W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

Skywarn Recognition Day on Saturday, 3 December 2022 0000z-2400z

The National Weather Service has announced that Skywarn Recognition Day 2022 is Saturday, 3 December 2022. Trained Skywarn spotters are encouraged to register on the event web site and check in for their location, get assigned an SRD for contact exchanges, and upload their contact logs to the NWS after the day. The hashtag of the day is #skywarn2022 but I have also seen #skywarn22 and just #skywarn .

ARRL has SKYWARN Recognition Day Operating Instructions. Participating stations are asked to exchange QSO information with National Weather Service stations from 0000z-2400z (700p Friday night to 700p Saturday night, US Eastern time). The exchange is Call sign, signal report, QTH, and a one or two word description of the weather occurring at your site ("sunny", "partly cloudy", "windy", etc.). (e.g. W8EMV 59 Ann Arbor windy). If you register with the NWS ahead of time you can get an SRD number - mine is SRD-DTX-1226. NWS stations will work various modes including SSB, FM, AM, RTTY, CW, and PSK31. Contacts via repeaters are permitted.

Locally here in Ann Arbor, the Skywarn repeater for Washtenaw County is the N8DUY repeater on 145.15- PL100.

The current Hazardous Weather Outlook for the Detroit/Pontiac DTX region is a wind advisory tonight through Saturday morning for wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph.

On the net, two Mastodon servers of interest are mastodon.radio and wx.social. The first is of special interest to ham radio operators, and the second is a new system for weather and weather adjacent (climatology, geography) enthusiasts, professionals, and students from the good folks at StormDig.

I plan to be tuned to N8DUY locally, and hope to pick up some DMR contacts along the way. I'll be checking the Fedihams network as well.

The map of the Maine Skywarn network for station WX1GYX Gray, ME lists TG 759 (SKY) on the DMR-MARC network for "SKYWARN for ME & NH". The Brandmeister DMR network lists TG 31206 as the "Central Kansas Skywarn" channel; please note these are not rag chewing talk groups .

FediHams, a multiprotocol digital voice interconnect from DK1MI for Mastodon and the Fediverse

FediHams is a digital voice interconnection with support for multiple ham radio networks, put together by Michael DK1MI to support amateur radio use and experimentation for the Mastodon network.

For more info about FediHams and instructions on how to join, see its home page at https://fedihams.net . For details about Mastodon.radio - one participant in a federated set of servers sometimes known as the Fediverse - see https://mastodon.radio .

The network as it's currently constructed allows use by amateurs coming in on the Echolink, Allstar, Yaesu System Fusion, and Peanut networks, as well as to two different DMR networks (Brandmeister and TGIF). All of these nets require proof of amateur status to join. Not all of them require a purpose built hardware radio to connect; in particular, Echolink and Peanut were both tested with apps running on my Android mobile phone.

I connected to the FediHams network with three different configurations - Echolink (via phone), Peanut (via phone), and DMR (Brandmeister DMR via a DMR radio and my MMDVM gateway).

For Echolink, the configuration was easy because I already had the software running on my phone to support connections to the regular Sunday night net run by the University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club. Use node DK1MI-L (963110) and you'll be added to FediHams. Please note, the Echolink use of Internet protocols doesn't always play nicely with modern firewalls, and I nearly always have to turn off wifi and connect through the data plan on my phone; your results may vary. If you don't already have Echolink installed, after you download it you'll need to validate your license via instructions at https://www.echolink.org/validation/ .

For Peanut, you'll want to download a client from the home base of David PA7LIM at https://www.pa7lim.nl/peanut/ and send in your proof of license via provided instructions. The software is provided for Windows (not tested) and Android. Once that is all set (it took a day for me), you can configure the app to connect to the channel of your choice and away you go. Please note that channel listings are provided via a drop-down menu keyed by country, and the YSF-FEDI channel is listed under the DE (Germany) menu. The user interface is a simple push-to-talk, and I found the sound quality quite pleasant especially because I could use a good headset on my phone.

I'm using the Brandmeister DMR network on my MMDVM hotspot, and a Radioddity GD-77 HT. Program your HT to connect to TG 2630002, and then check the Brandmeister network info page at https://brandmeister.network/?page=lh&DestinationID=2630002 to see your traffic. On my MMDVM hotspot status page, the connection shows up as TG DK1MI. MMDVM will start monitoring FediHams once your first transmission goes through. If you want to always have traffic to FediHams key up your radio, you'll need to connect to the Brandmeister "Self Care" page for your hotspot and add 2630002 as a static talkgroup.

My first test on FediHams was to use Echolink and DMR to both connect to the network at the same time and to talk to myself. Sound quality was fine, and the delay in transmission was about 4-5 seconds. (Delays come from the distance of the Internet connection from Ann Arbor to SW Germany, but also from delays associated with voice transcoding.) I even had a pretty respectable echo loop set up as the phone and the radio listened to each other.

