Advancing Ham Radio.. different ideas

Minitor IV in the Ham Band

2012-01-21T01:36:00.005-06:00

Our club repeater is capable of two-tone paging. It uses a CAT-1000 controller.

Many moons ago in the mid 90's we had some Minitor I's pagers re-crystaled for the repeater.

With narrow-banding affecting all public safety channels there will be scads of Minitor III and IV pagers out there, hopefully for cheap.

The municipalities will likely upgrade to the Minitor V as it's narrow band capable.

While the III and IV are frequency programmable, the ones that will be coming out of service will mostly be the 151-159 MHz subband versions.

Never fear, if you use the engineer login function of the pager programming software, you can edit the engineering data, and change it to a 143-150 MHz bandsplit.

This message thread on radioreference gives you good info in making your own Minitor Programmer. It gives you the pinout diagrams for the Minitors III, IV and V.

When I get a chance to test the sensitivity more in-depth I will edit this page with the results, and mods that I may deem necessary to improve the sensitivity.

{Update}
Sensitivity is good. Near .2 uV

HSMM / 802.11 in print

2012-01-02T13:58:00.003-06:00

List is a list of known printed HSMM resources for further reading that I have been compiling.

I am curious about articles in print outside of the US. If anyone knows of anything in any of the RSGB publications, etc, I'd appreciate hearing about them.

ARRL- VHF Digital Handbook - Chapter 7 - High Speed Multi-Media Radio by K8OCL
N6GN, "Inexpensive Multi-Megabaud Microwave Data Link," Ham Radio Magazine, December 1989
VE3JF, "VHF/UHF/Microwave Radio Propagation Primer for Digital Experimenters," TAPR/ARLL DCC, 1997
N2IRZ, "Web Pages on Packet Radio," CQ-VHF February 1999
K4ABT, "The Phoenix Shall Rise," CQ Magazine, June 2000
N8GNJ, "Broadband Wireless Internet Access and Amateur Radio," CQ April 2002
KB9MWR, "Inexpensive High Speed Packet is Here," TAPR PSR Summer 2002
WB0ZVV "Propagation Losses Through Common Building Materials 2.4 GHz vs 5 GHz", Magis Networks, 2002
K8IT, "Is All Data Acceptable Data," CQ-VHF Fall 2003
"The Use of Pringles Containers To Enhance Network Security," CQ April 2003
K8IT, "What is HSMM?," CQ-VHF, Spring 2003
W4RI, & K8OCL, "On The Amateur Radio Use of IEEE 802.11b Radio Local Area Networks," CQ-VHF, Spring 2003
KD5OUG, "Columbia Shuttle Recovery and 802.11b," CQ-VHF, Spring 2003
K8IT, "A Low Cost Horizontal Polarized Omni Directional Antenna for $15," CQ-VHF Summer 2003
K8OCL, "Alternative Options for Resolving HSMM Interference Issues," CQ-VHF Summer 2003
AA6JR, "Digital Hamming: A Need for Standards," CQ Magazine, January 2003
N2IRZ, "A Cheap and Easy High-Speed Data Connection," CQ, February 2003
N6CL "IEEE 802.11b: Friend or Foe?" Mar 2003 CQ
N5KM, "High Speed Multimedia Radio," QST, April 2003
KA3JIJ, "Wi-Fi for Hams Part 1: Part 97 or Part 15," CQ, June 2003
KA3JIJ, "Wi-Fi for Hams Part 2: Building a Wi-Fi Network," CQ, July 2003
K8OCL & KA3JIJ, "How To Get Into HSMM" CQ-VHF Fall 2003
K8OCL, "HSMM in a Briefcase" CQ-VHF, Fall 2003
N8UR, "Amateur Radio & 802.11," TAPR PSR Winter 2003
K8OCL, KD6OZH, & VA3BHF, "HSMM Radio Equipment" QEX Nov/Dec 2004
K8OCL, "The Frontlines - HSMM, Part 1" CQ-VHF Winter 2004
K8OCL, "The Frontlines - HSMM, Part 2" CQ-VHF Spring 2004
K8OCL, "The Frontlines - HSMM, Part 3" CQ-VHF Summer 2004
K8OCL, "HSMM and Information Security" CQ-VHF, Fall 2004
WA5VJB "2.4-GHz Patch Antennas," CQ-VHF, Fall 2004
K8OCL & KD6OZH "28 kbps to 9 Mbps UHF Modems for Amateur Raio Stations," QEX Mar/Apr 2005
WA5VJB "Cheap Yagis for 2450 MHz," CQ-VHF, Spring 2005
N2IRZ, "Can HSMM Find a Real Home in Ham Radio" CQ Magazine, April 2005
N2IRZ, "The Digital Circle of Life," CQ June 2005
KD9LA, "IEEE 802.11 Experiments In Virginia's Shenandoah Valley," QST July 2005
K8OCL, "S.H.A.R.K.s and Tsunamis," CQ-VHF Winter 2005
K8OCL, "The Hinternet and VPN Projects," CQ-VHF, Summer 2006
N2IRZ, "Some Encryption is Legal," TAPR PSR Summer 2006
WB8IMY "The Hinternet and openHSMM," QST July 2006
N2IRZ, "Data Encryption is Legal" CQ Magazine, August 2006
N2IRZ, "Building a Decent RF Network" CQ Magazine, October 2005
K8OCL, "What is Happening to the HSMM Working Group?," CQ-VHF, Fall 2006
WB8IMY, "Nontraditional Field Day-You Bet," QST November 2006
K8OCL, "The Hinternet on 5 GHz," CQ-VHF, Winter 2006
N2IRZ, "Wireless Local Area Network Design," CQ Dec 2006
WA6NMF "Use It or Lose It, SHF Edition" TAPR PSR DCC 2007
K8OCL, "The Sociology of Regulations," CQ-VHF, Spring 2007
KL1Y, "The Integration of Amateur Radio and 802.11," May/June QEX 2007
Paul Asadoorian & Larry Pesce, "Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hacking" July 2007
"Switchless Bidirectional Amplifier for Wireless Communication Systems," Wiley Inter-Science - Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, May 2007
Rob Flickenger, "Wireless Networking in the Developing World" Dec 2007
K8OCL, "Getting on the Internet - Your First HSMM Radio Station," CQ-VHF, Spring 2008
K8OCL, "HSMM and Field Day" CQ-VHF, Summer 2008
K8OCL, "New High-Speed Multi-Media Radio Mesh Networking," CQ-VHF, Fall 2008
K8OCL, "The Hinternet - Protecting HSMM Radio Networks," CQ-VHF, Winter 2008
WB8IMY, "High Speed Multimedia at 3.5 GHz," QST, June 2009
K8OCL, "New Amateur Digital Video (ADV) and Revolutionary HSMM-MESH at Ham-Com," CQ-VHF, Summer 2009
W5IFS, "Bringing Digital Radio to Amateur Radio," QEX, September/October 2010

DIY - ARRL and Radio Shack

2011-12-27T21:46:00.004-06:00

Back in June of 2011, I pointed out that there is a resurgence in the Do-It-Your-Self (DIY) community.

The economic crisis, Make Magazine, and the development of Maker Faire's/ "Maker Fests", all have apart to do with this.

A while back Radio Shack asked the "DIY community" what they would like to see in Radio Shack stores.

The top ten improvements requested were:
1. Arduino
2. More Kits and Project Suggestions
3. More introduction/instructional books
4. Larger assortment in LEDs
5. Wider variety in resistors
6. TONS more capacitors
7. DIY audio and speaker equipment
8. HAM radio gear
9. More competitive pricing
10. Stronger sales force

Since that time, Radio Shack has added Velleman Kits, and Arduino Kits as well as other things.

The ARRL just launched a new DIY campaign.

As I and the ARRL have noted, DIY is certainly nothing new to ham radio. But there are tons of DIY people out there that do not know about ham radio.

This may shock you, but I applaud this ARRL effort. Their recently released video is worth a look:

Mesh Potato

2011-12-18T19:42:00.004-06:00

An interesting video was just posted on the TAPR YouTube channel. It's a presentation that David, VK5DGR gave at the 30th Annual ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference. This was held back in September in Baltimore, Maryland.

In East Timore, there is no local phone service to speak of. Most people have cell phones, but they can't afford to use them. That costs 25 cents per minute, for people who earn about a buck and a half per day. That situation is duplicated in developing nations around the world.

Australian Amateur Radio Operator David Rowe VK5DGR is part of a group that's trying to change it. They've engineered a local phone system that's cheap to install and free to use. It's based on WiFi mesh networking, and it's being tested in South Africa and East Timore. They call it The Village Telco. And it's working.

David related the story of the Village Telco at the 2011 ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference, at the Saturday Night Banquet. The DCC is an annual, three-day weekend conference covering digital communications in Amateur Radio....

http://villagetelco.org/

The Village Telco is an initiative to build low-cost community telephone network hardware and software that can be set up in minutes anywhere in the world. No mobile phone towers or land lines are required. The Village Telco uses the latest Open Source telephony software and low cost wireless mesh networking technology to deliver affordable telephony anywhere.

Mesh Potato – A low-cost wireless mesh device you can plug a regular phone into

The Mesh Potato is a combination of a low-cost wireless Access Point (AP) running mesh networking software with an Analog Telephony Adapter (ATA). Mesh Potatoes automatically connect with each other, forming a “cloud” of Mesh Potatoes. Each Mesh Potato relays the phone calls for other Mesh Potatoes, greatly extending the range of the network. Plug an ordinary telephone into one Mesh Potato and you can instantly make a phone call to any other Mesh Potato on the network.

Here's what a US ham has done with this mesh potato for emergency use:
http://villagetelco.org/2011/11/guest-post-adapting-mps-for-emergency-work/

70cm DATV and the future

2011-11-20T18:51:00.004-06:00

Here is an interesting excerpt from an articled titled "Earth-shaking ATV, Plus.." by N5EM in CQ-VHF Magazine, March 1999 that I recently ran into.

Digital ATV Is Heating Up!

Since I last wrote about some possibilities in Digital Ham TV (DHTV), several reports of experimentation have been received. As long as there are efforts to make digital ATV a reality , I'll report on the work and keep you informed. One of the best developments is the previously mentioned e-mail re-mailer for DHTV. Check out the Web address for information about reading and posting messages to this list.

For those of you who may not have yet experienced an e-mail list, it is the method of sharing information in the information age . By "subscribing" to the list, you become a recipient of any e-mail message that is sent to the list. Anytime a message is e-mailed to the list, it is re-mailed to every subscriber, all in a matter of minutes. It lets people share ideas and information on a near real-time basis with like-minded experimenters any where in the world.

There are e-mail re-mailers (also called "reflectors ") for virtually any subject the mind can conceive of. Some have only a handful of subscribers while others have literally hundreds of thousands . There are several good e-mail re-mailers for the ATV community. One place to find out about them is at the Houston Amateur Television Society's Web site located at .

Some work with DHTV this month comes from Les Rayburn , KT4OZ, and Tom Askew, KB5IHI. They've been experimenting with video transmission using IBM Wireless LAN PCMCIA cards operating on 2.4 GHz. In their tests, Les and Tom used two laptop computers and wireless LAN (local area network) cards, transmitting Real Media data streams approximately 800 feet and resulting in actual ATV QSOs. Quoting from their test report,

"At 28.8 kbps encoding, it was...possible to have two-way (full duplex) QSOs, but at 56 kbps encoding the stream broke often. The Wireless LAN cards have a rated bandwidth of 512kbps but much of this is taken up by the protocol functions .One-way QSOs were possible at virtually any encoding speed, and high quality video (P5) was exchanged out to our maximum distance."

Not bad for a couple of laptops and a pair of $30 LAN cards. These LAN cards use spread spec trum and are Part 15 devices (they don 't require a license when used without modification). Since Les and Tom plan to modify these cards with the addition of amplifiers and external antennas , they've decided to participate under the Special Temporary Authorization (STA) of the Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio organization (TAPR) that allows the use of the frequency- hopping method employed by the wireless LAN cards in the amateur band s. After having initial success using the Real Media streams, Les and Tom have transmitted MPEG1 streams at distances of up to three miles using the unmodified Part 15 devices. These streams have included pictures, callsigns, and voice in each test.

So, DHTV experimentation is alive and well in the U.S. Other amateurs are participating in the experimentation and discussion, including Clint Turner, KA7OEI, in Salt Lake City, Utah , and Woody Winstead , KJ4SO, in Raleigh, North Carolina. If this interests you, subscribe to the DHTV re-mailer and start learning about the future of ATV.

I don 't want to leave you with the impression that DHTV is something going on only in the U.S. Quite the contrary- digital ATV experimentation in Europe is several years ahead of us. As early as 1996, the Austrian ATV organization had proposed MPEG 1-based digital ATV as the new standard for the 70centimeter band. This was to try to reduce the constant pressure on spectrum-intensive modes like ATV in countries where the total 70-centimeter band is considerably smaller than what we enjoy in most of the U.S. If you would like to read this proposal, you can find it on the Internet at . It's a very enlightening concept.

Ten years or so later, and we sadly aren't much further.

TAPR recently created a DigtalATV yahoo group. From what I gather DATV is pretty popular in Europe. The problem is it will cost nearly $2,000 to do 1 watt QAM Digital or DVB-S.

Not to practical for a one way transmitter in my book. It has been said that Image communications were never intended to be a mode independent of phone.

With that said, and the early experiments using less expensive 802.11 gear to achieve the same, I'd like to re-introduce that idea.

For those not up to speed, a normal 802.11 signal is 20 MHz wide. This is not a problem on 900 MHz or above, since there is plenty of space and little crowding.

For those not aware, if you use Atheros chip based 802.11 gear, half rate (10 MHz wide), and quarter rate (5 MHz wide) options are available using open source drivers.

And even more interesting is that that within the Atheros chip it is possible for licensed developers to enable a local oscillator generation for a direct conversion radio transceiver. This is not an open function, but irregardless, this is how 802.11 products on 900 MHz (Ubiquiti XR9), and 3 GHz (XR3).

And now 420-450 MHz with a module designed by Doodle Labs.

This is perfect for this type of application, as well as a multitude of other amateur infrastructure applications.

You can read more on the history of ATV and HSMM here:
http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/70cm-ATV-HSMM.html

And what other hams are doing with (muti-mode) 802.11 here:
http://kb9mwr.blogspot.com/search/label/80211use

Library of AMBE-files

2011-11-19T23:42:00.006-06:00

This has been on my to do list for a long time.

About this time last year, Kristoff ON1ARF wrote some excellent open source software.

You can find it here: http://villazeebries.krbonne.net/dstar/voice-announce/

From: http://villazeebries.krbonne.net/hamstuff/?page_id=10

Voice-announcement system on analog repeaters have existed for .. well .. almost forever. D-STAR repeaters, on the other hand, have so-far had this in a very limited way.

The main reason for this is related to the use of the AMBE voice-codec in D-STAR. AMBE-encoders are only available via an external hardware-device (either a chip inside the transceiver or the DVdongle). As this technology is usually not present in a D-STAR repeater, it has up-to-now only been possible to play out a fixed audio-message...

The “dstar voice-announce” package aims to provide additional ways to generate voice-announcement messages on a D-STAR repeater. It is designed to be as flexible as possible, to provide as much choice to the sysops.

By concatenating the .ambe files for “good morning”, “the time is now” “6″ “o’clock”, a complete voice-announcement can be created (also in .ambe format)

Kristoff created a small library of common words using the eSpeek text to speech synthesizer.

I'm not real fond of the voice quality of eSpeak, or Festival/Flite for that matter. So I created an alternate more extensive voice library. Mine contains about 360 words.

Now you don't need a DV Dongle to create system announcements. You just need to install and use Kristoff's ambestream program and download my or his AMBE word library.

You use it like so:

 ambestream -t TEST -v -4 -my KB9MWR -d k9eam.dstargateway.org -p 40000 K9EAM B this.ambe is.ambe a.ambe test.ambe

Rather than having to specify the path to each ambe word, here is way to use sed to append the full path to the premade AMBE words. In this example I have all my words in /root/words/ambe

 SENTENCE="this.ambe is.ambe a.ambe test.ambe"  

 # note all forward slashes must be escaped. Just follow the example  

 SPEAK=`echo $SENTENCE | sed 's/[^ ][^ ]*/\/root\/words\/ambe\/&/g'`  

 ambestream -t TEST -v -4 -my KB9MWR -d k9eam.dstargateway.org -p 40000 K9EAM B

ARRL Committee Seeks Microwave Band Plan Input
2011-11-11T00:32:00.002-06:00
I've blogged before on some ARRL microwave band-planning.

Well apparently they are now seeking input:

"An ARRL Ad Hoc Committee has been tasked by the Board of Directors with recommending updates to the ARRL band plans for the amateur bands between 902 MHz and 3.5 GHz. If you are now active on any of these bands or are developing plans to do so, the committee would like to hear from you."

You have till December 15th to respond.

http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-committee-seeks-microwave-band-plan-input

CisarNet: Italian Cisar Radio Amateur WiFi Network
2011-10-31T23:33:00.004-05:00
This just in from IW0SAB, Renzo in Italy:

The National Digital Link Cisar CisarNet (http://wifi.cisar.it), is an ambitious project that is joining much of the Italian region via a backbone digital technology wifi connections to 2.4 and 5.7 GHz, which allows experimentation for radio amateur and any use if needed in an emergency to coordinate and support relief efforts.

They have a 304 km (world record) link on 5.7 GHz.  And other impressive wireless links back to other parts of the Hamnet that I have blogged on before.

They have an  English wiki that is worth taking a look at.

On the top of this infrastructure, CISAR is activating several services, from voice and video over IP, DSTAR support and conferencing systems.

802.11 Digital Audio Repeater Linking
2011-10-20T10:12:00.006-05:00

Some time back I planted the idea of linking analog repeater together using 802.11/HSMM.

Instead of dedicated link channels usually on 440 MHz, you'd put some of that microwave spectrum to good use.

Since most repeaters are on commercial towers, achieving the required line of site and fresnel zone clearance shouldn't be a problem.

Each repeaters audio would be converted to VOIP using an Asterisk solution or now the plug and play CL-100 controller from CAT. (As seen above)

The advantage is now that is a multi-use link.  There will be plenty of bandwidth left over for APRS i-gate traffic, Winlink, etc.  Not only that, but other repeater linking could be done on the same 802.11/HSMM microwave backbone.

High speed Multi-Media interconnecting backbones can support radio linking of today as well as of the future.

Large regional and statewide linked repeater systems really should give this idea some consideration.

Motorola STF2520A 900 MHz Power Amplifier Modifications
2011-10-13T10:03:00.003-05:00
In case you overlooked the latest documented GBPPR project.  Here it is again.

Modifying a surplus Motorola STF2520A cellular-band RF amplifier for 150 watts in the 900 MHz ham band.

White House Staff on Amateur Radio’s Capabilities During Emergencies
2011-09-30T11:35:00.002-05:00
From: http://www.arrl.org/news/view/arrl-briefs-white-house-staff-on-amateur-radio-s-capabilities-during-emergencies

On September 12, at the invitation of White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard A. Schmidt, W7HAS, the ARRL briefed several members of the National Security Staff on the capabilities of the Amateur Radio Service to communicate in emergencies. “The White House is looking for ways that the great work of Amateur Radio operators can continue to support emergencies in the future with particular attention to increased use and dependency on internet based technologies,” Schmidt said. The ARRL presentation, conducted by Emergency Preparedness Manager Mike Corey, W5MPC -- along with President Kay Craigie, N3KN, and Chief Executive Officer David Sumner, K1ZZ -- focused on Amateur Radio’s current and evolving capabilities to provide Internet messaging connectivity.

Related:
http://kb9mwr.blogspot.com/2011/03/hsmm-420-430-mhz.html

http://qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/70cm-ATV-HSMM.html

New digital Yeasu Radio
2011-09-04T00:50:00.004-05:00
During the last Tokyo Ham Fair, Yaesu presented a new line of digital ham radios.

The label placed on the glass case in front of the HT has "C4FM" and "FDMA" in English. 

Vertex has been making and selling P25 commercial HTs for several years now. It's not such a stretch for them to come out with a dualband P25 radio under the Yaesu (amateur line) brand. Remember that they're now owned by Motorola.

There is also a new page on the Yeasu website titled "The Dawn of Digital Communications in the Amateur Radio World."

"2012 will be a historic year that sees Yaesu lead Amateur Radio into the modern era of Digital Communications."

DV Open Source Modem
2011-09-02T21:05:00.003-05:00

Some German hams have developed a digital voice board capable of GMSK (DSTAR) and 4FSK (APCO25).  It uses a DSP Encoder and Decoder.

The capabilities of their board are mostly defined from the firmware. It can handle baseband reception up to 8kHz (^=16kbaud, defined by the analog low pass filter).

Transmission is possible form DC up to 1/2 DAC update rate (a RC low-pass soften it). You can modulate on 2 DAC-channels simultaneously.

If someone want to write a firmware for an APCO, Analog, PacketRadio repeater - please let Jan, DO1FJN know.

For more info visit http://www.dvrptr.de/  And the corresponding yahoo group, DVRPTR.

>what type of programming adapter do you use?

http://www.atmel.no/beta_ware/

> Is the AVRISP-mkII useable ?

I'm not sure. If you mean the JTAGICE mkII: Yes.

You can use the (cheaper) AVR Dragon too. A complete list of hardware you will find on Atmels website (AVR 8/32 bit �C -> Tools).

> Is there a better one allowing debugging?

Yes and No (Jain). You can use a AVR ONE! This device supports more trace

capabilities.

> What version of AVR-Studio do you use?

AVR32 Studio 2.7beta but the last official 2.6 works too. We don't want use the

new 'AVR Studio 5' - it's a Windows only solution. 

Deviation Meter
2011-08-29T16:51:00.005-05:00
I hadn't built anything in a while.  And a friend mentioned the desire to have something to check for proper deviation on various Echolink and repeater setups.

In a prior blog, Are you narrow or wide?, I covered more of the background.

There is a lot out there on this sort of thing.

http://www.repeater-builder.com/projects/poor-mans-dev-meter/devmeter.html

http://www.repeater-builder.com/rbtip/deviationmeter.html

FM Packet Deviation Meter

So I suggested we build this and hook it to a an old dedicated scanner.  And after construction we calibrated it against a club IFR-1200 service monitor.

If you are not found of breadboarding, the above 73 article has an etched board available:

http://www.farcircuits.net/test1.htm

Here is a video that my friend made:

You'll be disappointed to know that Radio Shack doesn't carry the 15 vdc panel mount meter anymore.

LifeNet
2011-08-23T14:45:00.002-05:00
A interesting Mesh like network was brought to my attention. It's called LifeNet.

