AmateurRadio.com

Or….how I almost ruined my own birthday present.

I had it planned so well: on Friday night I put in all the resistors and capacitors on the Opentracker+ PCB. On Saturday I soldered them on, then put in the other components and soldered them on too. Did a pretty good job, with neat soldering joints. Then last were the two DB-9 connectors. Piece of cake, until I decided to hook the cables up: Bugger! I had switched the male and female DB-9 connectors, so I couldn’t hook up anything!

An hour, a meter of soldering wick and some strong words spoken to myself later they were off. Have I ever mentioned that I don’t like double sided PCBs? No? Well, here it is: I DON’T LIKE DOUBLE SIDED PCBs!!! From a designers point of view I can understand that double sided or multi-layered PCBs are easier to work with and much more efficient. But from a tinker’s point of view they are horrible if you want to (ex)change some components. I noticed that too with the Hi-Per Mite PCB which I made last time.

And yes, I did damage the PCB a bit when removing the connectors and moreover, Murphy paid a visit because it was the most important connection on the data side of the board. After I had figured that one out I carefully soldered a by-pass and I had communication going on between the tracker and my PC. (The Opentracker software is running under Wine on Linux and had no problems with my KeySpan USB-to-serial adapter). The new Baofeng UV-5R was connected to the laptop running Xastir and my other HT, a Kenwood TH-F7E was connected to the tracker. And guess what? It worked! The GPS module found a satellite signal and tracker happily broadcast it to the world, telling it where BX2ABT was located at Sunday afternoon. It was a small world, because I was only running 50 milli-Watts, so the only one who heard it was myself.

But that doesn’t matter. The first steps of BX2ABT on the APRS path are a success and soon Taiwan will have another APRS beacon to track.

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time.

Paul Simon – Have a Good Time

It’s become a tradition that I play this song on May 31st. I did so every year, since I discovered the great Paul Simon. Just a reflection on my own life and every year the song seems to describe exactly how my life is going: it’s a mess, but I’m having a good time.

I make my own good time and so I was good to myself this year. I ordered an Argents Data Systems APRS kit, because I’ve been longing to do something with APRS for a long time now. I’ve already had some success with Xastir and SoundModem decoding APRS signals on my laptop, so I’m good to go now.

My wife was good to me, too, because she brought a Baofeng UV-5R back from China. Even cheaper than the export model, with a cute Chinese lady inside and a lousy Chinese manual. In China they use simplified characters, but also the use and translation of foreign phrases and words is different than in Taiwan. So over here in Taiwan we translate “menu” as 功能表 or “Function List”. Makes sense, right? In China they translate it literally: 菜單 or “Dish/Vegetable List”, like in the different dishes listed on the menu of a restaurant.

Enough has already been written on the Baofeng UV-5R. I can only add the following: “What an ugly looking thing!” The designer should be subjected to some serious Chinese torture. Not that we Westerners don’t mess up every now and then. When having the HT in my hand I constantly had to think of this beauty made by the French truck maker Renault.Maybe theses things are for “manly men” and I’m not man enough to appreciate this kind of design.

Anyway, I am also going to make my foray into the SDR world, because my lovely wife also brought back an DVB-T USB Television stick with a RealTek RTL2832U inside. There has been a lot of talk about these sticks lately and for only US$11 is it worth a try. I’ll keep you posted, but for now I only tried the TV reception (great) and DAB radio stations (non what-so-ever in Taiwan! It seems FM radio is here to stay for a long time).

Together with the other projects that are under way I will have a busy summer holiday.

I finally managed to record some video, with my Canon SX-230, of the Hi-Per Mite Active Audio CW Filter. I had to delay filming by a week due to sinusitis, but this turned out for the best since the WPX yielded enough signals to show what this filter can do. I am more than happy with it and it is going to be a permanent part of my set up. Thanks to Larry (W2LJ) for mentioning this great filter here on this site. The only thing left is to find a case to build it in. This coming Saturday we are going up north to Taipei, so ample opportunity to get one. Enjoy the video.

