W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

W8EMV call sign issued

I navigated the FCC dance successfully and now have call sign W8EMV, replacing the previous call sign KD8OQG. There's no charge for a "vanity" license any more, just a matter of filling out the simple online forms and waiting 2 business weeks.

I've had the emv login for many years, starting in 1985 with umix!emv and proceeding through emv@umich.edu, emv@ox.com, emv@msen.com, emv@cic.net, emv@coast.net, and now emv@monkey.org. So W8EMV is easy enough to remember.

I've updated my links on this site and changed the blog name. That will inevitably break a few things, and I am not aware of how to set up Typepad to transparently redirect an old name to a new one.

thanks and 73

Ed W8EMV

Operating notes: AABTS "One Helluva Ride" 2018-W28-6 (July 14, 2018)

I rode and drove SAG for the AABTS "One Helluva Ride" on Saturday, July 14, 2018 with Saul KE8DDR. We clocked 111 miles door to door, which included two stops at the Gregory rest stop and a scenic ride through Hell, MI on a road that was paved with good intentions.

My 5 watt Baofeng HT was useful for talk-in to reach George K9TRV and Dan KB6NU who were operating net control. I had earlier programmed in the WD8IEL Chelsea repeater into it using Chirp, so I was ready to go. The range of my HT inside the car was not very good, but it was good enough for its purposes getting started. The Chelsea repeater is located near the M-52 and I-94 interchange.

The ARROW club has some radios just for this purpose, so we installed them temporarily in my car. Last year I made a goal of getting a W8EMV plate on the car just for this reason, and I managed to successfully navigate the Michigan Secretary of State system for doing that (at a cost of $7 for the vanity plate - cheap).

The antenna we used was a 5/8 wave with a mag mount on the roof of the car and the antenna cable snaked through a crack in the window, from ARROW.

The radio we used was a 2m rig, a FT-2900R, from ARROW. The only thing I noticed was that the tuning knob was very easy to turn and I bumped it at least once knocking me off-frequency.

The SAG drivers didn't all use APRS this time as far as I could tell. I also didn't have enough space to set up a laptop + wifi + cell phone hotspot in the car. Perhaps next year that can be a goal.

Neither WD8IEL nor N8DUY are on Echolink, so there wasn't really any backup plan to use wifi to get access to the net. That said, N8DUY which was pressed into service mid-ride has excellent coverage of the whole county and beyond. I was able to hear N8DUY on the HT all the way to Gregory. Of course net control had a cell phone number so the backup plan was the phone network.

Saul KE8DDR and I joke that the Sunday night nets are the "fix your radio hour". It turned out that running a net for a ride gives you a chance to do the "fix your radio hour", "fix your bicycle hour", and "fix your repeater hour" all at once. He repaired two blown tubes, and helpfully ran shifts both driving and operating the radio.

Elsewhere on the net:

• Dan KB6NU writeup: ARROW provides public service communications
• Steve W8SFC writeup on ARROW list (login required)

KiwiSDR and AM baseball radio DX

The combination of KiwiSDR and sdr.hu plus Wikipedia's baseball radio network maps plus AM sports radio makes for excellent baseball DX.

It's a little work to map out what's where, but generally you are looking for a flagship station in the baseball broadcast network on the AM band, or a local station that happens to be close to one of the KiwiSDR tuners.

A search for baseball scores will tell you the current games, and then hopefully your notes are good enough to find the frequency that lets you listen to your favorites, to close games, or even just to the background noise of the crowd.

Most KiwiSDRs only allow four listeners, and many of them have timers designed to maximize sharing that limit use to an hour or so at a time.

More: reports of baseball DX on HF Underground.

radiosocial.org, a Mastodon instance for radio amateurs

radiosocial.org is a Mastodon instance for radio amateurs. It's a fairly new system in 2018, but already the local timeline is well dedicated to radio interests. It's run by Andy M1LOL (@ak).

Mastodon is a worldwide federated network of systems which run a social network. The user interface is reminiscent of Twitter, but the experience also has some element of Usenet News in that your account is tied to a particular server with an admin who has responsibilities both for system administration and some measure of local leadership.

I have long thought that I might be interested in finding such an online home for radio, and I'm encouraged by what I see so far. There are other ham networks out there, but it's always nice to get in on the start of something.

Monitoring notes: Washtenaw siren net, June 2, 2018

Montoring notes, rather than operating notes, as I was just listening to this net.

On the first Saturday of each month, the Washtenaw County sirens are tested at noon, March through October. A net on the N8DUY 145.15 repeater assists in this testing. Radio operators are encouraged to register in advance and to identify a siren to watch. In general you are looking for good sound, good rotation (for sirens that rotate), and any maintenance issues. The net convenes at about 11:30 a.m. and is done by 12:15 p.m. or so.

There are 87 warning sirens in Washtenaw County that are managed by the county. City of Ann Arbor sirens are under city management and are tested on a different schedule.

The N8DUY repeater has very good coverage and is well tested making it ideal for the task of providing coverage to the whole county. This month's net was well-run and verified the correct operation of sirens from Manchester to Northfield Township to Ypsilanti Township.

If you're interested in participating in this testing, contact Ben KC8NIY.

• https://www.washtenaw.org/1785/Washtenaw-County-Outdoor-Warning-Siren-S
• https://sites.google.com/site/miarpsc1/contacts

Operating notes: W8UM nets for Sunday, August 7, 2016

As previously noted the W8UM repeater on 145.23 is off the air because of construction on the University of Michigan central campus at the Weiser Building (aka Dennison Building, aka Physics and Astronomy building). The complete gut and rehab of the space meant that all systems in that building are being torn out and rebuilt, including the space that had been used for the 145.23 W8UM repeater and for the UHF link that connected the repeater to the UMARC shack at the EECS building on North Campus.