In the wake of major disasters, the failure of existing communications infrastructure and the subsequent lack of an effective communication solution results in increased risk, inefficiencies, damage and casualties. Current options such as satellite communication are expensive and have limited functionality. A robust communication solution should be affordable, easy-to-deploy, require low-to-zero infrastructure, consume little power and facilitate Internet access.

LifeNet is a WiFi-based data communication solution designed for post-disaster scenarios. It is open-source software and designed to run on consumer devices such as laptops, smart-phones and wireless routers. LifeNet is an ad hoc networking platform over which critical software applications including chat, voice messaging, MIS systems, etc. can be easily deployed. LifeNet can grow incrementally, is robust to node failures and enables Internet sharing. A novel multi-path ad-hoc routing protocol present at its core, enables LifeNet to achieve these features. 

LifeNet exploits multihop communication to provide coverage over comparable areas with minimal infrastructure. Every device functions both as a host and as a router. Two devices close to each other communicate with each other directly, whereas communication between two far off devices can be relayed by low-power intermediate nodes in a multihop fashion.

More can be read here.

DUTCH*Star DV Node / WinDV
2011-07-11T05:43:00.009-05:00

Fred van Kempen, PA4YBR has written a new Windows program for use with D-Star DVAPs, and GMSK node adapters.

The DV Node program, (WinDV) will eventually take over most of the "market" currently serviced by DVAR Hotspot, as DVAR has reached the end of its development cycle - the "takeover" by DV Node has been in direct discussion and agreement with Mark McGregor, KB9HKM.

The beauty of his WinDV program is that is supports a combination of several protocols.

DPlus (regular gateways and reflectors) as well as the DExtra protocol used by the Xreflector system. Also supported are D-STAR Callsign Routing (through ircDDB) and the reporting of GPS positions to the APRS network.

His program should enable more D-Star users to be able access both networks.  As currently most D-Star repeaters in DVAP/Dongle users are only able to access the US Trust based network.  Where as; homebrew GMSK nodes and repeaters as well as Dongle users using G4KLX Digital Voice package have had access to XRFxxx based reflectors.

Icom stacks/gateways can implement both ircddb and dextra (XRF) linking.  I encourage all Icom gateway operators to consider widening the D-Star experience for their users.

I feel Win DV is a great step towards interoperability and hopefully exposing and migrating more users and gateways to a more open source based D-Star infrastructure.

In the future, Fred also notes he plans to develop a version for Linux, and Mac. 

I encourage you to check out WinDV today!

Innovating Makerspaces
2011-06-19T23:22:00.000-05:00
Here is something that I wrote for my local ham radio club.

Ham radio operators have long been some of the original open source , Do-It-Yourself  (DIY) proponents. 

Going back in time, radio stuff was expensive and out of the reach of a lot of hams. So they invented newer and mostly cheaper ways of doing things. They also came up with better ways of doing things because somebody else would see that idea in print and improve upon it. Of course the technology was rather rudimentary, and there was little way to go but up at that point in radio technology calendar.

What most people tend not to think about is the open-source nature of Amateur Radio. While operators most often are seen working in emergency situations, many of the modern conveniences we have today—cell phones, satellites, wireless devices— were developed and tested by radio amateurs.

Decades ago, amateur radio operators were on the forefront of scores of technological innovations, including television, digital communications, solid-state design and cellular networks. The hobby's roots trace back to radio pioneers such as Guglielmo Marconi and FM-inventor Edwin Armstrong.

Well a lot has changed over the years in society and ham radio.  Many amateurs have gotten away from these "do-it-yourself" roots.  But those types are still out there!

When the economic crisis first started to unfold in 2009, the Wall Street Journal just had an article on how Tinkering is making a comeback amid the economic crisis.

"The American tradition of tinkering -- the spark for inventions from the telephone to the Apple computer -- is making a comeback, boosted by renewed interest in hands-on work amid the economic crisis and falling prices of high-tech tools and materials.

Engineering schools across the country report students are showing an enthusiasm for hands-on work that hasn't been seen in years. Workshops for people to share tools and ideas -- called "hackerspaces" -- are popping up all over the country; there are 124 hackerspaces in the U.S."

In 2005 just shortly before the economic mess stated to unfold, Make Magazine was introduced by O'Reilly Media.  It focuses on do it yourself (DIY) and/or DIWO (Do It With Others) projects involving computers, electronics, robotics, metalworking, woodworking and other disciplines.

The magazine was well accepted by engineering and electronics students.  And led to the first Maker Faire. An event filled with DIY projects, science, demos.

These "fests" are now in their 6th year, and being held in California, Detroit and New York and many other places.

As mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article, regional groups are popping up all over the place to help support this innovation.  These are referred to as Makerspaces/ Hackerspaces.  They are places where people with common interests, usually in science, technology, or arts can meet, socialize and collaborate. A Makerspace can be viewed as a community lab, machine shop, or workshop where people of diverse backgrounds can come together to share resources and knowledge to build/make things.

There are two that I know of in our area:

http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/

And closer to home, http://www.dhmn.net/ an Appleton: a group of hacker/maker/software/hardware technology-enamored people.

If you still have a bit of "amateur" in you, I encourage you to branch-out and check these innovative groups out.  I think there can be / should be a lot of crossing over and sharing of talents between some ham radio folks and these groups.  These are the types of people that need to welcomed with open arms into the hobby.

CQ VHF Magazine Index
2011-06-18T19:15:00.004-05:00

I announced about a week ago via twitter that I have been working on an article index for CQ-VHF Magazine.  At thing point I believe it to be a complete article index since the magazine went quarterly in 2002.

As I explain in the index; "most of my interests lie on VHF above, and having acquired most of the issues since the publication went quarterly, the CQ VHF indexing became a new project."

You can view it here:

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/files/ham/cq-vhf.html

I am missing issues when the magazine was monthly.  If you have and are willing to sell any of the following issues, please contact me.  Jan 1999, Jan 1997, Feb 1997, Nov 1997, And any from 1996.

More graphs
2011-05-27T12:46:00.007-05:00
A couple years ago Will Payne, N4YWK was on a quest to graph some of the historic growth of repeaters.

I helped provide some of the data for him.  But more recently I wanted to take a look at 70 centimeter ATV growth.  

That of course lead to more counting as I wanted to look at the 900 MHz band in light of Alino's announcement that they intend to release a HT capable of 900 MHz.  The DJ-G29T.

Link to the FCC OET Papers:
http://tinyurl.com/dj-g29t

I've been exploring 900 MHz since 2008.

I think it's one of the still steadily growing bands out there that can be a lot of fun.

I had no intentions of buying a new HT any time soon, but the DJ-G29T is certainly changing my mind on that.  I have wanted a frequency agile radio with a VFO for 900 MHz for a long time.  I believe Alinco will be the first ham manufacture of a 900 MHz HT.

D-Star ircDDB
2011-05-15T21:42:00.006-05:00
A couple years ago on the D-Star gateway mailing list, it was discussed that the Icom G2 software was not impressive.

A few pioneering D-Star programmers (Scott, KI4LKF, and Jonathan, G4KLX, Hans, DL5DI, and others) discovered that callsign routing updates were sometimes taking upto 2 hours.  These same guys ran into programming road blocks that the closed nature of the Icom/USTRUST/K5TIT trust that led them to the development of open source alternatives.

Jonathan Naylor, G4KLX recently created some statistics on the size of the ircDDB network against the USROOT based network. 

The first thing to note is that the ircDDB network is larger in terms of gateways than the USROOT network. In most countries the number of gateways on the ircDDB network is greater, sometimes significantly so. With the rapid increase in numbers on the ircDDB network these numbers will increase further.

I feel that one of the reasons for this is that the ircDDB network is open, and encourages experimentation and open source. This is in contrast to the USROOT network where opaque and undocumented protocols are in use, yet some still stick to the Icom G2 system, claiming that it is somehow superior! Would these people claim that installing commercial software is more in the amateur radio spirit than home brew and documented software?

Just as an aside, take a look at http://www.va3uv.com/Vulnerability.htm.

Please feel free to distribute copies of this e-mail to anywhere you like, as long as you keep the numbers in the table the same of course.

Jonathan G4KLX

While I'm away
2011-04-08T01:26:00.000-05:00
These will be some of the things I'll be playing with this Spring and Summer.

Here are a pair of Ubiquiti XR-9's.  We started to experiment with these towards the fall of last year.  We have a HyperLink Technologies HA910I-APC 10 Watt (+40 dBm) amplifier that could be paired with it.
--

Here are some older things that we have messed with on 2.4 GHz.  Ubiquiti Nanostations and Bullets and going back even a few more years the WRT54G.  We have slowly been moving away from 2.4 GHz.  Our experiences have been that there is to much stuff on the band, and to many trees! 
--

Here are some antennas.  The top two are Comtelco's for 70 cm, yielding 10 dBd.  I hope to be putting these to use soon!  Some 900 MHz yagi's.  HyperLink yagi's yielding 13 dBi, and then some stuff from 2.4 GHz.
--

Here are two router stations just aching for some 400 MHz mini-pci boards to be put into them!

And on the narrow band digital front, we have already begun comparing D-Star, P25 and Mototrbo.  It began a week ago after some discussion at our local radio club banquet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdGr12Qiosc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRJXNpJmOvs

Blog Hiatus
2011-04-04T01:37:00.006-05:00
About a year ago I eluded to discontinuing this blog.

I received some positive encouragement at the time to continue it.

That said, I feel the same way I did a year ago... (if not more disgusted with the lack of leadership)

"I really don't know if ham radio these days is worth the effort I put into it."

So I will be taking a break.  

If anyone stumbles into anything interesting going on in the hobby I'd still appreciate an email bringing it to my attention.

73'
Steve, KB9MWR

Here is an interesting speech that ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN gave at AES Superfest in Milwaukee on 4/2/2011, titled "Do Something new in Ham Radio."

Unfortunately this is the first time Superfest that I have missed in a long time.  Had I know that she was going to be there, I would have attended so that I could share some of my thoughts in person.

The premise of her speech is good.  In coincides with my own logic.  There is some irony however.  

She mentions a phenomenon that occurs with some hams where they "Narrow their perspective down on Amateur Radio so tight..."

I'm sure ARRL staff and other can see me as one of those types since I blog on certain things over and over.

The double irony is the ARRL's own perspective seems to be narrowed pretty tight to HF and ARES, and Contesting.  So that is why you'll never read about anything in those areas on my blog.  You'll likely only read about stuff that you won't read in QST or on the ARRL web, as I have tried to fill that void.

Kay, if you want to encourage hams to try something new, how about relaxing a few more rules?

The recent petition- wavier regarding voice and data emissions is a good start.

Internet Pioneer Paul Baran, W3KAS (SK)
2011-04-01T01:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.arrl.org/news/internet-pioneer-paul-baran-w3kas-sk

What I'll add that he mixed his radio interest in by helping found Merticom. A pioneering wireless Internet service that existed from 1995-2003, long before "3G" and wifi..

For more technical info on the Merticom Ricochet Radios you may want to have a look here: http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/metricom/index.html

Bi-directional Amplifier Design
2011-03-25T12:53:00.004-05:00
Well it's been a while since I ripped on the ARRL.  And since they are doing such a great job, you knew it wouldn't be long before you'd see something so non-professional (amateur) from me again.

from kb9mwr@q...
to w9gig@a...
cc n4qx@a..., n7hpr@t...
date Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 9:52 PM
subject bi-directional amplifier design help

Hello,

I'd like to help encourage the development/documentation of a bi-directional amplifier for high-speed multi-media applications.

I was prompted when I read the ARRL Homebrew Challenge I said to myself, why encourage something that has already been done.

Since there are more non-part 15 overlapping channels on 3 GHz, 5 GHz and 900 MHz bands I would encourage it to be for either of those bands.

I haven't been able to make much head way in this myself due to a lack of access to the necessary development equipment.

In some of the open source development efforts that I have been part of, a bounty is often posted as a reward for something like this.

I'd like to take the same approach to this, as I am offering $40 to anyone who can document such a design in QEX or the like.  I'd also like to suggest that anyone else interested in the development also consider a contribution to the bounty (aka up-the-ante).

The total bounty-pledges of course will help who ever steps forward in their design and development costs.

To clarify, I am not requesting production or kits, just someone who wants the challenge and has the know-how to create a working prototype and will openly document their design in QEX or some other publication.

Would it be possible to get a blurb in QEX magazine to spread the idea out to the more technical crowd?

Thanks,
Steve, KB9MWR

Yeah, you guessed it, zero replies to my request.

And now some commentary on the HR 607 bill that has provisions to auction off a portion of the 70cm band.

I did my part and wrote to my representatives.  While it would be a shame to lose this band, the lower half of the band is Very inactive. Around here the only part used for the most-part is 440-450 MHz.

The current band-plan that caves out the lower portion of the band for ATV and isn't bringing any real traffic/ use either.  

Seems a shame that we can't setup a decent wireless (emergency) network, other than this pathetic Winlink business. Heck if we can't do it, sounds like that is exactly what the proposed Department of Homeland Security First Responder network is.

Time to move forward, else I have little desire to continue to write letters to try and defend spectrum that will just sit idle as it has been. Use it or lose it..... maybe the ARRL, TAPR and other "leaders" will one day realize they need to step forward and suggest some new ideas for the hobby to help not only "protect" the spectrum, but put it to actual use.

What I am reading is "When All Else Fails" ... we will build our own wireless network. Possibly a wake up call for ham radio?

Letter to my local club
2011-03-12T13:52:00.002-06:00
To: The President of the Green Bay Mike and Key Club.

Hello, my name is Steve, call-sign: KB9MWR. I’ve been active with the hobby since 1996 at age 16. I have been a member of the Mike & Key Club off and on.

I’d like to share some thoughts and observations and make some suggestions in the summary.

Fourteen years ago the mailed newsletters and repeaters where vital communication links for ham to share news and ideas amongst themselves. Now we are connected in a variety of different ways and the hobby is less relevant to many.

The newsletters now are electronic and cost the club nothing to reproduce and distribute. In my opinion they can no longer be viewed as a membership benefit. They should be viewed as a promotional tool, posted and shared publicly to encourage /show club involvement and in the hobby in general.

The emphasis on maintaining multiple club repeaters seems silly. The usage isn’t nearly what it used to be.

Hams keep in touch a variety of different ways now. Keeping things on the air for the sake of it, isn’t spectrally efficient. It’s a detrimental mentality that will surely keep future ham developments from obtaining spectrum.

In my opinion the role of the amateur service as changed quite a bit. It was technologically on top and interested many when I entered the hobby. 

Autopatch, packet and the like, all before cellphones and the internet and other social networking avenues.

This no longer seems to be the case. However, I feel it still serves a purpose to those who like to experiment and “learn how things work.” The true technicians and amateurs in my eyes.

Ponder how can the club reach out to those types of people. They seem most likely to help the hobby move forward in my opinion.

The banquet is just around the corner. I’d like to see the ham of the year nomination process refined a bit.

I think nominations should be on merits, and not the buddy system. I think a statement of reasons accompanying the nomination would help bring some value back to the award.

With a new year just around the corner, I’d like to see some defined goals for the year ahead as well as a explanation of the benefits of membership.

Lastly, I’d like to suggest the board conduct a member interest survey and solicit suggestions for future club direction and if warranted make updates to the clubs Purpose and Scope in the By-laws.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and ponder how we as a club can be more beneficial to our fellow amateurs.

Steve, KB9MWR

Einstein said "Insanity is doing things the same way but expecting a different result."

My guess is none of this will happen, but at least I can say I tried.

HSMM: 420-430 MHz
2011-03-01T01:29:00.030-06:00

It has been a while since I wrote on the idea of HSMM on the 70cm, 420-450 MHz band.

There have been some recent threats to the band with the proposed HR 607 bill.

So my logic to protecting the spectrum available to us, is to try and make better use of what we have, instead of letting it sit idle.

So following that logic, most of the lower part of the 70 centimeter ham band has been fairly idle.  This is known as the Amateur TV sub-band (420-430 MHz).

ATV - 421.250 Video - 425.750 Audio 
ATV - 427.250 Video - 431.750 Audio
ATV - 434.000 Video - 438.500 Audio
ATV - 439.250 Video - 443.750 Audio

So far there seems to be a fair number of hams interested in 802.11 based networks.  But one of the big hurdles is understanding and overcoming the line of site, and other wide-band microwave propagation issues.

I've pointed out that 3 GHz is a great band since you won't be sharing the space with all kinds of other Part 15 unlicensed devices that inevitably lead to a higher noise floors and headaches. 

The concept of HSMM on the 70 cm band intrigues me and others greatly because of the non-line-of-site possibilities. 

A normal 802.11 channel is 20 MHz wide, but I wrote before that this can be reduced to 5 MHz.

XAGYL Communications, is a Canadian Distributor of Ultra High-Speed, Long Range Wireless equipment.  In 2009 they partnered with Doodle Labs, a privately held manufacturing company with headquarters in Singapore to design and manufacture a new line of long range Wireless Data Transceiver devices.

It appears they may be the first to consider offering a true non-line-of-site solution, capable of operation in the 70cm band that could easily fit into unused ATV channels between 420-430 MHz.  

In a recent communication Daniel Lajeunesse at Xagyl in October 2011, I inquired on the status of their advertised XAGYL XC450M2.  He said this is their next project in the pipeline - expect 2 to 3 months.

http://www.xagyl.com/store/product.php?productid=16450&cat=251&page=1

I've held off blogging about this exciting new development for some time, but with some limited communications with both Xagyl and Doodle Labs it appears they are at least curious about what kind of amateur market there is.  Or at the very least are okay with some inquiries.

However, Doodle Lab's business model is to work with OEMs. Doodle Labs is not set up to address small quantity purchases. They are also concerned that they may get buried with the support questions. Doodle Labs has approached a few resellers to see if they can do this. But they want to see the demand first before they carry the product. So this is like a chicken and an egg situation. 

I recently received an email from Jay Parikh with Doodle Labs mentioning he stumbled into this blog and was impressed by it.

He also wrote to bring my attention to a new product introduced by his company that would likely be of interest to the ham community.

"It is a Atheros AR5414 based radio module for the 380-520 MHz frequency range." 

Jay, mentions that they have already received a number of inquires from hams on it.

With a 1989.5 MHz frequency offset, a proposed channel plan from Doodle Labs is below. 

For 5 MHz BW, Center Freq. = 422.5, 427.5, 432.5 , 437.5, 442.5, 447.5 (For US and AU)
432.5 , 437.5, 442.5, 447.5 (For Canada)
432.5 , 437.5 (For Europe)

For 10 MHz BW, Center Freq. = 427.5, 432.5 , 437.5, 442.5 (For US and AU)
437.5, 442.5 (For Canada)
None (For Europe)

For 20 MHz BW, Center Freq. = 432.5 , 437.5 (For US and AU)
None (For Canada)
None (For Europe)

{Update 3/20/11}
After a bunch of discussion, Doodle Labs mentioned they planned on releasing a model that specifically covers the ham spectrum. (see below)

He also notes that they used to have a relationship with XAGYL but for past couple of years it has stopped. So he is not sure what they are advertising. The modules look like theirs but Jay doubts they can supply any of them yet (since Doodle Labs has not sold to them yet). 

So at this point, they are still trying on getting a distributor lined up, and will be in touch with me and others who have contacted them as soon as that is done in approximately two months.

He notes the delay is actually on their side. There are some minor changes that need to be made to the design and their design team is completely swamped at the moment with a few different customer projects.

{Update 6/13/11}
Pre-Production stage. Expected availability is the end of October 2011. 

10/11:
http://doodlelabs.com/products-and-services/amateur-bands/420-450-mhz-band-dl435.html

Now if we can just find a OEM interested in selling this.

I have left word with Ramsey Electronics suggesting they look into and consider selling this.

Ramsey has sold amateur radio gear some as kits, and other things fully assembled.  From VHF/UHF and HF transceivers, VHF/UHF power amplifiers, and ATV kits.  All of which was manufactured by someone else, but bears the Ramsey name.  So they seem like a good candidate.

If anyone else has any seller suggestions, please spread the word, and/or drop me a message.

Vint Cerf: "Re-Thinking the Internet"
2011-02-22T12:44:00.004-06:00
Vint Cerf is recognized as one of the fathers of the internet. (He was a program manager for the U.S. D.A.R.P.A.)  He was recently invited back to Stanford where he graduated, to give a speech to future engineering students.

There is a lot of interesting history and things to get you thinking in his presentation.

Pay attention to the end of the presentation for this:

Wireless was absolutely a part of the internet architecture.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that the emergency network is dependent on a system that is often know not to work during emergencies.

Or If the emergency occurs in an area where there isn't any cellular infrastructure.  (Base-stations, back haul)

So I actually like the idea of doing down a different path.  

Which is a mesh like thing, that can be ad-hoc.

I also rather like the idea that everything transported in that system is IP based.  The part that I like is, it doesn't care how its carried, it doesn't know what its carrying.  It could be voice, it could be video, the network is oblivious.

By the way the police and fire departments and EMS today have a lot of trouble communicating.  Because their radios have to work at RF.  If Instead if we said the whole base is IP.  

And if you need to communicate by voice we will use VOIP.  And if we have to we will do RF transformations in some portable nodes.  

The whole idea is that your compatibility on an end to end to based on VOIP, and not on radio compatibility.  We'd have a much more general architecture.

For some reason that unknown reason that obvious fact has been resisted or ignored by the public safety environment.

10 watt 2.4 GHz amplifier
2011-02-06T09:50:00.003-06:00
Last year we stumbled into a bunch of 10 watt 2.4 GHz amplifiers at the Chicago FM Club's Radio Expo 2010, in Belvidere Illinois

There were only $20, and were actually pre−driver amplifiers, part of 2.5 GHz Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) systems being removed from the air.

They put out around 10 watts (+40 dBm) with a 100 milliwatt (+20 dBm) RF input at 2.4 GHz.  The amplifier needs +15 VDC at around 2.7A and a −15 VDC gate bias at 12 mA.  And the following documentation should get you going with this hamfest treasure.

No Internet, no problem?
2011-02-02T10:47:00.004-06:00
PC World has a good article in response to the Egypt situation. 

Does your government have an Internet kill-switch? Read our guide to Guerrilla Networking and be prepared for when the lines get cut.

Hams should give it a read as they are talking about Do-It-Yourself Internet With Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi / Mesh Networks.

The guys over at Noisebridge were the first to point out that another good reason hams should be building mesh networks is because of proposed internet kill switch bill.

Simultaneously, the United States is debating a bill to create an Internet kill switch, also known as the PCNAA bill. For true redundancy, a non-critical network can and should be built by the amateur service to avoid this single point of failure.

