Belcom AMR-217B, my advanced exam, and a couple of other things.

I visited the Hambleton Amateur Radio Society last night on the day of posting this, they were having a junk sale, my guest was with me and they also saw a few things in the junk that they liked and thought was cool, one of these was a Belcom AMR-217B VHF/FM Monitor, which I picked up for £5 and that money went back into that club's funds, along with a Heathkit meter and a set of spanners that my guest liked, nice to have some Heathkit stuff in the shack, though I'll have to make it electrically sound first.

I have some pics of the scanner receiver, front, inside and back, there is a sticker on the back that suggests it was sold at one point by a CB shop in Shildon, County Durham which as far as I am aware is actually still trading to this day

The receiver front panel, cardboard to protect tablecloth

Inside the unit, looks to be in good order, all but 5 of the crystal positions are occupied

The bank of crystals in close up, a couple of these don't have an RX frequency on them however I will be investigating this later to find out what frequencies these are on, though the rest suggest 2-meters

The rear panel, showing a serial number, a slightly damaged AC input connector, a fuse holder, a Uniden CB type power connector wired inside as per Uniden CBs, and an SO239 connector for the antenna

I plugged the unit into my power supply using the President Grant II's power lead and the unit fired up and scanned through the channels and a receive test done without the antenna plugged in worked fine, I'll be doing some further testing with this at a later date.

I have my Advanced exam booked for the 14th August so now have a deadline to work to regarding this, I hope to have it passed at the first time of asking and will be revising and doing two outstanding mock exams ahead of time.

I have had some external stress as well over last weekend so little time for radio and related however I am settled and the cause of the stress is now sorted, and I can now focus on my guest and radio

I also with help from my guest got our CB antenna up higher so I can be in communications range via radio from a bit further until, of course, they get their M7 which may be a couple of years yet sadly.

And that should be everything up to date for now

73 de 2E0EIJ

A creative solution to my 11-meter station problems.

Myself and my guest jointly cobbled together an antenna for 11-meters that we have dubbed the 'spider antenna', this takes the old DV27 on biscuit tin concept, adds radials made from galvanised steel wire used in gardens, 4 of these folded in half under the mount, which is a Sirio fixed body mount, this whole assembly is screwed onto the top of the wood.

The antenna was erected by way of cable ties to the window frame, and the SWR is actually not too bad considering how low and close to the building it is, the antenna is my springer/orbitor type antenna which has not seen use since 2015, an adapter converts the SO239 on the mount to take the orbitor's threaded connector, the whip was found to be seized up so a bit of fiddling got it out and got the SWR down (it was still set for the 106's roof).

not sure if it operates up on 10 but it seems fine on 11.

My guest and I settled on UK channel 11, the channel number is a reference to Netflix series 'Stranger Things' which features CB heavily.

73 de 26CT730/2E0EIJ

Quiet on the posting and radio front

Due to having a guest over at present I've been taken away from my radio activities, however I am still trying to get active when I can as my guest has in the past expressed an interest in the radio hobby.

I am also in the process of tidying up the shack, with some help, and hope to get that done soon too and a perhaps a stealth antenna for 11-meters to get my guest on the air and in contact with me without resorting to Skype.

I also as a result have not finished the video on the Yaesu FT2D, and just about to finish off my work for the Advanced exam and hope to get that passed soon so I can do all the things I still want to do.


I hope to get more active on air in the coming weeks

73 de 2E0EIJ

Hopeful attendance at the Colburn & Richmondshire District Amateur Radio Society and exam booking

Tonight I hope to attend the club, primarily as they have a guest speaker, and secondly to book my advanced exam before the end of August or I face being tested against material I have not studied due to the syllabus change.

The guest speaker will be talking about their life in Amateur radio, which will be nice to hear about as they do hold a G prefix callsign, this will be my first attendance at the club in the last couple of months, after I missed the colinear installation, however on passing the venue recently I have seen how the colinear is erected, this will be handy to guide new visitors to the venue either over simplex or on the repeater, this club visit will also allow me to take the Yaesu FT2D with me.

I would need to speak to whoever holds the position of exam secretary at the club in order to arrange the exam, as well as be able to have the invigilators available, getting the exam booked means I will still be tested to the old syllabus and will have time to catch up and revise, though I do have a guest scheduled to arrive in approximately one week from today, though as this guest has shown an interest in Amateur radio they may want to get a licence themselves, and I do have some plans for this summer for radio as well as the M0 exam

There will be an update later on should I attend the club, though the update may be posted tomorrow if I am not able to post it today.

73 de 2E0EIJ

Devastating news for digital voice mode users

It has come to my attention that Chance Callahan KD0MXN had obtained a DMR ID in December 2018, and all this time I was under the impression that he was strictly D-STAR, however not so.

