KINGSQUEAK.ORG & KC2RGW.COM

Only new to me, but this thing really impressed me. This is Slide Keyboard an alternate keyboard for Android phones. I was going to do an alternate layout for AnySoft Keyboard (which is also a great alternate, better than stock) but stumbled on this. Perfect

You tap any given key to select the center character and to select the alternate quadrant characters, you just swipe in that direction. It’s perfect for vertical mode one hand typing.

Share on Facebook

So I put this off for a while and I’m a bit late to the game for getting an Android based smart phone. I decided on the Samsung Moment for a few reasons.

I’m a Sprint customer so for an Android phone I was limited to two choices at this time, an HTC Hero or the Samsung Moment. The Hero is a bit slower, but generally has a reputation for having a slicker default theme/skin to the OS. The Moment is faster as it is a newer generation of CPU and runs at 800MHz and has a generic 1.5 release of Android on it as stock.

The biggest deciding factor for me was that the Moment has a slide out keyboard. As I do a ton of texting and email, sometimes more than a page of text at a time, a ‘real’ keyboard was important for me.

The fact it has a more generic Android release was also a prime motivator as the phone manufacturers love to promise timely updates as the OS is updated, but seldom deliver. I figured sticking to a platform that supports the generic load would make installing hacked releases a lot easier in the long run.

For the highlights as I usually do, I plowed into any available material I could find on the Moment and Android in general. I already knew there was quite a lot of hacking on the kernel and OS in general going on so I dug in to figure all of that out.

So far, I’ve modified the kernel and base OS in a few ways and have come up to the following configuration.

Stock Sprint CL14 release of the firmware which contains numerous patches and bug fixes. Modified Zeffie Kernel ZE13.2 and I’ve installed SetCPU from the marketplace to overclock the phone.

The performance with this latest update is indeed noticeably faster. I have the profiles configured to throttle on-demand with max speed while plugged in at 1600MHz and 1066 for when the charge is over 40%. I also set the throttling to 800MHz if the battery temp gets high and lowered it quite a lot while the phone is ’sleeping’.

Only time will tell how the stability is and battery life is overall with the ramped up specs, but initial impression is that it’s stable. I’ll know more about battery life in a day or two.

I came from being a pretty dedicated Blackberry user and had already made the mistake of trying the failure of the Samsung Instinct, which had a completely miserable OS with a lot of bugs and an unusable user interface with horrific lag to touch screen input. Luckily Sprint got me back on a Blackberry Curve with less drama than it usually takes to get customer service from them .

Initial impressions of the Android system are rather incredible. I’m a very heavy SMS and email user and this phone is really great for this. Gmail ‘native’ is supported in a push form for a single Gmail account and this syncs not just the mail but all my contacts from Gmail as well as my Google calendar bi-directionally. Perfect. I’d run Google Sync on the Blackberry so wiping it and firing up the Moment just brought all my contacts back automagically.

For corporate mail, Sprint includes Moxier Mail to interface with exchange. This also worked perfectly and is in push mode with the corporate Exchange server. I get my contacts/mail/calendar all through this app.

For my remaining other gmail and assorted email accounts, there is a POP and IMAP capable app also installed and I have that set to poll via IMAP for my other accounts. This too is working very well.

For SMS, the stock client is fine, but I stumbled upon Handcent SMS which delivers a whole pile of enhancements vs the stock Android client. You can customize all manner of notifications and interface colors and layouts. Highly recommended.

All the apps can be installed simply by using the Android Marketplace which can be searched/surfed via the phone, or you can alternately use Androlib to do some searching from your desktop.

A LOT of really decent free apps are out there…which is great. The Blackberry store was pretty awful. Almost nothing free was decent for the Blackberry.

Other apps that I’ve installed.

• Where – Uses GPS to locate local stores/shops/movies etc and has other location based features
• Mechanic – A file browser, app killer and backup utility
• Crickets – Makes cricket sounds
• Google Shopper – Can read bar codes and book/album covers
• WiFi Buddy – Scans and manages wi-fi connections
• Seesmic – A _great_ twitter client
• S2 Calendar Widget – Option to the built in calendar widget
• Assorted other widget toggles – single button widgets to turn on off silent mode/GPS/Wi-Fi etc.

The list of apps to try is just about endless.

