Building a Simple APRS Digipeater/IGate with the Bare Minimum

 Hi everyone!

With my recent adventures into the world of APRS, I figured that I should create a digipeater/iGate combo for the Maryville area. We have at least a dozen hams in town and I know of one in particular that uses APRS. Receiving packets in Maryville is easy - there is a station close to 30 miles away in Iowa that digipeats several packets down to our town without error. There is also a station in St. Joseph that I can hear perfectly too, as well as Falls City, NE - a little over 40 miles away from Maryville.

APRS: The OG IoT

As a computer scientist, I was required to take a networking fundamentals course. This course showed us how the modern day internet works and how each OSI layer interacts with one another. We sniffed network packets and learned how to wire ethernet cables. This semester, I'm taking an Internet of Things (IoT) course, which definitely goes hand-in-hand with my networking class.

Of course, my amateur radio adventures had to include some form of computer science/networking crossover. And that is where the topic of APRS comes in.

Antenna Adventure

Hi again!

The end of October is almost here and with it comes winter weather, especially around these parts. A few days ago, I was told North Dakota was in a winter storm warning with 12+" of snowfall expected! Of course, I'm sure Northwest Missouri is next.

Which brings me to today's post - antennas. Currently, I am running a roughly 29' random wire antenna fed with a 9:1 unun around the ceiling of my room. It works, but we recently installed GFCI outlets in another room that trip every time I'm on a band below 15 meters. Obviously, there's too much RF for my house to contain, and the only option now is to put my antenna outside. So strap in, because this will be a thorough and long adventure! Oh, and feel free to correct me in the comments below... I'm still learning.

Running PACKET on Linux

 Hi again everyone!

Man, I cannot put down my Linux with ham radio software! It's absolutely amazing! If you didn't read my last blog post, I got Linux to FINALLY run RMS Express and VARA, albeit with some issue. It does, for the moment, seem fixed. Today, I want to talk about expanding upon the RMS software to run packet for HF, VHF, and UHF radio.

The Many Wonders of QRP Circuits

 If you're like me, you like to build things and experiment with them - you constantly ask yourself, "how does this work?" QRP operation has brought me to that question many times, and today, I want to discuss a few QRP designs I happened to stumble upon. I'm sure you've also seen these circuits across the web. Today, I'd like to showcase some simple transceivers that you can build in a very short amount of time for almost nothing!