AmateurRadio.com

Elie, OD5KU

Just as I was finishing writing my previous post I heard someone else calling on the 20m DV frequency. It was Elie, OD5KU. Yesterday I had heard him working a French and then a Dutch station but signals were weak and not good copy at all.

I replied to Elie but he couldn’t make out my call. I tried several times and was about to give up when he called again with solid copy. Perhaps he had turned his beam my way. I tried calling one more time. This time he heard my reply and we had a good QSO with several periods of solid copy punctuated by occasional break-ups. These occurred when QSB took the digital signal down to near-invisibility in the FreeDV waterfall. I doubt that good SSB copy would have been possible at those times either.

I managed to make a recording of the end of this QSO so you can get an idea of the audio quality. It was recorded off-air using my Olympus digital voice recorder, then played back using the mic input of the USB sound dongle to make an MP3 file. Given the way it was created I think the clip is quite a good example of the FreeDV audio quality. As you’d expect from a digital signal either it’s all there or you just get gobbledygook. It doesn’t degrade gracefully.

Is this the future of ham radio? Have a listen and let me know what you think.

I may have mentioned more than once that we live in a rather small apartment.  It’s the upstairs of a cape-cod-style home, which is shoe-horned onto a tiny corner lot.  The only trees are 4 old silver maples (often called swamp maples) scattered around the

Silver Maple (from Cornell)

front and side yards.  The maple directly opposite the window where my equipment resides is not very healthy.  This has both benefits and hindrances.  On the negative side, we have to watch the cars, because it rains tree limbs in windstorms.  On the plus side however, it makes it easy to shoot wires into the sturdier parts of the tree, and once a year, I get the most amazing crop of maitake mushrooms growing around the base (easily 12-15 pounds of them).  I’ve mentioned to the landlord that the whole thing will come down in the next superstorm we get, but he seems content to have it stand there for now, threatening the house and any cars parked in the vicinity.  For now, I decided to take advantage of the accessibly to the higher branches.

I threw a length of 16 ga wire up into the tree about a month or so ago, and connected the other end to my MFJ 941-D tuner.  I estimate the wire to be around 38 feet.  With this setup I have been able to tune up well on 20M and OK on 40M and 10M.  My holiday present from KD2CHE this year was an old Atlas 210X, in excellent operating condition.  This setup got me contacts in Florida, Michigan, Maine, Manitoba, Missouri, and Puerto Rico.  The morning after the crazy windstorm this past week, I was amazed to see that the random wire was still up.  That day however, the winds continued, and when I got home I discovered that Mother Nature seems to think that the best type of antenna for me is an inverted-L.  One of the smaller limbs that I had managed to throw the chunk of wood I tied the far end of the wire to, had snapped in the storm, but the wire simply dropped through the tangle of remaining branches, and now dangled about 8 feet off of the ground.

I had planned on fixing, and improving on this over this past weekend, but before I did, my son and I fired up the Atlas on Saturday morning.  The wind mod seemed to actually improve my performance on 10M, and had no effect on 20M.  I made contacts with Belgium, and Serbia on 20M, and started getting lots of 10M contacts from the Southwest, and one from Washington State.  Since it was the 10-10 Winter SSB contest weekend, I got my required 10 contacts easily, and joined 10-10 (76641).

I don’t want to put up anything more elaborate at this place.  With the resources available, and an antenna-phobic landlord, this is about as far as I can go.  Also, if all goes well, we won’t be there much longer.  The next place will have to be antenna-friendly.  I spent some time Sunday re-stringing the wire (now about 60 feet) through the old maple, and now over to a second maple at the end of our driveway.  A quick test showed it was still working, and got 2 more contacts in the Southwest.

Ham Radio on a Shoestring, While Living in a Shoebox.  Does that sound like a good book-title?

73 – W2NDG

I was in the shack, messing about with ferrite rods trying to replicate Roger G3XBM’s success using a ferrite rod as a transmit antenna. Meanwhile I was monitoring 14.236MHz, the 20m digital voice calling frequency.

