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hello guys oscar hotel eight sierra tango november here from survival tech nord today we're talking about winter field day 2021 the tests i want to carry out and my objectives for the event i'm fairly certain many of you have seen my winter deployments before either winterfield day or other freestyle winter deployments usually with each year having a specific objective or goal in regards to learning and deployment in that respect 2021 really isn't that different but there are some changes in the station i'd like to make but before i do that i want to get some testing out of the way to ensure it's the right path moving forward now i'm absolutely satisfied with my shelter i'm still using the nor tint gamma 4 with a wood stove but i want to experiment with some other sources of heat which might be better optimized for a rapid deployment type scenario i'm also hoping to test or successfully test some what may appear to be radical changes to the way i operate data modes in the field now in winterfell day 2020 i use the azure ft891 but this year i'll be using the icom ic705 which tops out at 10 watts operating low power definitely has its challenges but it also has its benefits the most notable of these benefits is our portable power supplies we have the benefit of carrying a smaller power supply smaller solar panels or hand crank generator now the flip side of that coin is energy efficiency of course we're using less power so it's more difficult to be heard so we need to ensure we use the most efficient data modes to get our signals out and heard around the world anyway i think that's enough of a lead-in for you you see where this video is going so as i always say stick with me and i'll tell you all about it you are listening to the emergency broadcast systems this station broadcast emergency news and official information on the air for a sign mary [Music] so as i mentioned earlier last year's winterfield day i used the yaesu ft891 it's an excellent radio the only thing it's missing is an internal audio card for data modes but basically i'm pretty happy with that radio now for this year i decided to use a different radio a low power radio and that's the icom ic705 now i kind of fell into this idea of more power means more contacts however this isn't necessarily the right way to think in regards to preparedness or emergency communications with the yaezu ft-891 i'm constantly drawing about one amp of current when the radio is basically just sitting there doing nothing except receiving even if i turn the power down to 5 watts i'm still using 5 amps of overhead on the ft-891 just to power it and transmit at its lowest setting so when a radio has this much of current overhead we need a larger solar generator we need larger solar panels or hand crank generator to keep it topped up for the duration of the deployment without logistics this is unsustainable so this year i'll be testing low power communications using the icom ic 705 winlink email and js8 call now i know this strategy isn't going to help me win the contest aspect of winterfield day but it certainly is more representative of a potential emergency communications scenario i might find myself in in the real world so narrow band with data modes using a low power radio with low current draw with a smaller power supply all coming together as a more efficient more clever way of operating so now let's talk about heating the shelter heating is extremely important at 65 degrees north and there's no way any of us are actually going to operate sustainably over a long period of time without heating or shelters now i don't mind using the titanium wood stove it's actually magnificent basically weighs nothing and i can use whatever fuel i happen to find where i'm going to operate but in a rapid deployment scenario such as winter field day maybe we need to rethink this heating problem consider this for a moment we either bring a lightweight titanium wood stove which weighs nothing but then we need to find fuel once we arrive at where we're going to operate or we take a different strategy looking at this as a rapid deployment scenario where we're not going to be out for that long perhaps and we want to heat the shelter as rapidly as possible and get our radio and communications gear set up so that we can actually start operating so i've pulled the trigger on a mr heater little buddy this is a portable propane heater which will operate on either propane or butane the same type of butane that operates my jetboil for example the idea here is i'm using a ski polk anyway the weight i have to carry really doesn't matter as long as it's not more than a few extra kilos this means i can really take care of the comfort in the station set up the radio gear and once the radio gear is set up once the shelter is heated up then i can go search for fuel for the wood stove if required honestly though if i think about it i would rather have sausages and hot coffee rather than frostbite and exposure as we did back in the day [Applause] now even if i was some sort of mountaineer or expedition specialist capable of operating and sustaining myself and minus temperatures my radio equipment and the rest of the gear i require might not be able to so there's a couple of things that will kill a radio out in the field that's condensation and of course operating at a temperature which it wasn't designed for the ic705 user manual says we can operate down to -10 celsius so with the wood stove running i can definitely keep the temperature