Ham Radio Venture Overland
DMR 31655 / AllStar Bridge 54897 / P25 TG 31655 / Wires-X 81335 / XLX303 H
Post Your Adventure Here!
What’s everyone up to? Use this form to introduce yourself, post a story, a question, pictures of your latest (or past) camping trip, overland, or trekking trip.
Building Allstar Nodes
I’m trying to figure out a way to build a good but cheap! Allstar node that I could help the group with if anyone is interested. I still don’t have any of these working %100 correctly….. but I feel like I’m close and it’s been an aggravating but fun learning experience.
This is the final working configuration.
Above, is a BaoFeng BF-888 radio ($10.48 ea), a CM-108 sound fob ($8.99 ea), Raspberry Pi3B ($48.00 ea) based Allstar node. I’m feeding power from a single 12v source through a buck-converter to get the 5v for the Pi and step down to 4.5v to power the radio. The rest is wire, diodes, resistors, LEDs, and a switch.
This is the CM-108. The jacks have been removed to get to the solder pads. A couple of other components have been removed and/or added per some instructions I found. A tap has been made in two of the IC’s to get status for some front panel LED’s
The Baofeng BF-888’s have been modified to access the COS line, +voltage, ground, speaker, and mic, etc.
I want to 3d print the case to keep the cost down…. but at 22 hours of printing… It’s likely finding a plastic case will be cheaper.
I happen to have a DMK URI interface that makes this ALL a lot simpler… However, the URI is about $120
The buck-converter is still a good way to power it all as it’s only one connection and gets rid of the wall-wart for the Pi by feeding pin 2 and 3 on the header of the Pi and able to step down further with a diode to get 4.5 for the radio. Plus still having 12v available if needed.
More to come………………….
Lake Merwin, Wa. – KiwiSDR is online
My KiwiSDR receiver is finally in its permanent location at Lake Merwin in southwestern Washington State. I’ve tried to include some information on the website to help people figure out what they are hearing, how to find stuff, etc. This will be a work in progress so check for updates.
KiwiSDR Update – March-2024
The KiwiSDR2 finally shipped from New Zealand and is in my possession. I’ve had it running in burn-in/test mode at my home QTH for a few weeks now. Current receive antenna is an MLA-30+ loop mounted off the roof of the house and nulled for local noise.
It can be accessed here: http://21185.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/
The MLA-30+ is on the left with a rotor. Found the rotor to be completely unnecessary as you only need to adjust the antenna to null noise and leave it alone. The center picture is a multi-coupler used to distribute the receive antenna to ALL the receivers… of which I have too many 🙂 Right: is the Kiwi plugged in next to my SDRPlay RSPdx my second best receiver.
This Kiwi project is not a ‘cheap’ endeavor. After getting the receiver (small batch built) and other parts including the super-quiet power supply (Hi-Fi stereo favorite) for the Beagle Bone pc that runs the unit, GPS and receive antenna, cooling fans, and power back-up, OH! and high speed gigabit internet service to the remote woods….. so I hope this brings some value to the HAM/SWL community that has given me so much. If anything, I’m having fun with it so it’s justified in my eyes 🙂
Even though I am at elevation and in the woods; Starting out the antenna will be an MLA-30+ Active Loop. I have noticed some electrical ‘hash’ from the old buried power system (I suspect). I will experiment throughout the season with other options until the ultimate winner of an antenna is found. I have room for a lot of wire.
The radio will be plugged into a power conditioner and a CyberPower 1500va/1000w battery back-up (UPS). Another consideration is that I hear the FPGA chip on radio board runs a bit warm. I have designed some 3D prints to add a brushless AC cooling fan to the top of the well-ventilated unit. If it gets hot and I’m not there, I may need a way to shut it down. Looking at some automation ideas that will work with the internet service. I’m hoping none of this doesn’t add noise… we’ll see…. and correct. Our electrician is designing me mechanical (noiseless) high heat shutoff in case the ambient air in the trailer hit’s a high temp yet to be established.
Antenna will be re-located to the rear of my cabin as far away as possible from the power and internet router equipment. I have also created a 3D printed mount for the GPS antenna to be on the same mast as the MLA-30+ loop antenna.
Feel free to give it a try. It will be back online sometime Saturday and hopefully receive a lot more than at home.
