It was a very low turnout, with several members sending apologies due to illnesses and weather (and in fairness, those of us there got utterly drenched leaving the pub). Mindful of club funds we moved the meeting to a nearby pub that we’ve used a few times before and fortunately the school allowed us to cancel at no charge. And Godfrey made a sensible decision not to come as it was indeed dry when he’d have been coming but the rain was horizontal as we were leaving.
But for those of us that made it, there was a lot going on:
I brought my £6 repeater that links two Baofengs or other radios with ‘K’ (Kenwood) connectors, although being in a public place and raining heavily outside we couldn’t really play with it. But it will have uses, we just haven’t thought of them yet. Also I flashed my two Meshtastic devices to MeshCore which Marrold tells me is what all the cool kidz use now. We deed to find somewhere high up to leave a repeater.
Alistair brought a DigiPi hotspot he’d recently put together, which is a compact, all-in-one digital station for amateur radio. To use his words, it’s built around a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W running a lightweight Linux image, and connects to a transceiver via a USB soundcard and serial interface (he’s using a Digirig with his Lab599 TX-500 or connecting directly to his Icom IC-705). With a portable power source and connected to a phone or small tablet, it becomes a completely self-contained setup for digital modes. It runs popular software like WSJT-X, JS8Call, FLDigi, and APRS, allowing FT8, PSK, WSPR, and more without needing a laptop. Just power it up, plug it into the radio, and it’s ready to go. The whole point of the build is to make digital operation simple and portable, perfect for using on his boat, or a POTA/SOTA activation, or just running quietly in the shack. It’s small and surprisingly capable for such a tiny setup. The Pi Zero 2W and screen came to around £25 and more information about the Digipi can be found at https://www.digipi.org/
Greg brought some LoRa in an ultimately successful attempt to run AX.25 over LoRa @ 70cm, using the E22 400T30D Module made by EBYTE (max 1W). So far he’s have tested PacketRadio using LinPac software on Linux and IP over AX.25 communication (Ping and SSH). Using a minimum available power of 21 dBm it worked nicely between the ground and 8th floor of his flats (further tests to be made). The setup consists of USB-C to Serial TTL adapter, LoRa module and a few wires and elements on the universal board. Additionally after spending some time with Alastair, we made a connection using the modules at the pub (between his Linux laptop and Raspberry Pi)
We discussed putting together an order for some PCBs and parts to build LoRa “Hydra” module for Meshtastic (30dBm, 868 MHz LoRa modules made by EBYTE) but more on that soon.