Maltose Kincaid

August 31, 2021February 2, 2023

2 Meter Range Test Project

New project time! I’ve been wanting to test out the range of cheap and readily available amateur radios (specifically the Baofeng UV-5R) on simplex frequencies and finally got around to doing it. This is in preparation for the second phase of the solar box project which will pair that project with a simplex repeater setup.

I have previously performed a few tests with one radio hooked up to a laptop with a repeating CW (morse code) audio file to see how far I could receive the signal while using another radio in my vehicle. It was a half-assed plan to say the least: using a radio that essentially puts out only 4W of power at best, while also not taking notes during the process, didn’t really help.

This past Saturday, I decided to revisit my simplex range tests by picking a few locations locally where I should be able to receive signal. The goal of the project is to receive the beacon audio, over simplex frequencies , while being as far away from the beacon as possible. Two locations were chosen for the test. One being the P25 parking lot in the Ottawa Greenbelt. The second being Camp Fortune in Gatineau Park. Camp Fortune is a ski hill with a massive communications tower at the top of a mountain in the park. Unfortunately for me, the ski slope faces north (the beacon is in Ottawa to the south) and the place was packed to the brim with people, so that location was a no-go. I took a look at the topo maps for the area and settled on a spot just north of P5 in Gatineau Park for the test.

I used my Yaesu FT-70D as the receiving radio, paired with my Arrow II satellite antenna. The UV-5R beacon was paired with a Diamond RH-77CA whip antenna. The beacon was activated remotely using TeamViewer from my phone to unmute the computer and start the audio file playback. This was done to prevent overuse of the frequency and the transmission of any unintentional sounds from the computer. The Baofeng had VOX enabled to transmit the audio being played.

For the P25 Greenbelt location, I set up the receiving station on the shoulder of Bearbrook Road as it was higher in elevation than the parking lot.

Motorists thinking you are operating photo radar and questions like “are you tracking a bear?” are only a few of the perks of being this cool.

I set the audio file to play and within a few seconds of sweeping the antenna from side to side, I was able to pickup the beacon. It came through clearly, with the Yaesu’s S-Meter giving a solid reading of S5 (out of a possible 9).

I allowed the beacon to cycle a few more times just to see if I could get a slightly better signal, but that was as good as it was going to get. Part one of the test complete with good results.

Part two of the test at P5 in Gatineau Park began with a short 250 meter walk north of the parking lot, to a spot just off the road that should provide the elevation I was looking for while also being able to clear some of the hilly spots in the area to the south of the park. I changed positions a few times, but each time I was unable to receive any signal. There is quite a bit of foliage in that area close to the road which may have affected signal reception, but it was more-than-likely some elevation change between the beacon and this spot that I hadn’t accounted for.

The beacon details are as follows:

I came up with a short paragraph which began with my callsign, explained that this was a test for range purposes, approximate length of the test (which was ~50 seconds) and how often it would repeat (~5 minutes) and would then end with my callsign again. This was run through one of the many websites which offer a text-to-morse code audio file generator. A little bit of editing in Audacity allowed me to insert 4 minutes of dead-air so that it could be set to repeat in VLC when played back which would trigger the radio via its VOX functionality. I selected 144.190 MHz for the simplex frequency ~~as it is within the CW portion of the 2m band in Canada and did not appear to have any specific restrictions to adhere to~~ (this has since been changed to a different frequency as 144.190 MHz and other nearby frequencies are for narrowband transmissions only, which an HT is not capable of).

Range achieved from my home location to the P25 test site was approximately 11.3 km. With this test being successful, I will be planning for more testing at various locations throughout the area over the next couple of months.

August 31, 2021October 1, 2023

ISS Contact

A few months back, I purchased an Arrow II satellite antenna so that I can get better results when the International Space Station has their SSTV events. There are usually only a handful of events each year, and I’ve missed most of them since the first one I participated in back in February 2019.

The station has its own APRS setup, so I decided one night to see if I could ping it with my equipment. I used APRSDroid on my phone and linked to one of my UV-5R radios. All that needed to be done was to change the APRS digi path in the app preferences menu to ARISS and set the frequency on the radio to 145.825 MHz. All I could do then was to eagerly wait for the next pass of the station overhead.

SUCCESS!

The following image shows the contact. Only 1 packet made it through, though I had made several attempts during the pass. The packet was digipeated back to Earth through KE8FZT. This was a fun experiment and I look forward to attempting it again with my big old tripod I dug out of storage a few weeks back. Should make things a bit easier going forward.

Screencap shows the default ISS position out near the west coast of Africa (it’s always there). It was almost directly overhead when the contact was made.

Note: Yep, don’t start a post while you’re falling asleep. It’ll end up sitting as a draft for a few months if you do.

