Sunday Biking: September in July

Everybody's heard of events called "Christmas in July."  Well yesterday we had something akin to "September in July."  An unusually early cool front shoved aside this summer's rains and humidity for a day, giving us a high around 90 and humidity around 45%.  This breath of cool, dry air was a welcome break and felt a lot like a hot day in mid-September.  It made for good biking, with one small problem: the bugs didn't get the memo, so they were still out in force.

Anyway, it was a delight, and a good opportunity to get back on the mountain bike after Two. Solid. Months. Of. Rain.  Didn't get in enough miles before the heat and dehydration set in, but I did get in enough that I can be happy.

Some Progress on The Shop

First of several upstairs windows installed last week:

It's getting there.

Programming a Yaesu FT-60 Radio using Chirp

Continuing Wednesday's radio programming theme, here's a video on how to program an FT-60 with chirp:

The Video

If you didn't take notes of all that, you're in luck because I did.  Here they are:

1. Connect cable.  (Remember, you want the FTDI cable, not the one requiring the crazy drivers you'd have to download from hinkychinesewebsite.com)
2. Power the radio on while holding the MONI button – it's the middle button on the LHS, the one with the dot on it.
3. You will see a menu.  Scroll around with DIAL knob until you find CLONE. (I think it's item #8)
4. Press the FW button (bottom RHS of keypad).  Screen will flash off, then come back on with the same CLONE display.
5. Fire up chirp.
6. Now for menus: radio > make&model; port > figure out the USB port; usually it'll have "usbserial" in the name.  It definitely won't be any of the "bluetooth" ports!
7. Press PTT on the radio – hold the PTT button down a few seconds, then quickly hit OK on the pop-up panel in chirp.  TX and progress bar will appear as it downloads to computer.
8. Save the blank file!!!
9. Edit settings in chirp as you see fit.  Save to another file.
10. Back to the radio, press MONI button; this will switch radio display to RX.
11. Back to chirp, radio > upload to radio.  Now hit OK; should see progress bar as programming uploads.
12. Turn radio off, unplug cable.
13. Turn radio on, flip to memory mode (V/M, lower left corner) and test your handiwork.

Finally, your hearing is not going bad; the audio actually does fade at the end of the video.

Whew, glad to have this done.  Much thanks to Tony KD8RTT for the video.  I didn't have a lot of channels to add to my radio, having previously manually programmed many in, but I did add the recieve-only weather channels (wikipedia reference link).  It's a lot of steps to go through, but it is not bad and it all actually seems to work.  I'm sure this will come in handy when I want to really swap things up for some future adventure.

Tomorrow: less geekery, more mountain bike action.

ps 2/22/20: If you need to program by hand, there's a great one-pager instruction sheet here: http://k6lcs.com/Docs_files/QP-FT-60R.pdf  It's really easy, but it is time consuming if you have more than a few channels to program.  Definitely worth it to buy a good cable and use chirp.

First Breath of Fall?

Yes, it's kind of early, but it seems we have an actual cold – well, "less hot" front on the way tomorrow:

The forecast predicts a dip down to 70F near the Bethel Trails on Sunday morning, so you can guess where I'll be.

These early fronts do happen, but this is pushing it back by a couple of weeks from any other early front that I can remember.  It is odd though this year, we've gone straight from April showers into two hot July days and from there right into (maybe) early September.  If it cools the Gulf a little more, and the weather's just cool enough for mountain biking, I'll take it.

Dirt Rag Magazine Turns 200

200 issues, that is.  Here's a link the article at their web site.  Still waiting on my copy, but for the time being here's the cover:

If you're not a subscriber, it might be time to find a copy down at the newsstand.

