1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

This is a 1/2 wave end fed Shakespear 5240r. I love these antennas. It's only 3db gain but it's cool because as a 1/2 wave, it doesn't need a counterpoise or ground, and it's small. Off the subject, I have a layman's explanation in the works of how antennas radiate their energy and why different antenna types work the way they do. The 6db 8 foot antennas many of us have are essentially two of these stacked end to end creating what they call "two half waves in phase" with it's other name, the "colinear" two half wave antenna.

Getting the painting phase on the downhill side. Plans are morphing constantly too. I moved the Doppler direction finder up forward on the list and moved the 4th radio down the priority list. I also need the antenna real estate on the canopy so I won't be putting the surfboard there. I need the antennas more than the board.

This is the Doppler panel. I'm fabricating a right arm rest such that there will be a track ball mouse at the hand position and this Doppler panel will be just above and forward of that facing me square on for best visibility of the display. Later I can interface the directional data to a computer monitor overlayed on a map.

Meanwhile, the radar scanner mount is done and painted. I put another coat on top of the canopy while I was at it.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

More of the canopy paint. This is plain old Rustoleum deck paint, cheap and durable. That's all I care about. It's a utility boat, not a show boat.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Doppler testing and gadgeteering..

I was lab testing this doppler direction finding unit that's going into the boat. The antennas used during testing are not the ones that will be used on the boat. I have 4 Shakespeare 5240R end fed half wave antennas for the final installation.

There are a number of marine solutions for doppler df'ing that cost a lot of money. I chose a more experimental road by going with an inexpensive ham radio kit offered up for about 180 bucks. "Pseudo doppler" direction finder units use a multiple element antenna array arranged in a circle and they switch each antenna sequentially from one antenna to the next in the circle in order, in this case it goes clockwise around the 4 antenna circle. It's like moving one antenna in a circular pattern 125 revolutions per second. Only one antenna is "on" at a time with the others switched off. The switching rate is 500 times per second for a 7500 rpm antenna rotation rate. The idea is that if you can rotate a single antenna in a circular pattern, when a signal wave front crosses the circular rotating antenna, then the apparent frequency of the signal (in channel 68's case it's 156.425 mhz, which is a 156.425 million cycle per second alternating current wave) will be compressed to a slightly higher frequency when the antenna is swinging forward against the oncoming radio signal wave. When the rotating antenna is swinging around and the goes in a direction away from the source, the frequency of the radio signal expands and is reduced which creates the same doppler effect that you hear when a car goes by and the pitch of the engine sound drops as it goes by. Same thing here. Except the antenna is electrically rotated at 7500 rpm by switching the antennas at 500 times per second in a circular pattern.

The wizardry in the little doppler box converts all that information into a directional display consisting of a 16 LED circle which makes a 22.5 degree resolution. This unit can be interfaced to a pc computer to display a directional pointer across a chart plotter but that will be a project for later. For now, the LED display is plenty of information for instantaneous display of where that last fishing boat radio transmitted from. It's cool in that it freezes the display on the last signal transmitted. The bearing shown is relative to the boat, not the compass.

The unit under test using a scanner for the receiver, and 4 test antennas attached to the switching unit. This thing works great.

This non marine unit will be mounted overhead in the canopy as will the switching unit. As mounted in the boat, this is what a signal coming from starboard astern would look like. The display freezes on the last signal received.

The pile of antennas, all the same model. 4 of these will be for the doppler unit and 2 will be for vhf radios.

And another one for main communications. This is the usual 6 db 8 footer most of us have. It's 2 half waves fed in phase, termed "colinear". I've used this for several years but just changed the base to stainless. The plastic one never failed but it made me nervous.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Oh, and yet another one, this is the 1/4 wave "spike" I used last season for my scanning 2nd vhf with ais receive, but it's going to be retired and capped off but the mount will not be removed.

I had to drill a 1 inch diameter hole to put the radar scanner cable through the canopy roof. Instead of using a big grommet, I fabbed a 2 piece diagonal entry cap and sealed it off.