Some 10-20 years ago there were many private networks for automated teller machines, telephone, merchant credit card verification and so forth.  Now most of this all happens over the internet.  If there were some sort of major internet outage or attack, many day-to-day things would be interrupted.

Simply put, I'm pretty sure there would be major commerce and stock market effects.  I have a hard time fathoming what would constitute a national cyber emergency, that would be worth those kind of side effects.

At the same time many ham radio systems use the internet for wormhole-like connectivity.  APRS, WinLink, D-Star, IRLP, Echolink and so forth.  An emphasis on building our own backbone and infrastructure is just simply not there.  This leaves vulnerabilities in our emergency communications reliability.

There are some unknown vulnerabilities in the upcoming switch to IPV6, such as distributed denial of service attacks on IPv4 to IPv6 gateways.  As well as root nameservers, and core internet routing.  

The need for Speed and Digital Networks

Nearly 10 years ago a survey conducted by the ARRL Technology Task Force, of League members and other amateurs revealed that the number one interest in new technologies was in high-speed digital networks.  Amateur radio, particularly EmComm (this was just after 911), needed some means of data transmission significantly faster than conventional packet radio.  

Winlink is severely limited in capabilities and doesn't necessarily even conform to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards.  As the population in urban cities grows so does communications.  Have you ever thought how long it would take to covey even just 300 messages that loved ones are okay over such an antiquated medium?

If you still need more reasons to explore these wide-band modes, consider the fact that 99% of available amateur allocations go virtually unused.

Be a Life-Long Learner
2011-02-01T00:14:00.002-06:00

From the Acknowledgments and Dedication page of the ARRL PIC Programming for Beginners Book by Mark Spencer, WA8SME:

I would like to acknowledge the contribution of you, the reader of this text.

As a life-long learner, you are my real inspiration.  At times it feels like technology is passing us by, but I am inspired by those who want to be more than just technology users... and I thank you for that.

I've always been more interested in the experimental/technical side of ham radio, as opposed to the operational side.  

And I have to agree with Mark.  Those who truly inspire and make a difference in this hobby are those driven to learn.

The way I see it, primary interests of say; emergency communications, DX, contesting, Field Day, and QSO Party's are less constructive in the grand scheme of things.

Now I understand why over the years I have been slowly shifting away from the more traditional ham traditions toward the more experimental, futuristic ones.

How do you spend your time in this great hobby?  (By the way, above are thumb nails of some books I have read and recommend)

Also worth mention is the OP-ED in the February QST by Randy Ross, KI4ZJI titled "Evolve or Die" makes good points.  He points out the close tie between Amateur Radio and societies evolving technology.  And to ensure that continues he suggests:

"Knowledge of computers and the Internet should be embraced and incorporated into the newest evolutions of Amateur Radio."

New D-Star Developments
2011-01-27T12:27:00.001-06:00

Above is a D-Star Support Matrix document that Scott, NS7C compiled.  It's a good overview of what works with what.

"With all the various hardware and software options available, I sometimes forget which hardware works with which software." 

Just before Christmas I asked on the dstar_digital group about decoding D-Star DTMF. I have found that is way to clumsy to have to handle all control functions using the URCALL fields. (especially when mobile)

About a year ago I had played with trying to decode it.  I saw patterns, but wasn't able to define them, and had read that it might not ever be possible to use DTMF on D-Star as some thought it was implemented incorrectly by Icom.

Just after Christmas, Michael, DL1BFF proved this wrong.  Turns out after cooking up some code to handle the bit interleaving and FEC processing, the DTMF is there just like the manual says.

To compliment this, Kristoff, ON1ARF has been working on some voice-announcement software.

This includes a wav2ambe tool, that uses a DV-dongle to encode multiple files in sequence to produce one single .dvtool or .ambe file. (useful to generate an announcement "on the fly" based on a sequence of wav-files).

As well as a wavstream tool to stream multiple wav-files in sequence.  And ambe2wav - a new tool that can decode one or more AMBE-encoded audio-file (.dvtool or .ambe format) back into a wav-file.

He is also working on generating a predefined AMBE word / letter pack.  This will enable D-Star repeaters to be able to concatenate words for announcements without the need for a DV-Dongle attached.

With these two tools, you will be able to setup scripts to speak weather reports and the like, just as hams have done with IRLP.

Also think of custom greetings and queries.  

"Welcome Steve to the N9DKH D-Star repeater, the temperate is 67 degrees.".. when you make your first transmission after being idle. 

You should also be able to query over the air when your friend was last heard, as well as just about anything else you can think of.

Scott, KI4LKF is still at it.  His latest was working in D-Star voice mail.

YRCALL=_ _ _ _ _ _ S0
The above command will Store/create voice mail in the dvtool file x_voicemail.dat
YRCALL=_ _ _ _ _ _ R0
The above command will Recall/playback voice mail from the dvtool file x_voicemail.dat
YRCALL=_ _ _ _ _ _ C0
The above command will Clear/delete voice mail. File x_voicemail.dat will be deleted.
In all cases, the letter x in the file name x_voicemail is the module A,B or C

All very interesting ham developments worth checking out.

Intellectual Property
2011-01-27T05:50:00.003-06:00
If you know me or have been reading my blog long enough, you know that I am a proponent of open source concepts.

I remember posting to the Texas A&M Mailing list back in 2007 because I was running into a glut of roadblocks related to Intellectual Property in various projects that I was dabbling with at the time.

"Leaders in the ham radio arena who are to busy beating their own chests touting things like they are the "national association for amateur radio."

These so called leaders need to suggest/ lay some general concepts to steer the hobby to the future....  focus on spreading the importance of the open source concepts in the ham radio arena"

In my last big project the 73 Magazine Index,  I realized that its contents will become lost to posterity due to intellectual property issues.  A dirty shame....

Interestingly enough, I have noticed that TAPR has grasped the open concept.

They came up with an Open Hardware License, and I just noticed that the DCC DVD I bought was licensed as a Creative Commons 3.0 Share-A-Like work.  

Consider this:
TAPR's membership journal publication, the Packet Status Register (PSR) featuring both technical and non-technical articles is an authoritative source for up-to-date user and technical information on digital issues.

Explicit permission is granted to reproduce any materials appearing herein for non-commercial amateur publications provided credit is given to both the author and TAPR...

Yet I just noticed on the front page of the ARRL's site:
Copyright © 2010 American Radio Relay League. Reproduction of material from any ARRL Web page without written permission is strictly prohibited.
  Also: http://www.arrl.org/copyright-faqs

I've also noticed that "ARES" is registered trademark of the ARRL and so forth.

I'm sorry if I have not properly denoted all these various trademarks.  It's not intentional, it's just an encumberment that I don't have time to keep up with.

The reason I decided to blog about "Intellectual Property" is because my local ham club is in a potential law suit over IP use that could effectively flush this non-profit educational organization of all it's assets. 

So I encourage you to think about all this, and how productive or non-productive intellectual property is to the hobby and the world.

Here are some of my favorites:

Revolution OS

The Code Linux

Pirates of Silicon Valley (you can't watch this online due to IP, but it's worth watching)

http://www.fsf.org/

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Understanding Digital
2011-01-02T22:55:00.000-06:00
Okay so maybe the last couple microwave projects that I posted were not your bag.

There have been a few good videos from Hak5 lately.

If you aren't familiar, Hak5 is a weekly "home-grown" video podcast about computers, and technology.

I highly recommend it, and since someone left blog comments about the concept of more video content, well here you go.

If you are an old-timer, and videos on the web are too hip for you, I expect you to read Make Magazine.

A couple weeks ago the Hak5 crew covered Pulse Code Modulation.  And the following week, Time Division Multiplexing (TDMA).

Both concepts in the show are used in relation to the telephone network.  But they are both critical concepts to the basis of digital communications. (i.e. non-cw and other archaic forms of communication.)

As an example of how this ties in, I've been playing with Mototrbo, which happens to be a two-time-slot digital TDMA two way radio technology.

Remember: I'm trying to help hams expand their understanding and explore new ideas with my blog. 

I can't be successful unless You spend time less time drooling (like full-fledged ARES member with down-syndrome) and ogling that utterly useless QST magazine.

Read something that will help your brain, and the hobby!  I'll send you issues of 73 if I have to!

Mad Scientist
2011-01-01T00:31:00.000-06:00
I was happy to see DIY (Do it Yourself) on the cover of the January QST again.

I found the directional coupler - power/SWR meter article interesting, yet disappointing as it is only for HF.

The OP-ED member view point from Eric, KL7AJ titled "Put the Mad Scientist Back Into Ham Radio" reflects my own view point very much.

Eric points out the difference between his generation of Amateur Radio experimenters and today's batch of obsessed appliance operators.

"In our day, it was our job to create emergencies.  The new EmComm oriented hams are intent on fixing emergencies."

He's referring to setting accidental fires building Tesla Coils, or Jacob's ladders, and things of this nature.

He makes a good point.  If we want young blood in the hobby, we have to compete with paintball, bungee jumping and extreme skateboarding.

I highly recommend giving his opinions a read on page 82.  

If you are ready, here is a nice experimental project from my Mad Scientist friend.

You know you are ready for the accidental RF burn from this 100 watt 2 GHz amplifier.

Make Yourself Heard!
2010-12-09T13:48:00.008-06:00
I just noticed the New QuickStats Poll Now Available on the ARRL Web Site.

It's a far cry from a comprehensive survey, but it's a start.

Vote in all or even just one of the QST QuickStat polls below. We'll publish the results in an upcoming issue of QST (look for the QuickStats page in the Table of Contents).

This months questions include CW and ARES!

Results from this QuickStats poll will be published in the March 2011 issue of QST on the QuickStats page, located in the rear advertising section of the magazine. Along with monthly poll results, QST QuickStats offers colorful charts and graphs that highlight interesting Amateur Radio statistics.

Another way to help fine-tune the League is by letting them know your favorite articles in each issue of QST magazine.

http://www.arrl.org/members-only/qstvote.html

This survey has been around a while longer.  I discovered it about a year ago.

I'm encouraging all ARRL members to vote more often for the articles you like. We won't change the whole world, but at least we can make a point to speak up.

I also noticed this, which I think is a good idea:
The ARRL is sponsoring its first-ever video contest! We are looking for ARRL members to shoot and submit videos that showcase how fun and electrifying our hobby is!

So, maybe they do listen. I remember grumbling about the ARRL Homebrew Challenge not promoting anything new.

Here is another idea for the league.  Perhaps if you feel the same way, you can make youself heard on this too.

Back in January 2008, the Senior Discount (65+) was eliminated for ARRL Membership.  Citing risen costs.  

Fact is seniors now make up a huge proportion of the membership, so discounting them is a huge drain.

I wonder if the League has considered extending a discount to hams under age 25, or those enrolled in a relevant schooling.  Sure couldn't hurt the hobby could it?

I speak from experience, as I was lucky back in 1997 to be a recipient of a Foundation for Amateur Radio scholarship that I applied to my college electronics schooling.  And I am still active in the hobby, including helping helping elmers, now in walkers, get to the store. lol!

Microwave Projects =/ ARRL
2010-12-08T13:05:00.001-06:00
It was very sad to read the passing of John Champa, K8OCL.  He was former Chairman of the ARRL HSMM (High Speed Multimedia) Working Group.  He was also the High Speed Multi-Media Radio Contributing Editor for CQ VHF Magazine. 

Unlike most hams he had a high level of energy and ambition for his work on HSMM and in other areas of the hobby not well explored.

I am beginning to sound like Wayne Green with my ARRL critical comments.  

But hey, they led me on, to think there was some sort of Microwave Bandplan changes in the midst.  Truth is, I am not sure of the status if this, and can't get any real answers from the league.

Regardless if these jokers want to live in the past or not, here is an interesting thing to consider:

Amateur Allocations - Little known fact

Did you know in the US amateurs have access to approximately:
3.75 MHz of HF (160m-10m) spectrum
67 MHz of VHF/UHF (6m-33cm) spectrum
24.095 GHz of microwave (23cm-300GHz) spectrum

Of the above, over 99% of hams use a tiny fraction (0.3%) of the total ham frequency allocations while the remainder of our available ham allocation is essentially ignored. By the way, ARRL said that as of 4/2010, there were about 688,500 personal ham radio licenses in the USA. If only one percent of these were microwave users, that would be 6885 hams. We often hear that the majority of licensed hams are inactive. How many microwave experimenters do you know?

Source: hsmm-mesh.org

The realization occurred I was just a Technician over 10 years ago was that wow, there is a lot to explore and learn in the Microwave arena.  

Since then I have learned a lot and found it absolutely critical to have that under your belt.  

I remember reading the HSMM partnership with the North Texas Microwave Society when John, K8OCL moved to Texas.  And have to concur that is a great idea.

Since the ARRL has been so quiet, I have decided I need to do the same.  But I will be supplementing my blog space with more technical microwave experimentation articles in hopes of helping spur others on.

Since the mid-90's when I got into the hobby I have been connected to a then- high-school technology club.  Ever since the same basic group of now 30's aged guys get together to shoot-the-shit, complain about the ARRL :-) and most importantly see what we can build.

What you will notice from my future blogs is that there have been few HF related projects, and many microwave.  As it should be.  

It's a shame the ARRL doesn't understand simple math.  There is far more to lose in our microwave spectrum than HF.  Because there is tons more of it, and hardly any hams use it, and the commercial squatters actually see it as useful spectrum.

Hmm, if only we could do more than throw money to protect spectrum.  Perhaps the following microwave projects could be QST material to help foster so actual use?  Naa.. that is right we don't want to make anyone smarter.  I am a believer that if ham radio is to evolve, then QST needs to.  The concept that QST needs to continued to be watered down just doesn't stick with me.

The Proposed NTIA "Fast Track" Spectrum Reallocation shows that our 2.3 and 3 GHz allocations may be endanger.  So to start off here is a 4 watt power amplifier for 2 GHz.

D-Star for iPhone/Android
2010-12-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

This was the subject of a short thread on the dstar_digital yahoo group started by David, KC2WNW.

I chimed in and mentioned that there are several SIP/VOIP apps out there.  For desktop computers as well as Ipods and Smart Phones.

As long as the client can support a non numeric SIP addressing scheme, I really think this is a do-able idea. 

I've mentioned the idea before as well has John, K7VE who first shared the concept with me.

A validated user account on a D-star to SIP bridging site would have to be established.  You'd program that into your SIP phone client app.  From there you could connect to a remote D-Star system using the SIP address convention
sip://kb9lkzb@dstarsipbridge.com, etc.

The age old duplex / half-duplex PTT phone patch problem rears it's ugly head here.  

The Asterisk radio guys have their own custom application that has a software PTT.  Or you can set DTMF digits to control the PTT.  Much like how the CAT controller phone remote function works.  When you press 1, the this enables transmit (and a soft steady tone is fed back to the phone user while they are in transmit as a reminder), and 2 to go back to listen mode.

While not as elegant as a custom App with a software PTT button, this approach ensures compatibility with any standard SIP phone with this age old phone patch dilemma.

I use MIXphone/MIXVoip on an Ipod touch to connect to my own Asterisk phone and analog radio system.  But it doesn't look like it supports non numeric SIP dialing.  However, I am sure there is one that does.

Our Community Leaders
2010-11-11T13:21:00.004-06:00

I just received the December QST Magazine.  There wasn't anything that really to terribly interesting and usefull for me in this issue again (sigh)... However the "It Seems to Us" editorial did catch my eye.... (here is a snippet)

Our Community Leaders

"Why do people become radio amateurs? If you ask new licensees, frequently you will hear that they are interested in radio technology or that they want to be prepared for emergencies and to provide public service communications. But there's more to it than that."

In general, people join groups with whom they have something in common and whose company they enjoy. Sometimes a desire to learn - to tap into a body of knowledge and expertise - is the motivator. At other times, sharing a common goal is enough to bring people together who might otherwise have no occasion to interact.

Amateur Radio is a global community. We can lay claim to being the first technology-based social network. The common goal that sparked the creation and early growth of the ARRL was the desire to develop a network of relay stations to overcome the limited range of the crude radio equipment of the day, so that amateurs could exchange messages with others well beyond the reach of their own stations.

Read the whole thing in the December QST, Page 9.  

It's kind of interesting and fitting as I re-post this on a different social network.  Oddly enough, where sharing expertise and knowledge doesn't require you to at the radio at the time of relay...  A different demonstration of global communication nearly 100 years later.

It's also important to realize that the primary leadership role of a club is likely changing.  

In the 90's maintaining a local repeater (or two) was the key to the local ham radio social network.

As more hams have since gained access to the internet and cellular phones, and now social networking sites online the repeaters are less active and less important.

It's time to step back and reevaluate the clubs role and priorities in 2010 and beyond. 

And finally I have to repost this from Wayne Green's 11/01/10 blog:

A Ham Note

A note from Ben Alabastro W1VM chuckled over the September 2010 issue of QST having an article on a solar-powered repeater…and the Ham Radio December 1978 issue having an article on solar-powered repeater design. Glad to see you guys in Newington are still right on the ball.

Far's I can remember, our champions at the ARRL have never pioneered any new ham technology. To this day they're still pushing CW, a hundred-plus-year-old technology....

As pointed out, good leadership is hard to find at a national level.  In summary: Local clubs really need to put more emphasis on leadership.

Tower Bonding & Repeaters
2010-11-10T12:07:00.006-06:00

I recently helped a friend put up a Rhon 25 tower.  We got into the discussion of what he might put on the tower.  And proper grounding, etc.

This lucky guy got a hold of someone who had an attachment for a Hilti hammer drill to drive the 8 foot ground rods.  (Notice the plural, as in two).

Years ago I wasn't able to find anyone with this so I did mine hard way.

Then I brought up the idea of relocating repeaters and such.  

From the Hardware Noise section on repeaterbuilder.com:
Without the proper grounding and bonding you may constantly be looking for noise sources.  Pay particular attention to any point where two conductors are in poor contact with each other.

Tower bonding is something I didn't find a whole lot on when I did a google search.

Every 10 feet you have a semi-conductor.  Snow and water do get into those joints on your Rhon tower, and over time there is light rust in those joints.  This is a recipe for degraded repeater performance.

I showed this on an un-bonded tower that we once had our tech club repeater on.

We'd notice that on windy days, the weaker guys on HT's and such would have excessive creaking and popping on their signals.

So I keyed the repeaters local mic and went out and shook the tower as a demo.  

Degraded noise floor.  

After installing Copper Clad/ Zinc Grounding Clamps above and below each joint of the tower (as shown) this went away.

It's important to note that we also ran some RTV silicone around those clamps to prevent yet another water / rust joint.  And finally spay paint them, as copper clamps rust easily.

There is a whole lot more I could write on keeping a quiet noise floor in duplex environments.  But most of it has been covered elsewhere.  

Most people don't understand how important this all is.  I think this is because their experience is only in simplex operations.  When you have something transmitting at the same time it is receiving the whole tower becomes like a charged capacitor.

http://www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/cracking.html:
This situation happens when transmitter power is put into the antenna and the surrounding area is lit up with the RF energy - yours or someone elses.   What happens is the RF then creates tiny arcs and sparks in the broken joint and the receiver is desensitized by the wide band RF created by the sparking.

And RF Grounding is different than surge or safety grounding.

In RF, the length of the ground runs has much more to do with the fraction of a wavelength at the frequency involved than the DC resistance of the wire. 

Good RF grounding can add several S units to the receive signal and dramatically reduce noise on the signal.  Think surface area, and creating as big as RF counterpoise outside at your ground system.

Ham Surveys
2010-11-03T10:00:00.002-05:00
A while back I blogged on the importance of local clubs to periodically survey their membership to help the club officers identify what the membership as a whole is interested in. 

Amateur Radio Newsline recently reported that both the RSGB and RAC are performing major surveys.

RADIOS FUTURE: MAJOR SURVEY OF UK HAMS LAUNCHED BY RSGB

At the recent Radio Society of Great Britain National Hamfest the U-K national society announced the launch a major survey of all United Kingdom radio amateurs. The objective of the survey is to gather as much information as possible on 21st century amateur radio operation in that nation.

According to the announcement, the survey, which is internet based, will run for three months. The data collected will be used to determine the direction that amateur radio takes over the next 10 to 20 years.

Full details of the survey will shortly appear in the amateur radio press while notices of invitation will be placed on all amateur radio reflectors and will appear shortly on the RSGB website. 

http://www.rsgb.org/survey/

RESTRUCTURING:  RADIO AMATEURS OF CANADA  SURVEY FOR ITS FUTURE

Seemingly following in the footsteps of the Radio Society of Great Britain, the Board and Executive of the Radio Amateurs of Canada is asking current, past and future potential members as well as amateur radio clubs to provide  thoughts and recommendations on the future of the hobby in that nation.  This, by responding to a set of questions posted to the organizations website by October 20th.

Responses will be considered at a meeting at the end of October to develop a vision for the future of Radio Amateurs of Canada in the 21st century.  In addition they will be establishing a two year operational plan for 2011 and 2012. 

http://www.rac.ca/en/rac/strategic-future/survey/

Perhaps the ARRL will do the same next?  Or if nothing else you can always be proactive and drop a line to your section manager or other division director on the subject.

Kenwood TKR-850 as a D-Star Repeater
2010-11-01T00:40:00.005-05:00

In my opinion this type of thing needs more attention. After all do-it-yourself has long been a hefty part of this hobby. And there is no better way to learn than a hands-on project like this.

Reason number two would be economics, but I think that is obvious.

The third is spectral savings. D-Star is narrowband, but buying a new system just robs another frequency pair from the pool. It seems people rarely take repeaters off the air, even if nobody really uses them. And these days it seems there are more repeaters in a geographic area, than there is activity.

So it seems best in my mind to convert something already out there. This would make a great club project.

This is great example of continued innovation of D-STAR technologies by incorporating non-Icom products into D-STAR environment. 

Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:32:17 -0000
To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com
From: 
Subject: K8BIG Port B Using Kenwood TKR-850 Interfaced to ID-RP2C

The K8BIG Port B D-Star Repeater in Cincinnati, Ohio is successfully running using a Kenwood TKR-850 Interfaced to the Icom ID-RP2C in place of the Icom Band module (ID-RP4000V). The usable range of the repeater has been effectively doubled from around 25 miles radius to 50-55 Miles radius.

The K8BIG system is on the WCPO-TV Tower overlooking downtown Cincinnati, OH with the antenna at 700' AGL. There are 3 50,000 Watt FM Radio transmitters, 1 250,000 Watt VHF DTV Transmitter, and 2 3,000 Watt LPTV stations on the same tower along with various commercial VHF/UHF/220 transmitters so the RF environment is pretty harsh - add in the neighboring (2 Blocks) tower with a similar complement of transmitters and it is downright brutal for any radio equipment.

