MMDVM ZUM Board - Arrived!

It actually arrived a couple of week ago and I haven't got time to play around with it since I don't have any repeater right now to work on. The package reached me via priority mail from Germany and it comes with a user manual, a USB cable, and MMDVM ZUM board attached to an Arduino DUE board.

My intention is to have this MMDVM ZUM board connected to the Yaesu DR-1X spare repeater for experimenting and if this works well, we could have it installed at one of the repeater site in Klang Valley. This will incite more digital users to be on the air and for those who're starting up, they might want to go further a bit then the normal TYT/Boefeng cheapo HTs and invest on DMR or Yaesu Fusion sets instead.

Will see how it goes! BTW, I'm really enjoying the DMR now. I'm monitoring Brandmiester TG91 most of the time and I've managed to have few QSOs there and the latest was with VK4GO, Art. Art was here in Malaysia many years back and he seems to be very well into this new digital radio stuff.

DV4 Mini + Raspberry Pi + Yaesu Fusion

Finally, thanks to Wireless Holdings LLC, my DV4 Mini dongle arrived yesterday by post. Mr postman was trying to deliver a day earlier but I wasn't in. So, yah, I got it a day late.

I ordered mine along with the little antenna which is good within the area of my house.

As per my previous post, I've prepared my Raspberry Pi 2 with the required software. With the help from Gary (KE2YK), I managed to have everything installed in no time. Since I bought my Raspberry Pi 2 with a TFT touch screen from aliexpress and there is no way to use the images prepared by others, I need to start from scratch. The hardest part is probably to get the correct mono version installed. BTW, I'm using Raspbian's Jessie distribution.

(Note: the aliexpress vendor sent me the wrong TFT screen and not as per my order, I couldn't really mount the raspi at the back of the 5" LCD display).

I've went on air this morning, first time QSO on dv4mini + yaesu fusion with James (WA2UMP) from NY. The quality is quite good. I've the raspi connected wirelessly to my Huwaei 3G dongle.

My next move probably will be having a DMR HT to test the DMR system. I wish that we could move forward with the digital voice thingy but with too many standards adopted by the manufacturers, this probably will not be an easy thing to do. A chicken and egg situation, nobody will adopt digital if the infrastructure is not available and nobody want to invest on the infrastructure if there is nobody going to use it.

9M4GPT - Yaesu Wires-X + Fusion System, and DV4 Mini too

Over the past few days last week, I spent some of my time setting up my Wires-X. Thanks to 9M2FRI/PA3FRI (OM Martin) who brought the HRI-200 from Netherlands. To prepare the Wires-X, I've bought myself an FTM100DR to be the gateway radio, FT2DR, a handheld so I could test it easily. I've my FTM400DR for quite sometime and that is my main radio in one of my car.

My current gateway setup, FTM100DR + HRI-200.



As of now, my Wires-X node is set to be in an analog mode. Reason being, there is no digital DR1X repeater available locally right now and the HRI-200 couldn't be set to do AMS AUTO.

The Wires-X running on my Windows 10 PC. Look for MY-9M4GPT node 14060 or Room MY-KL-9M4GPT. Someone will probably waiting for you to make a contact from all over the world.



I did my very first test in C4FM across the continent with VK4GO (OM Art from Australia) this morning. For some reason, the voice coming in from the internet to RF was quite soft when it was on analog. I need to take another look at how this Wires-X being setup. The quality in C4FM was excellent and this is my first real QSO in digital mode. I am looking forward to have a digital repeater and Wires-X set up in KL. I have no idea when this can be materialised but hopefully soon.

BTW. I have ordered a DV4 Mini last week and am currently waiting for it to arrive. Ordered mine from Wireless Holdings LLC in US since I couldn't get hold of one from their main distributor in Germany. The dongle seems to be like a hot cake, snapped in no time when they've them in stock. I will probably using my newly arrived Raspi2 along with the dongle for the hotspot setup. It will probably running on DMR, just need to wait for my DMR radio to be ordered of the Internet.

Getting your WX station out to RF using weewx + aprx

I have been using my WH1080 since two years ago and it is still working great until few days ago when I found out that the anemometer doesn't seem to give any reading anymore. Anyway, other than that, everything still working just fine.

I have been experimenting with Raspberry Pi for quite sometime and I've moved my WX and aprx along with few local server apps into Raspberry Pi (previously on my router running OpenWRT). Anyway, for this post, I'm going to guide you on how to get the WX data into RF without a need of the Internet connection after the first setup.

What needed?

