In this issue of the Random Wire Review, I’m linking the podcast for this content right here. By doing this, I can still offer the podcast version of the newsletter without sending a separate email each week to your inbox.
The podcast was recorded through a Behringer C-1 condenser microphone and a Behringer MIC500USB pre-amp, straight into Audacity. I adjusted the decibel levels in Audacity to avoid clipping and the audio was exported as a mono .WAV file. That file was then uploaded to Auphonic where the audio was leveled and some constant background static was removed. The file as processed by Auphonic is what you hear in the final production.
While I’m not thrilled that the Behringer C-1/MIC500USB package has a bit of fuzz to it, I think my voice sounds warmer than with any of my other microphones. Since Auphonic removed that very slight background noise, I’m pleased with how the final audio file sounds.
I found the 6 Wire quick connector I wanted on a site called The Custom Saber Shop. That sounds a bit odd until you realize the sabers are light sabers with lots of electronics in them (jump to their sabers here if you’re into this kind of thing).
In general, I’m following the thinking demonstrated by David Gleason NR9V in his wiring diagrams at https://allscan.info/docs/radioless-node.php#wiring-diagram. However, since I’m using the Master Communications RL-20 board, I’ll also be digging into the guidance available for that board:
In the back of my mind is the possibility of putting a Raspberry Pi Zero into the PC-1A case…someday. There will be plenty of room for it, but I don’t really like the idea of the RPi inside the same case as the audio interface. Keeping them separate for now is how I plan to proceed, at least for this phase of the project.
1.3 Plan
RL-20 board
I’ve removed the PC-1A board from the case and the rear panel with screw connections. You can see below that the RL-20 board fits with room to spare in the PC-1A case. I’ve temporarily secured the board with one screw and have short standoffs underneath it to “air gap” it from the metal case.
A USB cable will connect the RL-20 board to the AllStarLink node (either the Dell Wyse 3040 thin client or the Beelink mini PC).
I have no plan for the open rectangle on the back of the case. I could leave it open for cooling or put the screw connector plate back in to fill that space. Or I could pass the USB cable through that nice, big opening.
On the front of the case, I’d like to find a small piece of frosted plexiglass to place there. I think that would allow light from the LEDs to show without being terribly distracting.
Quick disconnect
Then I’ll figure out the wiring for the 8-pin round mic connector on the front panel and where those wires are supposed to go on the RL-20 board. However, I’m going to wire the 8-pin round connector to one-half of the 6-pin quick disconnect. The other half of the quick disconnect will get connected to the RL-20 board and the potentiometer I use for volume control.
You can see the 6-wire disconnect in a build by W07T.
6-wire disconnect
Audio amp for volume
To provide volume control, I’ll use a PAM8406 amp mounted to the front panel next to the meter, and wired to a rear speaker jack on the PC-1A. This device is intended to control audio volume out to an external speaker via a 3.5mm plug. It’s a little confusing to try to visualize this because there is a 3.5mm plug on the PAM8406 board, but that is for audio in, not audio out. The audio out comes off the block of four screw connectors.
I’m picturing the PAM8406 going between the 8-pin microphone jack and the RL-20 board. Can I wire it such that the two channels are combined into a single output channel? I don’t think so. I think the simple approach is to only use one channel. The earphone jack on the board is for audio input. The screw block on the left is for left and right channel stereo output.
In the WO7T build, it looks like audio out is only from the left channel. (The smaller screw block on the right is for power to the board.) He wrote:
The PAM8406 amp is a stereo amp, but only makes use of the left channel input and output since all Allstar audio is mono. The input to this amp, coming from the Pin2 of RL-20 is plugged in via a 3.5mm stereo plug, and wired to the tip of such plug. As always ground is the shield of the plug.
I’m not sure how to “lock in” the PAM8406 where it mounts through the front panel. Perhaps some Locktite where it goes through the panel would secure it well enough to keep it stable. I can also mount a few standoffs in the corners of the board to help keep it positioned against the base of the case. I have a feeling that standoffs and hot glue are going to be my friends in this build!
I would love to know how to wire in the front needle display to show volume in some way. If not, I’ll just leave it there because I like how it looks.
I have no clear idea of what to put in the second rheostat space. Perhaps that’s a good location for some frosted plexi as it will be closer to the actual LEDs on the RL-20 board. I should be able to see the TX and RX LEDs through that small window.
Boost for different microphones
If I can figure out what David NR9V did to allow different microphones to function well in his AllStarLink audio adapter device, I’ll use a MAX9814 and a switch to provide this functionality. However, for now, I may skip this and consider wiring it in at a later time. My Kenwood MC-60 desk mic won’t need the MAX9814.
Your ideas are welcome! I don’t do this kind of thing very often so I could use some help thinking this through.
Buck booster
I have no real need for the XL6009 buck booster module but wanted to have a couple in my parts bin. I can see the possibility of using a 12-volt wall wart to power the audio interface. In that scenario, I’d use the buck booster to convert 12VDC to 5VDC. This isn’t in my plan — it’s just a remotely possible scenario.
I like my older Synology DS-220+ network-attached storage (NAS) device. Synology now makes a more friendly device called the BeeStation. I’ve mentioned this 4-terabyte device before.
The BeeStation’s best feature is how it makes good backup habits automatic. Within a couple of weeks of setting it up, I had both my and my spouse’s Drive and Dropbox accounts synced and regularly backed up; my older music, movie, and miscellaneous files stashed away; and our photos regularly backed up from our phones. All this was then backed up to Synology’s cloud servers every week (for an add-on cost), and everything was accessible remotely and on the local network.
If you dive into that article and read the comments (203 at the time I wrote this) you’ll find a lot of folks who think of themselves as more knowledgeable and sophisticated than the audience the BeeStation is aimed at: home users.
“If you're not ready for full-on NAS gear, consider this clever little drive.”
Take the pontificating and sense of superiority that comes through in the article with a grain of salt. The best backup can be the one you don’t have to think about. The BeeStation can provide that peace of mind and ease of use.
…adding a Telemetry module to your existing Heltec V3 Lora ESP32 Meshtastic Node is a straightforward process that enhances the functionality of your device. The chosen hardware components, including the BME280 Module and header pins, provide a reliable and readily available solution.
2.3 Desk microphone for the Yaesu FTM-300DR
I wonder if any subscribers have thoughts on whether the Yaesu M-70 Desktop Microphone would work as a desk mic for the Yaesu FTM-300DR. That radio is not one that Yaesu shows as compatible with the M-70 microphone, but it appears the microphone uses the same modular plug. There might be a power issue (as in: power to the microphone) with the FTM-300DR.
I’ve been excitedly waiting for my new WisMesh Pocket device from Rokland Tech. It arrived a few days ago and setup was quick and easy. However, I seem to be snakebit when it comes to these RAK-based devices as this is the second one (from a different vendor!) that worked for part of a day and then went dark.
I can access it via a serial connection (USB-C) but I can’t configure it. The bootloader is up to date. I updated the firmware but that did not resolve the problem. The upshot of this is: Rokland Tech is sending me a replacement.
Meanwhile, let’s look at photos of the device. The unit looks good and feels solid. Inside, the interior layout is pretty clean. I think the ten photos below will give you an accurate impression of this Meshtastic device.
Basic directions are on the package
I appreciated the very basic instructions on the outside of the package. My other device (from a different vendor) came with no instructions at all, and also had an incorrect part installed. (I’m still working on fixing that device.)
Front of the device is simple and clean
Note the shaped corners to prevent nuts from turning
Inside the unit
Power switch (top left), GPS antenna, main antenna, Bluetooth antenna
Information sticker on top by SMA antenna connector
I’m on the reunion planning committee for the 50th anniversary of our high school graduation. I also run the class website and publish the class newsletter. Along the way we decided to incorporate the reunion group so we’d be more likely to retain experienced reunion planners. We formed a 501(c)(7) nonprofit social club and incorporated in Washington State. All this adds up to: Tom has been busy.
Last weekend is when the work of the past year came to fruition with reunion events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Friday was a tour of the high school, a golf tournament, and a no-host social in our old home town. Saturday was the reunion event where I got pressed into service taking photos. I collected more than 800 digital pictures and logged more than 6,600 steps. Sunday was a potluck picnic at a classmate’s country home.
As I write this section, it is Tuesday evening and I’m still tired!
While I’m sure the title of this featured content will raise some eyebrows in the amateur radio community, it’s an important topic and it does affect many aspects of our amateur radio hobby. This came to mind as I thought about the short report in issue 100 about a group of hams that spoke of amateur radio as having no place in emergency communications. As I was thinking of that, I was also reading that Oregon is the top priority in the the country (a dubious distinction, at best) for wildfires.
Let’s take a look the intersection of changing weather patterns and amateur radio.
1.1 Let’s not call it climate change
It is very unfortunate that the term “climate change” has become a trigger word for many people, causing them to immediately deny that any changes are happening. The reality is: weather patterns are changing. This conclusion is based on evidence gathered from long-term observations of weather. The planet is getting warmer. We are seeing the timing of precipitation events change, and the amount of precipitation received in some regions has also changed. More climate-related energy is driving bigger storms.
If you’re a farmer or a forester or a wildland firefighter, you probably already recognize that the weather you’re seeing in recent years isn’t like the weather your parents or grandparents experienced. NASA claims the “rate of change is extremely unusual” when compared to paleoclimate data. NASA says “the rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.”
As a geologist, I know climate changes. The geologic record is full of examples of huge shifts in climate. It has happened before. While we like to think of the planet as a big inert ball, a geologist sees it as a huge dynamic system that has one constant: it is always in a state of change.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to find evidence on the internet without that information being linked to a conclusion that recent changes are due to human factors. Sadly, when one mixes evidence and conclusions, sometimes those conclusions become misleading or downright antagonizing. The evidence says weather patterns are changing. That should be enough to capture our attention.
It seems like hubris to think that a single species on the planet can prevent changes in weather. At the end of the day, I care more about identifying what we might do to perpetuate the human race and less about who or what is responsible for changes in weather patterns. Our primary job is to figure out how to adapt and survive. If we also find ways to slow or stop changes, well, that amounts to icing on the cake.
Call it climate change if you wish. I will continue to think of this phenomenon as changing weather patterns because calling it climate change interferes with having rational, reasonable conversations.
1.2 Changing weather is causing more damage
This topic becomes more interesting when it involves what we do for a living or for enjoyment. The intersection with amateur radio is this: our amateur radio hobby is affected by weather in several ways, some large and some small. If weather is getting worse, it will affect us at some point.
Big storms affect telecommunications
Last year, CBC News (Canada) reported that the post-tropical storm named Fiona “affected electrical grids and telecommunication networks, leaving some people unable to call for help.”
Are such storms related to climate change? According to NASA, tropical storms have been getting stronger over the past 40 years. That strengthening is attributed to climate change:
“The warmer the water, the stronger and the more energy this system is going to have and it’s going to just increase in intensity. So are hurricanes getting stronger? The answer to that will be yes. We are seeming more and more tropical cyclones become category three, four and five. So in reality yes, we’re seeing that change every season in the last several years.”
The two important points in this are:
Tropical storms are getting bigger and lasting longer.
Big storms affect telecommunications.
When telecommunications networks go down, who you gonna call? Amateur radio operators, that’s who.
Wildfires can disrupt critical infrastructure sectors such as transportation, communications, power and gas services, and water supply. They also lead to a deterioration of the air quality, and loss of property, crops, resources, animals and people.
“Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades. Wildfires require the alignment of a number of factors, including temperature, humidity, and the lack of moisture in fuels, such as tress, shrubs, grasses, and forest debris. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change.”
In the realm of emergency management, effective communication is paramount. When traditional communication infrastructures fail due to natural disasters, technological malfunctions, or other unforeseen events, amateur radio operators, often known as “hams,” play a crucial role in maintaining lines of communication.
“With wildfires burning sooner, and hotter and more unpredictably, with floods sometime impacting our communications infrastructure as well, it’s so important to be prepared for anything.”
“When an emergency occurs and conventional communication channels fail, ham can take immediate action and use ham radio to assist in emergency communication work.”
The method by which HF radio signals are broadcasted means that they can be susceptible to breaks in contact, including excessive rainfall. Raindrops essentially absorb the radio waves being transmitted, impacting clarity. Furthermore, stormy conditions such as thunder and lightning creates radio noise and static that makes messages difficult to interpret.
More rain or heavier rainfall? Moisture can find its way into connections in your antenna and feed line. This kind of situation can affect high frequency signals but probably has more impact on VHF and UHF frequencies. (If you’re a ham that plays in even higher frequencies, you already know how critical your antenna system is!)
Sometimes you can hear thunderstorms on HF from the other side of the country. Rainfall can increase background noise and static. Water droplets can scatter and absorb radio waves, particularly above HF, VHF, and UHF frequencies. In my experience on HF bands, this can make it very hard to convey information quickly and accurately. Some will want to argue this point and I concede that rain, in and of itself, is not likely to be significant at HF, VHF, and UHF frequencies.
More directly, we all know to disconnect our gear when lightning threatens. One lightning strike nearby can destroy thousands of dollars worth of equipment. The ARRL recognizes this risk and publishes links to numerous articles about lighting protection.
1.5 Is amateur radio still useful in the face of changing weather?
This is not intended to be an exhaustive dissertation on changing weather and how it may affect amateur radio. It should suffice to say that if weather patterns result in more extreme weather events, it will affect how radio waves travel. That means it will affect what we do in our amateur radio hobby. Whether we wish to admit it or not, weather does intersect with our radio capabilities and enjoyment.
Does amateur radio have a place in a world experiencing changing weather patterns? Absolutely. It’s reasonable to conclude that despite the existence of modern, high-speed networks on land, in the atmosphere, and even in space, there will always be a need for a reliable backstop consisting of functioning amateur radio stations and skilled and willing amateur radio operators.
1.6 New technologies offer hope for amateur radio
I would like to end this featured content on a fairly positive note. In an article on Eos.org titled Ham Radio Forms a Planet-Sized Space Weather Sensor Network, the authors make a case for the utility of new technologies in amateur radio:
Ham radio is currently experiencing a technical renaissance, thanks to the advent of inexpensive single-board computing platforms (a complete computer built onto a single circuit board, such as a Raspberry Pi) and open-source software. Such computer-based systems serve as virtual radio repeaters, connecting computers via the Internet to actual ham radios in the real world to enable remote control and data collection. Beyond the old-fashioned pursuit of voice communication, the lure of maker movement projects and the removal of the Morse code requirement from the amateur licensing exam have led to a greater number of licensed amateurs than ever before. Out of this increasing technical sophistication, digital communications networks, such as the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS), the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR), and the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN), enjoy wide membership and serve the amateur community while collecting propagation data at rates and resolutions that were previously impossible.
As I wrote this piece, I wondered if my frequent defense of radio-less protocols and systems still made sense. I think it does, but like all things, such methods work best in combination with other systems. In other words, digital data and voice probably don’t have legs without radio-based communications. Given the explosion of digital modes and hardware, the reverse corollary is probably true, i.e., radio-based communications are likely to continue to see digital technologies employed alongside, or as supplements to, traditional radio.
You might say that digital and analog systems have become symbiotic in the sense that the success of one depends on the success of the other. Such is the nature of growth and change.
The bits and pieces I need to build an audio interface for an AllStarLink node are coming together:
I have a Kenwood Phone Patch Controller PC-1A box.
Two modified CM108 USB fobs have arrived from a U.K. vendor. However, I’m not particularly fond of how the modifications look so I’m going to try an alternative (see next).
A kind-of-custom RL-20 audio board from Master Communications is on the way. I asked the vendor if I could purchase a board without the DB9 attached and he said sure, no problem. The RL-20 is also coming with the red and yellow LEDs reversed for a radio-less node.
I have a spare Kenwood MC-60 desk microphone I can use. I also have a genuine Alinco DTMF hand microphone I’ve tested on my node 588412.
In my “shack stock” I have numerous small audio amplifier boards, capacitors, switches, and more. I may look for a rocker switch that will fit the ON/OFF switch location on the Phone Patch Controller front panel.
2.2 CM108 vs. RL-20
The modified CM108 doesn’t look quite like the design I was hoping for, so I purchased an RL-20 audio board from Master Communications. The vendor left the DB9 off the board, giving me a nice solder pad for the microphone wires.
CM108 vs. RL-20 board
There is plenty of room inside the PC-1A case for the RL-20 board, audio amp, and wiring.
I don’t think I’ve shared my daily radio habits. Essentially, I try to touch something “radio” every day. For me, this is an important practice because my life is busy and sometimes it can be easy to set aside, or even forget about, my amateur radio hobby. I don’t want to lose momentum or stop learning something new every day!
3.1 Regular nets
Regular radio nets include:
I regularly listen to the 9 am net on AllStarLink (ASL) node 2462. This is a regular morning net hosted by the Puget Sound Repeater Group. This reaches me via my node 588412 with great audio through an old Heathkit speaker, or my SHARI node 588417 and a Yaesu FT-3D handie talkie. Sometimes (like this morning) I listen in via my node 588411 with audio coming through the speakerphone speaker in my Cisco SPA525G. That audio is pleasantly clear.
When I’m getting my morning coffee, I like to listen in on the W7RAT repeater in Portland. This is an IRLP repeater that regularly hosts the Worldwide Friendship Net. This signal comes to me via analog FM.
Also on my coffee runs, I listen in to the America’s Kansas City Wide network that is repeated by the WA7BND repeater in Portland. That signal is digital C4FM, very clear. At home, I often listen in via WIRES-X through my FTM-300DR Portable Digital Node.
I love to check in with friends on the W7NEE repeater in Shelton, Washington. This Yaesu System Fusion repeater is owned and operated by a ham radio friend, Jeff W7NEE, in coordination with the very active Colorado Digital group. The W7NEE repeater is the default in my home-built hotspot that I use only for Yaesu System Fusion, and Jeff also provides an ASL node that is great to listen to.
As I pause and reflect on what I just wrote, I’m realizing how truly lucky I am to have so many great technologies available to me. Most of this equipment is affordable and the audio quality over digital can be excellent.
3.2 Technology democratizes amateur radio
Just as important to me is how this technology democratizes(as in: the action of making something accessible to everyone) ham radio. If we think back to the time before digital radio, one often needed a fairly complicated, large setup for worldwide high-frequency (HF) communications. Today, through digital data and voice modes, worldwide communications cost a fraction of an HF-plus-antenna station.
We might always have some disagreement about whether digital modes represent “real” radio or not. Offsetting this concern is this reality: digital modes make accessing the world relatively easy and affordable. While some of us may want to put up a tall mast and a big antenna to work other stations over HF, some of us aren’t able to do that for various reasons.
Digital radio levels the field for many amateurs. That’s important to me.
I had meetings most of the week and yet still managed to dig into a variety of topics and bring them forward in issue 101 of the Random Wire Review. I peruse hundreds of news sources each week and capture interesting items using an app called Pocket.
(Originally, this was a free browser extension called Read It Later which I used extensively. Later, that morphed into the Pocket app I use today. The free version is perfectly adequate for most users. I capture so many links, though, that I pay for the premium service.)
There are alternatives to Pocket available. For example, I use Raindrop.io to capture bookmarks to share with the conservation district community I serve. You can see that list at https://raindrop.io/tsalzer/wacd-reading-list-15979489. Raindrop works well. Each bookmarked item has one or more “tags” and when you click on a tag, you get all of the bookmarks that are identically tagged.
Truth be told, thought, I was mighty surprised to find relatively few good resources for hams who need assistance to enjoy amateur radio. Maybe I was using the wrong terms in my searches for this information. I invite you to send me links to such information.
For example, one can enable voice prompts on the Yaesu FTM-300DR by installing a Yaesu FVS-2 plug-in module. (The FVS-2 module is a voice guide unit for FTM-100/200/350/400 series radios.) I’ve not done this so please take this observation with a grain of salt.
One person who regularly serves as net control on a Kansas City Wide net is a blind ham who uses the FTM-300DR very effectively. For those of us who are not sight challenged, it may be hard to imagine the many barriers a blind ham faces. Antenna connected? Power on? Reading the SWR? Tuning? How about operating memories in a radio? How to diagnose a problem in the local station setup?
If you are curious about radios that work well for blind hams, check out these resources:
By the way, this kind of assistive technology is not limited to amateur radios. For example, Sangean makes an AM/FM table radio with voice prompts. If you or a family member need this kind of assistance, an amateur radio or an AM/FM table radio with voice prompts would be a gift that demonstrates your understanding and caring.
Recently, I received two radios from XHDATA. The D-608WB is a portable AM, FM, shortwave, and weather band receiver that can be charged with a hand crank or via the solar panel built into the top of the device. The D-220 is an AM, FM, and shortwave pocket radio that is not listed on the XHDATA website at the time of this review.
XHDATA D-608WB receiver
I received these radios at no cost to me with the expectation I would review them. I’m not very familiar with XHDATA so this will be an interesting exploration of these products.
My first impression of the D-608WB is positive. For a plastic weather band radio, the D-608WB feels pretty solid. This radio uses an 18650 lithium ion battery for power and it can be recharged in the radio with a USB-C charger. There is also a hand crank on the back and a solar panel on top. Lifting the solar panel reveals an LED area light. Angling the solar panel may also help you maximize the rate of solar charging.
I’ve been listening to the radio for two days while it ran in the background on battery power. I’ve split that time between listening to local FM radio and listening to some of my favorite albums on a microSD card. I doubt I’ll get the full review done by the time this issue (issue 101) is published but I’ve started that work and look forward to finishing it.
Also received from XHDATA is their new D-220 radio AM, FM, and shortwave receiver. This is a pocket-sized radio that evokes memories of pocket transistor radios in the 1970s. The speaker looks bigger on the D-220 than on the D-608WB, but the 608WB speaker has a bass port on the back of the radio housing. Unlike the 608WB, the 220 uses AA batteries. I’ve spent less time with it while I work with the D-608WB unit.
