AmateurRadio.com

Today was Indian Summer. Judy and I walked over Shute Hill to Swain’s Farm. I worked Belgium, Netherlands, Morocco and England.

Indian Summer is what we call the last few days of extra-warm weather before the cold settles in for the winter. It was a gorgeous day. It may be the last good day with beautiful fall colors. It was 72F with a crystal blue sky.

The pathway over the hill is about 2 miles. We walked on a crunching carpet of rich colored leaves. Judy got a quick snapshot of me as we neared one of Swain’s fields.

The view from the hay field is fantastic. We gazed out on the Belknap Mountains. In the foreground the rich grass shimmered in the sunlight.

I heaved a line over a maple branch nearly 50 feet above the edge of the field, and I pulled up a 33 foot wire. I hooked up the KX3 and tuned around 10 meters. It was active, and I quickly landed a QSO with ON7DU. Johan was a 599 and gave me a 579 from Belgium. Then I worked the Netherlands. PA5WT was calling CQ and I answered. Kees gave me a 449. He was a strong 599.

Then I switched to 17 meters. Med was calling CQ from Morocco. CN8YR gave me a 339 and he was a 579. I went back to 10 meters for a final QSO with M0UNN in England. I exchanged a quick 599 with Jay and packed up the gear.

The view from the operating position was the greatest! In the past I’ve worked the QRPARCI Fall contest from here, but I couldn’t make it this year. Rain is forecast for tomorrow. I sure am glad I was able to get out today.

They’re coming fast and furious now! After a long period of not having the time or energy to edit episodes, we’re finally getting around to pushing out the backlog. In this action-packed installment, your intrepid hosts tackle gaming on Linux using the Steam platform, accessible computing, mention a site listing more than 50 places you can download Free Software and more. We also revisit the products of Sierra Radio Systems and Pignology, and wish Fedora a happy birthday. All THIS WEEK, on Linux in the Ham Shack!

73 de The LHS Guys

We’re getting ready to hit the road for vacation.  It’s been a whole year since KD2CHE and I tied the knot on a cliff overlooking Lake Tahoe.

Xiegu X1M

We’re not going to be heading back there yet, but wandering through New York’s North Country a bit.  I’m expecting to get a little portable QRP operation in as we poke around up there.  In anticipation of the trip, I picked up a spare power supply from my brother a few weeks ago to use with the Xiegu X1M, and any other 12V items I have or may acquire when I’m not near my main setup.  I decided to assemble the “motel room” version of my QRP setup here to see how it works.  I have the Xiegu, my Emtech ZM2 tuner, mic, the spare PS, and a small amplified speaker sitting here on the couch.  A string of 2 alligator leads is running from the ZM2 to the feed-thru from my random wire up near the window.  Everything powered up, and tuned up, so I decided to answer a couple of calls on 15M.

I made USB contacts with UT7UJ in Kiev, and S51ZZ in Slovenia from my test station on the couch here in Long Island.  Not bad for 5 Watts.  This little rig is full of surprises.  I also just found out from Ed at Import Communications through a post to the Xiegu X1M Yahoo group that he is going to be offering upgrade kits for the earlier X1M to upgrade the front panel and display to the newer version, as well as a strong possibility of a firmware upgrade that will cure many of this rig’s little issues.  The firmware upgrade has already been released for the newer model.

Now, time to pack it back up, and hit the road.  73s de Neil, W2NDG

Yes, that's right: It's another brand-new episode of Linux in the Ham Shack! We know it's been a while since your RSS feed has been filled with the joy of our show, but we're back and aiming to stay on track (now that Richard is safely tucked into his cardboard box again). In this action-packed installment, your hosts discuss promoting Linux in the classroom, a wedding interrupted by a radio transmission from above, WA0EIR's updated suite of Open Source ham radio tools, and a novel analytics tool for hams called QScope. See you all down the dial very soon!

73 de The LHS Guys

Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Pacificon amateur radio convention in Santa Clara, something I have been trying to do for several years now. It is a great event, with good technical programs and a super venue.

The most interesting presentation I saw was the one on digital voice (DV) technology by Bruce Perens K6BP. The presentation was mostly about the digital voice known as FreeDV,  an open source approach to DV that uses the Codec 2 voice codec for digitally processing/compressing speech.

