AmateurRadio.com

There IS a Parks On The Air program that has been up and running for a while.  In the USA, POTA is part of the World Wide Flora and Fauna program, which is international in scope.  Like NPOTA, WWFF was devised in order to get Amateur Radio ops off their duffs and into the Great Outdoors. I love their catch phrase - "Make nature your shack!"


POTA is the United States arm of WWFF and POTA encompasses not only NPOTA, but State Parks as well.  So if NPOTA was difficult for you as an activator, POTA should be easier as it will include many places that were not part of POTA.

Take for instance, the Great Swamp Wildlife Refuge (KFF-0454)  here in NJ.  I drive through it every time I go up to HP28, Morristown National Historical Park (KFF-0746), which is part of NPOTA.  Since the Refuge is administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, it was not part of NPOTA - but it IS part of POTA. My favorite portable operating spot, Washington Rock State Park, is also part of POTA (KFF-1635).

Activation requirements for WWFF are a bit stricter. For a valid activation, WWFF requires 44 QSOs, while NPOTA required only 10.  Happily, according to my good friend Greg N4KGL, POTA also requires only 10 QSOs for a valid activation. A good day's worth of portable operations should cover you. If you're bound and determined to work towards Activator awards, then you have a good program here to fill your heart's desire.. Me? I'll just be happy to have the "excuse" to go out and put some NJ parks on the air.

I've only just registered and have not looked into all the details about how to upload logs and stuff; but I am bound and determined to put some parks in New Jersey on the air this coming Spring and Summer for the chasers that are really into this.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!


Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 99-3 is now available for download.

Our 2016 Year End Closeout.
Part 3 of 3 from out New Year’s Eve live stream event.

42:50

Download
YouTube

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 99-2 is now available for download.

Our 2016 Year End Closeout.
Part 2 of 3 from out New Year’s Eve live stream event.

1:05:43

Download
YouTube

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 99-1 is now available for download.

Our 2016 Year End Closeout.
Part 1 of 3 from out New Year’s Eve live stream event.

1:08:09

Download
YouTube

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

When I first opened the box I noticed it was packed very well and as I held the K-Pod for the first time I noticed it had some weight to it. The K-Pod is built very solid and would not move around on the radio desk as you used it. There is a tilt stand that places the K-Pod at a very nice operating angle, this stand can be removed if you would rather have the K-Pod sit flat on your desk. The VFO is very smooth and the user is able to adjust the drag if need be but I was very happy with the VFO right out of the box. There are 8 buttons on the K-Pod that can be programmed with macros, each button has a tap and hold function you therefore have 16 macros. Macros are a great way to have a one button push (or hold) to control a commonly used button on the K3. Also Macros can be used to preform a multi task function. For example I have programmed a CW Split macro that puts the K3 in CW mode, sets VFO A and B to the same frequency, moves VFO B up 2 kHz, sets the filter to 400 Hz, clear both the RIT and XIT and locks VFO A on frequency. All this is done with the push of one button. The instruction manual gives you many Macros to choose from. You can program your own and try them out using the K3 utility program on your PC. On Elecraft's website you can download free of charge their programers reference to learn more about macros and programming them.
There is a rocker switch that will allow you to smoothly switch from VFO A (LED D1 lights up) to B (LED D2 lights up) and then to RIT/RXT (LED D3 lights up) adjustments. The manual says that LED4 is user programable and you can actually control the on/off function of D1, D2 and D3 as well.
On the top of the K-Pod there are 4 connection ports:

1.  Auxiliary outputs that the manual says can be used for an external antenna switch, amplifier and so on.
2. DATA connector is used to connect an RJ12 cable (supplied) to the K3. 
3. USB connector (USB cable is supplied) is used to interface the K-Pod with your PC for firmware updates and for what Elecraft calls "future" PC control. 
4. Power connector (cable supplies) can be used to supply the needed DC to the K-Pod and I say "can be used" because via a simple mod
   (parts supplied) to the K3 and K3S  you can power the K-Pod via the DATA cable.
   

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

When I first opened the box I noticed it was packed very well and as I held the K-Pod for the first time I noticed it had some weight to it. The K-Pod is built very solid and would not move around on the radio desk as you used it. There is a tilt stand that places the K-Pod at a very nice operating angle, this stand can be removed if you would rather have the K-Pod sit flat on your desk. The VFO is very smooth and the user is able to adjust the drag if need be but I was very happy with the VFO right out of the box. There are 8 buttons on the K-Pod that can be programmed with macros, each button has a tap and hold function you therefore have 16 macros. Macros are a great way to have a one button push (or hold) to control a commonly used button on the K3. Also Macros can be used to preform a multi task function. For example I have programmed a CW Split macro that puts the K3 in CW mode, sets VFO A and B to the same frequency, moves VFO B up 2 kHz, sets the filter to 400 Hz, clear both the RIT and XIT and locks VFO A on frequency. All this is done with the push of one button. The instruction manual gives you many Macros to choose from. You can program your own and try them out using the K3 utility program on your PC. On Elecraft's website you can download free of charge their programers reference to learn more about macros and programming them.
There is a rocker switch that will allow you to smoothly switch from VFO A (LED D1 lights up) to B (LED D2 lights up) and then to RIT/RXT (LED D3 lights up) adjustments. The manual says that LED4 is user programable and you can actually control the on/off function of D1, D2 and D3 as well.
On the top of the K-Pod there are 4 connection ports:

1.  Auxiliary outputs that the manual says can be used for an external antenna switch, amplifier and so on.
2. DATA connector is used to connect an RJ12 cable (supplied) to the K3. 
3. USB connector (USB cable is supplied) is used to interface the K-Pod with your PC for firmware updates and for what Elecraft calls "future" PC control. 
4. Power connector (cable supplies) can be used to supply the needed DC to the K-Pod and I say "can be used" because via a simple mod
   (parts supplied) to the K3 and K3S  you can power the K-Pod via the DATA cable.
   

