Tech Talk on ABC Radio - Mobile Phones

Tech Stuff - With the Optus outage over the weekend leading to the deaths of multiple people, it showed the network and technology we now rely on to survive is not infallible. But how did we get to this point? Nightlife takes a look at the past, present and future of mobile phones and their place in our lives. 

Peter Marks, mobile software developer and technology commentator from Access Informatics joined Philip Clark and listeners to Nightlife with a comprehensive discussion. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife/105786510  

FreeDV Sunday net 10:30 eastern time 19 stations

Another well attended Sunday morning net. Seen were VK3AWA, VK3KEZ, VK3SRC, VK3YV, VK5KVA, VK3PCC, VK2KNC, VK6KR, VK3AMO, VK3BRT, VK3SPX, VK7DIK, VK5APR, VK4WGR, VK5IS, VK2TTL, VK2BLQ.

FreeDV reporter was experiencing some issues but I decided to work from a list in my log book which saved my bacon.

Thanks to all those who tuned in.

Peter, VK5APR, (a net regular) has sent the following useful links for new users:

FreeDV User Manual, which is very comprehensive

Ham friendly introduction to the concepts of RADE:

https://github.com/drowe67/radae/blob/main/doc/rade_intro_waveform.pdf accessed from https://freedv.org/davids-oct-2024-update-real-time-rade-bbfm/ 

Davids presentation to the AREG ( areg.org.au ), a local amateur radio club in Adelaide, March 2025 meeting:

https://youtu.be/LxjcAF7Vy0Y accessed from https://freedv.org/rade-ham-club-presentation/ on the FreeDV blog dated March 22, 2025

For the technically inclined:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06671 accessed from https://freedv.org/david-july-2025-waspaa-paper-papr-rade-v2-snr-bbfm-otc-demo/

As always the main site is https://freedv.org/ and also keep an eye on the blog posts.

Enjoyed the Radio Old Timers Club lunch in Melbourne

Always a pleasure to attend these lunches. An efficient annual general meeting (I've joined the committee). Lovely to catch up with many old friends.

The multi-talented VK3YE was on tonight's ABC TV news

Watching the local TV news tonight and was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face, home brew hero, Peter, VK3YE:

Seeing him described as "Bus Expert" leaves too much unsaid. Here's my touched-up version:

The story showed a chart of expendature on buses by each state with Victoria coming last.

I'm told that VK3YE was also active on 774kHz AM in the morning running very high power.

Great stuff Peter.

 

Morning walk in the Australian bush with a DJI Neo drone

Almost every morning I go for a walk in the state forest opposite my house. It's very peaceful. This week, I purchased a little drone for antenna hanging activities and it turns out to have a "follow" mode where it will fly along behind you recording video. 

Later in the day I got my 40m dipole suspended higher in the trees. I tied flourescent bricklayer's string around the drone and flew it right over a near by tree and used it to pull a heavier rope over.

The Neo drone is better for this than my normal drone as the propellers have guards around them so the string doesn't get caught up when decending on the other side of the tree.

Installing FreeDV on Linux

In this video I walk through downloading, installing, running and doing the initial configuration of FreeDV on Linux. In this case I'm using Ubuntu 22.04 but it will be similar on derived distributions and I know it also works on Fedora based distributions.

FreeDV Sunday net - 19 stations

The biggest Sunday morning south east Australia FreeDV net so far this morning with 19 stations. Not everyone could transmit but I'm counting them anyway.

VK2DWG, VK2KNC, VK3AWA, VK3JF, VK3KR, VK3KEZ, VK3PCC, VK3SRC, VK3YV, VK1EJ, VK5LN, VK4BAP, VK5RM, ZL2TJM, VK2BLQ, VK3KVA, VK7DIK, VK3IK.

Great to talk with everyone and sorry I'm such a clutz at running the net. I need to figure out a better to run it than working through a changing list.

Installing FreeDV on macOS

To help newcomers I've made a video showing download, install and initial configuration of FreeDV on macOS.

My plan is to make a similar video for Linux but it would be wonderful if someone else could make the equivalent video for Windows users.

Tech Talk on ABC Radio

Atlassian is a hugely successful Australian software company that makes tools for software teams. Last week they surprised everyone by announcing the purchase of "The Browser Company" for almost one billion Australian dollars. 

Founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar financed the startup of Atlassian with $10,000 of credit card debt. Today, their market capitalisation is $45 billion US dollars. 

Peter Marks is a software developer and technology commentator from Access Informatics, joined Philip Clark on Nightlife to discuss the acquisition and other tech news. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/tech-talk-with-peter-marks/105755424 

This morning, after the Apple announcements I had several requests for comment including ABC Radio Darwin. My bit starts at 1hour and 6 minutes here. Host Adam Steer is a bit of a skeptic and has nostalgia for his old Nokia tradie's phone.

FreeDV Sunday net - 14 stations

The weekly FreeDV net on 40m in South Eastern Australia was excellent this morning despite wet weather here. Mark, VK5QI had planned a balloon launch that had to be delayed for the same reason.

7177 was busy so we moved to 7197 which caused a bit of confusion for a few minutes.

Stations on the frequency included VK2ATW, VK2TTL, VK3AWA, VK3BRT, VK3KEZ, VK3SRC, VK3YV, VK5GY, VK3KVA, VK5LN, VK5QI, VK5RM and ZL2TJM just listening but said "hi".

Thanks everyone for participating.

Is high octane fuel worth it in a Toyota Corolla Hybrid?

I was wondering if high octane petrol was worth the extra price. I asked two car oriented friends recently and they both said “absolutely - wouldn’t not use it”. Another friend said it has no effect except on high compression engines which modern cars are not.

Anyhow, I’ve been doing an experiment. I let my Toyota hybrid run very low on fuel and filled it with 98.

Here's what I see after a tank of Unleaded 91 fuel:

Here's what I'm seeing after a fair amount of a Premium 98 tank:

Normally I get 4.3 l/100 km. On high octane I’m getting 4.1 l/100 km. So it seems to make a small difference but not enough to justify an extra 20c per litre.

Here is where I fill up locally:

As is normal for a headline that is a question, the answer is no.

FreeDV with VK3SRC and VK3CKY

Just a little off air recording of some local stations talking with FreeDV RADEV1.

Joe VK3SRC asked about those "wings" (as he called them) on either side of the main carriers. He hypothosised that they were extra error correction signals. In fact they are an unwanted side-effect of the current RADEV1 code that will be removed in a future version.

To test this he used filtering in his transmitter to nicely remove them. You can see a "normal" signal at the bottom and his frequency limited signal above:

The resulting signal was perfectly decoded and has less wasted transmitter power.