Category Archives: Digital Communications

November General Club Meeting: Tracking Transpacific Airliners

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 0:00 Pre-meeting chatter 26:30 Meeting Start and Intros 53:30 Tracking Transpacific Airliners Presentation Start 1:27:10 Questions & Answers Meeting Presentation Slides (pdf) Our November Club Meeting was host to our Board of Directors election as well as a presentation by Levi C. Maaia – K6LCM on using your ham equipment and/or computer or smartphone to listen in on transpacific airline traffic on the VHF and HF bands. Hams aren’t the only ones using HF on a daily basis for reliable, long-distance communications. Airline pilots use HF frequencies from 2800 kHz to 22 MHz as their primary means of communication with shore stations during oceanic flights. These comms can be received by anyone with an HF SSB tuner and provide interesting data points for HF propagation. Aircraft are even sending PSK over HF! Levi showed us a tracking demonstration of a flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Sydney (SYD) as well as pointed us toward some resources for tracking and listening in on our own, with or without a radio!

DMR QSOs from your Android

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I just tried out a cool app for Android users … DROID-Star lets users login to the Brandmeister DMR system using your DMR ID and presents an interface that is operationally similar to Echolink. You can connect to any TG and then use the on-screen PTT to have a QSO. Works decently well for a beta version. Despite the “D-Star” branding it is a DMR app. Haven’t figure that part out. Download it from the Google Play App Store. -Levi, K6LCM

Yaesu System Fusion-DMR (YSF2DMR) Cross-Mode Repeater

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Over the past two years, there has been an explosion of interest in DMR amateur radio. Many SBARC members have been bitten by the DMR bug and they are chatting around the world on global Brandmeister talkgroups using hotspots and repeaters. While much of the attraction of DMR is the ability to work DX on a handheld transceiver, many local operators hang out on the local SBARC Brandmeister DMR Talkgroup (TG 31073).  In fact, every Tuesday night, the Digital Communications and Technology Net moves from 2m FM to TG 31073 at 21:00 Pacific Time. If you aren’t on the air with DMR yet, not to worry.  You may be able to chat on TG 31073 with a radio you already own! K6TZ operates a multimode digital repeater at La Vigia on the Mesa in Santa Barbara. We have recently reconfigured this repeater to bridge traffic from Yaesu System Fusion radios to TG 31073 using a new protocol called YSF2DMR. If you have a newer Yaesu radio, you may be digital-ready right now. Many new Yaesu amateur radio models available support System Fusion and are capable of connecting to the K6TZ digital repeater in order to bridge from System Fusion to DMR and TG 31073. Joining the local digital chatter on TG 31073 via System Fusion on the Santa Barbara South Coast is fairly straightforward. Just follow these steps: Obtain a DMR ID. If you have not already, click here to register your callsign with the DMR network and receive a unique DMR ID number. Your DMR ID is paired to your callsign on the DMR system and used to identify your transmissions. It takes a day or so to get a new DMR ID assigned and you only need to register once. Once you receive the confirmation email, keep it. You won’t need the number now using System Fusion but if you get bitten by the DMR bug in the future and want to explore further you will use this same DMR ID to configure a DMR radio. Set your amateur radio callsign in your System Fusion radio. Each radio model handles this differently. You must enter into your Yause radio the exact same callsign you registered to your DMR ID. The SBARC repeater will only bridge properly identified transmissions from System Fusion to DMR. So be sure you have input your callsign correctly and that you have received confirmation of… Continue reading →

General Club Meeting – February 15, 2019

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Last August our topic was DMR radio. Since then I have had a lot of requests for another DMR presentation, and since some new capabilities have become available, I thought this would be a good time. A lot of members have purchased DMR radios and would like to know more about their use and capabilities. A lot of our members have also purchased and Yaesu System Fusion radios as well. In fact, the Yaesu FTM400 mobile radio is probably the most popular general mobile radio in the Santa Barbara Area. There are probably 20 or more SBARC members with these radios but only use them for regular FM. Yaesu YSF radios are digital capable, but use a different digital protocol. Now it is easy to use your Yaesu YSF capable radios to communicate on DMR on the SBARC or other favorite talkgroup. At this meeting, we’ll show you how and do some demonstrations. So bring your DMR radios and Yaesu YSF HT’s if you have one. And, bring your questions about this or DMR in general. SBARC is lucky enough to have their own dedicated talkgroup, and we need to utilize it more. With this new capability, hopefully we can get more members to come over and give digital a try.   SBARC General Club Meeting Friday, September 21, 2018 at 7:30 PM Goleta Union School District Board Room 401 North Fairview Avenue in Goleta We hope to see you all at the meeting! Post expires at 11:00pm on Friday February 15th, 2019 but will still be available in the archives.

