Resources:

• RHEL RPMs from http://people.redhat.com/atkac/bind/5.6-test/ – if someone finds a better source for BIND 9.7+ RHEL RPMs, I’d like to know.  I had no luck building from the Fedora SRPMs.
• http://www.isc.org/community/blog/201007/using-root-dnssec-key-bind-9-resolvers – instructions for setting up BIND to use the root key.
• http://fanf.livejournal.com/107310.html – A more thorough walk-through of setup.

One resource I would have liked to find and could not was a deliberately unvalidatable non-root zone/record that could be used to see a validation failure.  If anyone knows of or finds such a thing, please pass it along.  Now we get to wait for .com, .net, etc, to catch up to .bg and .uk in the publishing of DS glue for deeper validation.

UPDATE 7/22/10:  Just found the following site which makes available bad records for testing purposes: http://dnssec-tools.org/testzone/index.html

So, what are the issues?  I tried my G1 running OruxMaps on a 3.5hr / 10 mile hike in the mountains on Monday to get a better perspective.

Battery Life. It barely survived.  I would probably expect twice the battery life from my Garmin GPSMap 76S with a constantly running display.  Can the battery life issues be solved with an external AA-based battery pack to keep the cell phone charged?  I have no experience with these things.  Reviews indicate that ones without regulators aren’t worth much.  I might have to try one.

GPS Hardware. Cell phones may have GPS receivers, but it is not their primary function.  Most Android phones I’ve looked at seem to use the Qualcomm gpsOne chipset instead of a dedicated chipset such as the oft-mentioned SiRFstar III.  This is a cause for concern, since gpsOne currently seems to lack support for WAAS and likely is not as sensitive as the SiRFstar.  The upside of gpsOne is that AGPS will provide a faster lock when within range of the cell network.

Usability. Another major hurdle is the availability of high quality GPS software for the phone.  I’ve tried Maverick Lite, OruxMaps, and My Tracks and found them all to be lacking the necessary features of a hand-held GPS.  My Tracks is the Google-sponsored outdoor activity tracking app that was very recently open-sourced.  Maverick and Orux both provide offline map access (another must), but they seem to accomplish this with saved graphic tiles and not vector data as would be desired.  Any new GPS solution I get should have high-resolution topo maps included.

Durability. Hand-held GPS receivers tend to be waterproof and a bit rugged.  I’ve dropped my GPSmap 76s a number of times – and it once fell off my bike at 15+ mph.  There’s no way any phone I’ve owned would be happy with that kind of treatment.

Bottom line?  Not sure yet.  I do think the concept of a hand-held GPS is already starting to fade.  I’m not ready just yet to give mine up in favor of the cell phone.  I hope the newly open-sourced My Tracks starts gaining some useful hand-held features.

Then it becomes apparent that the SS13As are not that great.  The adhesive backing would refuse to stick to the garage wall for extended periods of time, necessitating the addition of some screws to provide a slight ledge for them to sit upon.  They are also battery powered, and the stock batteries were nearly useless in cold weather.  Naturally, the colder times of year require the use of lights in the garage more often, and it became incredibly annoying to have to warm the switch with your hand and make multiple attempts to turn on the light… when the pullstring that otherwise would work is in reach.  My suggestion is to never use SS13As in anything but warm environments, and probably just avoid them altogether.  The one I had used inside would “forget” its code assignments and the coldness of the window sill was enough to keep it from working well.

To fix these issues, I revisited the idea of wiring regular three-way switches in the garage.  With the layout of the existing wiring, even the most creative ideas would require two new wires run the length of the garage, with one of them likely needing to be a 3-conductor that I don’t happen to have laying around.  And copper isn’t really cheap right now.  So, X10 was again looked at for a solution.

I decided to go with hard-wired X10 controllers, specifically the XPT4-W.  I installed these near existing wire locations with a minimal of effort – maybe 3 hours total. So, now I have fully functional control of my garage lights (probably even in cold weather), and didn’t need to run crazy amounts of cable for three-way switches.

Why do I care?  Because I loathe 47 CFR 15.121 and would like to see it abolished.  This is the section of FCC regulations that forbids the manufacture of devices that can receive, or be easily modified to receive, cellular frequencies.  This requirement only covers the Part 22 Cellular Service (824-849, 869-894 MHz) and not the all-digital PCS and AWS bands that cell service has expanded into.  With AMPS, conversations were transmitted using FM, and so could be easily decoded by any FM receiver that could tune to the appropriate frequencies.  With the digital services, more sophisticated handling of the signal (and even decryption) would be required, which apparently made it unnecessary to have the same kind of regulation.  As far as I know, this is the only restriction placed on what frequencies can be tuned by a receiver.  On freedom grounds alone, I have a big problem with that.  If AMPS does finally die – and I hope it does – I hope that 47 CFR 15.121 can die with it.

