Wednesday, January 29, 2025
The Wellspring of Eternity - LewRockwell
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Getting Started with AREDN January 27, 2025 by AB1OC
We have long been interested in Data Networking and Amateur Radio. One of our projects this past year has been to build a Homelab. This project builds on the fiber optic-based data network and includes a high-availability virtual server setup. These interests made our recent inclusion of AREDN (Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network) network capability in our station a natural addition. This post explains how we got started with AREDN.
AREDN Frequencies
ARDEN provides high-speed Mesh Networking and related services using Amateur radio links in the 900 MHz UHF and several microwave bands. AREDN networks are built using commercial data networking equipment and RF data linking gear, which runs software provided by the AREDN development team. The hardware uses inexpensive routers and RF linking nodes from several vendors, including MikroTik and Ubiquity. The AREDN system is well-documented, and it is not hard to get started.
Fortunately, several experts are working to build AREDN networks here in New England. I have gotten to know Jay, K1EHZ, a local expert who has helped me get started. Jay is president of the Merrimack Valley Amateur Radio Association, which devotes considerable time to building an AREDN network here in New Hampshire and training local Amateurs to use it.
First Steps
The AREDN network in New England links several DMR and other repeaters to create the New England Emergency Communications Network (NEDCN), which provides emergency and other communications services. The AREDN network offers a mix of RF-based and Internet Tunnel-based links.
AREDN Tunnel Router – MikroTik hAP ac lite
RF linking is not yet available in our area (although it is coming soon), so we began with an AREDN tunnel node that Jay has provided. The hardware used for our tunnel node is an inexpensive router from MicroTik. It uses a connection to the Internet provided via our home network to create a Wireguard tunnel to Jay’s node, which is part of the AREDN network here in New Hampshire. The router also has a Power over Ethernet (PoE) port, which can power and connect an RF linking device when RF coverage becomes available in our area.
A computer with a web browser is connected to one of the router’s LAN ports. The connected computer has access to all nodes on the worldwide AREDN system and the Internet via our in-house Internet router and the associated fiber Internet connection.
Accessing The Local AREDN Network
AREDN Tunnel Node Interface
You can use your web browser to access the AREDN network. The home page for our Tunnel Node is shown above. Each AREDN node has a similar interface, which can be used to configure the node and navigate the worldwide AREDN network. We can see more of the local mesh by clicking on the Mesh Icon (the grid icon on the left side of the web interface).
Local AREDN Mesh Network
Here, we can see all the nodes in our local mesh network. Each node can provide links to other nodes in the network and may offer AREDN-delivered services such as a Network Chart, VOIP Conferencing, eMail and Winlink services, and more.
Integrating AREDN Into Our Home Network
Our Home Network Dashboard
We use a networking and firewall system from Ubiquity. The Ubiquity Unifi system provides central management of Virtual LANs (VLANs) that divide our physical ethernet and WiFi network into independent Virtual LANs. We use these capabilities to integrate AREDN into our home network.
AREDN Integration Into Our Home Network
We use three VLANs on our Home Network to integrate AREDN. The table below shows the VLANs that we use and what they do:
| VLAN | ID | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Ham VLAN (Green) | 30 | Provide Internet Access for Wireguard Tunnels to Local Mesh and Other Nodes |
| AREDN LAN (Blue) | 110 | Access to AREDN Mesh and The Internet via AREDN Local Subnet Addresses |
| AREDN DtD VLAN (Red) | 2 | Provide Device to Device Access between Local AREDN Routers and RF Linking Devices |
We extend the AREDN LAN (Blue VLAN) to include a unique WiFi SSID for AREDN access via wireless devices within our home.
Future Projects – What’s Next?
AREDN Supernode Mesh
We are working on or planning several additional AREDN projects here. They include:
- Implementing an AREDN Supernode for our Local Mesh Network to provide worldwide access to other AREN Mesh Networks
- Upgrading our Tunnel Router to faster, higher-capacity hardware
- Add a 5 GHz RF link to our Local Mesh Network
- Adding sectorized RF connections for access to the AREDN network in our area
- Adding services to our Local Mesh Network. Plans include a Stratum 1 NTP Time Source, a Website, email services, and possibly a VoIP PBX. These will be provided via the high-availability server infrastructure in our Homelab.
- Access to a local video camera
The first two projects above have already been completed. We’ll soon add additional articles to cover them.
