Well, it's independence day again. Flags are flying. It's raining. Cassanova owns my shoe.
And he says "Yeah, what's your point?" So everything is pretty much normal around here.

Did finally get around to putting up a swing on the corner of the partially started treehouse. You can't see it in the picture, but it's what the ladder is leaning up against. The floor joists are all that's built, and up 9' on the doug fir. So I figured I'd hang the swing off the corner. It sure did make all the wood rock up there when my son was testing the swing. I had intended to put up a diagonal support for each of the 4 corners but hadn't done it yet. It was required for this one, and it made the corner rock solid, even when swinging. He sure likes to swing on his new swing too, so that's a bonus. Someday I will actually get to building the rest of the dang treehouse.

The Segway 2's control unit runs on a CR-2430 lithium ion watch battery. Just thought I'd share that tidbit.

It's not a great design in my opinion to have a non-rechargeable battery. They could have designed in a loop coil with a diode and put in an alternating current magnetic field in the unit so that the field induces a current in the loop and it then could charge a small battery.

If my $50 electric toothbrush can do this why cant the $5000 Segway...

"CQ Field Day, CQ Field Day from kilowatt seven romeo ... K7R!"

That phrase is now permanently burned into my synapses. After operating or logging for almost the entire time from 11am Saturday to 11am Sunday, that phrase has been said literally thousands of times. I did take a nap between 2am and 5am Sunday, but basically that was just because the noise on the 80m band was so loud and my back was thrashed from sitting at a wooden picnic table for hours and hours. We operated continuously either calling CQ or scanning and pouncing on others calling CQ. It was interesting some times that we could hear two parties clearly who couldn't hear each other very well at all.

From what I heard, the propagation wasn't very good. Most of the contacts I made were along the west coast. Alaska, BC, Washington, Oregon, California. We did get some southwest and east coast stations too, but mostly on the west coast. The antenna was a sky-loop, suspended up about 60 feet, from half a dozen ropes to tall trees all around the perimeter of the lawn. It was a pretty amazing sight for a temporary antenna. Thanks to Icom for letting us borrow the 756 Pro III radios, those were pretty cool. I learned a little about the rig, but mostly just enough to operate for the contest. It sure would have been fun to make some foreign contacts for sure though. Here is a video from a guy in Seattle (K7HV) who made contact with one of our stations as his second contact.

As a team, we made lots of contacts in a lot of different modes. I personally operated the SSB station on 20m, 40m, and 80m for the day. We were operating 5A (5 simultaneous transmitters), completely independent of commercial power, on a total of three generators. I don't have the final numbers yet but I think the team logged over a thousand contacts. We used the N3FJP logging software which is user friendly but unfortunately relies on continuous network connectivity which is hard to keep running 24/7. I hooked my laptop up to the 27" wide screen LCD TV so the operator could get a clear picture of the software with the callsign and location and make sure both the operator and the logger got the data correct. That part wasn't a hardship...

The generators were fairly reliable until we realized that one was putting out only about 70V so we had to shut it down. The second one ran fine until 9PM when its solenoid failed, and the crew had to figure out how to repair the thing in the heat and growing darkness... They got the job done and got it back on line within an hour. Since we had the radios running direct from AC power from the generators, not only did we lose all wifi communications, we also lost contact time in the contest. Next time we will run all the radios off of car batteries, charged by an Astron charger running off the gen. We probably could have run the radio for 4 hours just off the battery I figure. My generator has a direct 12VDC output as well as the AC, so I could use that for a much more reliable and direct approach to emergency power.

The weather was hot as hell. And I've been there (SoCa), so I know. The thermometer under the awning at my operating station read 95 for almost the entire day Saturday. It didn't cool down to even 80 until after 9pm. There were few breezes and they only blew hot air around. It was really pretty brutal being out on the grass for that long in that heat.

We shut down Sunday at 11am, just as it was beginning to top 90 degrees again. Fortunately, we were all packed up and leaving the park by 1PM. We had a large crew, so cleanup was pretty fast. All in all there were some fun times, but the heat and bugs at night really took most of the fun out of it for me. For sure the next time I do emergency communications, I will be operating INSIDE my trailer instead of next to it.

This year for our annual Canada trip, we decided to venture not far from the border. The cost of fuel towing the trailer to the far reaches of the planet is now doubly prohibitive. While we complain about $4.30 gas here in Seattle, the Canadians are paying C$6.00 for theirs. A dollar and a half per liter in Vancouver was the norm.

