Moving and Environmental Sensors

Moving preparations continue, with the current target of hitting the road NLT 15 September.  As part of this, the weather station has been taken offline and packed up.  As a result, weather.kl1v.net is no longer going to be updated.  I am keeping the page up for now, until I have an opportunity to download and archive the database.  There's a few interesting events in there I want to preserve, such as the barometric pressure spike from the Tongan volcanic eruption.

Farewell Alaska, but hopefully not forever. I go to reluctantly become a Texan.

Experimenting with KV4P Hardware

I recently obtained KV4P hardware, and on a whim decided to plug it into the Android based head unit I installed in my truck. While the KV4P app does work, it doesn't play very well with this particular head unit, and doesn't pick up the gps.  On the other hand, aprsdroid works extremely well, and the NA7Q edition has support for offline maps.  Definitely a 'warrents further investigation' arrangement.

Ham Projects for 2026 - With Some Bonuses

It is beginning to look like spring in Alaska once again, and the itch to do projects has resurfaced.  In no particular order... 

 

Site Summit BBS

A LinBPQ based packet BBS is still on the menu for Site Summit.  Minimum capabilities will include VHF 145.010 at 1200 baud, UHF 440.050 at 9600 baud, BBS functionality, chat, and winlink support on both frequencies.  I would also like to extend VARA support, at least on the UHF port to support winlink operation.

Optical Comms Project

Utilize two bi-di SFP modules with appropriate lenses for free space optical communications at distance.  It is my hope that I can achieve a stable connection over at least one mile.  Doubt it will turn into anything, but it tickles my scientific curiosity.

VARA HF APRS IGate

Deploy a VARA HF APRS igate to replace the failed robust packet igate on 30m.  Figure out a more permanent antenna solution for the igate so it is not desensed by QRO at the RSOC.

Hermes Lite 2 - Hard Rock 50 amp interface

Current direction I am leaning is to interface an ESP32 or similar to the Hard Rock 50 serial port to enable a web interface for the amp.  This will allow whatever software is driving the radio to send band data and read SWR over the network.

WiFi HaLow mesh experimentation

802.11ah utilizing babel routing to support a low cost and easy to deploy part 15 compliant MANET.  Think along the lines of Data Slayer, just with less clickbait titles. 

Truck radio installation

I have an ambitious list of radios I want to install in my truck.  First among them is a VHF/UHF rig of some sort.  Currently I am leaning towards a V-7600 paired with a head unit running android, to allow APRS function neatly integrated into the vehicle.  I also plan to install my IC-706, connected to a tuner and 102" CB whip, and a mini pc running Ion2G for basic ALE capabilities and to be able to do winlink on the go and some drive up POTA.  Having the android head unit would also support some other fun radio modes, such as pocket25 for scanning digital LMR on the go, or hardwiring a meshtastic node into the truck.

DIY Drone

 Build an endurance tricopter as a platform for cameras, utilizing 802.11ah for the primary control channel.  Use a steamdeck or similar as its ground station.

 HF antennas

 Take down at least one of the end-fed longwire antennas and replace it with the terminated folded dipole.  Possibly also a single band dipole or OFCD along the eaves of the garage.

Commercial Digital Trunked Radio Scanning

Recently, a small program called DSD+ released a free version of the software allowing following of digital trunked radio systems with only one sdr dongle.  Previous versions of this program required two dongles in order to effectively follow the trunk transmission and voice transmissions simultaneously.  I've been playing with it at home, monitoring the ski resort, power company, and most interesting to me, the public safety radio network.

Alaska Land Mobile Radio (ALMR) is a P25 Phase II/TDMA VHF radio network covering most of Southcentral Alaska, up to Fairbanks, and down the panhandle to Juneau.  The municipality of Anchorage has a complimentary system, referred to as Anchorage Wide Area Radio Network (AWARN) on 700MHz covering the Anchorage borough and networked with ALMR to transparently pass traffic.  It never fails to surprise me how much information leaks out of the system.  As shown in the picture above, each site advertises who it is, who their neighbors are and what frequencies their control channels are, and shown in the picture below, the health of the network.

Even if a voice channel is encrypted, the network will still tell you what radios are in the area based on who is subscribed to that particular repeater, and who is talking to who, since by necessity each radio has a unique ID number.  While I don't have a transmit capable sdr to verify this, I have read of attacks where individual radios respond to spoofed network pings without notifying the user.  Such an attack would make DFing of a targeted radio trivial with a transmitter and a Kraken, although the attacker would have to have done their homework beforehand and be transmitting themselves, opening them up to potential counter-attack.

