Were you listening???

Yesterday (last night to be specific) I decided to set up the gear to monitor as much as Superstorm Sandy as I could…  Twitter, ECHOLINK and HF SSB gave me a good deal of information and that was almost to the point of overloading the senses…  I can only imagine what the Communicators were going through in the areas strongly impacted by Sandy…

NYC ARECS (twitter @nycaresc) did an excellent job of letting us know what was happening in the Big Apple via their tweets…  They have a very large and comprehensive Frequency List on their Website should you ever be in NYC in a bad time…

The VOIP Weather Net (
http://www.voipwx.net/
) Was active with numerous Repeaters Linked together via ECHOLINK and the IRLP .  This gave an excellent image of what was happening locally in the Eastern Seaboard area.  From trees down, power out and flooding it brought it all down to a level that was easier to comprehend…  When you hear a guy saying that the tree in his yard has just taken out the power lines in front of his house…  It brings it home…

The Hurricane Watch Net (
http://www.hwn.org/
) operating on 7.268 and 14.325 gave us a large picture of the damages and conditons from Maine to the Carolinas…  I remember one station remarking that he lived in West Virginia and the temp was 31 deg F and they had 12 inches of wet snow snapping branches and bringing wires down…

For those of you not in a colder area…  In the fall before all the leaves fall off the trees an early snowstorm puts extra weight on the trees as the leaves collect the snow…  Add to this a gusty wind and the snow covered leaves are now a sail that puts lots of pressure on the branches…  The branches snap and fall to the ground…. or across Hydro/phone lines…  They also have been known to take out antennas the same way…

So in conclusion…

So what I heard was about 4 hours worth of good Comminicators doing what they had trained for…  There was no panic in the voices…  There was urgency….  In my opinion the groups did an excellent job of providing communications under less than stellar conditions…  No exercise can prepare you for operating in the field when your field is underwater and blowing away…

Bravo Zulu to all concerned

73bob

Issues with ECHOLINK

It was one of those spur of the moment ideas…  Once I got my Android Smart Phone for Christmas and I figured out that there was an ECHOLINK APP for the phone then it made perfect sense to hook up my old ECHOLINK  NODE back up so I could link back to my 2m radio from my phone if I was not within range of normal 2m communications.

Back in late 2005/early 2006 I was doing this with the 2m radio being set to the OVMRC Repeater VE3TWO Frequency of 147.300.  This worked great and so I figured that if it worked last time then it should work this time…

Can anyone out there see where this is headed???  All the old parts were still intact.  My Rigblaster NOMIC sound card interface set up for my Yaesu FT2400 with the right cables.  This I know works as its the same setup up for when I operate APRS from home so its already configured correctly for receive and keying the radio up for transmit.

So it it works with the above gear and the computer like the sound card settings  then when I go with the following setup…

Only real difference is the soundcard settings and the software…

And thats were we sit at this time.  The mechanics of the setup work fantastic.  No issues with keying up the radio or off keying its works great.  However the audio quality on TX and RX is leaving much to be desired and it looks like this could take a while.  It seems that UI View/AGWPE for APRS is much easer to set sudio levels for than ECHOLINK is…

I have a new shack computer (hand me down as Liz is getting a new desktop) coming in in the near future so I hope the sound card config issues will be cleared up with a newer, faster computer to work with…  Failing that somewhere in a box, here in a corner of the basement is the very old desktop from 2005-2006 that might still even have the old software on it and perhaps I can dust that off and breath life back into it for the amateur radio community…

In the meantime if you follow Echolink keep a watch out for VA3QV-L which would be me trying again to get the audio levels set correctly (so link in and say hi and give me your opinion of how it sounds to you).  If you see VA3QV on the stations list then its either my Phone or my Acer Netbook with the internet stick and then just try and connect and say hi…

More on how this work in progress continues ….  Its all in the configuration…

73bob

Revisiting ECHOLINK

As a few of you know back in 2006 for a few months I sponsored the ECHOLINK Node VA3QV-L which was operating on the VE3TWO (Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club) Repeater Frequency of 147.300 (+).  The idea of the node was to see how many people would use it to link back into our Club Repeater and say HI to us while they were out of town.

It was a fairly simple setup consisting of a Rigblaster Nomic interface, a Yaesu FT2400 2m mobile radio along with a simple JPOLE antenna (10 foot mast) and a power supply strong enough to run the radio at the 5w setting.  The computer was an old desktop that was strong enought to run whatever version of windows that it had on it along with the ECHOLINK Software…

.

