For a while I have been thinking about participating in Parks on the Air. This is an amateur radio program promoting outdoor activity by letting people activate park locations all over the world by making contacts from that special location and having other people chase these contacts. Both of these activities will collect points making for ranked lists and certificates which can be collected.

The treshold for a succesfull activation of a park in the POTA program is low: only 10 contacts from a park between 00:00 UTC and 23:59 UTC are needed. This makes activating multiple parks in a day or as a lunchtime activity possible.

I have been watching videos about Parks on the Air, from KB9VBR Antennas and the official Parks On The Air YouTube channel. And I like to read posts about POTA activations on peoples' websites and social media. But I needed to stop doing theory about this and do an actual activation myself. I mentioned yesterday on mastodon Lots of radio amateurs active from summits/parks! I must go do this myself in a nearby park and got positive responses where I mentioned @ei8kd I have the gear, I just need to find time to be away from the family and kick myself out the door.

Conclusion: time to stop thinking and start doing. Today was the chance: no plans for the afternoon and the rest of the family was doing things at home and didn't mind having me leave the house.

So today I wanted to do my first POTA activation at a nearby park: Noorderparkruigenhoek National Park which has never been activated in morse.

In preparation I have the gear with choice between the linked dipole antenna on the fiber mast for 15/20/40 meter band or the multiband vertical antenna tested for the 20, 17, 15 meter bands.

I bought/built the multiband vertical to be easily deployable in situations like this, so I packed that. And a sealed lead-acid battery, the FT-857D radio including microphone, a small CW key, antenna cable, power cable, headphones, a notebook and pen. And the smartphone with the Ham2K PoLo BETA logging app.

I packed the gear in the bag I normally use for taking my laptop to work. It turned out the bag with the heavy equipment was too heavy to hang from the back of my recumbent bicycle so I used the bicycle trailer.

In the park I searched for a place to set up. It would have been nice to find a parkbench a bit out of the way but parkbenches are set up for people who use the main walking/cycle paths and they all had people sitting there. So I found a grassy area within the park and started to set up the antenna and the radio. This was somewhat close to the high voltage line running through the park.

I first set up the antenna for 15 meter CW. The radio kept complaining about the standing wave ratio, but this was fixed when I connected the antenna cable to the radio.

Giving CQ with the small CW paddle gave problems, the paddle kept adding a dash after certain dots. It seems the small CW paddle was set too tight, pressing on it made it also send out dashes. After tapping on it a bit and moving it around the top of the radio where it was sitting (with magnets) made that problem go away.

This made giving CQ as PE4KH/P hard so I decided after a few tries to make it easier and use my call PE4KH without the 'portable' modifier. Sending morse with the paddle wasn't easy, I haven't practised much lately, I'm used to using the computer with the radio at home.

But: nobody came back to me on 15 meter CW. I spotted my activity on the pota.app site but that didn't change things. I switched to 17 meter CW where there was some more activity. I called CQ in morse a number of times. I also spotted myself on the pota.app site on that frequency. It sometimes seemed a call came back to me but they seemed in a different contact, maybe there was a DXpedition working split. Also in voice on the 17m band nobody came back and people I tried calling didn't hear me.

After that it was time to pack up and go home to be in time for dinner preparations.

One thing I wanted to avoid was people asking questions or reacting negative to me being busy with radio which is why I searched for a spot out of the way, but reachable by walking my bicycle over there. I saw several people walking dogs near where I sat, but nobody seemed to mind. Some people said 'good afternoon' and left it at that.

In the end: 0 contacts. But a learning experience. And I finally did that first activation attempt I had been (over) thinking about for ages.

Things learned:

• The radio plus battery (and other gear) is too heavy to hang from the (lightweight) luggage rack at the back of my recumbent bicycle.
• I can find a spot in that park
• Headphones don't work with a hat in the sun
• But earbuds are fine for radio outdoors, there is not a lot of noise around
• I need to check the HF bands before such an activity, to know where to start and what antenna to bring
• On the 15 and 17 meter band the multiband vertical works fine
• Having the 40 meter band available during the day can be helpful for days with bad propagation
• I need to have a list on paper of POTA frequencies on all bands I can be active on
• That same bit of paper could also have the standard lines to send
• I need to practise more with sending morse by paddle
• People with dogs don't mind other activities in the park
• The multiband vertical antenna isn't very obtrusive in a field of high grass
• I like having a notebook to write down calls when I first hear them, but logging will probably be nice with the Ham2K PoLO app.