Another view.

Fun fun fun...

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Continuing on with projects, should be able to be fish ready by next weekend.

The electronics dabbling continues, albeit slowly. This weekend's boat work was delayed somewhat by surfing adventures but I got some stuff done anyway. The doppler unit was tested with the new antennas installed on the canopy roof and it worked well. With 6 VHF antennas on the roof, it looks a bit ridiculous but that's what I'm about anyway, right? It's all experimental. Marine solutions exist, but I'd rather experiment with cheap alternatives.

Left is how the antenna board came, and at right is the modified board with connections for the external antennas. There are 4 of these boards.

The doppler direction finding unit had to be amputated of it's supplied antennas for replacement with marine grade units, four Shakespear 5240R units which do not need ground planes.

The antennas are pointed away from each other slightly to reduce parasitic coupling which is a bad thing in a df'ing array. The usual configuration for doppler arrays is 4 antennas supported by a single pole. This one has 4 roof mounted antennas. You see them on a number of boats including the coast guard vessels and a few fishing boats.

The laboratory

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Looks worse than it is. Lots of extra coax laying on the floor that was cut out.

And it fits into the garage.. barely.

Using 1/2 wave elements is not recommended for the 4 antenna array but testing shows it still works. The received wave front experiences some distortions due to resonant elements coupling with which ever antenna is active. The antennas are switched in a circular pattern 500 times per second, simulating a single antenna that moves in a circle around the boat canopy roof. The circuitry determines the direction from which the radio signal is coming from.

A little more sanitizing to do, but as it sits, it works GREAT!

So I mounted the antennas on the roof, modified the supplied antenna mounting boards to connect external antennas to the boards, and then mounted the antenna boards to the roof of the hard top. Testing this evening showed it works fine. An Icom IC-2000H ham rig tranceiver with the transmit disabled by removing the microphone will be used as the receiver to supply a signal strength meter and the added capabilities that a ham rig offers.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

The ugliness continues... the ugliest thing on the Pacific Ocean..

Not being happy to just keep drilling holes in my newly built pilot house (I think I counted over 60 new holes drilled in the canopy ), I MUST drill holes in the new electronic device still under warranty. But first..

The circuit board of the doppler controller had some stupidly placed jacks in the back. The form factor of this box is hideous. I hate it, but I'm too lazy to make a new one even though it would take probably 50 holes in the front panel to make a new one. So, you can see the audio input jack and it's adapter plugged into the board. The location of the jack was unacceptable in the intended mounting location in the cockpit, so I decided to solder new audio input leads to the board directly to eliminate the audio jack problem. I had to drill some holes in the case to allow the new cable to exit the box, and mount an audio mute switch, and for a tie strap mounting scheme I dreamed up (which worked quite well I might add).

The audio input jack and plug, not acceptable for where I wanted to mount the box. I suppose I could have used a 90 degree plug but I didn't feel like searching for one. The cigarette lighter is not for a mind altering BONG, but rather for electronic heat shrink tubing. Any questions??

At the end of the screwdriver is where I needed to solder the new audio input leads. The doppler device and it's circular switching antenna system is able to detect a frequency shift on the audio signal since FM is "frequency modulated" audio. So the frequency information is also contained in the audio that is modulated onto the radio carrier frequency (the channel frequency). That is why we need the radio's audio to go into this box. It's the wonderful thing about this invention. You can run the audio of any FM receiver into it with it's antenna system attached to the same radio, and it will work. Scanners work very well with these. What comes out of the box's speaker is the radio audio plus a doppler tone of 500 herts that is very annoying to listen to, so I had to add an audio "mute" switch to turn off the audio and let the box do it's thing without the noise. Most of the time this thing will be on channel 68 and I will have another VHF radio that I use for communicating on the same channel that I WILL be listing to without the annoying doppler tone.

Here I'm checking which conductor on the audio plug cable goes to what solder lug on the board.

The new audio cable soldered to the board.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Oh boy, new holes to drill.

Cable goes through the hole.

The board is mounted back in the case.

