AmateurRadio.com

Digital Solves All Your Problems? OK, I admit, that’s pure click-bait. In this episode I talk with Bruce Perens K6BP. Some of you may recognize that name, and maybe not have even known Bruce is a ham. Out there in the real world, Bruce is known for being one of the founders of the Open Source Software movement, and he remains an evangelist for the idea. Here in Ham Radio, he’s turned that focus to things like CODEC2, FreeDV, and the HT of the Future (put some mental reverb on that as you read it).

What we’re talking about begins with the ARRL’s FCC petition to update our rules regarding digital modes to get rid of the reference to Symbol Rate, and replace it with a simple 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit (on HF) into which you may stuff anything that’s legal… BUT, they retain the cw/data – Phone/Image distinction. I just spent a few quality minutes on Wikipedia trying (again) to understand symbol rate, and I don’t get it. But I do get bandwidth.

Our discussion progresses to more on CODEC2 (a free, open-source CODEC for high-quality, low bit-rate voice transmission), FreeDV (a free, open-source program for using CODEC2 on digital voice) and that HT (HT HT HT).

But it’s that 2.8 kHz bandwidth idea that’s got a lot of ham’s undies in a knot. The worry, as I understand it, is that with an “anything goes” 2.8 kHz digital policy, digital will proliferate across the bands, causing interference to analog modes (SSB, CW). And the analog ops won’t be able to tap the digital ops on their RF shoulder and say sri, OM, QRM, pse QSY, tnx. WinLink2000, a fairly wideband and often automated digital mail system, is frequently the focus of their displeasure, as it can tromp on a cw QSO without recognizing what it’s doing (if I understand the argument correctly, and I don’t claim that this is either a complete and correct analysis of the issue).

In the program, Bruce and I recognize the potential problem. We might not think it’s likely to be as serious as some hams think it is, and we don’t have a solution, other than to note that QRM is a fact of life. But it is something worth discussing, and I’d like to have that discussion soon on another episode of HamRadioNow. I’ve got a few suggestions on guests to talk to about it, but I’m open to more (be quick).

We think the ARRL is taking a baby step with this proposal, in that it retains what we think is an artificial distinction between bits that make text, and bits that make image and voice. But last time the ARRL tried anything like this, about 10 years ago with their “Regulation by Bandwidth” proposal (a far more sweeping plan that would have divided the bands into segments that permitted stuffing whatever fit into 200 Hz, 500 Hz, and 3 kHz bandwidths), a large part of the membership got very unhappy. They still are.

So expect the topic to come up in the near future, and periodically for a while, because this won’t have a quick fix. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to hold back progress on future modes because they may cause some trouble with our current modes.

73, Gary KN4AQ
HamRadioNow.tv

Several months ago I built an UNUN, like the one I use for my portable ops antenna, but this one was going in my attic.

I finally had time this weekend to get this thing installed in my attic.  I cut a piece of wire 30′ long for the radiator.  My shack is in the basement, and one wall is the garage wall.  So I drilled a hole at the bottom of the garage wall, and in the ceiling of the garage.

I then ran my coax from the basement up into the attic – very easy.

Then came the fun part, walking on roof trusses to get the wire installed.  Pretty easy, and luckily it is still cool outside.

Once installed I went down to the shack and hooked up the KX3 to the antenna.  It tuned up nicely on 40 thru 10 meters with the internal tuner.  So I put a quick CQ on 20 meters and was spotted coast to coast on the RBN – success!

About 11:30 pm on Sunday night I had time to get down to the shack again and see what was going on.

As soon as I turned the radio on I heard W1AW/5 (NM) calling CQ with no takers.  So I threw my call out and he came right back with one repeat on my call.  We exchanged 599 and it was fun.

I then spent about another hour messing around with FLDIGI and WSPR – with no success.  More to report on this later….these modes are all new to me, so there is a pretty big learning curve.

So now I can actually have some ham radio fun from home!