Another potential attack vector would be what amounts to a wifi deauth attack, where a jamming station monitors a site or multiple sites for subscription requests and immediately sends a corresponding unsubscribe request, effectively conducting targeted jamming of a repeater at a lower power level than dumb blanket jamming.

All of this would constitute comparatively sophisticated attack vectors.  To date, I am unaware of any such attacks occurring in the wild.

Cross Reference of Radio Services Avalable to the Individual

 The CERT group in my hometown has become interested in radios for its members.  It always comes back to the question of "who do you want to talk to and how far do you want to talk?"  Therefore, I generated a basic chart of radio services available to the average person (that is, not business band or anything esoteric).  I tried to cite CFR where available, but keep in mind when reading this, it is a generalization.

 

 

	Citizens Band (95.901)	FRS (95.501)	MURS (95.2701)	GMRS (95.1701)	Amateur Technician Class (Part 97)
Frequency Range	Low VHF 27MHz	UHF 460MHz	VHF 150MHz	UHF 460MHz	Low VHF and up 29MHz+
Channels	40	22	5	30 Note: shared with FRS except for repeater channels	Unlimited (Subject to local band plan agreements)
License Required	No.  License by FCC rule	No. License by FCC rule.  Secondary user, so subject to interference from primary licensees.	No. License by FCC rule. Secondary user, so subject to interference from primary licensees.	Yes. $35 license for 10 year term. No test required. License covers licensee + 'family' (95.1705)	Yes. $35 non-refundable fee and 35 question test for 10 year term. License covers individual only.
Maximum Power / Expected Range	4 watts (AM) 12 watts (SSB) Realistic range in rural environment 10-20 mi?	2 watts. Range arbitrarily limited by fixed antenna requirement. Realistic range in rural environment 3-5 mi?	2 watts. Range may be extended by improved external antenna, but no repeaters permitted. Realistic range in rural environment 5-7 mi?	50 watts. Range may be extended by external antenna and repeaters. Simplex range in rural environment 15-25 mi?	1500 watts. Sub bands may have lower limits. 50+mi range simplex in ideal conditions. Repeaters and linking can arbitrarily extend range.
Data	No (95.971)	Yes (95.531(a))	Yes (95.2731 (a) and (b))	Yes (95.1731 (d))	All analog and digital emission types permitted*
Type Accepted Equipment Availability	Inexpensive vehicle mount systems commonly available. Handheld units uncommon with relatively poor performance due to antenna size.	Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Units capable of data transfer uncommon.	Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Units capable of data transfer uncommon.	Inexpensive handheld units commonly available. Vehicle mount systems available. Repeater systems commercially available.	FCC type acceptance not required.

HF APRS

  

In the past, I ran an HF APRS gateway on behalf of KL7AA on 30 meters, using Robust Packet as the transport layer.  It worked well enough, however using a proprietary undocumented mode over amateur frequencies left a bad taste in my mouth.  Supposedly the SCS tracker we were using at the time could handle both robust packet and 300bd ax.25 on the same channel, however I never saw any evidence of 300bd bell being decoded.  The equipment to run robust packet was also expensive, which severely limited uptake.  The killing blow came late last year, when the radio running this HF igate seemed to go deaf, and so I pulled it off the air.

 

Fast forward to this summer, and a fellow ham turns me on to HF APRS again, this time using the VARA softmodem as the transport layer.  A little research turns up WA8LMF, who has already done a lot of the low-level work needed to operate this mode.  So after work one day, I attempt a experimental igate to see if it would be worthwhile.  Within 30 minutes of operation, I pick up a beacon from WA7GMX in the Seattle area!  I definitely think this is something worth pursuing.

 

First order of business is a permanent full time igate.  I haven't quite figured out what form this will take, but I'm inclined to start with an igate at the KL7AA club station, and perhaps another at my home station after I get VHF APRS back online.  With work, it may be possible to gate stations heard over HF to VHF.

 

Vehicle trackers may be a more interesting problem to solve, but thanks to the work of KM4ACK on 73 Linux, VARA has been shown to run reliably on linux and even raspberry pi platforms.  A pi and usb gps interfaced to a mobile HF rig may be a nice tidy platform for a basic HF tracker.  We shall see. 

