I mostly use a 40m hamstick for both APRS and voice. Being light, it doesn't require much of a mount.
I have external glass mounts for VHF/UHF on the rear side windows, with the coax slipping under the top corners of the upper tailgate.
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I mostly use a 40m hamstick for both APRS and voice. Being light, it doesn't require much of a mount.
I have external glass mounts for VHF/UHF on the rear side windows, with the coax slipping under the top corners of the upper tailgate.
APRS on HF? What are you using as the TNC, out of interest?Quote:
Originally Posted by Graeme
I looked at glass mount, but was concerned the glass might impact the rf, as wasn’t sure if it had the coating or not. Went with it a bonnet mount in the end.
40m and/or 2m APRS, running Direwolf (software TNC) on an Orange Pi with a USB soundcard for the radio and APRSDROID on my phone or tablet as a KISS terminal. 40m isn't quite as good as 30m but I only have a standard licence. One of my sons has a 40m APRS tx igate at my place using a RPi, DW, sound-card and a reprogrammed Codan for APRS support Australia-wide. I operate a 2m APRS tx igate using a RPi etc.
My glass mounts are wholey external, not through the glass. There's nowhere to fit a bracket due to the tight panel clearances.
OK, thanks. Explains the glass mount bit, and why I went for the bonnet mount to be safe.
APRS wise I was aware 30m existed, and kind of makes sense as it has a good mix of local/regional comms in daylight with more distance than 40m before the sun goes down…but as you say, limited to advanced licenses. Our band plan makes no sense - I don’t know of any other country where I’m licensed where bands (as opposed modes and power) are limited by class.
I’ve got an igate at home for 2m, using a RTL dongle and direwolf on a Pi, and run a Yaesu FTM-400XDE in the Defender (soon to move to the RRS) with VFO2 beaconing on APRS.
My primary 2m APRS radio is a headless Simoco SRM9000, with 2m on the IC as backup. I can split the HF APRS channel to only tx HF with rx on 2m/70cm/HF. I add a UHF/VHF radio for CB use when with a non-AR group.
I modified kissutil so that I can send DW ch2 to ch0 so that aprsdroid gets both 2m and 40m rx when receiving both, which is good when passing though 2m areas.
Very few 30m igates exist and while there's now a few 40m igates, my son's is only 1 of 2 that digipeats which provides confirmation of a packet having been heard.