Hello and welcome to Episode #591 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this deep dive episode, the hosts discuss Netbird, a wireguard-based VPN solution that is akin to TailScale. Topics include use cases, download and installation, basic configuration, gotchas, chaining with other VPNs and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Listen Now

Spin the Random Topic Wheel (Segment 1)

• International Whiskey

This Weekend in Hedonism (Segment 2)

• Cheryl’s Recipe Corner

• Pupusas and Curtido

• Description

• Pupusas are El Salvadorian stuffed corn cakes served with curtido and salsa roja. They are typically filled with melty cheese, pickled jalapeño and roasted squash, but the filling options are endless!  And the Curtido is a form of pickled coleslaw! I grew up enjoying these with my dad, so making them is a trip down memory lane!  It’s dinner tonight, once the show is over!

• Ingredients (Curtido)

• 1/2 head of cabbage, (2 cups of shredded cabbage)

• 1 medium carrot, grated

• 1 tablespoon dried Mexican oregano, (if you can’t find Mexican oregano, use Italian!)

• 1 cup hot water

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar

• Ingredients (Papusa Dough)

• 3 cups (11.8 ounces/334g) masa harina , (such as maseca)

• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

• 2 3/4 cup cold water, (from the faucet is fine)

• Ingredients (Papusa Filling)

• 2 cups (7.5 ounces) shredded mozzarella, (or Oaxacan cheese or any other melty cheese)

• 1/2 cup pickled jalapeño peppers, diced

• 1/2 cup diced roasted butternut squash

• 1 cup water (for hands)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil or neutral oil (for hands)

• Directions (Curtido)

• To a medium bowl, toss together the cabbage, carrots and Mexican oregano. In a measuring cup, stir together the hot water, vinegar, salt and sugar; pour it over the cabbage/carrot mixture. Allow it to come to room temperature and then cover it with plastic wrap and transfer it to the fridge for at least 4 hours and preferably a day before serving.

• Directions (Papusa Dough)

• In a medium bowl, whisk together the masa harina and salt. Pour in the cold water and using a spatula, stir the masa until mostly combined. Then, using your hands, mix the dough until a very soft dough forms. The dough will be very soft. This is totally okay; this means a delicious pupusa is on the way! I found it easiest to use a 2 ounce ice cream scoop and scoop out the masa into balls onto a piece of parchment. You could also do this with your hands but be sure to make the water/oil mixture above and coat your hands with it first.

• Directions (Papusas)

• Add the water to a measuring cup and pour in the oil (you can eyeball this). Lightly dip your hands in the water/oil mixture, making sure your palm are evenly coated. This will make it so the masa doesn’t stick to your hands. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees F. I like to place the pupusas in the oven while I make the rest of the pupusas so they can stay warm and melty. I placed a cooling rack atop a baking sheet and placed it in the oven. Working one at a time, flatten the balls gently until they’re about 1/2-inch thick discs. Place a tablespoon or two of mozzarella cheese, a small bit of diced jalapeño and squash into the center and wrap the dough around the filling creating a half moon shape. Pinch the edges to seal it completely. And then pat the dough gently, flattening it and alternating hands until it reaches about 1/4-inch thick and about 4-inches in diameter. Feel free to re-grease your hands as needed. Repeat with the remaining balls of dough. Meanwhile, preheat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add a teaspoon of neutral oil and brush the surface with a silicon brush. Add the pupusas to the pan, fitting two to three at time. Don’t be shy to break out another cast iron skillet (if you own it). Cook each pupusa for 4 to 6 minutes per side and then transfer to the baking sheet in the oven. Repeat this process until you’ve worked your way through all of the pupusas.

• Directions (Serving)

• Serve the pupusas with the curtido, wedges of lime and salsa.

• Tips and Tricks

• Cookie scoops are your friend! Use a 2 ounce cookie scoop to divide the dough into balls. It makes it super quick and easy and ensures they are close to the same size. Make sure your hands are always oiled. This dough is super sticky and the oil helps so much! While forming the pupusas, if a tear appears, simply pinch the masa shut. Also if a bit of cheese leaks out of the pupusa while cooking it, that’ll be delicious and make a bit of a cheese chip. Let gravity be your friend. When you move the ball of masa from palm to palm, gravity will help make it get a bit flatter. Each time you move it from palm to palm, you should be gently flattening it. When you’re done forming each pupusa, place them on a piece of parchment. You can use a plate or cutting board, just be sure to grease it with a bit of oil so the formed pupusas don’t stick. If you don’t own a large griddle and want to keep the pupusas warm while you work your way through cooking them, use your oven. Place a baking rack on top of a baking sheet and stick it in a 200 degree F oven. As you finish cooking the Pupusa’s, transfer them to the oven to keep them warm.

• Cheryl’s Mixed Drink Corner

• El Salvador

• Description

• Take a vacation with this great drink!