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

The last few years, I have been using an old hand me down laptop for my ham radio activities. The old one had little memory, the battery that didn’t last very long, was starting to boot unreliably, even after a Windows reinstall, and a few other issues. So I bought an open box Dell laptop at a discount from a local retailer. It has 8GB of RAM and a 1 TB disk drive and i5 processor. While it’s not a top of the line laptop, it’ll work for what I have intended. Also the screen isn’t the highest resolution but since it’s dedicated to ham radio usage only it won’t be a problem.

My main goal with this project is to use Linux more for my ham radio activities. I now work professionally in the Linux world so I would like to carry that experience into my ham radio hobby. I am setting this up as a dual boot system, keeping Windows 10 that came on it, and then installing OpenSUSE Leap 42.2 as my Linux distribution. I know Ubuntu seems to be the most popular distribution, but I am most familiar with SUSE Enterprise Linux, so OpenSUSE draws on that experience. I run openSUSE 42.2 on my work laptop on a daily basis so I am very familiar with it.

I thought I would post about the steps I am taking to achieve this so if anyone else decides to do something similar, I will have shared what I went through. I will try to follow this up later with posts about using various Linux applications for ham radio like CQRLog, WSJT-X and other things I find useful.

I will use the Windows install for a few things. My old ham radio laptop was running Windows so I can duplicate it’s capabilities if needed. One of those jobs is some Windows software that I bought from RT Systems for programming my radios. I’ll eventually investigate Linux alternatives such as Chirp but that will be low on the priority list.

The first steps I took in the process are:

• Boot into BIOS/uefi and disable Secure Boot. I don’t need this.
• Boot up Windows, create user account, and fully make sure all updates are installed, and any initial setup.
• Make a Windows 10 recovery USB thumb drive. This is built into Windows 10.
• Download the restore image from Dell to restore the laptop if needed.
• Run the Windows Disk Cleanup utility to remove all unneeded files including any previous version of Windows left behind after the updates, and all update related files. I check all the boxes in the cleanup utility including system files.
• Defragment the C: drive. This is needed so I can shrink the C: partition
• Use diskmgmt.msc to shrink the main Windows 10 partition to about 450GB. That will leave about 430GB of free space to use for Linux installation. I had to disable system protection, pagefile and hibernation in order to get the drive to shrink to where I wanted it. These are unmovable files and might hamper the  ability to shrink the disk. After shrinking, I reenabled all of those.
• VERY IMPORTANT STEP: Use Clonezilla to make a complete cloned backup of the entire disk drive so I can put Humpty back together if something bad happens or I make a mistake. This will backup all the partitions to a set of files on a USB drive, and allow me to completely restore the drive and partitions.  I now have 3 ways to restore the system. Clonezilla backup, restore image I downloaded, and the Windows Recovery thumb drive I created.
• Install Dropbox as I’ll use that to transfer some things from the old laptop to the new one.

BACKUPS are very IMPORTANT as is the ability to UNDO something even if it means a full restore. NOTE: Clonezilla doesn’t backup empty space to the resulting backup is smaller that the drive that’s being cloned.

Now it’s time to install Linux. I made a bootable thumb drive from the openSUSE Leap 42.2 iso. This was done using dd on my work Linux laptop. The website to download openSUSE from is: http://www.opensuse.org.  There are two openSUSE distributions. Leap is a point release and Tumbleweed is a rolling release and always at the bleeding edge. If you want something stable then Leap is the way to go. It’s also what I run on my work laptop as my primary OS.

I booted from the Leap thumb drive, and went through a normal install. From the free space I created by shrinking the Windows partition, I made a 4GB swap partition, a 50GB / (root) partition and assigned the rest of the space to /home which is where all my data will reside.

When Linux is installed, it installs the Grub2 bootloader which is able to detect Windows 10 and make it a selection at boot time. When you boot the system, a Grub2 menu will display allowing the choice of which operating system to boot. You can also choose which one boots as default when the grub2 timer expires.

One thing I found . . . When I booted back into Windows, it assigned drive letters to the Linux partitions which is something I did not want. I started up diskmgmt.msc in Windows and removed the drive letter associations from the 3 Linux partitions. That way Windows won’t mount the Linux partitions and possibly cause an issue.

At this point, I have a dual boot system and am ready to go. So far on the Linux side I have installed the following:

• Terminator – A nice terminal program
• cqrlog & mysql – Popular Linux Ham Radio Logging program. I exported my log from HRD (ver 5.24) on the old computer and imported it into cqrlog.
• tqsl – I made a backup of my certificate using tqsl on the old Windows computer and was able to restore it using tqsl on the new Linux installation.

One last thing before moving on. I took another Clonezilla backup of the entire laptop drive. Now I have two Clonezilla backups and could restore either one if I desired. 

Just a note on Virtual Machine vs Dual boot. I use VM’s daily on my work laptop and my other personal laptop so I am very accustomed to their use. On my work laptop I run Linux full time with Windows 10 in a virtual machine along with about 10 other Linux VM’s (not all running at once). For the ham laptop I wanted two things. To run Linux as full time as possible for my ham radio hobby, and for the operating system to have direct access to the hardware without the virtualization layer in the middle.

More to come!

Wayne Patton, K5UNX, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Arkansas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].