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 Previous: The K7VVV Solar Update |  Next: W1AW, NU1AW Operations Planned for IARU HF World Championship |
By Stan Horzepa,
WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
June 22, 2001
Communicating using light is nothing new, but some hams are using new techniques to QSO in this mode. In this week's installment of Surfin', we visit their Web sites to see how they are doing it.
The menagerie here includes three rescued cats. Keeping them entertained is work. My sister (a four cat owner) suggested purchasing one of those inexpensive laser pointers to keep the cats busy. Sure enough, two of our three felines, Molly and Junior, love chasing the laser beam wherever I happen to point it--typically all over our family room, while I sit in front of my PowerBook or watch Sox on the boob tube. Our older and wiser cat, Oliver, is above it all and seems amused as he watches the other two chase the laser.
 Try bouncing light off clouds and see what you hear at W1VLF's Cloudbounce Technical Information Web site. |
The eldest member of our menagerie, our canine Q-T Pie, goes out for last call before we head for the rack each night. I usually accompany him and sometimes have the laser pointer in my pocket. As I wait for Mr. Pie to do his thing, I entertain myself with laser-pointer DX by aiming the laser into the woods across the street to see how far away I can see its beam bounce off trees. One night, I managed to see the beam hit a low-passing cloud! My night blindness is probably a limiting factor with regard to detecting the laser pointer's capabilities, so it is probably doing better than I believe, but it is a fun time-killer nonetheless.
Speaking of hitting low-passing clouds with my laser pointer, a while back, I recall Paul Cianciolo, W1VLF, talking on the local 220-MHz repeater about his experiments with light communications. Using huge arrays of LEDs, he was trying to communicate via a 25-mile path across the Connecticut River Valley from elevated locations that were line of sight on either side of the valley (Johnnycake Mountain in Burlington, Connecticut, and the Buckland Hills Mall in Manchester, Connecticut).
I do not know if Paul succeeded, but I began searching the Internet to become enlightened about the subject of light communications and discovered that Paul has a Web site called Cloudbounce Technical Information. It seems that Paul has succeeded in bouncing light from his LED arrays off clouds. His Web site explains how he does it with pictures of the equipment he built to accomplish the feat. The site also has an audio sample of what a cloudbounce signal sounds like over a four-mile non-line-of-sight path.
Getting back to our cats and laser DXing, I discovered Web sites dedicated to that exotic mode of communication, too. Paul Kelley, N1BUG, is into laser DX, and he has assembled some pages called Getting Started in Laser DX at his N1BUG Web site. His pages provide an excellent introduction to the mode and include a number of links to get you beyond the introduction. For example, there are links to the Amateur Radio Laser Communications Web pages of Jim Moss, N9JIM, and the Experimenter's Corner Web site of John Yurek, K3PGP, which have construction articles for building laser communications equipment, as well as other pertinent information regarding the mode. K3PGP's "A $25 Multi-Mode Laser Pen" construction article seemed very intriguing. (Where did I leave that laser pointer?).
Until next time, keep on surfin'
Editor's note:
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, resides in downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, and is a member
of the QQCC (QST quarter century club), i.e., he has been a QST writer for 25
years. Since getting his ticket in 1969, Stan has sampled nearly every entrée
in the Amateur Radio menu (including a stint as Connecticut Section Manager),
but he keeps coming back to his favorite preoccupations: VHF and packet radio.
As a result, he runs a 2-meter APRS digipeater from his mountaintop location in
central Connecticut. Stan has been a long time advocate of using computers with
Amateur Radio and wrote programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna
bearings way back in 1978. Today, he uses his Mac to surf the Internet
searching for that perfect ham radio Web page. To contact Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: The K7VVV Solar Update | Next: W1AW, NU1AW Operations Planned for IARU HF World Championship |
