K0SWE Blog

Last weekend I was very lucky to get an in-depth look at  RMHAM's microwave network by being invited to a workshop on the subject. It's an IP-over-microwave network spanning New Mexico to Wyoming and Pueblo to Grand Junction. It's an extensive system that carries various amateur radio traffic; for example, it functions as part of the backbone for the Colorado Connection repeater network. To complete the workshop I had to dust off a lot of networking knowledge I haven't exercised in a long time, particularly OSPF. It's all fun and games until a rogue static route is breaking routing everywhere! It was a very illuminating class, and hopefully I can start to repay the kindness of the facilitators, Willem Schreuder AC0KQ and John Maxwell W0VG, by giving back in some fashion. They have some custom software which manages their configuration and tooling, maybe I can beef that up. But Why? We didn't talk much in the workshop about the network's purp...

I helped Heather Randall from JFKHS and Bob Sterner KB0BS from RMHAM to complete and submit a proposal to ARISS, so now it's their hands. It should be 6 to 8 weeks before we hear back. Very exciting! In the meantime, I tried my hand at receiving an AMSAT signal over the Thanksgiving weekend. Since I was attempting receive only, I decided to pipe it through my RTL-SDR rather than an HT in order to get a visual of the Doppler shift, and had some success. Unfortunately, the particular time I tried happened to be when no voice birds were overhead, so the only thing I got were what I assume were telemetry signals, and I didn't have the decoders installed. At least I got to practice tracking and adjusting for polarity with the new Arrow antenna. I also met with Heather and Bob in person, and we're planning an ARDF fox hunt with Heather's students next week. I get the principles, but this will be my first time actually participating in a fox hunt. I'm looking forward...