Off Grid Ham Radio & Fat Bike Camping
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Off Grid Ham Radio & Fat Bike Camping on the island of Hailuoto in Finland.
Hello Operators.
Today on OH8STN Ham Radio we take another journey into operating a portable ham radio station off-grid. With an emphasis on ham radio data modes, I have made my way to Hailuoto Island Finland for several days of radio camping. Riding my fat bike, I carried a QRO radio, easy to setup HF antenna, portable battery power and solar powered with PowerFilm solar panels. Going beyond the basics of off-grid and grid down comms was the priority.
On this trip I used a Yaesu FT-891 and 120-watt powerFilm SOlar panel. Data modes were accomplished using a Raspberry Pi and Android Tablet. These days I use the Icom IC-705, Lab599 Discovery TX-500, Xiegu x5105 or x6100 when operating man-portable. These radios offer better efficiency and capabilities than QRO rigs, in a lightweight portable ham radio setup.
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För this trio, we'll take the solar powered Ham Radio Station off grid, powered by the Raspberry Pi field computer, the 45ah solar generator, and a 120 watt PowerFilm Solar panel to the island of Hailuoto Finland, for a multi-day, off grid communications test, and another episodia of the x days off grid series. The expedition is completely man-portable, and solar powered. The entire station was carried on a fat bike, with a small bike trailer, for a total distance of about 90km or 56 miles. The trip lasted 3 days, which was more than enough time to test off grid communications with js8call, the PowerFilm 120 watt panel, the Nortent Gamme 4 shelter, the Yaesu FT-891 and Raspberry Pi.
73
Julian #oh8stn #xdaysoffgrid
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Raspberry Pi Field Computer • Raspberry Pi Field Com...
PowerFilm Solar
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45ah Solar Generator
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Antenna used:
Chameleon MPAS 2.0
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Your sacrifice to this more rare aspect of Amatuer Radio could best be described as a very special brand of leadership.
Some are on the cutting edge. Some are on the bleeding edge.
Your efforts exceed both.
Thank you for another very informative and good video I always learn something I've played around with CB radios for many years growing up got out of it for a while and your videos on ham radio and a few others I found have inspired me to try to get my ham radio license here in the near future thank you for all you do keep up the good work
I have not figured out if it is the excellent information or the calming measured voice that brings me back but always glad it does!
Loved the "slice of life" journey at the start of the video. It helped give a sense the conditions you're operating in as well as a nice view of the countryside.
Something I tell my operator compatriots all the time is "the mission determines the loadout." Your work exemplifies this concept and every time I watch another of your videos I learn something.
I need to go back and see how you built that 26650-based pack and how you coordinate the tablet and Pi. I also didn't see your source for the 10w PA. I have a 30w PA that I bought to go with my 817ND and/or my KX3. But I can see the value of a 10w PA as well, especially for the digital modes.
Thanks Julian for all the hard work. You are an inspiration to us who are dedicated portable and/or emergency operators.
Thank you David. It's incredibly difficult to convince ham radio operators not to take the kitchen sink to the field. Take what we need, plan for the most likely failures, then enjoy a lighter more manageable station.
I'm doing another 26650 build fairly soon. It's the same capacity as that previous video, just in a different way out.
Thanks for the comments and the feedback. It's very much appreciated.
73
Julian oh8stn
Yes! Understanding what the station is to do for us is the “mission” and dictates the engineering constraints. You’re taking amateur radio to new levels! Thanks! 73 de K2CJB
Important info for prepping. I aim to learn more this year. Thank you!
Thank you Sarah. We're going to have some more preparedness related videos in the coming weeks. All of the ties together though. Thanks for watching👍
Same here
Well Julian, I just experienced the same challenge. I attended Quartzfest with the plan to be totally off grid for a week. Every component work as planned. However, I experienced the same challenge of PI configuration. I suspect that if cables stay "attached" the pi the configuration would have remained consistent. It took me several hours to reconfigure. How frustrating when it all worked in the lab! Thanks for the great content. Those state side, a good test is in the desert at Quartzfest. aka ADV Chef
Thanks for answering the "why's". You break everything down, nicely, to explain the whole mission. 73 de KC3NEH
Thanks for that Richard.👍
73
Julian oh8stn
Very cool info. I have a extra wheel Fat mate trailer and also a Nordic trailer for my fatbike design to go off grid long term
Thank you so much for your great content. I am new to ham radio and your videos are quite good to help me understand what you can do . 73 de DJ4FR
good job Julian 73 goos luck
I’m taking my bike from Columbus Ohio to Hamvation in may! (60 miles maybe)
The vids have had a step up this time, loved it keep it up brother!