1. Raspberry Pi, I'm using raspbian. I'm not going in details on how to set it up. By now you should've been able to get this up and running.
2. weewx software, more information can be found in http://www.weewx.com/. Installation guide can be found here: http://www.weewx.com/docs/debian.htm
3. A weewx extension that I've adopted from cwxn extension so it could produce an aprx ready beacon file can be found here: weewx2aprx-0.4.zip (old deprecated package ->) weewx2aprx-0.1.tgz
4. Aprx package which can be found here (prepackaged): http://thelifeofkenneth.com/aprx/debs/

After you've got everything installed, the weewx and aprx package. You can install the weewx2aprx extension, to do this, just use the following command:

wee_extension --install weewx2aprx-0.1.tgz

          wee_extension --install weewx2aprx-0.4.zip   

You need to edit the /etc/weewx/weewx.conf. Toward the end of the configuration file, there is a new section created by the above extension installer. Edit as required, the necessary fields are the lat, lon and the note.

# Options for extension 'aprx'

[Weewx2APRX]

    lat = 0312.81N

    note = "WH1080+weewx+aprx Sg Buloh, Malaysia"

    symbol = /_

    lon = 10133.17E

    filename = /var/tmp/aprx_wx.txt 

Change the above to suite your preference and rerun the weewx's service by issuing the following commands:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/weewx stop 

$ sudo /etc/init.d/weewx start 

Edit your /etc/aprx.conf file and add the following information under the beacon, change the callsign as necessary :

        beaconmode radio

        beacon srccall 9M2TPT-13 \                                             

              via WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 \                                            

              file /var/tmp/aprx_wx.txt

 That should be it.

I passed my Extra! I'm KT2O (was AC8SH) too now.

Passed the three elements of FCC amateur radio license exam in a day, whew ..  It was all started few months back when my friend invited me to sit for the exam which was conducted by VE team from Thailand and Malaysia. Didn't take it seriously at first until it was very near to the exam date. I believe some will think that we're trying to undermine the local RAEs but in fact, we are not. There are quite few advantages of having an FCC radio license and I took the challenge to learn new things which I've almost forgotten after I passed my local RAE in 2007. 

Anyway, materials that I've used to study for the exam:

1. http://www.hamstudy.org (the flash cards really helpful, with some of the description explaining the answers)

2. Gordo's General Class FCC Element 3 book (bought it from Amazon along with ARRL Handbook 2014 & ARRL Antenna Book)

3. Extra Class License Study Guide by K4VRC (didn't bought the book, but studying the guide)

4. Sample online tests at http://www.hamstudy.org, http://qrz.com and http://eham.net, they are really helpful

I've used hamstudy.org website pretty regularly, I went through the entire exam questions for all three elements. Spent hours on the website whenever I'm in front of my PC or whenever I've access to the net. Else, the two books, the Gordo's and study guide by K4VRC were with me whenever I'm out of the house. 

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Update: 31/01/2015
Just got my vanity callsign, I'm now known as KT2O.

Maplin N96GY(WH1080) WX station + APRS

During my trip back to Manchester last month, I've got myself a cheapo WX station. Sold by Maplin under it's Maplin Gadget brand with N96GY model, I made to understand by reading some of the documentation found in Maplin website, it is an OEM from Fine Offset Electronics which produces few variants of the WX station with USB connectivity. I was a bit hesitate to buy it at first since 1) it is cheap 2) getting it to connect to a router will be a hassle. After few more research, I found out that there is a package called FOWSR available for OpenWRT and the price paid might be worth it to get it up for a year or so before getting something better/more expensive.

Assembling the unit is a no brainer, don't think you need to look at the manual to get the outdoor unit assembled. I've got it mounted on my porch since my house only has a small garden. For those who're thinking of putting a weather station, you should follow the one suggested here:

http://wiki.wunderground.com/index.php/PWS_-_Siting

Anyway, the next hurdle is to get FOWSR to talk to aprs-is server. The FOWSR software was developed quite sometimes back and it hasn't been enhanced further. It supports the following format:

• Weather Underground
• PWS Weather
• pywws
• XML

Left from the supported format is the APRS/CWOP format. I was looking to enhance the FOWSR but I couldn't get some of the libraries to compile properly using OpenWRT SDK (couldn't find this lib: libusb-compat), I might need to get the full source and recompile everything. But lucky me, I found someone using the same weather station + fowsr and his WX packet can be found on the aprs.fi. Emailed the packet owner, Nick (VA3NNW) to get more information on how he got his stuff running and he sent me a perl wrapper code that will reformat wunderground format into APRS/CWOP format. Thanks Nick for your help .. my WX station is up and running now and can be found here:

http://aprs.fi/weather/?call=9M2TPT-13

BTW, I've a workaround to have the WX packet to back-feed into the RF, by using aprx. What need to be done is to put a filter in section and in the section. If I ever get the OpenWRT SDK working, I might use it to output into a text file and let aprx to beacon out from the text file, this will then get picked up by other igate and into the aprs.fi. But for now, my current setup is working just fine.

