AmateurRadio.com

UPDATE 3.25.2019 I received an e-mail from Bob Interbitzen NQ1R at ARRL that the “fixed” updated QST app from PageSuite, Version 5.1, is now available at the Apple App Store. He posted a note on the ARRL website here. It updated on my iPad as usual and I was able to download the April QST issue. I had to download all of the back issues (I’d previously deleted the app trying to see if that would fix the issue to no avail as described below.) The larger issue regarding the reliability of the custom QST app remains.

Oh, at least 15 years or so ago, a university team in the UK came up with an electronic ink (e-ink) technology for an 8″x11″ format thin tablet for office use. It was going to revolutionize photocopying by reducing the need for it. Recall when corporate (and university!) meetings would be held after burning down the photocopier with reams and reams of memos, white papers, and so forth? The team in England had a budding product that would just nip that in the bud. Except, it never got released. It just wasn’t ready for market. The team went back to the drawing board and disappeared from the marketplace. A few years later, Apple released the iPad line of products which accomplished nearly the same thing. Many corporate and other large organization’s ship documents and memoranda prior to a conference room meeting out to the teams involved by email or intranet. But the eDocument tablet like the iPad has also changed commercial publishing in the print media — newspapers, magazines, and books. Amazingly so! Still, I have a rack in my attic that is almost full of past copies of QST, Monitoring Times, CQ Magazine, and a few others. I am about to dump them all but will likely just donate them to hams at club meetings rather than literally send them to the dump. I actually read those magazines on my iPad (the MT successor is only available by downloadable PDF.) And, I’ve dropped my subscriptions to the other ARRL specialty magazines in favor of paying the $25 or so for an annual DVD of them. I catch up either at my workbench PC or my desktop PC after they arrive each February or thereabouts. If you’re a subscriber to the ARRL’s flagship magazine, QST, you are no doubt aware of the push the League has had on shifting the receipt of your monthly magazine to digital-only by opting-out of the color print copy. (I love, by the way, the new layout changes, Steve Ford!). They advertise it as a Go Green! initiative. It will no doubt help the bottom line on the publishing books for QST but it’s odd that the specialty magazines don’t also come digitally except as on that DVD I mentioned above. But that’s another matter. A few weeks ago, Apple pushed out it’s regular iOS updates which I installed on both my iPad and iPhone. No sweat. Within a few days, I had updated 100+ apps on my iOS devices. (OK, ok. I have a few apps…) All worked fine. I culled a few as I decided I had a better app to do that task. When I received my usual e-mail from the ARRL that the shiny new April 2019 issue of QST was now available, I immediately downloaded it. Except when I did, the QST app crashed. Hmm. I repeated this cycle over a dozen times. Deleting it and the database and reinstalling from the app store (like we were told to do in March of last year by the League’s website.) Still crashed. I felt like the old guy on Modern Family who mutters, “ah geez,” all the time. So I asked about 50 hams a few nights later at a club meeting were they having problems. Of the 30 or so who said they read QST via an Apple device, most had the exact same problem that I did: complete app crash! Reading various Forums on ham radio will turn up similar complaints with some saying that’s why they haven’t renewed their membership. That shouldn’t be viewed as someone being Mr. or Ms Cranky Pants. The QST magazine is, after all, the premier outlet for the League. So I wrote a negative review on the iTunes store, thinking that the Support folks who read that page would realize that the app has hit the fan, so to speak. While I was in iTunes, I read a lot of the previous reviews of the QST app. The average rating out of 5 is 2.3 for this iOS app. That’s really not good. The date of the negative reviews go back several years. I have an Android tablet that I use to both test WiFi dead zones and link to some Bluetooth devices on my workbench but I never read QST on it. Nonetheless, I checked the Android Play store to see if it’s just an issue with Apple’s Development Kit (SDK). Nope. The average rating for the Android version of the QST app is only 2.5 out of 5, just a tad higher than the one for iOS. So it’s not just the operating platform that is plaguing this app. See the reviews for yourself at the respective links shown here:

Reviews of app in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qst/id531766442 And Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.branded.arrl&hl=en

