RT Systems Software for AnyTone DMR Radios

Amateur Radio / By / / , , / 3 minutes of reading

RT Systems for AnyTone AnyTone is a Chinese radio manufacturer that makes several popular Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) models. They are sold in the United States through a number of distributers, including BridgeCom Systems, ConnectSystems, Ham Radio Outlet, PowerWerx, and others. While the radio is high-quality, the same cannot always be said for their Customer Programming Software (CPS), which is often buggy and can be difficult to work. RT Systems has recently released their radio programming software for both of AnyTone’s DMR radios, the AT-D578 mobile and the AT-D878 handheld. The cost is $25 for each model, and is currently available as a download for Windows only, supported on Windows 7 through 11. RT Systems offers many of their packages for Macintosh as well, so perhaps at some point in the future they will support the AnyTone programmers for macOS. An optional copy shipped on a CD is also available for an extra charge. Both packages will work with the programming cables provided with the radios, or a cable is available from RT Systems. In the case of the 578, it uses a standard USB A-Micro B cable. Advantages Why purchase third-party software instead of using the free software from AnyTone, you might ask? The RT Systems software offers a number of advantages: The interface is consistent with the other RT Systems programming packages for those who have their software for other models of radios. It allows you to search, copy and paste, import and export, etc. RT Systems has […]

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Hard Case for Amateur Radio Gear

Amateur Radio / By / / , / 3 minutes of reading

Earlier this year, I found a nice weatherproof hard case for my Yaesu FT-991A from Monoprice.com that was on sale for a decent price. This is similar to the classic Pelican cases, but is a less-expensive “knock-off” like the Apache cases from Harbor Freight. The one I got is about 19″ x 16″ x 8″ external dimensions, and about 17.5″ x 13.5″ x 7.25″ inside, which I thought would be plenty of space for the radio, power supply and cables. From the Monoprice website: Provide IP67 level dust and water protection for drones, audio mixers, or small desktop computers using this customizable Weatherproof Hard Case from Monoprice™!  The IP, or Ingress Protection, rating is a two digit value that indicates the level of protection provided by the cases. The IP67 rating of this case means that it provides complete protection against dust and other solid particles and that it can withstand up to 30 minutes of submersion in water at up to 1 meter depth.  The case is constructed of impact and ultraviolet resistant polypropylene and has a fully customizable foam interior for superior shock protection. A pressure relief valve allows you to slowly and safely equalize the pressure inside and out.  Features:  Designed and developed to the comply with the highest safety protection standards Waterproof up to 1 meter depth for 30 minutes Shockproof design with fully customizable foam interior Total protection against dust and other solid material Ultraviolet and impact resistant material Pressure relief valve allows for gradual

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SPAM with Spoofed Sender

Computers, Security / By / / , / 2 minutes of reading

Recently, I’ve started getting more “bounced” or backscatter email returned to me, as if I was the sender… These messages are SPAM, and are not sent from my account, not from my domain, and not from my hosting service. Someone is generating email messages and forging or spoofing the sender address to make it look like it was sent from another account. It is really simple to do this, but it is also easy to block it. There are several systems like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Yahoo’s DomainKeys Identified Mail, or the DMARC system, that can validate that email messages were sent from an approved email server or gateway. They use a specially formatted text record in the domain’s Domain Name Service (DNS) records to identify the correct originating server. If an email with a spoofed sender is sent from an unauthorized email system it can be rejected. So, if you have found my site because you think that I have sent you SPAM or are trying to extort you for a BitCoin payment, please recognize that it didn’t actually come from me… Your email client should have an option to show you the entire message header, and you should be able to see that the email actually came from someone else, likely in another country. We need to continue to press our internet service providers to leverage the spectrum of anti-spam tools, including things like SpamHaus DNSBL, SPF, DKIM or DMARC, as well as offering filtering tools like

