Radio | Mark-Rodgers

Repeaters can be digipeaters too

September 28, 2011 MRodgers No comments

Almost every Ham Radio club has a 2meter repeater. Lots have 440 repeaters. Only some have a APRS digipeater. If they even do have a APRS digipeater, its almost always an afterthought and not a great setup.Why is it that the repeater gets the nice 200+ foot tower location and the digi gets the mag mount stuck on someone’s mobile home roof?

CB / 10 Meter Antena Hidden In Tree

September 20, 2011 MRodgers No comments

I decided to hide my 10 /11 Meter Antron-99 vertical antenna in one of the trees in m back yard, so that my house and yard doesn’t look like trash with multiple antennas sticking up all over the place. I already have 5 antennas visible outside and more to come, so keeping them hidden and looking nice is important to me. It is mounted to a 8′ pole for now, I might add another 10′ pole to it to get it up a little bit higher. I am feeding it with about 25′ of RG-8 coax, which will go into a coax switch I am building for 10Meter and lower HF bands for my dipole.

Satellite Antenna Rotor Controller Ideas

August 31, 2011 MRodgers No comments

Im looking to build the ultimate Satellite Tracking antenna rotor setup.
This would be based off a dual Arduino Amtel 328 microprocessors. One for inside, one for outside controllers.

Arduino Fire Pager Encoder

August 28, 2011 MRodgers No comments

I got my new Arduino it in the mail today and started playing with it.
My 1st project making a encoder that could send the 2-Tone audio to alert Fire Dept voice pagers, if there ever was an emergency and the fire dispatch tower went down. An ARES or RACES group working with the EOC or 911 dispatch center could easily implement this backup type paging encoder.

HSMM VOIP Phone test

August 26, 2011 MRodgers No comments

Ham Radio High Speed MultiMedia phone test

Today I went to meet up with some local Ham Radio operators to test the HSMM (High Speed MultiMedia) setup and test functionality of phone use. We gathered at the Homer Twp park near Midland, across from the Fire Dept.

Keith, KB8SOE setup a laptop running a PBX server into the a HSMM router to handle and direct all of the calls. He was able to simply add new phones and users in under a minute and have them in the system and ready.

Ham Radio POCSAG encoder

August 06, 2011 MRodgers No comments

I ordered a POCSAG Paging transmitter and receiver system Ebay from a seller back a few months ago and have been playing with it on/off for a while. My idea is to setup a Ham Radio Paging system. The idea isnt new at all. Lots of ham operators have been wanting to do it for a while and I keep hearing about small projects and tests popping up here and there,m but never anything fully running and operational. I would love to see more Hams get involved in it. Its a really neat mode of operation and has tons of possibilities.

The unit I got was a commercial band UHF Transmitter. Ive been testing it with a UHF stubby dummy-load type antenna.
The unit was made by WaveWare and I dont think its made or sold anymore. Its sad, since the POCSAG encoder board inside is really useful for my needs.

My idea is to pull the transmitter from the unit and use my own VHF transmitter. This will allow me to use the freq that I want and use higher power. I have an older Alinco VHF mobile radio and also use an external high power amp. I will post updates once its setup and working on the new radio.

HSMM-Mesh Demo

August 05, 2011 MRodgers No comments

John, W8QN held a HSMM-Mesh (High Speed MultiMedia) demo at the Midland Co Mi ARES/RACES meeting.
I was all excited to see the demo and learn about it, but then when I got there, I was kinda disappointed. I figured we would be hacking code, soldering new crystals, doing hardware mods to the routers. Unfortunately (for me) its too easy to setup, compared to what I thought was involved. Im more of a hands on hacker.

RadioReference.com Audio Feed WordPress Widget

August 02, 2011 MRodgers No comments

RadioReference.com Audio Feed WordPress Widget

This is still in test phase.
You will need to Download and save to your PC, then upload into Plugins. Soon I will have them listed in the main WordPress listing.

APRS Map Widget for WordPress

August 02, 2011 MRodgers No comments

APRS Map Widget for WordPress
This Plugin widget allows you to easily display your APRS location on your WordPress blog, without editing any code. Simply add your Callsign-SSID, add a title, and edit the height and width, if needed.

KC8GRQ-1 APRS Digipeater

July 26, 2011 MRodgers No comments

KC8GRQ-1

This is my main digipeater. The callsign is KC8GRQ-1.
The system runs an older, but rugged Azden PCS-4000 mobile radio. I got the radio for $5 at a local swap, because the mic audio didnt work. It turns out it was just a bad mic element. It didnt matter since I dont need the mic anyways.
Its on a small 2.5 amp power supply, which is enough for the 10w output power that I have it set at.