Hooked up the 137 MHz receiver to the Cubieboard on Friday night. Wxtoimg installed without a hitch, Cubian already put itself into the dialup group (necessary for serial access for ordinary users) and I was ready to go. NOAA-19‘s next pass was after midnight local time, so I went to bed. The next morning I was greeted by a rather garbled image of east Asia. Hmmm….thinking cap on. I checked the recorded audio file on another computer and it was messed up, so either Cubie can’t handle the input well or the input is not good. Back to basics and after feeding a very clean and stable 12 Volts to the receiver I had perfectly synced images. Because of recent storms I lowered the double cross dipole, so reception is not perfect. But with high passes I now can get some nice images, like this one….

Amateur Radio is lot like other areas in life. There highs and there are lows – there are valleys and there are peaks.  Often, the journey from one extreme to the other takes places within minutes of each other.

This evening, I was tooling around 10 Meters late. It was after 7:00 PM local time. The sun was already down, but sometimes – just sometimes, this is when the good ones can be heard.  Twiddling the dial, I heard a very weak BY5WJ. China!  So I turned up the power, as I’ve never worked China and started tapping out my call,  Woo hoo!  Success!  “W2LJ UR 579 TNX LARRY DE JOSH”.

Josh? In China?  Me, 579? Can’t be! Then I realized it was 6Y5WJ – not BY5WJ. It was Josh in Jamaica, and we have worked a few times before.  Obviously, being in his log, my info popped up and that’s why he answered me by name. After a few minutes, the band changed, and he became “normally loud” for what I would have expected a Jamaican station to sound like in New Jersey. So in a few seconds, I raced around the globe from the exotic Far East to the warm shores of the Caribbean.  A bit of a disappointment, to say the least (no offense, Josh!).

At that point I started switching bands. 12 Meters – not much. 15 Meters – W1AW/5 in New Mexico is coming in strong. 17 Meters – not much.  20 Meters – OK, a lot more signals than the other bands (as we all know, 20 Meters is usually open to somewhere). What’s that? VU2what?  A few more seconds of listening – it was VU2PHD, Mat in India.  Wow!  I very rarely ever hear India on the air. Still set at 75 Watts from my failed China QSO, I tapped out my call.  Holy crow – I hear “W2?” coming back. I sent out my call a few more times, following up with my suffix twice, “W2LJ W2LJ LJ LJ”.  I got a “W2LJ UR 559 QSB. UR CALL AGN?”  I immediately sent back “DE W2LJ W2LJ UR 579 579 IN NJ NJ. OP LARRY LARRY”. Or something like that, I’m so exhilarated right now, I can’t even remember the exact exchange. All I know is that this was my first QSO with the Indian sub-continent, and is only about the second or third time I have even heard them on the air! And I’m in his log!

I immediately ran over to my e-mail program to send a quick note to my buddy Bob W3BBO in Erie, PA. Bob is my friend, my DX Guru, and is the only person I actually know who is on the DXCC Honor Roll.  To my surprise he had already written me, “Did I hear what I think I heard on 20 Meters?”

I was able to answer in the affirmative and asked him how he happened to be listening. He had worked Mat earlier in the week and was going to make another attempt, as he wasn’t sure that Mat got his call correctly the first time. He had heard Mat come back to me and sent a quick e-mail to confirm. Whatever the reason, one of my best friends was on the scene to hear me work a new one. It just doesn’t get much better than that!

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

Imagine that! DMR and DSTAR on the same radio.

Take a look at this post which I found on the VE3XPR site – which is an interview with Jerry Wagner of Connect Systems.

It will be really good to see if this comes to pass.

Good luck Jerry, good luck Connect Systems!

About two months ago while I was on a business trip, my wife’s computer started to go on the fritz.  Immediately when she told me of the problem I knew what it was as her parents have the same model all-in-one Dell and it experienced the same problem six months ago.  They went through five service calls to get it fixed correctly.  The video display becomes bright and washed out, to the point where most text is unreadable and you can’t adjust the display to make it right.

For a few months I had casually been playing with a Macbook Air at work, mainly for a secondary computer.  I had vowed to family members that my days of supporting Windows for relatives is over due to the release of Windows 8 and my frustration with dealing with many of the same recurring problems of viruses and instability after 20 years of evolution of the product.  I decided to buy my wife an Apple iMac and go into uncharted territory.

