{"id":2687,"date":"2012-06-08T20:13:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T01:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2687"},"modified":"2012-06-08T20:14:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T01:14:13","slug":"project-creep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2687","title":{"rendered":"Project Creep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Today&#8217;s run: rest day]<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago <a href=\"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2539\">I bought an old laptop computer<\/a> to use with my ham radio activities.\u00a0 I wanted something to track the log from my <a href=\"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2213\">GPSDO<\/a> and to use for logging during\u00a0 contests.<\/p>\n<p>I recently got the idea that I&#8217;d like to have an <a href=\"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2668\">APRS-based propagation too<\/a>l, something that would alert me when the 2 meter band starts to open up to longer distances.\u00a0 So I put the soundmodem program and other ax.25 tools on this old laptop.\u00a0 Things ran slow so I spent a small amount and got some more memory for the laptop.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out that I&#8217;m not hearing much on the APRS frequency, not as much as I would expect. I changed out the poor coax to my antenna.\u00a0 People tell me\u00a0 to get either an external sound card or an external TNC.\u00a0 But wait, I&#8217;m already using the serial and USB port on the laptop&#8230; so maybe a USB hub?\u00a0 I could stand to raise the antenna a bit too.\u00a0 Since this is an APRS hole, maybe I should put up a digipeater\/I-Gate?<\/p>\n<p>I could buy a TNC, get a better computer, put the antenna up about 30&#8242;, 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)&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Wait a minute, what was it that I was wanting to do again?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Today&#8217;s run: rest day] A few weeks ago I bought an old laptop computer to use with my ham radio activities.\u00a0 I wanted something to track the log from my GPSDO and to use for logging during\u00a0 contests. I recently got the idea that I&#8217;d like to have an APRS-based propagation tool, something that would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2692,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}