Category Archives: Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio, Computing, software

Bodging yfklog

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To borrow a phrase from Darren, G0HWW. I did a bit of bodging of yfklog over last weekend. I couldn’t figure out how to get the existing code to talk to qrz.com, so after a bit of bodging with the Ham::Reference::QRZ; module, it now pulls the basic information from qrz.com, name, address2 (Town), operator class, grid, iota, state, qsl manager, and pops them into the relevant places in the log. A productive few hours!

I’m hoping to do the same for hamqth.com and, when I have a patch ready, Bob,W9YA will hopefully submit my changes assuming he deems them useful.

Another minor modification I made was to change the sort order of the exported online log, threw a bit of php at it, and now my most current contacts appear at the top of the output file.

Amateur Radio, Computing, Technology

Moving on.

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About 9 Years ago I got involved in IrishWAN. It was great fun at the time getting links set up, upgrading to the newest and coolest kit, helping others get nodes running, getting new people connected, all who hadn’t a hope of getting Internet from any available commercial offering.

For some months, before Eircom enabled the local DSL exchange, one of the only ways to get Internet in my town was through a WiFi node on my roof, 5.8Ghz Backhaul, 2 x 2.4Ghz Access.

Recently the last person that was using my node for Internet access moved over to a 3G dongle, so today I pulled the plug on the node, and took down the last of the WiFi antennas.

One of the Westflex 103 cables has been re-used for a 70Mhz (the Amateur Radio 4 Meter band) antenna that I put up today, the other is now spare. Surprisingly enough both seem perfect after 9 or so years exposed to the elements, as was the 2.4Ghz Omni-directional antenna from Wi-Pipe. Now I just need to “upgrade” to a 70Mhz radio, and the fun begins again…

Amateur Radio, Computing, Technology

YFKtest on LHS#86

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I finally got a chance to listen to Linux in the Ham Shack, Episode 86 in the last few days. I was delighted to hear Bob,W9YA on there being interviewed about YFKtest.

I have mentioned YFKtest explicitly before (here and here), its the only contest logger I use as my “roadkill” laptop is a bit too old to run windows. As Bob points out in the interview, YFKtest doesn’t need a GUI or a mouse to control it, so it’s pretty frugal with resources, and I share his hatred of being forced to use a mouse when it is completely unnecessary. I would like to think I have been doing my bit to assist Bob in improving it over the last while (a few minor fixes), along with trying to help him debug a few issues and quite a few of those fixes were tested recently when operating EI2WRC/p for the IRTS 80m Counties Contest, and it worked great. Now I just need to get on air a bit more!

Amateur Radio, AX25, Computing, D-Star, DIY

Radio-Active weekend

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In between cleaning the rubbish off the deck, entertaining my cousin Saturday afternoon, getting the tables and chairs out, putting the glass back into the glasshouse (literally), and getting the lawn cut. I got some time to look at some digital modes for Amateur Radio.

First up was getting my tunnel set back up to AMPRNet. That took a bit longer than expected, but I finally got it all sorted and have rip44d (Written by Heikki, OH7LZB) running, with a slight modification to use a separate routing table for the “44” Network. More on this below.

Next up, was to get my 4m (70Mhz) AX.25 port back running. Then configure LinuxRMS to allow the port to be used as a Winlink Gateway.  This will allow anyone that can connect to my 4m port to use it for sending and receiving email over radio (just like a smart-phone, only much more slowly 😉 and much larger range between base-stations).

Now, the only real way to test it properly was to connect to it from another machine which meant configuring paclink-unix on my (recently re-installed) Linux laptop.  So I unpacked my Emergency Communications Go-Kit, plugged it all in, downloaded and installed the latest version of paclink-unix. Configured it up and tried to connect.  Lo and behold it all worked.

While I was as it, I tried out the wl2kax25d daemon and the peer-to-peer mode of paclink-unix and it also seemed to work quite well (for instances when no Winlink gateway is available).

Now that I had the tunnel to AMPRNet running, I though I’d test it out some more so configured up a second ethernet port on the machine with my AMPRNet address of dstar.ei7ig.ampr.org, and configured the (same) laptop with the address of mobile.ei7ig.ampr.org.  Once it was all set up I tested the wl2ktelnet daemon which is the paclink-unix mechanism for directly connecting to the Winlink servers when Internet connectivity exists. Much to my surprise (that I hadn’t stuffed something up) it worked first time.

Now that it all seems to work, I’m going to bring it all along to Tankardstown Geopark next Sunday (17th) where SEARG will be operating for a few hours (80m Counties Contest) The priority will be voice on Sunday, but I may get time to “go digital”.

If your passing, drop in and say hello. Club members will be there from about 10 in the morning until after 6 in the evening.

 

 

 

Amateur Radio, Computing

iPod and “Keys out of order”

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So, its a typical weekday evening, I have several things waiting to be completed, but earlier on today, John, EI7BA posed a question on a mailing list looking for some information about a piece of software.

He wanted to know if it would work with his FT-847, and, I have the same transceiver here so I thought I’d help him out by trying to use the software in a Windows Virtual Machine running on my Mac-mini.

First problem, the mini is at the wrong end of the desk, about 7 feet from my FT-847. So I slide the mini and all attached to it along the desk to make up the shortfall, all good.

I test the software, and it seems to work ok with the 847, report the same to EI7BA, all good.

