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I’ve always been a bit of an armchair traveller, and also an armchair cyclist. I like to read accounts of people’s travels through foreign lands, particularly if they are travelling by bike. The slower pace and need to stop and talk to more people means that they are able to convey more of a feel for the place than you get from reading grossly overrated travel writers like Bill Bryson. So having just come across the blog of Raf, ON5RZ, who is currently cycling through the USA and Canada with an FT-817 and wire antennas, I have some reading to catch up on. Perhaps you’ll enjoy reading it, too.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since that tragic day. But as we all know, life will go on and we will remember. Where we all were, what we were all doing and those feelings of seeing what happened.

KCRA Logo

The King’s County Repeater Association will be honoring September 11th with an on the air station on September 10th, from 1300-2100z. Here are the frequencies for the event.

20m – 14.295 USB

KC2RA repeater: 146.430 MHz ( 1.0) PL 136.5
40m – 7.250 LSB Echo link: KC2RA-R
EchoLink node # 132967 (KC2LEB-R)

Frequencies will vary based on band usage and conditions, and all frequencies will not be on at the same time. The station is a part of the events for the 911 activities at Conference House on Staten Island.

The KCRA will send QSL cards honoring the event via self addressed stamped envelope to: KCRA 911 Memorial Event, PO Box 280288, Brooklyn, NY 11228-0288.

73.

Rich also writes a Tech blog and posts stories every Tuesday and Thursday on Q103, The Rock of Albany’s website, as well as Amateur Radio stories every Monday thru Friday here on AmiZed Studios.

Hello, new and faithful listeners. Welcome to the sixty-first-eth installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. If anyone has been paying attention lately, a lot of podcasters are packing up their gear and moving on to other things. Many more have moved into much more irregular release cycles. We on the other hand are coming back stronger than ever. New releases are on the way. We’ll be back to every two weeks starting with Episode #062 and we’re hitting our stride again. We may not be the best or most listened to podcast out there but at least we still are a podcast. So thanks for tuning in, as always, and please let your ham radio and Linux enthusiast friends know about us. Linux in the Ham Shack lives on. ¡Vámonos!

This is certainly not the first blog posting to be written about the D-STAR Access Point Dongle (DVAP).  If you Google the subject you’ll find many.  I would like to thank Tim Kirby, G4VXE for his excellent blog postings regarding the subject of the DVAP and his time in helping answer a few questions I had regarding the product. 

Let me start off by answering the question of why, why did I purchase the DVAP?  Yes, I am extremely fortunate to live in a part of the county which has several excellent D-STAR repeaters.  As a matter of fact, we have repeaters both here in Denver (W0CDS) and one down in Monument, Colorado (W0TLM) serving the greater Colorado Springs area.  From just about any point in Denver, including my home shack (via external antenna) I can connect to the Denver machines and generally anywhere south of Denver can hit the Monument system.  So again, why do I need the DVAP device?

This is partly answered by saying my biggest interest in D-STAR is not for local rag chew.  I much prefer to either just listen in on an active reflector or conduct short QSO’s or even rag chews with a hams around the world.  It has been my experience that our local D-STAR repeaters are often used for local rag chew sessions.  Again, sometimes I just enjoy listening in on an active reflector and hear hams from the other side of the world talk about whatever they are talking about.  The DVAP allows me to essentially connect to any D-STAR reflector I choose and I can listen without interruption or without tying up the local repeaters for just my listening enjoyment.  Of course, I can also contribute to the conversations as well and I do enjoy that aspect about D-STAR over Echolink or IRLP.

You might be wondering exactly what the DVAP is and how it works?  Another great question.  You may have heard of the DV Dongle which came out a few years ago.  It was a little blue box which connected to your PC and allowed up to use a PC headset and microphone to access the D-STAR network. The DVAP is almost the same thing.  Notice I said almost.  It does connect to a PC or Mac, but you must also own a D-STAR capable transceiver.  I have the ICOM IC-92AD. 

In my case, the IC-92AD controls all aspects of the DV Access Point Dongle and functions much the same way as my local D-STAR repeater.  The DVAP is essentially my own personal D-STAR repeater/gateway system.  I can setup my memories in the IC-92AD to connect to, communicate with and disconnect from all the reflectors on the D-STAR global system.   The DVAP has a built-in antenna and is capable of transmitting at 10mw on the 2m amateur band.  The range of the DVAP is designed to cover a range of up to 100 yards.  Depending on a few variables your results may vary.  In my application I plan for now to just operate it indoors with the stock antenna.  Of course, I’ll test with my outside mounted 2m antenna at some point to see just how far I can walk away from my QTH and still be able to use the DVAP.  But the general application is mainly inside my home and perhaps on the back deck or courtyard.