• Ingredients

• 1-1/2 oz gold rum

• 1/2 oz Lime Juice

• 1 tsp grenadine syrup

• 3/4 oz Hazelnut liqueur (example: Frangelico)

• Directions

• Mix, shake, stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

• Refresco de Ensalada

• Ingredients

• 1 x 850g can pineapple slices in 100% pineapple juice

• 1 mango, peeled

• 3 oranges

• 2 Granny Smith apples

• Juice of 1 lemon

• 6 cups cold water

• 1/3 cup sugar

• 1/2 tsp. salt

• (Rum or Vodka, if desired)

• ?Directions

• Put the lemon juice into a large mixing bowl or punchbowl. Dice the apples into small pieces. Stir the diced apple into the lemon juice as you go along, to stop the pieces from browning. Peel the mango. Dice the flesh. Add to the bowl. Open the can of pineapple. Pour the juice into the bowl. Dice the pineapple slices and add to the bowl. Squeeze the juice of 2 oranges, pour into the bowl. Dice the remaining orange and add it to the bowl. Transfer the contents of the fruit and liquid to a large pitcher or a punchbowl, it does make a large quantity. Add 6 cups of water. Add the sugar and salt. Stir. You can drink this immediately, but it tastes best if you put it in the fridge for at least 2 hours, and even better if you can wait until the next day. Serve cold.

• Russ’s Drink Corner

• Evan Williams Square 6 High Rye Whiskey

• Description

• Square 6 High Rye is the second Square 6 product produced exclusively at the artisanal distillery located at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience in downtown Louisville. The whiskey uses a new rye mashbill that differentiates itself from Heaven Hill’s traditional rye 51/35/14 mashbill. It’s the company’s first product to be designated a high-rye rye whiskey. The rye joins the company’s Square 6 Bourbon which is also distilled at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience. Evan Williams states that artisanal distiller Jodie Filiatreau distills one barrel of American Whiskey per day at the downtown Louisville experience location.

• Details

• Mashbill: 63% rye, 24% corn, 13% malted barley

• Region: Louisville, Kentucky

• Proof: 95 (47.5% ABV)

• Color: Light copper

• Nose: Rye grain, wintergreen, light oak, anise, earthy damp forest, paper

• Taste: Dry oak, Rye spice, aromatic spiced vanilla, pine, petrichor

• Finish: Pine, rye spice, leather, hint of tobacco, oak and grain

• Price: $80 (750ml)

• Rating: 86

• Bill’s Whatever Corner

• Headframe Spirits Kelley

• Distiller’s Select American Single Malt Whiskey (5 Year)

• Proof: 130 (65% ABV)

Segment 3 (Announcements & Feedback)

• Comment on Episode #588 from W2HY

• Best episode yet IMHO! Can you imagine Ham Van Winkle waking up from 20 years ago and seeing what his/her $30 can now buy in fully-featured panoramic receiver technology?

• Comment on Episode #588 from DF1TN

• Another way to get remote access to an SDR dongle is by forwarding the USB port to the remote computer.

• Additional Info: https://lhs.fyi/JO (Arch Wiki)

• Please Help Support the Show

• Patreon

• Paypal

• Merch

• Topics

• YouTube

Segment 4 (New Subscribers, New Supporters & Live Participants)

• Twitter

• @AleMaffio70

• Mailing List

• ZL2MST

• Discord

• a.taqiyy

• rat

• Live Chat

• Woody, KC1VOP

• Mike, K6GTE

 Hey all you Icom fans out there, as we all know, the IC-7610 is a great radio, as I have one and am super pleased with it. BUT there seems to be something fishy going on south of the border in the U.S of A. A large Amateur radio supplier in the U.S. called GigaParts is now advertising an IC-7610 ver 22 and an IC 7610 ver 32, but the catch is that the version 32 is $600.00 U.S. more. On GigaParts site, once you click on the ver 32 7610, you are informed it has "enhanced performance". 

Things just don't add up.......
- Icom's website says nothing about a version 32 or lists any enhanced improvements? 
- Icom just introduced the IC-7760, so why add internal competition? 
- To increase the rig by $600.00, which is worth at least a QST page introducing this?
- Dayton or whatever it is called now just pasted without mention of this, and believe me, these things are known well in advance at Icom or whoever. 

What does add up is the U.S. tariffs on electronics from Japan of 25%.  I am not saying the price jump is a tariff, but it is one explanation. You may ask why Icom just does not just say it is a threat; my answer to that is the big baby bear south of the border does not take kindly to that. Icom may just add a few improvements (that in the past were free updates) and call it "enhancements".  In time, let's see if Kenwood and Yaesu add "enhancements".

What are your thoughts on it...... 

I’ve been having fun with mountaintop VHF ham radio for decades, way before Summits On The Air (SOTA) was a thing. It is an activity that I enjoy very much during VHF contests, Parks On The Air (POTA) activations, SOTA activations, and just goofing around in the mountains. Most of this activity has been on the 2-meter band, but any frequency above 50 MHz can be fun.

