Well there it is… this is the contact made using the bicycle mobile station… with little more than a mobile CB whip. That arrived in the mail this evening. Time for me to investigate ways of tuning this antenna properly though, rather than making the auto-tuner do all the hard work.
I was just reading back through the posts on Gentoo Universe… and Diego’s post regarding Free Software Washing Machines caught my eye.
There are many benefits for why free software firmware would be good… However, you’ve got to convince the marketeers and management of such companies that this is a good idea. This is not so simple. In extreme cases, you’ve also got to convince government… more on this later.
Take my current project at my workplace. We’re developing a new video intercom system. The devices are based on the Freescale i.MX27, and incorporate an 800×480 LCD, resistive touchscreen, USB port, ethernet (with PoE), mono internal speaker/microphone, handset interface and a small software-controlled relay. The audio interfaces are mono, but capable of sample rate up to 192kHz (limited to 96kHz by ALSA) and it wouldn’t be difficult to get stereo out of them. I wouldn’t mind buying one later on to play with at home … maybe one of the early ones with psychodelic colours (the first revisions didn’t have the LCD lines routed quite right) since we’ll want to sell the others. My role was with the audio CODEC, the TLV320AIC3204, some code for this is already on the ALSA-devel mailing list (the continued development of this driver is the mainly the reason why I want one for home).
They’re a fun little device to play with… and there may be some who might be interested in hacking such devices. They already run Linux… a few of them at my workplace run Gentoo even — mostly the test modules. However, the firmware for these, particularly at the higher levels will remain proprietary. I’ve released the CODEC driver as GPLed software … and ideally I’d like to see the rest of the kernel changes released openly. I’ll play this by ear first however. The good news is that if someone wanted to port Linux over from scratch, it’s real easy to get Linux booting on these things (tip: start with the Freescale MX27ADS support, I ported kernel 2.6.34 this way).
The CODEC driver I’m mostly happy with… the machine/fabric driver I use for ASoC on this thing however … let’s just say, it’s a hack. The CODEC’s clock is generated from a pin on the MCU, and so I have to use some rather “creative” methods to configure that clock and make it available to the CODEC. There’s no way it would be accepted into mainline… and we’ve since found that clock drifts the moment you look at the chip funny. Ahh well, live and learn.
There’s also a GPIO module that allows us to use the keypad controller (which is not routed via IOMUX AFAIK) as a GPIO chip… similarly, it was a monkey-see-monkey-do hack… but I might be able to make that more acceptable to upstream.
So there’s the issue that such code is considered a bit of an embarrasment to its author. (I don’t speak of other code on these things, just the parts I have written!)
Secondly, there’s the thorny issue of intellectual property. The firmware on these VoIP stations incorporate a proprietary protocol for VoIP. Why not go with SIP? Basically this protocol was designed to run on their earlier products… which were all based on small 8-bit microcontrollers. SIP was just too much for a ~40MHz 8-bit micro like the Rabbit 3000. Thus a simpler protocol was developed. I have no idea about the specifics, other than the fact that it was developed to suit the lower-end microcontrollers in use at the time. I think in future the newer units may wind up moving over to SIP, but for now, deadlines are on top of us, we’ll go with what we know works for now. Given how much of Jacques’ business relies on this protocol, I don’t see them opening it up to their competitors anytime soon.
Finally, there’s one of support. The modules we use were purchsed from Ka-Ro Electronics, and the kernel we use was supplied by them directly… based on kernel 2.6.28. To my knowledge, there’s no openly-available patches that allow a user to run the latest Linux kernels on the Ka-Ro modules — you more or less either have to forward port the patches that Ka-Ro provide, or try to hack up a patch of your own (this is what I did). Now, Ka-Ro clearly have their reasons for not openly releasing a patch for their hardware, I haven’t enquired as to why this is… I have a patch that gets their TX27 module working under kernel 2.6.34 (theoretically newer kernels too) but I’ll probably run it by Ka-Ro themselves before I release it.