Fred, AB1OC
MFJ Products, from G5RV Antennas to Amplifiers and Tubes, Still Available at DX Engineering Posted by OnAllBands
Purchase MFJ, Cushcraft, Hy-Gain & Ameritron Products While They Last
***
As we mentioned in our previous post about Cushcraft antennas, select MFJ products—including branded MFJ, Cushcraft, Hy-Gain, and Ameritron items—are still available at DXEngineering.com. MFJ, a fixture in the ham radio community for decades, ceased production of its lineup of equipment in May 2024.
Today we’ll be featuring just a few of the many popular MFJ, Hy-Gain, and Ameritron products that are in stock at DX Engineering. Please check DXEngineering.com for availability. As of this posting, the website includes the following:
Hy-Gain
MSHD Lower Mast Support Kit: The Hy-Gain MSHD Lower Mast Support Kit is designed to fit the HAM-IV, HAM-V, and T2X Tailtwister Hy-Gain rotator units. It’s manufactured from heavy-duty aluminum castings and is required for mounting these rotator units to a mast instead of to a flat mount surface. Stainless steel hardware is included. “This is one heavy-duty mount,” per one customer review. “Should give many years of service with no problems. Worth the money in a lot of ways!”
SPT-500 Super Penetrator HF Vertical Antenna: This 5/8 wave, 12/10 meter 1,500W power-rated antenna’s full-size radiator (with lower radiation angle) concentrates power closer to the horizon. Measuring 22.8 feet, it features large diameter, heavy-wall tubular construction. Four full-length radials and special machine-formed brackets give extra talk power and overall strength. Double-matching also provides a DC path to ground to drain off precipitation static, resulting in an extremely low-noise antenna capable of high power.
MFJ
849 HF/VHF Digital SWR Wattmeter
Featuring a large 3.5-inch bright orange LCD display, this meter reads SWR, and forward and reflected power digitally in a single glance. Handling 200W, it covers 1.5-525 MHz and features two sensors with SO-239s. An HF/VHF switch selects frequency range. The LCD is backlit, and the meter runs on 13.8 Vdc. The meter has a black-painted metal housing with rubber feet.
G5RV Multiband Antenna
This 102-foot center-fed dipole is capable of 1,500W and covers 160-10 meters with a wide range antenna tuner. It’s designed to be used as an inverted vee or sloper to be more compact. It may be used on 160 meters as Marconis (with a tuner) and a ground. The antenna handles full legal limit power. Just add a coax feedline and get on the air. Read much more about G5RV antennas in this OnAllBands article.
Five Stars: “Does a great job on all HF bands. No assembly required. Open the package, put it up in the air. I have been impressed with the reception and transmission on the HF bands (with an antenna tuner).”
Richard, DX Engineering Customer
1702C Antenna Switch
This switch employs center-ground protection. The unused terminal is automatically grounded for static and RF protection. It provides better than 60 dB isolation at 300 MHz and better than 50 dB at 450 MHz. Users can expect less than 0.2 dB insertion loss and nominal SWR below 1.2:1. The switch features cavity-type construction, 50-ohm impedance, mounting holes, SO-239 connectors, and the ability to handle up to 2.5 kW PEP.
1919EX Heavy-Duty Antenna Tripod
Supporting up to 100 pounds, the 1919EX tripod includes a built-in steel mast and a collapsible 15-foot fiberglass mast. Its steel mast is 1.6 inches in diameter and extends to a height of about 4.8 feet. The steel mast easily accepts most U-bolt antenna applications. Weighing only 9.75 pounds, the tripod collapses to 54 inches long by six inches in diameter. Its companion telescoping fiberglass mast employs MFJ’s QuickClamps for easy and secure height adjustments.
This 600W PEP (500W CW) solid-state linear amplifier uses state-of-the-art, high-voltage RF TMOS-FET devices in the power output section. The ALS-600 provides continuous frequency coverage from 1.5 through 22 MHz (160 through 15 meters**) with no tuning adjustments. Broadband five-pole low-pass filters provide output harmonic suppression in excess of all FCC requirements. Users enjoy instant band switching, no tuning, no warm-up, quiet low-speed fan, and SWR protection.
**10M and 12M operation with optional modification kit, FCC amateur license required.
Replacement Power Tubes
Choose from Ameritron 811A and 3-500Z tubes in stock:
75 Amp Switching Power Supply
Ideal for Ameritron’s ALS-500M 500W solid-state amplifier, this switching power supply provides 75 amps of output current continuously. The switching power supply has less than 100 mV peak-to-peak of ripple under 75 amps under full load, and load regulation is better than 1.5 percent under full load.
