I’ve been conducting some tests today to make my own Node Adapter software in place of the VB6 application currently available for use with Satoshi board.
Id have to say my efforts have been so so, considering what I perceive to be the “unopenness” of a number of applications key to the system. I’m not deterred by hopefully by the end of the week I will be able to connect as a DV-Dongle user and save the audio streams.

I think I will just stick to packet sniffing port 20001 which is how DV-Dongle users connect. The protocol looks simple enough, but it would be considerable easier with decent documentation.

Last week when testing the Range Rover with everything running I discovered the single 105a/h battery I had placed in the boot wasn’t quite up to the job.

Ok it has 500 potential recharge cycles at 70% usage, but running it flat I’m going to really deplete that potential and thus I’ve come to the conclusion that I need another two.

With three batteries in the boot, with about 300amp/h between them, I shouldn’t need to have to start the engine to apply a charge. The main car battery is disconnected by means of a relay; thus when the engine is off the batteries now in the boot are isolated from the rest of the car.

You might wonder, why not just run the engine? Well despite all my efforts of finding an ex police Range Rover, applying additional ferrite filters to a lot of the loom at some expense, there is still on 20 meters a lot of noise which no doubt is coming from the ignition.

I’ve recently purchased from high quality Magnecor HT leads which I’m hoping will reduce the problem. They are Silicone competition leads which promise “excellent RFI and EMI suppression”. Fingers crossed that coupled with some new spark plugs (well why not) the issue of RFI will be gone.

I also need to get a move on and find a way to mount the solar panel to the roof. I’m currently seeking a Expedition Roof Rack to enable me to mount it on. Being a 40watt job, it should address the issue of battery discharge when doing very little and keep everything primed without the need to remove the batteries and trickle charge them.

Basically where the vehicle is parked, its half sticks out of the underground car park. So it seems a shame to not make use of the light and charge it up not only when static at home, but also when on a beach or on top of some hill. It will hopefully ensure that whilst receiving at least, the amount of powering being used won’t exceed what the panel is generating (I wish).

So I used the Flex Radio for the first time on air, down Llanmadoc beach in Swansea.

Setup a YP3 Beam in a Bag on a Racal pneumatic mast.

Flex receive is fantastic, however the radio at times refused to transmit, not could the ATU match up. Despite the Antenna having a very good VSWR reading on the MFJ Analyiser.
Switched back to the Icom 706 which is on the dash, and made a good few contacts.

Will have to investigate why the Flex is temperamental

I needed some virtual com ports on Windows Vista for the car PC. Basically to get the Flex Radio 3000 interfacing with the Ham Radio Deluxe you need to interface via a com port.

I decided on Com0Com as the virtual com port driver, thus downloaded it from http://com0com.sourceforge.net/

Installation went ok until I got up a nice message about unsigned drivers, similar to this:

(Note that’s not exactly the same error as the driver is different, but the message and problem are)

Basically in Windows Vista x64 you cannot allow unsigned drivers to be installed. Even using BCDEdit to allow unsigned drivers doesn’t work as Microsoft has applied a number of security patches to prevent it. The only way to do it, is to press F8 on window boot and select the option which allows for unsigned drivers.

I don’t want to be pressing F8 every time I reboot the computer, as after all its designed to be in the car and getting the keyboard each time will soon become tiresome. Luckily I came across ReadyDriver which lets you boot from a CD Image, USB Stick or Floppy and it basically presses F8 and selects the options for you. That said I dont want to boot from a CD or any other external device. A bit more research and I was sent a copy of ReadyDriver Plus which basically installs a bin boot image and extends the Windows Boot Manager to boot into it and does the rest for you.

I’ve uploaded version 1.1 of the software, as it got sent to me and I’m not sure where from.

http://www.2w1etn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/SetupReadyDriverPlus.exe

Having ordered about a month ago a Flex 3000 direct from the Factory it arrived today. You might wonder why order it from the Factory and not a UK dealer? Well when I ordered it I was told that it would be none CE because the CE models hadn’t been completed. Naturally I informed Flex that I didn’t mind the fact it was non CE and thus ordered it from them. After the order was processed then I got told it was take a month to deliver, from my shopping for one, it’s the same time as they would be available in CE form, from the UK dealers. Needless to say I have the CE model.

I won’t even mention the £260 I had to pay in customs charges

Let’s hope that’s the only hitch I get. Looks quite tidy, I’ll do a full review when I get it all setup.

Around the 8th of June 2009 GB7CD started to fail, the PC running the repeater like most D-Star gateway servers was simply of too low a spec to be utilised for any period as a server. As such a number of components failed and or were about to fail. Bottom line, it didn’t have RAID, nor did it have anywhere near sufficient cooling capacity and as such the CPU and the Motherboard got quite literary fried.

I got delivered the server for repair which had originally been donated by another Amateur. Formerly used as a rack mounted media server, no doubt to which it was very suited. But in terms of keeping something you want to maintain online for as close to 24/7 as possible then from the outset it was naturally the wrong choice.

Reading other repeater websites, it seems whilst groups have been forthcoming with funds for the ICOM hardware there has been a general over optimist approach to hardware dependability. Consider that in the first 4 years hard disks of server quality will fail at a rate of 10% a year. After 4 years this increases significantly year on year. Consider the user of lower quality, cheap consumer hard disks and you’re asking for trouble. The lack of any form of RAID on the original GB7CD installation was regrettable as without access to a working system or a backup of the user registered accounts you create yet more work for yourself when you come to reinstall the server.

Sticking in any form of cheap desktop computer with little more than desktop components even for a short time is pointless. You have to register users on it, do you really want to have to register them again if it fails a week later?
 