The DMR ID for gateway and repeater operators to blacklist, if this is even possible, is 3122805 if you value the safety of your gateway or repeater and Amateur radio operators worldwide, this comes as a massive blow because DMR reflectors and talkgroups can be crosslinked to Yaesu System Fusion, though I do use DMR myself and this means he could potentially send threatening and harassing messages over DMR as it supports a form of text messaging.

From what I can tell the contacts list in my DMR HT is not up to date from that point, however as I bought a radio for DMR that can record the second I hear a voice contact from him the second it gets recorded and then forwarded to the FCC to be dealt with, I can only summise the primary reason he got a DMR ID in the first place was to access the DMR network and harass me, obviously he won't be telling people that as he is a very sneaky conniving young man.

From what I can also tell is that because the DMR reflectors and talkgroupls I use are also accessible on YSF reflectors and FCS reflectors I can access from my Jumbospot through my two existing YSF radios, neither of which are able to record as far as I know however I am never far away from a computer or my mobile phone.

So why should we blacklist this young man from DMR? here's the list

• He never stays true to his word and stabs people in the back and makes false claims about them, he did this to me on the day I bought my FTM-400XDE
• He was monitored by the Sheriff's department in Savannah, GA over P25 radios which he openly admitted to misusing anyway and the FCC did nothing
• He planned to attack vulnerable WiFi routers using knowledge he gained from passing his Technician class exam
• He gave some very dangerous and illegal advice to a newly-licensed American Amateur radio operator on reddit
• He made false accusations about the "theft" of a picture from reddit that turned out to just be a click-bait ad that had been posted as a topic in reddit previously
• He received a network-wide (G-line) ban from IRC network Snoonet and to warrant that you have to seriously break the rules which of course he would have done given his background and history

I was hoping it would be some months before I would be posting about the single individual in our hobby that by rights should not be part of it, it sickens me that he is because his behaviour, attitude and history go contrary to what Amateur radio is all about, the sooner the FCC do revoke his license the better.

On closing he made a remark in ##hamradio on freenode on the 18th May speculating that a user there could have been an AI written by a University, considering his track record his speculations tend to become accusations pretty quickly.

I know that it will be a matter of time before the individual I refer to as the 'disgusting creature' will pass this on to him, however the stress caused to me will be low to nil unless of course I hear him on the air via CQ-UK or Hubnet as these are the primary places on DMR and YSF I monitor when not monitoring GB3IR or GB3HG.

73 de 2E0EIJ 

POCSAG in Amateur radio

The dreaded POCSAG (dreaded if you run cheap Chinese radios on 2-meters) has found it's way into Amateur radio, the Germans have been running it for years, in recent months I've seen an option for it in Pi-Star however up until a few days ago my Jumbospot would not be able to transmit it, however the board received a firmware upgrade and should now transmit it.

To receive it from the Jumbospot I'd need a pager though my RTL-SDR combined with PDW can do the same thing, however though I want to play with it I'm not sure what I could do with it or how it fits in Amateur radio however the Germans have it sorted, getting a used UK pager would not work  because the Jumbospot and the standardised frequency used are both in 70cm and UK pagers are set on 153MHz.

I am a fan of the older technology, pagers are no exception to this, even though I now know that poorly built 2-meter rigs (Chinese ones primarily) suffer badly from commercial installations of POCSAG and FLEX transmitters as these are so high powered and the radios alluded to have wide front ends, people may ask why I want to buy or even use a pager, however if it's in Amateur radio it would be free and I am pretty sure some kind of QSO can be done using them over the DAPNET.

Perhaps in the coming months I will play with this, after all it is there so why not.

73 de 2E0EIJ

In-car tablet mount delivered today

The mount for the CHUWI Hi10 Air tablet has arrived today, though yet to be installed, as you know the tablet will get used for APRS map display with the Yaesu FTM-400XDE and I needed to be able to mount the tablet to something.

So the mount needs fitting to the seat runner on the passenger side of the vehicle, I plan to include a USB 2 hub in the setup as well to allow a couple of extra peripherals such as a wireless keyboard and mouse, the Logitech K400 fits the bill well as it has a laptop style track pad so operating APRSIS32 would not be an issue at that point, the USB hub required to be able to plug two devices into the tablet (the radio would need the com port reallocating at the tablet end as this would break the setup as it currently is).

As the tablet charges from USB-C this means I can run it from the charging cable on long journeys, the tablet should gate anything it gets from the radio to the APRS-IS and also keep tracking active where the radio cannot transmit to an igate or digipeater itself.

I have test fitted the tablet on the mount without attaching it to the gooseneck that would hold it down, it fits snugly and should stay in place on the bumpiest of roads all being well, however that remains to be seen until after installation.

I hope to get the mount fitted to the car sometime this week, the speaker for the FTM-400XDE also needs reattaching as even Sugru does not seem to hold it despite the fact the FTM-400XDE itself is still held in place and is the heavier item, I could fix the speaker to the gooseneck of the tablet mount as it seems to be of good quality and I'll be attaching, somehow, a USB hub to it anyway.

73 de 2E0EIJ