[Today’s run: rest day]
A few weeks ago I bought an old laptop computer to use with my ham radio activities. I wanted something to track the log from my GPSDO and to use for logging during contests.
I recently got the idea that I’d like to have an APRS-based propagation tool, something that would alert me when the 2 meter band starts to open up to longer distances. So I put the soundmodem program and other ax.25 tools on this old laptop. Things ran slow so I spent a small amount and got some more memory for the laptop.
Turns out that I’m not hearing much on the APRS frequency, not as much as I would expect. I changed out the poor coax to my antenna. People tell me to get either an external sound card or an external TNC. But wait, I’m already using the serial and USB port on the laptop… so maybe a USB hub? I could stand to raise the antenna a bit too. Since this is an APRS hole, maybe I should put up a digipeater/I-Gate?
I could buy a TNC, get a better computer, put the antenna up about 30′, get some better feedline, then get an isolator so that I can run the digipeater without interference from other 2 meter operations (local repeater, SSB/CW)…
Wait a minute, what was it that I was wanting to do again?