For my local Ham friends to be able to see picture of the new puppy… Puppy Pics

28Sept2022 Building an AutoPatch. It's still useful! A quick intro I live on the rural northern California coast. As technology has marched on, and AT&T has been allowed to let all the copper communications lines fall into disrepair and failure, we find ourselves dependent on a very fragile infrastructure. In our case, hundreds of miles of coast are connected inland by a single fiber run. All land lines, cell phones, and network connections from various providers tie into this single point.

The International Space Station has multiple Ham radios on board, and uses them for multiple purposes. Voice contacts with terrestrial hams, educational sessions with schools around the world, APRS, and Slow Scan Television. Receiving the broadcasts is fairly easy, but does require some setup and equipment. And each mode is different APRS vs. SSTV), in this article I’ll focus on SSTV reception. You need: A 2 Meter Ham radio with a decent antenna (nothing fancy, I use a copper J-Pole).

I’ve had some problems with the battery on my F250 keeping a high enough voltage. After spending hours running a cable directly from the battery, under the running boards, fully covered. Worked fine when the engine was running, but have have had issues with the battery voltage not staying high enough. After getting one new battery under warranty, the replacement had issues after a year. More than enough to start the truck, but not enough to sustain 50W transmissions from the FT-400.

A post I’ll update as I find new things, but just to keep track of functionality in my radios that was unexpected. Initially had this in a Google Doc, but decided my Ham related stuff had a place here. FT-2980R Cannot delete a memory on the radio. You can only mask it, which has the effect of hiding it, but it doesn’t automatically become available as a free channel. FT-8900 When in cross-repeat mode, any transmission turns on the cooling fan, which will not turn off until you power off the radio.

I have APRS set up in the shack, using YAAC and a Raspberry Pi to send weather data. It’s also configured so when I want to, I can turn on a radio, and send/receive via RF, while being an iGate and/or digipeater. I also figured out how to send/receive text messages and email, and installed an FT400 in the truck to do APRS on the go. I used to use an HT and Mobilnkd VNC, with an external antenna.

I got my Technician ticket in 2000 as KG6BKG. I’d actually studied for the test years before, but couldn’t get my head around morse code at a speed that would pass a test. I bought an HT, and primarily used the radio while offroading. A couple people in the group had Ham licenses, so we’d space ourselves out in the group of vehicles and keep in touch, while the others would chime in with their CB’s as far as they’d reach.