21st July marks the 40th Anniversary of the first lunar landing by Apollo 11. Fantastic stuff.
Shame the later missions were cancelled, we almost had an amateur repeater sitting on the moon.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
AWA RT85 modifications
I have been making some mods to my RT85 transceivers, most recently was adding a fan to the PA heatsink, using some old Intel Pentium2 fans, simply glued them to the heatsink, added a thermal switch to the internal heatsink, a BC-547 NPN, a couple resistors, so the thermal switch drives the BC-547 which supplies 12v to the fan, radio gets hot on long overs, fan cools it now.
(The thermal switch was a PEPI 46deg from WES Components)
Did this to both my 6metre versions (E-band), one for car and the other in the shack. The third RT85 is a A-band for monitoring on 2metres.
Added a Repeater Reverse switch, for the Repeater Reverse switch, I had already converted the RT85 from 2716 eprom to 2732 eprom, which provided two banks of 80 channels, the 2nd bank has all the rptrs in reverse, so when monitoring a repeater channel, just flick the switch to go to Reverse mode.
Added a Tx Power Hi/Lo switch to the remote head, the Hi/Lo power mode is already available, via a link on the remote head, just added the switch to bring it out to the remote head front panel.
Added LED backlighting to the remote head, this was simply adding a small green led & a resistor and soldering to the front cct board in the remote head, this now backlights the key buttons, so they I can identify the buttons when driving the car at night, instead of guessing which button is which.
Replaced the rubber contact switches in the front panel of the Remote head, used some tactile microswitches ( Jaycar p/n SP-0603 ) Just unsolder the old switches, cut off a pair of diagonal legs of the microswitch, bend in the remaining two legs carefully and push in and solder to the board, get the switch base as close to the cct board as possible.
Added a 3.5mm mono socket for the speaker connection from the remote head., unsoldered the tow spade tags, glued the socket (DSE p/n P-1231) and soldered it in. So can now use a speaker with the standard 3.5mm plug
Added a RJ-11 socket for a microphone connection on the Remote head, used a RJ-11 (Jaycar p/n PS-1470 ) as it had the required 4 pins and was the smallest compared to RJ-12 and RJ-45 sockets., glued the socket on the back of the Remote head, next to the 3.5mm speaker socket, and solder wires around to the pins where the old microphone cable fed to. On the microphone lead, simply cut and spliced a 4 pin RJ11 plug cable to the existing microphone curly cord and heatshrinked it.
So finished all this off last week, put one 6metre in the car, the other in the shack, and the 2metre unit in the shack too.
Will add photos, etc, to the website page at some stage.
(The thermal switch was a PEPI 46deg from WES Components)
Did this to both my 6metre versions (E-band), one for car and the other in the shack. The third RT85 is a A-band for monitoring on 2metres.
Added a Repeater Reverse switch, for the Repeater Reverse switch, I had already converted the RT85 from 2716 eprom to 2732 eprom, which provided two banks of 80 channels, the 2nd bank has all the rptrs in reverse, so when monitoring a repeater channel, just flick the switch to go to Reverse mode.
Added a Tx Power Hi/Lo switch to the remote head, the Hi/Lo power mode is already available, via a link on the remote head, just added the switch to bring it out to the remote head front panel.
Added LED backlighting to the remote head, this was simply adding a small green led & a resistor and soldering to the front cct board in the remote head, this now backlights the key buttons, so they I can identify the buttons when driving the car at night, instead of guessing which button is which.
Replaced the rubber contact switches in the front panel of the Remote head, used some tactile microswitches ( Jaycar p/n SP-0603 ) Just unsolder the old switches, cut off a pair of diagonal legs of the microswitch, bend in the remaining two legs carefully and push in and solder to the board, get the switch base as close to the cct board as possible.