I wrote Bob Interbitzen, NQ1R, the Marketing Director for the ARRL, about the issue. He rightly asked me what make/model/iOS version I was using. I sent that from the Settings menu. His first response was, well, that’s an old iPad from back in 2016. It is. And it was the biggest fastest iPad Pro Apple offered then. Apply still fully supports it. And I read my CQ Magazine (and others) on the Zinio app just fine and dandy. I also read a ton of books and magazines in both my Kindle app and Apple Books app with nary a hitch. So, it really, really couldn’t legitimately be the old “you need a new computer” response. To Bob’s credit, this caused him to research the issue more deeply. Moreover, he said in his e-mail back to me, “I appreciate your concern for this matter. I can assure you it is receiving a priority level of our attention.” I can hardly complain about the communications from the League in response to my report of being blocked out of the digital access that they’ve encouraged subscribers to shift to. (I myself have not opted-out at this point. And, am glad that I haven’t.) In reality, the League has hired a large commercial eDocument company based in the UK, PageSuite, to customize an app for the League’s QST magazine. They do a lot of business and have a US corporate presence in Boston. They provide the software for the host of the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times newspapers, for instance, and they are fine sites to read, IMHO. PageSuite is launching a new app, called “New Edition,” in which they say “Our new ‘Edition’ solution offers publishers new ways to generate revenue and grow digital audiences.” So the vendor chosen by the ARRL is one that is doing a lot of business. They must have software engineers and coders who are knowledgeable about both iOS and Android (as well as web) platforms, no? The League posted a note to QST subscribers about the issue with the iOS version of the app crashing as Bob took time off for Spring Break. This was dated March 3, 2019:

He also sent me a follow-up message by e-mail that updated the technical issue:

While the bug issue with the new version of the app was the initial problem, this has now become a policy problem. Apple has changed the way they consider QST. The app developer had the fix coded last month, but Apple will not let them upload it. We have investigated all options with both the developer and Apple — including appeals to Apple, largely to assure them that QST is a membership journal and not simply a magazine subscription. A new version of the app meeting Apple’s change in terms is being readied. We have our sights set on a weeks-long (not months) resolution. Additional information will be posted to ARRL News, found on the ARRL website home page and http://www.arrl.org/news”. Bob Interbitzen, NQ1R, ARRL Marketing Director e-mail to K4FMH

OK, so now the issue is post-app crashing (for those developers with the app in the SDK) and at the feet of Apple’s iTunes App Store management. The developer (PageSuite) is most certainly a member of the Apple SDK community. This provides such developers with prior versions of iOS releases ahead of when Apple releases it to users. So technically astute developers have the versions of hardware that Apple says their iOS supports (including my 2016 iPad Pro), the new iOS software candidate, and their own QST app code. Well, they should, at least. Everyday, all day activity for development teams. Perhaps. I’ll get to that in a moment. Apple’s management rules for publication are something that the ARRL can’t really negotiate or deal with. It’s the contracted vendor’s turf and, frankly, their obligation to handle. Or, it should be under the terms of the contract with the League. But another issue in PageSuite’s app for ARRL’s delivery of the digital QST is that the app just crashes. When this happens, there is a report automatically generated. This is called, not surprisingly, a “crash analytic report” and the user is given a chance to have it submitted back through the Apple iOS system, ultimately, to developers. However, it is another step in the development process which costs time and, therefore, money. Without it, app Devs are Somewhat Out of Luck (SOL). It’s explained here (emphasis mine):

When an application crashes, a report called “crash report” is created. This will help understand what the problem is and where is it coming from. This will state the condition causing the iOS application to stop without prior warning. Most iOS app developers fail to implement this function during their iOS app development, and when there are no crash reports attached to an iOS app closing unexpectedly, there is little or nothing that one can do to solve the problem. So, it would be wise for an iOS app developer to implement crash analytic to the application during its development to help the application function the best possible way. With this in place, other causes of crashing in iPhone application can be reasonably reduced or stopped. http://blogs.perceptionsystem.com/ios-app-crash-7-reasons-why-an-app-crashes/

