60M Test - Seems OK to me!

Well,

Following the modification to the FT-DX-3000 to give the ful 60M allocation in the UKhere:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/your-going-to-what.html

I left the radio WSPRing on the 5MHz band last night.

Seems OK to me:

What do you recon, good egh?
 

SO2V - SO2 What? Ah, 2 VFOs!

Well,

During a two day break from work, I've been fiddling about with Writelog and Logger32 (the programs I use for RTTY) to try and experiment with the 2 receivers I have in the main FT-DX-5000 here.

The idea being that I can have:

1. Main receiver to an MMTTY decoder providing the main RX window
2. A clone of the main receiver window running an alternative decoder (2Tone)
3. The second receiver on the same or a different band into a third decoder running either/or MMTTY and 2Tone.

So far, In logger32 I have achieved everything I set out to do:

I have the two receivers in the radio, both with frequency read from the radio correctly and the ability to receive in both 2Tone and MMTTY on both.

Now, in WriteLog I almost have the same thing:

But not quite! I have two receivers feeding two versions of MMTTY with the main receiver also having a clone using 2Tone. What I can't get to work is reading the receiver frequency of the 2nd receiver within the radio. Eventually, of course, I would like to be able to TX back to a signal received on either receiver i.e. TX on the main or sub receiver frequency; I suspect that may be asking just a bit too much, although I think it's possible if I had two separate radios, so I dont see why not...

I'll keep trying, I wonder if anyone else has this set-up working?

Complex, egh?
 

RTTYing in A71 Land

Well,

Its been snowing hard in the UK (so I understand), but I'm stuck in A71 land this weekend....

The Qatar Amateur Radio Society were doing a stall at an exhibition recently, I called by to see them, here's the set up:

I've actually spent some time at the QARS main site today, you may remember I visited them a while ago:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a7-land-a71a-ah-qatar.html

I've been running RTTY using one of their FT-2000s. You may recall I made an interface for my FT-450 a while back:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/hows-interfacing.html

Well, here it is on top of the FT-2000 - plus an adapter for the rig end of the cables:

So been running on 20M RTTY today with the callsign A71A. Been quite hard work as at times there were many stations calling, but no single signal decoding, I guess I perhaps need to consider working split next time.

Fun though, egh?

Grey What? Ah, Grey Line!

Well,

Still spending most of my time in A7 land, not yet with license for the region but am still hopeful. Travelling back tomorrow, so will be checking progress during the week.

Propagation in general is a topic that I claim to know very little about and understand even less about, however, I do very much understand the theory and concept of grey-line propagation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(solar)

From time to time, you see or hear something that arguably cant be anything other than the effects of grey-line propagation. Here's an example from 30M the other evening...

This happened, of course, just as the UK was entering night and Australia was entering day.... the grey line on the earth was connecting the two areas of the globe. You can see that through more normal propagation methods, my signals were reaching into Europe and not much further.

Interesting, hugh?

WPX? Ah, Worked All Prefixes!

Well,

Been playing in the CQ-WPX RTTY contest this weekend, managed 512 QSOs for 1446 points and 352 unique prefixes in 61 DXCC entities.

As is becoming the norm, here's a map of the logbook:

Very pleased to manage to get some RF all the way to New Zealand; but who wouldn't be?

Fun, egh?

FT-5000 AFSK

Well,

Over the past few weeks I've been trying to get my FT-5000 to function in AFSK based modes; the radio is setup with the audio from my digibox (the one that feeds all the other radios) into the packet connector on the back. I've been seeing some very strange behaviour which I've captured in a short video:

Any thoughts on what's going on here would be very much appreciated!

** UPDATE **

I've discovered (more by luck than any judgement) that this problem goes away when I enable the RX audio filter for Packet mode. I had set menu item 083 and 085 both to OFF; if I change 083 to 100Hz (or any other value) then the problem disappears.

I don't begin to understand this as I though the filter set by menu item 083 and 085 were RX audio only....

Maybe someone can explain?

Weird, egh?

XE test? Ah, Mexico!

Well,

Been dabbling in the Mexico International RTTY contest this weekend:

http://www.fmre.org.mx/concursos/2013/rtty/rules-rtty-2013-english.pdf

Running pretty much maximum allowable bananas for my full UK license and trying to get as many Mexican states as possible (these count as multipliers to your total score). Mexico is a fair distance from the UK (like 5,300 miles) and conditions didn't seem that good. So given that most of my late afternoon CQing was with the antenna pointed at the appropriate part of the world, my sum total of 3 Mexican stations is rather pants.

