Radio Experimenter Blog

Okay ever since I started blogging there have been so many people who produce software designed to make it easier for you to blog. The problem is that not many have been reliable. I’ll not go into the MANY names of the software, but they have been so unreliable that they can crash your web server or delete all your blogs. I have been unable to restore all of my blogs so it looks like it’s been years since my last blog. But we’ll start over now with one that I can use from my iPhone or iPad. This is just the starter blog for testing to ensure that it works and can upload pictures.

Well it’s been almost a year.  I haven’t stop doing things in radio, I just haven’t had the time to replace the software and restore all the previous posts to the website.  I have found a backup of the site from almost a year ago that I’ve manually loaded back into the new blogging software I’m using.

I’m now using Windows Live Writer for the blogging software on my PC, but still using Word Press for the blogging on this site.  Word Press has never failed me yet, but it can get damaged by some poorly written software.  I really like the Windows Live Writer software for updating.  There are lots of plugins for it and you can also use simple watermarks for photos.  There is a lot more than that though.  I probably won’t be using all the features, but it feels good to have it working again.  I may try and recreate from my memory things I have done in the past year and publish them retroactively as if they were published in the past.  That’s what I did with the posts that are previous to this, but I didn’t have to try and remember, I just  typed them verbatim from the backup I found.

My friend Darren (KJ4EQJ) and I have decided to make a go-kit.  We wanted to make several different types to see if there is a demand for pre-built go-kits.  We mean pre-built, as in everything but the radio.  All models will be designed with some kind of housing, a place for a battery or at least a power connection for the smaller units, an inverter, and a place for the radio and antennas or connections.

I’ve already designed a complete unit myself in which I used a portable toolbox. It works great and has all the items mentioned above.  It was more of what I would call a pre-prototype.  It functions well, but there are a lot of things to improve.  The main problem I have with it is the wheels that are already on the units are REALLY cheaply made.  As soon as a battery of any signification size is put into it, they barely even function.  They still roll, but don’t provide any support to it while you are moving it.  The reason; there is no axle shared between the wheels.  They simply attach to the side of the case.  Well, below I have a few photos of the start of the next prototype.

Prototype #1

Here are some quick photos of the last two days work on the prototype. The first one is simply the unmodified toolbox.  This one is much better than the one that I currently am using, in that as described above, it has wheels with a connected axle.  This one is also a single unit, which gives it much more strength than the pre-prototype.

The next few show some of the things I’m changing. I’ve got the radios power connector feeding through to the bottom of the toolbox.  This is where the battery will be and it will allow the power cord to be hidden and not cluttering up the upper area.  The radio isn’t mounted in this picture, but it will be in the final at roughly the same location.

This one is showing the details of the rectangular device in the bottom-left of the photo above.  It is a 90 Watt inverter that also has a 12-volt automotive socket.  The power for this is also fed up from the bottom unit where the battery is located.  Since there are many different devices that will need power, a distribution device of some kind will be designed for the bottom section.  It will use the standard ARES power connectors.

This is the last addition I’ve done so far.  There is another that isn’t shown.  It is another 12-volt automotive socket.  The reason another was added is that the conductors that run to the AC inverter can only handle about 12-15 amps and if the AC outlet is being used, it may already be using that maximum.  So the 12-volt socket that is built into it should only be used for low amperage, 1 or 2 amp devices, such as this GPS.  This GPS will provide the radio with data needed for mobile APRS functions.

Here is the current final setup.  It isn’t completed!  It’s simply where I’ve left off for now.  I’ve still got more ideas to add or at least try out.  It does look like it will be a great Go-Kit!  One thing that is slightly bothersome with this setup, for this radio, is that the remote head at the top must be removed and placed in the tray to be able to close the lid.  Luckily the remote head/mounting unit can be separated very quickly.  The mount however can stay where it is and the lid can still close.

It’s been a month since my last blog, but a lot has happened.  So here goes.  I’m not going to put it all down though, because no one would want to read all of this.

Tower Climb

I’ve been on top of the Pine Log Mountain tower in Waleska.   And let me tell you that it was an extremely weird climb this time.  It was like you were climbing right up into heaven.  You couldn’t see the top of the tower from the ground.  And likewise, you couldn’t see the ground once you got up there.  This picture is of me looking down at Gary.  And you can barely even see him.  He was about 60-80 feet below me.  I was probably about 140 feet up at this time.  We did some work on the 462.625 MHz GMRS Repeater.  We’ve got two antenna’s up there now.  Just moving the antenna up to the top has greatly improved the range and reception.  I didn’t think an additional 100 ft would even matter since the tower is already on the highest mountain in the area and was already up about 100 ft.