Cutting to the chase on this, Bob’s done everything that I could expect him to do. I’ve been in software development, funded software development, designed award-winning software licensing models in the GIS industry, and so forth and so on. Bob’s got a difficult challenge here. Especially, since the public reviews have stated repeated and consistent negative issues with PageSuite’s QST app on both the Android and iOS platform since 2014, or for at least five years. It cannot be that PageSuite’s personnel is incompetent, although they do not follow the implementation of a crash report system which is “best practices” from Apple’s point of view. They’re too large and have too many production-driven clients to be incompetent. But what it may well be is that the ARRL’s custom app to just download and digitally manage the rights (DRM) to QST is not a big enough client to warrant the labor devoted to an issue in order to resolve it in a timely fashion. Back in the late 1990s, I was a respective $100,000 customer to ESRI and ERDAS and a $50,000 customer to RSINC annually, all GIS and remote sensing software vendors, on behalf of NASA and the State of Mississippi. Would my contacts at each vendor take my call? Every time! I’m a $100 a year customer to ESRI now as an individual consumer. Will they take my call? No. But I can post a question on their Forum for such small fry customers. That’s just the economics of software support. Is this the situation that the ARRL is in with the QST app produced by PageSuite? Is it that they are just not a big enough fish to get the right technical talent to keep the QST app on either platform working reliably? I do not know for sure but it would be consistent with the observable performance record and the corporate profile of PageSuite. I will close with this. The issues regarding the digital QST app over past five years or so are analogous to the Logbook of the World development. Great idea. Largely built or designed in-house (or something equivalent) at first. It was terrible in performance. But, scaled up, using modern IT designs, hardware, and implementation, LoTW now has over 1 billion QSOs in it’s database. It’s bigger, better and faster. And, the League is taking on business from the CQ Communications, Inc. line of contests! That improvement came about because of the heat that the Division Directors (Board members) received from the membership community. Bear that in mind. Moreover, the Zinio platform is where CQ Magazine has disseminated their digital version, DRM and all, with very few technical issues over the past several years that I’ve been a subscriber. (I had one subscription where my electronic payment wasn’t added to my current account but resulted in a “new” account such that I could not get my back issues. A phone call to Hicksville NY fixed that.) Thus, it just isn’t that getting magazine issues out to subscribed customers is that big of a deal these days. Others, like Apple Books and Kindle, do it at volumes a few magnitudes larger than the QST subscriber base. The Board of Directors, along with the President and CEO, should schedule a review of the contract with PageSuite at the next meeting. I am not pushing Zinio as an option but PageSuite has just not performed. As CEO Michel has gone on record with, adding value to the ARRL member is the mission of the day. Here, the member is not getting value added but value subtracted. This is especially the case for those members who responded positively to the Go Green! call by the League to opt-out of the printed version of the QST magazine. I’m sure they’ll get the April 2019 issue, eventually. But it’s been over a month and only a hope by Bob Interbitzen of a “weeks-long” hiatus that it will be resolved then. If this were a paper cut, a band-aid would be a prudent response. But this five-year run of an unreliable app on both the Apple and Android platforms requires stitches to firmly fix the problem, not a band-aid. If this issue reports to the Programs & Services Committee, here are it’s members:

• Dale Williams, WA8EFK, Great Lakes Division Director, Chairman; [email protected]
• Ria Jairam, N2RJ, Hudson Division Director; [email protected]
• David Norris, K5UZ, Delta Division Director; [email protected]
• Mike Ritz, W7VO, Northwestern Division Director; [email protected]
• Greg Sarratt, W4OZK, Southeastern Division Director; [email protected]
• Kristen McIntyre, K6WX, Pacific Division Vice Director; [email protected]
• Bob Vallio, W6RGG, 2nd Vice President (Officer Liaison); [email protected]
• Norm Fusaro, W3IZ, (Staff Liaison); [email protected]

Contacting your Division Director and letting him or her know your feelings about this is both your right and responsibility to help the League grow and prosper as our amateur radio organization. As Mr. Spock would’ve said, “It’s only logical!”

At the weekend I built my MiniTiouner DATV receiver. I'd purchased the PCB, tuner module, 1V regulator and programmed USB interface module from the BATC stand at the Telford ATV Academy the previous weekend. The remaining components that I didn't already have were ordered from Digikey using the handy spreadsheet on the BATC Wiki and I sourced a suitable DC-DC Converter from eBay.

The build was straightforward and there are some instructions by Mike G0MJW but only really referenced them for the commissioning stage, checking voltages etc. I was pleasantly surprised to see a large degree of protection on the board, fuses both filament and poly-fuse, reverse protection and zener diodes in the circuit.


