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The digi setup

For some time now I have been thinking of getting back into the digi modes, I do have a setup that offers QRP power levels and a narrow bandwidth antenna which can be perfect for digi modes such as JT65 just for starters. In the past I had the Signalink USB interface but ended up selling it when my mode of choice seemed to be CW. I came across a used Signalink USB unit for a great price so I scooped it up. I am planning on setting up my Elecraft KX3 for digi operations and leaving the Elecraft K3 setup for CW. Last I wanted to make use of a Toshiba net book I have had collecting dust for some time now. The net book runs Windows 7 home addition and after loading a fresh instal of

Discovery soldered jumpers

Windows 7 on the net book it's ready to go. The used Signalink did provide a surprise once I opened it up. Inside the unit you will find some jumper wires that have to be moved around depending on the rig you are using with the interface unit. The unit I purchased was not being used with the Elecraft KX3 so some jumper swapping  was in order. To my surprise the jumper wires were soldered in place! Signalink had designed the jumper positioning as a non solder setup using a 16 pin IC socket, this way you could remove the jumpers and reconfigure just in case you changed out your rig. My plan was to see if I could remove the wires and see the damage to the IC socket. After the wires had been removed, solder sucked out and some melted plastic on the socket removed I decided to just add some fresh jumper wires. It's now time to set up the net book and get it communicating with the Elecraft KX3.

IC socket cleaned up, wires removed

 

There has been a big change here since our move with regards to ham radio.   Antenna challenges, finding a spot for the radio, having the setup "eye friendly" to non hams who visit.  The antenna challenge seems to be solved with the MFJ 1788 loop antenna. There are still some hick ups with it, for example not being able to tune 20m below a 9.1 to 1 SWR. I have spoken with MFJ and they have given me some great ideas to try with the loop. (more on that as I venture into the loop's insides) The setup was solved with a great roll top desk all is hidden away and protected with a very fashionable piece of furniture. Now it's time to look at expanding my radio operations beyond CW but still very much not forgetting about CW it will still be a large part of my operating. CW is perfect for low power and simple antenna operating. BUT also with my new antenna it has a narrow bandwidth and needs to be returned as you move up or down the band. With practice the loop can be retuned very fast. I was wanting now to add a mode that would favour the loops narrow band width. The digital world came to mind.
The last time I was in digi land PSK31 was the ground breaking mode and I have come to understand by many of the blogs I read there are some new modes in town!! PSK is still around but it too has changed. There is also now SIM31 and 63,  JT65, Olivia and the list goes on, I have been out of digital for some time now and am not sure what all is out there. What I am looking for is something that uses a narrow bandwidth, (most digi modes do) only requiring low power, would be great to have a "conversation mode" and not signal reports and goodbye and not a mode that takes forever for exchanges as I have heard about some digi modes. Having said all that one thing I can remember about the digi modes is they can be lot of "fun" to setup with your rig and PC! BUT that is all part of the fun I guess. So you digi fans out there help me out with some suggestions as to an HF low power narrow bandwidth digi mode I can scramble my brains with. Oh and if it helps the bands I have available are 10-40m and the rigs I have are the Elecraft K3  and KX3.

1st PSK QSO with K5ZG

I want to thank all those who posted comments and emailed me direct to help my PSK journey along the road to success. Today I sat down and read all the comments and considered the feedback which helped me  get a plan going so I could be on the air with PSK. So what was wrong....well the good old Elecraft K3 was for some reason not set up the way I thought it was. I went back into the manual to see what the recommended settings were. The K3 when in DATA A mode (which is the mode that is recommended for PSK) the Line out to the Tigertronics Signalink is not taken from the MIC but the rear LINE OUT on the K3. That was the first problem it was not. I am sure I selected LINE OUT rear panel....but the menu does not lie!!! it was set to

fldigi and KI4BIY

something else. So that was changed and I gave some PSKing a go.... but still nothing!!! So it was back to the K3 settings again, this time I had to check to make sure DATA A was set to DATA A.  I thought it had to be as  the LED readout on the K3 reads "DATA A". I checked and DATA A was set to PSK D what ever that is  so I set DATA A to DATA A. It was then that things seemed to be looking up. I saw a station (K5ZG) calling CQ on the waterfall, I gave him a call and he came back to me!!! SUCCESS I made my first QSO on PSk but the QSO was not complete as QRM and the band conditions were changing and he faded away before the QSO was completed. I then closed down DM780 and opened up Fldigi to see how that worked. It was about 20 min's or so later I made contact

My PSK reports with 5 watts

with KI4BIY. The problem here was not the band conditions or the contact but I was using Fldigi and had NO macros setup. So it was live PSKing but I  was able to have a very nice QSO. This gave me the confidence the program was now working. There is one question I still have, when I transmit my output power can start off at 5 watts but as the transmission progress the output can climb as high as 12 watts before leveling out. I can readjust the output and get it to stay at a steady 5 watts but it takes some adjusting and readjusting of the Signalink TX. Any thoughts on this.....is it normal or are there more adjustments to be made??

Giving PSK a go

On Wednesday I spent some time familiarizing myself with HRD's DM-780 and getting some custom macros setup. In time I am  going to try out Fldigi and see which program I like better. The only reason I started with DM-780 was the K3 is all setup with HRD so I am half way there when it comes to PSK. So how did it go...well I am operating at 5 watts and there were some stations calling CQ but I was not able to grab their attention with my replies. I setup DM-780 to send info up too PSKreporter but up to this point and including today I just don't seem to be spotted at all. I am not sure if my setup with PSKreporter is wrong or I my signal

Action on the band

is not getting out. I do see on my LP-100 watt meter there is 5 watts getting to the antenna but whether it is readable or not I am not sure. Besides I am still getting the hang of PSKreporter as well so it could be operator error at this end. Also today I was involved in the NAQP CW contest but am now just taking a bit of a break. I was calling CQ on 40m CW a short time ago and KC9SNC came back to me. Our QSO was going well and the CW speed was very comfortable for me.......then came the contester's right over our QSO!!! Now they may not have heard us as I was QRP at 5 watts but that brought the QSO to an end. I did email Matt and gave him some more info about my station and that we may have better luck next time. So up to this point I have not been able to make a PSK contact maybe I will give Fldigi a go on Sunday and see if I can bag my first PSK QSO. It's now time to head back to the NAQP CW contest......and try not to QRM anyone who is not involved in the contest!!!

