Tag: Equipment

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Main Duck Island

Over the summer I had the chance to go camping on Main Duck Island in Lake Ontario. The place is rather inaccessible, unless you have a boat. Luckily, I do know someone who has a boat.

The trip out to the island was fun. I normally don’t get seasick, but I had a very light brunch before we departed and the choppiness of the lake didn’t play nicely with that. There was some talk about diverting to a closer island because of me tightly holding onto the bucket, but I told the skipper to keep on going. No point in turning back half-way to our destination.

We made it and I quickly got off the boat and kissed dry land (clearly I’m no sailor). We were told the island is a busy place most of the time, but when we pulled up to the dock there were no other ships in sight. We set up camp on some high ground near the dock.

The view from the port side of the vessel

We spent the next 2.5 days on the island, exploring what it had to offer. The island used to be settled for a time with a lighthouse, school, some homes and various other buildings. The lighthouse remains but is automated. Not much else exists except a few abandoned buildings and ruins.

The lighthouse. The water was apparently quite low this year, these rocks are normally underwater up to the treeline.
Lightkeeper’s Home
Big ole’ snapper on one of the trails

I also brought an HT with me as well as my Arrow II beam to see what repeaters I could successfully hit from the island. Some good contacts were made across a number of repeaters. My Yaesu FT-70D was programmed with a list of repeaters that fall within 80km of the island. The results of my testing are below:

Near Lighthouse:

  • VE3KTO (Picton) – S9. Had a QSO with VE3GSI.
  • VE3KBR (Kingston) – S1. No QSO.
  • VE3TJU (Picton) – S9. No OSO.

West Side of Island:

  • VA3LGA (Lansdowne) – S5. Had a QSO with VA3ASZ mobile.
  • AC2GE (Dexter, NY) – S6. No QSO.
  • KD2CPX (Dexter, NY) – S1. No QSO.
  • KC2ELX (Watertown, NY) – S4/5. No QSO.

East Side of Island

  • VA3LGA (Lansdowne) – S9. No QSO.
  • AC2GE (Dexter, NY) – S9. Had a QSO with WD0DBT, heard me calling on another repeater and was waiting for me.
  • KD2CPX (Dexter, NY) – S5. No QSO.
  • KC2ELX (Watertown, NY) – S9. No QSO.
  • W2OSC (Oswego, NY) – S9. No QSO.
  • WB2OOY(Watertown, NY) – S9. Heard another station but didn’t catch the full callsign, possibly K3QT-, no response to further calls.
  • W2WLR (Watertown, NY) – S9. No QSO.
  • WN8Z (Fulton, NY) – S1. Very scratchy, no QSO.
    Facing VA3LGA repeater in Lansdowne, ON

    The furthest repeater I was able to connect to was VA3LGA in Lansdowne, ON which, from the lighthouse at the northern tip of the island, is ~72 kilometers. Granted, this is mainly over open water, but has been my furthest VHF contact to date, excluding any packet connections to the ISS in orbit.

    I had originally planned to see if I could do some satellite operations from the island too, but I had forgotten to load my UV-5R into my bag when we departed for Kingston.

    All-in-all it was a nice and relaxing experience with some good testing thrown in. I am hoping to get back out there again next year with more transmitting capabilities.

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    RAM Stubby Mount Update

    As the months rolled by since first modding the RAM Stubby cup holder mount, the rubber fins on the mount began to give up on their job of preventing the thing from sliding around. As a result, the mount began to tip over whenever it was in use. This is not optimal so I fixed it!

    I had some closed cell foam kicking around and cut two small blocks out of it and wedged them between three of the rubber fins. The blocks are a bit thicker than the gaps between the mount and the cup holder. This is holding everything as it should and is now capable of holding 2 HT’s without falling over while cornering. The added benefit is that I can still move the mount between vehicles if needed as the blocks can be re-positioned or removed if necessary.

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    RAM Stubby Modification

    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 weight
    The steel slug
    395g of copper coated BB’s, the container weighs 66g
    Reassembled Stubby base weight
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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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    Camelbak Chute Repair

    This has been my EDC bottle for the last year and a half. A few months ago I noticed that the strap that holds the small lid on had begun to wear through and a few days ago it broke. The lids still function as they should, just the smaller one is no longer attached when it’s open. I didn’t see much point in purchasing a new one so I decided to repair it instead.

    There were two options available for repairing this lid: Cut the green cap retainer down and run a piece of paracord through it for retention or remove the retainer and attach the paracord directly to the cap.  I tried cutting the retainer down first but realized it fit’s the form of the top of the lid behind the cap and wouldn’t work.  It may have been alright if I inverted the retainer on the cap but I decided against that too as the knot in the paracord may still be too big for it. I kept the larger ring of the retainer under the main lid and cut it down so there would be no protrusions.

    I removed the retainer and experimented with normal and gutted paracord.  I could’ve gotten a tighter knot with the gutted paracord but it didn’t feel like it had the same hold as the non-gutted piece.  If it ever slipped off, it would be more difficult to reattach the gutted cord again.

    The non-gutted cord was looped around the gap where the retainer attached to the cap and tied with two overhand knots followed by another knot that I honestly don’t know the name of and then it was sealed with a lighter.

    I wanted extra strength so I melted a small piece of scrap paracord into the entire knot assembly.  It doesn’t look pretty but should hold for awhile.

    Lastly I tied the other end of the cord to the finger loop/handle on the main lid with a slipknot.  This allows me to adjust the length of the cord to better suit how I hold the cap out of the way when I’m drinking from the bottle.

    With these repairs, I don’t imagine the lids should be much of an issue for the foreseeable future.