Ham'in It Up

It's official, I have my amateur radio license again!  This time I'm KJ6OSS.  Not crazy about the call sign itself, but since I'm mainly using it for this project, I can live with it.  I've been lazy and not posting updates (license was actually granted 5/13/11).  I got my papers from the FCC last week, and on the same day this arrived....

My Byonics MT-AIO APRS Transmitter

Sadly, it seemed like it wasn't going to work right out of the box like I expected it to (even though it was supposed to be programmed with my call sign and everything.)  I've tried several times last week, leaving it on for a few hours, even taking a walk around the neighborhood to make sure I had a good signal for GPS and the other ham stations.  Tonight, however, it was able to connect and report it's position for the first time (part of the reason I haven't posted until now).  Ironically, I failed to get it to connect with my laptop after buying and hacking together a 2.5mm to serial to USB cable today, but without any changes it seems to work okay now. Strange. 

The best site I've found for tracking is aprs.fi.  I'm able to access the raw data packets through that site, which can be quite useful.  Well, think I'm going to go for a drive now that it's working!