Ik vond een podcast die me gelijk interreseerde omdat het over koude oorlog geschiedenis gaat: Podcast De Bunker over een bunker van de PTT in Arnhem. Deze bunker was onderdeel van het PTT noodnet wat in geval van grote verstoringen de belangrijkste communicatie zou moeten verzorgen.

Ik kwam hier op via een route die begon bij Uit presentatie voor morgen, beeld van een van de bunkers waarin het PTT (mini-)noodnet gevestigd was. Een onafhankelijk koperdraad telefonienetwerk voor de koude oorlog en daarna. Is tegenwoordig vervangen door KPN ADSL verbindingen & VoIP. ("NCV")., toen verder ging bij Kijken mag nu, want 'geheime' atoombunker voldoet alleen nog als erfgoed - Omroep Gelderland en daarin staat onderin weer een link naar Podcast De Bunker.

De maker, Frank van Dijk, is journalist bij omroep Gelderland en echt terdege in dit verhaal gedoken. Erg leuk om te luisteren.

I've had time to take pictures and do some really basic testing of the cable modem hardware recently given to me. The first test was very simple: I plugged each one in and looked whether a power led came on and nothing bad happened. No device let out magic smoke, all power leds came on fine.

The Televes interfaces were used to bring network bandwidth over distances over the TV-cable with the last mile over Corinex equipment.

Corinex CXP-HDA-GWYC gateway

This is one of the master units. It looks like it can be mounted outdoors in any kind of weather. It has connections for ethernet network, coax, AC power, DC backup power.

It has currently a fixed IPv4 address (as noted on the case). The device runs a webserver with title Corinex AV200 Powerline Ethernet Adapter and wants a password. I don't have a password and no default passwords I could imagine worked.

Corinex CXP-LVC-GWYC gateway

This is the other master unit. It is not an outdoor unit but does have an "industrial" look to it. It has connections for ethernet network, coax, AC power, DC backup power.

This device tries DHCP with vlan tag 1. After I connected it to a network port with vlan 1 defined it accepted the offered IPv4 address. The device runs a webserver with title Corinex HD200 Web User Interface and also wants a password. I don't have a password and no default passwords I could imagine worked.

Televes 769201 (two)

Also ethernet network to cable or cable+plc (selectable) interfaces. Dual ethernet interface.

Televes 769203

Ethernet network to cable interface. Single ethernet interface and no option to also use PLC.

Corinex CXWC-HD200-WNeH

A Cable access device. Same model I looked at earlier: Getting further into the Corinex CXWC-HD200-WNeH: I got root!.

Corinex CXC-HD200-WMEe / HD200 CableLan wall mount

Also a cable access device. Also seen before: New hardware device to play with: Corinex HD200 CableLAN Wall Mount Adapter CXC-HD200-WMEe.

Connectivity tests

I ran a first few connectivity tests: a coax cable with some attenuators between 'gateway' and 'access device', power on the 'gateway', wait until it seems to be booted up, power on the 'access device' and see if the 'access device' starts to show link over cable.

Corinex CXP-LVC-GWYC tests

No link was seen with the CXWC-HD200-WNeH or the CXC-HD200-WMEe. I tested with some serious attenuation in the network to make sure I don't damage anything.

Televes devices

These seem to be point-to-point: The Televes 769201 with mac address ending in 4B set up link with the Televes 769201 with mac address ending in 50. The Televes 769201 with mac address ending in 50 set up link with the Televes 769203 with mac address ending in 5F. The Televes with mac address ending in 4B did NOT set up link with the Televes 769203 with mac address ending in 5F.

Today I managed to get 9M1Z in the log in FT8 on the 20m band. This gives me East Malaysia as new DXCC entry.

I also worked for a while on getting 8Q7JF in morse, but the reception on that side was not very good and a lot more amateurs tried to get that station in the log. I already have Maldives in digital modes, so I concentrate on morse.

2024-06-19: Saint Vincent & Grenadines

Not due to a DXpedition but due to someone enjoying a holiday: today I had a contact with J88IH on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines which is an island country in the Carribean.