Love that Ford Torino. If I owned that car it would not have an antenna on it.
Actually the guys in that car really cool. They got out and were talkin to me about the bike and what I was doing on the island. That car is a dream :-)
@@OH8STN A neighbor has one shoved in a semi trailer on the acreage next to me. I found a litter of kittens in it a few years ago.
Hi Julian. Thanks for the video, inspirational as usual and great tips. Just did a portable ops and realised I had too much gear so are optimising for the next trip. 73's from VK3
Good video. I have starting using aheadless pi 4b/tablet with FT-891 and ZLP miniSC. Thanks to your videos and those of KM4ACK I was able to get my pi configured, amateur radio sw installed and functioning, gps and real time clock all working. I agree, the cable salad is a problem, and I will work on shortening them in the near future. I run everything off a 12Ah LiFePO4 battery (commercial, not home brew). I have a proof of concept solar charging system setup, but will replace it with a more robust solar charge controller and solar panel. I can't afford the flexible kind you show in your video. My "mission" is to have an autonomous, offgrid stationary setup that can operate indefinitely. I live on a small Greek island in the middle of the Aegean Sea. Grid power is sometimes "iffy." One year, grid power was off for more than two weeks in parts of the island. Cellphone service was also compromised. The closest vhf/uhf repeater is 75km away. Thanks to our elevation on he island we are able to reach it and others. With NVIS HF (mostly 80m) we keep good contact with other operators on the mainland. There is only one other full time radio amateurbesides myself on the island. Another one comes to the island only in the summer months. I will be gathering more experience with JS8CALL, PAT Winlink and other digital modes as we come into the summer months here. Keep up the good work!
Great trip and video Julian! Cheers Sir 73
Thank you Eric
Last weekend at "winter field day", I brought along a medium sized AC inverter for some accessories. I had all these other careful preparations, but I did the dumbest thing, and crossed the positive and negative alligator clamps onto my battery. Blew 3x 35amp blade fuses. They were soldered onto the inverter main board. I was able to repair it at home for the price of a cup of coffee, but I was not prepared to prevent or resolve that failure in the field.
That's a tough lesson. I'm just curious though, what was the inverter for?
@@OH8STN I was setup with my city emComm group. We had some networking hardware and laptops for contest logging. So the inverter was certainly not "mission critical". I powered my digital station off LiFePO4 with a modest .25amp drip from a 50w panel. While that's pretty meager charge current, if you figure on RX my HF rig needs 1 amp, I just extended the run time by 25% for RX. This was an overcast day at 47 deg N in January. I was actually pleased with how everything else worked. Made multiple contacts with northern Florida and SE states in the USA. I'm in Seattle, WA so good times with JS8Call
Great production as usual. I fell in love with finland last year. Me and my family have been in savitaipale last year for holidays. We repeat that this summer but on another location. I will bring my ft857d and the mpas. Looking forward to seeing you on js8call.
Outstanding Markus. Finland is an amazing place. I really knew nothing about it other than what the history books wrote about World War II. As a life choice, it's the best one I've made. Welcome back to Finland, and I hope to work you on the air.
Another great job Julian. Thank you 👍
Favorite channel and one of your best produced videos yet!!
Hi Julian from Canada. Last Saturday/ Sunday I participated in Winter Field Day with my club, the Georgian Bay Amateur Radio Club in Owen Sound, Ontario Canada. I setup and entirely digital station as a demonstration. Mine is still a work in progress and so my demonstration was only partically successful. My antenna for the event was the Cameleon mini with the extension. This I mounted using the jaw clamp to the trailer hitch on my truck. The following day I used PSK-reporter to track results and discovered that the signal was reported from Eastern Europe, all over North America and into the Carribean. Transmitting was fine but without a proper time sync reception was virtually nil. Inspired by our video's I will be doing more work on the station, which includes adding a real time clock and a GPS dongle, both of which have been ordered. I believe as you do that digital comm's will be critical in any emergency, and more so in a full grid down event. After my demonstration I've now become the digital operator for my club. As such I will be doing my best to convince other operators as to the value of having this capability as part of our clubs emergency comm's plan. With your permission I'd like to share your videos with other member of my club as a means of generating more interest in using digital modes. On a personal note, I'm a senior citizen and over recent years have experience a decline in my hearing. I now wear hearing aids but even so have some difficulty with doing phones. I use a headset which helps but, as you may well know DX contacts using phones can be difficut when dealing with foreign accents or under poor conditions. For me one attraction of digital modes is that I can still communicate irrespective of my hearing loss or poor propagation or QSM. In that regard digital modes offer advantages over CW.
