AmateurRadio.com

Our view of Toronto

In the livingroom

We are  in our new place and have been for some time now also it is beginning to feel like home! I have a room dedicated to my rollmop desk with my radio equipment in it which was better than the last setup where the desk was basically in the living room. By way of an update we are still in a condo but have moved 10 floors up (now on 16) in the same condo but a 2 bedroom 2 bath which is great. The "odd" issue I have been having is my MFJ 1788 mag loop has a very poor SWR when on the balcony of the new place. The best SWR I can get is 1.6:1 and thats it, I have tried moving it all over the balcony but  the SWR just gets worse. The balcony at the old place is basically the same size as the new one. The difference is the old balcony was a 1/2 circle and the new one is  rectangle. I brought the antenna into the living room and took it apart just to check and make sure the move did not damage it. All was well with the antenna and the next odd thing is from the living room on two chairs the SWR is perfect! Very less than ideal conditions and all is good with the MFJ loop. I also have the Chameleon CHA P loop and I put that on the balcony and it tunes to a flat SWR. This issue with this antenna is it has to be manually tuned as were the MFJ mag loop can be done from the warmth of my room.
I was able to run coax along the wall in such a way that it's not noticeable and out to our balcony. I took advantage of a persian carpet runner in the hallway to hide the coax. I then used Comet CTC 50M to get the coax outside. At the old place I was able to leave the MFJ antenna on the balcony but were we are not at times the wind that comes off lake Ontario is crazy so it's indoors.....not that it matters as the SWR is very poor. In the next post an update on my Sun SDRpro 2 rig.

It has been some time since I have posted but it has been very busy out this way as we are moving. It has been packing, packing and more of the same!! The move is underway  so I'm looking at 2-3 weeks before VE3WDM is back up and running. We are still in a condo but the good news is we are 100 feet higher with a clear east/north east exposure.
See you soon once all the unpacking is done.

To get the rig up and going it's not like most dial and knob rigs were you plug it in, turn it on and start spinning the VFO. This as most SDR rigs there has to be a talking relationship with the rig and PC. Lets start with the PC because there is going to be software on your PC that the SDR rig will have to communicate with and to do it well your PC should meet certain spec's.

My new adventure arrives

  IARU contest was in full swing and I felt it was a great time to see if my I.P. address both static and dynamic as well as the good old Subnet mask was going to bring me joy! I started the PC and with the pushing of a few buttons I was up and going. I am the proud owner of a new Expert Electronics SunSDR2 Pro. So the cat is out of the bag as some had already guessed my new adventure is SDR radio. For real VFO spinning and button pushing I still have my Elecraft KX3.  Expert Electronics has currently 4 transceivers, the MB1, SunSDR2 Pro, SunSDR2 and SunSDR2 QRP. I chose the SunSDR2 Pro for a few reasons first being the MB1 was way out of my price range. I wanted a bit more than QRP power so the SunSDR2 QRP was out of the question. The U.S dealer is NSI communications and on their site the SunSDR2 Pro was on sale as well! I order the rig and it took about a week to make it up to me in Canada. Before it was shipped Yuri from NSI communications called me just to let me know if there was any issues with setup to call him. He also advised me to download and start reading the manuals.

The SDR radio is a learning experience for me and I’m sure it is going to be the way of the future and I’m a slow learner so I wanted to get on the wagon soon. I “tried” to set the radio up on my own to have it communicate with my PC and it just went from bad to worse. I had to get the rig to communicate with my PC via the Ethernet card. I have two Ethernet cards and was getting them intermixed until I was lost. I didn’t want to get frustrated as this is a huge learning curve BUT I did give in to emailing Yuri about my situation. He promptly called me and set up a time to use Team viewer and take over my PC to figure out the issue. Within 15 minutes he had my PC and SDR radio “talking” with each other.

SunSDR2 pro

The SunSDR2 Pro tops out at 20 watts and includes VHF and a lot more that you can read about from this LINK. As I was saying at the start of this post the IARU contest was on this weekend and I threw my SDR rig into the action. This contest gave me an opportunity to see how the receiver stacked up on a busy band. I was impressed and very much enjoyed using the second independent receiver/transmitter.
I was not an active participant in the contest I was there to see how the receiver preformed. Next I want to get my contest software and logging software on board with the SDR radio. Some draw backs I have found with this rig is.....at this point in time there is no QSK and there is no one button split operation. For split it involves a few button pushes. I have been told and read on the forum that these issues are known and solutions are being worked on.

Using the 2  receivers

At times it did not go as anticipated

The fun begins

All I can say is the adventure continues..........my first stop on this journey is going well beyond the left/right mouse clicking, seeing messages on the PC that say "are you sure you want to save these changes" and finally finding out the hard way that I should never had saved the changes!! The best way I can explain this part of the adventure is.......when I am building  Ikea furniture and at one point things are just not fitting together. You find the reason is because 10 or so steps prevues you either  forgot a part, placed it in backwards or put the wrong part on. To correct this you have to disassemble to 10 steps back and correct the issue. With the PC it's easy to see things are not working as they should or as they used to be BUT ITS THE GETTING BACK PART!!
At this point (don't get me wrong I'm still having a blast) I am learning about all about static IP address, Dynamic IP address, just plan old IP address and finally Subnet mask. Oh and believe me I never knew how fast things can go wrong if your not really sure about these settings and the numbers you place in set empty spaces.

The numbers game begins

The post office delivered my change of direction this week. I’m very excited as this is going to be a 180 degree turn for me. This may sound odd but this box contains something that at times will frustrate me, take me in a direction I have never been before, expand both my  knowledge and skill and I hope as I will be retiring next year keep me amused and occupied for years to come. Below is a picture  the weller soldering iron preping some cable with Anderson power pole connectors........hmmmmm how on earth does Anderson power pole connectors fit in with my 180 degree turn?????

I decided to put my Elecraft K3, Elecraft P3  , K-pod and LP-Pan up for sale!! It may sound odd but I was very close to the K3 and it served me very well. The support at Elecraft is amazing along with many rig software updates. The gear was sold one piece at a time. First it was the LP Pan that was sold and soon after the Elecraft P3 was sold and then the K-pod was gone. Just today the Elecraft K3 was shipped out. What is left is a vacant spot on the left side of the radio desk.........hmmmm is it still called a radio desk with no radio??? Why this drastic move you ask.....well the solar cycle is at a low, I do have some real challenges in the condo with a compromised antenna and when I looked over at the roll top desk that used to hold the K3 I just was not moved to go and turn it on. I came to the conclusion I needed a new challenge, something to give my learning curve a challenge. So what am I off to next.........stay tuned to find out!