Bruce Perens K6BP talking about FreeDV

I won’t cover all of the technical details here but you can follow the links above to go deeper on the topic. The initial FreeDV efforts are focused on the HF bands, using the sound card plus computer approach to implementing DV. This is a good approach since it is a relatively easy way to adopt this technology. (Compare this to VHF/UHF where you need to solve the repeater infrastructure problem to make progress.) FreeDV operates with a bandwidth of  1.25 kHz, narrower that the standard 3 kHz or so SSB signal. FreeDV also has the benefit of degrading gracefully as the  signal-to-noise ratio is decreased, with less of a digital dropoff that we see with D-STAR and other DV technologies.

Like many hams, Bruce pointed out the concerns and limitations of the proprietary AMBE chip used in D-STAR, DMR and now the new Yaesu DV system. I totally get this point and support the idea of a an open source codec. On the other hand, this work is coming more than a decade later than the creation of D-STAR. I like to refer to this phenomenon as ”our ideas are better than their products.”

Bruce introduced Chris Testa KB2BMH to talk about the “HT of the Future”. This is a handheld transceiver implemented using Software Defined Radio (SDR) and inspirations from the world of smartphones. As Bruce said, “Why isn’t your HT as smart as your smart phone?” This is similar to the Android HT idea that I blogged about a while back. See Chris’s blog and this HamRadioNow video for more information.

Another presentation that I attended was about D-STAR with several speakers, including Robin AA4RC. The innovation continues to happen in the D-STAR world with a strong theme of using Raspberry Pi computers to create D-STAR hotspots and repeaters. Robin described the “DV Pi” being developed…a DVAP-like daughter board that plugs into a Raspberry Pi. Jim Moen K6JM talked about the many ways you can implement a D-STAR Hotspot. For more info on that see his D-STAR Hotspot page.

There’s much innovation happening in the area of Digital Voice. It got me thinking about it again so I dug out my ICOM D-STAR HT and put my DVAP back on the air.

73, Bob K0NR

Here are the changes at RadioKitGuide.com so far:

• -Coming Soon- TJ4A MK II 4 Band SSB Transceiver.  No other info yet
• –New- TJ2B MK II SSB Handheld Transceiver.  YouKits combined the A and B models into one with a good choice of bands.  So far only available assembled.
• –New- EK1A and EK1B 3 band QRP CW kits.  Power output 4-5 Watts.  Built in Keyer.  SMD parts all finished.  Assemble in about 2 hours.  A model: 40, 30, and 20 Meters.  B model: 20, 17 and 15 Meters.  $179 + S&H

-Ten-Tec

• The 1254 Superhet SW receiver has been discontinued.

-JUMA

• Juha tells me that they are in the process of transferring logistics to a new company.  They hope to have kits available again by the end of the year

-Small Wonder Labs

• As many of you have heard, Dave Benson has retired from kit production.  The famous RockMite transceiver is supposed to be moving to QRPme.com.  You can also check out the Super RockMite from AliExpress further down this listing.

-Wilderness Radio

• Bob from Wilderness Radio informed me that the SST and Sierra have been officially discontinued due to a parts availability issue.

-Dan’s Small Parts and Kits

• Dan doesn’t seem to have any kits listed on the website anymore, but is selling some of them on eBay.  See the listing at radiokitguide.com for more info

-QRPme

• As stated above, QRP.me is rumored to be the new source for RockMite kits.  Stay tuned.

-Walford Electronics

•   -NEW- The Lydford SSB Phone Transceiver.
•  -NEW-  The FiveFET Simple Regen TRF Receiver.

-Kanga Products UK

• -NEW- Open QRP Transceiver.  Similar to the Ten-Tec 506 Rebel.  Based on the OPen QRP design from Steve K1EL.

-Kits By EA3GCY

•  -NEW- EGV-40 CW QRP 40M Transceiver.  40M CW Band.

-BLEKOK QRP by YD1JJJ

•   -NEW- Micro 40S QRP 30 Watt SSB Kit.

-The Ham QRP DIY Kit Shack on AliExpress. 

• -NEW-Pixie Kit (Improved).
• -NEW-Frog QRP Kit.
• -NEW-Super RockMite Kit.

See RadioKitGuide.com for all details on these, and many more!

Please leave any additions you may have in the comments.