As you can tell from the photo above, the DV Access Point Dongle is relatively small.  Inside the box you you’ll find the DVAP module with antenna attached, a user guide and a USB cable.  The user guide explains briefly about the operation of the DVAP and points you to the DVAP Support Website.  From the DVAP website you’ll find additional “how to” material and links to the various software you’ll need to download and install. 

Because I had done some homework on my own before hand, and again thanks to Tim for answering a few questions, I was setup and fully functional in about 10 minutes.  During this 10 minutes I downloaded the software and drivers, unpacked the DVAP from the box, connected it to a laptop running Windows 7 and programmed a few memories to connect to the UK reflector.  I’ve been playing around with the DVAP and getting my memories setup on the IC-92AD for about an hour and am really pleased with the DVAP.  As I stated, I’ll do some more testing and will make sure to blog about my experiences.  Currently I’m using the DVAP tool which is what you’ll find on the DVAP support website.  I do have plans to test another client which offers a little more functionality and allows you to connect direct to reflectors from the software client versus the need to setup from the radio.  But I wanted to first checkout this client first.

As I stated earlier, I do have a few tests I want to complete.  First, I’ll connect the DVAP to my external 2m antenna which is mounted just below my roof line.  It might be interesting to know just how far I can walk away from my QTH and still be in communication to the DVAP.  Remember the DVAP transmits at 10mw.

I also want to check out the other software client which I briefly discussed.  I also plan to setup additional memories on the IC-92AD for other D-STAR reflectors.  I’d like to see how it all works from my office location.  I do work in a lab which is somewhat of an RF black hole.  It might be nice to take the setup to work and enjoy some D-STAR QSO’s during my lunch break.  Finally, I plan to test the range of the DVAP by attaching my external 2m antenna and walking around the neighborhood.  This will probably just a be a one-time test to fulfill my curiosity of just how far 10mw will truly go.  I also have plans to test to see how well it would perform when connected to my 3G AT&T data card.  This could be useful on longer road trips where either I don’t take along HF gear or just to supplement my operation.  I’m sure I’ll share my experiences via this blog site.

But for now, it will come in handy in the shack.  Speaking of which, I just finished my first QSO on the DVAP while connected to the USA Reflector 001, module C with N9ZGE – Don in Springfield, IL.  I was his first D-STAR contact and he was my first DVAP contact.  Best of luck to Don as he continues making those D-STAR contacts.

If you would like to learn more about the exciting D-STAR digital mode, please read this.

Until next time…

73 de KD0BIK

I was only saying to Andy G6REG this evening that I seemed to have missed all the 70MHz Es openings this year. After supper I popped up to the shack to listen on 28MHz and noticed a tweet from Gav M1BXF to say that 50 and 70MHz were open to Scandinavia. I was pleased to work several stations and new squares. After I’d got the ones in the log, I put the iPhone video camera on to record OH1LEU working one of my locals, G8CUL.

Remember, this is a little 70MHz station – the antenna is just a vertical

So after ARISSat-1 was deployed, I have been trying to receive a signal from it. Specifically SSTV signals. I haven’t been very sucsessful. For one, I haven’t been able to be at the radio when it makes a pass because of work and family commitments. I’m hoping this week, I’ll have more time to sit down and be there to listen for. But the first thing is, I need to know where it is. 

Screen shot of MacPort installed Gpredict

I took a look at some of the tracking software out there for my Mac and found that there is only really one program that I could find for the Mac natively, that was “fully” featured with all the bells and whistles. But it was pretty steeply priced for me at $98. I decided t see what else was out there for free. The only one I found that I liked, was Gpredict. It’s written for Linux, but there are ports for it for Windows and Mac, and it’s open source, so it’s free.

The only draw back was, it wasn’t native, so I had to install from source or use MacPorts, a project that ports open source Linux software to the Mac platform, since Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD. The install took me about an hour because of all the dependencies needed for GPredict. MacPort installed them all with no problem.

So after some false starts and finally reading some more info on it, I managed to get it running on my Macbook Pro. After I ran it for the first time, it saw that the info for the satellites was out of date and asked to do an update, giving me the option to do it online or through a file I downloaded.

Gpredict supports fast and accurate real-time satellite tracking using the NORAD SGP4/SDP4 algorithms, No software limit on the number of satellites or ground stations and Radio and antenna rotator control for autonomous tracking.

After uploading and doing a little more research, I was able to find ARISSat-1 on the list, under RadioSkaf-V. Once I found it, I was able to track it no problem. Now, it’s just a matter of having the time to do it. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out GPredict, and try it out. Since it’s free you’ve got nothing to lose.

But if you also have a suggestion for Mac satellite tracking software, please, share it in the comments, and share any experience you have with GPredict.

73.

Rich also writes a Tech blog and posts stories every Tuesday and Thursday on Q103, The Rock of Albany’s website, as well as Amateur Radio stories every Monday thru Friday here on AmiZed Studios.