Again a great video! :-D
Thanks for that. I was worried it would be abstract and boring :-)
Great video Julian! Those are some absolutely beautiful views! I am currently working on my portable station and your videos have been an incredible help! 73, de K8KNX
I have learned that when I havent had linux up and running on my computer to run digitally, it is very easy to forget login methods and passwords, which is extremely frustrating. When everything is up and running, it never fails that my wolfielink fails due to rf, and needs to be adjusted and interrupted. The point is, to quote you Julian "test the equipment" more often, to have an optimized a system. Thanks for the video, and the inspiration to continue with emcomm.
73 SA6ROS
Waiting for IC-705 with built in sound card and USB cable rig control?
Your commentary on bandwidth and power usage on SSB vs Digital modes is very informative!!!
Another Great Video!!! Thanks :)
Excellent video as always. Just a couple of ideas? Why not drill small holes in the cover of the 891 - and screw the Pi directly to the case of the 891? Also, perhaps a 3d printed connector also screwed into the 891 case? Just my lame ideas :)
Actually that's a brilliant idea. I've considered it previously but always shied away.
nice trailer
Thanks, there's more than the beginning :-)
@@OH8STN is burley nomad ?
Another excellent video, as always! We are all in your debt.
I like your current configuration with the Yaesu and the Raspberry PI but I would love to see a uBitx and a Raspberry PI combined in a single case. It would be extremely interesting to see how the two setups would compare.
Finally, that looked more like a beautiful vacation day at the beach. Are you sure it's training if it ain't raining? ;-)
I was kind of wondering why it wasn't pouring down on me. That's :-) we've discussed the units before. It would be an awesome project but you have to realize by now, in regards to circuit work, I'm nearly blind. I love the idea though of integrating the radio and the Raspberry Pi. The problem for me is always been the investment in time and building it, without knowing if I'll actually be able to finish it. If I can get that radio here, take a look at what's required to finish it up, I could see if I'm actually able to see well enough to build it.
I'll start asking around to see if anyone has one locally.
Hey I just noticed that little icon next to your name 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Thank you Sir.
Ok, if it's possible to run untethered from the radio by using a tablet, then is it possible to house everything in a durable case and surface mount an antenna port and power inputs to the outside of the case? Maybe even a temperature and battery gauge. I understand heat could be an issue during the summer. but as long as it's possible to open the case and allow everything to breath, I don't see an issue. You could even house the battery and charger in with the radio. One box that is self contained, yet user serviceable. 🤷🏽♂️
Muy buen video.73👍
Your conclusions about the simplified integration mirror what I've been considering. I'm putting together a very lightweight grab-and-go kit with a 40m SSB transceiver (Phaser for now) with three 18650 LiFePo4 batteries (30 watt hours) in the same enclosure, along with a tiny USB hub connecting a GPS dongle and a USB sound card dongle connected to the radio. The batteries charge from USB or solar at home and can charge from a small solar panel in the field. Instead of a Raspberry Pi, I've opted for a 14" (old eyes) but very thin netbook (4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash hard drive) that weighs under three pounds (1.4 kg) including its own battery. Basically, get a lightly used Chromebook and put a lightweight Linux on it. The integrated radio portion of my equipment feeds a resonant end fed antenna that is wound onto the winder that's integrated with the radio enclosure. Unwind it and haul the end up into a tree. The connection between the radio and the computer is a single USB cable.
The main reason I keep coming back to a Linux netbook despite wanting to use a Pi is the netbook is much more integrated, requiring fewer connections for a fast and reliable deployment. You're using a tablet to connect to an integrated radio and Pi. I'm using a netbook to connect to a bunch of integrated radio stuff albeit without the computer in that mix, but both of us are using tested integrated systems with minimal interconnections.
The weak part of my system is the 4W transmitter. This would be for very weak signal work, probably locally, just over the horizon but ground wave. I'm planning a more powerful version that's externally battery powered but otherwise has a similarly simple minimal interconnection design.
I'm also thinking of making a pre-tuned lightweight coax mag loop antenna for portable use. The disadvantage of needing to re-tune a mag loop every time the frequency changes isn't an issue with JS8 on a single frequency. There will probably be a minor tuning adjustment each time the mag loop is deployed in a different location, but for low power I could avoid vacuum capacitors and have a simple fixed high voltage capacitor that does most of the tuning and a small variable air dielectric capacitor for fine tuning.
Thanks for the video. As always, not only informative, but just gorgeous to watch and very inspirational. I love how the design is determined by the mission... what each person is trying to accomplish. No more than we need, but no less.
