JNOS, Packet and More

>Is anybody using APRS on HF?

Yes. Some. It's a kick to see folks showing up from around the country
and even a little DX from time to time. I've picked up stations in Hawaii and
the Carribean . Most of the activity is on 10.151 - LSB so you're actually in the band).

There's a bit of European activity on 14.105
because of some issue with their working packet on 30 meters. Not much
North American activity on 14.105 because some fuddy duddy BBS's are
camped there.

>I want to set up APRS on HF so that I can use it north of Nanaimo on
>Vancouver Island BC. Once I'm about five miles north of Nanaimo, that's the
>end of APRS.

HF (and satellites) are the ideal extension of APRS for folks out of range
of the digi system.

> I'm thinking of modifying one of the little 30 meter PSK
>transceivers producted by smallwonderlabs.com.

You could maybe receive but transmitting won't work. It's a serious technical
problem to get the FSK you need for packet.

> Does anybody have any
>dedicated transceiver recommendations?

I use an ICOM IC-726. (Like a 725 but it has 6 meters.) Any of the basic SSB
rigs that covers 30 meters should work just fine. You don't need a great deal of
power.

> How about general advice?

For a TNC, I like the older KAM's. (Not the Kam Plus or Kam 98) The original KAM
is true dual band so it works well on HF and VHF packet at the same time. EBAY
is a good source of these TNC's.

You can also use a PC soundcard with Linux or SV2AGW software on Windows. That
works ok but given the choice I'd use the external KAM and save the computers CPU
cycles for more interesting things.

I see that K7OFT's making packets on 30. Looks like it's time to fix my antenna and
clean up the wires and get back on there.

Hope that helps.

73,
Bill - WA7NWP

to SEATCP
---

It's amazing what can be heard on 145.825:

TKR1>BEACON,K7OFT-10*,WIDE3-3/1:TKR1 (K7OFT-11) 144.390MhHz Tracker/Portable Digi krm6@msn.com
TKR1>GPSA01,K7OFT-10*,WIDE3-3/1:$GPGGA,,,,,,0,04,,,,,,,*62

Well, I guess it's not the frequency or the station that's heard - it's the fact it
was heard with the DSP56002EVM modem.

IT'S WORKING!!

Biggest issue was trying to run the DOS debugger under Mr Gates 98SE in
a MS-DOS window. When I rebooted to DOS mode - everything fell right
in to place.

Now to do battle with the configuration to find which port is which radio and
configure the PTT and other signals accordingly. TAPR's box lists Radio 1
and RADIO 2. Everything in the EVM documentation deals with Left and
Right. Very shortly I'll know how the two nomenclatures are related.

Bill

to SEATCP
---

Charles may have a bit of a funny colored flag, and it's upside down, but
at least he's got it unfurled and is out flying it. For that we have to give
him credit. There's a lot of work involved in his http://www.uspacket.net
setup and again we need to give him credit for his (somewhat misdirected)
efforts.

Hopefully something new will come from the DCC to show if TAPR is once
again going to get their flag up in view or if it's time to play taps for TAPR.

Bill - WA7NWP

To: dev@seattlewireless.net
Subject: Re: lightning arrestor

> But after reading a little about how lightning disrupts network equipment, it's
>probably worth some peace of mind to add lightning
>protection.

For industrial strength lightning protection information visit:

http://www.polyphaser.com/ppc_technical.asp

All other information is good.. Ground the mast (probably required for code), make
loops in the lead in wires (controversial but certainly won't hurt) and use surge protectors.

Bill

> Last week I went on my bicyle from Victoria to Nananaimo via Saltspring.

Oh for the good old days of bicycling... It's hard to believe it's already 10 years
now since I rode through the Canadian Rockies from the Glacier Hamfest in
Montana to Calgary...

Here's a picture taken at the very start of the Columbia River... (I didn't know that
it flows NORTH at the beginning?)

http://www.jnos.org/webpict/bvAlbum/199296kevin/1992/92l/_92l03.html

> Some of you may have seen my (occasional) beacons as VE7PLN-7

Didn't notice but now I'll be looking for you. If you're on the bike - send out
lots of positions so we don't miss you.

> 1. As I understand it, a D7A(g) is sufficient for this purpose. Is that correct?

Not only sufficient - but ideal!

> 2. Do I still use 144.39 MHz for send and receive?

No. PCSAT (NO-44 on the charts) does have a 144.39 radio but it's not always
available. When it is - you're facing a heck of a lot of competition.

The best chances are PCSAT and ISS. For PCSAT, 145.825 with an alias of W3ADO-1,SAGATE
is recommended. ISS is 145.800 down, 145.990 up and alias is RS0ISS,SAGATE.

The "SAGATE" on the alias is a hack to allow ground stations to rebroadcast your
packets.

> Any other advice will be welcome.

I have an old Palm 3 - The Satellite Tracking program PocketSat has been very handy
for predicting passes.

Make sure you have a real antenna on the D7. Throw away the one that came with it.

Check out Bob Bruninga's APRSTK program. It's a version of his APRSDOS that will
actually tune the D7 to satellites when they come in range. I have an old HP-100LX palmtop
I hope to try with APRSTK someday very soon.

A small (5AH) Gel Cell and 5 W solar panel bungie corded on the paniers provides all
the power you'll need.

Have fun and give us a warning before you start any trips so I can make sure to
record the tracks.

73,
Bill - WA7NWP

>Philip
>VE7PLN

to aprssig
---

> WE7U wrote
>If the non-amateur posted the data to an ftp/http site or it got
>wedged into an SQL server somewhere, then an amateur station snagged
>the data and put it out over the air (or over the 'net feed), then
>that _would_ be legal. Fine distinction I know, but the rules
>specifically state that the control of the rig should be in
>amateur's hands only.

