Cleveland RAYNET Group

General

The programs below are available by requesting them via e-mail.  All programs were written for use under Windows with a PC.  Use the link which is present at the bottom of every page of this website to send an e-mail request.  All programs contain an HTML Help file.

A description of each program is below.  The approximate total size of the installation files is also given.  The information should help decide whether the program may be of interest before requesting it.  Because of the large file sizes, broadband e-mail access is almost essential.

For each program e-mailed as an attachment, it will have three files called the installation files.  These three files are Setup.exe, Setup.lst and Progname.cab, where Progname is the actual program name.

When you receive the installation files via e-mail, put the three files in  a directory by themselves (e.g. C:\Temp) or they will overwrite any existing files with the same name.  To install the program, navigate to your chosen directory and double-click the Setup.exe file.

Farmer

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Farmer stands for Forecasting Amateur Radio Maps and Effective Range.  It requires extra hardware described in the Help file.  It measures and logs the received RF signal strength at the aerial connector of your FM receiver.  It draws graphs in units of time versus microVolts or dBm.

If you drive a route whilst logging received signal strengths and you also have a Garmin GPS receiver logging your track, when you have finished and display the recorded graph, you can see an internet map showing where you were at any time.  In other words, you can click the graph at any point to see the date, time and received signal strength, with the option of displaying the location on a UK map.

The Farmer program can be run at the same time as the CRASH program.

The installation files total about 3 MB.  The latest version is 1.0.3.  It works with Vista.

Farmer_K

The information below is not all correct.  I must be very naive if I believed that life is so straight forward.  It appears that the rig models mentioned below do speak the same secret language, but in different dialects!  Farmer_K works with the Kenwood TH-G71.  Until I manage to discover all of the dialects, it probably won't work with any other model.

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Farmer_K is similar to Farmer, but it doesn't require rig modifications or a USB digital voltmeter.  It uses a data language to communicate with an FM rig via an interface cable between the PC and the FM rig.  It will therefore only work with certain Kenwood FM transceivers. Once a second, Farmer_K polls the FM rig and asks for its S meter level.  The response is displayed on a graph and written to a file.  Like Farmer, a Garmin GPS track file can be associated with the signal strength file to show a map of where the received signal was at a certain strength.

Farmer_K was written to work with a Kenwood TH-G71 hand portable rig.  Other Kenwood rigs have the same memory control data language, so it is believed that the program will also work with the TH-D7, TH-F6, TH-F7, TH-K2, TH-K4, TM-V7, TM-271,  TM-G707, TM-D700 and TM-D710. To enable the data control language with the TH-G71, select menu 15 and set TC (transceiver control) = ON.

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Once you have confirmed that your PC can talk to the rig, you are ready to record a signal strength graph.

The installation files total about 2.7 MB.  The latest version is 1.0.0.  It works with Vista.

CRASH

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CRASH stands for Cleveland RAYNET Automatic Sound Harvester.  It can be used with a microphone, but was designed to record the received audio of an FM receiver as a file on your hard drive.  It only records when audio is present, so on a RAYNET event lasting 8 hours in real time, the recorded file may be perhaps a total of 1 hour.  Each period of audio is date and time stamped, so that when playing the audio file, each time somebody speaks, the time can be seen.

The trigger which starts each period of sound recording is user selectable.  It can be the audio level (AC voltage) into the PC's microphone socket or it can be derived from your FM receiver's squelch circuit and fed into your PC via a serial or parallel port.

There is an oscilloscope and spectrum analyser display of the recorded audio.  That part of the program was provided by another software author, Murphy McCauley.

There is also a facility to type a control log for a RAYNET event and to automatically insert the time for each entry if desired.  There is a known bug. Some PCs can't see the table grid lines, so can't type a log.

The installation files total about 4 MB.  The latest version is 1.0.0.  It does not work with Vista.  When opening a new file, Vista reports that your PC has no audio device.

RayPath

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RayPath is a radio path power budget program.  It is best used with VHF or UHF radio path signal strength prediction programs.  You specify the transmit power, received signal strength, aerial gains and coaxial cable losses.  RayPath calculates the signal path loss which will balance the equation.

RayPath can calculate coax losses for specified lengths of some cables.  It also knows aerial gain values for several aerials.

The installation files total about 2 MB.  The latest version is 1.0.1.  It works with Vista.

RaceTime

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RaceTime helps to plan RAYNET events in which competitors travel a known route.  You specify the checkpoint names, the distance between checkpoints and the guessed speed.  RaceTime shows the estimated time of arrival at each checkpoint.

You can specify the guessed speeds of the fastest and the slowest competitors.  Their ETAs at each checkpoint will be displayed.  If a known arrival time at a checkpoint is entered, the real speed is calculated and also the ETAs at further checkpoints.

The installation files total about 2.6 MB.  The latest version is 2.2.0.  It works with Vista.

BattLife

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BattLife calculates the discharge life of a fully charged battery when used with specified equipment.  If you know the battery current drawn on transmit and on receive by a particular rig, you can calculate how long the internal or external battery will last.

The installation files total about 2.1 MB.  The latest version is 1.0.0.  It works with Vista.

UILogFilter

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This is a specialised program of interest only to users of the APRS UI-View32 program.  If a UI-View log is made of stations heard over a period of time, UILogFilter can edit the log to remove all stations which are not of interest.  It doesn't change the original log.  It creates another log file.