Its main purpose was to see if there was the interest in such a service and if there was then the Club would set things up and run it themselves.

I ran the Node for about 4 months and then the Club took over the project which let me use the same equipment without the ECHOLINK Software as an APRS station once I had configured the AGWPE and UI View to work with the Rigblaster interface and the desktop.  This carried on for years until I replaced the Desktop with the Dell Laptop I am still using as the shack computer now…

.

.

As you know the Dell although its getting tired has been operating on APRS as VA3QV for a few years now and doing great…  With the arrival of my new Android Smart Phone (as it has an ECHOLINK APP) I decided to get my old ECHOLINK Node of VA3QV-L back up and running just incase the need ever came up that I would want to link into my node from my Droid or from my Netbook using my Internet Stick.

.

Right now the link radio is set up on 146.550 while I do the testing but its not on unless I am sitting there watching it while I am trying to get the configuration correct.

So far I am pleased by my attempts.  I have been able to get the software to key up the radio and even more importantly able to off key the radio.  From the Droid to the computer to a vhf handie being used as a monitor the audio levels seem to be fairly good.  From the vhf handie to the computer to the droid the audio levels seem to be be a bit high and so far I have not been able to get them set correctly yet.  Lowering the audio levels at the sound card and also lowering the volume on the radio has not seemed to fix it yet.  Its only a matter of time till everything gets set up right

.

I wish I could remember how I did this 7 years ago…  Perhaps it will come to me…

More on how this works out…

73bob

APRS–> IGates vs RF

Now please keep in mind that I am not a APRS Whiz…  I am a low end APRS user but I do dabble in that part of our wonderful hobby…

Today if you do a “aprs.fi” search for my callsign (VA3QV) you will notice two callsign SSIDs  in close proximity… 

VA3QV is my home station.  It has my old Dell laptop as its dedicated computer.  I am using a rig blaster nomic interface to a Yaesu FT2400 2m radio.  The shareware version of AGWPE Packet Engine and the 32 bit version of UI View complete the station.

VA3QV-4 is my shack computer.  My Toshiba laptop  is running the 32 Bit version of UI View and I have changed the coordinates (Lat/Long) to a vacant lot close to my QTH.  This setup is not hooked up to any radio nor do I plan to do so.  It is hooked up to the internet only.

VA3QV-5 is my Portable APRS Station.  The computer is my ACER Netbook.  This is  a dual purpose station as I have it hooked into another Rigblaster Nomic interface that is wired up for my old ADI dual band handheld.  Using once again a copy of AGWPE and UI View 32 bit it gives me a 5w portable  RF Style APRS Station.  This station has also a bit of a “Wired Connection” so to speak.  If I plug in my Wind Mobile internet Stick I can configure UI VIEW to act either as an I GATE which would let me connect to an APRS Server (simular to VA3QV-4) but I could “gate” RF Signals to the internet or if I set the filters correctly gate internet signals to the RF world.  Due to the complexities of setting up the internet to rf  IGATES there do not seem to be many of these out there…

You might notice that there is no VA3QV-9 or VA3QV-7 listed above.  The “-7″ SSID is usually used to indicate a handheld portable station.  I have plans to pick up one of the new Yaesu VX8GRs when they become a bit more available in Canada.  That would become VA3QV-7.  The “-9″ SSID normally denotes a mobile station and as I don’t own a car…  Don’t forsee me owning a car in the near future …   It goes without saying that if you were to see VA3QV-9 without a boatload of blog posts describing my new mobile setup (both vehicle and radio) most likely you would be seeing someone bootlegging my call.

Now the above paragraphs have defined what I do in the APRS area of the hobby and that leads us in (although a bit long winded) to todays actual post…

Today is a bit of a test day…  I am currently running VA3QV and VA3QV-4 at the same time and I am noticing that the screen is a bit more conjested on VA3QV-4 than on VA3QV.  It seems that more amateurs are playing with versions of APRS such as mobile devices (IPHONES) and also DAPRS (DSTAR) that are not beaconing their positions and stats on the traditional 2m band.  They are sending their info out via either the internet directly  or through whatever sort of gateway to the internet.

