Amateur radio ⁽²⁵⁶⁾

I dug my poor dusty MD380 out yesterday and charged it up. For a while now I have had Fusion and POCSAG on the pi-star but I rarely use the FT2D and when I do it's only for APRS. So I thought why not get DMR back into the pi-star. I have a dual DVMEGA HAT with pi-star set to duplex from when I was fiddling with the new HAT. Anyway, since I last used the MD380 I changed the rx and tx frequencies in pi-star to the 'designated' hotspot frequencies so the MD380 needed reprogramming. That's where it all started to go south... First off, since I rebuilt the Windows PC I did not, for some reason copy across the MD380 programming software. Ok, found it on the web and installed it. Can it see the TYT programming lead? Nah. This particular lead is basically a wire, it does not have a chip built in apparently and so needs a specific driver. Oh yes, Windows will see the lead and knows what the device is but has no clue about the driver. Ok. Found a driver. Installed it - apparently - it does not give an error but the rapidly disappearing screen on installation did not fill me with confidence. And no, it doesn't work. Tried another programming software suite called editcp (https://www.farnsworth.org/dale/codeplug/editcp/) in case that included the driver. Nope. The disk that came with the MD380, which took some searching as it is one of those small CDs and has nothing at all written on to indicate it is from TYT, also has the driver but it would not install either. Right. Over to Linux. It saw the device and lsusb shows a reasonable text string. The same editcp software has a Linux version. And, typical of Linux it just works. It read the radio, allowed me change the frequencies and programmed the radio again, no issues (*). I did have to remember just how to set up the codeplug as I wanted to use both TS1 and TS2... that took a bit of head scratching as it's been years since I fiddled with this. But a couple of useful websites (there are many others) helped sort my brain out and I now have pi-star and the MD380 set up for TS1 and TS2 with different talkgroups on each via the Brandmeister self service. (* OK I'll admit it took me five attempts to program the frequencies as I kept reading it wrong! FOUR times entered wrong before I got it typed in correctly)

(edited 27/7/24 15:34) I recently came across Meshcom (https://icssw.org/en/meshcom/) which broadly speaking is an amateur radio off grid messaging network like Meshtastic. I had a 433MHz Heltec V3 with Meshtastic installed but as there is no 433MHz activity nearby it has just been sat in the abandoned project pile aka the corner of the desk. So, I thought, here is an interesting use even if there are no nodes nearby… yeah, that’s always a bad start. Anyway, as yet the instructions are not as polished as those for Meshtastic and I struggled to get anywhere, routinely managing to lock Windows up completely when using the esptool. When I finally got the thing to look like it had connected the downloader instantly gave an error and packed up. It was then I noticed there is a web flasher (url) so I tried that. Off to a bad start, the flasher reported that the serial port (the device is directly USB connected) was not ready, and no amount of whinging and gnashing of teeth fixed it. Unplugging and re-plugging the Heltec in made no difference. Three times, same thing. I connected it to the Mac and checked that the esptool.py there could see the board in case I had killed it. It found it and gave the correct output. Back to Windows and the web flasher, and on the fourth failure I pressed the reset button on the Heltec and then the installation succeeded. 5th time lucky. [Subsequently I flashed a TBeam device first time and with no issues, so the Heltec may be a bit odd] Some configuration is needed which can be done by commands typed in via the web flasher which also has a console function. After setting the location and wifi access the node appeared on the home LAN and also announced itself to the world via the dashboard at  https://srv08.oevsv.at/meshcom/# and after a while it sent all the location information etc via the Internet. The Heltect only has its tiny spring antenna right now as the 433MHz collinear has and rx LoRa APRS gateway connected. As this is really just yet another experiment it may get repurposed again anyway, but it is an interesting project. Time to read. 27/7/24 I repurposed the TBeam unit that was my LoRa APRS rx gate and was basically doing nothing. Meshcom uses the same spot frequency of 439.9125MHz so it needed to go. This has GPS built in and appears to be communicating - it has its location and altitude etc. plus time The node will go back in the oft on a collinear but once there I have no way to communicate with it because for some reason the onboard web server will not work and the Meshcom iPhone app is beta and on Testdrive which I do not want to install on my phone. I may need to run a USB lead down to one of the Pi systems assuming I have serial comms enabled on it. [15:34 rebooting…