Ka-Ro presumably will only provide support for the kernels and board-support packages that they provide, which is reasonable. They started with a known stable kernel, and started their development on that (it was a year old before they touched it), and released it knowing it would be reliable. Obviously they cannot provide the same guarantee to newer kernels… because they won’t necessarily know what might have changed — you could encounter severe bugs that were not their doing and thus, a lot of time and effort is spent trying to fix a problem that was not their doing. Similarly, at Jacques, we don’t have the resources to answer questions from inquisitive geeks wanting to turn the monitor station in their apartment into a music player or web server. At best, we’d be able to put some of it online, but we’d have to say “Sorry, can’t answer questions, you’ll just have to work it out yourself.”
In the Amateur Radio world… homebrewing, and home-modification of equipment is common. In fact, once upon a time, it was the only way to get on air unless you had a lot of money! Thankfully, one can now purchase a radio station for far less money than it would cost to design, build, and debug, and the build quality in general will be much higher. Of course if you do go the homebrew route, you’ll at least be wiser and richer for the experience.
The difficulty with homebrewing radios these days, is getting parts, and working with them. Back in the day, things were valves, and discrete components… maybe the odd DIP-packaged IC… and no more than double-layer PCBs. The two Yaesu FT-897Ds I have, incorporate multi-layer boards (4 I think) and SMD devices. One got cooked in a storm, frying the microphone preamp and a DDS chip (although the finals appear to be okay, and it makes a good shortwave receiver). The complexity of this radio made it impossible to repair, and so I had to buy a second one (or rather, insurance did). Now, I’m mostly very happy with this radio, but there are one or two niggles I have with regards to its interface… and a few features I’d like to implement.
Yaesu do provide a block diagram of their transceiver, but they don’t provide the code to the Hitachi H8300 microcontrollers that reside inside the unit… and there are several of them. Suppose I get the microphone circuitry fixed in the cooked one… I might be able to get FM functionality back. The DDS chip was responsible for the carrier sidetone generation with SSB, and for generating the carrier in AM and CW. It’s no longer manufactured… and the chances of a different chip being compatible with the existing firmware are next to zilch. I’ve still got it… I intend to build my own radio out of the bits that are left over (the Phoenix897 project) … it’ll be here that I’ll be able to explore the possibilities in terms of implemented features.
However, one challenge will be designing and producing PCBs that will be suitable for use with today’s devices. The construction methods of the past such as wire-wrap and dead-bug, work fine for discrete components, work okay for DIPs, SOICs, TSSOPs and QFPs… but I’m afraid you can forget it on a BGA or LCC. So you have to build a proper PCB, and the track work has to be very fine. Then there’s the actual fitting of components onto the board.
The boards I was building for the electric harvester project I was involved in at Laidley didn’t involve anything smaller than TSSOP ICs, or discrete SMD capacitors/resistors smaller than 0603 (most were 0805) … easily hand-soldered. At Jacques we’re dealing with components even smaller… they don’t get soldered by hand — instead they’re oven baked. It takes a few hours to lay out a board, and the slightest bump will scatter all those carefully placed components. The smaller components are not marked… with no means of identifying them, they get tossed. (And yes, I did accidentally bump some one Friday evening… not proud of that at all.) I can see me going through a lot of components because a PCB gets knocked for six.
So the modern components are much harder to work with. An ideal solution to my dillema would be a pre-built radio that I can customise the firmware on. Alas, the closest I’ll get to this, is SDR kits such as the Softrock… even they have to be supplied in “kit” form. FCC rules basically forbid manufacturers from producing off-the-shelf transceivers with customisable firmware… or at least that’s how I understand it. Not sure whether the EU works the same… and the ACMA’s EMC directives are more or less based on the FCC’s… so I suspect that’s the issue here.
More or less the worry is that you might hack the firmware to circumvent the bandplan restrictions that may exist in your area (i.e. modifying a transceiver to broadcast WFM on the 88-108MHz band for example). I’m not sure how this is different to homebrewing a set, or modifying a set yourself … but being able to just hack the firmware yourself is not something the various spectrum management organisations want us to do.
This is sad in a way… I think there would be a big market in having a radio that had completely opensource firmware.
One of my big niggles is that the transceiver I have won’t remember power limits by mode… I can do 100W PEP, but only 30W average, so for FM I find myself constantly winding the power back to 30W, but the moment I kick the radio into SSB, I’m winding back up to 100W. More than once I’ve accidentally called into a FM net on 2m using 50W because I had been using 2m SSB the previous night (my radio only does 50W on 2m)… or accidentally found myself transmitting 100W on a 10m FM repeater.
