Thoughts on the Crowdstrike Outage

By now you're probably aware of the massive outages caused by a bug in Crowdstrike. The bug is the result of an update pushed out overnight, which caused Windows systems to become unusable. Unfortunately, Crowdstrike is very widely used by large corporations so the impact is immediate and widespread. A Symantec Enterprise Antivirus update had a similar effect about 12 years ago, but this one is much more widespread.

We are lucky that only Windows systems were directly affected. Crowdstrike also makes endpoint protection software for Mac and Linux. We use it on everything. Several of my coworkers who use Windows were dead in the water this morning. The fix was to reboot into safe mode and delete the affected file. PCs with Bitlocker disk encryption enabled needed a recovery key from IT. I use a Mac so I wasn't directly impacted but because user authentication servers run on Windows I had trouble accessing some systems.

This could have been a lot worse. If this had affected Linux systems, it potentially could have taken out DNS and NTP servers, and the Cisco Network Registrar systems used to provision cable modems. That would have killed voice, video, and Internet service for any customer's device which rebooted. Recovery would have been greatly impeded because IT personnel wouldn't be able to communicate or get the fix easily.

AIUI, it's taken out several airlines, shipping companies, banks, and various point of sale systems.

It's a perfect example of the dangers of IT software monoculture where one bug can take out a huge swath of systems.

Consider it a sign to increase preparations for grid (power and Internet) collapse.

Radiowavz 40M Dipole Antenna

Today's vacation day activity was to put up a Radiowavz 40M dipole. I got it in trade several years ago for an AR15 lower receiver. :)

Hams know that antennas offer better performance when erected in crappy weather, ideally a New England winter day. Not having one of those handy, hopefully a hot-as-balls SE Pennsylvania day will suffice.

It's currently supported on both end but not the middle, which as you can see, sags a bit. The end supports are 5 foot lengths of schedule 40 PVC pipe with an eye bolt on the end. Braided dacron cord is strung through each eye bolt and then secured to the end insulators of the antenna with a bowline knot. The halyards are then attached to a large plastic landscaping stake in the ground.

The feedline is a 25 foot piece of RG-8X coaxial cable running to an MFJ-4602 window pass-through panel.

After it was up and connected I texted a couple friends and we tried it on 80M phone using NVIS propagation. I was able to hear them but they could not hear me, which wasn't surprising.

I'd like to get the middle up higher so I'm going to look into a military surplus fiberglass mast. If I get the center elevated the resulting antenna will be an inverted-V, which will give me better performance.

I haven't made any QSOs on this antenna yet, but this screenshot from pskreporter.info shows the results of calling CQ with 50W on JS8.

And this one from WSPRnet.org shows the results of transmitting 50W on WSPR.

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Resources

I ran across this first link yesterday and thought it's worth sharing with the current State of the Union.

Bellingcat's Online Investigation Toolkit - Links to a variety of OSINT tools. If you have a Google account, you can go to File > Make a Copy and save it to your own Google Drive.

And this video is interesting:

Using Skiptracer to Gather License Plate OSINT Data.

(That channel, Null Byte, has a number of interesting videos.)

Scanner stuff:

Radio Reference - Site with information on frequencies, licenses, and discussion.

Broadcastify - Site to stream scanner feeds on your computer or mobile device.

Police Scanner and Radio on Apple App Store.

Police Scanner and Radio on Google Play.

Freescan - Free software to program and control many police scanners. Can also be used to record. I use this with my Uniden Trunktracker IV.

ProScan - Another piece of scanner software.

Chirp - Free software for programming primarily ham radios, but you can use it to easily add other common frequencies like FRS, GMRS, MURS, and NOAA weather to hand held radios like the ever-popular Baofengs.

Testing WSPR and a New Laptop

I picked up a cheap HP laptop at Microcenter on Friday to run ham radio apps on in the field. I'd rather not take my $3,000 MacBook Pro camping, plus it's a fact that a lot of ham radio apps are better supported in Windows. Should something bad happen, it'll be a lot easier to swallow with a $400 laptop.

Anyway, today I was configuring the HP to work with my Icom 7200 using Fldigi, JS8Call, and WSJT-X, and tried out transmitting using the latter in WSPR mode. The antenna was my Hawaii EARCH 40-6M end-fed, strung approximately horizontally out to my back fence. This is far from optimal.

I transmitted on WSPR at 50W a few times and checked propagation using WSPR Watch on my iPhone. Not bad.

Along with a couple friends I'm heaing up to Tioga Country next weekend. We're all hams and off-grid operations are on the list of activities. One thing I want to try is a random-length loop antenna using welding wire, connected to my antenna tuner using an LDG 4:1 balun. My friend did this a couple years ago and it worked great, allowing him to check in on a north PA/south NY 160M net.

Digital QRP with a Mac and SignaLink USB

Operating QRP PSK31 using a Mac, Fldigi, and a SignaLink USB interface. In the video I provide details on my antenna, physical connections between the radio and rig, and about configuring Fldigi.

More info on the antenna can be found in this older post.

WSPR on a Mac

I did some WSPR work out back today using my MacBook Pro, WSJT-X, Yaesu FT-817ND, SignalinkUSB, and my 20M vertical antenna.

Hopefully you find this useful.