Unexpected Fossil

Went to buy firewood from the local rock quarry.  Quarry man said he found some fossils and let me pick one out.

🦐 IT'S AS SHRIMPLE AS THAT 🦐

Helped a neighbor pull shrimp pots and was paid with a portion of the catch. Nothing quite like ocean to plate in three hours.

Ham projects for 2025

 2025 has dawned with a fresh list of aspirations for myself.  While some goals, such as a new job, are outside the scope of this blog, there are multiple items that deserve to be listed here, mostly to hold my feet to the fire.

Site Summit BBS:

 I've managed to convince holdouts on the KL7AA board to let me move forward with an upgrade/replacement of the packet node on Site Summit.  The plan is to install a full featured linBPQ based packet node with BBS, forwarding, and Winlink capabilities in its place.  There will be a 1200bd port on 145.010MHz and a 9600bd port on 440.050MHz.  Ideally, this will also be links to the Wasilla node too, although I haven't yet approached the MatSu club on this matter.

Robust Packet HF APRS igate:

 The radio running the Robust Packet HF igate on 10.1473MHz USB has apparently seem to have gone deaf, although I have not dedicated time to in-depth troubleshooting of the system.  For the time being, the igate has been pulled offline, pending future troubleshooting efforts.  The future of this system is, at this time, unknown.

Home shack master plan:

Utilizing my current Hermes Lite 2 and shack pc running Linux Mint, plus hopefully a Hardrock50 amp if I manage to save up the money, my purely personal goal is to have a fully remote HF operating position.  I also plan to bring my VHF igate back online.  I also have a SEA-222 marine HF transceiver, which, if it is stable enough, I plan to press into service as an HF packet node on 14.105MHz LSB (technically 14.102MHz USB, since packet doesn't care, but who's counting).  If all this jank actually ends up working, I may crosslink the HF packet and VHF APRS port, but that's much further down the line.

There's a lot up there, when you start dissecting each piece, and that's before you factor in other obligations, but I think I can pull it off.

~moose

Junkbin GPS Stratum 1 NTP Clock Source (A Work in Progress)

I don't know where most of these parts came from, but when I opened my electronics junk drawer the other day I found an Orange Pi Zero+ and a serial GPS of dubious quality that also featured a PPS out.  With these two parts in hand and a suitable project box, my weekend free time is suddenly consumed with a pending project: build a stratum 1 NTP server using only parts on hand.

OK, but what even is that word salad of a title?

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a method of synchronizing clocks over the internet.  Wikipedia has much better information than I could ever hope to provide here, but the gist is NTP servers are organized hierarchically based on their distance from known stable clock sources.  This distance is referred to as the 'stratum' of the server.  Stratum 0 is a master clock itself, such as a GPS, atomic clock, WWV signal, or other authoritative time source.  Stratum 1 is any NTP server directly attached to a stratum 0 clock.  Since my junk drawer project welds a microcomputer and GPS receiver together, it will (eventually) qualify as stratum 1 (with caveats).

Pulse Per Second (PPS) is a signal put out by time sources to define the precise beginning of a second.  A GPS connected via serial port can vaguely define the time in its NMEA sentences, but PPS provides a stable 'tick-tock' to the time sentences.

New Years' Day aurora

Weather has been weird this winter, with precious few clear nights for stargazing. We got a decent one a week ago though, right as a big solar storm ripped through. I took these shots from my bedroom window.  You can see my weather station and one of the HF antennas in the foreground.

Gull Rock Trail

Hiked about halfway down Gull Rock Trail in Hope today. Reminded me just how out of shape I am, but it was worth it. Hard to take a bad picture on this trail.

AREDN Mesh Access via PFSense Firewall

After several months of wrestling with integrating an AREDN node into my home network, I finally arrived on an iteration that I think I am content with.  It isn't perfect, and I will detail the limitations below, but to sum it up, I am treating the AREDN node as a second WAN, with a bit of tomfoolry to get DNS working properly.

This guide will only allow for access to resources on the mesh.  It will not allow access to the wider internet via the mesh.

Most of the configuration followed the PFSense dual-WAN guide word for word (which can be found here).  As seen in the screenshot above, the connection is set up as DHCP.  One area where I deviated from the guide is unchecking both boxes under the 'Reserved Networks' header, as AREDN utilizes the 10.0.0.0/8 private address space.  On a side note, your home network better not be using the same address space or you're probably going to have a bad day.

