When: 2020 from 1442Z to 1600Z
Where: Apple Orchard Mountain - W4V/RA-001
Who: Just me
Ascent: Hike Up
Equipment: Kenwood D-700, Opek HVU-500 antenna
APRS Coverage: Excellent
Contacts Made: 7
Mistakes were made; success was had.
As in years past, the goal of the Golden Packet Event is …
I must be a glutton for punishment.
This is my third time visiting Apple Orchard Mountain (AO) and its steep climb to the top with way too much stuff.
But I’m always rewarded in the end with awesome views, excellent VHF and UHF range, and interesting phenomena.
This trip …
[caption id="attachment_1259" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Portable HF
setup on Methodist Hill North[/caption]
I arrived at …
Years ago I was given a CLOVER2 board. I later
gave it away to someone who was interested in trying to add capabilities
to his BBS. I now have found the cables for it! I wonder if I can figure
out who got the board or if someone else could …
Years ago, Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, talked about a "good" antenna for APRS SATCOM applications. It was a 19-inch vertical antenna that would function on both the 2m and 70cm bands, and had lobes that were up around the 30-degree mark. Looking for information on that antenna last night I found …
read moreSuccess! That’s the word I’m using to describe my latest battle up a summit. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t without some failure, but I’m willing to give this trip a grade of B. Luckily I had some help…
When: 2017-07-15 from 14:00Z …
Like last year, I'll be heading over to Apple Orchard Mountain to support the annual APRS Golden Packet Event. My friends Dave KB3RAN and Steve N3IPN are once again part of the team with the addition of Ed KC3EN joining us for the long slog up the mountain.
In addition …
read moreOn Saturday, 16 July 2016, Dave KB3RAN, Steve N3IPN, and I hiked up Apple Orchard Mountain (SOTA W4V/RA-001) to activate it for the Appalachian Trail Golden Packet event. While we were there we took advantage of the altitude and activated the summit for Summits on the Air (SOTA), National …
read moreTurning on the radio this morning I was surprised to hear Puerto Rico coming in loud and clear on 50.125MHz. Once I had KP4EIT and HI3TEJ (Dominican Republic) in the logs I checked the DX Cluster to check the activity. There appeared to be many other stations from the …
read moreDuring the weekend of July 16th I plan on being atop Apple Orchard Mountain, in Virginia, operating in the AT Golden Packet event as well as doing some VHF+ work while I'm there. I'll be accompanied by Dave, KB3RAN, and Steve, N3IPN, who are planning to operate QRP HF voice …
read moreThe other day a fellow amateur radio operator, WJ3K, caught me on the Annapolis repeater and asked me whether I was seeing odd things happening on the APRS network. Specifically, whether or not I was seeing station tracks getting bounced around as if an old packet had been injected into …
read moreYesterday I was tuning around 20 meters and heard packet! Wow, it's been years since I've used packet (outside of APRS which is a different animal when compared to this). Turns out I stumbled onto the Net105 frequency with all of their users. It's quite busy there and I've seen …
read moreEarlier this week the Calvert Amateur Radio Association (CARA) hosted its monthly meeting with a program by a local guru of mesh networking. Keith KB3TCB gave a presentation on what mesh networking is and what it can be used for. I've known about mesh networking for some years but never …
read moreTonight some members of the Calvert Amateur Radio Association met on 146.580MHz to test out simplex range of narrow mode C4FM as seen in the new Yaesu radios. Five stations got into a round table discussion, all within about ten miles of my station. I haven't purchased anything other …
read moreI don't understand the use of the Internet in conjunction with Amateur Radio. Echolink, Winlink 2000, and IRLP all setup a false sense of security for users. Creating a dependency on something you cannot control means that resource won't be there when you need it. Most recently the American Radio …
read moreAccording to Part 97 of the FCC rules (specifically §97.221 Automatically controlled digital station) automatically controlled digital stations have 134.5kHz of space to work in on the the HF bands (10 meters through 80 meters). Breaking this bandwidth up into 500 Hz channels* we see that we have …
read moreNTS traffic is addressed very simply:@NTS. So if I was going to send an NTS message to the ARRL I would use 06111@NTSCT. Simple, right? And I'm assuming that most BBSs would allow you to route traffic based on the @NTSportion of the address but not FBB. FBB …
read moreAfter months of gathering pieces and trying to get time to tinker I think I've finally got everything figured out with connecting my PTC-II modem to my XFBB BBS so I can communicate over HF to distant lands. Right now I'm only setup to guard and call on a single …
read moreHere's something I've been thinking about. If you have a VoIP phone system in your house with your own phone switch (like Asterisk) why couldn't you hook in a transceiver to monitor your local repeater or simplex frequency so you could monitor throughout the house without having to carry an …
read moreThere needs to be a comprehensive list of all NTS nets and NTSD stations. This list needs to be in text format and a "pretty" graphical format and should be available on the ARRL website under NTS.
This would make it easier for those of us on the road to …
read moreThis morning I received the ARRL's ARES E-Letter (24 Feb 2010) and found it riddled with how Icom's D-Star system was so great and the answer to all our problems. The entire letter seemed to be one big advertisement for Icom, actually. What I can't understand is why the ARRL …
read moreI've been thinking a lot about volunteer responders in the scheme of emergency management. Many of these groups lack a robust communications system without which you are going to be stuck in the mud.
So what about ARES groups. From the emergency managers point of view ARES is a communications …
read moreEvery day or so my local packet BBS receives a humor post from W1GMF in Massachusetts. I really enjoy the jokes but I'm really impressed by the path the message has to take to make it to Yorktown, Virginia. The path looks like: KR4MA N9NDS KB0OFD N0KFQ KB8DM N4JOA N9ZZK …
read moreTen days ago I reported on my blog that the ARRL wouldn't recognize QSOs taking place via the ISS for DXCC or WAS. I got the response I was looking for today from Norm Fusaro, W3IZ. Thank you ARRL for letting this happen. Now I have QSOs to upload to …
read moreThe CQ WW RTTY DX Contest will be this upcoming weekend (29-30 Sep 2007). This will be the first contest I will be participating in since moving into the new shack. I'm not expecting a lot of good DX results at the moment due to the past experiences with the …
read more