7 December was apparently Skywarn Recognition Day, so a station in Mount Holly, NJ, WX2PHI, was celebrating by making contacts on the N3KZ repeater system, so at 5:15pm EST, I keyed up my HT to the mobile antenna on my car and reported 32F and clear sky. It was good to know I could key up the N3KZ node in York from over here in Lancaster.

The Yagi spun around like a wind vane at times atop its flagpole, but it held up just fine. The aluminum pole swayed quite a bit as well. I’ve wrapped a loop of cord around the pole to use as reigns. so I can spin it straight again without really going outside.

I used my Allstar for tonight’s 985 Roundtable as a test, since my antenna had been blowing around all day. I wasn’t not sure which way it would be pointing.

It’s really easy to miss the first word or 2, or prefixes of callsigns. I was listening along on RF as well. I got 2 random restarts of the Allstar connection, and I learned that I can’t send any commands to the radio while the node is transmitting simplex on RF.

The 985 Winter Field Day will be at Lines Self Storage in Chester Springs, PA.

I got Japan, Colombia, and Uruquay on 12m FT8 today. I got so much Japan from Hawaii, I assumed I’d not see it for a long time. Winter is good in 10M and 12M.

The 985 workbench suggested locking down the node to be safe, so I set only my node (63047) in the allow list via asl-menu and node configs. It needed at least one value, according to the UI, so I gave it my own node ID. It still allows me to connect to the W3GMS repeater, node 53085.

My Week in Radio

• Built an Allstar node from a PI 4 and a USB-C radio dongle to reach 985
• Stumbled into and recognized some Olivia-8/250 on 20M
• Lots of ISS repeater traffic at convenient times on my good ol’ 1/4 wave antenna in the tree
• Got the radio blog up-to-date with all my adventures
• Listened to Jim, AF3Z, talk about sideswiper keys, and I might give it a try as i’ve changed the way I’ve been using my iambic paddle to almost never squeeze.
• looking forward to FT Challege

Questions

• KC3WWC, John: I have the basic Allstar node configured. Should I leave it connected to 985 all the time? I recognize some of the repeater features, so what other cool things should I have this node do?
  • W3CRW, CR:
    • using it for a few years
    • not always connected
    • switch to other nodes
    • always disconnect from one node before connecting to another to avoid linking.
    • has a node in 2 vehicles to supplement the reception.
  • WA3VEE, Ron:
    • best thing for 985
    • not connected all the time
    • uses HTs anywhere in the house
    • operated at long distances
    • be careful to not cross-link
    • in vermont, connected to 53085, simplex 446.100, unknowingly connected the repeater to the entire vermont network
  • W3DIB, Greg:
    • Joe is adamant about avoiding crosslinks to other repeaters.
    • other danger: if you are always connected, someone else could link to you and cross-link.
      • prevent other nodes from linking to me.
      • disallow every other nodes
    • computer security:
      • keep the node up-to-date and secured.
      • it used to be ancient versions of debian and asterisk
      • now it’s much better….allstar 3
      • careful about forwarding ports to it.
      • uses a VM, flipperphone. will try to get a tutorial together.
    • W3CRW, CR:
      • supermon on the node allows cool monitoring with web access
      • On Tuesday’s at 20:00, there is a tech net on the East Coast Reflector. The net usually runs a couple of hours. You can connect, to the Reflector via Allstar on 27339, 45225 or 45192.
• KC3RFG, Jim: When you setup a station and all the gadgets in the RF chain, where does a wattmeter prefer to be?
  • NA3CW, Chuck:
    • it should be between transmitter and tuner, so you can tell when the tuner is right
    • sounds like bad cable or other installation problems?
    • RF getting back through the chain?
  • KC3RFG will check that jumpers are good
• W3DIB, Greg: On RF now, impressions of the NanoVNA?
  • W3QP, Tim:
    • 100% worth the money
    • depends on use-case
    • needs calibration all the time
    • can be fragile
    • great for building ununs, etc.
    • dedicated VNA can be much more convenient
    • uses nano vna saver python script to capture everything
  • KC3WWC, John:
    • so much cool stuff to measure, so opens up a whole world
    • lots of more features to learn on youtube every week
    • as a technical person, you’ll have a lot of fun.
  • KC3NZT, Harvey:
    • lots more data than a regular analyzer
    • maybe doesn’t need recalibrated all the time.
      • use saved calibrations
  • KC3RFG, Jim:
    • calibrated for each band, saved it, and recalls them.
    • does lots more connected to the computer

KN3I, John, and AF3Z, Jim, were talking on 985 about Sideswiper keys. Technically, it’s a straight key. It’s 2 straight keys together, so it’s not considered an automatic keyer. You can optionally use either key to manually key a dit or a dah. Sideswiper is sometimes called a Cootie Key. It sounds interesting, since it’ll not race me on dits.