5.2 Unhappy about SIM cards
The FreedomLINK LTE radios I bought late in May have not had much use. Several weeks ago, I was notified that some of their SIM cards had been compromised. I was urged by the vendor to stop using the two devices. They sent out new SIM cards but those cards never arrived. Several days ago, I contacted the vendor again to inquire about new SIM cards. A replacement shipment is on its way and I may have more to report by the time issue 101 publishes.
The SIM cards arrived with no instructions on how to replace them. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. But the space available to manipulate the SIM cards is very limited. I managed to break one of plastic ears on a SIM card slot. The vendor did send me a UPS label so they could repair the unit. Fingers crossed that they are able to do so.
5.3 Microphones: unhappy and excited
Shure microphone
The small Shure microphone (Shure MV5 Digital Condenser Microphone) I purchased has been a bit of a disappointment. Yes, it looks like a Shure microphone, and for that I am grateful. However, for $100 I expected a microphone that was more metal than plastic. I’m not certain I like the sound, either. More testing is needed. I may just need to move closer to the microphone.
The C-1 mic is about $50 and the MIC500USB preamp is about $124. Following up on glowing reviews, I checked eBay on a whim and found a Behringer C-1 mic and the MIC500USB device as an open box item for $80. I purchased that package and I’m really looking forward to using the mic and preamp. This purchase is scheduled to arrive after issue 101 publishes.
There is also a C-1U microphone that is, apparently, a dynamic mic with a USB interface. I have little knowledge about this option other than I haven’t had great results in recording the Random Wire Reflections podcast with dynamic microphones.
5.4 M17 Project
Being a long-time supporter of open source software, I find I’m very curious about the M17 Project. M17 bills itself as “Open Source Amateur Radio.”
I love the idea of open source radio. We ought to have more projects like this. An open source car or bicycle or computer would be great to see. I guess I really lean toward open source hardware in general.
I haven’t carved out much time for M17. Instead, I’ve been following Steve Stroh’s coverage of M17 in his great Zero Retries newsletter. Steve finds some of the most interesting amateur radio content for his newsletter and I always look forward to going through it from top to bottom. Zero Retries is Random Wire Recommended!
I’ve been enjoying watching the Blue Angels practice via my ADS-B tracking system. The plans are flying without squawking identification, but given the geographic location, boundaries, speeds, and published practice schedules, it’s obvious these are the Angels.
Blue Angels practicing over Seattle on August 1, 2024
As I schedule issue 100 (a milestone!) of the Random Wire Review for release on Friday, July 26, 2024, I note another milestone: my subscribers just shot past 1,000 people.
I am humbled that so many people are interested enough to subscribe. I am thankful and grateful to you for sharing this journey with me. I also admit I feel a bit of pressure to continue to improve my content and style. However, it’s a pretty good feeling!
Thank you for subscribing and for letting me know when something is, or is not, interesting.
Sincerely yours,
Tom KJ7T
Special note on audio captures of QSOs
I’ve been capturing audio of QSOs over AllStarLink (using both ASL and SHARI nodes), DMR, Yaesu System Fusion, WIRES-X, Echolink, and analog RF. I’ve been planning on sharing examples of audio quality over these various systems. However, it has come to my attention that this may not be legal in every part of the United States. Because of this, I am suspending this activity until I can ascertain whether capturing and sharing such conversations is legal.
This is a confusing, unclear topic. For example, the FCC says:
The FCC and the Communications Act do not forbid certain types of interception and disclosure of radio communications, including…Divulgence of transmissions by amateur radio or citizen band radio operators.
This section shall not apply to the receiving, divulging, publishing, or utilizing the contents of any radio communication which is transmitted by any station for the use of the general public, which relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress, or which is transmitted by an amateur radio station operator or by a citizens band radio operator.
Seems abundantly clear at the federal level. It becomes murky, though, at the state level because each state treats the interception of wireless communications differently. Essentially, a state can’t have regulations that are less protective than federal law, but it can have regulations that are more protective.
In defense of recording and sharing audio clips of amateur radio conversations, I would say that (a) we have no expectation of privacy when we are engaged in amateur radio communications, and (b) because there is no actual or implied sense of privacy in such communications, all amateur radio operators consent to being overheard.
There is a kicker, though, and that has to do with obtaining personal gain from recording and divulging such conversations. Since no subscription is charged for Random Wire products or services, I feel comfortable saying no personal gain accrues from this activity.
Clear? Not to me. So I’ll hold off on this activity until it becomes clear to me that it is legal to capture and share amateur radio transmissions.
I’m wondering: why not a mini PC instead of a Raspberry Pi 5? I note that a Beelink mini PC on Amazon specs out better than a Canakit RPi 5 kit at close to the same price. (In fact, I purchased the mini PC for a dollar less than the RPi kit by clipping a coupon on Amazon! I already have a different Beelink product and it has been a solid performer.)
The Intel Processor N100 is a mobile processor with 4 cores…It is part of the Intel Processor lineup, using the Alder Lake-N architecture with BGA 1264. Processor N100 has 6 MB of L3 cache and operates at 100 MHz by default, but can boost up to 3.4 GHz, depending on the workload.
The Raspberry Pi 5 features a Broadcom BCM2712 SoC with four ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores clocked at 2.4GHz. This lets it run circles around the Pi 4, which uses older ARM Cortex-A72 cores that are considerably slower than Cortex-A76 cores even when both are operating at the same clock speed.
If you’d like to dive a bit deeper into comparing the N100 against the Raspberry Pi 5, check out Raspberry Pi 5 squares off against a scrawny Intel CPU. Also, Explaining Computers has a YouTube where he evaluates the performance of both platforms to demonstrate how they compare:
I think the five reasons to go with the RPi 5 are:
You need access to what the GPIO pins offer. You don’t have that kind of flexibility with the mini PC.
You want to use an MMDVM hat (see What You Need to Know About MMDVM Hotspots for more about MMDVM) for a radio interface. If you want an RF-based node that uses an MMDVM hat, the mini PC is not the right choice.
You need the lowest power consumption. The RPi 5 (or an old Dell Wyse 3040 thin client) is going to consume less juice than the mini PC.
When a single-purpose machine meets your needs. (This statement is probably more accurate for the RPi models that came before the RPi 5. The RPi 5 is certainly a more capable processor than previous models.)
It may be less expensive than a mini PC.
If you don’t need those things — or rather, if you need a wider range of capabilities — it’s hard to argue against the mini PC.
The RPi’s power consumption, as measured by CNXSOFT, is 8.8 watts max. It consumes 1.7 watts with the power switched off. Idle for the RPi 5 was 3 watts in headless mode with wifi and 3.6 watts with monitor, keyboard and mouse, Ethernet, and wifi.
For comparison, here is what Dell says about the Dell Wyse 3040 thin client that runs my desktop node 588412:
“Extremely compact and energy efficient, the Wyse 3040 runs on less than 4 watts and offers many years of efficient, secure and high-performance service.”
I don’t know how long the Dell Wyse 3040 will last. It is already long in the tooth. Nevertheless, it has been a stable, long-lasting platform that is well-suited for running a radio-less AllStarLink node.
Context: an AllStarLink node
Here’s my example. To build an AllStarLink node, I could go with a Raspberry Pi 5 and ASL3. That would get me the new control console. Or I could buy the Beelink mini PC for a few dollars less than the Canakit and get twice as much RAM, an M.2 slot on the motherboard, and 500 Gb of SSD storage. Replace the supplied Windows 11 Pro operating system with Debian 12 and you would have a machine that would likely run circles around the Pi.
Even better, you could virtualize an AllStarLink node on the Beelink, thus giving you a W11Pro machine that can be used for other things. Having a backup computer that also runs ASL3 could be very handy indeed.
My proof of concept for this is my node 588411 which has been running 24x7 for several weeks in a virtual machine on my home server. That node runs as a hub, i.e., it has no radio. I use my SIP phone to connect to/through it. The audio is clean. (I have the node automatically announcing the time at the top and bottom of the hour.)
Here is an example of AllStarLink audio as heard through my Cisco SPA525G SIP phone. What you hear in the recording is audio coming through the speakerphone. Recording was done with a Zoom H4n Po handy recorder held about 12 inches from the Cisco phone. Dave KK7LMD was filling in as temporary net control for the Alaska Morning Net and you can hear how wonderfully clear his audio is. A little later, a mobile station using RF radio checked in. I did process the audio to normalize the audio levels but I did not apply any noise reduction.
This section was edited to remove the audio clip. See the note at the beginning of this issue for the explanation of why.
Where this idea falls apart is if you want an MMDVM hat so that you can use a handheld radio to connect to the node. I do wonder if a CM108 fob in the Beelink would function with a virtualized node, though. In fact, I wonder if the HotSpotRadio - USB would work with a virtualized node, or perhaps one of the ANR kits by David NR9V.
I’m sure the ANR devices would work with the Beelink if the operating system on the Beelink was replaced with Debian 12. After all, my desktop node 588412 runs on a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client running Debian 10. Seems like I could test this pretty easily.
Similarly, I do have a HotSpotRadio - USB device that I could use for testing.
What did I do? I bought the Beelink mini PC running Windows 11, then I installed VirtualBox on it. To run VirtualBox I also had to install Python and some dependencies on the mini PC. I exported a copy of my 588411 node virtual machine and imported it into VirtualBox on the mini PC.
Did it work?
So did it work? Did running node 588411 in a virtual machine on the mini PC actually work. Yes, it did. When I ran the node on the mini PC, it worked fine after I changed the network settings to match the network hardware on the mini PC. Allmon3 works on the mini, as does Allscan.
An advantage to the mini PC when moving from place to place is it is easier to configure networking in the mini PC. My model of Dell Wyse 3040 does not have the wireless networking board that came in some versions of this platform. In contrast, wifi is built into the mini PC.
A variation of this theme would be to simply put a copy of the virtual machine on my laptop. This is where virtualization becomes a powerful tool because it means I don’t have to buy more hardware to operate more machines. It also means that my node is already set up and ready to go with me. I’m looking forward to trying this, particularly with the HotSpotRadio-USB device!
Installed to the laptop
In fact, what the heck. I went ahead and installed VirtualBox on the laptop. This mean that I also ran into the “missing Python dependencies” issue but that was easily solved by following these video instructions:
After that, I installed the pywin32 package from the command terminal:
Recently, I caught part of net of folks in Texas, with fewer participants from other parts of the country. Most of the fellows were ex-military. The part that made me sit up and take notice is when they were describing amateur radio operators as useless in an emergency. In their deployments, they had never worked with ham radio people, and from that, they concluded that there really wasn’t a place for hams in emergency response situations.
Huh.
That is so different from my experience. In Washington and Oregon — the two states where I’ve done most of my radio operating — amateur radio is often a key part of emergency response plans. Many clubs drill for such situations. Many counties have close links to groups of amateurs in case those skills are needed.
I suppose this may simply reflect how local authorities view amateur radio. Maybe they don’t know, or have forgotten, some of the lessons from Katrina:
One complaint I heard on the net was about the kind of radio operator who had an overblown sense of his or her own importance. They spoke of “people in yellow vests” showing up at the scene of accidents or emergencies and then trying to direct others. I have seen that before. I get it. However, those folks seem to be the exception, not the rule. I don’t think “people in yellow vests” adequately describes the approximately 750,000 licensed amateurs in the United States.
One thing they said had some real meat to it, though. In an emergency, one of them said, “call the POTA guys!” Parks On The Air operators have portable stations that are ready to deploy. Those operators are used to taking their station to another location, setting up, and getting on the air quickly. This is one of the things about POTA we rarely talk about. We know we perform in a stressful situation to the level we’ve practiced. POTA operators do this all the time.
If you’ve been on the fence about POTA, you might consider how it helps you keep your station and your skills sharp and ready to go if needed in an emergency. And it’s a fun way to practice your radio skills.
A useful adjunct for AllStarLink would be a speech-to-text service for Asterisk. There is at least one project published for this, but it is designed for slightly older versions of Asterisk, not the very recent version included in ASL3.
This package contains an example Node.js program that uses the Asterisk External Application Protocol (AEAP) to facilitate external speech to text translation in Asterisk 18.12.0+ and 19.4.0+.
Since I’m not finding an appropriate package for Asterisk 20, I tried using Otter.ai on my smartphone to convert speech to text. The results aren’t entirely useless but they are sometimes rather amusing.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to send up a small, battery powered repeater, or perhaps a Meshtastic node, on a weather balloon. It can be done. It has been done.
This came to mind as I read about amateurs using drones to take antennas aloft. That seemed like an expensive and chancy approach to temporarily getting and antenna “up there.”
And I know this is not an original idea. Just search Google for “antenna attached to balloon” and you’ll find a ton of resources!
Years ago we used a Kenwood dual-band ham HT in cross-band mode, wrapped in towel, rubber-banded to a Navistar 40 RC plane, flew up to 400' and flew figure-8's for 45 minutes. Worked great until we ran out of gas.
Seems like this kind of thing would make for a great collaborative project between an amateur radio club and a high school class. You would not need a license like you do with a drone (at least a drone with sufficient payload capacity to lift a radio). It should be relatively safe if you tether the balloon.
Another use case could be working an event or an emergency where you need line-of-sight communications but local topography gets in the way. Lofting an antenna for several hours isn’t practical with a drone but could be accomplished with a tethered balloon. I’ve worked a few bicycle races and comms were always a bit sketchy. I imagine radio communications would have worked much better if I had been able to get an antenna 100 feet up in the air!
Also, check out Steely-eyed Balloon Men at https://www.ve7nfr.com/pico-balloons.html. Their most recent article covers a high-altitude launch with APRS, a crossband repeater, and camera on July 7, 2024.
New outdoor Meshtastic node
I purchased a weatherproof Mestastic node called…well, wait a minute, hold the phone. The new node ran for a few hours and then died. I’ll hold off on talking about this until I can get this resolved with the vendor.
New Meshtastic node from Rokland Tech
Meanwhile, I did it again: I ordered up another Meshtastic node. I’m excited about this one as it checks a bunch of boxes for me.
RAK device? Check.
GPS? Check.
Pocketable? Check.
Bigger battery? Check.
It is a RAKwireless WisMesh Pocket All-in-one Meshtastic Handheld 915 Mhz Radio with LoRa Antenna & GPS pre-ordered from Rokland Tech. The shorter name is the WisMesh Pocket node.
This device should consume less power than most of my Meshtastic nodes and it has a larger battery than some. It’s compact. It has an acceleration sensor (accelerometer) so you can set the display to go off after a few seconds and it will come back on as soon as you move the device. Since displays consume a lot of power, that feature alone will save some juice. It has an external physical switch to turn the unit on and off.
It’s not here yet. When it arrives, I’ll be sure to take some photos for you.
Amazon Sidewalk network
File this one under: did you know that LoRa radio is also used by Amazon?
Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices like Amazon Echo devices, Ring Security Cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, and Tile trackers work better at home and beyond the front door. When enabled, Sidewalk can unlock unique benefits for your device, support other Sidewalk devices in your community, and even locate pets or lost items.
The Sidewalk network is designed as a long-range shared community network. It works over three existing wireless radio technologies — Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distances, LoRa for long range, and frequency shift keying using 900MHz.
That’s pretty interesting, especially in an Internet-of-Things context as this means trackers of people, pets, and things. Where might this go? Who knows, but maybe only Amazon has enough widely distributed hardware to make something like this work.
Personally, I’m intrigued by the potential for an intersection of Meshtastic and Sidewalk via LoRa radio. I haven’t heard of that happening but I’ll be watching for it.
SkywarnPlus on virtual node 588411
I followed the steps at https://github.com/Mason10198/SkywarnPlus to install and configure SkywarnPlus on my ASL3 node running in a virtual machine (node 588411). It didn’t work for me. It should have, based on the documentation:
SkywarnPlus works with all major distributions, including AllstarLink, HAMVOIP, myGMRS, GMRS Live, and more.
Testing generated no audio and I saw nothing reaching the Asterisk CLI. We also received a heat warning today that my Amazon Echo devices relayed to me, but node 588411 did not announce it.
I did not find instructions on uninstalling SkywarnPlus so I’ve reverted my settings. Specifically, I rolled back all of my rpt.conf settings, removed the crontab entry, renamed the config.yaml file, and rebooted. The node is operating fine, just as it was before I tried to get SkywarnPlus working.
I’d like to try this again at some point when I have more time to figure out why I couldn’t get it to work. I missed something along the way, I’m sure.
These are great starting points if you’re curious about the scientific and experimental sides of amateur radio.
Heard neighbors on the Alaska Morning Net
I was listening in during the Alaska Morning Net on AllStarLink node 29332 on July 19th and heard several people from around the region, some near, some far. Dave KK7HLD served well as fill-in net control, keeping the conversation going. He is a near neighbor, just a few miles north of me in Portland, Oregon.
6. Other (Not Radio)
Remember the rotary engine?
This note is for those of us who are fascinated by mechanical things. This article reminded me of the old Rotax rotary engine but this particular evolution of the rotary idea seems like it might actually work well. It marries a single piston to a planetary gear. Very interesting in a mechanical sense: This Super Small, Rotary Combustion Engine Could Power Your Next Motorcycle
Solid state batteries are here
Solid state batteries is a very interesting topic. What is a solid state battery? Says Wikipedia:
Compared to lithium ion batteries, solid state batteries are expected to be lighter, safer, and last longer. This is good news if you do POTA or SOTA. It’s also good news if you use a laptop computer, carry a smartphone, or use an e-bike, as less weight and more safety will benefit a wide range of consumers.
The safety aspect is particularly meaningful when you consider how a thermal runaway condition in a lithium ion battery can have devastating outcomes. Lithium-ion battery fires are a growing public safety concern. Lithium ion batteries are everywhere.
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh great, another way for manufacturers and vendors to dig into my wallet again!” That is undoubtedly true. In this case, though, I think the benefits will be worth it.
I’ve had a few incidents with lithium ion batteries in smartphones. In one, the swelling battery broke the phone back. In another, the battery started to overheat; in that instance, I was able to pry off the back and remove the battery to an airtight, fireproof container. Either of those situations could have turned ugly very quickly.
Recent changes to Audacity are described in the change log. I have to say I continue to be amazed at this free sound editing tool. As my skill in using it grows, I’m usually able to produce good quality audio files. I think the limitation in Audacity is me, not the software! What a great tool is Audacity.
Between the time I captured this note and published issue 100, Audacity released version 3.6.1 (see the change log).
I use PowerToys and 7-Zip. I’m going to add Lightshot to my technology stack.
The Yellowstone supervolcano
Here is a very interesting article about the Yellowstone supervolcano…at least it was interesting to me, with my geology background! I think most of us don’t realize how tremendously huge the Yellowstone system is.
If this kind of information is interesting to you, you might enjoy this video by Nick Zentner of Central Washington University. Nick has a very different and engaging style. (Yes, I know this isn’t radio, but it is about disasters, and maybe that broadly intersects with amateur radio.) If you watch the YouTube, the Yellowstone segment doesn’t start until 17 minutes 25 seconds into the video.
The Yellowstone hotspot has special meaning for me because I worked in a gold deposit north of Elko, Nevada, that was probably formed as the North American plate slowly moved over the Yellowstone hotpot. At the time I worked in that region, we had no idea that the Yellowstone hotspot might be related to the gold we were discovering and mining. In a geologic sense, this is breaking news. It’s exciting.
Imagine my surprise when, just a few days after recording the podcast preview of Issue 100, a geyser exploded at Yellowstone. Technically, this is a hydrothermal explosion: “hydro” for water and “thermal” for heat. (One mine I worked at in northeast Washington had an ancient hydrothermal eruption layer that was later buried by the Klondike Mountain Formation. We mined up the fossilized hydrothermal vents and into the eruption layer.)
Color me surprised to be receiving promotions from entities purporting to help push my podcast to millions of people. Sorry, but no. That is not my plan. I’m going to enjoy this journey. I’m not going to try to push people into experiencing something they don’t want. So to all those promoters: you won’t be getting a reply from me!
That’s a bit of a surprise, considering how many aircraft were in the air at the same time over and near Portland! I think my childhood fascination with fighters is never going to abate!
I received some feedback on the audio clip I have been using in the Random Wire Reflections podcast to separate topics. The audio bothered a few people so starting with the Reflections podcast that previews issue 100, I’ll use Morse Code clips. I’m echoing this by using Morse Code as my content separators in issue 100.
I also have a new Shure microphone coming that I’ll try for podcast recording. Even if it doesn’t work as well as I’d like, it is sure pretty to look at. If it works well, I’ll put a link to it on the Support page.
Shure MV5 Digital Condenser Microphone
I had a piece prepared for issue 100 on sources of RF in the home, but as the content for issue 100 grew and grew, I’m saving the RF article for a future Random Wire Review.
More closing of the closing notes…
The two CM108 USB fobs I ordered arrived from the UK. These are already soldered and ready for building a ANR-type device. One of these will (I hope) go into the Kenwood PC-1A Phone Patch box I mentioned in Issue 99. I think I’ve got all the other parts I need so I’m open to suggestions…before I start building! I would have purchased already prepared CM108 fobs from David NR9V but he notes on his website the following: “NOTE: I am temporarily not providing assembly services, but can still ship kits. Please check back in September for updates.“ I look forward to David’s return this fall!
Kenwood PC-1A with board removed, showing the CM108 fob
After looking at the modified CM108 fobs, I have changed my plan. Instead, I’m going to use a Master Communications RL-20 adapter. I think that will give me a cleaner build with a well-proven device. I contacted Master Communications a few days ago and asked for the RL-20 without the DB9 adapter installed and that’s what will be coming in a few days. This will be fun.
I have a new-to-me mic and digital interface coming. I started looking at the Behringer MIC500USB Tube Microphone Preamp and then noticed this was also available as part of a bundle with a Behringer microphone. I wasn’t feeling very committed at the $159 price but then saw the bundle on eBay for $79. At that price, it’s worth taking a chance on it. It can output to USB so that means I can use it to record podcasts on the computer. I have a dynamic mic with an XLR interface, so along with the Behringer C-1 condenser mic in the bundle, I’ll have some options to play with for recording podcasts.