The chase for new countries/entities is always on, and there usually more DXpeditions during the peak of the solar cycle, because of the better propagation on HF allowing for more contacts.

Glorioso Islands

Currently there is a DXpediton on Glorioso Islands: FT4GL Glorioso Island - dx-world.net.

This is one person visiting the Grande Glorieuse for work with doing radio in spare time, but with Glorioso Islands ranked #7 most-wanted a lot of amateurs want to get in the log. So I was expecting this one to be hard or impossible. Adding morse will not happen: this one man DXpedition is not doing morse at all.

I got FT4GL in the log on 12 meter FT8 last Friday evening without needing a lot of work on it.

I have the transcript of the contact (with FT8 this is possible) and it's showing the complete exchange with final confirmation from the remote station, but I'm not showing up in the online logs. Weird.

Today I added FT4GL on 10 meter FT8, but their closing RR73 did not decode on my side. I got a reasonably good signal report, so I think I may be in the log on 10 meter FT8, but that's also a question mark for now. Later I had a full contact on 10 meter, with the RR73 seen.

Niger

The 5U5K DXpedition is in Niger. I managed the contact today on 10 meter FT8. This took part of the day, they were active but not a lot of stations could decode their signals and most of the time they didn't decode me. In the beginning of the afternoon the contact was made. I hope to add more bands and morse later.

St. Helena

Andy Chadwick ZD7VJ is active from St. Helena. In morse! So now in the log.

Update thanks to log checking

With DXpeditions that have (limited) Internet access it is possible to check the logs while the DXpedition is still active. It turns out I am in the log of FT4GL twice now on 10m FT8 and not on 12m FT8. And I'm good in the log at 5U5K. On to 5U5K on more bands and in CW, and more entities!

For work I have an HP Elitebook 840 laptop. I really like the option to have one or two monitors connected to a docking station with those monitors becoming active when I connect the laptop with an USB-C cable.

So I was dissapointed when a few weeks ago this external video option stopped working. I worked around it by connecting one monitor to the HDMI output but this was not so great. Searching HP and Windows support found no real solutions, just the standard 'reboot completely' and 'try to upgrade drivers'.

Eventually searching with some different terms found something: USB-C not working with external monitor : r/HPOmen with this specific answer If nothing is working, Open the computer, remove the battery, wait 5 minutes, reconnect battery and working again. HW bug that needs 0V restart..

Since I saw what was needed to replace the internal battery of an HP laptop a few weeks earlier I decided to give the 0V restart a try after all the other restarts. So I shut down the laptop completely, opened the case and disconnected the battery, reconnected it again and closed the case. The bottom side has a lot of little plastic tabs, it's best to use something like a guitar pick to open it after loosening all the screws.

Right away the laptop worked again with external monitors via USB-C.

In the intersection of radio, networks and security I had a look at some Ethernet over cable devices in the past: a the Corinex CXWC-HD200-WNeH, a Cab.Link CLS-D4E2WX1 router and a Corinex HD200 CableLAN Wall Mount Adapter CXC-HD200-WMEe.

All these devices didn't want to establish a link on the 'cable' side because there was no Ethernet over cable master device. This has changed: I now have some hardware that should be able to perform the master role for Corinex Ethernet over cable.

I also have some pieces of 75 ohm coax cable, splitters and attenuators. Those attenuators will be needed because I don't have kilometers of coax cable to span, so I'm not losing as much signal as those masters are expecting.

This hardware is from holiday parks that switched from Corinex Ethernet over cable and other Ethernet over cable devices to newer standards. With Ethernet over cable both directions (upstream and downstream) share the same bit of spectrum, which makes amplification of signals for longer cables impossible.

So now to find time to set up a mini cable network and have a look at the master systems, their controls, the possible speeds, the security of the masters and the RF spectrum used by this system.

The standards

I should dive into the exact standards behind this a bit more. I'm very sure it's not docsis which has separate downstream and upstream frequencies. For as far as I can see this is a HomePNA implementation similar to powerline. Source: Ethernet over coax - wikipedia.

Last weekend was the CQ World Wide WPX CW Contest 2024 edition.

I planned to participate, so I made sure the TLF Linux based contest logger was set up correctly and ready to log contacts. Since this contest is supported by default in TLF I didn't have to do much.