Anyway, I'll be entering my log for a laugh, but here is the (now traditional) map of my contacts:

The maps I create of my logs are done here:

http://www.adventureradio.de/analyzer/

Odd isn't it, how I find myself beaming to the north west (300 ish degrees), working mainly stations in Europe and then suddenly work a VK4 in NE Australia.

Cat was trying to help keep log:

Fun though, egh?

The Old Dog is Up and Running

Well,

Following my last post about the FT-1000MP Mark V I found, I've managed to purchase a SMPS from eBay. This PSU has 2 x 15V @ 15A and 2 x 14V @ 15A; as SMPS are good in series it wasn't hard to manufacture a replacement for the FP-29!

It even fits in the FP-29 case!

The radio is working FB:

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the radio itself. The PSU is a bit noisy and running a little warm - I will keep my eyes open for an alternative, in the meantime I'll stick it up on a shelf and run the cable to the radio.

I want to use this instead of the IC-7410 I have here, it will be employed for AFSK type digital modes mainly - and as a second radio to my FT-5000 RTTY contest machine!

Not bad, egh?

Over the pond on Top Band

Well,

You may recall my ramblings about Top Band back here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/well-this-top-band-twig-does-it-work.html

So on-and-off I've been leaving WSRP running on either Top Bank or 30M over night, just to see how far signals are getting, and have been wondering if this may ever happen:

Well, looks like it has!

Fun, egh?

JARTS - You What? Oh, JARTS

Well,

Had a little dabble in the JARTS RTTY contest today and yesterday, conditions seemed to be really good, but there wasn't as much activity as I had hoped for. Here's my log from the contest in map format:

There were a few new countries for me, but NOTHING in Africa at all! And also no VK (Australia) or ZL (New Zealand) but hey, ho, it was fun all the same!
Still, rather impressive, egh?


 

It's a busy place 30M!

Well,

Been fiddling with wire antennas again over the weekend. Decided to make a good old-fashioned dipole for 30M.

Here is the dullest photograph ever:

But you can, at least, see that when I say an old-fashioned dipole, I really do mean two bits of wire with coax in the middle.

Now, over the last 24 hours I have left one of the radios WSPRing on 30M, here is the general map of the time period:

looks like a very busy place 30M WSPR!

And here is the map showing just people I am hearing or people who are hearing me (or both!):

So, it very much looks like my two bits of wire are working well! Now, looking in detail at the unique contacts involving my callsign, we find this:

Now, the two contacts to VK land (Australia), seem to be between 7 and 8 AM and also 7 and 8 PM; now that just about during the transition between day and night (or vice versa) so I just wonder if there is some grey line influence here?

What do you recon?

Fun though, egh?

How Much Power?

Well,

Myself and my chum Vince, G0ORC headed off to the National Hamfest last Friday, following a lot of consideration I was thinking of changing the Linear Amplifier that I have here for HF work. I have been using a Ameritron 600 watt Mosfet linear, with great success, however I was wanting to be able to run UK legal limit RTTY without pushing things to far.

ML&S had a very intersting linear amplifier at the show which just took my fancy, another great re-shuffle in the shack and it's in:

The linear is manufactured by a company called ALPIN:

http://www.alpinamplifier.com

And contains a single 4CX800A tube capable of 1300W SSB and 1000W continuous CW or RTTY work. The amplifier looks (both inside and out) to be a close copy of the ACOM 1000:

http://www.hfpower.com/

I am told that Alpin are ex-employees of ACOM or something like that (I don't actually believe a word of this).

Anyhow, the amp certainly looks the business:

and it's very easy to tune, I have created a chart of the "starter" settings for my setup and you simply rotate the "load" control as instructed on the LCD display and then peak the "tune" control for maximum smoke (RF out).

There is a good review of the amplifier here from RadCom:

http://www.alpinamplifier.com/images/RadCom%20Review.pdf

The review seemed to say the right kind of things....

I've had a dabble in the CQ WW RTTY contest this weekend and have been delighted with my station performance. This is a map output from my log from this weekend, most of the contacts have been on 10M:

you can see that I have worked far and wide and the RTTY station here at G0MGX is clearly working well!

Cat's not been helping much as normal:

Good though, egh?