IRLP/Echolink functionality, and memory channel organisations are other improvements… remembering node numbers is a chore I could well do without… and I find there’s often not enough channels to cover all the repeaters in the country… or it’s difficult to organise them in a manner that allows quick retrieval. Modern storage, modern microcontrollers, I see no reason why this can’t be stuffed into a relational DB (something akin to SQLite) so that you just whistle up the repeater by location, callsign or frequency… and if it has IRLP or Echolink, be able to just choose a node, browsing by country/state or provence… put your callsign across then press a single button to dial it for you… then at the touch of a button, it dials “73” for you to close the link. (or maybe after a fixed period of inactivity, it can put your ident across, wait 10 seconds, then dial “73” for you).
My old TH-F7E could remember 10 DTMF code sequences and 400 channels, the memory channels just being sequentially accessed… so you really had to put careful thought into ordering or you were relying on cheat sheets to figure things out, in that case why even have the memory channels at all?
I’d also be nice if the set could do HF CB… I can receive it… I see no reason why the set can’t just automatically drop its power to the 12W and restrict its modes to USB/LSB and set the channel spacing accordingly as per the CBRS. I can make a radio with opensource firmware do that… then again, I could also make it do 100W on that same band, and violate the CBRS. One has to convince the government that we won’t try to do the latter (although there are plenty that already do).
All of the above I’ll probably look at implementing when I go and rebuild the old FT897D … and you can bet your bottom dollar I would have tackled some of them already had there been opensource firmware on these rigs. However, the red tape one would have to deal with in order to make such a radio available on the market, I can well understand why the firmware on these things is proprietary.
In a perfect world … if only such a utopia existed!
Well, I can’t call it a “bicycle mobile” contact per se… it was made using the bicycle mobile station however. This afternoon about 1:50PM UTC+10 I made contact with VK100WIA being operated by the South Coast Amateur Radio Club at a frequency of 14.188MHz USB.
The station was being powered by mains, and transmitting 100W (most of it probably rattling the tuner) on a 6′ long CB whip mounted on the back of the bicycle mobile station. The SWR without the tuner was very high, so I’m going to have to look at tuning this in a lot better than it currently is. I registered a S5 Q4 signal with the other station, who was a perfectly clear S8 Q5 copy at my end. I was also hearing New Zealand elsewhere on the band… very stong signal.
I will need to tune the antenna up quite a bit for it to work on 20m… I’m surprised it even worked at all! I tried a few other bands… 10m was dead quiet, couldn’t get any of the FM repeaters, no activity. 6m, I could trigger VK4RBX at Ipswich, but no one about it seems.
This is from my driveway at my home QTH … not in a high location. So a bit of peddling up the hill and I might get quite a distance with my rather limited antennas… but I’m going to see if I can tune the thing in a bit better. My observation of others’ is that one does better when the tuner is an integral part of the antenna, and this is what I’m going to have to do. If the tuner is going to have to do hard work, then let’s get it out into the open and helping the cause.
In the meantime, I’ll have to print a couple of QSL cards… I still need to send one to Mario OS8M from the Christmas evening contact I made on 20m… but it’s only just now that we’ve got a working printer again.
Well… just this afternoon, I made some steps towards getting HF going on the bicycle mobile station.
I’ve had the station going a while now… and with the new workplace being so close to home, I’m often heard on 2m, usually on three repeaters:
Usually, it’s VK4RBS in the centre of town unless there’s activity on VK4RAX. VK4RAX as I get closer to home. I’d listen to the latter all the way, but pagers clobber the receiver on the poor FT-290R II. Hearing pagers is bad enough … try it through a headset! Made worse by the fact that the headset is a semi-homebrew design, embedded inside a motorcycle helmet… so I can’t easily take it off. Once I’m out of the city however, the pagers aren’t an issue.
Range is pretty good… I use a quarter-wave ground-plane antenna on 2m… actually, the antenna itself is the same as on my previous bicycle-mobile station… a tunable whip antenna. The antenna is intended for mobile use on a car, so to give it a reasonable counterpoise, I cut a 500mm long piece of aluminium angle, and bolted the antenna mount to that. I found that alone, wasn’t good enough, and since added a 500mm long piece of copper wire that hangs out the back. That brings the SWR down nicely into the range where the FT-290R II is happy to work with it.