I would tell you NOT to get into hacking your Android phone unless you are willing to deal with the consequences. As I was writing this, my phone locked up, likely due to the CPU clock settings I’m still fiddling with. To me, this is part of the fun. If you are an appliance type user, don’t even bother doing this. You can lose your data, and possibly do permanent damage to your phone….so if you do this…don’t come crying to me.

That’s enough rambling for now.

Share on Facebook

So, I’ve had this device for about two years now and have mentioned it to several people on the air, describing just how effective it is.

What is it? This is an active DSP audio noise eliminator filter manufactured by BHI Ltd.. As simply as possible, it wipes out background hash band noise. It isn’t a pulse noise eliminator like a noise blanker, though it will drastically soften the edge of pulse noise as well.

This is an AF (audio frequency stage) DSP unit. It plugs into the audio output of _anything_ you want to feed through it and you in turn loop it’s output into the speaker or other destination audio feed of your choosing.

The unit has either 4 or 8 steps of increasing DSP elimination effects. In stronger conditions you can back it off easily so it isn’t as heavy handed on processing the signals, or in lousy conditions with weaker signals, you can really clamp it down for the maximum effect.

The best way to show you what this does is simply an mp3 file I created to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Here is a 40m SSB clip with the filter being toggled in and out

The clip was made with some high noise levels and relatively low signal levels at or below the noise peaks, using my vertical on 40m SSB.

The DSP setting was on maximum 8/8 so there is some minimal artifact on the audio signal and a very slight audio level drop. Keep in mind the completely annoying original signal. With the DSP engaged it would be easily possible to maintain a pleasant extended contact with any of the stations in the recording, vs only wanting a brief ‘in and out’ style contact before getting sick and tired of the noise level. A slight bit of the ‘under water’ artifact is much more tolerable.

These units are available in a few configurations from BHI Ltd.. They come in built-in modules designed to be hard wired into the audio circuit of a radio or to be built-in to the internal of a speaker cabinet. They also come in self contained powered speakers with the module included internally. Lastly and my personal favorite are the ‘universal’ inline modules. These allow you to use whatever source or speaker you choose by simply plugging in different inputs and outputs to the unit. It’s the most flexible option.

These modules aren’t cheap, but they are worth every cent if you like to spend a lot of time listening.

W4RT.com is one source in the US for this product.

Share on Facebook

This map shows ham station beacons and the trails of moving vehicles on APRS

Well my IF tap worked great for a few hours and after I shut down my rig….signals were not right. I learned what seems to be a fundamental lesson about JFETs…they don’t like static much. I’m 99% sure that I zapped the JFETs in the buffer amp I installed after doing some reading on how static sensitive they are. At least my rig is just fine otherwise.

So I got an alternative design buffer amp that’s sitting here waiting for me to pop the hood again and install it. This one doesn’t use JFETs, so my gorilla paws without a static mat won’t be as likely to cook it.

In other news, I’ve rewired myself again for packet radio and APRS operations. Using Xastir on Ubuntu linux, I’ve had APRS up and running a few days consecutively here and there. Pretty neat stuff and can be _very_ handy for any mass deployment events.

In a nutshell, APRS takes GPS coordinates or other information and sends it out as a beacon via radio. So if I’m running the mapping and client software and you are in the field with a handheld running APRS, I can see your position as it is beaconed every few minutes overlaid on a map.

If you are providing event support over an entire marathon course as an example, as the control operator or other field station, at a glance you would be able to see the location of all your operators. This becomes important when you get a call that a runner or rider has been injured and needs first-aid. The closest support vehicle can be instantly located. Not only that, but you can follow that vehicle on the map and know when it arrives at the hospital or control point.

You can beacon most any data up to a limit of 40 characters per beacon. Commonly people beacon their position and then a frequency they are listening to. This way when you see them up close, if you see them you know how to reach them. It can be fun while traveling around just to make contacts as you ‘run into’ them.

Generally this is all done on the 2m ham band for local coverage. But even with that system, there are facilities to repeat or ‘digipeat’ the traffic a station hears. So if I beacon, a station within range will hear it, and then transmit again. Yet another station further out will pick that up and repeat it again, and so on. Add that it is also possible to send the data out to the internet from home stations and you can reach pretty much anyone on the network, world wide.

