Amateur Radio High Frequency Capabilities

[usmcveteran]

Thought I would start a thread for hopefully chronically my journey back into HF radio.

I got my elecraft kx3 back on the air. I still need to play around with antenna to maximize efficiency given my location but it's going well. I've made a contact in Kansas and Montana. I've heard morse code from France and didn't try to respond but bet they would of heard me. My 2 contacts I did make were on 3 watts of power (radio wouldn't use more because I need to work on antenna).

My overall goal is to make a radio go box that I can take with me and charge via solar, AC and might as well throw in via DC that is capable of pretty much anything that's possible.

It's a tall order for sure but I think doable.

I ordered and will receive a cheap usb sound card for digital modes (have to decode signals using software) a raspberry pi and I downloaded a image for it that includes over 80 ham radio programs so I'll essentially save my self a year of installation since I don't know what I'm doing lol. I ordered a touch screen and box for raspberry pi and necessary accessories. I even ordered a satellite usb that gives the pi accurate time for digital modes but can be used for satellite tracking to aid in "downloading weather maps". Did I mention I read you can set up the pi as wireless access point for wifi so people can connect via smart phone when there is no internet in area and send emails over radio via winlink? I'm sure there is a ton more.

Once I can get everything working at home I plan on trying to design a go box to house everything. I'll probably utilize lifepo4 batteries and make sure that I have switches isolating key components to minimize parasitic draw especially when box is unattended to extend battery life.

If anyone here has technical knowledge that might help in this I'm all ears, otherwise it might be a wild ride lol.

[big flash]

i don't understand half of what you just said, so best of luck and i'll keep tabs on your progress LOL

[WARFAB]

Did I mention I read you can set up the pi as wireless access point for wifi so people can connect via smart phone when there is no internet in area and send emails over radio via winlink?

Guessing this kind of like the old school dial up modems, except over the radio? Sounds cool.
Liberty's Teeth might be able to steer you towards some LiPo battery sources.

[usmcveteran]

Yea it's really slow , I think I read something like some modes are around 125 characters a second and another one is around 500 character a second.

[usmcveteran]

Here is video kind of showing email over radio.

[usmcveteran]

Got raspberry pi and stuff today. Just trying to get it all set up. I did read something interesting though. The email service thats usable over radio is actually part of same network the government would use if all other forms of communication failed.

[usmcveteran]

Update: finally got my radio to work with laptop and winlink software and sent myself an email through HF! It was a blazing fast connection peaking at 242 bytes a minute lol! Only took a couple minutes from start to finish and sounded kinda like the old phone modems lol. Now that I got that working I'm going to work on getting it configured on raspberry pi. Then I hope to set the pi up as a remote server so I can use internet to connect with it and control radio when I'm not home and also turn it into a wifi hotspot when there is no internet so I can still use phone to send and receive email over radio.

[WARFAB]

Only took a couple minutes from start to finish and sounded kinda like the old phone modems lol.

I kind of want to do this just so I can feel nostalgic about the modem noises.

[usmcveteran]

I'll have to see if I can upload some audio in near future somewhere and post it here for you lol. Anyone know linux or specifically raspberry pi code? I'm trying to figure out how to enable my usb sound card for software. It was easy to do on my laptop which is windows but this is more over my head.

[usmcveteran]

So I'm kinda stuck at moment. I downloaded the ham pi v1.2 which is raspberry pi OS with a bunch of software already installed. I'm thinking it was set up wrong so I might start from fresh install and install all programs myself.myself. That said I'm definitely learning a lot. With the image I downloaded there was nagware installed lol. Everytime you restart OS a box would pop up saying to basically send person who made it a qsl card (it's like a personalized post card Amateur radio operators can make and send when they make contact with someone). So I learned you can start task manager, enable all options to see all command lines being ran in real time. So I left up that stupid box and saw the code for it. So I was able to determine I couldn't see folder in location shown so I unhid all hidden files and delete the file and viola no more stupid pop up lol.

Problem I have now is when I go to send email and select a radio station to connect to it doesn't change my radios frequency automatically. But other then that if I manually set frequency using other software on raspberry pi I can still connect and send / receive email over HF radio. I can even do it from work on my phone by remoting into the pi computer.

[usmcveteran]

Making copy of my current image before some goes wrong but I got pretty far.

So I have the pi set up to send / receive email, it controls radio and changes frequencies now so I can have it automatically try and connect to all know stations.

Haven't test yet but should be able send and decode most or all digital modes over HF radio. I can get weather reports via HF radio.

Heck if it isn't connected to a network it turns into its own hotspot. No it doesn't have internet but it allows anyone who connects to it to send emails or text messages to my outbox where I can send them. It also allows people to check for replies after I enter them. Heck it even has its own phpBB forum installed that's only accessible via that wifi connection that's not on internet. So that means people can't register for account and will have to post as guest but they can still choose a username when posting. Oh and I can remote into pi from phone while on my home wifi, when I'm out and about through internet, and also while connected to wifi hotspot without internet.

[Norm Deguerre x2]

Update ??
shoulda looked at this at your house
Prolly wouldn't have made sense anyways
I was way past exhausted
Just actually about caught up now, I do know my own name. ????

[Norm Deguerre x2]

Did I post any pix of my Drake set-up before ?
made in Miamisburg,Ohio it is. ????

[Norm Deguerre x2]

PS
3 watts will get you pretty far
I can not talk about my Drake 1000 w rig on here's tho.

[Norm Deguerre x2]

Drake L-7.