I have been able to open the squelch of the Toowoomba (VK4RDD) repeater, once waiting at lights at West Ashgrove, and another time, underneath the Goodwill Bridge at the Queensland Maritime Museum near South Bank in Brisbane. I also can work the Ipswich repeater, VK4RAI while walking up the hill along Cooper’s Camp Road at Bardon… about a distance of 80km out to the repeater’s location (near Marburg).
This is using the FT-290RII with the 25W linear option, and the aforementioned antenna.
This afternoon, I figured out how to interface the electret microphone in the headset to the FT-897D. The wiring standard I use for my headsets is a customised one… using DB15HD connectors (VGA-like). A female DB15HD exists on the headset side, this is to prevent some goose trying to plug a headset into a VGA card on a computer. The following is a rough schematic of a typical headset using this wiring scheme.
Typical headset wiring schematic... looking into female DB15HD connector.
There are three pins that are normally unused… On a couple of my interfaces, +5V and 0V are wired up… it was initally thought I’d use these for power rails … one supplied by the headset (one of my planned “headsets” was a former in-car hands-free kit for a Nokia 3310, and so you’d be able to charge the phone this way), the other supplied by the device (many radios supply a 3.3V or 5V rail).
For the FT-897D, the microphone used is normally the dynamic type… that is, uses a balanced (differential) audio feed. On the FT-290R II, I tie Mic – to 0V, and just use it single-ended, which works fine… but a better way is to actually convert the single-ended microphone signal to differential. How does one do this? Well, the answer came out of the TI TLV320AIC3204 datasheet which I’ve been reading quite a bit lately.
TLV320AIC3204 Typical Circuit Configuration, showing microphone wiring (Source & Copyright: Texas Instruments)
Typical electret microphone configuration (Source: Wikipedia)
I noticed something odd about the way they wired up an electret microphone. Rather than wiring it up as shown on the left… they instead mirror the positive side; feeding through a resistor to 0V, but tapping off via a series capacitor to the CODEC input (see right; click image to enlarge). Why were they doing this I wondered? Then I found it. Inside the electret capsule is a J-FET which amplifies the weak signal from the microphone itself. By hooking a resistor on both sides, and using two capacitors, they were creating a phase splitter. I stumbled across that article on Wikipedia, and it was then I knew what they were doing.
So I’ve done the same thing here… Rather than a single-ended design, I have interfaced the electret microphone to the radio using the phase-splitter technique. The schematic I use (with DB15HD pinouts) is below:
FT-897D Headset interface
I’m yet to take the whole shebang for a ride… I have a 6′ long CB (27MHz) whip that, last time I tried, tuned up nicely on 10m and 6m… might work somewhat down on 20m. I have had a VK2 station come roaring in at S7 when listening on 80m via this antenna on the back of my fold-up bicycle, but unsurprisingly it’s pretty deaf there… I plan to get a second antenna mount and suitable spring (so the antenna doesn’t get snapped by a low branch), make up a new bracket, and mount that some time in the coming weeks… then we shall see what the bands are like around Brisbane.
Hi all,
This is a short one, as it’s way past my bedtime as I write this. I’ve been quiet lately; non-existent on IRC and IM channels, and not a lot of activity.
I’ve been doing a lot of work out at Laidley earning an income, and thus Gentoo has taken a bit of a back seat. Particularly with stagebuilds, which I’ve been meaning to get back onto for a long time. Some of the things I’ve been chasing in the background include:
In the midst of this, a recent storm blew up some equipment in our house, namely a D-Link DSL-504 ADSL router (shall be missed; was a good router but now Ethernet on it is cooked), one 10/100Mbps ethernet switch (cheap 8-port Netgear), and worst of all… a Yaesu FT-897D transceiver (cooked 3 diodes in the power circuits, the microphone preamp and a DDS chip… a write-off). The latter I had hoped to hook up to some of the MIPS boxes, and get hamlib going. The SGI O2 has working sound on Linux these days, and would possibly make a decent PSK31 station.
Luckily, the Lemote Fulong that resides in my room, got spared from that storm. Both Fulongs are capable of running from 12V… and I suspect the ground-strike came up through the mains. Thus, I’ve already purchased a solar panel & regulator, and have two ex-Telstra 6V 110Ah batteries to power the radios with — they can also theoretically power the Fulongs and an Ethernet switch if I expand the panels up a bit in the future. So hopefully no further issues, not sure how many Gentoo dev boxes are solar-powered at present, but this is an option I’m considering.
