planetkris

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the crash…

This install has been on the drawing board for a couple of months. The requirements for getting this equipment into the car were strict.
#1. The car may only have ONE (visible) antenna.
#2. A clean, integrated install, with hidden wiring and functionality.
#3. The equipment must not get in the way of the operation of the vehicle. Most importantly airbags. This includes magic (folding) seats and dashboard controls.

First up, the radio. The choices were narrowed down to two. The Yaesu 8800 and the Kenwood TM-V71A. I got a chance to test out one of the Yaesu sibling radios - the 7800 at a rally last month. The audio was great, the transmitter worked flawlessly as expected. The menu options and programming were similar to most radios, so I was able to figure it out waiting for rally cars to show up. At the event I was also able to test out the 8800. Two of them were in use at the rally and both operators gave glowing reviews of the rig. Only one feature frustrated me. The ability to quickly lock the display. Instead of a single key press… The lock function is buried under a menu setting for both the 7800 AND 8800. Later in the week I swung by the local HRO and got a good 30 minutes of sit down, hands-on time, with the Kenwood TM-V71A. Why did I buy it? 1 touch lock. The ability to change to a green display was a bonus. The stock Kenwood remote kit was all that was needed here. It’s just out of the way and just high enough to see it while driving. Out of the sun and away from airbags, this worked out great!

My $4.43 antenna: I first scoured the web looking for euro, stinger, stealth amateur radio antennas. Something that would replace my existing antenna, something that would still receive FM, make toast, and be cheap. $245 is not cheap. Sure it radiates on 2 meters, probably deaf on 440 and needs a box of coils and chokes to get decent FM coverage. The KISS moment came when I just stopped trying to use 1 antenna for 5 radios. Do something else for FM - a hidden glass mount or “other.” Then use a dual band radio on a tuned vertical using the stock base. Use ONE radio for mobile and APRS duties. I too dislike that one side of the radio is dedicated to APRS, but this I think is better then a 5 watt handi-talkie in a TrackerBox hooked to a duplexer (this allows the use of 1 antenna) that will de-sense a $360 radio with $80 worth of eBay gear.

So… 10mm screw + solder + 20″ of solid copper wire + tubing + heat shrink = $4.43
A tuning session got the antenna down to 1.3:1 SWR on the 2 meter bands (VHF) and 1.5:1 SWR on 70cm (UHF). Total length is now around 16″ - looking at the math, I’m sure the base has something to do with the total height. Basically a vertical that is a 1/4 wave VHF and a 3/4 wave UHF. I call it: The KM-443 Vertical You know I will say that on signal reports if asked.

Hacking the existing FM antenna: In order to get the headliner open enough to get access to the antenna, pretty much all of the plastic interior panels in the rear of the Honda Fit needed to be removed. Christine was thankfully patient and refrained from freaking out on the fact that I had just taken apart the inside of our 11 month old car. Once in my hand, I saw how the amplified antenna works. Power and a tiny coax cable travel to a circuit board that is shielded, grounded, and sent up the center conductor of the mount. Relocating this inside the vehicle was worth a shot and I soldered on an RCA coupling to make this easy. Extra RCA cables are always around the house, right? A wire about the length of the stock FM antenna was soldered to the center conductor and tested. Reception is decent, and the base was ground to the inside of the chassis, with the new antenna wire traveling up the inside of the plastic window frame. Will this be good for rural areas? Probably not, but LA radio stations sound great, and satellite radio is for everything else.

What I had left was a 10mm bolt center post and a good ground. A small section of PVC was used as an insulated spacer to replace the missing stock antenna. A donated piece of good coax was attached with ring terminals.

Cable runs: The following has been run from the front to the rear of the Fit.
* 10 awg fused battery power cable.
* Remote accessory power relay wire.
* Kenwood remote head unit cable.
* CAT5 cable with serial data to/from TNC and switched power.
* Satellite radio antenna wire.
* Speaker audio.
* CAT5 cable used for Kenwood microphone.