We stayed in a "RV resort" campground in Hazelmere. I thought it was rather interesting that there were campers of all sorts, tent campers, RV campers, trailers, and class-A motorhomes. There were also lots of fifth-wheel trailers and small mobile homes that apparently are for permanent residents there. I have never seen permanent residents at a campground before, mixed in with the campers. Must be some kind of thing they are doing to exploit a loophole and avoid taxes I figure. There was a duck pond, a playground, and a small stream that runs through the park. It was a rather large place, probably about 50 acres I would guess. Lots of grassy areas too. The park was hosting a dog show for the weekend when we arrived. They had wifi, and we had a full hookup for the trailer, so it was rather civilized. However, my son and I were chased out of the hot tub rather rudely by one of the volunteer staff there. True we were breaking the rule on the spa because my son was under the age limit, but I didn't think the response was appropriate. So, other than a bit of attitude from the people, the place was fairly reasonable. It wasn't cheap though. $42 US a night for the full hookup spot (1.01C$ = 1.00US$ this trip). The weak dollar and the price of fuel certainly made this Canada trip the most expensive one we've ever taken - and that includes one where we drove all the way to Banff several years ago.

Vancouver is an interesting city. The building architecture and the city layout is different from any other city I have ever seen. High-rise apartment buildings are the norm in this downtown city. Whereas in downtown Seattle, about half of the high-rise buildings are residential and half are offices. The buildings are on average 30-50 floors I would guess. There are a lot of cars and traffic is heavy around rush hour. I can't imagine that there are more people that live in downtown Seattle than downtown Vancouver, but that's what it says online. It just seems to me that there are about 10x more apartments in Vancouver than in Seattle.

This year, we decided to visit Stanley Park - a very large park right on the edge of downtown Vancouver. We drove to the park and found a parking spot near the aquarium. There is a playground, and lots of other places to sit and relax in the park. The weather was good for us, just at 70F (21C) and bright blue skies. We hiked around the park for a while, and my son played on the playground equipment. We walked over to what we thought was the teahouse restaurant, looking for high tea. However, contrary to the brochures, the restaurant gone out of business and was taken over by a brew pub. Apparently it is seasonal, and we were there for its opening day. Food was OK, but prices seemed quite high. Don't think I'll need to go back to that one. We took the free shuttle bus around the park's outside loop road, trying to see all the sights from the different vantage points the park offers. It's a rickety old street car type bus, so it rattles pretty good. But it's free and fairly convenient.

I opted out, but the rest of the family decided to go to the Vancouver Aquarium there in the park, to see the sights below the bay. The beluga whales were the main attraction, and of course my son thought those were pretty cool. The pregnant beluga whale Qila had just given birth to a baby female whale a few days before our visit, so there were lots of people there to see the newborn calf. The aquarium has good web coverage with live whale cams, so they are fun to watch.

We drove out to Point Roberts, a small bastion of Washington state on a peninsula, south of Vancouver. The only way one can drive to this small Washington town is through Canada. It always sounded like fun, so this year we did it. We stopped for lunch to watch the orca whales playing in the sound. We didn't get a lot of great pictures, because they were about a quarter mile off shore, and we didn't have access to a boat. We did see a couple of them jump out of the water though, so that was fun. It was kind of interesting to see some of the Canadian homes that back up to the border. Some had hedges or fences that were just on the Canada side of the border, and others didn't have anything except a lawn that reached down to the small drainage ditch that was just on the US side of the border. It is interesting that there is no border fence, and only a marble obelisk every half mile or so to note the boundary.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip. The orca whales were a nice surprise bonus. Canada is definitely an interesting place, just a little bit different. It's nice to get out for our little change of pace every year, but it sure is nice to come home too.

My son begins his career as an impressionist photographer.

This post details the construction of the Mobile Packet Server project that I designed earlier this month. This server is a complete Windows Server, Packet TNC, and 40W VHF radio in a complete waterproof portable package. I used what I had on hand, a 30 cal. ammo can.

Next, I cut a couple pieces of 1/4" plywood the size of the motherboard (6 7/8" square) and the power supply (6 7/8 x 2") and match drilled the holes for screws. I used #6-32 flat head screws, and zipped them in to the holes with a power screwdriver into a nut on the top side. I then used some LockTite glue to hold the boards in place. These were the only things that required attachment, everything else was just held in place by the tight spaces.



Then I installed the main board...



and then the power supply and all the power wiring...



I installed the battery, the radio, the WiFi card, and last the TNC, which slipped nicely down between the radio and the motherboard. The battery and radio are on the right side, while the motherboard and power supply are on the left. The TNC goes between them, and it is easily lifted out if needed. The laptop hard drive was stuck vertically up against the battery and the flat ribbon cable folded up between it and the motherboard so it didn't touch anything, and was cushioned and held in place.