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Back to a MacBook Pro

Computers, Macintosh / By / / , , , / 1 minute of reading

An update for 2022: My 2017 27″ 5K iMac was showing it’s age, and I had decided that there were times when a laptop would still be better than using my 11″ M1 iPad Pro, so I’ve upgraded to a late 2021 model 16″ MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro SoC processor, built-to-order with 32Gb RAM and 2TB SSD. I realized that I’ve become spoiled with the 27″ display on the iMac, though, so I also bought a Lenovo p27-u20 27″ 4K Thunderbolt4 display. The monitor essentially has a Thunderbolt/USB dock built in, so it has pass-through ports for Thunderbolt, USB-C and several USB-A ports, along with Ethernet, so that I can leave peripherals connected to the monitor, and only have to connect a single Thunderbolt cable to the MacBook Pro, which also provides the power delivery to the laptop.

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Moving to Bluehost.com

Hosting, Websites, WordPress / By / / , / 9 minutes of reading

Because of the outage at MacHighway.com, which last for about 5 days for me, but even longer for other clients, I decided that it was time to move to a different (better) hosting service. MacHighway was a local Denver company when I first signed up with them almost six years ago, but they have bought by another company, at least once, perhaps more? They are now owned by Deluxe. The quality of the technical support from MacHighway has deteriorated during the past year or so, as it has been offshored. The offshore tech support resources don’t seem to be at all familiar with the Macintosh, so they have lost their niche reason for attracting customers. They are really now simply providing cPanel virtual hosting on Linux servers, like most other hosting services. What drove my decision to leave MacHighway was a combination of the lack of support, along with the lack of communication. I think that I may have been one of the first to post about the outage on both Facebook and Twitter, since for part of the outage, MacHighway’s own web servers were offline, leaving customers with no way to contact support. Even when they got their main web server and their support site back online, there was not much communication. Their network status page did not reflect the outage. They have closed their call center due to COVID-19 concerns, and their online chat assistance was not active. Migrating to a new Hosting Service Below I have outlined

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Back online again!

Hosting, Websites / By / / / 2 minutes of reading

My web hosting provider, MacHighway.com, apparently botched a datacenter migration, and on Saturday, 9 October 2021 at approximately 20:00 UTC all of my hosted domains, websites, and email went offline. MacHighway did a horrible job of alerting affected customers, and didn’t post any updates for some time. Even their own websites were offline for awhile. They eventually posted on Twitter and Facebook, but only provided updates about once per day, and several times claimed they were “95%” restored or “all systems back online” when many clients were still down. On Tuesday, they posted on Twitter that if you were still experiencing issues to reach out to support at Deluxe, MacHighway’s parent company. I emailed them Tuesday night, and only got an automated reply. That reply email, though, had a phone number to contact support at Deluxe, so I called them this morning. Unlike the folks at MacHighway, the support team at Deluxe actually answers their phone, and I was able to speak with two support people. They were able to see the same issue that I had reported 24 hours earlier, that the external, internet-facing DNS name servers were returning the wrong IP addresses for hosted domains. The escalated the issue to their tier 3 admin team. By about 1600 UTC today, 13 October 2021, Deluxe or MacHighway had finally resolved the DNS issue, and I began receiving email again, and my websites have come back online! I may edit this post later with more details, but for now, I’m

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Thank you, WayBack Machine!

Drupal, Websites, WordPress / By / / , , , / 1 minute of reading

Tonight, as I was updating some of the content on my website, I discovered that I had a link to a page that didn’t exist, and realized that I was missing a number of posts. Rather than trying to dig through the database backups, I went to the Internet Archive “Wayback Machine” at Archive.org for my site, and was able to find a copy of my website from 2018, when it was still running Drupal, before I migrated to WordPress. It had the missing posts, which I was able to copy and paste. I need to go back and add categories and tags, and fix some links and put images back in, but at least I was able to recover all of the text!

