W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

Operating notes: new net protocol for Washtenaw ARPSC net

Our ARPSC (Skywarn) net switched to a new check-in protocol on the Sunday night net. Rather than giving your entire info all in one go, you check in with just a call sign, and then net control calls a roster.

This makes the net more of a directed net, and spends less time on calls that double. It also means that net control has more than one opportunity to correct a missed call sign.

Never one to miss an opportunity to innovate, I'm going to try this approach on a big zoom call, one where it's always uncertain who goes next.

See https://mastodon.radio/@w8emv/104703215788181316 for discussion.

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!

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)

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: 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.

Operating notes: Echolink commands, operating at low power, programming with Chirp

This list of Echolink commands should be helpful if you want to do more than listen to a repeater. Note that repeater operators can and will change any of these codes.

To switch a Baofeng UV-5R between high power (5 watts) and low power (1 watt), press the octothorpe key ("#") briefly. The "L" character will light on the display if you are operating low power. A long press of the octothorpe key will lock the keyboard or unlock it.

The current version of Chirp is 0.4.0. I updated my radio so now it has channels 1-70 with a bunch of gaps, and added Monroe County, Lucas County (Ohio), and Marquette County repeaters to my setup. Alas, the programming I did managed to get the receive frequencies correct but did not properly get the repeater offsets. I don't know exactly what happened, next time I'll go back and sort it out.

We went to a Mud Hens game (it was a good time, and they won). I wasn't able to find the Lucas County, Ohio Skywarn repeater. We had a little light rain in the first two innings but it cleared up and was a beautiful night.

Related articles

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Operating notes, July 11, 2014: Baofeng UV-5R battery fade

I had my Baofeng UV-5R out and about with me today, monitoring W8UM and N8DUY. W8UM is the U of Michigan Amateur Radio Club 2 meter repeater on 145.23 Mhz, and N8DUY is the repeater on 145.15 Mhz that has the local Skywarn net.

N8DUY sends out a signal in morse code every 15 minutes (did I tell you I'm learning Morse, mostly so I can decode these tones) and so it was an interesting punctuation to a meeting I was having where radio communications was part of the conversation.

This evening I kept the Baofeng on and heard KD8YYI giving a call over Echolink, so I joined in on 2m and started to talk. Alas, the battery in my Baofeng seems to cut out on long transmissions at the end of a day of monitoring. I switched to Echolink on my Android phone and we had a good conversation. KD8YYI is from the Cincinnati OH area and he was just getting started on Echolink, so I invited him to join the Sunday night net at 8:00 p.m. on W8UM-R which routinely has calls from Hawaii, Houston, and Boston in addition to the Ann Arbor area locals.

Operating notes, July 10, 2014: Baofeng UV-5R keypad lock

The Baofeng UV-5R radio has a keypad lock function. If you press and hold the # key, the radio will say "lock", and the keypad will mostly be disabled. Mostly disabled, because the red CALL key will still turn the FM broadcast radio on and off, and PTT will still key up the radio, and MONI will still disable squelch. Press and hold the # key again to unlock.

How did I find this out? I was bicycling across the Diag and tried to tune in WCBN 88.3 FM, and found instead that my radio was just making a high pitched beep and not doing anything when I went to adjust the frequency. It took digging out the manual at home and looking around for a bit to find the magic lock / unlock sequence.

The sign that your keypad is locked is a little lock symbol just to the left of the battery status. This image (via Amazon) shows the screen with all LCD displays on.

Note that turning the radio on and off does not reset the keypad lock!

Product links follow.

Operating notes, July 9, 2014

I'm inspired to do this latest blog by the work of Dan KB6NU. KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog is a steady stream of useful information, clippings from the net and from the press, and especially operating notes.

The idea of doing operating notes is to write down what just happened while it's still fresh so that you have a log of your activity and something to refer back to when you scratch your head and wonder how you can solve a problem that you remember solving previously. Writing things down as they happen is a time-honored tradition, and keeping an operator's log is part of good radio practice.

The notes for this morning revolve around figuring out how many 2 meter local channels I can monitor simultaneously with my current rigs. I think I'd be able to listen to 4 at once, minimum - 2 over the air on my Baofeng UV-5R doing simultaneous dual band monitoring, one Echolink channel via Internet on my Android phone, and one Echolink channel via Internet on my MacBook. Still TBD is figuring out the best way to use my NooElec RTL-SDR card to monitor more over the air channels from my MacBook, which could give me the whole local area and which would free up the Echolink channels for repeaters that I can't reach with my current radio and antenna.

thanks and 73