Amateur radio ⁽²⁵⁶⁾

Well that's a fail. I tried a dry run today for when I hopefully go portable. Whip on the car on a magmount, tuned nicely for 7.074MHz for FT8, but the rig manages about a second of tx and then straight back to rx. I've had similar before with RF getting into the USB leads. The setup is pretty standard, FT818, Signalink, Z817 tuner, lead from rig to Signalink, lead from rig to tuner, lead from Signalink to USB hub for audio, lead from tuner to USB hub for CAT. First off, the tuner refused to tune. One ferrite cured that and it was happy with a match (of course I forgot to try a 1:1 unun here). But lots of ferrites later and still no go on tx. The trouble is likely to be the long USB lead to USB dongle for CAT control, or the USB hub. Actually I can do without the hub as the MacBook has two USB ports and I only need two for this. In fact, for FT8, which is my aim here, I can do without the tuner too. But now the sun has moved round onto the car and it's too hot to fiddle. Hmmm...

Getting ready for a trip in early July, hopefully /A from a hotel and also /P from the car. I might even manage one POTA. I am just assembling the final items such as this LiFePO4 battery, the smart charger for which has no lights or any indication of when it has finished charging which I found a bit odd. Anyway, it is on charge ready to see if everything plays properly together while still parked on the drive!

Another new toy, only small this time. This is a 433MHz LoRa transceiver with TinyGS firmware loaded. More about that below. The device has radios built in - WiFi and BLE built in via an ESP32 chip and LoRa via an SX127x transceiver. It comes pre-loaded with software which I did not investigate as I planned to flash it anyway. It can be powered from a supplied connector or via a micro-USB and has an SMA socket on board. There is a wealth of info on the web about these devices and some include GPS capabilities. I got this because I came across the TinyGS project. Quoting directly from their website: TinyGS is an open network of Ground Stations distributed around the world to receive and operate LoRa satellites, weather probes and other flying objects, using cheap and versatile modules. This project is based on ESP32 boards and currently it is compatible with sx126x and sx127x LoRa módules but we plan to support more radio módules in the future. The TinyGS firmware basically does everything. Installation is straightforward provided you have a supported board. The first board I got was a Heltec and sold as V2 but was a V3 when it arrived and would not accept the firmware. The second board worked fine. Instructions are all on GitHub. One flashed the board sets itself up as a WiFi AP to which you can connect and set basic parameters including access credentials for your own WiFi and credentials for the central MQTT server which aggregates results from every other ground station. Once those are set and it reboots, connects itself, throws up its own web server for status and configuration changes, and gets on with things. At first I had it connected to the Big Wheel in the loft (hardly big at 70cm) but received nothing at all. Next, I tried the collinear. Again, nothing. So I set the Arrow up for 70cm, mounted it horizontally and about 20 degrees up and pointed south-ish avoiding the house next door and left it all night. Overnight it received 41 packets - success for very little effort. An example of received data How that is displayed on the website (list of all stations) The Arrow was in the way so the board is now connected to the Big Wheel again pending me making an antenna to go outside. TinyGS is a fascinating project, very easy to get in to for little outlay. Update: having left the board connected to the collinear it seems to like GaoFen-7 even though at 400.45MHz it is a way off the bottom end of the antenna’s range. Other than that, it has picked up signals from FEES (437.2MHz), Norbi (436.703MHz) and Sapling2 (437.4MHz). 128 confirmed packets as of 12:30 on 27/5/23, not a lot, but some at least.

I had a dabble with 70MHz FT8 these past few days seeing I have been moving stuff about and can now connect the 70Mhz transverter to the FT817 and not be worried about blowing it up. Only one confirmed QSO but a couple of reception reports today via pskreporter... one in Wales at 181 miles but an incomplete QSO despite me sending several RRR's though we did at least exchange signal reports, and then one reception in EI at 298 miles, plus one more local in England at 56 miles. Not too bad given this is all via a halo in the loft.

Late to the party as always I recently looked in more detail at POCSAG and that led me to DAPNET. I spotted this a while ago but somehow it didn’t register as interesting back then. Signing up to DAPNET was seamless. You first sign up for an account and the only thing that threw me there was the need to specify a RIC. A document suggested just using one’s DMR ID which I did. You need to send a copy of your licence and I keep a PDF handy for just this. I received account information early the next day. You then need a transmitter ID, same form, different option. That came back almost immediately. Details of that go into pi-star and it all worked in that the DAPNET website could see my pi-star, and pi-star started to display incoming DAPNET connections. Given my desire for new toys for old technology I purchased an Alphapoc 602R pager from an eBay trader. This arrived in a couple of days but despite me programming it all up it never received any pages despite pi-star displaying some test ones directed at my RIC. Firmware perhaps? After soldering the wire pi-star could not update the image no matter what I tried (which after all was simply to try again!). Reading various posts indicated some older DVMEGA boards would not update this way. The DVMEGA website mentioned that one can update by removing the chip from the board and inserting it into an Arduino Uno, having removed the chip from that. That worked fine, although I have to admit it failed the first time as I forgot to chose the correct board in the DVMEGA website’s x-loader that comes with the firmware. So, the DVMEGA is now on HR3.26 but still no DAPNET. Now here it seems my ability to permutate search terms (‘dvmega’, ‘dv-mega’, ‘dv mega’) clearly failed me as I eventually found a few posts suggesting that the DVMEGA firmware doesn’t support it anyway. By now this was all a bit of a straw clutching exercise as I had already ordered an MMDVM Pi hat which the DAPNET website itself suggests. Amazon to the rescue. I ordered a AURSINC ‘MMDVM Duplex Hotspot Module Dual Hat’ on next-day delivery and it arrived at lunchtime today (30th April). This came with pi-star specific instructions which was very handy. Out with the DVMEGA and in with the MMDVM_Duplex hat, booted the Pi, chose the modem [STM32-DVM / MMDVM_HS - Raspberry Pi Hat (GPIO)] and it worked straight away radio-wise. After shutting down the radio modes so DAPNET could get a word in another test sent to my RIC and the pager worked. Success. As this new board is duplex I have set up pi-star to use split 70cm frequencies for the radio side of things and it seems to work well now I have reprogrammed the FT2D. I did have pi-star connected for DMR, D-Star and YSF but I have now only enabled YSF to calm…