Well, today was the Scouts Jamboree On The Air. A couple of us arrived at around 7:30am to get ready for the Scouts at 8:30. Of course, they were early and we had 15 or so Scouts before 8. No big deal. It actually worked out well, I think. They pitched in and got hands-on training in assembling and erecting antennas.
I'd say we had an easy 40-50 Scouts (including Cubs, Weebelos, and Girl Scouts) throughout the day. I was disappointed that the media didn't show up but I guess you can't have everything. We ended up with three stations (2 voice 1 digital). I was running the digital station and unfortunately the G5RV I put up didn't work at all for me. I had problems using the same antenna at Field Day so I've decided this isn't the antenna for me. I ended up building a 80M off-center fed dipole on-site and tuned it up on 20M. It worked great and in no time I picked up Canada and Mexico.
The highlight of the day for me was seeing the excitement on the face of a 6-year-old Tiger as he made his first PSK contact with a very patient Canadian station. Hats off to Colin for being willing to wait for some slow typing as he asked several questions.
Looking forward to next year!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
TinyTrak R8 Mod
Well, I ran into a bit of difficulty this afternoon when I tried to use my new TinyTrak with my FT-60. As it turns out the cable that I use with my Piccon also works with the TinyTrak. I was excited to be able to use the HT instead of carrying my spare FT-8800 around in the truck. Unfortunately the TT3 wouldn't key the radio.
I just chalked it up to some misconfiguration between the radio and the device. I read through the manual while waiting to get my hair cut and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. No funky menu settings I may have missed other than disabling Rx Sleep.
When I got home I checked the Byonics site and looked up the cable again to confirm that it should work. That's when I saw the problem. With the cable for the mobile I had to leave R8 out of the circuit. In the description for the HT cable it says that R8 has to be IN the circuit.
Byon actually addresses this scenario and describes adding R8 to your cables. Well, that's all well and good if you're building your own, but I was using one of his. So what could I do? Well, the lightbulb went on and I used the same solution I've used for other kits where I needed removable components...I added a single in-line package (SIP) socket where R8 goes.
Now if I'm using the HT I insert R8. If I'm using the mobile I remove it. This is what it looks like configured for the HT. I had to bend the resistor leads a little and lean it over the pots to get the top of the case to fit but there's plenty of room now. I tested it and it works great.
I'm pretty happy with myself and the mod. :-) See ya on APRS!
I just chalked it up to some misconfiguration between the radio and the device. I read through the manual while waiting to get my hair cut and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. No funky menu settings I may have missed other than disabling Rx Sleep.
When I got home I checked the Byonics site and looked up the cable again to confirm that it should work. That's when I saw the problem. With the cable for the mobile I had to leave R8 out of the circuit. In the description for the HT cable it says that R8 has to be IN the circuit.
Byon actually addresses this scenario and describes adding R8 to your cables. Well, that's all well and good if you're building your own, but I was using one of his. So what could I do? Well, the lightbulb went on and I used the same solution I've used for other kits where I needed removable components...I added a single in-line package (SIP) socket where R8 goes.
Now if I'm using the HT I insert R8. If I'm using the mobile I remove it. This is what it looks like configured for the HT. I had to bend the resistor leads a little and lean it over the pots to get the top of the case to fit but there's plenty of room now. I tested it and it works great.
I'm pretty happy with myself and the mod. :-) See ya on APRS!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
APRS Goodness
After much consternation I finally jumped in to the APRS world. I have a Yaesu FT-8800 in a mobile go-box that I figured I could use to put my signal on the air. I also realized I have a Garmin eTrex Vista that I'd been planning on getting rid of but I could use it for the project as well. So $50 later I had a Byonics TinyTrak3+ in my mailbox.
The instructions say it should take about an hour to build. Took me about 2 hours but I spent a lot of time fiddling with the camera.
It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!! ;D
I remembered I had some power stuff from my General class and I could use an alternate power connection. The pic quality sucks but you can see that the end LEDs are on.
OMG I can't stop! Once I had power I had to make sure I could read and write to it.
Unfortunately when I ordered the unit I forgot to order the interface cable to connect to my radio. Good thing I can make my own. Unfortunately I learned a hard lesson today. PS/2 cables are a pain in the butt to modify. First I learned that only 3 conductors are used. Second I learned that they didn't go to the pins I needed. With this gotcha I couldn't really make the simple cable I wanted to. I also found that if you cut the outer shell off with a Dremel you'll discover that they fill the pin area with plastic. >:( I used a butane soldering iron as a torch to melt the plastic so I could dig it out and access the pins to wire it was I needed. Once that was done I was off and running.
I got the mouse cable wired to the pins I needed to and then made a quick run to Radio Shack to buy an audio cable. That got cut in half and the raw end went to my new serial connector. Then I wired in the PowerPoles with 18# red/black zip line. Finally I heat-shrinked what I could as best I could to act as some strain relief. Unfortunately with so many cables coming out of the serial connector I can't put it in a housing. My other problem is the mini DIN. I put it back in one of the molded shells I cut and electric taped/heat shrunk it to give it some strength. It didn't work. It pulled out when I tried to remove it from the radio. I'll have to figure something else out.
Raw Serial Connections
Wrapped Serial Connections
Radio Connections
After tweaking my configuration I was able to test everything together. To my delight not only did it all work but I didn't smoke my radio either. Within about 10-15 minutes one of the guys was calling me on the air because he'd seen me pop up on APRS. I also used http://aprs.fi to confirm that I was showing up. I'm a happy camper.
