Radio Things!

I passed my foundation amateur radio exam in August 2018 at South Nottingham Amateur Radio Club (SNARC) and was allocated the callsign of M6PIU. This is a great club and a very friendly bunch of people. If I was more social I'd go every week. I've not really planned to take my intermediate exam yet. I'm mostly interested in packet radio, and try to maintain a list of AX25 (non APRS) activity around Nottingham on this page.

Transceivers

Kenwood TH-D74E - 2m/70cm

I bought this radio at the end of 2020 for portable packet stuff, but it's also just a decent radio. It has a built in KISS TNC and will do APRS as well - perfect for cycling trips :-)

The first morning I got it, I went for a very cold bike ride and connected to a Dave's and Simon's mailboxes. Of course, a flask of tea is needed, and the laptop provided the ax25 connection via KISS. I'd like to be able to do this from my phone, but I've not seen any terminal apps which will do the ax25 and KISS encapsulation.

Kenwood TM-V71 - 2m/70cm

This was the first radio I bought. It was second hand off eBay and I like it a lot. It has a dedicated port on the rear for connecting up to a TNC. One of the nice features of this radio is that it has dual receive, regardless of whether you want to use 2m or 70cm at the same time or not. You can also configure the radio to use either side, which means you can hold a voice conversation and only briefly be interrupted by packet :).

The n-type antenna connector was slightly damaged or had been stressed in some way prior to me getting it. I ended up replacing this with a SO-239 connector which I prefer (although I've heard may not be as suitable for UHF).

I have this hooked up to a Diamond X30 2m/70cm antenna which is in the loft. Unfortunately my house is surrounded my metal buildings and I can't quite get enough height, so my reception is quite poor.

Baofeng UV-5R - 2m/70cm

Not much to say. It's so cheap you'd be silly not to have one. The provided antenna isn't particularly good, especially for a radio with such a poor front end. I replaced it with a Retevis RHD701.

To the left is a photo of me operating the UV-5R from the top floor of Tower Building at the University of Nottingham with an external quarter wave whip antenna. Nice and high - not sure if the wired windows did me any favours though.

I actually ended up buying a second Baofeng to record a Computerphile about packet radio.

Yaesu FT-450D - all HF bands and 6m

My is my first HF transceiver. Still learning and setting up a decent antenna, so updates to come!

Terminal Node Controllers (TNC)

Kantronics KPC-2

Thanks to Dave G1ZEK for passing this onto me. We've had quite a bit of fun exchanging messages and trying TCP/IP. Image on the left shows the KPC-2 hooked up to my Kenwood TM-V71 in bed. :)

Kantronics KPC-3

I was after a second TNC so I can experiment alone with some TCP/IP stuff. Mine came with a firmware 5.0 ROM. I ended up flashing 8.2 onto a new ROM although not yet played with any of the extra functionality.

Other Stuff

I'm currently running a personal pager transmitter on 439.9875MHz. This is the same frequency used by DAPNET, but it is not connected to the DAPNET network. It's pretty nice to be able to just push messages via MQTT rather than depend on an external service. This can only transmit at 100mW, and I'm guessing the antenna gives around 2dB of gain. After each message, it sends a POCSAG message to RIC 6 stating "M6PIU POCSAG"

I also have a second pager transmitter running from Nottingham Hackspace built using the same design, operating as MB7PNH (Pager Nottingham Hackspace).