Category Archives: amateur_radio

Yaesu FTM-500DR

amateur_radio

The Yaesu FTM-500DR is their flagship product, it’s about $500, but it’s got so many small gripes it’s almost as if no one on their team has actually used a radio in a vehicle…

  • Powering It Off — Why do I need to hold the power button to shut it down? A single press or a double press should shut it off… instead they’ve decided the single press of the power button will lock it…
  • Locking Out a Memory Channel During Scanning — Each memory channel has a SCAN attribute of YES/NO… setting this takes about 10 steps… ten steps! So if you’re scanning around and hit on something you want to skip, you essentially can’t…
  • Memory Scanning, All or Nothing — There’s no apparent way to break up what memory channels you do scan — it’s all the channels or none.
  • SD Card is Half Baked — Using an SD Card to be able to program the radio seems like a great idea, but in practice both the RT Systems and Yaesu software don’t seem to work well with it… Neither of the software packages recognize that the Yaesu radio itself will save multiple copies of the data by incrementing a number on the file… so you have to go manually rename files… and while opening saved files in the software seems to work fine, the other direction hasn’t worked at all for me… it either fails or corrupts the radio and requires reprogramming by cable, this is true even if I format the card in the radio to have just a single saved version…
  • USB – Serial Cable — Why are still transferring data to these radios from a PC using serial? It takes ages to move data at 9600bps which seems unnecessary…
  • No Ignition Sense — I know this isn’t common on mobile radios, but I really don’t understand why not… the radio is connected to the battery, why not provide an input to let the radio be powered on/off along w/ the ignition w/o requiring relays and hard power cuts?
  • Audio Recording — I love the audio recording feature, but it’s recording in uncompressed audio with support for only a 32GB card… recording to a compressed format would let you store much more audio on the card
  • Audio Recording Part II — Quite a bit of the functions are persistent through power cycling, like memory scan, but unfortunately recording is not, so you need to start it each time (fortunately you can set one of the P-keys on the mic for that)

Maybe these are issues w/ all radios, maybe I’m not using it like most others would, but these are fairly annoying quirks. It’s only been a few weeks, so maybe it’ll grow on me…

TNC-Pi on 64-bit Linux

amateur_radio, raspberry_pi, ,

I decided that I wanted to run an APRS iGate at my house because I found that low power transmissions in my neighborhood simply aren’t making it to the nearest Digipeater.

My current setup is a Mobilinkd 4 + iPhone SE 2020 + aprs.fi — but it’s not working very reliably — What I’m finding that is that every 2-3 days it stops beaconing and stops receiving packets… if I unlock the iPhone and fiddle it starts working, I’ll get a day or two, and then it will stop. My assumption is that iOS is simply not geared to run background applications like this and so it doesn’t work as a “set it and forget it” type of system.

That lead me to a purchase I made a long time ago… When I was first getting into APRS I bought a Coastal Chipworks TNC-Pi — it’s a TNC in the form of a Raspberry Pi “hat”, and I recall that it worked fairly well at the time using a Raspberry Pi 3B. I don’t fully recall what my goal at the time was, but it was using in a vehicle and ultimately when I found the Mobilinkd that worked out better. I parked the hardware, but pulled the Micro-SD.

Fast-forward a decade or so and I’ve decided to resurrect the TNC-Pi in the hopes that I can use it as an iGate and doing RF beaconing.

I’m grateful that despite having not sold this product for quite a while (I think over 5 years at this point?) the website linked above is still operational with instructions and files… but what I found was that time marched on in the world of Raspberry Pi development and left these little setup/helper apps behind.

If you try to run pitnc_getparams and see this message:

-bash: ./pitnc_getparams: cannot execute: required file not found

That means you’re likely running a 64-bit version of Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS, but these applications are built for 32-bit.

You have two options:

  1. Install a 32-bit version of Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS
  2. Install the required 32-bit libraries

If you decide to take the option 2 route — installing 32-bit libraries — these are the two fairly straight-forward commands I had to run to get going:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
sudo apt install libc6:armhf

After that, you’ll find that both 32-bit helper applications are able to run on your 64-bit OS.

Kenwood TH-F6A vs. Yaesu FT-60

amateur_radio, electronics

So I figured I would compare these two since I own them both, and this will remind me what I like and dislike about each–

First off, to anyone outside reading this I realize the Kenwood has a lot more features and really is a class higher (and double the price), but anyway…

