Click on the buttons below to go to the various
WA8LMF  APRS mapping webservers.

 2 Meters VHF    ISS Satgate 

30 Meters HF

 AX.25 Packet     VARA  

60 Meters HF

 AX.25 Packet     VARA  

 Special Events Webserver 

 Traverse City Area - 2 Meters 

 Road Trip Tracker 

NOTE 1:  This webserver is using  TCP/IP ports14439, 14441, 14443, 14445 & 14447  rather than the customary port 80 for http .   As a result, you may not be able to access it from some corporate or government Internet connections that severely firewall or otherwise restrict access to uncommon port numbers.

NOTE 2:  Radio propagation (i.e. reception) on 30 and 60 meters HF is highly sensitive to the level of solar activity.  When the solar X-ray flux plotted on the graph below has a baseline above the first major division, or spikes upward (i.e. a solar flare), 30 meters will have very poor conditions, or black out completely, causing very few (or no stations at all) to show on the HF map.

X-ray radiation from the sun travels at the speed of light, reaching the earth in about 8 minutes.   When these intense blasts of X-rays reach the earth, they can temporarily disrupt the ionized layers of the earth's upper atmosphere (the ionosphere). These layers are responsible for reflecting long-range (beyond the horizon) HF radio signals back to earth.  The result is a weakening or even complete fade-out of HF radio signals.

Real-Time Solar Activity Monitor (Last 72 Hours)

(Courtesy of US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
 at https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/swx-overview-large.gif

Background on the WA8LMF Webserver Setup

The WA8LMF APRS webserver produces multiple map displays.

• The HF page displays 30-meter (10.149 MHz) HF APRS activity. This is live off-the-air (RF-only) as heard in Haslett, Michigan (near East Lansing, MI); i.e. no Internet APRS feed.
   
• The VHF page displays live off-the-air (RF-only) two-meters activity on 144.39 MHz, as heard in Haslett, MI; i.e. no Internet APRS feed. Three additional maps show expanded detail in the Greater Detroit area, the Lansing-East Lansing area and the Michigan State University campus.
   
• The ISS "satgate" page displays the current position of the International Space Station and it's radio footprint on the ground, in real time, as received from KJ4ERJ's Internet feed.
  
  When the station passes within range of my receive system in Haslett, MI, (typically 500-800 miles / 800-1200 km), live off-the-air (RF-only) position reports from stations on the ground, relayed through the station's digipeater on 145.825 MHz, are plotted on the map.
   
• The Special Events page is used for ham fests, balloon launches and other one-time events. It usually produces two maps: One shows the vicinity of the event at county or state level; the other is a close-up aerial photo view of the venue.

These displays are generated by 11 copies of UIview running simultaneously on the same computer. They are served by the UI-Webserver component of five of those copies of UI-View32  The VHF, ISS "Satgate", Special Event and 60-meter instances are running in 4 separate VMware virtual machines using micro-Server2003. The HF page is running directly on the Win7-64 host. All instances are connected to APRS Internet servers using filter ports set to receive JUST my own callsigns, the ISS space station object, and the US National Weather Service feed.   All stations heard off-the-air in all instances are passed to the APRS Internet System; i.e. all instances function as igates.

The computer's internal sound system is used for EchoLink. All the APRS receive and transmit on the various bands is being handled by three separate Behringer UCA-202 USB external sound cards.

• 30M HF is being received with the left channel of a copy of the UZ7HO "Soundmodem" software packet TNC, and a Yaesu FT-891 transceiver connected to a homebrew magnetic loop antenna.
   
• 60M HF is being received with the right channel of the same copy of the Soundmodem and a second FT-891.
   
• 2M VHF is being received with the left channel of a second copy of the UZ7HO Soundmodem, and a Kenwood TM-211 transceiver connected to a Comet 2M/UHF 19' "SuperGainer" collinear.
   
• The space station is being received with the right channel of the second copy of the UZ7HO Soundmodem, a Kenwood TM-221 two-meter monobander and a homebrew "Texas Potato Masher" satellite antenna (a variation on the M2 "Eggbeater" antenna).
   
• The special events page is normally generated by an IP link to the 2M VHF Soundmodem and/or an APRS Internet feed, rather than directly off the air with it's own radio and TNC.

All instances of UIview are set to capture and date-time-stamp an image of their map automatically every 1 minute.

• Instance 1, a.k.a "US 30M HF", shows a static map (captured from Precision Mapping 9.0) of the entire continental U.S. and the southern part of Canada.  From time to time, this may be pre-empted by a live dynamic map for a special event such as a balloon launch.
   
• Instance 2, a.k.a. "Central Michigan 144.39 MHz", shows a static map (captured from Precision Mapping 9.0) showing the southern half of the lower peninsula of Michigan and surrounding areas, from Chicago, Illinois in the west to Cleveland, Ohio in the east. This is an area about 340 miles (about 540 KM) across west-to-east.  Two meter tropo openings are evident on this map, when stations start appearing from the western shore of Lake Michigan, and from east of London, Ontario or Cleveland.
   
• Instance 3, a.k.a. "Tracking ISS"  shows a static map of the US and southern Canada.  This instance also serves a screen cap of the "Orbitron" satellite tracking program that shows the current location of the ISS and it's next two orbits on a world map. This screen cap is updated once a minute.

All of this, along with EchoLink, mmSSTV and EasyPal "digital" SSTV is running on an Acer E3-111-P60S 11.8" "netbook" PC dedicated to 24/7 "Ham SuperServer" duty.  (Review here)