It turned out to be a short activation due to the heat. 10m was pretty quiet, but a few stations could be heard in the noise. 20m proved to be a success with a total of 37 contacts mostly within an hour. 11 of the contacts were Park to Park contacts, two of which were Parks On The Air activators in Canada and one contact being a Park To Park triple park activation. Over all it was fun setting up antennas, playing radio and hanging out with KF0OUA. 73

Leon KF0OUA and I will be doing a Parks On The Air activation at Monson State Park at 9am 7/14/24. We're going to try to do a 10m activation so anyone with their technicians license is welcome to come try their luck at the park as well. Everyone else is welcome too. I will be monitoring 146.520 simplex for a talk in frequency if anyone gets close and wants directions. 73

After we did some email testing using three different user stations, it was clear the stand alone post office worked as advertised.
It's a Winlink mode that we could employ if some catastrophe takes out the Internet access to the gateway.
Like Ben explained earlier, in this mode, the gateway also becomes the message server to any Winlink user in range.
This is one of the reasons the HHS 400' site is a key player in how we plan to stay connected to our people in an emergency.??

I've taken my temporary gateway down and have returned my station to normal use as N0QBH and digi is? N0QBH-4.
One more step in the move to high places :)

73
Mike N0QBH

Ahead of the gateway move to the HHS 400' tower both Mike N0QBH and I will be testing various functions and settings on the N0QBH-10 and W0AYE-10 gateways. Mike's gateway is Radio Only and will not pass messages to the internet at this time. Messages that are sent to the N0QBH-10 gateway will only be able to be retrieved by local users that have a good connection to the gateway. Testing on the W0AYE-10 gateway should not affect regular use or passing of traffic.

Sometimes as Hams we hear the terms pre emphasis and de emphasis and how it improves our audio quality.
This is the best, short description I've seen for us laymen.

In?,?pre-emphasis?is a technique to protect against anticipated noise. The idea is to boost (and hence distort) the frequency range that is most susceptible to noise beforehand, so that after a noisy process (transmission over cable, tape recording...) more information can be recovered from that frequency range. Removal of the distortion caused by pre-emphasis is called?de-emphasis, making the output accurately reproduce the original input.

For more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(telecommunications)

What they don't mention is the process also distorts the phase of the signal. This is why we bypass these circuits when we want to do high speeds like 9600 baud packet or fast VARA FM.

73
Mike N0QBH

? MEMBER BULLETIN ? July 1, 2024 ? Dear ARRL member, ? Effective 12:00pm ET / 16:00 UTC we will be returning Logbook of The World? (LoTW?) to service. ? As work progressed on the network, some users encountered LoTW opening briefly during which some 6600 logs were uploaded. The logs were not processed until this weekend as we tested that the interfaces to LoTW were functioning properly. We are taking steps to help manage what will likely be a huge influx of logs. We are requesting that if you have large uploads, perhaps from contests or from a DXpedition, please wait a week or two before uploading to give LoTW a chance to catch up. We have also implemented a process to reject logs with excessive duplicates. Please do not upload your entire log to “ensure” your contacts are in LoTW as they will be rejected. Lastly, please do not call ARRL Headquarters to report issues you are having with LoTW. You can contact support at LoTW-help@.... ? Through the end of the year, you may experience planned times when LoTW will be unavailable. We have been using this time to evaluate operational and infrastructure improvements we would like to make to LoTW. Those times will be announced. We appreciate your patience as we worked through the challenges keeping LoTW from returning to service. We know the importance of LoTW to our members, and to the tens of thousands of LoTW users who are not ARRL members. LoTW, just behind QST, is our second most popular ARRL benefit. ?

?

Copyright ? 2024 American Radio Relay League, Incorporated. Use and distribution of this publication, or any portion thereof, is permitted for non-commercial or educational purposes, with attribution. All other purposes require written permission. ?

The topic of this essay is Meshtastic, an open source suite of programs designed to communicate using LoRa as the modulation type and mesh as the methodology.
Although it not Ham radio directly, it's components use Amateur shared frequencies within the ISM bands (433 & 915 MHz), making it open to all.