I have a very busy week and weekend coming up due to a long-awaited, heavily planned high school class reunion. I’m on the reunion committee and we are down to the wire before delivering events on August 2, 3, and 4. That might mean Random Wire Review #101 is a little lighter than normal!
TL;DR — I tried to deploy a new server instance on Vultr of a VirtualBox virtual machine running an AllStarLink node. Although Vultr documentation says it can be done, I did not succeed. Why do this? Because ASL 3 opens the door to having pre-made AllStarLink appliances that could be installed easily and consistently! Working on this project was going to be the focus of this issue, but instead I’m reporting that I believe it can be done but I haven’t been able to do it…yet!
A few issues back, I experimented with copying a virtual machine running an AllStarLink node to another computer. The emulator I used is VirtualBox and the only trouble I had after importing the .ova file to a different Windows machine was properly configuring networking. Other than that, it worked fine.
Node 588411 running in a virtual machine
What is VirtualBox? Says VirtualBox.org:
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3. See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction.
Now that ASL3 supports running on a virtual machine, the thought occurred to me: where are the pre-built nodes as virtual machines that can be downloaded? Imagine being able to simply choose the kind of node you want, download the appropriate image file, and import it into your emulator of choice. Honestly, that seems like a killer way to get some more nodes on the AllStarLink system.
I think it would be a great thing to take a node that is known to be working well and move a copy to a different system. Change a few key pieces of data and boom, you have an almost instant node.
I’m sure this idea may unsettle some hams who believe we should all build our stuff from scratch, as well as those who decry computer-based things as not being part of amateur radio. I confess that I find it really hard to imagine that any ham can completely avoid using any computer systems or knowledge sources in their amateur radio hobby, even it is only to renew their license with the FCC.
I respect that some folks want to lean on historic practices. I get it. I still have my Kenwood TS-520S around because it is a pleasure to operate. There are no computers attached to it or associated with it. It is relatively simple compared to many modern transceivers. Bonus: the receiver is great and the sound is delightful.
Perhaps my perspective is different than most. I believe that if it connects to amateur radio somewhere in the chain between sender and receiver, it’s part of amateur radio. I view amateur radio as a big tent with soft walls, not a narrow aisle bounded by diamond-sharp edges.
I also suspect that many amateurs want a simpler way forward, i.e., they would prefer a radio appliance, something they plug in and it just works. This is where some pre-made, known-good AllStarLink virtual machines could help build the AllStarLink community. Maybe it would help if I describe AllStarLink nodes as radio appliances instead of radios.
1.1 Importing a VM of a working node
What comes next rises to a level of arcane-ness that most people are not going to want to know anything about. Feel free to skip ahead. Otherwise, take a deep dive into this guidance provided by Vultr: Best Practices when Migrating to Vultr. Specifically, look for the VirtualBox section in that document. I offer this information not because you might want to do it, but rather, to prove that it can be done.
(In all truth, I got so frustrated with this process that I took an hour off for a motorcycle ride. That gave me a chance to reset my brain and approach this again with a fresh perspective.)
To bring a virtual machine instance into Vultr, you have to create a raw image file from the .vdi file in the virtual machine. To create that raw file, you use a command line tool called VBoxManage (in Windows, it comes as part of the VirtualBox application but can only be run from the command line). VBoxManage has a thorough online manual.
You have to extract the .iso file that is part of the virtual machines .ova template, then you convert it to a raw image file using VBoxManage. The raw image file then must be placed in a location that Vultr can reach to pull the file in.
1.2 You have to upload from a URL
During this journey, I discovered interesting things about how Vultr expects to access the ISO file. Vultr wants a URL. No direct upload service is provided. That’s a bit awkward. I went down various rabbit holes to get the image file to a cloud location that Vultr liked. Google Drive did not work, nor did OneDrive. Both of those services append some extra information on the end of the file’s URL and Vultr rejects URLs with appended information.
What to do? I tried to use a pCloud (a secure cloud storage service) account to accomplish this but uploads to pCloud are quite slow. Instead, I tried using one of my WordPress websites, modifying the upload limit and adding .ova as a file type. It still didn’t work.
You can, of course, sign up for Vultr’s Object Storage for $6/month. That $6 gets you 1 terabyte of storage and 1 terabyte of transfer bandwidth/month. I confess that I’m tempted. In fact, after a couple of hours of fighting with good ways to fulfill the upload requirement, I succumbed and purchased the object storage from Vultr. (If you want to try any Vultr services, please consider using my affiliate link, found on the Support page as item 4.)
By the way, using Vultr Object Storage is not quite as simple as it sounds. You need a client application to move files in and out of storage. I installed a freeware program called S3 Browser and configured it to use my Vultr Object Storage account. Then I created a bucket for my virtual machines. Once I had a bucket, I was able to upload my image file to the bucket. Note that for a large file like this, uploading to Object Storage takes quite a while. My upload of about 3 Gb’s took about 20 minutes over Xfinity cable. I like S3 Browser so I did go ahead and buy the lifetime S3 Browser Pro license for $39.99.
One benefit of using Vultr Object Storage is you get a URL to the file that Vultr likes. I also don’t mind having some extra bulk storage available. Figuring out where to put the image file has been the hardest part of this exercise!
1.3 Deploying a server with the image file
To deploy a server, you set up a new cloud compute instance on Vultr:
In Products, select Cloud Compute. I chose Cloud Compute - Shared CPU for this test, and selected Seattle as the server location.
Under Choose Image, select Upload ISO, then in My ISOs click the plus sign next to Upload ISO. Enter the URL where your image file is located. Your upload will take several minutes. If no errors are reported, you can proceed.*
Under Choose Plan, select AMD High Performance. Under that option, I selected the 25 GB NVMe option at $6/month. I also accepted the Auto Backups addition at $1.20/month.
*And the Upload ISO step is where I repeatedly failed. I tried to upload the .ova file. Nope: errors. I tried renaming the .ova file to an .iso file. Nope. I opened the .ova template and extracted the .vdi file, then used the VBoxManage to convert the .vdi file to an .img file in raw format. That should have worked but it didn’t.
I spent about eight hours on this on Saturday, and that is usually the time I am recording and editing the Random Wire Reflections podcast. I’m a day behind my self-imposed schedule.
I’m going to set this aside for now but the idea of being able to export and save working node configurations as virtual machines, and then importing one of those virtual machines into a cloud server seems like it should work. It also seems like having a library of working node configurations for various purposes would benefit the amateur radio community. It might take someone smarter than me to make this work.
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2. Did You Get Your Start with CB Radio?
It’s often very interesting to listen to amateur radio operators talk about citizens band (CB) radio. I often hear a sense of derision from other hams as they talk about “those CBers” and their bad radio practices. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to say there are plenty of hams who have pretty atrocious (oxymoron alert) radio practices!
I suspect that many of us who enjoy amateur radio now once had a CB radio. I did. When we lived in northern Nevada in the very early 1980s, you had a land line phone and a CB radio. There were no cell phones. With a fairly inexpensive CB and a mag-mount antenna, you had comms when the land lines went out and when driving.
Winter in northern Nevada can be brutal! We had a half-circle driveway and more than once I could not get it cleared of snow. The snow was a fine powder and the wind would howl across our homesite. I had a grain shovel for the snow. Starting at the top of the drive where the car and pickup were parked, I’d start shoveling. By the time I got to the bottom, the driveway was drifted in again. Rinse and repeat. One day I got so frustrated I started up the car and tried to go through a drift at speed, only to feel the car rise up in the air and settle down on top of the drift, high centered. That’s a lesson you never forget!
Reno was a four-hour drive to the west, Salt Lake City was a four-hour drive to the east, and Boise was four hours to the north. The countryside was largely empty and we could sometimes drive for an hour or more without seeing another vehicle.
CB was a lifeline on the highway. This was in the era of C.W. McCall’s popular song “Convoy.” In our 1/2-ton Chevy pickup, we looked like David to the large multi-wheeled Goliaths on the highway. Every long-haul trucker had a CB and many were willing to talk. I can’t count how often we whiled away the hours tagging along with a group of big trucks, listening to their conversations, and sometimes joining in. It was often humorous, occasionally a bit salty, and it helped us stay awake.
I had forgotten some of these memories until a conversation on an amateur radio net about how people got started in amateur radio. One set of life experiences I had that was generally positive was using a CB radio in the 80s. This didn’t cause me to get my amateur license but it didn’t hurt, either.
I wonder how many of us got our start in two-way radio with a CB rig?
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3. Hamshack Hotline Warning About BLF
Recently, I received an email from the Hamshack Hotline folks titled BLF and Speed Dial No No's. Well that is a bit of a teaser so I read the message. If you have a Hamshack Hotline number on a SIP phone, this message is for you.
Here’s the crux of the message about the Busy Lamp Feature, or BLF:
If you still use the speed dial with either parameter of "blf+" OR "sub=", your phone still sends the request to our server asking for the status of the remote extension(s), over and over and over, every second. Those requests still put a huge strain on the server.
And there are currently several, several hundred users on the HHUS server that have not stopped using those forbidden parameters in their speed dial setups.
So, HH will be turning on the IP Ban rule for users who are still using BLF.
You should also be aware that almost ALL soft phone apps have a BLF feature as well and set to "On" by default.
All HHUS users will need to turn off the BLF feature in their soft phone apps and in their hard phone(s) by 5pm eastern on Friday the 19th or the automated rule check that gets turned on will ban your IP address and your phone(s) will stop connecting to the HHUS server.
For those who were using the Busy Lamp Feature, Hamshack Hotline has published two pages to help you see who is online:
Their page at https://blf.hamshackhotline.com/ explains all this better than I can. I did log into my Cisco SPA525G phone to make sure my speed dial buttons weren’t configured in ways that would cause me to be banned!
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4. Tech Stack: My Daily Drivers
My technology stack is where my personal and work lives intersect. Described below are some of the items I use every day. The things that are backups or are only occasionally used may, or may not, be mentioned. This is not an exhaustive list of the technology I have on hand. Rather, it is just the top layer of my daily drivers.
4.1 Computing: the TomBook
I am really enjoying my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 laptop running Microsoft Windows 11 Pro. It is equipped with 32 Gb of RAM and an i7-3650U processor at 1800 MHz. That processor has 10 cores which, for my uses, makes it a beast.
At home, I have the laptop elevated on a desktop stand. I run a second monitor (Samsung) using a small docking station. To travel, I only have to disconnect the USB-C power and the USB-A dock.
With the laptop on the stand, I use a Logitech keyboard and a Microsoft mouse on my desktop.
When traveling I often take the X1 or an older Surface laptop (named, as you might imagine, the TomSurface).
4.2 Storage: the TomServer
My primary storage external to the laptop is a Lenovo ThinkStation P510 also running Microsoft Windows 11 Pro. This machine has 64 Gb of installed memory. The Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPU runs with 14 cores. Although it is a bit dated, the substantial memory and the large number of cores allow me to run virtual machines on this PC without any trouble.
The primary disk is a 1 Tb SSD. For storage, I’ve installed a 4 Tb SSD.
4.3 Storage backup: Synology box
My backup box is a Synology DS220+ with two 3-Tb hard drives installed. The Synology box is secondary to the P510 TomServer. I use FreeFileSync to maintain repositories for my various machines on the TomServer, and then once a week or so, I trigger a routine to copy those repositories to the Synology box. I also run iDrive (an app) on my machines that incrementally backs up changes nightly.
4.4 Linking machines: Tailscale
Tailscale is on almost every machine I operate. Tailscale allows me to easily make connections through my firewalls from near and far. To operate my Olympia, Washington machine from Portland, Oregon, I use Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over Tailscale. When in Olympia, I can reach my Portland machines the same way.
My Raspberry Pi’s all have Tailscale on them. Even my Synology device has Tailscale. This software has been a tremendous help because I travel so much.
4.5 Network routers
Did I really mean routers, plural? Yes! My main router at home is a GL.iNET GL-MT6000 Flint 2 router. It feels solid. It has been pretty seamless to operate. Sometimes, I activate the VPN I configured on it, helping to protect everyone in the household who is connecting through it. I also run AdGuard Home on it for the same reason.
One of the great things about this router is Tailscale runs on it. That makes it even easier for me to reach into my home network when I’m away.
As a backup router, I have an interesting device called a Linkstar H68K. I wrote about it in May 2024. This unit is not running AdGuard or anything fancy. On those rare occasions I need to bypass some of the filtering on my home network, I simply switch my connection to the Linkstar.
I kept my older TP-Link router as a backup to the backup, just in case something surges and fries some equipment. By the way, I do have most of my networking gear plugged into an APC-brand uninterruptible power supply.
The other piece of home networking that is significant to mention is my use of NextDNS for filtering and for handling my DNS queries.
4.6 Amateur radio communications
Did you notice I did not say radios? That’s because some of my preferred methods don’t involve radio much, at least on my end. My Portland home has truly awful RF interference so I have gravitated toward digital systems. All of my systems are connected to larger systems elsewhere that do have significant RF-related aspects, so to me, these still fall into the realm of amateur radio.
AllStarLink
ASL was the first digital voice medium I adopted in a big way. I have several nodes at home, a couple that can travel with me, and one (node 57945) running on a Vultr cloud server.
DMR
I do have a DMR hotspot and radio that I occasionally fire up and use. I have it if I needed it but I don’t use it very much.
D-STAR
My Icom ID-5100A mobile radio does D-STAR. There just isn’t a lot of D-STAR traffic around me so I generally leave this machine off.
C4FM: RF and WIRES-X
For portables, I primarily use two radios: an FT-3D and an FT-5D. For mobile, I run a Yaesu FTM-300DR radio.
At home, I have a second FTM-300DR running as a WIRES-X Portable Digital Node. This machine is on unless we’re leaving for more than an hour or two.
I also have a hotspot running WPSD that is dedicated to Yaesu System Fusion. The FT-3D and FT-5D play nicely with the hotspot.
I would say that my two most-used digital voice systems are AllStarLink and C4FM. The audio clarity is really helpful, especially as my hearing slowly changes with age.
HF
For HF radio, my stalwart friend is a Yaesu FT-450D. I’ve used it in the shack and for POTA. I also have a Yaesu FT-891 which is certainly more portable than the 450, but I’m more comfortable with the 450.
Meshtastic
I also have several Meshtastic devices. As I learn more about this technology, it spurs my thinking about how it could be used. I’m curious about Meshtastic even though it doesn’t seem to have many uses that align with my radio hobby.
Those are the bits of my tech stack that I touch and use almost every day.
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5. On The Bench…
5.1 Yaesu FTM-300DR power problem
I had a problem with my Yaesu FTM-300DR operating as a mobile in the pickup truck. I would turn it on and 30 seconds later it would go dark. Rinse and repeat, over and over.
It was a very hot day and I thought, well, maybe the control head on the dash is getting too hot, so I moved it off the dash to a shaded part of the air-conditioned interior. That did not fix it.
I checked the antenna connection and it was tight at the antenna and at the radio.
What was left? If it wasn’t internal to the radio, the only likely thing left was power. I move this radio from rig to rig so I use a Powerwerx 12V plug adaptor for power. In this particular adaptor, there is a small screw collar at the tip of the plug that secures the spring-loaded tip. When I inspected it, I saw it was partly unscrewed. Once I screwed that back into place and reinserted the adapter, the radio stopped shutting down.
I know that using a 12V adapter isn’t a robust solution but since I move the radio from rig to rig, it has worked pretty well so far. I suppose it might be better to wire in an Anderson Powerpole pair and use that!
5.2 CoreMP135 by M5STACK
This is an industrial ARM-based device that runs Debian 12. That’s good enough to run AllStarLink, or should be. This little device isn’t much larger than two small matchboxes stacked on top of each other.
There are two operating system images available. One is for controlling devices and the other is a Debian 12 instance that is, unfortunately, limited. I say limited because the root filesystem is quite small. In the M5STACK implementation, the root filesystem is 100% full. I’ve fiddled a bit with fdisk and gdisk, but I think I’m going to have to try to mount the microSD card in a different machine to expand the root filesystem.
Why does this matter? I can run “apt update” as root but there is no room to install any updates. If I don’t have room for updates, I won’t have room to try to shoehorn AllStarLink on board, either.
I am feeling compelled to pull that out of the corner and open it up. I’ll bet some of the capacitors are shot. One reason I wanted to get a Heathkit is the layout likely has plenty of room for me to get in and work on it. If I muck it up, I’m not out much!
5.4 AllStarLink interface from phone patch
I’ve got some other old devices boxed up that I hope to modify someday. One is a Heathkit HD-15 phone patch that I’d like to use as the housing for an AllStarLink node. But as I thought about this little project, I realized that the Kenwood PC-1A Phone Patch Controller already has an 8-pin microphone receptacle so I ordered one in good shape from an eBay seller. It arrived on Monday so I’m including a few photos as my mind starts contemplating how to convert this into an AllStarLink audio interface.
Kenwood phone patch (knife is 3-5/8 inches long)
You can see the 8-pin microphone jack on the left of the photo. That is going to work well with one of my Kenwood MC-60 desk microphones! One of the two knobs will become a volume control. If I can, I’d like to monitor audio level through the monitor gauge, just for fun. I don’t know what to use the other potentiometer for. I welcome your ideas!
While I was at it, I opened up the box. Everything looks nice and clean inside. The 8-pin microphone connector looks to be in great shape. One rheostat is easy to turn and one is more resistant. I need to think about where to put an indicator LED on the front panel.
Kenwood PC-1A phone patch interior
A quick swipe with a lightly dampened microfiber cloth cleaned up the front panel enough to show this device is in “good enough” cosmetic condition for this project.
Kenwood PC-1A phone patch with front panel wiped clean
I’m not thinking of keeping the phone patch functionality so at this time, removing the board seems likely. There is plenty of room in the case for a CM108 USB fob, a small amplifier, and more. The rheostat on the back panel (missing the knob) could be removed and a headphone/speaker jack mounted there. The USB cable that goes to my physical node (a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client, a Raspberry Pi, or a mini PC) can come out the back panel where the existing cable passes through.
I have a couple of CM108 fobs coming from the U.K. around the end of the month. I chose to go this route because I’ve destroyed several CM108 devices while trying to solder the one very fine wire to one leg of the IC chip. Rather than go through that frustration again, I thought I’d try a CM108 that someone else has soldered. Fingers crossed.
Turning this into a sound interface for my AllStarLink desktop node should be a fun little build. I’m obviously starting to dream a bit about it!
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6. Tech Trivia: Drones Splash Down
I saw the headline and had to read the article because once upon a time, I almost lost a drone in a lake:
Fifty-five of 200 drones losing their GPS lock seems suspicious. But what piqued my interest was the drones operating over water. I had an incident two years ago where my DJI drone was hovering over the surface of a lake, and I lost control of the aircraft.
Later, I learned that not only does my drone use GPS for positioning, but it also uses the view of the surface below it. I think the lightly rippled surface, moving from the light breeze and reflecting the bright sun, confused the drone. When I told it to return home, it did nothing. When I tried to pilot it back to the dock, it went away from the dock. When I piloted away from the dock, it went farther away.
I was stumped and pretty worried because I had no control.
Finally, I turned off my controller and then turned it back on. That forced a new connection with the drone and about 30 seconds later I had control again. The drone still couldn’t find home but at least I could pilot it back to land for a safe landing.
I don’t know what happened with the SeaTac drones but losing control of a drone is not unusual. I’m glad no people were injured and no property was damaged.
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7. Closing
Well, not much RF-based radio is in this issue. I had wanted to report success on the proof-of-concept installation of an AllStarLink node on a virtual machine to a cloud server. There is more work to be done on that topic!
Hopefully, I’ll have a bit more on traditional radio in the next issue (issue 100 on July 26, 2024).
7.1 Future test of two consumer radios
I expect to have a couple of XHDATA radios in hand soon to review. One is D-608WB emergency weather radio. I’m looking forward to giving it a try. The other radio is not listed yet on the XHDATA website: the D-220. Here is what their rep said about the D-220:
XHDATA is planning to release a new portable D-220 radio. The D-220 radio has good reception performance and excellent listening sound quality. Not only does it receive the FM/MW/SW bands, but it will be surprisingly good value
XHDATA also describes the D-200 as a “high performance global band radio” with DSP.
The two radios are coming from China so I don’t really expect them to arrive before August.
7.2 Enjoying my virtual machine AllStarLink node
I'm really enjoying my AllStarLink node 588411 in a virtual machine on my home server. Node 588411 is currently connected to node 289802, and that node is connected to XLX303 C. (Check out the XLX303 dashboard.) XLX303 C is the WIRES-X node for Olympic Mountain Digital, and that is code for the repeater in my “home” community put up by Jeff N7NEE.
Locally, node 588411 is connected to my Cisco SPA525G SIP phone. To connect, I hit my speed dial button and hear the phone announce the connection to 588411. Then I pull up AllScan and connect to node 289802.
This morning, I heard Ben AB7I and Gary AC7VA in crystal clear audio. This is truly amazing technology.
7.3 Personal: I bought a new scooter
On a more personal note, I just bought a BMW C 400 GT scooter. This is a single-cylinder scoot that can run on the freeway but is happier around town. I have a 2008 Suzuki Burgman 650 that has carried me many thousands of miles around the Pacific Northwest but it has grown too long in the tooth to depend on. The BMW is loaded with technology so my learning curve right now is very steep. The bike, and my helmet, have Bluetooth, so I’m starting to noodle on how to add a ham radio to this package. It would be a blast to have some QSOs while motorcycling!
BMW C 400 GT scooter
Why did I include this? Because our conversations are better when we learn a little bit about each other.
On July 10, 2024, AllStarLink.org announced the release of ASL 3.02. Details of what changed are in the release notes. This is a significant update and if you are already running ASL 3, updating is recommended.
For those running ASL 3 on a Raspberry Pi, you’ll use the new Cockpit to update ASL 3. I’m running ASL 3 on a Debian 12 virtual machine so I updated from the terminal. The usual “sudo apt update” and “sudo apt upgrade -y” commands work to update ASL 3 to ASL 3.02.
