Ramblings of yet another nerd…
So another mobile install, and more worries about how much space I have for wire….. things are always tight. I’ve been trying to plan this one out a bit, and started looking for ampacity charts. For the most part, they agree, but there’s always that question of “chassis wiring” versus whatever the other category is. …
Read More Wire gauge – what is really overkill?
About a year ago, I started cooking with cast iron after our pediatrician recommended it to help with my daughters iron levels. My biggest fear was cleanup- every cast iron pan I had seen in stores was sandy looking, and them at would seem to hold food and be a pain to clean. Enter the …
Read More In the kitchen… Cast Iron
So, I sold my scanner. I needed something that could monitor P25 Phase 2, in addition to Phase I and analog signals. I could have spent $600 or more on an SDS100 or SDS200 – and some day, I might… but looking at what I had on-hand, I wanted to see what I could do …
Read More SDRTrunk…
The experiment: Using a TV antenna directly as an amateur radio transceiver antenna. The background: Many websites and magazine articles exist wherein the author has disassembled a TV antenna and re-used the parts to construct a yagi-style antenna. Based on the feeding arrangement for the elements, it appeared that the basic TV antenna design is that of a …
Read More TV Antenna re-work… another old post worth sharing
OK – this is another issue that sparked quite a bit of discussion, and is worth putting out here for others to consider. Differential signals are a great concept – the transmitter transmits the signal between two wires, which connect directly to the receiver. The receiver then measures the DIFFERENCE (hence “differential”) between the two …
Read More On Differential Signalling between subsystems….
It took over a week, a complete network reconfiguration, and a lot of google searching to figure this one out. I wanted my MMDVM on P25 for a number of reasons. It should have been as easy as turning the mode on, and selecting a default host, right? well… maybe? It didn’t work that way …
Read More MMDVM on P25…
“Your codeplug will never be complete” – a quote I saw on a site about amateur radio DMR codeplug generation. I’ll argue against that thought. I wish I could get all of the background info I wanted in here – but I haven’t had the training I would like. There are entire Motorola hosted courses …
Read More Some thoughts on codeplug design and layout
Honestly, DMR is getting me excited about UHF/VHF amateur radio again. It’s not a NEW technology by any means, but the concept is really cool – I can have a drivetime chat with my buddies in Ohio, Alabama, and Iowa – assuming they have access to the repeaters. The biggest challenge was wrapping my head …
Read More DMR and Hotspots…. something else to break?
This is an old post, pulled from one of my older websites – at the time, i was going for a CLEAN install, and speakers were a problem for space – so here’s my solution. This was part of a series on the overall install, including the use of a Jotto desk purpose-built console (Vehicle …
Read More 2002 Ford Explorer Overhead Console SpeakerA technician I worked with once told me that the best engineer he ever worked with was not necessarily the smartest guy in the world, but what he did know was how to get a hold of people who COULD solve a problem. This really is true for many things, not just engineering. Management, for …
Read More The best guy for the job…