Ham Radio

Seen a few articles about people controlling their radios remotely lately and thought what most others were doing was a bit too complicated. It could be done a lot easier, at least in my opinion of what’s easier. First, rig control. Linux has the hamlib libraries that can control many different radios. I had built a simple CI-V serial interface for my ICOM IC-706 a while back. It’s not perfect, but can be made to work at 300 baud. The rigctl command line program is pretty simple to use. The manual page for it has all of the commands listed. Many don’t apply for my particular radio, but I can switch frequency, mode, memory channel, and a few other key operating parameters. I can read all of those parameters as well to make sure I’m where I think I am. ...

Today was RACES Exercise with Simulated Traffic 13-11. In the exercise, we were supposed to call up a net, contact as many other stations as possible using both voice and digital modes (QSO party style), and send a list of all of our contacts back to net control via voice or digital. In East Contra Costa County, things didn’t exactly go as planned. The net was called up by John KN6SQ with Lou N6VV co-located on top of the hill at Willow Pass that separates Central and East county. It’s a decent location that can hear most of East county. Initially, I was the only one that checked in. It wasn’t until the county emergency notification system was activated that others got on the radio and checked into the net. I think we had a total of 6 stations. We usually have a few more than that for these exercises. ...