If you remember my earlier statement about the IGATES sending signals from the internet to RF being very rare this means that if you are monitoring RF only you are missing quite a bit… 

I never really thought of it before till today when on two computer screens running the identical software and the identical map of Ottawa one was cluttered and one was not… 

I guess its the way of the future with ECHOLINK, IRLP, DSTAR along with several other internet based modes to replace having antennas (boy if that one don’t get me some flames what will?) for amateur radio… 

I freely admit to using ECHOLINK Remote HF Recievers in conjunction with my FT 847 to extend my recieve while running my NTS Nets…  But there is always a real HF Rig and antenna in the equation.

With so many operating APRS without RF and with the lack of Internet to RF Igates how will the person with his FT350, VX8 or Kenwood 710, 700, TH7  know that there is someone close by he could chat with??? 

Im sure that one day I will see the following SMS message over APRS…” Roger…  The rig is a IPhone with a 3 G connection…  BTU 

To me the intenet is a tool I use in my hobby…  My hobby still uses antennas and not the one on my cell phone or WIFI connections…

As usual comments are welcome…  Polite comments can disagree and get published…. Nasty comments are cheerfully deleted…  If you wish to comment via an EMAIL we call it a GUEST BLOGGER POSTING and I will cut and paste the complete (Polite only emails please) email into a posting giving you credit for the material…

73bob

News Update from the IARU

This mornings check of TWITTER found the following tweet and after following the link to the IARU Website finds the following:

=======================================

Published January 23rd, 2010

Hola

Hoy han estado activos los dos operadores en Haití: YV5JF y YV5VE, firmando  como YV5AJ-HH. También estuvieron en Echolink y Messenger aprovechando una celda WIFI  abierta 73 Reinaldo, YV5AMH

Hi

Today, were active, the two operators in Haiti: YV5JF and YV5VE, with the Call Sign YV5AJ-HH. Also they were working in Echolink and Messenger,   using an open WIFI cell. 73s. Reinaldo, YV5AMH

===============================================

I find their headline just a bit misleading.  Perhaps one of :

” Internet returned to Haiti”  Amateurs agument their communications plan to include ECHOLINK and MSN“

Now the fact that someone is doing something is good news…

Although for those who have been faithfully monitoring the HF Frequencies just in case they could hear someone needing assistance from the affected area…  To suddenly hear that “When all else fails….WIFI” probally won’t do anything for the morale of the operators…

Now before you start the hate mail:

I realize there might be an issue with the translation as the news item does say “…also working in Echolink and MSN…“ so perhaps the fact that they also made HF contacts was just lost in the translation…

I am very pleased that assistance is being offered to and received by the people of Haiti…  I am also pleased that we are doing something to assist.

I use echolink on a regular basis and have no problems using a VOIP System in conjunction with my other Amateur Radio modes and tools…

I was just hoping for a little more RF in the story to make things a bit more PRO Amateur Radio.  The release is coming from the International Amateur Radio Union so I would of expected the people there to give it bit more of an Amateur Radio Spin…

Anyway as mentioned yesterday the ARRL is sending Radios. Equipment and a repeater into the affected area.  Canada (RAC) has bilingual radio operators ready to depart as soon as security-safety issues are resolved.

Today CNN on air reports confirm yesterdays CBC report that the rescue mission is starting to wind down and soon will become a recovery mission.  The looting and security issues are still there which makes the security of volunteers still a serious problem…

Things are happening, assistance is being offered and for the most part accepted…

Later we must talk about the attitude of leave it to the pros and keep the “want a bees out”…  I guess the first thing would be to define a wantabee compared to a volunteer…

This discussion will start early in the week when I give you what I concider to be the definations…  After that we can discuss the positions that a volunteer can do without getting in the way….  or the benefits of having a trained volunteer ready to come in and help out…

And as this is an Amateur Radio Blog…  it will be from an Amateur Radio Perspective…

73bob

Changes to the shack and some updates

Today (this morning ) I thought I would tell you about some changes in the shack along with update a couple of items I have previously blogged about….

The first change was the return of APRS to the VA3QV shack.  I had loaned out my Yaesu FT 2400 which was the radio I used for packet/APRS out to a local amateur who needed a voice rig till he replaced one that was not functioning.  I got it back last week and finally got around to re installing it and getting it back on the air.  I use it at the 10w setting and the antenna is a larson 5/8w magmount antenna which is on my metal fence rail in the back yard.  After checking the path it gets into 3 different digis in the Ottawa Area so all is good.

