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The other day I did a complete rebuild-in of my Kenwood TM-D710 in my car (a 1999 Volvo V40 2.0T). Actually I had planned to get a cruise control kit from a junkyard-Volvo. But a late check of my wire tree learned me my car doesn’t have any preparations for a cruise control set. So I blew off that job.
Instead I picked up on another job: build in my Kenwood TM-D710! I did use the radio in the car before. But there where cables over the floor and the main unit was positioned in the spare tire. Not the ideal solution.
I did the whole job again. This time I pulled out the complete back-seat so I could lift the interior trim. This way I could run cables from the dash to the trunk. 2 networkcables for display unit and microphone, 1 speakercable and a dedicated 12 volt cable (fused)from the battery. I terminated the patch cables for display and microphone in the dash into a dummy switch. This way I can remove the display as well as the microphone so everything is out of sight.

Only remaining job is drilling a hole in my roof for a permanent antenna setup. More on that later.

Checkout the result:

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PE1JPD 23cm transceiver kitLast night I visit a keynote from Bas PE1JPD about his 23cm transceiver kit at our local HAM-club evening. It was a very good keynote. Bas was able to find a very good balance between speed and technical depth. He took his listeners from the beginning of design thru prototyping and the final kit. His remarks about the bugs he found (and how he solved them) where hilarious. Bas used very professional slides in his presentation to illustrate the various parts of the schematics. From his answers to questions of the public you could tell Bas really understands designing kits and made really solid choices in this 23cm transceiver kit.

I was so enthusiastic, immediately ordered one. I’m not that much of a 23cm fan but I like this project so much already. I really want to reward the effort Bas put in it.

The 23cm transceiver kit is build around a very smart PLL-solution. Receiver and transmitter share the same intermediate frequency. A cheap Atmel processor is used to control the whole 23cm transceiver kit. A standard 2×40 character with a rotary encoder is the interface.

It is a simple kit which does 23cm FM-only. The idea behind it is to have a pretty straightforward kit with low priced, good available parts.
Bas has prepared a kit with a professional euro-card (10x16cm) circuit-board, all parts and a display. All you need to do is find a case, a speaker and a mic and you are ready to go. The kit price is 142,50 euro’s which is a really sharp price for what you get.

This keynote was outstanding, I wish more people used it as example to model their keynotes. I hope Bas will do this keynote again for other clubs. Maybe the 23cm band will be very crowded, thanks to his project!

More news on the building process the coming months on this blog.

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APRS operatorBob, WB4APR, the creator of APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) introduced the term: APRS operator. He wrote about it here. It really gets me thinking about the possibilities of APRS besides position reporting.
As Bob writes: “A perfect example of an APRS operator data
entry station is a home station where a volunteer can serve this
“back room” function. Without even leaving his room, he can
tune to the nets in progress, listen for every tid-bit of information
that is appearing on the nets, and then enter that onto his display
that everyone then at the EOC can see.”
I can see how that works. It would be handy if you’re able to see were accidents happened for instance. These often cause a lot of congestion. Wouldn’t it be handy to follow a Twitter-feed from, let’s say, your local emergency department and somehow reroute accidents from the feed to APRS as (temporary) objects. If that can be done via a script, it wouldn’t even need manual operations. I don’t think that’s the only useful application but maybe it should be one of the tools a APRS operator should have.
The Netherlands is a very small country in comparison with other countries around the world. So APRS is a bit less useful here then in remote area’s. When you want to plot everything that’s happening in The Netherlands on an APRS map, it wouldn’t be readable anymore. If all mobile stations are plotted as well (and they are) it would be one big mush. So we have to be a little selective what to forward and what not.
At the other hand, now there isn’t much dynamic information on the Dutch APRS map besides mobile stations, weather stations and ships. A little more useful information wouldn’t hurt.

If I can find some time, maybe I dive into this aspect of APRS. Maybe I can be a good APRS operator. Would be nice to set up a group of APRS operators and bring APRS more up to it’s potential (at least here in The Netherlands).