K0SWE Blog

In an effort to jog my memory from last December's RMHAM networking workshop, I decided to set up a miniature lab of my own. I'm glad I did, because even a simple arrangement had me scratching my head for a while! I had two MikroTik LHGs, two hEX PoE lites, and two laptops, and the goal was to get those configured to ping from one side to the other and back via Part 97 frequencies with RMHAM's conventions. The initial setup went well enough. One wrinkle is that I run Linux on almost all of my computers, and run MikroTik's Winbox client using a Wine compatibility layer. That's fine, but I also use UFW as a firewall, which interferes with Winbox's ability to scan for neighbors or connect by MAC address. I had to remember to turn off UFW while doing this experiment. Also, I was trying to power the LHGs using the hEX routers and avoid even more cable spaghetti by using separate PoE injectors. This meant that I couldn't plug directly into the LHGs; when I...

Being stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, I finally had occasion to set up an HF antenna. I picked up a relatively inexpensive and flexible Chameleon EMCOMM II. My "shack" is a 2nd story guest bedroom/home office, so I set up the transformer directly outside the window and ran the wire out to the backyard in a top-fed sloper configuration. I set that up with the Icom IC-718 I got from Dick and Alan's SK collection, and the LDG IT-100 tuner I picked up. This weekend happened to be a  CQ WPX SSB contest. That meant that there was plenty of activity, but it was a little intimidating to jump in and attempt to make contacts. I finally overcame my mic fright and made my first HF QSO: KK9A in North Carolina, at a distance of 1,377 miles (2,217 km). He heard me, I heard him; unfortunately, I don't know if I made the contest exchange correctly, because he moved on quickly. Still, I'm happy that my HF station is working! I tried several more QSOs during the con...

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has certainly hit the US like a ton of bricks in the last 2 weeks. I'm working from home, my kids are schooling for home, and practically every event involving more than 10 people has been cancelled. Unfortunately, that included several emergency communications meetings and trainings that I was looking forward to. Instead, I'm taking the opportunity to work on more resilient VHF packet radio and Winlink configurations. When I was heavily into this several months ago, I was primarily using an Anytone AT-D878UV, but I've noticed that while it's better than the cheapo Baofeng UV-5R, it's still not great about switching between receive and transmit as quickly as packet requires. One of the radios in Alan's SK collection is a Kenwood TM-261 VHF-only mobile rig, which is perfect as a base in my shack. I got the 261 working for packet today with the Signalink USB, Direwolf and Pat, and it runs like a champ! I put it on the Arrow ...

I've spent the past couple of weeks engrossed in finding new homes for much of Alan and Richard's SK collection, but today I was able to get out and try to put some of the keepers into action. I've taken the Icom IC-718 and cobbled an HF station around that. I don't really have room around my home to set up an HF antenna without getting creative, so for now I'm resigned to operating portable. Since I won't have ideal antenna conditions, I picked up an LDG IT-100, a wide-range automatic antenna tuner that integrates well with that particular transceiver. Richard had several homemade dipole antennas in his collection, including a very impressive fan dipole with 5 elements. I didn't take a tape measure so I don't know exactly which bands it's supposed to cover, but the full thing is about 60' wide. While my kids were playing at a playground, I set up the big fan antenna between a couple of trees. I wasn't able to get it very high, probably...