New iGate Buildout

	After seeing no operational iGate in the Victorville, California area, I decided to build another iGate for deployment. I had an extra WRT54GL, and I acquired two Motorola Keynote receiver boards from a friend nearby. He pretuned them to the 144.390 MHz APRS Frequency for me to use for this iGate. After a lot of building and troubleshooting, this was the end result. An operational iGate without external peripherals, besides the antenna.
	I salvaged a window clip antenna and attatched the RF Connector onto the case, making this a clean looking iGate. Whats inside can be a mess, but it has to look good on the outside, and function. My previous version, I mounted an audio input jack to the case, and tied in a cheap scanner. This version will not have an external reciever, instead it is all inside the router case.
	Here is the rat nest of wire and parts. The Keynote reciever board was double stick taped to the RF case for the WiFi. The TinyTrak4 was left in its case, because of the proximity to the motherboard, and the power supply for the pager board sandwhiched in between. First I configured the TT4 with the Callsign, RXAMP, AMODE, and ABAUD. Callsign: KJ6HVB RXAMP: 9 AMODE: KISS ABAUD: 9600
	Here is the power supply I built for the pager board. LM317T Regulator and Schematic http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM317.html#Overview
	Keynote Pager Reciever Board. Pin 1 - 1.3 VDC Pin 2 - GND Pin 4 - Audio Out Pin 8 - Battery Saver (Jumper to power with 10k resister to enable receiver)
	This is a view of the bottom of the pager board, to show where to solder on the connector for the external antenna.
	This is the RS232 to TTL 3.3v converter. I had to modify it, so it wouldn't mess up the TT4. I cut the tracer between pins 7 & 8 of the Serial connector, and also cut the tracer going to pin 6. Pinouts (Components on top) Pin 1: Transmit TTL Pin 2: Receive TTL Pin 3: GND Pin 4: 3.3-5v Serial to 3.3v TTL converter (A232DBH3v): http://www.compsys1.com/workbench/On_top_of_the_Bench/Max233_Adapter/max233_adapter.html
	JP2: Pin  1: 3.3V          Pin  2: 3.3V Pin  3: Tx (ttyS1)  Pin  4: Tx (ttyS0) Pin  5: Rx (ttyS1)  Pin  6: Rx (ttyS0) Pin  7: NC            Pin  8: NC Pin  9: GND         Pin 10: GND

The end result, an operational RX Only iGate for an area that needs it, that isn't messy.
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KI6PSP (Ed)

Charity Radio Project

I started on a repeater rebuild project, and I had a few radios donated to me for this project. The donator works for a radio communications company near San Fransisco, and he had a vast supply of old VHF radios that were now unusable on the commercial band. Because they were destined for the dumpster, he gave me a call, and offered a few more radios to go to Hams without one. I began thinking about how I could supply one of these for the next Tech class the club presents, I could complete the repeater build, and the remainder could go to other Hams without the proper equipment.

I started this as a road trip with my newly licensed Mom, KJ6HVB. This would be an all day trip, but considering there was no cost for these, I could justify a road trip. After all, I had fun chatting with my Mom, and playing with radio gear. I was amazed as to how much APRS traffic we observed. We started to recognize callsigns we saw in the morning by the end of the day.

I was really excited to get the repeater built, and see what these radios could do. After running checks on all of the gear, I had 17 working radios, and 2 with a bad receiver. Now programming these would be a challenge, as special hardware is required, but I do look forward to tuning these with my Mom, and putting them to good use.
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KI6PSP (Ed)