I participated on Saturday and Sunday most moments I could get behind the radio. I found out the internal tuner of the FT-991a radio is able to tune the CW portion of the 15 meter band on my 10-20-40 meter endfed, so I made contacts on that band too. I don't think the outgoing signal is very strong, but it's another band for contacts! On Saturday the 10, 15 and 20 meter bands had good propagation, on Sunday the 10 meter band gave no new contacts and no response to a CQ call.

Most contacts were 'search and pounce' but calling CQ also gave results on a busy band. The balance is between finding interesting multipliers with search and pounce (searching the band for stations) or working lots of contacts calling CQ.

The results according to TLF:

                                             Band   160   80   40   20   15   10
                                             QSO      0    0    0  166   53   31
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                             Pts: 334  Mul: 194 Score: 64796    

In earlier contests I thought using the 15 meter band could add results, this seems to be true.

It seems the bitcoin extortion scammers have to make their story sound more menacing to get a bit of return on spam sent. This one fresh in the inbox:

Hello pervert,

I want to inform you about a very bad situation for you. However, you can
benefit from it, if you will act wisely.

Have you heard of Pegasus? This is a spyware program that installs on computers
and smartphones and allows hackers to monitor the activity of device owners. It
provides access to your webcam, messengers, emails, call records, etc. It works
well on Android, iOS, and Windows. I guess, you already figured out where I’m
getting at.

It’s been a few months since I installed it on all your devices because you
were not quite choosy about what links to click on the internet. During this
period, I’ve learned about all aspects of your private life, but one is of
special significance to me.

I’ve recorded many videos of you jerking off to highly controversial porn
videos . Given that the “questionable” genre is almost always the same, I can
conclude that you have sick perversion.

I doubt you’d want your friends, family and co-workers to know about it.
However, I can do it in a few clicks.

Every number in your contact book will suddenly receive these videos – on
WhatsApp, on Telegram, on Skype, on email – everywhere. It is going to be a
tsunami that will sweep away everything in its path, and first of all, your
former life.

Don’t think of yourself as an innocent victim. No one knows where your
perversion might lead in the future, so consider this a kind of deserved
punishment to stop you. Better late than never.

I’m some kind of God who sees everything. However, don’t panic. As we know, God
is merciful and forgiving, and so do I. But my mercy is not free.

Transfer $856 USD to my bitcoin wallet: bc1q7kn8n7mjngk9t9cvh3crgqa7xzdaday3meamth

Once I receive confirmation of the transaction, I will permanently delete all
videos compromising you, uninstall Pegasus from all of your devices, and
disappear from your life. You can be sure – my benefit is only money.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing to you, but destroy your life without a word
in a second.

I’ll be notified when you open my email, and from that moment you have exactly
48 hours to send the money. If cryptocurrencies are unchartered waters for
you, don’t worry, it’s very simple. Just google “crypto exchange” and then it
will be no harder than buying some useless stuff on Amazon.

I strongly warn you against the following:

) Do not reply to this email. is your address!
) Do not contact the police. I have access to all your devices, and as soon as
I find out you ran to the cops, videos will be published.
) Don’t try to reset or destroy your devices.

As I mentioned above: I’m monitoring all your activity, so you either agree to my terms or the videos are published.

Also, don’t forget that cryptocurrencies are anonymous, so it’s impossible to identify me using the provided address.
Good luck, my perverted friend. I hope this is the last time we hear from each other.

And some friendly advice: from now on, don’t be so careless about your online security.

The fun part is 856 US dollar is not enough to recoup the "investment" in Pegasus. From what I can find pegasus is about 500.000 US dollar per tracked identity.

The 856 dollar is probably a choice to improve the chances of actually receiving money. It seems this has sadly worked already, at this moment bitcoin wallet bc1q7kn8n7mjngk9t9cvh3crgqa7xzdaday3meamth has three incoming transactions, two of which are around 856 US dollar.

As always: this is a scam, nothing happened, the sender has absolutely nothing, just a wish to have hard to trace money come in. Earlier items about bitcoin extortion scams: Earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier (although I think bitcoin is generally a really bad idea and a huge scam)

This weekend was the His Majesty the King of Spain CW Contest organized by the Spanish amateur radio club URE.