Added a 3.5mm mono socket for the speaker connection from the remote head., unsoldered the tow spade tags, glued the socket (DSE p/n P-1231) and soldered it in. So can now use a speaker with the standard 3.5mm plug
Added a RJ-11 socket for a microphone connection on the Remote head, used a RJ-11 (Jaycar p/n PS-1470 ) as it had the required 4 pins and was the smallest compared to RJ-12 and RJ-45 sockets., glued the socket on the back of the Remote head, next to the 3.5mm speaker socket, and solder wires around to the pins where the old microphone cable fed to. On the microphone lead, simply cut and spliced a 4 pin RJ11 plug cable to the existing microphone curly cord and heatshrinked it.
So finished all this off last week, put one 6metre in the car, the other in the shack, and the 2metre unit in the shack too.
Will add photos, etc, to the website page at some stage.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
APRS update
now running Xastir APRS Client Node on Ubuntu 9.04 at home
now running UIView32 Node on W2K3 at work.
also did a test run of Xastir on Debian 5.0 at home, it works fine.
plus I did a test run of Xastir on Xubuntu 8.10, it works fine as well.
The TT3 is working well in the car, but noticed some dead spots along northern beaches not covered by VK2US-1 and VK2RAG-1. hopefully will get an iGate running at the clubsite to fill those missing spots along the beaches.
now running UIView32 Node on W2K3 at work.
also did a test run of Xastir on Debian 5.0 at home, it works fine.
plus I did a test run of Xastir on Xubuntu 8.10, it works fine as well.
The TT3 is working well in the car, but noticed some dead spots along northern beaches not covered by VK2US-1 and VK2RAG-1. hopefully will get an iGate running at the clubsite to fill those missing spots along the beaches.
EchoLink node 1494
Node 1494 is off air at the moment, having issues with Ubuntu 9.04, WINE and Echolink with the TX Audio dropping out most of the time. Rx Audio is fine.
Trying to determine if it is the PC at fault, as this particular Dell GX240 PC was erratic with Win Xp and is slow & randomly freezes using Ubuntu 9.04 and same when it was Ubuntu 8.10
Suspect the Dell PC, as my older IBM PC works fine with Ubuntu 9.04 and runs faster.
Trying to determine if it is the PC at fault, as this particular Dell GX240 PC was erratic with Win Xp and is slow & randomly freezes using Ubuntu 9.04 and same when it was Ubuntu 8.10
Suspect the Dell PC, as my older IBM PC works fine with Ubuntu 9.04 and runs faster.
new VK2KFJ blog on Blogspot
this is a relocation of my blog on Yahoo 360, which is being scrapped on 13-July-2009 and my website at www.geocities.com/vk2kfj which is being scrapped at end of 2009.
my other website www.qsl.net/vk2kfj is still operational
below is blog entries from my Yahoo Blogs:
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Entry for 14 June 2009
(from Yahoo7! Blog)
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my other website www.qsl.net/vk2kfj is still operational
below is blog entries from my Yahoo Blogs:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entry for 14 June 2009
relocating my blog from Yahoo 360deg Blog over to here today, as Yahoo 360 is getting the axe. A bit of a shame.
This was the new BLOG site http://au.360.yahoo.com/vk2kfj
the new Blog here has no new "nice" URL like the Yahoo 360 Blog had.
This was the new BLOG site http://au.360.yahoo.com/vk2kfj
the new Blog here has no new "nice" URL like the Yahoo 360 Blog had.
(from Yahoo7! Blog)
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- VK2KFJ back on APRS
-
Now running the TinyTrak3 with Garmin HVS-16 and Kenwood 2m h/h for mobile op.
This time I wish to configure the TT3's 2nd config area for HF APRS for country mobile activity.
Since I been active on Linux again, I now re-visiting the X based APRS software for Linux, ie XASTIR and X-APRS clients.
Eager to try these clients out on either (or maybe all) Ubuntu 9.04, Debian 5.0 and Fedora 10
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- demise of Geocities.com
- Found out recently about the demise of Geocities.com
in other words Geocities.com/vk2kfj/ will be turning off at end of 2009.
New BLOG site is http://au.360.yahoo.com/vk2kfj
So, I am relocating from there to here and running it as a Blog instead of a static website,
which is probably better in terms of dynamic content and providing a timeline of my activities.
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