The good things about Yaesu

  • Yaesu feels better in my hand by far–the Kenwood is too short, it’s easy to accidentally hit PTT or just generally find it hard to re position in your hand, the smaller size might be something I come to appreciate about the Kenwood later, so who knows…
  • Yaesu buttons and case have a more study feel vs. the Kenwood.
  • Yaesu has power and volume on the same knob… seems so simple yet Kenwood decided to stick the volume as the ring (2nd control) under the channel change knob; This makes it difficult to change volume w/o changing channel.  This is probably my biggest complaint about the Kenwood–if they had even added an “ear flap” to the volume control that would have been fine, just something to make it easier to move the volume ring and not the channel knob
  • Yaesu gives you better control over the lamp… again this seems so simple, yet Kenwood has no way (that I have found) to activate the lamp when a signal is received–so if I’m scanning channels I don’t know what repeater or channel I’m on when a signal is coming in… not a big deal, but an annoyance considering there is already a lamp setting in the menu, it would be a better of an additional option or two
  • Yaesu belt clip can be opened by pushing on the top and it’s spring loaded.  Kenwood is just friction fit and relies on the metal retaining shape.  I don’t wear the radio on my belt, but I do clip it to a pocket on my backpack and I feel like the Yaesu is more secure
  • Yaesu has a dedicated squelch knob–actually I should say, it’s not a knob it’s the ring on the channel knob, which is perfect because having an entire knob for squelch seems like a waste.  That said, it’s not that hard to push the SQL button on the Kenwood…
  • Yaesu software for programming is great, the Kenwood’s feels like a DOS converted to Win 3.1 hold over.  I also have to manually set offset amount, offset direction, step, etc… those are all set automatically with Yaesu SW or when programming on the radio
  • This is actually a Kenwood annoyance, not a Yaesu feature… They give you two LEDs on the top to indicate whether you are receiving on Band A or Band B, but they are the same color and are not changeable… it would be great if they had two different colors, or at least let you set one of the LEDs to a blink pattern so you could tell what band you are receiving in the dark
  • Yaesu dust covers on the side of the radio seem much more study then the Kenwood… I’m certain I’ll break the Kenwood’s off
  • Yaesu never gets hot while charging… the Kenwood gets noticeably warm when charging (which is pretty much anytime you plug it in)… probably unavoidable given its size and the battery configuration, but it’s an annoyance
  • Yaesu includes a charging cradle, Kenwood needs to have a barrel plug put in (and the dust flap pulled, another reason it’ll be broken off)

Stuff I like about the Kenwood…

  • It’s got 220…
  • It will receive very wide band
  • You can easy swap between seeing the programmed alpha tag and frequency–on the Yaesu you have to navigate a bunch of menus which seems a bit ridiculous (then again how often are you going to want to do that?)
  • Alpha tag for frequencies is longer than 6 characters–I like to use 1, 2, 4 to designate 2m, 1.25m or 70cm on the repeater call signs so I appreciate that Kenwood allows 8 characters.  I realize this is more of a complaint against the Yaesu LCD size
  • Lithium Ion battery… with the Yaesu you end up with battery memory if you don’t follow allow deep discharge
  • Charges with the 12V car plug… the Yaesu will only run from it, but not charge its battery.  That means if I’m traveling I need to bring the Yaesu cradle and have access to 120V.   Kenwood I can just leave plugged into the car.
  • Yaesu put the headset and charge inputs too close together and the dust flap is anchored between them… result is very awkward and somewhat forced connections when you’re using both headset jack and DC power jack
  • Joystick control… makes much easier and faster to get to the menus vs. the Yaesu

So I’m still getting to know both of them, but at this point I think I have the Yaesu feature set and operation down.  The Kenwood I’m still working the kinks out.  Over all if I had $300 to spend on just one of them I’d go for the Kenwood because dual receivers, lithium ion, and 220 TX are great features for not that much more money.  I’m still glad I have the Yaesu though and if you’re looking for a radio under $150 it seems like a pretty good one.

Adventures with the Kenwood TK-880 (Part 1)

amateur_radio, electronics

So, after someone on air mentioned liking Kenwood’s, I decided to go for it and buy one… it ended up being about $80 with shipping and a microphone… I knew it would be a pain, but I figured why not…

The thing arrived and it’s kinda neat looking, I guess it’s basically what you’d find in a cab or police car…

The first thing needed is a programming cable because the thing has no buttons for programming… it’s designed to be programmed at a PC and then put in service in a vehicle where the user just selects channels… The cables are about $15 on ebay…

Rather than spend another $15 I decided to build my own… it turned OK, but ended up costing more than $15 between the bits/pieces and certainly the time…

Homemade Cable

Given the comparisons in size, I felt like this:

oldfashionedcircuits

At this point I decided to watch Back to Future III and write this stupid post.  By next year I should have some progress…

Grounding galvanized pipe (like ENT)

amateur_radio, electronics

I know this is an easy search, and a no-brainer to those who are experienced… but apparently copper and galvanized pipe are incompatible (which is why I have a union on my water heater).

If I’m using ENT or chain link top rail as an antenna mast I need to ground it.  To ground it I should use brass pipe clamps.  Brass contains zinc and is compatible with galvanized pipe (copper is not compatible and will chemically etch the zinc from the pipe and it will rust at that spot).

I should keep watch if I’m using a bare ground conductor that it doesn’t touch the mast either, and also verify the type of metal the mast supports are.

(www.repeater-builder.com/antenna/site-stuff/radiositerules.html)

(http://www.askcodeman.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=316)