The odd thing about it was that my Kenwood TH-D7 was picking up the packets with no problem at all.  Ideas I had for troubleshooting included:

• Increasing the delay between keying up and transmitting the packet in case the start of the packet was getting clipped
• Turning the Rtrack volume down in case it was too hot
• Trying various antennas
• Trying more power by adding my 35 Watt amplifier to the system
• Changing my call from KI6ESH-3 (used for digipeaters) to an SSID of 9, the standard for mobiles (thinking maybe the digis were ignoring other digis)
• Checking input voltages to make sure they were high enough to drive the transmitter properly
• Going to a nearby mountain top to see if I simply wasn’t getting a good path out.  My TH-D7 even on low power got digipeated immediately, but nothing from the Rtrack.

None of those seemed to have any effect.  I went ahead and captured a packet from the Rtrack on my Kenwood to take a closer look at what it was sending:

KI6ESH-3>APOTC1,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1:/170607h3703.36N/12201.85W>000/000/A=000439 11.7
VRTrak V1.7

Set up in it’s “simplest” configuration and with the GPS data turned off, this is what the packet looks like:

KI6ESH-3>APOTC1,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1:>

So the packets look fine there… I don’t see any reasons they wouldn’t get digipeated or igated properly.

When listening to the packets on another radio, I noticed they really
seem to “sound” different to me, not sure if this makes any sense, but
I recorded the audio of one RTrack packet and the second packet is
from my TH-D7.

Is it possible for anyone to decode the packets from the MP3 and see
if the first packet does appear to be valid?  Here is the audio file:

http://ki6esh.com/rtrack_and_thd7.mp3

Are there any troubleshooting ideas I could try to make this start
working again?  I am going on a road trip this week and would love to
track the journey to Black Rock City.

I’ve tried various antennas (rubber duck, small mag mount, large mag mount, large mag mount with a 35 watt inline amplifier, took it flying over cities at low altitude where coverage should have been great, etc)

Here is a copy of my configuration profile in case I have something
set up incorrectly there:

• Profile 1 (jpg)
  
• Profile 2 (jpg)
• Profile Switching (jpg)

Any help in getting this to work would be greatly appreciated.
Otherwise I’ll get it shipped back for additional troubleshooting help.

On the last row just as I was getting ready to leave I saw a brand new Mirage B-34 linear power amplifier sitting on a table.  They are hooked up in-line between a 5 watt handheld radio and the antenna, boosting the signal output up to 35 watts.  I’d never used one, but I know I could definitely benefit from some additional power.  Thought about buying it, the price was $40, then wandered away.

Before leaving, I pulled out my iPhone and checked Google and eBay for the prices of these things… saw prices ranging from $89-$120 for them, so $40 was a great deal, figured I could just sell it and make a profit.

Well, as soon as I got home I quickly talked myself in to at least “trying it out” which led to a long afternoon of playing with cables, connectors, and soldering irons.  I checked the max power consumption of my cigarette lighter adaptor for the car, saw it was good enough, so I soldered a lighter adaptor to the power cables on it.  Bought an antenna cable at radio shack, cut off the end, and soldered on another PL-259 to the end of it and got everything running.

I pulled out my second HT so I could test the audio differences with it on and off, and quickly learned about desensing a receiver… The HT would hear the “roger beep” style tone of the repeater, but I couldn’t hear the audio of my own transmission at all.  I even separated it from the antenna a ways and had it recording on my laptop so I could review the audio later, but still wasn’t able to get much.

It wasn’t until tonight when I was talking with Craig, W6WL, and he told me it was definitely just desensitizing the receiver, and after a quick test with him we proved both radios really were transmitting properly.  Sitting in my driveway with my mag-mount antenna he said he could receive me about 70% signal.  Then I flipped on the 35 watt amplifier and he said he could hear me at 104% hehe.  We chatted for a bit and my signal was quite strong to him, so long story short, I’m very pleased with my purchase!

