CNC pcb milling day 2

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon working on the milling project again.

I made some serious progress on dialing-in the settings. It was a mix of software settings in Eagle + PCBGCODE.ULP + Mill setup.

This board is getting pretty close. I am probably about 95% of where I want to be. I think that I set the Z (height) access a bit too deep or this might have a complete success. If I had to solder this board up with parts it would have worked fine. (All of the connections were 100% working.)

I need to document my current Eagle and PCBGCODE settings before I make any more changes. There are a lot of suttle details that go into the initial setup. As long as I document them now I think that it is pretty reproducible without much work.

I also need to try to resurface my wood table so that it is "true" again. I bought this mill used so it has some hours on it prior to me working on it.  The extreme outside edges of the table need to be milled down to the same level as the rest of the table bed. At some point I will make another table but I think that this one has a lot of time left before it needs to be swapped out.

The drilling portion of this took about 8 minutes (something like 48 holes.) The milling (2 passes every where) took about 10 minutes. I think that with some GCODE optimization that I can likely reduce that by another  10-20%.

73 de NG0R

CNC pcb milling day 1

I spent several hours Saturday afternoon working on the CNC mill towards the goal of being able to mill a circuit board.

A couple of quick pictures from my iPhone while I was working on a dry run (above) and my first attempt with copper (below).

 Overall I am feel pretty good as I am close but not quite at the level were I am completely happy. I am probably about 90% towards my goal. Frankly if I was working with 1206 SMD parts I would be in good shape but I need more accuaracy than for 805 and drilled through-hole parts.

I need to tweak my milling depth so that I am not cutting away so much detail. I also need some time to work with Eagle on tweaking my layout a bit related to pad and trace sizes.

A great first day but I stil have some work ahead of me.

73 de NG0R

Linux and radio setup

I was helping a friend setup CQRLOG and FLDIGI on Ubuntu the other day. It is a pretty simple setup except for one little oddity, that is critical for many of us: rig contol

In order to get the USB-->Serial adapter to work:
sudo adduser MYUSERNAME dialout

I had not run into that as an issue with previous setups (likely with older version of Ubuntu). I am not sure if the permissions changed between the version of Ubuntu or maybe some other software installation took care it automatically in the past.

73 de NG0R

Summits on the Air

Time for some more catch-up on the blog and SOTA logs.

On Saturday October 20th Ben (N2BEN, left) and I (NG0R, right) drove from our home in central Minnesota to eastern South Dakota to activate W0/ES-002 as part of the Summits on the Air (SOTA) program. There are not many SOTA peaks in the central portion of the US... so for us "flat landers" it generally means a road trip if we want to activate a summit.

 

Back story: Earlier this fall Ron KC0JQO mentioned that there were some peaks in central and eastern South Dakota. One of those peaks is about about 150 miles away or aka: within a single day drive for a round trip expedition. A couple of weeks after that I started to research the W0/ES-002 location in detail. I spent about 4 hours across two days trying to track down if it was public or private property. The officals in Roberts County and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe were great to work with over the phone. After much checking the location is on indian property but it is considered open for public visits. The info from Google Maps is very accurate and will get you right to location. Unless it is extremely muddy you should have no problem accessing the site in a car or a two wheel drive vehicle. It is the largest hill that you will see on the horizon as you approach it for 30-60 miles.  There are no trees, shade, or shelter. Welcome to the great plains... it will be windy here.

We posted our operating times and frequencies on the SOTA Alert website and on several of the Internet mail reflectors so that people would have some idea of how to track us down. I also had APRS running via RF from the truck and via the Internet on my phone. I had spotty access to the Internet so I also tried to self spot to the DX packet cluster to get some of the initial traffic going.

This was our first SOTA outing with our new Elecraft KX3 radio. We used an 8ah battery, 22 foot push up mast that was guyed to the ground, and 84 foot inverted L antenna with a 16 foor counterpoise. We logged on paper. It was about 40 degrees (F) with a 25mph wind making it pretty blustery since there was no shelter. (Since it was cold I did not take many photos... we focused on operating and being on time.)

We operated for about 90 minutes. 20m (14MHz) was pretty active, 17m (18MHz) was a struggle, and 40m (7MHz) was a bust. We operated exclusively SSB. (In the future we will split our time between SSB & CW as our CW skills improve.)  We put 27 QSOs in the log and had a good mix of locations that we work.

Two (2) of the twenty-seven (27) QSOs were SOTA to SOTA QSOs:
NG0R W0/ES-002 ---- W5STR W5A/MA-009
NG0R W0/ES-002 ---- KD9DC W5N/OR-006

Overall it was a very enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. I was happy with the Q count. I was happy with station performance. Ben was impressed at how simple the setup/breakdown was. Ben was impressed how far 5 watts of RF power can travel.

We should have our QSL card order on-site in a couple of days. (I plan to make up custom QSL cards to each SOTA activation in the future.) The first QSL card/request arrived in the mail early this week. The SOTA logs are posted to SOTA database as of this morning.

