Articles, notes and random thoughts on Software Development and Technology
For the Amateur Radio license exams (for most countries) you need to remember Ohm’s Law, which is easily remembered by the Ohm’s Law triangle:
V I R
where:
V = voltage (volts)
I = current (amps)
R = resistance (ohms)
To calculate any value knowing the other 2, cover the value you need with your finger and then use the remaining calculation, e.g.
V = I x R
I = V / R
Similarly for Power, use the PIV triangle:
P I V
where:
P = power (watts)
I = current (amps)
V = voltage (volts)
I currently hold a US Amateur Extra license (my callsign is KK6DCT) which in the UK would be equivalent to the Full license. I’m curious what the similarities and difference are between US licenses and UK licenses so decided to take a look. This is just a casual observation so please do not refer to anything here as fact, I may and probably do have some things wrong.
In the US the 3 license classes are Technician, General and Extra, where Extra has full privileges. In the UK the equivalents are Foundation, Intermediate and Full. In the US each license level gives you access to additional bands and ranges within each band. Technician in summary gives you VHF and above plus part of 10m, General adds parts of the HF bands and Extra gives you full access to everything. With the UK licenses, privileges are by allowed TX power, with Foundation restricting you to 10w access to parts of most bands HF and VHF, Intermediate raises the allowed power to 50w, and Full to 400w.
For US licenses you are required to identify your station at least once every 10 minutes. For the UK license you’re required to identify ‘as frequently as is practicable during transmissions‘ but there’s no time requirement specified.
I’m curious what other differences there are – I may come back and add to this post later. If you’re aware of more differences leave a comment below.
I’m setting up a test install of linbpq on Linbuntu 22.04. This is just a test install to play with the config.
Since linbpq is a 32 bit app, you need to add i386 32bit library support:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt-get update
./linbpq ./linbpq: error while loading shared libraries: libasound.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
To fix, install:
$ sudo apt-get install libasound2
Next error
./linbpq: error while loading shared libraries: libz.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
To fix this on I installed 32bit gcc:
$sudo apt-get install gcc:i386
At this point I was able to create a simple bpq32.cfg file to test telnet access, and I’m up an running:
SIMPLE LOCATOR=YOURLOCATOR ; Node locator NODECALL=YOURCALL-5 ; Node callsign NODEALIAS=YOURALIAS ; Node alias (6 characters max) LINMAIL ; Enable BBS LINCHAT ; Enable CHAT BBS=1 PORT PORTNUM=2 ID=Telnet Server DRIVER=Telnet CONFIG CMS=1 LOGGING=1 DisconnectOnClose=1 TCPPORT=8010 ;FBBPORT=8011 6300 HTTPPORT=9123 CMDPORT 63000 LOGINPROMPT=user: PASSWORDPROMPT=password: MAXSESSIONS=10 CTEXT=BPQ32 Telnet Server\nPress ? For list of commands \n\n USER=testuser,changepasswordhere,testuser,””,SYSOP ENDPORT APPLICATION 1,BBS,,YOURCALL-7,YOURBBSALIAS,255 APPLICATION 2,CHAT,,YOURCALL-8,YOURCHATALIAS,255
Quick notes:
At this point you can connect using the telnet option to send and receive over the internet.
Will look at using Direwolf for access via radio later.