The Right Hardware

Quite frankly the number of people in Amateur Radio that are “experts” in computing never astonishes to amaze me. Before you decide to go build your own computer out of bits you have floating around, consider that you can obtain cheaply, maybe even free a quality rack mounted server 2 to 4 years old from many companies and corporations. On eBay even decent boxes are floating around for £150 to £400 with ample abundant parts should something go wrong. You might wonder why you obtain quality servers at prices cheaper than a comparable desktop. Its simple. Newer servers are more energy efficient. Imagine you are the Halifax bank and you have an installation of 1000 HP DL580’s; If you could replace those servers with hardware that’s maybe using 200 watts less and has more computing power, wouldn’t you drop the old ones too? 

What you’re looking for in server hardware is at least redundant disks and redundant power supplies. Depending on the server manufacturer and model you might have 2 to 3 power supplies all hot swappable. I’d suggest you have a spare sitting there in case one goes, reducing the time your machine doesn’t have a online spare. Notice I’m talking about keeping your box online for as long as possible. Surely that’s got to be the goal, and is it really justifiable to let the server fail for the sake of a few parts that together wouldn’t cost more than £50.

Cooling as with the RF side is important, hot swappable fans are generally the norm in server larger than the smallest 1U form factor, again keep a spare one or two so should a couple fail you don’t have to take it offline to protect the hardware.

Considering the low disk usage of the D-Star gateway software RAID 5 seems a bit like over kill. Opting for Mirroring with a hot standby seems more sensible, you should have improved read access and the ability to lose two hard disks.

Other options include getting servers with redundant ram and even redundant CPU’s. That’s where I drew the line, having a good pick of servers to chose from I did consider something like a HP DL580 with redundant RAM but it’s probably a bit overkill. I opted for an IBM x360. 2GB of ram installed and 4CPUs plus mirrored disks. I see no reason it won’t be running for the next 5 years without major problem. It needed before being installed on site a new FAN and a new Hard disk which were found for less than £50 for both on eBay.

Some pictures that might interest you:

D-STAR (Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) is a digital voice and data protocol specification developed as the result of research by the Japan Amateur Radio League to investigate digital technologies for amateur radio. While there are other digital on-air technologies being used by amateurs that have come from other services, D-Star is one of the first on-air standards to be widely deployed and sold by a major radio manufacturer that is designed specifically for amateur service use.

D-Star compatible radios are available on VHF and UHF and microwave amateur radio bands. In addition to the over-the-air protocol, D-Star also provides specifications for network connectivity, enabling D-Star radios to be connected to the Internet or other networks and provisions for routing data streams of voice or packet data via amateur radio callsigns.

The first manufacturer to offer D-Star compatible radios is Icom. As of December 30, 2008, no other amateur radio equipment manufacturer has chosen to include D-Star technology in their radios. Kenwood re-brands an Icom radio and distributes it in Japan only.

D-Star Equipment 20th June 2009
 

Whilst installing D-Star the documentation currently being circulated seems to suggest that there are fewer ports needed to make it when that relativity.

I was getting a lot of messages like" link attempted while linking currently prohibited" in dplus.log resulting in the repeater not being able to connect. Rebooting would sometimes result in it working and enable the dplus functionality of being able to connect up the repeater to other boxes.

Robin AA4RC pointed out in an email that port 20001 UDP needs to also be open, which was sadly lacking from a lot of documentation.

At present the current ports are open which after seemed to cure the problem:
20001 UDP
20002 TCP
20002 UDP
20003 TCP
20003 UDP
20004 TCP
20005 TCP
40000 UDP
40001 TCP

I’ve been planning for a little while a HF power amp project. Depending on size restrictions I may limit the device to certain bands, rather than comprise on band filtering.

Through eBay I’ve picked up 10 Motorola MRF150 RF Mosfets, some research on the web lead me to a number of projects specifically the amp of k0gkd, and it’s from his website I’m basing my project. I’ll be posting everything I discover whilst building it, so you should be able to replicate what I’ve done.

Amateur radio, often called ham radio, is both a hobby and a service in which participants, called “hams,” use various types of radio communications equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs for public service, recreation and self-training. Well that’s what it said on Wikipedia at any rate.

Amateur Radio is about more than just communicating. After all anyone can grab a copy of Skype, MSN Messenger or YIM and start chatting with new people. In my view the Internet has meant that people become Radio Amateurs for very different reasons than a large proportion did say pre 1998.

Despite the efforts of the governing bodies to reduce the technical standard and exam burden on new amateurs with the introduction of easier licensing requirements Amateur Radio as I see it has no choice and is already becoming more technical. The end goal may well remain the same for many Amateurs but today it’s not just about making contact its far more about how you make contact. Perhaps infact we are returning to far more original goals and objectives of experiments and developing new technology.

Amateur Radio in all reality started at the dawn of the 20th Centenary, with the 1920s the hobby developed into what we know today as Amateur Radio with the introduction of voice. Its directly through the efforts of Radio Amateurs that a lot of technology was developed and therefore made contributions to very differing industries.

Today we see Radio Amatuers from almost every country on world, the exception being the odd closed state. Women, Children and everything inbetween is welcome and can often be heard onair.

In many countries, amateur licensing is a routine civil administrative matter. Amateurs are required to pass an examination to demonstrate technical knowledge, operating competence and awareness of legal and regulatory requirements in order to avoid interference with other amateurs and other radio services.  Generally there are a series of exams available, each progressively more challenging and granting more privileges in terms of frequency availability, power output, permitted experimentation, and in some countries, distinctive callsigns. Here in the United Kingdom we have for some time began requiring a practical training course in addition to the written exams in order to obtain a beginner’s license, called a Foundation License.