I planned to participate in advance. The propagation wasn't very great on Saturday, during the day I heard nothing on the 10 meter amateur band and I made contacts on the 20 meter amateur band. Late in the evening I made contacts on the 40 meter band. There was some nice DX on the 20 meter band early in the evening: I had contacts with stations in Thailand and Japan. On Sunday the propagation was better with activity on the 10 meter band as well, but it was still 'scraping for contacts'. Although I planned to get at least 100 contacts I stopped at 97 contacts before the contest was really over because it was getting really hard to find new calls and I felt like it was time to stop.

My approach was to search and pounce on other stations. I have called CQ a number of times but no responses came.

The results according to TLF:

Band   160   80   40   20   15   10
QSO      0    0   23   65    0    9
Mult     0    0   16   36    0    6
                                   
Pts: 133  Mul: 58 Score: 7714      

And the multiplier score is even better: at this moment TLF cannot deal with the fact that the first contact in one of the Spanish DXCC entities (Spain has EA: main land spain, EA6: Balearic Islands, EA8: Canary Islands and EA9: Ceuta and Melilla) counts as two multipliers: one for the country and one for the Spanish province.

The YouTube algorithm coughed up some videos for me about Lithium-Ion cells in disposable vapes: Scavenging rechargeable lithium cells from the roadside - bigclivedotcom, More free street-lithium reclamation - bigclivecom, Can you reuse these batteries? - Becky Stern and a complete walkthrough from taking vapes apart to building a LED light with the cells LED fairy lights get disposable vape batteries & Type-C charging - darieee.

So I had this in mind but luckily the sidewalks around where I live aren't filled with waste from vapes. I have seen people vaping from colored tubes like the ones shown in the video.

Yesterday I found my first vape unit with a usb-c connector. It seemed empty and completely discharged. So I took it apart and very quickly disposed of the parts that were sticky with residu from the vape fluid. I kept the electronics and the Lithium-Ion cell apart. The Lithium-Ion cell is an FMT17350, 3.7 volt and 850 mAh.

After a day the cell is still smelly! No idea what to do with it at the moment, it may find some use powering something with LEDs. I clipped the wires so I could remove the last plastic, which does leave me with something with an usb-c connector and a few chips. I suspect some kind of charging and/or power management circuit.

To be clear about it: I think smoking or vaping is an unhealthy habit both for the smoker and the surroundings.

I recently saw a QYT KT-WP12 2m/70cm radio offered for a nice price and bought it. The difference with the QYT KT-8900 radio is that the display is in the hand microphone, which would make usage in the car easier for me.

The radio has a 3.5mm jack connector hiding behind a little cover with screws for programming. I wanted to get in to program the channels and change some other settings. To program this radio needs a 'daily' version of Chirp radio programming software so I downloaded and installed this using the instructions Running CHIRP on Linux with the .whl package.

Upon trying the download from the radio with the QYT KT-8900 programming cable I created in 2016 the radio just rebooted and the software gave an error. This could be a problem with the software or with the cable, so I started a search for the official QYT software for Windows. On the first Windows system the cable didn't want to work at all because the cable has a PL2303 chipset which is really unsupported in Windows 11. I dug up an older and slower laptop with Windows 10, and there I had to downgrade the existing PL2303 drivers to make communication possible. How to do that was found via Prolific USB-to-serial comm port windows 10 which mentions Fake PL2303 – how to install on Windows 8.1 - BartB which also worked for Windows 10.

Finally I was able to test the official QYT software and that showed the same problem, so for now I think the problem is in the cable.

The Build your Own 3 PIN Programming Cable BTech, QYT, etc Mobile - by John 'Miklor' K3NXU has a remark which seems to be about this problem but I can't be sure as the video is offline:

Ezequiel Welcomme LU9MWE (Argentina) brought to my attention that some models only work with the original cable (Chinese). Using an aftermarket or homemade cable may result in the radio cycling or pulsing when trying to communicate with the software. (Pulsing VIDEO).

The solution is to place a reference to GND in the communication lines. This is done by adding two 10K ohm resistors. One between GND - RX, and the other between GND - TX.

