Category Ham Radio Equipment

Jun 25 2017

Field Day Was a Blast!

Brookhaven National Laboratory Amateur Radio Club

 

Been enjoying Field Day for about 30 years now and this year was no exception. Despite a family obligation I managed to squeak out around 150 CW Q’s!

 

This was my first year working split (so to speak). I attended the BNLARC / K2BNL Field Day with old (and new) friends on Saturday evening for around 4 hours.

KE2YK's KX3

 

Sunday morning was the first time working QRP CW from home! Unlike working Field Day from a picnic bench, this old geezer really appreciates the comforts of home. Worked class 1E in the central air… and you can’t beat that!

All in all despite the horrific WX Saturday morning on Long Island, Saturday evening at BNLARC was picture puuurfect. The WX was so clear I caught a faint glimpse of the Milky Way galaxy despite the light pollution.  A truly rare instance with humid Long Island summers!

72 and 73 KE2YK

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 21 2017

How To Take Your SharkRF OpenSpot Portable!

Take Your Openspot Portable

Take Your Openspot Portable

I recently grabbed a SharkRF OpenSpot from Grapevine Amateur Radio. As of this post, Jason KC5HWB sells the units shipped for $215. What’s better than buying Ham Gear from a Ham! Jason does a video series on “What’s New In Ham Radio”. Be sure to check out his HamRadio 2.0 site for the latest and greatest goodies!

Since I already have a DVMega / Bluespot for the Ham Shack my plan was to set up the OpenSpot for portable operation.

Installed my Gatcepot 24000mAh 5.5A Universal 3-Port Ultra-High Capacity Power Bank , TPLink Nano Router and the SharkRF OpenSpot into the Pelican 1150 case and now go 100% portable by tethering the router to my iPhone 7.

With inspiration from Rob AK7RM’s how to (thanks Rob), I threw my How To version together with some extra info to help with the setup process. I also wanted to specifically cover the problem that hung me up for a bit. Check the note about the SSID value.

This how to is written specifically for use with the the TPLink Nano Router and an iPhone7 in Hotspot mode. However you can probably adapt it to any similar setup.

Get your copy of my OpenSpot Portable Ops document.

Enjoy! Hope To Catch you on DMR 73 – Gary KE2YK

Feb 5 2017

Rapberry Pies and DVMega / Bluestack HotSpot Toys!

My Raspberry PI / DMR Stack

Been spending a lot of time on DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) these days. Recently ordered a DVMega / Bluestack Node and have been having a ball chatting with people all over the World.

As a matter of fact I had a very nice TAC311 QSO with HL5KY in Korea on 2/4 @ 22:20 hours.

The black PI is a PI3 Mod B where I run my Web Server, custom firmware for the Tytera MD380 called MD380 Tools and do some crazy Java Coding.

The clear PI is a PI2 and I experiment with all kinds of code like the unsupported BlueDV console for the BlueStack Node.

And of course the top of the stack is the HotSpot. Right now the console is an Nexus 7 tablet running Andriod with the BlueDV console. Pleas note my HIGH TECH way of keeping the STACK together!!!

If you are interested in finding out more about DMR, you can listen to DMR Ham Radio Operators talk on the various talk groups. A good place to start is to listen to talk group 3100.

Most of all have fun! 73 KE2YK