We went to the Apple store Saturday morning after I got back from my trip.  We were greeted by a friendly sales guy, Steve.  He introduced himself and started getting to know us, what we do, where we live, and how much experience we had with computers.  The conversation turned to Steve Jobs and we talked about how much of a hand he had in the design of the store, right down to the selection of the floor tile and the front glass.  I usually despise conversations with salespeople at electronics stores, but this was actually quite enjoyable.

After I asked some questions about the models and capabilities, I told him the iMac model we’d like to get.  He made some taps on a little iPhone-like device and about 40 seconds later a girl popped out a hidden door in the back.  The stores are designed much like Mac laptops with hinges hidden so you can’t really tell where the door to the back area is.  She brought a box containing our iMac right where were standing.  I gave the sales guy my credit card and he used the same little device to scan the card.  “Would you like an email receipt, no paper?”  he asks.  “Sure” I reply.   I figure this is probably the end of the transaction and our visit, but he carried the computer box over to a table and stared taking it out.  This area is where customers get aquatinted and assisted with new purchases.  Steve hooked everything up and instructed us on various elements of the user interface and the major applications.  We stayed for awhile getting familiar with the iMac and after we were done, someone boxed up our machine, careful to pack it up just as it came from the factory.  We walked out the door with a box and a bag of accessories and surprisingly, no paperwork.  I’m actually sad to leave as I wanted to stay and play around with the machine more and perhaps buy some more stuff.

A few weeks passed.  My wife is doing fairly well with the iMac.  There are naturally some differences with the user interface when coming from Windows, but for the most part she’s getting through them.  I no longer hear complaints about slowness, locked applications, or how she had to do a periodic reboot again to clean things out.

I switched to a new Lenovo laptop last year after my Dell laptop display went bad.  I reformatted it entirely for Linux.  Linux was working well, and I was running Windows in a virtual machine to handle one contesting application and a few programs for my Kenwood TS-590 that only run on Windows.  The Lenovo was mediocre in my opinion.  The keyboard flexed when typing and the touchpad required way too much force to click, to the point where it fatigued my borderline carpal tunnel syndrome IT professional hands.  I struggled with wireless Linux drivers and USB operation was often an adventure.  I decided to bite the bullet and order a Macbook Pro.

The Macbook arrived about a week later.  The Retina display is amazing, though now when I look at other lower resolution displays I perceive pixels.  Transferring files over was fairly easy and I even copied the Windows virtual machine over from my old Linux box and ran it with no problems.  In full screen mode it’s funny because it runs quite nicely and acts like a native Windows operating system installation.  I later created another virtual machine and installed Linux Mint 15 on it so I could run CQRLog.  So, I have three operating systems in one.

As much as I wanted to blog about how I’ve been using Linux successfully for a year in my shack, I’m really pleased with the Mac and I think I’ve been permanently converted.  The beauty of the Mac operating system, OSX, is that it’s Unix under the hood.  It looks simple on the surface but you can dive down into the complexity if you like.  You can bring up a shell prompt, install packages, create cron jobs, etc., basically most of the stuff you do in Linux.  A lot of the open source software out there compiles for OSX.  I attempted to recompile CQRLog for OSX but was unsuccessful.  I think completing this will require some additional coding in Lazarus Object Pascal to customize a version for OSX, but it’s doable.  All in all I think you get the best of both worlds with a very user friendly interface and a Unix core.

People often complain about the cost of Apple products, especially when comparing Android devices and iPhones, but I think what one really needs to focus on is value, quality, and user experience.  There’s a level of attention to detail with Apple that you just don’t often find in other products, especially when it comes to brown box computer purchases from your local retail outlet or mail order ecommerce vendor.  Of particular interest to radio artisans, the Macbook Pro has one thing you rarely find in laptops these days — an aluminum body.  I’m curious how well the laptop performs in a high RF environment as I had problems with the USB ports resetting on the Lenovo when running 100 watts on HF.

Considering Microsoft’s insistence on discontinuing support for Windows XP, its stopping shipments of 7, the issues with Windows 8, and the maturity and popularity of alternatives, it’s a good time to convert to Linux or Mac.

Series Seven Episode Six of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, Martin (M1MRB) and Colin (M6BOY) discuss making representation of Amateur radio and  Martin (M1MRB) and Chris Howard (M0TCH) interview Gloistein GM0HCQ / VP8CMH/MM about his work in Antarctica.

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