The MiniTiouner uses free to download DVB-S receive and analysis software called "Minitioune" written by F6DZP. The Software is hosted on the VivaDATV forum. So I registered and downloaded the software.

V8.0 of the software requires a pull-down resistor adding to the USB module to identify the type of board, so that was added (not pictured).

Power was connected and then plugged the USB lead into the PC (Windows 7 32bit) and it went off and installed drivers. The documentation said I should see two USB controllers, but I was seeing four?

There are several test programs included in the software package to test drivers and board and they were showing errors.



The PC I was using has had no end of serial USB devices plugged in and out over time so suspecting another Microsoft Windows "disappearing up its own backside" driver issue I tried it on another more vanilla machine but had the same problem.

This seemed to point to the USB interface (an FTDI FT2232H Mini Module) perhaps it wasn't programmed? So I downloaded the FTProg utility from FTDI but instead of seeing a FT2232H was showing it as a FT4232H device.


Doing a Google found a reference to the same problem. I downloaded the data-sheet and checking with a meter I could see pins CN2-5 and CN2-11(VIO) on the module didn't have 3.3V for some reason and as the post said if the VIO pin is missing 3.3V it defaults to a FT4232H. In the end I checked my soldering (no fault found) I removed the module from the socket to examine it and after re-seating it the board sprang to life so seems it was just a bad connection.

Eager to test I set up the ADALM-PLUTO SDR running DATVExpress as I'd done previously with the commercial set-top satellite receiver and we had a picture! It was time for a cup of tea!


Now it was working all that was left was to put it in a box.


I have only had a brief play with the software since the weekend but was interested to see if I could receive some RB-TV (Reduced bandwidth) So I set the Pluto and DATVExpress to transmit on 146.500MHz using a low symbol rate (250 Ksymbols/s) and it worked!  Bertie was wriggling a bit too much for a clear picture but I had now actually used my 146-147MHz NoV. Now just got to learn and understand the various modulations and settings.


I was able to try out another piece of software, the Spectrum Analyser from Steve Andrew for the SDRPlay. It turns the SDR receiver into a handy spectrum analyser with 10MHz bandwidth from 1kHz upto 2GHz and was able to check the output of the Pluto.

 
This wasn't a proper test setup by any means, the SDRPlay was still connected to the dual-band collinear outside the shack so the noise is the usual hash I see, but the Pluto was putting out a decent waveform, it did help putting on a proper resonant antenna (a spare mobile magmount) rather than the tiny one supplied.

I plan to do a bit more with the 5.6GHz FPV stuff before the weekend having took delivery of some nice grid antennas and hope to get out to try a contact or some tests with members of SKARS 73

I am always keen to try something new and I've spent the last couple of weeks experimenting with some Amateur Television ATV and Digital ATV (warning this post is bit of ramble and information overload)

They say "a picture paints a thousand words"and I've always liked the idea of sending pictures via radio having dabbled with sending and receiving SSTV and SSDV, including pictures from High Altitude Balloons (HABs) like the Hamfest HAB flight I did back in 2015


But I've also been intrigued by "Fast scan TV" to transmit moving images. I've seen demonstrations at conferences and in online videos and joined the British Amateur Television Club BATC a few years ago but apart from reading the CQ-TV magazine I had not done anything mainly due to expense and investment I mistakenly thought I would need to make.

Recently I have seen mention of using easy and low cost equipment to get on the air on 5.6GHz (the 6 cm amateur band) using cheap modules intended to transmit “First Person Video” (FPV) back from drones.
 
These simple units can be used without any modifications to get on air. A number of operators have used them with high gain WiFi panel and/or dish antennas with a clear line of sight path to send pictures to stations using the same equipment over paths in excess of 50km, the current record is over 160km. Chris Leviston M0KPW has an excellent website describing his 5.6GHz system http://www.5-6ghz-atv.co.uk/ and there is more information at the BATC Wiki https://wiki.batc.org.uk/5.6_GHz

Inspired I ordered some kit from eBay a few weeks back, a receiver module and transmitter arrived quite quickly (no slow boat from China this time)


The equipment is powered by a 12V supply and input and output is a composite video signal and audio. It can be fed by a standard camera or video source but I dug out an old Raspberry Pi and soon had it generating and transmitting a test card with the required call sign overlay. The modules are channelised, the displayed 33 number is bank 3, channel 3 which is 5.665GHz selected by the BATC since it sits inside the amateur allocation,