I scrounged an old switch from my junk box for an audio mute switch. The switch goes into the speaker wiring to kill the speaker noise.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

More hole drilling, the plastic just flies around!!

The mounting location just to the right and in my view while piloting the craft.

This is a great search and rescue tool. How many times have we all been tempted to help a boater in distress whose lost in the fog? Radar and this little doohickey is handy for those times. If you look carefully you can see the audio mute switch on the side of the box.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Again, more sanitizing to do but no wire loom and no headliner. Easy access. I hate protective loom on cables in boats. Most of my wiring is unprotected for good reason. Loom just traps moisture instead of letting it breath and dry out. I learned that 35 years ago working on salt water sea planes down in Long Beach.

A view of the other side of the canopy rib as seen through the windshield and the cables attached to the rib. These cables are all for the doppler setup. On the other side of the rib is radar cabling.

Another view of the antenna switching unit before securing the wiring.

I would probably not be this sloppy with a paying customer's boat but for mine, it's all about utility and NOTHING about appearance. I want instant access to the test points, and I want it to stay dry as possible without moisture entrapment.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Doppler direction finder testing

I got most of the recent electronics installation finalized to be able to use the boat today. I have a chart plotter , 2 more vhf radios and an ais transponder to install later, but for now this will get me going.

I'm actually a little more excited about the direction finder than I am about the radar install, but that will change. I was doing more testing after the modifications while in the driveway. I almost took it down and put it in the water today but it was a little late. I'll do that tomorrow, Sunday.

Wiring is a little more tidied up and functional.

Here's a Youtube video of the little direction finder in action in my driveway. I was using the police frequencies instead of marine frequencies on my boat's Icom IC-2000H which is now my dedicated DF receiver. Nothing was going on in the marine band, so that's why I had it scanning police frequencies instead. I have a new IC-2300H coming Monday which will be the third VHF and I will soon be ordering a second IC-2300H for the fourth VHF.

This DF unit works great. It has an internal speaker which works well as a remote speaker for the radio and that speaker has a mute switch that I posted about earlier. I can shut the noisy audio off and still have the DF display working. The video has the sound of a separate scanner and that scanner was picking up the doppler tone which really should not be there in a separate receiver like that but the scanner heard it anyway. The doppler 500 hertz tone is much louder coming out of the DF unit's speaker. It's not present in my other VHF on receive on the same channel the DF setup is tuned to. I can transmit full power out of my communication radio without blowing up anything in the other radio or the DF unit.

Tomorrow on the water I'll get the full picture of what the receiving directional pattern is on the 4 antenna array by fixing on a radio source like NOAA weather radio and doing a few 360 degree turns to see if the DF unit tracks and stays with the source location. During driveway tests it is indicating correct directional information for the received stations which is amazing considering my terrible VHF location with all the trees and canyon walls and whatnot. The receiver on the DF was scanning out of sync with my handheld scanner so you occasionally see some out of sync things happening between what the display is doing and what you are hearing. You'll also see the display move around a little on a source signal because of all the signal reflection coming in from different directions at my location here. Direction is bearing relative to the boat so the top of the display is the bow and the bottom is the stern. The boat is pointing about 215 degrees magnetic, and the signals are coming from Eureka PD, Arcata Fire and Humboldt County Sheriffs. The Sheriff's repeater is the one coming from 180 degrees off the stern.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Sea trial results from Sunday

Radar is excellent. It's an LCD unit, and as low to the water as it is, it works really well. Plenty of range, and I can't say that the low height off the water has negatively effected it's performance. Really pleased. My last trip last season was on October 31st with 1 each 32 pound halibut caught, but the trip all the way out from the jaws was one where I could not even see the water in front of the boat because it was so foggy. This thing will help.