I've modified Nick's perl script a bit to output a file into a /tmp directory instead of sending it direct to the APRS-IS server. I'm using aprx to beacon out from this text file into RF and back into aprs-is from someone's igate. This is now work well.

Nick has changed a bit on how his scripting works now, he is using CGI. For those who're interested in Nick's perl script, do head up to his page at:

http://noseynick.net/wx/noseywx.html

Cheap RTL based SDR

Thanks to Rut, Pang & Yau, found a new way of monitoring the air. Cheap DVB/DAB usb sticks along with freely available SDR software which can be used to monitor few ham bands plus some other bands too. All these can be bought from ebay for a very cheap price, the cheapest I bought was for RM35 and reached me within a couple of weeks time. Went for an eyeball with them last night and comparing what we've, we've found that there are three kind of tuners these cheap sticks come with. An R820T (seems the cheapest) which is based on Rafael Micro R820T tuner, an Elonics E4000 tuner and one an umarked FC0013.

A zoom in on the one with R820T tuner:

And here is with Elonics E4000 tuner:

Running SDR#:

And here, decoding ADS-B using ADSB# + ADSBSCOPE:

More information on using this cheap SDR can be found here:

http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
http://sdrsharp.com/
http://www.hdsdr.de/

HF/RF Clipper

Ordered an HF/RF Clipper for my QRP set from OM Joachim (DF4ZS) and it arrived yesterday. More information on the HF/RF Clipper can be found in the following website:

http://jwm.de/afu/index0.htm

Decided that I should do the dissect on my MH-31 last night, couldn't wait really but there was a setback, I couldn't really understand the instructions on modifying the tone switch, but after confirming with OM Joachim, I went ahead with installing the Clipper into the mic. Here is what we should do on the tone switch, shift the two wires to the left, and the wires from the tantalum cap goes to the free right most pin.

Here is the module, installed inside the MH-31 replacing the condenser mic element.

Have not really go into field testing yet, will do so when I've got free time today or probably during field day. Did a comparison with another stock MH-31 mic, it does put a lot of punch.

JT65 - A new experience

Went for an eyeball (yes, two days in a row) with 9W2RUT, 9W2MZY & 9M2CJ last night and while browsing the Japanese Radio magazine that was brought by CJ, came across few articles on operating digital mode. There is this melodic signal which I was curious about and I've no idea what it was... until last night that it. CJ told me that it was actually JT65 mode. So, went ahead and searching for more information on this mode and found a software called JT65-HF. Did playing around with it this morning and found a new playing ground ...

BTW, it is a bit different with PSK that I've accustomed with, you need to wait for a turn to transmit, even or odd minute and need to wait almost the whole minute to get a text appearing on your screen. Patient seems needed if you're working on this mode :)

Here is the screen capture of my contact this morning.

I've used WSPR before for low power but it was more on propagation reporting tool and no QSO involved but this JT65 let us do a simple QSO, CQ - Signal Report - Bye Bye.

More to explore with other modes after this.

Going QRP - Do more with less!

I've been thinking of going QRP for quite sometime and I believe I've enough courage to go for it now. Someone advertised on local ham FB group, selling his barely used 4 months old Yaesu FT-817ND and I grabbed this opportunity to get the unit. Haven't really go out and set this up but I'll do this in near future. One thing though, when using the stock vhf/uhf antenna that comes in the box, the set produces white noise, around S6-7. I need to put high squelch on vhf/uhf just to remove the white noise. Have no idea why it is acting that way. Anyway, vhf/uhf is not my main target when getting the set. I'm eyeing for contacts on HF, I've bought a portable Buddistick HF vertical antenna when I was first licensed in 2007 and yet to fully use it .. probably this is the right time to test the antenna.

As of now, my QRP setup consists of the following:

1. Yaesu FT-817ND

2. Buddipole's Buddistick Deluxe vertical antenna / G5RV Jr. as backup 

3. External Pb battery - GP 12V 7.2Ah
4. LDG Z-11PRO II (ordered, waiting for delivery - hopefully within this week)

BTW, I remembered that someone gave a BHi DSP module back in 2008. I'm going to install it into the FT-817ND when I've Weerut's time to work on it. My hands are no longer good in soldering little stuff, might as well ask for help before it becomes "tikus membaiki labu".