The table below shows a real basic log in case you want to check to see if you are in the log: 

QSO Date	Time	Callsign	Freq	Mode	RST Sent	RST_Received
2012-10-20	19:20	W5SAN	18.161	SSB	59	57
2012-10-20	19:19	KA1R	18.161	SSB	59	44
2012-10-20	19:12	VE3IC	18.161	SSB	57	57
2012-10-20	19:11	VE3XN	18.161	SSB	55	57
2012-10-20	18:57	KB1RJD	14.342	SSB	57	34
2012-10-20	18:56	KB1RJC	14.342	SSB	57	33
2012-10-20	18:54	NE4TN	14.342	SSB	59	45
2012-10-20	18:52	AA0LV	14.342	SSB	59	55
2012-10-20	18:51	N9GOC	14.342	SSB	59	59
2012-10-20	18:49	KD2CKS	14.342	SSB	59	54
2012-10-20	18:46	WG0AT	14.342	SSB	59	59
2012-10-20	18:45	K7SO	14.342	SSB	59	58
2012-10-20	18:44	VE1WT	14.342	SSB	59	57
2012-10-20	18:42	KD9DC	14.342	SSB	59	54
2012-10-20	18:41	W5STR	14.342	SSB	59	59
2012-10-20	18:39	N4EX	14.342	SSB	59	55
2012-10-20	18:38	VA6FUN	14.342	SSB	59	55
2012-10-20	18:35	WD9BSA	14.342	SSB	59	53
2012-10-20	18:34	KI4SVM	14.342	SSB	51	22
2012-10-20	18:30	NS7P	14.342	SSB	59	44
2012-10-20	18:29	KG7E	14.342	SSB	59	54
2012-10-20	18:28	AA0LV	14.342	SSB	59	44
2012-10-20	18:27	KC3RT	14.342	SSB	59	55
2012-10-20	18:21	W0AO/M	14.342	SSB	59	55
2012-10-20	18:20	N0BCB	14.342	SSB	59	22
2012-10-20	18:18	W0MNA	14.342	SSB	59	43
2012-10-20	18:11	AC0BR	14.342	SSB	59	59

73 de NG0R and N2BEN

November 2012 Snow

We had our second snowfall of the season this morning. We recieved about 1.5 inches of wet snow which will probably be gone in a couple of hours.  The kids went outside and played with the puppy (Max the Wonder Dog) in the snow first thing this morning.

The ground is not cold enough to sustain snow quite yet, but we are getting close. A couple of cold nights and we could be in the frozen season for a while because snow & ice would stick around.

October 2012 Rain (and snow)

Trace ------ October 17th
0.125 inches October 18rd
Trace ------ October 23rd
0.325 inches October 25th (then it turned to snow)

The snow on morning of the 25th had extremely large wet snow crystals. It snowed for about 10 minuted, enough to cover my black jacket and make it almost white while I walked the dog about 1/3 of a mile.  As quickly as it started it melted off since it was about 35f outside.

Since we are now regularly at or below the freezing point (mainly at night) I removed the rain gauge from the front yard for the season.

SOTA Activation - W0/ES-002

Date: 20 October 2012
Time: Approx. 1800–2000 UTC (1pm-3pm Central time)
Region: W0-Eastern South Dakota
Summit: W0/ES-002 (Roberts County HP, aka: Preacher Hill)
Latitude: 45 28 14 N, Longitude: 97 6 18 W
Elevation: 651m / 2135f (1 point)
Call Sign: NG0R
Frequencies: 14.342.5-ssb, 18.157.5-ssb, 7.285-ssb (all +/- 5 for QRM)

Equipment: Elecraft KX3 + 84'/16' long wire antenna

APRS Track:
On Road: NG0R-9  
On Trail: NG0R-5  

I will be headed to eastern South Dakota Saturday morning with my son Ben (N2BEN) to try to activate W0/ES-002. It is known as Preacher Hill and is tied to Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Tribe. After working for several hours with the folks in Roberts County,SD and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Tribe I was able to confirm the status of the property.

Our goal will be to on the air at 1pm central time. We will likely work 20m, then 17m and 40m in that order. I will try to self spot on the DX cluster from my phone if possible. I will also have APRS running so with a little luck you should be able to figure out where we are and when we are operational.

Google Map info

73 de NG0R

SOTA catch up

I feel like a slacker. I actived Little Si W7/KG134 back on 7/13 as part of the Salmoncon group but I had not gotten around to posting the log.  I spent some time this afternoon registering with the SOTA website and DB so that I am now able to post logs.

Let me know if you need a confirmation or a card from activation.

73 de NG0R

KX3, Max the Wonder Dog, and Italy

I made a cool QSO on Saturday....

I was on a roadtrip weekend. Friday night I visited the Buffalo River State Campground and then on Saturday morning I drove into Fargo to visit the local hamfest. Saturday afternoon I drove east towards the "north shore" of Lake Superior. On the way east I decided to pull over in Frazee, Mn so that Max the Wonder Dog could get some rec time time after a couple of hours of cruising.

While at the park in Frazee I decided to pull out the brand new KX3. (It arrived Friday afternoon shortly before I left on the road trip.) I threw up a wire antenna in the trees (84 feet x 16 feet... aka: semi-random wire antenna) and setup the rig on a picnic table.

I worked IW1FP in Italy on 17m SSB with 5 watts of power. I gave him a 5x5 and he gave me a 5x1 signal report. I noticed that he was having QSB challenges with all of his stateside contacts so the signal report did not bother me.

Talk a nice Saturday:  a hamfest, nice fall colors, a warm afternoon in the park, Max the Wonder Dog, and QRP QSO with the KX3.

73 de NG0R

Deer at dusk

I spotted this family on a hill near Breckenridge, Co a couple of minutes past sunset. I was able to stop my vehicle and shoot for a couple of minutes. It rounded out a great fall day of touring the hills of Colorado.