Category Archives: Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio

Morse Code

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Last Christmas (2006), I purchased for myself a Kent Twin Paddle Key. My intention was to re-learn ‘the code’ (I logged my last Morse Contact in 1995). It has been sitting for several months on my desk not even plugged into anything. Last weekend the IRTS had their 75th AGM and Dinner in the Vienna Woods Hotel in Cork. As I had never been to one, I decided to head down. The XYL (my lovely wife) was rescued at the last minute by another engagement.

I had the privilege to chat with (before dinner) Dave Sumner, K1ZZ (CEO of the ARRL and his wife Linda, KA1ZD, RSGB president Angus Annan, MM1CCR, IARU region 1 president, Ole Garpesdat, LA2RR and his Wife. It was great to meet such high profile people and hear first hand their thoughts for the future of the hobby, and to make them feel welcome in our small country.

After dinner (which was absolutely excellent) and after all the speeches, I got to introduce myself and speak to some of the ‘old timers’. Experimenters (Radio Hams) that have been licensed for longer than I’ve been breathing air. A couple of things struck me. Of the people I spoke to, all of them seem to have great passion for the hobby, all of them have the full support of their spouses (if still with us), all of them have a lot of knowledge and all ,while differing of opinion on lots of topics (Jameson vs Paddy etc), of them seemed to be great proponents of ‘the code’.

The passion with which they spoke was amazing, one retired gentleman lamented the fact that he could no longer maintain 40wpm receive speed, that 30-35 would be as good as he could do nowadays.

I decided that it was time to act, so this week I’ve started trying to re-learn morse code. Its a facet of the hobby that I never really immersed myself into. When I did my morse code exam it was so that I could gain access to the Shortwave Bands (160m – 10m), as that was the requirement at the time. Now there is no Morse requirement for access to these bands.

Progress has been slow, I have a program sending me morse code at 15wpm (or so it says). I have most of the letters back, but I’m still having difficulty with numbers, and seem to still mix up J & 1, V & 4 and some others. Its interesting, some letters I have no problem with at all, in fact I don’t even have to think about them, my hand just writes them out, others are ok in combination (CQ and my own callsign EI7IG, QC would require me to think), some more then require my full concentration.

30wpm is a long way off methinks!

Amateur Radio, ARGO, Work

ARGO

While I was flying around west cork doing daft things like putting up portable masts,
All up

getting free food, and enjoying the craic in the Quality Hotel in Clonakilty, my Da had a look at the ARGO.
SEMRA Training Weekend - Galtees

Last few times I had it out, the brakes were giving trouble (right hand wasn’t working very well) and it refused to start a few times. The brake had been dodgy for a while and we had planned to look at it anyway.
It seems that there was no spring on the pin in the carburettor and the pin was sticking closed, Da had an old carburettor lying around so he took the spring and ‘adapted’ it for its new home. He didn’t find the brake problem exactly, but found evidence that there was some metal embedded in the pad. I took it off the trailer this evening and before putting it into the shed, went it for a quick spin around the ‘block’. Brakes are much better than before, but there’s still something up with the carb as it completely died at one stage. Its possible the pin is still sticking, we’ll have to see.

I’m hoping to use it as a ‘mobile’ APRS/Wifi/MAP27 node for the Enterprise Ireland funded GAISS project I’m working on in TSSG, but I don’t think its reliable enough yet, more (off road) testing is required I think ;), and with the IRTS 2m Counties Contest only around the corner (Easter Monday), I’ll have to have it ready for another TARG trip up Slievenamon.

Amateur Radio, General

The West Cork

I’m just back from a very tough weekend in Clonakilty.

Several months ago, Conor, EI4JN, asked me if I would mind helping him out on the communications side of things over the weekend as he was the Communications officer for the event. Suffice it to say, all went pretty smoothly on the communications side of things. We had done a recce of possibly repeater sites several weeks ago and Conor was confident that they would provide good coverage for the course cars/radio points for the event.

We had two repeaters situated in farmers fields, one East of Clon (on a 36 foot portable mast), and one West (24 portable foot mast), both running on battery power (a 110AH Lead Acid Battery) for the weekend. So we had to check on them at various times over the weekend and decide whether to replace/try and recharge them. In AREN, Anderson Power Poles are the standard connector we use on all our equipment (PP15’s, PP30’s and PP45’s) so we first fitted each repeater with Power Poles and this allowed us to put a Whattmeter on each between the battery and repeater, we then just had to read the meter to see the power consumption and then make a decision on it (more details and pictures later).

Thankfully Conor’s plan worked and we had excellent repeater coverage both days, and any problems we had were simply faulty radio’s/antenna leads that had to be replaced. At the start of one stage on Sunday the timing equipment got knocked over and damaged by a gust of wind, after a few minutes of surgery we had that back working again. We proceeded through to the end and on to SS19 where we stayed until they kicked
us out about 5am.