There are even low frequency links that will broadcast the traffic hundreds or thousands of miles in a single hop. This can all be incredibly useful in the even of a major disaster that knocks out telecommunications services. Hams have the ability to set up field stations with these capabilities in a matter of hours. It’s something not often remembered about this ‘hobby’ as witnessed here ARRL article about the Haiti earthquake

Share on Facebook

I’ve been up to a bunch of fiddling lately and haven’t bothered to do an update here so for posterity’s sake…this is what I’ve been doing.

I’ve always been curious about repeater operations and recently got the opportunity to play with a 440 repeater a friend bought. Boy has this been an eye opener.

We started out with it on a 40′ home Rohn 25 tower and just wanted a low profile machine to cover the local township. Well, we couldn’t use it at a distance of just a few miles. So we found another tower location at 100′ and figured….”now we’ll be in business”. The 100′ spot at 20W output got us maybe 7 miles. Fast forward and we found some people who had a 275′ location and a decent amp and pre-amp as well. Now we’re cooking.

There is a lot of work behind having well balanced link system audio with repeater systems. A lot more than I realized. We’re in good shape now and it’s been an interesting learning experience for sure. The machine is now linked into five others and it’s a lot of fun having a nice wide coverage area.

So on to the IF tap on the TS-2000. What is it? Well, an IF tap brings out the intermediate frequency at the mixer level of a receiver so you can use it for external processing. In my case specifically it’s the 10.7MHz 2nd IF that I’m feeding into my QS1R SDR receiver.

This lets me tune using the Kenwood TS-2000 and use all the filtering benefits and spectrum display of my SDR. This also gives me 2m and 440 coverage via the SDR which I didn’t have before doing this mod. The SDR does 500Hz to 52MHz or so natively.

I used a kit that Andy made up WA5UP that makes it nice and easy. It’s a JFET buffer. The purpose of the add-on board is not only to tap in to bring the IF out, but to prevent any oscillated interference from my receiver from getting back into the HF rig.

The concept for this is hardly my own and I used the document that K4DSP produced that I have kicking around over here. Thanks to both of those guys for making this simple for me.

The whole thing worked out fairly smoothly. I had to bypass the output attenuation in the kit to get a strong enough signal for my receiver, but once I got that figured, things were working well. The TS-2000 shows me about 7kHz of spectrum above where I’m tuned on SSB and about 16kHz below where I’m tuned. This is far narrower than the QS1R generally shows me, but I can now see 2m and 440 on my panadapter and use all the SDR filtering for receive that I have available.

Basically this gives me yet another option as to how to use my SDR rig in the shack.

All in fun and I managed not to burn anything up with all the fiddling too.

Share on Facebook

It’s indeed been a scanner day here at the shack. After having it annoy the hell out of me for several years, I finally got around to replacing the EL (electroluminescent) back light for the display on my old Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner.

Found the tips on how to do it at Radio Reference thanks to one of their forum users. The part was all of $3.50 from All Electronics one of my favorite quick grab parts-bin sites.

Now it’s as bright, if not a bit better than it was new, 15+years ago.

The surgery to do it was a bit deeper than I’d expected with a few annoying ribbon connectors to un-wedge and the usual myriad of small retaining screws, but once the adhesive blob was cut and the two leads desoldered, it was a piece of cake getting the new EL panel in there. Worth doing.

Share on Facebook

I’ve always liked scanning receivers, radio of any type really but scanners are an addiction. For some reason I’d taken a break from running scanners for a number of years and recently I dusted off some of my old reliables and remembered how much I enjoyed general public service monitoring.

I decided to take the plunge and get the latest and greatest digital and trunking capable model to augment the old reliable Radio Shack Pro-2006 that is still humming along. This gives me the capability to monitor the newest radio systems as they come on line in the area.

Currently in my part of NJ there are not that many digital systems, but across the country they are coming on line very rapidly, so if I was doing any traveling this new portable would come in quite handy.

I’ve only had this for a few days now and it’s taken a few days just to get a basic handle on all of the features. This thing has any feature I could have imagined missing on the old banks based scanners I’ve owned before. For anyone considering either the Uniden 396/996 or GRE PSR500/600 series, you simply *must* anticipate using software to manage the memory systems and also anticipate using an online database for frequencies if you truly want any ease of use.