The Icom band module was being swamped by the high RF levels at and surrounding the site, causing very poor effective receive sensitivity even after the TX-RX BpBr Cans and an additional band-pass cavity. I had partially remedied this with one side of a reject-only mobile duplexer, but that introduced around 6 dB of insertion loss. Even with the 6 dB insertion loss the effective sensitivity was improved. The Kenwood repeater has a much tighter front end and much better selectivity with adjustable front-end helicals so the additional receive filter is not necessary and the 6 dB insertion loss was removed.

After the interface was built we were able to plug and play into the Icom ID-RP2C controller and gateway. With the exception of the increased range there is no operational difference in the repeater - everything works identically to the Icom band module. Commands work, data works, D-Rats works, etc.

I will be building more of the interfaces shortly which can be used to interface any 9600 baud-capable analog repeater directly to the ID-RP2C. Anyone interested please let me know.

Thanks.

Dan Woodie
KC8ZUM

You may want to look at;
Michael, VK5ZEA's Homebrew DV Node Adapter to ID-RP2C interface.

John, K7VE's Kenwood TKR-820 Node adapter retrofitting.

And/or my Motorola GM300 retrofitting and commentary.

As a technical side note, one thing to consider when converting analog repeaters is the receiver IF bandwidth.  To date there has been little discussion on narrowing receivers bandwidth to match the narrower D-Star signal.  Just be aware that converting a 1950's era repeater to D-Star that might have a 60 Khz I.F. would be vulnerable to adjacent channel interference.  A good overview of the theory can be found in a reprinted article from Ham Radio Magazine 1985, by WD5IBS.

Interesting Article Bounty
2010-10-06T13:32:00.008-05:00
Okay I'm not happy with the magazines I have been receiving.  It has been over a year since I have read anything on HSMM. And I have yet to see the word Asterisk in QST, QEX, or any CQ magazines.

And when I read the recent ARRL Homebrew Challenge I said to myself, why encourage something that has already been done?

While I have high hopes for a couple new ARRL staff, and the future if ham radio. I am presenting a challenge.

During an interview, the Beaver Valley ARA revealed that ARRL President, Kay Craigie, N3KN got licensed in 1983 because she was jealous of all the fun her husband was having with ham radio. She was a computer hobbyist at the time and became a ham just when computers were starting to be integrated with amateur radio. 

She was also the vice president when the HSMM working-group was formed back in 2001.

So it would seem natural to assume her stance on the future of digital communications is strong.

Brennan Price, N4QX is the new Technical Relations Manager filling the vacancy created by the retirement of Paul Rinaldo, W4RI.

It was Paul, W4RI's recommendation (back in 2001), to the Board that the HSMM Working Group be founded.

I don't know much about Brennan, N4QX, other that his stated goal is to "defend Amateur Radio spectrum."  So it would seem that encouraging microwave/HSMM use would be logical.

I fell strongly about the ARRL Technology Task Force.  I hope he can fill the shoes as well as Paul did.

My challenge is to get more hams to submit articles to QST, QEX, and CQ magazines.

My homebrew challenge would be to document a bi-directional amplifier in QEX magazine.  Since there are more non-overlapping channels on the 5 GHz and 900 MHz band I would encourage it to be for either of those bands, or 3 GHz.

Contact me if you are up to that challenge, as I am offering a small bounty.  I also have other gifts for anyone else who steps forward to write anything else interesting.  If you write, and don't tell me, I'll likely be getting a hold of you to thank you.

60 Ghz and the Future
2010-10-04T13:08:00.000-05:00
In one of my earlier blogs, I pointed out that about 40 years ago 2 meters and 70 cm were basically uncharted areas. Now they are populated. Undoubtedly the future of ham radio is in our huge - virtually unused microwave allocations. They have the necessary bandspace to support wideband modes.

Jim, KC4BQK was first to repost this good video about 60 Ghz and the future of LANs. Blogger Craig Mathias from the Fairpoint Group dose a good job explaining 60 Ghz and the difference between WiGig and WiMedia. This could be something in the future that could include Ham Radio.

Check out his blog http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/3436

Linux Speech Recognition
2010-10-03T19:07:00.002-05:00
I've been looking for Automated Speech Recognition for Linux for a while.  I keep seeing Dragon Naturally Speaking on the selves locally. 

I have read some discussions where people have gotten Dragon to work under Wine. But I really need something that works standard in and out style, so I can script things to work with it.

I have all kinds of ideas for two-way radio integration and Asterisk projects.  If only something existed.

I have played with CMU Sphinx in the past, but it's not as developed as I'd like.

If anyone has experience in the area of Speech Recognition with Linux, I'd like to hear from you.  Ideally I am looking for something that is under $200, and works as well as Dragon.  It need not be open source, just Linux compatible.

Specifically if anyone has experience with Voxeo's Prophecy, or LumenVox, I am eager to hear more.

I doubt this online petition for a version of Dragon Naturally Speaking for Linux, will convince Nuance Communications, but I suppose it's worth a try.

P25 Development
2010-10-02T11:04:00.003-05:00
It's been a while since I reported on anything P25 related.

Much has been happening with the op25-dev group. 

The code is still on the private sedition repo until they are ready to make an initial release and the current re-engineering of the code has been held up by a need to complete a thesis. 

Apparently the plan is to re-home the repository on CGRAN or Google Code before the year end and make a public release at the same time.

If you are not familiar with the work going on, simply put; it's a Huge interoperability stride for narrowband digital radio.

An interesting suspected fork of this work is a package called the Digital Speech Decoder.

This already decodes C4FM off a sound card with a discriminator connection, and it error corrects. 

If it was possible to take this a pipe it back out a sound card (without passing it to mbelib) to a transmitter in theory you could build a P25 repeater using a computer and a couple sound cards with the appropriate discriminator and varactor connections.

Jonathan Naylor, G4KLX has done this sort of thing with D-Star. And I found it most impressive.

From there the raw IMBE bit stream and headers could be IP encapsulated, sent
over the internet for the purpose of P25 repeater linking.

I don't know how many P25 groups are out there, but I'd encourage them to get the
word out to anyone with the potential programming talent.

And possibly place a bounty to help encourage this type of development.

Miscellaneous HSMM
2010-09-27T00:26:00.007-05:00

For those not aware, a normal 802.11 channel is about 20 MHz wide.

The Atheros Chipset used in some of the professional grade 802.11/Wifi products (like Ubiquiti) can support half (10 MHz) and quarter rate (5 MHz) channel widths.

Obviously the maximum data rate (normally 54 Mbps for a conventional 20 MHz wide channel) drops, but even at quarter rate is still very usable with a maximum data rate of 13.5 Mbps.

The open Atheros driver talks directly to the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), and is also capable of frequencies outside of the Part 15 band.

[For a while no open source HAL's existed that can let you do 5/10 MHz mode. You had to use  MikroTik, StarOS, IkarusOS, DD-WRT and a few others for these modes.  As of June 2010, it appears that 5/10 Mhz support seems to be implemented in ath5k now.]

You can see the feasible channel selection overlay here:
http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/allocations.html
The channels in light blue fall into overlapping amateur band space.  And are acceptable for HSMM operation.

As you can see you can squeeze seven 5 MHz wide channels below the first Part 15 channel on 2.4 GHz, two of which are completely outside of the Part 15 overlap.  (Thus, should have quieter noise floors) 

On the 5 GHz band, there are thirteen channels that are completely outside of the Part 15 overlap.

And even more interesting is that that within the Atheros chip it is possible for licensed developers to enable a local oscillator generation for a direct conversion radio transceiver.  This is Not an open function, but irregardless, this is how 802.11 products on 900 MHz (Ubiquiti XR9), and 3 GHz (XR3) (as well as other places) are possible and on the market.

Open source drivers unlocked the possibility of additional frequency support.  It allows programmers to be able to write a driver.  In summary; Atheros has allowed a third party to create a layer between the low-level functions of its chips and high-level drivers via the madwifi/ath5k development.

So what about unlocking additional channels in other chipsets/hardware?

Broadcom is the the chipset of most common Linksys WRT54G routers. 

Broadcom has for a long time declined to provide non-licensed access to it's chips.  A project that has been working to reverse engineer access using legal means had released its first working drivers for Broadcom 4300 series chips a few years ago.

If you are into the nitty-gritty, a recently released (2010) Broadcom wireless driver seems to have structures which imply the PHY in the chips can be directly controlled to program HSMM channels. 

Also see:
http://lwn.net/Articles/456762/

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211

For a slightly less technical overview of the various aspects of Modifying Consumer Off the Shelf Wireless LAN devices for specialized Amateur use, have a look here:
http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/modify.html

HSMM network in California
2010-09-09T00:09:00.005-05:00
Jason Spence, KF6RGF writes that there is movement in the San Francisco, California area to build a HSMM network.  He needs volunteers with access to towers to help build it out.  More information can be found here:

http://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/HInternet

Overview: 

The amateur radio service has a good chunk of the Internet address space (44.0.0.0/8), and it's not being used for its intended purpose: a worldwide packet radio network. Meanwhile, the rest of the Internet is crowding into the remaining address space and will no longer have any left in the near future.

The address space isn't being used because of a chicken-and-egg problem: the necessary digital repeaters aren't available for users, and there are no users to justify building the repeater network.

The cost of the equipment has finally come down to the point where even a modestly funded amateur radio club can afford to set up a small regional network by themselves. Through advocacy and standards development, Noisebridge is building a packet radio network modelled on the original vision of the Hinternet. 

Members of Jason's group will be touring the SFBA ham clubs and giving presentations at their monthly meetings to gather the necessary volunteers.

Miscellaneous D-Star Developments
2010-09-07T23:24:00.003-05:00
I've been backing off on the D-Star blogging.  But here are a couple interesting developments that you'll likely never read about on any of WB9QZB's yahoo groups.

The first comes from DARPA (The Digital Amateur Radio Projects Association) 

World Wide Routing for DSTAR

Hello to the group,

The gateway is now turned on and now we can play around with routing. But here is the catch.

The routing is a new world wide routing system call ircDDB (built by the Germans). It will route to both D-Star system that joins the world wide routing scheme.

The two D-Star systems that can handle routing are the US ROOT, which is made up of only ICOM and one Home brew system; and the Multi-Trust Servers that the Europeans built with the help of a few here in the US. There system is made up mostly of Home Brew and some ICOM systems. Of course the DARPA gateway (KJ4NYH) is built under home brew network (Multi-Trust Server). So with the new routing scheme we can now route to US root or anywhere else that has the same system.

More US gateways are joining this new routing method because it’s faster than the US ROOT routing.

You can view the dash board at http://ircddb.net/. Look for Gateway KJ4NYH on the dash board with a green light that means it ready for routing.

So what can or where can we route to? Well you can route repeaters/area gateways and also call signs that are placed in the UR Field, i.e. W4AES is the gateway for Orlando, FLA so my UR field will look like this—> /W4AES C.

Give it a try and see what will work. Just check out the dash board and look for US calls.

73

Will – W4WWM

Digital Amateur Radio Project Association – DARPA
Expanding the digital experience.

And here is a good video overview from Michael, VK5ZEA demonstrating it.

The second, is a note from Ramesh, VA3UV on his Free Star* Project.

I started working on a project called 'FREE STAR*" about a year or so  ago.  FREE STAR* was an attempt to build a vendor neutral digital communication network and allow bridging between various VoIP protocols that are in use amongst radio amateurs today (app_rpt, IRLP, D-STAR, etc.).

I'll keep this brief - further info can be found on my website:

http://www.va3uv.com/freestar.htm

We have built a few systems on top of our Allstar / ACID boxes, they seem to work well.

Cheers,

Ramesh, VA3UV

Allstar Node 2200 > Bridged to XRF005A.

QSL.net
2010-09-03T10:22:00.002-05:00

For nearly a dozen years, Al Waller, K3TKJ ran QSL.net.  

He started it to provide webspace to help further the abilities and interest of the Amateur Radio Community.

There is a tremendous wealth of information hosted on the pages of QSL.net 

About a year ago, Al retired from offering these services, and turned over these systems to Scott Neader, KA9FOX.

I encourage you to take a look at what is all hosted on QSL.net and consider sending an email to K3TKJ, thanking him for all his years of work.  And consider a sending a donation to KA9FOX to help ensure that the tremendous amount of resources is available to the amateur community for many more years to come.

DIY Emergency Cell Tower
2010-09-01T09:25:00.002-05:00
Chris Paget, KJ6GCG has over a decade of experience as an information security consultant and technical trainer for a wide range of financial, online, and software companies. Chris' work is increasingly hardware-focused, recently covering technologies such as GSM and RFID at venues such as Defcon and Shmoocon.

At the recent Defcon 18 conference he displayed a spoofed GSM cellphone tower using a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) transmitting 25 milliwatts, to present a GSM air interface to a standard GSM handset and uses the Asterisk software PBX to connect calls. The combination of the ubiquitous GSM air interface with VoIP backhaul could form the basis of a new type of cellular network that could be deployed and operated at substantially lower cost than existing technologies in the developing world.

http://openbts.sourceforge.net/

FCC rules aside, this is some powerful stuff.  Imagine being able to restore cellular coverage in a disaster area using the foundation he has laid.

You can read more here:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/083010-open-source-voip-cell-phones-at-burning-man.html

Regarding using HSMM style techniques for running an amateur cell site:

 http://www.innismir.net/article/513

Here is a similar project which modifies android phone to use asterisk running on something called a mesh potato. This would be great for developing areas.  Just drop some of the MP's with a battery and a solar cell and poof... a phone system.

http://www.villagetelco.org/

Another favorite is using asterisk with amateur radio and repeaters

http://app-rpt.qrvc.com/

ARRL says help protect the $pectrum!
2010-08-10T15:59:00.006-05:00
The radio spectrum is a finite and increasingly valuable resource. Mobile broadband providers are willing to pay almost any price for access that they can sell back to the public. Yet, who can put a price on a community, devastated and cut off by natural disaster, being able to communicate reliably when normal channels have failed? What is the dollar value of a young person being inspired, by his or her hands-on experience as a radio amateur, to pursue a career in science or engineering? On a more personal level, what is the enrichment that Amateur Radio has brought to our own lives worth to each of us? 

Think of how much we owe to those who came before us, who made certain that Amateur Radio would survive and flourish after they were gone. We can never repay them – except by doing the same for future generations.Every day, ARRL volunteers and staff work tirelessly to protect our spectrum access.....

In 2010 ARRL launched a newsletter, Spectrum Defense Matters, to keep members information on issues related to the protection of Amateur Radio frequencies. 

But again it's really only a sales pitch to round up some extra donations.  More importantly (to me anyhow) is how can we get more stuff on the air.  How do we get hams out of the wood work, and get them to try new things?

Back in 2005 the HSMM working group prepared two recommendations for Board consideration:

-A new all-digital license scheme to attract Internet-savvy technical individuals to ham radio, and
-A frequency bandwidth plan that will allow for adequate digital development of Amateur Radio into the 21st Century.

Improving and Expanding Amateur Radio in the 21st Century

50 years ago, amateur radio service gave its licensees access to wireless voice communication services that were otherwise unobtainable and trained people for careers in industry. It should be doing the same for today's wireless communication but isn't. This is a proposal for a 21st century novice license oriented towards HSMM. It would change amateur radio somewhat, but would ensure its existence by attracting younger users and make it more relevant to today's technology. First, let me explain why new novice licenses are needed.

The current Amateur radio licensing system assumes that everyone wants HF access and they proceed along an upgrade path to get it. License classes are hierarchical. However, there are several groups of users within the ARRL that have different interests. Some are interested in having the best HF station and contesting or chasing DX. Others are interested in weak signal communication using portable stations on the microwave bands. One large group is interested in personal communication and emergency communications with VHF and UHF repeaters. Another group is interested in digital communication using computers. The "one size fits all" arrangement does not serve any group well and creates unnecessary contention among groups.

If license classes were organized by area of interest and new hams just picked the licenses that fit their needs, each license could better fit the interests of each ham. Rather than acting as an unnecessary impediment that is shrinking the ranks of the hobby, licenses could encourage new growth. Licensing that fits user needs could be more restrictive for HF spectrum where the number of users that can be supported is small and become less restrictive as the frequencies go up and large numbers of users can be accommodated.

Many amateur HF users prefer the traditional form of FCC regulation with highly structured bands and a Morse code requirement for their portion of the spectrum. The existing license structure largely fits their needs. However, hams interested in buying HTs and using voice repeaters face a lot of examination requirements that are unnecessary for their purpose. They should have a simpler license where they learn how to set up a limited station and agree to certain operating procedures and frequency ranges. This would encourage new membership and build the pool of emergency communicators.

Hams who want to set up repeaters or do high-power weak-signal communication on the VHF and UHF bands require more knowledge as they will be setting up larger, more complex stations. The current license examination system with an exam that stresses design requirements and RF safety fits these needs. However, a new license class for HT users would benefit the radio clubs setting up and maintaining repeaters by providing more members.

Those interested in computers and digital communication are under-represented in amateur radio ranks. They are technophiles as we are, but the current system does not serve them well. This is disturbing, as digital communication is the future. In particular, amateur radio should encourage the participation of those interested in software as all electronic communication now depends upon it. There should be a license class where they agree to certain frequency ranges and non-interference provisions. This type of license would expand the use of new technology, make the learning experience of amateur radio more relevant to ham's personal lives, increase the use of our microwave bands and allow the development of and experimentation with new high-speed multi-media applications. It also assists us in supporting public safety, health and welfare agencies during times of emergency as the majority of the information that must be communicated becomes digital.

This new license wouldn't be called a "novice" license (as that might discourage its use) but a "digital communication" license and would......

After consolidating to three license classes, I think a digital license class like what was presented is a great idea.  I'm all for something radical in this hobby.

Ten years ago a survey conducted by the ARRL Technology Task Force, of League members and other amateurs revealed that the number one interest in new technologies was in high-speed digital networks.

Today, you hear nothing from the Technology Task Force.  But still plenty about how the ARRL needs money, and how hard they are working to protect spectrum.  (Note: TTF is in hiatus due to W4RI's retirement)

The economy is in the toilet, instead of money can we see some other ideas on how to protect the spectrum by encouraging new uses?

Just a thought...

HSMM BDA?
2010-08-05T19:07:00.003-05:00
Most hams are probably not well experienced at operation at 900 MHz and above.  Microwave propagation is a different animal for these folks.  

Reading and understanding it and the expected path loss is one thing, and then real world experience is a whole another thing.  You can then compound your confusion on expected performance by realizing that wide band spreading modes are yet another layer to the mix.

I built a simple analog 900 MHz repeater so that I could get a better idea of how signal propagation on the band.  I was rather impressed.  On the same token I was also impressed using the slower Aerocomm FHSS units on 900 MHz.  But trying to draw comparisons between narrow to wide is a bad plan.

The XR-9 is a logical step for the average ham, with a modest tower.  The versatility in data rates and ability to change the channel width from the default of 20 MHz spreading to a half-rate of 10 MHz and even a quarter rate of 5 MHz is ideal.

Overall in all the experimentation of wide band spread spectrum at 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz, from the Proxim Symphony, origional 900 MHz WaveLan, Ubiquiti Bullet to the XR-9, I feel the average ham will be mildly disappointed. (Also see David Rowe, VK5DGR's blog on Wifi is hard.)

All this stuff works great if you can get a central node/AP up high on a commercial tower.  Not so great if you live in an established neighborhood with medium to mature size trees.

I have experienced the difference between 1 watt and adding a 10 watt BDA's on both bands.  For the average ham, living in the city with a modest tower, this does improve things significantly, and provides something usable.

In light of the recent spread spectrum rule change, I would highly appreciate if TAPR would consider getting behind a BDA project.

I would appreciate if the ARRL would clarify how spread spectrum fits into the existing band plans on 902 and above.

To help things along here is a recent article I stumbled into detailing construction and theory on a switchless bidirectional amplifier for 2.4 GHz using circulators.

The theory can be applied to BDA development for less crowded bands like 3 GHz, 5 GHz or even 900 MHz.

Most commercial bidirectional amplifiers use radio frequency (RF) switches which switch between two signal paths. Their switching time can cause data loss at a high transfer rate. For instance, with a data rate of 54 Mbit/s the time duration for 1 bit is 17.66 ns. Switching times of commercial available bidirectional amplifiers can be as high as 2 ms, causing a loss of more than 100 bits. There, bidirectional amplifiers realized as monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC) bias a transistor circuit in such a way that it amplifies either in the one or the other direction......

In the following, a switchless bidirectional amplifier is discussed. It is compared against a bidirectional amplifier concept using RF switches as commonly used in commercial wireless communication systems....

Steve, KB9MWR

HSMM Mesh Network in Texas
2010-08-03T15:00:00.002-05:00

In Collin County Texas a groups of hams have been making good use of HSMM technologies to update their Amateur Radio Communications Health-care Emergency Services (ARCHES).  This was traditionally setup of two meter/ 70cm voice and packet radios at 9 Austin, Texas area hospitals.

The setup provides key patient data to the City of Austin Emergency Operations Center, during significant incidents, even if normal communications are unavailable.  It's highly successful. During every activation, patient data and other traffic passed more quickly and accurately than all other techniques tested during the activations.

The ARCHES program has been so successful, we have been asked to expand the system to ~ 40 additional area hospitals and clinics in central Texas.

Due to the existing significant number of packet collisions using traditional packet radio with just 9 nodes, they are migrating to HSMM.

With 40 or more packet stations in the area, passing packet data could slow to a crawl due to packet collisions.

The stations could only transfer data at 1200 baud, at best. Attempts at using 9600 baud showed that common radios do not pass 9600 baud data well. They distort the data so badly, that many resends are needed to get data through.The effective data rate seldom exceeds 1200 baud.

The HSMM proof of concept was demonstrated least year by AD5OO, NG5V, and KD5MFW who achieved a 10 mile point to point link across downtown Austin, Texas using only 35mw.

The Austin HSMM SIG has incorporated Optimum Link State Routing (OLSR) into custom firmware to provide automatic linking of radios that will be placed on Water Towers throughout Collin County Texas.

HSMM VOIP Network in Spain
2010-08-01T09:52:00.001-05:00
There is an interesting HSMM/ Asterisk VOIP network in Spain: 

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.bicubik.net/hsmmn/

Alex EA5HJX, Andres EA5HIQ, Pepe EA5SW, Paco EB5HTC, Javier EB5BXA, Boletin EA5SW, Paco EB5EA, Sergio EA5HFB, Ernesto EB5JDY and several other hams are researching new technologies and telecommunication systems.

Can you explain are in street language, What is Intended and this project will bring to ham radio and its benefits?

