Wetnet Geek Brunch 2/25/2012

Good brunch today with medium turnout....  The WiFi lasted 'hours' which is a big improvement...

I showed the imic I picked up a couple nights ago at the Redmond Mac Store..    It's currently trying to receive WSPR on HF.   The install and hookup was painless - even on my 'vista' machine.  I say 'trying' because apparently there's a RTTY event this weekend and both 20 and 15 meters are very busy...

  http://wa8lmf.net/ham/imic.htm

Four out of five installed the D-Rats Beta successfully and exchanged our Hello's and Good Morning's via the WA7FW ratflector...   The application continues to improve.   I'll have it running full on on the home workstation now and will be getting the repeater (ratflector) running on both the home server and the (little white netbook) portable server.    If anybody wants the secret handshake to get the Beta - send me Email.   (Hey Ren - the unit's are configurable under Preferences...)

  http://d-rats.com/

I'm looking forward to trying the KISS packet mode of D-Rats with the Virtual Kiss port on BPQ32 - that should twist up the packets nicely.

Onward!

73
Bill - WA7NWP

A Portable HF Digital Station

More notes - to be polished soon.

The 'project' is done.  I wanted to get a handle on the equipment I had and how to use it.  Also to get an idea of where to go next.

I used the good laptop.  The goal was to learn the tools not do battle with a minimal system.  That comes later.   For now I'm assuming that if I have to go - I'll be taking the good laptop and the yellow toolbox of portable radio equipment.

The learns would seem to be obvious:

• Most important is to spend time with the system.  Using the hardware and software is the only way to really learn it.
• The low power, 2.5W, is useable but marginal.   It can work the world but only during optimum band conditions.
• A tuner is a good thing.  The new automatic tuners really take up the slack for a non-resonant marginal antenna.
• External Radio Interface that has a built in sound card with a single USB cable is the way to go.
• Computer control of the radio is much better than not...
• ... more soon.

A new project will be started today to fill in the missing pieces of this go-box setup.   Missing pieces include hardware such as a self supporting antenna, an amplifier and more experience with the software tools.

For the next generation:

• JT65-HF for simple QSO's and minimal information exchange
• WSPR for system propagation testing
• Self supporting antenna with a handy way to station it outside.
• Need a connection to a messaging system.   WL2K, APRS, PSKEmail?
• CW - just for fun?   Need a CW key interface?
• Self hosting battery that charges from 12v auto, local AC mains or even Solar.

Initial write up notes...

The Rig
* FT-817ND
* Tigertronics USB
* HP Laptop.  Vista.  Lots of CPU, RAN, Disk.
* ZL11 autotuner -> Elecraft T1
* 40/30 fan dipole

The Software
* VOAProp - notes:  Learned:  r-click to set location.  click to draw line on chart then hit button to "Show Chart" to get time of day effective reports to that area.  For example I just clicked on La Par.  Best of the chart shows S3 at 22Z on 21 MHz.
* FLDIGI
* JT65-HF
* APRS-Messenger

Learned.
* Need better antenna
* Web results good.  (save some pictures)
* WSPR for unattended.

UI-View TNC Config File for 96UHF

The UI-View program works well with the Kenwood D7 HT.   So well, it even sets the frequency at startup time.   The beauty of this is that it allows setting up different configuration files for different channels and, it turns out, for different baud rates.

Editing the stock file to create a new configuration file for 145.01 was trivial and only a matter of changing the frequency setting.

Moving to 96UHF, where not only the frequency but also the band and baud rate changes, was a bit trickier.

Fortunately, before I had to spend too much time discovering the silly little things that thrive on eatting our minutes, I found the SV1BSX  web page were he already had it figured out.

  http://www.qsl.net/sv1bsx/APRS/d7-9k6.html


This is working for me now.  I'm sure there will be future tweaks..

Here is the text for a 96UHF.cmd file to be saved in the ui-view\cmd folder:

;This is a TNC initialisation file for use with
;the Kenwood TH-D7 on the NWAPRS 96UHF 9600 baud APRS on 440.800 MHz.

;
;TH-D7.ORG will allow you to revert to the default
;version of this file, if you edit it and mess it up!

