• eliminate syllabus (I mechanically produced the XML from the original NCVEC document, and left in the syllabus, which as Chris points out is redundant.)
• Changed some obviously unique element values to ID attributes
• Fixed a few typos

I've taken Chris's data and fixed one more typo (question T7C09 wasn't RNC valid), and re-indented it back to two spaces. I have updated the RNC schema and Ham radio technician tests to use the new data. Thanks, Chris!

Adding the images would be a good next step. Probably I will split them out into individual files and add relative URI references to them within the document; the XForms display can use the XForms output element with a mediatype of "image/*" to display.

Chris also has on his page an XQuery presentation of the test, plus some starts at interactive versions. I believe XForms is more suitable for the interactive version, and XQuery and XSLT for a static presentation; so in some sense, Chris and I are doing things backwards, as I started from a static version and he's started from an interactive version. But I'm sure we'll all learn something fun.

A bit of background: Dan McCreary and Kurt Cagle are strong promoters of the XRX approach, combining XML, XForms, XQuery, and XSLT with REST. I do this in my Day Job, which is coincidentally at Xerox, but there's no connection between the name XRX and Xerox, nor is Xerox interested in my ham radio work!

I'm going to continue to use this test pool as a use case for XForms 1.2 Future Features for making the interactive part of the testing easier to author. XForms 1.1 has some features (such as the ability to add nodes) that will make it possible to update the test instance with spaces for answers, even without the cooperation of the original test author, but ideally XForms 1.2 would capture this use case and make it easier to describe declaratively.

- posted by Leigh @ 17:29 z 1 comments

With the events in China, it seems likely that the interference on 40m and 60m is from either Chinese or Taiwanese Over-the-Horizon Radar.

It definitely occurs in bands. There's a strong one in the 60m range, and another just below 40m (shown). It extends into the lower portion of 40m as well, though about 20dB less strong.

Labels: DX, QRM

- posted by Leigh @ 16:02 z 0 comments