W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

Time 2021-09-19 17:18:36

Web Name: W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

WebSite: http://vielmetti.typepad.com

ID:196391

Keywords:

Eight,Whiskey,W8EMV,hamradio,amateurradio,#hamr,#hamradio

Description:

I navigated the FCC dance successfully and now have call sign W8EMV, replacing the previous call sign KD8OQG. There's no charge for a "vanity" license any more, just a matter of filling out the simple online forms and waiting 2 business weeks.I've had the emv login for many years, starting in 1985 with umix!emv and proceeding through emv@umich.edu, emv@ox.com, emv@msen.com, emv@cic.net, emv@coast.net, and now emv@monkey.org. So W8EMV is easy enough to remember.I've updated my links on this site and changed the blog name. That will inevitably break a few things, and I am not aware of how to set up Typepad to transparently redirect an old name to a new one.thanks and 73Ed W8EMV On Sunday, June 20, 2021 from 8:15 pm - 11:05 pmthe Washtenaw County Skywarn net was activated fora series of severe thunderstorm warnings. The netstayed in "condition green" the entire time, withWD8EOC relaying National Weather Service reports,but with no significant reports of damage in thecounty.The worst of the weather passed to the south of theAnn Arbor area, with Lenawee and Monroe County seeingstorm damage.The National Weather Service summary,Severe Thunderstorms and Riga Tornado June 20, 2021,notes 50-60 mph wind, 60,000 power outages, andan EF-1 tornado in Riga in Lenawee Countythat had a 3 mile long track. Riga is about 45minutes south of Ann Arbor, on US-223 west of US-23.The area was under a severe thunderstorm watchovernight, but the most severe of the stormsin that system did not make it this far east.The worst impact of the second round of stormactivity was in suburban Chicago,where the EF-3 tornado from Naperville to Willow Springsblew through a 16 mile track of up to 1/3 of a mile widethat injured 11 but (miraculously) had no fatalities.Skywarn nets in the Ann Arbor area are coordinatedthrough the N8DUY repeater on 145.15- MHz in the2 meter band. A slightly delayed transmission ofthe repeater is available on Broadcastify. Steve W8AYN ran the Washtenaw Skywarn net using the WD8EOCcall sign on Saturday 12 June 2021. The net started atjust before 8:00 p.m. when the National Weather Serviceissued a severe thunderstorm warning for the county, andcontinued until just before 9:15 p.m when the warning was allowed toexpire.Reports from the radio and from Twitter were primarily ofsporadic hail, anywhere from pea sized to quarter sized, runningfrom Dexter to Scio Twp to southwest and west Ann Arbor. Therewere no high winds reported.This storm started near Lansing and tracked to the southeastat about 20 mph. The bigger hail reports were further tothe north, including reports from Laingsburg and Ovid inShiawassee County.More storm details from IEM.Some useful Twitter accounts this season includeplus the usual Ann Arbor weather chatter, which mostlydiscusses the famed Ann Arbor Weather Shield.BBC World Service news on 7 January 2021, a minute from a shortwave broadcast with news from Washington DC. The broadcast is from 5945 KHz, a service to Asia.BBC Radio 4 on 8 January 2021, three minutes from a longwave broadcast with an interview of Mary Trump. The broadcast is from 198 KHz, the longwave domestic service of Radio 4.Both monitored at the U Twente WebSDR which has a handy "record" button. My DMR hotspot was silent for some time because I had neglectedto update it with a newly required password.The Brandmeister network article on hotspot security has the detail thatyou need to carry this out. You'll want the "hotspot security"section of the "SelfCare" setting at Brandmeister, andon the MMDVM side the menu option is under "Configuration" /"Hotspot Security".It took but a moment and now all is well again. My notes such as they are say that I had OpenWebRXrunning last year around this time, but the 2019experience was not accompanied by blogging and Ihave forgotten what I learned.This year's install was very simple, using the Debian install instructionsand then systemd to start and stop and reload the system.The 2020 OpenWebRX setup has a lot more digital modessupported, and I was able to successfully decodea transmission from Ralph AA8RK this morning. I was listening on 443.5 (the output frequencyof the W8RP DMR repeater) with my setup, which includes a Nooelec RTL-SDR tuner and a 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4.Miraculously, the DMR decoder picked up not justRalph's voice but also decoded his call signand channel number.One funny thing about this repeater setup is thatfrom time to time it will send out a short burstof traffic that OpenWebRX can't decode, see belowfor that. The Reuse Center used to be a warehouse full of reclaimedcastoffs, a mish-mosh of home improvement items, old golfclubs, unloved books and music, and the very rare bit ofelectronics. Everything was priced to move, and we're sadthat it's gone, having closed due to the current peculiarsituation.The rare bit of electronics I scored one weekend at this placeis a Realistic Pro-34 scanner. This is a handheld devicewith 200 scanner channels in 10 banks, which was a $329.95 productat Radio Shack in the late 1980s. I found it for $2, and managedto source a compatible power supply for it for another $15 fromT-Power (via Amazon).Back in its day, lots of people didmods to the Pro-34to add or cut a diode that affects coverage of certain prohibitedbands. One such modification is accompanied by