In addition to that, while I was working on getting that wired up, I also did some additionall installation to get my RTrack APRS tracker wired up in a more permanent installation.  I’ve got it running to my old hershy kiss mag mount antenna.  We’ll see how often I make it to a digipeater now, and if I don’t get great results, I may toss the 35W amp inline for that transmitter for a little while and see if that brings about great improvement.

The tracker of course was primarily for the airplane, and I think the lower power of the unit will work just great.  Driving around this mountainous tree filled area with a small antenna some extra wattage might be beneficial!

I inquired with two of our staff who probably authorized their purchase and use to see if they knew the legalities of it, and both admitted they were not absolutely sure if it was legal or not, but also commented on the truth that they are such short range devices it probably would not cause any harmful interference to any other users of the frequencies.

I decided to do a few minutes of research which I shared with them, and now I also share with you in case your might also be interested.  The short story is… yes, it’s legal. 

The longer version follows:

The last sentence of the FCC introductory paragraph on the service is of most interest to us in this case:

Family Radio Service (FRS) is one of the Citizens Band Radio Services. It is used by family, friends and associates to communicate within a neighborhood and while on group outings and has a communications range of less than one mile. You can not make a telephone call with an FRS unit. You may use your FRS unit for business-related communications.1

It does appear in 2002 that a petition2 was given to the FCC by the ITA3 requesting business use be prohibited from the frequencies, but with quick review of the FCC comments on that petition it looks like they dismissed it as a money-making attempt by business band radio manufacturers :-)

So for businesses who do use FRS as a part of their day-to-day operations I would just recommend always keeping in mind that this is shared radio spectrum, and if ever our use interferes with anyone else’s use of the frequency we need to be willing to move and not assert any “rights” to those channels. Personally I believe that if push ever came to shove, I think families and occasional users have more right to “family” spectrum than do businesses, but currently it is completely legal to use it.

My only other brief comment is that if you ever create an emergency communication plan or disaster plan, I recommend including FRS Channel 1 with Privacy Code 0 (no tone transmitted) as that frequency to be used for staff responding to such an emergency.

Channel 1 is casually recognized across the country as the emergency frequency4, and turning off all privacy tones ensures more radios from various manufacturers would actually be able to communicate with each other since the tones selected don’t always match across brands.

If you have any additional information or correction to this post, please let me know in the comments, I’d be glad to update my text with any details you may point out.

My primary uses would be for tracking my car and aircraft, as well as possible use for hiking, mountain bike riding, etc. Some day down the road it might be integrated in to high altitude balloons or radio controlled aircraft, etc.

So for most all of those applications, small size, light weight, low power consumption, and a simple package are the preferences. Currently I use a Kenwood TH-D7 with a Garmin GPS III+ when I need to do APRS. That ends up being a mess of wires by the time I’m done… so I’m hoping for something simpler, and preferably with a dedicated frequency agile 2M radio.

The device that got me started on this search was seeing the recent release of the RPC Electronics RTrack tracker. Small size, good looking package, built in radio, programmable to have different profiles, smart beaconing, etc. This unit includes the 500mW Frequency Agile 2M transmitter, APRS Modem, and GPS, all for a price of $250 plus shipping.

Next would be the Byonics MicroTrak devices. They have versions from 300 mW up to 10 Watts. Nice to have some options there! For aircraft use, I think the 300 mW would be just fine, but even with my TH-D7 putting out 5W, I know my APRS coverage in the car is pretty poor in my area, even with an external antenna. So maybe I should go with a higher power unit. Once of the nice things is you can add an amplifier to their lower power versions if you change your mind later. The costs for these vary between $105-$180 for the pre-built versions.

And with all of those, you’d need to add a GPS to the package such as the Byonics GPS1 or Byonics GPS2 for $56 or $69 respectively. So this places the least expensive operational unit at $161, and the range of units from $161-249.

For all of the units I’m initially comparing, I’m not yet looking at if they need antennas, extra power supplies or voltage regulators, batteries, etc. The MicroTrak does offer as an option a voltage regulator, the Micro-Volt 12 that will run from 12-24 volts, so that would be great for car and aircraft use.