Found old, no longer used LowePro camera bag, nice go kit bag for rig, ATU and battery.

Only thing now .. time to go for QRP-pedition .. Pantai Jeram anyone? :)

--

Latest update, Rut had time to help me out with installing the bhi DSP & putting a battery holder into the LDG.

--
Next will be the HF/RF clipper, still waiting for it in the post :)
--
Update again: My first QRP contact was with 9V1RN/Nan on 29th Dec, 2012. TQ Nan for the contact, 55/59. He was on Buddistick too working from his apartment and I'm from my hotel room.

MARL 2012 National Field Day 1-2 Dec, 2012

Participated in the MARL 2012 National Field Day which was held from 1-2 Dec, 2012. Went for the one at Tasik Taman Jaya, PJ. Forgotten to snap many photos during the first day, but here are those yg sempat kena snapped during the event using my smartphone. Update: Adding few more photos from Pang & Fahroe.

Enjoy the pics!

En Shahrul, expert panjat pokok ooo :)

Mana north yg betul nih?

Interview with RTM.

G5RV Jr + 40m & 80m mono dipoles.

2m antenna setup.

Pang with his homebrew portable QRP vertical antenna. Just spread the radials please.

Ceh, only trust made from junk ah? That little antenna analyser on Pang's hand can show the graph too ooo..

9W2RUT with his magnetic loop .. took him many hours before he satisfied with his work.

Taken from 9W2VXP post. Can you see that little 5W QRP radio? X1M that it. Heard 9W2EDU voice in one of the check net using this radio from Hulu Selangor. Hey, what is that blue thingy at the back? Battery pack?

9M2RZL - pemasangan magnetic loop.

9M2RZL's magnetic loop. Used 1W during one of the Field Day check net using FT-817ND with no tuner.

Ayoo, si CW man on the job again. Ada orang jadik peneman .. taken at around 3:45AM.

In the morning, 2nd day .. everything sudah kemas2 and ready for last check net before packing up everything. 9W2WF, 9M2YRS, 9W2RUT and 9W2FG dok busy cleaning up kat belakang.

Final photo before packing up.

Alamak ..hehe, banner tak sempat tempah, kita guna FleaMarket's KRAM le punye banner.. janji ada.. Those who were left just before we go back home, from the lower left: SWL (tak ingat nama), 9W2FG, 9W2RUT, 9M2AU, 9W2BBS .. upper from left 9W2WF, 9M2TPT, 9M2RS, 9W2NIK, 9M2YRS, 9M2PJU, 9W2ZLZ, 9M2RZL.

Ha, this one tak boleh ditinggalkan .. peneman setia dari day one until we left the place.

Overall, nice field day with quite number of participants not only those in Tasik Taman Jaya, PJ, but from all over the country. From Perlis up north, to Johor .. down south and Sarawak too.

Antenna Party - Hexxbeam

Bought the hexxbeam from DX Engineering quite a while back and could only put it up today with the help of few of my friends. Thanks to the following (not following any orders):

1. 9W2RUT (Weerut)
2. 9M2PJU (PiJU)
3. 9M2KRZ (Khairol)
4. 9W2WF (Fadil) 

Without them, the antenna will probably still in the boxes and the mast will rotting and sold as scrap instead :)

Photos during the installation can be found in 9M2PJU blog here. Enjoy the photos:

Customs tariff for transceiver (amateur)

For those who're thinking of importing transceivers for amateur radio usage, please use the following tariff to get tax exemption (8517.62.520). You do however need to get an Import Permit from SIRIM QAS.

Declaring your tariff wrongly and you'll be imposed with unnecessary sales tax (as what I did the last time I brought in my FT-920).

New mailing list for APRS users in Malaysia

It seems that the number of APRS users in Malaysia has been increasing steadily of late and as such, having a mailing list to discuss issues and suggestions to make APRS even better assimilated within the amateur radio operators is the best way. Currently, APRS is mainly concentrated in KL, Penang, JB and Kota Kinabalu with some others are coming up with the infra and slowly adapting.

From my past few weeks experience going around Peninsular Malaysia, it seems that the setup in Penang is more toward having one way igate, with JB following suite but I believe there is at least one working digipeater somewhere in Tampoi. Hopefully with this new mailing list, we could share our knowledge locally and discuss what the best to improve the adaptation of APRS among Malaysian radio amateur operators.



For those who're interested, our mailing list is: myaprs @ yahoogroups.com.