Radio, railways, stuff...

I have a G7RPG microhub which has been running fine for a number of years but with the recent PHP security issues the operating system was rather out of date. I could not replace the version oh PHPand although it is not Internet accessible I do not like loose ends. I have been meaning to upgrade to AllStarLink 3 for a while so the PHP issue pushed it up the long list of things to do. AllStarLink does not use PHP but the web frontend on the microhub does. Installing AllStarLink 3 was pretty easy and there are detailed instructions for a Raspberry Pi installation like the microhub at https://allstarlink.github.io/allmon3/install/ -it coes as a complete package that is installed onto an SD Card so no need to first install an operating system. Plus it is a 64 bit o/s now. Setting it up was straightforward - I won't repeat it here because every system is dfferent and I may tell you the wrong things but in my case I use simpleUSB for the radio but bear in mind that the microhub was already set up and running anyway. The only thing I did to make things easier was to copy all of /srv, /etc and /usr/local from the original microhub so I could refer to settings later on. The one thing that caught me out was the microhub has a red/green/blue LED that is driven from a couple of GPIO pins. This was controlled by 'events' in Asterisk that ran one of four commands which, I believe were a part of the WiringPi package. Rather than installing that and figuring things out I elected to write some scripts to use the gpioset command and that goe a little messy as it needs to run as root plus the command does not exit. I had to use 'timeout' as well plus 'visudo' to enable the asterisk user to run the commands without needing a password. The last fiddle was getting the commands in the right place - at the end of /etc/asterisk/rpt.conf. I have not reinstalled the original web frontend from the microhub as I have not used it in a while. Nodes can be connected from the Allmon3 web frontend. I set up echolink which again was straightforward especially as I had the old config file to refer to.

I came across a post about the UmKA-1 (RS40S) cubesat and it broadcasting SSTV images - nearly missed it, I must read more as I usually only take notice of the ISS events. Anyway, I managed to receive two pictures, one sadly not so good. I missed one pass that would have been good, at least it sounded good on the TS2000X but the PC's USB ports had decided they did not want to play. Grumble. But here are the two images I did get: Info on the cubesat can be found at https://db.satnogs.org/satellite/SDUV-9624-5611-1090-5908

Another successful reception of SAQ on 17.2kHz today. As usual this was via SDR++ on the Mac using an AirSpy HF+ Discovery and a YouLoop antenna in the loft roughly aimed at SAQ. Today's broadcast was for UN Day. The screenshot below shows the first signals while the transmitter was being set up. The next screenshot is mid-broadcast: And finally the end of transmission. The event was livestreamed on YouTube and recordings etc. can be found at https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderSAQ