Field Day 2012

This year I was only available to help with some of the setup for the HOSARC field day. The guys had worked out a network of diapoles and end fed wires that covered UHF, VHF,& HF. I got a few contacts on 15 meters and we even had a visitor from out of town who came by to operate.

ARRL visual website tour video

For the November meeting of my amateur radio club, we had Katie Glass, KB1ULQ, the Digital Content Manager for the ARRL give a visual tour of the new ARRL website. This tour included some of the new features of the ARRL website such as social media components and popular older content like accessing the extensive ARRL archives and product reviews. Katie was a complete professional, taking questions from the audience and giving a thorough presentation. Attached is a video I made of the presentation.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

This is the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) presentation by Mark Steiner, K3MS. I recorded and edited this video for HOSARC my amateur radio club. The talk was given at the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club general meeting in October of 2011. Mark touched on many different aspects of amateur radio on the ISS, including satellite launches, equipment on board the ISS, and ground stations. What did come out during the Q&A section of the talk was that if you would like to get some your own technology into space, design an easy system to change the Kenwood radio from school transmit mode to repeater mode easily via computer control. Seems the current process for changing the radio includes many more steps than busy astronauts have time for. If you can make it happen quickly, easily, and reliably, you could have your own tech in space! It is a high bar, but how many gear-heads do you know with systems they have designed in space. Please check out the video and leave comments. Full disclosure, the video does have pre & post-roll commercials. All money generated by these commercials will be donated entirety to the club. I hope you enjoy the video.

30 minutes of APRS with Bob Bruninga, WB4APR

This is the first 30 minutes of Bob Bruninga, WB4APR giving a talk at my amateur radio club HOSARC. It was a very informative talk and I hope to get the rest of this talk in the near future. Bob's presentation was incredibly informative. If you ever get a chance to see him give a talk, run, do not walk. He is a tremendous resource to the amateur radio community.

Greene County still needs help after Hurricane Irene

Last night I spoke with Len Signoretti, N2LEN. He was tired but still working hard at the Greene County ARES deployment. He is still looking for volunteers and could use all the help he can get. If you have any time this week and are in the New York area, please contact him at: (phone number removed after event) It is a rural area and they have a 2M / 440 local repeater up running for main communications. If you have a good 2M / 440 mobile rig, you are most welcome. Please help out if you can.

Update 9/9/11:
Just spoke to Len this evening. The ARES activation for Greene County was deactivated Tuesday Sept. 6th followed by a one day ARES activation on Wednesday Sept. 7th for area flooding and to fill in for a cellular outage in the area. I called Len on and off during the week and that man was working so hard I doubt he even remembers talking to me. Hats off to everyone who volunteered for the relief effort. Len said he had people coming in from far and wide to help out.

Queens ARES response for Huricane Irene

If you are a Queens New York based ham who would like to help ARES with the amateur radio response to Hurricane Irene, please contact  Jeff Spiro via the following email address: N1JSP[at]arrl.net. Licensed Amateur Radio operators with HTs & Mobile Units welcome.

Best of luck to them in their efforts. 

 

Raspberry PI, a $25 computer could be a great new platform for amateur radio

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has developed a $25 computer that is just made for hacking. This could be just the platform needed for inventive new APRS, and other amateur digital modes. Think of all the things you could do with the portable processing power of a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM hooked up to a HT or other portable. This device has been geared towards education so the documentation should be open and ready for hacking in the classic sense of the word.
One video port and one USB is all you get as far as ports for now, with both ethernet and Wifi planned. Power usage? 1W at full load. I have attached a video about it below. Update: They will also have a Model B with 256 megs of RAM and a 10/100 Ethernet port, price point: $35.

Update: Raspberry PI will be at the NYC Maker Faire. Looking forward to seeing what they have planned for the unit. Eben Upton, one of the founders will be there to explain the plans for the project.

Update 2: On Availability: From the Raspberry PI website

When will the device be available to purchase?
We anticipate the device will be available to the general public later in 2011 – we were hoping to hit the end of November, but right now December’s looking more likely.