10M RX on Quansheng UV K6
As most of you know I am not really big fan of chinese radios, however everything seems to be made there these days including our anytones
It is amazing how hackable this radio is via its firmware, I have the IJV mod in it but couldnt make sense of the menu or its functions, I find the egzumer FW easier to learn and use
as such here are a few small videos of it on HF
low-cost versatile APRS board – part 2
I have been using the Lilygo TWR for some weeks now. I used it mainly as an APRS-tracker, but I also tested the I-Gate and digipeater functionalities. It is amazing, that a lot of settings can be configured directly on the device, using just the small thumbwheel and the OLED-display. The Webinterface offers even more – take a look at my screenshots. The device even offers smart beaconing and different symbols (moving car, stopped car). Impressing for a software version 0.3.
The hardware seems to be the source of some issues. It seems, that even in the “low power” setting the output of the device is almost 1 Watt. In the “high power” setting it crashes when starting to transmit (= turns off). First I thought it was a software problem, but it actually seems to be a hardware problem. It was hard to get the device out of such a “crash loop”, but I managed to do so after some attempts.
There are few android devices, which can connect to the wifi access point of the Lilygo. A majority of devices fail to connect. As a workaround I configured a guest wifi on my router, naming it as the network, for which the Lilygo TWR is looking for. When it connects to my guest network, I can access the built-in webserver and the configuration menu.
I printed a case for the Lilygo TWR, which is also available on github.com. It has a version number of 0.9, so a few things might be adjusted in the future, but so far the board fits into the case and it works even without additional screws (see picture).
In tracker mode, while transmitting a beacon every 30 seconds (smart beaconing set to “off”), a 27100 battery lasts for more than 6 hours. That is a good battery life. Also the board charges the battery, when connected to a USB power supply.
In spring I would like to configure the Lilygo TWR as a digipeater and lift it up with a drone (or with a kite, when it turns out to be too heavy for the drone). So I made some weight measurements:
– bare board: 60g
– board with 21700 LiPo cell: 132g
– board, battery and case: 171g
– board, battery, case, nagoya 701 antenna: 188g
I still have to run more tests with my other radios – other repeaters and I-Gates seem to receive and decode the Lilygo TWR well. My FTM-300 seems to skip some packets, but displays most of them. The Anytone 878 receives all beacons, but the displayed symbols change (single bit errors ?). The FT-3DE decodes only few packets and I still don’t know why.
New project at KB7RQQ (a remote SDR receiver install)
…Likely available in March 24′
I’ve been toying with the idea of having a remote SDR located at our place at the lake. The site is at 1,260′ elevation and is pretty RF quiet environment. I have fairly reliable power, but internet has been an issue.
We aren’t in good range of cellular. I can get about a bar-and-a-half from a single AT&T tower across the lake. This has worked OK for DMR with the hotspot but summertime with tons of people in the local campgrounds… the cell site doesn’t have enough bandwidth for everyone to use it at once and often it’s hard to get even a text to go through.
We currently have a WiFi system that is radio linked through the woods that operates much like WiFi in a hotel or airport in that you have to authenticate your account each time with a browser. This means it isn’t an always on connection and I have no ability to get IP addresses for devices and be able to route to them from the outside. It also suffers greatly from lack of bandwidth, foliage in the way, wind, snow, heavy rain, and crashes often during high usage. The cost was palatable though at $100/year.
More recently and Luckily!, I have a neighbor up there that runs an ISP in Portland and he has put some equipment on Davis Peak near Woodland, Washington. This is linked to the KGON tower in Portland, Oregon and fiber linked to his servers in downtown Portland. Davis Peak is about 10 miles line-of-site from us at the lake. The back-haul from Davis Peak to Portland’s KGON tower is about 35 miles!! Testing has ensued with excellent results… and the internet radio equipment should be installed at my site within the next few weeks.
Next is putting together the wide-band receiver. On order is a KiwiSDR 2 that should arrive sometime in February as they are just now going into production for the first run of the model-2’s.
The KiwiSDR is an IP based SDR that allow users to control it via the web browser from anywhere in the world without having to run any software. The KiwiSDR runs WebSDR and allows users full control of the device. The KiwiSDR is wide-band and runs as a ‘hat’ with the computer being a BeagleBone Green running linux and the associated software. It samples from 0 – 30Mhz all at once and you can zoom out and see the entire HF spectrum in a waterfall. Visit KiwiSDR.com for further info and links to receivers that are online currently.
The picture above shows the entirety of 0 to 30Mhz being sampled all at once. The picture below shows zoomed in at the WWV AM signal at 15 MHz with another signal in the waterfall to the right.