I did however hurt my wrist when I was on the tower.  This picture was after that event at the top of the tower.  I tried to untwist an N connector on the end of some LDF-7 feed line.  It was on there for probably 15 years already, so I don’t know what made me think my weak hands could do it.  We ended up having to use a  pair of HUGE channel locks to get it off.  The connector’s center pin was pushed in too far and we had to adjust that.  At least I didn’t realize what had really happened to my hand until the next day.  I think I may have torn a ligament or some soft tissue.  I’m wearing a wrist brace until it heals, which so far has been almost three weeks.

D-Star Repeater

I’ve got the 1.2 GHz D-Star repeater fully working and on the gateway now at my home.  I had everything setup correctly for a while, but for some reason there was one step that wasn’t quite working, even though everything on the D-Star status site said it was fine.  No one could connect to my repeater through the gateway, but I could link just fine.  I had all the necessary ports forwarded 20000-20005 and 40000-40001, each with the correct TCP or UDP setting.  However it was an individual line for each entry.  I decided I’d do a blanket forward of those ports, both TCP & UDP.  So now I have just two port forward lines in the router’s configuration.  It’s now working correctly too, so I’m leaving it.

The only thing left to do it to move the repeater to the Ballground tower site and to setup that router the same as here at my home.  I also need to get three 1.2 GHz antenna’s for the repeater.  We are not going to go the route of using a duplexer just because we don’t want the loss that we’d get at those frequencies.  That’s why we’ll need the three antenna’s.  Two for the D-Star Voice repeater and one for the Simplex Data repeater.

Ham Radio Laptop

It’s not doing so good.  At least not for the sound card modes.  Unfortunately, the power supply for the laptop has died and so if I want to use it for long periods of time, I have to have it plugged in.  The only adapter that I have available is an extremely noisy 12 volt upconverter that works just great, but it introduces lots of noise into the sound card with the radio-to-soundcard adapter that I have.  everything works just fine if I unplug the power supply and run off the battery though.

Part of my plan, however was to have it setup for an always on APRS reporting and information station.  This new problem prevents me from doing that the way that I intended, since I must leave it plugged in for 24×7 access.  I can solve this by using a TNC instead, but of course that means more work and time.  I also have two TNC’s, but I would only want to dedicate one of them 24×7 since the other is a multi-mode dual-channel TNC.  I want that on for working HF and taking to remote places if I can.  The problem is that the other TNC is really old and seems to want to lock up occassionally.  I think that it’s just been a configuration issue, but I need to verify that, which is why I said it takes time.  I’m not certain but the TNC is a Kantronics KPC.  I think that is the first one that they made.

I’ve got my main Ham Radio only laptop setup now.  I’ve put several programs on it that I use regularly with Ham Radio.  Those are MixW, EchoLink, UI-View32 and my D-Star related programs; DV-Tool, Control Software for my Icom IC-91AD and ID-1 radios.

MixW is a sound card program that interfaces my radio with the computer so I can use several of the sound card modes that are available.  I can use almost all of the modes available due to MixW’s plugin capabilility.  The main modes I use for it though are PSK31/63, AX.25 Packet, and CW.  I use it almost entirely for AX.25 in a stand-alone mode, since it can act like a TNC for many programs.  I do however use it fairly regularly for PSK31, but of course, I have to shut off the AX.25 mode to due so.

I run EchoLink as a standard mode on this laptop, so it’s only when I am sitting physically in front of the laptop that I use this mode.  I usually control all my computers on my network and others are some repeater sites using a program called Ultra VNC.

Ultra VNC allows you to make secure connections to the PC and control all aspects of it just like you were sitting there.  The only thing that it doesn’t allow is to send the audio from the PC back to me.  Another program however, does allow that called IP-Sound.  The advantage of IP-Sound is that, unlike Microsoft’s Remote Desktop feature, if you’re familiar with it, the sound also stays at the remote computer, so you can still run sound card interface programs like EchoLink, MixW, etc.  Remote Desktop only allows to sound to go one place at a time, the physical computer or the remote controlling computer.

