 Yeah, yeah, something like that. All right So hi I'm Roland I've been playing with radio since I was about 14 years old It's been a very long break when I was traveling to go to Yale But a few years ago After becoming a permanent resident of Singapore I decided to resume doing stuff with radio One of the basic problems when traveling is you end up accumulating masts and antennas and test gear and Radios that I have with me. So that was sort of the reason for the pause but This particular mountain may in fact be Very familiar to people seeing some of my other talks. I'll give that in just a moment The title refers to operating a radio station. You're actually seeing the station The antennas have been a wire This is 2200 meters above sea level. I was using it to communicate with a range of stations The largest range was 3000 kilometers. So this is near the east coast of Australia I was talking to a station on the west coast And this is not with fancy new Near sort of noise level digital modes. This is just voice The previous photo, sorry, if you know that of the mountain because it's in a wilderness area The park service decided not to repair the trig station when it was destroyed. So that sort of broken down high pod Also serves to identify the mountain Here is a 20 year old photo taken on the same mountain So notice the trig station was in the background and a very long head first in the front Here with a Rig doing something different 20 years ago and so it sort of begs the question why go up to the same mountain again with gear And the answer is it was a different experiment What I was doing 20 years ago was on the HF The range involved was only 160 kilometers, which is less than the distance to the horizon So it's very much a line of sight activity We're using 25 watts of power, which our batteries is quite difficult It's quite a substantial battery and required four day packs with a gear and therefore three assistance To get the stuff up to the top of the mountain by the time it was taken one of these things had walked back down What I did in January was on a much lower frequency Almost 20 times the range and In one occasion a tenth of the power all the gear fitted comfortably into one day back in addition to a liter of water So there's there's differences in what these two frequencies can achieve There's also part of my own interest in radio and indeed in electronics Which is working on the electronics for these lower frequencies is a whole lot simpler Then working on the electronics for VHF and UHF have wires big enough to see and it's a bit relaxed about Rooting the moment you're working in the high frequencies things like the length and shapes of circuit board tracks start to matter So if you want to start playing with the electronics of radio HF is a much much easier place to start and so that was really the other half of the reason for getting myself back into HF Not on propagation so the there are similarities in tenets Although it's not very obvious the antenna on the left is an array of elements about a meter long The symmetrical that standing vertical The antenna on the right. It's actually two antennas is a V-shaped piece of wire 10 meters long for one frequency that is to say 10 times the size and 20 meters long for the other frequency Or 20 times the size the sizes of the elements are in the inverse ratio to the to the frequency But the propagation mode is completely different for the VHF its line of sight it was Talking to another radio station repeat it basically on another mountain 160 kilometers away For the HF case. It's using the earth's ionosphere We're at the bottom of 60 kilometers of gas We're totally atmosphere above that is a little over 900 kilometers of ionized gas or plasma called the ionosphere Parts of the ionosphere have increased density of electrons or ions Particularly the DE and F layers that are dense enough to refract radio waves But only reflect or reflect refract but only in certain frequency ranges So the three to 30 megahertz or HF range happens to be about the sweet spot for using the ionosphere for this purpose When you're all about 145 megahertz of doing 20 years ago, it would just pass straight through the layers and go out to space So it happens that for this range of frequencies. It is possible to use the ionosphere To conduct your communication far beyond the line of sight You get to a 3,000 kilometer line of sight you'd have to be in space So to get to 3,000 kilometers from 2,200 meters above sea level requires somehow that your signal is dead And so it's some way one of these layers my signal was being reflected and or refracted To get a sense of where There are actually three mountains involved But just because I did a couple of trial runs in mountains of Victoria that you can drive up to before trying on the mountain which requires a four-hour walk to your heart So the 3,000-kilometer contact was from Banyong to Perth And for context, we are here. That's about 600 kilometers, I think, so it's only a little bit further That's why there is almost 600 kilometers further east and I was not able to communicate quite so far But certainly so there the first tests I did on New Year's Eve were to drive up two peaks in Victoria With a couple of friends and operate. This is my first time ever operating on HS Terrible begin with this stuff And so it was helpful to have friends around me who were themselves experienced amateurs to learn a couple things very quickly And I was thinking maybe a couple of contacts in in Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory probably New South Wales Maybe you know Amelie and then astonishingly Didn't realize I got a VK6, which is at the Perth Station until after I was reviewing my log. I said wait a minute. I've got call signs in every Australian state And also half of the process, I was somebody getting ZL calls like that And I believe quite a lot, so I was getting Calls at quite a range and so the operational amount Banyong was all two and a half watts Equipment problem that I'll get to in a moment That's so that we've got that very long operation was on the unintended lower power Happier being about hardware. We'll talk briefly about