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It has been reported on some sites that the T32C team donated some equipment to Tov, T32TV. That is the real ham spirit and if every DXpedition could do that there would be a lot less “most wanted” DXCC entities.

I have been busy with work and kids lately, so I need my sleep and try to catch as much as possible of it. So why does my daughter have to wake me at 06:00 local time Saturday to go to the toilet? She’s almost 6 and more capable than most other kids her age. Gave me an opportunity to sit behind the set, with the rising sun warming up my face. Even though 10 meters is not my favourite band I did check it out. Guess who was calling CQ? Right, T32TV. He wasn’t strong, but very willing to have a real QSO with me and surprisingly I was the only one answering him. I worked T32C, so Christmas Island isn’t a new DXCC entity for me, but QSO’s like the one with Tov are infinitely better.

The other fun thing that I did – before my battery died on me – was a QSO with Frank W7PAQ. With the rise in sunspots you sometimes stumble upon a “local” QSO that travels half around the world. Well, Frank was having a PSK31 QSO with a fellow American ham. So when that ended I called him. Frank really surprised, but pleasantly. We had rag chew DX session, because signals weren’t a 100%, but we kept it up for 10 minutes before Frank had to QSY to a local net. These QSO’s make me walk around with a smile for at least half a day.

Charging the batteries for Sunday morning now. 73 de Hans

Welcome to Handiham World.

Image: Here I am recording AMSAT Journal. I find that using a USB headset with boom microphone gives the most consistent audio quality because you can maintain an exact distance between your mouth and the microphone. It is also more comfortable and allows you to use both hands to hold any print material you may be reading from or using as a reference. All recording is done digitally using the open-source software Audacity, which runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac.  For insight into recording digitally, see the “With the Handihams” article in an upcoming issue of Worldradio Online.  The headset pictured here is a Plantronics brand, but I don’t have the model number.  It was one recommended for voice dictation by Nuance, the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking®.

This edition of your weekly e-letter is a little bit early because I must be out of the office all day Wednesday for a meeting. I’ve noticed that the ARRL Letter sometimes has to shift its schedule around a little bit and occasionally there will be no audio version. Sometimes it is necessary for staff to have days off or take care of other office duties, and recording a newsletter is a specialized job only certain staff can complete.  

I‘ve been busy to set up to 84m horizontal loop again today. The XYL was not too happy with this. First it is a ugly thing in her garden and second we are still busy to finalize building the new bathroom and I should have spend time for that too. But then, the PA-beker contest is only this weekend, the bathroom is still there next week. It’s  always a struggle to divide time between so many things especially when you got a hobby. Well, I always thought the militairy glasfiber mastparts I have to build the supporting poles of the loop antenne would be unbreakable. But the first mast snapped when I tried to get it up. Anyway, I got some spares and the next one did hold it. The loop is up again. Now, a test on 80m didn’t work out, I called several times but no one replied. I heard PA0PSA and YT2SS calling but they didn’t hear me. So I switched to 40m, a  few calls to 9A6DX and we had a nice chat. Report 5/5 with 5W into the loop is not that bad. A quick modulation report guide me to another setting of the Turner +3B mike I now have connected to the Yaesu. I hope I’m ready for tomorrows PA-beker contest.

N1MM on the right VFO B…

Well I decided to use N1MM for the upcoming PA-beker contest event. So first thing of all the preparations I have to do before I’m ready is to connect the FT817 to N1MM. That is done by the famous ZLP modem I described earlier in my blog. The problem only is that my laptop assigned the modem to virtual COM port 11. First problem, N1MM only knows 8 COM port assignments. Luckely someone had encountered that problem before and to solve this you only have to follow the N1MM help document on this subject. Once it was solved I had the FT817 communicating with N1MM. Next problem is that N1MM only reads VFO A, VFO B shows 0,00 MHz even when I switch to VFO B this does not change. I asked for a solution in some internet forums and discussed the problem with PE2KM who has a FT817 as well. Kees tried the same set up with his radio and has exactly the same issue I have. Now I’m in contact with one of the programmers I think on the N1MMlogger yahoogroup to see if we can solve this problem as apparently Ham Radio DeLuxe does read both VFOs and I can switch between them.

HRD left VFO A, right switched to VFO B

So, after successfully fixing my TS-440S did I enjoy operating it? Not a lot – I’ll write about this later – but today very much so.

I had to come home early because our water supply was cut-off for maintenance on Sunday and it hadn’t been restored on Monday morning. Well, it had in the mean time, so I did a day’s worth of dishes and turned on the radio afterwards to relax a bit. Found some guys talking on 20 meters, so I listened in. It was a VK4 station with a V63 station talking about antenna’s for the school station. The conversation turned to how John – the V63 operator – was teaching the kids, how he brought over toothbrushes and taught the kids how to brush and how ham radio opened their world.

Now I am not really a fanatic ham and I had no idea where V63 is. So when a chance came up I called in and John – V63JB, his home call is KH6DLK – came back. I told him we had the same profession and asked him about his location, which he told me is Federai Island, Ulithi Atoll in the Western Caroline Islands, never activated on the amateur bands before. Wow, impressive. But I was really touched when he put one of his students on air to chat with an operator-friend from Hawaii a little later. This is amateur radio at its best: opening up the world and connecting people with each other.

Later a PY station called in and I believe there was also a States-side station present in the group (signal strengths weren’t great and readability difficult at times), so it was quite a diverse group from half across the globe meeting on 20 meters this afternoon. I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to John, but I hope we’ll meet again and I hope he gets his station over there in Ulithi Atoll well established for his students to enjoy. In the mean time I’m contemplating sending him some toothpaste.