I’m going to re-visit this post as I look further in to things, so check back here for updates. But at first glance… I like the simplicity and “sealed package” of the RTrack, everything is in the box. But if I built a box for the Byonics system, for approximately the same price I could have the option of 10 Watts. So it looks like I need to look further in to the differences between the TinyTrak3 features and the OpenTracker 1+ software and options. If I built a box for the Byonics I could include room for batteries.

The other interesting news was that Mark Bronson (KI6FEA) and I finally made contact via radio. He’s over in the San Jose/Alviso area, and we met up on the K6FB Castle Rock repeater late one evening. Hopefully that encourages him in to the hobby at least a bit :-) Then after church we talked via simplex on our way to lunch and then over to his house.

We talked a lot more about APRS tracking for our aircraft that afternoon, and I’m putting together some of my thoughts on the options available to us regarding that shortly. Primarily I’m going to compare the options of the RPC-Electronics RTrack, Byonics TinyTrak3Plus, Byonics MicroTrack, or just using the Kenwood TH-D7 with an external GPS.

My goals are for something small, easy to set up, low power consumption, fewer wires the better, low cost, and to adjust it’s beaconing rate depending on speed if possible.  I’ll review the listed trackers above, look for others, and report back on which one I’ll probably end up buying. I’ll be sure to refer to this page to see which ones look the most interesting ones to take a deeper look at.

So now we knew it was my radio, and after learning they don’t do any repairs in the shop, we went ahead and filled out the paperwork and they’ll ship it off to Kenwood since it’s still under warranty.  I asked if they had any estimates on how long it would take, and he simply said they’d call when it came in.

I may grab my old radio back from Mark this weekend if we meet up so I don’t have to give up this radio hobby cold turkey ;-)

But the bigger update is that I’m having radio troubles! I often am adding, changing, or re-ordering frequencies on this thing, and starting last night, my data cable is no longer working.

As I’ve mentioned previously I use MacMemoriesManager on my MacBook Air. It’s been working great all this time, but now the software keeps reporting that it can’t find the radio. First I tried a Menu Reset on the radio, then a VFO reset, and as a last resort I tried a full reset. Now I’ve got a blank radio and no way to program it via the cable!

If I get a few minutes tomorrow at lunch I’m going to try to run over to Ham Radio Outlet in Sunnyvale and see if they can take a look at it. I noticed that the double plug seemed like it was a bit firmer going in, so my guess is one of the small internal contacts inside the jack has bent out of position.

What is Arduino?

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

So before Christmas, Ellen and I were talking about gift ideas for each other and I went ahead and let her know that the Arduino was something I was interested in. She was willing to let me open it early, but I waited until Christmas anyways which gave me plenty of time to research it further online.

I have been really impressed by the platform, and by the programming interface to it. The software comes in Mac, Linux and Windows flavors so that covers just about everyone who would want to try it out. I ordered the Adafruit Proto Shield from Adafruit Industries. Since I bought that as a kit, I had to dig out my soldering iron and refresh my skills a bit.

In preparation for that, I’d recently completed building a MintyBoost kit from from ladyada.net. The MintyBoost is a battery charger for USB devices that runs off of two AA batteries. When I went to MacWord this year, I’d played with my iPhone in the car all the way up and ran the battery dead, so that helped convince me that having an external charger for it that ran off of batteries would be a nice thing to have.

But back to the Arduino… my first step was running through the tutorials over at ladyada site. They were really well put together and take you from the “Hello World” of physical computing, the blinking LED, through the use of switches and more advanced programming and logic.

My first sketches were just blinking LED’s at different speeds. Then I made an LED “breathe” like a sleeping Macintosh. Then I added in a switch and would make it blink or breathe. Played around with digital and analog inputs, tried out some sending and receiving of IR signals. One of the fun ones I did there involved pointing any IR remote control at the arduino to toggle an LED on and off again.