ZUMspot Raspberry Pi Info and Setup

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ZUMspot Raspberry Pi Info and Setup Here’s some info on what it took for me to get my ZUMspot up and running, updated with new things I’ve learned recently.  This doc is a bit wordy but I’m hoping this will let you know what you need to successfully get your ZUMspot Rpi working using a Windows PC.  Don’t think the below is a lot of work – it’s really not. I’m pretty impressed with this product which all in is about half the price of the SharkRF Openspot  but with built in Wi-Fi and the possibility of adding a display.  I found configuring the ZUMspot to be as easy as the Openspot and I’m not a Linux person. Hardware Needs ZUMspot Rpi ($80 + $10 shipping) Raspberry Pi, either the Pi 3 Model B ($35) or the Pi Zero W ($10) If you choose the Pi Zero W you may want additional accessories mentioned later Micro SD card, 2GB or greater. (you likely already own this or <$10) 5V power supply for the Pi with micro USB connector (you likely already own this)  Software Needs  Latest Pi-Star software image from the internet (free) A windows tools to ‘burn’ the above image to your micro sd card (free) A PC on your network to configure Pi-Star   Hardware Details ZUMspot Rpi The ZUMspot Rpi is fully assembled and tested and comes with a short antenna.  It is purchased via email from Bruce Givens, VE2GZI (ve2gzi@gmail.com).  Send him an email stating you’ll like to buy one and he’ll reply pretty quickly (for me in just a few hours).  He produces them in batches so you might be put on a waiting list.  He ships from NY and from the time I paid until it was in my hands was less than 1 business week.  Cost was $80 + $10 shipping. He does offer a kit consisting of the ZUMspot Rpi + Rpi Zero W + 2×20 header + 4GB microsd card with Pi-Star already on it for $110 + $10 shipping but you can do better putting your own kit together. Raspberry Pi With the Raspberry Pi and you have 2 choices – the Pi Zero W, or the Pi 3 Model B.  Make sure you get exactly one of these part numbers.  The older version of each do not have built in Wi-Fi. Raspberry Pi Zero W is the smallest, cheapest, and more power frugal of the… Continue reading →

Tracking Planes, Ships and Automobiles!

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Amateur radio operators were among the first to design products, build and maintain a digital RF tracking system. APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System), is a digital communications protocol for exchanging information among a large number of stations covering a large (local) area. Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, a senior research engineer at the United States Naval Academy, implemented the earliest ancestor of APRS on an Apple II computer the early 1980s.  The first use of APRS was in 1984, when Bruninga developed a more advanced version on a Commodore VIC-20 for reporting the position and status of horses in a 100-mile (160 km) endurance run. Over the years, Legacy Landscape is helping out people to avail an exhilarating landscape experience.With that note we should also be aware that APRS has grown to include thousands of amateur radio APRS stations around the world tracking all types of vehicles and reporting weather from backyards to mountain peaks. SBARC has been a supporter of APRS, maintaining an i-gate and digipeaters for the system at our repeater sites. Today, commercial systems that function similarly to APRS are tracking many types of assets around the globe. The SBARC Telecommunications Services Committee also collects data from some of these systems including AIS for ships at sea and ADS-B for aircraft. Check out SBARC’s mapping and tracking systems: AIS MarineTraffic System ADS-B Aircraft Tracking APRS Amateur Radio Tracking   This page contains information from Wikipedia.    

The AllStar & EchoLink Playground is Now Open!

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The SBARC Telecommunications Services Committee has been hard at work rebuilding the club’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) repeater systems.  As part of the completion of the second phase of this project, the 70cm repeater VoIP playground is now open! Both AllStar Link and EchoLink systems are supported for incoming and outgoing link connections on the K6TZ 446.400 repeater. Local amateur stations can control the node over using DTMF commands to link to repeaters around the globe. Many hams may be familiar with EchoLink and IRLP, two mature ham radio VoIP systems that permit node-to-node and node-to-conference server connections. AllStar Link is a newer and very powerful radio linking system based on the open source telephone PBX software Asterisk. The AllStar network has grown tremendously over the past few years and lends itself very well to experimentation. There is a new section on this website with a short primer on the new VoIP system including complete documentation of the DTMF commands used to control the 70cm node. Read more and start experimenting in SBARC VoIP playground! Thanks in particular to Ludo, K6LUD for his work to become our resident AllStar Link and Asterisk guru!