I was able to hear a 10M beacon today at 28193.180kHz:

E E E E E VVV DE VE4ARM / B AMATEUR RADIO MUSEUM / AUSTIN MANITOBA / EN 09 E E E

My Week in Radio

• I used N3KZ 440 repeater in York from Lancaster
  • always surprised on their range.
  • thought UHF didn’t go far.
• I built an Allstar node from a PI 4 and a USB-C radio dongle to reach a fringe repeater.
• I’m looking forward to FT challenge
• I stumbled into and recognized some Olivia-8/250 on 20M, and some SSTV
• I’ve been hearing lots of ISS repeater traffic at convenient times on my good ol’ 1/4 wave antenna in the tree.
• I got the radio blog up-to-date with all my adventures.

Others

• 145.010 packet repeater
• K3EA, Greg:
  • No contests this past weekend
  • Next weekend:
    • ARRL 160m CW at night
    • FT challenge - normal exchanges
  • December 14-15
    • 10m contest, phone/CW, 48 hrs, should be great.
  • https://contestcalendar.com
  • Propagation should be normal and above normal
• WB3LNY, George:
  • Working on ISS access.
• KA3TKW, Tom:
  • ARISS mission 1622UTC, 145.800
  • New satellite on Nov 4, AO-123, ASRTU, FM, 4-day pass
  • Easy satellites
    • ISS: 145.800FM, 145.825 packet, 437.800FM downlink
    • AO-123, 435.400FM down
    • SO-50, 437.795FM down
• K3DMM, Denny:
  • Travel and simplex contacts
• K3AQ, Kenny:
  • New laptop from Best Buy to run fldigi, etc.
• KB3MIJ:
  • Some fldigi on HF
  • Some repeater work at reesers.
• W3MW, Don:
  • Most bands on a vertical antenna.
  • Mounting some antennas on the roof with a contractor.
  • Built some more receive pre-amps.

Swap and Shop

• VE3HOH, Pete
  • Rohn 25 sections + brackets
  • 8 yagis for 432.
  • Kushcraft yagi for 2 meters
• KA3TKW, Tom:
  • Cheap UHF radios
  • CMD-1550
  • Shortwave receivers

I finally got my AllStarLink 3 node up and running. I had registered for a node number, and I had bought the pieces to have them ready to go. The little Pi Zero W boards I have wouldn’t boot, so I used a Pi 4 instead with the USB radio device.

Initial Installation on Pi 4

I started out with the official instructions:

• Downloaded the image for the Pi
• Installed the Pi Imager by deb file instead of just dding it to the device, since the imager conveniently allows pre-configuring:
  • user
  • locale
  • WiFi network

Configured the Cheap Ausinc UHF AllStar Radio Dongle

I purchased the hardware from Amazon a while ago. It has a USB-C port, and the cable is flipped for different modes:

• one way to program the frequency via USB serial
• other way to use the USB sound device for TX/RX The product description mentioned the different modes, but I didn’t recognize it. I learned about the flip from a video

I downloaded the srfrs.py Python script to the Pi, and used it to configure frequency and tone to protect default access to it:

./srfrs.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --frequency 438.1 --ctcss 94.8

Matthew, KC3WRY, suggested this frequency in the 70cm of the band. I was reading and wondering about 446.1 or 433 or so.

More Configuration and Confirmation

I followed another video for more configuration and confirmation of the settings from intro video.

I made another pass at web-based configs and asl-menu. I set it to be a SimpleUSB device in simplex mode, and I tuned the volume settings. I had no TX until I set “Change CTCSS From = no”. I don’t know what that setting does, but the tip came from the video. Then I could use the allmon3 web interface to connect up to Parrot+ node (55553) for testing, and it reported, “volume just about right.” I could connect and disconnect to nodes from the web interface. There are other commands in the web interface to say the time or id the node on demand.

I could send DTMF commands from my UV-K5 with the F4HWN firmware:

• * starts DTMF entry, PTT sends the codes.
• *1 <node number> disconnects from a node
• *2 <node number> connects to monitor another node
• *3 <node number> connects to transcieve to another node
• other scripts, like “disconnect all” don’t seem to work yet.

The W3GMS admins granted me access to connect my node to the repeater, so I’ll have a chance to try it out there. I was also able to connect to K3IR.

I further tested my AllStar node talkin to the 985 repeater. I discovered the bit of a delay caused my node to often skip a moment in the beginning of others’ transmissions, so I’d miss a second at the start. Also, since it’s simplex, I couldn’t throw any DTMF commands at it while the node is trasnmitting. I had to use the web interface to disconnect if others were talking at the same time.