8/24/2022 AREDN mesh presentation for the Fullerton Amateur Radio Club
I created this flowchart to illustrate the flow of data between a private data network, radio and the Internet. Why is this important? Consider this scenario:
Power is out, the Internet is down and cell phones aren’t working. Let’s say all of Southern California communications are down (A likely scenario during a major earthquake). You need to send an email to an adjacent agency including a detailed list of medications and medical equipment that you need delivered to your area now. You know as well as any good emergency communicator that trying to do that over voice is not the …
A couple years ago, my wife and I walked up to San Juan Hill (W6/CT-230) to activate this summit. It was a place I’ve been to many times on my mountain bike. The walk up took about an hour and a half, and of course and hour and half down. I remember thinking you know, this is nice and all, but I wonder what it would be like to ride up here and do this?
Fast forward to Saturday, February 4th, 2023 and here I am doing my first ever mountain bike ride for a summits on the …
Niguel Hill is a short and relatively flat walk from Seaview Park on Talvera Drive in Laguna Niguel Park. I have been to this area several times for other activations and emergency communications drills. As a summit spot you have good line of sight communications to much of South Orange County making this an ideal location for beginner summits on the air activators. You’ll also find some line of sight connectivity to parts of Orange, Irvine and Tustin. There are several convenient picnic tables to choose from. Most of them are within the “activation zone”, with all being at …
In the mountain bike world, when reviewing trail maps and usage, I am always wary of areas that haven’t had much activity. In the SOTA world, Sugarloaf Peak is one of those places. Although it was not far away from civilization and close to a very popular trail, it had only been activated 5 times before. Why? Well, now that I’ve activated the summit, I can tell you why.
If one was to hike up to this summit, it would be an all day hike for sure. At roughly 11 miles round trip, over 2,000 feet of elevation gain …
Today marked my first real attempt at doing a DX contest and actually logging the contacts. The goal of this contest was to make contacts with people outside the 48 contiguous United States. The 10 meter band was wide open today, so getting contacts was not terribly difficult. I spent about an hour on the contest and logged 7 solid “59” contacts. The farthest of them were Japan and Argentina. My rig was a Yaesu FT-891 powered at 50 watts connected to a SuperAntenna MP1 with a couple elevated radials as you’ll see in the YouTube video below.
CONTACT
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If you were lucky enough to pick up the Evolve Maestro III from Microcenter for $60 (currently sold out), you may be wondering if it can be used for ham radio digital operations. Yes, it can. And the battery life is outstanding. Here’s a recent video of me using it in the truck to operate VARA HF. It also works great for WSTJ-X for other modes like FT8.
You may also be wondering, can I power this up with 12 volts? Yes, you can. I like Anderson power poles, so with a couple parts I can keep this …
A quick demo of FM Packet Winlink using some unlikely parts:
- A Microsoft Surface Pro 4 running Windows 11
- A Mobilnkd TNC3 connected via Bluetooth powered with a generic USB power bank
- A Radioddity QB25 mini mobile radio running on low power powered by a Bioenno 3aH battery
- A special cable made by Hammadeparts.com
Does it work? Yes!
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If you find yourself in an area that has no cell phone service and need to spot yourself for a POTA (Parks on the Air) activation, here’s how you can get yourself spotted via Winlink. Obviously, you need a Winlink gateway to get to, so Vara HF will probably work the best in this situation.
Before heading out, go to https://sotamat.com/ where you will need to create an account and watch the tutorials.
Compose a message in your Winlink Express client.
TO: potagw@outlook.com
SUBJECT: SPOT {your callsign} {park designator} {mode} {frequency} {any comments}
Example: SPOT KM6ZPO K-TEST SSB 14321 …
I have been a fan of the Mobilnkd since I got the TNC3. It’ managed to get it work on an older tablet running Windows 11, but my new Dell XPS 13 just won’t work with the TNC3. (Maybe my TNC3 is dead?) I decided to upgrade to the newest TNC4, and I’ll say I’m very happy with it so far. Getting the TNC4 to work on Windows 11 is slightly different than how I always did it with Windows 10, so I wanted to show you how I did it and write out exactly how it works.
The first …