New Four Band Ham Mobile - Wouxun KG-UV950P

This is the quad band radio I was mentioning at brunch last Saturday - the Wouxun KG-UV950p. Hopefully it'll  transmit simultaneously on both radios.

  http://www.buytwowayradios.com/products/wouxun/kg-uv950p.aspx

> Still not really getting the "quad band" aspect after 3 reads.

VHF and UHF give us local simplex and repeater access.

HF gives SKip DX which is not as easily predictable but with much greater range.

In the middle we have a couple magic bands, 6 meters and 10 meters, that give us both DX and local.    Normally good for local but when the sun shines its magic rays we have propagation around the country and beyond.

I find it appealing to have a single radio that can be used for day to day communications and can also open up and play on those special times when the skip is in.   Thus the appeal to me of a quad band radio like this.

The cross-band functionality may be a bonus where the radio could scan the cool frequencies on one side and cross band it locally to UHF at very low power with the other side..


> I suspect a bit of over-specsmanship after reading this feature:
> Stun and Kill Function

I believe those are standard functions for part 90 commercial gear that allow remotely disabling a radio that's been stolen.

>

I thought the Yeasu FT 8900 was going to be the ultimate 'special purpose' four band rig.  I had planned to use one side on 6  meter packet and the other for local voice operation.   Then I discovered it only does one band-transmitter at a time so it wouldn't work. Hopefully these new radios are better and allow full  independent operation of both modules.  Simultaneous transmitting would be the ultimate..

It's Time for a Smart Talkie!

So who will be the first to bundle an Android 'pad with an Amateur Radio transceiver?   This looks like a break through application for ICOM's DStar.   Other 'digital' modes would work but it would take more development.

Maybe the open source folks will do it - http://radio.testa.co/

-- update 11/20/2013 --

The Runbo was an option but it was pricey.   This one (EARL) looks even better:

  http://www.meetearl.com/

On the other hand, maybe just adding an Argent Data T3-9670 to a tablet or smart phone will be better yet.

Amateur Radio HF Restrictions in USA

Dear ARRL Directors:

I wish I had the time to write a well crafted explanation but the information is there on the advanced Amateur Radio development mailing lists and in regulations from many other countries around the world..

This is a bad idea and could hurt us for years to come.   Reducing the symbol rate is, of course, a good thing.   Locking us into a mere 2.8 KHz on HF is an artificial limitation that will, in the near future, lead to the same frustrations as the archaic symbol rate restriction and further hinder our adoption of modern technology.   A bad change now will add years to the process until we make a better proposal.  Ideally there should be no limit by rules but rather by appropriate technologies and reasonable operation practices as is shown to work successfully elsewhere.

Please further research and reconsider this proposal.

73's
Bill, WA7NWP


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ARRL Web site
Date: Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:48 AM
Subject: ARLB030 ARRL Files "Symbol Rate" Petition with FCC
To: wa7nwp@gmail.com


SB QST @ ARL $ARLB030
ARLB030 ARRL Files "Symbol Rate" Petition with FCC

ZCZC AG30
QST de W1AW
ARRL Bulletin 30  ARLB030
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT  November 20, 2013
To all radio amateurs

SB QST ARL ARLB030
ARLB030 ARRL Files "Symbol Rate" Petition with FCC

The ARRL has asked the FCC to delete the symbol rate limit in
§97.307(f) of its Amateur Service rules, replacing it with a maximum
bandwidth for data emissions of 2.8 kHz on amateur frequencies below
29.7 MHz. The ARRL Board of Directors adopted the policy underlying
the petition initiative at its July 2013 meeting. The petition was
filed November 15.

A few mesh things..

1- Reprogrammed two M2 bullets running the earlier NW-MESH load with the latest CHANGEME firmware.  Tried one as an upgrade instead of an install but wasn't sure about settings so went ahead and installed the whole thing.  Ubiquity installs are getting faster and easier every time.

2- A lighttpd web server is running on the Pi.  For now it's just serving some files off the attached old 500 G drive.  Good learn here is it's possible to directly HNA advertise the /pub directory and a PHP (web page script) file.  Thus either resource is available anywhere on the mesh as a simple web page click.

