Toughbook

-
It's slowly become clear that my penchant for Chromebooks (cheap and simple to manage) will not get me far in amateur radio. After asking the internet for recommendations and getting a lot great advice, I picked up a Panasonic Toughbook CF-19 MK5. It's 8 year old hardware at this point, but:
  • it sounds like most ham applications don't require much in the way of CPU or memory, 
  • the IP65 water resistance and general indestructibility is a big plus, 
  • and they're a bargain at ~$300. 
Compare that to a brand new "spill-resistant" Lenovo X1 Carbon at $1,500!

I've installed Xubuntu 19.10 on it, and the experience was pretty seamless. A couple of notes:

  • The touchscreen works, although I can't figure out how to calibrate it yet. As usual, I'm asking the internet.
  • The speaker didn't work directly after install, but after playing around in alsamixer and raising all of the channel levels, I was able to get it working.
  • The front buttons don't work out of the box, but apparently there's a driver running around called panasonic-hbtn.zip. I'll have to track that down.
  • Mine didn't come with a GPS module, but eBay has second-hand parts going for $35, so that'll be a nice addition.

Comments

  1. XyloSeptember 2, 2020 at 9:30 AM

    If others are looking into running Linux on a CF-19, I'm collecting useful tools for that here: https://github.com/xylo04/panasonic-hbtn

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New station setup and grounding problems

-
Image
A couple of weeks back I rearranged my home office and shack. The new arrangement gets my HF station off of my desk and onto its own shelf, and it's been sitting there receiving FT8 quite happily while I've been programming and testing a WSJT-X UDP receiver  for Golang. However, today was my first attempt at operating FT8, and unfortunately, something about the current arrangement is causing my CI-V control to reset every time I transmit. Having CAT control reset on transmit is a killer problem for digital modes. With WSJT-X in particular, the software ends the transmission if CAT resets, so you've lost that entire transmit cycle. I had similar problems in the old desk location with certain bands; for example, I couldn't really operate anything below 40 meters due to CI-V resets, and even on 40m I had to limit my power to keep it reliable. Today's test on 20m was very discouraging. I used to be able to run 20m at 100W if I felt the need (usually used less), but to...
Read more

Researching HF

-
Image
I haven't been on the air much lately because I've been doing more research than operations. I've been looking into a mobile radio to supplement my HTs and give me a little more power and reach, and I'm very attracted to a multi-band radio that includes HF. That's taken me down an incredible rabbit hole of what all is possible outside of VHF/UHF. Transceiver The sheer amount of gear needed to get into HF is a little staggering. The transceivers themselves are, of course, pricey. Then one needs mobile antennas suited for the desired bands; mobile options range from basic "hamsticks," a set of whip antennas which need to be swapped out when switching bands, all the way up to a motorized "screwdriver" antenna with its own hydraulic lift. After that, you might need an antenna tuner (I've heard conflicting opinions about this), and at least an SWR meter if not a full antenna analyser to tell whether a tuner is needed. At least in a mobile set...
Read more

First Mobile Radio: Kenwood TM-D710G

-
Image
I've been looking at mobile radios for a while, but the difficult thing about it is that there's no radio that does everything. I've been looking at: VHF/UHF radios that support digital voice modes like DMR, or  VHF/UHF radios that include a TNC and APRS, or  all-band radios that do HF in addition to VHF/UHF, or  HF-only rigs.  Choosing one means giving up on the other modes, or running multiple radios which multiplies cost and complexity. After much humming and hawing, I decided that packet is one of the things I'd most like to master (even though the prevalence of packet is supposedly much reduced from its heyday), so I chose what seems to be the most popular dual-bander with a TNC. The Kenwood TM-D710G puts out 50W on the 2m and 70cm bands, which is an order of magnitude more power than the HTs I've been using. It has a well-integrated TNC which supports APRS (with built-in GPS for location), and also more general packet/AX.25 communications, even...
Read more