Weekend adventures ..

Yeah .. yeah.. not into the wilderness but into my hams world. TPT will talk nothing but his hams world nowadays :) Anyway, worked on 10m with Pak Arif again, YC9MDX from Timor Island.. though I've heard few other stations, the pile up from other 9W2s.. so, forget it.. those hams were trying to get to Europe and we were seem to be disturbing them.. I wonder, when they specifically calling a region (e.g CQ Europe), should we interrupt them?

Anyhow, did my adventure into APRS world too. As per my previous posting, I have my Dell ready and I was using Rigblaster P&P from my FT897D as temporary APRS fill-in digipeater+igate. So, since I got from Mr Posto my FT60R's battery eliminator on Saturday, I spent my weekend trying to build the radio<->pc interface. I started on Friday evening and stayed up till wee hours in the Saturday morning and given up.. I could not get the PC to trigger the PTT line.. so, on Saturday evening, I started to look into it again.. replaced the optoisolator, wouldn't budge .. removed the diode, same thing, removed the LED .. same thing .. the voltage won't go to +5V as expected .. so .. took the connector off .. just the USB<->RS232 thingy.. guess what, AGPWE wouldn't trigger the CTS line high.. for whatever reason. Rummaged through my boxes of junks .. and found an RS232 cable .. good.. good.. and connect it to COM1 .. and guess what.. there.. the red LED on the FT60R lights up.. damn.. I spent hours to troubleshoot .. and it was the USB<->RS232 thingy that caused the problem. Reconstructed everything, clean up the mess I did on my table and underneath it .. and clean up the experimental box that contains the circuit that I did on a veroboard (sorry, I didn't shoot any photo before it went inside the box.. and too lazy to open up the box again..).. and photos here are the result of my hard work .. hi.hi.hi

!

The box.. will show the inside if I ever need to open it up.. yes, I use silicon glue to glue up the DB9 port there :) Left side goes to the radio and the two cables on the right go to PC.

The radio .. using battery eliminator .. and look closely, you see that I cut off the connector to the remote mic and replaced it with a pair of stereo plugs. I did it because it is a hassle to find a 4-pin plug which fits into the FT60R speaker/mic plug. So, there .. I could use both remote mic and the interface by unplugging one and replugging another to the female stereo plug. Surely, bad thing is to mix the power supply with my other rigs which somehow putting QRM on the receiving audio.. I tried putting that ferrite bead, helps a little.. need to get a separate power supply I guess.

Anyway, you could check the result here:

http://www.db0anf.de/app/aprs/stations/basic?call=9W2TPT-3

Digipeaters - Klang Valley

Discussed this with 9W2RUT one day and it seems that we really need to sit down and do the necessary discussion about the PATH for digipeaters around Klang Valley area. For now, we do not have a wide coverage digipeater yet, the digipeater is ready to be commissioned and now I heard is awaiting approval from the site before it is up and running full-time. For now, this digipeater is running in test mode from 9M2CJ base. (Update: Saw 9M4RDG-1 in my UIVIEW terminal).

There are two other active digipeaters and one igate active and mine is, up when I want it to be :) My setup is more on fill-in digipeater with PATH set to be my alias and WIDE1-1. The others, I've no idea really, but I believe one is set as WIDEn-n and this seems to be repeating the packet sent by this wide-coverage digipeater to be. I'm planning to have a full time fill-in digipeater+igate up and running from my base and currently missing two main parts: 1) the antenna (might be able to use my mag-mount + Larsen ciplak on top of my air-cond compressor .. not a good idea but that might work just fine) 2) the interface between my HT to the PC .. what I've right now is .. 1) FT-60R which I need to get a battery eliminator 2) a newly bought old Optiplex GX60 PC running WinXP Pro (thinking of putting Linux but looking at the software available, I might want to stick with XP Pro). Software that I might choose, AGWPE (packet engine) and UIVIEW32 (for digipeater and i-digi).

Anyway, found this useful website: http://wa8lmf.net/DigiPaths/ which explains a bit more on this PATH thingy .. and I guess this will be a good reference for us.

Argent Data Tracker2 + Nuvi 350

Finally, after waiting for quite a while, I got my Nuvi 350 from my friend yesterday. Could not wait to test it out really. First try was early this morning, I supposed to meet someone to get a Dell Optiplex GX60 which should become my full-time fill-in digipeater/igate but the guy could not make it.. so, I went to Jalan Pasar to get the necessary thing for my fill-in digipeater instead.. and with the Nuvi 350 connected to the Tracker2. Not so good result since Tracker2 couldn't get any data sent to it.. I set the port to AUTO with the hope if I make a switch between the Garmin eTrex to Nuvi, it will be necessary to do any more setting up to the Tracker2.. I was wrong, so .. went ahead searching a quick guide on how to have these two devices talking to each other. Lucky me, found this helpful guide.

Using the otwingcfg.exe, I went ahead with configuring the Tracker2 and wallah.. it went alive and transmitted it first packet out w/o problem after setting the port to GARMIN. Fill up my afternoon time with tidying up the cabling and fixing the Nuvi. I drilled a hole on my dashboard so that there will be no cables criss-crossing on the dashboard. The result is quite neat.. judge it yourself from the following photos... enjoy..





Finally .. the track sent by my Tracker2 to igate.. looks nice too:

Two days in Perlis

SPKG 2009 datang & pergi lagi. Couldn't wait for the next year big event now. I brought my family to Perlis, with one aim, to help motivate the students at my alma matter. Too many nostalgia in MRSM Perlis that my wife and me left out there and we couldn't joined the yearly SPKG which started quite a number of years ago since we were out of the country. This was our second year attending the SPKG.

One DX per country .. can I achieve that?

Probably ...! and will try that .. I started my 10m activity few months back and up till now, I've made contact with few hams across multiple countries.. I've done: Thailand, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan and today with a station from Australia. So .. probably enough for Asia Pacific, now need to be selective .. haa..haa..