Now, what exactly happened I’m not sure, but I saw my iPod display light up, thinking it a bit strange, I picked it up and pushed the docking connector home again, all good.

iTunes gives me an error when it tries to sync, hmmm, Disk Repair says it can’t be repaired, hmmm, I tried to fsck it in the terminal


bash-3.2# fsck_hfs -fy /dev/disk1s2
** /dev/rdisk1s2
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1~34).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
The volume name is John's Pod
** Checking extents overflow file.
** Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
(4, 3045)
** Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
** The volume John's Pod could not be repaired.
bash-3.2#

Not good. I tried to mount it, but it refuses to mount, not good. The perceived wisdom on google is to purchase Disk Warrior. I have a few GB of data on there that I don’t want to loose, but it’s not really worth spending money on, so after a bit more trawling through web pages I decide the data is gone (not good), but I will be able to gather it all together again, given time.

Before I “restore” the iPod, and purely for the hell of it I plug it into my Roadkill (I first heard Bill, N2CQR use the term) Ubuntu Laptop. Lo and behold, the drive mounted automatically.

I immediately remounted it read-only and started copying off data.  That seemed to complete successfully, so I unmounted the drive and plugged it back into the mini. Much to my surprise, the drive mounted (and iTunes was happy to sync it).  Just to check, I tried an fsck again and it still gave gave the same errors as above. For now, I’ve decided to ignore the errors until such time as it stops working completely.

So, if you have an iPod that gives you a Keys out of order error message when you try to check and/or repair it, talk to a friendly Linux user and ask them if you could plug your iPod into it before you decide your data is toast.

Amateur Radio, software

CQIR and Yfktest

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2012 is the 80th anniversary of the founding of our national Amateur Radio society, the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS). To mark it, the IRTS is organising an Amateur Radio Contest, like any contest, there will be different categories for contesters to take part in (full rules).

Previously, I mentioned that I have used yfktest, in fact at SSB field day last year, I did a svn checkout, just before the contest as we had a problem with the software the other guys regularly used.  So, this time, instead of waiting until just before the contest started, I thought I would have a look at it slightly beforehand.  Boy was I surprised.  While the web page is a bit dated, the latest check-in to the repository was 29th of February 2012.  It seems that Bob, W9YA has been busy working with a group of hams finding some bugs and making lots of improvements.  Good job Bob (and everyone else), I am really looking forward to trying it out on the day.

Amateur Radio, APRS

More on TH-D72 battery life.

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I was chatting with two guys in the office about the results from my previous tests with the TH-D72. In the previous tests, the radio was configured to receive all APRS packets.  Now, considering EI4HQ’s scenario, which was to have it with him while walking.  He isn’t going to be very worried about the location of other APRS stations while out walking in the hills.  Also,if another APRS station is within simplex range, Voice Alert will let him know.

So, I just configured the Battery Saver on the TH-D72 to be more aggressive.  Set for 1 second, this means that when the squelch is closed, and no key is pressed for more than 10 seconds, the radio switches the radio off for 1 second, then momentarily turns is back on in order to detect if any signal is present. As an aside, it is suggested in the manual that the battery saver be set to 0.03 seconds in order for APRS to work reliably. This is what it was set to in the previous tests.

Anyway, at 1 second the first packet was logged at 08:44 in the morning and the last at 23:00 that evening.  Giving approximately 14h 15 minutes of runtime.  Setting the battery saver to 2 seconds, with the first packet at 08:35 and second at 00:02 increases that to approximately 15h 25 minutes.

In other words, a 5 to 6.5 hour increase in battery life. That, i think you would agree, is a very useful increase in battery life.

 

 

Amateur Radio, APRS, AREN

TH-D72 Battery Life

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So EI4HQ and I were discussing “toys” and presents in general, and he inquired about the TH-D72 and battery life. I purchased mine in November 2010 (G0HWW twisted my arm) and have used it for various things from AREN events, listening to aircraft, DTN Experiments (PDF), silly IP over AX.25 tunnels, the usual.

Anyway, I said to EI4HQ that I though it was about 8 hours, but I would check.

The radio has a setting to allow it to transmit the position of the radio, automatically at fixed intervals (beacon interval). So, I did three experiments.  I left the radio in the car for the day on all three occasions. Setting the beacon interval to 5 minutes the first day, 10 minutes the second, 20 minutes the third while the second side (transceiver) of the radio was monitoring the local voice repeater(EI7WDR). This was done just to see what the difference was in battery life, and I (and WE7U) was making the assumption that with the longer intervals, that the battery life would be better.

Day 1, first beacon recorded on aprs.fi at 08:50, last at 18:06, total operational time of 9h 16 minutes. Day 2, first beacon recorded at 08:21, last at 17:41, total operational time of 9h 20 minutes. Day 3, first beacon recorded at 08:18, last at 17:18, total operational time of 9h.

Now, today I had to drop down to WIT, so the onboard GPS had to come out of its power save mode for that short journey, which may account for the reduced battery life. Also there could have been more activity on the repeater, actually there was, I had a brief conversation for a few minutes with EI2HI in Cork on the way into work this morning.

However, the results are pretty clear I think (and I would love to see someone else’s results to compare), that the once every few minutes position beacon is not the biggest load on the battery with everything else running.

So what is the battery life?  Without more experimentation, i would guess about 6 hours if I was out walking with it. That, I think, will have to be the next experiment.