Building The Net

These are snapshots of some of the tests I did on my FT-4X with the Signalhound SA. We will be preforming these tests at the HT Evaluation Day event.

Transmit Power Test

Harmonics Test

Deviation Test 1

Deviation Test 2

PL Tone Test

Fun with FLDigi and Contesting!

Turning additional color codes on in WSJT-x really make a difference.

I did this video using a new tool to capture screen activity. I think the quality is much better then the previous method I was using. Let me know your thoughts!

Here is a quick video on how to completely reset FLDigi back to it’s initial config. This is useful when things get so messed up with your config you just want to start over… Enjoy!

Tossed this together as part of a series on digital modes for Amateur Radio. This is the first installment and covers installation of FLDigi, the premier open source software for Amateur Radio digital modes.

Amateur Radio Station at SCaLE (So Cal Linux Expo)

Several Amateur Radio Operators setup and operated an HF station at the Pasadena Convention Center for a 3 day stretch at the premier Open Source Software event in the US. The event included a booth on the expo floor demonstrating Mesh Networking, as well as a VE testing session for new and upgrading operators. This was the second year that SCaLE invited this group of Amateur Radio Operators to show the latest (and not so latest) technologies used to communicate with other Amateur Operators around the world. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the HF station this year by Vern (W6NCT) as an operator and also to man the information table next to the station.

Who Comes To An Open Source Conference?

That’s a great question! If you think it’s a bunch of programmers that spend all their waking hours locked away in dark rooms, typing endlessly on keyboards, eating junk food and downing highly caffeinated beverages, you would only be partially right. The far greater majority of attendees are programmers, engineers and technologists that make their living using or creating open source software. There are also many computer hobbyists and even some younger folks that have a love of technology. In other words, A PERFECT AUDIENCE TO INTRODUCE TO AMATEUR RADIO!

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Heartbleed – What is it? (for non geeks)

The Heartbleed bug was caused by a programming error in a software package called OpenSSL. This error had the potential of allowing bad people to attach to secure web and email servers, as well as services that rely on the TLS/SSL protocol, and steal the private encryption key off the servers. The TLS/SSL protocol is what puts the pretty little lock in the address bar in your browser. The private key is what the owners of the sites you go to are suppose to keep secret, and not share with anyone because if someone has it, they can decrypt the encrypted data traveling between your system and the server. THIS IS BAD…

Heartbleed – What is it? (for geeks)

The Heartbleed bug was caused by a programming error in the OpenSSL library that deals with TLS handshakes. A couple years back, a new RFC (rfc 6520) proposed a new extension to the TLS protocol that would allow a heartbeat to be exchanged between the client and server to reduce the number of re-negotiations during a TLS session. This all sounds good, and actually is a very beneficial to the protocol in general, but when it was implemented in OpenSSL, an error in the way the code was written allowed a request to grab a bunch of data without checking the boundaries of the data itself. This could allow someone to make a request crafted in a certain way that would cause OpenSSL to return 64k of protected memory data possibly containing the SSL private key of the server.

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Samba 4 as an Active Directory Server – Can it dance the dance?

Two weeks ago I thought to myself ‘Gee, now that Samba 4 has a real release out, wouldn’t it be fun to test it out and see how it holds up?‘ And so my adventure began. Now mind you, I’m not a novice to Samba, or to Active Directory, so I figured this would be a simple setup and test. How hard could it be?

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Running the System Rescue CD

— Stu