Pi-Star version for MMDVM hotspot as of 8th April, 2022

 Pi-Star version for MMDVM as of  8th April, 2022

I have updated my Pi-Star MMDVM nodes to Pi-Star v4.1.6 and Dashboard 20220401 (1st April 2022),

nothing noticeably different for me, as I just run DMR and P25 on my hotspots.

John Moyle Field Day 2022 - postmortem

 I went to QF46pu with the intention of  working VHF and above, however after the first hour  of calling and finding nothing and hearing nothing,  (except for  VK2LE/p on 146.500, but they could not hear me). Dave VK2JDS was tuning around 40metres and found lots of stations calling CQ Contest,  so I started working the contest on 40metres, it was great fun, lots of strong signals, easy to work them. There were some serious stations out there, but also many casual contesters who liked a bit of a chat, which I was very obliging with. 

I was not  doing the contest seriously, just give out some numbers.  There seemed like there were many club groups and family groups, one op had his daughters doing the CQ calls while he made the contacts, so I was surprised by the number of young operators, both genders present, some of which had picked up the contest bug and operating very professionally and proficiently, which was great to hear. 

Over the 24 hour period I racked up 50 contacts, in between other projects,  while realistically just having a bit of fun in the contest.  I was operating under my other callsign VK2ABP,  running the Icom 756 Pro2 into a 80metre horizontal wire loop, strung out among the trees. 

Now that I had fun on a HF contest, I think I need to have a go at the RD Contest in August. I think I leave the VHF and above for the WIA VHF-UHF Field Day Contests.

update on VK2RWI Repeater facilities

 

Band	Output Frequency	Input Frequency
6 metres FM	53.850 MHz	52.850 MHz
2 metres FM	147.000 MHz	146.400 MHz
70cm FM	438.525 MHz	433.525 MHz
70cm DMR	438.600 MHz	433.600 MHz
23cm FM	1273.5 MHz	1293.5 MHz

WSJT-X FT8 update

 I ran this WSJT-X on my Linux Mint laptop on 50.313 in FT8 mode for a few days, amazed at what it decoded,  from here in Sydney (VK2)  decoding stations VK1,2,3,4,5,6,7, plus ZL1,2  this is not using a 5 or 6 element 6metre yagi, no, this is  from using my 40m HF dipole, through the Icom 756 Pro2's antenna tuner, with s5 noise level, the FT8 does the trick of pulling signals out of the noise.  Even a SWL can throw a bit of wire out in the backyard and decode these signals.  

It's not hard to think  what you can get with a couple phased arrays up a mast, in a low noise environment. No reason not to get the America's or Europe with proper 6metre setup. Great fun, I can't wait to go out in the country and try it from a low noise floor environment. It's too damned noisy in the city suburbs with all these damned houses with solar panels with noisy inverters running all day. Tired of listening to high noise level on HF  and 50 Mhz, thanks to fxxxing Greenies and their fxxxing solar panels polluting the RF spectrum.

WIA VHF/UHF/SHF Field Day Contests for 2022

 as mentioned earlier this year, the Summer VHF/UHF/SHF Field Day Contest has come and gone already

These are the remaining two WIA VHF/UHF/SHF Field Day Contests for 2022.

  Winter 2022 - 0200 UTC Saturday 25 through 0159 UTC Sunday 26 June (0400 / 0359 in VK6). 

  Spring 2022 - 0100 UTC Saturday 26 through 0059 UTC Sunday 27 November (0400 / 0359 in VK6).

The Wireless Institute of Australia (wia.org.au)

Beware when visiting Canberra - ACT Gov is stooping to low acts of money grabbing.

 This is a pic looking southbound on Northbourne Ave in Canberra,  just before Cooyong st, the speed limit drops from 60km/hr to 40km/hr with only these small signs to warn you that speed limit has dropped. This section was 60km/hr. This is a six lane major thoroughfare, that follows from the Federal Highway and becomes Northbourne Ave and continues across Canberra to Woden and onto Tuggeranong.  This is the "main" thoroughfare of Canberra.  The ACT Gov obviously strapped for cash, came up with this new cash grab. This must be recent, I don't remember seeing this last December (2021) but its now there is January 2022. The joke of these picture is the tiny speed signs  say "High pedestrian activity". High pedestrian activity in Canberra ?  

 If this ploy was for safety, then the  ACT Gov  should have put big 2metre high speed signs and flashing lights, and ripple strips on the roadway to get driver's attention. 