Direction finder is EXCELLENT! It was confusing at first out there because when I installed it I became confused and got the left and right antennas reversed. The effect of that was reverse antenna switching rotation, and the effect of that was that the bow and stern directions were correct but the left and right were reversed. Adding to the confusion was that some of the test receive signals had a bunch of reflective component coming off the nasty little wind waves from the south wind that day. I found some really clean radio signals coming from other sources like the Humboldt Hill 146.70 mhz ham repeater and a few others. So the system works perfectly and I'm really impressed with it's performance. When I got home I reversed the left to right orientation of the switching array and it only took about 10 minutes.

So gambling with 200 dollars worth of Shakespeare 1/2 wave antennas paid off. I'm really happy with it's performance and I'm even more happy that I'm fish ready now unlike the last 3 seasons when I screwed up my project time table.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Check out the tow rig!

Just enough cover to keep an old man out of the cold.

You can see how the forward leaning windshield lends to a roomier feeling cabin instead of having a normal rearward sweeping windshield poking you right in the face.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

I added a remote controlled spotlight called a Golight. It remotely aims in elevation and azimuth. It has about a 400 degree rotation, a little more than a full turn. We'll see how long it lasts in a salt water environment. A Sitex EC5e chartplotter was also added. Nice having the boat ready to go for the May 1 Pacific Halibut season opener. The ocean salmon season opens about a week later. This will be the first time in 3 years that I've had the boat ready to go this early. Those last 3 seasons were messed up with projects that went late and into the beginning of the fishing season.

The new little chart plotter lives next to the radar display. It has a nice bright color display.

I added a 3rd VHF radio so that the older Icom IC2000H (located lower right) could be dedicated to the direction finding system. The new one is an Icom IC2300H at the upper right. It has a great receiver and scans very fast. The VHF at left is a Standard Horizon Matrix GX2100 with an AIS receiver built in to display the larger AIS transponder equipped boats on the radio display and also on the chart plotter through an NMEA0183 network connection. It works quite well and enhances the radar targeting with identification of the vessel by it's vessel name and other information like it's size, course, speed and other particulars.

 

[GT1000000]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Wow! Absolutely outstanding!
While most of the equipment you have installed, I can understand, it is far and above anything I have ever had the opportunity to work with and I must say I am blown away by your Mastery of it...
You have put together one heck of an electronics package that would be the envy of any world class transportation medium!
Very, very impressive and most of all, thank you for continuing to share with us...

 

[glnbnz]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Yes I have definitely enjoyed this entire thread!! Very impressive You are going to get some serious fishing done this season and I look forward in following this in the future!!

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Wow! Absolutely outstanding!
You have put together one heck of an electronics package

Thanks GT1K. The electronics items are realistically pretty low end in the big picture when you look them up one at a time. The Standard Horizon VHF is fairly slick but the two ham rigs, the chart plotter, radar, and the other gps and fish finder are sort of like "bang for the buck" low end units but they work well. The radar was 300 bucks that I got by posting a want on a local fishing forum. From my ham radio side, the direction finder and radio stuff are nothing too fancy. It's just nice to have a structure to mount eveything to now, and still not spend a fortune. I've added another battery to the boat for a total of 3 with 2 of them running the electronics most of the time but all 3 can be ganged together for a 3 battery engine start. That is done with 2 battery switches. I think I've posted this diagram before. A full charge when I leave the house with the boat will take care of everything for 6 to 8 hours out there. My Chrysler outboard charging system alternator is modified for uncontrolled output so it runs warm and probably gets about 15 amps going into the system with voltage controlled by switching the batteries in and turning things on. The downside is that the alternator never backs off so it is always there parasitically giving the engine a small load to work against which slightly impacts my fuel burn. That modification has so far lasted 550 hours and 6 years on the ocean.

By the way, my wiring under the dash is an absolutely attrocious MESS. I'm ashamed to show it but everything works. Someday I will sanitize it. It's something else.

This is the really great thing about this forum. All of us here have done things to boats to make them so much better than anybody who marketed them 40 years ago could have imagined. My workmanship is nothing compared to so many others here who have gone the extra steps to pull off some really spectacular works of art and craftmanship. My approach is pretty much utility in nature and could be picked apart by a true professional or craftsman. I'm amazed by so many of the other works here.

