Packet Radio, Part 6 (Antennas, and Winlink)

A couple of months later, and I'm getting back to packet, in various ways.

First way was realizing that I'm really getting tired of lugging antenna the 5-6 steps out of shack closet to master bedroom.  It's time to get that sucker up to the attic, and into a more permanent setup.

My first thought and attempt was to run a cable up through the ceiling of a closet off my shack.  No luck; a hole I poked apparently went up just beyond the reach of the upstairs attic.  Talked to a neighbor, who suggested trying to run a hole at an angle, to reach into the attic, but that ran into a stud or similar.  He also suggested finding the top of the wall frame, and run the cable down into the wall, to an outlet, which I still might do.

But what worked was poking a hole in the ceiling above the shack, but slightly concealed behind the door.  This was about mid-attic, easily spotted, and the RG8X run down through it.  First problem solved.

Second problem was reconnecting to a socket.  First try there was to solder the braid to the socket, but whether my soldering pencil wasn't hot enough, or the socket frame not prepared properly, it just didn't work.  Google was my friend, though, and suggested solder lugs, which oh yeah I did that before, and had several spare lugs sitting handy.  Soldered the cable lead to the socket center pin, and taped it up.  Second problem solved.

All that, and was able to get on the air.  Somewhere over the recent past (since my last blog post), I'd installed Winlink Express, and gone through the setup, and established an account.  I'd sent email to myself, received it, and replied, but not seen the reply come back to my Winlink account.  But after that, I wandered off (because, well, that's what I do...).

So after getting antenna issue settled, I checked my Winlink mail, and hey whaddya know, I've got mail!  Presumably somebody from SPARC sent a couple of test emails.  So I crafted a reply and sent that off.

I sent off another email to myself, received it, and this time replied with a /WL2K in the subject, and that try got through.  Yay, I can talk to myself!

Then started looking around for other things to do.  Had found mention in an ARRL email of a Winlink net covering my area (the Great Lakes Area Winlink Net) and sent off an email for that.  Then saw that Virginia has a similar ("the original") net, and sent that off.  A couple of days later, I had responses from both nets, so now I have something to do on Wednesdays (I've got local club voice nets on Mon and Tue, so this is good :).