TekMaker - make something!

 This is in three parts so you can skip sections if you are only recording audio or only ever use a mobile phone.  Check out the accompanying videos to this article  Part 1 https://youtu.be/DzL4REzFaRQ Part 2 https://youtu.be/cRp_b9D5Iy4 Part 3 https://youtu.be/pUa5ySCwZcM   1 Equipment and useful accessories Camcorder - these generally give more predictable results than mobile phones, a necessity if you want shake-free scenes. Buy one within your budget, sturdy enough to be shake-free and light enough to take out with you. Microphone and Mic stand/anglepoise bracket. Sound can make or break a great video, even a budget (£20) condenser mic like mine can give great audio (used with 45V power supply or mixer) or a budget moving coil mic. Use a stand, split shield and cradle to eliminate unwanted sounds. Headphones - check your test recordings and footage regularly, headphones guarantee that you can hear everything and are cheaper and more portable than studio monitors....

    Things to do with an SDR, using Windows 10 or 11, a Macbook or Linux PC or laptop What is an SDR? A Software Defined Radio is the front-end of a radio receiver built in hardware. It was originally designed to allow people in caravans and leisure homes and boats to have a low cost way to receive digital video broadcasts (DVB) or digital television. Those same chips have more recently been repurposed to be used for radio reception and due to their flexibility can be used to decode many types of demodulation and signal processing which can be done in software and customized to what the user desires. These can generally  be bought for less than 30 GBP and often come with aerials which will give basic reception but are best thrown away asap. I have made my own folded dipole aerial from coaxial cable and scrap plastic pipe that have performed 15 dB better! SDR are incredibly versatile and low-cost radios and can be used with an SBC or Raspberry Pi or maybe an old laptop or ...

 Reasons why you might consider buying or building a Hotspot My MMDVM hotspot runing Pi-Star The control panel Enables reception in areas of the house and around it that may be poor reception otherwise. Many people live in flats or cannot mount antenna due to housing or local council regulations, this provides them with a link, via the internet to multiple digital voice systems and talk groups. Allows easy access to additional talk groups. Some repeaters may provide access to talk groups, possibly on a schedule. This is great but also can be limiting if your local repeater is dedicated to TG91 worldwide and you wish to use TG2350 UK. Having your own node allows you to be in control on-demand.   Allows Multimode operation from different radios. You can have a single node and select from DMR, C4FM/Fusion, YSF, P25, NXDN, POCSAG. The node is generally capable of switching automatically once a transmission has ceased for a selected time period Allows mobile operation - You can set...

 The first thing is to download the Pi-Star software from https://www.pistar.uk/downloads/ , at time of writing the current version is Pi-Star_RPi_V4.1.5_21-Jun-2021.zip ,but you should get the latest available. I used a Raspberry PI 3B but it is possible to use a PI Zero W or other model. You should then use either Etcher, or the Raspberry Pi imager to copy the image to your SD card, which should be at least 4GB and Class 10 or better, I used a 16GB simply because they are available for little money these days. Simply put the SD card into your PI and attach a monitor and keyboard via USB connection. The PI should boot with the usual rainbow screen, the default login is pi-star and the password raspberry. We will change these soon. To find out what IP address your pi is on type ifconfig and hit return. If you are connected via ethernet you will be able to type http://pi-star.local into a browser and access the dashboard as below - This will redirect after 10 seconds and you will be...

So, having completed the Foundation exam in April 2021, the Intermediate exam in May and the Advanced exam in June  and got my callsigns M7RBE, 2E0HGA and M0RLF (RaLF) I figured one of my next steps was to look at HF Transcievers and see if I could get one at an affordable price. So I had a few watches on Ebay week after week and learned about a few of the more popular classic models. I had a short-list of Kenwood, Icom and the value favourite, Yaesu. Most where selling as mostly working and complete for around 400 - 600 GBP. I knew I would be happy to do some work and use that experience to feel my Youtube channel as I have done other projects like recondition a Yamaha Pacifica Electric Guitar and Marshall practice amplifier before I started the channel and had worked in Electronics for 25 years includinh a stint at Racal Communications on, yes, HF Transceivers. Then on Thursday this week my eyes lit up, a Yaesu FT-101B in 'unknown' condition but appearing complete, i.e. all k...

Having bought one of these transceivers recently I was firstly disappointed in the User Manual, it is in extremely small print, barely 4 point and my first searches online brought a pdf of the same manual scanned badly which was not much of an improvement. Also it is a reference guide rather than a how-to. I think many people would prefer to learn how to use the radio as well as which buttons to press with context. I am only covering the basics as I think once you know those then you will figure out the rest using the two manuals I have linked to below. So here we go! The Baofeng UV-S9 Transceiver, around £25 on Ebay Caution, two things are very important to know before we begin. Firstly it is illegal to transmit on any band that you do not hold a license for. You must check with your licencing authority, which in the UK is Ofcom https://www.ofcom.org.uk. PMR446 is not currently legal for a radio which does not have a fixed antenna and it is illegal to use a Baofeng for this purpose. A...

And why you shouldn’t import too many repeaters to your codeplug like I did! I have made an accompanying video on YouTube at https://youtu.be/dNkdYzQbISY Setting up DMR takes some patience but once you access the repeaters and talk groups you will be rewarded with many QSOs from all over the world in glorious digital quality. DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) is a great transmission/reception mode, it is clear audio in a resilient wrapper that can withstand a lot of QRM - interference and fading. It is pretty much either working, or not with no real distortion. It has been developed due to the availability of cheap micro processors which can process audio into digital encoding and manage complex transmission systems. The DMR amateur radio system allows people to talk one to one or through a repeater in either simplex mode (same TX and RX frequencies) or duplex mode. You can probably access many DMR repeaters in your surrounding area and they provide access to hundreds of talk groups. Now mode...