More fun of course is an actual QSO with an actual person on the other end of the line. Michael DK1MI and I had a few nice conversations on 2022-10-11 - one part "how do I sound" of course, and also a discussion of how the network is put together and some hopes for future use. DK1MI has a blog at http://qrz.is which has details on a number of projects (hardware and software) with a ham radio theme.

This is my second go at getting a useful repeater configuration for use with Mastodon.radio. You can see my notes on the first try at https://vielmetti.typepad.com/w8emv/2020/07/feditalk-qso-dmr-brandmeister-tg-23514-with-m0yng.html where Christopher M0YNG and I both made a connection through a Brandmeister DMR TG. My hope is that the new FediHams setup will work with connections from a variety of networks and will also help discover new connections.

73!

A reminder to set your password on your MMDVM hotspot

My DMR hotspot was silent for some time because I had neglected to update it with a newly required password.

The Brandmeister network article on hotspot security has the detail that you need to carry this out. You'll want the "hotspot security" section of the "SelfCare" setting at Brandmeister, and on the MMDVM side the menu option is under "Configuration" / "Hotspot Security".

It took but a moment and now all is well again.

Listening to DMR on OpenWebRX

My notes such as they are say that I had OpenWebRX running last year around this time, but the 2019 experience was not accompanied by blogging and I have forgotten what I learned.

This year's install was very simple, using the Debian install instructions and then systemd to start and stop and reload the system.

The 2020 OpenWebRX setup has a lot more digital modes supported, and I was able to successfully decode a transmission from Ralph AA8RK this morning. I was listening on 443.5 (the output frequency of the W8RP DMR repeater) with my setup, which includes a Nooelec RTL-SDR tuner and a 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4. Miraculously, the DMR decoder picked up not just Ralph's voice but also decoded his call sign and channel number.

One funny thing about this repeater setup is that from time to time it will send out a short burst of traffic that OpenWebRX can't decode, see below for that.

New radio notes: Radioddity GD-77

I got two new Radioddity GD-77 radios the other day - one for new ham KE8PFB, and one for myself.

Programming the radio from the keypad is awkward but not impossible, and we got one analog channel up and running to reach the ARROW repeater. That was plenty to confirm that it was working.

We'll tackle DMR next. I have a DMR hotspot, so it should be possible to share it.

The included instructions were in German and in English, and the "how to get a DMR ID" instructions were for Europe. This led to a support ticket - the USA instructions are at RadioID.net.

The GD-77 is supported by dmrconfig, and I was able to convert my RD-5R configuration to it without too much trouble. The GD-77 only has two squelch settings, so the RD-5R's configuration needs to be edited - other than that, surprisingly easy.

The GD-77 user interface is nearly identical to the RD-5R. A few of the key bindings are a little different, but it's otherwise effectively the same radio as far as capabilities and controls. I guess that's OK, but I sort of wanted to get a completely different rig from what I already had. The tradeoff of course is that it was completely familiar.

What is the effective coverage of my DMR hotspot?

My new MMDVM DMR hotspot shipped with a little SMA antenna, and has a power output measured in milliwatts. I wanted to figure out just what kind of effective range I had for it, so that I could get away from my desk while connected to it.

My radio is a DM-5R with low power at 1 watt and high power at 5 watts. At about a block away from home, transmitting on low power, I can get a clear echo reply to my hotspot with Parrot. At four blocks away, the low power TX doesn't get into the hotspot, but my RD-5R still picks up some fraction of activity on an active channel.

The next test was to change to high power (5 watts) on the radio, and to get a better antenna setup for the hotspot. I have a 2 meter ladder line antenna that also works on 440, so I connected that up to the SMA port to see how it would work. My best distance was about 137 meters, as measured by GPS, from my house to the bus stop. That's almost line of sight with just one building in the way using high power (5 watts) on the RD-5R into the hotspot, and Parrot to verify transmissions.

Some other DMR range experiments from Youtube:

• K0LWC measured 0.7 miles (1100 meters) with an Anytone 878 into a 10 milliwatt hotspot, with clear line of sight across a park and no buildings obstructing his view.
• KG4VDZ hooked up a SharkRF OpenSpot 20 milliwatt hotspot to a 50 watt amplifier, and claims a DMR range of 15 miles using a vertical antenna on top of a tower.

Feditalk QSO (DMR, Brandmeister TG 23514) with M0YNG

Proof of work - photo courtesy Christopher M0YNG, showing his newly acquired display screen for his MMDVM hotspot.

This was unplanned! I happened to have the radio on as M0YNG was tuning up. We had a good 10 minutes chat about radios, tech in general, and how hard it can be to find the instructions to do anything technological because of the vast amounts of jargon in use across the board.

dmrconfig - a configuration utility for DMR radios

I have a Radioddity / Baofeng RD-5R DMR radio. I got it back in 2018, and have recently added an MMDVM hotspot for it to my collection.