I think the netbook approach is a good one. If it truly is just one cable between the net book and the rig, I think you're set. By the way, you mentioned the four Watts. What I didn't mention in this video because I didn't see the relevance, what's much of my testing in previous months and years with regional Communications was done between 1 and 5 Watts. Once I understood the antenna configurations, NVIS with 3w was "easy". Anyway, that was the reason for mentioning the power levels versus the range and Mission. I think you're really onto something.
Finally, I don't think I ever put into words how much I appreciate your posts, feedback, and sharing. Initially I thought "my goodness, writing a book", but everything you're right is so incredibly valuable, that I look forward to it every time. Please don't stop sharing your feedback.
73
Julian oh8stn
@@OH8STN - One other advantage to having a battery powered QRP radio and antenna that uses a single USB cable to a netbook... I could leave the netbook at home, grab any computer with two USB ports, plug in a thumb drive with bootable Linux and JS8Call and have a working station for EmComm or to demo ham radio. That would work particularly well with a portable mag loop antenna, even indoors.
Thanks for the great video!
After removing the case from the USB sound card I see that you are still using the plugs and jacks with it. Would it be a wise move to eliminate the jacks and solder the audio lines directly to the adapter dongle? I would worry about stressing the jacks to the point they would snap off of the board and ending the start of a field day. It would be nice to incorporate all of this into a Hardened Power Systems case except for the added weight of the ammo box, everything would be protected. They take the approach of machining out from HDPE the panels for the box instead of printing certain parts so as to maintain durability.
'73 from SV9 land.
Thanks for the great Videos learning a lot and thinking along lines i had not considered. Busy setting up a similar raspberry pi setup myself and all going very well
Thanks
Brian G0WZB
Love your videos.... kn4vvy 73
Build it into a waterproof case!
I'm pretty sure we'll get to that. I really like the idea and I'm only concerned about the weight. It would solve many of the problems we have with integration.
I like the tent. Where could I purchase one? Also like the use of the tablet. What type of battery setup do you use?
Great video Julian ! I really enjoy bicycle touring. What antennas did you use ? I saw the MPAS but not another. Thanks for sharing !
Hi Brett. Thsnks for this.
Yeah cycling is an amazing pastime. Clears the mind, tunes the body, ... Only antenna was the MPAS 2.0, with 3 counterpoise wires. I also used a tuner, but really didn't need it in that configuration.
Its always good to hear from you. 👍
The USA eBay seller above is currently out of the data cable. I got mine from HAMdaptor eBay seller for $17 including shipping.
RR
Nice informative video, as always. Thanks! As a bonus I got to see my call in the log from the other side. Was that the 500 mW test from JO89ut on my wire in the garden? 73 de SM5SYO
Thanks. That's exactly what it was Mikael. In fact it was that qso which proves the potential of narrow bandwidth modes. Not very fast but they definitely get the message through.
@@OH8STN I remember that moment. QRO on IC-7300 at first, but then a switch to the QRP /P field equipment (i.e. 817nd + CHA wire + tuner). I remember trimming down the power on the 7300 for each test while setting up the portable gear at the same time, just in case it would work. Amazing!
That music was beautiful. Who was that?
Hello Buddy,
to much technics, to few environment and landscapes ;-)
Hello BK 😀
Probably true, but we train for emergency communications.
@@OH8STN As i saw the Hailuoto Island, i thougt that one day i will visit You with my Zodiac :-)
Do you have a link to the protection handles for the FT-891?
here you go facebook.com/rigirauta
Look up Waveshare 10.3inch E-paper Monitor, HDMI Display Interface, Eye Care to replace your current power hungry display.
I'll take a look Harold. Thanks for that
Julian, out of curiosity, what is your native country?
Didn't you consider to use CW for communication? No cables at all, less extra weight (no PC, no sound card are needed), less power consumption. 73 de R2AUK
CW can't be decoded under the noise floor.
@@OH8STN In fact it can. The ARRL Handbook explains this in great detail. Here is a short summary ham.stackexchange.com/a/15899/13598 Also I don't belive you have much noise working portable. From personal experience learning CW is not hard at all and even fun. I wrote a blog post on the subject not a long time ago. It's in Russian but I think Google Translate will manage eax.me/morse-code/ Frankly, the actual reasons why I learned CW - 1) there is way to much QRM in digital modes 2) I hate to depend on PC and sound card when I'm working in the field, not mentioning extra weight.
js8 seems dead in europe. its only a handful stations on pskmap and I dont seem to see anyone on the air. am I missing something?
Compared to what? On 40m, I've got 63 unique stations on my heard list from the past 24 hours. All from EMEA. Definitely fewer Operators than FT8 if that's what you're comparing it to.
@@OH8STN I left it on for about an hour (IO91 London) and I didng get anything. And seems that none got my CQs. Ill try again. FT8 is so boring.