UI-View32 is a program that was designed to work with a TNC to work on the APRS network.  I’ve got a TNC that I use it with, so I don’t have to use MIxW for that mode.  I usually use MixW for other AX.25 purposes.  The only bad thing about UI-View32 is that the author is a silent key so it is no longer being developed.  Also there is no hope of the software being picked up by someone else since part of his will apparantly involved making the software free to anyone, but destroying the code as a consequence.

The other programs are basically my radio control programs for my two D-Star radios; IC-91AD and ID-1, with the exception of the DV-Tool.  It is a program that interfaces a DVDongle into the D-Star network via the Internet.  This allows you to use the computer’s microphone and speakers to emulate the audio only portion of the D-Star radios.

I’ve got 4 laptops.  Until today only 1 was working.  As part of my cleanup and organization of the ham shack, I moved this laptop from it’s undeserving current location, to my desk.  Just for fun I decided I’d try and power it up to see if the hard disk would be recognized; something that hadn’t happened the last 30 or so times.  It booted right up!

I already knew what the problem was.  It is a rather cheaply made laptop and the hard disk and it’s tiny pins somewhere in the case had "ever so slightly" became misaligned.  This was, of course, enough to make the laptop a big, but flat paper-weight.

Thanks to my almost giving up on it attitude, I put it in a rather undeserving location that apparently twisted or bent the case, just right so that those tiny pins are now connecting with the hard drive.  Needless to say, I am not going to use this as a laptop and carry it around with me anymore.  It will become a "stays in one place never to me moved again" computer.

With all that said most of my spare time today had been to work on installing a fresh and uncorrupted operating system.  Since it originally had Windows XP and I still have all the driver CD’s, that what I put on it.  I haven’t quite finished yet though, since it takes forever to download all the updates from Microsoft.  As I write this Windows XP Service Pack 3 is downloading to the laptop.  Once I’ve got all the updates in place then, I proceed with all the important stuff; Ham Radio related software.  That, of course, will be a work for tomorrow.

I did some work on the 1.2 GHz D-Star repeater today.  I’ve either lost the password (which I don’t recall changing) and/or the IP Address of the repeater.  This, of course, prevents the configuration software from accessing the repeater and changing the settings.  So I spent a long time today trying various combinations of passwords and IP Addresses.  I then got smart and decided to use a program on my computer to ping a huge range of IP Addresses.  Unfortunately, this did not help since I never got in, even if the IP address was found.

This is one thing that I think Icom got completely wrong!  There is NO master reset option on these repeaters.  So the only option was to send the repeater back to Icom and have them "fix it."  I went down to Ham Radio Outlet and had them send it back through the warranty repair option.  Apparently someone in Tallahassee, FL also had to send their repeater in for the same reason.  Hopefully I’ll have the repeater back in a couple weeks so we can take the next steps to getting the repeater setup on the Ballground Tower.

Since Darren and I were not able to get the Swan 100MX transceiver working, we called in a higher power.  Darren said that a friend, Don, could easily fix this.  I’ve known Don for a few years, but didn’t know that he was an electronics wiz.  But anyway, we’ve located all the documentation for it, Service and User manuals, and have handed it over to him.  He will hopefully find a simple fix for it.

Since he is now working on it, that leaves more time for me to finish my organization of my ham gear, so I’m okay with that.  I normally don’t like handing off a project that I started on, but in this case it is a little bit of a stress relief.

Darren assisted me with the cleanup of my garage, so we could move all my ham gear into the ham shack, which is still unorganized,but at least in one place.  I’ve got about 90% of my ham stuff in a single location for now.

We also spent a while trying to get his Swan 100MX radio working.  We got power to it, but didn’t seem to get any audio out.  We couldn’t tell if it was receiving or transmitting.  It did power up and the speaker works, but didn’t get anything tuning up.  We didn’t have a manual (service or operating) so we couldn’t tell if we were doing anything wrong or not either.  I’ve since located on the web both the service and operating manuals so we’ll look at it later. He left it with me since I have all the other equipment to test and tune it up.

I climbed the Waleska Tower on Friday.  The purpose of the climb was to do a survey of the site. However we were able to get the 462.625 MHz GMRS repeater antenna up and on the air as well. It was awesome as it had been a while (2 months maybe) since I had climbed a tower.  I climb the towers with my fellow tower monkey Gary, KI4VDP.

I’ll get some photos that I can post as well.  I’ll just update this blog with or maybe post a new one when I get the photos.  They were taken by our ground crew, Diana.  I took quite a few with her camera on the tower when she sent the camera up the rope in a basket.