AmateurRadio.com

 While taking part of my morning brew I noticed an issue with my blog. I have a list of the blogs that I follow and blogger calls it a blog list gadget. The little squares beside each of the blogs I follow is supposed to be a solid color and it is not. That is not a big deal but at the bottom of the blog list is a link that says "Show all". Now when I click on it the remainder of the followed blogs do not appear, nothing happens. I tried it both on my Windows and Mac pc with the same results. The max blogs you can show it 10 that you follow. When the Show all link is clicked the rest of the followed blogs should appear. I went to the gadget and played around with different settings and nothing was successful. I then went to AE5X blog  who has the same setup for followers as mine. His too the squares were not a solid color and the link at the bottom of the blog list did not work either. Now I am not sure if it is just an issue here or if it is wide spread across all blogger blogs? If you have a blogger blog with this gadget give it a try, give the link on my blog a try at your end and if this is a wide spread issue does anyone have a fix. 

Next up is my Python script for shutting down my contest station. That probably makes it sound like I’m running some massive, high-end operation—but in reality, I just really like things to work smoothly. I find it incredibly handy to simply double-click a Python shutdown icon on my desktop and have everything taken care of automatically. Some might call that lazy, overly dependent on a PC, or a bit geeky. I prefer the last option, and I’m fairly certain my dear wife would agree.

The reason I use a Python script for shutting the station down is the same reason I use one for startup: everything shuts down in the proper order. The shutdown process is essentially the reverse of the startup sequence, with a few hiccups that required some creative workarounds.

One issue was that certain applications—Win4Icom in particular—take noticeably longer to shut down than they do to start up, so I had to extend some of the timing in the script to allow for a clean exit. Another problem was that Win4Icom was not shutting down my Icom 7610 as it’s supposed to. As a result, the radio was staying powered on until the Wi-Fi plug turned off, cutting power to the supply and abruptly killing the radio. That obviously doesn’t allow for a proper shutdown sequence.

In the video, you’ll see that the Icom 7610 now shuts down cleanly at the very end of the shutdown process. I accomplished this by adding Python code that sends the appropriate Icom HEX command to power down the radio correctly.

I have been working on some Python scripts to automate tasks that I would rather not do manually. The video above shows my contest station powering up from start to finish.

Why do this, you ask? The part of the amateur radio hobby that really interests me is CW contesting. Now that I am retired, I take part in four weekly one-hour “mini” contests and, in an average month, I spend two or three weekends CW contesting as well.

The programs I use need to be started in a specific order. For example, I must start my virtual port program (VSPE) first, and then start the radio and contest programs in a certain sequence. If this order is not followed, I get flooded with error messages.

Some say I over complicate things, but I am somewhat of a perfectionist and like everything set up just so. Python lets me achieve that with a single mouse click. There has been some fine-tuning of the Python code along the way. For example, my radio control program Win4Icom is delivered as a complete new program with each update, rather than as an add-on to the original, as the N1MM+ contesting program does. Because of this, I wrote the script for Win4Icom so that it always checks for and runs the highest revision number of the program; otherwise, it would just continue to load the same old version.

I also had to introduce delays between the startup of some programs. After VSPE starts, I delay Win4Icom by five seconds, because VSPE is still initializing in the background and Win4Icom would otherwise throw errors. I also added a step to minimize VSPE to the taskbar once it starts, so it does not sit on the screen. As Win4Icom starts, I added a 10-second delay while it powers up my Icom 7610 and sets up the COM port configurations for N1MM+. I found N1MM+ needs to wait for those steps to complete before it begins its own startup. Finally Reverse Beacon Network web page is setup to open with my call sign showing spots where it is heard. 

 Here's the sequence shown in the YouTube video:

• WiFi smart plug powers on.

• Astron power supply powers on seen in the lower left corner .

• Raspberry Pi 4B boots (red power LED visible on desk), launching HamClock.

• VSPE starts and minimizes to taskbar.

• Win4Icom launches, powering on the Icom 7610.

• Reverse Beacon Network loads/refreshes as HamClock continues to load.

• N1MM+ Logger starts.

Next up: Python shutdown scripting (with its own challenges). I'm also 3/4 through a script to generate ADIF file of contest contacts that exports and auto-upload to N3FJP, Club Log, LoTW, CWops, and QRZ.com. Stay tuned!

The January NAQP is always a contest I look forward to. It starts at 2:00 PM local time, and my plan was to operate for about eight hours of the ten-hour event. This contest is always well attended, and with the maximum power limited to 100 watts, everyone is on a level playing field.

As always, I reviewed the previous year’s results, the bands I used and when, and my balance between running and search-and-pounce. Last year, 10 through 40 meters were all open and I made good use of those bands. This year was quite different — 10 meters was poor and I spent only a short time there. The best band turned out to be 20 meters, followed by 15 meters and then 40 meters. I knew going in that solar conditions were not going to be as favorable as last year.

The contest started off a bit slow, and I initially wondered if many operators had seen the predicted solar conditions and decided to sit this one out. Like last year, I spent about 95% of the contest running, and things did begin to pick up later in the afternoon. My highest hourly rate was 115 contacts, and three hours in, it was time for dinner. I was very pleased to have logged 300 contacts by that point.

After dinner, however, that’s when things really went downhill. Before the break, the Kp index had been holding steady at 3 and the Bz index was around −6 to −8. After dinner, the Kp jumped to 6 and the Bz index dropped as low as −19. I was wrapping up my time on 20 meters and transitioning to 40 meters as evening set in, but under these new solar conditions my hourly rate dropped from around 100 contacts to barely 25.

The deteriorating band conditions brought severe QSB  stations would be there one moment and completely gone the next. The combination of high Kp and strongly negative Bz also made CW signals sound as though they were gurgling underwater. Given these conditions, I decided to pull the plug at 8:00 PM local time and call it a day.