Motorola GM-339 and Tait 8110

Just some ex-commercial radios  we playing with for 2m and 70cm

Motorola GM-339 UHF mobiles, and Tait 8110 VHF mobiles.  Excellent radios.

23cm portable 8th to 10th December, 2016

I did  a trip to Canberra on 8th December, 2016,  first stopped at the carpark at southern end of Federal Highway, (QF44qu) where it rises up from Lake George, so I could try to work Dave VK2JDS at QF46pu, it was extremely windy and difficult to keep grid pack still or even hear the radio, so we were unsuccessful. It probably should have worked and I was aiming up the lake, above the water.
On 9th December 2016, I visited Mt Ainslie (QF44nr) to try and work Rod VK2TWR at Nimmitabel, but he already packed up, but I did hear Gordon VK3EJ at Cobram on 1296.150 MHz via AE, working Rob VK1KW, nice strong signal from Gordon before quickly fading out. At least this proved my IC-910H and 23cm Gridpack were working.

on 10th December 2016, came up to Mt Ainslie (QF44nr) again and tried on the northern side of the hill, to try and work Grant VK2MAX at Kempsey via AE on 1296.150 bu to no go. Also tried to receive Dural beacon 1296.420 but no go.

Then I moved around to western side of Mt Ainslie (QF44nr) to try Grant VK2MAX again but no good AE path available.

beacons

update from Colin VK5DK

Advising that all the VK5RSE Beacons (144.550, 432.550 & 1296.550) are now back on air after a power supply replacement. Any reports most welcome to either VK5DK or VK5DJ.

144.550MHz Beacon has CW plus two Digital modes JT4D & JT65B, 

432.550MHz has CW & JT4D digital mode  

1296.550MHz has CW & JT4F digital mode.

DMR radio

I been doing some more playing with DMR using my TYT MD-380  UHF handheld. Since I first started playing with this, there is now a second network operating locally,

http://dmr-marc.net/   the original DMR network here in VK

and the other network

https://brandmeister.network/ or referred to as DMR-BM,

which is very interesting  as it comprises of homebrew repeater equipment, such as the MMDVM repeater which is based on Arduino a kit and interface board, which does more than simply DMR, they also doing C4FM   and planning on P25 support.  Also DV4mini doing Dstar, C4FM and DMR

http://ve1cra.net/main/dmr.html

http://mmdvm.blogspot.com.au/

http://ve1cra.net/main/dstar.html


Just in the Sydney basin, we now  have VK2RCG  439.500  (Sydney city),  VK2RWW 438.100 Dural, VK2RLE 438.425 Heathcote, VK2RHP 439.750 (Horsley Park),  VK2RAG Central Coast and one planned up Newcastle.
And of course the DMR repeaters in pretty much all states now, including Canberra VK1RBM.
What this means is since they share Talk Groups, you can be travelling around Sydney and switch  repeaters and maintain the same  Talk Group QSO. You don't have to chat via a public Talk Group, you can setup a private QSO with another person.

In summary,  a whole different concept compared to the old fashioned FM analogue repeater, it takes a bit of thinking to get used to the idea, but once you understand the concepts, then you soon realise the benefits of it. As it grows, you will see  a lot of multi-mode digital repeaters and gateways appearing.

some instructions from Alan VK2ZIW for configuring serial port to be able to run FPP software to program the PRM80:


Notes on running PRM80 FPP programs on Linux
============================================
Fedora 23 x86_64 on ASRock QC5000 system (Low Power AMD Kabini)
with FTDI Serial USB dongle ID 0403:6001, it's TTL to the radio

Radio: PRM80L S E0
     PRM8025 - 9502 810 10869

Reason: Conversion to 6m with VK3SMB's eprom, subtracts 20MHz
from the eeprom stored channel frequency, 68MHz becomes 48MHz.

The FPP DOS program does horrible things with the USART so
run "dosbox" with a network serial port. Use "netcat" (nc)
to connect to the FTDI serial port.

