Android

speak of the devil, my new new HTC Aria arrived yesterday, much better browsing than my previous Nokia, I can now monitor vklogger.com when mobile. Functionality appears great. With time I can compare it against the likes of the iPhone4.

smartphones and apps

I was just reading Terry VK2KTJ's blog, apart from the discussions about podcasts for science, I noted Terry is using an Android based mobile device, note that I used the term 'mobile device'
instead of smartphone, as describing them as "phones" is a very loose terminology, as it is a really a micro notebook computer, usually with touch screen interface AND it has a phone as part of it functionality.

Anyway, I have been reading up on these 'mobile devices' since my daughter just HAD to go buy an Apple iPhone4, because that's what Gen-Y have to do !! Don't take me wrong, Apple make good stuff, but I like flexibility and being able to fiddle with things and it was my fellow work colleagues talking about which "smartphone" we need to use, that started me thinking, so I did some googling on the subject over the last 2 weeks and finding an abundance of good info on the subject of mobile devide operating systems, I now know Apple have iOS for iPhone and Nokia and some others use Symbian, HTC have both Windows 7 and Android based mobile devices. I myself have been using a Symbian based Nokia, which due to hardware reasons, is going to get replaced by something different, hopefully a HTC with Android.

Android is an open o/s based on Linux which is great, you can still have a fancy brick, but with a base o/s that allows some fiddling. I even see people doing some hacking to get iPhones to dual boot Android and iOS o/s's which is exciting stuff, that just instantly opens up your choice of apps that you may wish to run.
That's what I like about open systems like Linux and Android, it just pushes the big guys like Apple and Microsoft to innovate and to try and stay ahead on the ensuing pack.

I feel it will be an exciting period for these new mobile devices (smartphones) its already has me
thinking about apps that can assist my hobby, apart from the existing amateur radio apps such as echolink, dstar, aprs.

VK9NA Norfolk Island DXpedition 2011

the VK9NA team heading to Norfolk again and will be operating from 9th to 20th Jan 2011
on band 50MHz to 10GHz. Modes operated will include SSB, CW, FSK441 and JT65.

Need to find out if they can do 23CM FM simplex

Echolink Node 1494 update

finally fixed the damned DTMF decoder for the node, its been broken since I changed PC's a year or two ago.

Did some testing in the last couple days, tweaked the audio levels, spoke to Dave VK2JDS viaVk2BLO node on Orange repeater 146.700 and Terry VK2JTP via his node.

in summary, my node is looking in better shape now, so I can use it.

2m & 70cm FM activity

the sticky weather of summer has started, with the N.E. breezes hitting Sydney yesterday, creating coastal ducting, some rptrs that were enhanced last night, to the north we had 147.100 Buladelah, 146.900 Newcastle, 146.775 Watigans up to s7 normally s1, 438.025 Newcastle, 438.075 Somersby was up to s7 normally s1, the south 146.700 Ulladulla, 146.975 Robertson up to s9 from s1, then from south west 146.950 Mt Ginini was less than s1, nothing found inland, so looked confined to coastal ducting. Noted that 146.650 Mt Bindo was s1 instead of its usual s9, maybe an inversion, as I noted the Dural 23cm beacon was missing, but re-appeared this morning.

Nothing this morning from any of the distant rptrs, but did hear Dave VK2AWZ talking to Brian (VK2BX) on 146.500 FM simplex from Vincentia (near Nowra) approx 10am. Just checked again for 2 & 70 rptr at 2pm, but nothing. 30deg with 80% humid with thunderstorms approaching from west. Will go see if anything on 52.525 FM simplex.

23cm operating

Last Friday, 1st October, operated stationary mobile from Seaforth Oval, took the 23cm FM and the Double Quad antenna and 3m coax,

we been trying to do some tests out to Dave VK2JDS, on previous attempts to use this site, there has always been some sporting event on, the reason for this site, is it is high, but has a clear, unobstructed view to the west, from the carpark, the land dips away acrossd the playing field and there are nil trees to block the path, you can see clearly the Blue Mtns, there are other nearby locations that might be higher, but usually they obstructed by large trees.

For this test, Dave using his all mode for 23cm into a 3m dish, located on his mountain top at 890 m ASL, aimed at Sydney. We used 1270.000 MHz simplex, Dave first tried sending a carrier and I opened the mute on my FM rcvr to try and detect, it was hard to tell if the noise floor changed or not, so I ran 10w FM, Dave tried detecting it in SSB mode and he was successfully able to detect my carrier, so we proved it was possible over the 190km path.

23cm operating

I noticed a good turn out of 23cm FM ops for the WIA broadcast on VK2WI on recent Sunday mornings, one day there were at least 5 or 6 people.

Field Portable locations

After visiting the Jenolan Caves/Edith, Oberon region in July, I finally sorted and uploaded the photos to Flickr and updated the Field Portable web page on my website. I went back through and added some more information relating to some good RF locations to use, unfortunately, some of the places I wished to visit in 2009, which I thought would now be cleared of forest, are still in the process of being cleared, so, will have to wait until 2011 to do some tests from those sites.

Next trip, hoping to get to the DX Farm in October for some DXing.

Field Portable

did some more work on the Field Portable page on my website, updated some more places that I surveyed for portable DXing. Need to add some more photos soon.

linux update

Attempted installs for Slackware, Gentoo and OpenSuse versions of Linux, the Gentoo I couldnt get past the basic search & load drivers, the Slackware installed ok, but failed when booting. The OpenSuse works well, a very nice gui based installer and equally good looking gui when running.
I installed the KDE 4.3 desktop with my OpenSuse. There was the option to install either Gnome or KDE. Nil amateur packages on OpenSuse, but still a good easy to install and use package, for those new to Linux and just wish to experiment.

Next, I wish to give Fedora 12 a test run, maybe Debian 5.04 too. I have been holding off upgrading my two Ubuntu boxes from 9.10 to 10.4, as I deciding whether to reallocate one of these boxes to another project.

In summary, for amateur radio related activities, still best to use either Debian/Ubuntu or Fedora bundles. For a ham that is new to Linux, probably Ubuntu is best choice, as it is just so easy to install and use.