The only problem I ran into was AllScan lost track of some of the configuration settings. I suspect this was because PHP was also updated as part of the update/upgrade process (but not as part of the ASL update), and something changed from my earlier manual installation of PHP. Not to worry, though — a few edits to the config set things right. Allmon3 worked fine before and after the update was installed.
Contents
1. AllStarLink on a VM? Why Not!
1.1 AllStarLink 3 Beta is now available
1.2 Test installation on a virtual machine
1.3 Got it working…kind of
1.4 Installed AllScan
1.5 Fixed problems with manager.conf
1.6 Additional software installed
1.7 Summary of links in this ASL 3 article
2. AllStarLink 3 Beta Configured for SIP Phone
2.1 Update modules.conf
2.2 Update extensions.conf
2.3 Update pjsip.conf
2.4 Restart Asterisk
2.5 Connecting to other nodes
2.6 Moving screenshots from VM to Windows machine
3. Personal Observations on Podcasting
3.1 Getting started: what is your why?
3.2 My whys
3.3 The upsides
3.4 The downsides
3.5 Equipment
3.6 Hosting your podcast
4. Introspection: The Random Wire is Evolving
5. Notes
5.1 Raspberry Pi SBCs eligible for improved functionality
6. On the Bench
6.1 AllStarLink node fixins
6.2 New PC for running ASL in a VM
6.3 Sound sample: Worldwide Friendship Net
1. AllStarLink on a VM? Why Not!
CONTEXT: I started writing this about three weeks ago…just moments before AllStarLink.org announced a major update to ASL that includes support for virtual machines. That announcement completely changed the foundation for this content!
I recommend this video. If you’ve never set up a node before and you want to use ASL 3, Freddie Mac walks you through every step to get your node up and running on a Raspberry Pi. He mentions that ASL 3 Beta supports AllScan, something that is important to me. You can also find Freddie Mac’s website at http://hamradiolife.org/.
Some of the great changes in ASL 3 include:
Ability to install on a Raspberry Pi 5
Ability to install into a virtual machine
Asterisk version updated and no longer runs as the root user
I want to give ASL 3 a try, especially on my node-in-the-cloud. In the meantime, though, I decided to do an experimental install into an Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine on my home server, configuring ASL 3 as a hub running DAHDI. (My node-in-the-cloud number 57945 is configured that way — it’s simply a hub with no radio.)
However, I encountered some hiccups. I did get them resolved, but I’ll describe what they were in case you run into them, too.
I started with a minimal installation of Debian 12 in a new virtual machine. This becomes important later when I found that some services were not working correctly.
The update node service was missing
After installing ASL 3, I discovered that the update node service was not running. I had to search for, and install, an updated .deb file to get that going. I found that on GitHub at https://github.com/AllStarLink/asl3-update-nodelist and manually installed it. If I recall correctly, I had to explicitly start the service from the command line after installing it.
Allmon3 was missing
After installing ASL 3, I did confirm that allmon3 was not installed. I followed the directions for installing allmon3 on Debian 12 found at https://github.com/AllStarLink/Allmon3. Once I did that, I could see the Allmon3 page and log into it, but it gave me no data whatsoever: no icons, no colored transmit bar, nothing. I also found I could not execute commands. Hmmm.
I banged my head on the keyboard for a bit on this issue. All of the required packages are installed. I tried to manually configure /etc/allmon3/allmon3.ini to reflect the IP address and authentication details needed by Allmon3 and that broke it. After an hour or so of fiddling — including comparing the allmon3.ini file to a known-to-work allmon.ini file running on a Debian 10 node, I finally got it to work…kind of. Then I cleaned up my ufw firewall settings and added some port forwards to my router.
Stepping back for a moment, this was all a a bit discombobulating because the new manual for ASL 3 Beta said that allmon3 and asl3-update-nodelist are installed as part of the ASL 3 package. If they are installed, why wasn’t I finding them? That sent me down a rabbit hole for a few hours. (UPDATE: One of the maintainers acknowledged this was incorrectly stated in the manual. That part has been clarified in the online manual.)
Screenshot of errant content in manual
1.3 Got it working…kind of
At this point, AllStarLink.org could see node 588411:
AllStarLink sees my virtual machine node 588411
I could now connect my cloud node 57945 to 588411:
Connection made from 588411 to 57945
That’s easier to see with the bubble map:
AllStarLink bubble map of connection
And Allmon3 on 588411 now does show the correct dashboard icons:
Allmon3 is running
But Allmon3 did not show the connected node, nor do I get the colored transmit/receive bar. Another hmmm moment.
1.4 Installed AllScan
I set that problem aside and moved on to installing AllScan. The software author, David Gleason NR9V, very recently modified the installation routine to work with the ASL 3 Beta and I’m glad he did. I use AllScan far more than Allmon or Supermon. It’s a great piece of work by David. (You might also be interested in his node building page at https://allscan.info/!)
This is when I recognized the root of my problem with the Allmon3 installation. I tried to install AllScan and at the final step when the command tries to run the PHP file, the file wasn’t found. I could see it. It was right there! But PHP couldn’t see it. That was the moment when I realized PHP probably wasn’t installed. Remember that I did a minimal install of Debian 12, meaning that if you need a package, you’ll probably have to install it. To install PHP 8.3, I followed the instructions at https://tecadmin.net/how-to-install-php-on-debian-12/.
Once that was done, I was able to complete the installation of AllScan. It worked immediately and showed my connection to 57945.
AllScan is running on 588411
1.5 Fixed problems with manager.conf
There was one other hiccup along the way with manager.conf. Before I installed PHP, I was watching messages in the Asterisk CLI. I kept getting errors about manager.conf not being able to authenticate so I went into manager.conf with nano and manually changed the user and password (called the secret in manager.conf) to match what I was using for Allmon3. After restarting Asterisk, I saw no more error messages.
Now that I had PHP running and my manager.conf problem was resolved, I went back to look at my Allmon3 instance and sure enough, it was now working, too!
Allmon3 now runs perfectly
1.6 Additional software installed
I also installed Tailscale, xrdp, a desktop environment (xfce), and mlocate. I use Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over Tailscale to connect to the node desktop. I can also use Tailscale as my SSH backbone. I usually install mlocate as that allows me to find files. (For example, when sleuthing about PHP, I searched for PHP using the locate command and the paucity of files suggested immediately that I did not have PHP installed!)
My takeaway from hitting these speedbumps is…yeah, you can get ASL 3 running. It’s a tremendous piece of work by the AllStarLink team. However, if you are installing to a Debian 12 platform, it may be best to wait a little while for the installation process to get a bit smoother. I think there are a large number of people interested in ASL 3 on Debian it won’t take wrong this to get better.
This was a bit more convoluted than I expected but I muddled through until it worked.
You are going to have to crack open the new manual at https://allstarlink.github.io. The way SIP connections are made has changed in ASL 3 (presumably because of the substantial upgrade in Asterisk) and the manual has vital information to help guide you.
The load command load = chan_sip.so in /etc/asterisk/modules.conf needs to be replaced with noload = chan_sip.so. because chan_sip is deprecated.
Make chan_sip.so a noload channel
While you are in /etc/asterisk/modules.conf, you’ll need to add a whole new section that loads pjsip and related required elements. The manual says “add the following at the bottom of the file” but I modified that slightly. The bottom of my modules.conf file ends with [global]. If I put the pjsip content below that, it would be in the context of global, so I put the pjsip stuff above the [global] section.
Apologies for the small print in the screenshot below. I had to zoom out the view in order to get the entire list into one window!
Add pjsip items to modules.conf
Since I have a desktop installed in my 588411 virtual machine, I simply opened the new manual using the VM’s browser, allowing me to easily copy and paste the long pjsip section right into my modules.conf file.
I like using nano as my Linux editor. In nano, hit Ctrl X on your keyboard and answer Y to save.
2.2 Update extensions.conf
I hit a bit of a brick wall making the required changes to /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf. You’ll see in the new manual that some variables are included in the new [sip-phones] section: ${EXTEN}, ${NODE}, and ${NODENUM}. When I married the new [sip-phones] section with what I had used before, it didn’t work.
(Also, I note that there are a few references in the new manual about lines or content being highlighted in color, but I don’t see any highlighting, no matter what browser I use. My guess is the manual was written in some other system that showed highlights but those highlights were lost when the content was copied to the website.)
Pasted below is a screenshot showing the configuration suggested in the new manual on the left and my actual changes on the right. My changes are working for me but may not work for you because your phone is likely set up differently. I use a speed dial button. When I push the speed dial button, it connects to node 588411. Line 4 on my SPA 525G is set as extension 211, and the phone listens for a call to 300. Hopefully, that helps explain why my working [sip-phones] configuration looks so different than the recommendations in the manual.
Settings from manual on left, my settings on right
One stumbling block for me was ${NODE} is set at the top of /etc/asterisk/extensions/conf as NODE = 588411. Leaving the ${NODE} variable in the recommended [sip-phones] configuration got in the way of the node authenticating to the phone. I noticed the potential problem when the announcement over the phone was telling me that ${NODENUM} was 300 and ${EXTEN} was 588411. That wasn’t right so I started fiddling by replacing variables with static values.
I did find it very helpful to go to open the Asterisk CLI and monitor what pjsip was seeing. In a terminal window, start the Asterisk CLI with asterisk -rvvv. Then type in pjsip set logger on and hit Enter. To exit, type exit and hit Enter. The pjsip logger is where I saw that what I thought was my node number, pjsip was seeing as my extension, and vice versa.
2.3 Update pjsip.conf
Of course, none of the above worked until I configured /etc/asterisk/pjsip.conf per the manual’s recommendations. My UDP port is 5062 so I changed that in the Basic UDP transport section of pjsip.conf.
UDP transport in pjsip.conf
Farther down in the pjsip.conf file, you configure your endpoint in the “Endpoint Configured For Use With A Sip Phone” section. Here’s a side-by-side view, with the manual content on the left and my configuration on the right:
Endpoint settings from manual on left, my settings on right
And then the auth section needs to be changed:
Auth settings to match (password obscured)
2.4 Restart asterisk
I prefer using sudo systemctl restart asterisk to restart the system but sudo astres.sh works just as well.
2.5 Connecting to other nodes
You can use standard DTMF commands to manage connections to other nodes. I prefer the convenience of using AllScan by David Gleason NR9V. AllScan makes connecting to another node very, very easy. A few days after ASL 3 was released, David published an update to AllScan that works with the new system. AllScan is Random Wire Recommended!
2.6 Moving screenshots from VM to Windows machine
As an aside, I have Tailscale installed on the virtual node 588411 (running Debian 12) and on my laptop named TomBook (running Windows 11 Pro). With Tailscale, you can use Taildrop to copy files from one system to another.
I discovered that Taildrop allows the use of wildcards, so I was able to transfer the several screenshots I captured on the VM while preparing this piece with just one line in a terminal window on 588411:
tailscale file cp *.png tombook:
That was a slick discovery!
3. Personal Observations on Podcasting
I used to avoid YouTube videos of people showing others how to do something. Now I don’t. I am finding it easier to find a very focused demonstration of what to do to fix or modify something by simply searching for videos on it.
And yet, amateur radio is an audio medium so I feel a bit more comfortable approaching it from the podcasting side instead of making videos. I suppose there may be times when I want to show something that I can’t describe with only words or photographs, but that seems unlikely at the moment.
3.1 Getting started: what is your why?
Why do you want to do a podcast? It’s important to know because it can be a lot of work. That means time taken from other things you might rather be doing. Without knowing your why, you may not stick with it if it begins to feel like a burden.
Do you want to teach? Video might be a better medium. However, audio and the written word can also be used very effectively.
Do you want to reach a certain age group? Audio cuts across most demographics, while video and written material seem a bit more segregated when it comes to reach certain audience segments.
Are you comfortable speaking into a microphone? Podcasting might be a great tool, but if you are just as comfortable in front of a camera, video might be right for you.
3.2 My whys
My why was simple: a desire to grow my community by reaching people who would rather listen to audio than read another email. I chose not to use video because (a) I’m not very comfortable in front of a camera and (b) video is more difficult to produce (i.e., less forgiving).
I did not appreciate audio as a medium until my aging mother lost most of her sight. An avid reader all her life, the dimming of her vision came as a major blow to her. Audio books became a lifeline for her, and as my wife and I were helping to care for her, we listened to some of the books, too. I found that I enjoyed hearing content at the narrator’s pace instead of at my reading speed. With the frequent long drives involved in my work, audio books became a staple for me.
Also, I wanted to grow my skill at narration, something I have always felt could improve. How to do that? Well, do more of it!
For these reasons, adding an audio component to my newsletter felt like a natural step for me.
3.3 The upsides
One upside is I get to explore a new medium. This is all new to me so I get to learn a lot, quickly. That is usually a lot of fun for me. I also get to hear feedback that helps me become a better speaker, something I very much want to do.
I anticipate that the podcast will allow me to reach more people and that may equate to some new subscribers. Or it might just be a value add for existing subscribers, but that’s a positive if it strengthens my subscription base.
3.4 The downsides
Producing audio takes more: more equipment, more effort, and more time. I went looking for information and didn’t find much that was clear and unequivocal. (Well, that’s not completely true. I found very clear guidance when a vendor wanted to pull me into their own walled garden of hardware and software!) And you know why? Because vendors want to sell their products and everyone’s situation is different.
I’m still at the point where I write out a script of sorts for each podcast and you can hear that in my spoken delivery. It’s not where I want to be but it is where I’m at now.
3.5 Equipment
Microphones
My point about the lack of clear guidance seemed especially true when it came to selecting microphones. Every source seemed to conflict and I finally began to recognize that there was no crystal clear, right-or-wrong answer because every situation truly is different. So I did what I usually do: I made mistakes and learned from them. If you have unlimited time and money, go for it. I don’t, so I tried to be a bit more judicious and economical in my experimentation.
An example is the Blue Yet Nano microphone. I have a Yeti microphone that I picked up at a thrift store, but the thing is simply huge on my small desk. It gets in my way. I liked the sound it captured but not how much real estate it consumed. Some people like the Blue Yeti Nano and some detest it — just like many microphones. Still, it wasn’t much money to try the Nano and I am finding it to be a hot little mic.
Therein lies one of the downsides of the Nano: it tends to pick up more than I want it to. It picks up more because it is a condenser microphone. It would benefit from being in a more controlled environment. I don’t have a sound studio, nor do I have space to create one. I might love it more if I had a quiet space, but I don’t.
I also tried some dynamic microphones because they are less sensitive than condenser mics and so they might be better in places where there are background sounds you don’t want recorded. My first episode was using a dynamic mic and a few people told me it sounded too quiet. My second episode was with the condenser mic and a few people complained about the hissy sounds in my speech. For the third podcast, I ended up recording into a Zoom H4n Pro handy recorder while sitting in my pickup truck. I’ve also picked up an Elgato Wave 3 mic and it seems hotter than the Nano! For this episode, I’ll try recording with the Elgato mic and if it is too noisy, I’ll revert to the Nano or the H4n.
As you can see, this is still an active area of experimentation for me. Once I settle on a few approaches, I can spend more on a better microphone as my daily driver.
(By the way, I fell down this rabbit hole because I was looking for a desk microphone I could use with my FTM-300DR radio that I’m using on my desk as a Portable Digital Node over WIRES-X. There were no obvious choices and so I started to learn more about kinds of microphones and which ones might work with my radio. Along the way, I discovered that even some worldwide microphone vendors were a little mixed up about what might work with the FTM-300DR!)
What will you record into?
I’m recording into my computer, except when I record into the Zoom H4n Pro. Any day now I’ll start recording through the computer to an external SSD to save my onboard storage space.
3.6 Hosting your podcast
This topic could easily consume an entire newsletter. I looked at many options over a few months and finally decided to keep it as simple as I could. Since Substack (the service that hosts the Random Wire newsletter) also offers podcast hosting, I chose to host at Substack.
You can find free podcast hosting and paid podcast hosting. I lean toward paid because the free versions often limit how much you can host, how long they’ll keep your podcast episodes online, and may include advertising of their own choice in your podcast. Paid hosting tends to give you more time with fewer or no ads.
But there is more, a whole lot more. Having your podcast hosted in one place doesn’t get your podcast “out there.” You need to distribute your podcast, as in: have others carry your podcast. I’m using Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, and Pocket Casts.
Promoting your podcast
You have a choice: promote your podcast, or not. Promotion means spreading the word. I’m using Facebook a little bit but mainly depending on my Random Wire newsletter subscribers to increase my podcast listeners. I have multiple social media accounts but I’m trying to stay away from those tools because I find some folks in the social media realm tend to be a bit more vocal without always exercising much discretion. I don’t really want a subscriber base that goes up and down a lot. I want subscribers willing to travel this train with me.
Make sure your amateur radio club knows you have a podcast. That is a great way to reach people who might not be able to attend club meetings. The spoken word connects with people in a way that the written word does not. That’s important, particularly when we have so many in our radio community who need those connections.
If your local school has a ham radio club or a STEM program (science, technology, engineering, math), it may not hurt to let them know you have a podcast. That gives the club advisor or a teacher the opportunity to review your material and consider using it in some lessons. You might even get invited to present a topic, and there are few better feelings that helping people learn about amateur radio!
OK, that’s enough. That was a shallow dive but if you’ve not thought about this before, it probably felt deep. Let’s call it “deep enough” and move on to another topic.
4. Introspection: The Random Wire is Evolving
If you’ve been with the Random Wire for a while, you’ve probably noticed that topics can be a bit, well, random! I started this writing experience by journaling. And then I started writing a runbook (that’s an information technology term) for my various radio platforms. A runbook, in nontechnical terms, is a collection of how-to recipes for common tasks. In my case, I wanted to document some of the tasks I found myself engaged in — things like installing AllStarLink on a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine, upgrading Debian on an ASL node, extending a node number, and more. That’s right: this all started for me with AllStarLink.
Along this two-year journey, subscriber numbers grew pretty steadily:
Meanwhile, my topics rambled along on a random walk, covering old gear, new equipment, making some deeper dives into digital modes, and resurfacing a few times on other topics, sometimes with actual RF-based radios. It’s been a bit of a dog’s breakfast, in my view. I’m not entirely happy with that, but at the same time, I have come to realize that a lot of hams have wide-ranging interests that are hard to present in a discrete set of topics contained in a focused, targeted newsletter. To this day, the Random Wire newsletter remains a somewhat messy collection of topics and observations.
Subscribers are great. But there are two problems with subscribers: first is not having any, and second is getting caught up in the subscriber numbers game. When you start a blog or newsletter, you are alone. You write the very first post and publish it and then…nothing happens. It takes other people. It takes partnerships and mutual support. It takes connecting with real humans to grow your subscriber base. But there is an inflection point in this process because you start to watch the subscriber numbers change with each issue of the blog or newsletter, and the watching ends up influencing what you choose to write about.
I’m trying not to do that. I’m trying to keep it all a bit messy and rambling, true to the title: the Random Wire. I’m thrilled to have more than 950 subscribers following my work. I’m actually astounded by this number. When I started, I thought maybe my little niche in our huge amateur radio universe might capture the interest of a hundred or two hams. It is growing beyond anything I expected. Color me continually surprised.
I’ve been told my writing exhausts people, as in: Tom, there is too much detail. I’ve been told I’m not writing about real radio, meaning: the content isn’t appealing to some folks. I’ve been told my topics have no order, and to that I say: true. I’m a mess, just like many of my radio friends are!
But as noted, subscribers do influence content and style. In response, I’ve written summaries instead of detailed recipes. Feedback: not enough detail. I rolled in a bit more about “real” radio, only to hear from some that this wasn’t the content they wanted. I’ve tried to organize a bit better by at least having a table of contents in each issue, and the feedback on that change has been: silence.
And yet…and yet…I feel the Random Wire evolving. It is certainly growing, but as I look back on the nearly 100 publications in two years, I see the content beginning to intersect more and more about radio and technology, where technology often means computers, routers, networking, etc. A confluence of big topics opens up an even wider universe of things to write about. I’d really like to stay anchored in amateur radio but I feel some pull toward ideas and products that are outside that limited realm.
I’m grappling with this tension as I think about the Random Wire this summer. Should I give in and expand my topics or should I try to stay more focused on my admittedly messy, random ideas and activities about amateur radio and tech? I’m more comfortable not changing but at the same time, I do want to expand my knowledge and interests. I truly do not know where this will lead. It’s a rambling journey, not a destination.
Let me also address paid subscriptions. I just don’t see that for the Random Wire, partly because my content is a jumble of ideas and partly because I want content to be free. I remember being an early amateur radio licensee and having that awful epiphany that everything cost more than I could afford. I lean more toward helping people get involved with amateur radio and trying some things that are new to them rather than dwelling on detailed analyses of circuits and antennas. The Random Wire, when it speaks to me, says: I need to be free to people.
At the same time, I’m spending a lot of time planning, buying equipment, writing about it, and thinking about what to capture next. It becomes a bit costly and so I now include affiliate links on my Support page as a no-obligation way to generate some revenue from this work. It’s not intended to provide much but every little bit helps with internet cost, website hosting, recording gear, and amateur radio equipment. It is always a humbling moment when I see that someone has bought me a coffee or purchased a product using one of my affiliate links. Thank you!
So the content has been changing a bit over time and there are completely optional ways to provide some financial support if you wish. Another evolution is the addition of a podcast which has been, and continues to be, quite an adventure. I have to say that creating a new podcast from scratch is an order of magnitude jump up from writing a blog or a newsletter. It takes more equipment, more time, more thought. The time required for editing is greater than you might imagine.
I’ve started my podcasting journey at the smallest and simplest level that I thought might yield good-quality audio results. This is unnerving work for me. I am stepping outside my comfort zone to try to become more comfortable with the process of verbalizing ideas in front of hundreds of other people. Have you seen hams that can’t quite bring themselves to make that first CQ call, or who shy away from actually transmitting CW? That is the kind of reticence I feel in front of the podcasting microphone. I am exercising that weakness to become more capable at this.
Just as with the written word, I really don’t know where the spoken word is going to go. I’d like to do some interviews. I plan to capture sound clips of various modes so people can hear what different modes sound like. I want to get clips of some of the best practices I hear on the radio and clips of some of the worst, without embarrassing the people speaking. I hope the podcast evolves in this direction.
