Squeaky Penguin's (Trip Reports) Build Thread

Always enjoyed following your build.

 

How's that radio working out? I read a little about it after you picked it up, but don't know enough to tell what I'm looking at.

No! I want quiet and comfortable. Not full of metal bars and rattles.

 

It's working great. Easy to program and use. transmits and receives perfectly. only thing I might want in a radio that it doesn't have is integrated APRS but I'm a little disillusioned with that anyway. Seems like it'd be great if you were a trucker and wanted people to keep track of you. Not so useful in the boonies where I'd be interested in having it.
Oh, and the CB part.... you can program in the CB channels and set it to receive AM and hear CB perfectly. It won't transmit AM though so if you try it's hard to understand.

 

What? APRS is awesome in boonies. You can text literally anyone's cellphone in an emergency. If you have any family back home they can keep tabs on you. And if you have a group of guys with it, you can keep tabs on each other.

 

Haven't had good luck with coverage in colorado's mountains.
That's kind of what I mean. The only use I'd have for it is where there's no cell service.
Granted, I was using it with a baofeng and a cell phone (aprs droid) that was only 8watts but that same radio did well hitting voice repeaters when it couldn't hit anything aprs enabled.

 

The antenna is the most important part. 8w is plenty. A mag mount antenna is your downfall for good reception and broadcast.

It's also possible you didn't have something wired right for the aprs? Tncs also need calibrated to work their best.

 

Oh I hear ya. Quiet is nice. I have something planned for my cage so I don't get the tuning fork sound though out the cage. Not sure if it's going to work but it's worth a try. Not going to say what it is just yet until I try it first. Corey looked at me like I was crazy when I told him.

 

ray, pvc wont work for a cage either

 

Or water noodles

 

From what I've read, there's very little loss between a mag mount and an nmo installed in the same place all else being equal.
I know I've gotten excellent voice performance out of my radio and the aprs worked perfectly on pavement but quit logging data points as I ventured out on trails. I did get a couple of points out when the trail hit the tops of the mountains so I figured I had everything configured right and it was just a matter of aprs coverage. Do you think there's better aprs coverage in Wyoming? Or do you have a lot of aprs experience on Colorado's mountain trails?

 

I've not done much in the hills there. You can look up what the coverage is. I'll check.

Most of the repeaters here are digipeaters so you can usually hit one. The big horns are very well covered and the others have decent coverage. Montana does too. So does ID and Utah.

 

Go vinyl, no more gross carpet. Though carpet is probably better for sound deadening

 

What are your digi path settings in APRSdroid? I changed mine to WIDE2-2 and it made a big improvement in reaching i-gates.

WIDE2-2 (Shortest path string. Produces two hops by directly using two high-level digis. Will work almost anywhere but especially recommended in the American west where high-level digipeaters are really high-level; i.e. on mountain tops thousands and thousands of feet above users that can easily be reached directly, without the help of home stations.) Note that WIDE2-2 is the ONLY path that works with digipeaters in southern California.

http://wa8lmf.net/DigiPaths/

 

i know mine is set for wide-2 im pretty sure that is the recommendation for most who use a baofeng

 

To be honest I'm not sure as it's been more than a year since I messed with it. I'm not anti APRS by any means. It's probably the primary reason why I got my HAM license.
That's also why I was so disappointed by it. Anything APRS does that I am interested in, is done way more easily and efficiently with a smart phone that has a data connection. That leaves it's usefulness (for me) to areas where there is no cellular service but there IS aprs coverage. There aren't many of those areas on the mountain trails of Colorado in my, admittedly limited, experience. I'm surprised at the expansion of cellular service actually. I get service nowadays in areas I would have never expected it.

 

Got a random hole drilled in my roof. Hope it doesn't leak.

IMAG0452 by brettbjorgum, on Flickr

And a start on the sound deadening. Not an enjoyable process.

IMAG0453 by brettbjorgum, on Flickr

IMAG0454 by brettbjorgum, on Flickr

 

Why does that stuff look like alumium buble wrap? Is it heavy? Hope so.. I laid some stuff down that looked like that in Frank..did nothing.

 

Yes. Guessing one box of 9 sheets weighs around 30lbs. I've used about half of one box so far.

They advertise the texture is to make it easy to see where you've rolled it. Seems to work good.

 

Got some more done, but it's slow going.

IMAG0455 by brettbjorgum, on Flickr

IMAG0456 by brettbjorgum, on Flickr

IMAG0457 by brettbjorgum, on Flickr