This allows everything in the back to be turned on and controlled by the driver. The TNC can be switched off if I want to use both sides of the radio, or I want to stop beaconing my position. The radio comes on and goes off with the car. A bypass switch was installed in the rear panel should I want to have the radio on without the keys in the ignition. If you’re going through all the hassle, why not add a accessory power connector and power pole port in the back for charging, extra radios, etc.

The center console: This is a Honda Fit, not a Chevy Tahoe. So the microphone connector had to be tested to work with the magic folding seats. I was about to mount the speaker off the back of the console when I realized that it would interfere. Christine suggested that if I take off the bracket, it might fit. Well, it fits perfect! If you turn the mic on its side it seems to be happy in the pocket next to the handbrake, or in the rear cup holder.

A great setup for APRS duties is the Garmin Nuvi 350 and an Argent Data Systems Tracker2. I want to give a shout out to Mike Wren N2QDK for his APRS mobile install. After reading this I knew I had found what I was looking for. I drew a lot of inspiration from his install, and I’m loving my Garmin Nuvi APRS setup!

Finishing up: With just a little compromise, I got what I was looking for. My mobile setup can do everything from cross band repeat, to tactical APRS tracking, and yet from the outside it looks just like any other Honda Fit with a GPS on the dash. I’ll be APRS tracking more frequently and I can’t wait to volunteer at a rally with it!

Kenwood is pro APRS. Something must have been lost in the translation when the marketing guys wrote up the specs for the TM-V71A. It lists APRS, and then to the right it says: NO.

What does that mean? It certainly can transmit and receive on 144.390. So, it doesn’t have a built in TNC like its older brother the 710. So? It’s certainly an APRS capable radio. It even has the industry standard 6-pin mini din ready for packet data on the back of the rig. The TM-V71A is great for APRS duties.

Something tells me that the marketing department wants you to steer over to the RC-D710. It’s a ready to go TNC with all sorts of options that make your V71A ‘feel’ like you spent the big bucks. Well, the small bucks are okay with me. Matter of fact, with this unit connected to an Argent Tracker2 and a Garmin Nuvi 350 - it’s about $1500 worth of kit for about $600. Stay tuned as I install it over the next few weeks.

First challenge: Getting the radio to talk to your TNC (tracker).
I guess I could blame those marketing guys again, but I don’t know who messed up the verbiage in the manual on the pin-outs for the DATA jack. I opened up the manual and flipped to the section on packet operation. Easy enough, I just have to provide audio in/out, PTT and ground. Wait… What pin is PTT?

1 PKD input, 2 DE, 3 PKS input, 4 PR9 output, 5 PR1 output, 6 SQC output
Seriously Kenwood? Where did these abbreviations come from?

The description is just as confusing. For pin 3: ‘L’ is transmitted and the microphone is muted. The letter L? The low? What?!
Does that give one any indication that pin 3 is the PTT? Leading to the confusion is the ability to set the “baud rate” for the radio. (Please take note the quotes…) This had me questioning if there actually was a TNC in the radio and whether to pass audio data or digital data to the unit.
Panicked, I called Brian NJ6N for some help. He chuckled at the descriptions and pointed me to buxcomm.com where a handy reference sheet tells us the following.

1 DATA IN, 2 GND, 3 PTTP, 4 DATA OUT, 5 AF OUT, 6 SQ
Now that’s more like it. Brian also explained that the baud rate has to do with the filtering the unit is doing. For very high data rates it skips some of the internal circuitry that could lead to some issues with received packets. For our purposes, APRS is 1200 baud and the default settings will be fine.

Cable time: Because I’m super impatient, I scrounged the house looking for a 6-pin mini din connector. “Hey, that PS/2 keyboard / mouse connector looks like it could do the trick!” Before you could say “e-waste” I had the end off a PS/2 keyboard on the desk hooked to an ohm meter. Bad news - They don’t use pin 2, and they don’t even bother to leave an un-used wire in there. Don’t bother tearing open the mouse - it also doesn’t utilize pin 2 at all. Thinking that this is the end of my experiments I slice the connector open and take a closer look. Pin 2 is there and, sure enough, nothing is connected to it. After digging a channel with a sharp knife I find there is enough there to solder. The elegant solution I came up with is to ground the pin to the outer shield and use that for pin 2 ground. A little heat shrink and we’re back in business. For those of you with patience, it looks like this cable from Byonics should do the trick.