One of the downsides of programming this particular radio is that CHIRP (which is used to program analog radios) is not available for DMR, and that the supported radio software only runs on Windows. And while Windows is fine, the rig I have to run that at home is an ancient Eee PC with a small screen that makes using the programming software awkward at best.

An alternative to the vendor software is dmrconfig, a configuration utility for DMR radios by Serge KK6ABQ. It supports a pretty good set of DMR radios including my RD-5R, and it runs on MacOS and on Linux. It lets you read and write codeplugs to the radio, and it helpfully converts your codeplug to a human readable file so that you can edit it in a text editor.

So far so good with dmrconfig - I've only used it once, but the programming looks like it took just fine. It's certainly a lot more helpful to have a format that can be backed up easily! It does however make me want to get a radio that can have more user entries in the database, the RD-5R is skimpy on that account.

Also noted but not tried yet: qdmr, which uses the same codebase as dmrconfig for radio codeplug writing but that offers a GUI for it. Worth a test another day.

Thanks to @witchy@mastodon.radio for the reference to dmrconfig - they are using an Anytone 878 radio with this particular setup.

Radioddity RD-5R "RX Group List" - or, why can you hear me and I can't hear you?

A programming quirk of the Radioddity RD-5R.

If you want to add a DMR talkgroup to talk on, there are really four things you need to do:

1. Add a digital contact, listing call ID and name.
2. Add a channel, listing that contact along with frequencies.
3. Add that channel to a zone, allowing you to select it on the radio.
4. Add the channel to the "Rx Group List" so that you can listen to it.

If you miss step 4, you get the following: people can hear you on a channel, but you can't hear them.

Debugging this was tricky. I had added a few extra talkgroups to my hotspot configuration, so I thought I had checked everything - and it turns out I had everything correct for transmitting. What could be different about the Feditalk group? Well, it's UK based, so I tried connecting to the UK Brandmeister server and listening to some other UK talkgroups, and that didn't work.

The AHA moment was of course an RTFM situation. Section 3 of the Radioddity DMR Quick Start Guide referenced a screen I hadn't seen before, the "RX Group List". Adding the channels to that list (and noticing that they weren't there already) fixed the problem.

Thanks to the following for helping me through this bit of troubleshooting:

• Nick W8XM for the ARROW RD-5R codeplug and some timely consulting on RX offset programming
• Patrick KC3OWU for encouragement and debug help and a first successful QSO on Feditalk, TG 23514
• Christopher M0YNG for running mastodon.radio and prompting this exercise in the first place

Having figured all this out, I'm now intrigued by OpenGD77 which is open source firmware for this RD-5R radio and for other DMR radios. Perhaps a next project!

New gear: MMDVM hotspot from Radioddity

New radio! This one is an MMDVM hotspot assembled for and sold by Radioddity. The part I got is clearly labelled "Made in China", but it was shipped promptly from the Radioddity depot in Las Vegas, Nevada. It arrived in a small cardboard box with a single page of tutorial instructions and a few extra screws.

The tutorial text is "Geek Teches THE MMDVM DMR TUTORIAL". I'm certain that it reads better in whatever language it was originally written in, and frankly the text is confusing at best. Fortunately the software and hardware is an ordinary MMDVM and Pi-Star configuration, and there's plenty of good tutorials for that.

Some useful tutorials include:

• Playing with Pi-Star, Amateur Radio Notes, Toshen KE0FHS
• Pi-Star Digital Voice Software, Pi-Star. Official docs
• Pi-Star integration with Brandmeister API, Brandmeister wiki

Nick W8XM was very helpful - I happened to catch him on the ARROW 2m FM repeater while I was putting things together, and I related the problem I had originally where people could hear me but I could not hear their return. It seems that the hardware in this kit is subject to frequency drift, and you need to tune the "RX Offset" with some trial and error (using Parrot) to get an accceptably low BER. At zero offset I had 1.3% error rate; after tuning to -200 my BER was down to 0.2%. Ailunce has a good description of what you need to get to.

I had one glitch on setup - typing in the wrong wifi SSID for our home network! - and had to manually add a new wpa_supplicant.conf file to the SD card to make it work. Fortunately, this tutorial from KE0FHS made that quick work.

The Brandmeister network does not like hear lots of short transmissions in sequence from a single station, so if you are testing things out vigorously and punching a lot of buttons in short sequence you might get a user blocked voice message from the network. This corrected itself for me by waiting an hour.

With all of that set up, I'm back on the air with DMR. There's a weekly Michigan net via Michigan One DMR, and the Brandmeister Feditalk talkgroup is one I hope to make more contacts on.

73 de Ed W8EMV