Amateur Radio – remembering Ohm’s Law with the VIR triangle (and the PIV triangle)

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)

Differences between US and UK Amateur Radio License rules and restrictions

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.

linbpq install on Lubuntu 22.04

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

Installing PAT Winlink client on MacOS

Quick notes:

  • download the .pkg from https://github.com/la5nta/pat/releases and run it
  • run ‘pat configure’ set your callsign, password and gridsquare
  • run ‘pat http’
  • open localhost:8080 in your browser

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.