All this is to say: I started without a plan and I still don’t have a plan, other than to enjoy my journey in amateur radio, learn a lot, and share what I’m learning with others. Your time is precious. So is mine. I don’t plan to write or record on things that have little value but I’m sure I will. Along the way, I’m also certain we’ll find topics where our interests overlap. I’m glad you’re on this journey with me and hope you’ll have a good time on the Random Wire train. Next stop: unknown!
Do feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly with your feedback. I value all feedback.
5.1 Raspberry Pi SBCs eligible for improved functionality
As long as we’re dwelling on tech, interesting news about Raspberry Pi single board computers (SBCs) came to light a few weeks ago. Check out these stories:
Available for every Pi ever made. This is interesting stuff for those of us who run several Raspberry Pi SBCs!
6. On the Bench
6.1 AllStarLink node fixins
I ordered up a Kenwood PC-1 phone patch from eBay for a potential sound interface build to connect to an AllStarLink node. This would be similar to the ANR-series devices by David Gleason NR9V but packed into a vintage case. This would go well with my existing desktop node speaker, a Heathkit HS-1661.
That node has AllStarLink running on a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine and one of the early ANR units by David for interfacing the microphone and the speaker with the ASL machine.
I’ve tried to do something like this before but fell down when it came to the very fine soldering required on the CM108 sound fob. This time, I’m rolling the dice and ordering a couple of CM108 devices that have been modified by someone else. I have all the other parts I’ll need. (Somewhere I even have a Raspberry Pi 2 W that I might be able to shoehorn into the Kenwood phone patch case…but that will mean cutting some holes in the back.)
6.2 New PC for running ASL in a VM
I can’t believe how inexpensive mini PCs have become. I got the Beelink Mini S12 Pro for $159. I installed VirtualBox on it and migrated a copy of my node 588411 to the mini PC. AllStarLink.org sees it and I can reach Allmon3 and AllScan on the new virtual machine. Next up will be reconfiguring this instance to access my ANR sound interface. Sometimes getting sound to move in and out of a VM can be problematic so this is very much a proof of concept. I’ll have more on this in issue 99 of the Random Wire Review next week!
6.3 Sound sample: Worldwide Friendship Net
On July 10, 2024, I recorded several minutes of the beginning of the Worldwide Friendship Net on the W7RAT repeater in Portland, Oregon. Most transmissions sound like they are via IRLP and Echolink, at least to me. Sound was captured on a Zoom H4n Pro handy recorder, handheld near the speaker of my Yaesu FTM-300DR radio in my pickup truck.
The purpose behind posting sound clips like this is to help subscribers experience other nets and other modes of radio.
Coming next week: C4FM audio from the Kansas City Wide network!
This is the “morning after Independence Day” edition! Last night, we were quintessential Americans, attending the Hillsboro Hops baseball game and staying for the fireworks. This has nothing to do with radio except for appreciating our freedom to work and play with radio!
“You're talking on the air, an unowned medium. It's literally like talking in person, except with technology that allows your voice to travel farther. But the government requires that you license yourself to exercise the right to speak in this way?”
I’m not going to try to summarize the hundreds of comments in that thread. If you’re interested in reading points of view about rights, privileges, a regulated society, and more, I commend the thread (linked above) to you. I found that the comments improved my perspective on this topic and enhanced my appreciation for the many privileges we enjoy as licensed amateur radio operators. In any case, it seems appropriate to reflect on our freedoms and privileges as we put another Independence Day in the log! To all the veterans in my life and the ones I have not yet met: thank you.
2. New LiFePO4 Battery
I picked up a small LiFePO4 battery from Dakota Lithium recently, on sale for $69. I’m not sure I needed another small battery but I’m certain I’ll find a use for it. I have a spade-to-PowerPole adapter on order with PowerWerx, along with a PowerPole-to-OEM T adapter for my mobile radios.
LiFePO4 batteries
I have a smaller battery from an off brand. That 6 Ah battery weighs almost the same as the Dakota 10 Ah battery! Amazing.
And, as I noted last week, I clipped my Ten-Tec Scout 555 to it to give the radio a bit of needed exercise.
Ten-Tec Scout 555 clipped to Dakota 10 Ah battery
3. Digirig and Digirig Lite
I have a Digirig Mobile device and it does work. It’s amazingly small, perhaps the size of a large thimble. It’s really quite amazing. I do like miniaturized devices and this one just blows my mind.
Digirig Mobile is very small
While reading Steve Stroh’s great Zero Retries newsletter, I discovered a new, less expensive, and simple Digirig: the Digirig Lite. This is definitely on my “to be acquired” list. I do love a small device and my experience with the Digirig Mobile device has been very positive. (And many thanks to Steve for once again surprising me with something new. It seems like every issue of Zero Retries surprises me!)
I don’t find the Digirig Lite listed on Amazon yet, but the Digirig Mobile is available there. I have a link to it on the Support page.
4. New TNC Arrived
Speaking of terminal node controllers…I was about to purchase a new MFJ-1270X TNC-X device when the news about MFJ shutting down some manufacturing hit the air. As soon as I heard this, I went to the MFJ website only to discover that the 1270X was sold out. I’ve been keeping an eye out for any stock that was still available and found some for sale by Ham Radio Outlet. Boom. One more 1270X is coming to the shack! The one I already have is simple and simply rock solid. The Digirig Mobile works fine but I do like how less mysterious the 1270X TNC-X feels.
My uses cases are APRS and Winlink. We’ll see where this goes in the future. I have too many radios so I may as well put one of them to a productive use.
Here’s a photo gallery of the unboxing of the new 1270X:
For now, this TNC stays in the box, but I’m certain I’ll find a good use for it! I am not including an affiliate link on the support page because the price for this TNC on Amazon is too far off street prices for my comfort.
5. Encryption of Radio Traffic
While going on my morning trip to get coffee about a week ago, I listened to an interesting conversation. I was listening to the W7RAT IRLP repeater in Portland when traffic from an East Coast reflector started booming in. It was a bunch of hams from New York and Massachusetts who seemed to know each other, and somehow, they got onto the topic of encryption of radio traffic by city, county, and state agencies.
Very interesting. It sounds like conversion from analog to encrypted radio is not cheap and the effective range of encrypted radios may be slightly less than unencrypted radios.
I’m of two minds on radio encryption. On the one hand, I get it — encrypting radio traffic provides additional safety for our public safety workers. The guys on the radio were talking about riots in 2020 and how some bad actors were listening in on cheap handie talkies, calling out certain officers in the police department by name. Implied in this conversation was those officers were being targeted. That’s not good.
On the other side of the coin is making sure we have the ability to hold such agencies accountable for their actions. If comms are hidden behind a veil, that becomes harder to do. I’m guessing that news media folks are a bit rankled by seeing comms that have traditionally been “in the clear” become encrypted.
I had a bad experience with a law enforcement officer in my youth where I was a victim but was treated as if I made up the story. Why? Probably because the perpetrator was a LEO. I was surprised that the judge leaned so heavily on the side of the LEO, but then again, my judgment was definitely biased because of the incident. That experience has left me pretty jaded. While I try to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt, I’m very uncomfortable around armed officers I don’t know.
Nevertheless, I want our public safety folks to be as safe as they can be, so if encryption helps move the dial in that direction, I support it. (And related to my experience with a LEO, if location tracking was part of the encrypted radio system, that would create a data set that could help clear up statements that don’t agree.) To satisfy those who think they should have access to the communications, perhaps streaming the audio from general channels over a system like Broadcastify with a 10-minute delay would give them what they want. TAC channels? Encrypt them. I don’t see the need to overhear in real time what our public employees are doing to resolve a situation.
This particular topic probably strays slightly into the realm of politics and I really don’t want politics to invade this newsletter. Philosophically, radio ought to be open to all. Normally, I would not be supportive of encryption, but having worked in the public safety arena, I know there are times when being able to send and receive detailed information about a situation or a person is invaluable, and indeed, sometimes life saving. I support encryption when it enables public safety officials to do their job safely and effectively.
6. How Do You Do APRS?
I’ve been an APRS fan since I first learned of it. My first handie talkie was a Yaesu VX-8 with the external GPS module. I got that radio to run APRS and to work satellites. (APRS is the Automatic Packet Reporting System.)
I still run APRS in my mobile rig. Even though my spouse and children are not licensed amateur radio operators, they can still track me via https://aprs.fi.
My morning coffee run on June 25, 2024
I also have APRS enabled on one of my AllStarLink nodes and on the hotspot I use for Yaesu System Fusion. AllStarLink node 588412 reports the position of the node:
AllStarLink node 588412
My Yaesu System Fusion hotspot also reports to APRS:
Hotspot with YSF reports position
I’ll be interested to learn what you use APRS for, and if you don’t, why not? Granted, it’s been around for a while so it may feel dated. However, that’s actually a strength because APRS is supported by a significant number of APRS digipeaters around the world. I use https://aprs.fi to see what is happening around me, and APRSDroid (on my phone) for messaging over APRS.
I have been thinking of adding a WX3in1 Plus device to my home network to bolster local capacity to the APRS network. I’m also noodling on how to build a low-power-consumption portable fill-in digipeater…perhaps something like Evan Pratten’s Building a cheap APRS digipeater!
I’m also looking at other implementations, including:
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I thought I’d better clone the microSD card in my Raspberry Pi 4 hotspot that I use for Yaesu System Fusion. While I could use it for other modes, I find it simpler to dedicate the hotspot to one system. I do also run APRS on it but the load from that is very light.
I used Win32DiskImager to make an image file of the system from the working microSD card. Then I burned the image to another microSD card, stuck that into the hotspot, and booted up. It’s working fine, and the original microSD is labeled and put away in my desk drawer, in case my friend Justin Case comes visiting again. I also have the image file stored on my file server so that I can burn a fresh image whenever I need to.
Note that I made the image file on Windows 11 Pro but on the Win32DiskImager page, it says it only goes up to Windows 10. I did have to reboot my computer after installing the program.
7.2 Sound clip of AllStarLink
One of my new goals is to include a sound clip of a mode in each issue.
This recording captured part of a youth net (as in: moderated by a youth) I overheard on my home AllStarLink station on June 28th at about 4:20 pm Pacific. The recording was made with a Zoom H4n Pro with audio captured in mono to save space. You’ll hear a variety of audio characteristics among the different participants, ranging from smooth, clear audio to a thoroughly broken transmission. I think one of the participants may have been using Echolink but I can’t be sure.
For those who have not used AllStarLink before, I hope this gives you some insight into the quality of audio you might experience in this mode.
7.3 Hillsboro Hops baseball
If I get time after the Hops game, I’ll post a few photos here for those who want to experience the moment through a few images. We had a great time. This is a small ballbark with only one tier of bleachers. You are close to the action. The Hillsboro Hops are a minor league affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Hillsboro Hops pitching against the Eugene Emeralds
After the game, we were treated to about 20 minutes of great fireworks.
I welcome this big version change but I think it should come with a caution. Many of us will want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version which is now ASL 3 Beta. If your node is running fine, I suggest waiting a bit to see if undiscovered bugs or problems come to light, especially if your node is publicly accessible.
Despite my sense of caution, I must say well done to the AllStarLink folks. I feel like my financial support of AllStarLink is helping to make a difference. AllStarLink is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization so your donations may be tax deductible.
In next week’s issue, I’ll detail how I got ASL3 running in a virtual machine and configured to work with my Cisco SPA525G SIP phone on my desk. There are some significant changes with ASL3, particularly in the realm of configuring for use with SIP phones. Step one with a major upgrade like is a must: read the user manual!
A special thank you to Jeff for buying me some coffees! I appreciate your support very much.
Thank you to all readers and subscribers, and 73 to all!
Good afternoon. KJ7T is in the booth! This is Tom Salzer with some Random Wire Reflections for Issue 97 of the Random Wire Review that will publish on Friday, July 5th.
And I have to laugh a bit when I saw I'm in the booth, because the reality is I'm at my messy sit-stand workstation at home, early in the morning when it is quiet, and just pretending that I have a recording booth!
I actually recorded this podcast inside the passenger compartment of my Honda Ridgeline truck while waiting for my daughter’s prescription to be filled. I captured audio on my Zoom H4N Pro Handy Recorder with a “dead cat” filter over the sensitive microphones. The audio was later imported into Audacity for final editing. I exported the audio in mono to save space, making this podcast a bit more friendly for folks using cellular bandwidth to listen.
Tom Salzer KJ7T
Overview
OK, let's take a dive into Random Wire Review issue 97.
Topics in issue 97 include:
Independence Day;
a new (to me) Dakota Lithium battery;
the Digirig Mobile and Digirig Lite devices; and
a terminal node controller by MFJ.
I also offer some reflections on encryption of radio traffic and on APRS. The closing notes include a short bit about cloning my hotspot microSD card, a sound clip from an AllStarLink net, and a few photos from the Hillsboro Hops baseball game.
If you are interested in AllStarLink, you’ll want to stay tuned to the very end where late-breaking news is shared about a major version upgrade for AllStarLink!
Independence Day Edition
Since issue 97 will publish on July 5th, I'm calling it the Independence Day Edition.
On July 4th, my wife and I will attend a baseball game that pits the Hillsboro Hops against the Eugene Emeralds. We'll try to eat a few hot dogs, have a beer, and watch the fireworks show that will be featured at this game. Usually we get together with family, but having a night out for the two of us seems like a great way to celebrate Independence Day this year.
In issue 97, I refer readers to a Reddit thread about the First Amendment and ham radio. Reading through those comments helped me appreciate the many privileges we enjoy as licensed amateur radio operators even more.
New Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery
I succumbed to a deal on Facebook for a 12-volt, ten amp-hour battery from Dakota Lithium, for $69. That’s a nice price for a portable battery.
This little guy is a bit larger than my off-brand 12.8V 6 amp-hour battery by TalentCell. I'm surprised the Dakota battery doesn't weigh much more than the TalentCell battery.
I tested the battery by clipping the power leads from my Ten-Tec Scout 555 to the spade lugs on the Dakota battery. It worked great and I can tell this is going to be a mainstay in my ham radio kit.
Digirig Mobile and Digirig Lite devices
I have a Digirig Mobile device that I bought because I couldn't get an MFJ TNC some time ago. The Digirig device works great. It's about the size of a large thimble, as in the protective device you put on your thumb when sewing.
Actually, the Digirig kind of blows my mind. Essentially, it's an external sound card that is just tiny.
The catalyst for me to look again at the Digirig products was an issue of Steve Stroh's great newsletter titled Zero Retries. Steve included a bit about the new Digirig Lite device that incorporates some of the needed cabling into the device.
I love a tiny and complete solution so the Digirig Lite is on my "must acquire" list.
If you like content that is interesting and future focused, produced by an experienced and capable ham, I recommend Steve's newsletter to you. A subscription button is included in issue 97 of the Random Wire.
A New TNC Arrived in the Shack
And speaking of terminal node controllers, Steve's mention of the Digirig Lite caused me to remember why I bought the Digirig Mobile, so I went looking for an MFJ 1270X TNC again. Most vendors I checked list this device as out of stock, but Ham Radio Outlet had some in Sacramento.
I very swiftly logged into my HRO account and ordered up another 1270X. It arrived a few days later. I include unboxing photos in issue 97.
Encryption of Radio Traffic
I overheard an interesting conversation from an east coast reflector while on a morning drive for the coffee that fuels the start of my day. Somehow, those hams got onto the topic of encryption of radio traffic by city, county, and state agencies.
I reflect a bit on this in issue 97. I'm of two minds. Normally I would prefer radio be open to all. But I've been in the public safety arena and I understand the need to protect people, families, businesses, and public officials. If encryption makes public safety officials safer and better able to do their jobs, then I support it.
How Do You Do APRS?
I actually did laugh out loud when this title popped into my head because it echoes a line in the 1980s movie The Last Starfighter. In that scene, an alien astronaut is meeting the hero's friends and family on Earth, and when one of the people asks him "How do you do?" he responds with: "I do WELL! How do YOU do?" That's the intonation I hear in my mind when I read How do YOU Do APRS?
I run APRS in my mobile rig: a Yaesu FTM-300DR on VFO B. I also have APRS enabled on my desktop AllStarLink node and on my Yaesu System Fusion hotspot. These latter two devices simply report the position of the devices. They aren't digipeating or igating APRS traffic.
I'd love to know how you use APRS, and if you don't, why not? The technology has been around for a while but I consider that a strength because it means there are a significant number of APRS digipeaters around the world.
I've been kinda sorta thinking of adding a digi on my home network, and that means either getting a pre-built device like the WX3in1 Plus or building a fill-in digipeater. There are links to some interesting digi projects in issue 97.
Notes
I did clone my hotspot microSD card as I suggested I should a few weeks ago. The clone is currently in the hotspot and running fine. The original card is labeled and in my workstation drawer. The image file that I can use to burn more microSD cards is stored on my file server. That's about as backed up on this system as I need to be.
Something I'd like to do in Random Wire Review issues is include a sound clip of a particular operating mode. In issue 97, I link to a seven-minute clip of an AllStarLink net that let's you hear the wide range of audio quality among the participants. Audio ranges from smooth and clear to completely broken.
One of my goals is to help subscribers who have not used some of these modes experience the kind of audio you might hear.
I think I'll throw in a few photos from the Hillsboro Hops game, just for fun. Getting away from radio for a few hours can be a refreshing change that helps provide a bit more perspective when you come back to it later.
LATE BREAKING NEWS
Hours after Random Wire 96 was published last week, AllStarLink announced the availability of ASL 3. This is presented as a Beta release. If you take a look at the online manual, this is a big step forward for ASL:
Supported Hardware & Software
Any x86_64/amd64 hardware device
Any emulated x86_64/amd64 virtual machine
Any arm64-based device such as Raspberry Pi
Any emulated arm64 virtual machine
Debian 12
I welcome this big version change but I think it should come with a caution. Many of us will want to upgrade to the latest and greatest version which is now ASL 3 Beta. If your node is running fine, I suggest waiting a bit to see if undiscovered bugs or problems come to light, especially if your node is publicly accessible.
Despite my sense of caution, I must say well done to the AllStarLink folks. I feel like my financial support of AllStarLink is helping to make a difference. AllStarLink is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization so your donations may be tax deductible.
I’m sure I’ll give it a try soon. My cloud node is definitely a public-facing system so I’ll capture multiple backups of the working node before I go down this path. Step one, though, is to read the user manual!
With that, I'll say thank you for taking the time to listen and to comment. 73 to all. This is KJ7T and I'm clear.
NOTE 1: I’m sitting in my local Honda dealer’s showroom, editing this issue of the Random Wire while my vehicle is being serviced. Many years ago (nearly 50, actually) I sold cars for a Ford dealership. What an eye-opening experience that was for a young, naive fellow! In some ways, showrooms haven’t changed. Salespeople still lurk where they can see the doors and people driving onto the car lot. But in other ways, the showroom is a much more relaxed place with more customer seating and even places to work…almost like being in a hotel. This waiting area even has a snack bar!
NOTE 2: As I prepare to capture some audio clips (I just purchased: Zoom H4n Pro All Black 4-Track Portable Recorder) from various modes to share via my new podcast feed, I am feeling particularly thankful for digital voice modes. As my age (I know, it’s just a number!) continues to creep upwards, I recognize that my hearing is not as good as it used to be. My hearing sensitivity is somewhat reduced so clarity of voices becomes more important. I use DMR, D-Star, AllStarLink (ASL), C4FM/Yaesu System Fusion (YSF), and rarely, Echolink. Of these, I find DMR, ASL, and YSF the nicest to listen to. Of these, YSF is, to my ears, the clearest audio when signals are strong. (I suppose that hearing is personal in the same way that we don’t all see the same colors.) For me, I would rank them with YSF in first, then ASL, with DMR in third place, but truth be told, they are so wonderfully close in audio quality that it doesn’t really matter.
NOTE 3: I pulled out my venerable Tec-Tec Scout 555 transceiver this week. I picked up some CW on 17 meters using a really poor antenna. There is a certain kind of joy to be had when using a very simple radio: power on, rotate the tuning knob, and enjoy!
Ten-Tec Scout 555 on my patio table
NOTE 4: The Fourth of July holiday (aka Independence Day) will occur before the next issue of the Random Wire Review on July 5. I hope you take a moment to reflect on what it meant to form a new country and shape it over the years. It wasn’t easy then and it isn’t easy now. This grand experiment continues to evolve. I wish us all well!
1. WIRES-X Nets
Says Yaesu:
WIRES (Wide-coverage Internet Repeater Enhancement System) is an Internet communication system which expands the range of amateur radio communication. For WIRES-X, an amateur node station connecting to the Internet is used as the access point and connects the wireless communication to the Internet. Users' stations can communicate with other amateur stations all over the world using a node within the radio wave range.
I know this list is woefully incomplete, but here are some of the nets I try to catch when I can. I’ve organized these by day with nets available every day of the week.
You can schedule a few ahead of time on your calendar, or if you pop into this newsletter on a whim, look at today in the list and find some nets! Alternatively, visit the list of active rooms and search for a term that appeals to you, such as “ragchew” or the name of your state.
If all else fails, try a search using WIRES-X NET as the search term. You’ll find some state and country nets that way that are not in my list.
I tag most of the nets in my list in Central time simply because it’s an easy conversion whether you are east or west of that time zone. (United States time zones are shown at https://time.gov/.)
6:00 am UTC (1:00 am Central): Northwest Fusion GroupSquirrel Net, an hour or more of gentle banter to start or end your day. All are welcome.
6:30 pm UK (12:30 pm Central): Northwest Fusion GroupThe Early Evening Net, everyone is welcome.
SUNDAY
10:00 pm UTC (5:00 pm Central): FediHams Net in Fusion room 73737.
MONDAY
8:00 pm Central: The POTA Net on America's Kansas City Wide Digital Network in WIRES-X room 28054. Discuss your POTA gear, your contacts, or tips on activating/hunting!
