Archive of posts filed under the Blog category.

Getting started on DMR with an XPR6550 as a HAM

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Some years ago my club (W8YY) joined DMR MARC as the first node in Michigan’s UP. For a long time I just used club equipment. But having moved downstate recently, I decided I wanted to stay involved in DMR, and needed to purchase my own hardware. I had been using a club XPR6550 and decided to look for one. Out of the blue, I found one at a garage sale, for far below market value and scooped it up.

Lesson Learned No. 1 – Buy the right radio

There are many different XPR6550s out there. Some are VHF, some are UHF, and some are 900MHz. The one I bought was UHF, which should be fine since the repeaters I want to talk to are UHF. But there’s a catch, there’s more than one flavor of UHF. The radio I purchased was configured for 450-512MHz. Not great, since amateur repeaters are down around 440MHz. I ended up selling the radio on eBay and using the money to buy the right radio. So, before you buy your radio make sure you make yourself familiar with the Motorola’s model numbering system.  Shown below is the numbering system for XPR6500 series radios. In general, if you want to work UHF, try to find a radio with a “Q” in position 4 of the model number; VHF look for a “J”; and just avoid “T”s and “X”s. For other Motorola Radios models, check here: http://dmr-marc.net/FAQ/radio-models.html .

XPR6000-numbering

Lesson Learned No. 2 – Programming Cables

You will also need a programming cable. For the XPR series the cable part number is PMKN4012A. Please don’t buy a knock off, you’ll risk damaging or bricking your radio. Motorola has put some smarts in the cable. There is a chip in the cable, between the USB connector and the radio. Motorola has not published what the chip does or how it works, but it does do more than sign/authenticate the cable as genuine Motorola, it facilitates communication between your computer and radio. The knock off companies have done a poor job reverse engineering it, and performing certain operations with a knock off cable, such as firmware upgrades, can brick your radio.

Lesson Learned No. 3 – Radio Programming Software

Motorola is in the business of selling radios to enterprise customers, not amateurs. They will charge as much as the market is willing to bear; which, apparently, is about ~300USD for a copy of their Customer Programming Software (often abbreviated as CPS). Large customers will buy the software outright. Small to medium size businesses have the option of going through a dealer. Dealers are typically local businesses that can afford Motorola’s big business prices by supporting a bunch of smaller businesses in aggregate. In addition to selling hardware, dealers also make money programming radios.  The needs of an amateur and a small business aren’t terribly different, a hypothetical budget version of the CPS for amateurs could be used by small businesses in place of going through a dealer. No matter how loud we are, Motorola sees us hams as tiny little sliver of the market; an acceptable market loss to keep their dealers happy and in business, this isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

All that said, I still think its kind of bullsh*t that individual hams have to shell out the big bucks to legally program legally obtained hardware. Especially since the software is ~300USD and you can generally buy the radios for quite a bit less than that (used). A lot of people are probably going to disagree with what I’m about to say: But, if you’re a just one ham with one or two radios, I see no reason why you should feel bad about pirating this software. If you look hard enough you can find it posted on forums out there (Please don’t ask me for links or to share software, pirating software is illegal). On the other hand, if you are a small business, a club, have more than just a couple radios, or simply can afford the ~300USD price tag, you should really should just pony up the money and go 100% legit, you’ll get better support and software updates.

Some other notes about the software:

  • The software’s official name “Motorola CPS”
  • The software is Windows only. From what I’ve read, Win7 seems to be more reliable than 8 or 10. Although I have it running on 10 right now.
  • There are several versions to serve different geographical regions:
    • AA region (North America)  for XPR radios
    • AZ region (Asia, Austrailia) for XIRM and XIRP radios
    • EMEA region (Europe) for DM and DP radios
    • LA region (South America) for DGM and DGP radios
  • As of this post (mid 2016) the current major version number is 13
  • To program in analog amateur repeaters you will need to activate the “20/25kHz Channel Bandwidth” feature. If you are a legit CPS software owner you can request a free key from Motorola to allow this functionality (yes I do think this is a stupid extra step, I’ll spare you the rant). If you pirated the software, you might be out of luck, as I’m not sure how you would request a feature for a piece of software Motorola has no record of you purchasing.
  • Code Plug (often abbreviated CP) is the term used for the configuration file you would load onto your radio.
    • Examples to get you started can be downloaded at http://dmr-marc.net .
    • KD8EYF had created a tool to help users more easily generate custom code plugs. At the time of this posting the forum which he had hosted the software on, has gone down. I’ve tried contacting both him and DMR MARC about this, but I have yet to receive a response. I’m a bit disgruntled to say the least. It is a bit irresponsible to host free software that people rely on without mirrors. KD8EYF: if you are reading and would like me to host a mirror for your software, please get in touch (my call is K8SPN).
  • Once you write to a radio with the CPS, all CPS versions earlier than the one used can no longer read the radio.  This is important to remember when purchasing a used radio.