Again, this is going to be a shorter version of my blogger ‘blog at http://w0fms.blogspot.com where I intend on having more random thoughts and technical detail than I post here! 🙂

I’ve purchased parts (in the US– all from Mouser for lowest overall cost except for the Analog Devices AD8346ARUZ Modulator IC– which they don’t carry) for the British Amateur Radio Club’s DigiLite “poor man’s” DVB-S SCPC modulator unit.

Almost complete BATC DigiLite DVB-S modulator board. All that is still needed is a MMIC amplifier be added after the QPSK modulator is properly adjusted with the external PLL Oscillator I am still awaiting from Israel.

The unit, as you may remember from my last post, uses an older analog Hauppage PVR-150, 250, 350, 500 and/or probably PVR-USB2 MPEG2 hardware encoder to set fixed constant bit rate (CBR) video and MP2 type CBR audio in a program stream format. This is translated to Transport Stream (TS) format for over the air transmission, Channel, EPG, and other needed DVB-S specific information is also multiplexed by the BATC software which is then sent to a DSPic33 that optionally adds the FEC (particularly at rate 1/2) and randomizes (to take out DC components because RF is inherently AC coupled!) the data– and then forms I/Q data with some pre-distortion with some tricks.. it’s filtered in a atypical way through an ANALOG LC Nyquist filter.. otherwise unfiltered PSK has infinite bandwidth! In commercial products a DSP typically would do this with a digital filter and a DAC. Finally the AD8346 does the I/Q phase shifting and that is the directly at frequency modulated DVB-S.

The LO is generated by a good e-bay find– a PLL L-band Oscillator that you can get from Ultram Tech in Israel custom programmed to one frequency. (I intend on reprogramming the unit with an Arduino [AVR ATMEGA part] board in the future– the chip’s dividers are programmed with SPI.) I have not received the board yet and didn’t want to disassemble and hack the 1152 MHz oscillator I previously bought about two years ago from Israel.

What the software and serializer firmware doesn’t do, thankfully, is care about the type of video that is in the MPEG-2 stream. I verified that tonight. The designers in the UK thought that NTSC would be fine.. and it seems to be.

Here is a video of the DigiLite “doing it’s thing” with rate 2222K video and 128K audio at a bandwidth of 3 MHz- 3MSym/S at 1/2 FEC QPSK. The video was set at NTSC D1 720×480 4:3 and I toyed with the settings until we were absolutely maxed out and were at close to zero null packets. Over the air, about 100K slower video might be a better choice. At 2112K, the null packets averaged 4.5%.. so somewhere in between these settings is about right for NTSC at 3MSym/s QPSK. This proves the digital part of the system out! We are close!

YouTube video of the BATC DigiLite running NTSC!

This is cool.. 1/2 the bandwidth and better quality than most Amateur TV. You’d think it was a no brainer for 70cm to replace 6-8 MHz AM TV? Well it is.. but in my not so humble opinion it’s not legal to run.

—SOAPBOX—
Part 97 defines that a digital phone or image (important definition) signal is legal if it uses the same or less bandwidth than the equivalent analog signal.

DVB-S and other digital standards definitely do. Unfortunately, from commercial license grants researched, I note that ATSC is C7W emission type and DVB-S/S2/C/T is G7W. Image is defined to EXCLUDE “7W” emissions. C7W and G7W are specifically defined as “multiplexed data” in another part of the rules– actually in reference to RTTY in the typical early 1980’s wording of those rules. So because DVB-S is “data” by part 97 definition, the 56K baud/100KHz BW rule applies at 70cm. In my not-so-humble-opinion it is not legal to run DVB-S nor ATSC (?!?) at 70cm because of these antiquated and wrong rules. But it is legal at 33cm and above as wideband data.

There are several who disagree with me on this. But for their definition to be valid technically by the Part 97 rules as they stand ATSC and or DVB-S would have to be G2F (DVB-S) or C2F (ATSC). By the Emissions Designator system that would also imply no audio channel. F2F is what SSTV is and I believe the “image” definition for FM/PM/PSK was specifically written with HF SSTV in mind! NO COMMERCIAL license grant (I found) has it defined that way! I can’t run 70cm DVB-S because I interpret the rules as above. Anyone who disagrees with me and wants to run it is fine with me. Wish you the best and I’m all for you! Likely the FCC nor the ARRL would do a thing to you as they shouldn’t!

What this really means is that the digital rules in US ham radio need fixing in a big way! We need to get rid of all the protectionist crap and realize that for many modes, the handwriting is on the wall for analog. The way the current rules are written in Part 97 makes most new digital modes second-class citizens on the bands. Bogus and Sad IMHO in almost-2012.

— /SOAPBOX —

Plaque I received yesterday

The CQWW SSB is as always the beginning of the small contest season for me. I did a lot of contests in the past but since family life keeps me busy I choose to participate only the important ones. Some of those are only important for me as a Dutchman like the PA-beker contest, Friese elfstedentocht contest and the PACC. I placed myself 2nd in the PA-beker and 4th in the Friese 11 steden last year and this month I’ll try to improve myself, I guess it’s going to get difficult. Next thing to do is to set up the horizontal loop again, after that I will see if there is time and room for any improvements on the station. Anyway, one thing is for shure I really want to have fun that’s the most important thing. First contest coming now is the PA-beker contest which is purely a contest inside the Netherlands, I will participate again in the QRP section with my FT-817. Only this time I will use N1MM as contestlogger instead of the PA0FLE contestlogger I used in the past. Hopefully it will help to beat my score of last year.

Last years declare:

Place / Call  / Region  / QSO  / Multiplier  /  Score

That means if I want to be at first place I need approx 120 QSO and 60 multipliers. Looks easy, but I can tell you it’s difficult to make so much QSOs in 2,5 hours especially when QRP.