Last weekend my wife (Julie, KN6AOC) and I tried transmitter hunting (also known as amateur radio direction finding or ARDF) and antenna building for the first time. The Fullerton Amateur Radio Club setup the event and had mentors available for us.
A while back I purchased an Ed Fong dual band (2M/70CM) DBJ-2 antenna for field use. Roll up “slim jim” antennas are an excellent choice for your go bag. You can hang them from a tree branch in the field, but what do you do when there are no trees around?
This morning on my drive to work I was listening to a conversation on the PAPA system via PAPA 22 which is on Pleasant’s Peak. The PAPA system has many repeaters interlinked throughout California. A ham operator was hiking up to Strawberry Peak to do a SOTA activation (W6/CT-018). I don’t know which repeater he was using, but it probably wasn’t PAPA 22. I’m thinking maybe he was on PAPA 4. Anyway, when I got to work I thought I would see if he was tracking his location via APRS and found him as N6MKW-7. …
I did a field test of PinPoint APRS tracking software.
2019 Field Day locations within Orange County, California.
I tested SARTrack's software for APRS station tracking and APRS messaging.
After several months of trying to figure out how to use a Baofeng as a TNC for things like APRS tracking, I finally found a method that works.
Julie (KN6AOC) and I had a great time on Saturday, June 22, 2019 visiting several of the amateur field day club sites.
A presentation I did for OCRACES regarding APRS Station Tracking and Messaging
If you’ve been researching how to build an APRS iGate, surely you’ve seen quite a few articles on setting up a Raspberry PI or other Linux-based solution. But what if you don’t have a Raspberry PI laying around? What if you’re not a Linux geek? Well, this is your simple Windows-based solution. I’ll first provide the parts list and then get into the details.
| Item Needed | Description | Source |
| Base Station Antenna and Cabling | For receiving APRS audio | Local HAM shop, Home Depot, Internet |
| RTL-SDR USB Dongle | For connecting the antenna to the computer | Internet (Amazon) |
| AIRSPY SDR# | Your software defined |