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Table of Contents
I've built my NinoTNC, now what?
First thing you need to do is build or buy a radio cable.
Building a radio cable is easy. The radio connector on the NinoTNC is a DB9 socket, and you need a DB9 plug to interface it.
The pinout is the Kantronics standard:
The other end needs to be wired for your radio. This is specific to your radio. More here on that.
The next thing you need to do is configure your NinoTNC. It has 2 groups of 4 switches, labelled SIGNALS and MODE.
Some sensible defaults:
1200 baud AFSK, common on 2m FM, with a 6 pin mini-DIN Yaesu:
set SIGNALS to 0 1 0 0, MODE to 0 1 1 0
Full DIP switch settings for the NinoTNC are on this page under the heading “14. A4 specific instructions”.
Then what?
You need to decide what you want to achieve.
There's no-one nearby, I want to see packets get decoded
Chances are even if there's no packet stations nearby then you'll still hear the occasional APRS ping, at least.
Tune your radio to 144.800MHz, FM mode, and plug in your radio to your PC.
Download and install an APRS client - two which I know of are:
APRSISCE/32 (Windows)
Xastir (Linux)
Both of these can be configured to use a KISS modem, like the NinoTNC, directly.
Actually configuring these programs is beyond the scope of this article but it should get you started.
I want to be a "client"
There are many different paths to choose from here, but the simplest I know of right now is QtTermTCP. This allows you to make and receive arbitrary connections, and the current beta allows you to use a KISS modem, like the NinoTNC, directly.
Direct download links of the beta:
Windows
Linux x86
Linux ARM (Raspberry Pi)
More detail on setting this up shortly.
I want to run a node
Great. This is what we need to build a national network. The good news is that you can run whatever you like so long as you're attending it. You only need a special permit (an “NoV”) if you want to run it fully unattended with third party traffic flowing through it. To do that, you need a full licence, or for a full licensee to put their name against it. But there's nothing stopping you trying this out before you get your NoV or your full licence.
This is quite an involved topic but one thing we want to do with this initiative is to demystify and simplify it.
More detail soon.