above freezing inside the bunker of course this also means we need to get outside the shelter and find fuel for the wood stove the point here is heating the shelter is not only good practice for ourselves it's also good practice for our equipment now we all have our own type of conditions to deal with wherever we are around the world some people have to deal with rattlesnakes and sandstorms i need to deal with extreme cold temperatures so whatever we're dealing with let's make sure we equip ourselves so that we can actually sustain ourselves in the conditions we're trying to deal with [Music] so now that i've got my cap set up the tent is good and there's enough heat and shelter for me i have to take a look at the radio and see what i can do to prevent any mishaps from taking out my radio during this event so i've added a cage to the icom ic705 it comes from a company called pov mounts from california the cage offers a carry handle two side handles and a bezel frame to protect the rotary encoders on the radio from damage if you happen to drop the radio face down so the cage also has hardpoints tapped into the bezel frame allowing operators to attach other accessories to the radio which would normally be flopping around attached to a cable or something like that the frame was quite easy to install and it only required a couple of hand tools no disassembly of the radio was required for the additional layer of protection and anyone can actually install this cage onto their 705 i think the only thing i need now is a shield of some sort to put in front of the touchscreen during transportation to and from my operating locations the cage isn't cheap but it offers a level of protection for the front panel of the 705 which i haven't seen previously i think if we're going to spend this amount of money on such a magnificent radio we should also be willing to flip a few coins to make sure it has the adequate protection it needs for the front panel so now let's change our focus from the radio over to the software and the systems hosting the software what you're looking at now is the icom ic705 a raspberry pi zero a raspberry pi 4 bravo and a relatively low power and low energy nano pc called the larkbox pro the larkbox pro is an x86 64-bit pc running windows 10. naturally as an x86 pc this can run any software we would run on a normal size laptop or desktop in this case we're running wind link express with a vada hf modem the lark box pro will be my primary operating pc for winter field day and a rather radical detachment from the raspberry pi based systems you would normally see on the channel the reason for this radical change in operating is the decision to operate using low power avara hf is vastly superior to rdop in regards to weak signal performance and is much less susceptible to qrm so if i'm going to have any success at all during winter field day using wind link i'll need to use the best mode giving the best chance for the weak signal operator so you can actually see the lark box pro is well it's relatively the same size as my raspberry pi 4 bravo just next to it the difference between the raspberry pi 4 and the larkbox pro of course is the larkbox pro is ready to go the real-time clock is already integrated usb ports are there there's nothing to add on to it you simply plug it in configure your software and you'll be ready to go now you can run windows or linux on this box but i chose windows because i'm desperately trying to use vada hf in the field now i couldn't afford a rugged tablet so that was a no-go the raspberry pi was too much of a fragile piece of equipment for the conditions i'm operating in plus i couldn't run vada on it so the only other option was to choose another type of pc in this case a nano pc to run that software now this doesn't mean the raspberry pi is of no use to us anymore of course it still is but i've relocated the raspberry pi for bravo to backup status for winter field day i'll be using it as a backup computer along with the zygo x5105 which is my backup radio for winter field day so i've got the x5105 i've got the raspberry pi 4 bravo and i've got a new data mode interface from xggcoms called the digimode4 it's special because it's a one wire interface and dual interface so to speak because it has an audio interface and cat control built in to a single board now as you know winterfield day at least for me and probably for many of the people who watch my channel it's about testing our gear well i think i may very well just put the zygo x5105 with the digimode4 interface to the test there's no better way to understand the reliability of our gear unless we actually throw it in the fire to see what happens so maybe we'll run two radios on winter field day let's see how that goes i've also made some changes to the raspberry pi for bravo changes which in my opinion will make it more robust more reliable and less of a toy so i've got a new hat for the raspberry pi for bravo from uu gear it's called the witty pi 3. the wikipi 3 has a few features that are important to us as ham radio operators first of all it's got an on off switch it also has a real-time clock built in and it has a wide voltage input now in regards to raspberry pi power uu gear has a couple of interesting products there's the witty pi 3 we just talked about a couple of moments ago and there's also something called the zero to go which doesn't have a real-time clock but it has an even wider voltage input anyway we'll come back to both of these boards after winter fielding now if you go back to the lark box