8:00 pm Central: The Digital Learning Net on Colorado Digital Multiprotocol Network in WIRES-X room 43674. Discuss everything about digital ham radio. Check in online and join the net with HAM.LIVE: https://www.ham.live. (I try to listen in on this net because it is always full of great information and people.)
5:00 pm Central: Food for Talk on America's Kansas City Wide Digital Network in WIRES-X room 28054. This is where farm families around the world share a little bit about who they are, where they live, and how they proudly grow or help feed our hungry world.
8:00 pm Central: America Link’s Round Table Rag Chew in WIRES-X room 21080.
2. Net Question: What is Your Legacy?
A few weeks ago I was listening to the Worldwide Friendship Net (IRLP and Echolink) via the W7RAT repeater in Portland, Oregon. Check out the W7RAT status dashboard at http://www.pdxirlp.net/:
Sometimes a net control operator will pose a question to help get conversation going on a net. It’s usually on a topic that is somewhat banal, like what is your favorite radio or what was your favorite car. However, on June 8th, net control posed a different, deeper question: what is your legacy? What do you want to be remembered for.
That is one thought-provoking question! I pondered this for the rest of my “pick up morning coffee” drive.
During my five-year stint as a volunteer emergency medical technical and mine rescue EMT, I was blessed to be able to save some lives. Who knows what some of those people — and their descendants — will accomplish? Each person you meet may represent unlimited future potential!
For me, though, the legacy I hope will endure is working hard to build a better future for our children and their descendants. I have done this for 32 years through my work for and with conservation districts in the Pacific Northwest. That work continues to this day. I could retire now, but I still get far more joy than pain from my work. As long as that equation holds true, I’ll continue working in conservation.
I know that history will forget my name, but I also know that future generations will benefit from my investment of time, money, and energy today. My words don’t feel quite adequate so I’ll parrot the words of a friend who says it more simply than I can: my goal is to leave the campsite better than I found it.
3. YSF Node Failure and Recovery
Last week, I was away on work travel for several days. When I got home, I noticed my home-built hotspot was not responding. (This is a home-built hotspot that I only use for Yaesu System Fusion.) I think we had a power hiccup while I was away.
Nothing I did seemed to resolve the problem with the hotspot so I pulled out the microSD card and re-imaged it with a fresh image. Once that was done and I restarted the device, I went through several iterations to try to get it to see the Nextion display. Once that was resolved, I restored a previously saved configuration. With just a few more tweaks after that, it was up and working normally again.
I think what I’ll do next, though: make a clone of the working microSD card so that I don’t have to do that dance with the Nextion display again!
UPDATE: Yes, I did it. I cloned my working microSD card. More on this in next week’s Random Wire Review issue 97.
4. Node Remote App for AllStar Nodes
The Node Remote for AllStar Nodes app is available for Android and iOS devices.
I tested this on an Android smartphone. It is working, more or less. I can connect and disconnect to other nodes but the app is not showing any information about my node. That could be something about the way my node is configured, I suppose.
Note that this app does not allow you to transceive using your smartphone. It simply facilitates connecting to, and disconnecting from, other nodes. You can, of course, do this by logging into Supermon (or AllScan if you have that package installed), but it is a convenience to just pull out the phone and connect in moments.
Node Remote feels a little rough around the edges, as if it was a great start but then got set aside. I could be wrong. It does work, and that’s what really counts, right?
5. Meshtastic Base Node Redux
I wanted to connect my small Meshtastic unit without a battery running on my home network with my always-on ThinkStation P510 computer operating as a server. But guess what? No Bluetooth on the P510!
A deeper dive into the Windows Device Manager shows that the wifi card installed is a Dell Wireless 1705 802.11bgn device. Interestingly, Dell shows this card has Bluetooth…but it isn’t running on my system. This is an older card that is limited to 2.4GHz so it might be worth upgrading.
For now, though, I purchased a Bluetooth USB dongle to give me modern Bluetooth capability. The TP-Link device is labeled on Amazon as:
TP-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter for PC, Bluetooth 5.0/5.3 Dongle Receiver, Plug and Play, Nano Design, EDR & BLE, Supports Windows 11/10/8.1/7 for Desktop, Laptop, PS5/PS4/Xbox Controller (UB500)
TP-Link Bluetooth 5.0 USB adapter
The directions said to insert the device into a USB port, then download the driver. However, my Windows 11 Pro machine immediately recognized the device. I did not have to install a driver.
An older version that uses Bluetooth 4 is available but as long as I’m going to shell out a few bucks, I’ll go right to Bluetooth 5 for a few bucks more! A link to the TP-Link dongle is available on the support page.
6. Closing Notes
6.1 SHARI node telemetry
If you have a SHARI node and want to fiddle with whether telemetry announcements are made when the node starts up, you might think those configuration details are contained in the /etc/asterisk/rpt.conf file. Nope. Find them in the /usr/local/etc/allstar.env file. Google is usually my friend when searching for information like this, but I went down the wrong rabbit hole so it took an hour or so to actually find the correct information.
6.2 Field Day photos and audio
RepeaterBook.com trailer at HoodView ARC Field Day event
I used my Zoom H4n Pro to capture an operator calling “CQ Field Day” at the very beginning of the 24-hour Field Day event. You’ll hear other sounds in the background and that’s because not only were there two stations operating in a small trailer, but a tour for visitors was occurring at the same time.
I serendipitously caught someone calling out “Field Day has started!” in the background of this clip:
KJ7T is in the booth! This is Tom Salzer with some Random Wire Reflections for Issue 96 of the Random Wire Review.
Condenser microphone this week
This week, I’m using the Blue Yeti Nano condenser microphone. It is more sensitive. I’m trying to talk across the mic rather than in it to help reduce the sibilants (the hissy “S” sounds) that are normal to my speech. I’m also recording into Zoom instead of Audacity, using the Zoom background noise filter to help quiet the sounds coming in from my environment. The final mix was done in Audacity.
WIRES-X Nets
A schedule of WIRES-X nets will be in issue 96 of the Random Wire Review publishing on Friday, July 28th. I found good nets for every day of the week.
YSF Hotspot Died
When I got home from several days of travel, I found that the hotspot I use for Yaesu System Fusion was not responding. I burned a fresh image to a microSD card and restored a previously saved configuration to get it back on the air.
What is Your Legacy?
“What is your legacy?” was a question posed during the Worldwide Friendship Net on June 8th. This got me thinking about my own legacy and I share my thoughts in this podcast.
Node Remote App for AllStar Nodes
I’m testing the Node Remote app for AllStar nodes. It isn’t working perfectly, but it does work. More on that in issue 96 on Friday.
SHARI AllStar Node Telemetry
I learned a tiny new thing with my SHARI AllStar nodes: the telemetry settings are not where I expected them to be.
Differences in Generations
This topic is not contained in Random Wire issue 96 — it is special to this podcast.
One of the topics in a training last week was about how different generations view the world, how they were shaped by events of the time, and how they think and speak differently. I’ve been thinking about that, and perhaps this helps explain the division that I still hear when people talk about learning CW and about those of us who did not learn CW.
Credits
Intro music: Positive Uplifting Music For YouTube Videos by UNIVERSFIELD — https://freesound.org/s/702873/ — License: Attribution 4.0
Fades between segments: Atmospheric, ambient fade by waveplaySFX — https://freesound.org/s/384695/ — License: Attribution 4.0
NOTE 1:Affiliate links for some products are available on the Support page. I’m not including the Support page link elsewhere in this newsletter because it just seems a bit much. If you are interested, please visit the Support page!
NOTE 2: Thank you to Ken for the coffee! Subscriber support is always appreciated very much. I’m a fan of free content and voluntary support when the spirit moves you.
NOTE 3: I had a long drive from Portland, Oregon to Burlington, Washington on Sunday and returned on Tuesday. I had the best company for both legs of this trip: I listened to Ham Radio Workbench 211 on the way to Burlington and Ham Radio Workbench 212 on the way back to Portland. For me, the Ham Radio Workbench Podcast is one of the highlights of being in our amateur radio community. I enjoy the content and how it is shared. Even my spouse (who is not a ham) enjoys the banter and passion voiced in the podcast. Random Wire Recommended!
NOTE 4: It was great to hear an interview with my home club president, Ben Hicks AB7I, by KMAS radio. Hear the 13-minute interview with Ben about Field Day at https://share.transistor.fm/s/632f251b.
NOTE 6: I’m starting to fiddle with podcasting. As I get this up and running, I’ll be posting audio previews of upcoming issues of the Random Wire. That’s not my end game, though — I’d like to include audio from different radio exchanges and modes so folks can actually hear what these systems sound like. The podcast will be available on Substack and can be found on Spotify and several other services.
1. Meshtastic Node with Rotary Encoder
This device finally looks like something that could be useful without a smartphone. I bought it because the rotary encoder allows me to set some pre-made (“canned”) messages. To reply to a message over Meshtastic, one selects the desired reply from that set of messages. No phone needed.
Meshtastic node with rotary encoder
I can envision a couple of these being useful on trail hikes, SOTA activations, boating, and other outdoor activities. Of course, it also works in conjunction with my cell phone via Bluetooth, but that’s a given.
Unlike most of the Meshtastic devices I’ve purchased, this one has a GPS module. That is a necessary feature for a node that can communicate without using your smartphone’s GPS.
Node internals
Using a Heltec board, plus having a GPS module running, power consumption seems a bit higher than most of my other nodes. Combined with the limited capacity battery, I’m not getting the battery life I’d like to see. This is easily remedied with a small USB power bank.
The seller operates the LayerFabUK store on Etsy. Shipments come from northern Scotland, but that has not been a problem. Shipments have only taken 10 days to two weeks to get to Oregon.
I think my next Meshtastic experiment will be a bigger jump forward, in the form of a Meshtastic T-Deck Lilygo with GPS. I can test sending and receiving messages by using my node with the rotary encoder with the T-Deck.
2. Base Station Meshtastic Node
While I was at it, I picked up a node without a battery. This runs from a USB-C power supply. I feel much more comfortable keeping this running unattended at home because it has no lithium ion battery inside. I run this node around the clock at home as a router-client. It is very lightweight so a small piece of reversed blue painter tape keeps it secure on the shelf.
Base station Meshtastic node
This was sourced from the OVVYS shop on Etsy for $52. Note: I replaced the stock stubby antenna with a longer 915 MHz antenna.
3. How to Manually Change your Hamshack Hotline Number on the Cisco SPA525G
About a month ago, the Hamshack Hotline folks announced the end of 10-digit calling numbers. These numbers are shrinking to seven digits. But what do you do if you have a 10-digit number already? That’s my situation with my Cisco SPA525G phone!
HH suggests re-provisioning the phone. Nope, not going to do that. I have way too many things programmed into my phone. I thought there must be a manual way to update the HH information without affecting my other lines and one-button shortcuts. The procedure I followed should be similar for other Cisco phone models.
For those who prefer a video walkthrough on how to update your number on a Cisco SPA525 phone, Vince VE6LK has just the thing. I wasn’t aware of Vince’s video when I wrote my instructions (such is the downside of preparing written content a few weeks prior to release), but since the process is not hard, what I came up with meshes very nicely with what Vince did. Great minds and all that ;-)
For the Cisco SPA525G phone, here’s how to manually update your 10-digit HH number to bring it in line with the new seven-digit system before the end of June 2024.
I encourage you to backup your configuration before making any changes to your Hamshack Hotline instance. HH recommends you re-provision your phone. I chose not to do this because I have five lines in use on my phone, plus numerous programmed buttons off to the side.
To save your phone’s configuration, access the web interface for the phone, then click Admin login. The URL should look like http://your-phone-ip-address/admin/ once you are there. Add spacfg.xml to the URL, i.e., http://your-phone-ip-address/admin/spacfg.xml, then press Enter. You’ll probably see your browser screen fill up with gibberish for a moment, then it should resolve to show a nicely formatted XML file. Click File, Save As, and save the spacfg.xml file to your computer. Now breath a sigh of relief because you have saved a copy of your phone’s current configuration. This means if you fumble finger the changes, you can revert to your prior working configuration and try it again.
To manually change settings, you’ll want to change how the HH number is displayed on the phone and how it authenticates to the HH system. To change the display, you should be logged into the Admin interface as described above. Then click the Phone tab. I have my HH number on Line Key 1, so find that section and change the information in the Short Name field as you wish.
Changing the Short Name changes the display on your phone
Line Key 1 is extension 1, so now click the Ext 1 tab and scroll down to the Subscriber Information block. Change the Display Name settings as you wish.
Now change the User ID from your 10-digit HH number to your new 7-digit HH number (no dashes or spaces). This changes how your phone authenticates to the Hamshack Hotline system. When you have made these two changes (Short Name and User ID), scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Submit All Changes button.
Changing the User ID changes how your phone authenticates to the HH system
At this point, your phone should reboot and (hopefully!) your new settings are now active. It’s a good idea to test your phone after making changes. Don’t forget to update your HH number in other places if you have included it on a website, signature, or other resource.
4. AllStarLink While Mobiling
For this exercise, I used my new SHARI PiZeroU node from Kits4Hams because it is small. If you are not interested in this content, skip down to Testing a New Phone Service. I have quite a few screenshots in the AllStarLink While Mobiling section so it is a bit long and tedious if it is not something you are interested in. Note that this same configuration will work not only when you are driving but also in a hotel room.
Essentially, I tethered my cell phone to the PiZeroU but there's a twist because the PiZeroU doesn't have an obvious Ethernet port. However, one of the two microUSB ports also functions as an Ethernet port with the correct USB-to-Ethernet adapter.
That still didn't get me quite where I wanted to go, so I picked up a short adapter cable to convert the Ethernet connection to a USB-C plug that goes into my phone. Then I enabled Tethering in the phone and powered up the SHARI node.
Once the node was booted up, I could easily use my handie-talkie to connect. However, since I was mobile, it was more convenient to use the mobile radio. I added a memory in my Yaesu FTM-300DR to connect to the node at low power. With the DTMF microphone in hand, I could easily connect and disconnect from nodes. Audio quality was very good as long as I had a good cell signal.
However (and there always seems to be a however!) this was actually a bit clunky in practice. It’s a bit awkward to manage the multiple bits of gear and connections:
Mobile node configuration with twist ties to make it neater
What I really do is use my phone as a hotspot. It is easier and works fine. To set this up, I added my phone’s wifi information to the SHARI node. Translation: I added a second wireless network to my node’s wpa_supplicant.conf file.
With two networks in the file, the node will look for the one at the top of the file first. If it doesn’t find it, it will then look for the next entry. My top entry is my home network and the second entry is my cell phone in hotspot mode. What this really means is once set up this way, the node automatically picks my phone as the network when I’m in the vehicle.
Select the wifi configuration menu item
Then select the setup option:
Select the wifi setup option
When you click on OK, you’ll be presented with some choices. The first is a sanity check: are you sure you want to do this?
“Do you wish to continue? Yes”
When you answer yes to continuing, you’ll be asked if you want to clear the existing file contents (i.e., start over on configuring wifi) or not. Since we are adding a second wifi network to the file, we select No.
Clear the file? No.
And this brings up another sanity check to make sure you are really doing what you intended. We click OK.
We say OK that the file is not cleared
At this point, you get a slightly veiled choice. You are asked if you want to manually enter the SSID. That’s what I did because it wasn’t very difficult. If you answer Yes, you will get the input screen. If you answer No, you’ll be presented with a screen that shows available access points.
Answer Yes if you wish to manually input the SSID and password of the wifi network
Here’s what that data entry form looks like. You’ll enter your SSID of the wifi network and press OK, then you’ll get another screen where you enter the password for the network.
Wifi network data entry form
Once you’re done, it’s a good idea to take a look at your wpa_supplicant.conf file.
Display the file
Mine looks like this (I’ve hidden the passwords). By viewing the file, you can confirm that both wifi networks are now present.
wpa_supplicant.conf file with two wifi networks
And finally, I always reboot the system after making a significant change. I doubt that I need to do this, but there are a lot of invisible moving parts in this little system and I like to know that I’ve given all those bits a chance to mesh correctly.
It’s a good idea to reboot after making changes
If you chose not to enter the wifi network information manually, you’ll see the screen that says it is scanning for available networks:
Automatic scanning for SSIDs
After a brief delay, you’ll be presented with a list of available networks. Where I live, that list looks like this:
Example of a list of nearby wifi networks
If you are using this method of selecting the network, after selecting the SSID, you’ll get a screen asking for the network password.
In summary, to operate mobile with your AllStar node, you can physically tether your node to your cell phone or you can configure the node to automatically select your phone as the wireless network (once you put the phone in hotspot mode). I hope this content helps the subset of us who like to use AllStar while traveling.
5. Testing a New Phone Service
In May, T-Mobile announced it was raising prices for some legacy plans. I haven’t seen that price increase in my bill, but while investigating this, I discovered that a hotspot that I reported as “lost or stolen” in January has continued to be on my monthly bill. I was told at the time that $50/month charge would come off my bill. It did not. When I inquired, I was informed that they had suspended the line and per policy, continued to charge the monthly fee.
Color me a bit unhappy to have paid $300 over six months for a device I no longer have and cannot use. No relief was offered. This is not the way T-Mo used to operate. Just a handful of years ago, customer service was very flexible in making sure customers were happy. I am not particularly happy now.
So it is time to shop. I use voice, data, and text. Sometimes I use my phone as a hotspot. I am probably above average in data use but my consumption is not extreme. I don’t watch movies or play games on my phone.
Given this kind of use profile, I went looking for unlimited voice, data, and text. I looked online for advice and found some helpful experiences on Reddit that persuaded me to give US Mobile a try.
I have a Google Pixel 4a that can use two SIMs (one eSIM and one physical SIM). I ordered a a discounted three-month plan (US Mobile is a pre-paid provider) for $45 that includes a free starter kit and paid $2 extra for rush delivery.
Since I’m on T-Mo for my main number, I planned to test the US Mobile service on the T-Mo network, thinking this would give me a real-world comparison to “real” T-Mobile service. But that’s not what I did. I selected the “Warp 5G” network which is really Verizon, not T-Mobile. (The “GSM 5G” network is T-Mobile and includes some international time but I don’t travel internationally; the Warp 5G is Verizon and claims it offers priority data which might be useful in crowded places.) The Unlimited Starter plan costs $23/month ($276/year) which is a fraction of my three-line T-Mo bill.
The SIM card should arrive before this issue of the Random Wire is published, so I may have a few very early thoughts below as an update.
The SIM card arrived and I configured the phone late Tuesday night. In so doing, I got a chance to test US Mobile’s customer service because the activation process did not go smoothly. The directions in the starter kit told me to download the app to the phone I was going to activate and to follow the instructions there. Well, those instructions started walking me through setting up a new activation, including paying for it. But I had already done that.
Customer service, via chat, suggested I go to the website and log in. I did that. However, I couldn’t find the activation instructions because the service agent misdirected me to a different menu. I finally found those instructions on my own and selected a new phone number for the phone.
In the mobile app, one instruction was to activate, then insert the SIM card. The website said to just insert the SIM card and I’d be done. I asked support what to do and waited…and waited…and then support asked: “Have you successfully activated yet?”
I gave up waiting, turned off the phone, broke out the nano SIM card, and installed that to the phone. Once I turned it on, it took about a minute before the phone found the cellular network. At that point, I had service on the Verizon network with my new phone number.
So far, so good. The next day, we went out to dinner and I put my T-Mobile phone beside the US Mobile phone. The T-Mo phone had full bars on 5G and the USM phone had 4 bars on LTE. That, of course, is going to vary by location. I tested them side-by-side by loading Facebook, then loaded Google News, then loaded CNN. My T-Mo phone loaded about half a second faster than the Pixel, but that reflectedthe difference in cellular network where I was located and the slight difference in processing speed of the phones. There were no hiccups and service has been continuous since I activate the USM SIM.
Right now I’d give USM an A for cellular service and a B for customer support. Most of us aren’t going to need much customer support, so personally, I put more weight on the quality and distribution of cellular coverage. I anticipate switching my family plan from T-Mo to USM by the end of the three-month trial.
6. XHDATA D808 Radio
As promised last week, here is more information about the XHDATA D808 radio. It arrived the night before issue 94 was published so I only hinted a bit about it last week.
D808 box
The radio came in a brown cardboard box. Inside that was the retail box cover as shown above. Inside that was a white cardboard box as shown below, with the radio wrapped in bubble wrap and foam wrap. In other words, it was protected by multiple layers of material.
D808 unboxing
The D808 in hand feels very nice, rather like the Tecsun PL680 Portable Digital PLL Dual Conversion AM/FM/LW/SW and Air Band Radio with SSB I purchased a year ago for about $36 more than the cost of the XHDATA D808. (Yes, this means I now have two radios that do much the same thing! The D808 will live in the travel trailer and the PL680 will be at home or in my luggage when I travel.)
D808 in hand
Accessories include a brief manual, a leatherette carrying pouch, a USB cord for charging, and a wire antenna that plugs into the 3.5mm external antenna jack.
D808 manual and accessories
A major selling point for me is the use of a standard 18650 battery.
Single 18650 battery
As I write this, my spouse is using the D808 to listen to classical music on a local FM station. Using it on the Air band was simple: push the AIR button then hold the up arrow until the radio begins to scan the frequency range. When it hits the top of the frequency range, it stops scanning. Then hold the down arrow down until it starts scanning. Rinse and repeat. Other bands work the same way.
I only have two negatives to share about the D808. First, I wasn’t aware the wire antenna came with the radio. It was not listed in the “included components” in the Amazon listing, but upon review, I see it listed in the accessories a bit farther down the page. Chalk that up to buyer inattention.
The second item is that I’m not sure the lithium ion battery is protected. If you choose to replace the battery, it’s a 18650 Li-ion battery with a button end, not the flat end. You might already have one of these in your kit somewhere.
7. David Gleason and the World Radio History Website
I became aware of it because of interactions I’ve had with David Gleason NR9V about AllStarLink. He developed a nifty bit of software that makes it easy to keep a list of favorite AllStarLink nodes, but more than that, it shows you which nodes are active. His AllScan software runs on both kinds of nodes in my collection: those that run on AllStarLink and those that run on the HamVoIP distribution.