So we can all understand, a HSMM network is just one of many highway lanes that can move large amounts of data at high speed. What would be technologically wireless broadband network of high capacity in her ability to integrate all technologies: RF, VoIP, multimedia, data ....

What are the Objectives of the Project HSMMN?

To promote knowledge and new technologies to the general public: The HSMM project has not only a technical aspect but also a social aspect, with aims to bring new technologies and their application in the real world to the public with expertise or not. Disseminating knowledge and new technologies to the general public: The project has HSMMN Not Only But Also to Technical aspect of social aspect, with aims to bring new technologies and their application in the real world to the public with expertise or without them.

We intend that anyone interested can collaborate, learn and practice the knowledge acquired. Anyone interested can collaborate, learn and practice the acquired knowledge. To this end, talks and workshops are planned in various radio clubs and associations interested in the project. To this end, talks and workshops are planned in various radio clubs and Associations interested in the project.

Creation of a research group developing new technologies to the world of amateur radio: This project not only aims to develop the network, which is the chief end of it, but to bring together people interested in researching and learning about new technologies to help amateur radio operators and emergency services communications. 

Unifcar technologies: using computer systems and hardware elements to create an IP data highway you can travel by all types of information: audio, video, telemetry, APRS, etc ... 

Collecting, processing and sending information through a variety of different technologies such as for sending APRS weather information (winds, rainfall, air pressure, barometric pressure, etc)

Ability to provide automated voice announcements from a centralized control room radio repeaters as required. Capacity to Provide automatic voice announcements from a centralized control room radio repeaters as required.

Creating an information service of communications systems available by region, by using a geographic number to gain access from the fixed, mobile and IP (VoIP). 

Integration of other communication networks: IRLP, DSTAR, WIRES-II, E-QSO, etc. 

Interconnection of repeaters using wireless technologies: Wireless, WiMAX. Each repeater could put a computer capable of processing all the telephony and transform it into Voip (voice over IP) that is transported through the network to reach another repeater HSMMN and is decoded by joining together all repeaters creating a mesh. Each repeater Could put a computer capable of processing all the telephony and transform it into VoIP (Voice over IP). That Is Transported through the HSMM network Reaches Another repeater network and is decoded by joining together all repeaters creating a mesh.

The whole process will be use Free Software.

Entities in the world of emergencies communications in Spain have shown interest in this project as an additional operational tool to consider for future medium to long term.  Access from the PSTN will be in collaboration with guifi.net.   This is an area open, free and neutral telecommunications network built through a peer to peer agreement where everyone can join the network   

It looks like a nice mix of HSMM, Asterisk SIP and app_rpt technologies.

Alex Casanova EA5HJX, writes that he is working to develop a box that is a router (IP), and Asterisk (VoIP) and gateway with radio (analog and digital radio).  Maybe this box can help in disaster like Haiti. Around the HSMMN´s Project we are investigate to integrate Asterisk VoIP with analog or digital radios.

Keeping relevant & moving forward - case in point
2010-07-05T00:32:00.001-05:00

The following is a partial excerpt from a presentation by Glenn Currie, KD5MFW at Ham-Com 2010 held June 11-12 in Texas. (You can read the full presentation and others at: http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/)

Those deploying communications technology in developing countries are deploying systems in areas where there is little or no infrastructure... much the same as after a natural disaster.

They are using wireless mesh systems for much of their infrastructure. When you have no infrastructure due to disaster, natural or otherwise, Wireless mesh networks are being deployed.

An organization called Inveneo works to bring communications infrastructure to under developed countries.

They use Wi-Fi (802.11) wireless broadband equipment for much of their work. They set up Wi-Fi communications links and add their own resources including small web servers and end user net top computers so people can send email and check websites for emergency information.

Inveneo deploys to Haiti after the recent earthquake.  The got in fast with gear and two man teams.

Inveneo installed a Wide Area Network using Wi-Fi type equipment.  Inveneo quickly deployed an emergency network that served many agencies

Amateur radio passed some traffic in the aftermath of the recent Haiti earthquake. I have read the reports on the Internet and in the printed amateur radio magazines. Hats off to all the hams that pitched in and helped strangers in a bad situation.

But what systems past what percentage of the emergency traffic during the emergency? What really worked and carried the bulk of the emergency traffic?

It is known that the network deployed by Inveneo passed Thousands of Messages for multiple agencies, and their networks continue to pass traffic.

Amateur radio needs to have a broadband offering in their tool box.

All emergency communications organizations are making wide use of broadband RF communications techniques – except amateur radio.

I am confident, that if amateur radio manages to remain relevant, in the area of Emergency communications, future amateur radio license exams will include questions On how to configure wireless routers. This technology is that pervasive in the world. Hams can step up to the plate get into broadband, or they can leave it to groups like Inveneo and Part-15.org to provide emergency communications, in the ham bands.

I recently tried to point out that WinLink is showing its age and is far from ideal.

I was trying to suggest that we focus our efforts on the future, and made reference to a geostationary satellite as one avenue.

I received a bothersome/bullheaded comment from Stan Piekarczyk, Outagamie Co ARES EC "Should we wait another 10 years for this to get launched?"

To answer the question, NO!  

The first step is admitting that something isn't cutting it, or is less than desirable.  Step two is making it happen by stop being an amateur radio user, and becoming an innovator.

Ham radio technologies can Only advance if We make the happen.  Glenn, KD5MFW points out some wake up calls for hams in his presentation.  It's time to think ahead.

KC4BQK also blogged on this:
http://kc4bqk.blogspot.com/2010/07/january-2010-haiti-had-devastating.html

Growth Gauges?
2010-07-02T21:12:00.000-05:00
Generating statistics on the internet of various modes of ham radio seems to be a trend, although I am not sure why.

At the top level, keeping statistics on amateur radio licensing trends has been something I've noticed for the last 10 or so years.  A few times a year there seems to be a post on QRZ.com on this.

While somewhat interesting, I really don't think it is an accurate gauge of anything.  There are thousands of amateurs holding licensees, but are not active on the radio or in research and development endeavors.

There is a list of live Winlink packet stations.  As well as the live statistics of D-Star repeaters and active users.

I never understood why one must register to use their D-Star radio over the gateway network.  If remote people on D-Star can't hear you it's because you aren't registered.  Now I understand why this inconvenience exists.  For the sake of being able to generate and advertise the total number of people using this mode.

There are also statics for IRLP, as well as hams experimenting with APCO-25.

Like I said, I'm not sure what all this statistical data goes to prove.  Is it supposed to impress you that there are 900 active IRLP connections and 17 billion registered D-Star users?

And what about some of the modes that don't have anyone taking statistics?  How many people are really active with ATV (amateur television)?  Or, hellschreiber?

Are these numbers meant to try and sway you into trying a new mode?  Or make you feel like you missing something?

Once upon a time, years ago... hams used to experiment and try new modes and things because they were interested in that sort of thing.  Now apparently hams need to be peer pressured?  And what about those that are content on whatever mode most interests them?

If you are interested in electronics and radio theory, I encourage you to get into the hobby regardless of the statistics.  This isn't a high school poluarity contest folks.  Please don't consider exploring a new facet of the hobby only because that is what is advertised as popular, and not because you have a bonafide technological interest.

Developing a deep technological interest based on a curiosity of "how it works" helps the hobby.  Anything else only helps inflate numbers for a fad.

Two new books
2010-07-01T13:30:00.006-05:00

There is a brand new Microwave book from the Radio Society of Great Britain.

It is all up-to-date stuff, not a re-hashing of old QST articles like many of the ARRL microwave books.  It covers interesting test equipment, and the latest software.  Most importantly, the projects are modern too, using easy-to-find transistors.

The second recommended book is from the American Radio Relay League on PIC microcontrollers.

This book was written to be understood in a chronological fashion.  The book seems to fill in stuff all the other PIC books seem to miss.

Digitally Linking Analog Repeaters
2010-06-03T00:39:00.009-05:00

Those from Wisconsin might be familiar with the Wisconsin Interstate Network.  It's a wide area coverage UHF linked repeater system, composed of nearly 20 systems throughout the state.  It is all RF linked, so from an emergency commutations standpoint it's very handy resource.

Now imagine if you can if it was all linked digitally, but still using RF, not the internet.  

It would not be very expensive to convert the analog audio to digital at each site and run inexpensive outdoor ethernet cable up the tower instead of a hardline line for linking.  Since each analog repeater site is at significant heights, achieving line-of-site linking on 3 GHz or 900 MHz should be possible.  

If you did this, you would have a high-speed statewide digital RF backbone independent from the internet, that not only connects all the analog sites, but has plenty of bandwidth left over.  

ARES / user LAN access could be on 440 or 900 MHz.  I'm talking about sending 20 MB of pictures from your ARES incident across the state in seconds.  Or hooking an IP phone up and having a fairly secure conversation if the situation warrants it.  

All this is possible, all fairly inexpensively.  You just have to think different.

Wecomm is a smaller linked repeater network project going on in the state, that I have blogged about before.

They are building data networks into their site deployments.

What I am showing above is a very inexpensive way to stream audio digitally.  Wecomm (so far) has been using expensive JPS Ratheon ARA-1 radio interface devices to accomplish this.

USB server adapters are fairly new.  They allow you to use USB devices as network devices... cheaply.  

When you are dealing with many sites, far away, the idea of having a computer at each site is less than ideal.  Fairly inexpensively you could build a computer with no moving parts using flash drives to increase reliability..... But can you do this for under $50?

If a plug and play solution is what you seek, check out the CAT CL-100 Internet/802.11/HSMM Linking Controller. 

N9ZIA
2010-06-02T01:08:00.001-05:00
On the subject of experimentation and learning something new, there is one local ham that comes to mind.

What seems to drive him is the quest to understand how things work.  Couple that with his "shut up and solder" philosophy, and you'll wonder if this guy gets any sleep.

Beware the pages aren't without attitude.  The deeper you dig and get lost in his "web," it seems necessary needs to filter out those who are not like minded, and have no intention of picking up an iron.

The amazing part is nearly everything is built from curb surfings..... "Hey, what can I do with this?" .... Experimentation at it's finest!

You can start here:  http://www.qsl.net/n9zia

I have also started archiving a collection of his prominent projects.

Ham Radio in KA9Q's eyes
2010-06-01T14:00:00.000-05:00
It took me a while to find this snippet of comments from Phil Karn, KA9Q in WT Docket No. 97-12 from about 10 years ago:

....amateur frequencies are still occasionally involved in emergency communications despite being almost completely eclipsed in recent years by cellular phones, portable satellite links and the like. But the amateur service has always been primarily an experimental, technically-oriented service. It is not a critical operational safety-of-life service like public safety or aviation, nor is it a common carrier utility like cellular telephones....

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Phil Karn, KA9Q:

He is an engineer that worked for Bell Labs in the 70-80's. He was on the ARRL future systems committee/Technology Task Force for nearly a decade. He had had his fingers involved with many Amateur Satellite Service projects.

Has helped develop the Internet as he as been a strong contributor to its architecture. (His name is on at least 6 RFCs, as a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force)

He is well know for his work with digital communications specifically with DSP and forward error correction (FEC) and spread spectrum.

Since 1991 Phil was been with Qualcomm, a wireless telecommunications research and development company, as well as the largest cellular chipset supplier in the world.

Simply put: Your cellphone works on CDMA technology that Phil Karn helped develop. Phil is the best example I can think of where ham radio served as an "experimental, technically-oriented service" that served(s) as a breeding ground for technological development that later the rest of the world greatly benefited from.

An Univeral Radio Interface
2010-05-13T01:23:00.002-05:00

All of the various digital modes out there require some sort of interface to your soundcard.  Most of these interfaces use the serial port (RS-232) for keying, or some of the newer "Rig-blaster" interfaces can do provide that over a USB connection in the absence of traditional com ports on the newer computers.

There is still one thing lacking.  Their own dedicated sound card.  There is nothing more embarrassing than forgetting to disable your computers system sounds.  And on the same token having to mess with the mixer settings each time is also annoying.

Thanks to the hard work of Steven Henke, W9SH and Jim Dixon, WB6NIL, they have ground work for a Univeral Radio Interface.

You can build your own using inexpensive USB sound FOB's/sticks.  Or you can buy a pre-manufactured interface from DMK Engineering. 

The basis of it all is the C-Media electronics CM-108, CM-108AH, or CM-119 USB interface chips. 

PTT and optional Carrier Detect are accomplished using unused general purpose I/O lines of the USB sound devices chipset.  Just plug this into a USB port of your computer, no other connections to the PC are necessary!

If you build your own, the sound fob will require some modifications to bring out PTT, block DC on the audio outputs, and attenuate the receive audio to match the microphone levels.

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/voip/USB-FOB.pdf

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/voip/usbfob-119.pdf

Unfortunately the number of programs that support this type of interface are presently limited.  The good news is any one coding a program like ham radio deluxe or the like can easily adopt support for this interface.  The channel driver is open and authored by Jim Dixon, WB6NIL and Steve Henke, W9SH.

If you an author of such a program you can find the definition in file chan_usbradio.c.  I encourage you to add support for this inexpensive to build interface.

WinLink Failure
2010-05-09T20:08:00.012-05:00

At the April 8th meeting of the Green Bay Mike & Key Club, Dennis, KC9OIS had an ARES report on a demonstration of a mobile Winlink station and it's emergency email capability.

The station was setup by Outagamie County ARES at the Paper Valley Hotel in conjunction with the WI ARES/RACES at the WI Governor’s Conference in March on Emergency Management....

While the demonstration was successful, John, NA9J and my (Dennis, KC9OIS's) messages never reached their destination successfully.

Paul, N5XMV writes:
I don't see the purpose of continuing to find new ways to use Ham Radio, whether for experimental, emergency, or commercial use, if the average Ham is not able to understand the full concept, build it, and implement it... What happens when it fails, reach over, and get a new piece out of a stockpile of new stuff?? 

Paul, N5XMV, makes a good point. Emergency communications weakest link is in the operator behind the equipment.

At the same time, exercises and demonstrations like this let you experience the mistakes and correct them before the time comes that you actually need to rely on it. My question is what is being done to prevent a repeat performance?

I don't know much about how the Winlink network works.  But it seems to me that if "emergency" messages can be lost, this is Not a well thought out design.

Are outdated networking protocols are the basis of Winlink? It sound like a kludge of much how the old KA-nodes worked, and the hierarchical BBS message forwarding using a system of mail rewrites and mail exchangers.

Ouch!

RFC's for SMTP mail delivery ensure that the sender should get a return message in the event that a message is undeliverable to to a broken path route or server being down.  If Winlink cannot at the very least support this, perhaps it's time to re-think the network topology.

Think "real-time network" .... it can be done.  In the 90's we here in Wisconsin could test the deliverability of a message with the ping command.

traceroute is another good network debugging tool.

Here is an old reference on Emergency Operations and Packet Radio
http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/wapr/wiscnet/part31.html

Here is some interesting history on Winlink.

July, 2003: In cooperation with its partnership with Homeland Security & at their recommendation, the ARRL Board sought to provide a Nationwide digital system to enhance the communications capability of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) There are situations, the Board said, when ARES "must have the capability to pass digital traffic across the Nation quickly and accurately.

ARRL Resources Volunteer Committee determined that the new network should: provide rapid transfer of emergency traffic between sections; use available and future digital modes, interface with commercial communications systems such as conventional telephone, cellular telephone, and the Internet, etc., have speed, performance and accuracy.

The digital network will provide a value-added service for ARES and will continue to be viewed very positively by our served agencies," the committee said in its report. "This allows ARES to be viewed as modern and necessary instead of antiquated and invasive."

A quote from the former FCC Director of Engineering and Technology:

In the past, hams have adopted more spectrally efficient technologies - for example, by migrating from double-sideband amplitude modulation to single-sideband modulation and, more recently, by shifting to more efficient modulation for digital modes. I would urge you to continue shifting towards more spectrally efficient communications techniques - especially digital techniques. Such a shift has a number of benefits: 

First of all, it demonstrates to policymakers and regulators that you are good stewards of the public's airwaves even without direct economic incentives.

Second, by using what you have efficiently, it strengthens your case when you need to ask for additional spectrum. 

Third, by allowing more users to access the available allocations simultaneously, it improves the amateur experience and ultimately increases the attractiveness of the service to new and old users alike. 

Fourth, it provides the opportunity or "headroom" for increases in data rates to more closely match those available on wire line networks and, in the future, on commercial wireless networks as well. 

Fifth, as the rest of the telecommunications world makes the transition to digital techniques - and there are very few exceptions to that trend - the amateur service will look antiquated if it is not making progress in that direction as well. So looking to the future of the amateur radio service in the new century, I would urge you to continue your traditional role in public service by being prepared for and providing communications in times of emergencies, conducting experiments, providing training in radio communications, and encouraging international comity. But I would also urge you to focus particular attention -- for the reasons I just mentioned -- on experimentation with digital techniques."

So far the basis of Winlink on a county/state level seems to rely on 30 year old packet radio technology.  

For example it will take over and hour to send a 540 KB .xls file of names... or in just a half an hour you might be able to send a 270 KB attachment at 1200 baud.

So even if the demonstration messages would have made it, Winlink still appears as a failure to me in that regard.

NWR SAME software decoder?
2010-05-07T00:14:00.008-05:00
Server weather season is upon us.

I have often thought it would be nice if there was an open source (soundcard/ FOB based) SAME decoder solution.

One could dedicate a cheap USB sound FOB to a receiver parked on their NOAA weather radio frequency that would sit and decode any SAME data bursts.

I am thinking for interfacing to repeaters to provide custom weather alert signaling. 

It does appear that software to decode SAME data exists, just not open source.

http://www.dxsoft.com/en/products/seatty/

A SAME software decoder would benefit projects like thelinkbox, and asterisk app_rpt as well as other projects.

{Update 6/11}
Greg Hewgill, has updated the source to his NWR tools, now at:

https://github.com/ghewgill/nwr

I also ran into this web based encoder: http://www.drewkirkman.com/projects/noaa-same/ 

Why experiment?  Why not roll over and die?
2010-05-04T23:18:00.003-05:00
Quoting N2XTS (from a recent QRZ thread on new technologies) on why ham radio's days are numbered:

It isn't the hospitals, the Part 90 encroachment, the ARRL,

It's the closed minded, living in the past old farts who refuse to accept that we are supposed to be on the forefront of communications technology. The same people who forget about our service existing to provide a trained technically minded pool of radio operators ready to be called upon to serve their communities in times of need also neglect the part about advancing the art of radio communication as spelled out in our basis and purpose in Part 97 it appears.

So we should just stick to using 50 year old analog FM, HF and not experiment with anything that might actually have any intrinsic technical value? What is the big deal here? Let me guess you all are opposed to IMBE, AMBE, OFDM, VOIP, and anything else that might actually require YOU to become technically competent and proficient with MODERN RADIO COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY and not your brass keys, vacuum tubes, and Gonsets?

If all we do is jaw jack on 50 year old technology occupying 40 billion dollars worth of spectrum exchanging post cards... what is the point to us even existing anymore?

Some good food for thought, that goes along with how I feel.  Bill, just managed to put the words to it first.

Club Reboot?
2010-04-21T23:34:00.004-05:00
Does your ham club have goal or a set direction for the year?

When is the last time you as a group, reviewed your constitution and bylaws and /or charter?

Are they still relevant, or are they in need up updating?

Hows does your club support the various pillars (technology, public service, advocacy, education and membership) of amateur radio?  Is your club spending balanced in these areas? 

What resources are available to amateurs in your area?

Lastly, where do you want amateur radio to be in the years ahead, and how are you working with your club to help achieve this?

You can view the ARRL's plan and goals here:
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/2010%20ARRL%20Strategic%20Plan.pdf

Text Message Response Bot
2010-04-12T12:31:00.003-05:00
For the last few months (Jan-April 2010) in Linux Journal, there has been an ongoing article on Parsing Your Twitter Stream - Twitter response bot, by Dave Taylor.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/work-shell-parsing-your-twitter-stream
http://twitter.com/davesbot

I'll post an excerpt below because I can see such a scripted bot useful for ham radio in conjunction with APRS/Packet and the slow speed user-messages portion of D-Star.  

When used in conjunction with a Vellman K8055 Board or homebrew serial or parallel port device you can control external devices by short text messages.

Last month, we circled back to Twitter and started developing a shell script that lets you actually parse and respond to queries sent via Twitter. The idea was that if you were a store, for example, a tweet of “hours?” could be answered automatically with a response tweet of the store’s hours—simple, but interesting nonetheless.

ftp.linuxjournal.com/pub/lj/listings/issue191/10695.tgz

For fun, I’ll let people send the query “time” and get the current output of the date command too, just to demonstrate how that might work. Here’s the code block:if [ "$msg" == "time" ] ; then
echo "@$id asked for the time"
$tweet "@$name the local time on our server is $(date)"
fi

DIY Compatible D-Star Repeater - Green Bay
2010-04-06T15:48:00.019-05:00

We have an experimental 440 MHz analog repeater that has been converted to D-Star.  The GM300 radios have been interfaced using a GMSK node adapter.  The node adapter is in a duplex configuration, so in reality it has nearly all the functionality of an Icom D-Star repeater.

A D-STAR repeater is an expensive proposition.  And many people are not happy with the Icom D-Star repeater performance.  It's a number of things, most notable the poor receiver sensitivity.  ~.45uV... In many cases the "repeater" is nothing more than two 28XX series radios in a rack mount box ... Pictures in the d-star digital yahoo group confirm this.  Receiver desense is also on the list due to the use of plain-jane RG-58 inside the units.

Apparently the Icom G2 software is also not impressive, as discussed on the D-Star Gateway mailing list back in November 2009.

To build this adapter the cost about $100 (+ your analog radios) as compared to the cost of a Icom RPC-2 Controller plus a RF band module at about $2900.

For the longest time I was running Mark, KB9HKM's DVAR Hotspot Windows based software to compliment the board.  For remote repeater site use I haven't been real keen on the idea as Windows computers seem to need reboots at inconvenient times.

So I have had a watchful eye on two Linux developments.  

The first is by David, G4ULF, but he is still in the midst of releasing the program.

The other (probably less prominent) is by Scott, KI4LKF.  His "rptr" program is available now.

All-in-all, I'm happy to report, version 2.93 has been running stable for me.  Under Linux at least I have been able to script some ideas by trapping the debug messages with Perl.

For now, the frequency is 441.4625 +5 (SNP)  The 40 watt GM300 radios are running cleanly at 20 watts.. The repeater is located in the village of Allouez near Heritage Hill State Park.   The antenna is a Comet GP-6 Omni (9 dB), at about 35 feet.  It is fed with LMR-400 coaxial cable.  It appears to have about a 15 mile coverage radius.

