AMATEUR RADIO:

I added a new Yaesu FT-991A in 2021 as a transportable HF/6M/Vhf/Uhf radio. I still have the Yaesu FT-857D that lends itself to mobile operations very well. I use the 991A for SSB and digital in the shack. My digital operation is mostly Winlink using Winlink Express for email.I bought an RDA50 to use VARA for digital peer to peer contacts. It seems to work very well and Winlink Express knows about VARA in addition to Pactor III and other digital modes.

AL7LI Mobile on the TX Gulf: We spent winters in the motor home on the TX gulf coast and I did some amateur radio playing there. I mostly wanted to check out the antenna mount I built for the HF (ATAS-120A) antenna when I re-did the roof on the motor home. Since I had the roof opened up I connected the shield side of the mount to the coach framing. I mounted the ATAS 120A, drove a 4' copper clad ground rod next to the MH, and hooked up my FT-857D. I grounded the chassis to the ground rod as the steel square tube framing for the coach is grounded to the chassis, I had a great RF ground as well. The ATAS-120A tuned flawlessly from 7MHz to 53Mhz and the antenna performed extremely well. I was able to send and receive email (Winlink Express) on 7MHz and 10MHz routinely. The FT-857D and the ATAS-120A are capable of V/UHF but I also have a 2M and 70CM dual-band antenna mounted and used my ICOM IC 2820H for FM repeaters and D-Star so I didn't use the 857 for V/UHF. The two FM repeaters I can hit from Rockport are not very busy, I have only heard a few QSOs on one and nothing but a voice ID when I ka-chunk the other one.

COMPUTERS:

Raspberry Pi Farm

The Raspberry Pis are hardwired ethernet via their own 8 port switch. I have loaded OpenCPN a marine chart plotter with some nice features on Pi4-1. The application has really matured since the first time I messed with it and there are lots of plugins for added features. Three of the 3B+s have dedicated purposes. Their functions are labeled in the photo. I have added a Pi 5 (not pictured) but haven't assigned it's duties.

My main server uses FreeBSD 13.0 running on an Intel PC. It and it's predecessors have been solid for years with little maintenance. It's a full features server but mostly used for collecting and displaying data from the weather stations we have around the Western US. FreeBSD 13.x has become really easy to use and has matured into a premium UNIX system. There are many binary packages available although you can still compile applications from source. I loaded FreeBSD 13.0 for ARM on a Raspberry Pi 4 and am using it as a desktop with excellent performance. I'm using XFCE4 as the windows manager.

WEATHER:

As an Amateur Radio Operator, I am currently reporting weather data to the Citizens Weather Observation Program (CWOP) via APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System) my local APRS weather report, Wunderground Weather, several local databases, and my personal favorite, PWSWeather.com

The *.homeunix.net Weather Stations: My weather group has completed our weather station upgrades. All four sites have a Davis VantageVue. The Kent, WA local server is the central server for all the sites and the home page is updated regularly to reflect the changes going on with the station sites.  All four station sites now have direct web access. The central server is at fortmo.homeunix.net Comments are welcome. Send me an email here.

SOLAR PANEL:

The solar panel project is on hold since I moved to Fort Mohave, AZ until I redesign the system. I plan on building a large enough system to maintain a battery plant for communications emergencies. Arizona has a lot of solar energy installations so I should be able to get amateur radio help with it. Will Prouse has many YouTube videos on solar and he stays current on the latest developments.