Watching traffic, I discovered one can ask the REPEAT service on APRS to list repeaters near you.

The HT app presented the firmware update right away upon launching, so now I know it can do the upgrade. The first time I updated the radio, I used the older “BTech Programmer” app.

The update promises some fixes around

• ack in in-built APRS,
• TNC stability

I discovered in the app the setting: Radio -> ID Settings -> 3 Checkboxes (ID, Location, Check) could be turned off to get to “none” to disable post-TX noises, which is “PTT Release” in the radio.

Those settings kept getting synced from the app to the radio, so now they’re set the way I want it to stay. I could have also disabled “Synchronous Signal Settings” in the app, but the mismatch seems like it would have been confusing.

My Week in Radio

• Really glad to get to field day with 985.
• Customized my AllStar node for better mobile use:
  • DTMF to shutdown
  • DTMF announce IP address
  • Announce ip with the start up macro
• Btech UV-PRO with KISS TNC support
  • It does APRS internally
  • KISS TNC for packet to connect apps on the phone via bluetooth
    • AprsDroid
    • WoAD for Winlink and serial terminal

Others

• W8CRW: field day
• WA3VEE: field day, photographs!
• KC3SCY, Luke:
  • Made 50 contacts on CW, goal was 10
  • Got a nice Drake 4x to help with CW and a new key
• W3FHA, John:
  • Working on a radio crammed with tubes
• W3JAM, Jeff:
  • Heard W3R on 80M CW, but didn’t really operate
  • Pelican case for Bird meter and slugs for it.
  • Checked into Simplex Net and Welfare Net
• KC3HQZ, Jean:
  • Fun on Sunday at 985 field day
• KB3ILS, Keith:
  • Winter Field Day
  • Logging contacts for Joe
  • Heard, “I’ve been waiting for you” from AF3Z under another club call
  • Tried Joe’s Begali straight key
  • Making room for a straight key
• AB3AP, Mike:
  • Bought a QSL card dated from 1949 that belonged to Dick, W3ORU, a recent SK from 985.
• WA3KFT, John:
  • Worked field day a bit
• KC3TYX, Vic:
  • Made a few field day contacts, but not much. He didn’t hear W3R.
• KC3YIG, Dave:
  • Fun at field day
• NA3CW, Chuck:
  • Setup for WFD on Friday
  • Didn’t operate the event
• KD3AIS, Tim:
  • Great time at 985 field day on Saturday
  • Met Harvey, KC3NZT
• KC3OOK, Bill:
  • South control for simplex net: 42 contacts
  • Welfare Net
• W3QP, Tim:
  • Fun at 985 field day
  • Had lots of RFI from electrical lines and other antennas
• N3CRE, Charlie:
  • Visited 985 WFD
• W3MFB, Mike:
  • Saw 985 field day on Sunday
  • Talked to KD3ACF, JT, a bunch
• K3YVQ, Jack:
  • 985 WFD
  • Learned about CW from Keith
• AA3LH, Leon:
  • Fun at field day, made some contacts
  • Looking forward to Summer Field Day
• KD3ACF, JT:
  • Got a cage for 705 and next POTA activation
  • Long chats with W3MFB
  • POTA hunting
  • New AllStar node
• AF3Z, Jim:
  • Operated Cornwall Ranger Station for WFD
  • Indoor station: 2I
  • Jim was their main CW op: 130 QSOs
  • Highlight: Saturday night, 80M, finally found W3R when Keith came to him.

Questions

• KB3ILS, Keith:
  • When operating straight key,
    • Do you rest your forearm on the table?
    • How do you grip the straight key?
    • Operation tips?
  • WA3KFT, John:
    • 3 fingers on the knob, arm on the table, only wrist movement.
  • NA3CW, Chuck, concurs
  • AB3AP, Mike:
    • European style: float the arm
  • AF3Z, Jim:
    • In European style, key is often on the edge of the table.
    • Rests his arm on the table, grip thumb + next 2 fingers
    • Holds the key on his leg when camping
  • KB3ILS, Keith:
    • Luke is the operator he wants to emulate
• KC3YIG, Dave:
  • Electrovoice 719 mic needs a cartridge replacement. Tips, sources of parts, etc?
  • NA3CW, Chuck:
    • No experience changing mic cartridges
    • That mic seems similar to the D104 with a crystal cartridges
    • Specific cartridges can be hard to find
    • Some people seem to replace the cartridge with one from Heil
    • With age, cartridges don’t sound right
• KD3AIS, Tim:
  • Has a Diamond 510HDM antenna, 17ft tall, can the antenna be placed near trees to hide it?
  • WA3VEE, Ron:
    • You’re sounding good, so no hurry to put that up.
    • Ron’s antenna is next to a bunch of bushes
    • Foliage won’t attenuate much
    • It’s fine
  • WA3KFT, John:
    • Long antennas have nice gain
    • Tie a pipe hitch to the antenna 1/3rd down from the top
    • Hoist it to hang in the tree
  • NA3CW, Chuck: Feb 2018 QST, “Live Trees Affect Antenna Performance”
    • Did simulations with HF
  • WA3VEE, Ron:
    • His installation is 3-4 feet away from the tree and elevated on army mast
  • AF3Z, Jim:
    • Has a tree in path of beam, and it doesn’t seem to affect anything.
    • Hangs other antennas
  • KC3SQI, Wayne:
    • D300 stuck on a 2-inch piece of PVC attached to the deck railing
    • 10 ft from the ground
    • When he got above the roof, got an extra 2dB into repeater
    • Doesn’t make a lot of difference

The 985 group held their winter field day at Lines Self Storage. They had 5 stations in trailers and tents. They worked some satellites and mostly HF. There was hundreds of feet of coax feed line all over the place.