Initially, the antenna will be an MLA-30 loop but I do have plans to be able remotely switch antennas via the browser and will have some sort of terminated Beverage antenna as an option too.
This is the Kiwi: Still have to work out a quiet power source and get all the proper connectors. Hope to have this online spring of 24′
So What’s the Point?!?!
Harder question to answer 🙂 I just really like to hunt signals and identify them. These remote SDR’s are a blast! I’ve been able to get very current news on Ukraine and other conflicts from areas closer to the source by being able to listen to their MW and LW local stations. I have been listening to military channels from all militaries by finding receivers closer to the source. Cool world music programs, utility and ‘numbers’ stations, monitoring the ham bands in different countries to see what’s going on etc. For the end user… this is all free and doesn’t require a radio or software… just a web browser and an internet connection. Goal is to add my station to this community and add to the west coast options and further experiment with SDR technology.
visit: rx.linkfanel.net to get a map of all the SDR’s on the network. Click to use them.
or visit KiwiSDR.com for the lowdown
low-cost versatile APRS board
I surprised myself with a Lilygo T-TWR Plus ESP32-S3 after seeing this video about a APRS software for this board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJTNMjpJB98
The board can be obtained from different suppliers (note that there are different versions for VHF and UHF – and do not order the “open version” !) for around $70.
The software is available here, including instructions about flashing it to the board: https://github.com/nakhonthai/ESP32APRS_T-TWR
Here are my first impressions:
– the board comes with a HT-software pre-programmed on it. This is nice for testing, but there are better FM HTs around, so you will really want to flash the APRS-software to it. Flashing it is easy, if you follow the instructions
– the board uses a 27100 lithium cell, which I still have to order, but there is a small spring included in the package and by printing this adapter (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2837524) and adding the spring to it, I could insert a standard 18650 cell (note the polarity printed on the board!)
– I also printed a case, but it is hard to remove once the boards “snaps” into the case. I will probably modify the case a little bit, otherwise it will be hard to remove/replace the battery
– I still don’t know, if the board charges the battery when connected to a 5V USB-connector
– connecting the wifi AP of the board does not work for almost all of my devices, we had no luck with Samsung, Apple and Microsoft devices, only a Xiaomi phone could connect to it
– the board connects to a wifi, but the password string must not be longer than 12 characters (I created a guest-wifi for that reason)
– the board receives and displays APRS-beacons of my FT-3D, it also reports them to the Internet (I-gate mode)
– the board transmits beacons, but my FT-3D decodes only approx. every 5th beacon
I still have to figure out, why the transmitted beacons are not always being decoded. Two digitpeaters/I-gates around Kiel decoded some (?) beacons. Increasing the preamble did not help. I can set two different bandwidths and there are also filter settings (for transmit or for receive or both ?) to play with. For now I can say, that the board works great as an I-gate. I will have to do more tests with the digipeater and tracker modes and report about these tests later…
AI image creator
I checked out Microsofts free image creator (https://www.bing.com/images/create) and asked him create some portable HF radios. I got a radio, which looks a little bit like the FT-897 (but note the wireless microphone). Then I asked for a waterfall display and got a radio with that feature and also a free retro-style leather case. I also wanted to see a handheld radio. It looks like being inspired by the ID-51- could that be the ID-59, coming out in 2027 ? Well, at least it’s amusing to play with such an image creator…
dg6oay
One of my headlamps is a very inexpensive model, but I really like the combination of a narrow and a wide beam LED and the usage of a 18650 battery. The lamp head has always been too heavy for the hinge and finally the hinge broke off. I designed a copy of the mount plate and added a gopro mount. I printed this one and an additional mount on my 3d printer and glued the second mount to the lamp. The lamp works better than before – it is still adjustable, but can also be fixed in a certain position. So if you repair or build something: the Gopro mounting system might help…
HRVO Sunday evening Net
HRVO Sunday evening net.
Dec 10 2023
Thanks everyone for the check-ins.
Tonight’s topic was If you were a kid today what would you want for Christmas?
Announcement- Ken KF4EOM will be running Christmas Eve net and will have Santa on standby to talk to any kids or anyone else that would like to speak to Him. I think it will be a fun net and I hope we have a lot of check-ins.
Check-ins including myself as net as net control.
KK7IAA – Mary – WY
KK7GXU – Don – WY I/o
AA1PR – Mike – VT
KF4EOM – Ken – AZ
N7MYW – Seamus – WA
KD7VNZ – Ann – WA I/o