Yaesu VX-3 Repair

Posted on November 15, 2019 by revmook

I broke the LCD screen on my favorite radio. Luckily, a new display was $0.97 from Yaesu in California. A bit of exploratory disassembly and fiddling with zebra stripes, and the display is back to normal!

Yaesu part number for the LCD is G6090181

W6/CT-225

Posted on November 11, 2019 by revmook

November 10th, 2019. This was a quick activation. I cycled up to the top, made 10 contacts, and was back at the starting point within an hour. Getting to the actual summit is impossible as there is a fence to keep folks out of the antenna area. I didn’t bother setting up the HF station, so I just worked local 146.520 Mhz, 2M FM using the Yaesu 817. RF levels felt high, as my HT was struggling to pull signals from the Mount Wilson repeater which is line of sight to this point. Furthest contact goes to WB2WIK, who was near the Ventura County line.

Date:10/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-225 (Flint Peak)

Time	Call	Band	Mode
22:08z	KM6CEM	144MHz	FM
22:10z	K6LDQ	144MHz	FM
22:12z	KI6UCN	144MHz	FM
22:12z	KK6TDU	144MHz	FM
22:15z	KA6JAC	144MHz	FM
22:15z	WB2WIK	144MHz	FM
22:19z	KA6HGT	144MHz	FM
22:20z	KK6ZVQ	144MHz	FM
22:25z	KN6CJK	144MHz	FM
22:28z	KN6DFX	144MHz	FM

Total distance: 0.7 mi
Max elevation: 1854 ft
Min elevation: 1493 ft
Average speed: 0.00 m/s

Download

AG6N_activationID_398143 Download

https://summits.sota.org.uk/summit/W6/CT-225

W6/CT-150

Posted on November 10, 2019 by revmook

November 9th, 2019 – This was the second summit of the day with Lars, KJ6CBE. The hike up, and down from this point was uncomfortable for me with loose sand and rocks most of the way. The trail starts very steep, then follows the ridge line (also steep) up to a false summit where it flattens out for a bit. Continue along the trail to reach the real summit. I worked 40M, and 20M SSB. Lars worked 2M FM. The radial system on my vertical antenna broke, leaving me with higher SWR than I wanted on 20M. Still made a contact to the east coast. Not bad for 5W at solar minimum.

Date:09/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-150

Time	Call	Band	Mode	Notes
21:35z	K6HPX	7MHz	SSB
21:36z	W6JP	7MHz	SSB
21:38z	K6LDQ	7MHz	SSB
21:41z	KC6ARY	7MHz	SSB	W6/CT-015
21:43z	WC6J	7MHz	SSB
21:45z	K6VVV	7MHz	SSB
21:53z	N4EX	14MHz	SSB
21:54z	WW7D	14MHz	SSB
21:59z	N0RZ	14MHz	SSB

Total distance: 0.54 mi
Max elevation: 4209 ft
Min elevation: 3642 ft
Average speed: 0.00 m/s

Download

AG6N_W6-CT150 Download

https://summits.sota.org.uk/summit/W6/CT-150

W6/CT-021

Posted on November 10, 2019 by revmook

November 9th, 2019. I like this summit. I’ve been up to this location before, not knowing about SOTA. It’s a pretty easy hike with rewarding views. The original fire lookout tower was destroyed in the 2009 Station Fire. 10 years later, they are constructing a new lookout. Lars, KJ6CBE worked 146.520 FM and I worked 20M SSB. My furthest QSO was W4KRN in Virginia. Thanks!

Date:09/Nov/2019 Summit:W6/CT-021 (Vetter Mountain)

Time	Call	Band	Mode	Notes
18:45z	W6RO	14MHz	SSB	Queen Mary
19:05z	WW7D	14MHz	SSB
19:06z	WU7H	14MHz	SSB
19:06z	NW7E	14MHz	SSB
19:07z	NS7P	14MHz	SSB
19:08z	K6QCB	14MHz	SSB
19:10z	W4KRN	14MHz	SSB
19:11z	KJ6DQ	14MHz	SSB
19:13z	VA7VJ	14MHz	SSB
19:16z	K6LDQ	14MHz	SSB
19:17z	K7GT	14MHz	SSB
19:18z	W6RWS	14MHz	SSB	W6/SD-443
19:20z	W7PMF	14MHz	SSB

Total distance: 1.87 mi
Max elevation: 5919 ft
Min elevation: 5374 ft
Average speed: 0.00 m/s

Download

AG6N_W6-CT021 Download

https://summits.sota.org.uk/summit/W6/CT-021

W6/CT-226

Posted on October 21, 2019 by revmook

W6/CT-226, Cerro Negro Benchmark – 575m, 1 point

QSOs on 20M, 2M. 5W into a base loaded vertical from QRP Guys. Furthest contact to North Carolina. KJ6CBE was also on 2M.

KJ5MA
K6GBW
K6LDQ
N4EX
W0MNA
WA2USA
W0ERI
KK6DDT
KK6ZVQ
KK6FCC
KM6PRO
KM6CEM
W6VWH
WA6WV
KK6IDV

AG6N_activationID_395940 Download

https://summits.sota.org.uk/summit/W6/CT-226

PAT – A Winlink Cliet

Posted on September 10, 2019 by revmook

Here is how I run Pat with AX25. This assumes Direwolf can key your radio for 2M/ 1200 baud connections to local nodes. I’ve yet to get this actually working, as I live in hole which RF can’t seem to escape.

Run Direwolf, with APRS stuff commented out of the config file. The -p and -c flags are needed.

$sudo direwolf -p -c direwolf_noaprs.conf
This will give a symlink, such as:

Virtual KISS TNC is available on /dev/pts/1 Created symlink /tmp/kisstnc -> /dev/pts/1

Take note of the device number, in this case, /dev/pts/1 Bind the port to AX.25

$ kissattach /dev/pts/1 wl2k AX.25 port wl2k bound to device ax0

Then, run pat. I use a bunch of arguments here, you don need to.

$pat --listen ardop,ax25,telnet http -a 0.0.0.0:8080
Open a browser, and load pat interface on :8080. Please note 0.0.0.0 allows connections from other machines, not just localhost which is useful for VPN.

You noticed that I included ardop in the config – this is a HF modem which needs separate command line arguments for configuration. Basic config is below. 8515 is the port, plughw is the USB sound card for I/O. Find the audio cards by typing aplay -l into the terminal

Download ardop here.

$./ardopc 8515 plughw:1,0 plughw:1,0

Baofeng Charger Mod

Posted on August 24, 2019 by revmook

I really want all my radio junk to run off a single power supply and interconnect with Anderson Power Poles, so I modified a Baofeng charger base to do just that!