AmateurLogic.TV Episode 186 is now available for download.

AmateurLogic.TV celebrates 18 years on the air.
George reviews the Craftsman Battery Powered Soldering Iron.
Jocelyn demonstrates the MFJ-1898 Portable HF + 6 Meter Antenna.
Emile introduces Outlook Package Message Manager.
Mike explores OpenWebRX +.
Announcing the winner of our 18th Anniversary contest and Icom IC-705 prize package giveaway.

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Hello and welcome to the 520th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this short-topics episode, the hosts discuss several open source and ham radio topics. Topics include: student contacts with the ISS, solar eclipse studies, proposed changes to the 60-meter band, the latest Raspberry Pi OS, OpenWebRX and much more. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Lobo Overlook is an excellent summit and tourist spot near Wolf Creek Pass, one of the most scenic passes in Colorado. I’ve been up there for VHF contests and other mountaintop operations and initially thought it might be a SOTA summit. No such luck, as it is superseded by a higher summit nearby (W0C/RG-169). Lobo Overlook is accessed via an easy 3-mile gravel road just off the pass. The road leads to two small loops at the top, one of which is the actual Lobo Overlook while the other goes to an obvious radio site. The trail to RG-169 is best accessed from the radio site, so we parked there. Wolf Creek Pass and Lobo Overlook sit right on the Continental Divide and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) passes through here just a bit to the west.

Lobo Peak

This unnamed summit is listed as 11820 in the SOTA database. However, Lists of John (which was used to create the W0C SOTA database) shows this summit as 11831. My topo map seems to agree with 11831, so this might be an error. Of course, such a cool summit near the CDT deserves a name, so Joyce/K0JJW and I decided to call it Lobo Peak, for obvious reasons. (I looked for an existing nearby Lobo Peak and did not find one.)

Near the radio site, we started at the marked trailhead and headed west on Lobo Trail (878), actually going downhill to intersect the CDT about a half mile down the trail. At the trailhead, it was not obvious which summit we were headed to and it might not even be visible at that point. The summit did reveal itself as we headed down the CDT (see first photo above). We followed the CDT to a visible game trail that takes off steeply to the right (lat/lon 37.49765, -106.81515). There are several game trails that split off, heading up towards the saddle to the left of the summit and we stayed on the most established one. We set up our station within the activation zone just below the actual summit, avoiding the rock scrambling to get to the top.

The one-way distance on the trail is 1.2 miles with an up-and-down profile. Lobo Overlook is only slightly lower in elevation from “Lobo Peak”. The trail starts at about 11,770 feet, descending to a low point of 11,500 and back up to 11,800 at the summit. So that produces a net ascent of about 300 feet, maybe more, one way. Of course, you get to repeat this on the way back.

SOTA and POTA Activations

Once in the activation zone, we deployed the IC-705 on 2m FM, driving the 3-element Yagi antenna. We worked Travis/KB9LMJ on 146.52 MHz, who was mobile in Pagosa Springs. Further calling on 2m FM did not yield any contacts, but K0JJW and I did work each other on VHF/UHF. We had anticipated that this might be a tough place to activate on VHF, so we brought along the HF gear and set up an EndFed Halfwave antenna for 20m. Propagation was good and we soon worked 11 stations on 20m SSB.

This summit sits right on the dividing line between the Rio Grande National Forest and the San Juan National Forest, both valid for Parks On The Air (POTA). We opted to operate from the Rio Grande side (K-4405) because that was a new one for both of us.

Continental Divide Trail

I’ve hiked sections of the Continental Divide Trail before, including some pre-SOTA backpack trips with Denny/KB9DPF. It is a great trail because it runs along the backbone of the Rocky Mountains. It is often accessible via roads to high mountain passes. (Another example is Wander Ridge, just off Cottonwood Pass.) Once you hop onto the CDT, you are hiking an established trail that is literally on top of the world.

This is an excellent, easy-to-access summit in the Wolf Creek Pass area. So if you are in the area, this might be one to activate. The road to Lobo Overlook is closed during the winter.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Another Continental Divide Summit (W0C/RG-169) appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Hello and welcome to Episode #519 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this deep dive episode, the hosts discuss more than one topic that need a bit of exploration. Those topics include: the upcoming JOTA/JOTI scouting event on the air and Internet, the LHS Minecraft server, Ubuntu 23.10 and iVentoy. Thank you for listening and we hope you have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

A new addition.....well I did have it in the past and sold it....don't ask

As you know I enjoy my CW contesting and am always looking to make things more easy. When contesting I use N1MM+ logging software which works great. During non-contesting times I use Win4icom radio control software. As a side note this software by VA2FSQ Tom is great and very well supported. He also offers radio control software for Yaesu and Elecraft as well, I have used the Elecraft radio control software (Win4k3) and it was great as well.

When contesting there are times when radio adjustments are needed such as filter settings, APF settings and digi select. To get to these adjustments you have to dig down a few menu settings to get where you want to be. Then I came up with what seemed to be an easy solution......but as they say, nothing is easy.
Using Win4icom the multi-menu changes could be done with one mouse click! With Win4icom you can use multiple 3rd party programs and N1MM+ is one of them. After setting up Win4icom and N1MM+ to speak with each other via virtual com ports I was good to go.......so I thought. 

Win4Icom software

The communication between the two programs was all good except for the N1MM+ cw macros would not key the radio and send the CW message. That is a big issue when contesting, I contacted Tom from Win4icom and he informed me that Win4icom does not support the use of DTR over virtual ports. He then informed me to overcome this issue I needed the Winkeyer from K1EL. The funny thing is I used to have a Winkeyer but sold it! 

I then ordered the Winkeyer and waited for it to come in, when it did I followed very closely the installation instructions for the Winkey. When I started both Win4icom and N1MM+ low and behold all the macros worked like a charm! But as always there is always a hiccup when dealing with computers, software and hardware. 

I had my 9A5N touch keyer connected to the Winkeyer port and then I tried to send code from the key it did not work. I have an early edition of the 9A5N key and it does not like the Winkeyer. I solved the issue by connecting the touch key directly to the Icom 7610 radio.
So now I am off to the races and can have Win4icom, N1MM+ and Winkey all happy and working together.