The map has been updated.

Demolished L3 Repeater Hut

Exposed L3 cable

The U.S. electric system has 2.5 gigawatts of pumped hydro storage capacity.

“Capacity” when used to discuss an energy storage apparatus can have two meanings.  It could mean the power capacity of the system, which is the amount of energy that can be released from storage and converted to electricity instantaneously.  For pumped hydro storage, this would be determined to a large degree by the size of the turbines, generators, and penstocks.  This quantity represents, for instance, the number of lights a plant could handle without dimming – it says nothing about how long it could keep them lit.  A common unit of power capacity is gigawatts.

The other type of “capacity” is the energy storage capacity of the system.  For pumped hydro storage, this is the value related to the size of the water reservoir.  This is the quantity that represents how long a plant could keep a given number of lights lit, for instance.  A common unit of energy capacity is gigawatt-hours.

Assuming the author chose the units correctly, this quote tells us that the power capacity of US pumped hydro is 2.5 GW.  Unfortunately, something isn’t right, because the Energy Information Administration says the number is actually 20 GW.

Consider another example:

The Norton project could store 2.7 gigawatts of power in an abandoned limestone mine.

I’m afraid this one is beyond redemption.  You don’t store power, you store energy.  But the units given are for power, and from further research in other articles, the power capacity of the plant is expected to be 2.7 gigawatts.  I was not able to find a source that estimated the plant’s energy storage potential.

Any time you read the words “power,” “energy,” or “gigawatt” in an article, read it very critically.  The commonly cited statistics for power plants are always their power capacity, and even for energy storage plants, storage capacity is seldom stated.  One likely reason is that power capacity is relatively easy to determine – it is likely written on a nameplate on the generator somewhere.  Calculating the energy capacity of a storage facility would be more challenging, and might not be a number required by regulators – and hence one that is seldom available.

Both quotes are from this wired.com article, but many articles discussing energy storage have the same problem.

Later I noticed that the G1 was not functioning on my home network, yet worked on other similarly secured networks I connect to.  It would connect, obtain an IP address, but not pass traffic – which is a pretty bad scenario since the G1 wouldn’t automatically fail back to its GSM data connection.  I did the typical troubleshooting with “forget”-ing the network and reconnecting, etc, but this was unsuccessful.  More detailed analysis showed that almost immediately after DHCP completed successfully, the G1 would see no traffic generated from the network, and the network would see no traffic generated by the G1.  With the laptop working fine through all of this, it really seemed to be a problem with the G1.

After essentially exhausting other options, I turned my attention to the WAP.  I tried changing the SSID which didn’t help, and reverting back to TKIP, which worked fine.  I then decided to upgrade the WAP’s firmware, from 2.07 (2004 era) to 3.04 (2005 era – still 5 years old!).  The wireless security settings are more granular than the former version – and after reconfiguring – the G1 works on AES.

Hopefully this time it will keep working.

RF Capabilities

Both rigs provide 50W power on the 2-meter and 70-cm ham bands.  The 350R additionally can transmit 1W on the 1.25-meter band.  The extended receive ranges are also divergent, with notable differences being the lack of 13cm/1.3GHz band (and possibly the 33cm/902MHz band per a footnote) coverage on the 350R .  There are published mods to provide extended transmit capabilities for both units.  Both radios have a cross-band repeater capability.

APRS

APRS is the feature that places these two radios in their own category.

GPS

One aspect of APRS is the use of a GPS for automated position reporting.  In the D710A, an external third-party GPS receiver (such as the GPS-710) needs to be connected to the control head.  For the 350R, Yaesu sells their own FGPS-1 module which installs in the back of the control head.  Documentation indicates it is possible to use the FGPS-2 module, which is the GPS receiver used on the VX-8R, but the required CT-133 cable could not be located from various retailers websites.  It does not seem to be readily possible to use a non-Yaesu GPS receiver.  Personally, I think having a GPS connection available from the radio body would make sense.  My intended control head mounting location is not likely to have the best view of the sky.