Over the week I refined the Pi software, adding the Pi camera and various libraries in python to generate video with informational overlay, adding a GPS allowed calculation of the locator square when out portable. I have put it in a box (sorry no picture of that) and a switch to flip between live video and test card. I also had a bash at making some double biquad antennas. Regularly updating my twitter feed with various milestones (I recommend you follow me)

Pi sending live video via 5.6GHz with text overlay using pi camera and raspivid easy peasy.. pic.twitter.com/Fthfpbw0r0

— Andrew Garratt M0NRD (@nerdsville) July 28, 2018

Lol, wife looking suitably impressed by the Pi based image generator which flips between live feed and test card using switch pic.twitter.com/M6qnif5V0P

— Andrew Garratt M0NRD (@nerdsville) August 3, 2018

While browsing the BATC website for information I spotted that there was an ATV Academy workshop being organised by the Telford and District ARS, giving people the opportunity of finding out a bit more about ATV and people could bring along their equipment and projects for advice. So at the last minute I decided to go but because of the distance could only really go on the Saturday. But it was well worth it and a great day. I was made to feel welcome by everyone there and was able to show off my modest achievements on 5.6GHz and learned about the BATC Portsdown Transceiver and MiniTioune receiver projects, even buying the parts to build the receiver.

Having a great time learning all about ATV today, showing off my humble efforts pic.twitter.com/YTwEf7Sjdl

— Andrew Garratt M0NRD (@nerdsville) August 4, 2018

The academy coincided with a BATC Activity weekend and they were going up to the summit of the nearby Long Mynd to operate on the Sunday. Since I wasn't there I had planned to go to a local high point to see if I could make contact with some of the other operators and stations and got the kit ready on a cheap lighting tripod. I was going to use an old portable satellite dish with one of my double biquads at the feed point.

The satellite dish is inverted because they are offset so when the dish is vertical they are actually pointing around 20 degrees upward towards the TV satellite (in the UK). So for terrestrial use with low elevation they work better inverted. (see here for better description of offset dishes)

I did venture out but I chickened out setting up due to a combination of a surprisingly busy road, fly tipping and very hot conditions. Due to the the fly tipping in the lay-by I didn't want to be seen getting stuff out of car boot! especially as a few cars had slowed down as they passed.

Nevermind I have ordered couple of cheap high-gain mesh dish antennas so when they arrive I will get out again and arrange some skeds, hopefully roping in some of the radio club.

In addition to the 5.6GHz stuff I have also taken possession of an ADALM-PLUTO SDR from Analog Devices. It is inexpensive (£90/$100) and designed to allow educational experimenting in software defined radio. It is a SDR receiver and low-power transmitter. They had been in short supply but availability has improved.

Charles Brain G4GUO has added support for the device into the DATV Express software. I am hoping to use it for some experiments in RB-TV (Reduced bandwidth TV) so I can actually use my NoVs

I took the PLUTO along to the ATV workshop and was able to see it transmitting and being received by other peoples receivers. So last night I got out the two satellite receivers I have and with a little bit of persuasion with settings got some DVB-S DATV transmitted and received.

Bit of "shaky cam" but shows the ADALM-PLUTO transmitting across the shack using #DATVExpress being received by an old FTA satellite box. pic.twitter.com/souCJA9qBK

— Andrew Garratt M0NRD (@nerdsville) August 5, 2018

Anyway, that is enough for now.. but will try to keep the blog updated as I experiment some more, but follow my twitter account @nerdsville for realtime updates 73 Andrew

That's how I think of it, anyway ..... right up there with BBQs, lemonade, ice cold beer, pretzels, watermelon, ice cream and swimming pools ..... The 2018 Flight of the Bumblebees has been announced!  Thanks to Rich Fisher for putting this on from year to year, this event, along with QRP To The Field has gotten me "into" portable QRP operations more than anything else.



OK, so maybe I'm an Amateur Radio and QRP nerd, but what is more sublime than sitting somewhere in a nice shady spot on a hot summer day, making contact after contact with QRP friends around the USA and the rest of the world? The breeze in your face, the Bumblebees buzzing, the bands hooping with CW?