Using the Tracker2 manual I came up with the following pin configuration:
Argent Tracker2 >>> Kenwood TM-V71A
DB9 >>> 6-pin mini
1 audio out >>> 1 data in
2 squelch input >>> 6 squelch out
3 ptt >>> 3 ptt
5 audio in >>> 5 af out
6 ground >>> 2 ground

Plugged in and ready to go: I turned on the radio and tuned to 144.390. I specified in the menu which side my packet operations would be on. My Tracker2 blinked to confirm it was hearing packets! A quick test and I was able to send a message to K6SOA-9. Receive and transmit both work. Now, one side of the radio will be dedicated to APRS, but this is no different then the D700. A remote switch is in the works to allow me to turn off the tracker and regain the use of both A and B sides, should I need a cross-band repeat or dual receive.

Next time I’ll be detailing the entire install. From hacking the existing FM antenna mount, to Garmin Nuvi 350 APRS messaging. I even tackle getting the Honda Fit amplified antenna working inside the car. As you can see I’ve added a 12v cig jack and Anderson power pole panel. Stay tuned!

I’ll be over at Gilleran Park in Mission Viejo with the South Orange Amateur Radio Association. If you want to see some cool radio technology that will be used to save you during the ‘flood, fire, earthquake, etc.’ Stop by and check it out! If you’re no where near my location - use the ARRL Field day location locater and find one in your area! I’ll be teaching the educational session on APRS, making our 100 point satellite contact, and probably working late night DX on the big bands. Have tent and a Honda Fit full of equipment, will travel.

I wanted an elegant and not so permanent way to attach a 12v fan to my rig. It’s going to see use as net control and even at 5 watts - it gets hot after transmitting for a half hour. It’s also going to serve as a digipeater at an upcoming rally. I’ll show off the thermal controller once it’s built, so the fan is not running 100% of the time.

Parts: coat hanger, zip tie, $6 PC fan, $2 dust cover w/foam.
Pictures: IC-2200H fan mod here

Basically bend the coat hanger into this: |_|
Slide it into the back heatsink and tilt it forward.
Bend the ends into hooks. Hook the fan onto it.
Tilt it down and around the outside of the rear heatsink.
Zip tie it into place.
- Enjoy

What’s next Kris? - A car that runs on NO GAS? *chortle

In the picture we have a standard 1400mAh Yaesu FT-60 battery (FNB-83 on right) that lists for $65, next to an FT-60 AA pack (FBA-25 on left) with 6 Sanyo Eneloop AA’s which total out to $50 and that price is for the 8-pack, so you have 2 more rechargeable AA’s for your walkman. I’m sure you could find the stock battery for cheaper, but even if they were the same price this new Eneloop pack lasts a third longer with 2000mAh of power.

Tech stuff: I numbered the batteries thinking that I may have to take them out and put them back in. This keeps them in the same order in the pack and I won’t mix in other batteries of various age and charge states. You also may notice the small piece of foil wrapped around the negative terminal of battery #6. This is done in order to mimic the factory battery pack. It may be part of its charging circuit, or simply may connect to the external charging pads found on the FNB-83. Either way - I want the FT-60 to recognize this as a rechargeable NiNH battery pack… because… that’s what it is. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the stock battery is just 6 AA sized cells sealed in the case. Now - This is actually a somewhat controversial modification that Yaesu won’t warrant, but it means that you can charge your new batteries in the unit. Controversial because if you are a moron - you can try to charge non-NiMH batteries and you will start a fire. A chemical / metal fire. Don’t bother reaching for the ABC class extinguisher. They also say something about about missing a temperature charging circuit in the AA case (thermistor maybe), but I can’t find one in the FNB-83, so I think this is part of the ‘cover your ass’ portion of their battery charging guide.

