SOTA Activation G/TW-002 M1XOR

Yesterday I went to Cringle Hill, this was the paek adjacent to the one I previously visited on 6th May Ground Hill G/TW-001.

I went alone with my IC-705, planning to do APRS and see if I can pick up stations both the Noth of the moor and south, and see if I can relay them. A Temporary join of the two areas!

As soon as I set up the station on 2M, I head G0WPO/P on another summit. I quickly caught up with him, on 5 watt, didn’t have a chance to plug in my external battery for a little more power. Dodd Fell G/NP-016. Not a bad first contact at 70km.

I managed to get 9 QSOs with that 1 S2S. So all is well. I moved on to getting my laptop out, setting up APRS. While that listens for beacons I could grab a bite to eat.

I could see both digipeaters MB7UHT and MB7UCG. I wasn’t sure the effect of my station had. Nor unsure how to measure it. My home listening station did pick up my beacon on the hill. I presume this was because of MB7UHT as I can clearly hear that at home.

I had a few challenges I came across this trip:

  • Dealing with location, this was hard coded in direwold config and/or YAAC
  • Direwolf gave off a beacon and YAAC gave another
  • Having to restart the YAAC = Direwolf. With no clean easy way to save packets caught
  • A station on 144.8125Mhz was causing a bit of interference, presumed to be YSF/C4FM. The Few closest Stations are: MB6VB - IO93hw / MB6RY IO95dj / MB6GW - IO94fv (This is DStar + DMR)
  • The BNC crimp on my coax isn’t 100% secure. Give it a wobble and signal cuts out
  • Knocking the VFO dial and accidentally transmitting off intented frequency.
  • Cutting myself when packing up the station.

I managed to play with filtering to try and curb the neighbouring stations. I also turn on the pre-amp on the ic-705 and see if that helped hear distant stations.

Things to do next:

  • Look at setting up either direwolf to use GPS for beaconing, or YAAC. Ideally want to simplify the tools needed here with just direwolf.
  • Look into current data capture I did, so understand what Stations I did hear. And if repeated packets got heard further along.
  • Packing some plasters next trip.
  • Look into the BNC and re-crimp and/or solder.

Further along:

  • Look into direwolf doing an automatic packet dump.
  • Look into putting this into a phone app rather than laptop.
  • Read the manual on ic-705. See if there is a VFO lock and other fun features.