Other silly sketches were variations on the Night Rider light bar, I programmed one from scratch, then found better examples online that were smoother in appearance. I’d seen people trying POV or Persistence of Vision projects, so I downloaded a sketch and had it say Ellen’s name as you waved it back and forth in a dark room Won me some points with the wife there ;-)

I’ve playd with RGB LED’s making them fade in to all the various colors, worked with a 7 segment LED to count from 0 to 9, worked with sending and receiving serial data via the USB port, started working on building a VU Meter (to be used for audio levels, lighting levels, water temperature, etc)

I keep planning on taking pictures, posting code snippets, etc, but I figure it might be better to get in the habit of posting anything and working on the details later. If you want to see any of the source for any items listed here, just let me know. More to come soon.

Since we only had my one radio, the Kenwood TH-D7, we never have talked to each other on the air, and I really wanted to get at least a basic setup going for emergency communications. I would like her to have a radio in her car so that if the big earthquake happens, at least we’ll have a chance of using radio to communicate.

So far I’ve been really impressed by it, very small size, I can tell it is well built, audio quality seems very good, and I haven’t been on the air with it yet but that will come soon enough.

One thing I really liked about having another Kenwood is I was easily able to transfer the memories from my TH-D7 to the TH-F6 with little trouble! For the D7, I’d been using a Keyspan USA-19HS to USB port, and connecting the Kenwood Data Cable to the radio. I was using MacMemoriesManager on Mac OS X with my 12″ Powerbook. Before I even got my F6 I ordered a USB Programming cable for it from an eBay store called qMall.

I knew there were no Mac drivers supplied with it… but I had faith, and my faith was rewarded with a quick search online. I quickly discovered the cable used the pl2303 Serial to USB chip, and that led me to the SourceForge project: PL2303 USB to Serial Driver for Mac OS X. I have noticed that Apple has a link to that same SourceForge project as well.

I struggled a bit, it was appearing that MacMemoriesManager couldn’t communicate with the radio. Of course I don’t ever read the manuals, so I struggled for a bit trying various options, baud rates, ports, etc until finally I wandered through the menu and found the secret option. Since the TH-F6A doesn’t have a separate PC port, they use Menu Number 9 “SP/MIC JACK” to determine the SP/MIC jack function. It includes the options of SP/MIC, TNC, and PC. I flipped that to PC and the frequencies started copying right away.

I was able to copy all of the D7 frequencies to it, and over the next days I’ll figure out how I want to organize all of the frequencies in to different groups and such. It’s great having the wider receive range, I can pick up AM broadcast, CB Radio, TV stations, all of the aviation band, etc. That was one reason I chose it, I won’t have to carry my Uniden Bearcat 200XLT scanner as often anymore.

For the specific details and permission of how to use it, get in touch directly with KA6MAL, but the summary is you format an APRS (Automated Position Reporting System) message query to his infopeater callsign and SSID with a message of “?” for information on the system, or “?AVWX KWVI” for example to receive the Aviation Weather report for the ICAO airport identifier KWVI (Watsonville Municipal Airport). When you send that, his system replies with an “ack” and then passes along a report like this one:

082253Z AUTO 24007KT 10SM CLR 19/12 A2992 RMK AO2 SLP131 T019401{al

One of the downsides of either APRS or the Kenwood TH-D7 is that the TNC has a limit of 45 characters before it cuts off the message. If it’s a limit of APRS or common amongst other radios, it would be nice if Kamal’s system would break the packet at 45 characters and send a follow-up message with the remaining information.  The 45th character is after the “k” in “RMK” … generally the useful information is before that, but if the remark is that the station is unreliable or out of service… that would be a key piece of information!

I’m not sure how often I’d be able to use it, but when you need it, you need it! If nothing else I love seeing more practical uses of APRS and amateur radio! Now it has me wondering what other fun information we might be able to get access to via APRS?  I’ve seen earthquake data broadcast before, it might be really neat to query the infopeater and have it respond with the USGS data on the single most recent largest event in the last hour for a given state.

Either way, keep up the great work KA6MAL and thanks for sharing the information!