I wonder what ever happened to Oops? He probably moved on to other career opportunities and hobbies.

 

[coolbri70]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

I wonder what ever happened to Oops? He probably moved on to other career opportunities and hobbies.

have not seen him on here well over a year:noidea:

 

[Sea Stomper]

Re: 1977 Orrion becoming an ocean animal

Someone got some pics of this thing running down Humboldt Bay with the mighty 39 year old Chrysler outboard yesterday while I was testing some electronic and mechanical things I had just finished working on.

And this comparison shows you how very small the boat is. I'm a Cummins diesel tech, and I was working on this 36 foot Maine lobster boat the other day. This little 15 foot trihull is really just a large jet ski.

 

[Sea Stomper]

Well, it's well past May 1 and even though my boat has fished, projects continue.

Last night I finished installing a new VHF radio, a Kenwood TM-G710GA dual bander with integral GPS and an integral digital terminal node controller. It's two transmitters are rated at 50 watts output each. It can broadcast my position real time to a web based database and tracked. It's the ham radio equivalent of an AIS transponder but the radio does so many other things too. The radio actually is 2 vhf's in one. It can receive and transmit in the same band on both radios, and has two volume and two squelch controls (you can see both sets of knobs on the right of the unit, one for each receiver of the radio) and too many other features to mention. In effect, this gives me the equivalent of 5 vhf radios for "extreme" electronic counter measure capabilities on the water. For now this is it for the electronics on this boat. I ditched the AIS transponder idea for this season. I am far beyond my alternator's ability to keep up with all this stuff on so extra "home charged" battery power is used instead. With a full overnight charge it will run all day without alternator input with everything running.

The control head of the new Kenwood VHF. Last night I got into the guts of it and modified it for expanded transmit capabilities that cover the marine bands. I can't legally use it on the marine bands but I have it in an emergency if I have nothing else that works. You can see the dual display showing both of it's radios, with the left one fixed on the ham radio "APRS" (Automatic Packet Reporting System) frequency of 144.39 Mhz. The right display is on 156.425 Mhz which is marine channel 68. It's a very small boat so I like having all controls at my fingertips on one hand while being able to keep that same hand on the wheel. By the way, I also love that little Garmin hand held GPS with full marine charting on it at the right. It's really handy for doing things on while leaving the other two gps screens alone or doing other things. In the picture, 3 gps units include the new VHF, the little Garmin and the Sitex EC5i. A 4th gps is out of view on the left side of the cockpit.

The black box to the left of the radar display is the new VHF radio itself. The display is a control head for it.

The fish finders and the 4th gps.

Closer shot of the 4 radios. All of them are on the same VHF channel 68 except for the left display of the Kenwood being on the ham APRS digital frequency of 144.39 Mhz beaconing away every 3 minutes giving out my position. I'm going to change the way it beacons my position. Right now it beacons my position every 3 minutes. The revised beaconing schedule will involve course changes and speed changes which will determine how often it spits out my position. When I stop it will stop the beacon interval. Again, this works exactly like an AIS transponder but it is ham radio's version and I didn't get it for any other reason except that it's been a long time since I bought a really nice ham rig. If I wanted to, I could tune the left display to channel 68 and the right display to any other marine VHF channel and hear both at the same time. It's virtually 2 radios in one plus it does so many other geeky things that I won't go into here.

I gave the direction finder a full out test today out on the open ocean and it was really awesome. I confirmed that it indeed does point right at the boat that is transmitting on the channel. It uses the bottom right radio as it's receiver. It's really cool to have a full time DF fix on whoever is talking. It's also kind of cool to package all this stuff in a tight space and has an aerospace feel to it now.

The http://aprs.fi website image tracking my short lived salmon trip cut short because of a woozy passenger. The ocean wasn't all that nice today. My identifier on the aprs.fi site is N6HGG-1 . It's my ham callsign with a dash 1 following it. The aprs.fi website has a bunch more information on the tracked stations than is shown here. Fun stuff that only adds to the already fun fishing stuff. I can't help myself.