Lesson Learned No. 4 – Drivers

Sometimes the radio might show up as a COM device or serial device before drivers are installed. Here are some steps RadioReference forum user IdaScan shared to fix this issue (http://forums.radioreference.com/2576930-post35.html)

  1. With radio connected to laptop and showing up as USB Serial Port (COM6) in device manager, right click and uninstall. This should remove the instance from the device manager.
  2. Then disconnect the radio and cable from the computer.
  3. Next, install MOTOTRBO Driver from TrboNet’s website: http://trbonet.com/redistrib/rndis_d…ation_0450.zip
  4. Install the driver using the setup exe.
  5. Once this is completely installed and happy, then open up MotoTRBO CPS. Once loaded, reconnect cable and power up radio. At this point, it should now show as a network device MOTOTRBO Radio in Device Manager and prompt for network discovery permission (Network 5, 6, 30, etc). You should be able to read/write/update with 12.1 in Windows 10.

DMR-MARC has some not-so-terrible instructions on how to configure your radio, which can be found here: http://dmr-marc.net/FAQ/subscriber-program.html

This is all I have to report at this point. I’m still learning all the ins and outs of programming my radio for amateur use.

The Fiero Project

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Some years ago my grandfather gave me an old Pontiac Fiero that had been sitting dormant for nearly twenty years. No precautions were taken to store or preserve it; it just sat outside in the elements with an undiagnosed engine problem keeping it from being moved. Once it was towed to my parents place, it sat in a garage for some years as I wondered where to begin with such a project. There where many obvious problems, and a lot needing fixing, from weathered and faded paint,and a broken windshield, to ancient gasoline in the tank, and the unknown engine problem. As I neared the end of earning a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering, I began to take the project much more seriously. Last summer I jumped right in and started by cleaning out the fuel system.

Starting with the basics, I turned over the engine by hand to make sure nothing was seized up. Next, I changed the fuel filter, as well as the oil and battery, which predictably did almost nothing; the engine turned over just fine but wouldn’t start. So, I jacked the whole car up and dropped the gas tank; which, by the way, was atrocious on the inside. After disposing of what was surely no longer gasoline, I hosed it out with a gallon of industrial degreaser . Followed by a good soaking with muriatic acid. I also tried using phosphoric acid, since the tank flash rusted shortly after the first cleaning. In my opinion it’s not really worth the fuss, the tank still flash rusted, and I don’t really like playing with strong chemicals. Now that it was clean I painted it and replaced the fuel pump ,and assorted rubber parts that had turned to goo.

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Before and after pictures of the inside of the gas tank.

 

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Before and after pictures of the fuel sender.

 

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The finished fuel tank and fuel sender.

 

Now surely, I though, I should get something out of the engine; and I did. What I got was what sounded like an extremely rough idle before eventually stalling. Now I was getting somewhere. Following the advice of a friend I picked up a cheap compression tester, and tested the cylinders one by one. The fourth cylinder I tested had no compression. Next step: Engine Surgery. I popped off the valve cover, and voila! A jammed valve and a snapped pushrod. From what I can gather it seems an excess amount of carbon propped the valve in an open position. Then, with no force acting on the rocker arm to keep the pushrod seated it moved out of place, the rod jammed against it, buckled, and snapped in two.

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What I found under the valve cover (left), and the broken pushrod (right).

At this point I was pretty enthused, I finally had an excuse to rebuild a sizable part of an engine.  So I pulled off the cylinder head, and tore it down until it was bare. Then I packed it all up and cleaned everything in a chemical wash basin after hours at work. I honed all the valves, and replaced the one that had jammed. I took some time while everything was apart to paint the pushrod and valve covers fire-engine red with some spray on engine enamel.