QRSSing Again

Well, a while ago I stumbled upon a kit of parts here:

http://www.hanssummers.com/qrsskitmm.html

I thought it looked rather fun. The kit arrived the other day and it's a very simple bit of equipment all based around a single processor. The link above will give you details of all the different modes et cetera that the kit can produce, but here's the finished version of mine:

It's in a ridiculously large box which mainly contains fresh air, but I had the enclosure here anyhow so figured I may as well use it. I've built a power supply out of bits from the junk box.

The first time I plugged it in I had the electrolytic capacitor the wrong way round in the power supply; it exploded with quite a bang! So I replaced that and all is now well.

Cat's not impressed as normal:

All good fun though, egh?

It's been ages.....

Work, work and more work. That's all there is to it at the moment; finaly, however, I now have some time to:

1. Catch up with my Blog;
2. Play some Radio!

The WSPR and QRSS beacon I was begining to develop here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/back-to-real-homebrewing.html

is finaly complete!

The output amplifier that I was fiddling with ended up as an Analogue Devices AD8008, which I ended up mounting on a kind of break out board that I had:

You can see how this helps with the "ugly" construction and the use of SMD devices. I can't remember where I got this break out type board from, but it certainly came in useful here!

Many, many moons ago I built myself an QRP ATU, and now I have it permanently hooked up between this beacon and a cheap vertical HF antenna I have slung up against the side of the house. So the setup looks like this:

The WSPR and QRSS beacon is written in C for Arduino:

www.arduino.cc

and I've made quite a few changes to the source code which can be found here in anyone is interested:

http://www.qsl.net/g0mgx/files/Mega_DDS_60_v2_1_G0MGX_eeprom.ino

I've got this hooked up to a GPS module which is sitting in the window of the shack, this is providing the timing data to the WSPR and QRSS beacon. Currently I've got it running on 30M and will be doing some checks for reports in the near future. It's utputting a stagering 20mW!!!!

I've also started (well nearly finided) re-writting the code for my recent DDS project in Arduino; I was never quite happy with the way that ended up, so using my new found C skills I have written (from scratch) the DDS control software.

The original project is here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/dds-running-well.html

The functionality is the same as before, it's just that it works better and I have a much better understanding of how it works.

The source code for this is here:

http://www.qsl.net/g0mgx/files/G0MGX_DDS_FINAL.ino

I can claim some originality in this one!

Here's the inside of the replacement DDS, you can see that it's now Arduino based:

Please excuse the clothes pegs; they are just holding bits in place whilst the glue dries. I'll post again about this piece of work once completed. It's kind of soak testing right now as there is a calibration routine included to adjust the DDS for any misalignment in the frequency output due to clock inaccuracies.

All good though, egh?

More WSPRing and QRSSing

Well,

After my last ramblings here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/back-to-real-homebrewing.html

I've been doing some travelling with work, so progress is not so good. However, I have entered into a dialogue with a number of folk over my observation that the amplitude of the DSS reduces as the frequency increases. Some suggestions to overcome this mainly include AGC type circuitry or utilising pin 12 of the AD9851 to feedback a voltage to set the output amplitude based on a sample of the output (recursion see recursion). The most interesting feedback that I got, however, was not that the amplitude was dropping with an increase in frequency, but that my scope wasn't reading the signals correctly. The theory being that as the frequency increases my scope sensitivity drops off....

I ended up plotting this graph:

This is implying that my scope starts to take a dive, accuracy wise, after about 1MHz, this is the blue line with the y-axis indicating how many dB my scope is "deaf" by. The yellow line is the same signal but through the on-board low pass filter from the DDS module. This seems to imply that the LPF is rather badly designed also. If this theory is correct I need to subtract my scope deafness from the drop in signal out of the LPF. If at this stage we remember that 6dB is half voltage, this is not insignificant!

All rather confusing? My scope is a 100MHz rated fluke which I thought was supposed to be a good quality instrument. So, is this behaviour typical or is my scope a pile of dingos kidneys? I wonder...

I've made a bit of progress boxing the WSPR and QRSS beacon project:

So far, I have tried a number of output amplifiers, the first based on the circuit in my original QRSS beacon, from back in December 2010:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/qrss-beacon.html

This gives me a nice clean 4v P-to-P voltage out, but I wanted more than that, so either I add another stage or do something else.

I have also tried an output amp based on the Analogue Devices AD8008, this works OK also. I'm off on my travels again tomorrow, so I'll pick this up again when I get back.

All good fun though, egh?

Back to real homebrewing!