The Sanyo Eneloop is finally a good rechargeable battery worthy of your attention and their super flash marketing. I’m done buying ‘rechargeable’ batteries from companies that make the bulk of their money on disposables. I’ve had particularly horrible luck with bunny batteries. We got a charger and 4 of their batteries for Christine’s digital camera. After maybe 5 recharge cycles the battery life was down to 1/5th alkaline AA’s, and I’ll explain how charging them wrong was most of the problem.

Your super speedy rapid fast $9 plug in battery charger is crap. I discovered that keeping your batteries topped up and on the charger until use, is what’s killing them. I learned this too late to save a pile of NiMH Motorola TalkAbout batteries… sorry Earth. It’s A charging BASE. It’s where you keep your TalkAbout when not in use. It’s also plugged in and overcharging your batteries constantly.

The secret to making rechargeable batteries last? Effort. I know you don’t want an Excel sheet of your battery packs, voltage, and temp - so I’ll make this easy. Charge them up for no longer then 12 hours (overnight) and take them off the charger. I know the little green light comes on. I know the red light stops blinking. Take them off the charger! They’re ready to go! When they die, charge them! Don’t throw them in a drawer. Get them on the charger as soon as you can. After they have been charged up and sat in a drawer for 6 months - you’ll need to charge them again. Although with these new batteries that’s becoming less of an issue.

10 ECHO “Charge for 12 hours and stop.”
20 ECHO “Use Whenever.”
30 IF BATTERY = DEAD THEN 10
40 ELSE GOTO 20
50 END

Summary:
You can buy these off the shelf and they are ready to run.
You can get a better then stock NiMH battery for your gear.
They stay charged and ready for an emergency.
Check out the data.
Check out what the digital camera guys had to say.

I bought an Icom IC-2200H mobile 2 meter radio right after I got my license. It was the same price new as many of the used ones shipped via ebay. I’m still not sure why 3 year old radios sell for $20 less then brand new ones - and why people don’t take into account the $16.95 worth of shipping. For $4.05 more, you’re better off with a warranty - here’s why:

Several times when I was just getting the hang of using the radio I would push to transmit and nothing would happen. I would look down at the radio and be like - huh? Then I would push to transmit again and it would key up no problem for the rest of the day. I chalked this up to my inexperience with the unit.

A few months went by and it did it three times on one occasion. I was having a nice conversation on my way down to the shop. I was talking away and I heard the other person on the repeater over the radio key up and say something like: “Are you still there? Did you hit a dead spot??” While I was squeezing my mic and chatting away to no one apparently. “What the hell?” I keyed the mic up again and described my problems. Later in the QSO it did it twice more! At this point I knew something was wrong and it wasn’t my new license.

I brought it back to the good people of HRO in Anaheim, CA. They tried patiently to repeat the problem while in the store. I must have keyed up 100 times on some poor simplex frequency. I couldn’t get it to happen under controlled conditions. This is no surprise to me as a computer technician.

I offered up a solution. If I could get a picture of it in action - would that satisfy the warranty repair folks? They agreed and for the next 3 days I drove around with my digital camera practically guaranteeing that it wouldn’t fail anytime soon. I left the shop and made a call on the way home to the local SOARA repeater. I looked down and there it was! Red light on the microphone - NO transmit on the display! My IC-2200H had a PTT problem.

I pulled over, snapped some shots, and went to HRO the next day. They sent it right out to Icom for me and I had it back a couple weeks later. It came back with no real explanation of what was fixed - but that something WAS repaired. So, if you have experienced this problem: 1. It’s probably not your imagination. 2. It’s NOT the microphone. 3. Be glad you spent the extra $5 on the brand new rig. 4. I hope you get it fixed as quickly as I did.

