taddtorborg

This test showed an over-the-air rate of 107 bytes/second using G8BPQ on a dedicated point to point link with two NinoTNCs set to 9600+IL2P. The radios were Yaesu FTM3100R at FFVC node and Tait TM8110 at TADD node.

experimental range testing

KA2DEW-FTdx10 dnr in operation 30seconds

I needed to check into a net run out of NC from NJ, on 3960khz (75m) at 9pm local time. About 450 miles. I made a dipole that was 118 feet long, balun fed. I tied rope to a water bottle and tossed it over a tree limb. Then I looped the water bottle over a low limb a few times. On the other side the bottle seemed to be enough. The tree limbs were flexible and springy where the rope went over so I could pull the rope down and tie up the dipole and then let the rope spring back up. At that point the balun is laying in the middle of the parking lot with about 20' extra wire slack. I walked the dipole north until the wire was taught and then used a long bungie cord to clip the balun to a luggage ring in my trunk. The antenna was slightly V shaped pointing south. Then I ran the coax to the radio and got on the air. Very low noise floor, S1 or less except for a few stations several Khz down the band. 1.2:1 SWR even though the antenna was only a couple of feet from the ground in the middle. N3LTV was net control and I could easily talk to him. 10 over S9 signals for most of the time, dipping down to S8 or so with band changes. I could hear all of the stations in the net who were in NC. Some of those had noise that was too strong for them to receive me.

short video of one piece of the flea market at 2022 Xenia/Dayton-Hamvention

I am using the Loopback test feature built into the Firmware of a NinoTNC. The firmware version is 3.14 and I run the test at 1200 and 9600 baud with various levels and switch settings.

This is a 47 second pan around the RARSfest 2022 indoor hamfest.

This is a short walk-by of the NCPACKET/TARPN tables at the March 2022 Charlotte hamfest in Concord NC.

My son Jack (age 5) and I went to check out the FL528 Causeway near Port-of-Canaveral as a place to watch rockets. STS112 was going up this day. I didn't do very well with the autofocus on my camcorder for the actual launch. The good thing about this video is the pan across the area to show what the viewing looks like. This is about 2x as far away from the launch pad as the NASA non-VIP viewing area, but it is easy access in and out and free. If one was in the Orlando area, for instance, you have 3 hours to spend to watch a launch, do a run out to the location, wait for 90 minutes for it to fly (or not), and make it back on your schedule. When I tried the NASA area, we got stuck there for 6 hours waiting for them to finally scrub the launch. Then we had to board the busses with everybody else and that took a while as well. Warning... there are no portapotties at these places, but you can leave and get to a rest room in about 15 minutes. Here is a link to Google Maps for the location. We park just to the east of the bridge. https://goo.gl/maps/H3u6CgkXaYuPoJYv7

We had many visitors to the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society Field Day site in June 2021. This guy was the youngest and he did a good job. He made several contacts after this one. Everybody who made a contact on our GOTA station should have been videoed. Next year the GOTA site we will try to have a dedicated videographer! http://rars.org Anybody in the Raleigh area who wishes to get on the air or get their children on the air should contact RARS. We'll set it up. Licensing for Amateur Radio is pretty easy and we have both training and testing available. See http://rars.org

I'm getting some wide band interference. This is what it looks like on my Icom. It comes on suddenly. It tends to be on for 8 to 10 hours? Today (Monday) it started at just about 10AM. It happens on some weekend days, but not all. It may be LED lights, or somebody else's device. The noise was not present at all in 2018 to 2020. My neighbors are about 40 feet away side to side. Neighbors in front of and in back of my house are about 200 feet. The antenna I'm using is particularly good around 146mhz. The noise may well be present at 173 but the antenna doesn't work well that far from its center frequency. The antenna a Comet CX333. The antenna is about 40 feet in front of my house hanging in a tree at about 40 feet above ground. When the noise source isn't there, I get S0 across that entire tuning range. I can hear and decode packet stations at S3 when the noise is S0. The reason the antenna is hanging from a tree and not mounted on my roof is because the noise in the tree was much lower than on the house.