The installation files total about 2.4 MB.  The latest version is 0.1.0.  It works with Vista.

UI-PHG-DFS

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This is a specialised program of interest only to users of the APRS UI-View32 program.  APRS is the Amateur Position Reporting System.  Some APRS stations transmit a PHG code or an RNG code to indicate their radio range as well as their location.  The UI-PHG-DFS program draws range circles around APRS stations displayed on UI-View32 maps.  As well as plain vanilla APRS position beacons, the program also decodes compressed and Mic-E beacons.  For Radio Direction Finding purposes, the program decodes DFS and BRG codes to draw either circles or bearings to a target station.

The installation files total about 5.5 MB.  The latest version is 0.2.0.  It works with XP and Vista.

RIT_Clock

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RIT_Clock is an alarm clock program.  It runs each time the PC is booted, as long as you set at least one alarm.  It can handle 10 alarms.

Each alarm can either be a one-off date and time alarm or a time alarm which activates every day.  You enter your own message for each alarm, to remind you what the alarm is for.

When your PC is turned on and RIT_Clock runs, if any date and time alarms should have activated since you last used your PC, you are informed which alarms you missed.

The installation files total about 2.6 MB.  The latest version is 2.5.0.  It works with Vista.

Arsenic

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Arsenic stands for Automatic Relay Selection Establishing Networks In Cleveland.  It will be of little use to people in other areas of the country, except for illustrating its amazing facilities in case somebody wishes to write a similar program for other areas of the UK.  The program is believed to be unique and has very powerful facilities.

There is a very slight chance of me writing a version of Arsenic to cover other areas of the country.  As the work involved is phenomenal, I would probably have to be drunk at the time of agreement.  I am never drunk.

Arsenic knows the location of 41 VHF/UHF relay locations covering a large area.  For each, it knows the radio coverage range maps on 2m and on 70cm.  Most relay points are accessible by a normal car on public roads.  A relay is defined as a standard RAYNET mobile running 10W RF to a 5/8 whip.  It could be a Net Control station, a manual relay or a cross-band talk-through relay.

Click any point on the Arsenic map (or enter an OS NGR).  The county is calculated and shown.  Of the 41 relay locations, all in range of the selected point are listed.  Click two points on the Arsenic map (or enter OS NGRs).  All relay locations in range of both selected points are listed. In addition, relays which are in both 2m and 70cm range are indicated as allowing cross-band talk-through.

If no such single relay location exists, Arsenic will list two relays in range of each other which will allow double talk-through (XBTT in series) to link the two selected locations.

With an infinite number of selected locations, 820 radio paths on 2m between the relays and another 820 radio paths on 70cm, the radio coverage was calculated theoretically.  Visiting an infinite number of locations would take a long time.  Infinity is a long time, especially towards the end.  Arsenic was fine tuned by visiting many locations and measuring received signal strengths in microVolts using the Farmer program.

There is a known bug.  Arsenic fails with error 480 on some PCs.  It works perfectly on a 3 GHz PC with Windows XP Home SP2 and 1 GB RAM.  It also works on a 700 MHz PC with Windows ME and 128 K RAM.

The installation files total about 4.4 MB.  The latest version is 1.0.3.  It works with Vista.

TMV7E_RC

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TMV7E_RC is a program which allows remote control over the air using DTMF codes.  It controls the Kenwood TM-V7E and TM-732E dual band 2m/70cm talk-through rigs which are used by some RAYNET groups.  It is believed that the program will also work with Kenwood models TM-742E, TM-V71E and TM-D710E.

Commands include Talk-Through on/off, CTCSS mode on/off, CTCSS toneburst mode on/off, reverse repeater on/off, RF power level change, VFO frequency change and CTCSS frequency change.

The program can be used with any 2m or 70cm FM rig to remotely control one of the above models.  It generates DTMF control codes.  The most reliable method of use is with a suitable interface cable which connects the PC's headphone socket to the local rig's mike socket and also connects the PC's serial port to the rig's PTT line.  An interface cable for APRS, AX.25  or SSTV will probably work.  It can also be used (less reliably) by simply holding the local rig's mike near the PC's loudspeaker.

There is also the facility of synthesised speech to give a network announcement or a callsign before each command is transmitted.

The installation files total about 2.7 MB.  The latest version is 1.2.0.  It works with Windows XP.  It has not been fully tested with Vista and the DTMF tones sound strange with Vista.

RAYNET EP Message Form

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RAYNET EP Message Form is an add-on program for EasyPal by Erik VK4AES.  EasyPal can transfer text files fairly quickly, but they aren't formatted, so may not look pleasing to the eye or be easy to read.  Formatting a message using e.g. Rich Text File format or Microsoft Word, would make it longer to transfer the file.  A message can be typed into a RAYNET message form on the screen, then it is pasted into EasyPal for transmission.  At the receiving end, the text message can be pasted into the RAYNET EP Message Form and it can be printed.  The message form template graphics are not transmitted by EasyPal.

The installation files total about 1.9 MB and the program works with Windows XP, Vista and 7.  The latest version is V1.0.0.  It may be downloaded from http://www.filefront.com/14811497/RAYNET-EP-Message-Form.zip/

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If you use an e-mail application similar to MS Outlook, you can send an e-mail message to Cleveland RAYNET Group by clicking here.   This will fail if you use web-based e-mail.

Updated on 29 October 2009