Tag: DVAP

You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

Kansas City is a Yaesu Fusion town. No two ways about it. And can we stop for a second and recognize how internet-based radio has changed over the past ten to fifteen years (twenty)? Seems like yesterday when IRLP was all the rage. Then the upstart Echolink came in, which never really felt like radio because of being able to use a computer to talk. Kenwood’s TM-D710A rig went whole hog with their integration of Echolink into that radio. IRLP felt more real because you used radios – plus it was based in a linux variant. Then the rise of D-Star and Yaesu’s Fusion. Raspberry Pi-s and Allstar nodes. Cats sleeping with dogs. Things got complicated.

Way back when, I was stationed in Korea and as an additional way to get on the air I got an Icom IC-92AD along with a DVAP that allowed me to use D-Stars. The HT was of a nice solid construction, metal not plastic… very rugged. D-Stars had poor quality audio, until you got used to it… and compared to IRLP or Echolink.

I still have an EchoIRLP node. Seems like a bit of an antique these days. A gentlemen from Long Island connected to the node a while back, explaining that the IRLP node on their repeater system had been down for a couple of years and they had just repaired it. He was curious where all the IRLP traffic was? That is a good question. There is still activity with the East Coast Reflector. Not sure how those folks on the west coast WIN System are doing.

Another interesting phenomenon is the geographical segmentation of D-Star and Yaesu’s Fusion. I will be honest in admitting I have a hard time defining the difference between Fusion, Wires-X, YSF, and C4FM. But that’s another discussion. Interestingly enough, some towns are D-Star and some are Fusion. I am not sure if that is because either Yaesu or Icom donated the components to different repeater owners or if there is another explanation.

Kansas City is a Fusion town. I noticed it first with a local UHF repeater. I am not a big net guy, but I enjoy, at times, monitoring the repeaters and reading the mail. One day when I went to check the local UHF repeater, it was just digital hash. Lo and behold, they’d gone Fusion. Hmm. A little more investigating showed that many more repeaters around the greater Kansas City metropolitan area had also gone Fusion.

It was time to ditch the Icom HT. A recent Kansas City hamfest gave me the opportunity where I was able to find a home for my lightly used IC-92AD (with DVAP, extra batteries, and a drop-in charging cradle). And now I am the proud owner of a Yaesu FT5D… still trying to figure out the ends and outs. Similar to the DVAP, I got a pi-star “hotspot” that allows me some flexibility of connecting to both repeaters as well as… other “linked” nodes. Sometimes they are called “rooms” and sometimes they are called other names. Still figuring it out. I have a Wires-X button that seems to offer some additional functionality. Need to learn more about that.

Having the new HT has motivated me to check into that local net on a slightly more regular basis. We’ll see what becomes of Yaesu’s Fusion…. will it enjoy a similar rise and fall like IRLP or will it continue to grow?

Ham radio and my year in Korea

Here is a a re-cap of my amateur radio activities during my past twelve months in Korea:

(1) DX – I enjoyed working a good bit of DX, enjoying most QSOs with stateside contacts as well as Pacific exotics. The greatest limitation I had was my operation location and resulting inability to ideally situate an HF antenna. Living in the barracks (the ultimate in CC&R) restricted any type of permanent antenna installation, further limiting my options. I solely used a Buddipole (which after many additional accessory purchases, became two Buddipoles). Despite the antennas being positioned next to a three story building, I was able to make contacts to North America, South America, Europe, and even Africa. I credit this to improved band conditions over the past months and also the Buddipole… it’s a keeper.


(2) EchoIRLP node – I brought my embedded EchoIRLP node to Korea and interfaced it with a Kenwood VHF/UHF rig. Again, with my poor location and inability, I could not have an antenna installed outdoors. Instead, I kept the Kenwood rig at its minimum wattage setting and used a roll-up J-Pole made from ladder line. With my HT also set on minimum power, I was able to make effective use of the EchoIRLP node. My primary contacts via the node were with the XYL back in Kansas. She has a mobile VHF rig, to include APRS. I could check to see when she was on the road for her morning or afternoon commutes, connect through my EchoIRLP node here in Korea to our EchoIRLP node back in Kansas. With the XYL’s rig set to the frequency of the Kansas node, I could frequently ride along with the XYL and harmonics as they moved about. Additionally, the Echolink capability of the embedded node allowed me to regularly talk to my dad, KD6EUG, while he connected to my node via an app on his cell phone. Another great enjoyment was the ability to monitor the different IRLP reflectors and sometimes participate in ongoing nets. I am sold on the flexability of the embedded EchoIRLP node and will take it with me again when I get deployed for a long duration.


(3) D-STAR – starting with a D-STAR Dongle, I moved to a DV Access Point and got an ICOM D-STAR HT. I enjoyed playing with D-STAR and the ease of having the Access Point as well as the IC-92AD (http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/ht/5092.html) made using D-STAR pretty straight forward. There is no aruging that the audio quality for D-STARS is poor. The complicated nature of setting up a rig at home for the XYL would also make D-STAR a poor choice to replace the EchoIRLP node. However, I enjoyed having the flexibility of having the ability of getting on D-STAR.


(4) Linux – all my radio operations here were supported by using the Ubuntu distrobution of Linux. After toying with CQRlog, I have settled on fldigi as my primary interface to my HF rig.


(5) APRS – although my APRS operations here were limited to the internet (Korea has virtually no APRS traffic), I used xastir (www.xastir.org) to show where my operating location was and also advertised my EchoIRLP node.


(6) WX station – never happen. I could not find a good location to place the collector, so it is still in the box. More importantly, wgoohat I didn’t get the opportunity to learn was how to interface a weather station to the APRS application xastir.


(7) Stars & Stripes article – I was able to discuss my amateur radio experiences with a reporter from Stars & Stripes.