Author: W5HNZ

We have been granted the permission to republish The Sumter Co ARC’s newsletter. Enjoy, always some good stuff here.

This is a cool little application that I’ve recently found that scratches an itch that I’ve had for a while. I compiled this code on my Linux desktop, and it works great. I haven’t tried for the Raspberry Pi yet, but it should be just as easy.

You can find it here: https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/

Saw this mentioned somewhere on the ‘net and thought this was interesting. Perhaps some of you may find it interesting as well.

Radio astronomy is always interesting! Here’s a really cool article from sciencenews.org.

Thanks to K5DDT for the contribution:

Hello to everyone. This is a reminder to those who know and a heads up to those who don’t know. There is a gathering planned for this Saturday, March 20th at the clubhouse at 9:00 am for an antenna build. There will be a 2 meter antenna and a 40 meter dipole constructed.. If you want to build a different antenna or one of these for yourself, that will be fine also. Please get in touch with Rick Swiney WB5TZN @ 662-322-7784 or send him an email to confirm attendance. Hope to see you there.

You can find Rick’s email address on QRZ.

Thanks to K5FY for the contribution:

This weekend is the ARRL DX International SSB contest. Starting 0000Z, 6 March to 2400Z 7 March. It will be a great time to work on DXCC during the contest or catch the occasional rare DX stations practicing prior to the contest.

Rules and details can be found here: http://www.arrl.org/arrl-dx

A good find from K5DDT:

Indeed it does. When searching for signals from Mars, anyway. This is an interesting article that I think we all can gain some interest from. From spaceweatherarchive.com:

News from K5DDT :

Some of you may not understand the following message. Not to worry. This is from Fred Gray, WB5BNV in Meridian to me. He is posting notice of a schedule when his station will be monitoring the Ardop PtP Mode for transmitting and receiving messages over Winlink. As stated in the message below, he will forward your message to someone else if you let it be known that is your desire. Having said that, the person you want it delivered too will have to log into Fred’s  Station P2P to retrieve any messages waiting for them. This is great practice and I would encourage everyone to get familiar with this method of passing traffic in case of a severe interruption of communication services.

Why? Emergency traffic is one of the primary reasons many people get into Ham Radio. In a severe emergency the airwaves could be so busy on single sideband that you could not make contact with hardly anyone due to pileups. These digital methods are designed to operate in poor band and noisy band conditions. 

Thanks to everyone for your time and hopefully you will learn and use this capability with your equipment and never have to use it for a real emergency situation.

************ Message ID: DJAXTNGOGECX
Date: 2021/02/06 23:32
From: WB5BNV
To: K5DDT
Source: WB5BNV
Downloaded-from: Peer-to-peer:WB5BNV
P2P: True
Subject: P2P BBS

I WILL BE THE MANUAL P2P BBS UNTIL LARRY GETS TO FEELING BETTER
ANY MESSAGE FOR ANOTHER STATION, SEND TO ME WITH A NOTE
TO READDRESS IT AND I WILL TAKE CARE OF IT.
MY HOURS WILL BE 7AM TO 7PM.

Pro’s

ARDOP P2P is user friendly.
It has good message accounting which is necessary for emergency communications.
Using the RMS Log you can sort messages sent and received during
an event.
You can print any message.
You can send and receive messages “unattended”
Confidentiality is achieved for messages with sensitive content.(Good for Hospital use)

Con’s

ARDOP P2P will not automatically forward a message.
The work around is to manually forward
messages received at your station which are destined for another
station. This will be satisfactory if you have a good conscientious
DBBS operator.
A reasonably fast computer with plenty of RAM is desired
(but may not be absolutely necessary).
ARDOP Will not download to a MAC or Linux computer.(QUESTION MARK)
P2P is strictly Point to Point. It is not suitable for net operation.

Big thanks to John, K5FY for the contribution:

I ran across this browsing the web recently.  It may be worth the time, if you are like me and could use a bit of a refresher on DMR radio programming.  It covers the radios most of us have and looks to be informative.

—Taken from the web: This is a follow up class to the “Intro the the Maine DMR System” online class. This class will cover building a codeplug from start to finish, for most popular DMR radios (Motorola, TYT, Radioddity, Anytone, and more). This class will also cover Brandmeister and DMR-MARC (or any C-Bridge) systems. It will NOT cover installation of the CPS software or connection to your radio. You must already know how to download/upload a codeplug to your specific radio. Check YouTube for a tutorial on connecting to your radio to your PC. This class was developed by kb1zpp and sponsored by the SJVARA.

Sign up at www.sjvara.com

Advanced DMR Programming February 20, 2021 Lobby opens at 16:30 est Class starts at 17:00 est Held via www.freeconferencecall.com, you will need an account which is free You will need a computer, PC or Mac. You won’t see anything on a smartphone. You will need to download the app from www.freeconferencecall.com For a walkthrough to set up an account check out the April or November issues of the SJVARA newsletter at www.sjvara.com/feedpoint