Check out the APRS tracker box I just built. This box hooks to 12 volts, an antenna, and a GPS puck. It transmits it’s location on programmed intervals through the radio to digipeaters in my area. These digis then transmit my location information to the internet. Check out findu.com.

I wanted the box to be as small as possible, so I ordered two sizes. The smallest one they had and the next size up. I used the tiny 9″ x 8″ x 4″ box. A bit of a squeeze, but it’s all in there. It’s a good thing you can take off the HTX-202’s battery. The idea is: I can throw this unit in any vehicle (car, truck, rally car, etc.) and track it from space.

The Byonics TinyTrak TNC with GPS receiver is around $120 with cables. The radio was $55 used on eBay and the connectors were found at the local electronics store and a swap meet. The powerpole chassis mount is wired up in series so that other hardware can be powered and either connection can be used.

I started with AO-51 at 9:23, but I didn’t hear it at all. I am following the ‘if you can’t hear it, don’t transmit’ rule, but I think no one was on it. (over the ocean / day after field day) Next time I will try at least once to transmit. At 9:30 I gave up on the low AO-51 pass and moved on to the prime 53 degree SO-50 pass.

Now there is a bit of a trick to the SO-50 and that is its 10 minute timer. You need to turn the transmitter on by sending a tone for 2 seconds to the satellite. I expected that to have been done by many other hams working the bird as it passed. I didn’t hear much on the downlink until another station keyed up on the uplink frequency with the PL of 74.4. This turns the timer on. You can clearly hear it in my recording as it goes just about full quiet and XE2BHL calls out.

Needless to say, I’m stoked! There is a lot of things that go into tracking and contacting a satellite and any one of a number of issues can prevent you from hearing anything. I had an un-tuned antenna, a time problem (UTC -8 instead of -7), and a polarity issue (holding the antenna flat instead of upright). Finally hearing both SO-50 and AO-51 at Field Day made me a lot more confident in what I was doing.

Things I learned:
Don’t assume a ton of people will be on the satellite you’re working.
Listen first THEN transmit
AND when nothing is heard at all transmit at least once
Callsign in phonetics! Kilo India Six India Uniform Charlie
Delta Mike One Three (see grid squares)
Keep at it!

I had to get clever and figure out a way to use my mp3 player / voice recorder (with no mic input) to record sounds off my hand held FT-60 transceiver. As you can see on the right, I still play with legos. It’s my lego mp3 holder thingy. That’s an earbud strapped to the small mic hole on my Creative mp3 player. It’s surprisingly not that bad! I was able to place it on the front seat of the car while I was outside yeilding my antenna around. This kept a lot of the ambient noise down and I was able to record my very first satellite QSO!

SO-50 6/25/2007 9:37PM PST - XE2BHL - DM12 - Jose in Tijuana, Mexico
KI6IUC first satellite contact - MP3

This weekend was the annual ARRL Field Day. Celebrated by hams across the country, the (24 hour) event is part contest, part emergency exercise. Groups obtain a higher score the more “off the grid” they are. Point bonuses are awarded for alternate energy sources, such as portable generators, solar, and battery powered transmitters. The idea is to demonstrate to the public - A. We’re geeks and we’re having a good time. AND B. We are the people that will be relaying a message to your loved ones when the power goes down due to a natural disaster, etc.

I went into my first field day weekend with a little trepidation. I tried to figure out what the activities were going to be (of the various clubs in the area) before spending a full weekend with one particular group. My objectives were: Have a good time, learn more about ham radio, tune my homebuilt antenna, learn more about satellites, meet some folks, play with APRS, have a good time.

Later Friday night after visiting some other field day sites, I stopped by The Southern Orange Amateur Radio Association’s location. A relaxed group of folks, SOARA held their field day activities in Mission Viejo’s Gilleran Park. Friday was merely a get together BBQ to plan the various stations and activities for Saturday. As I pulled into the parking lot I saw a familiar face. Tom AE6SH, who volunteers as an EMT/ham for many rallies in the Southwest, greeted me with an: “I know you!” I was quickly introduced around to club members and started to get an idea about what field day was going to be like with SOARA. Three towers. All modes, all bands, APRS, D-Star, satellites, etc. When I asked what OSCAR satellites would be worked, Vlad KI6BLP said only: “All of them.” To which I could only respond: “Awesome!”