3 - PI vs POGO.   I'm currently running a PI as a 'computer/build server' and a POGO planned as a dedicated NW-MESH resource server. For future projects I'll be going more PI and less POGO.   While the POGO is faster and cheaper; it has less memory, no audio/video output and the full disk system is on a removeable memory chip which is easy to replace.   The biggest differentiation for me is that the PI uses (essentially) Debian and POGO is running ARCH-Linux which suffers big time from the newer is better syndrome.  PI just works - POGO got broke on an update that required searching out some "just this time" special commands that 'might work' because all of the /bin files were moved to /usr/bin.

4 - I'm working towards moving the local-local traffic off the mesh on to local Access Points as that's faster.   HD video won't go on the mesh and stutters.  :(

5 - 5 GHz is looking better all the time.   The three channels on 2.4 GHz aren't enough.  Any future AP's will be at lease Dual Band and I'm looking forward to trying out NW-MESH on 5 GHz.

6 - Waiting for the new Agent 440 Data Radio - we'll soon be Babbling on UHF.

7 - (added)  I now have an FTP server, proftpd,  running on the Pogo.  With a little more customization I should be able to point the IP camera at it instead of the FTP server that's been running for months and months on the little white ASUS netbook.  That will free up the netbook so it'll no longer be a mesh server but rather a client user device.

More soon.

73
Bill, WA7NWP

Amateur Radio Licensing

Some web sites to help with Amateur Radio Licensing

• Ham Study - sponsored by ICOM
• http://hamexam.org/ - Amateur Radio Practice Exams
• http://www.qsl.net/k/kb7tbt//newham/ - Ham Help page.  Comprehensive list of links.
• http://aa9pw.com/ - FCC Exam practice
• http://www.qrz.com/page/ham-radio-howto.html - Summary
• http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed - Getting Licensed comments
• http://www.arrl.org/licensing-education-training
• Ham Lesson of the day - archives
• KB6NU Study Guides
• Ham Test Online

What to do with an NW-MESH system?

Folks keep asking what they can do with a NW-MESH (equivalent to HSMM-MESH, Broadband Hamnet, etc).

Here's my list of what I've done or an doing with it.

• I needed to put the Raspberry PI on the internet for a system update.   All four sockets in the nearest router were in use.  I grabbed another NW-MESH router, turned it on and plugged in the PI.  It was on the Internet and updating..
• The file server is in the back of the house.  Both formats of new movie are on the laptop in the front room.  I run WINSCP from the laptop and copy the files to the server and in a little while the 8+ Gigabytes were safely archived.
• I have an IP camera (Trendnet TV-IP551W) taking pictures of the front yard.  It takes a picture every five minutes and transfers it to an FTP server archive.  The camera and netbook running the FTP server, filezilla, are currently on the same router but they could be on any of the four NW-MESH routers currently running.
• To access the pictures, I bring up the home page of the lighttpd web server running on the netbook and click on the link to the web cam archives.  Then I can access, by day, any of the pictures.
• It's fun to just check the wifi heard list of the Ubiquity Bullet on the table on the back deck.  I'm hearing three pages of stations.   It will be even more interesting with I raise the height a bit or put on the directional high gain VAGI antenna.
• More soon...

Error Correcting Soundcard Packet

My first packet received thanks to a bit corrected...   Note the [SINGLE] in the status.

1:Fm VE4GLS To APU25N Via GATE [19:03:06R] [SINGLE]
>160203zDX: W7KKE 45.00.66N 124.00.35W 2068.9km 267ø 11:04

It's a little thing (that's some 'small' humor) but I got a kick out of it.

Update:

The monitoring of HF 300 baud packet on 10149.3 MHz CF continues. The display screen shows 17 packets from 6 different stations around the country.   Two of those 17 packets are tagged as having [SINGLE] bit errors fixed.

No APRS-MESSENGER psk packets decoded yet.  I have to tweak the frequency settings on that application.

I need a better antenna....