The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

I’ve been able to decode my first few APT images from NOAA satellite passes using CubicSDR and the SDRPlay RSP1A with a vertical 2M VHF antenna (Diamond x50a).   So far the images are full of static!  Will try my basic RTL-SDR and the new Fundcube dongle NOAA APT (Linux) - Automatic Picture Transmission. Receive and decode images from weather satellites. Currently only 3 active NOAA satellites transmit APT images; NOAA 15: 137.62MHz. NOAA 18: 137.9125MHz. NOAA 19: 137.1MHz. https://noaa-apt.mbernardi.com.ar/ https://noaa-apt.mbernardi.com.ar/guide.html  Finally,  Auto137 is another exciting project for future follow up: https://gitlab.altillimity.com/altillimity/auto137 SDRPlay RSP1A https://www.sdrplay.com/rsp1a/ Funcube Donlge Pro+ http://www.funcubedongle.com/ Nooelec HF Bundle - NESDR SMArt https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-bundles/nesdr-smart-hf.html

Quick Start guide for getting RTL-SDR set up for Linux and Gqrx.   This guide was written for Linux Mint 19.3 but works well under Kubunto 20.04.  Thank you Ken Ranous, KAOSBL! https://ranous.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/rtl-sdr4linux_quickstartguidev20.pdf Other resources to set up and configure CubicSDR with SDRPlay RSP1A (API v3.06). https://github.com/cjcliffe/CubicSDR/releases/tag/0.2.4 https://appimage.github.io/CubicSDR/ https://www.sdrplay.com/rsp1a-software/ https://www.sdrplay.com/downloads/ https://www.rickmakes.com/cubicsdr-basic-setup-on-ubuntu-20-04-lts-with-rtl-sdr-blog-v3/

I've been following this project from Andrew KC2G - this is a good alternative to VirtualBox under linux. nCAT and nDAX give you native support for FlexRadio under Linux (Kubuntu 20.04) this evening. https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/7986862/announce-experimental-cat-dax-clients-for-linux You can download the nCAT and nDAX binaries to run locally depending on your linux configuration, your may may need to build your own versions from source using GO. Details for each are on the project github pages. https://github.com/kc2g-flex-tools/nCAT/releases https://github.com/kc2g-flex-tools/nDAX/releases If you download the binaries don't forget to chmod +x , then start each from a command line terminal (note the options and output): cwhite@superstudio:~/Downloads$ ./nCAT-linux-amd64 -headless 9:59PM INF Registering client 9:59PM INF Got client handle handle=0x6AFCEBCB 9:59PM INF Looking for slice slice_id=A 9:59PM INF Found slice slice_idx=1 ~~~~~ cwhite@superstudio:~/Do...

 QTH - Home @ Dyer St. - Saw and add today for the new ICOM 705 rig.  QRP. Field Operations.   I hope to buy it this fall for field work (along with solar charging for LiFePO4  batteries).    But first i need to get digital modes up and running at home, and preferably natively on my Kubuntu 20.04 LTS linux box.  I installed Fldigil Flrig and Flarq from the  Software Center.  Hamlib was already installed, probably from dependencies.    I also took the opportunity to install GPredict for my future satellite tracking needs.   Special thanks to W1HKJ for supporting Linux!  Yaesu FT-991 looks pretty stable.   Flex-6400M is still in beta.   I'll try working with both. W1HKJ  http://www.w1hkj.com/ I also found some useful articles (albeit dated) on Reddit which led me to several key resources. http://www.linuxwolfpack.com/hamradio.php http://www.linuxwolfpack.com/ft991-fldigi-linux.php Todd Will...

https://www.sarcnet.org/rotator-mk1.html Mini Satellite-Antenna Rotator Mk1 This project is a portable device used to automatically point a directional antenna towards an orbiting satellite.  Additional items to purchase not in the build list: 20W solar panel 10A MPPT Solar Charge Controller 12V 7AH SLA Battery 12V-USB Power Converter Raspberry Pi, running Gpredict and Hamlib rotctld/rigctld LCD Monitor, Mouse and Keyboard Dual-band Arrow antenna Yaesu FT-817 transceiver Our Mini Satellite-Antenna Rotator Amsat Status Tracker Page: https://www.amsat.org/status/ Additional Links: https://www.amsat.org/product/2020-edition-of-getting-started-with-amateur-satellites-digital-download/ Tom Schuessler N5HYP:   https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AOE7WZa2PXgZmoU&cid=223F2BAE7ABEB326&id=223F2BAE7ABEB326%211841&parId=223F2BAE7ABEB326%211766&o=OneUp

There are a number programs available to help beacon listeners figure out which beacon is transmitting on which frequency at any given time. https://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/beaconprograms.html

Recipe for a future project - This is an TDOA (Time Difference Of Arrival) antenna switcher that, when combined with a radio receiver, will tell the direction to a transmitter via LEDs. https://www.byonics.com/tdoa https://k5rwk.groups.io/g/main/message/7683 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmitter_hunting http://www.146970.com/PDFs/TDOA%20Phasenpeiler.pdf