this directionupon completion:"LASTLY, Now that you have made the mods, you can use the warranty card tolight the Bar-B-Q Grill with."The March 1989 edition of Popular Communications ("Pop Com") hasa review of this scanner, and instructions on modifications.Look starting on page 25.I have most of the frequencies you can see from the Washtenaw Countypiece of the W8SRC repeater guideprogrammed in, plus a few simplex channels. With the scanner turned on most of the time, I hear a few more things that I would if I onlytuned in the radio when I was actively transmitting. Mostly thoughthe local traffic is scheduled nets in the evenings, automated repeater announcementsof the time of day on the hour or thereabouts, and every once in a while someone announcing when they are going mobile.More details about the Realistic Pro-34 scanner on Rig Referenceincluding a full user manual. My RD-5R gives about 0.4% BER when talking to my MMDVM hotspot, but my GD-77 withthe same configuration gives nearly 1.0% BER. Audio quality is still good, but ofcourse it's worthwhile to tune things to minimum error rates regardless.Some notes on tuning the TX level on the radio:N6AMD, How to tune your MMDVM repeater with an SDR for low BER. Focuses on getting your audio levels correct; "If the raw audio is either too quiet or too loud, subscriber radios will not decode the digital signal properly." Uses pistar-mmdvmcal and an SDR to calibrate audio levels (TXlevel).F5UII, Install MMDVMHost on Raspberry Pi and tuning MMDVM for DMR digital mode. N6AMD's article is derived from this one, which uses both SDR and oscilloscopes for tuning. "The goal is simply that the audio levels are not too strong and do not saturate the analog input of the arduino".Ailunce, How to set RX TX offset. "Also every DMR radios may get a different BER when using the same hotspot. If you can't find a good balance for the BER between the different modes, it may be better to use different hotspots for each different mode." Previously: 2019and 2018.The goal is to enjoy as much of the pandemic-shortened 2020 baseballseason as I can via listening to far-away AM stations through SDRreceivers.I'm continuing to use the baseball section of my commonplace bookto keep track of who's broadcasting where, and where you can listen to KiwiSDR or WebSDRreceivers to tune in those broadcasts. Two big changes in my listening since last year. For East Coast stations, I'm moreand more relying on listening through the WebSDR at K3FEFin Northeast Pennsylvania. WebSDR's can readily handle 50 or more simultaneouslisteners, so there's less chance of congestion. This particular listening postwill pick up stations from Connecticut to Washington DC.In the KiwiSDR world, there are more and more Kiwi's that are using advanced technology to squeeze out more listening channels than the typical 4 channel setup.N6GN in Fort Collins runs a Beaglebone AI KiwiSDR setup that offers14 simultaneous users. The usual tradeoff is that you get less ofa spectrum waterfall display and more audio channels.Some teams are easier to follow than others. I don't have a goodway to copy Padres games, except via their Spanish language station.Phillies daytime games can be picked up via a station in Scranton,but 2000 watt WEJL drops down to 32 watts at night, not much of apowerhouse. Receivers do wink in and out from time to time, so anygiven listening suggestion is not a guarantee.It's weird to listen to games, knowing that the crowd noise issynthetic, and knowing that some teams like the Marlins have hada piece of their season wiped out due to COVID-19. But it's stillbaseball - a weird, slightly mutant baseball, with seven inningdoubleheader games and men on base to start extra innings. I got two new Radioddity GD-77 radios theother day - one for new ham KE8PFB, and one formyself.Programming the radio from the keypad is awkwardbut not impossible, and we got one analog channelup and running to reach the ARROW repeater. Thatwas plenty to confirm that it was working.We'll tackle DMR next. I have a DMR hotspot, soit should be possible to share it.The included instructions were in German and inEnglish, and the "how to get a DMR ID" instructionswere for Europe. This led to a support ticket - the USA instructions are at RadioID.net.The GD-77 is supported by dmrconfig,and I was able to convert my RD-5R configurationto it without too much trouble. The GD-77 only hastwo squelch settings, so the RD-5R's configurationneeds to be edited - other than that, surprisinglyeasy.The GD-77 user interface is nearly identical to the RD-5R.A few of the key bindings are a little different, butit's otherwise effectively the same radio as far as capabilities and controls. I guess that's OK, but Isort of wanted to get a completely different rig fromwhat I already had. The tradeoff of course is that itwas completely familiar. Our ARPSC (Skywarn) net switched to a new check-in protocol on the Sunday night net. Rather than giving your entire info all in one go, you check in with just a call sign, and then net control calls a roster.This makes the net more of a directed net, and spends less time on calls that double. It also means that net control has more than one opportunity to correct a missed call sign.Never one to miss an opportunity to innovate, I'm going to try this approach on a big zoom call, one where it's always uncertain who goes next.See https://mastodon.radio/@w8emv/104703215788181316 for discussion.

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Operating notes from Ed W8EMV in Ann Arbor, MI.

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