You may recall my discovery back here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/well-this-looks-just-great.html

So, Ive managed to make some progress. I've modified the software from W3PM from here:

http://www.knology.net/~gmarcus/

and have managed to get the GPS module working and also the DDS drive routines....

The code is written in C for the Arduino; and it's now interfaced to a four-line LCD, the AD9851 DDS module and the GPS receiver. The GPS module isn't in the picture as it's hanging out the window so it has visibility to the sky.

I've started to box the project, and have also built an RF amp to get me a staggering 100mW out...

Progress has been quite good today, I need to think about how I can get the RF levels the same on each band because as the frequency increases, so the amplitude out of the DDS and hence out of the RF amplifier decreases. I'm really not sure how to tackle that one, so I may have to ask for some help here.

Yesterday myself and Vince G0ORC went over to the "Dambusters Rally":

http://www.qsl.net/gb4tcm/dambusters.html

The rally was really good, albeit a bit small, but there was loads of really good radio junk to rummage about in. I picked up all sorts of stuff including this meter which I am rather proud of:

I've cleaned it up, mounted it on some wood, and stuck it in the corner of the shack with some amps flowing through it...

The next step will be to put some lighting inside...

Looks god though, agree?

It's extreme soldering again!

Well, I've started with my Arduino WSPR beacon project from here:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/well-this-looks-just-great.html

I've hit some obstacles with the GPS module and am planning to come back to that bit later.

The original plan that I am going to follow uses an American QRP Club project the DDS-60.

http://midnightdesignsolutions.com/dds60/index.html

This is a AD9851 based DDS but includes a small on-board RF amplifier and a low pass 60MHz filter. As this was the board used in the design, I ordered one. It arrived today and looks like this:

It's another surface mount project and came very neatly packaged. I had to purchase the AD9851 separately (I think when the kit was originally put together you could get a sample from Analogue Devices). Now, this AD9851 is a very small component indeed and has 28 pins... Using a suitable soldering iron and a magnifying glass I have managed to get the chip on the board OK. This is the best I can manage to show the result:

If you open up the image above you can see that it's not a bad job. Here's the other SMD chip installed:

So the rest should be quite easy going in comparison as they are just Rs and Cs....

All in all not a bad start to the latest exercise in extreme soldering.. not bad, egh?

It must be Christmas

Well, not much going on here; just been playing Radio and generally taking things easy.

I made a visit to the post Christmas sales and came home with a laptop which is now interfaced to the FT857 via the homebrew device I was making earlier:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.com/2011/12/three-soundcards-no-you-must-be-kidding.html

That is enabling me to leave the laptop running WSPR whilst all the other electronics are shut down - except the FT857, of course.

Very neat laptop, got one of these new fangled Intel i5 processors and is running 64bit Windows 7 - all reasonably well priced and more importantly low power consumption.

I used to leave both PCs running in the shack, but more recently have taken to shutting them down - primarily to conserve power. But now I genuinely find that the shack is rather cold in a morning so I'm turning the heat on - not much of an energy saving!

The shack is looking quite tidy right now, I've even added yet more shelves to create more space in this tardis I spend my time inside:

I need to get outside and look at the Windom antenna again:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-just-been-far-tooooo-long.html

because the SWR on the antenna is bouncing in windy conditions (again). I suspect it might just be too close to the other metal objects and when it moves around it's either touching the mast thats holding the 6m beam in the air or actually touching the antenna itself. Only time will tell.

The Geddy cat has many places he could chose to sleep; he has two proper cat beds, theres also four people beds in the house, plus a choice of sofas, chairs et cetera. He does, however, prefer to sleep on the clean washing as it waits for the ironing fairy to pop round:

Damn crazy cat!

Three Soundcards - No Problem!

Well,

following the last escapade with exploding USB soundcard devices, I purchased an alternative from a local store. This time is was a staggering £10.

I hooked it all up and everything seemed to be working fine; I made a few minor adjustments to the audio attenuation levels going into the soundcard mic input, but nothing unusual.

So now we have the shack looking like this:

And the FT-857 is happily WSPering away:

Given that its quite early on a dull winters day here in Belper, this is with the output power set at 10W:

And here, as a change from the mandatory cat picture, is my Bird of Paradise, grown by me from seed and in flower:

Fantastic, hugh?

The Shack 11/10/2010

Here is a picture of the shack on 11-10-2010.

You will see that I have a lot of test gear; this is because I do quite a bit of homebrew and am very interested in QRP operation.