The KE0VH Hamshack for July 2017

July 2017

Last month I wrote about how we had installed an AllStar Node (46020) in the office here in Lakewood. It by the way can now be seen by going to APRS.fi, and putting in the callsign search box ke0vh-1. Jeremy N6JER wrote up the instructions on how to set this up after doing an exhaustive search on the internet but not actually getting a complete set of instructions. If you go to his website: www.n6jer.com, you can see the complete instructions on how to do this. I followed them with my node and it worked great. Took a while to get the GPS co-ordinates matched up with the map, but as you can see below it works really well. Just another feature of AllStar that is really cool!

Right now I don’t have an external antenna of my node, just a whip in the office. But it allows Rich W9BNO and I to have a great link out of a very RF dead building with one link into the 448.975 WØGV repeater here, and of course whoever else is linked in. Jeremy N6JER’s node (45844) at EMF HQ in Rocklin is on a frequency of 442.950, PL 141.3 and has some really good coverage around Rocklin and Roseville CA with 5 watts. You can see his coverage map on his website too. We link my node and his node more or less permanently to the KDØWHB SkySystem AllStar hub (node 46079) so we can pick up our HT’s in our respective offices and talk to each other between here and there. Click this website: http://stats.allstarlink.org/getstatus.cgi?46079 to see what is currently connected to the hub right now. Thanks again to Skyler, KDØWHB for bringing us into and helping us with both hardware and education of the AllStar world. AND, at this time, we are planning on using AllStar as the backbone for the SBE Chapter 73’ of the Air Monday night net with the WØGV repeater in Denver as the flagship machine. We will still be using IRLP and Echolink with Skyler’s bridge to those systems from AllStar. More to come on this in the near future. I am also going to use a Raspberry PI computer to make a portable AllStar Node, for times when I am in a hotel or in an area that may have cell but not repeater, and specifically an AllStar repeater around. More on this in the future as Skyler teaches me to do this!

By the way, the WØGV repeater here in Denver is getting a new amp to take the power up to 75 watts depending on where Gerry (repeater owner) sets it. Thanks to Keri, KBØYNA for donating it to us out here on the Front Range eastern “side of the rockpile”. The repeater is a GE Master II e, and this will really help with the coverage here in the Denver area. More to come on this one too!

AND, here is another repeater project that we will be hooking up to AllStar as well, a 5 watt Kenwood repeater that we will probably use here at the office or maybe on a hilltop soon. Once again, Keri KBØYNA in Grand Junction is helping with re-frequency-ing and tuning this radio for some use here. No real plans yet, but I will keep you up to date on this project as well. The repeater does transmit and receive, but needs a controller, which will probably be done by Raspberry PI. More to come!

As you may remember, I love spotting old radios in movies. Here is the latest spots from the movie “Independence Day: Resurgence”. A fine Yaesu FT-101!

And this

A really fine transistor Zenith Royal 3000

I LOVE SEEING these.

Finally, in this really busy summer, and in particular this month, I found this prayer and it really speaks to me about our Freedom, and Privileges given to us by a loving Heavenly Father.