K0SWE Blog

I purchased a TNC-Pi 2 from Coastal Chipworks (John Hansen, W2FS). It took longer than I'd like to admit to assemble, but I did get it working. So far I've gotten XASTIR for APRS working (had to build from source), and been able to view local RF station reports, view APRS-IS data and even published RF messages to the internet as an IGate. If I continue playing with APRS, I'll probably look at YAAC . XASTIR works and is full-featured and mature, but that UI is showing its age. I'd also like a headless IGate option, and javAPRSSrvr sounds like a solid option. I'd still like to play around with Winlink and PiGate, and see that the TNC's transmit is working along with receive.

I joined about 40 hams from Colorado AuxComm, several ARES districts and the Rocky Mountain Ham Radio group to provide race communications for the Dirty 30, a 30 mile/50 km ultra trail run through Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Our mission is to make sure that every runner that steps on the mountainous, dispersed course also steps off at the end of  the day, and by all accounts, 2019 was a very good year for the comms team. My aid station (#3, Horseshoe Trailhead) started the day with no RFID mat to automatically read bibs, so I spent the morning manually entering bib numbers into my laptop, connected via WiFi and microwave back to the comm trailer running the centralized race web server.