The 2nd change is the addition of a new michrophone to my Yaesu FT 847.  I was given an audio mic on a desk stand and was told to have fun hooking it up.

Although not exactly as pictured its pretty close

A quick trip to a local electronics store got my PTT switch and a hunt through the junk box found a lenght of wire with the right connecter for the FT 847 on one end.  About one hour with a multi-meter and a low power soldering iron had me on the air and getting great audio reports.

Now the great thing about this endevour is that first off it worked and for those of you who know me well I was able to make all the connections without smoking my fingertips…  Bandaids and soldering usually go together in my shack and with this last project I was able to break the tradition.

The other change is that as I need the soundcard outputs of my dell laptop for the AGWPE Packet Engine Setup for my Packet /APRS installation I could no longer use my Dell Laptop for SKYPE.  Starting today I am using my ACER Netbook in the shack for ECHOLINK and SKYPE and normally will be active on one or the other  (SKYPE is first choice) whenever I am in the shack.  Nothing against ECHOLINK but my daughters are not amateurs and so they can SKYPE me when they need something when they are out at work.  On SKYPE I can be found as bob.sharp.VA3QV if I remember correctly.

On to the updates…

I did make it out yesterday to the Ottawa ARES meeting and was brought up to speed on the local happenings.  The Groups other name is the Emergency Measures Radio Group and both names share the same website address at www.emrg.ca.  I could tell you about all the things they are doing but if you visit the website you will be able to read it in more detail than I could of remembered to list here.  One thing I will mention is that they have an excellent relationship with the City of Ottawa Office of Emergency Management who support EMRG by providing repeaters and repeater sites.  EMRG currently has 4 VHF voice repeaters, 2 UHF Repeaters, one Portable Repeater on VHF along with a Packet Digi all set up at different Ottawa Fire Department locations across the City. Its nice to see the City supporting the ARES…

After the EMRG/ARES Meeting with the assistance of  Rob VE3SJN I headed over to a local electronics shop and picked up what was needed  to get the Desktop Mic connected up.

After droping off my briefcase after the meeting and the shopping trip Trisha and myself went over to a local high school for my H1N1 and Seasonal Flu Shot.  Despite what was mentioned previously in the media I was able to get in and out within one hour and that was getting stabbed in both arms.  One arm is kinda sore (the one that got the H1N1) but its not stopping me from moving  and the other arm is fine…

If you remember my previous posting of 14year old vs Industry Canada there is an article in todays Ottawa Sun that concerns the topic.  I’m not sure if this is old news (from the orignal item) or more of an update but I am very concerned that the father seems to be agreeing with the fact that his son is showing no respect for Canadian Law. Perhaps someone with a citation book and a badge should introduce them to the Radio Act.  He was asked nicely to shut down because he was breaking the law and then refuses…

BREAK OUT THE TICKET BOOK AND WRITE HIM UP…

But then again why do we need laws anyway???  Now thats just my opinion but once your warned and then refuse to comply I concider it to be fair game…

Today I have already checked into ONTARS, the North Bay Net and the OVMRC 80M Pothole Net and am going to try for an afternoon of radio if I can get some Christmas Shopping done first…

73bob

ECHOLINK and APRS getting set up

Today I decided to fight a bit with the new laptop and get my UI VIEW and ECHOLINK software up and running.  It took a bit but I did get it all functioning.  If you were to do the APRS.FI thing and search for VA3QV-1 that would be my new notebook (net book, laptop whatever) its the new little ACER jobbie and I am pleased with it…

I should mention that I have no GPS hooked into it yet so I manually entered the lat/long into the software so the coordinates were just down the road from VA3QV which was running on RF rather than VA3QV-1 on the APRS Server only.

Echolink working fine as well so not its a better logging program and SKYPE and also a DIGIPAN program,  then maybe all will be finished and I can spend time playing radio instead of working on computers…

On the radio side of things I was able to have a couple of short QSO’s on the local repeaters along with checking in to the Ontario Phone Net and the 3730 group on 80m.

If the weather cooperates tomorrow morning and I have the energy….  I plan to drag the FT817 portable station out to the park for an hour or so and test out the station I will most likely be using for field day.  The long range forecast is calling for sound and light on Field Day Saturday but I am hoping that will change before then…

On the topic of Field Day if you check back in the blog from a few days ago I did post some club updates.  As of todays date (Saturday June 20) I have nothing new to update.  With regards to the OVMRC there is no new info on their webpage and the newsletter did not mention Field Day in the June issue…  More on this if I can find something out…

Enjoy the rest of your weekend

73bob

Update on the noise/antenna issues

Well as most of you know by now I have switched home HF antennas to an Inverted “L” style of antenna from the infamous folded vertical that I used to operate with.

