Tag: Baofeng

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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).

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.

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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.

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ARISS/NOTA ISS Slow Scan TV Event Feb 8-10

Every once in a while, the International Space Station has an SSTV event.  SSTV stands for Slow Scan Television.  Essentially you’re receiving data as an audio stream from the station (similar to old dial-up modem sounds) and then you can convert that data into an image using a computer or smartphone.  I used an app called Robot36 as the decoding app and another app called ISS Detector for determining when the station would be over my location.

I only found out about this event less than 24 hours before the end of it.  Ran outside just as the ISS was sailing overhead last night and was able to receive image 8 of 12 (Apollo 8 50th anniversary) by holding my UV-5R’s speaker mic up to my phone running Robot36.  As I had just downloaded the app a few minutes prior and didn’t have much of a chance to figure it out, I ended up losing the image when I closed the app (controls are a bit weird in the app).

I went outside again this morning ahead of when the ISS was supposed to be overhead.  I managed to catch the tail end of image 4 and caught all of image 5, but again screwed that up.  The app will auto-save the image at various times, but once it gets to the bottom of the screen, it will overwrite whatever came before it.  So I ended up losing the top where it says NASA On The Air.

All in all, it was pretty fun.

Captured images are below: