I bought a Anker Soundcore bluetooth speaker to use with my FT3DR, but it won’t pair.
The FT3DR “sees” the Anker speaker, but when I try to connect, it tries for a while, then fails.
Will look for another speaker.
I bought a Anker Soundcore bluetooth speaker to use with my FT3DR, but it won’t pair.
The FT3DR “sees” the Anker speaker, but when I try to connect, it tries for a while, then fails.
Will look for another speaker.
I’m always looking for better APRS coverage.
I’ve had a Tram mag mount on my 2014 Subaru Forester for two years. Of course, everyone recommends drilling a hole in your roof instead. Most everyone claims they can hit repeaters they’ve never been able to hear after permanently mounting their antenna. I don’t doubt their claims, but my experience for APRS is slightly different. My hope was, after changing from the mag mount to the drilled hole, many APRS dead spots would be reduced or eliminated. Read on for the details.
The old setup:
The Measurements
I operate a Fill-in digipeater near Boise, Idaho, so I am using that as my reference point.
DIY vs. Paying A Pro
I strongly considered drilling the hole myself. There are lots of tutorial videos on YouTube that show you how. I would either need to remove the entire headliner, or figure out how to snake the cable half-way up the vehicle, bypassing a large sliding sunroof. After about 8 hours of research over several months, I decided to pay my local two-way radio shop to do it for me.
Initial Results
After about 24 hours of testing, I can only see about a ~10% improvement. One area that is normally sketchy received a solid beacon. The other 8 or 9 areas are no different than normal. These are not far-away places… just sections of town that might be slightly lower or obscured in some way.
Next Test…
Replacing the 1/4 wave with a 5/8 wave with higher gain.
Very cool, can’t wait to try this out.
This is super cool perl script that returns the local weather forecast via an APRS MSG.
Looking for the battery level indicator on the TH-D72?
Hit the F key, near the top right corner.
Nov 2, 2016: ISS packet system now operational on UHF (437.550 MHz)
If you’d like a rundown of some of the best gear to buy, checkout Episode 39 from the Ham Radio 360 Podcast:
The radio used for voice and APRS digipeating on the International Space Station is offline until further notice.