AmateurRadio.com

More important things spewing forth from the interwebz:

The Ham Hijinks guys have been at it again, with this article: New Drug Aims To Get More Hams On The Air
Warning: Do Not Take These Guys Seriously, It Only Encourages Them

Chiming in on April 1st, Dan KB6NU reported that the FCC is going to reinstate the Morse Code test.

I posted an article about using UTC over at HamRadioSchool.com: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

KB9VBR has a nice article that explains the common types of antenna connectors used with ham radio.

Elliot KB0RFC has been writing some interesting stuff about D-STAR, DMR and other things digital on his blog. See his latest article: Developing a DMR / D-STAR radio

James R. Winstead, KD5OZY, of Coleman, Texas found out that sometimes the FCC does show up and bust radio amateurs that are causing problems on the air. See the ARRL article here. It always cracks me up when the FCC Engineer reports that during their station inspection, the offender’s radio is still tuned to the frequency where the problems were occurring.

Serious DXers all over the world are in severe depression after finding out that Crimea is Not a New DXCC Entity. Conspiracy Theory: the whole thing was instigated by a group of hams that believed Crimea would be a new one.

73, Bob K0NR

In this episode, we get all science crazy. Lots of fun science topics to tickle the brain are in store. Along with that, we pursue the new LTS release of Ubuntu, the disappearance of Maylasia Airlines flight MH370, and some pretty cool tunes. There’s even some ham radio content thrown in, ’cause that’s how we roll.

73 de The LHS Guys

Sarah, Evan, and I had the opportunity to go to her parents’ place for the Easter holiday weekend. Since the trip coincided with the Michigan QSO Party, I decided this might be a good test of the portability of the K2. Unfortunately, I was unable to operate much longer than a half hour but I had some fun on 40 meters and tried out N3WG’s (Pignology) HamLog for logging. Neat stuff.

Unfortunately, I must report the change of power supply did not correct my issues I had experienced with my Yaesu FT-950.  I blogged yesterday about the chain of events  which took place over the weekend and my intentions of trying another power supply in the event my main unit is going defective.  I had prepared myself for the worse case scenario and unfortunately that is what is going to happen. 

I have boxed up my FT-950 in the original box (thankfully I keep these things) and will ship it out today.  In an earlier telephone conversation with the Yaesu amateur service dept. I should expect a 10 day (or less) turnaround.  As for repair costs, Yaesu charges $35.00 just to look at the radio and then $70.00 per hour labor.   I’ll keep you posted.

I would like to just thank those who reached out to me via email and posted comments with suggestions of things to try.  I’m fairly confident I’ve exhausted all options I’m capable of performing (or feel comfortable performing) on the 950 and all results remain the same.  Something is preventing the 950 from operating at full power on 10 – 20 meters and zero power output on 30 – 160 meters. 

Meanwhile, the 2014 QSO a day challenge does continue.  I still have access to other HF rigs and will do my best to limp along working mostly digital modes and a few SSB QSO’s here and there.  Based on the expected turnaround time from Yaesu, my 950 should be back in the shack well before I’m scheduled to operate W1AW/Ø the week of 21 May.

Until next time…

73 de KDØBIK

Ik heb inmiddels de petitie ondertekend.

In this episode of Linux in the Ham Shack, Pete goes AWOL. While he’s out being dishonorably discharged, Harrison and Cheryl step in to fill his medium-sized shoes. We also get an interview with Bob, W9YA, current maintainer of YFKTest. He tells us all about the new and exciting world of YFKTest and how it’s not, in fact, dead.

73 de The LHS Guys

I thought i would share a quick update on my WSPR experiments at home. My initial setup of the WSPR included what I though was quite a healthy heartbeat from the GPS module. In fact this was incorrect, i had the Serial Data and PPS lines crossed and the U3 thought the Data was the PPS signal. hence why the recalibration sent the Reference oscillator wildly off course.

Now fixed, i don’t have a heartbeat coming from the module, but thats because the GPS module is too close to the U3 and also there is a lack of pull up resistors between the 3.3v and TX pins. both these issues I will fix this week

Another point and is based upon many questions i am getting about the module is what antenna am I running. Well its simple Im using my main shack antenna – this being the MQ26-SR. With the calculated output of the WSPR module(288mW) and the ERP figures of the antenna (6dB), the grand ERP will be about 1.1W-ERP

This 1.1W ERP would account for how well the little module is doing. I have since corrected the DDS instability, by adding a heatSink, only the clock update and calibration need sorting – these both will be corrected when I sort out the GPS module.

This map shows a 8 hour transmission period, transmitting once every 4 minutes. No calibration is done as the GPS module is disconnected. I manually set the Reference oscillator by transmitting a 14Mhz signal and measuring the output on the Oscilloscope. I made the change to the oscillator by making adding the difference to the Ref. Oscillator of how much it was off by. (in my case just 163Hz)

Anyway here is a quick tour around the unit. This video was taken and made before I realised i had the GPS wired up wrong, and before I corrected the instability of the DDS module.