Here is the completed design:


I installed the optional external USB ports because it was so hard to get to the ports on the main board which are just below (above in this picture) the serial cable (white cable). With the serial port, the monitor cable, and the keyboard all going into there, it was easier to run the USB mouse off the external port.

This package is still on the air (shown below, in actual operation) since construction, and it is a self-contained unit that can run on its own without any physical connection to anything else for about an hour on the 7AH gell cell battery that is built-in. This includes the 12VDC monitor, which runs off one of the power cables coming from the battery bundle. The only thing required for operation is an antenna for the VHF radio. It has a spare power pole power connection (in addition to the input power connection), and a spare coax power cable to run another TNC or GPS if needed. Complete specs are below.

This RMS packet node for Winlink services the Redmond, WA area on 145.670 MHz FM simplex. The portability of this system gives the operator a significant advantage for emergency communications. The package is rugged, and literally requires only a mag mount antenna to be on the air in about 60 seconds from opening the box. An operator could throw it in his front seat, power it off his 12V power plug, and drop a mag mount 2m antenna on the roof and be able to have a mobile packet node able to be placed at an optimum communications point to support communications personnel.



Computer: Via Epia 600 main board and CPU, 512MB ram, 60GB laptop hard drive, 4 USB ports
Software: Windows Server 2003, and RMS Packet (by W5SMM and KN6KB)
Monitor: 12VDC KDS 17" LCD display, powered by coax connection from battery
Network: 100MB ethernet and 802.11B WiFi
Node Controller: KPC-9612 dual-port TNC, powered by coax connection from battery
Power: 7AH Gell-Cell lead acid battery, and external input - power pole connection on 2' cable.
Spare power pole and coax output connections also wired in to power/charge other devices.
Radio: Icom IC-228H 40W 2m VHF, powered by power pole connection from battery

Issues
In a real-world portable situation, I would probably want everything to be insulated, just in case. Being that it's inside a metal ammo box, anything could happen if it got jolted just right. This is just a proof of concept, but it seems to be working out well.

The board puts out about 15W or so of heat I figure, and it does not escape readily now, being that all the gear is jammed up against it, and it's in a box. The CPU and GPU are fanless, so they depend on air dissipation, which isn't happening in this design. I added a small 12V fan (not shown in the pictures) that connects to the spare power pole connection, and just sits on top of the motherboard at the lower left corner of the box. That fan moves enough air to keep it all cool and happy, but it isn't mounted it just sits there. And there's no fan guard, so watch your fingers. It's loud, and probably pumps about twice as much air as needed down into the case, so I may add a SPST switch across a 470 ohm resistor, in line with the +12 for a high-low switch.

There are no "front panel" controls for power, reset. The DIN connector is buried on the motherboard, and I'd have to figure out where to mount the switches.

There is no power switch. When the battery is connected, everything is live, since everything is wired directly back to the battery (to avoid noise and ground loops). I will have to add a 20A 12V SPST toggle switch someplace, which I can wire in-line with one male and one female spade quick-connect, to turn off the battery (and turn off the unit if not under external power).

The computer is S L O W. Its an old board. The newer fanless Epia boards have a bit more horsepower, but I think pump out a few more watts of heat as well and they cost a couple hundred bux. Perhaps there's a way to get the fan at the bottom of the case somehow. There are new Via board designs such as the Pico and the Nano that might better support this design, but they are even pricier. Plus they would take some custom connectors and some fancy wiring to make them interface with the rest of the system. Perhaps after I win the lottery...

Other than these minor things, it seems to be a fairly workable design. Feel free to post any questions.
73 de KD6GKD

Since my son is Spider-man, Batman, and Superman, obviously I have become Superdad... Today I now have a new Superdad shirt to proclaim it proudly to the world. Father's day is definitely a nice thing. It's a second day per year that I get to take it a bit easier. Birthday is the other day. Sometimes it's really not easy being a dad, and I don't really feel like I'm doing a super-job most of the time. But, at least my family seems to like my work so far. I guess fatherhood is always a work in progress.

Well, since it's bright and sunny (almost 70° today) perhaps a visit to the park will be in order. Definitely will have to grill up something outside this evening at least. Perhaps even a mowing of the lawn will occur today as well. Is there a baseball game on today? Apparently the M's are ahead 2-1 in the 5th. Haven't watched a single game this year. Not a great year for this town's ball team. "Rebuilding." Yeah. That's it...