AmateurRadio.com

I installed a four port RS-232 serial card in my shack PC today. When I bought the computer earlier in the year I purchased and installed a two port serial card, thinking that would be enough. But it wasn’t. You can never have enough serial ports if you want to interface with radios. With four, I can now have CAT control of both the K2 and the K3, the TNC connection to the Kenwood TM-D710 and one more which is currently controlling the PTT of the FT-817 for the EchoLink node but could be used for the control port of the Kenwood if I ever decided to use that for EchoLink. No more hassles with USB to serial adapters, and all my USB ports are free for things like sound cards. I don’t know why people use laptops for shack computers, they provide far fewer options.

Needless to say, things did not go as smoothly as they could have done. I thought I could have COM2 for the K2, COM3 for the K3 which would be easy to remember. But Windows gave the ports the designators COM3, 4, 10 and 11. There’s an option to reassign the port numbers but Windows claimed that everything from COM2 to COM9 was in use. By what, was my unanswered question.

In the end I decided to name the ports COM2 through COM5 as I wanted regardless of Windows’ protestations. They did work, but finding out which port was which was a matter of attaching a radio to one socket, loading a program and trying all possible COM port numbers until it worked, as there was no logical correspondence between the numbering and the sockets on the back of the computer. Who said it was meant to be easy anyway?

Despite all this I managed to make a few contacts using JT65A on 20m including DU1GM, N0OB and K1CF, using 25W to the dipole.

Although I now have computer control of the K2 I don’t have a sound card interface as I have cracked open the plastic case of the USB audio dongle and superglued the bottom half containing the PCB to the stripboard on which I will be building my homebrew SignaLink clone. Of course, now I have a serial cable connection between the computer and the K2 I don’t need a VOX controlled interface, never mind an isolated one because the serial cable will bypass the isolation anyway!

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Anyone else seeing this diabolical interference on 20m?

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

I’m not exactly a fan of Flash in websites but I think you’ll agree that that this example from the home page of the Dutch store HEMA is very amusing. When the page opens, don’t click on anything, just wait…

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

David Rowe, VK5DGR, is working on Codec2, an open source low rate speech codec that is intended to replace the proprietary AMBE vocoder in D-STAR.  Bruce Perens, K6BP, discusses the Codec2 project here, and further information from VK5DGR is here.

If you missed it, I discussed the issues with proprietary technology and D-STAR here, here, and here.

If you believe open source technologies are crucial to amateur radio, please donate to the Codec 2 project.  Paypal donations are accepted.

David Rowe, VK5DGR, is working on Codec2, an open source low rate speech codec that is intended to replace the proprietary AMBE vocoder in D-STAR.  Bruce Perens, K6BP, discusses the Codec2 project here, and further information from VK5DGR is here.

If you missed it, I discussed the issues with proprietary technology and D-STAR here, here, and here.

If you believe open source technologies are crucial to amateur radio, please donate to the Codec 2 project.  Paypal donations are accepted.
Anthony Good, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Pennsylvania, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Julian G4ILO has an interesting post about using W6CQZ’s JT65-HF software.

“One of the features of JT65-HF is that it automatically links in to the PSK Reporter network so you can see all the stations you heard on a map and, even more interestingly, all those that heard you.”

In 20 minutes on 20m at 5W he managed to be heard twice on the west coast of N America under S9 noise condx. Julian says he can understand “why the mode is so popular, even addictive”.

More info on JT65 from HFLINK. “JT65A is a weak signal digital QSO mode.
JT65A is normally used on HF and 6 meter bands.” Also not to be missed are The Complete Bozo’s Guide to HF JT65A (a work in progress) by Andy K3UK and the ‘smart person’s guide’ to the mother mode WSJT.

Stephen Rapley, VK2RH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New South Wales, Australia. Contact him at [email protected].

Interesting update on IK1ZYW Labs on project to achieve remote control of the FT817. Also a pointer to an interesting page on FT817 Accessories, the external keypad project (circuit, manual & firmware available as well as various configurations of components including reprogrammed and tested chip ATtiny2313-20PU, xtal and 4×4 keypad) and the remote display project (pages under construction).

From the external keyboard info:

“…are you tired of hunting needed functions through F+Sel+A/B/C combinations? Do you want to improve your on-the-air proficiency? You can’t help but always press more keys at a time? Or always retouch the frequency when pushing the F button? An external keypad will let you re-discover the joy of QRPing with the FT-817(ND).

The IK1ZYW Keypad for FT-817(ND) is a wired partial remote control for the little Yaesu transceiver. It was conceived during a 6-hour field session at 2700 m.a.s.l. for a VHF contest in August 2008…”

Stephen Rapley, VK2RH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New South Wales, Australia. Contact him at [email protected].