W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

RCA Radiotron tube art

I once had one of these tubes in this box, it got lost - I regret that.

See VinylSavor for a longer story about this box art. Image used with permission.

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.com/2011/08/tube-box-art-part-1-rca.html

Geomagnetic storm prediction for 2025-06-01, 2025-06-02, and 2025-06-03

Aurora on its way!

My favorite aurora webcams are from Isle Royale, https://www.nps.gov/isro/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm.

This weather forecast from the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), https://www.swpc.noaa.gov

Subject: WATCH: Geomagnetic Storm Category G4 or Greater Predicted

From: SWPC Product Subscription Service SWPC.Products@noaa.gov

Space Weather Message Code: WATA99

Serial Number: 9

Issue Time: 2025 May 31 1504 UTC

WATCH: Geomagnetic Storm Category G4 or Greater Predicted

Highest Storm Level Predicted by Day: Jun 01: G3 (Strong) Jun 02: G4 (Severe) Jun 03: G2 (Moderate)

THIS SUPERSEDES ANY/ALL PRIOR WATCHES IN EFFECT

NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 45 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.

Induced Currents - Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems may mistakenly trip out key assets from the power grid. Induced pipeline currents intensify.

Spacecraft - Systems may experience surface charging; increased drag on low earth orbit satellites, and tracking and orientation problems may occur.

Navigation - Satellite navigation (GPS) degraded or inoperable for hours.

Radio - HF (high frequency) radio propagation sporadic or blacked out.

Aurora - Aurora may be seen as low as Alabama and northern California.

Operating notes: HARA 700p Sunday night net 2025-05-25

The Hiawatha Amateur Radio Association (HARA) runs a 6-repeater linked network in Marquette County, Michigan. Their weekly DMR net is at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday nights, followed by a net at 7:00 on their FM repeater K8LOD in Marquette. I checked in via RF this week on 2025-05-25 to the 7:00 net on a visit to Marquette. Some notes follow.

https://www.qsl.net/k8lod/

Lucile KD8PTE was net control, she does a very good job of keeping the net orderly and prompting people for followups when there's something interesting they say on the first go around.

The net had check-ins from Marquette, Harvey, Gwinn, Three Lakes (Baraga County), and K8EX coming in from Seward, Alaska via Echolink.

The K8LOD repeater is also reachable via Allstarlink and Hamshack Hotline, and I previously checked into it on 2025-03-02.

I brought my Quansheng HT running the egzumer firmware with me, and had very little problem programming the radio from the front panel to get this repeater into use. For some reason the Quansheng feels much easier to handle for this sort of on-the-fly programming task than my older Baofengs.

The HARA repeaters also support events including the February UP200 sled dog race, as the easternmost linked repeater in the net is in Grand Marais.

Field report: Washtenaw County siren test, Saturday 2025-05-03

The Washtenaw County Amateur Radio Public Service Corps (ARPSC) supports the county Emergency Operations Center by participating in a monthly test of the 90 outdoor warning sirens in the County. The test is held on the first Saturday of each month from March through October, with the sirens being activated at noon. City of Ann Arbor sirens are on a different schedule, which activates on the second Tuesday at 1:00 p.m.

Ham radio operators like myself who volunteered for the siren test were assigned one of the sirens in the area that's convenient to them and that needs to be monitored for this season. My siren this week was on Lohr Road at Waterways, just southwest of the Ann Arbor Airport. Once you are on location or heading to it there is a brief check-in to make sure everyone can be heard by Net Control. At the noon hour, the sirens go off for their test and there's a net afterwards where people report in successful (or unsuccessful) operation of the siren they are watching. Did it rotate? (Most of them do, but not the ones in Dexter Township). Did it make a noise? Did it stop making noise when the test was done? Are there any maintenance issues, like trees growing into the control box or power line?

Like all parts of the ham radio hobby, this exercise has a few pieces. You need to be able to get to your assigned siren, and they really don't have street addresses - some careful observation and directions from net control should get you there. You'll either need to be near the N8DUY repeater with your handheld radio, or you'll need a suitable car radio with a little more power if you are further away from I-94 and M-14 in Scio Township where the tower is. And of course you'll need to be on time.

Warning sirens save lives, and if they are not working you really want to find out before hand and not during an emergency. Tracking down maintenance issues during these tests is some small but essential part of emergency preparedness, and I'm happy to participate.