HRD DM-780

Another day in the shack but not really on the radio as so much as setting up the radio. I decided to take the plunge and go head first into setting up a digi mode. PSK was my weapon of choice. I did some looking over of notes last night to get my mind into it. The software I have preloaded on the PC is  Julian's Kcomm, fldigi and HRD's  DM-780.  One of the trying tests for me is to get the radio to communicate with the
software. I was not disappointed.... figuring out the com port, stop bits, CAT settings,

Kcomm with fldigi

handshake or not....and the list goes on was a challenge. Then there is the sound card setup and settings!! Some of the troubles I ran into were.....not being able to get the K3 to key up when the software said it should. After overcoming that  the K3 had no problem keying up but then would not un-key at the end of the macro!!! After solving those two hurdles I then had troubles getting the 5 watts output I wanted to have. It turned out to be a jungle of sound card tuning and radio tweaking. I was not sure how I did it but I am now able to have a solid 5 watts out on all bands and simply adjust the K3's power control if I want to increase the power. I won't try to figure out what I did as when I do for some reason I un-configure  the configured. The software I decided to stick with was DM-780. Kcomm is great and works well with the

fldigi with flr

K3 radio. The setup of communication between the radio and software was the easiest of all the software I dealt with. I was not able to get the waterfall going I did integrate fldigi waterfall but it seemed to run as two separate programs. I was getting frustrated at this point and really never looked into getting around this issue. One great feature of Kcomm are the macro's that control aspects of the K3.  With running fldigi on it's own I was not able to get the K3 out of transmit when the macro was done sending....again frustration was setting in. I am sticking with DM-780 but have to do some reading on how to customize the macros and some other minor settings.

Finally some snow for Christmas......

Well it's Tuesday and it's the last day off for me before going back to work. The day has been spent in a very leisurely fashion. The only outing today was early morning to the Chiropractor and that was it. The weather has turned to snow here for the first time this winter snow is staying on the ground. I thought it would be a great day to spend at the radio as the Christmas season for me has been very busy with "stuff" ohter than radio. I tuned the K3 to 14.060 and found K9EEI calling CQ. So at 500mW's I answered his CQ, Carl was 599 here with his 5 watts and I was 569 into Illinois. At the end of our pleasant QSO we exchanged emails as well. Now during the QSO for some reason my keyer was acting up. What I mean by this is it would send radium dot's one after the other without me keying the keyer. The keyer that I have is the Begali contour which is Iambic
paddle with magnetic return. I played with the adjustments some time ago without testing it....thus the strange behavior of the key. It was time to adjust the key and on the Elecraft K3 you can put the rig into test mode. This way you can adjust the keyer with out transmitting on the air. After adjusting the key it was time to do some WSPR and maybe some PSK31. I wanted to see how the bands were doing so it was WSPR first. I have a sheet of paper on how to set up the radio for WSPR. (soon I am going to make up a macro so setup is just a push of a button on the K3) Well for some reason I was not transmitting a signal!! I checked and rechecked the settings of both the computer, K3 and sound card. All seemed to be good but still no signal so it was off to PSK31. I was able to decode signals on 20 meters and it seemed pretty active. After setting up things for PSK31 I again had no transmit !!!!  I tried a little of this and some of that but nothing. Now I was muttering to myself  how much a pain in the @#$& the digi modes were. Well it was back to good old CW and they can stick the digi modes for now.  Back to CW and about 2 hours wasted playing with the silly digital modes I keyed my trusty Begali key.....NOTHING....I was not transmitting!!! Then it hit me the dam K3 was still in test mode from me adjusting the keyer!!! Sometimes these added features can be a real pain. Next time I will just switch to the dummy load and transmit into that........ like the old days.

This week has been dedicated to setting up for the CQ WW DX CW contest this weekend. Making sure the contest logger works (N1MM), try out the CW macros along with the K3, test out the antenna on all the bands and finally make up some goals. I find by doing some prep work before the contest Murphy does not rear his head as often during the contest. Early last week my Tigertronics Signalink USB came in and it was my ticket to get into the digital world. Years ago I had a Yaesu  FT-1000MP MKV I had the Rigblaster Pro along side it. I dabbled in PSK and was into RTTY contesting at that time. I had hopes of setting things up and getting on the surf board of Digital communications last weekend.
Well that dream was short lived, the memories came back of sound card setup, adjusting the ALC level and basically getting everything just right for the digital engine to purrrr. Over the weekend the setup was not purrrring at all it was more of a hisssssss.  The connections between my K3 and Signalink were smooth going. The PC recognized the on board sound card in the Signalink. At first I ran into some trouble setting up the CAT connection between the K3 and software  (Ham radio delux's digital master 780) I was able to decode PSK signals with Digital Master, in transmit with the K3 set at 100 watts I was able to use the TX control on the Signalink to raise the output power to what I wanted (5 watts). The unresolved problem is I am not able to get any ALC reading on the K3. I know the ALC is very important to a clean signal. I have given up trying to solve this problem at this time. I am as I said concentrating on the CQ WW DX CW contest.