David encouraged me to try building an AllStar node, even when I was demonstrably awful at soldering. I came close to succeeding but eventually bought a device from him that runs my always-on node 588412. I have continued to appreciate his kindness and mentorship as I worked to improve my skills.
Since then, I’ve learned a bit more about David’s history. He has built one of the most amazing collections of curated radio history. I commend the WorldRadioHistory website to you. Amateur radio operators may wish to start by checking out old publications at https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Home-DX.htm. There you will find scans many old journals such as 73 Amateur Radio Magazine and even The Modulator, the ARRL’s journal in 1923.
There is so much to discover on the World Radio History site that I feel like it should come with a cautionary note:
WARNING! YOU MAY LOSE TRACK OF TIME!
The Library of American Broadcasting Foundation (LABF) has honored David with the inaugural Excellence in Broadcast Preservation Award for his work to preserve broadcast history. What an incredible treasure trove of radio history. Well done, David!
8. Closing Notes
8.1 WIRES-X audio device not found
My WIRES-X Portable Digital Node has been operating very well, but I continue to have occasional problems with the audio device:
Not found the Audio device for the WIRES-X use.
I described this issue here and here in issue 93. As a reminder, I’m running the WIRES-X software on my under-desk server, which I administer from other computers. WIRES-X is forgetting there are audio devices plugged into the computer.
The workaround that is working for me is to reboot the server but I don’t like doing that. Most of the time, if I physically connect a keyboard, monitor, and mouse to the server and then restart WIRES-X directly on the server, WIRES-X finds the audio device and I’m good for two or three days. I tried going through these steps by remoting in from another computer but that doesn’t work. I’ve got to be “on” the real computer that WIRES-X is running on.
After the audio device is found again, I disconnect the keyboard, monitor, and mouse and use WIRES-X remotely…until the audio device is again not found.
8.2 Microphones redux
I’m back to using the Blue Yeti Nano microphone as my daily driver on Zoom and Teams calls. The videoconferencing software seems to do a remarkable job of filtering out background noises. Using the cardiod pattern on the microphone, I’m getting good reports of audio quality from others.
I did try using the Audio-Technica 2005 USB/XLR microphone on my proof-of-concept podcast recording but it picked up every hissy sibilant in my speech. Next time, I’m going to try the Nano, hung upside down above my mouth, with the “dead cat” wind/pop filter. As long as I can choose a quiet time for recording, the sensitive Nano should work fine.
Thank you to current, new and future subscribers! 73 to all,
Note that affiliate links for some products are available on the Support page. I’m not including the Support page link elsewhere in this newsletter because it just seems a bit much. If you are interested, visit the Support page!
I know from reading posts around the interwebs that a significant percentage of amateur radio operators are upset about the Logbook of The World (LoTW) going offline. I use LoTW, too, but I’m not nearly as upset as some folks are.
Those of us with some information technology background seem to be growing more and more appalled as we learn about the archaic systems the ARRL has been depending on for many years. Let me be kind, though, and refer to them not as archaic but as legacy systems.
I happen to have some empathy for the ARRL. This arises from my experience running a statewide nonprofit association where we strive to accomplish as much as we can while spending as little as possible. Such is the nature of nonprofit work: trying to accomplish big outcomes on a shoestring budget. This means some of our IT systems are cobbled together from disparate pieces of software and hardware, and the entire system depends on one or two knowledgeable individuals to keep them running (yes, I am a single point of failure in our system). Some of our bits and pieces are very old (legacy) that were once common but are now uncommon. We know this is not a resilient approach but we just don’t have the funds to outsource much of our infrastructure and support.
I’m guessing the ARRL is in much the same boat. People a few decades ago built systems and since those systems have continued to function, little additional investment was made in the software and hardware. I’m reminded of the plight of an agency in the State of Washington some years ago as they realized their system, which ran on COBOL, was unsupported because all of their COBOL programmers had retired.
I’ve said to others (somewhat tongue in cheek, but with a kernel of truth, too) that information technology moves along in dog years, i.e., for every year we experience as humans, the tech advances seven years. It’s brutally hard to keep up, and it’s ever so easy to fall behind. Once you are behind the curve, it becomes almost impossible to catch up without something drastic happening.
To me, the ARRL’s situation presents a remarkable opportunity for all of us. First, we are all getting a lesson on vulnerability of systems. As we learn more, many of us are certainly looking inward at our own computers, backups, firewalls, and more. I know I’ve turned off some port forwards that I realized I no longer needed. I have some other internet-facing equipment that I could more safely access through a single point of entry over my VPN. Computing is now such a significant part of amateur radio that we can’t afford to be ignorant of security, redundancy, and resiliency. We can’t afford to not keep up.
I think the ARRL has been handed one of the most unique opportunities in its history, and that is: to share with members while they rebuild and upgrade their systems. For those who wistfully recall the days before computers, this information will not be welcome. For the rest of us, we can learn from the ARRL’s experience and regain confidence as we observe how it recovers from this debacle. This is a teachable moment not only for the ARRL but for all of us who depend on internet-connected technology.
I know the accepted wisdom in these situations is to keep information close to the vest because one doesn’t want to hand bad actors more attack vectors. I get it. Nevertheless, the ARRL could have done a little better. Over the past several weeks, real information (not speculation) has been very sparse. (However, this has changed over the past few weeks: https://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-systems-service-disruption.)
In computing terms, whether to support the ARRL or not seems like a binary choice: members can either help them grow and improve, or we turn away, accelerating their demise. I lean toward building on the strong history of the ARRL and supporting a ground-up rebuild, one that doesn’t depend on single points of failure.
In a more tongue-in-cheek vein, let us all hope that they don’t rebuild like this XKCD Circuit Diagram. That style of infrastructure build-out might be how the ARRL arrived at this moment!
2. These Are Some of my Favorite Ham Sites
Below are some of my favorite amateur radio websites and podcasts. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. I’d love to expand my reading and listening so if you have recommendations, please do share!
If you’ve wanted an informative, attractive dashboard in your ham station, you may want to check out the VA3HDL system.
To get the code, jump to https://github.com/VA3HDL/hamdashboard/ and click the green button labeled <> Code and then select Download ZIP. But before you do that, take a look at the explainer video put together by KMR4ACK.
I used the KM4ACK instructions to make some changes in the code (took about 20 minutes while I was simultaneously on a video call), resulting in my dashboard:
KJ7T Ham Dashboard
The last time I look at the VA3HDL dashboard some months ago, customizing it was not nearly as easy as it is now. Thank you to Ben AB7I for reminding me of this software.
4. First Podcasting Mistake: Wrong Microphone
File this under: I should have known better.
I bought the wrong microphone for podcasting and video conferencing. It is a lovely Blue Yeti Nano. This wonderful device picks up every sound around me and that’s the problem. It would work very well for picking up nature sounds but for my purposes, I don’t want every little sound captured: a toilet being flushed, a crinkle of paper, a dog barking, a car being revved. That level of realism is not really what we expect to hear in most podcasts or during video conferences. We expect to hear clean audio, scrubbed of extraneous, distracting sounds.
The Nano is a condenser mic. I had forgotten that condenser microphones tend to pick up a lot of sound…a LOT of sound. As soon as I plugged it in and started listening on headphones through the monitoring port, I knew what I had done. Oops.
I immediately flipped this script by purchasing an Audio-Technica AT2005USB Cardiod Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone. Not a condenser microphone. A dynamic microphone. I like the idea of having the flexibility of using USB or XLR connections. If you’re curious, Podlad.com presents a nice discussion of differences between these types of microphones. I am finding the dynamic mic works much better for recording and video conferences. (However, truth be told, video conferencing software has become quite adept at filtering out background sound. While using the Nano this week for Zoom calls, nobody said a thing about background sounds. That might be a workaround if you have a condenser mic: use conferencing software to record your audio.)
I know I’ll make mistakes as I get started with podcasting. I did not expect that I would choose the wrong kind of microphone right out of the gate. Despite feeling like I made a silly error, I’ll keep both mics because each has strengths that work well in particular situations.
Next up, I’ll be looking at portable audio recorders and USB audio boards, as well as podcast hosting services. I’ve not done exhaustive research on podcasts hosts. I do rather like the features of SquadCast. The price point isn’t out of reach, at least at the Creator level.
This is an interesting (to me) journey. I’ll gladly take recommendations! Please do send them along if you have advice.
UPDATE: I also bought an off-brand dynamic mic that actually has a slightly darker sound to it. I tested the MAONO USB Dynamic Microphone, Podcast Recording Microphone with Gain Knob on my desk with a “dead cat” fur windscreen over the cardiod element. The MAONO mic is relatively compact, it is not expensive, and the sound characteristics are very nice, especially for my tends-to-be-light voice. After a few days of use, I went back to using the Nano. I need to test various scenarios with the Nano a bit more before recommending it, but I sense that I’ll land there in a few weeks.
UPDATE #2: Something simpler for Zoom and Teams meetings might be the TONOR USB Conference Microphone for Laptop. Again, not expensive. This is described as a supercardiod dynamic mic. Like all of my dynamic mics, distance from the microphone is important. The Nano is a bit less sensitive to distance because it is a more sensitive microphone. This is significant in video conferences where seeing your face is an important part of communicating. With a dynamic mic a few inches from my face, I’m partly hidden. This is one reason I’m leaning toward the Nano as a great all-around choice. (Other factors are: build quality and the ability to select between a cardiod pattern and omnidirectional pattern.)
If you have advice as I start to build out my podcasting suite of tools, please do let me know. I am running Windows 11 Pro machines with Audacity for editing sound files. I have not been a Mac user for about 15 years so I am no longer knowledgeable on that family of platforms.
5. Speaking of Microphones…
Recently, I reached out to a worldwide vendor of microphones and other amateur radio gear. Their products are used in broadcasting and they sell desk mics for amateur radio. (No, I am not talking about Heil Sound.)
I gave them the brand and model of my radio (Yaesu FTM-300DR) and asked which of their desk microphones would work with my device. The answer both surprised and disappointed me:
Our mics won't operate with Yaesu VHF radios - you need an electret element mic. Ours are dynamic.
Uh, the microphone that comes with the FTM-300DR is a dynamic mic. I replied to tech support with this information and that seemed to end our conversation. Well, scratch that vendor off my list.
I may try an XLR microphone (cue the already-in-my-kit Audio-Technica AT2005USB mic with XLR) and some adapter cables from Heil to make my own dynamic desk mic for the FTM-300DR. I haven’t found a plug-and-play desk mic for this radio. I would like to use a desk mic for my Portable Digital Node on my home desk.
6. Pinged by a Radio Vendor
A few weeks ago, I received a request to review a radio in the Random Wire review. I’m sure it was going to be one of those “we’ll send you a radio for free if you’ll review it in the Random Wire” kind of things. I did not take them up on their offer but I did take a peek at their line of radios. There are a couple that look interesting.
6.1 XHDATA D608WB Emergency Radio
Their emergency radio has some features I like. This unit is designed to keep on hand if there is a weather emergency, for example. I like that the battery is a replaceable 18650 battery. Nothing proprietary with that choice!
There is a small solar panel built into the top and a hand crank on the back. There is a flashlight. Nothing unusual there. But the solar panel can be angled upward, and underneath is an LED panel for area lighting. That could be very handy.
It’s got Bluetooth, memories, an SOS alarm, alarm clock, NOAA weather alerts, MP3 player, and more. For me, the only thing it is missing is the ability to listen to air band transmissions. In a disaster, listening in on air traffic could be informative.
The price point at $35 (after clipping a coupon) is very attractive. While I’m usually not attracted to these inexpensive emergency radios, this one doesn’t look too bad for the price.
6.2 XHDATA D808 Portable Radio
Unlike the yellow-colored D608WB emergency radio, the D808 looks more like a retail AM/FM/SW radio you might see on a store shelf. Note that the product number does not include WB, meaning this radio does not include NOAA weather alerts.
But what it does have is the ability to tune upper side band and lower side band signals. For amateur radio operators, that opens up more listening opportunities than a less expensive AM/FM/SW radio and single side band. Like the D608WB, it uses an 18650 battery for portable power.
At about $100, this unit is a bit more expensive. The clincher for me? It includes air band coverage. This looks like a nice, solid radio to put in the corner of my desk at work.
For both radios, some online reviewers have suggested that the 18650 battery included is not a protected battery. One reviewer said he bought name-brand 18650s that were protected and they fit in the battery compartment.
6.3 Tecsun Digital PL330 AM/FM/LW/SW Worldband Radio with Single Side Band Receiver
While Tecsun did not reach out to me, a great alternative to the XHDATA D808 is the Tecsun PL330. I have some Tecsun radios. Not only are they well built, they also perform well. The PL330 is about $20 cheaper than the D808 making this quite a good value. SWLing.com has a solid review of the Tecsun PL330 that also mentions the D808 in several places. That seems particularly apropos here since I mention both the D808 and the PL330.
6.4 Which to choose: the D808 or the PL330?
I don’t have a recommendation for you. If you want to have airband, then you might pick the D808. If you want Tecsun quality, you might pick the PL330. While I really like Tecsun products, I’ve ordered the D808 because of (a) airband coverage, (b) ability to tune single side band, and (c) the battery is an 18650 cell. This will be a throw-in-my-luggage receiver for enjoyment during hotel stays. For $8.30 more, I’m adding the AN-80 Shortwave Reel Antenna FM SW External Antenna Whip Antenna to Improve Signal Reception Suitable for FM SW Radio to my order. Note that the D808 also has a 3.5mm jack for an external antenna, so a small active loop antenna might be something to consider in the future. (A loop with a 3.5mm plug would also fit my ATS-25MAX radio.)
LATE UPDATE: Waiting for me when I got home from my latest trip late last night was the D808 radio. I unpacked it and powered it up to a classical FM station located in the Portland area. The sound was good for the small size of the radio. It is about the size of my hand and feels rather solid. I’ll have more about the XHDATA D808 next week, but on first examination, I’m pleased.
7. Replacement Fan on RPi 4 Case
The Easycargo Cooler Kit worked great when I replaced the noisy fan in my Canakit Raspberry Pi. The lid of the case has a space where a 30mm x 30mm fan fits and is held in place by slightly springy plastic clips. The Easycargo fan was a perfect fit and it is running much quieter than the original fan. The household is happy once again.
CanaKit case for Raspberry Pi 4
You may observe in the photo above one of the less desirable features of this case: it is glossy so it shows fingerprints and smudges very well. I have it stuck out of sight on a shelf so that aspect doesn’t matter to me. It has plenty of openings to help keep the RPi board cool with the assistance of the fan.
8. Closing Notes
8.1 Portable Digital Node now runs from a power supply
I picked up an off-brand bench power supply that has been powered on 24/7 for the past couple of weeks. I didn’t really need it because after three days of the FTM-300DR running as a Portable Digital Node around the clock while attached to the big battery, the input voltage sensed by the radio did not vary. It stayed at 13.4 VDC the entire time. However, the battery really isn’t a great long-term solution so I purchased a power supply to use day to day, with the battery still available as a backup if the power supply lets out the magic smoke. With the addition of fused wiring, Power Pole connectors, and a T-connector, the radio is powered up and working fine.
As a maybe-it-is-interesting aside, my daughter was reading over my should while I typed this. I had originally typed 24x7 and she was mildly offended by it because it looked like math. She believed it should be 24/7. We found a Reddit thread on this very topic! For clarity, I am switching to 24/7 as that seems much less confusing.
8.2 Killing the standby beep on the FTM-300DR
We added a dog to our household a year-and-a-half ago. Mary is part Corgi, part Dachshund. Can you believe that mix is called a Dorgi? I laugh every time I hear that descriptor. Mary has characteristics of both but she leans toward Corgi.
Mary the Dorgi at 3 years old
She is now four-and-a-half years old. What does this have to do with radio? Well, whenever one of my radios beeps, her head and tail drop and she silently disappears. Her body language screams: “I’m escaping something painful or dangerous.” I’ve been having trouble understanding this but at a recent conservation district meeting, a light bulb went off in my mind. The district was talking about virtual fencing for cows. In simplest terms, a geo-fenced perimeter is established and cows with collars get an audible tone, then a vibration, and finally a shock as they approach and reach the perimeter.
It was the description of the collar generating a tone that triggered the connection in my head. One of the district board members is a vet who I talked with after the district meeting. When I described how Mary reacts to my radio beeps, she said: she’s been collared.
Now I’m trying to figure out how to reverse that training. Mary doesn’t bark even though the two breeds in her mix are often quite vocal. She must have been a barky pup and the previous owner used a shock collar to change that behavior.
I did find a way to eliminate the beep on the FTM-300DR at the end of every digital transmission. A few minutes of searching revealed there is a menu setting on the FTM-300DR for something called a standby beep. Turning that off killed the beep following digital transmissions.
I turned off standby beeps in my Yaesu FT3D handie talkie, too, so that when I’m using the HT with my Fusion-only hotspot, the radio won’t beep. M0FXB has a short YouTube on how to turn off the standby beep on a Yaesu FT5D radio. The process is very similar for the FTM-300DR and for the FT3D.
Hopefully Mary will find it a little easier to be around me when I’m playing with radios now that the beeps are gone.
8.3 When do I write this newsletter?
I have found that if I leave content creation to the last minute, I feel stressed. Writing this newsletter then feels like a burden. A few months ago, I changed when I start a new issue by starting on it a few weeks before I publish the current issue. That means I am writing issue #94 before I’ve published issue #93.
That change, by itself, has changed the equation for me. Writing is once again something I look forward to because I don’t feel a clock ticking away toward a deadline.
The downside is that the last few months of Random Wire newsletters have become more like journals. I capture ideas during the days (and nights) when they surface, and sometimes I probably have not been taking enough time to organize my thoughts better in the newsletter (at least that’s how it feels to me when I review an issue a few weeks after it publishes).
9. Coming Next Week
Here are some of the topics planned for next week’s newsletter (Random Wire Review #95):
Meshtastic node with rotary encoder
How to manually update your Hamshack Hotline number on a Cisco SPA525G phone
AllStarLInk while mobiling
I’m also working on a list of WIRES-X nets but I think that won’t be ready until the June 28, 2024 issue (Random Wire Review #96).
This issue of the Random Wire is loaded a bit more heavily than usual. I’ll be traveling again most of next week so I am front loading content in anticipation of having somewhat less meaty content in the June 14, 2024 issue. However, that will be a good issue to talk about Field Day plans!
The other high-level thought I want to share is this: I wish to be a lifelong learner when it comes to radio, and to accomplish this, I try to do something with radio every day. When was the last time you powered up one of those radios on the back shelf, in the closet, or hidden in a box? I learn every time I touch a radio.
1. Configuring the Yaesu FTM-300D as Portable Digital Node
This piece on WIRES-X has been delayed over and over again. Getting my WIRES-X registration approved was delayed, then I was traveling so much for work all I wanted to do was hit the pillow when I got home. Finally, though, the planets have aligned and I was able to get my radio set up on my desk.
By the way, for those of us who have been wondering what WIRES-X stands for, it is an acronym for Wide-coverage Internet Repeater Enhancement System. The first version was called WIRES, then WIRES II. WIRES-X, the successor to the earlier systems, “supports the C4FM digital and voice technology.” Also, you may find (as I did) that many users use Personal Digital Node in place of Portable Digital Node. Since the Yaesu manual calls it Portable Digital Node (PDN), that is the term I use here.
Those of us who have inhabited the world of Yaesu-brand amateur radios know that the menus can be a bit challenging. Settings that ought to be next to, or near each other, in the menus are often widely separated, making the configuration of a Yaesu radio confusing at times.
Setting up my Yaesu FTM-300DR (available at major amateur radio stores) as a Portable Digital Node with WIRES-X was worse than any other Yaesu system I’ve used to date. This was one of the most arcane radio configuration sequences I’ve undertaken. Below, I’ll explain it as simply as I can, but it is peppered with some hints and discoveries that occurred as I worked through the steps necessary to get my radio operating as a PDN.
Please note that I configured the radio to operate without the WIRES-X HRI-200 device. There are different steps to follow if you are using an HRI-200. Yaesu explains the differences between using the HRI-200 and not, which I summarize as: if you want to host a room or control the remote remotely, you need the HRI-200. For most of us, operating as a Portable Digital Node without the HRI-200 is probably fine.
FTM-300D as Portable Digital Node
1.1 What you will need
To configure the FTM-300DR as a Portable Digital Node, you’ll need:
You need a set of Yaesu Interface Cables SCU-58. The manual specifies the SCU-40 cable set but the SCU-40 has been replaced with the SCU-58 set. (It turns out for use as a Portable Digital Node, you don’t need the audio cables that come in the set; more on this in a minute).
The correct COM port driver and the WIRES-X program. Find the WIRES-X Connection Cable Kit Driver Installation Manual 2205A and the PL23XX Prolific Driver Installer (ver. 402) at the bottom of the FTM-300DR Files page. Find the WIRES-X program at the bottom of the list on the WIRES-X Internet Linking page.
Successful registration for WIRES-X (register here).
1.2 Updating and installing
Before installing software and connecting the radio to your computer, you should update the firmware in your radio if needed. To do that, you’ll need to check the firmware version of your radio and compare it to what is available on the FTM-300DR Files page. Finding your firmware version on the radio is explained on page 11 of the WIRES-X Portable Digital Node Function Instruction manual which is not on the FTM-300DR page but rather on the WIRES Internet Linking page.
(Note that at this point, you’ll be powering on the radio. I never turn a mobile or base station radio without an antenna or a dummy load attached. I am using a 25-watt dummy load (affiliate link on the Support page) just in case I mess up and accidentally transmit RF. Better safe than sorry. A dummy load is a lot less expensive than repairing a radio or buying a new one.)
You need to install the correct serial port driver before installing the WIRES-X software on your Windows computer.
Once all of these preparations are complete, you’re ready to make physical connections between the radio and the computer and fire things up.