pro for a moment there were a few enablers which made what you're looking at on your screen possible just like with the raspberry pi we needed to install a hotspot so that i could connect to the larkbox pro with my android tablet the tool i'm using for a hotspot on windows 10 is called connectify and yes there's a free version although i'm using the pro version so that i can have a custom ssid now we also needed some software to run on the larkbox pro to enable remote connections i'm very familiar with vnc style servers and clients so i went for a tight bnc server the tite vnc server is very similar to the real vnc server running on a raspberry pi but there are some benefits to using tight vnc over the real vnc server firstly with tight fancy you can connect address to ip address client to server directly from your local network in contrast real vnc server demands that you connect through their cloud well from where i'm standing that kind of defeats the purpose of an off-grid winter field day so we use tightvnc server to connect in our local network wirelessly between our android tablet or mobile phone and the larkbox pro so the screen we're looking at now is actually from my android tablet we're connecting to the lark box pro with bnc client to the tight vnc server running on the larkbox pro we can interact with all of the applications and features of the software running on the lockbox pro like js8 call or winlink or anything else now i know the question is going to come up julian why don't you just use a tablet and connect that to your radio so that you don't have to go through all these hoops the simple truth is i want to be completely untethered from the radio and computer when we're operating in the bunker i want to set up the radio on its little table as you see and i want to be able to move freely around the bunker to do what i want to do where i want to do it without the inconvenience of having that tether between my laptop or tablet and the radio and computer so here we are again with my testing setup this is the icom ic705 and we have the android tablet connecting to the larkbox pro over the vnc server and access point which we have running on the lockbox pro so we have no physical connection between the radio and the tablet or the lockbox pro and the tablet anyway i hope this isn't too abstract it's almost identical to what we've done with the raspberry pi but with a system which is basically more robust and easier to deploy than the raspberry pi now it's about time for us to start talking about portable power and charging now as i mentioned earlier in this video the goal is to use lower power with narrow bandwidth data modes to augment the lack of a broad signal and much more power so realistically the true experiment during this winterfield day is seeing if we can sustain our communications at the station using a much lower wattage panel than we normally would if we were deploying a qro station so lighter much lower wattage solar panels along with a portable power supply which is also smaller in capacity than we would normally use so the portable power supply i'm using is the power film lightsaber max you've certainly seen this on the channel before i'll be using two of them in parallel at least that's what i'm going to attempt so i've never done this before but if we don't try during testing we won't know if it's actually viable later down the line when our lives depend on it now to keep the lightsaber max set topped up i'll be using two 28 watt rollable panels from power film solar now there's really two important reasons for using the rollable series firstly they're completely waterproof secondly i can just leave them outside the shelter without having to take care about bringing them in regardless of the weather conditions they are deployed in i'm using two 28 watt panels rather than a single for example 60 watt panel simply for redundancy so just in case my portable power experiment completely fails i do have a backup plan i'll continue to use the two 28 watt rollables from power film but i'll augment that with a 20 amp hour lithium iron phosphate pack i built and a charge controller from genison called the gv boost now the gv boost is absolutely incredible in low light conditions like we have up here in higher latitudes so it'll charge our lithium iron phosphate batteries earlier and keep charging them later in the day because of that inbuilt boost controller so where we benefit from its low light performance it lacks the power distribution we've seen for example with the buddy pole power mini but if you're at a higher latitude perhaps this might be a better solution for winter ops so it's really been a crazy past couple of months the research the testing all of the background work which goes into putting something together like this now it's been an insane amount of work but honestly i'm extremely stoked to share this video with all of you now i'd be a liar if i said i wasn't nervous about winter field day but just like we have to learn and evolve as we go along we also need to take what we've learned and create a better station using that knowledge so if there's anything you can take away from this video it should be our stations evolve and the evolution of our stations comes from the research the testing and the field trials this is why we have events such as winter field day so let me know what your winterfield day plans are in the comments and don't forget you can reach me during winter field day using js8 call or win link email rock and roll guys thanks for watching ciao