Maxtrac/GM300 radios have a jumper inside (JU551) that sets whether the external connector will have flat or discriminator audio.  You want discriminator.  You may also need to add some 10 uF DC blocking caps on the RXA and TXA lines. 

For more Information on the GMSK/ DSTAR Node Adapter/ Hotspot, please visit the websites below:

http://www.dutch-star.eu

http://www.gmskhotspot.com

http://d-star.dyndns.org/

Specifics on node adapter setup

If you are seeing what else you can do on a Linux platform with D-Star, I'd love to hear more about it.

{Edit Oct, 2010}
You may also want to take a look at John, K7VE's recent blog where he converts a Kenwood repeater for D-Star.

{Edit Nov, 2010}
And a Cincinnati OH, club using a Kenwood TKR-850

Wisconsin Amateur Packet Radio (WAPR)
2010-04-05T20:12:00.004-05:00

I was starting to miss the Wisconsin Packeteer columns that Andy Nemec, KB9ALN wrote for several years.

So I revived the old website.  http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/wapr

It's interesting to look back and see how excited hams were about this new mode, and how quickly it grew.

Then there is the downside.  There was plenty of drum beating to look to the future, especially in the last 10 years.

Well known Buck Rogers, K4ABT even wrote an article 10 years ago promoting spread spectrum for higher speed networks. (link)

Andy's conclusion was right on:

We have steadily lost the digital speed race to the wired network. This means there is little to retain experienced operators, not much to entice newcomers.

All of this points to the need for drastic action to be taken by the ham community, specifically the Amateur Packet Radio community. As I mentioned before, the ability to carry digital audio could gain the interest of the general ham radio public in addition to we who spend a lot of time with packet radio.

So where are we now?

Just last month the spread spectrum rules were proposed to be relaxed once again.

But will that change anything?

Probably not.

The funny part is with all the increased band threats you'd think interference resilient spread spectrum modes would be heavily promoted.

Just think all those amateur operations affected by Pave Paws, might not have been if using spread spectrum.

I'd like to see spread spectrum come to the 70 centimeter ham band.  I think there is plenty of room there (unused ATV chunks), and point to point uses similar to D-Star's high-speed Digital-Data (DD) mode could prove useful.  

The problem is how does spread spectrum fit into the existing ham band plans?  Will your coordinator even acknowledge a request?  If these are not made clear, you will likely never see a commercial solution made specifically for hams.

Reasons to like / dislike D-Star
2010-03-07T00:59:00.001-06:00

Here is a thought from a local club member that contacted me about D-Star:

The thought occurs to me that D-Star is one future standard and why not purchase a D-Star radio ahead of the roll-out?  One issue is that it adds expense and why buy something today that you can’t use when the standard may evolve to something better in the future.  Therefore, a waste of money now?

He actually has a good thought process.  The thing I see is that since D-Star is based on the JARL standard, some parts of it cannot change.  By that I mean, GMSK modulation and data rates for example.  Evolve, yes it already is, and that is why I like it.

What he means is be replaced (not evolved) by something else radically different, perhaps TDMA based or what have you.

My feeling is that this is not a big consideration/fear simply because ham radio is in such a decline.  You will likely never see another replacement simply because it's not on ham manufactures priority list as they market is simply not there.

Resons I like D-Star:
I've been in the hobby for nearly 15 years.  I'm starting to become a been there, done that kind of guy.  This is something different... a step in the right direction, to the future.

From a repeater stand-point the slow speed data & voice are not only spectrally efficient, but efficient on the club pocket book.  Else you have to deploy separate APRS and voice repeater feedlines and antennas.

The framework is open so some development and evolution is possible.  This paves the way for additional functionality that can be added later.

And it can be done remotely (SSH) since this is a digital system.  No more spending $$ on new controllers and scheduling trips to the site to interface them.

D-Star helps attract a new breed to the hobby.  The computer savvy.  Which is good, since we should be one the path to software defined radio (SDR).

Some of my dislikes:

-Closed codec.
-User radios are not firmware upgradable
-DTMF encoding implemented wrong ?
-The term "D-Star" trademarked by Icom
-Attitudes
-One vendor

The attached images shows some starter ideas of how to add additional functionality. 

One of the problems since ham radio is so stagnant is that no one really monitors. It becomes so infrequent that people are on at the same time. Those once 24/7 radio active hams are now amusing themselves with Ipods and smart phones.

So one of the script ideas report the callsigns of who is in the air to twitter. This way people know when to put down the Ipod and pick up the HT.  Other scripts report current temperatures as text messages periodically.

An AMBE open source compatible codec?
2010-03-02T01:20:00.009-06:00
First some history:

Depending on your point of view, Jon Lech Johansen is either your hero or adversary. To the copyright industry, Jon Lech Johansen has been a detriment to their policy of control since the advent of DeCSS (Decrypt Content Scrambling System.)

At the age of 15, “DVD Jon” wrote a computer program that allowed users to copy DVDs. Then he posted it on the Internet. A Norwegian private school awarded him a prize for making an outstanding contribution to society. The Norwegian government indicted him.

Jon spent 3 long years in the Norwegian courts proving his innocence. The American movie industry pressured the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to press charges against Jon Lech Johansen in 2000 for allegedly bypassing the CSS copy protection on DVDs.

Early on; Bruce Perens, K6BP, amateur radio and open source advocate voiced concerns  about D-Star’s use of a proprietary vocoder.  Asking; does it really fit into the spirit of the hobby?  Bruce makes a strong argument that an Open Source vocoder needs to be developed.

In May 2008, he announced that he will investigate the development of an alternative codec.  The Codec2 Project: Next-Generation Audio Codecs and Vocoders for Two-Way Radio.

In August 2009 David Rowe, VK5DGR, began designing and implementing a replacement codec under the GPL.

“Proprietary codecs typically have small, novel parts of the algorithm protected by patents. However proprietary codecs also rely heavily on large bodies of public domain work. The patents cover perhaps 5% of the codec algorithms. Proprietary codec designers did not invent most of the algorithms they use in their codec. Typically, the patents just cover enough to make designing an interoperable codec very difficult. These also tend to be the parts that make their codecs sound good.”

The AMBE codec was patented [6] (US: 6199037, US Classification 704/208; 704/222; 704/230, International Classification G10L 1106; G10L 1902)on Dec 4, 1997 and issued in Mar 6, 2001 to John C. Hardwick of Digital Voice systems, Inc.  [Patents last 20 years from the date of application]

Two open source compatible codec’s that come to mind:

Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer Society originally controlled the patents and licensing of the MP3 audio codec.  Tip-toeing around the patented parts of the algorithms the LAME encoder was developed as  free software application used to encode audio into the MP3 file format.

The DivX codec (used to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.) was actually an attempt by the now defunct U.S. retailer Circuit City to develop a video rental system requiring special discs and players.

The Xvid codec became a primary free and open source competitor offering comparable quality.  It too was developed  by tip-toeing around the patented parts of the DivX algorithms.

Think about it......  Do you like your freedoms?   Thank those who have taken the time reverse engineered something.  Welcome those types with open hands to the hobby.  Those types of experimenters are just what this hobby once was and still can be.

{Update May 2010}
Interestingly enough the Digital Speech Decoder and xMBE codec library - can decode and recover the audio from P25 (Phase 1) IMBE, as well as Mototrbo (AMBE+2).

Is the reason the AMBE codec of D-Star isn't supported because it might cut into Robin Cutshaw, AA4RC's DV Dongle sales?

DV Access Point Dongle (DVAP)
2010-03-01T09:25:00.002-06:00

Unlike the DV Dongle, the new product allows Amateur Radio operators to walk away from the computer and transmit/receive D-STAR voice and data using a two meter D-STAR radio..... The DVAP is basically a GMSK modem with a 10 milliwatt  two meter transceiver built in.

This is more crap for hard core D-Star enthusiasts.  As if paying $200 for a regular DV dongle wasn't insane enough, just so you could talk AMBE over the internet using your PC microphone and speakers... now you can pay that plus the price of a D-Star radio, just to talk on the precious D-Star network.

Why in tar-nation Robin, AA4RC wasted any time designing the DV Access Point Dongle is beyond me.

It seems more logical to promote the GMSK node adapter hooked to a real retrofitted analog radio. Converting analog repeaters to D-Star at a fraction of the cost seems like something I'd get behind.  At least then more than one person can use it.

This is another toy... that to me was a huge waste of engineering time. I thought Robin was going to work on a complete open replacement for the $300 Icom D-Star gateway software, hence www.opendstar.org.

All that has resulted is an add-on called D-plus, basically written to augment the DV dongle that Robin sells.

The AMBE decoder should be at the repeater end. Then users who want to talk on D-Star over their PC's can stream their voice using an open codec (no dongle) to the repeater, at which point it can be converted to AMBE with a community dongle.

Who is steering the D-Star boat? Will the D-Star newsletter ever promote such ideas? Or is it a mere advertisement to aid Icom and Robin in their financial endeavors?

It seems to me....
2010-02-11T13:18:00.007-06:00

Of the three ham magazines I received this week, zero really of interest in QST.  Big surprise.... however the editors Eclectic Technology column titled "The cost of Codecs" did catch my eye.  It's a pretty rudimentary quick explanation of what a codec is, but goes on talking about cost issues and mentions that we are fortunate  to have access to some free "Open source" codecs.

CQ-VHF has two articles on Digital Television.  Sub-described as the new ham frontier.  So these get my "promoting something different" seal of approval.  There is also a Digital Wattmeter Element for the Bird Model 43.  This is how Mark, WA8SME replaced the analog meter with a digital meter.

Lastly the RSGB Radcom magazine has an account of David, G4ULF's homebrew D-Star repeater.  It's a nice summary of everything he has blogged about at http://g4ulf.blogspot.com

One of the "news" items in QST is how the ARRL website has been revamped.  "More than two years in the making, the new ARRL website is finally here...."

Big whoop..... Speaking of websites:

I and several other locals are getting excessively annoyed by the annual paper trail ritual of repeater coordination.  You'd think this could all be done online... streamlined to make the volunteer coordinators and systems owners jobs easier.  What a novel concept.  Unfortunately once again, it seems there is no guiding hand from a national level in this area.  Yet we all know is can be done, just look at the Log of The World website.  All done online.

Speaking of coordination.

What is going on with the ARRL Microwave Band Planning?

The committee was established two years ago and a chairman named a year ago.  I helped submit data to Will Payne a year ago for his trend graphing.  Other than that I haven't really heard anything more about this band-planning.

Apparently the board is to busy Ramping Up Focus on EmComm Issues.

Here is a pop quiz for any ARRL board member or officer in the event they read my drivel.  In the above "To Go Kit" or "Jump Kit" pictures, what key thing is notable absent?  Here is a hint, it is also not mentioned in Chapter 10  "Preparing for Deployment" of the ARRL Emergency Communication Handbook.  Answer: A soldering iron.

Lastly, I am making a request for feedback on this blog.  I have been blogging for a while, and simply put, I really don't know if ham radio these days is worth the effort I put into it. :-(  My email address is on my website and on QRZ.

Developing Wireless Networking using OLSR
2010-02-03T10:40:00.004-06:00

I've written before that mesh network topology on-top of standard 802.11 can make a powerful system. There is a group of hams in North Texas pioneering the way.  They have been developing firmware using the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) Protocol.  This is an IP routing protocol which is optimized for mobile ad-hoc networks.  

You can read more about this groups work at their newly launched website:

http://hsmm-mesh.org/

This is the place for info about the efforts of a special interest group of Travis County ARES that is working on linking various hospitals and government agencies with high speed 802.11 equipment. It is an extension of the ARCHES program to establish and maintain communications ability during times of emergency when the normal channels are no longer available. The bulk of the work so far involves implementing mesh networks using the venerable Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

Here we will try to enlighten and educate you all about the High Speed Multimedia MESH network HSMM-MESH™ currently being designed, developed and deployed as an amateur radio broadband communications system.  It is being used in and around Austin, and Plano Texas, as well as other sites.

Just further proof that there are still things out there to be discovered and developed in the hobby.  

If you are interested in what you see on their website, I highly encourage you to check out a free Ebook titled "Wireless Networking in the Developing World" -Second Edition  by Rob Flickenger.  

If you are like me you'll likely be ordering yourself the printed copy.

RTTY - Packet - 802.11
2010-02-01T23:49:00.006-06:00

Anybody remember 2 meter RTTY?  There is still some on HF, but it was pretty popular from 1950 to 1980 even on two meters.

RTTY declined in popularity, as faster, computerized transmission modes were developed, using less-expensive equipment.

That equipment was the TNC.  And now roughly 30 years later, (just like RTTY) it too has declined as faster, less-expensive equipment exists.

Vellman K8055 & Activity Graphs
2010-02-01T01:13:00.005-06:00

I recently picked up a Vellman K8055 interface board.  

My original application was in conjunction with Jonathan, G4KLX's D-Star project.  He has since added other methods of support for transmitter control, such as legacy serial port keying.

The Vellman board has 5 digital input channels and 8 digital output channels. In addition, there are two analogue inputs and two analogue outputs with 8 bit resolution.  As one can imagine, it has a lot of potential applications.

I had a guy interested in my repeater activity graph scripting that I mentioned a few years ago.  That was designed around repeaters with IRLP as this would just be a simple add-on for the Linux machine.

So for my first Vellman idea, I whipped up some perl code to watch a COR of a radio and provide the same logging and graphing functionality.

Refer to the original documentation if this interests you.  I have updated it. 

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/voip/activity-graphs.html

VOIP / Asterisk / Phone Interfacing
2010-01-10T01:32:00.005-06:00

For nearly a decade I tinkered to my hearts content with various applications and packet radio.  I learned an immense amount about TCP/IP.  From DOS based NOS packages, which lead to ethernet networking the shack, later to Linux.

Well, I have been tinkering with Asterisk for about 6 years with the same enthusiasm.  Much to my surprise, I learned that one of the original founders of our ham technology club has man of the same interests.  So much love that Mike Kassner has the vanity callsign, K0PBX to reflect that.

When it comes to interacting with other people not in the hobby, messages (sometimes emergency) are relayed person (ham) to person, and the second most common way is by telephone.

As a mater of fact, telephone communication is probably the largest part of non-face to-face communication.

So like a good ham, being knowledgeable in how the telephone system works and is changing is always beneficial. 

With some quick research you'll learn that SIP has become a widely adopted defacto protocol.  You'll also learn that an open source Linux based application called Asterisk is a very powerful tool that many hams are playing with.

I was most pleased to notice that the second edition of Jonathan Taylor, K1RFD's VOIP book does elude to a whole new world using Asterisk and app_rpt.

In my opinion, the ham radio tie-ins are just starting.... What a perfect time to get jump on board and help develop something new.

http://nerdvittles.com/ - You'll find an immense amount of tinkering ideas here.

Southeastern Asterisk Radio Networks - Digital Amateur Projects Association (DARPA).

EmComm & AMSAT's Geostationary Satellite
2010-01-03T15:37:00.006-06:00

A very interesting overview of AMSAT's phase IV Geostationary Satellite and the possible emergency communications implementations is in the Fall issue of CQ-VHF.

As you can tell I don't have a lot of love for Emcomm, but here is something that actually makes sense.  A high speed multi-media capable, geostationary satellite.

AMSAT has recently begun negotiating with INTELSAT to get amateur radio communication payloads “piggybacked” on commercial geosynchronous communications satellites. This would be a first for amateur radio. It would allow earth stations to have 24/7/365 communications over a very large area using small fixed antennas. A small dish antenna would be able to access voice communications and text messaging. A larger dish antenna could provide access to video and high speed data. Because this has obvious value for emergency communications, AMSAT hopes to get considerable funding for this project from emergency communications agencies.

Hams are well acquainted with radio coverage problems while providing emergency communications. The high frequency bands suffer from hourly to daily propagation challenges. VHF and UHF simplex channels have limited geographic coverage. A repeater improves coverage while restricting all operations to its fixed channel pairs. Most of our current operating modes offer voice communications only. If data is transmitted it is supported at low rates such as 300, 1200, or 9600 baud.

I hope this gets some backing from the ARRL ARES directors.  I honestly don't understand why and how all these recommendations come down the EC line to promote stuff like WinLink.  They should all get behind something like this that makes sense, and help promote development and deployment of terrestrial HSMM networks.

Is amateur ARES / emcomm ‘a waste’?
2010-01-02T09:17:00.005-06:00
This is a quick cheesy remake of a speech I have at a local club meeting.  I didn't expect so many other bloggers to pick up on it.

Emergency communications has been part of ham radio from it’s inception. Yet we need separate entities (ARES/RACES) to help promote it? Why not separate entities to help advance this hobby?

“Do we need to keep maintaining an inefficient, overly-political, antiquated, bureaucratic emcomm-specific radio organization? No. Amateur radio operators have always been willing to help in times of true emergency, and that won’t change if ARRL didn’t have its grubby little hands all over it. ARES-type emcomm as we know it could use some restructuring and attitude changes. When all else truly does fail, agencies will still want us, whether we’re trained in ICS or not, and whether we’re ARES or not.” --- Kevin K0KDS

What you're seeing in an influx of people who have no interest in technology or experimenting.

CB is back. Remember the 1970s?

We have a generation of "communicators", people who pick up a cell phone or microphone and want to communicate (talk).

The underlying technology is of no interest to this generation.

Citing the need to grow the hobby, the entry criteria have been overly simplified. We now give a ham license in every Happy Meal sold.

The end result is the need for ARRL to create reason for people to become hams, Public Service.

Ham radio is nothing like it used to be, and will never again be a platform for experimenting and technology seekers. ---- [Callsign removed by request]
(From: http://www.eham.net/articles/22898)

In the January 2010 issue of QST on page 9 the “It seems to Us” editorial by K1ZZ is about just this same theme.

It’s titled “Not an Emergency Radio Service?” And references a FCC Public Notice DA 09-2259 that states “While the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communications service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications, is one of the underlying principles of the amateur service, the amateur service is not an emergency radio service [emphasis added].”

Here are some other peoples blogs on my video:

http://sparqi.blogspot.com/2009/12/example-of-why-amateur-radio-is-failing.html

http://k9zw.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/kb9mwr-speaks-on-aresraces-is-a-waste/

Just to clarify, I'm not totally against it.  Just recently locally I've noticed a huge emphasis on it.  In my opinion there are other ares that we should be placing a much greater emphasis on.  In other words, if you enjoy dedicating yourself the the drills and so forth, fine... just try not to take it to seriously.

From what I have seen the real thing never compares to a drill.  Fortunately in the area I live in the last real emergency was the Weyauwega train wreck of 1996.  

While lots of local hams responded, what stands out the most is that we were not wanted by the local emergency coordinators and other officials.

So building a good relationship with these guys can't hurt.  It's even better when it helps you obtain access to tower sites.  But please let it stop there.

In all the house bills that recognize Amateur Radio for emergency communications it is noted that we do this "as service to the public at no cost to taxpayers." 

Yet I read about FEMA grants and other federal and state taxpayer assisted money being awarded and spent on various amateur radio installations.

This is the kiss of death in my opinion.  And I obviously do not condone this.

German HSMM Hamnet 2.0
2009-12-09T14:03:00.008-06:00

Hamnet 2.0 is a radio based network designed by German radio amateurs, which connects the already available infrastructure of the amateur radio service to each other and will provide a new powerful base for a amateur internet wireless network.

The official launch of the project and the presentation was made on the amateur radio exhibition and conference on October 31, 2009 in Hanover, accompanied by relevant lectures.

Hamnet 2.0 works on the basis of the TCP/IP protocol, so that commercially available wireless routers can be used with no or minor modifications as the hardware.  In addition, a separate hardware and firmware for this application was developed.  They are using the Ubiquiti WLAN module NanoStation 5 on the 6-centimeter-band (5.7 GHz).

Their situation is probably much like that over here. Sharply declining use of existing obsolete, slow, failure-prone equipment.  Due to some displacement by the Internet.  

The idea and hope is to support cross services (voice, images, data, video etc.) by using TCP/IP as the base.  Use of affordable a technology, and setup something independent from public networks.  While arousing interest in experimenting with the new technology, and developing new applications.

They started by establishing a 10 km link between DB0SHA, in Hanover, and DB0UHI in Laatzen in less than 10 minutes.  This was done just by holding the units in the air, which yielded a stable 16Mbit/s connection.

They expanded faster than they initially thought.  Interconnecting D-Star Relays and linking of EchoLink gateways.

Trying some more DX paths showed immediate success of Hanover to Peine (32 km) using the bare module.

They have since used this technology to replace their 23cm 19.2 k links.  And have connected over 9 points, and have others planned.

http://db0fhn.efi.fh-nuernberg.de/doku.php?id=projects:wlan:hamnet

73 Magazine Index
2009-12-06T21:53:00.009-06:00

The SolderSmoke blog noticed my 73 Magazine index project a few weeks before I completed it.

It was a rather large undertaking, but worth it in my opinion.  There is a wealth of timeless information in those magazines.  And for many just by taking a look at the index will bring back a wave of nostalgia.  

"What a great magazine 73 was! Sure, it was a bit wacky, but it had really wonderful technical content, at just the right level for truly amateur ham radio operators. Take your own walk down memory lane:" http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/files/ham/73.html

It is part of my effort to point out and promote what amateur radio is really about.   I tend to agree with Jorge, KI4SGU's blog comment that "Ham radio needs a spokesman like Mr. Green Again."  I hope the ARRL takes note.

While I have been blogging for a while, I have had recent wave of receiving email comments and feedback.   I started this blog shortly before the ARRL Introduced the "Fifth Pillar" at Dayton Hamvention 2008.  

ARRL President Joel Harrison, W5ZN, announced that the League will expand its identity program to include greater emphasis on technology. Harrison explained that "Ham radio operators, and particularly ARRL members, closely identify with current and emerging radio technology. Today, we are naming 'technology' as ARRL's new fifth pillar."

While I hoped this meant a greater emphasis on the ARRL Technology Task Force or Future Systems Committee, the only thing I really observed was the We Do That Radio website that was launched.

I swapped some emails with Allen Pitts, W1AGP who manages the site after it's launch as it did catch my eye.

Science, Experimentation and Technology .... We Do That!........ with Amateur Radio.

Welcome to Ham Radio in the 21st Century, Your scientific national resource!

The Amateur Radio Service frequency bands are the place on the usable radio spectrum where you as an individual can develop and experiment with wireless communications. Hams not only can make and modify their own equipment, but can create whole new ways to do things.

Learn about cutting edge Ham Radio technology and techniques. 

The problem I saw and still see with that site is that it is geared for new hams.  I conveyed this to Allen and shortly their after decided to start my own blog.  There are plenty of fairly inactive hams bored with the same-old, same-old.  I didn't feel the We Do That Radio site is geared for them, so this is my attempt to point out "something different."

