Road King Blog

I’ve really been slacking on the blog.  Been riding fairly often, but nothing that epic - or even really interesting.

Non-ride wise, I’ve been working on antenna selection and gear installation for APRS on the bike, so my friends and family can track my movements online.  I’ve got it up and running, but coverage is a bit sparse in parts of my home area.  I’ll most likely have to get some more RF output from the tracker on the bike in order to achieve wider coverage.  Something to look at in the coming weeks.

For those wondering what I am talking about, APRS is an amateur radio mode where data from a GPS device is encoded and broadcast over the air, where it is picked up by other amateur stations and eventually fed into an internet backbone, allowing anyone on the ‘net who knows your call sign to track your movements.

Geek Alert: if you don’t care about geeky radio stuff, there’s no need to read any further in this entry

OK, you were warned…

Equipment on the bike consists of a Yaesu VX-8 transceiver with GPS module, feeding a Comet HP-32FHN 1/2 wave 2m / 440 antenna which is mounted to the left lower saddle bag guard.  The Comet HP-32FHN was designed by Comet as a motorcycle antenna, after amateurs told Comet that their antennas were breaking under the stresses placed on them from being on the bike.  The antenna is truly built like a tank.

HP-32 mounted on Road King

The antenna cable is carefully zip-tied to the saddle bag mount.  Having the cable dangling loose and getting into the rear wheel would be a Bad Thing….

The radio lives in a Ram Aqua-Box, modified to allow the antenna and GPS cables to pass through.  The Aqua-Box is quite sturdy and provides good protection for the radio.