Growing tired of having my radios roll around in my vehicle while out and about, I made the decision to get a RAM mount to mount everything to. I didn’t want to drill any holes to install it, mainly due to most locations being inadequate for that method of mounting, so I instead opted for a RAM Stubby cupholder mount base. While this worked in theory, in practice it didn’t work so well.
I chose the long length arm (~5″) to get the radio up high enough combined with the marine electronics mount, which is essentially a 6-1/4″ x 2″ aluminum plate for mounting fishfinders to. It provides a decent mounting platform for handheld radios via their belt clips but does merit some additional tinkering with to make things perfect, but that’s an aside for now.
The Stubby mount is weighted, but with the long arm and plate mount, coupled with the weight of a radio, it’s not a stable mounting option as originally thought. Under normal urban driving conditions, the entire mount assembly tips over. Not ideal.
I decided to take the mount apart and see what could be done with it. The bottom of the mount is held in with 3 clips and can be easily pried apart. The base also has a screw in the center which secures a steel weight. This weight does not extend the full length of the interior of the base which is the reason for its tippiness (autocorrect tells me that’s not a proper word, but whatever).
I weighed everything and determined that the base weighs in at 490g, while the steel slug alone weighs 378g. I went to my local outdoor store and picked up some BB’s to add further weight to the base. I filled the space between the top of the base and the top of the slug and then filled the gaps between the slug and the wall of the base. This added an extra 395g of weight bringing the new base weight up to 886g. With this modification, the problems with tip over have been removed. Now I just need to find a way to keep the radios from sliding off the plate mount on top. Another project for another day.
Stock Stubby base weightThe steel slug395g of copper coated BB’s, the container weighs 66gReassembled Stubby base weight
The International Space Station held another SSTV event during the Winter 2021 break and I was determined to catch all of the images that they would broadcast this time around. They were to be all related to lunar exploration, past, present and future. I had dabbled with receiving SSTV images from the ISS previously, but never really planned for it properly. I did my research and found that all the suitable passes for this event were all early morning passes for each day (ranging from 1 AM to 9 AM).
Armed with my trusty Arrow II satellite antenna, a radio and my smartphone, I headed out morning after morning to collect the 12 images that would be broadcast.
Out of those 12 images, I managed to snag 10 (I missed images 10 & 11). Much better than my two prior attempts and the quality of the images was much better as well. The Arrow II was definitely worth the investment. If you go here you can type my callsign into the search box (see the image on the Amateur Radio page for my callsign) to see all of the images I captured.
A few months back I had purchased a new enclosure to hold the guts of the solar box. The original plastic ammo can was beginning to show fatigue at the bottom from lifting the box with the battery installed within. This wasn’t going to be good for a permanent field deployment of this box in the future, so I decided to upgrade to a Nanuk 905 to house everything. This upgrade benefits the project in two ways: Firstly, the thing is waterproof and extremely durable. Secondly, it allows for the installation of a secondary battery in parallel with the one already installed (as mentioned in a prior post).
Two issues with the new enclosure were how to charge the batteries without running the cables through an open lid and how to prevent the batteries from smashing all over the place when the box is being carried (the handle is on the side when laying on the ground vs. the ammo can having the handle on top of the lid).
I solved the first issue by drilling a 1″ hole through the side of the case and installing a weatherproof surface mount SAE socket with the included 4 screws and some black RTV sealant to retain some level of waterproofness.
The second issue was corrected by fabricating an aluminum frame to fit within the case. I was going to make it fit the full interior dimensions of the case, but the interior isn’t flat. The batteries sit side-by-side in the frame and are secured to it with 1″ wide Velcro straps. The edges are all curved inside. The finished product isn’t perfectly square, but it’s fairly close (and dare I say, not too bad for a first attempt at something like this). The only issue with not being fully square is that that the batteries are wedged together on one end. Not a deal breaker, but won’t be optimal when the warmer weather rolls around again.
Just a wee bit on the janky side of things.
I decided to instead make a frame that fit the dimensions of the outer part of the foam insert. This should allow for some slight shock resistance to anything inside and also some slight insulation to boot.
Fits beautifully.
I added a standoff to prevent everything from sliding towards the lid when carried by the handle which seems to be working well so far, but it looks like a second one will need to be added on the side closest to the lid hinge. If carried at a normal walking pace by the handle, there is minimal movement of the battery/frame combination as is.
Frame with standoff added. A small piece of close-cell foam was added afterwards to the standoff to protect the lid.
Further steps for this project include beefing up the battery section of the frame with some aluminum bar stock so that the batteries can be strapped down independent of one another which should be good if only one battery is needed for operation (most likely during the summer months where less power is needed). I’m also planning on mounting the charge controller to the inside of the lid using a piece of aluminum bar stock to keep it out of the way when the repeater and radio are installed later on. Another hole will also need to be drilled to run the antenna feedline out of the box, but I’m still researching how that will be done (possibly using a cable gland and sealed with RTV sealant).
At the very least, it looks a whole lot sexier now.
I finally got around to flying the Flying Monkey 03 in sport mode for the first time this past Tuesday. Everything was going well. Did a fast pass down the length of the canal then stopped and turned around to come back. Got everything lined up and pushed up on the stick to accelerate. Only one small issue: the wind was gusting a bit that day ahead of a massive storm front that was rolling in and, not thinking about it all, that was the direction that I was flying back in.
Everything was going smoothly until I glanced over to check where some people were walking by. I looked back at the video feed and saw this:
Final shot.
As soon as I saw that I knew it was in the drink. A split second later, the feed died. I tried to use the locate feature built into the app, but it was already underwater when I tried, no luck there. I searched the area on both sides of the canal for the next hour in the hopes that what was left of the airframe might still be buoyant enough to wash ashore. No luck there either. Dismayed, I got in my car and drove away with no idea of what had happened.
Upon checking the DJI Fly app later that night, I discovered that the app records all incoming video feeds and flight telemetry in real-time, so I have some semblance of what happened. It appears that while going down the canal on the first pass (approximately 5 meters up), everything was fine. Part way back down the canal it suddenly began to lose altitude. A split-second before the final pic above, the aircraft canted to the left a bit. I believe that it was hit by a strong burst of wind and that with it being angled forward in flight, that the wind pushed the aircraft downward. The final turn to the left was probably the ground detection sensors detecting the water as the aircraft had also begun to slow down at that point.
The aircraft has been deemed destroyed, along with the flight battery and micro SD card holding 2 flights worth of imagery (always back up your data between outings).
A replacement drone is on its way and should arrive within the next few days. The flight battery and micro SD card have already been replaced.
A hard lesson learned. Always test out new flight modes/options at altitude and never above water. Replacing a busted arm or two is always cheaper than replacing an entire drone.
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).
S5 and clear.
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.
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.
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