Despite the loss of the RF link, the W8UM weekly Sunday night net went on as scheduled tonight, using the Echolink node for net control. I tried to connect but was having a hard time getting audio out of it until I realized that Echolink doesn't play well with firewalls, so I turned up a VPN connection and was able to successfully connect through that.

After the 8:00 p.m. UMARC net there is a 8:30 p.m. ARPSC net on the 145.15 repeater, and several W8UM regulars are also regulars on that emergency and Skywarn preparedness net. So after the net closed we talked for a bit - we being me W8EMV, Augustine W8AWT, Don AC8TO, Matt WS8U, and Thom W8TAM. Several of those folks had attempted to run a net on 145.23 simplex, but the consensus was that we needed a net control station with better coverage, perhaps someone operating from the UMARC shack.

Look for future weeks for more improvised operations. Stuart W8SRC who does a lot of programming of local repeaters was away and not able to provide his assistance, but there were a lot of folks with hardware that could perhaps be put to good use temporarily or permanently.

Operating notes: W8UM repeaters down due to building construction on U of Michigan campus

From: Palmisano, John
Sent: Saturday, August 6, 2016 6:39 PM
Subject: W8UM Repeaters - URGENT
To: w8um-members

W8UM Members: all UM repeaters, 2m, 70 cm, & 900 MHz are out of service for the next several months. Building renovations necessitated this shutdown.

No alternative plans for the Sunday Night Net or any other local communication has been determined.

Both the ARROW and Stuart's 70 cm repeaters are optional.

Operating notes: New Baofeng UV-5RA setup with Chirp on a Raspberry Pi

A new radio came in the mail today, a Baofeng UV-5RA. This is a cosmetically different but basically identical model to the UV-5R that I already have, which will be a hand-me-down to KE8DDR who I promised a radio once he got his license.

Every new radio gets programmed with Chirp, so every time I have to re-figure out what I already knew about Chirp once and get it working again.

This time it took me three rounds of frustration before finally getting Chirp to work. My first try was with my relatively new Macbook Air; that required downloading a new driver for the programming cable, which successfully loaded but didn't work. Next, I tried an old Macbook, but the battery on that device is so weak that it reboots if you try to do the slightest bit of work on it.

The success came when I rehomed all of the work to a Raspberry Pi. I had to install both the Chirp software as well as X11 and Gnome, and these instructions for loading X11 on Hypriot were essential. Some large number of minutes of downloading new code later, I was ready to test. Still no good. What could possibly be wrong?

Finally I looked closely at the instructions, which say that you should turn the volume knob all the way up before beginning with programming. A twist later and all was well. I loaded in a few Washtenaw County repeater configurations from Repeaterbook, and we're good to go. A brief contact with W8TAM tonight on the W8UM repeater was a first contact.

I know that I'll want to revisit this effort, mostly because it makes sense to grab programming for systems in adjacent counties so that when I'm on the road there's someone possibly to talk to. I didn't add any 70cm repeaters, and I should put in the National Weather Service channels. Still - as a start - this was a relatively easy way to get a new radio working.

Operating notes: APRS for Windows Phone, on the University of Michigan MGuest network

APRS is a protocol for device location over RF and TCP/IP.

I'm using APRS for Windows Phone 1.1.0.0 by Stefan HB9TWS.

One operating note. If you are on the U of Michigan campus as a guest, you can connect to the Internet over the MGuest network. While on this network, APRS will appear to work, but the beacons will be silently dropped. Disconnect your phone from wifi and use your cell connection if you want to post to the APRS network.

If you're not running a Windows Phone (and most people aren't) there are clients for Android and for iPhone.

• Android: APRSDroid
• iPhone: iAPRS from KF8KK

I have not used either of these recently, and there may be others.

For viewing the APRS network, I use aprs.fi , e.g.

http://aprs.fi/info/a/W8EMV

I don't yet have an HT or 2m rig for my car that does APRS over RF, but I have my eyes open.

Baofeng CH-5 charger for UV-5R radio isn't working

I hear a faint rattling sound when I shake the Baofeng CH-5 charger that came with my Baofeng UV-5R radio, and when I place the radio in the cradle I get nothing, no lights, no charge.

Alas my UV-5R is beeping because it needs a battery charge.

I'm guessing it's a solder joint that failed. I opened up the case of the charger and looked, but there was nothing obvious. The only bit that might explain the rattle is a thin piece of plastic that was loose in the case, but not any bits of solder.

Time to take it in to All Hands Active for a build night for a look!

Operating notes: Nagoya NA-771 antenna, Washtenaw Skywarn

The stock antenna on my Baofeng UV-5R stopped working just before a vacation trip up north. This got in the way of operating in the Upper Peninsula, which I had been looking forward to. Oh well, several the repeaters up there have Echolink, so any time I want to tune in I can, as long as I have wifi or cell data coverage. I didn't go on the air while I was there, though I did monitor one conversation (about snowmobiling).

I've replaced the Baofeng's antenna with a Nagoya NA-771. It's quite a bit longer than the original equipment, so much so that it just barely fits in my bookbag. It still does fit, though, and that means I can still carry a radio around with me anywhere. I haven't done exhaustive trials of performance but it's clearly better that I had been getting before, and overall I'm happy with the switch to a new antenna.

It was a busy night tonight on the N8DUY 145.15 repeater as storms blew through the area causing widespread power outages and lots of talk on the Skywarn net. Even though there was a lot of static, I still was able to hear the talk on the air and relay reports from trained spotters to Twitter. (I'm not a trained spotter yet - yet! - so I didn't check in to the net.)

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