1.3 Connect the radio to the computer, start it
For a Portable Digital Node, plug the SCU-58 cable into the back of the transceiver then plug the USB end into your computer. After starting the radio by holding down the two orange buttons (GM and DX) while simultaneously holding down the power button, the radio should power on in WIRES-X DIRECT mode. Now go to the Windows Device Manager and make sure you see the Prolific driver in the Ports list. For me, the driver is assigned to COM13.
Prolific driver shows up in Device List
1.4 Start the WIRES-X software
Now you can start the WIRES-X software on your computer. Make sure it is using the correct COM port. Every time I start it, it defaults to COM4 which is not the correct port. I have to manually change it in the software under File —> Communication port. Then wait a minute or so for the software to populate the list of available rooms.
But when I did this, what I saw at the bottom of the WIRES-X application was this message:
Not found the Audio device for the WIRES-X use.
With help from some folks with the Colorado Digital Multiprotocol group (specifically: Chris KB2IDX, Jimi N7VDR, and David WD0HDR), I learned that the audio cables that come with the SCU-58 cable set aren’t really needed when using the FTM-300DR as a Portable Digital Node. All you need is the correct kind of plug stuck in the computer’s microphone jack. On my laptop, it’s a combined mic-and-headphone jack, so I found an old pair of earbuds with a 3.5mm jack and stuck that in. After restarting WIRES-X (and again having to set the correct port), I was good to go.
After learning this tidbit, I found a YouTube that demonstrates this great trick:
You might run into a snag with this workaround. I did. I’m running WIRES-X on a computer I access remotely and the input port seems to go to sleep after some undefined amount of time (usually a couple of days). The solution has been to reboot the server but that is not my happy place. I ought to have WIRES-X running on a computer dedicated to this use but since my server has capacity, I chose to set up my system that way. Meanwhile, I bought a complete set of SCU-58 cables — including the audio cables! — from DX Engineering. This has not solved my problem but at least I know how to fix it: reboot!
1.5 Selecting a room
You would think you would simply scroll to the room you want and maybe double-click on it. Nope. You go to the top menu and select Connect —> Connect To, enter the numerical code of the room, then click OK.
CONNECT TO menu in WIRES-X
Here’s a screenshot of my FTM-300DR connected to the Olympic Mountain Digital room:
WIRES-X connected to Olympic Mountain Digital
To be more clear, you find the number of the room you want in the room list in the lower left pane of the WIRES-X program. You connect to it using the Connect menu at the top of the WIRES-X program. To see the room number, you can expand the DTMF ID field with your mouse. Below, I’ve highlighted 04429 which is the Olympic Mountain Digital room.
Olympic Mountain Digital in the room list
1.6 Ready to transmit
If all has gone well, you should be ready to transmit. There’s only one way to find out. Grab that microphone and try it! I had a brief QSO with Gary AC7VA that showed up in my hotspot web interface:
QSO with AC7VA shows in my hotspot interface
I am no expert on this. This is my first time off the starting line with WIRES-X. I’m comfortable with using my Yaesu HT on my hotspot. Using the FTM-300DR on WIRES-X is a new experience. The best parts: the sound quality is great and the node is always on, ready for me to use.
1.7 Current draw
Constant learning is one of the best things about amateur radio. I am wondering how much current my radio is drawing. I need to figure out how long I can go before charging my big battery. It looks like RX consumption is 500 mA and TX is max 11 A, but a Redditor measured 280 mA for RX and a range for TX from 2.5 A to 9.2 A. (Note that the TX values are for RF transmissions, but with the radio set up as a Portable Digital Node, there should be no RF transmissions.) The takeaway is: if I’m monitoring most of the time, the big battery should last me for days.
I did a very simple test by leaving the node operating overnight on the battery. When I went to bed, the battery voltage was 13.4 volts. When I got up the next day, it was still 13.4 volts. This suggests I can (a) assign the big battery to this use and not worry at all for days or (b) assign one of my smaller LiFePO4 batteries to powering the node and recharge a bit more often. I haven’t decided. (Later, I ran it around the clock for four days and saw no change in the big battery.)
I’m going to reinstall everything on my Lenovo P510 ThinkStation computer (affiliate link on the Support page) that runs 24x7. Right now the node is running off my laptop that I use for video conferences. WIRES-X takes over the sound card in the laptop, meaning sound doesn’t work in other applications while WIRES-X is running. Since the ThinkStation runs around the clock, it seems like the best choice for running the Portable Digital Node. However, this also means I ought to add a larger uninterruptible power supply for the ThinkStation, something that has been on my to-do list for quite some time.
1.8 UPDATE: I moved the node to the ThinkStation
These are the steps I followed to move the radio node to the ThinkStation.
Download and install the Prolific driver, reboot.
Download and install the WIRES-X software.
Find the COM port number in Device Manager.
Start WIRES-X on the computer. Make sure it is connected to the correct COM port (File —> Communication port).
Start WIRES-X on FTM-300DR.
This will populate the serial number field in the WIRES-X app on the computer.
Enter my node and room number (found in the user registration from Yaesu) in the column titled DTMF ID, then click ID Entry, then OK.
Initial WIRES ID Activation screen
That should do it…but it didn’t. I forgot to move my headphones to the ThinkStation. I plugged them into the front mic/headphone jack and restarted WIRES-X. It still didn’t see the headphones. As I thought about this, I remembered there are mic and headphone plug receptacles on the back panel. After plugging the headphones into the mic input on the back of the ThinkStation, WIRES-X detected the audio device and the program started cleanly. My radio display changed to read DIRECT in all caps.
The dreaded “not found the audio device” message
Then I waited for a few minutes for the list of rooms to populate. Once that was done, I entered the DTMF ID of the Olympic Mountain Digital room (04429) in the Connect —> Connect To menu. At that point, I was connected to the W7NEE repeater in Shelton, Washington from my QTH in Portland, Oregon. (Later, I moved the SCU-58 cable to a different USB port on the computer and the “not found the Audio device” message returned. It disappeared after I rebooted the ThinkStation.)
Screenshot of WIRES-X running remotely on the ThinkStation computer
Note that I’m running this on the ThinkStation and accessing the interface from other computers using remote desktop software. This allows me to not use my primary computer (Lenovo ThinkPad X1) to run the WIRES-X Portable Digital Node.
Also, I hope you recognize how much quicker the setup went the second time. Walking through the process the first time is simply confusing. There is no doubt about that. But after taking that walk once, the second time was much, much easier!
1.9 Changing the timeout setting
My last hint is about the timeout setting of WIRES-X. The default timeout is 10 minutes. That means if you have no activity, your node will disconnect from a room in 10 minutes. If you want to remain connected to a room for longer periods of time, change the setting in the WIRES-X app on the computer. Go to File —> Settings —> General settings then check the Unlimited TOT box and click OK.
2. SHARI Node in Kit Form
After the last couple of issues of the Random Wire where I talked about my new “Silver Surfer” SHARI node for AllStarLink, a couple of subscribers asked for more information. Operating under the general rule of thumb that if one person asks, ten people might be wondering, I’m including a bit more information on building a SHARI node in this issue. (SHARI, by the way, stands for SA818 Ham Allstar Radio Interface.)
The closest analogue to the Silver Surfer is the Kits4Hams SHARI PiHat in a Unistorm case. This is available from Kits4Hams for $80, not including the Raspberry Pi 4, power supply, and microSD card. Some soldering is needed. You’ll also need to download the HamVOIP image, install it to the microSD card, and configure the settings.
If that seems like too much work, Kits4Hams can build the node for you. Here is their description from the Kits4Hams website:
Kit – Available as a parts kit for $80 (UHF or VHF, right-angle or straight antenna). You supply the Raspberry Pi, Pi power supply and microSD card to complete your Allstar node . Please be sure to download and study the SHARI PiHat Construction manual to be sure you own the required tools and possess the required mechanical and soldering skills to build the kit. Additional Options: – We will solder the SA818S radio module onto the PCB for an additional $5. – The fan option is $8
Built – We supply all the parts including the Pi4B and Pi4 power supply. You supply the microSD card and perform the setup of Allstar – A complete assembled and tested unit is $205 ($215 with fan). This option is currently available as we have Pi4-2 GB boards.
The $215 built price with fan compares very favorably to what I paid for the Silver Surfer.
One thing I like about the $80 Kits4Hams kit is they will do the most finicky bit of construction for you (i.e., soldering the SA818S module) for only $5 more. That seems like a great option for those of us who want to save some money and who might not do so well at fine soldering but are okay with larger/coarser connections.
Their newest node kit is the SHARI PiHat in a 52Pi case. In this build, the cooling fan is mounted inside the case. The top cover is Lexan so you can see the indicator LEDs. This particular build looks very nice.
Disclaimer: I am a Kits4Hams customer. They have built a shiny new SHARI PiZero node for me and I discuss it in below. I receive no financial benefit from recommending Kits4Hams products and services.
3. SHARI PiZero from Kits4Hams
As noted above, today I write about my newest of AllStarLink nodes, the SHARI PiZero. This was built and programmed for me by Kits4Hams. It was literally plug-and-play: it arrived, I plugged in the power, it joined my home network, and then it showed up on the AllStarLink.org nodes page. Boom, just like that!
This is a small and sturdy build, perfect for tossing into a briefcase or luggage, along with a handie talkie programmed for the correct frequency.
I like that Kits4Hams uses the official Raspberry Pi power supply. My understanding is the official power supply uses a shielded cable. (In my RF-rich environment, that makes a difference.) To that has been added a big ferrite. Whatever they have done, the sound quality I am getting is better than my two other SHARI nodes!
SHARI PiZeroU with Ethernet adapter and power supply
The node is running at about 130° F, comfortably below the maximum temperature for the PiZero board. (After letting it run overnight, it was at 122° F, and the highest temperature I’ve seen after a long set of QSOs was 136° F.) Supermon was properly set up on the unit.
I installed AllScan from the bash shell without much trouble. I did have to enable sqlite in the php.ini file and reboot (I previously documented this) to get AllScan up and running. AllScan does put a bit more load on the PiZero but it seems to be handling it. I’ve detected no hiccups in how it operates in the handful of hours I’ve had it running on my desk.
AllScan on node 588417, the SHARI PiZero
Just like my ClearNode, the SHARI PiZeroU (U for UHF) announces its IP address over the radio when it boots up. To me, the audio quality is better than the ClearNode because I don’t hear nearly as much interference in the audio. That makes me think I should upgrade the power supply on the ClearNode and add a ferrite. It couldn’t hurt.
I am very pleased with this little unit! Thank you, Kits4Hams!
4. Noisy Fan Replaced on RPi 4 Case
While I was traveling last week, my spouse texted that one of my Raspberry Pi devices was making noise. It turns out that the RPi 4 that powers my ADS-B Exchange flight tracking unit was the culprit, and specifically, the fan. The fan is mounted just inside the top cover of the CanaKit Pi 4 case.
When I got home, I confirmed that the fan was noisier than it had been just a few weeks ago. It looks like when I put things together, I powered the 5V fan on the 3.3V GPIO pin. I did this because running the fan on the 5V pin was noticeably loud.
I ordered a couple of new 30mm x 30mm fans from Amazon (affiliate link on the Support page), intending to use one as a replacement and keep one as a spare. This fan model claims it runs on 3.3V and 5V so we’ll see how it does.
The cooler kit includes two fans and several heat sinks
As an aside, I’m realizing that I order so much ham gear on Amazon that perhaps I should just refer to it as Hamazon!
5. Resource Pages?
I am contemplating whether to create some topical summaries to collect and condense some content. For example, a page on AllStarLink would probably be a welcome resource, especially if all of my editorializing was eliminated. These pages would have to be regularly updated. It’s always frustrating to me to find old, out-of-date advice on the net.
The primary focus for pages like this ought to be on answering the question: “What would this look like if it were easy?”
I would like to know if you think this effort would be helpful. Please post a comment or contact me directly. Thank you for your counsel!
For work, we’re going to start experimenting with developing some podcasts. We’re not ready to splurge on a big suite of specialized equipment, so I’m starting my experimentation at home, with equipment selected on inexpensive side of the ledger.
Microphone: Blue Yeti Nano with a furry windscreen muff.
Stand: A simple desktop stand with a shock mount for the Nano.
Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-M20X Professional Studio Monitor Headphones.
If I go down the XLR microphone pathway, then I’ll need to buy an audio mixer. The Nano essentially contains a USB audio interface. Fingers crossed that it works well enough, at least in the beginning.
I looked and looked at microphone arms but none of them looked like they would work quite the way I wanted. The desktop stand with a weighted base will be good enough for now.
Headphones are always a gamble for me because my head is not as large as some headphones are built for. Again, fingers crossed.
For software, I’ll simply use Audacity for now and see how my practice recordings go.
7. Following Up
The NOMAD Heltec V3 meshtastic device by PacificNorthWest3D has been a solid performer. The Etsy store owner, Zach, wrote a couple of notes on my invoice. Zach noted I was “the first customer to buy the NOMAD since being published one day ago” which was a great surprise. I guess that means I have unit #1! I always enjoy the personal touch that some sellers include. This is part of what makes amateur radio such a great hobby.
Thank you, Lynn, for buying me a cup of coffee! That was a delightful surprise after spending a couple of days tending family gravesites in Pasco, Kennewick, Dixie, and Walla Walla. Also thank you to the couple of hams who purchased items using my affiliate links. I very much appreciate your support.
This is another week “on the road” for me so the content feels a bit light, but that is before I start writing, so maybe by the end of this newsletter the content will be just fine.
My SilverSurfer node is working great. I used it over the Memorial Day weekend from a hotel in Pasco, Washington. The hotspot I used to connect it to the internet has a great feature: an Ethernet port (that’s why I bought the Inseego MiFi X Pro hotspot). I was able to tether the node directly to the cellular hotspot rather than try to connect it to the hotel wifi. (Tethering to a smartphone with a USB-to-Ethernet adapter might be a cheaper way to accomplish the same thing.) By the time you read this, I will have used it in a hotel in Ellensburg, too. In that space, I intend to connect it to a small travel router and use the hotel’s wifi. I’ll write about that next week.
A new Shari node is being shipped. Before the SilverSurfer, I had ordered a PiZero node from Kits4Hams. Over the weekend I was notified it was ready to ship so I paid the invoice. Comparing this node with my ClearNode and the SilverSurfer will be interesting. The PiZero node should arrive before the next newsletter goes to press so expect a few photos and remarks on this device. I’m excited at the prospect of a compact, durable node that “just works.”
My second Yaesu FTM-300DR is giving me looks, wondering why I haven’t connected it to WIRES-X yet. Soon, little radio, soon! As I type this, I’m quietly reviewing the configuration manual for WIRES-X while sitting in a meeting.
While traveling through a more remote part of Washington State, I had my radio tuned to 146.520 MHz. The calling channel is usually completely silent in this part of Washington. All of a sudden, a booming signal came in. I responded and we had a quick QSO while each of us was traveling at a separation rate of about 140 MPH. This, in a mountainous reservation, 30 minutes from any kind of cell signal. The other driver saw my antenna and called out. That was a delightful surprise. I wish this kind of thing happened more often.
When I’m near repeaters I know and like, I listen in. While traveling through and away from Portland this week, I was bouncing between the W7RAT repeater on 440.400 MHz and the national calling channel 146.520 MHz. I checked into the Puget Sound Repeater Group’s 9 am net through the W7RAT repeater and then switched over to 146.520 and was surprised to hear Michael W7RAT on the air…from Austria. It was morning for me and evening for him. He was remoting into his station to visit with folks in the Portland area. I had a very pleasant QSO with him and thanked him for the W7RAT repeater. Michael has quite the amateur radio history as described on his QRZ page. Status of his IRLP node on the W7RAT repeater is available at http://www.pdxirlp.net/. Thank you, Michael!
And a first for me was hearing a CQ on 146.52 MHz from a station identifying as “maritime mobile.” I responded while driving from eastern Washington to Portland and had a very pleasant QSO with Jacob. He was calling from a riverboat on the Columbia River. I’m not sharing his call sign here since he is far from home and enjoying his river cruise. These encounters with hams I’ve met before are wonderful while I’m on long road trips and I thank every ham who monitors 146.52 MHz while mobile.
PRO TIP: When you have many devices that use electrical adapters like wall warts and inline bricks, label them. I have a Brother P-Touch label maker that I pull out whenever I get a new device. Even the chargers for the rechargeable vacuum cleaner and the electric bicycle are labeled. I also label programming cables for various radios. The label maker has saved me a lot of grief.
2. Array of Meshtastic Devices
My array of Meshtastic devices continues to grow. I took the H1 and the TerraNode on my road trip this week and both performed well. The TerraNode stayed in the pickup truck and the H1 was clipped to my briefcase.
The smallest of my Meshtastic devices arrived last week. It is small enough to clip to a belt loop. This one is destined to be my everyday carry node. Shown below is the H1 by @Muzi.Works. It is available on Etsy. I added the small carabiner and split ring to make it easier to snap onto a pack or belt loop.
H1 device is quite small
If you’re curious whether there are Meshtastic nodes published near you, visit the MeshMap and see what gives in your neck of the woods.
The H1 is a very small device
Simon — the H1 maker — will soon be opening his own online store at http://muzi.works. In the meantime, that link will redirect you to his Etsy store.
3. Meshtastic T-Beam Supreme
3.1 Changing from client to router broke it
While fiddling with some settings on my T-Beam Supreme by LILYGO, I managed to mess it up. I had changed it from a CLIENT to a ROUTER and found I could no longer connect to it by Bluetooth or by USB cable. The screen remained blank. I finally concluded I needed to remove the power, but with an internal 18650 battery, that meant opening the case and removing the battery. Once I did that, I made sure I was pressing the correct button while I inserted the USB cable to make sure it would go into programming mode.
(Later, I found a note in the Meshtastic Configuration Tips page that speaks to this particularly instability. Of course, being “he who breaks things,” I discovered this tidbit after breaking the node!)
3.2 Flashing fresh firmware
I knew it worked because the Flasher (https://flasher.meshtastic.org/) then saw my T-Beam Supreme. I selected the target device (T-Beam S3 Core), the firmware (2.3.4ea61808 Beta from the Stable channel), and hit the Flash button. (I have to say that flashing firmware using a web browser and a serial cable is surprisingly pleasant. I don’t have to load a special program and I don’t need to keep that program updated. The hardest part is figuring out which port the serial cable is using. Cue the Windows Device Manager for that!)
Flasher screen
This time, the process worked. I erased the old firmware and replaced it with the 2.3.4 version. Once that was done, the T-Beam screen start working again. Whew.
I quickly reconfigured the long name to my call sign with a number after it. Since this is my most powerful Meshtastic device, I named it KJ7T-0, intending to use it most of the time as a fixed Meshtastic station.
3.3 Configuring the node over WiFi
I learned another trick that had eluded me: how to connect to the Meshtastic node over WiFi. Every time I’ve enabled WiFi in the node settings, I’ve lost the Bluetooth connection and could not reach the node over my wireless network. The problem, as usual, was with me. I found a YouTube that explained how to do it and naturally it is very simple: just type the IP address of the node in the browser window.
With that key piece of intel, I was able to connect to the node over my LAN and go through the rest of the configuration options very quickly (WiFi being much more responsive than Bluetooth). The YouTuber above noted that finding the IP address of the node isn’t obvious. However, I found it very easily by scrolling through several screens on the device.
Network settings for Meshtastic device
Once you have the IP address, you can open the Meshtastic client screen in your web browser. I used both Chrome and Edge to do this.
Node configuration over IP
To go back to seeing the node in the Meshastic app on your smartphone, disable the WiFi radio on the node and hit the save icon in the upper right corner of the node configuration screen. That reboots the node.
While going through these steps, I discovered that the node was still had WiFi enabled. I was able to connect through the Meshtastic phone app by connecting through the app with the node’s IP address. Then I disabled WiFi in the app and saved, the node rebooted, and my Bluetooth connection was restored. I want to use Bluetooth to extend the battery life compared to using WiFi. I also disabled the GPS for now to reduce energy consumption.
Lots of learning with this node!
3.4 Environmental data reported
While I was fiddling with it, I also enabled the Environment module. The information is not particularly useful but it is interesting to consider how one might connect other environmental sensors and have that data reported over the mesh.
Environmental data reported on node
4. Hamword
I am not very accomplished at this Wordle-like game! So far, I have six wins and one loss. Click here to jump to the Hamword site and learn about playing this game via Winlink. For me, this usually means running Winlink Express on my PC. Rarely do I hook up my VHF radio and use Winlink over RF. Nevertheless, I have my Winlink-in-a-box package ready to go at all times.
Tom’s Hamword performance
I learned that an inadvertent extra space after a five-letter word causes the guess to be rejected. It doesn’t appear as if the guess was counted as wrong, rather, it was rejected for having more than five letters. The space counted as a letter.
This week, one person got the Hamword in the first guess! To borrow an exclamation from The Princess Bride: inconceivable! It took me four tries to guess the word.
Each Memorial Day weekend, family members gather to tend gravesites in several cemeteries. For me, it’s about a five-hour drive each way to get there. In years past, several generations of extended family would gather for a reunion, but a few years ago, the family members who had been organizing this event kind of ran out of steam. None of the rest of us felt we could do it, either. (However, I begin to wonder if we should try for a reunion every five years or so. That might be worth doing!)
Dad was a World War II veteran. He had been stationed at the Army base on Adak Island in the Aleutian Island chain. One of our favorite family stories was of a letter he wrote to Mom while stationed at Adak, with lines that demonstrated his dry wit: “Having a great time. There are beautiful women behind every tree on the island.” At that time, there were no trees on Adak Island! (Some reforestation has been attempted, says Wikipedia.)
This year the tending of the graves and sharing of meals were enjoyable moments. It was good to spend time together, honoring those who came before us, and in so doing, remembering how much they continue to mean to us.
L to R: Sister-in-law Heidi, sister Sandra, me, my wife Janis, and brother Eric
Some relatives are veterans. My brother Eric brought flags for them. We cleaned up some neighboring gravesites, too, that usually don’t get much attention.
For this Memorial Day, I offer this original haiku:
Memories of all
Who paid the ultimate price
For our liberty
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