Back In The Shack

Posted on April 15, 2020 by n4tqu

Looking at my logbook it seems that I took most of 2019 as a break from this radio hobby. I suspect this is due to the number of FT8 contacts I made in 2018 (622 total according to my logs) and likely just feeling burned out on doing the same thing over and over again. Contrast that to the 9 contacts I made in 2019 and draw your own conclusion.

So with the current Covid19 craze, sheltering at home, and avoiding the insanely high pollen counts in GA (to which I am highly allergic to one of (I think the Oak trees)) I have been holed up in the basement and playing a bit of radio.

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First Portable Ops of 2019

Posted on March 15, 2019 by n4tqu

The wife and I will be camping at Fort Mountain State Park later this month and I’m planning operate as a portable station while we’re there. This year I will be operating a different setup from what I used in 2018.

My gear this trip will be the Yaesu FT-857D radio with an LDG autotuner, a SignaLink for digital modes along with my new laptop dual booting Ubuntu and Windows 10 and two antennas. The primary antenna will be a GAP 20M monoband antenna and my backup will be a 40/20/10/6 OCFD. I have little experience with the GAP antenna so far and I’m hopeful that it will work well. Getting the OCFD into a tree in the woods is not always the most fun activity but is good practice for field day and other portable operating opportunities.

I have updated the Portable Ops page with details for the grid square and dates for when i’ll be operating.

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ISS SSTV Recording

Posted on March 8, 2019 by n4tqu

During the recent ISS SSTV event I setup my phone and recorded one of the better ISS passes near my location. Below is the edited for length video I posted to Youtube:

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Experimenting with Linux

Posted on February 27, 2019 by n4tqu

Recently I came across the Youtube channel of KM4ACK and the stuff that Jason is doing with a Raspberry Pi immediately intrigued me. I purchased my first RPi in 2018 and quickly turned it into a server running Pi-Hole for my home network. Seeing as my day job is focused on Linux servers this was a natural way for me to utilize the new low powered computer and fit it into my home network in a very useful way.

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ISS SSTV Event of February 15-17 2019

Posted on February 16, 2019 by n4tqu

I saw on the NFARL club mailing list that there was to be a repeat of the ISS SSTV event from the previous weekend. Since I already had a setup for VHF ready to go I decided to install the software recommended by the email author and see what I could decode with my minimal setup.

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