Allstarlink

My Week in Radio

Contesting

I finished the FT Challenge. There was no special exchange this year. We could use other defined subbands in addition to the regular frequencies to alleviate crowding. We could work anyone, even if they’re not participating explicitly.

I operated QRP, so it was nice to find the quieter subbands and more FT4 activity. You earned multipliers for each 3000km, so I don’t really know on my score yet.

I found wsjtx-improved on the Debian Linux repository, so used that. I saw the color improvements, the better location labels with states, and it had filters.

AllStar

I learning some obvious things about AllStar: it can’t hear my DTMF if it’s currently transmitting, since it’s simplex, so it’s hard to control on a busy net.

Yagi in the Wind

Finally, I watched my home-built yagi flapping around on that windy day. I guess I can stop worrying about it, since it held up fine.

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.

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.

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.