Bicycle mobile

I've always been a bit of an armchair traveller, and also an armchair cyclist. I like to read accounts of people's travels through foreign lands, particularly if they are travelling by bike. The slower pace and need to stop and talk to more people means that they are able to convey more of a feel for the place than you get from reading grossly overrated travel writers like Bill Bryson. So having just come across the blog of Raf, ON5RZ, who is currently cycling through the USA and Canada with an FT-817 and wire antennas, I have some reading to catch up on. Perhaps you'll enjoy reading it, too.

Rough justice

Some UK readers may already know of the case of Carl Johnson, M3VWP, who was prosecuted for driving without due care and attention, found guilty, fined and received three points on his driving license for operating his 2m mobile rig whilst driving.

In the UK it is, quite rightly, illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving - though you can see this law being flouted every day of the week. There is, however, an exemption for the use of two-way radio, which applies to ham radio mobile operation. You could argue - and personally I would argue - that if it's dangerous to use a mobile phone then it is no less dangerous to use a ham radio. But that's beside the point. It is not illegal to use a ham radio whilst driving and unless he was actually driving dangerously as a result, M3VWP should never have been prosecuted for it.

Nevertheless, he was, and when summoned to court he decided to represent himself. Despite the existence of many holes in the prosecution's case - according to his letter in Practical Wireless, Carl was stationary at traffic lights when spotted by the officer, who after an hour at the roadside apparently admitted he didn't know the relevant law himself - M3VWP was found guilty. He decided not to appeal.

Of course, it's just my opinion, and I know only what I have read, but I feel sure that if M3VWP had been professionally represented in court, or had appealed, he would probably have got off. A good solicitor might have got the point across that the law against using mobile phones did not apply in this case and that Carl could hardly have "not been in proper control of his vehicle" as he was stationary when spotted by the police.

Unfortunately in the UK only the very poor or the very rich have access to justice. If you're poor, you receive legal aid, but if you have any means at all you have to pay the exorbitant legal fees yourself, and only the very wealthy can afford to take such a hit to their bank balance. One can only feel sorry for M3VWP for being convicted when he did nothing wrong. It seems that it doesn't matter what the law says, if the police think you've broken it then that's it.

Radio amateurs in the UK take note. Operating your radio whilst mobile could cost you a hefty fine and even, if you already have some points, lose you your driving license.

Working W1AW

It was a fine day, too fine to stay indoors, so I decided to go out for a couple of hours and do some more mobile operating with the K2 and MP-1 antenna. I didn't want to drive all the way to the coast as it takes a bit too long so I wanted to find a good site nearer home. I studied the map and found a likely spot not much more than three miles away near Tallentire Hill. There is a narrow lane that runs high up along the side of the hill with a good takeoff from north through west to south. At the high point there is a wide verge where you can park clear of the road. The only people who disturb you up there are a few dog walkers from Tallentire village, so it is ideal.

Today 15m didn't seem quite as good as on Tuesday - or perhaps being beside the sea made a difference? Anyway after a while of tuning around on 15 I moved down to 17m and had a 5 minute chat with Sonny W8FHF in Ohio. Shortly after that I heard W1AW the ARRL headquarters station in Newington, Connecticut calling. It was being operated by Ron, K1RKD from nearby West Hartford. As an ARRL member I was particularly pleased to work HQ and Ron promised to log me on the computer so I would receive a QSL card via the bureau.

I heard several other US stations and also Javier, XE2CQ very loud. I was sure he would hear me given the chance but he was having a long chat with someone and I didn't get an opportunity to call him. I made one more Stateside contact, with Roger N4ZC near Charlotte, North Carolina, though he struggled a bit to hear my 12W signal so it wasn't a long one.

I went back to 15m after that, but the only other station I worked was Yussuf, CN8YZ, 59 both ways (he was running 25W.) Not great DX but still a nice contact.

I am getting a bit hooked on this mobile lark as I seem to be hearing much better DX than I do from home and it is just so pleasant to hear atmospheric band noise and copy weak signals instead of the awful racket demonstrated on my recent video. In fact I must find out where I can obtain another power cable for my K3 as I would like to try my best radio in the car. It would be nice to have a bit more power, although I'm getting a real kick out of making SSB contacts with 12W to a mobile whip, but the main thing is the K3 receiver is much better.

Across the pond mobile

With rain being forecast for the rest of the week I thought I would take the opportunity to make a few more mobile contacts. Before I did I decided to make a modification to the antenna that I hoped might improve the SWR of the MP-1 on the magnetic mount.

The Moonraker 7in. Turbo mag mount is not, in fact, a 7in. diameter magnet. It is more like a 5in. diameter magnet inside a steel case shaped like an upside down dinner plate with a 7in overall diameter. The magnet is not a tight fit inside the recess of the plate, so by drilling close to the flange I was able to make a hole without drilling into the magnet, to which I attached a terminal for one of those push-on electrical connectors. This could be used to attach a wire to ground the antenna to the car body. But as I hadn't found a suitable grounding point I decided instead to make up a set of quarter wave counterpoises for 10m, 15m and 20m which I attached to a mating connector.

