Some great High Definition video and information here. Bill Brown, WB8ELK mentioned these guys during his very entertaining speech at the DCC. He is hoping to do a “long duration” flight in the relatively near future, hopefully Amateur Radio Operators at this side of the Atlantic can assist with telemetry reception and even payload recovery.
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Arthur Guinness 250th Celebrations
My contribution to the celebrations.
Taken after a long day at the ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference, Elk Grove, Chicago, Illinois. Sláinte!
APRS on the International Space Station
ANDE-2 Update.
It seems that POLLUXs batteries have gone flat.
Satellite Transponder
Anyone got a bit of space on a satellite for one of these puppys?
Very impressive engineering (for an “Amateur”), now if we could find a way to attach a few antennas and chuck a few into orbit.
09/09/09
Anyone fancy a quick QSO at 09:09:09 on 09/09?
iPhone and LHS
Recently I’ve started using the iPod functionality on my iPhone. I don’t know why I never figured it out before, but it plays the audio out throught my Car’s stereo over the bluetooth connection. I’ve been using this newly-found functionality to catch up on Linux in the HAM Shack, which I also only discovered recently.
I have to say, I do like the format Russ and Richard have adopted, and though I’ve been in the hobby for a good few years, and using Linux even longer, I’m both enjoying it and learning from it. If your a HAM, and looking for an alternative to Windows head on over to the website and check it out.
Cheers Guys.
Netopia Cayman PSU Fault?
There was I, browsing away, minding my own business on Friday evening, when all of sudden my Netopia Cayman lost sync. I tried rebooting it a few times but no joy. On reboot, it would respond to a few pings and then stop. I rang Eircom Saturday morning and after going through all the questions, eventually, they said they would have a replacement router out to me by Tuesday at the latest.
I asked a friend of mine if he had a spare router, which he did, but he suggested that I first try replacing the PSU, as he had a router display similiar symptoms previously and it turned out to be the PSU.
Turns out, that the PSU is where the fault lies. I plugged the router into the shack power supply and all is well again (As an aside, I now know that it uses 0.3Amps at 14.0Volts).
Sean Kelly Tour – a different view
And this is it…
What has this got to do with the Sean Kelly Tour? well, the Sean Kelly Tour took place last Sunday (August 30th), and from all accounts it was quite successful with roughly 2700 hardy cyclists taking to the roads.
The above screenshot (covering an area of roughly 900 square kilometers) is taken from the xastir window of my home Ubuntu desktop after I got home from the event. It shows the trails left from the APRS equipment in several vehicles (including some of these, these, one of these and one of these), several objects and a few home stations. As the screenshot is from the end of the day, it is quite confused looking.
AREN was at the event to assist Civil Defence in maintaining an accurate location of as many of the three different sub-events (50k, 100k and 160k) as we could, allowing them to more cleverly deploy their own medical resources around the course. Great use was made of the SEARG APRS digi-peater network, and it definitely (as can be almost seen) proved it’s usefulness on the day, allowing the guys in Net Control Tim, EI2KA and Bernard, EI8FDB (see below) to keep both the the Civil Defence and event organisers updated as to the locations of various items almost in real time, throughout the day.
It was a good days exercise for AREN, and best of all I wasn’t manning Net Control!