In the spirit of discovering new technologies and expanding the horizons of amateur radio, I’ve been intrigued lately by Meshtastic, a promising project that leverages long-range radio communication to create mesh networks. Although I haven’t yet had the chance to dive into it, I wanted to share my excitement and initial thoughts on what makes Meshtastic a compelling option for our community.
What is Meshtastic? Meshtastic is an open-source project that allows you to use inexpensive, low-power LoRa (Long Range) radios to create a decentralized communication network.
Dear fellow radio enthusiasts,
I hope this post finds you well. Today, I want to share something personal that I’ve been experiencing lately. Despite my passion for amateur radio, I’ve found myself struggling to maintain the same level of enthusiasm I once had.
Several times each week, I switch on my rigs, scan the HF and VHF bands, listen to the chatter and the digital modes, but I don’t feel the spark I used to.
#Morse
I would really like to succeed in learning Morse code.
But after several attempts where daily or professional tasks took over and led me to failure, I felt the need to find an external motivation.
I stumbled upon a video of a former co-worker who made a youtube channel 100 inspiring videos in 100 days (fr) where he says that publicly committing to a daily action for 100 days was a way to achieve this goal to improve in one domain.
#Morse
Since I can’t make any more progress in learning Morse code with the Koch method, I’m trying to learn in a different way by doing something that is not recommended: generating Morse code when I can only decode it with difficulty. I don’t know where this will lead me and I don’t recommend this to anyone at the moment. I am experimenting!
For that, in order not to clutter the radiowaves, I took the option to acquire an autonomous keyer on which to plug my key.
#SOTA
I’ve already introduced you to my backpack for field operations and SOTA, but I have a second lighter one if the trip is a bit long or if I’m not sure to use the radio.
This one weighs only 800 grams (instead of 6.5kg)!
It consists of the following items:
a D104-M6B amplified Astatic microphone a QRPver-1 v.3 (4w) transceiver in 20m version (single band) a rechargeable battery pack EFHW antenna for 20m a coax a throw-bag and a rope I also have a small Morse iambic key.
#SOTA
When I operate in the field or on a summit, I like to have all the stuff I need. To do, I have a complete backpack to operate on HF and 2m bands in SSB, FM, digimode and even CW. For this last mode, I require technical help… I will be more clear later on. ;-)
So, what is the content of my backpack ? It weighs about 6.5 kg.
#Hardware
My first HF radio was a Yaesu FT-450D. This set was perfect to introduce me to the major amateur radio bands, major in the sense of “long distance”. I had acquired it by taking advantage of a promotion that offered the SCU-17 digimode interface. This duo is great, because it makes it quite easy to implement an environment that seems, at first sight, rather complex. I was able to discover and abuse PSK31, HellFeld, FT8, MFSK modes for a few years.
updated on 2022-11-02
If you are a HF digimode user, you have everything you need to send emails through the Winlink gateways. The Amateur Radio Safety Foundation runs the Winlink service and offers radio amateurs a mailbox associated with their callsign in the form CALLSIGN@winlink.org You can create your mailbox by following the instructions on their website, right column. In short, you can create your account by logging in once without a password.
In order to have an HF transmitter when I am on the road or when I am climbing a SOTA summit, I have ordered a QRPver 1_v.3.
This device works on a single HF band that you choose when ordering. I chose the 20m band version (14,000 to 14,350 MHz) which seems to me to be a good compromise between good propagation and ease of installation of an antenna. Moreover this band is rather well used in digimode.
#Fldigi#Digimode#Mfsk
Among the many digital modes, aka digimodes, there is one that I find really nice. If you saw the title of this post you will have understood which one I’m going to talk about.
MFSK, acronym of “multi-frequency shift keyed”, is a family of digital modes that dates back to the 1960’s but is still interesting because it transmits data with an error correction code (FEC) and it also allows sending images!