Krun

I spent a couple of hours this morning writing a little program using Lazarus / Free Pascal called krun. I will use it to run certain ham radio programs that I use with my Elecraft K3, hence the name beginning with K like my other Elecraft-related programs. In principle though it could be used with other radios, if their command language uses only printable characters.

What krun does is connect to the radio using the serial port and send a sequence of CAT commands to it. It will then run a specified program. It waits in the background until the specified program is finished and can then (optionally) send another sequence of commands to the radio before closing. The com port, baud rate, command sequences and path to the program you want to run are all specified on the command line.

The main reason for writing krun was to facilitate the use of packet radio software with the K3. The SV2AGW Packet Engine doesn't support CAT at all so it can't set the K3 into the right mode for packet operation. For VHF packet you must use FM, but with the transmit audio coming from the line input. It's hard to remember to switch the audio to line input before using packet and then remember to switch it back again for normal phone operation afterwards, so I often ended up transmitting a signal with no modulation. krun should prevent that. As a bonus it can set the frequency, mode and power level as well, so setting up for packet is almost a one-click operation.

I haven't made krun available on the website as it takes time to document and upload it and it probably won't be of use to very many people. But I may get round to it eventually, if anyone expresses a need for it.

Armchair fellwalking

As I noted in yesterday's post about my walk up Binsey, I didn't take any photos. My wife Olga, who is usually with me whenever I go anywhere interesting, is the keen photographer and owner of the camera. I never think about taking photographs and if I do, my thumb is usually in front of the lens or my shadow is in the picture or some other disaster. Why bother, when other people do it so much better?

It occurred to me that, as I didn't have any photos of where I had been, I could instead link to a page on another site that had pictures of the area. And I found a wonderful site, David Hall Lake District Walks. David seems to have walked every hill in the Lake District many times, and not only has he photographed the views, he also has pictures taken along the route, a map showing the path he took, notes about the walk, time taken and distance travelled.

If you have any interest in walking at all, this is a site to bookmark. You'll probably spend many hours following David's walks from your armchair. If you are planning to visit the area David's site will give you a lot of ideas for walks to do when you come here.

A chill wind on Binsey

Olga went to a fashion show at Armathwaite Hall this afternoon. As she doesn't drive, I had to take her, so I decided to while away the couple of hours until I had to collect her by taking the VX-8E up nearby Binsey Fell. This is a fairly modest hill at the northern extremity of the Wainwrights, WOTA LDW-190, which by virtue of its separation from other Lake District fells is also a SOTA summit, LD-041.

It was an easy half hour's walk up the grassy path from Binsey Cottage, even allowing for several stops to take in the superb panoramic views. (Memo to self: next time remember to borrow Olga's digital camera.) On the top it was very windy and quite cold, so the first priority was to find somewhere a bit sheltered from the wind where I wouldn't freeze to death and people would have a chance of hearing my voice and not wind noise when I spoke into the microphone.

I hadn't been up there long when my VX-8E received an APRS message from "WOTA" to let me know that M3XJV/P had been spotted on Coniston Old Man, LDW-030, on 145.525 FM. This is a prospective new feature of the Wainwrights On The Air website that I have been testing, to send "spots" by APRS text message to those who would like to receive them. The feature hasn't been made generally available yet and probably won't be, because a) no-one on the WOTA site has expressed any interest in using APRS, b) even if they had, there are too few APRS IGates in range of the Lakeland fells to provide effective coverage, and c) my experiments so far suggest that sending APRS messages from the internet is unreliable because the messages are sent once instead of being repeated until acknowledged, so unless you happen to be in just the right place to get perfect reception when the message is sent, you won't get it. In fact, this was the first WOTA spot I have ever received on my VX-8E while it was out of the shack.

I tuned to 145.525 just in time to hear M3XJV/P announce that he was closing down and going back down due to the wind and the cold. I tried a couple of calls of "G4ILO/P for a summit to summit" to no avail. Well, it was worth a try!

I made a few calls on the FM calling channel, 145.500, and eventually was answered by Steve, M0IGG on Walney Island at the opposite end of the county. That was pretty good going for 5W to a quarter wave telescopic, considering his low elevation and all the mountains in between. So at least my activation qualified for WOTA.

However despite making several calls on four different 2m repeaters, one 70cm one covering the city of Carlisle, and the FM calling channel, I could not raise even one more reply. After ten minutes or so of this, crouching in the lee of the trig point of the summit, to try to get some shelter from the wind, I too decided to call it a day before hypothermia set in!

Aircraft scatter on 2m

Whenever I see reports of tropospheric propagation on 144MHz I tune my receiver to the GB3VHF beacon in Kent to see if I can receive it any better than normal. I am always disappointed, because it appears that the mountains of the Lake District block all signals from the south round to the east, except for Sporadic-E which is presumably reflected in at a higher angle.

However, when I monitor the beacon using WSJT in JT65B mode I very often see traces like the one on the right, showing a strong doppler shift on the signal. The traces normally last for no longer than two or three minutes, then it's back to band noise again.

At this QTH when the sky is clear you can always see aircraft trails heading north-south on their way down to London. So I presume that the effect I am seeing is due to aircraft scatter?

I don't suppose it is of much interest to most 2m DX enthusiasts to spend some time trying to work a relatively QRP station in IO84hp square, but from my point of view it would be interesting to try a couple of skeds with other UK stations using, I guess, JT6M, just to see if it is possible to make a contact by bouncing RF off an airliner.

A lament for Whinlatter Forest

I'm always envious when I read some of the accounts written by American QRPers of their trips into the wilderness to make radio contacts from remote places. Photos showing endless vistas and antennas silhouetted against a distant horizon. It's something one can only dream of in this small, overcrowded island, and it's getting worse now that more people are taking their holidays at home in Britain.

Olga wanted me out of the house so she could do some cleaning without me getting under her feet, so I grabbed the VX-8E, jumped in the car and headed for Whinlatter Forest Park to do a quick 2m WOTA activation of Whinlatter, LDW-160. When I arrived, the car park was full and I only just found a space. Instead of the sound of birdsong the air resounded to the testosterone-fuelled cries of men on mountain bikes - and a couple of hard-looking women.

I first visited Whinlatter Forest 30 years ago and up until last year as long as you avoided the school holiday periods and Bank Holidays, you could normally have the place practically to yourself. The car park would be less than half full and once you had walked a short way from the main forest roads you would only infrequently encounter another person. And they would be on foot, perhaps with a dog, not hurtling past at breakneck speed scattering mud and stones in all directions on some two wheeled contraption.

After your walk, communing with nature, you could stop for tea in the visitor centre cafe - a beautiful spot looking out over the forest. On one memorable occasion I remember that a Sibelius symphony was playing on the sound system - perfect. Nowadays the sounds you'll hear should you venture in are the thumping cacophony favoured by the adrenalin-seekers who now get their refreshment there. If Hell was a forest, it would be Whinlatter.

This has not happened by coincidence. There are now businesses in the forest that rent out mountain bikes to visitors and offer other "thrills" like the chance to whizz from tree to tree suspended by a pulley from aerial ropeways. So the Forestry Commission, the public body tasked with the management and conservation of our forests, has presumably been complicit in this transformation.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that mountain bikers are entitled to enjoy their fun just as much as portable operating radio amateurs. But they are much harder to ignore because there is a lot more of them - not that ignoring them is a good idea due to the speed they travel. I would have thought that the adrenalin junkies could get their kicks just as well in a converted disused quarry where they would not offend those who are looking for peace and quiet. Who gave the Forestry Commission the right to tear up a place of outstanding natural beauty and tranquillity in the name of profit?