So what are some of the advancements vs my scanners of olde?

Sheer capacity. My Pro-2006 was considered a very high capacity scanner when I purchased it with ten banks (selectable groupings) of 40 channels for a total of 400. I used to think I would never be able to fill that up. The 396XT has a capacity of 25000 Channels! Suffice it to say I think I could program most of the entire East coast with the capacity this thing has. With programming software linked to the on line frequency databases, you can put an awful lot into the unit in a very short time.

Memory management. In the old days you had the bank system. Ten banks of 40 channels as an example. You use the banks to turn scanning categories on and off. Putting police or the local town in bank 1 and adding neighbouring towns or other categories in the other banks. This is a fairly simple system, though if you only have ten channels in bank 1 that you want, you wind up leaving 30 unused memories blank. This is very wasteful. Also the old scanners only showed you the frequency information on the display. This made it hard to know who was talking as you had to memorize them.

The new world has gone to an object oriented approach that takes a bit of fiddling to get one’s head around. There is a hierarchy of categories. System/Site, this is the top of the chain, generally a regional name, though you can make it a top level category of frequencies as well. Next up is the Group, a sub category, a township name as an example or “fire analog” or “fire digital” if you wanted to group in that way. Then finally inside the groups are the frequency entries.

There is then a ‘cross index’ of sorts. So you have your System->Group->Channel hierarchy, you can then tag those with ‘quick keys’ or index numbers that serve to enable or disable them on the fly. This allows you to do a quick select of a global category for monitoring. In trunked system mode you have System->Site ->System Frequencies->Channel Groups->Channels.

An example that I’m using

For daily scanning I have two main System categories, “Home” and “Locals”. Home consists of my immediate town and the singular bordering townships. The groups underneath “Home” are named for the neighboring townships or miscellaneous categories of other immediate resources like “ham repeaters” Locals are the next ring of neighboring towns, two or three towns ‘out’ from where I live. Places I can clearly hear on the portable and may be of interest. The groups inside Locals are also townships or general categories.

Now, Home and Locals have a quick key of 0 and 9. So while scanning I simply enable those two quick keys and those two systems are in turn actively monitored. Inside the Systems, I have the groups. Each of those group assignments have their own ‘quick keys’, the purpose of this is that I can enable Home and then enable and disable the groups inside Home itself. Example, enabling Home and the group quick key for my township only if I don’t want to hear the immediate neighbors for some reason.

O.k. so you have that control…what if you have say a public works frequency in the local town grouping but you don’t normally want to hear that? You simply use the old style lock out function. This just blanks the channel while scanning…skips right past it. You can manually queue it up if you like or unlock it if you want to hear it for a specific reason. Alternately you can make groups like mayberry-PD mayberry-FD mayberry-MISC and assign each of those a GQK (group quick key) so you can simply enable or disable them with the group quick key.

This is a bit complex, but it is extremely powerful and leads to fantastic flexibility if the user just takes some time to adjust to it and figure out how they want their own categories laid out. After four days or so now, I’m still in the process of optimizing the layouts for my general preferences.

As mentioned earlier, software is absolutely *key* for managing all of these categories. I am using Freescan , a free application that is under rapid and current development and supports all the features of the very new XT model that I own.

One of the huge functions that Freescan provides is the ability to import files locally, save your configuration locally and the big one…use an internet connection to an online database and load frequency plans that way. I highly recommend Radioreference.com they have free access as well as a subscription that permits online loading directly from their database. The site is also a fantastic source of information on most models of scanners and information on the monitoring hobby in general.

Enough rambling, I tried to keep this as much to the point as possible, but it’s a ton of information to cover. Suffice it to say, if you are looking for something to entertain you for days at a time, the newest scanning receivers from Uniden and GRE are simply incredible.

A few links on the topic:

Some Vendors:
Scannerworld.com A vendor that provided quick service that I recommend.
Universal Radio Another vendor that I use as well, also recommended and have a great site for pictures of the products.
Uniden/Bearcat Main Product Site
GRE America Main Site

General Information Resources:
Radioreference A site with a frequency database, live audio feeds of scanners, a wiki and active forums…highly recommended!
Uniden Product Wiki Reference The home of a lot of their on line info on scanner operation.
Eham.net Scanner Reviews Take with a grain of salt
For publications, there are Popular Communications and Monitoring Times both have been around for quite a while.

