[pskmail] Re: A few reflections from a week away
- From: Ian Bennett <ibennett@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pskmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:01:17 +1000
Per,
Sounds like you had a ball.
I use a 7m "squid pole" using VK7JJ's design for a vertical antenna when
I'm camping. This is best known in Australia as the VK7JJ Squid Pole :-)
For counterpoise radials, I use four, 8m self retracting metal tape
measures. They work great and take up very little room when packed and are
easy to deploy. The 8m ones work down to 80m.
If you only go down to 40m, the 5m variants are even better as they pack
up even smaller :-)
Just don't forget to rub off the painted surface to make good contact with
the metal tape. I forgot to do this and surprisingly enough they didn't work
too well!!!
Anyway, we are off on another trip in July and I'm looking forward to
giving PSKMail another go.
Ian
VK1IAN
On Mon, Apr 16th, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Pär Crusefalk <per@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Had a nice week with some excellent skiing in Sälen. Btw here is a video
> of someone going fast down one of the slopes there:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3S3SE6BFGg
>
> Anyway. I set up my FT-817ND with a 6 m fishing rod vertical fed by an
> MFJ-902 tuner at the base of the antenna (housed in a waterproof box,
> I like to tune at the antenna in order to tune the antenna and not the
> coax). Only had two radials with me so could have been a more efficient
> antenna but it worked.
>
> First issue was that I set up fldigi using RTS ptt over /dev/ttyUSB2.
> Worked fine until I rearranged the usb connections (fldigi crashed right
> away). Had some issues with fldigi locking up serial ports, that killed
> the GPS (got nothing from it). When I replugged everything and started
> over with all the configs it worked fine. Except for the occasional
> fldigi freeze that is.
>
> Started listening on 10148 and had endless traffic there, ARQ
> connections that seemed to never end. I also had 40 meters set up as a
> backup frequency to my server but changing band means I have some tuning
> to do at the antenna (looking hard at getting the elecraft T1 ATU to
> make that switch much faster). Anyway, as I had no way of getting
> through the endless traffic I called it a night and left the PC to do
> timed position beacons. Also decided to try THOR22.
>
> In the morning I found several nice QSL's received by servers. But, when
> checking the pskmailers map it seemed I was not on it. Further checking
> at aprs.fi showed that the data was invalid:
>
> 2012-04-08 18:20:51 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,DL4OAH-8:!6111.47N/01300.162E 196/000/ QRP
> [Invalid uncompressed location]
> 2012-04-08 20:46:12 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,9A1CRA:!6111.47N/01300.162E 196/000/ QRP
> [Invalid uncompressed location]
> 2012-04-09 05:42:04 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,DL9YCS-3:!6111.47N/01300.162E 196/000/ QRP
> [Invalid uncompressed location]
> 2012-04-09 05:51:46 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,DL9YCS-3:!6111.47N/01300.162E 196/000/ QRP
> [Invalid uncompressed location]
> 2012-04-09 06:03:38 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,DL9YCS-3:!6111.47N/01300.162E 196/000/ QRP
> [Invalid uncompressed location]
>
> Hmm, so I unchecked compress and sent again. Now it worked. I see an
> obvious difference when looking at the data that worked and the frame
> that did not.
>
> 2012-04-09 06:03:38 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,DL9YCS-3:!6111.47N/01300.162E 196/000/ QRP
> [Invalid uncompressed location]
> 2012-04-09 06:05:55 UTC:
> SM0RWO-7>PSKAPR,TCPIP*,qAS,DL9YCS-3:!6111.47N/01300.98E-QRP
>
> The rest of the week was an endless "fight" over the pc. Anton, 9 yo, is
> just starting to develop games using Scratch. That is a programming
> language for beginners that teaches kids the real principles of software
> development: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/About_Scratch
>
> So, I could have worked much, much more but what I take from the week is
> anyway:
>
> 1. Fldigi is not stable and can not be relied upon. Crashed several
> times, often frozen in the mornings.
> 2. We need a way to let the weak, mobile stations at least enjoy
> unconnected mode. A separate APRS only frequency for example. It took me
> about 6 hours to get through the crowd now.
> 3. Compressed position bug apparent.
> 4. The THOR-modes are very, very nice. Helped me send several pskaprs
> emails during really poor condx.
> 5. I need to get Anton his own laptop...
>
> I suppose #2 is what we should discuss.
>
> 73 de Per, sm0rwo
>
>
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