I attempted to do a SOTA activation today, my second attempt, and I failed again.  Last time I didn’t make any contacts (despite calling CQ on several bands endlessly) and to add insult to injury my cook stove malfunctioned so I couldn’t cook lunch.  This afternoon I went out on a spur of the moment thing and realized when I got to the site that I forgot my battery.  I looked through the Jeep to find something I could MacGyver and only came up with a laptop battery, but I didn’t have a voltmeter along to figure what pins were what.  However all was not lost.  I got to hike up to the site and muck about as they say, go four wheeling with the Jeep through some nearby mudholes, and then take another hike to one of my favorite spots in Pennsylvania.  Perhaps the third SOTA activation try will be a charm.

Trail up to the site

One of the two towers near the site.  This is an old firetower now used by Carbon County, PA.  The cabin at the top was removed.

The other tower at the site owned by State of Pennsylvania.  Well built, though a bit bland by radio artisan standards.

A neat spot on a rocky peak about a mile away from the SOTA summit

I have completed the Arduino-based rotator computer interface and controller project or at least gotten the code and functionality stable and to the point where I’m satisfied with it.  The unit emulates the Yaesu controller command set and works with Ham Radio Deluxe.  I’ve tested the unit with a Yaesu G-1000DXA rotator.  While the code has AZ/EL rotator support, I do not have an AZ/EL rotator to fully test the elevation functionality yet.  This summer I hope to assemble a satellite antenna setup complete with an AZ/EL rotator using this interface.

If anyone is able to test with an AZ/EL rotator, or if anyone wants to attempt to interface this to another brand rotator, please let me know as I would be glad to develop the code.

Now that the snow has melted and ice fishing season is over, I’m looking forward to doing some Summits On The Air (SOTA) operation on the Appalachian Trail (AT).  This video I found from Kevin Gallagher beautifully summarizes a six month AT journey into a few minutes and got me thinking about SOTA operation from the trail.

Welcome to Radio Artisan, and a special shout out to former K3NG Report readers.  This is my new creation which will focus on projects and operating activities.  Links to projects and “sticky” articles are over on the right.  I will generally post articles when some new project page has been created or if there’s an update to an existing one.

A few of the pages are past postings from the K3NG Report.  The PIC Keyer is a project that I’ve had published for several years now.  My newest creations are the Arduino CW Keyer and the Arduino Computer Rotator Interface / Yaesu Rotator Interface Emulator.  Both are being actively developed with new features, but are fully functional.

I’m currently on an Arduino kick as you may be able to tell.  I also have in the works a frequency counter which will interface with the CW keyer, and a DDS chip controller which may become the basis for a larger project.  I also have in the works an Arduino controlled balanced antenna tuner.

If you have any interests in these projects, please be sure to drop me a line.

73