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Great stuff, Steve, thank you. I'm interested in the Willamette Valley Mesh / AREDN network. I think we'll see it extend up to include the Portland metro area relatively soon, judging from a few conversations heard in club meetings and on the air. And I'm interested in APRS-over-LoRa. I can see utility in having a low-powered APRS network using LoRa devices. Selfishly, I'd put one of these on my boat! Be very well, Tom KJ7T

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Tom - WVM has incredible energy. They talked about using the ARDC grant monies to be able to place AREDN nodes on some broadcast towers (I think... that presentation SHOULD have been recorded). And LoRa is getting amazing traction. It's kind of cool that LoRa being used in Amateur Radio spectrum "sneaked on over the goal line" in getting Spread Spectrum technology widely used in Amateur Radio.

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I'll offer that my best talk was a 2-hour session about using solar in the field successfully (Sunday, 10a-noon), despite that COVID caught me in that talk. The presentation slides are posted on the SEA-PAC website. He discussed the batteries, how to choose the capacity (Amp Hours) and Chemistry, but also talked about which solar charge controllers emit less RF noise when charging the batteries. Which types of panels are better, and how long they'll last... Foldable panels can be useful, but use them in dry weather! Use the solid panels in wet weather. The way Bioenno (LiFePo chemistry) battery charge shuts off the LED when the battery voltage reaches the full voltage, but that means "Rapid Charging is done", and you should leave the charger attached until there is NO current flow from the charger to the battery in order to ensure that it's topped off. There was SO MUCH useful info! But it was a firehose. Congrats on the TNC find! N7LOL informs me that (by next year) there will be a fulltime APRS digi in Seaside, to help our packets get to the regional iGate.

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N6UOW - Thanks for that pointer to the slides (https://www.seapac.org/seminars2023.html) and the Nine Steps to Solar Success slides are the only available slide deck.

One thing I was going to propose for SEA-PAC 2023, but didn't have time to write it up, much less gear up to participate, was to bring an AREDN 2.4 GHz network online from the hotels and conference center to demonstrate just how good it IS.

A full time digi would be cool. There's an unused omni on a tall pole in the middle of Seaside that is unused, and I've had my eye on that every year.

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His slides are wonderful, though at times missing some detail--google to the rescue. 73 de K3FZT / Steve

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RE: Fast scan TV included on the IC-905. Technology Connections YouTube channel recently posted a retro-review of the Sony PCM-701 digital audio processor, a device used for recording 44.1 kHz audio using videotape. For about 20 years the professional version of this device (the Sony 1630) was the standard way to get your studio mix to the CD mastering/production house.

It would be a very clunky work-around but fairly trivial to come up with a video modem. The issue I'd see is that short bursty data wouldn't be very efficient because there'd be a lot of sync and setup before sending data.

https://youtu.be/xSnrQBfBCzY

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Ready - It's just puzzling that Icom was that far behind the technology curve (ATV vs Digital ATV) but at least it's something and it does add at least some visual appeal and it's the first time video has been included in a "mainstream" Amateur Radio unit, so there's that.

The microwave networking folks say "Um, full motion color video? Been doing that for YEARS now on OUR Amateur Radio network."

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