This time I thought I would drive to the coast to see whether being close to the sea would help me work across to North America. I parked beside the road half way between Maryport and Allonby, looking across the Solway estuary to the Scottish mountains in the distance. It was a sunny afternoon, the sky was blue and the sun glittered off the sea. A nice mobile QTH for a spot of operating.

I set up the MP-1 on the magnetic mount and checked the SWR on 20m using the antenna analyzer: it was about 2:1 as it was before. I then connected the counterpoise, expecting the SWR to come down to a 1:1 and was amazed to find it made absolutely no difference. It was as if there was no connection to the counterpoise at all - though I checked, and there was. Possibly the SWR curve changed slightly but the null stayed exactly the same, which was very disappointing.

I switched to 15m, tuned the MP-1 for best SWR and had a listen around. The first contact was with Nick, UY3LA from Lozovaya 150km south of Kharkov in Ukraine. My report from him was 55 to 59. He spoke good English and we had a chat for five minutes. I told Nick that my wife was in Kharkov at this very moment, and he invited us to visit him the next time we are both in Ukraine.

I heard some nice DX including FM5WD, A71CV, XE1HH, VU2JQ and CU2AA. I also heard several Stateside stations but could not get through to any of them. I switched to 17m for a while and made a couple of European contacts with good reports, which surprised me as there was a small hill about 80ft high immediately behind me in the direction of Europe. I'll never understand HF propagation.

I also had an eyeball QSO with a local from Allonby who drove by and saw my antenna. He was a fellow radio enthusiast and wanted to say hello. It turned out the radio he was enthusiastic about was the 11m kind, but he was interested in getting a ham license so I told him to contact the Workington club for more information. He has a better antenna than me - a Sirio vertical up at 20 feet above all the TV antennas. I can just imagine what my neighbours would do if I tried that. That's the trouble with living in a "posh" area.

Eventually I returned to 15m where I could still hear several US stations. I called K1JDL who said "I can hear a mobile in there but I just can't pull you out" and then immediately QSY'd. Then I called Tom W0WP in Iowa who came right back with a report of 57 to 58. We had a really good chat for 15 minutes and Tom said that he "didn't miss a word." He was running 1200W to a TH6DXX so I said he must have a good receiver as my power was 20dB less than his. I thought he would say he was using a K3 but in fact he was using a TS-2000! However he is out in the country in a plot of several acres and the nearest neighbour is a quarter of a mile away so he doesn't suffer from man-made QRN. I can only dream!

Mission accomplished: my first Stateside contact from the mobile and a good solid ragchew to boot. I decided to call it a day and go home for tea.

Mobile DX

It occurred to me recently that the reason why I can rarely bring myself to work anything other than digital modes is because the noise level on the HF bands at home is so high that listening to the radio is too unpleasant. Tune across the band and you hear dozens of carriers against a background of hash and buzz, with odd patches of warbly noises. Although the noise falls off on the higher bands the carriers if anything get worse. Forget about listening for beacons on VHF! I don't think the problem is solvable, as I believe I am hearing the combined output of all the houses in the neighbourhood, not the product of a single rogue device that could (theoretically) be tracked down and eliminated. So my instinct is just to work digital modes with the volume turned off.

People have often asked me why I don't operate portable or mobile from the car to get away from all this QRN. My usual answer is that I often operate for an hour or so here and there and it isn't practical for such a short time as that. Operating from the car on a cold dark winter night isn't as attractive a prospect as doing it from a warm shack, and my wife would probably take a dim view my going off for three or four hours at a time just to talk on the radio in any case. But Olga is away at the moment and I'm getting fed up with digital modes, so I thought I would give it a go.

I already had a Superantennas MP-1 which I bought for portable use, but haven't made much use of it for that due to the British weather rarely being warm enough to tempt me out. (Yes, I know SOTA types operate from hilltops in sub-zero temperatures and howling gales, but I like my comforts and they're masochists.) A quick trip to Maplin in Carlisle resulted in the purchase of a Moonraker 7 inch Turbo mag mount with the requisite 3/8 fitting. Then I drove out to a quiet spot to try it out. The spot I chose isn't an ideal radio location as it is surrounded by hills, but I haven't yet found somewhere with a good take-off that isn't a "viewpoint" and packed with tourists, or anywhere that I can drive on to the beach.

I took the antenna analyzer along which made tuning the antenna a lot easier. I started off on 15m, where I got an SWR of 1.5:1. For the radio I took along my Elecraft K2, which has been little-used since the K3 came along. I set the power to 12W and searched for someone to work.

My first mobile contact was with John 9H5JW, a British expat living in Malta. He gave me a 58 report to my 59 (he was running 100W). We had a good chat for ten minutes and I felt the MP-1 was doing a really good job.

Next I heard KD4FNI from Ozark, Alabama. He didn't hear me, unfortunately. My next contact was with Nick RV3EFR near Orel for 59 both ways. Then I tried to call Harry 7Q7HB in Malawi. He was working another mobile in Finland, but unfortunately when he finished there was a bit of a pile-up and he didn't hear my call. He was strong enough that I'm sure we could have made a contact, as was KP4BD in Puerto Rico whom I also called without success.