Amateur Radio and Linux
2009-12-06T00:28:00.006-06:00

One of my favorite magazines Linux Journal, also has a few articles in their January 2010 magazine.

Back in April 2007 on the Texas A&M University Amateur Radio 802.11 Mailing List I made some comments that hams of the past were perhaps one of the earliest adopters of the open source way of doing things.  This was spawned from some discussion with another local ham, who happens to be one of my elmers.

Leaders in the ham radio arena who are to busy beating their own chests touting things like they are the "national association for amateur radio."

These so called leaders need to suggest/ lay some general concepts to steer the hobby to the future, or perhaps they have a lack of approach.  If I read one more thing about contesting or a home-made keyer, or restoring a boat anchor  I'll probably puke.  Instead put that in a specialty magazine, and focus on spreading the importance of the open source concepts in the ham radio arena in your monthly distributed membership magazine.    Focus on promoting the "right ideas" in that precious well distributed rag.  I don't see much of this steering, just a bunch of nostalgic crap.  Ham radio needs to promote exciting things and new technology to entice people to the hobby or drag people out of the wood work.   Retired people will find their way into the hobby on their own, to re-live the past..  In my opinion, we don't need to have oodles of crap for these people, they will come on their own and that's fine.

Ham radio needs to promote exciting things and new technology to entice people to the hobby or drag people out of the wood work.  IRLP is a good recent example.  It can take that "magic of HF", and make it portable, as in HT portable.  This day in age, a big old HF rig, isn't cool, nor usually an option for most renters or apartment dwellers.

Packet in the 80's & early 90's was enticing, because it was at competing speeds to the internet that was in it's public infancy at that time. The autopatch in the 90's was enticing as cellphone were not yet main steam. Both of these examples happen to fall about the time of the no-code license became available.  But many seem to attribute the in-rush of hams in the 90's due to the no-code license scheme revision.  That went hand in hand with the these exciting technological things, it was not solely due to the new entry class.  If there is nothing "cool," I'd bet you'd have a hard time giving a license away... and that does not insure they will use it!  People actually bucked down and learned code, even if they hated it... ask yourself why. It's probably because there was an aspect of the hobby they perceived
as cool/interesting at the end of the rainbow.

New and interesting things in ham radio generally means encouraging experimentation.  As experimentation is what brings new modes, and discoveries to the hobby.  Not everyone will partake in that experimentation, but if there is a new discovery from those who do, everyone can later "play"  with it, when it catches on.  Open source, open information, encourages this experimentation

Hams or the past were perhaps one of the earliest adopters of the open source way of doing things. 

We acknowledged this was done out of necessity - radio stuff was expensive and out of the reach of a lot of hams. So they invented newer and mostly cheaper ways of doing things. They also came up with better ways of doing things because somebody else would see that idea in print and improve upon it. Of course the technology was rather rudimentary, and there was little way to go but up at that point in radio technology calendar.

We also felt this is not so much the case anymore. 

The current demographic of hams is skewed toward old. These people seem to be in either one of two camps. First is the retired person who has "made his fortune" (or at least is reasonably well off financially) and is not worried about inventing ways to do something on the cheap. They just buy an appliance and go from there.

The second group is middle aged and sees ham radio as not only a hobby, but a way to make some bucks. These are the guys that have an economic interest in closed source. They file part numbers off of chips, they cover circuitry in epoxy, and delude themselves into thinking that they will make a nice future retirement income from that "magic" CW keyer that they designed.

They don't do ham radio for the altruistic reasons (although some may have started out that way), it is money for them.

It seems to us that any change in the hobby needs to be political/philosophical. That means a change in leadership of the ARRL as they are the most prominent force in the hobby. This has got to be a grass-roots movement and it needs to start ASAP. The hobby will be gone and replaced by a "Citizen Communication Corps" if nothing is done.

In this Linux Journal issue one of the articles is titled along with some of the  same thoughts. "When All Else Fails—Amateur Radio, the Original Open-Source Project"

What most people tend not to think about is the open-source nature of Amateur Radio. While operators most often are seen working in emergency situations, many of the  modern conveniences we have today—cell phones, satellites, wireless devices— were developed and tested by radio amateurs.

On page 46 "An Amateur Radio Survival Guide for Linux Users  - A getting-started guide for Linux users looking to venture into the world of Amateur Radio" by Dan Smith.  This is an overview of common amateur radio activities with information on how to participate using a Linux system and free software.

On Page 50 you will find information on Xastir.  An Open Source Client for the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS).  Subtitled "Plotting Mars Rover locations on a detailed map, easily done with Linux?  You Bet! By Curt Mills, Steve Stroh and Lara Mills.

Starting on page 56 of this issue, an article titled "Rolling Your Own With Digital Amateur Radio" by Gary Robinson.  He points out that Amateur Radio and open source are a heavenly match.

Amateur Radio operators are generally free-thinking individualists who don’t mind getting their hands dirty to get something done right. Many of us do not think twice about buying a brand-new radio for hundreds or even thousands of dollars and popping the lid on it to see if we can modify it to make it better. You do not have to look hard to find myriad articles on how to modify different pieces of Amateur Radio equipment. So, it is not surprising that we might feel the same way about the software we use.

Open-source software and Amateur Radio are a natural fit. Few operators ever would buy a piece of radio gear if it came with a license that said they could not modify it, and it’s natural to see why a lot of us navigate toward open source in general and Linux in particular.

I encourage you to pick up this copy at the newsstand if you are not a subscriber

Tinkering & Innovation
2009-12-01T16:32:00.001-06:00
About this time a year ago I wrote about the same thing.  I pointed out that you cannot sit back and expect the big ham manufactures to come out with new technologies.  As that is what we are supposed to be doing.

John Hays, K7VE was recently interviewed by Computer World magazine.  The article has a good theme on Reviving innovation in the hobby.

Reviving innovation

Decades ago, amateur radio operators were on the forefront of scores of technological innovations, including television, digital communications, solid-state design and cellular networks. The hobby's roots trace back to radio pioneers such as Guglielmo Marconi and FM-inventor Edwin Armstrong.

But in recent years, as many potential new hams were attracted to computers, the Internet and other technologies that they could explore without passing a licensing exam, some veteran hams worried that ham radio was at risk of gradually sliding into stagnation and was perhaps even on the road toward technological irrelevance. Over time, many old-timers worried, experimenters would gradually be replaced by hams more focused on the hobby's operational aspects, such as restoring antique radios and providing communications services for community parades and other charity events.

Other hams, however, believed that the hobby was actually entering a new era of innovation, one driven by the same type of people lured away from ham radio by advancing digital technologies. They reasoned that a streamlined licensing system, capped by the FCC's elimination of Morse code testing two years ago, would, over time, revitalize the hobby. This would happen by attracting technically skilled innovators who were interested in more than merely tapping a telegraph key.

Whatever the reason, a budding corps of innovators is now working to restore at least some of ham radio's past glory, focusing on projects ranging from satellite construction to power-line communications to testing long-range Wi-Fi links. "Ham radio provides the broadest and most powerful wireless communications capability available to any private citizen anywhere in the world," says Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the  American Radio Relay League (ARRL), a national association of ham radio operators based in Newington, Conn.

And along the same lines the Wall Street Journal just had an article on how Tinkering is making a comeback amid the economic crisis.

Occupying a space somewhere between shop class and the computer lab, the new tinkerers are making everything from devices that Twitter how much beer is left in a keg to robots that assist doctors. The experimentation is even creating companies. With innovation a prime factor in driving economic growth, and corporate research and development spending tepid, the marriage of brains and brawn offers one hopeful glimmer.

Engineering schools across the country report students are showing an enthusiasm for hands-on work that hasn't been seen in years. Workshops for people to share tools and ideas -- called "hackerspaces" -- are popping up all over the country; there are 124 hackerspaces in the U.S., according to a member-run group that keeps track, up from a handful at the start of last year. SparkFun Electronics Inc., which sells electronic parts to tinkerers, expects sales of about $10 million this year, up from $6 million in 2008. "Make" magazine, with articles on building items such as solar hot tubs and autopilots for robots, has grown from 22,000 subscribers in 2005 to more than 100,000 now. Its annual "Maker Faire" in San Mateo, Calif., attracted 75,000 people this year.

Amateur radio operators find themselves hooked on do-it-yourself technology

Minikiewicz said through the years, his interest in the hobby has been centered on the keen sense of accomplishment one gets out of building a radio from the tubes up that allows the builder to travel -- through radio -- to distant places.

"That's that whole other element," he said. "You're accomplishing something on your own. You're not just plugging it up."

Club/ equipment crossroads?
2009-11-22T15:50:00.002-06:00
Here is the Letter to the Editor I wrote for the Green Bay Mike and Key Club, (my local club) Keyclicks newsletter in December 2008.

The thoughts in this article are that of my own, and do not necessarily represent those of the GBMK. I'll admit to having a digital interest/bias.

The Green Bay Mike & Key Club is at an equipment crossroads. The 147.12 and 147.36 are nearing the end of their 30 year life. They both do need upgrading, and I'm sure many doubt this.

But it seems there is more to it than that. It's more a question of where will ham radio be in another 10, 20 and 30 years? More importantly, where do you the members and hams of the area want and envision it to be?

I also feel that there is little doubt that the GBMK is the prominent club/voice for ham radio in this area. The community infrastructure they decide and provide for the area ham populous does in effect impact the future of ham radio in this area.

My personal feeling is that one of the three systems the Green Bay Mike & Club maintains should be able to do something more that it has for the last 30 years. I feel strongly that one of these systems should at least be "digital ready," meaning that the hardware can support or be upgraded to support some digital format.

Weather that be D-Star, APCO-25, NXDN, or something else is for members to decide.

All I know is locking the community into another 30 years of the same capabilities doesn't sound very smart for the future of the hobby.

73'

Steve, KB9MWR

Unfortunately it fell upon deaf ears. I did receive a couple notes from people who seemed to agree or thought it was a good point/well written.

The club chose replace the 147.360 Micor with a Kenwood analog radio. When put on the spot, the reason for not considering digital was because there wasn't enough of a potential user base. Hardly any members had digital capabilities. That coupled with the question of which digital format would take over and not wanting to invest in the wrong thing.

While I can understand the reasoning. The door swings both ways. Most hams won't take the plunge and buy a new radio without infrastructure in the area. Which is also understandable.

Trying to be good spirited I even helped with a tune-up when the new repeater was moved to the Bellin hospital site. For a few weeks the excitement was high, and there was a lot of use of the new system.

So lets look at it now:

During the month of October I logged the transmitter activity on the 147.360. On average it saw less than 1 hr of total transmitter time daily.

So to me the argument that a digital counter part was not warranted due to potential use has been invalidated.

I guess the core issue here is in generating and keeping interest in the hobby. It also seems wise to not duplicate resources, but instead try something different.

For instance there are about analog 10 repeaters in Green Bay. How many hams per day do you think get on all these machines?

So I don't see how a narrow band push is logical, for the sole purpose to accommodate everyone's request to put up a repeater.   

Just my $.02

Tonight's Family Guy
2009-11-15T01:17:00.000-06:00

Tonight's Family Guy titled "Quagmire’s Baby" featured some ham radio references.

Peter goes to Quagmire’s garage sale and buys a Ham radio. He uses that radio to talk to a ghost of Ronald Reagan. Peter eventually ends up going back to return the radio.

More references can be found here:
http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/files/ham/cartoon/cartoon.html

A second way to convert an analog repeater to D-Star.
2009-11-13T15:45:00.001-06:00
Until just recently if you wanted to make your own d-star repeater at a fraction of the cost, there was one way.  That was the Satoshi GMSK node adapter.  

To build this adapter the cost about $70 as compared (+ your analog radios) to the cost of a Icom RPC-2 Controller plus a RF band module at about $2900.

As one can imagine the GMSK node adapter is very popular.  There are a number of other revised clone boards out there (and gmskhotspot.com)  to feed the need and address small board errors in the original design.  

The problem being is that there is not always credit due to the base designer and PIC code author Satoshi Yasuda 7M3TJZ/AD6GZ.  Currently, the PIC code is in a state of being re-written to satisfy that it doesn't infringe on his rights.

In this impasse Jonathan Naylor G4KLX's sound card based GMSK / D-Star repeater controller project has gained a lot of attention and advancement.

Will the Digital Revolution Crush Amateur Radio?
2009-11-01T15:47:00.000-06:00
Amateur radio must seek change - and welcome it when it comes.  It is essential to seek change. When change does occur, it often comes with confusion. It amateur radio is to survive, it must not run from change, it must be prepared to run toward it. Change imposed by the digital revolution is an opportunity if amateur radio can solve the problems therein related.

From 73 Magazine - March 2000 - Bill Parker W8DMR

ARRL Approves Study Committee to Research & Develop Plan for Narrowband
2009-10-19T22:07:00.003-05:00
From: http://www.arrl.org/announce/board-0907/

Minutes of the 2009 Second Meeting
ARRL Board of Directors

Teleconference  July 17-18, 2009

29. On motion of Mr. Sarratt, seconded by Mr. Frenaye, the following resolution was ADOPTED:

    WHEREAS, there is current substantial amateur radio movement, activity, and innovation in the digital narrowband area; and

    WHEREAS, the FCC has mandated that by 2013 commercial radio move to narrowband channels and Amateur Radio manufacturers normally follow commercial practices; and

    WHEREAS, the VHF/UHF Amateur Radio band plan currently uses 15 and 20 kHz FM channels; and

    WHEREAS, with the increasing use of narrowband across the country amateurs are placing and using narrowband equipment outside the repeater subband because there is no real place to fit the narrowband pairs; and

    WHEREAS, for ARRL to remain a respected leader in technology, we must be actively involved in innovative solutions to problems by bringing about a productive discussion on a technical paradigm shift; now

    THEREFORE, the President shall appoint a study committee for the purpose of research and to consider developing a plan to move the US amateur community to narrowband channel spacing.

I would be in favor of this IF it meant there was some thought behind it.  It would be nice to clear a few ~50 KHz wide channels on 2 meters for higher speed data applications.  This of course should go hand in hand with some other modernized regulations.

Promoting narrow band just so we can accommodate more repeaters (more of the same) is a poor reason.  Perhaps if there was less effort to squeeze in more repeaters, this would promote exploration of other bands.

How-To Build a D-Star Compatible System at a Fraction of the Cost with More Capabilities
2009-10-08T10:06:00.001-05:00

FCC ferrets around for spare spectrum
2009-10-06T12:00:00.001-05:00
From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/25/fcc_spectrum_shortage/

FCC ferrets around for spare spectrum -Got any ideas?
By Bill Ray 

The FCC is asking for suggestions in the hunt for more radio spectrum, having established that there's not going to be enough to support the next generation of broadband requirements.

The US regulator wants ideas for making better use of all the spectrum below 3.7GHz, and it wants them by 13 November 13. It's asking (pdf) for suggestions on what spectrum should be used for what and how to get hold of it.

The consultation is part of the National Broadband Plan, which has been inviting the industry to say how much radio spectrum it needs. Surprising as it may seem, the industry thinks it needs lots and lots more radio spectrum if it's going to serve customers with the sort of quantities of data it thinks they would like, as the FCC explains:

"According to Wireless Communications Association International (WCAI), a traditional handheld device, with average customer usage patterns, will consume about 30 megabytes of data in a month, a single smart phone consumes 30 times that amount, and a single connected notebook or laptop computer is consuming 450 times that amount."

So you smartphone users out there are already burning through 900MB of data a month, while laptop users are consuming more than 13GB every 30 days or so. That seems like an awful lot to use, though that includes voice traffic.

Still, the FCC is taking those numbers seriously, and it wants to know how much bandwidth you think the wireless industry is going to need. It also wants to know where that spectrum should sit, both for fixed and mobile wireless services, and suggestions to encourage existing users to hand it over for reallocation to wireless broadband.

The FCC has the same problems as the rest of the western world: Huge swathes of the radio spectrum were allocated to governmental and military operations that have no incentive to make use of it or even to keep track of which bits they are actually using.

UK regulator Ofcom's solution is to charge everyone for spectrum usage. Though calculated rates if it can't get the spectrum onto the auction block. But that's not always a good idea (billing lifeboats for radio frequencies is not good PR), so the FCC is hoping the general public can come up with something better.

The regulator is open to suggestions from 23 October until 13 November, and we look forward to hearing what the American on the street has to say on the matter. 

All of 900MHz, 1.2GHz, 2.4GHz ,3.4GHzand 5.8 GHz don't even total 800 MHz of spectrum! Can you list the times the ARRL has encouraged life above 902 MHz in QST in the last 5 years?

.. oh yeah priorities... 4 MHz of HF spectrum, my bad!

The range of D-Star
2009-10-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Several Digital Voice operators have reported hands down, absolutely no question, tested it for months, the D-Star is usable for reliable (non-garbled communications) for mobiles about 10% or less of the coverage area of the Analog FM and for base stations about 80%.  This is largely due to the picket fencing of a mobile signal, multipath for non line of sight, etc.  On a high peak in the desert with line of sight, one can imagine them being comparable, but not in the real world of trees and buildings.

Yes the R2D2, digital garble on P25 and D-Star transmissions is due to multipath.  Experience is that 2 meters is more prone to R2D2 issues than 70cm  Partially because 70 centimeters  penetrates buildings better.    So yes analog copies with some conditions better than D-STAR. Mobile, multipath for one.  

Here is a sample for those curious but not actively experimenting:  http://www.ussc.com/~uvhfs/dstar_test_excerpt_2a_20080116.mp3

Digital voice should in theory get out further as a narrow band mode advantage.  Some hams have noticed that their radios specifications it takes a stronger signal to decode.

The Icom repeaters have poor receive sensitivity and poor adjacent channel
rejection compared to Motorola/Kenwood repeaters.  The spec's on the RP-2000V are
12dB sinad at .45uv and only 65db isolation from adjacent channels.  

The D-Star user radios spec. worse sensitivity in DV mode than FM.... However in theory with proper implementation:

The DV Advantage Per Mark, N5RFX:

The DV signal has a steady noise level to –119 dBm and drops off at –120 dBm. The analog FM signal SINAD begins to drop at –102 dBm. Between –102 and –119 dBm DV has a SINAD advantage over analog FM. The advantage occurs over a 17 to 18 dB range. When noise free signals are desirable, DStar digital voice can meet this requirement with a 17dB to 18dB increase in the range that noise free operation can occur. For weak signal work, the analog FM signal will prevail.

CONCLUSION

Trading 2 dB of sensitivity for a 17dB increase in nearly noise free reception is an advantage of DStar over analog FM. When weak signal reception is necessary, the analog signal will provide better performance.

D-STAR isn't perfect, but it's here and it's being used, so we should familiarize ourselves with it.  Besides, it's fun to play with a new mode. :)

One method to combat multipath it is found in the IC-2820H mobile, with its diversity receive.  Another possible combatant might be to put circular polarization at the repeater site.

Reference: http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/cir_pol_rpt.html

There is an article on circular polarization antennas in August 2007  QST.  It might be interesting to do some research in this area.  Bases  could use horizontally polarized antennas to cut down interference from man made sources and be 20 db down from adjacent vertically polarized FM repeaters and mobiles.  Using slot antenna designs horizontal might also be practical on 23-cm mobiles. (John, K7VE mentioned this back in 2007.)

I still haven't found any reports of any D-Star repeaters trying circular polarization at the repeater site.  But I would be curious to read about it.

HSMM @ HamCom
2009-09-12T14:09:00.003-05:00
CQ-VHF editor, Joe, N6CL wrote a bit about HamCom in his "Innovations and Insights" editorial.  The following is a partial excerpt:

For those of us who were able to attend the HSMM seminar at HamCom in Plano, Texas, we were treated with an exciting presentation on the latest in HSMM. MESH networking is a form of digital communications that is designed to route data, voice, and instructions between nodes. This routing is accomplished by continuous connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by "hopping" from node to node until the destination is reached. Thus, HSMM-MESH® networking is using HSMM in a mesh network.

John Champa, K80CL, led the two-hour forum with an introduction to the difference between WiFi and HSMM. He highlighted the need for developing a means of digital transmission that is significantly faster than the technology that existed in the aftermath of 9/11. He also spoke of how under-utilized the VHF-plus ham bands have been. Additionally, he discussed the need to update our emergency communications so as to bring ourselves in line with the rest of the world.

With the migration of commercial television to digital, we amateur radio operators are also a bit behind the curve. John covered amateur digital video and compared it with what has just gone away, analog NTSC standard television. Glenn Currie, KD5MFW, followed John with a presentation on HSMM-MESH®

Glen discussed the city-wide deployment of HSMM-MESH® in the Austin, Texas area. Austin was picked for the deployment because of its central location and the critical role that it played in recent hurricanes....

Cut down your path loss
2009-09-10T00:08:00.002-05:00

Here is a repost from a wireless networking forum that shows the impact of a single small tree in the line of sight at 5.8 GHz

The antenna is at 35 feet above the ground. I'm 250 feet from the antenna.

LOS signal was -68 dBm. With the tree in the way, it was -78 dBm. That's a 10 dB difference, or a ten times reduction of signal.

Decoding D-Star / AMBE DTMF?
2009-09-07T00:25:00.027-05:00

Having remote control over an amateur station is traditionally done with DTMF.  

So far, all D-Star control functions have had to be done via the URcall field.  This is totally annoying and cumbersome to me.

When it come to digital mode like D-Star the AMBE vocoder translates the DTMF to a digital signature of sorts.  

Most codecs add special payload forwarding  information for DTMF digits.  This be because most low-rate voice codecs cannot be guaranteed to reproduce these tone signals accurately enough for automatic recognition.   Codec compression and then decompression of audio will make decoding DTMF at the remote end highly unreliable. 

Defining separate payload formats also permits higher redundancy while maintaining a low bit rate.  (See RFC 2833)

AMBE is no exception. The AMBE chip has digital codes to signal the encoding of DTMF and to decode the same.  The coding scheme can be found at  http://dvsinc.com/manuals/AMBE-2020_manual.pdf starting on page 32 (Section 5.2.8)

These special digital codes can only be used if you have access to the full 48-byteframe, which is not in the case of DV data, that only forwards the 9 DV data bytes.

Due to this, it is some peoples understanding that Icom chose not to use that feature of the AMBE chip.  (See: the Testing With DTMF Tones section of the Utah VHF Society page.)  However, DTMF data is in fact included "in-band" along with the compressed audio data stream. (those 9 bytes of wonderful but totally opaque data..) 

You may still need access to an AMBE Chip (or DV Dongle) to deal with that..

This is a shame because it limits one from being able to create software hooks in programs like Mark, KB9HKM's Hotspot to be able to remotely control it.