Digipeater Functions

The D710A appears to have a robust set of digipeater functions.  This feature would primarily be useful in situations where a temporary digipeater was needed to serve an area not covered by a permanent digipeater.  The 350R appears to not have this feature.

Other APRS Features

The D710A supports QSY information, weather station attachment, and a Kenwood GPS format for tactical display integration with AvMap G5.  Both radios are equipped with the SmartBeaconing feature which bases position update intervals on the speed of travel and direction changes.  The 350R has some navigation enhancements providing direction indication to other stations.

TNC

The built-in TNC on the D710A can be used by a PC or other external device, and supports KISS.  The 350R supports a “modem” mode for both 1200 and 9600, which hopefully means it can be used as a TNC as well, but I’ve not found anything explicitly confirming success with this.

Software / Firmware

These modern radios, like most recent electronics, have some computer-ness to them.  Programming software and firmware updates for the D710A are freely available from Kenwood.  These updates have added new features to existing products at no additional cost.  So far, there is no indication of any software available for the 350R.  [Update 2010-04-24: KC7HP pointed out that software is now available.] The repair for the navigation issue discussed below involved mailing the unit in for repair – for what should be a firmware update.  Given the newness of the product, it is possible that the rolling out of consumer firmware updating is forthcoming, but the situation with the VX-8R upgrade to VX-8DR doesn’t make this prospect seem likely.

Bluetooth

It’s only fair to mention that the 350R has an optional Bluetooth module.  The only Bluetooth capability provided is audio, such as the use of a Bluetooth headset for using the radio.  I’d be much more interested in this if Bluetooth data capability of some sort were provided.

Quirks

The 350R is a really new radio, and that means there is not much information available, and that it has a few bugs and quirks.  Already there are reports that APRS navigation feature leads you in the wrong direction.  There are also reports that the radio will hang, requiring power to be physically removed to reset the unit.

Conclusion

While the 350R does introduce some new capabilities (222 MHz, Bluetooth, integrated GPS, navigation feature), there are still features of the D710 that it seems to lack (digipeating, tactical GPS protocol).  The free firmware/software of the D710 is hard to beat.  Given the quirkiness of the new hardware, and feeling that the features unique to the D710 have more potential use than those unique to the 350R, my inclination would be to get the tried and true D710 if purchasing a unit today.

The install was straight forward and relatively painless.  The hardest part was getting the wiring connector detached from the factory radio.  I used the kit from Crutchfield since I wanted a no-hassle return option, mostly.  The USB connector is a cable emerging from the back of the radio, while the 1/8″ miniplug external input is on the faceplate.  It would have probably been more useful to have both on the back, or swapped.

The basic functions work as expected.  CD audio sounds fine.  AM radio reception seemed to have the same sensitivity as my factory radio, despite comments elsewhere on the web indicating problems with this.

The USB and CD are capable of playing back MP3 audio, of course, as well as the similarly encumbered WMA and AAC formats. Naturally, for ideological reasons, a decent amount of my audio is in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats, which this unit can’t play on its own.

Bluetooth audio sounds pretty good paired to my Android G1 running cyanogenmod, though it can be skippy at times which I blame on the G1s underwhelming RAM and CPU.  The G1 running cyanogenmod has the ability to play my Ogg Vorbis and FLAC media.  The menu interface for pairing the phone is incredibly unintuitive on the CZ509 – have the manual and patience handy when attempting.  The radio does have an auto-connect feature which should cause the CZ509 to connect to your Bluetooth device upon powerup, but I have never had this work.  I’m not sure which device is at fault for certain, but I suspect the CZ509 isn’t doing something right.  Fortunately with the help of a shortcut on the G1, manual connection is only a few screen presses away.  The Bluetooth playback only has play/pause/forward/back controls and has no song title text.  I’m guessing this means the CZ509 only supports AVRCP 1.0.  I’m not currently using the phone audio capability of the CZ509 – I’m not sure where the microphone would go.  Sometimes the G1 will not produce any audio despite an established connection which is readily solved with shutting down Bluetooth on the G1 and starting it back up.  I’ve not had this happen in the middle of a connection.  It would also really be nice if the headset volume controls and Bluetooth volume controls were stored separately in the G1 as I need it full-scale for A2DP and near the bottom for wired headphones.

I’m overall pleased with the purchase.  I certainly could have gotten a more featureful or less expensive radio had it not been for the A2DP experimentation goal, but this radio should serve my needs.