I aw KC3NZT, Harvey, operating a satellite station with special hardware. Harvey also called CQ on HF. He’s a machine, logging hundreds of QSOs.

I used a headphone splitter to listen to another operator, Bob. I copied some CW, but not a lot. I listened for some digital and found a bit of RTTY, but it was for the BARTG contest, not WFD. I made some SSB contacts on others’ radios that were setup for the weekend.

I hung my rolled slim-jim to call on 146.520MHz and beacon some APRS, but I heard nothing. I could also check winlink email through the N3MEL gateway in Downingtown. I had looked it up ahead of time. In the notes in WoAD, I list the frequency where the gateway listens for packets.

I visited during daytime on both days, but did not stay overnight like some did.

I connected up to Winlink through N3FYI’s gateway on 144.950MHz. using 1/4-wave antenna hanging in the tree. I also had set my APRS message to “Winlink”, so the Winlink server pinged me over APRS when I had a message. I’m not sure I could read the APRS message on the UV-PRO, though, since I let it sit too long. I had a message icon, but I couldn’t dismiss it.

There were only 3 of us at the SPARC elmer night, but we were on the same page. I compared notes on packet/APRS and WoAD with KC3QEH, JJ. We both had these new Btech-based radios. Even on the hill, our HTs with small antennas didn’t pick up much inside the building. I tried an external antenna from another club radio and I started receiving lots of packets. Sending APRS messages worked under the Signal menu: KC3QEH-7:TEST MSG

Yet Another Radio

I got interested in AX.25 packet over RF, so the Btech UV-Pro immediately looked like an interesting jumpstart, when it got a firmware update that allowed it to operate as a KISS TNC over Bluetooth.

Application Driven

HT is the up-to-date app for interfacing with the radio. There’s a “BTech Programmer” app, but it is an older, branded version of HT.

Setup

In the radio, I’d set “General” -> “Digital” -> “Format” = “APRS”, but the HT app kept switching it back to “BSS” any time it connected to the radio. It would never let me set “APRS” until I “verified” my ham radio callsign. It wants to do it by sending your license info to some chinese site – no thanks. Instead, I used a web app to generated an APRS code that worked in the HT app.

I enabling digital mode in radio to make it periodically beacon my APRS location. I set it to a fixed channel for sending APRS. Only the HT app seems to be able to set the beacon text for APRS.

I can send messages from radio by prefixing the message with the recipient:

KC3WWC-7: hey

TNC KISS Mode

I installed WoAD on Android, and enabled TNC KISS on the radio. I paired the radio to the phone via Bluetooth. I checked the Winlink RMS map on the website to find nearby packet gateways, and set the radio to the given packet frequency for the gateway I was trying to use. I configured a session for the callsign and SSID of the Winlink gateway, and started the session. Now it’ll send and receive queued email. There’s a log in WoAD that shows what it’s doing.

WoAD also has a terminal which can be used for BBSes, like KA3TKW. I connected there to see some messages and a BBS software from 1990!

APRSDroid can also talk to KISS TNC over Bluetooth. It’s a much nicer UI than the radio or HT app. Sometimes when switching apps, I needed to cycle power on the radio, but it doesn’t usually take too much to get it going again.

Customizing actions of the ASL node isn’t all that complicated. Everything can be setup in /etc/asterisk/rpt.cfg under the [functions] section:

• added *77 to announce IP to help find it on DHCP on WIFI (hotspot):

  77 = cmd,asl-say -n 63047 -w ip4
  

• added *78 to shutdown the node via DTMF

  78 = cmd,shutdown now
  

• ensured I could disconnect all with *6

  6 = ilink,6
  

• made the node fire that *77 command on startup by adding to the (node-main) section for my node:

  startup_macro = *77
  

I activated US-1418 one nice afternoon with the GRA-1900T on 40m. I was getting desperate, so tried vertical and horizontal orientations. I wonder if I was a bit too close to the metal pavilion.

Direwolf doesn’t want to do anything without a local config in place. I had to decompressed /usr/share/doc/direwolf/conf/direwolf.conf.gz to $HOME/direwolf.conf. I customized the configuration file:

• set my callsign
• listed audio devices with arecord -L, found pipewire, and set ADEVICE pipewire in the config
• plugged the Btech APRS cable into the Quansheng and computer
• Direwolf is decoding packet (from 145.010MHz) and APRS (144.390MHz).
• -q d quiets APRS decode errors when reading plain packet
• -t 0 disables the colors
• with pipewire, I can have both my record-aprs.sh script and Direwolf decoding.
• decoded APRS from ISS on 144.825MHz via multimon-ng:

AFSK1200: fm KB9VIC-9 to DH4TLZ-0 via RS0ISS-0,WIDE2-1 UIv pid=F0
`t].l .#\`KB9VIC EM58 OLNEY IL HOME OF WHITE SQUIRRELS _%
AFSK1200: fm KA2OMQ-0 to W4BB-0 via RS0ISS-0 UI^ pid=F0
QSL? UR 59 FN13
AFSK1200: fm W4BB-0 to CQ-0 via RS0ISS-0 UI^ pid=F0
:KA2OMQ   :QSL and 73 via ISS
AFSK1200: fm W9QO-0 to STPX1V-0 via RS0ISS-0,SGATE-0,WIDE2-2 UIv pid=F0
'oIPl .-/]