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This linux command line is hard!?!

Someone just pinged me with the regular beginner fears of working in a linux environment, especially the command line.    Luckily I found a nice site that gives a good set of introductory command line commands and arguments : 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linux_For_Newbies/Command_Line

A few of my personal tips :

1) Use the man pages!    IE: ‘man rm’ will show you all about the rm command and how to operate it.

2) Note everything is not in the path, especially the current directory.    If a command will not run, try doing a ./<command> rather than just <command> if it is in the current directory.

3) / Unix   \ Windows.     The path separators are different.. so if your a windows command line guy.. this will take a bit of getting used to.

Enabling GPIO on the Pi

Need to enable the GPIO pins on your pi.. say for SVXLINK ? A quick command summary :

sudo git clone git://git.drogon.net/wiringPi
cd wiringPi/
sudo git pull origin
sudo ./build

VOILA!

Crackling Raspberry Pi Audio?

Working on an echolink node on one of my Pis. Noticed that even with regular aplay command the audio had a certain snap and crackle to it. The fix is in (actually it’s a firmware update.. so skip down in the link that follows). http://dbader.org/blog/crackle-free-audio-on-the-raspberry-pi-with-mpd-and-pulseaudio

W4BFB Hamfest .. Reviews are in!

(From the W4BFB Website)
http://www.w4bfb.org/hamfest2014/index.php

Another Great Charlotte Hamfest in the Logbook
“THANK YOU” to all our Dealers, Flea Marketeers, Guest, and Volunteers who made this possible. Without you, it would not have been possible.

A special THANKS to Kay Craigie – N3KN, President of ARRL, for presenting the ARRL Forum along with Dennis – W4PWF (Roanoke Division Director), Jim – N2ZZ (Roanoke Division Vice Director), Karl – W4CHX (New NC Section Manager) and the rest of the ARRL staff.

Also thanks to our other great Forum presenters, Lou – N2TU (K9W DXpedition), Bob – K4UEE (FT5ZM DXpedition) and Bill – W4ZV (first American Novice DXCC).

Some highlights other than the Dealers and Flea Market area were:
The Youth Lounge by Toni (KK4TRH) and Patrick Fink (W4PFI) was well received by parents and youth, and even had a special visit from ARRL presidentKay Craigie (N3KN). The build your own 2/440 meter antenna by Bob – K9TMU was another great sucess with over 20 antennas being completed. Also the GoBox contest headed up by John – WB2NHQ had some great goboxes entered.

Don’t forget the Charlotte Hamfest

So this year my fellow Charlotte Hams have elected me to the board of the Mecklenburg Amateur Radio Society™ … a very humbling experience! So I feel it’s my duty to make sure you attend, lots of stuff this year with some great prizes and forums. More information here :

Damn you Prolific

So you have Windows 7 and you want to get a prolific serial device driver that works so you can program your Wouxun, Baofeng etc. read this : http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Drivers.php

2m / 70cm Cheap Antenna Setup

So I removed the temporary Slim Jim stuck on a fishing pole from the side of the shack. It wasn’t a bad solution but certainly wouldn’t hold up to any real weather. More info on the SlimJim can be found here –> n9tax antennas

Being a cheap ham and having spent a lot of money getting the rest of the ham shack together, I didn’t want to break the bank on the permanent solution. So I settled on a Tram Dual Bander which can be found here –> Amazon Link I did take a minute to inspect all the solder joints and put rubber electrical tape covered with shrink wrap tubing over the main joint (just because I am paranoid). At 8 feet and a reasonable gain for ~$50 I figured I didn’t have much to lose.

So the more interesting piece was the mount. I was playing with a lot of ideas from a ROHN pole to some other type of mast. I came across this mount on Amazon and couldn’t resist for $30 : Winegard gable antenna mount This thing is a beast!! Getting it up to the mounting location took a bit of planning. Lesson learned : Attach the top section first, insert the pole between that and the long gable mount and bolt it in… then bolt in the longer gable mount to the wood. I painted it a nice brown that accented the shack fairly well and after a few hours (that included adding some 2x4s to the underside of the gable for support) I was on the air. SWR was fairly flat over the 2 meter and 70 cm bands and was able to hit all my favorite repeaters.

Some pics :

Antenna up!

Gable Mount view

Pre-install

Floor is in

Just needs a little quarter round and we should be good to go

Almost…

Left wall

Back wall

Right wall

Front