Joseph Burford Photography » VK5UJ

Tracking

Joseph — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:25:24 +0000

Last Saturday I took a Luca for a drive up to the NERC buy & sell. Caught up with a few guys I haven’t seen for years.

Anyway the APRS track worked pretty well, so that was cool, looks like I’ve finally got the settings in my OpenTracker+ all sorted.

Topology map, showing tracking box.

Standard street map view.

Tracker

Joseph — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:05:18 +0000

After a bit of mucking about I got the OT+ from Argent Data going in my car.

Here’s a track from one day this week.

Home to my parent’s in law, where I catch the bus, then from there back home again.

Nothing exciting but you get the idea Will probably do some more driving over the weekend and draw spots all over the map!

Met John!

Joseph — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:17:38 +0000

Some time back John NA3J told me he would be in AU some time around the beginning of April, I hadn’t heard a lot back about it and had forgotten about it.

This morning on the way to Office Works to get a printer cartridge I turned on the rig in my car and who do I hear on the local repeater, John NA3J.

So after that freak on air meeting I just had to catchup for a eyeball QSO. Thanks to Bob VK5HAG for organising a catchup, ended up meeting with John NA3J, plus locals Bob VK5HAG, and Kevin VK5KKS at the local Fasta Pasta and having a chat for a number of hours.

I reckon it’s about 9 or 10 years since I first started talking to John over IRLP, I’d be on my way home from work in sunny SA and he’d be on the way to work in freezing Denver.

Great memories and awesome to finally meet up after all these years, a good start to the weekend. Enjoy the rest of your trip and time in VK land John.

Arrived

Joseph — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:30:39 +0000

My APRS parcel of bits arrived today. We were out this morning when the postie came past so this afternoon I went for a drive with Luca to the local post office.

Now to see what damage we can do!

APRS Order

Joseph — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:35:31 +0000

APRS tracker I ordered has shipped, now tracking via USPS

APRS Gear

Joseph — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:27:49 +0000

Today I ordered some APRS gear from Scott at Argent Data, looks like some of it is on backorder

Should be fun to get back into APRS, I used to enjoy it a lot and it looks like a number of cool things are now available since I last used APRS about 8 years ago.

New ATU

Joseph — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:30:41 +0000

Because I’m not using an optimal antenna (actually far from it) I recently purchased an antenna tuner. I ended up getting an LDG Z-100 which is a nice small compact unit that goes well with my Yaesu FT 857D.

After reading reviews I ended up ordering direct from the US and saved myself about $80 compared to a local purchase, it’s always nice to save some cash The unit took about 5 days to arrive and I haven’t had a great deal of time to give it a good work out, however initial testing shows it works a treat.

In the backyard I have the small G5RV at around head height, with the tuner in line I can now use prety much any band.