The most important key to making all this work is DNS.  If you try and enter your AREDN node's IP address as a DNS resolver for the AREDN connection gateway, PFSense will puke out an error.  This leads to my workaround utilizing PFSense's internal DNS resolver, Unbound.

In PFSense 'services' menu, select 'DNS Resolver' and scroll all the way to the bottom where you will see the header 'Domain Overrides'. Add an override for the domain "local.mesh" pointing at the IP address of your local AREDN node.  This allows unbound to redirect all DNS queries ending in local.mesh to the mesh node.

And that's it! Point your browser at your node and browse around the mesh to make sure everything works as expected.  Note that this is not a perfect solution.  For example, if you host a service behind PFSense that you also wish to expose to the mesh, you will have to add a second set of rules to expose that device and specific port.  In that scenario, it would also be beneficial to add a static IP in your mesh node as well.  However, for simple access to the larger mesh, this solution is hard to beat.

~ moose

Hermes Lite 2 on the air

I spent last weekend tromping through the woods to get a wire antenna up.  It ended up being longer than I expected, and I eventually would like to get it up higher. Maybe this weekend?  Point being, I have a working receiver. Shown in this picture is SparkSDR, a host program compatible with the HL2, running 8 digital skimmers across 4 different bands simultaneously.

I can't get over how cool SDR'S are.

Next step is getting the antenna higher and after that, transmitting. Hope to be checking into sniper's net soon!

KL1V 

HF APRS IGate

 Nothing like a simple fix to a problem you've been banging your head against for months to humble you...

As a bit of background, one of the APRS systems I manage for the KL7AA club is an HF APRS igate, running robust packet (RPR) on 30m at 10.1473 USB.  Its not my favorite mode, given its closed-source nature, but I will grudgingly admit it performs well.  Having a free software modem version available helps make it more accessible, but that's a rant for another post.

This system has been down for most of the winter, and given the harsh winter storms we've had, I believed the issue to be with either the feedline or the antenna, and began to troubleshoot.  Another club member happened to be close by, and we began discussing the issue.  It was at this point they asked 'is this cable supposed to be plugged in?'

It was the interface cable from the modem to the radio.

All winter this cable had been unplugged, making me chase my tail for months trying to troubleshoot it.  Plug it back in, and the packets immediately started to flow again.

Putting my silly moments out there helps keep me humble.

KL1V

Milestones

 Fiber is pulled all the way through the conduit, into the garage and house.  Confirmed as good end to end with equipment connected on both ends.  Next step is to get radios and hamputer relocated, everything on a UPS, vlans set up, etc etc.  The important takeaway though is I now have a working layer 1 between house and garage!

~shotgun moose

Shotgun Moose goes off half-cocked

 Somewhat expensive lesson to learn, but learn it I did. Always pull cables by their jacket, not their termination.

Internet out to garageshack will (eventually) be provided by a fiber run.  I had purchased a pre-terminated length of fiber with LC connectors on each end.  Off I go, eager to get operational, and I make the mistake of tying pull line to just the LC connector, and not the cable jacket too.

Half way though, the pull line gets really light, and all that comes out the other end is the LC housing, sans any fiber.

Don't be like me! Learn from my mistake!

~shotgun moose

Meshtastic

I've been playing around with meshtastic recently, using three lilygo t-beam units.  So far, performance has been impressive.  Further testing is needed, but I'm inclined to set up a dedicated solar powered base station that can be co-located with the KL7AA-10 digipeater.  This site would provide coverage of the entirety of the Anchorage bowl, at minimum, with the potential to reach south as far as Kenai/Soldotna.  I don't know if nodes would need to be utilizing the same encryption key or range settings in order make use of a hypothetical repeater, but it's an intriguing possibility.

~shotgun moose

KL7JFU Field Day 2023

Jermey, KL7EC put together an excellent video of the KL7JFU sponsored Field Day 2023 up in the MatSu.  Although the bands weren't great, a good time was still had by all involved.

KL7EC does a fantastic job editing his videos.  I would highly recommend checking out his other videos of his POTA adventures.  I can't say enough good about Jermey as an ambassador for ham radio.

 

~shotgun moose

Hello World

 Welcome to my little corner of the internet.  Here I plan to mostly document my ham radio forays, although there may be the occasional rant on here as well.  More to come soon.

~shotgun moose