I was pulled over on the way home from the paintball game today for not having a front license plate.
“Have you had any alcoholic beverages today?”
“Yes”
Jeez. So I get to stand on the side of the road and follow the trooper’s pen with my eyes. How humiliating.
I had to answer all the questions, where are you going, what have you been doing, blah blah blah.
Regardless, we had a blast today playing paintball. We played numerous games, and wore ourselves out.
I guess I better get a front license plate.
Entry for May 15, 2006 – The Antenna Farm Starts
May 15, 2006
My two new antennas arrived today. One is an active GPS antenna, and the other is a 800/1800/2500 MHz antenna. I placed an old dual-band in the center for now.
I spent the day working on the roof of my pickup. First, my brother and I removed the headliner, then we installed a Yakima permanent rack. After he left, I drilled 4 new 3/4” holes, and installed 4 new Larsen NMO mounts. Here are my plans for the antenna mounts as of now:
1- Active GPS antenna
2- Combination cell phone / wireless LAN antenna
3- 2 meter APRS antenna
4- Undetermined
After I had the antennas installed, I ran a piece of shielded twisted pair cable up roof mounted console. I will use this later to transmit GPS data for the LCD display. Lastly, I sprayed a layer of rubberized undercoating on the roof, to cut down on noise some.
Entry for May 12, 2006 – GPS APRS Project
May 12, 2006
I managed to get the TinyTrackerII soldered together earlier in the week, and tonight I started testing it. I had to wire up a TTL to RS232 converter to get it to talk with my laptop. I was able to configure the parameters, but haven’t set the audio levels with the radio interface yet. I also powered up the $17 GPS receiver, and it is spitting out NMEA serial data as it should. My GPS antenna seems to have been delivered to the wrong place, so I still don’t have it.
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