radios. I didn't make much in the way electronics for this particular experiment Although I did a little bit for power What I wanted was an HF radio that would do Sort of all of the frequencies and modes that amateurs care about in a portable form So not a sort of bulky base station radio And I wanted to be a widespread use but not want to be using some sort of weird odd radio that no one has an experience with So the two serious contenders The the ISO 817 which is a 2001 design still manufactured, but the design hasn't changed. It's probably the last Major work anyone will ever do in end-to-end analog radio with the range of capabilities that required for now radio The early craft is much more recent design With a largely digital simple path and therefore it's half the weight, 30% smaller And has various conveniences that the old radio doesn't have Nonetheless, I bought the older radio because I want to do a bunch of experiments that require Modifying a radio and having access to the signal path. You can do that with a radio that's analog from end-to-end You cannot do that with a radio. That's mostly digital and software One of the problems is that matching a radio to an antenna requires or often requires a separate device In the other class case, there's a space inside for it and the other space is not required by another device So it gets a bit bulky from now on top use, but it's okay. I was able to carry it comfortably one pack So with all the other stuff so it worked The other big selection issue was Antenna and mast and really looked primarily at soda beams, which is a UK group and back tenna Which is a basically one guy doing sort of crowdfunded batch work in California. I think He his stuff is just more refined. He's thought through the stuff He clearly does and works with people who do a lot of backpack operation. It's called back tenna It's for backpack use and they're I after weighing it up costs were similar, but his stuff is more refined most importantly, the mast was selected it's a Extendable fishing pole, but it's 10 meters long, three steps high, but coaxed it will fit into a suitcase This matters if you are flying to the place from which you're going to walk Which is exactly my situation. I live in Singapore, but I was flying to Sydney driving to Cosiasko and then walking several hours on the mountain So yeah, that fact that fit into a suitcase was a deciding factor for the pole For the physical accessories the one they handled is the same. The wire is similar, but you're cheap soft aluminum pegs versus some sort of hardened alloy with a sharpest spike they won't bend because of the three from shape The S-clips which make it much much easier to assemble stuff fast and you and again this matters amount of operation You don't typically have a lot of time on the top And also male business, so getting two wires to one bit of coax. You need a doctor, basically This one works, but like really What were you thinking is again the fact that a guy's thought through his stuff again. So that was what ended up buying I Made a few extra cables and and other patching bits that was they were able to sell me parts to do so But the kit itself is actually pretty good The next big challenge is operating is preparing to operate in Singapore the noise for here is unbelievable And so the units I've yet to have a successful communication other than a few kilometers in Singapore But I still needed somewhere to set this gear up to begs It was not going to have a lot of time on the ground in Australia before going into the National Park I was in Australia for three weeks, but we're in the National Park on like the fourth day or something. So Nearly time to do set up an operation here That's always a problem whole other talk on the use of Singapore Land Authority fields. I've done on other occasions I'll put out today that it was helpful to have first done a bunch of antennas at Maker Faire last year This is a sort of aerial photo of the science center and all the antennas that we we call for Maker Faire Which at least some people in the room came and saw and at least one came not read But but importantly in order to do that I had prepared a risk assessment And so when the Singapore Land Authority when I finally found the right person who could actually have a concrete discussion about antennas with me One of his first questions was have you performed a risk assessment? Why yes, yes, I have He's one that got through the science center in like less than 24 hours. That was it. There were no further questions So The Singapore Land Authority has fields about 1700 fields spread across Singapore They had rollers to look after a land that can be used for development, but it's not currently developed as the same from national parks whose Land is isolated permanently for recreation They mean they tore that all the downtown fields that I'm used to get mowed regularly That's why we have these nice clear fields or every single book doesn't happen by itself I asked them to use all four the crudely marked fields here in particular a good hacker space about here So I had in mind this one This one was the walking range unfortunately this is before the one that did not allow it to be caused It's part of the growing real estate park because a lot of public use that they create all through the LSA night So in fact most of my stuff was done near the middle of this field big open space no India light And generally out of everyone's way cricketers notwithstanding So that was set up one night on that field The mass is tall enough that the top of it is not in the frame It's quite a serious difficulty photographing thing because again, it's more than 100 meters from the street light So I'm dealing with a little flash in my in my camera Right so far so good. So that was all sort of November December December 31st as said I went up two mountains in Victoria with drive-up access to the site So they're like picnic tables and stuff on top Didn't photograph the whole setup. I wanted to point out something in particular So you've got the radio tuner my phone Because we're going to go up three mountains that day when I was going to see the battery life of the internal