Free Book Download from Sparks 31

I've been following Sparks 31's blog for awhile now, and bought his book Communications for 3%ers and Survivalists. He's decided to make the full text of that book and his other tome, The Modern Survivalist available as one PDF, for free.

https://sparks31.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/free-book-download/

It's worth a gander.

New Scanner

This week I got a Uniden BC396XT scanner from Amazon. I have a couple posts up about it over on Survival Preps, here and here.

"Technical Glitches." Uh huh.

Unless you were under a rock, you know about the following three things:

1. The Chinese stock market dive.
2. "Technical glitches" grounding all United Airlines flights in the US yesterday.
3. "Technical glitches" causing all trading to be halted for several hours on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

On Tuesday, this was tweeted by Anonymous:

Unless the network and system admins at UAL and the NYSE are totally incompetent, they have major redundancy in place to prevent shutdowns like this from happening. There's simply too much money at stake to have single points of failure.

Now, was Anonymous responsible? Perhaps it was someone looking to divert attention from the Chinese stock market meltdown. Whatever really happened I doubt that the powers that be would share the truth, for fear of upsetting the apple cart.

My tinfoil hat feels a bit warm. It would be a good time to revisit your emergency preparations.

Testing the Arrow 146-BP3 2M Yagi Antenna

Pics and details here.

External Battery Packs for Cell Phones, Tablets, Etc.

Most of us rely on cell phones, tablets, and maybe a GPS unit in our daily lives and out in the field. Smart phones are basically pocket computers and it's easy to become reliant on them to augment our own knowledge. Unfortunately, they eat electricity and many of the most popular models don't have replaceable batteries. That's where an external battery pack comes in.

External battery packs range in size from units the size of a lipstick to large blocks. Modern battery technology is allowing manufacturers to cram more amp hours into smaller units, but if you want more than one phone recharge, or need to recharge more than one device, you're going to have to buy one of the larger units.

Last Fall I picked up an EasyACC 15,000 mAh pack from Amazon, and used it on my Fall deer hunting trip. It's about at the limit of what I'd call pocket-sized. The two USB ports can theoretically be used to simultaneously charge two devices, although one port puts out 1.5A and the other puts out 2.1A. However, if one of your devices requires a 2A minimum input then you'll be limited to charging one device at a time.

Aside from the big pack, I also have a smaller unit from Duracell that I picked up when I bought my first iPhone. I carry this one in my EDC bag to and from work, just in case there's a foul up during my commute and I need to give my phone a boost.

New Commo Blog

Another commo-related blog worth checking out:

Communications Tradecraft

New iPhone 6

Last night I went to the local Verizon Wireless store and upgraded my phone from an iPhone 5 to an iPhone 6. The 5 was about two years old and starting to get sluggish, plus the battery life was deteriorating.

Since I backup my phone to my laptop, I had to wait until I got home to restore from the backup, but before doing so had to upgraded iOS on the new phone. That went pretty smoothly, except that I had to delete and reinstall CloudMagic before it would let me setup my work Exchange account.

So far, what I like about the new phone is the greater capacity (64 Gb vs. 32 Gb), faster CPU, better call quality, and larger screen. I am not wild about the smooth rounded sides, which make it less secure when holding it. However, I have a Magpul case on order from Amazon which should arrive tomorrow to eliminate that concern.

I'm hoping that the iPhone 6 will have better battery life than the 5 but it's too early to tell. The camera should be better, based on the pictures I've seen taken with my wife's iPhone 6.

Portable Vertical HF Antenna

Over on Survivalpreps, clickenzee here.

Free Book: Radio Monitoring A How To Guide

N2EI has made his book, Radio Monitoring A How To Guide, freely available under the Creative Commons License. Go download it here.

{Hat tip to Sparks.}

Baofeng UV-5RA Extended Battery

Up until recently one downside of getting the Baofeng UV-5RA HT was that the extra capacity batteries made for the other variants of the UV-5R did not fit it. At the start of last week I found a 3600 mAH battery to fit the UV-5RA. It’s from eBay seller radioshop8888 located in Hong Kong. This link should take you directly to the battery.

The cost was $21 shipped from HK to the US.

Here are some pictures, with a regular Bic lighter for scale. First, the UV-5RA with the stock 1800 mAH battery, then with the 3600 mAH battery, and finally the two batteries together.

Note that my radio is fitted with a Nagoya NA-701 2M/70cm antenna. It provides a little better performance than the stock rubber duck.

Aside from having double the capacity of the OEM battery, the extended battery makes the HT easier to hold, especially when you’re trying to work the buttons while holding it with only one hand.

Solar Flare and Incoming X-Class CME

As reported in the news over the past couple days, the Earth was hit by a solar flare on 9/9.  An X-class coronal mass ejection is following the flare and is expected to hit us with a glancing blow early Friday morning, 9/12. When the flare hit HF radio transmissions were severely disrupted, e.g., 20M was pretty much wiped out for awhile.

Other than HF disruptions and some better than normal auroras, any other effects are likely to be minimal. That said, I’ll be unplugging my radio antennas and power cords tonight, just in case the predictions are wrong. Likeiwse, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do things like fill the gas tanks in your vehicles and any spare gas cans, just in case.

Good sites to follow what’s going on with the Sun, solar flares, and CMEs are Solar Ham and Space Weather.