Category: Show Notes

LHS Show Notes #027

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Contributors:

  • Russ visited a Ham Radio Outlet in Virginia and bought a new Yaesu FT-7900R for his truck.
  • Richard bought a Kenwood TS-50, some wire and antennas at the Belton hamfest, but hasn't installed them yet.
  • John, EI7IG, says you don't need AX.25 support in the kernel to run XASTIR, since you're running the TNC in KISS mode. He also says that APRS is useful for emcomm events, disseminating local weather information, and passing short text messages.
  • Tim, KI6BGE, recommends Resonant Frequency, Linux in the Ham Shack, and SolderSmoke in his October 29 blog entry.

Announcements:

  • We received a donation from Paul during the last episode, and now Alex made a sizable donation. Thanks, Alex!

Links and Notes:

Music:

  • "Company of Fools" by Great Big Sea from the album "Fortune's Favour"

LHS Show Notes #026

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Contributors:

  • Kent, VE4KEH, writes in the forums that the Debian Testing updates have caused him some problems. Richard suggests not using the Testing distribution, while Russ disagrees.
  • Do any of the ham radio digital protocols support full TCP/IP? Can we load a web site via packet radio?
  • Commentsabout Episode #025:
    • Alex, OZ9AEC, says that he'd rather attend an Ubuntu launch party every six months, rather than a Windows party every six years. 🙂 He provided a link to an Ubuntu 9.10 Release Party Map.
    • Jim, N3JIM, defends APRS (Automatic PACKET reporting System), saying it's more than just vehicle tracking.
      www.aprs.org says it's "automatic packet reporting system"
      www.aprs.net says it's "automatic position reporting system"
      Our hosts discuss the apparent usefulness, or lack thereof, of APRS.
  • Richard rants about receiving spam, this time from Twitter.

Announcements:

  • Please donate to the fund to send Linux in the Ham Shack to the Dayton Hamvention in 2010!

Links and Notes:

  • Joe, NE3R, provides this audio segment about minicom, a Linux terminal application for connection to serial port devices. Check out Joe's blog.
  • Audio from Russ at Ohio Linux Fest:
    • Talking to Jim, KB3ORA.
    • Handing out DVDs of the first 22 episodes.
    • Matt, KC8BEW, provided some ham radio gear to use at the booth. Thanks, Matt.
    • Russ visits with Beth Lynn Eicher and Rob Ball, both of OLF, and Doug Vann of Duo Consulting talks to Russ about Drupal.
  • Richard talks about his visit to the Belton HamEXPOin Belton, TX.
  • Donate to the fund to bring Richard and Russ to Dayton Hamvention 2010.
  • Look for new topics in future shows, such as reviews of other Linux distributions such as ARCH Linux, Slackware 13, and OpenSUSE 11.1.
  • Russ talks about getting his amateur radio station back on the air. He put up a new antenna, an AlphaDelta DX-CC trap dipole for 80-10m. He also acquired a Rascal GLX sound card interface, installed fldigi, and made his first digital mode contact with PSK31 on 20m! Yay, Russ!
  • Russ has also discovered IRLP.
  • Paul, from TeenRadioJourney.com, made a donation to the Dayton fund. Thanks, Paul.
  • We're looking for a new logo for Linux in the Ham Shack. Any and all submissions will be considered.

Music:

LHS Show Notes #025

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Contributors:

  • Paul, from TeenRadioJourney.com, mentions LHS on his blog.
  • Russ Wenner from The Techie Geek podcast joins us in the chat room.
  • Kent, VE4KEH, in a post in the forums, says he heard Russ on an episode of Hacker Public Radio, and wonders if an appearance on Linux Outlaws is next. He also asks about a Windows 7 launch party. Our hosts respond.
  • Kent also posts a comment in a thread about Acer dropping support if you install Linux on one of their computers. Kent asks which manufacturers are Linux friendly? He also wonders why Acer creates two partitions on their laptops.
  • threethirty from Linux Cranks sent congratulations about LHS getting a mention in an LXer.com article Ohio LinuxFest Report
  • Matt, KC8BEW, in a comment about Episode 22 asks if Chirp will support radios other than Icom D-Star.