(Image/Ameritron)
A Personal Record: Winter Field Day 2025January 28, 2025 by KM1NDY
I have done Winter Field Day every year since I became a ham. With a radio club in a rain storm (2020), in a museum train caboose in 0℉ weather (2021), in a severe blizzard in a tent in our backyard (2022), with another radio club in rustic cluster of cabins (2023), at the outbuilding on our off-grid farm (2024), and finally, in a comparatively luxurious tiny RV again on our land in Upstate New York (2025, this report!) I published our WFD 2025 checklist in this post.
Like we did for our very successful ARRL Field Day last June, we set up two 80M OCFD antennas. One was running in a north-to-south configuration in that treeline visible out the window of the travel trailer. If you look closely you can see part of the 200′ of coax we used to get back to the temporary shack. The coax ran in through the window and we used pipe insulation in order to keep the freezing cold outdoors outside. It is hard to see, but using a space heater we were able to keep the temperature inside the trailer at a comfortable low 60s°F. The other 80M OCFD was set up in a perpindicular treeline, with roughly an “L”-shape formed between the two antennas. We used bandpass filters to minimize interference. These antennas gave us each access to all HF bands from 80M to 10M with an external tuner.
For the RV enthusiasts out there that are curious, we were powering the RV with a 3500W generator which was giving us AC, however for reasons that we are still a bit unsure of, our trailer was not converting the generator AC power to DC. The RV’s onboard furnace (along with its lights and most other major appliances) runs on DC. We could not run the furnace without draining the trailer’s 75Ah battery given its 11A draw. We do have a solar panel which was providing some daytime energy (about 24W), but it would not be enough and certainly would not help at night. We have to do some trouble shooting on the RV’s converter (if it even has one! We actually could not find it.) At this point, we suspect we blew a fuse earlier in the year. Regardless, we had no problem being comfortable with the one electric space heater plugged in to AC. If we tried plugging in two space heaters, we would trip the RV’s main breaker. Ok, back to radio!
Georgia the Peaches, our one-eyed pirate puppy who is now two years old and seventy pounds had no problem curling up in a sleeping bag inherited from her beloved predecessor Nellie. I will mention, that our quarters were incredibly…cozy(?)…for two adults and a dog that stands taller than 5 feet when she is up on her back two legs. Georgie is also an incredibly demanding dog, so there were a lot of pauses in radio focus to keep up with her needs.
That said, AA1F and I had a very good showing. We made 339 total contacts, with 30 of those CW with the rest phone. We met a whole bunch of Winter Field Day multipliers including operating: 100% on alternative power (+1), away from home (+3), with multiple antennas deployed (+1), on at least six bands (+6), while use multiple modes (+2), and six continuous hours during the event (+2). You can see a lot of our stats below.
All of our QSOs are show in the map below. We did get a few DX stations…the most impressive of which was Japan on 10M CW!
Below you can see the North American contacts we made with the various bands in different colors. We managed to get all but a handful of states in the log.
And again, you can see the contacts we made this time by mode.
And a rough KM1NDY early Sunday morning (okay, by early I mean around noon), selfie just ‘cuz… Poor AA1F, he was there, and I didn’t manage to get a single picture of him. Neither of us took many pictures…we were way too busy making contacts!
I loved this Winter Field Day! It was my best contest radio showing ever when it comes to number of contacts. We had a few problems…infrastructure-wise we were not converting AC generator current to DC for reasons that are not quite clear yet. Radio-wise, we lost the network connection between our two computers. My process for networking have been documented here and here. I used an ethernet cable connecting the two computers this time. I think what happened was I tried to switch my computer over to JS8Call, losing the connection from the radio to the computer in the process. This somehow led to the contest information in N1MM changing, and most importantly, no longer matching that in AA1F’s computer. N1MM therefore no longer would recognize the two computers as part of the same contest network. Unfortunately I was not able to troubleshoot this during WFD, and AA1F and I ended up mostly logging separately. This created a lot of work to fix the logs for submission, which I did last night.
Otherwise, the radio stations and antenna system worked very well. In fact, at the last half hour or so of the contest I was able to successfully run a station on 20M and hold my own on a frequency on upper side band. The cabling for each antenna was a 100′ run of LMR400 combined with a 100′ run of RG8X. It may be worth investing in more LMR400 because I do believe it makes a difference.
Another important note is we ran our stations off of 15Ah Bioenno LiFePo batteries. Believe it or not, for the ENTIRE operation, we only used 2 batteries each while putting out a full 100W. Our computers and other peripherals were plugged in to generator power. These batteries really are amazing.
Well, another Winter Field Day in the books! We are already excited about ARRL Field Day, and are setting a goal of at least 200 contacts apiece! We will see!
As always,
KM1NDY