I’m unlikely to be back on IRC, as I don’t have the time to check it these days with my long commutes. That said, there is email; and I will see emails sent directly to me… I don’t always get a chance to delve into the mail folders that hold list messages.
Figured I’d share this trick. The KG-UVD1P dual-band handheld produced by Wouxun supports a feature whereby all settings and memory channels can be transferred to a second handheld using a wire clone cable.
Unfortunately, nowhere describes the wiring of the cloning cable… well… none that I have seen. The Wouxun handhelds use the same wiring standards as Kenwood radios, so same headset pinouts, same PC interface cable schematics. They use 3.3V TTL signalling — just a level shifter is needed for RS232 communications to a host computer.
For those who are interested, this is the pinout for the headset connector (taken from the Kenwood TH-F7E handbook):
| – | “Ear” (2.5mm) | “Mic” (3.5mm) |
| Tip | Speaker | 3.3V reference |
| Ring | Remote | Microphone |
| Sleeve | 0V | PTT |
I’m not sure if the “Remote” is actually used on Wouxuns… on the Kenwood handheld, this is where the three programmable buttons connect, each one via a series resistor in parallel (PF1 is 3.9k, PF2 is 10k and PF3 is 27k) — there is also a lock switch which shorts this pin to 0V. The Microphone connection provides a bias for electret microphones, this may be blocked by a 10pF capacitor.
To hook the handheld up to a computer for programming, one needs a different cable. The connections into the handheld are via the same two connectors, but now the signals are different:
| – | “Ear” (2.5mm) | “Mic” (3.5mm) |
| Tip | N/C | N/C |
| Ring | RXD | N/C |
| Sleeve | 0V | TXD |
A level shifter is needed before the port is RS-232 compatible. In this pinout though, lies the secret to cloning the KG-UVD1P. The cloning cable simply connects the RXD to the TXD on the other radio, and 0V to 0V. No level shifter is necessary since both sides of the cable use the same logic. I constructed a cloning cable using two 2.5mm and two 3.5mm stereo phono plugs, just hooking the 0V lines together, and ensuring RXD at one end, hooks to TXD at the other.
As for the actual procedure, the handbook I found, took a bit of re-reading. The procedure is thus:
During the process, the red transmit LED will blink on the source radio, while the destination’s green receive LED blinks. Eventually both radios will reset — you will see the first radio returns to where it was before it was powered off, the second radio will also display the same screen content, and have the same settings.
Lately I have been riding my bike … a lot. As in all the way into the Brisbane CBD and back again to my home at The Gap. Lately, my handheld, a trusty TH-F7E has also given up the ghost… previously this is what I used when bicycle mobile — had that thing on the handlebars, and a small mobile whip on the back (which I never bothered to tune).
The handheld worked well… even better when I had the headset interface working. However, SWR was high, and although my handheld never complained, my other radios did! With the handheld gone, I had to finally deal with this issue. The helmet that I previusly used too had also been replaced — with a new headset to go with it. Anyway… that’s a side issue.
The big problem I faced was how to get this antenna tuned. The antenna is a tunable whip, basically just a length of stainless steel with a suitable mounting at the base — you cut it to the length you need to achieve resonance. Pretty simple. c=fL, and since hopefully most of the energy is going to be on the surface of the metal, and the metal is not insulated, it’d be approximately 1/4 of the wavelength (L). But what wavelength??
The radio I’m replacing the handheld with, is an old one… a Yaesu FT-290R II, which is an all-mode 2m radio. Since I have an all-mode radio, it makes sense to set up the antenna for all the modes I am likely to use. I don’t know CW very well, flat out decoding it when sitting comfortably at my desk, let alone whilst peddling up hills, so I’ll leave that to people like LY2KW. SSB and FM however, are definitely on the money. This is where the band plans come into play.
Here in Australia… the SSB portion is down the low end between 144.100MHz and 144.320MHz. Then there’s an all mode allocation between 145.225 and 145.775MHz. Everything above 146.025MHz is FM. The highest I normally transmit on 2m is 147.500MHz, as there are repeater outputs above this. Since I don’t know CW, the lowest I’m likely to go is 144.100MHz. So in order to balance this, I split the difference and used that to choose my resonant frequency… which yields a frequency of 145.800MHz, which puts me just at the start of the satellite segment. Hopefully SWR won’t be too bad everywhere else.