Working post for useful articles and recommendations on DIY HF antennas. https://www.hamfesters.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Stealth-Antenna-Guide.pdf http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/9106023.pdf https://hamradioschool.com/your-first-dipole-antenna/ https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-propagation/dipole-antenna/hf-ham-band-dipole-construction-80-40-20-15-10-meters.php

Tonight I received this email: "Welcome Chris Wite KI5JBP to The Richardson Wireless Klub!"  Turns out their next MOTA is tomorrow night, which I plan on joining K5RWK  via 147.120. http://www.k5rwk.org/home/repeater-information/ To Do List: Base Station - So Many Options To Consider! https://www.gigaparts.com/yaesu-ft-dx101d-hf-50mhz-sdr-transceiver.html https://www.gigaparts.com/yaesu-ft-dx3000d.html https://www.gigaparts.com/kenwood-ts-590sg.html https://www.gigaparts.com/icom-ic-7610-hf-50mhz-100w-transceiver.html https://shop.flexradio.com/signature-series-radios/ Power Supply https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/ysu-fp-1030a https://www.gigaparts.com/mfj-4035mv.html https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/mfj-4245mv https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/asr-rs-35m-ap Mobile https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=71-003327 Antennas https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dmn-x50a https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/mfj-1838 Antenna Tuner: https://ww...

Today I passed both the Technician and General amateur radio license exams.  No Morse code testing is done but CW is still fun and encouraged to learn.  Special thanks to the VEs at WB5QNG in Plano who were able to administer the tests remotely using Zoom+ExamTools. I have a Baofeng F8HP Mobile radio - 8 Watts, dual band both 2M and 70CM bands - VHF (136-174MHz), UHF (400-520MHz).  I’m also exploring software defined radios - there are some really good SDR dongles for monitoring local transmissions and and analyzing RF spectrum.  CubicSDR and gqrx both work well with Ubuntu. https://wb5qng.org/ https://hamstudy.org/ https://baofengtech.com/bf-f8hp https://gqrx.dk/ https://cubicsdr.com/ Check out my Amazon Kindle reading library:

Posting “for a friend.” After 30 years I decided to resume my studies for the Technician Class Amateur Service operators license.  Aka “Ham” for the LIDs out there like me.  I’m also going to pass the Code Exam.  But instead of painfully memorizing tables of CW codes I’m going to try the KOCH METHOD to learn reflexively. http://www.arrl.org/ http://aa9pw.com/morsecode/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#/media/File%3AInternational_Morse_Code.svg https://jgweb.us/ham/hamStudy.php https://www.gordonwestradioschool.com/main/page_home_page.html

A week before the Coronavirus lockdown, I replaced the old Shuttle XPC computer that I built in 2010 as my primary workstation at home.  A lot has changed since then! I decided on a stylish, full sized  HTPC case with ATX motherboard instead of the Shuttle barebones kits I've been using from Newegg since 2004. I sourced the parts thru the local Microcenter in Richardson - apparently Fry's isn't what it used to be, and I didn't want to wait on shipping.  Special thanks to  The Tech Buyer's Guru  for design inspiration and component recommendations! New Build Specs Silverstone Grandia GD09 case with aluminum finish Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO WIFI Motherbord PowerSpec 550 Watt 80 Plus Bronze ATX Power Supply AMD Ryzen 5 3400G with Radeon Vega Graphics APU Crucial 2x8GB Ballistix DDR4-3200 Black Memory - 16GB Total Reused Components: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2 SATA SSD LG Super Multi Internal 16x Blu-ray Optical Drive (WH16NS40) Old and New Benchmar...

Reposted from  AskUbuntu .   A lot of trouble for an easy fix.   I verified with Ubunstu Studio 19.04 with iOS 13.2.3 Ubuntu 18.04 / iOS 11.4 This version of Ubuntu has the latest libimobiledevice (at the time of release) so it supports iOS 11.4. There is a propblem with the Gnome integration, though. It shows the Documents folder (app folders). In addition to the tip below by @diego, here's a simple way to get to the pictures folder (this works if the iOS Documents show up for you but not the pictures): Open the iDevices Documents folder in Nautilus. Press CTRL + L to get the real address which will look like afc://YOURSERIAL:3/ Remove trailing colon and number and press ENTER (i.e. it should just read afc://YOURSERIAL ) You should now see your iDevices system folders, including DCIM.

Been a while since I posted but wanted to grab some old DV files from the Video Camera.   A lot of peple report firewire support being broken in many linux distros, but figuring out how to login to my old blog was a tad bit harder than getting ieee1394 interfaces working again on my linux system! Steps for future reference 1.  Install Ubuntu Studio . Note:  While I've been using LinuxMint for many years, I felt like a change anyway. 2. Set Up Firewire IRQ Priorities.   Confirmed changes on my system: cat /etc/default/rtirq RTIRQ_NAME_LIST="rtc firewire snd usb i8042" RTIRQ_NONE_THREADED="rtc firewire snd" 3.  Reboot - Here's output of dmesg and lspci $dmesg |grep firewire [ 1.603804] firewire_ohci 0000:04:09.0: added OHCI v1.10 device as card 0, 4 IR + 8 IT contexts, quirks 0x41 [ 2.110941] firewire_core 0000:04:09.0: created device fw0: GUID 0011066600000215, S400 [ 90.935327] firewire_core 0000:04:09.0: phy config: new root=ffc1, ga...

