Spring Break 2000: Hamming in Honduras

de KB5LBN

While many students were partying on South Padre over Spring Break, I was in wild backcountry in Honduras - far from any telephones or televisions, for what was one of the most incredible weeks of my life. I was in a group of 32 people on a church mission trip to raise the standard of living for the villagers of San Augustin Prieto. But my sister, Johanna W5JLP, our dad Gene K5GP and I (KB5LBN) were also equipped with a second mission - to establish a permanent amateur radio station at Rancho el Paraiso, where we were staying for the week.

Last year, when Johanna and I were at Rancho el Paraiso, we took a QRP kit radio, set up a 40M dipole, and talked with our dad on CW using only 3 watts. This year, we set up the radio owned by the Ranch, a Yaesu FT-757 with the hope that the Ranch would be able to communicate with their home offices in Juticalpa, Honduras and Atlanta, Georgia. Johanna and I were disappointed when we realized the antenna we set up last year was gone. This was no problem, however, since we brought 20M and 40M dipole antennas, along with our own radio, a Yaesu FT-100 running 100 watts for sending and receiving e-mails.

Johanna W5JLP, Louisa KB5LBN, Russell, and Stacy send the first email from Rancho El Paraiso in Honduras, Central America.

Once we arrived at the Ranch, we quickly got to work setting up the antenna. Helping us were UT Electrical Engineering senior Russell Blake, and Herb Lloyd, the veterinarian at the Ranch. We strung up the antenna to a giant tree beside the cafeteria, but this location had very high power line noise. Mid-week, we moved the station to the medical clinic at the Ranch, as far away as possible from the power line. The noise was lower at the clinic. Steel poles for the antenna never made it to the ranch while we were there. They were bumped from our flight to Honduras and arrived at the Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa several days later. Herb will use the poles to raise the dipoles off the roof of the clinic. This will help lower the SWR. We had no trouble talking with stations in Europe and North America with the antenna only a foot off the roof. My dad spent several hours showing Herb and Jose, the Ranch manager, how to use the Yaesu-757. By the time we left, they were somewhat trained on using the radio.

To communicate with our friends and families in Austin and elsewhere without a phone line, my dad used his PC and the ham radio to send e-mail. The software that made this possible is called Airmail, and is still in beta-testing. Airmail 2.9 was posted on the Internet in mid-March. My dad brought his laptop PC, a 266 MHz Dell notebook running Windows 98 and Airmail 2.8 (an earlier version.) Airmail works with the SCS PTC-IIe TNC, or terminal node controller. The TNC is connected between the computer and the ham rig, and was used in Pactor II mode. Pactor II transmits information in short bursts, and then listens between the bursts for acknowledgement that the information was received correctly. Basically, the PTC-IIe serves as a special type of modem. We sent our e-mails nightly on 7070.4 kHz by connecting to K4CJX in Nashville, TN or to KN6KB in Florida. After connecting, the outgoing and incoming e-mails were transmitted automatically within a few minutes.

Overall, we successfully completed our mission to create a permanent radio station for the Ranch. The radio should be beneficial for normal communications as well as emergencies. We also trained the people at the Ranch in how to use their equipment. For pictures of the trip, see http://www.flash.net/~gpreston/. The next project that we are working on is getting a license for the Ranch. Hopefully by the time we return next year, ham radio will be a standard means of ommunication for Rancho el Paraiso.