Radio Stuff

Tuesday - Another quiet day. I played with FT8 but could only see others on 20m. Nothing at all on 40m.I'm not sure if it is really that quiet or I just couldn't get the antenna tuned. I'm using the ATAS-120 which is a Yaesu screwdriver antenna made for Yaesu radios such as my FT-710. This evening, I made a contact with someone on the Canary Islands. Almost 5k miles. 

Wednesday - Our neighbor asked for help debugging a problem with is RV battery system. He is running an all Victron 24VDC system with four 100AH, 12V BattleBorn LiFePO₄ batteries. A “Cadillac” system. Three of the batteries had, essentially, no charge even after being charged with a Victron Lithium specific charger until they registered a fully charged state. When a load was applied, the voltage dropped almost immediately. He was sent a large document of test procedures to go through for the batteries before they would even talk about warranty. So much for their “legendary” customer support. 

There are advantages to a 24V system but also some drawbacks. This highlights one of the drawbacks. Each battery has its own BMS (Battery Management System) and they don’t communicate with each other. 

We then headed into San Antonio for an appointment. We stopped in Castroville for Bridget’s new glasses and at Costco for her hearing aids. Costco was pretty crowded. 

I ordered a waterproof box to hold the Meshtastic radio and it came with a waterproof gland for the wires. It’s mounted upside down in the box so the antenna and power cables exit from the bottom. The plastic box will still allow the Bluetooth LE communication to the phone. 

Thursday - This morning, I installed another program called GridTracker which ties into WSJT-X, the FT8 program, and shows activity on a map. What shows on the map are the decoded transmissions that receive.