Share on Facebook

Somehow I’ve avoided writing this, but boredom has finally gotten the better of me and I decided I would outline my stance on the healthcare situation as it is.

Our leadership globally in medical technology is driven in today’s context by some very simple mechanisms. Greed and ego. The top practitioners are driven by their own egos and their own desire for the high salaries that can be attained in the medical field. If you take away all ability for doctors to make the living that attracted them to the field, they will (and already are) leave the field to move on to another more profitable venture. For the number of years, effort and expense it takes to get through medical school, it simply will not pay to bother.

Currently, the state of the government meddling in the medical coverage arena already drives many practitioners away from giving care to those who most need it. The governmental fraud that is practiced against the physicians is incredible. Essentially under our current system, a doctor that is foolhardy enough to give care to individuals on government assistance will be fleeced when it comes to recovering their expenses. The government essentially steals the services of the physicians who remain in the service of patients on assistance. This has obviously drastically dropped the level of quality in choice of practitioners for those on assistance.

Rather than having a fair and equitable system in place to compensate physicians for their time and services, the government reaches deep into their pockets and steals from them in return for the favor of public service.

When the government finally puts all of the middle class on the dole, the level of care for all of ‘us’ will be dropped to the current levels of free clinic care. So not only will the level of care that the average American receives drop drastically, but the insane burden that will be placed on the clinic system will destroy it. My prediction is there will be an immediate flight from the system by the few remaining physicians that are currently willing to participate. We will be left with the worst of the worst. Physicians with training so poor that they cannot create a specialized practice of their own. Physicians that are so undesirable that they cannot attain a staff position in a hospital.

Currently most of us have a benefits package through our employers. Over the last three years alone my own contribution has been increased by several hundred dollars per month. The burden on our employers has been increased exponentially as well. So I am already inside-out on my salary simply due to healthcare coverage increases that weren’t offset by wage increases. Add to that the ever increasing tax burden for living in the kingdom that NJ has become and the pool of money at the end of the month is nearly dried up.

Once the Marxist social medicine system is slammed down on our society, all of our employers will instantly drop coverage for their employees. If there is no reason for them to continue to provide coverage as an incentive for employment, you can believe they will immediately stop their contributions. Do you all think for one second that your employer will then turn around and give YOU that money? No way, it will instantly be absorbed by their bottom line. That leaves us all stuck in the lines at the clinics….unless.

Once we have all been banished to the local free clinics for care, people will realize that going into these drug infested neighborhoods is a dangerous proposition for our families. It is plainly unsafe. At the very least we will be subject to having our vehicles vandalized and very likely much more serious crimes. To avoid this, we will need to scramble and attain our own private insurance coverage so that we can maintain the level of healthcare to which we have been accustomed.

Guess what? The cost of care, particularly when you have the magic money disappearing machine of our federal government handling it, will be astronomical. So all of the cost we currently carry and much more will still have to be paid into the kitty. In order to attain our ‘good old’ level of coverage, we will all now have to pay TWICE. Once in the insane tax burden that is levied to pay for the dole and again for our own private coverage.

Currently, if the tax burden goes up another $500 per month, I will be left at a zero balance. That will leave me with no spare money to get my own insurance coverage. That will place my family and me in line with undocumented criminals and their broods in the most crime ridden, crack infested areas possible just to get basic medical care.

The level of care will be far inferior to what we are used to now thereby lowering quality of life and even life expectancy. People in general will be less inclined to pursue even basic wellness care lest they have to be exposed to the hoardes of undocumented and other criminals in the public clinics.

This is what the new reality will be. Our government has not once in recent history initiated any program on time, on budget and delivering what was promised. There will be no possible way that they handle healthcare in even a close approximation of what they represent the plan to be.

On the technology side, the only thing that funds and motivates research is profit. Our government does relatively nothing at all to advance medical or any other health and welfare related scientific research, so that burden is left to the private sector. Once you have the government controlling the entirety of the healthcare system, there will be no more profit motive for all of the private sector businesses that currently support the research needed to advance medical technology. The only money that will flow is into projects related to national security or defense.