March 31, 2021March 31, 2021

20 Years of ARISS SSTV Event

Back in December there was an SSTV event to celebrate 20 years of amateur radio operations on the International Space Station. I was able to catch part of an image from a fairly good pass, but abruptly lost the signal.

Since then I have purchased an Arrow II Satellite Antenna. Should be getting better results next time.

March 31, 2021

Solar Box Update

A quick little update on this project.

I left the solar box outside for 3 weeks from January to February 2021, seemingly the coldest part of the winter. Temperatures dipped to -23 Celsius at the lowest without the wind chill.

In order to give the box something to do, I hooked up a USB reading lamp to the 12V USB adapter. It wasn’t pulling a crazy amount of power (only 0.05A). The kit managed to keep going, discharging a bit each night and recharging during the few hours of sunlight it had during the day. One handy thing about the light being hooked up was that I could see if the kit was still on without having to go outside.

It only died once that I’m aware of and the next day it came back to life after a few hours of sunlight hitting the panel. That was 2 days before I brought it back inside.

Almost Dead — Getting pretty close to shutting down.

The battery was not able to fully charge each day due to a combination of the cold, some heavy snowfall and overcast days during those 3 weeks. On a sunny day, the sun was hitting the panel for about 3-4 hours per day, which would normally be enough to fully charge the 7A battery during the warmer months, but not enough in the winter. I could’ve adjusted the charge controller to have a higher float voltage to compensate for the cold temperatures (currently set at 14.1 V). The only problem with this is that I would have to manually adjust it anytime the ambient temperature got too high. Not much of an issue in this situation, but it would be an issue if this was deployed throughout multiple seasons (ie: 6 months from January to June). 14.1 V is a good float voltage for 20ish degree weather. Setting it higher to compensate for the cold winter weather would keep it topped up better in the winter, but would lead to the acid in the battery boiling during the warmer months, thereby killing the battery.

My initial thoughts about increasing the amperage by adding another battery in parallel would possibly prevent the float voltage adjustment from being necessary in such situations.

When I brought the kit back inside, the battery was not fully charged. Charging it with the solar panel in the window for about a month did not do much to bring the battery back up to full capacity. It did get really warm here over the last few weeks and so I set it back up outside. Within a few hours, the battery was fully topped off again.

January 13, 2021January 13, 2021

Mid-Canada Line Site 12

This is a spot which has been on my list of places to explore for the last year or so. It’s an abandoned test facility for the Mid-Canada Line, a cold war era line of radar stations used for detecting aircraft. Notably aircraft flying towards North America over the Arctic. The Ottawa Valley had 4 sites set up to test the technology out. The Cliff Notes version is this: transmissions between each station in the line would be interfered with by any aircraft passing between them, thereby acting as a trip-wire of sorts to alert the military to the presence of an aircraft.

MCL Site 12 Top of Tower — Main Doppler dish on top of the tower.

The tower does have some tilt to it, but all of the guy wires are still attached. This thing was built to withstand 120 mph winds when fully kitted out, also while covered in 2 inches of ice. Should be up for a little while longer. According to the UAV, the top of the tower sits around 40m AGL.

MCL Site 12 Tower Overhead — Oblique view of the antenna arrangement. Top is the Doppler dish, middle 2 antennas are for receiving, and the lower antenna is a microwave dish.

Only the skeleton of the equipment building remains. Most of the sheet metal siding seems to be intact, just no longer attached to the building frame, and can be seen in the second image laying on the ground around the buildings foundation.

Flight 012 Mid-Canada Line Site 12 Test Fence — The view from 120 meters up. You can play “Where’s Maltose” with this shot.

This location does see quite a bit of foot traffic with all the footprints and vehicle tracks that were there on the morning I went. It was definitely worth the visit. I look forward to returning later in the year to get some updated shots during the warmer months.

December 24, 2020January 13, 2021

Flying Monkey 03

Introducing the newest member of the Flying Monkey family. Picked up this Mavic Mini recently and have begun to put it through it’s paces. One thing to note is that the DJI Fly app for this UAV only supports phones and tablets running 64-bit OS’s, and the supported list of handsets is very limited.

Luckily I’ve got an older iPad running a 64-bit OS and could activate it through the app on there. Unluckily though, is that the included lightning cable for the controller is not long enough and the tablet can’t be mounted to the controller. I’ve got a longer cable and a tablet adapter on order to correct these issues.

On a whim, I decided to try connecting the drone/controller with some 3rd party software (Drone Harmony in this case) that I had installed for mapping purposes. Seems to be working as I’ve run 4 flights with it with no issues from my 32-bit phone. I think this may be due to DJI releasing an SDK for the Mavic Mini a few months back. Either way, it works and I’m happy with it. Just need to run with the proper overlap settings on my next outing.

Flight 004 Skate Park TEST — Completed orthophoto of a local skate park. Altitude was set to 45m to clear the trees/poles in the area. Despite the wind that had picked up, the UAV was able to do it’s job quickly.