[SETUP]
;DON'T alter anything in this section unless you are
;sure you know what you are doing!
COMMAND_PROMPT=cmd:
COMMAND_CHARACTER_CODE=3
ESCAPE_CHARACTER_CODE=
CONV_COMMAND=CONV
MYCALL_COMMAND="MYCALL "
UNPROTO_COMMAND="UNPROTO "
NO_BEACON_COMMAND=BEACON EVERY 0

[INIT_COMMANDS]
^C
AI 1!
;Control mode on.
TC 1!
;Select packet mode.
TNC 0!TNC 0
;Select band 'A'.
;sELECT band B for 9k6
BC 1!BC 1
;Set the frequency to 440.800.
FQ 00440800000,0!FQ 00440800000,0
;No shift.
SFT 0!SFT 0
;Select data band as 'A'.
DTB 1!DTB 1
;Open the TNC in packet mode. Wait for up to 4 seconds
;for PORTOUT to be seen in the response from the TNC.
TC 0!PORTOUT!4
;Send some TNC commands.
ECHO OFF
HBAUD 9600
AWLEN 8
BEACON EVERY 0
MON ON
MCOM ON
CONOK OFF
LTMON 10
LOC E 0
GPSTEXT $GPRMC

[EXIT_COMMANDS]
MON OFF
;Close the TNC.
TC 1

APRS at 9600...

> In the Pacific Northwest, there are a number of people experimenting
> with 9600 baud APRS. They have a reasonable network of i-gates and
> digipeaters. They've shown a couple of things: 9600 baud works for
> APRS; it can be more reliable for mobiles (less chance flutter will
> corrupt the packet, because the data burst is so short); and it ends
> up doing more for the network than halving the bandwidth because it
> moves a lot of stations off 144.39 and onto an alternate channel. Most
> of that network is Kenwood D700's, D710's, D7's and D72's.
> Tom

Following up on Tom's comment above...    I've been almost exclusively on the PNW UHF 9k6 APRS network for years and years.   In general -- it's great to get off the chaos of 144.39 and the system is working better than every with multiple I-Gates and digipeaters.

Messaging just work's as long as you have a real I-Gate or two.   What doesn't work is Voice Alert.   We've worked around that by bringing a significant portion of the local 144.39 traffic to the UHF network. Also I sometimes run with my second VFO on the Tone Squelched 144.39 channel just to see if anybody is in range.

It's really nice to have the extra bandwidth for more information... We have DX spots of 6 meter openings, satellites, winlink2K access points and the echolink/irlp nodes in the area and room for more.

As to TXdelay - ideally it would be a bigger win but since the D700 is fixed at 1/2 second (silly Kenwood) it is far from optimum.  With the light traffic load it's apparently a non-issue.

While 9600 is cool and it's trivial to set up with the Kenwood mobiles PM feature, I recommend to anybody that asks to not use 9600 buad.

Two reasons:

1.  The data you can see on a mobile radio is the rate limiter.  With a full 1200 baud channel the display too busy and distracting. Anything beyond that from a faster 9600 channel is just unusable. 9600 would work good for a backbone but not a 'user channel.'

2.  If the goal is to help spread the load from the busy 144.39, you don't want 9600 - you want 1200 which all the trackers use.  Moving the dumb trackers off the main channel onto an alternate frequency is good for both the trackers and the main channel.  Since the trackers aren't running Voice Alert, they're the ones that can run there without missing this incredibly useful APRS feature.

> Why would using a subtone suddenly not work when changing the baud rate?

Two issues with the tone .. I should have been more clear.

1. The affect of the tone on 9k6 data is an unknown.

2. Stations on the alternate channel don't hear the other stations on
the main channel... It would work if everybody moved. It doesn't
work cross channel.

The big win is the alternate channel to spread the load which only takes an I-gate or two to make happen.   Add digi's as necessary...

73
Bill - WA7NWP

DStar Options

... this is a work in progress ...

One of these days, RSN, (real soon now) I'll have an ICOM R91 DStar radio for a digital node.

Until then, I'm looking at using one of my existing radios as a way to get on DStar and hook up with neighbors that have repeaters or hot spot access points.

The data to do this is scatter...

Software:

Radios with 9k6 data ports that work:

* YAESU seem to have the FT-8800 and FT-8900.

Ham Radio Wish List

Save the pennies maybe this year list:

• Kenwood TM-D710 for the mobile. The current D700 is my most used radio. It would be even better if I moved it to the house for two channels of packet use and then having the extra mobile functionality of the D710. This wasn't an option until Kenwood finally had a clue and redesigned the radio to fix the DC on the filters problem.
• Base station Vertical for 10/6 meters - Diamond CP610
• Tigertronics USB interface for base station
• USB to CI-V for home setup

Win the lottery new gizmo next year list:

• A pair of DoodleLabs 440 MHz Data Radios
• Better CW filter for the FT817
• Icom R92 DStar HT for remote operation
• High accuracy time base for FT817
• Diamond CP725H is a four band (6M, 10M, 15M and 40M) trap vertical antenna
• Comet H-422 quad-band rotatable trapped dipole that covers 40, 20, 15 and 10.
• CUSHCRAFT A6270-13S 6M/2M/70CM BEAM