New Ham Radio Project

I’ve got a new Ham Radio project coming up. I just ordered a Yaesu FTM-10R, a waterproof 2m/70cm transceiver, and accessories, that I’m going to install on the BMW. I picked up the newer model of the Bluetooth board, and am hoping that I can get it to interface with the SRC in my helmet. It looks like I’m going to have to put together some sort of remote PTT switch, unless the helmet’s VOX is a little better than I think it is. But either way, once I get some time, and the weather cools off a little, I should be on the air while I’m riding!

Race To Dakar

Another book about motorcycle adventure, this one covering the trials of a privateer team attempting the Dakar Rally. It was a fun ready, like the Long Way Down and Long Way Round books, and really brought home to me just how hard these rallies are. Two weeks of brutal riding over deserts and rocks, injuries, fatalities, and a true test of human endurance. It’s amazing that anyone finishes it, considering just how hard it is on riders and machines, but they do. I’ll never compete in one, but I’m definitely going to be watching the 2011 rally.

Setting Up The 2m/70cm Vertical

I finally got around to setting up the 2m/70cm vertical that I bought almost two years ago. It’s now in the attic, at about 30 feet, being fed by about 40 feet of LMR-400. I’ve tested it on both 2m and 70cm and it’s getting out with no SWR problems and good coverage. Now all I’ve got to do is set up the 2m and 70cm HO Loops to get a little side band action.

My APRS Tracker Is Back On The Air

I managed to break the feed line for my APRS station’s antenna, it disconnected from the connector while I was loading the Jeep up for the drive up to Illinois in December. I’ve been a little bit of a slacker and haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Well, on the way home from work today I stopped off at Tanner Electronics and picked up the parts I needed to get a new connector on the feed line. After a quick spin around the block to make sure the transmitter was still working I buttoned everything up and am able to send position reports again.

TrustedQSL on Fedora Core 4 x86_64

Getting this to compile was a little tough. There’s a few things to do in order to build it.

First, in tqsllib and TrustedQSL, you’ll need to edit the ‘configure’ scripts in both directories. In each one you’ll need to change the library paths for zlib, expat, and libcrypto from lib to lib64 in the checkzlibdir, checkexpatdir, and checkssldir functions.

The bigger problem is in the TrustedQSL package. There’s a couple lines of code in crqwiz.cpp that don’t play nice with 64 bit compilers. Use this diff to patch the crqwiz.cpp file. After that it’ll build and run just fine.

I’ve signed and submitted a file and LoTW parsed it successfully with this patch applied to tqsllib-2.0 and TrustedQSL-1.11.

T81A Found!

It arrived this morning, and I’ve powered it up, done a full reset, and started programming repeaters in. I’m thinking I’m going to have to get ahold of someone with a better antenna because this thing just can’t consistently hit repeaters that it should be able to. I’m hoping there’s no internal damage, but the fact that I can’t hit 444.150 from 183 and Empire Central with 5 watts is not making me feel all that good.

I’m A Jinx

It’s official. I’m a jinx. I put together the new Windows XP machine last night out of a spare Athlon 2000+ that I had laying around. Well, I powered it up this morning to finish patching it and the CPU let the magic smoke out. Literally smoked the CPU.

So I went to Fry’s at lunch and picked up a 2.8GHz Celeron-D, a new motherboard, a gig of ram, and a new video card. No more used parts!

Then the real fun started. This was my first XP installation and I had to call Microsoft and read off a 48 digit number and get one read back to me in order to reactivate the installation. That’s just stupid. Maybe the next version of Windows can move back to a hardware dongle instead of this crap.

So it’s finally up and running and will be undergoing a burn-in for the next few days. Then the HAM Radio apps go on so that I can get the rest of the shack put together. PSK-31’s a must!

Looking for a T-81A

If you’re selling an ICOM T-81A, I’m looking for one. The 1.2GHz bug has bitten and this one will take the place of my current HT and give me two more bands at the same time.

Some Books

Since it’s the first of the month and I’m a little bored, here’s some of my favorite books:

Ham-Com

Today was spent shopping at Ham-Com. I needed to pick up some small parts to get my last few antennas set up. So I’ve now picked up an MFJ-916BN duplexer, a couple N connectors, some Power Poles, and some 10 ga. power cable.

Now I’ve just got to run the cables for them!