Currently, I get to “enjoy” having off from work on Mondays. So, I took the opportunity to go try out a new tuner and antenna setup at a local park. Walter Hill Floodplain State Natural Area isn’t very big or scenic (just google Trash Mountain in TN). But, it is minutes from my home QTH, and there’s plenty of room to play radio. I took my Yaesu FT-891, a new LDG Z100 Plus tuner, and a lightweight EFHW for 40/20M with to give it a go.
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I’d been hearing about the TN Dirt Devil route for a while, but I’d never gotten around to actually ordering a map and seeing what it’s all about…until now. The Dirt Devil is a carefully plotted system of public roads in western Middle Tennessee (near Leiper’s Fork and the Natchez Trace Pkwy). The official printed map of the route is available from tndirtdevil.com, and costs $22.50 at the time of this post. I studied the printed map, and then created my own GPX track to follow on this ride. I didn’t even try to cover all of the roads that are part of the Dirt Devil, but still felt like I had a full day’s ride.
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Well, I finally got around to getting an APRS solution installed on Kyle. I had been using my cell phone and APRSdroid to get into APRS-IS, but that felt like I was cheating. I wanted an RF based solution. After contemplating using an existing HT (Yaesu FT-60), I decided that the power output would simply be too low for the areas I’m likely to go exploring. In light of that issue, I decided to go with the same mobile radio I used for the digipeater I recently built. This would give me an opportunity to use knowledge I already had, and more importantly, it would hopefully get me closer to 25W RF output.
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This was a fun ride along some backroads in Cannon County, TN. Round trip for me ended up being about 120 miles. Good thing the KLR fuel tank is roomy. The roads along the route are primarily rough asphalt, with some of the standard countryside roadway hazards. However, a good portion of the route is hard packed gravel. If I’m bragging, there were two ‘creek crossings’. If I’m telling another rider the truth, there were two places with some flowing water over the road surface.
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Recently, I moved from an apartment to a house. This gave me the opportunity to do some radio related things with fewer space restrictions. So, I decided to put together an APRS digipeater and I-Gate using a Raspberry Pi running Xastir, a Mobilinkd TNC, and a surplus commercial radio found on eBay. I chose to use Xastir for the simple reason that, although it can be complicated, the documentation available (mailing lists, primarily) is quite helpful. I also chose to configure it as a RX/TX I-Gate, as there didn’t seem to be many around my location. My goal is to help increase the reliability of messaging over APRS for users without RF capability (e.g. APRSdroid via TCP/IP connection).
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This is from an older activation I did at K-5493 (Franklin-Marion State Forest), and I honestly can’t remember when it was. I’ve activated this park several times, as it is one of my favorite places to camp. This bluff looks out over a valley, and the town of Kimball, TN is at the end. With my telescope, I am almost able to read the gas prices at the Wal-Mart gas station sign.
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