. treasuries (bonds) remains low, and quite frankly, riskier by the day. Taking all this into consideration, investors are selling their treasuries and buying commodities. With increased commodity buying, their prices go up. When commodities go up, we all pay more for food. By the way, food and energy are not included in the government's inflation calculations. This is why we are fooled into believing that inflation remains low. Food inflation is actually running over 6% at this moment, and projected to hit 10% by Spring.

Here are some 3-year charts that show how the prices of commodities have been rising. It takes about three months for these price changes to reach the super markets. Stock up now, because food will cost more, a lot more, and soon.

 

As you can see, the prices of commodities are approaching, or have surpassed the prices we experienced during the real estate bubble, when stock investors were riding the profit gravy train. The latest round of injecting new money (read debt here) aids big banks and those who play the stock market. It will not create jobs or increase the sales price of your home.

What you and I will see, is the price of imported goods, like those sold at China-mart, will continue to increase, and commodities will continue to increase. We will begin to buy less, and more people will loose their jobs because companies will scale back. This financial death spiral has already begun.

People who use the Dow Jones index to measure our economy's strength are fools. The things you need to watch are the actual jobless rate, which is around 18%, and the price of commodities. Someday not too far off, a $1 bill will be as useless as a penny, and your wallet will contain nothing but $50's and $100's.

Michael Carroll N4MC

Our National Anthem

I posted this to facebook some time ago, but I just had to make it part of my blog.

Grammy Award winning tenor, Larry Ford, sings our National Anthem with the feeling and gusto of our Founding Fathers. Our National Anthem will never loose its meaning, nor its luster, and no matter where I am, I will always be an American.

CB Ham Radio is Here...

...just as many had predicted back in 2007 when the FCC dropped the Morse code requirement for all license classes except Amateur Extra class.

Earlier this year, I pulled my old CB radio out of my junk box and installed it into my car. Often times while driving to and from work, I am stuck in enormous traffic jams, and I thought a CB radio might provide me useful information for bypassing a jam now and then. Since many CB antennas mounts use the standard 3/8" threaded antenna, and so does the Ham Stick® antenna for the ham bands, I could use the CB antenna mount for my ham antennas when I want to run my Icom IC-706MKIIG ham radio in my car.

The first day on the road listening to my newly installed CB radio brought me back a few decades. It seemed like the same old jammers, whistlers, bone heads, and ignoramuses were still on the air causing trouble. More often than not, the usefulness of CB approached zero, along with its appeal.

Since about 2004, I have mostly been off the HF bands due to one circumstance after another. This is not to say I was inactive, but that I spent very little time, comparatively speaking, listening to the HF bands. Due to my recent windfall of a very nice, semi-new Yaesu transceiver, I am back on the HF bands with gusto. And, I might add, having a great time too!

There have been numerous times recently that I thought my ears were deceiving me. As I tuned across the 75 meter band, I heard music in the phone portion of the band that was right on top of an ongoing QSO. The music signal was quite strong, peaking at 40 over S-9. I could make out what the ops were saying over the music, and they were none too happy about the deliberate interference. If I didn't already know that I was listening to amateur radio, I would have insisted that I was listening to channel 19 on my CB radio.

I like to chase DX, although I am poorly equipped for the task, but it is fun nonetheless. Again, on numerous occasions, OM's were whistling and laughing on top of a DX station, and of course without identifying. What gives?

Many, if not all CB radio dealers sell 10 meter radios as well, which are advertised as such so they do not draw attention to themselves for selling illegal radios. These same CB radio dealers, however, also offer "modification services", which "tweak" their various products to produce the illegal results their customers wants, as in expanded transmit coverage to include the CB band.

Here are two examples:

In a nutshell, we have unscrupulous vendors selling 10 meter radios to unlicensed CBers and also modifying said radios to operate illegally on 11 meters, the CB band. These CBers are the caliber of folks who cause deliberate interference on the ham bands, and probably because they easily obtained a "no code" ham license. This scene is playing out while the FCC turns a blind eye to enforcing their own regulations.

Is this interference a sample of the future of ham radio? Will more and more "CB hams" show up in unwelcome ways? Will ham radio become a copy of channel 19, only at 1500 watts of 'legal' power? If we're lucky enough, someone will invent a new apparatus using GPS to zero in on the malicious interference and fire a laser beam to disintegrate their antenna. I think it's too late to hope for the FCC doing their job.

Michael Carroll N4MC