That's right ....... nothing!

This year, the last Sunday in July falls on July 29th and the contest runs from 1700 to 2100 UTC. So grab your radio, a hunka wire and make like a bee and get out to the field and pollinate those frequency bands! Get out of that musty ol' shack and enjoy the beautiful weather and sunshine. These are the things I dream about while I'm shoveling the pile of frozen over, rock hard slush that the snow plow leaves at the end of my driveway after every big snowfall.

For the rules, please go to http://arsqrp.blogspot.com/

For the roster, please go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OzR8FvgVX9J2U0BsjPPg7uzqbuv4C93IAmf7hr8_5GY/edit#gid=0

72 de Larry W2LJ - Bumblebee # 12
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

So I'm driving to work this morning; and when you commute to work every day, you get a real good chance to look at the behinds of cars that are in front of you.  As I come to a red light and come to a stop, I notice the car in front of me has one of those vinyl decals on his rear window.  It looked like this - but you have to picture in your mind's eye that this was all surrounded by the entire darkness (blackness) of his tinted rear window.

Was feeling pretty chuffed after repairing the MFJ-1788 'Super Loop' and couldn't wait to try it out! So for a couple of evenings of experimenting I put the loop in the garden on a 5ft pole held up by a heavy drive-on stand with 20m (65ft) of RG58 running into the shack.

Temporary test setup

I chose the easy option of using FT8 to do some testing, selecting the 30m FT8 frequency initially. I tuned the loop and was met with a cacophony of signals, far louder than my usual OCFD would receive. Working with around 30 Watts had a few contacts in a brief 30 minute session, including a nice one in Greece with SV1IW.

PSKReporter showing where I was spotted

What was striking was the lack of noise and just how tight the tuning was, indeed I had to tweak the tuning a couple of times during tests, a slight adjustment either way and the signals just disappeared. I checked out 40m and 20m as well with similar good results.

I had a few more sessions and a few days later I tried it out to receive the Shortwave Radiogram broadcast from Bulgaria on 9400kHz, this time as it was a broadcast band had to use my ear to do the tuning, adjusting till I heard a rise in 'noise' and signal.

Trying out the loop antenna, @SWRadiogram
images this afternoon from Bulgaria 9400kHz pic.twitter.com/53HRwIHUQz

— Andrew Garratt (@nerdsville) May 19, 2018

I have now got the loop up on a rotator and mounted slightly higher up with a shorter length of RG213 (not on the video) it is still quite low and unfortunately is slightly shielded to the south by the neighbours metal roofed building,



I am very happy with the loop. Transmission wise it unsurprisingly doesn't seem a huge improvement over the OCFD on its resonant bands, it scores over the OCFD is on its 'non-resonant' bands such as 30m and 17m. But the massive improvement is in receiving, signals are stronger and noise is much lower, picking up some more distance signals even given the poor conditions.

still evaluating the RX of the mag-loop and according to pskreporter heard 92 countries, 1182 stations on FT8 30m/40m in the last 17 hours.. pic.twitter.com/ZuWZOFFiP2

— Andrew Garratt (@nerdsville) May 22, 2018

The antenna cannot be said to be a pretty thing to have in the garden! The tuning is very particular, in the video I show the 'auto tuning' isn't ideal. It requires the radio to be putting out a signal into a mismatched load for what could be nearly a minute. Not good for the radio and is a source of QRM during this time, the usual technique of tuning slightly off a QSO frequency is more problematic due to the sharpness of the resonance. You can still tune off frequency and then tweak with the slow tune buttons to bring it in. I've noticed that on some of the higher bands it occasionally doesn't auto-tune because the 'dip' seems very short/sharp and the controller doesn't react in time and overshoots especially using low power settings.



I also have had issues trying to operate the radio remotely, I have tuned it up on an FT8 frequency in the morning and then later in the day logged in to try to make a few QSOs during a coffee-break to see the loop has drifted out of resonance. This can only be down to the loop getting warm in the summer sun.

I am still evaluating the antenna but am looking at making a better controller, over on AmateurRadio.com where this blog is syndicated, I have had a number of kind comments including one from Elwood Downey, WB0OEW who pointed me to his published design of a controller, using a similar method to what I was toying with. Thanks Elwood.

73 for now, more updates soon.

The antenna farm