So, back to the formula, c=fL. Plugging the info in, I got a wavelength of about 2.057 metres. So 1/4 of this … 514mm. Out with the hacksaw.
Plugging in the radio, I found my SWR was still appauling… well… I don’t know my actual SWR, but the radio was telling me it wasn’t happy with it! The power amp on the FT-290R II (I have the FL-2025 25W linear attached) throttles back when it sees a poor match — and this is shown on the S meter. Okay… maybe I mismeasured… well it turned out that I hadn’t taken into account the fact that there’s about 30mm of metal at the base of the antenna holding it in place… so off that 30mm came.
Tried again… still no good… doing an estimated 12W, which while respectable, it’s probably no good for my finals. Something else was the matter.
I did some probing around… yes, the shield of the coax was making good contact with the bicycle frame, but why was the SWR so high? I was hoping that the frame would make for a counterpoise radial. I knew it wouldn’t be a groundplane, but surely the frame being 1.5m long would count for something. As a hunch, I tried adding some lengths of copper wire to the antenna mount, connecting to the shield. Three of them extend 60 degrees apart, with one pointed straight out over the rear tyre. That brought the SWR down. So it seems although good contact was made, the aluminium frame made a bad counterpoise in other ways. The following is the new arrangement.
Now, with that solved… I turned my attention to the radio mounting. I don’t have any mounting brackets, nor am I likely to get any, so that method was out. I had invisaged mounting it on the handlebars… well… I’ve sorta achieved that. This will need fine tuning.
The FT-290 is intended as a portable rig, thus there is provisions there for a carry strap. I’ll have to get a more suitable one, but I managed to find one that fits, and at least straps the top to the handlebars. This does mean the back of the radio swings… I’ll have to sort that out before long, otherwise one old radio is going to get battered and bruised. The strap loops over the top of the handlebars and around the steering post. It looks okay for now, but I know I’ll need to tweak this.
The setup is almost complete… I still have to work on the mounting. It needs to be quick-release too so that I can take the radio with me when I chain the bike up. Another option may be just to sling it over my sholder. The battery sits nicely on the back luggage rack — a 9AH SLA battery, plenty of life for this radio.
The last piece of the puzzle is one of operation. You notice the handmic slung over the handlebars. This is very temporary, as I hate taking my hands off the handlebars when riding. I replaced my helmet with another open face motorcycle helmet, similar to those worn by Australia Post delivery people. Yes, overkill on a bicycle, but the visor already has prooven useful in keeping rain or low branches out of one’s face (yet to see a bicycle helmet with one) and the peak keeps the sun off well (again, most bicycle helmets are lousy at this). It also makes it very easy to embed a headset.
The headset in this one is made up from two $10 computer headsets that broke. The microphone is off one, the speakers out of another. The audio quality is quite good, and shown in the photo below is what it looks like, with the adaptor for my mobile phone (Nokia 3310) attached. The next step is to make another adaptor for the FT-290, and suitable PTT arrangement. I’m thinking a toggle switch, since then I can flick it between transmit and receive without needing to hold a button down. VOX doesn’t appeal. 😉
The bike isn’t quite ready yet, but hopefully I’ll get something up and running this coming weekend. Then I shall be mobile once more. I shall report back once I have given this a try out proper.
Well, I really didn’t think I’d be writing a post like this.
This is following on from, and indirectly in reply to, an operator who decided to call in on the Australia-Wide Night-Owl and Insomnia net which is held every Friday night at 3595kHz.
Now, this net is pretty laid back… all are welcome. There are however, some things that just are not done on radio. Just as much as they are not done here on the internet. One of them, is to air dirty laundry on air.
Without going into detail… we had an operator call in from Victoria (a VK3V.. call, standard licensee) who then proceeded to make allegations about the off-air activities of another operator (VK2.., advanced licensee), in particular, the allegations involved claims of abusive phone calls and threats. The VK2 station responded pointing out some other misdemeanors allegedly purpotrated by the VK3 station, before (thankfully) moving on with the net. Thank heavens both had the decency to leave it there rather than tie up net time arguing.
