N7EKB's Amateur Radio Page

Picture of Ed in front of his truck at work.

Introduction

This page is where I (Ed Braaten, aka N7EKB), keep things related to my hobby of Amateur radio. My introduction to the world of radios began in a police car at the age of 5 - I was fascinated by all the chatter and squelch tails. I got involved with shortwave listening in high school. I collected a number of QSL cards from international broadcasters and listened to a lot of Deutsche Welle.

After several thwarted attempts through the years I finally studied and passed the test for a No-Code Technician license in November, 1997. Shortly after getting my Technician license, I taught myself Morse Code and became proficient at the blazing speed of 5 WPM. I passed the 5 WPM Morse Code examination and was able to upgrade to a Technician Plus license in December 1997. My original callsign was "KF6OQI". When the FCC Opened their Gate 4 Vanity Callsign Program in December, 1997, I applied for the vanity callsign "K6EKB". I was inspired to apply for this callsign (which matches my initials) by my Elmer, Ken, "K6KRD" whose callsign also matched his initials. On 7 January, 1998 the FCC granted me the "K6EKB" callsign. Incidentally, Ken later moved to Idaho and his callsign is now "WA7RLZ".

After some theory study and some more practice with Morse code (13 WPM), I upgraded to General Class in May 1998. Many years later (April 13th, 2004 to be exact) after hitting the books again and participating in an excellent class held by Jerry Seligman, W7BUN, (Silent Key, Aug 16th, 2006) from the Radio Club of Tacoma, I finally upgraded to Amateur Extra Class.

I've lived in the Pacific Northwest since 2001, but didn't try to update my vanity call to match the "7" call area until I applied for N7EKB on January 31st, 2017. The FCC accepted my application and made the N7EKB grant official on February 18th, 2017.

Social Media

You can find me on Nostr as: ed@n7ekb.net. Nostr stands for “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays”. There are some really cool social media apps built on this protocol. I use Amethyst on my phone and Gossip or Snort.social on my Linux desktop. I setup NIP-05 on this website and may eventually run a private nostr relay here in the hamshack.

APRS and Tracking N7EKB's Semi Truck - N7EKB-14

In my current job I'm driving an 18-wheeler doing mostly "drop & hook" deliveries of shipping pallets. You can track my big rig (N7EKB-14) on APRS via the following link: 6-hour track. The APRS packets are being beaconed out using my Tytera UV-390 running the OpenGD77 firmware. I also run this setup in my car, beaconing as N7EKB-9. I have a Raspberry Pi-based APRS digipeater/iGate (N7EKB-10) running in my shack to enhance APRS tracker coverage in the Rainier, WA area. The iGate provides a feed of APRS objects heard over RF to my shack computer runing the Xastir program.

My Station

My radio shack is setup in an upstairs room in my house near Rainier, WA. The grid-square is CN86PV and the ICBM coordinates are 46° 54.279' N and 122° 42.118' W. My primary HF antenna is an NI4L OCF Windom Dipole antenna mounted approximately 25ft off the ground. The main HF rig in the shack is a Xiegu G90 (max 20 watts!) which I use for HF voice and digital modes (mostly FT8/JS8Call). The main VHF/UHF radio is a Tytera MD9600 dual band DMR and analog radio running the OpenGD77 firmware. The secondary VHF radio is an Alinco DR-235T for the 1.25m band.

Meshtastic and Reticulum

I have a Meshtastic mesh network client running in the shack on the 900 MHz ISM band. I have the "WASH" and "GhostNet" channels configured and also gatewayed to the internet via MQTT. While extremely popular these days, meshtastic is pretty much limited to texting and a one-person-per-device usage model.

Reticulum is a much more robust and flexible network stack that can replace the firmware on many meshtastic devices. I've re-purposed several of my meshtastic devices and now have some working RNode devices running in the shack and an adjacent building on the property. I run the MeshChat app on my Linux computers and the Android Sideband app on my phone with reticulum.n7ekb.net as my access point to the global Reticulum network and my experimental RF-linked nodes. I'm also running a pair of Nomadnet Nodes based on Reticulum, one on the TCP host and one on the RNode host. You can connect to my public access Reticulum node by configuring a TCP Client connection to reticulum.n7ekb.net using port 48086. This public access node gives you reliable access to TCP connected Reticulum users as well as a link (via my Tailnet) to my tiny RNode network.

Linux Only - No Windows

I've been running Linux on all of my home computers including those in my radio shack for close to two decades now. I program many of my radios on my Linux laptop using the CHIRP program or free software from the manufacturers. When the manufacturer's free software is only provided on Windows, I use a Windows virtual machine running on my Linux laptop to install and run that software.

East Thurston County ARES Team

I'm a member of the East Thurston County (ETC) Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) Team and serve as the Assistant Emergency Coordinator (AEC). To learn more about the ETC ARES team, follow this link: https://etc-ares.org/.

Memberships/Clubs

I'm a life member of the ARRL and a member of the local Yelm Amateur Radio Group. I'm a life member of the Quarter Century Wireless Association. I'm member #4334 of FISTS International. My OMISS member number is 14838. I'm also a member of the Ten-Ten International Net with 10-10 number 69377.