My third contact was VU2DSI from near Mumbai in India. He gave me a 56 to his 59. I'm pretty sure I haven't worked India before, even from home, so I was very happy with this. The /M suffix is really worth about 10dB of gain. "Will the mobile please call again."

My final contact on 15m was with Mauro I5HOR near Florence. He gave me a 55.

I was pretty happy with those contacts, but I wanted to see how the MP-1 performed on a mag mount on the other bands. On 10m I got a 1.2:1 SWR, though there was nothing to be heard on that band. I went up to 40m and the SWR dip was pretty sharp and would only come down to 3:1. On 20m I got around 2:1, and managed a quick QSO with Franco IZ4NPE for a 58 report on that band, so it was not too bad.

Clearly the poor ground through the mag mount affects the SWR of the MP-1 on the lower bands. The K2 ATU can take care of this quite happily, but possibly performance is compromised as well. A permanent mount on the car isn't an option, nor would it be worth the trouble for the amount of use it is likely to get. I will have to see if I can drill the mag mount and fit a terminal that would allow me to attach a temporary ground wire to the car body, or even a resonant counterpoise, if that would make a difference.

All in all it was a worthwhile exercise that I'll probably try again. To make a contact with India from a parked car using 12W to a whip antenna is quite an achievement!

PSK31 on your phone

I don't really think Windows Mobile is a very good operating system for mobile phones. It seems needlessly complicated, a bit like Windows for desktops. But just as I use Windows on my desktop computer in the radio shack because I'm not willing to limit myself to the rather poor choice of ham radio software available for Linux, so Windows Mobile offers the best choice of ham radio applications for a portable computer that happens also to be a mobile phone.

A good example of this is PocketDigi by Vojtech Bubnik OK1IAK. I last tried this a few years ago when I had a Dell Axim Pocket PC, though I never used it on the air. Since then, Vojtech has added support for a number of popular digital modes, so the program supports not only PSK31 but PSK63 and 125 as well, plus RTTY, MFSK and several more. It can decode CW as well.

To test it out I just put the phone near one of my speakers connected to the K3 and turned the volume up loud. This is far from ideal, but I did manage to decode a few stations on 20m this morning. One of the accessories available for my HTC Touch Pro is an adapter for a headset, with separate jacks for microphone and headphones. This would be ideal for connecting to a radio. You could make a tiny portable digimode station using this and an FT-817 or even a PSK-20? You probably think the phone is bigger than it is, but the picture above is more or less actual size.

One annoying feature of the FT-817 - and one of the reasons I never actually tried PocketDigi on the air - is that Yaesu stupidly did not allow VOX in DATA mode when the rear ACC socket is used. Someone sent me an audio VOX circuit but it required an audio transformer that I couldn't obtain. But if I can manage to make a suitable interface it would be an interesting thing to try.

If you don't have a Pocket PC or a Windows Mobile phone you can still try PocketDigi. There is an x86 version that will run on a Windows desktop. It's rather basic compared to most digimode applications, but if you are using a very old and underpowered PC with a low resolution screen it could be just what you are looking for.

APRS phone

I finally succumbed to the idea of using a mobile phone for APRS. It arrived today. The phone is an HTC Touch Pro Windows Mobile phone. It isn't the latest model, but it's one that I knew would run the APRS software I wanted, APRSISCE by KJ4ERJ, and I got it for a very good price from Expansys. Though not visible in the photograph, it's one that has a real (if small) QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the back. So apart from APRS it will also be useful sending and receiving email and surfing the web when I am out.

Unfortunately my phone company 3 UK's account servers were down today so I was unable to log in and add unlimited internet to my package. I had to do it over the phone. This worked out rather well, as because I have had my account for more than 18 months and have not taken advantage of a free upgrade phone they gave me the internet add-on for free. So I have all the minutes and texts I could ever use, plus "unlimited" internet, for £15 a month, which I think is quite a good deal.

Unfortunately I don't think the internet package will start until 15th January (I had a bit of difficulty understanding the Indian gentleman who took my call) so I won't be able to use the internet (and the APRS software) out and about until then. But the phone can use wi-fi so I was able to install the software and get it running from inside the shack.

I was very impressed with the performance of the phone's GPS, which picked up signals from several satellites from inside the shack. APRS text messaging works really well - faster than ordinary mobile phone text messaging in fact. It is also faster and more reliable than APRS text messaging over amateur radio, which always seemed a bit hit and miss.

I do feel a bit of a cheat doing APRS this way, but the functionality is just so much better using the phone. The map display of the APRSISCE software is far more useful than the display of the VX-8E, and the compact self contained phone is much more convenient than using a portable GPS linked to an APRS tracker and separate radio.

Since the mobile network will relay my position reports to the internet I can be tracked and receive messages anywhere, not just when in range of an APRS digipeater or gateway. I no longer need to run a (cough, unattended) Internet gateway in order to connect myself to the APRS network. And that simplifies things in the shack a good deal. I have already released the FT-817ND from 2m duty and returned to using the K3 and transverter. So it's smiles all round.

If you have APRS capability feel free to send a text message to G4ILO-12.