Ben W0AYE turned me on to this facet of the hobby at our last meeting with a couple of Blackberry like communicators that we texted back and forth with.
While this was using the technology at it's simplest form - simplex communication, adding one or more Meshtastic devices(s) creates a basic mesh network.
The is because unless explicitly told not to, all LoRa Meshtastic devices relay all packets up to 3 "hops" to all of the other users on the channel.

To that end, I purchased the $35 WisBlock basic hardware combination for LoRa and solar charging.
It's inside a weather tight enclosure with an external N connector jack for the Lora 915 MHz antenna and a weather tight power cable from the solar panel.
I now have a Meshtastic remote relay mounted up on my tower acting like a digital repeater.
The first thing I noticed is I have a "neighbor" using meshtastic to report weather. I'm still trying to figure out who Sunset Hillbilly is...
Reading below may explain why...
My other LoRa radio is called a T-Deck and it looks like a Blackberry from 20 yrs ago (same as Ben had to the meeting).
In a short drive test today it sent and acknowledged all four transmits which were simply text of where I was when it was sent.
I started at about a mile then 2 then 3.?
Today I tried sending a message from a town hall 4 miles distant and it was in the log when I got home. Yea!

The real point to this post is to gauge if there is interest to discuss this mode further and perhaps, provide a place for us share what we know.
At this point, almost anyone into Meshtastic knows more than I, so the stupid question doesn't exist.

73,
???????Mike N0QBH

This was forwarded to me from Rick N0BJN and may be useful to anyone connecting to the DARC Room using YSF through a Hotspot.


Hi Everyone,???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 6/25/24??? 19:09

?

You are being notified because your Openspot,? Zumspot,? Pi Star,

Raspberry Pi? or other Device was seen on the old FCS 004-29.

The old FCS 004-29 is no longer Linked to the DARC Room 40012.

The new DARC Room Bridge is on FCS 001-55 & is called the

N?ANC-LINK.??? ? ? If you wish to get into the DARC Room 40012

with your Device,? please Link it to FCS 001-55 & that will Bridge

you into the DARC Room 40012 on Wires X Fusion Digital DN

( Digital Narrow ).??? ? ? The old FCS 004-29 is not linked anymore

due to Outages 4 weekends in a row lasting over a day each.

The new FCS 001-55 has been working good since 4/21/24.

Thank you for being part of the DARC Room on the new

FCS 001-55 N?ANC-LINK Bridge to the DARC Room.

If you have any questions,? please ask.

?

Please join us for the DARC Digital Net Saturdays 8:15 PM

Central Time in the DARC Room 40012 on Wires X or FCS 001-55

or N?BJN-L Echolink Node 925804.???? Any & all stations are

welcome.

?

73's

?

Rick Houle N?BJN ( alias Mark Adams )

Little Falls,? MN?

Winlink Gateway W0AYE-10 is back on the air near Olivia while Ben tests it.
I've taken N0QBH-10 down in anticipation of moving W0AYE-10 VARA-FM Winlink Gateway to the 400' HHS site once testing is complete.

73
Mike N0QBH

I'm kind of excited to announce the club has been given the go ahead to shift our packet radio station on the 400' HHS tower to a Winlink Gateway running VARA-FM (callsign W0AYE-10).
I was able to locate the Kenwood TKR-750 radio programming software and with lots of help from Tony WD0HXV, we were able to reprogram it with 16 frequencies in the 2m digital portion of the band.

Presently, it's back on 145.670 (the MN packet freq), but will switch to 145.070 (MN VARA FM freq) when Ben W0AYE connects his gateway to the radio.

With 50 Watts 400' up, we should be able to solidly serve our present and new users over a much wider area.

Purpose:
Winlink VARA will allow it's users to send and receive emails including attachments up to 100k via 2m voice radios and a Windows pc with free software.
They can also transfer mail and larger files directly between two stations using a peer to peer mode.
It's very automatic and fast!?
This isn't meant to replace your present email, but to give you another way to connect to the rest of the world. I use mine for anything Ham related.
That way, I stay proficient in it's use and spread the word with my @winlink.org address.

There is also a separate VARA Chat program that lets two stations keyboard and transfer files as well.
While sending and receiving email may seem old hat, remember, we are doing it over radio, quickly - look Mom, no wires!

Stay tuned...
73
Mike N0QBH

开云体育

Mike,,
--

73 de Randy, WR0RR.
(Ex: KA0UYL and N0GMX)