My philosophy with ham radio is to have fun doing ham radio things and tell people about it. If they think VHF SOTA looks like fun, other hams may try it. At the same time, I want to be open about the challenges that may be encountered. Doing SOTA activations using just VHF can be difficult, even frustrating. (This is one of the reasons I like doing it.) So this post is a cautionary tale, focused on three essential principles.

1. VHF SOTA is easy to do, except when it’s not

A VHF SOTA activation can be as simple as taking a $30 handheld radio on a hike up a summit and making a few contacts on 146.52 MHz or another simplex frequency. The radio is compact, lightweight, and completely self-contained, ready to go! This is arguably the easiest way to do a SOTA activation if the summit is near a populated area.  For example, Genesee Mountain (W0C/FR-194) at 8284 feet overlooks the greater Denver area, so hike to that summit and you should have plenty of stations to work on 2m FM.

Now, try that same approach in a more rural part of the state and you may run into trouble. This is when VHF SOTA is challenging and potentially frustrating.

Which leads us to the second important principle…

2. You need to have chasers within range to contact

This is obvious, but you do need stations that are within range to work. This becomes more difficult in areas that have low population density. There may not be many radio hams within range of your chosen summit; they may not have 2m FM gear, they may not be listening to your frequency, and they may not even have the radio turned on.

Before activating a summit, consider the likely range and how many chasers might be around for you to contact. Take, for example, Aspen Ridge (W0C/SP-084) on the west side of South Park. The hike up is easy, and the elevation is substantial at 10,740 feet. The map shown above has a circle with a radius of ~25 miles, which is a conservative rule of thumb to get us started. Making radio contacts within this radius should be a slam dunk from this elevation, but it does depend on the actual terrain.

From the map, we can see that we should be able to work stations in Buena Vista and Salida, which are small mountain towns with a corresponding small ham radio population.  Some of these folks make it a habit to monitor 146.52 MHz to see what activity occurs on the calling frequency, which helps. But it helps to get the word out to the target audience that you will be on the air. The basic idea is to “send invitations” for your planned activation. The local radio club (Chaffee Lake Amateur Radio Association) has a groups.io list, so you could drop an email message there. If you know some of the hams in the area, you can always reach out and ask them to be listening for you. It is always good to post an ALERT and then a SPOT on SOTAwatch because some chasers may see that. Also, keep an eye on SOTAwatch for other SOTA activators that are on other summits.  During the summer months, it is common to encounter tourists, campers, hikers, or off-road enthusiasts on 2m simplex.

Looking at my Aspen Ridge logs, I see that I’ve worked K0MGL at his home station near Florrisant, at about 60 miles, with some mountains in the way. So the 25-mile radius shown on the map is quite conservative. (Much longer distances are possible.) Now, I probably would not be able to work K0MGL with just a handheld radio and a rubber duck antenna.

Which leads us to our third and final principle…

3. Every decibel of signal strength matters

VHF radio often gets described as being limited to “line of sight,” which is a helpful model but one that is incomplete. (See The Myth of VHF Line of Sight.) I often make VHF contacts beyond line of sight, bouncing signals around the mountains without knowing the actual radio path. These VHF SOTA contacts happen at the fringes of radio coverage. That is, there is just enough signal to complete a contact, but small changes in signal strength can make the difference between success and failure. So you should optimize your station as best you can.

First up is ditch the rubber duck antenna and get an antenna that is a half-wave in length on the 2-meter band. See A Better Antenna for Dualband Handhelds. Make sure it is a half-wave and not just one of those extended rubber duck antennas that are a quarter-wave. Those work a little better than the typical rubber duck, but the half-wave is far superior.

Another half-wave option is the roll-up J-pole antenna, such as the N9TAX Slim Jim antenna. (There is a slight difference in construction between a J-pole and a Slim Jim antenna but they are so similar, I consider them the same.) You can purchase this type of antenna already assembled, but it also makes for a fun project to build one from scratch. (Just search on the web for “2 meter j-pole antenna plan.”) You’ll need some way to support this antenna, such as a non-conductive pole or a rope strung from a tree.

The next step up in antenna performance is to add additional gain and directivity. I use the Arrow II 2m Yagi antenna, which provides about 6 dB of gain over a half-wave radiator. I normally just hold this antenna in my hand, but you can also set up a mast to support it.

Another option is to increase your power level. The typical HT puts out about 5 watts but a mobile radio can go up to 50 watts, a 10-dB improvement. While antenna improvements help on both transmit and receive, increased transmitter power only makes your transmitted signal stronger. However, if the other station is also running 50 watts in a vehicle or at home, more power from the summit tends to balance things out.

The key point here is that even a few decibels of improvement can yield more radio contacts.

Wrap It Up

So there we have it, three important principles to keep in mind when pursuing SOTA activations using VHF. I have had a ton of fun doing this, but I also know it can be frustrating. The most fun occurs when I make a long-distance contact that I did not expect. (My best DX from a SOTA summit using 2m FM is 245 miles.) Keeping these principles in mind helps to set expectations while providing some ideas for improving your odds of success.

73 Bob K0NR

The post The Truth About VHF SOTA appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.