Ed W8EMV @w8emv@mastodon.radio

Biked across town to talk to W8TAM who gave some good advice on attaching an antenna to my bike rack. The suggestion was for an NMO mount which would easily handle 2 meters radio and could be adapted with a different antenna to also support HF. When not in use the antenna could detach, and I could still carry groceries with it attached.

This is the recommended mount for my application, from Breedlove:

https://breedlovemounts.com/store/ols/products/nmo-roof-mount1

I need to measure to make sure everything will fit on the bike!

Is there a working APRS to Twitter, APRS to Mastodon, or APRS to email gateway?

The docs I have found so far suggest YES for APRS to email, via EMAIL-2, but the docs are also old.

It would be great to be able to post a message here via RF!

Looking at this DMR rig from Radioddity as a possible base station + occasional car radio + experimental bicycle rig.

https://qrznow.com/radioddity-db25-d-tiny-mobile-dmr-radio/

For some reason, when I call the N8DUY 2m repeater on my RD-5R, I get no response. Calling N8LBV on 70cm on the same radio and on the same tower works just fine.

Looking forward to the 8:00 a.m. net this morning on N8DUY 145.15 Ann Arbor MI, which I plan to operate bicycle mobile.

Sunrise today 7:08 a.m., sunset 7:56 p.m. The days are getting visibly shorter, but I still have 1 hr 52 minutes between sunrise and the start of my day at work.

Still noodling about how to get a good antenna on a bicycle for 2 meter operations. Considering a mag mount to a back rack, or a dipole of some sort inside a pool noodle affixed crosswise.

73 de W8EMV/BM !

Reading with interest G4AKC operating HF Bicycle!

https://www.qrz.com/db/g4akc

Considering a better antenna for my bicycle mobile operations. I have a hunch that a mag mount could work, with a ground plane attached to the back rack of my bike. It would be more compact than a rollup J-pole + bike flagpole.

Operated the morning 2 meter net on N8DUY bicycle mobile. My timing was good to be at a park overlooking the Huron River with some good elevation during the net.

Next to research what I would need to get a flag for the back rack and attach a roll up J pole antenna to it for some better tx.

#sofun

Operated bicycle mobile this morning and it was a great deal of fun.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 connected to a RTL-SDR tuner stick, monitoring 1090 MHz for aircraft ADS-B and feeding to ADS-B Exchange and a commercial flight tracking site.

I'm close enough to Michigan Stadium to hear the planes going over on game day, but my ADS-B receiver doesn't track them. ADS-B Exchange is tracking one flight, and it says the data source is "ADS-R or UAT".

Is this the 978 MHz band in use? If so, and if anyone's listening to that, do I need a second Pi or just a second radio?

Do you keep a scanner going, and if so, what channels is it tuned to?

I'm monitoring 5 or 6 local 2 meter and 70cm repeaters with an old Radio Shack Realistic Pro-34. It supports 100 channels, but I'm not going to need them all. The radio was $2 at a reuse store, and I put $15 into getting a new power supply for it so I didn't have to futz with batteries.

Listening to 1010 WINS, the all-news radio station in NYC, to get local weather news and commentary for the flooding going on there right now.

The "official" feed is on Audacy (formerly radio.com) at https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/listen#schedule which sounds almost too good. If you want a scratchy reception with authentic AM noise, tune to K3FEF at http://www.k3fef.com/ which has a very nice multi-user SDR.

Changes in ADS-B land as Flightaware agrees to be purchased by Collins Aerospace, a division of Raytheon.

For my part, I'm exploring ADS-B Exchange. (They have an interesting Discord server which is only available to people who feed them.)

Looking to buy a #NanoVNA and looking for recommendation for a US supplier. I see that Nooelec has a kit with some extras that I think I could put good use to.

I have been warned that Amazon is not a good source because of widely variable quality.

I really want to improve my antenna situation before I even consider a more powerful VHF/UHF radio.

I think the next item in my shack is going to be an antenna analyzer. I've heard only good things about the NanoVNA.

It's entirely likely that I burnt out my oldest Baofeng by transmitting on 440 into a 2 meter only antenna, which in retrospect was entirely preventable. Live and learn, that radio had good service.

I'll take any recommendations for mag mount style 2m/70cm antennas, either for temporary installation in a car, or for me to find a cookie sheet as a ground plane.

There's a repeater near me that has a morning 800a net (N8DUY). I'm close enough to it that I can easily copy everything from it, but my HT with a rubber duck antenna doesn't work well enough to get a clean signal in - especially compared to the signals of the OMs who have base stations and better antennas and more power.

This morning I used my ladder line antenna strung on low branch in a tree, and miracle of miracles I get positive signal reports.

Next: same antenna out an attic window.

My MMDVM hotspot is back on the air.

It had lost track of time, which apparently broke a lot of things. I fixed up the NTP servers and pointed it at a working Brandmeister server and it seems to be as good as new.

73 de Ed W8EMV

University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club net on 145.23- in Ann Arbor, coming in strong. Monitored with Youloop antenna, Airspy HF+ Discovery SDR, SDRSharp.

I am still learning SDRSharp - it has quite a few features that the other tools I had been using (GQRX, CubicSDR) do not, so there's a bit of a learning curve.

The new antenna + SDR combo covers HF as it says on the box so I'm also enjoying some shortwave listening.