I asked whether the person selling me the radio still had the cable and I will receive it soon and test with that cable. That cable I made back then was later modified to have both 3.5mm jack plug for the QYT radio and the connector for baofeng / wouxun radio's, so I'm not keen on modifying it even further at the moment.

Update 2023-05-22: interesting results with the right cable

I received the cable and tested with it. First the official QYT KT-WP12 / QYT 9900 software on the older Windows 10 laptop. It still had the radio rebooting and showing a communications error. But the same cable with chirp worked and I was able to download the current memories and settings and upload my own list of channels and modify settings. So this radio now works for me and I can use it with my own programming.

One day I came home and my son was very unhappy. His roblox account was phished minutes before I walked in and he was immediately locked out. All the 'how does one get phished' checkboxes were the same as with other types of phishing.

The steps:

• Someone promises free stuff on a roblox-related discord, with "DM me (send a private message) for details"
• In the answer to the private message comes a url, using shrturl.uk which turns out to be a link shortener
• Link redirects to url on roblox.com.py that looks an awful lot like the roblox site
• Site asks for login...
• Site asks for code which has been sent via e-mail

Yes, those two steps should have alerted the visitor. That's when good judgement didn't happen, but in hindsight that is already very clear

• e-mail address linked to account is immediately changed

Upon complaining to the attacker that the account was gone the offer was made to buy the account back. By this time I was involved and we decided to ignore this offer and block the attacker in discord.

With a bit of searching I found that 'roblox account stealing' is an industry with crime-as-a-service parts, much like bank account stealing.

All of this is no use to my son. But I learned a lot about roblox and roblox account stealing.

The last months a large number of my contacts have been chasing special event stations. There are quite a number of those on-air at the moment. And I was active with another special event station with our radio club!

75 years Union of Spanish Radio Amateurs (URE)

The Union of Spanish Radio Amateurs or Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles celebrates their 75th anniversary with a big event: 75 anniversary of the union of spanish radio amateurs (URE) award with a lot of stations active on all HF, VHF/UHF bands and satellites. From the Netherlands with my station I can contact them on a number of HF bands and I have been making contacts at a high rate. I concentrate on morse, but I also like having them in the log in other modes. So far I have managed to get enough bandslots for the Silver award. With the current propagation I can get Spain nicely on the 40, 20 and 17 meter amateur bands. For most of April getting the Spanish stations on 12 and 10 meter was impossible.

100 years German funkkartel

The German radio amateurs are also celebrating the founding of the first radio amateur clubs in Germany 100 years ago with special event stations. 100 Jahre Deutsches Funk-Kartells lists history and the special event actions. I also chase these, mostly in morse again, but also in other modes. So far I have managed to get these on the 40 meter, 30 meter and 20 meter amateur bands.

Being part of a special event

On 20 april 2024 I was part of the crew activating PH75NAVO from the old command and communication bunker on Soesterberg Air Force Base. We were allowed to set up our radios inside the bunker and an antenna outside. I didn't make a lot of connections as operator, but we had fun setting up, looking around, explaining amateur radio to visitors and generally having a nice day. Lots of positive feedback and the foundation that controls the old airbase as a nature reserve was very happy to have us visit!

During that weekend there were no FT8 connections which were 'promised'. I made up for that by activating the special call on Wednesday 24 April in FT8/FT4 ending with 218 extra connections in the log.

Reporting in Dutch: PH75NAVO op 20/21 april actief - VERON A08 - Centrum, PH75NAVO, geslaagde activatie vanaf vliegbasis Soesterberg! - VERON A08 - Centrum.

I haven't cycled a long distance in a long time because reasons but I seriously want to be able to do those distances. The best way to work on this is the approach of just doing it. So I took a day off recently, was blessed with nice weather and I cycled almost 84 kilometers from Utrecht to Schoonhoven and back.

The most important thing I learned was to eat before I got hungry, so to bring enough food which gives the right kind of nutrition. And enough water.

I have a strong wish to cycle to a place which is about 120 kilometers from our house, I think I can do this given enough time, the right planning and enough food and water. In the past my wife and I have once cycled 180 kilometers in one day and have experience with over 100 kilometer days on cycling holidays.

I also brought a handheld radio along which transmitted my location to APRS. But as soon as I was out of the range of my own aprs receiver at home I fell off the APRS map and didn't return until I got close to our house again.