Hmm... hilltop is 1220 elevation. Have a hill at 1240 about three miles east, and a hill at 1325 or so in the county north. So it's 360 view from up there.

The house is to the west of the hill, at 1080 elevation according to GPS.  300 to 400 yards depending on placement of everything, however, about 250 yards to a shed if I drop there first.

I'd like to put a VHF repeater up as well, so having clear line-of-site would be nice. Wonder if I could remote-control using 802.11?

Jamie/KC0ILP

Solved the problem by switching to KISS mode on the TNC and taking full control into the software.

Not exactly the ideal solution since it still leaves the serial mode TNC matter a question, but it is an even greater indicator that the TNC was misconfigured somehow.

Odd, given that it's configured from defaults, and WinAPRS is set for KPC settings (adding the parameters required).

Jamie/KC0ILP   

Steve --

Thanks for the great suggestion. I can get power out there. Didn't know about the remote station idea, but since I plan to put a repeater into operation up there as well, there's no reason to drag that back down the hill.

Actually, thinking about the dog house - it might become a bit bigger. The hill up there has an outstanding 360 view and makes for a great fixed weather spotting location. However, I'll have to take lightening into consideration to move the dog house far enough away from the base of the tower to be secure. What do you think about 25 feet from the base?

I'm sensing this could get expensive... next comes the hammock, fridge and TV - a hide-out from the wife up on top of the hill:-) "Honey, I'll be up...er... checking on some wires."

Jamie/KC0ILP

When I'm serially connected into the TNC (under Linux, I'm using minicom and am able to connect and manipulate the unit fine - including changing baud rates to 4800, checking messages heard, etc., under Win2K, I use SecureCRT with its serial communications mode to do the same), things look fine.

I've not been able to connect into the Garmin, and the HSP cable didn't include an inbound data wire to match up with the Garmin's, but even when I use different serial cable to bypass the Garmin altogether (e.g. a standard radio shack rs-232 from the db-9 on the PC to the db-25 on the tnc), I can access the TNC just fine, change settings, verify messages heard, but the APRS applications never learn of it.

Any thoughts? Thanks --

Jamie Saker
KC0ILP

Have a bit of a station building challenge that I was curious if anyone had similar experiences or thoughts on how to tackle.

We have 50 acres in southwest Iowa, with a nice big hill (1210 ft. elevation which is "up high" for this part of Iowa). The top of the hill is a natural location for antennas, but I'll have to run at least 200 to 300 yards before I can hit my power source (a garage with backup generator and other equipment).

Any suggestions on that length of cable run, outside of fiber and converters? :-) Or would fiber actually be a good approach? I'd have to believe it'd provide some significant benefit with respect to lightening protection from tower hits to the garage with the equipment.

Thanks!

Jamie Saker
KC0ILP

Got a dilemna that's probably a no-brainer once solved, but after two weeks of re-reading manuals, trying two different PCs, different radios, different OS's and different APRS programs, I'm still stumped!

Here's the problem: In APRS, I am tranmitting my location (and verifying I'm heard by others since I then show up on www.aprs.net, even verified by friends on different computers/connections), but I am not displaying any others I hear in APRS locally. My TNC does show status of having heard several around me and I frequently see the receive light indicating I'm hearing others. I've seen the call signs in the TNC mheard status.

Here's what I'm running - as mentioned, I've verified the same problem in two different configurations and have figured I've got some sort of TNC configuration or APRS software configuration problem. I'll detail both setups:

Setup A. WinAPRS (v2.4.6), Win2K Professional, Kantronics KPC-3+ TNC, Icom IC-T81A with Icom TNC cable. Connecting thru COM2 and works outgoing. Have WinAPRS set to a Kan TNC for the special settings needed. TNC is set to 4800 bps and software is config'ed for serial port and same baud rate. I set to 4800 since the Garmin says it wants 4800 to communicate, even though I'm not seeing it.

I've tried this both with a HSP cable (sharing a Garmin GPS 12 XL, which is also not communicating - I've got the Kantronics HSP cable and the Garmin cable, Garmin brown to Kantronics red, Garmin black to Kantronics black, and cannot receive data from it) and a non-HSP cable which bypasses connecting the GPS altogether (e.g. manually inputting my location data to see if I have a problem on the receive). Same problem in both cases. I'm not using KISS or any special mode (not TNC's APRS mode either) - I am in terminal mode on the TNC.

Setup B. XASTIR (current rev), Redhat Linux 6.2, Kantronics KPC-3+ (same one), ICOM IC-2800H, same Garmin GPS-12XL and cables except for mini-din cable from TNC to radio.

What's odd is that both transmit my data and are heard by the digis, but even though the TNC is hearing others, it's not getting the data into the APRS program - on either setup!

I'd be happy at solving this input problem on neighboring APRS nodes, and would be totally overjoyed at resolving the GPS communication matter too. I have a hunch that since both have to do with the APRS app not receiving incoming data, they might be related...

Any ideas? Much appreciated!

KC0ILP
Jamie Saker / Omaha NE

Geary -

Thanks for the response per the IC-2800H cross-band operation. However, I must still be missing something. Which buttons did you mean by the VHF and UHF buttons -- on my unit, there are none labeled as such.

Thanks again -- do you like your 2800H?

Jamie Saker
KC0ILP

Thanks -- I'll give that a try. Do you operate a 2800H as well - if so, what's your impression so far?

Jamie Saker
KC0ILP

Just got my Icom IC-2800H which was ordered primarily for cross-band operation (when I'm down in my orchard watering trees 30 miles from the closest repeater, connecting via my Icom quad-band HT).

But... after two reads of the manual, I can't find any reference to cross-band operation. Checked the Icom website again and it's definitely listed as one of the capabilities.

Anyone familiar with how to set the 2800H so I can input from the HT on 440 and retransmit on 2m (with appropriate offsets for both)?

Thanks in advance!

Jamie Saker
KC0ILP