There is a ton of software applications hams could be developing if they had the ability to decode AMBE DTMF.  The Icom D-Star ID-RP2C controller also lacks the AMBE chip, which makes it a no-thrills controller.  

For example; the current temperature could be sent to the display of ones radio if requested via DTMF.  Or time...

So is there really no way to decode DTMF?  I'm not convinced yet.  It is way to clumsy to have to handle all control functions using the URCALL fields. (especially when mobile) 

If you listen to the raw DV stream it sounds noticeably different when you are pressing digits.  

While I haven't played with this enough, it does seem there is a digital pattern to DTMF when you analyze at the raw DV stream.  

For instance;
DTMF 0 always seems to start with c3-48-3c-82-02-44-21-0b-28
DTMF 1 always seems to start with d3-08-24-f3-83-18-30-41-10
DTMF 2 always seems to start with d3-08-24-f3-83-58-30-41-10
DTMF 3 always seems to start with d3-08-24-fe-93-18-30-41-10
DTMF 4 always seems to start with 83-09-20-82-c5-14-40-c6-2c
DTMF 5 always seems to start with 83-09-20-82-c5-54-40-c6-2c
DTMF 6 always seems to start with 93-49-24-92-55-10-50-c6-28
DTMF 7 always seems to start with 
DTMF 8 always seems to start with 93-c8-38-f3-04-4c-51-8e-14
DTMF 9 always seems to start with 93-c8-38-f3-14-0c-51-8e-14
DTMF * always seems to start with c3-48-3c-82-02-04-21-0b-28
DTMF # always seems to start with c3-48-3c-82-12-04-21-0b-28
etc...

There are some variations that occur, which make determining an accurate DTMF mapping difficult.  Tools to record AMBE (natively) exist, so perhaps a histogram comparison routine can solve the dilemma.

If a DTMF mapping can't be accurately determined you can always add a DV dongle at the repeater site.  

But ideally I'd like to see the AMBE vocoder become part of future revisions of the D-Star controller hardware.  Having that in there enables hams to develop applications like I have described above.

DVSI the codec manufacture was able to be persuaded to sell the AMBE vocoder chip in small quantities to help hams.  Perhaps they could be further persuaded to release or sell an affordable closed binary to enable such DTMF decoding?

First lets see what we can do as hams.

I re-introduced this subject on the dstar_digital mailing list in December 2009.

I want to try and get a better understanding of the limitations of the "DTMF Decoding" feature of the AMBE codec that is not fully-implemented in D-Star.

I've read the "Testing with DTMF tones" section on the Utah VHF Society page.
http://utahvhfs.org/dstar_codec_behavior.html

"you cannot reliably pass DTMF signaling through a D-Star link system unless that audio is generated from a D-Star radio itself! This means that if you are using a D-Star system as a gateway or as a relay of an analog channel, you should not expect DTMF control to be possible through that link."

From the limited testing I have done from an Icom Radio to an Icom radio by pressing Digits on the keypad I haven't really noticed the distortion behavior.

What I am reading is the problem is going from Analog DTMF to Digital medium within the radio? Like feeding analog DTMF from some other source into a D-Star Radio's Microphone input. (why you'd want do this, is beyond me)

Since my experimentation would involve a D-Star radio's keypad and a node adapter with DV dongle to recover the audio (and DTMF if needs be), does anyone know if DTMF is implemented correctly with the DV Dongle? Or any other perceived issues?

Handy Tools:
dShark – D-Star packet protocol analyzer.

Software from Jonathan G4KLX, such as his sound card based D-Star Client.

Jakub Hruska's sound card based Windows D-Star decoder program.

{Edit Jan 2011}
For more information on the DTMF in-band channel with all 4 bits of DTMF information, see the ircDDB-mheard code from Michael, DL1BFF. (line 383 - his code handles the bit interleaving and FEC processing)

Kristoff, ON1ARF took Michael's code and packaged it as a proof of concept, to allow people to experiment with DTMF-controlling your D-STAR repeater.

See: http://villazeebries.krbonne.net/hamstuff/?p=18

Non-Icom Repeater Joins Network
2009-09-01T12:54:00.000-05:00
(Reprinted from the August 2009 D-Star Newsletter)

D-STAR has always been touted as an open standard and has been evidenced by the development of software and applications such as DPlus, D-RATS, DSTARMONITOR and others. Now, an effort is under-way to develop a D-STAR repeater package based on non-Icom hardware and Gateway software. David Lake, G4ULF, and members of the Ashdown Forest Repeater Group in the UK have the GB7MH repeater and prototype software on the air and operating.

The hardware is a modified Tait T800 repeater operating in full GMSK mode with the D-STAR standard 6.25 KHz bandwidth. The repeater uses the GMSK Node Adapter developed by Satoshi Yasuda of Japan. With the cooperation and support of the Trust Server Team in Texas, the repeater is connected to the G2 network and is running popular software including the DPLUS module developed by Robin Cutshaw, AA4RC, and Pete Loveall’s DSTARMONITOR code unmodified.

The system is capable of full callsign routing to and from the live G2 network, provides station updates and includes a self-service registration page similar to the Icom registration. The system is undergoing rigorous testing to ensure the integrity of the worldwide G2 network. The software will not be made available until testing has been completed. The repeater is usually connected to REF005A.

David would like to acknowledge the hard work of many who are working on this project including Sato-shi Yasuda, Robin Cutshaw, Jim McClellan, Darren Storer, Pete Loveall, Iain Phillips and members of the Ashdown Forest Repeater Group. This effort represents an exciting step in the evolution of the D-STAR technology and is worth following closely as development continues.

The evolution of D-STAR repeaters began with the commitment of Icom to implement the JARL standard on not only radios, but repeater infrastructure and software. The tremendous growth of D-STAR has opened the door for developers and other experimenters in Amateur Radio to implement new features and capabilities on the digital platform.

You can follow the developments of the GB7MH D-STAR repeater project at http://g4ulf.blogspot.com.

APCO 25 decoder /analyzer
2009-08-30T23:27:00.000-05:00

Matt Robert, VK2TVK writes in the APCO25 ham radio list:

Hi List,

I would like to let you guys know about an open source P25 decoder/analyzer project  that has been running for a little while now.  OP25 started as the thesis for a Computer Security PHD student that is researching the security aspects of the APCO25 standard. The software is being expanded into a decoding suite that can gives various bits of information about a received signal and there is also provision for a software based repeater.

OP25 is based on the open source GNUradio package, and it is compatible with either the USRP software radio peripheral, or a conventional NFM radio connected to a sound card via a discriminator tap. One contributor is also working on adding transmit code with the intention of giving a software based P25 repeater that can be run off conventional PC hardware. Currently all the major contributors are HAM operators.

At the moment OP25 is considered pre-alpha (i.e. developmental) and we are looking for people that are interested in becoming developers/contributors to the project. The project is designed to run under GNU/Linux and it requires a bit of skill to get it going. It's definitely a HAM radio project at this stage and that's why I figured it would be appropriate for this list.

Shown here are are some sample screenshots for the curious.

Please feel free to have a look at the project homepage at http://www.sedition.org.au/op25 and there is also a discussion list at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/op25-dev/

Kind Regards,
Matt

Re-Crystaling WRT's
2009-08-22T18:18:00.007-05:00

Some hams in Germany have been recrystaling Linksys WRTs to go outside of the Part 15 band:  Arsene, LX1TB has modified the Linksys WRT54G(S) models to tune the frequencies below 2400 MHz for better fit with the hamradio bandplan..  Look on these German websites to get the details: 

Translated version of : http://www.rlx.lu/~lx1tb/wrt54gs/

And translated version of: http://db0fhn-i.ampr.org/wrt54gs/

At the recent Ham-Com convention in Texas, Kipton, Moravec, AE5IB and Glenn Currie, KD5MFW made this chart with the data about the crystal change.

The whole screen is the amateur radio spectrum allocation in that frequency area.

The top section is the standard off the shelf WiFi. You can see that Channels 1-6 fit into the spectrum.

The second section is replacing the 20 MHz crystal on the transmitter with a 19.6608 MHz crystal (the next lowest that is readily available and costs under $1) With it we can use channels 7-11 in our band. Other countries allow the unit to have Part 15 channels 12-14. 

The third section is the ARRL Band plan. he notes, because we are spread spectrum, we look like background noise to the narrow band signals.

Kipton tends to think maybe with a software change we can add those channels also and with the crystal change still be in the Amateur Radio Spectrum.

With the crystal changes, the units can not be detected by unmodified standard 802.11 devices, and  impossible for them to connect.

The tests showed that by making a simple 59-cent crystal change the HSMM signals could be moved to between IEEE Channels 2-3.  

Also show at the Ham-Com  HSMM presentation is a spectrum analysis from Wi-SPY by MetaGeek.

The yellow shaded area shows the official 802.11 Channel 2 center. The red shaded section shows the official 803.11 Channel 11. 

The CPU clock and ethemet clocks are totally different from the radio crystal, so both units "think" they are on Channel 11. Only the crystal-modified "slide band" unit is somewhere between  Channels 2 and 3 as shown by the green and blue accumulated readings. Both units were tested for about 3 hours for frequency stability, etc.

You can read more about this in the latest (Summer 2009) CQ-VHF Magazine HSMM column by John, K8OCL Titled "New Amateur Digital Video (ADV) and Revolutionary HSMM-MESH at Ham-Com."

Spread Spectrum and Ham Radio
2009-08-17T22:42:00.006-05:00
All though the 80's and 90's the big thing one kept reading about was spread spectrum and how it would revolutionize ham radio.

So lets take a trip down memory lane:

TAPR's Statement on Spread Spectrum Technology Development

TAPR was founded in 1982 as a membership supported non-profit amateur radio research and development organization with specific interests in the areas of packet and digital communications. In the tradition of TAPR, the Board of Directors at their Fall 1995 meeting voted that the organization would begin to actively pursue the research and development of amateur radio spread spectrum digital communications. At the Spring 1996 board of directors meeting, the following statement of purpose was passed:

    "TAPR believes that the technical facts support our conviction that conventional and spread spectrum systems can coexist without detriment to conventional systems on all frequencies from MF to EHF. To this end, TAPR will begin to research spread spectrum systems that will develop technology for future deployment." 

As stated above, the TAPR board feels strongly about TAPR's focus on spread spectrum technology and especially how it relates to the potential coexistence on frequencies that will have increased number of users occupying them. The amateur radio bands, like other spectrum will become more heavily utilized in the future. It is in the interest of amateur radio to develop systems that are interference-resistant while not interfering with other primary or secondary users on those frequencies.

TAPR understands the concerns many have with the new technology, and believes that efforts in both education and research is necessary in order to allay the fears about interference and to demonstrate the benefits of the technology.

TAPR believes that todays' communications technology is moving toward all digital transmitters and receivers. These advances in technology, combined with the swift evolution of cell based transmission and switching protocols, are opening up a new set of possibilities for unique new services utilizing intelligent networks. These will contain smart transmitters, receivers, and switches. Today's Internet is perhaps the best example of a self-regulating structure that embodies these new technological approaches to communications in the networking domain. However, to date, many of these innovations have not moved into the wireless networking arena. TAPR will work on moving these innovations into the amateur radio community.

TAPR feels that the VHF/UHF/SHF radio networks of the future will involve a mixture of links and switches of different ownership, which terminate at the end-user via relatively short-distance links. What will then be required is a built-in, distributed, self-governing set of protocols to cause the network's behavior to make more efficient use of a limited, common shared resource, the radio spectrum. Creating such a self-regulating structure for the optimal sharing of spectrum will require much effort.

One of the major problems which stands in the way of these new approaches today is the current FCC regulatory environment and the manner in which spectrum is managed and allocated under its rules.

Historically, the current regulatory approach to radio has been based upon the technology that was in use at the time that the Communications Act of 1934 was framed, basically what we would call today, 'dumb' transmitters speaking to 'dumb' receivers. The technology of that time required reserved bandwidths to be set aside for each licensed service so that spectrum would be available when needed. Given this regulatory approach, many new applications cannot be accommodated since there is no available unallocated spectrum to 'park' new services. However, given the new set of tools available to the entrepreneur with the advent of digital technology, what once were 'dumb' transmitters and receivers can now be smart devices which are capable of exercising greater judgment in the effective use and sharing of spectrum. The more flexible the tools that we incorporate in these devices, the greater the number of uses that can be accommodated in a fixed, shared spectrum.

Therefore, TAPR will focus its spread spectrum effort in the following areas:

    * TAPR will work to promote rules and technologies to make the most efficient use of the spectrum through power control, forward error correction, and other means to minimize interference among spread spectrum users and existing communications systems.
    * TAPR will work on issues and efforts with other national organizations to change the regulatory environment and rules in order to promote the experimentation, development, and later deployment of spread spectrum technology.
    * TAPR will work to develop information on the topic to help educate members and the amateur community as a whole about spread spectrum technology, and to disseminate this information via printed publications, the World Wide Web, presentations at conferences and meetings, and other means.
    * TAPR will work to foster experimentation, development, and design of spread spectrum systems, and to facilitate the exchange of information between the researchers and other interested parties.
    * TAPR will work to develop a national intra-network to foster the deployment of future high-speed spread spectrum systems into regional and local communities, including the development of suitable protocols and guidelines for deployment of these systems.
    * TAPR will work with commercial companies who manufacture spread spectrum devices which operate in spectrum shared by the amateur radio service (ARS), in order to make them more aware of the nature of ARS operations on those bands with the goal to work towards the deployment of devices which will minimize interference between all spectrum sharing partners.
    * TAPR will work with commercial companies who manufacture spread spectrum devices in order to identify equipments that can be either used or modified for use for Part 97 operation.

Adopted by the TAPR Board on September 20th, 1996 at SeaTac, Washington Board Meeting.

Spread Spectrum Statement Committee:
Greg Jones, WD5IVD
Dewayne Hendricks, WA8DZP
Barry McLarnon, VE3JF
Steve Bible, N7HPR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(internet_service)

In 1994 Merticom, established them selves as owner of Ricochet Networks was one of the pioneering wireless Internet service providers in the United States.  They provided 128 kbps broadband services  to the general public using unlicensed 1 watt 900 MHz FHSS radios mounted to light poles in several major cities by 2001, just before the filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.  At the time, many hams in these large cities complained that the Ricochet Networks made the 900 MHz band virtually unusable due to the high noise floors caused by the wide deployment.

http://www.tapr.org/fhss_project.html

The TAPR FHSS Radio project was displayed at the 1997 ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference, October 10-12, 1997 and officially started that year.

The development of this 1 watt, 128 Kbps 900 MHz FHSS radio, suggested this is the future for amateur packet radio.

October 1999 TAPR signed an agreement with the Dandin Group to take the TAPR design from its current state into production which TAPR has access to production for sale back into the amateur radio community. This is an agreement we have been working on for several months. The bringing together of TAPR's and Dandin's capabilities will help the speed of the project tremendously.

Dewayne Hendricks (WA8DZP) , was the CEO of Dandin Group.  Dewayne stated that Dandin was trying to do something like what Metricom was doing, but we were trying to do it in a different way than they were doing it, a different business model.

"The first release of the TDR-900 is designed to operate at 900 MHz with future radio modules to cover other parts of the spectrum."

From October 1999: http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/taprfhss.html
TAPR has signed an agreement with the Dandin Group to take the TAPR design from its current state into production which TAPR has access to production for sale back into the amateur radio community.

From Dec 2001: http://www.dandin.com/tdr900.html
The TDR-900 is being developed for both commercial and amateur radio deployment. Dandin will be handling the commercial interests in the radio, with TAPR handling the amateur radio service.

The system has been designed so that the digital and RF board are separate units. Additional bands for the radio are in development.

More information on technology availability and licensing will be available once the technology transfer between TAPR and Dandin is complete.

In the fall of 2002 TAPR announced it would discontinue it's stalled 900 MHz FHSS radio efforts.  The project did not reach completion as they were faced with continuing parts obsolescence problems that resulted in continual redesign, and second, we were unable to obtain the RF design expertise needed to finalize the RF board.

The TAPR Spread Spectrum Radio

Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) has announced that a team led by Bob Stricklin, N5BRG, Bill Reed, WD0ETZ, and Tom McDermott, N5EG, is developing the TAPR Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum radio. At last report, the prototype radio was transmitting, although not yet hopping. The group spent about $15,000 on the project last year-on things like pc board prototypes, development software, parts, and other odds and ends that a project of this magnitude requires and anticipate spending another $15,000 to $30,000 on it in 1999. Thus far, though, TAPR has received a little less than $2,000 toward its overall goal.

TAPR will be sending out a fund raising letter in the next few months to help fund all or part of the costs of this development project. Members are being asked to donate to this worthy cause, and I'm asking the readership of CQ VHF to also consider supporting this valuable project. Please take a serious moment to consider this request and help bring this unique project closer to completion. If you have contact with a local or regional packet organization, contact them about supporting this project as well.

Donations above $25 will receive a handsome certificate acknowledging their contribution to the TAPR FHSS Project, while those donating $250 or more will receive a plaque to let everyone know of their efforts on behalf of this project. All donations are needed and welcome, no matter how large or small. Even if you simply become a member of TAPR-well worth the $20--you can be sure it's appreciated and helpful. Thank you for your consideration. Contact TAPR at 8987-309 E Tanque Verde Rd #337, Tucson AZ 85749-9399; (Phone: (940) 383-0000; Fax: (940) 566-2544. Internet: . Visa and Mastercard are accepted. 

-Per N2IRZ, CQ-VHF Magazine, March 1999

The funny thing is you really don't read much about spread spectrum & ham radio anymore.  It appears that the main guys who were beating the ham radio drum initially on this apparently made a buck off it in the commercial market.

Which is a dirty shame.  I was a follower of the project having been involved in conventional packet radio and seeing the need for speed.  Of course the idea of modifying Part 15 spread spectrum radios was never really promoted by TAPR because that was a direct conflict of what was trying to be marketed.

This TAPR / Dandin FHSS radio project wasn't fully successful for them as the project never made it to completion.  The reminds me of how ham radio was a test bed, or example for how AMBE / D-Star works.  This has given Icom and Kenwood a chance to perfect it and unveil it for APCO25, Phase II.

Lesson learned; commercial influences like this can sometimes screw-up a potential good thing for this hobby, and other times (like with D-Star) being the Guinea pig can help breed some new developments into the hobby and work out for the commercial entity.

The Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2009
2009-08-02T20:15:00.004-05:00
This was a ARRL news piece a while back.

The ARRL is asking its membership to contact their members of the US House of Representatives with a request to become co-sponsors of this significant piece of legislation.

While this is all nice in theory... Where does one click or write to, to encourage new technologies that can help aid and advance how we communicate in emergencies?  Surely if the ARRL can adopt Winlink 2000 for ARES emergency communications, they could also get behind some development of something more modern?

We had something more logical, a wide network of packet backbones in the 80's and 90's.  Yet some how we end up with this bastardization called Winlink.

In the April Rain Report, CQ Editor Rich Moseson, W2VU, talked about packet's remarkable comeback and its EMCOMM applications. 

About ten years ago a survey conducted by the ARRL Technology Task Force, of League members and other amateurs revealed that the number one interest in new technologies was in high-speed digital networks.

This is what led to the development of the High Speed Multi-Media working group in 2001-2005, appointed by former ARRL President, Jim Haynie, W5JBP.

The HSMM working group was an loose attempt to steer ham radio into the future by bringing awareness to the general ham populous of what is possible with HSMM.

It really could evolve into something powerful, the "next generation of ham radio."  But it needs a leading force for that.  The ARRL and TAPR both seem to have no interest.  In my opinion, they should both be working on the community/ public relations with companies like Ubiquiti, and developers like the DD-WRT guys.   Encouragement to work together and enabling hams would not only be beneficial for the hobby, but also the general populous.  The HSMM working group encouraged hams, but neither larger group did anything to enable further experimentation.

I have pointed out that 802.11 and WiMax manufactures like Ubiquiti have the potential to develop built-to-order products for HSMM on VHF/UHF bands.  

The Ubiquiti XR-1 is the first VHF 802.11 radio that I know of.  

It's just a dirty shame someone like the ARRL or TAPR can't establish a better working relation with companies like this.  Something like the XR-1 would be an inexpensive powerful Emcomm tool.

I encourage you to write to your section manager if you realize that legislation alone can't advance how we communicate.

Additionally TAPR is seeking nominations for a few good people to serve.  So if you, or know of a ham with some fresh ideas, speak up!

Homebrew D-Star Repeater?
2009-07-19T19:33:00.018-05:00

In the past I've written about a passive D-Star capable repeater using a couple Maxtracs.

This of course is less than ideal as it's a carrier activated system, left open to intermod and such.

I have also written about Satoshi's GMSK node adapter.  There was a tid-bit about this in the July 2009, QST, Eclectic Technology column by Steve Ford.

In the QST article it was talking about using Satoshi's board as D-Star Simplex Hot Spot.  Mark, KB9KHM developed some windows software so one can use the node adapter as a simplex node to talk back to the gateway server of other D-Star repeaters.

Most of the bugs have been worked out, and the official non-stripped down Satoshi, GMSK node adaptor board can be used to make or convert an existing repeater for D-Star, with the capability to talk back to gateway servers for interlinking.

I suggest taking a look at David, G4ULF's blog.

His blog is a running log of development of a D-Star repeater that links to the worldwide dplus network running on homebrew components and standard UHF FM rigs.

Duplex use of the node adapter used to require two 18F2550 PIC chips running his code, instead of the one.  Now KB9KHM's HotSpot software can emulate that.  So you can get by with a mini-hotspot board, and just one PIC.

Satoshi's project has caught a lot of attention (and some flack), because you can construct the node adapter for about $75.  An Icom D-Star system; one radio module, RPC controller and gateway runs about $3,000.

If you build or convert your existing repeater system, you can also keep backwards compatibility for repeating analog.

All you really need are direct (varactor or varacap) drive to transmit the GMSK data, and a discriminator output for receive.  (As pointed out for the simplex hot spot use, most 9600 baud "data ready" radios will work.)

The retrofitted repeater system should be tuned for maximum 3 KHz deviation for best bit error ratio.

If the idea of running Mark, KB9KHM's windows based "hotspot" linking software for a permanent repeater installation doesn't thrill you, never fear, Dextra is here! (This is a very close basis of G4ULF's project)

British Columbia Wireless Amateur Radio Network.
2009-07-12T20:57:00.003-05:00
The BCWARN infrastructure includes and supports:

-Electronic Mail via WinLink (over 2.4ghz microwave, AX.25 packet radio and Pactor3)
-D-Star Digital voice and data
-VoiceOverIP using Asterisk private branch exchange (PBX) open source telephony switching technology
-File sharing
-Remote printing and facsimile
-Video conferencing & instant messaging

http://www.bcwarn.net