Some audio came through the PC speakers. I didn’t catch what it was, but the callsign OZ1BXN appeared below the DV application waterfall. I waited, and shortly Chris called again. We completed a QSO with 100% solid copy each side. I gave Chris 5 by 8, which was the actual K3 S meter reading, and Chris gave me 5 and 9. Chris said he was running 200W peak power. I had the K3 in DATA mode with the power level set to 25W which is the recommended level to use with a 100W transceiver. Whether that results in an average or a peak power of 25W I have no idea.

Although Chris’s signal was solid copy with no dropouts the audio was rather boxy and I found it more difficult to read than a typical SSB signal. This is probably a consequence of the fact that Codec2 has been designed to use a 1.4kHz bandwidth rather than the 2.8kHz required by SSB. I can understand the thinking behind this decision but I agree with David G8JGO who commented on one of my earlier DV posts that it is a pity the codec wasn’t designed to give better than SSB fidelity within an SSB bandwidth. I think that would make the adoption of digital voice more compelling. I can see many people, particularly skeptics who can’t see the point of digital voice at all, being turned away by the audio quality. Has DV shot itself in the foot?

Having said that, Chris reported that I had very good audio. I had tweaked the equalisation built into FreeDV to give some treble emphasis and bass cut, so perhaps some adjustments are possible.

I received two e-mails, that I’d like to share – the first is from Andreas, IZ3NYT:

“Hi dr om,

I built a new beacon on 30 meters, I would like your participation, I hope you have fun. receive the signal if I’d like your QSL card.
the frequency is 10139,2 khz cw wpm 8, power 100mw.

The layout and the pictures you can see on my site http://iz3nyt.altervista.org/.

73 de Andrea IZ3NYT”

Keep a listen out for Andreas’ beacon – this would be an excellent way to know if the band is open to Europe

The second e-mail was from Blaine KØONE, pointing me towards a new Website : MorseFusion.com.  They are touting themselves as a new way to learn Morse Code:

“You begin by listening to a novel (over 20 available) spelled out in English (not in code). Then you select which letters, numbers, and punctuation marks you want to gradually start hearing in code. Proper character speed and word rate are maintained during all stages of training.”

and

“Throughout the learning process you focus your attention entirely on listening to a novel, NOT on learning Morse code. Learning takes place gradually and in the background.”

Interesting concept – but not cheap. A subscription of $19.95 per month is involved.  But, if all other methods of learning the Morse Code have failed for you, this might be something you could look into.

I have to admit, the list of novels that have is intriguing. Classics such as “Pride and Prejudice”, “Moby Dick”,  “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (had to read that in High School) and books that are a bit more fun, such as “War of the Worlds” and “Tom Swift and his Wireless Message”.

The Tom Swift and Hardy Boys books were staples of my youth.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

After the unsuccessful Christmas cumulative contest I thought I’d have another go at the UKAC 144Mhz contest. I will be portable again from one of the local hills that I can get access to easily from the car and without having to drive for miles. I better sort that out tomorrow before its too late. Last time I operated from a farm track near a water pumping station with enough metal furniture around to ‘help’ propagation no end. Its a toss up between there and somewhere near Whitehaven that is just as quick to get to. Lets hope its not as cold as last time.

I spent all of Saturday monitoring the FreeDV suggested frequencies but so far I haven’t heard a thing. I am really surprised. Whenever a new data mode is announced the main problem is usually QRM as too many people pile eagerly on to the recommended frequencies. FreeDV is a development that is potentially as revolutionary for the hobby as the advent of SSB in the 1960s. I would have thought that more hams would want to be in at the start, especially as there is no cost apart from the time taken downloading the software.

Perhaps people just don’t know where to go. Since my last post I have discovered the FreeDV QSO Finder. This is a tool to enable potential users of FreeDV to find out where others are. Suggested frequencies are: 14.236, 7.190 and 5.4035, though I’ve seen people using other frequencies. This weekend’s contest will probably put the kibosh on attempts to set up contacts for now, but I hope for better luck next week when the bands are quieter.