Where did the month go? February found me involved with the Camp Belzer Group (WD9BSA) for my first VE session with their team. I had a great time and we were able to facilitate some license upgrades as well as some new licensees. I actually participated in two VE sessions, one held the following day for some folks who were unable to attend the first session.
I gave up on finding some good weather and finally braved the single digit temps long enough to get my antenna launcher out and get my primary HF antenna back up and running. So I’m back on the air once again.
The shack is coming together nicely and I’m looking forward to building a custom bench in the next couple of weeks so that I can keep my service monitor, oscilloscope and other tools in a much easier place.
I was finally able to get my Echolink node moved over to IRLP/EchoIRLP and migrated from the Windows XP laptop over to a Raspberry Pi. For the most part it’s working well, but when I connect my 70cm machine to the K3HTK 33cm machine in Noblesville we experience some weird audio anomalies. So far we’ve been unsuccessful in tracking them down. In the meantime we’re linking our systems via IRLP instead of Echolink which ironically works just fine, even using the same hardware.
I’ve been ask to doing a presentation at the Indianapolis Hamfest titled, “Meet the Raspberry Pi.” Ed Valasek, K3HTK, will be assisting me with the presentation, but we hope to give those curious about the platform a good introduction as well as list some of the ham radio related possibilities, many of which Ed and or myself have experimented with. If you have any questions or suggestions on the topic, please let me know. We have some time, but July will be here before we know it.
Assisted a fellow ham (KG8Q) who found me via my website with getting his Motorola XPR 6580 up and running on 33cm.
Attended the Brownsburg Hamfest. Same venue as last year, but seemed like it drew a decent crowd. Was good to visit with some fellow hams.
The Naptown Amateur Group, where I serve as president, will be hosting an ARRL VE session on March 29th from 0900-1200. More details at www.n9ag.org or www.nf9k.net.
Looking forward to vacation in a few weeks and doing some mobile operating as well as stationary once we get down to Gatlinburg.