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PreciseRF HG-1 “WR” MLA Review

Amateur Radio / By / / , , , , , , , / 17 minutes of reading

While I’m fairly happy with the performance that I get from my first HF antenna, an MFJ-2299 telescoping rotatable dipole, which consists of an MFJ-347 mount with a pair of 16.9′ telescoping stainless steel whips which will cover from 6m-20m, mounted on an MFJ-1921 tripod, with a DXE 25′ telescoping fiberglass mast, I wanted to have an antenna that covered the lower bands, especially 40m, as well as 80m and 30m, which the MFJ-2299 does not cover. I live in a small neighborhood in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, and have a very small lot, so stringing up 120′ of wire isn’t really an option. It’s also a new neighborhood, so the trees are all quite small, so I don’t have anything to use to get a wire antenna up in the air, nor to camouflage a stealth antenna. After doing quite a bit of research, including reading the ARRL book on “Small Antennas for Small Spaces” it seemed that the “unsung hero” of limited space may be the Magnetic Loop Antenna (MLA), or Small Transmitting Loop. A magnetic loop antenna for amateur radio is typically made of about 10′ of large diameter coaxial cable (utilizing the braided shield rather than the center conductor) which makes about a 1m diameter loop, connected to a tuning capacitor at the bottom. A smaller inductively-coupled loop is connected to the transceiver. The capacitor can be adjusted to change the resonant frequency of the loop. An MLA doesn’t need to be mounted very high, only 1-2m,

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Amateur Radio: One Year In…

Amateur Radio / By / / , , , , , , / 6 minutes of reading

I took my Technician and General tests together, last July (2019). I had started with a Yaesu FT-60R handheld, but really started to learn things last October (2019) when I bought a Yaesu FT-991A and started working on HF. Looking back over my first year+ in amateur radio, here are some things that I have learned: It’s all about the Antenna — It’s easy to focus on the radio, with knobs, buttons, and flashing lights. Probably the biggest factor to one’s overall success/performance is not the radio, but the antenna! The “best” antenna is the one that you can put up (given any location, size, HOA restrictions), but an antenna that is resonant in the frequency band you are using is going to be the most effective. Higher off of the ground is generally better if possible. Antenna tuners, loading coils, traps, etc. are compromises in performance for size, and flexibility. A compromise antenna can work for you, but may not be ideal. You can find lots of information and ideas in the ARRL book on “Small Antennas for Small Spaces.” Antenna performance is important with handhelds as well. The typical “rubber ducky” antenna is optimized for size/cost, not for performance. An aftermarket 1/4 wave antenna that is 14-16” will generally perform much better than the stock antenna. With the original antenna on my handheld, I could barely hit the repeaters from outside — with the aftermarket antenna I can reach them from my basement! You can also use a

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Adding an Epic PWRGate to the Powerwerx MEGAbox

Amateur Radio / By / / , , , , , , , / 9 minutes of reading

When I was looking for a portable 12v DC power solution, I started with a West Mountain Radio Epic PWRGate as a controller/charger for the 12v Deep Cycle/Marine/RV battery from my travel trailer. Since I bring the battery from the trailer inside during the winter, I figured that I might as well make use of it with the radio, and keep it charged. The West Mountain Radio Epic PWRGate is a slick device. It has inputs for power supply and solar panels, connection to/from the battery, and the output or load. It will act as a battery charge controller, and can be set for the battery chemistry — sealed lead acid/gel, AGM, or LiFePO4. It will also act as an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) that will automatically switch from the input power to running the load from the battery. I used the RV battery for Winter Field Day in January 2020, and it worked well to power the radio, but it is HEAVY! The RV battery weighs about 53 lbs. I had decided that for ARRL Field Day in June 2020 I wanted to have a LiFePO4 battery, which are much smaller and lighter, but can offer similar or better capacity/run-time. By comparison, the 30Ah LiFePO4 battery that I selected only weighs 7.6 lbs. Researching some of the run-time calculators showed that a 30A/hr LiFePO4 should power my Yaesu FT-991A for an estimated six hours, which I think is a reasonable compromise between run-time and cost. This is actually double

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