Hello all. Have you read all those wonderful quality articles I wrote for AmateurRadio.com lately? I guess not, because they are all still in my head and you will probably never be able to read them. Utter lack of energy due to the new teaching schedule was the main culprit. By the time work was done, the kids and the house taken care of, I was usually too tired to even switch on the rig, let alone write something worthwhile reading. Not that I totally abandoned radio, but have you ever tried a Morse code QSO when you are tired? It doesn’t work, believe me. I guess we’ve all been there, or will be (again).

My father’s passing away also added some stress and despair, but I know it a phase and that this will pass in time. May 16th would have been his birthday and after I phoned my mother I went to my shack (a.k.a. office, work shop and storage room) and out of habit switched on my TS-440S. Only J-stations in CW, so I went to the RTTY hang-out on 15 meters. That turned out to be a good choice: first of all I am an ex-army telex operator, so RTTY always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Secondly I saw XV2W on the waterfall. He is a rag chew buddy who visits his family in Vietnam every year and I only caught him once up till now. So I called him and we did have a very nice QSO as usual, even though our signal path wasn’t the best.

After talking to my wife on the phone (away on business, again) and putting the kids to bed I returned to the radio, which was still tuned to 15 meters around 21.084 kHz. There were quite a few RTTY signals around which is unusual, because RTTY is not so popular here in East Asia. When I checked one of the signals out I found it to be a ham from the eastern parts of the States. Propagation wise that is weird, because 15 meters in early evening is usually for local Asian or European contacts. But I wasn’t complaining because the eastern USA is usually hard to work, especially with strong and decent signals. For a change I started calling CQ and within an hour I had worked stations from Mississippi, Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas all with good signals. Feels good to do RTTY again and work some real DX. I wonder if it was some sort of ionospheric duct, because after the last US station faded out I heard the usual bunch of Ukrainian and Russian stations coming up. Very interesting.

Yesterday I also took delivery of the Hi-Per-Mite CW filter. It looks very good, especially the PCB: quality stuff. I think I can get it assembled this weekend as it doesn’t look too complicated. The one thing I am still contemplating is whether or not to change the centre frequency of the bandpass from 700 to 800 Hz in order to better match my Kenwood rigs.

The handsome man in this photo is my father, the little one me. It was 1967 and he introduced me to this little magic box full of sound called radio. I guess the bug bit me then. His passion was photography and art, not electronics, because that was his 9-to-5 job.

But he always supported me in my endeavours and taught me so much. The Weller soldering station he used for so long is sitting proudly on my desk, now being used by me. He was the best father I could have wished for.

He is with the angels now, without pain, without frustration. I am sad, but I am glad. Thanks dad, for everything.

I didn’t make a single QSO on Saturday. We had to go to my principle’s wedding in Taizhong and when we came home the radio only made a lot of noise with very few signals around. The K-index was 4 if I remember correctly, so that explains it a bit. Instead I heated up the old Weller and I finished another part of my audio filter. A Saturday night well spent.

Sunday was a different story. I hadn’t planned on participating in the ARRL contest, but there were so many signals on 15 meters from the States that it was impossible not to log some new prefixes for the FISTS 25th Anniversary Prefixes award. I spent an hour in the morning and logged 13 stations.

There was no FEA net at 0800, so I logged E73W (new country for me) and then took down the Cobweb. It was making too much noise in the wind and I need to get the wire tension fixed anyway. I put up the 10 meter vertical again and what a difference that makes! The higher bands were suffering from local noise but 40 meters was brimming with stations and even with the attenuator switched on they were still booming in. Nothing like a good vertical for 40 meters. 80 meters and 160 meters only yielded Asian stations, so back to 40 and in the course of the evening I spent – altogether – an hour logging another 11 stations from North America. In the end I counted the following 16 new prefixes for my award:

K0, KV0 / N2 / K5 / AA6, K6, KA6, N6, W6 / K7, N7, NJ7, NK7, VE7, WA7 / N9. All of them from the Western part of NA.

Add to that the E73 prefix and I didn’t do so bad at all this weekend: my score went up almost 7%. More important: my CW skills improved again, especially the rapid taking of call signs. I know there are “apps” for practising Morse code, but the best practice is still on air. Only 152 prefixes to go.

Two days ago we still had 10 degrees Celsius and rain. Sunday saw 24 degrees and sun. So what better to do than cleaning the Spiderbeam pole. WD40 sure made it shine again.