Map of siren coverage (checked for January 2025): https://www.washtenaw.org/1785/Washtenaw-County-Outdoor-Warning-Siren-S

Ball Smacker Radio eSQL "talk" from 2025-03-21

(embed a Flickr post because uploads to Typepad are failing)

First explorations of Meshtastic and some plans for bicycle portable operations

The ARROW presentation by Blake KE8SQU on Meshtastic prompted me to start exploring this LoRa-based radio protocol which operates in the 915 MHz ISM (unlicensed) band.

https://meshtastic.org

I ordered a Meshtastic radio from Rokland, their "WisMesh Pocket v2". This radio is designed as a ready-to-go portable device with a little screen, case that holds a battery, a little antenna, and generally speaking enough working parts that I should be able to turn it on and go try it out. I'll write more about it and link to it appropriately based on how well I am able to make it work.

When it arrives my initial plan is to work this into my Ann Arbor "Bike Every Park" parks challenge - throw the node in a backpack, stop at a city park, see if there's coverage there, try to make a QSO, make a suitable note, move on.

First park to try is Burns Park near my house which I know is near the node that W9TNC runs - it should be easy. From there I will start mapping out the radio terrain. My expectations are that the tops of parking structures will be good locations for 915 MHz operations, as they seem to be also for VHF/UHF. But what I don't know quite yet is what the density of stations is - the "Meshmap" suggests "not very dense" so far.

https://meshmap.net

The other thing I want to do is get a node running at home running FrozenBBS, a message board for Meshtastic.

https://github.com/kstrauser/frozenbbs

This is going to take a little more work on the hardware side; as the author writes

I have a RAK4631 radio with a RAK13800 Ethernet module, with the BBS code running on a Raspberry Pi 4 next to it. I went through a lot of false starts making this work.

The rationale for making my first node a portable one (rather than a fixed station at home) is that with the bicycle operations I can do a nice survey of the vicinity and see what is out there that could work and get a better intuitive sense for what 915 MHz propagation is like with altitude and trees figuring in. At worst, if reception is bad but I know who has a node running I can just ride close enough to be within line of sight!

Ethernet interference on 125 MHz and on 2 meters?

I'm seeing a bunch of birdies on my 2 meter radio receivers. On the Airspy HF+ SDR it looks like a bunch of bright lines. On the roll-up J-pole antenna the overall noise floor is high (S7 or even S9) which makes working simplex stations very hard, as I discovered at the last simulated repeater failure test for our weekly ARPSC net.

I was able to make a contact with Steve N8AR via the South Lyon N8SL repeater from Ann Arbor. He could hear me just fine with my Kenwood sending, but I didn't hear him on that rig. So I tuned up the Airspy receiver to hear him.

I think I figured out some of it - I have a lot of ethernet ports on a switch in the attic, and I'm seeing a very strong signal on 125 MHz which am pretty sure is gigabit ethernet modulation leaking out of the unshielded (cheap) ethernet cables.

There is also noise at home on the AM band very distinctly in front of our house under the overhead lines. Ah, city life. I will bring my radios to the park in the summertime and not have these problems.

Looks like Andy G7UHN has some suggestions with ferrite cores

http://alloutput.com/amateur-radio/ethernet-rfi-noise-reduction/

based on this presentation from Joel W5ZN

https://w5zn.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Noise-The-Grim-Reaper-of-Weak-Signal-Reception.pdf

Wes N8QM had a tip for inexpensive EMF sniffers, which can be used to measure field strength. I see some of them are specially designed for ghost hunting too (!)

Ball Smacker Radio "close" eQSL from 2025-03-01 0200 UTC on 6960 AM

Received S5-S7 and enjoyable quality with some fading on the "misdr2" KiwiSDR in Northfield Township, Michigan (just north of Ann Arbor) which has a 100 foot loop antenna. My much smaller indoor loop antenna has a lot more noise on the 43 meter band and though I could see the signal on the waterfall the audio quality was not enough to enjoy. I was listening on 6960 kHz AM in the 43 meter band.

Theme tonight was "close", and the eQSL matches that referencing asteroid 2024 YR4 https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/2024-yr4/

Ball Smacker Radio transmits from somewhere in the northeastern US. https://ballsmacker.net

Brandmeister changes may require renumbering your DMR ID and reprogramming your DMR radio

This change tripped up a couple of hams in the ARROW club. From Brandmeister's weblog:

https://news.brandmeister.network/important-message-for-brandmeister-usa-hams-using-a-radio-id-starting-with-1/

Important message for Brandmeister USA hams using a Radio ID starting with 1

IDs are issued by Radioid.net, if you have an ID starting with 1, you need to log into your RadioID account and open a ticket requesting that your ID number be replaced with one starting with 3.

Getting a reassigned 3-series DMR ID from https://radioid.net is not hard, but you do need to reprogram your radio. Until you renumber you'll be able to listen to the Brandmeister network, but not transmit. That particular failure might be surprising! Some radios are easier to reprogram than others which can add to the hassle.

The back story on this is that the "1" number space is reserved for "test networks", whereas "3" signifies North America and the Caribbean. And while DMR in 2018 was experimental enough that you could probably make a case for having some stations in the experimental number space, by now the world wants you to sort out where you are and number yourself accordingly.