There will be no reason at all for the government to find a cure for more common ailments. If they reduce their own costs with a cure, they will in turn reduce their own revenue flow. Our government has never in recent history done anything to reduce its source of revenue….our taxes. Sure they may rearrange the accounting, but in the end, the numbers just continue to increase. It is against the very foundation of the state of our current system. It is not in the best interests of the system itself to self-destruct or limit its growth.

The utter collapse of the domestic healthcare sector, the pharmaceutical companies and all of their related technology and research branches is nearly guaranteed. This will further drive all engineering work off shore and further into the economies of other nations. The employment impact alone on our economy will be massive.

Why oh why a huge number of people think this is the way to go is just beyond my comprehension. Are you all willing to completely lower yourselves into the third world so a bunch of undocumented criminals can have a better life? Do you all really believe that our government is capable of doing anything that is truly in the interests of the people? Is it simply that the general public is this ignorant? I think so.

Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality. — ALBERT CAMUS, Between Hell and Reason

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money
— Alexis de Tocqueville

Share on Facebook

I haven’t really updated much lately, just been busy playing with this or that.

Just got one of the Zero Five 10m 5/8 verticals in the mail. Man, this thing is built like a rock. It’s actually a bit too solid as the quickie makeshift mast I was going to throw it up on will now have to be something a bit more substantial.

The base diameter tubing is roughly 1-9/16″ O.D. and the thinnest is about 5/8″ at the top. Very heavy quality aluminum and well put together construction quality for it’s tuning ring matching system. I went with this one in the hopes of having a very solid build quality and so far so good. Can’t wait to get it in the air, but I have to get myself a TV tripod to mount it on.

I’ve been tinkering around with the QS1R SDR GUI interface SDRMAX 3.0 again lately. I committed a bunch of changes to the project trunk for button layout changes, added filter options and also darkened the overall color scheme for some better contrast. I’m still amazed at all the work that the original author Cathy Moss put into this software.

I’m still barely just a hack with Qt and C++ so I’ve basically just been reverse engineering what she did and just poking about with superficial changes that I can follow and get to build properly.

The good news is that Qt 4.5.2 just got released and has fixed all the OpenGL font rendering issues that the Qt project claimed weren’t broken with 4.5.1. Nice to know that at least when they won’t admit any issues, they at least fix them. Now our project doesn’t have to keep tarring up 4.5.0 to give to people who needed a clean build source until they fixed it.

A screenshot of the enhanced contrast and my own hacked in color scheme for the panadapter and waterfall in SDRMAX 3.0.

changes to SDRMAX 3.0 interface

Share on Facebook

So I’m sitting at lunch, and on the table is a flyer for a benefit 5k run. Nothing too unusual and I make my usual crack about doing the run while smoking…until I read what the charity was for.

It was a charity that promotes “pro-social behavior in our children”. I went on to read that the primary mission for this group is to essentially squash any creative spirit in children and teach them how to conform to what their group sees as ‘acceptable behavior’. A truly disgusting premise.

What is going through people’s minds with this concept? We, on a grand scale are designing educational systems and media agendas to teach children to essentially keep their heads down and not to stand out from the herd.

This began years ago with the pro-socialist political agenda I had to suffer through as early as the 80’s in public schools. Things like “US History” were used to disguise various Marxist and Socialist agendas with revisionist concepts of the actual historical facts. It has now metamorphosed into this anti-creativity agenda designed to pretty much break the spirit of any creative personalities or squash any self image for those who are natural achievers or free thinkers.

Things have degenerated to the point where score keeping in any sort of intramural events is prohibited because the psyche of the losing team might be harmed by the thought that they have failed. If students aren’t all wearing the same uniform or listening to the same music, they are now profiled as though they are terrorists. We are churning out a raft of non-thinkers, afraid to express themselves for fear they may stand out from the herd and be ridiculed.

Those who ’succeed’ in the new plan, will be zeros when it comes to any contribution to our society. We are raising a destiny of failure and self-loathing mediocrity with these methods. People will be living lives, hating themselves because they are not mediocre enough to fit in, rather than realizing that they are the ones the herd should be following.

We are stifling innovation with this system and the way our current domestic economy is heading, the only thing we have left to bank on is the very innovative spirit that we are programming out of people.

A little light reading…now WAKE UP!

Share on Facebook