AMRAD at Vienna Wireless' WinterFest

[Frank Gentges]

Tacoistas,

The AMRAD van was taken to the Winterfest today, Sunday March 12th.  We 
accomplished a number of things and certainly firsts for the van.

+A wireless network hot spot was established. 

+Added on to this basic capability was a VoIP telephone interface. 

+A UHF voice receiver was connected to the computer and digitized. 

+The VoIP telephone could dial up the UHF receiver and hear the local 
weather forecast.that the UHF receiver was getting.

+An Internet connection was established and interfaced to the hot spot 
wireless system.

Unfortunately, we did not have a wireless notebook to then connect to 
the external Internet to demonstrate the connection.  I had one to bring 
but it languished on the floor of the lab and did not come with the van. 
:-[

On other fronts:

+Radios for HF, 6 meters, 2 meters and 440 MHz were on the newly 
installed shelf in the van.

+The rotator head, a mast, a 2 meter and a 440 MHz beam were installed 
on top of the pneumatic mast in the van.

+The pneumatic mast was extended to 43 feet with the AMRAD banner flying 
in the breeze for most of the WinterFest.

We had posters and handouts inside and outside at the van about AMRAD 
and the AMRAD van and our plans.  We had a chance to talk to a lot of 
people coming by including a number of AMRAD members and AMRAD 
watchers.  Hopefully, we will get some more participation and ideas on 
future work we can do at AMRAD.

We had a  chance to see a number of technologies integrated together in 
the van.  Of course we learned a lot and we also confirmed we can do a 
lot with the van.  Oh, yes, we did all this on 12 volt power without a 
120vac inverter running.  We still do need 120vac to run the rotator.

A bunch of thanks are due to many AMRADers that participated in the work 
that led up to today.

Now we need to decide what to do with the van next.  Perhaps we should 
deploy the van to the Manassas Old Virginia Hams Hamfest.

I still want to get a DirecTV/Directway satellite connection for the van.

Frank K0BRA