battery in the Again, it's Hey Unfortunately, there is a inappropriate feature which is sale, but infirmly the radio But there are four options Half a what one what two and five months and so what they've done classic. It's hard to change Hardware particularly layouts of LCDs, but you can make software do stuff So it's one bar two bars three bars or three bars flashing that gives you the full power options And that's what the manual says turns out that that's only true using the internal battery if you the external battery It's mostly true For those three months, but if you're operating long distance from mountain top you will start at the highest power wall and It turns out that I could not get it to flash Cycling through the power settings that it wasn't flashing so I stopped at three bucks the three that's the two and a half watts Which is why the operation? Well, I'm expected to go three thousand meters. It doesn't kill me this Impression happened at two and a half watts. It was not Virtue was like I couldn't work out how to get into five watts. It turns out that on an external source The power meter goes blank at five watts This was mentioned at least once just once and forms and we're so many to work this out But most people use this with its internal battery Then headed into the Cosiastal Park, which is usually snowy and never vestilized It's our little moment. There's three kilometers from there's road. It's away from great power gas a few things on this picture one is The intended to set up People do die this Disturbing the regal levels so there's actually a side door here to cool it if you're stuck out here in a In the snow Your life is in immediate danger So there's a door that can up at any time and sort of wooden box and get into it as blankets and water But and dry fruit Also, the power source is solar That has consequences I'm there for a week. I'd like you to recharge the batteries in my radio There's a clear review of it So the difference power is The old part of the building is everything up to about this wall is essentially all your part is 60 years old the club is a little bit conservative about such things and The deal has been no power for member use There's electric power to run lighting To run a couple of safety alarms and to control the water Where it burns gas but it uses electric electronic control to efficiently burn gas and the deal has been that's the only thing The power can be useful so there was no house on it the power point you can see only went in 18 months ago and It's not enabled at this time of year. It's doing these to work putty. It's connected There's a general available. There you go. And generally it's only used for battery charges for causes pills Rest of the risk disconnected because the fear is people will turn up the headlights Most people have no idea that headlight draws 5,000 or 100 times or battery charging force and certain more than Modges electric systems can deliver not a huge threat, but if you trip circuit breakers in the lights go out At the same time, however, this way what's in this black box is in fact a Dual USB socket that goes into a cigarette lighter socket in the car two amps each and so The observation there is again because of safety concerns mobile phones are now viewed as incredibly useful things Do not have the ability to charge a phone if you're there for a weekend in the winter is now something that has safety consequences So the club has finally agreed to make available USB sockets for charging phones So design is all that's a lot of final input. It's 12-bit input, but I did this arms Work it would do figure that with a This is a converter That it would draw about 800 milliamps just like well into answers About what I calculated that means I could charge the battery that means for four or five days We sat there before walking up the mountain. I could operate So This is the lab room. It's the antenna distance The radio is sitting here. Oh there because the girls in the swing That's the map The weather is variable as is always the case in mountains, but it happened about the fourth day We're looking at the predictions. Yes, 70 20 up to every day probably rain someone This indicates a gigantic No rain very low wind perfect conditions Managed to get my hands on the wind, but otherwise perfect conditions That said I didn't think to photograph it the first morning, but even after the summit reason That's what it looked like the cloud was still rising And now later. It's just a little bit left That's the entire station It all fits into a single day back, which is nice This is about two hours of the walk I'm gonna put it here with the trees These are last trees Another three kilometers from here from here to the summit and about 300 meter rise That friends out the day before when we had to cowardly to refuse to go outside. There was a hail storm There's nothing there's nothing to hide under at all out there in a hail storm You have nothing we get back back with like quite a lot of hail storms The next photo is taken up on that ridge Yeah, so we should have zip forward three hours or two and a half I've rarely seen this or never seen it this way That was the path as it was and just stayed there all day. So again, this is consistent with the high pressure system just sitting there Do that I've never seen it in 30 years of walking up this mountain in particular I have never seen that far west so it was just astonishingly clear Which meant I can set this thing up It's not just that still there was essentially no wind up there. We were sitting and still there which meant that the Relatively flimsy pole wasn't being challenged So operate or sorry That's what it's like. So there is about a five minute video of me operating I won't do it now for time reasons, but the both the video and the slides are there I must want to view them or That's all for now because I over at my time I think I should not take any questions but it means come out later. We'll put a false agent on there So as I mentioned, hopefully now we'll have in your hands a Grocer or flyer for false Asia. This is Asia's largest open tech conference. It's one of the largest open tech conferences in the world