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?
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 |
This video demonstrates a simple fox hunt transmitter using a Baofeng UV-5R and an MP3 player connected with a Baofeng APRS-K2 audio cable.
Recently I’ve been thinking about setting up a field kit for the Areden Mesh Network. I’ve seen plenty of people able to setup their nodes at their homes, so I know it’s possible. Setting something up for very portable field use was my challenge.
Below is a video demonstration of a fully mobile digital ham radio setup that can be operated anywhere within range of Wi-Fi or cellular networks. With this setup I can connect to any Wires-X room in the entire world. I can be indoors working plugged into AC and WiFi or fully portable using battery power and a Wi-Fi hotspot.
The laptop is handy for quickly finding and switching to rooms, but so long as you have a nearby Wires-X or System Fusion repeater connected to the Internet you could work with just the handheld radio.
Parts to buy:
- A radio