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By the time I got the head reattached, my dodge blew and intake manifold gasket, and since nothing can ever be easy on a Chrysler product, I spent the rest of what was left that summer dealing with repairs on my truck. Ultimately, I ended up getting it running well enough to trade in toward my Forester with 40,000 more miles and ten times the reliability. And so now I eagerly await this coming summer when I can finish reassembling the engine and test out the Fiero.

Why I killed my Facebook and moved to Twitter

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Facebook comes with baggage and is fraught with expectation. The whole air surrounding Facebook is one charged with emotion, as the complexities of interaction and identity are watered down to a few drop down selections. In my experience, the complexity of communication as well as the need for clarification goes up. This can be observed in the application of terminologies like “like” and “friend”, the perceived simplicity of black and white selected states just leads to more ambiguity. In the analog world saying “you like something” has only one meaning, when on Facebook the convention applied to the “like” button has a much broader meaning.

“Friending” is it’s own bag of marbles. Not “Friending” or “Unfriending” a friend on Facebook can defiantly send mixed message. An “Unfriended” friend may be insulted, offended, or even hurt, perceiving a correlation with friendship in the offline world. While it could be a sign your friendship is waning, it could just as easily mean you just don’t want your feed clogged with: information you easily can or do get offline, or automated post made by apps, or any of the other dozens of reasons that have nothing to do with honest to goodness friendship. Online actions could lead to the need for offline clarifications. Time spent clarifying or repairing hurt friendships is time that could have been spent, just hanging out, having fun, or just growing closer. And, well, “friending” or “not friending” family adds it’s own dimension of fresh hell to all this.

I Dont Always - I don't always use social media But when i do i use twitter

I don’t really have too much of a gripe with any of this; after all, every form of communication has it’s strengths and weaknesses. But, the complexity and the type of friction added by using Facebook is a huge turn off for me. I turned to twitter because it’s largely neutral, following someone’s feed carries far different connotations than “Friending”. My only thought when I choose to follow someone is “Do I find their feed interesting?”, not “How will they feel if I follow or don’t follow them?”. Similarly, since twitter is public by nature, the only though I have when posting is “Is it ok if what I’m about to post goes public?”, not “Did I correctly set my up privacy settings, groups, and whatnot?” With Twitter, my focus and attention is freed up to think about what I’m posting, rather than the baggage that comes along with using the social network.

And for anything I need more than 140 characters to express, I have Cheesed-Off.

 

Field Day 2013

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This Summer, I had quite a bit of fun at Field Day 2013. I joined the Saginaw Valley Amateur Radio Association for their Field Day outing. Running a Kenwood TS-520S I recently picked up, along with the matching AT-230 tuner, I strung up a G5RV antenna in some nearby trees (with help form the club). It was the first time since I got on the air with the rig since I bought it.

Field Day 2013

From 1800UTC to 0200UTC I made a total of 12 contacts, ranging in from New England to Texas, and everywhere in between. It was a great time and really got my feet wet in the world of HF.

Time (UTC) Station Frequency (MHz) Mode Location
19:11 W4RAT 14.300 USB Virginia
19:35 N0FUK 14.275 USB Iowa
19:37 W1CUM 14.320 USB New Hampshire
21:04 K4OO 14.290 USB North Carolina
23:30 K4PMH 14.290 USB Virginia
23:35 WB4ZPI 14.343 USB Alabama
23:38 WE1CT 14.275 USB ——
23:44 W5WB 14.320 USB Texas
23:50 W5CCW 14.330 USB ——
00:39 AC8IE 14.309 USB Ohio
00:58 WC9AR 14.231 USB Indiana
01:23 N5TT 14.300 USB Texas

Some Good HAM Exam Prep Resources

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If you’re like me, you like to run through practice questions to prepare for tests. Here is a short list of resources I’ve used, and recommend.

 

Web: http://hamexam.org/

A simple site that just runs you through test questions. Definitely a great free resource.

 

Android: Amateur Radio Exams 1.0 Pro

Aside from the $2 price tag, and slightly humorous contradiction in the name, this is a pretty rock solid little app. It has numerous useful test modes, including: random, previously unanswered, previously incorrect, and all questions test modes. It also remembers where you last left off and offers an option to resume from that point. The real selling point of this app, though it’s not terribly unique, is that you can study anywhere without fumbling through your phone’s browser.

 

iPhone: Unknown

I don’t own an iPhone, but I’ll be happy to take app recommendations and post them here. Feel free to email me at deseehc@kcabdeef-off.com if you know of a particularly useful app.