Btech

I recently added winlink back to my APRS ping on the UV-PRO. I immediately got a message from a Winlink gateway that I had 1 new Winlink message waiting. For the full RF experience, I fired up KISS on the UV-PRO and a session to K3IR’s Winlink gateway (145.030kHz) and checked my Winlink mail over the radio.

I needed to be careful to not let HT app start and re-enable “digital mode”. When “digital mode” is enabled, it would switch to APRS 144.390MHz every time WoAD would TX, and that doesn’t work. The hint was seeing APRS traffic in the WoAD log while waiting for my Winlink session to initialize.

The email was KC3WRY, Matthew, playing around sending Winlink via APRS. I acknowledged and responded to his message.

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.

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.