[Elecraft] field logging
Jessie Oberreuter
[email protected]
Fri Apr 19 14:35:01 2002
On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Dave Sergeant wrote:
> On a related matter, we are planning a battery powered entry in this
> years NFD (the UK event). Running the K2 on gel cells for 12 hours is
> no problem, our camper van has batteries for lights, but the laptop
> for the logging is a problem. My Tosh batteries are actually
> nackered, but I suspect there are few laptops which can run for 12
> hours on their own batteries. Genny needed just for the laptop (and a
> kettle..).... Or maybe we will have to do it the old way.
We run off of batteries for all of our contests (indeed, of late
we've been running everything off of a single deep cycle lead acid marine
battery). We've been logging by hand (pass the 80m cw clip-board,
please?), but we keep considering going to some sort of electronic system.
We all have laptops, but not all of them will run off of 12-13.8v and
we're scattered across linux, OSX, and Windows. Building a set of DC-DC
converters and serving a terminal based logger from the Linux box seems to
be the best solution to me.
Last year, I considered designing a little microcontroller based
self-networking logging computer and having us build them as a club
project, but I didn't get around to it. The other ultra low-power
solution would be to use Palm Pilots. We have enough of them with
backlights to provide everyone with a terminal; I'd then have to write the
code and, ideally, design a simple keyboard/network/power interface for
them.
This year, we sold our old military tent and bought a short school
bus for our contesting! Considering how busy we've all been, we'll prolly
be lucky to just get bunks installed before the June VHF and FD contests,
but we'll get computerized logging one of these years!
--
Jessie Oberreuter
[email protected]
"He's a bit on edge, Mr. Johnston -- he hasn't slept since 1945."