"ITU E.212 : The international identification plan for public networks and subscriptions" is the underlying standard. DMR IDs are assigned along those principles so that there's a global numbering plan that has at least the top level number space already divvied up along international lines.

DMR hotspot running "pi-star" with read-only filesystem at boot gets in the way of Tailscale

The hardware is a Pi Zero (the very slow original one) with an MMDVM hat, all tucked away nicely in a case with a little display. I bought it from Radioddity in 2020. It works right now with the Pi-Star software, running version 4.1.8 with a 20240307 date. The operating system is old (based on Debian 10 "Buster").

It stays up for a long time and works without incident for 100+ days at a time. When I reboot it, I have a few issues.

I'm running Tailscale on the device for remote access. Tailscale wants to have a read/write filesystem to keep logs and manage keys. Pi-Star wants the whole SD card to be read only to avoid disk wear. Those two desires are in conflict.

The thing I do right now after a reboot is to log in on the local interface (without Tailscale) and run the rpi-rw command which makes the file systems writable. Then I can manually bring Tailscale up. This takes a minute every three months, which is tolerable but not ideal. It would be much less ideal if I didn't have local LAN access to the device, e.g. if it were in some far-away place in a hut on the side of the road. But it's not, the hotspot is in the attic.

I could spend some time manually adjusting the Pi-Star configuration, following these instructions from VK3ERW: Pi-Star How To: make file system Read/Write (RW). "Note: Some of the files modified in this procedure may be overwritten during future Pi-Star upgrades."

I could add a systemd unit that would run the rpi-rw as a "oneshot" command as a prerequisite to starting the Tailscale service, or as a "drop-in" modifier to Tailscale. If I'm doing a "drop-in", the command systemctl edit tailscaled is the mechanism for doing that edit. I see informative discussion at https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/5399 . My tolerance for doing systemd hacking comes and goes, and this is likely to take more than a minute every three months to do, but it would be a suitable place to learn.

I could switch from Pi-Star to WPSD, which has a nicer dashboard but doesn't run on my Pi Zero hardware. (I'd need a faster Zero like the 2W.) WPSD has stopped running in read-only mode since an update in 2023. https://w0chp.radio/wpsd/

The solution for now is log in, manually reconfigure, and write this blog post describing my other options. Future me will need to decide whether to spend money on this, or time hacking systemd, or just ignore the problem and push it down the road 100 days.

First QSO on 220 MHz!

The ARROW club https://w8rp.org has a new 220 MHz repeater online in Ann Arbor, linked to the club's 2 meter repeater. After some extensive testing and configuration by Jay WB8TKL, it debuted at the ARROW AMPteam outing on Monday, December 16, 2024. Nine hardy souls checked in from the club's field outing to Hunt Park on the 220 side of the linked repeater system.

At that time I had a 220 MHz radio (my tri-band BTECH UV-5X3) tuned through a VFO to the 224.38 MHz output of the repeater, and I was able to listen to the net just fine. But that radio didn't have the right 220 antenna on it and it's a bit of a fuss to program this Baofeng style radio from the front panel, so at that point I just was listening.

It turns out that a little bit of shopping in the attic found the box where the 220 antenna lives, and a little bit of research got the radio programmed correctly, and another box yielded a CHIRP cable to dial in the frequencies into a saved channel correctly.

Better yet, I made my first crossband QSO on 220 this afternoon! I talked to Kevin KF8CTY, a new ham who was testing out a new 2 meter rig in his truck.

220 gear is not anywhere near as common as 2m or 70cm equipment, but the low-end gear is not expensive. Radioddity sells a UV-5RX3 tri-band transceiver (less than $30 in 2024) with two antennas, one for 2m/70cm and one for 220. The BTECH UV-5X3 is a very similar radio but features USB-C charging (less than $70).

For a base station, some suggestions from club members: Alinco DR-CS25t (220 MHz monoband, 50 watts, about $250); Radioddity QB25 (2m/70cm/220 Mhz, 25 watts, about $120).

Comet makes an antenna, the Comet CX-333, about 10 feet tall (about $185). For your HT, the tri-band Nagoya NA-320A (about $20) should cover your needs.

I suppose the next challenge here is to get some simplex frequencies tested out! (You'll want to schedule those connections.) 223.50 MHz is the national simplex calling frequency on 1.25 meters.

W8RP Ann Arbor is two linked systems, one on 146.96- (2 meters) and one on 224.38- (1.25 meters). The repeater is located at Wolverine Tower near I-94 and State Street and has good coverage throughout Wasthenaw County. I don't honestly know what the propagation footprint is for the 220 side, that will have to yield to further experimentation.

(updated 2024-12-27 with more equipment options).