07-28-2015, 10:09 AM
I have it installed and working. Yay! Added a Mirage BD-35 amp, turns out it can be very problematic hitting the APRS beacons with just 5 watts of power. I'm up to 45 watts now. Not enough to brown the toast, but she hit the beacons.
Above shows the bits loosly tossed in the top case. Below, a bit more organized (the cigarette adaptor and converter goes behind the mounting board normally - I pulled it out for clarity). The other two shot show the power feed coming in and the antenna feed coming out.
I used hook & loop tape to hold the power adaptor into the cigarette lighter port instead of the ABS pipe. It turned out to be too cludgie. I also used hook and loop to hold the arms down but the sticky won't sticky. I even tried RTV. No joy. May have to resort to a mechanical fastner. Dang!
If you go to aprs.fi, plug in KG7UHR for the Phoenix area you should see my symbol pop up. If you do a generic search, say over a 12 hour period you can see all sorts of activity. It is especially interesting near ports as some boats use APRS.
Tracking is pretty primative, bread crumbs are posted, then straight lines connect the dots. No attempt is made to follow roads or trails. This gets real bad if the sender has set up a long time frame between sending in packets.
Above shows the bits loosly tossed in the top case. Below, a bit more organized (the cigarette adaptor and converter goes behind the mounting board normally - I pulled it out for clarity). The other two shot show the power feed coming in and the antenna feed coming out.
I used hook & loop tape to hold the power adaptor into the cigarette lighter port instead of the ABS pipe. It turned out to be too cludgie. I also used hook and loop to hold the arms down but the sticky won't sticky. I even tried RTV. No joy. May have to resort to a mechanical fastner. Dang!
If you go to aprs.fi, plug in KG7UHR for the Phoenix area you should see my symbol pop up. If you do a generic search, say over a 12 hour period you can see all sorts of activity. It is especially interesting near ports as some boats use APRS.
Tracking is pretty primative, bread crumbs are posted, then straight lines connect the dots. No attempt is made to follow roads or trails. This gets real bad if the sender has set up a long time frame between sending in packets.