Another weekend, another public service event. Being a member of AUXCOMM comes with the responsibility to aid in communications where needed. While not as important as in a disaster zone, communicating for public service events like the New River Trail Races, gives us an opportunity to test equipment and practice passing traffic.
As part of my local AUXCOMM group, I find myself helping out with public service events pretty often. As a mater of fact, April is our busiest month and we support between 8 and 10 events a year. For the last several years, one of those events has been the Appalachian Journey Bike Ride in Floyd County.
Some of the cooler technology making gains these days is raining down from above. With the onslaught of LEO communication satellites being launched, connectivity is everywhere and it's getting easier and cheaper to obtain. Through a deal between T-Mobile and Starlink, you can now experience satellite connectivity provided directly to your cellphone.
My AUXCOMM group has been playing around with the idea of using Meshtastic to supplement our resource tracking. At net control we normally use Windows computers and found the mapping capability of the Meshtastic web client to be a bit lacking. I decided to try and roll my own to give us nicer looking maps with offline capabilities and a way to track resources around the map in near real time. Here's what I came up with!
I was recently supporting a bike ride event called the Appalachian Journey. I was assigned to help out in the communications trailer as net control. It's always nice to have internet access for information. When Randy, KE4RL, built his communications trailer, he designed it to be a Faraday cage so it's impossible to receive a wifi or cellular signal inside. This gave me an opportunity to see if my old trusty Linksys 54G Router was still useful.
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| Comm. Trailer with Linksys sitting on top. |
The annual Iron Mountain Jubilee has come around again. This year the event was an extra day longer with events occurring on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Because of this, I've added a new item to my kit and decided to setup camp for the entire weekend.
There's a lot a cheap radios on the market today and many turn out to be poorly constructed junk. However, every now and again you come across a gem. This seems to be the case with the truSDX, especially if you are into digital modes or CW.
I've been playing around with using the amateur radio capabilities of the International Space Station for about as long as I've held my ham radio license. The ISS is one of the easiest satellites to work and while I've had success with a simple antenna on my handheld radio, having a directional antenna makes the task much easier. In this article I'll show you how to make a lightweight, portable antenna that is well suited for working the ISS.
Each year our radio club participates in providing communication services for the Iron Mountain Jubilee, an endurance horse ride through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. This year the course changed and a 100 mile, 24 hour event was added.
The Appalachian Trail Golden Packet is an event where stations from Georgia to Maine setup ARPS on mountain tops in order to pass data packets up and down the length of the Appalachian Trail. My club helps activate the station on top of Comer's Rock. Here's how it went this year!
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| David Todd (N4SH) Operating |
The AT5888-UV has become my take-along radio for operating portable at events. It's always good to also have access to packet radio in the field, so I decided to investigate integrating a Mobilinkd TNC with the AT5888.
I finally got my hands on a Mobilinkd TNC 4 and needed a way to keep it together with my UV-5R that wasn't a rubber band wrapped around the whole thing. With access to a 3D printer I gave a try at designing something that would do the job.
With the Mobilinkd TNC always running out of stock lately, I was tempted to look elsewhere to fill the portable TNC need. I had been eyeing the Chinese made X1C3 and read several reviews, but can it really replace the Mobilinkd? A friend of mine bought a couple of the X1C3 devices and sent one my way to try. Here's my take on the inexpensive device.
Each year our club participates in several public service to hone our emergency communication skills. In the month of September that usually means the New River Tail Triathlon. The event entails participants who bike, kayak, and run the New River Trail. This year I decided to be maritime mobile and give a heads up to the dock of boats arriving.
Each year ham radio operators gather on the mountain tops from Georgia to Maine in order to form a chain of packet stations along the path of the Appalachian Trail with the sole purpose of sending a data packet from one end to the other. This year I decided to participate as an observer, but due to unforeseen circumstances I wound up being the lone activator for the peak at Comers Rock.
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| Comers Rock ATGP22 |
Each year my club's AUXCOMM group provides communications for an endurance horse ride that crosses three counties a covers a lot of challenging mountain terrain. Due to the pandemic most of our public service events were canceled last year, but luckily this year we were able to get out and practice our radio skills.
I had seen the Vero VR-N7500 reviewed a couple years ago and thought it sounded interesting. But at the time I couldn't see shelling out the $200+ for the radio, especially since most reviews showed the app control over the radio was lacking quite a bit. You could get a better known dual band mobile radio for about the same price. So, I forgot about it. Then recently I saw an advertisement from Retevis for their model RT99 and was again reminded of the N7500. Turns out both the RT99 and N7500 are the same radio and Retevis was having a sale on theirs that made it a good price for the advertised capabilities.
