Node-Red Calling Summit to Summit

In the arcane and niche world that is the intersection of peak bagging and ham radio, aka SOTA, the participants fall into two broad groups; activators and chasers.

Happening daily across the planet, activators, especially the apasionada, ferret radios to wild and distant peaks, setting up a temporary radio station and then hoping that the co-dependent chaser community hear, respond and make the trek worthwhile. All things being equal smiles abound.

Within this rarefied world is another notable accolade where activators assume a dual role of activator and chaser. The chance to communicate from one peak to another is special in that two apasionadas get to experience what their weak and faint signal must sound like to chasers but unlike most chasers get to do it in a “electrical” noise free environment. Often a faint and perfectly audible voice from a distant location plays in the headphones. This contact unsurprisingly is know as a Summit to Summit (S2S).

Some in our community are legendary in the pursuit of S2S contacts such as Colorado based Cary (KX0R) and Dave (N6AN) here in SoCal.

Sadly, I’m not one of these legends nor anywhere close.

As with many activators, my initial goal was to attain the coveted Mountain Goat award which in true Western style I achieved in a respectable two year window having shlepped my gear up 100+ mountains. The equivalent chaser award, Shack Sloth took me over seven years to achieve through only S2S contacts, no comfy chair for me!

Truth is I’m never quite as aware as I could be about other activators concurrent efforts and pretty much all my S2S contacts have been others calling me.

I love to mix up my hobbies and pondered the practicality of applying technology to my deficiency.

I kicked the tires on an idea, in hindsight possibly overkill of creating a small PC centric solution for the 2023 G/LD event that Mark M0NOM organized. Reasonable progress was made but I became distracted and then further distracted with a return to the UK.

My morse code dabbling has spurred a re-interest in past projects primarily to complete and/or use some of what I’ve done in the past.

Green for go!!

Peaks can be cold, dusty, beautiful and throughly inhospitable. Two problems exist that limit my S2S enjoyment; awareness and too much fiddling to get on frequency.

Improving awareness could be as simple of an LED lighting up or possibly a bank of LEDs conveying opportunities immediate and those slowly drifting into history. A green LED could indicate a new and current S2S opportunity, yellow some or one that are aging out dictating prompt action and red for opportunities that are most likely missed.

Less fiddling might be a winner

On a busy Saturday, details of activators scroll by on our notification web site in a random and jarring way. I’m reading one, checking the time, frequency and suddenly the line is displaced down one or two or more slots. Lost, I attempt to regain acuity and give up in my transliteration from web to frequency readout on my radio. Another S2S is missed.

Tailored for my iPhone screen, a list of current activations is displayed with a color coding to denote age matching the LEDs. Sorting them narrows to band (maybe 10m for the current 2024 challenge), geography, calls, mode etc.

Quickest way from A to B

Once upon a time people paid me to write software.

During the dawn of computing we used a gamut of languages from labor intensive assembler to one of a multiple of block structured languages and even the grand daddy of “object oriented” in the form of Simula 67. As someone, that was ejected into the ranks of shepherding software engineers, I often lamented at how long software development remained in what appeared an efficiency neolithic age. ChatGPT has dispelled that notion but along the way graphical almost cartoon like systems have surfaced.

As a quick and efficient way to develop a working system, Node Red is actually quite easy to master and satisfying in the immediacy of usable software. Maybe not appropriate for large scale mission critical system, it never the less has a real and valid place.

Zeros at 7 o’clock

Raspberry Pis come in many shapes and forms but alas have been far too hard to find for far too long. Rummaging through my “junk box” yielded a Pi Zero W, forgotten and feeling inferior to the newer and unobtainable Zero 2 W, its pressed into serviced simply based on its size and ability to sit neatly on my newly established “flight deck” aka a clip board.

The Pi OS comes in two or three flavors one known as “headless” but unlike a Zombie can be counted on to do useful things. Installed along with Node-Red on my forgotten Pi Zero W and it’s single USB serving as a conduit to the CAT interface on my KX2, I’m off to the races.

In addition to QSY-ing to a frequency, pressing CALL with send W6PNG in morse or S2S an declaration of opportunity.

LED Duration

On that same busy Saturday, it’s plausible that the Green, Yellow and Red LEDs are on all the time somewhat negating their value. I need to experiment with durations which could vary depending on time of week or an event. For example, maybe on a busy day green is only for displayed ….

Predicated on cell service

Cellular service is seemingly everywhere even in remote parts of the Western USA especially atop a peak. However, a peak’s height and hence reception of/by multiple towers can confuse things such that we often end up with no cellular service. Go figure.

I’ve learnt that sometimes it’s worthwhile to pause, try something and then consider refinement and next steps. There’s lot of things I could do beyond determining if the current prototype is usable and useful.

Certainly this work/project has been a great complement to hiking in that it’s a brain work out.

Any comments, thoughts, suggestion or ideas how to evolve this little project are always welcome.