My view... If I write a program that fetches, or watches for data, be it from
a database, the current outside temperature, the calculated phase of the moon,
the neighbors noisy speakers, or weather data flowing by on data feed, it's
all pretty much the same thing. It's "my" program, which is essentially a
set of rules I've created, that's keying my amateur radio and distributing the
data. The source is irrelevant. I'm setting the rules and controlling the rig.

The "civilian" isn't making my transmitter go. I'm making it transmit when I see the
data appear. Along with that, it's my responsibility to make sure the data is
legitimate, that it's legal to distribute, that the transmission doesn't interfere with
others, that it's using the minimum necessary power, etc - all the normal
rules the amateur service operates under.

The control of the operation and all transmissions is totally in "my" (the amateur's) hands.

73,
Bill - WA7NWP

PS. Missed you at the gathering Curt. I had videos you would have enjoyed...

At 01:38 PM 9/11/02 -0700, Ray McKnight - WB3ABN wrote:

>The bandwidth issue is a much greater concern.

Right. We have Megaherzes of virtually unused VHF and UHF spectrum
that we need to be using for new and interesting projects like this. Lots of
unused packet channels and with a bit of a twist on the existing 1970's
repeater technology we could share the bandwidth there for data feeds.

> Gate'ing to HF would be
>a positive disaster, and keeping it off 144.39 as well.

That could be done - but it would have to be done like porcupines kissing...
Very very very carefully...

73,
Bill - WA7NWP

to NWAPRSSIG
---

After taking 6 months to build up the courage to tackle decoding
MIC-E packets in my PERL library, I spent the two hours this
morning it actually took to do it.

I learned a couple tricks that make it possible to observe some information
from human monitored MIC-E packets.

Here's one packet:

VE7HRA-14>TY0SVY,VE7VAN-3,WIDE3*:`22ol"Tk/>"5(}

Reading backwards we see: "5(} That's the elevation. } is
the indicator and the "5( is the encoded elevation.

Next character is a >. That means this came from a Kenwood TH-D7. If
it was a ], it would be the D700. Those are the only two special symbols currently
defined.

Prior to the >, there's a k/. Turning those two symbols around
we get /k - which is the standard table and symbol designators. Primary
table, /, and symbol k from that table.


Another example:

KC7HTG-14>T7SRQU,K7NWS-10*,WIDE3-1:'2Z/l!du/]"44}

Elevation is present and encoded as "44
This is a ']' radio, which is a TM-D700
Symbol is /u


And a final couple examples:

N7WGR-7>T7QWQY,SEA*,WIDE3-2:'2;*l k/]"51}
N7QXO-8>TU4QYP,RELAY*,WIDE3:'2E;l v/]"44}

Both have elevation information. Both are D700's, N7WGR-7's symbol is a /k and
N7QX0-8 is using /v.


Nothing truly profound here - but it was new to me and might be interesting
for others that watch the traffic flow.

73,
Bill - WA7NWP

At 10:13 AM 9/11/02 -0700, Curt Mills, WE7U wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, AE5PL Lists wrote:
>
> > I would guess that UI-View is seeing the TCPXX* in the path and is
> > refusing to gate it to RF.
>
>Which in this case is saving you from illegal amateur radio
>transmissions. You don't want to lose your license over this do you?

What's illegal about it? There's never been a question of anybody
losing their license over something like this.

We can transmit useful information from various sources on the air. That's
what ham radio is about.

A pure 1200 baud stream of weather data would be an interesting and useful
application of one of the many unused frequencies on any of the amateur
VHF or UHF bands.

We can control what we send. In this case, it would be prudent to filter the
data stream to confirm that the CWxxxx station was indeed a weather data broadcast
and not some naught words or spam. That should easily meet the letter of the law.
That's the job of a control operator.

We aren't using our frequencies now for useful and innovative schemes like this.
Others will be in the near future.

Bill,
WA7NWP

Hey - javAPRS does indeed work in Windows without a browser. It wasn't too
hard to set up. My full notes on how I got it working are on my Wiki at:

http://www.jnos.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/JavAprsAlone

73,
Bill - WA7NWP

Here's the short list of what it took
=========================

- Created a folder - f:\japrs
- Used WinZip to unpack the contents of japrs.jar in that folder
- created a map folder - \japrs\map
- added some maps: JWORLD.MP JUSA.MP JPUGET.MP, etc
- created maplist.txt in the \japrs\map folder

JPUGET.MP^JPUGET
JUSA.MP^JUSA
JWORLD.MP^JWORLD
expedia,47.43,121.8,1.47^Expedia Seattle

- came up with the following big long command line to invoke javAPRS

wjview /a /cp f:\japrs width=400 height=300 homeID=WA7NWP-10 mapListFile=maplist.txt sendLogin=false drawvectors=true dosMap=wasound.mp cabbase=japrs.cab datafile1=netc:10151:jnos.org javAPRS

Following the mail on this list recently turned out to be useful.

For the past few months I've been receiving complaints of low audio
when using my 706II. I was running with the mic gain on full, talking
loud, and fearing it was time to take the rig "over the hill" to the ICOM
office in Bellevue.

Then the discussion came up here about whether or not the 706MK2 would
do narrow band FM... I checked my radios memories and guess what...
Somehow I'd had the FIL engaged and the small N in the upper left of the
display was showing. An additional test with a local ham confirmed that
engaging the filter did indeed result in a reduction in received audio.

Thanks folks...

73,
Bill - WA7NWP