Edit ~/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74.conf
Setup the DosBox serial port:

serial1=nullmodem port:5000 transparent:1 rxdelay:1

After your "MOUNT" command for C: add:
C:
cd prm80pmr
bin\prm80pmr

Save your "dosbox-0.74.conf" file.

Setup the serial port, "stty raw" - most important
as you don't want any control characters interpreted.
"clocal" to ignore Carrier Detect. 4800 baud, 8bit, no parity.

#============ shell script rundb ==================
sleep 2 < /dev/ttyUSB0 &
stty raw < /dev/ttyUSB0
stty 4800 clocal cs8 < /dev/ttyUSB0
sleep 1
dosbox &
sleep 2
 nc localhost 5000  < /dev/ttyUSB0 > /dev/ttyUSB0
#============== script end ==============

70 MHz submission by WIA

The WIA has lodged a submission with the ACMA concerning interest in an amateur allocation in the 70 MHz band.

http://www.wia.org.au/newsevents/…/2016/20160806-1/index.php

Microwave Activation Day

the next Microwave Activation Day fast approaching, Saturday 23rd July 2016.
Hoping to help our with some 3.4 GHz testing  with Brian VK2XTC and Gary VK2KYP.
I also  wish to take 23cm and see if I can hear anything  from VK4,  ie. MS scatter or AE, as these days yield a good turnout from VK4 area, so expect plenty signals bouncing around from up that way.

GippsTech wrap-up

Enjoyed the lectures at GippsTech this year.  Enjoyed the drive down and back, managed to work a few SOTA stations on 40metres, whilst mobile. Met new people and caught up with old acquaintances. This year was interesting in terms of 3.4 GHz as several attendees brought their completed 3.4 Ghz panels, so we did some carpark tune-ups and then headed in different directions  to make some  contacts on 3398.200 Mhz. Lou VK3ALB, Matt VK3PP, Bernard VK3AV, Mark VK5AVQ, Gary VK2KYP, Dave VK2JDS and myself all had operational panels, plus several others with non completed panels were there to see these panels in operation, which in turn inspired them to get their panels completed. Tim VK5ZT gave a lecture on modifications for these panels so there some new alternative methods for modifying these down to 3.4 GHz and some added features to enhance the panels functionality. Next year we bring  gear to run on other microwave bands to have an even bigger activation.

here is extract off VKlogger showing some of the contacts:



here is Mark VK5AVQ and Dave VK2JDS at "The Ridge" in Morwell (QF31ER) we did some receive signal comparison testing of our panels using the VK3RGI  beacon some 30km away on 3400.434 MHz



Bernard VK3AV setting up his panel below at Federation University in Churchill (QF31FQ)



Dave VK2JDS and his panel



Lou VK3ALB and Matt VK3PP setup their panels



Mark VK5AVQ setting up his panel

GippsTech symposium 2016

this coming weekend is GippsTech 9th/10th July at the Federation University in Morwell Victoria.
Lots of  good technical discussions to listen too, meeting microwave gurus and top it off with some on-air activity on sunday afternoon on 3.4 Ghz

compiling WSPR and WSJT for Linux and Windows

I have been out of the loop for compiling my own  packages of WSPR and WSJT for a couple years now due to other family and work commitments.  Now I am getting settled again and getting back to it.

Having a recent look at the WSJT home page shows me that there have been some changes since the changeover to QT4 IDE suite, now there is a fully bundled SDK, called JTSDK 2.0 which includes  QT5 and other required tools and libraries, to make a standardised full development kit,  available  for both Windows and Linux platforms.

This is a major step forward in making it easy for Hams to be able to compile WSJT and WSPR against their own desired Linux O/S platform.  I had found it very time consuming  having to debug and compile over and over for each Linux O/S that I wanted to try this on and then do it all over again when I did an update to the particular Linux O/S, whether it be Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu or Centos O/S's.

Here is the link to the WSJT Development page which describes the JTSDK 1.0,

http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx-doc/dev-guide-main.html

which references the replacement by JTSDK 2.0 which is here on Sourceforge site

https://sourceforge.net/projects/jtsdk/

Congratulations to Joe Taylor and the  JT Development teams for the ongoing development  and providing this SDK.