Announcements:

Links and Notes:

  • Russ talks a bit about being at Ohio Linux Fest. He was in "podcasters row" in the exhibit hall, along with the Northeast Ohio Open Source Society, The Linux Link Tech Show, and the Security Justice podcast. Russ shares some interviews and audio he recorded:
    • Interview with Matt, KC8BEW.
    • Russ plans on taking Linux in the Ham Shack to Dayton Hamvention, 2010.
    • Jim, KB3ORA, stops by the booth.
  • Questions in the chat room:
    • Russ Wenner from the Techie Geek Podcast, asks: is ham radio an expensive hobby? Richard opines.
    • HamTests.net is a good resource. The European site is HamTests.co.uk.
    • Do you need to learn Morse code? Nope, but it's even more popular now.
    • Do you need a high antenna? Not necessarily. Russ discusses. The ARRL has several good books on antennas.
    • Paul Shirey asks if shared folders on different machines can be combined. Possible, but difficult.
  • Richard talks about APRS and XASTIR.
    • One of the requirements for using APRS under Linux is that you must have the AX.25 packet radio protocol support in the kernel.
    • To determine if your kernal has AX.25 support, enter this command in a terminal: 
      grep ax25 /proc/kallsyms

      If you get a result something like this:

      c0510ddc r trans_net_ax25_table
c05127a0 r trans_net_ax25_param_table

      then AX.25 support is built into the kernel. If you receive nothing, then you'll need to recompile the kernel with AX.25 support. (Most of the current versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint have AX.25 support.)
      For more information, see the HowTo:AX.25 article on the XASTIR wiki.

    • Richard describes configuring XASTIR.
    • Bottom line: it's not all that hard to set up. Read the wiki. There are how-to articles for many different operating systems.
  • From the chatroom, someone asks about the throughput of the various data modes in amateur radio.

Music:

  • "Like This" by STEEP from the album "STEEP"
  • "Lost" by Trainlight from the album "Now You're Alone with Ghosts"

LHS Show Notes #024

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Richard and Russ are the Penn and Teller of Amateur Radio podcasting.

Contributors:

  • Doug, N6LMX, recently acquired an old Dell Inspiron 3500 notebook and decided to try Linux Mint on it. For some reason, probably processor and memory, it stalled before it got started. Same with Ubuntu 9.04. However, Xubuntu 9.04 works like a charm.
  • Joe, NE3R, sent an audio message about minicom. Thanks, Joe. Look for it in a future show.
  • Google alert about a LHS mention in John's Blog.
  • Paul in the chatroom asks about connecting a Linux machine to a shared Windows printer. Russ suggests browsing to https://localhost:631 to bring up the CUPS administration page and configuring the printer there.

Announcements:

  • New streaming audio on the web site. New URL: https://stream.lhsinfo.org:8008, or go to https://lhsinfo.org and look for the links on the right side of the page.
  • Look for Richard at the Belton HamEXPO on October 3rd. in Belton, TX. Russ will be at Ohio Linux Fest on September 25-27 in Columbus, OH.
  • Welcome Bill, KA9WKA, as the newest member of the Black Sparrow Media production team. Bill will be compiling the show notes for Resonant Frequency. (And, now, LHS too. Email comments, corrections, suggestions to ka9wka at blacksparrowmedia dot com. -Ed.)

Interview:

Topic:

  • Richard discusses programming radios using Linux
    • Richard tries programming his Vertex VX-150 using Wine under Linux. The programming software installed fine, but when he tried downloading the data from the radio to the computer, he received errors, probably due to a mismatch in the serial port speed. Next, he tried programming his Icom IC-91AD. The software installed and recognized his serial port, COM1, and he was able to program the radio.
    • Tim, KI6BGE, in the chatroom, says the IC2200H D-Star program works the same way.
    • KB3GTN in the chatroom says he's had good luck programming his Kenwood TS480 within Linux, using his own program.
    • Tim, KI6BGE, says the Icom ID800 and IC2200H use the same programming cable, but different software.
  • A Ustreamer asks which Linux distributions we're using. The summary is Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, SpearMint, CentOS, OpenSUSE, and Debian.

Music:

  • "Terra Firma" by Garrett Wall from the album "Sky Pointing"
  • "All of the Above" by Garrett Wall from the album "Sky Pointing"