Sunday afternoon we (Conor and I) were after taking down the first repeater and heading back to Clon from Timoleague, we came across a pretty serious car accident, so we bailed out of the car and headed down to see if we could render any assistance. When we got down to the scene both cars were badly damaged, but fortunately no one was killed, or even badly injured. One other driver had got out of his vehicle and told us he had called the guards and they were on the way (we could hear the siren). We were all in a very very dangerous location, so he agreed to walk back down the road towards Clon to slow down and turn traffic around, I walked back towards Timoleague to do the same (and to collect my camera), while Conor spoke to the “Victim” and tried to calm her as it was obvious she was in a state of shock.

What struck me was that of the 5-7 cars on the road, only us and one other got out of their vehicle to help. They were all sitting there in their cars waiting for something. As I got to each car I suggested to them that they would be better off heading back the way they came, and go through Ring if their destination was Clonakilty.

One woman started berating me for the behaviour of the rally followers the previous night in Clonakilty etc. etc. which stunned me initially (WTF?). I suggested that if she wasn’t going to render any assistance to the poor lady that had just been nearly killed that she might be better off turning her car around and heading to Clon via Ring.

I went back down to the scene and took a few pictures, shortly thereafter a lone Guard arrived (he called for backup), thanked us for our assistance, we left the ‘victim’ and the Guard our details and high-tailed it to the second repeater site as we still had to take down the mast and it was now getting dark and cold. We made it back to Rally HQ about 19:30, got showered and fed and onto SS19.

Other than coming across the car accident, what a cracking weekend!

Amateur Radio, Computing, Mapping, software, Work

Parallels

Parallels is very very impressive. I’ve been using it since before christmas to boot custom Ubuntu CD’s for the Enable project here in work (on my MacBook Pro). I recently wanted to try out Radio Mobile for Radio System performance analysis. So the guys in work supplied me with a copy Windows XP and off I went.

It was a pretty simple install, then, once it was up and running, I installed the Parallels Tools as instructed, and then Radio Mobile itself. The virtual machine takes about 25 seconds to boot and less than 20 to shut down and, in operation, its very responsive. To quote Ronseal, It “Does exactly what it says on the tin”.

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Amateur Radio, Technology, Weather

EI2WRC Weather Station

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In October I Posted that we (SEARG) had put an APRS Weather Station on the air, just behind the College in Waterford City. Mark, EI7IS has been working on integrating the output into the club web site, so now it is visible at http://www.searg.com/WXstation.php. If you find it useful, please do let Mark know.
Temperature/Dew point
<IMG SRC="http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/temp.cgi?call=EI2WRC&last=120&xsize=300&ysize=200&units=metric"

Barometer (millibars)
<IMG SRC="http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/baro.cgi?call=EI2WRC&last=120&xsize=300&ysize=200&units=metric"

Amateur Radio, Mapping, Work

SEMRA Training Weekend

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As part of the requirements gathering process for the GAISS Project (Geograpically Aware Information Support System), which is an Enterprise Ireland funded, proof of concept phase project. Kristian and I spent last weekend as observers (mostly as observers, though the argo pictured below did get (ab)used for a short time) on an excercise run by the South East Mountain Rescue Association.

SEMRA Training Weekend - Galtees

This was to allow us to see both in practice and, later on Saturday, on paper, how their processes operate. To that end, we learned lots, and were completely exhausted by the end of the day.

Remarkably, all SEMRA personnel are volunteers, and give up much of their time in order to hone their search skills in order that you and I have some hope of survival if we get lost or injured on the mountains in the South East of Ireland. What is more remarkable still is how well organised and efficiently they operate given that they are so few in number and are all voluntary.

Amateur Radio

IEEE Podcast on Amateur Emergency Communications

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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) feature Amateur Radio emergency communications in the October 2006 Spectrum Radio podcast which is available here.

Though US focused, it is interesting nonetheless. Personally I’m involved in the Amateur Radio Emergency Network (AREN) in Ireland which is Voluntary Emercency Communications arm of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society – IRTS.

Amateur Radio

GENSO

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Towards A Global Educational Network for Satellite Operations, or more succintly GENSO. More information is available here, but it looks like the ESA (and others) want to build a network of satellite ground stations distributed across the plannet.

It sounds very much like they have seen how distributed ground stations were used to good effect to gather telemetry from PCSAT2 (which is now back on earth). Where there was good use made of the APRS-IS backbone for carring the data. Though I have quite a modest set-up at home, I was even able to contribute data to the effort, so if the GENSO project is able to build on that experience, it should prove to be very effective. I wonder if I could get WIT involved, hmmmm….