Radio Programming Notes

Reference notes to self and anybody else who is befuddled about using chirp to program channels into various radios, from a Macintosh USB port.  (not a full chirp manual here!  just a few reference notes around some of the gotchas)

(For the non-hams out there: Why the heck do you have to program a radio?
In this case, it means pre-setting a bunch of frequencies and other items for handy use in the future.  Conceptually it's no different than "programming" the push-buttons on your car's AM/FM radio, but as you might imagine, there's a lot more going on in a multi-mode multi-band two-way radio.  Hence the convenience of using a spreadsheet-like program to download, edit, and upload the myriad settings.  Anyway, back to the main topic; if you needed this paragraph, you can probably safely skip the rest of this post.)

The cable you want for Baofengs:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HUB0ONK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Currently slightly north of $20, which is more than some of the radios it can program.  Still, for time saved, well worth the money.  Also, no dodgy drivers to download from Chinese web sites.  I mean, can you really trust that stuff?  I'll take the Apple pre-loaded ones, thankyouverymuch.

Next up, the cable you want for a Yaesu FT-817ND:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041LNISK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Similarly, it's plug-and-play, drivers pre-loaded by Apple.  About $25, and money damn well spent, because again, there's no downloading drivers from some who-knows-where web site.  There's still a little guessing about which USB port to point chirp towards, but here's a hint to narrow it down: it ain't either of the two with "bluetooth" in the character-salad name.

Finally, some guiding advice on getting programming images up from and back down to your FT-817ND, courtesy of VK3BQ:
http://www.vk3bq.com/2013/10/18/chirp-and-the-ft817nd/
Just in case the web site ever goes away, here's the key part:

A trap for young players with the 817 and chirp. You need to do two steps to get the radio to talk to the computer

Power on the radio while holding down both MODE < > buttons, The radio will beep three times and show “CLONE MODE” on the display.

Set CHIRP up to download the radio image form the menu, then on the radio, press button “A” and the radio will start TX’ing data, and you have a copy of the radio memories. Program up the radio in chirp with your repeaters and other parameter settings and save a copy. To load the new memories/file into the radio, power on the radio as per above and enter “CLONE MODE” again, Set CHIRP to upload to radio and then press the “C” button on the Radio, the device will change to RX mode and receive the new configuration. The instructions are on page 69 of the 817nd (2011) manual under Cloning.

Alright!  Made it easy, and it even worked the first time.  Got all of the customary PSK31 frequencies, the local repeaters, and the common 2 meter simplex frequencies programmed in right, and all without having to perform a selfie root canal as part of the process.  Tested out on the W5SGL repeater, and all is right with the world.

Next up ("next" as in somewhere between "this weekend" and "real soon now"): Do the same on the FT-857D.  The same cable allegedly works for that radio too, so I'd say there's a high chance of success.  Will update this post after the attempt is made.  (Edit: did so, worked fine; see postscript below.)

OK, that was a deep-dive into high geekery; mostly it's notes to myself.  Maybe have some mountain biking report after this weekend.  The weather's taking a slight turn for the better.

ps: It all works exactly the same on an FT-857D, except that to upload data from the radio to the computer, press "C".  On the other end of things, once you've gotten all the channels entered into chirp, to download to the radio press "A".  It's just like the 817, only opposite.  Why?  Because Yaesu, that's why.

Whatever the radio, remember to download an image from it and save that before starting editing.  One nice thing is that, even though it's bad form to swap images between an 857 and an 817, you can copy and paste rows or even blocks of rows from one image file to the other.  Handy.

pps: One more note-to-self: programming an FT-60 with chirp.  Haven't tried yet, will get to it eventually.

Listen in on the Tuesday Evening Net

At 7 pm CDT sharp on Tuesday evenings, you can listen in on the MCARA 2 meter club net.  If you're local, tune to your receiver to 146.73 MHz FM.  If you're not local, point your web browser to our Broadcastify page at http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/25297

No guarantees of anything beyond the net being called, but generally we have a lively technical session following the check-ins.  Anything even vaguely radio related is fair game.  Sometimes it rolls for an hour, sometimes it's over in ten minutes.  You never can tell.