After our trip to Europe and Japan I really want to do FT8 or other digimodes - my preferred mode because of naff hearing etc - rather than just take handhelds. But the weight of the FT818 + tuner + PSU + a laptop is prohibitive. True, the PSU and tuner would go in the checked bag but I feel that the FT818 would really need to come as carry-on. And anyway I do not own a laptop, plus the fact that we tend to travel light so there is very little room for my stuff anyway. So it got me thinking. At home I use one PC for Linux, one for Windows 10, the Mac mini, and a Pi. Four systems, four screens, and great flexibility as all the audio is interconnected by a mixer. But the Windows PC is now playing up and is too old for Windows 11, not that I want that but I guess it is inevitable as running Windows without security patches is just about the worst thing I can imagine. Well, ok, my imagination runs a lot deeper than that, but you know what I mean. The QRP Labs QMX+ looks most interesting, small and portable, and with the QRP Labs heritage ought to be a really useful bit of kit. So it got me thinking, is it time I invested in a small Windows laptop, junk the current Windows box and use the laptop connected to the screen for here plus simply unplug it and go portable? I mean, it's not like I've not done that before and it is a pretty standard model. It's just that, all my life I've used old hardware, secondhand or chucked out, cobbled together to make it do what I want. I've never had a new system other than the Mac Mini and its MacBook predecessor, the latter not eve being mine anyway. It is, therefore rather uncharted territory, purchasing a new or new-ish laptop which will not see a great deal of use as I really prefer the Mac. Or do I find an older MacBook and cobble that together? I have an older 11" model with a dead battery - I changed the battery before but the replacement didn't last. That was going to be sold but I no longer trust eBay as suitable for someone that sells very little. So, the choice, should I go this route seems to be a new(-ish) Windows laptop that will take Windows 11, or a cobbled together old MacBook which I already have but could potentially sell to offset the cost of the Windows one. Either way I will investigate the QMX+ first because the weight of my other HF transceivers is the killer.

We just had a short trip to Europe and then Japan and so I took a couple of handheld radios along. For Europe the CEPT licence was fine but for Japan I arranged a short term one via JARL who were very helpful. So, licences and HTs in hand, or, rather, in carry-on bag, off we went. I had broken the radios down into battery, radio and antenna and put each in a plastic bag to keep everything clean. Big mistake! My bag was searched at the UK airport and in Schiphol. The bags were causing confusion, especially as, at Schiphol they asked how the battery related to whatever the Mouser code was on the old plastic bag I had used. Very quick though, it only added a couple of minutes each time and they were happy. So I left the radios intact for the onward trip from Schiphol and into Japan. No issues at all at either end or on the return. So... note to self, leave the radios intact.

I wanted to get a programmer for the ID51. So, off to RT Systems as I have some of their programmers already. Got the Mac version of the package for the ID51 but it does not allow programming via SD card. That caught me out because their package for the FT2D does and I wrongly assumed this would too. Of course, it needs a cable! Off to eBay… an allegedly suitable cable arrived today but the RT Systems program will not find it. Typical, it needs one of their enfangled cables that are incompatible with the rest of the world. No way that will arrive in time for our trip. So… Chirp then. Downloaded the Mac version but it, too will not see the eBay cable. I know the Mac sees it so why won’t the software? RT Systems has no option to select a USB port, Chirp does but offers no help as to what it is. Try Linux? Hmmm… I’m really not into fiddling with flatpack or any other enfangled package managers - apt is enough, no apt, no use. Windows then! Got Chirp, and it can find the cable, and Chirp will see it and will download from the ID51. All good then? Nope! This exercise was to enable me to program up all the foreign repeaters ready for the trip and also to figure out why our local repeater was in the list incorrectly. So let’s take a step backwards now… I had tried to update the list of repeaters by downloading from Icom. This method works fine by loading the relevant file onto an SD card and telling the radio to load it. RT Systems take note - why does your FT2D software allow this but the ID51 software does not? This should be standard! But the resultant list was missing the local repeater. I tried to add it but then the radio tells me there are no repeaters at all. I tried downloading the file from repeaterbook which at least knows about the local repeater. No joy. I tried editing the files already on the radio but each time it somehow messed up. After many attempts and permutations I had to give up which is why I though getting an actual programmer would help. Enter Chirp (on Windows, yuk…). It downloaded from the radio fine but when I looked at the repeater list it seemed broken - all it had was a list of callsigns and no other information. Ugh! But then I remembered that the radio had whinged that there were no repeaters. So, I loaded a known good repeater list file already omitted the SD card, checked the radio would see repeaters when DR is pressed, and downloaded that from the radio into Chirp. The repeater list is just as broken. Ok… so I exported everything from Chirp as CSV and opened in LibreOffice. But it does not export the repeater list so I am no further towards understanding how the data…