Saturday morning, up at 6:30 and off to Gilleran Park. I helped string lines and lift towers. At 11:00AM K6SOA was on the air! Everything was well planned and well placed. They use a contest tracking program on wireless laptops to log every contact and check for duplicates instantly (reminder: this is in tents - in a park - on generator power ). I grabbed my headphones and jumped in with Greg N6REG on the BIG 20 Meter antenna. He logged a ton of voice contacts while I typed them into the laptop. Stations were calling “CQ Field Day” from all over the US. I got excited when we heard from Western Florida, even more excited when we talked to Western Massachusetts!

Later in the day, I cracked out my home built ‘handi-tenna‘. This antenna is based on K5OE’s design for a small, portable, cheap - satellite antenna. The only tiny problem is you need an expensive analyzer to tune it. Up until now I was unable to find someone with the right equipment. In a matter of minutes I had a device in my hand that told me my antenna was tuned to 420Mhz. As the birds are on 436Mhz, I would have to trim it a little. (Birds = slang for satellites) An hour or so of fiddling and I had it set in the 435-440 range. Thanks Richard K6RBS for the analyzer!

I took a break and went and grabbed Christine. I convinced her to come back with me to field day and she brought some ‘busy work’ just in case she got bored. The good news is, after listening to some contacts and hearing CW (morse code) on 20 meters, she enjoyed hanging out and logging with some of the SOARA operators. I know she was most excited working with me operating on 40 meters when we made a contact with a station in Nevada, as it was the first one from that state.

The work on the handi-tenna payed off later that night, when I was able to track and listen to SO-50. I won’t go into all the details of how an FM voice satellite contact works, but I was able to hear Vlad KI6BLP call the clubs K6SOA callsign FROM the satellite. This is with my $11 antenna, handheld radio, and headphones. Thirty minutes later an even better pass of AO-51 came over the ocean. I was able to copy dozens of callsigns from Southern California to Washington State a lot clearer then I ever expected. Previous to this I had tried working satellites on three separate occasions with no luck. To learn more about amateur radio satellite communications, click here.

We left the site around 10:00PM and headed home for some sleep. I returned on Sunday morning to help for the remaining four hours of the contest. I helped Heiko AD6OI and Patti AD6OH on the 6 meter antenna. It was pretty quiet on the band and only after calling “CQ Field Day CQ Field Day this is Kilo Six Sierra Oscar Alpha” about 30 times did we make a few contacts. I got to check out D-STAR with Biran NJ6N’s setup. We watched a webcam broadcast from a field day site in Washington - over the ICOM ID1’s internet connection.

Tear down was quick and everyone pitched in to carefully pack the towers, rope, cable, and radios back into storage and the various vehicles that had brought the equipment. I had an awesome time and I want to thank and shout out to: AD6OI, AD6OH, AE6SH, AE6H, KI6BLP, NJ6N, K6RBS, and N6REG! I look forward to participating more in SOARA’s activites in the future!

It seems as if every few years I remember I have a web log or *cough ‘blog‘ here at the home base - planetkris.com. I once again will remind you that I’m usually busy over at rallynotes.com with my rally adventures. As a spin off to rally, I recently got my amateur radio technician license and have been getting into a lot of new activities and clubs, etc. As an established geek, I’ll be posting about that from now on here. Check out the ham radio stuff on rallynotes if you want to keep up.

Christine pointed out to me that I still have posts from 2005 on the main page.
Speaking of the SunMoonStarsGirl, she has a new gallery up.

While you’re busy checking that stuff out - I’ll be working on my ARRL Field Day post.

Other top items:
I’m getting married in August. Honeymoon in Tahiti.
I started a motorsports company. I’m doing contract tech work in the mean time.
I still live in California.

-and we’re done here!