I'm really looking forward to finding some cool uses for this. Eventually I see myself getting the more capable TinyTrak4 but this is a great way to get into APRS on the cheap.
The instructions say it should take about an hour to build. Took me about 2 hours but I spent a lot of time fiddling with the camera.
It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!! ;D
I remembered I had some power stuff from my General class and I could use an alternate power connection. The pic quality sucks but you can see that the end LEDs are on.
OMG I can't stop! Once I had power I had to make sure I could read and write to it.
Unfortunately when I ordered the unit I forgot to order the interface cable to connect to my radio. Good thing I can make my own. Unfortunately I learned a hard lesson today. PS/2 cables are a pain in the butt to modify. First I learned that only 3 conductors are used. Second I learned that they didn't go to the pins I needed. With this gotcha I couldn't really make the simple cable I wanted to. I also found that if you cut the outer shell off with a Dremel you'll discover that they fill the pin area with plastic. >:( I used a butane soldering iron as a torch to melt the plastic so I could dig it out and access the pins to wire it was I needed. Once that was done I was off and running.
I got the mouse cable wired to the pins I needed to and then made a quick run to Radio Shack to buy an audio cable. That got cut in half and the raw end went to my new serial connector. Then I wired in the PowerPoles with 18# red/black zip line. Finally I heat-shrinked what I could as best I could to act as some strain relief. Unfortunately with so many cables coming out of the serial connector I can't put it in a housing. My other problem is the mini DIN. I put it back in one of the molded shells I cut and electric taped/heat shrunk it to give it some strength. It didn't work. It pulled out when I tried to remove it from the radio. I'll have to figure something else out.
Raw Serial Connections
Wrapped Serial Connections
Radio Connections
After tweaking my configuration I was able to test everything together. To my delight not only did it all work but I didn't smoke my radio either. Within about 10-15 minutes one of the guys was calling me on the air because he'd seen me pop up on APRS. I also used http://aprs.fi to confirm that I was showing up. I'm a happy camper.
I'm really looking forward to finding some cool uses for this. Eventually I see myself getting the more capable TinyTrak4 but this is a great way to get into APRS on the cheap.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Awesome Exam Day!!
I couldn't be happier with the results of today's exam session. Three of my students were unlicensed (even though this was a General class) and now they have their Technician license. Four students (including one of the unlicensed ones) picked up their General. Three had already taken the upgrade and passed. Even our club president decided to upgrade and he's now an Amateur Extra.
I guess I have to pat myself on the back a little. I had ten students total test throughout the course period and everyone that tested passed. I must be a pretty good instructor. :-D
I guess I have to pat myself on the back a little. I had ten students total test throughout the course period and everyone that tested passed. I must be a pretty good instructor. :-D
Friday, August 21, 2009
Big Day!
Well, tomorrow is the big day. Last weekend I wrapped up the General upgrade course I was teaching with a 2.5 hour review. Talking to everybody I think they're all feeling pretty good about passing. Some of the students have already upgraded so that's cool.
Tomorrow is the exam session. I have 8 students taking tests ranging from Tech to Extra. I feel confident we'll have a 100% pass rate. We'll see if I'm right.
Tomorrow is the exam session. I have 8 students taking tests ranging from Tech to Extra. I feel confident we'll have a 100% pass rate. We'll see if I'm right.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
NBEMS Testing
Well, I finally had the chance to play around with NBEMS using fldigi and flarq. It seems like there's some promise but it wasn't without its challenges. It seems much better suited to SSB than FM. We ended up splattering all over a simplex QSO 1K away that we didn't know about. They were cool about it and actually let us test some more to see how much bandwidth we were taking up.
We started off using it with fldigi set to PSK-31 and this proved entirely too slow for transferring files. We gave up long before we transferred more than 2% of a 35K file because it was taking too long. Unfortunately when we tried changing modes to MT63 flarq on my end quit talking with fldigi. I still haven't been able to get it working.
In the image above the large window is fldigi. The blob of red is the image I was trying to transfer. The small window is flarq.
After talking with one of the guys with WPANBEMS he told me they had similar challenges during their testing. Now they skip flarq and just use fldigi and wrap. Still need to do some testing with it but in my solo run it seems to work. Hopefully I'll have an update on this again soon.
We started off using it with fldigi set to PSK-31 and this proved entirely too slow for transferring files. We gave up long before we transferred more than 2% of a 35K file because it was taking too long. Unfortunately when we tried changing modes to MT63 flarq on my end quit talking with fldigi. I still haven't been able to get it working.
In the image above the large window is fldigi. The blob of red is the image I was trying to transfer. The small window is flarq.
After talking with one of the guys with WPANBEMS he told me they had similar challenges during their testing. Now they skip flarq and just use fldigi and wrap. Still need to do some testing with it but in my solo run it seems to work. Hopefully I'll have an update on this again soon.
Friday, July 31, 2009
More Digital Fun
Well, I finally got around to playing with FLDIGI again. I hadn't been able to get it to work with the IC-7000 but I tinkered enough tonight and got the rig control working. I still need to tweak the macros and figure out a few things but it seems to be pretty slick. Now that I have it working I'm one step closer to getting the NBEMS stuff going.
I really want to see about using this on a Linux-based netbook so I was pleased to finally get it working. Hopefully I'll have the chance to get it all setup and configured this weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
I really want to see about using this on a Linux-based netbook so I was pleased to finally get it working. Hopefully I'll have the chance to get it all setup and configured this weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
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