Now, undoubtedly, the vast majority (me included) are not privy to all the information. They may be completely false, or there may be some truth to them. That isn’t for me to decide and does not concirn me. What I object to, is the usage of the amateur bands, as the platform for this kind of debate. It does not help any of the participants, or bystanders at all… and perhaps what both sides should realise here, is that by airing this material on-air, they are opening themselves up for a potential defamation case.
It is no different to me for instance, making similar allegations on this site… I could be sued for defamation. This is one of the reasons why I did not reveal the callsigns, or even the names of the guilty culprits. In the past, I recorded the net and provided it as a podcast (and had I done this, the recording would have been up for the world to hear)… but sadly the computer that I used for this is not operational at the moment. In any case, those who were listening, know to whom I refer.
I would ask that all people, who make use of radiocommunications services, whether it be amateur, citizen’s band, marine, airband or any other service out there… please bear this in mind. Your personal squabbles have no place on the air, as I for one (and likely countless others) am not interested in hearing them.
Well… three bits of news to share… I can’t be stuffed doing three separate posts however, so I’ll stuff all three into the one, it puts less load on the servers involved.
I managed to get X going on the Yeeloong within Gentoo… I’m currently battling problems with Python 2.6 not building, but at least X runs. I hope to get the necessary patches into my overlay shortly.
I recently put my homebrew 2m vertical back up … this time, using the mounting brackets from my old 2.4GHz vertical, and mounting the thing up as high on the antenna mast as I can push it. The choke balun on the antenna is level with the TV antenna yagi, so most of the radiated power is well above the TV antenna.
With this, I am now not only kinda able to work previously impossible repeaters such as VK4RBS (Bayside/Alex Hills), but also VK4RSS at Ocean View. What’s so good about VK4RSS? Well, I’m tripping it with 500mW of power (therefore good access when using 5W)… and it happens to be accessible via IRLP as node 6215.
I can also be sporadically reached on EchoLink node 37 37 40.
I did say there were three items in this bulletin. I finally received my academic transcript, confirming that I have formally completed my studies at QUT, graduating with the following qualifications…
This is timely, right at the bottom of the employment market… but I can’t help that. Now begins the task of finding work in the Brisbane area. I’m still running to/from Laidley doing some work out there… which may turn into paid employment (I hope so anyway… costs me almost $8 a day with a student discount in transport… That’ll double to about $15 when that card expires).
If anyone’s looking for someone to assist, particularly in the telecommunications field (I have a soft spot for radio and embedded systems)… feel free to get in touch directly.
It has been a while, but I can safely say I have returned. Not sure what the next step is… looking for paid employment I guess, but I have passed all subjects this semester, which should mean that I am now qualified in IT and Electrical Engineering as a graduate.
After the last exam, I could not run out of the building fast enough. 6.5 years of studies has certainly taken its toll on my mental state. Anyway… I wound up traveling northern and central NSW with my father and his girlfriend for the last fortnight — got back home yesterday. I am currently putting together some photos, and I’ll have a slide show ready for the next BOSQ meeting. I’ll put a link up to the photos when they’re done processing (the aging PIII 550MHz webserver here takes a while to resize over 500 photos, most 10Mpixel in size).
Where did we go? We camped at:
In that time:
We learned:
What now? Well… as I say, I’ve got to find some employment somewhere. I now officially become “unemployed” according to the damn lies^W^Wstatistics. Potential employers in the Brisbane area, should contact me directly.
This also means I should have some time to dedicate towards Gentoo. My last attempt at stage builds got sidetracked by a need to study and also hit technical issues (something in glibc’s build kept hard-locking boxes).
Also on the agenda here is a proper port of Gentoo to the Lemote Yeeloong. The little netbook has been running well under Debian, with Gentoo sitting in a chroot environment… now that I’m no longer using the machine for daily studies, I think the time is ripe to start looking into reloading the machine. Zhang Le did a great job incorporating Lemote’s patches into a mirror of the Linux/MIPS git tree, which I’ve been using to build my kernels… 2.6.30-rc4 has been quite stable.
I’ve also been looking at the ARRL handbook, with the view of upgrading my license to the Advanced level. Then I’ll be paying for a 5-year license before the ACMA/WIA decide to up the fees again.
So, much to do, and a mountain of bugs in Bugzilla with my name on them… Ohh joy.
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