Linux Support for the Parallax BOE-BOT (Board of Education Robot) I'm leading a robotics class for the Boys and Girls Club of Collin County on Saturdays. Today I got my BOE-BOT working with Linux over USB! (albeit the interface is still limited to the command line). Here's how I did it: 1) Download the Basic Stamp Tools for Linux from SourceForge 2) Extract to a local directory and make/make install (w/ sudo when necessary) 3) Plug your Boe-Bot into the USB port, and use the "dmesg" command to deterime the correct port. My port was ttyUSBO: usb 2-3: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0 usb 2-3: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001 usb 2-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 usb 2-3: Product: FT232R USB UART usb 2-3: Manufacturer: FTDI usb 2-3: SerialNumber: A7005rCF 4) Create a symbolic link from your USB port to /dev/bstamp and to the Parallax Tokenizer shared library: bash...

Good-bye Samba. Hello CUPS! I've finally resolved a long standing issue printing from windows PC (xp and vista!) to the laser printer attached to my Fedora based linux workstation. So far this solution has been very reliable and doesn't required SAMBA. 1) In Fedora, Define a " Raw Print Queue " and make sure its shared (select the "Generic" drop down when you reach the "Printer model" step of the wizard, then select "Raw Print Queue") 2) In Windows XP (or Vista), "Add Printer", select "Connect to a printer on the Internet", and use the CUPS URL for the raw print queue on your Linux workstation (mine is http://192.168.0.102:631/printers/Raw) 3) Print a test page from Windows. If you have a problem make sure you have the correct Windows/XP/Vista print drivers installed, just as if the printer were connected locally.

2009 Quotes “We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard… because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” (JFK) “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent… It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” (Charles Darwin) “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” (Henry Kissinger) "Do, or do not. There is no 'try.’" (Jedi Master Yoda) “Look for the sudden and significant change…” (Judy Spitz)

For the Children! 2008 Softball Champions -- Corporate Challenge - City of Richardson Continuing a fine tradition of winning for Texans Credit Union, our team won gold this year with the Division D Softball tournament . We started the tournament with Game 1 on Saturday morning at 8am and led the team to a 6-2 win. The Texans then made it through the tournament with one loss (4-14) Sunday afternoon in a double-elimination gold medal round. We played the final gold medal round with lots of passion and energy on Sunday afternoon. Coming from behind with 6-8 deficit, we gained four runs to post a 10-8 lead. However, our opponents managed to tie the game 10-10 with a minute left on the game clock. The Texans again rallied with a 1 run and held our opponents scoreless in the bottom of last inning to win the gold medal 11-10. The Richardson Corporate Challenge is an Olympic style competition involving many athletic (and non-athletic events) held in the fall of each year. This charit...

Resolving GDM issues with Fedora 9 (Sulpher) GDM is not fully supported in Fedora 9 because GDM was rewritten during the GNOME 2.21 release cycle ( ref ). gdmsetup is missing so you cannot customize your login and I had issues with user switching ( Cannot communicate with GDM (The GNOME Display Manager)). Also, GDM would not put my monitor into powersaving mode from the login screen which was a real issue. To resolve I reverted back to the fedora 8 versions of gdm and fast-user-switch applet. Note: this could be "dangerous" (ie, see below - you may be required to recreate your user account). 1) Download fc8 rpms for gdm, fast-user-switch-applet and fedorainfinity-gdm-theme (required to resolve a gdm dependecy) gdm-2.20.1-5.fc8.i386.rpm fast-user-switch-applet-2.20.0-1.fc8.i386.rpm fedorainfinity-gdm-theme-8.0.1-1.fc8.noarch.rpm 2) Remove the fc9 versions of gdm and gdm-user-switch-applet $sudo yum erase gdm 3) Install the fc8 versions: $sudo rpm...

The Everyman’s Library 100 Essentials The Aeneid by Virgil The Analects by Confucius Animal Farm by George Orwell Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The Arabian Nights by Husain Haddawy The Audubon Reader by John James Audubon Beloved by Toni Morrison The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window by Raymond Chandler Black Mischief, Scoop, The Loved One, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Carried Away by Alice Munro The Castle by Franz Kafka Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Collected Stories by Raymond Chandler Collected Stories by Roald Dahl Collected Stories by Franz Kafka Collected Stories by W. Somerset Maugham The Complete Henry Bech by John Updike The Complete Short Novels by Anton Chekhov The Complete Short Stories by Evelyn Waugh Crime and Punishment...