The change of antennas was brought on by an attempt to improve my signal going out and hopefully improve my receive by lowering my noise floor.

After about a month of messing around I am partially successful.  The signals out have been fantastic and some people have even used the term “armchair copy” to describe my signal.  So far I have been able to make contacts and break pileups on 20, 40 and 80m.  Although the antenna loads up fine using my LDG Z100 auto tuner on all bands 10m to 160m I have yet to make any contacts on 10,12,15,17 and 160m.

On the receive side I have been able to slightly lower my noise floor down to around a S7 to S9 on 80m compared to the +20 plus that I was getting in the past.  The noise level drops greatly the further away from the 80m band I get…  The 80m noise level seems to drop more later in the evenings which makes its easy for late night ragchews but rough for early evening nets…

On that topic I do have a problem hearing the Net Control Stations for the Ontario Phone Net as most of them are in southern Ontario and as I’m in eastern Ontario some nights it becomes rough copy…  To help myself hear whats going on I have been operating  by multi moding….  I transmit on the assigned frequency but in fact am operating split by using a remote reciever that I can access via the internet using ECHOLINK.

I am using the facilities of VE3MAZ-L in Niagara Falls Ontario for receive and the system works great.  Only drawback is that I can hear myself talk (full duplex like when you work sats) and that takes time to get used to.  Good sides are that I can hear all the net along with my own signal so I know how everyone else should be hearing me as well.  Thanks Ken for offering such a wonderful service to the amateur community.  As long as my internet connection is stable I can hear whats going on…

I am still working on the noise issue but so far I seem to be stuck at the S7 to S9 level for 80m.  I have added chokes, ferrite beads and extra grounds and extra radials and to be honest I think thats about as good as it gets.  My last hope is that I have been informed that HYDRO Ottawa will be in later this summer to replace/upgrade some underground wiring and I’m hoping that the work they do will help out with my noise…

Enjoy your weekend and more later

73bob

Working 80m with a big split

I figured out how to work around my noise problems that everyone who will listen to my whinning knows I have…  Its a merge of the new and the old…

I transmit from my QTH using my normal FT 847 and the Inverted L antenna along with my LDG Z100 Autotuner.

I then recieve off my laptop using the ECHOLINK and the VE3MAZ-L remote receiver in Niagara Falls Ontario.

I have used this system in the past just to listen to various nets but this is the first time I actively participated in a net. The net I chose to test things out on was the Ontario Phone Net which is on 3.742 at 1900 hrs local time.

Tonight I recieved 3 pieces of traffic via the echolink hf link and transmitted via 80m hf.  Outside of some getting used to hearing myself talk (full duplex as I can hear what I am saying via the Niagara Falls remote base) it was not that bad.

There was an approx 1 second delay between the RF side of things and the ECHOLINK side of things…  The Net Control Station VA3PB Paul was good enough to slow things down just a bit to account for the delay on the “overs” and after that all was easy to follow.  As I have done some SAT work since I got the FT 847 working full duplex was not that hard…

It was nice to participate in the net from the comfort of the shack and its also nice not to be feeding the skitters in the park….

73bob

Friday contact of the day KE5YTA- Roger

Tonight I had a very nice QSO with K5YTA Roger in Richardson TX…  This was an ECHOLINK contact…  I had the computer running in the background while I was doing some renovations in the shack…  I am in the process of changing some things here in the shack in anticipation of a visit from the plumber who will be here on Monday to fix a couple of newly leaking pipes in the laundry room which is beside the shack.  I figures as my coax lines go out the laundry room window this would be a good time to get them a bit neater before the plumber gets upset…

So anyway getting back to the Echolink contact…Roger connects to my laptop and we have a great chat….He was saying it was cool there today around 70 deg F and was cold at 45 tonight…Chance of it getting below freezing tomorrow…  Lets see…  our high today would of been close to 45 dec F and it was just raining most of the day….  Then we had the flash freeze and the temps dropped about 30 degrees real quick…. The rain switched to freezing rain then snow….

I like his bad weather more than I like my good weather today….  Anyway it was a great contact…  

73bob