 Lucky, I was dawdling at less than 40km/hr looking for a particular address, if I had been coming down there at 60km/hr, then I would have been severely stung.

Addendum : 9th April 2022 - I just been to Canberra, one of the small signs (on the left side) has been replaced with a 2metre high  sign, plus a warning sign  of road changes placed ahead of the speed sign.   Somebody  in ACT Govt realised their whoopsie. Another of the 40km signs obscured by a tree.  I also took note of all the speed  changes  on this main road from above Watson through to Woden, 100, 80, 70, 60, 40, 60, 70, 80, 60. The speed limit is all over the place. 

The next dodgy speed trap is still southbound when crossing London Circuit, there is a speed camera to catch people accelerating towards the open space of the  huge round about ahead.

John Moyle Field Day Contest 2022

 The next John Moyle Field Day Contest will be held over the weekend of the 19th-20th March 2022 and will run from UTC 0100 on the Saturday to 0059 on the Sunday (24hr period) 

I planning to head out west for the weekend and Manly Warringah Radio Society (VK2MB) is also planning to operate portable too.

Good luck to all participants, hopefully now that we starting to get ahead of Covid, many of us can go portable for the contest.

WSJT-X 2.5.4 running on Linux Mint 20.3

 I finally got around to installing latest WSJT-X, both on my Windows10 laptop and also on my Linux Mint laptop, these are old hand-me-down laptops,  the Linux Mint laptop is an old ASUS N550J 2015 model I think, it was my XYL's MS Windows10 laptop which became unbearably slow and useless, so I took it and installed Linux on it, I tried a few different versions, but settled on LinuxMint as it is derived from Ubuntu and Ubuntu derived from Debian. Anyway, the old ASUS has a new lease on life, it is fast again.  I have in the past ran WSJT on  various Linux platforms, on old Dell servers, I had deliberately  gone about  compiling and testing WSJT on  the various Linux derivations and documenting it. Anyway, I finally put some antennas up at home, since moving house, I thought lets try some actual weak signal radio activities.  

Next, I downloaded the .deb files for WSJT-X 2.5.4 and installed on Linux Mint 20.3 this was just too easy, much easier than the old days of manually compiling against different version of Linux, now days  it is  as easy installing on Linux, (since it based on QT5,) as it is for  installing on a MS-Windows 10 laptop.

Next step, connect the TigerTronics USB SignalLink interface to my IC-756PROII transceiver and the other end into the USB of the Linux Mint laptop, to make sure it was found and defined as a linux device, I ran a couple commands from terminal window, such as lsusb command to show the USB devices,  and used the Sound application in Linux Mint to see the input and output sound devices were identified and could see it displayed and I could test the interface.

I read some forums, I can see quite a few hams complaining that they  could not get their SignalLink devices to work on LinuxMint, I can't understand it, as I found it so easy. I can't imagine what the hell they were doing, (or not doing),  to make it work, it was just so damned easy. Maybe they just using some old crappy PC or laptop.

Anyway, I had it all installed and configured and plugged into the transceiver and before I even realised it, the thing was decoding  FT8 on 50.313MHz, which blew me away, as I couldn't even hear anything like a signal coming from the radio, yet, I was decoding callsigns and messages from other hams. This is what I call weak signal Dxing!

Next step, I better read the WSJT-X documentation to see how I start replying to people on FT8. A few years I was at Dave VK2JDS's place watching JT65 on 23cm EME, which was impressive as it is, but FT8 is pushing the boundaries even further.

WIA Summer VHF UHF Contest 15th-16th 2022 post-mortem

 I had to work, but I did listen on 50.150, 144.150, 432.150  I did hear several content stations on 6m and 2m across Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.  I will try again and for the 2022 WIA Winter VHF UHF Contest and hopefully be active in that contest.

23cm FM Repeaters update

Update of 23cm FM voice repeaters for VK1/VK2

OUTPUT   INPUT      Callsign       Location

1273.100   1293.100 VK2RTZ      Mt Sugarloaf , Newcastle   91.5Hz ctcss

1273.200   1293.200 VK2RPW    Grundy Mtn,  Walcha  - defunct

1273.200   1293.200 VK2RWC    Chatswood,  Sydney (north)

1273.300   1293.300 VK2RPL     Mt Nardi,  Lismore  - defunct

1273.400   1293.400 VK2RAG    Somersby,  Central Coast

1273.500   1293.500 VK2RWI     Dural,   Sydney (north west)