AmateurRadio.com

I finally got caught up with things so I could find time to experience the HF band conditions everyone has been talking about. I put the K3 on 10m WSPR while I was doing my computer jobs. I missed some chances of being heard because the WSPR rig control doesn’t switch the K3 into DATA mode and in SSB mode only the microphone is live not the line input. My apologies if the sound of typing affected anyone’s WSPR reception! After spotting the error and correcting it I was received by five VK stations, which is quite pleasing for 20 watts to an attic dipole!

When I was finished with the computer I had a listen around the 10m band. There wasn’t as much happening as the WSPR results would suggest so I tried 12m, where some PSK31 was heard. After making one contact there (ER1RY, Moldova) I went back to 10m and saw some faint traces. I worked several Russians and heard but didn’t work three South African stations. I was also spotted from Madagascar by someone on the PSK Reporter site. That would have been a nice contact! I checked the SSB end from time to time but only heard a handful of signals too weak to work.

Ten metres is one of my favourite bands so it is great to see some signs of life. But I fear that improved propagation is going to bring problems for digital mode enthusiasts. As Paul, PC4T complains in his latest blog post, when you get good propagation people operate wherever they can within the band plan so the weak signal modes get trampled over by the wide, loud modes.

Unfortunately there is no “gentleman’s agreement” that says PSK has exclusive use of 14.070 – 14.072 or that only JT65A can be used from 14.076 to 14.078. Here in Europe, even the band plan separating CW, digital and voice modes is only a gentleman’s agreement. The frequencies mentioned above, like the QRP frequencies and others, are just “watering holes” that benefit people who operate those modes but can be ignored by others with no fear of any official penalty.

There has been an explosion in the use of digital modes over the last few years as more hams connect their computers to their radios and discover sound card software. The effect of this has mainly been that you could often find PSK31 activity when nothing else could be heard. Poor conditions have prevented the bands from getting too overcrowded.

But with better propagation people are going to be fighting for space. PSK is going to need to spread beyond its usual 2kHz on the most popular bands, as will JT65A. The “modes du jour” most of which offer no significant benefit over those that already exist will cause confusion by operating on top of one another. And the outmoded, inefficient RTTY, for which no technical justification for its continued use exists, will stomp over everything running the legal limit just as it always has, only this time more people are going to have their contacts spoiled and get angry about it.

It’s going to be a fun few years!

This is a short introduction to Linux for Amateur Radio Operators showing a few things that are available for Amateur Radio.

The first bit of live data I received from my APRS VHF propagation alert reflector was a warning of a possible Sporadic-E opening on six metres. I was rather surprised that there was Sporadic-E this early in the year, but I went to the DX Sherlock website and sure enough contacts had been reported between a station even further north than here and one in the Czech Republic. I then clicked on the map to see the actual contact details and was surprised to find they were WSPR spots!

I went to the WSPR website and sure enough the same signals were shown. I decided to fire up WSPR on 6m myself but by then the OK station had gone and no new spots appeared from anywhere.

I have been, and still am, somewhat sceptical of the value of WSPR in showing VHF Sporadic-E propagation. One of the characteristics of Sporadic-E, particularly at the start and end of the season or on the higher frequencies like 2m is that it is very fleeting. A signal can be there for one minute, literally, and gone the next. On the other hand, signals can be really strong when reflected by Sporadic-E. WSPR is designed for detecting weak signals under steady propagation conditions and uses a 2 minute transmit cycle during which the data is transmitted very slowly. It seems to me that what you want to detect Sporadic-E is a mode with short transmit cycles where the data is transmitted quickly, perhaps something more akin to the modes used for meteor-scatter. I wonder if K1JT could come up with something?

Nevertheless I am very interested in anything that helps to detect VHF openings that might otherwise go undetected. I plan on WSPRing more on the 6m band, as long as there are others doing likewise so there is a chance of being received!

I have been beaconing WSPR using 500mW all day today. The KAT3 didn’t want to repeat its trick of matching my multi-band dipole so the best SWR I could manage was about 1.8:1. I don’t know how much of the 500mW ended up warming up the ATU or the coaxial feeder.

This is a shot of the WSPR propagation map taken just before 1800z today. As you can see, the 500mW is getting out pretty well. I think I have been received by all the G stations that have been monitoring at some time during the day, and a few others. And it was nice to see fellow bloggers Paul PC4T and Bas PE4BAS monitoring even though they can’t transmit on 60m, and better still spotting me!

Just after I posted this, my 500mW was also spotted by LA3JJ!

On looking through the mail at lunch time I saw that I had received a letter from Ofcom. My NoV permitting me to operate on the 60m experimental band had arrived!

Until now I hadn’t been bothered about operating on 60m because I couldn’t see how I could possibly find room for an antenna for that band. However a couple of weeks ago I heard someone activating a SOTA summit in the Lake District on 60m and was frustrated that I could not reply to them. So I decided to put in an application for permission to operate and here I am.

I don’t have an antenna that is resonant on 60m so I tried tuning up my multiband dipole using the K3 auto ATU. After a lot of persuasion it managed to find an acceptable match on the higher frequency channels but it gave up on the lower ones. So I should be able to manage some activity on the new band.

Fortunately, the channel allocated for beacon and WSPR use is one of the ones I was able to match. And today just happened to be a 60m WSPR activity day. So I fired up the WSPR software and beaconed on 60m using 2 watts, increasing to 5 watts in the evening when propagation went long and most of the traces faded out. The 5 watts did me no good at at all, but my 2 watt signal was heard by 7 different G stations all around 400km distance from me plus F/G6AIG at 760km. I received 6 different G stations including G4ZFQ at 458km running 20mW, plus OZ1PIF (my best DX at 984km) and LA3JJ.

Tomorrow is QRP day on 60m when everyone is supposed to run 500mW or less. I have not decided yet how little power I will run but I will be WSPRing on 60m all day. Hopefully there will be a few more people who manage to spot me.

Introduction:

• Intro from Pete, VE2XPL, host of the wAVEgUIDES pODcAST.
• Promo for the GNU World Order podcast.

Announcements:

• Hello to the new folks in the chat room.
• The Mintcast podcast is either going to stop or will have new hosts after the next episode. If you’re interested in hosting a podcast, contact the folks over there.
• Please spread the word about MAGNetcon, the Mid-America GNU/Linux Networkers Conference, to be held May 6-7, 2011 at the St. Louis Union Station Marriott. If you know anyone that might be a sponsor, exhibitor, or speaker, please let us know. Application forms are available on the web site.
• Check out the new website for Resonant Frequency.
• Also mentioned, the Going Linux podcast and Computer America, “America’s longest-running nationally syndicated radio talk show about computers.”

Feedback:

• Richard, KR4EY, writes about CW… wait, we did this one in Episode 52.
• John, KC8DAX, weighs in on the Windows vs. Linux debate: there are hams that will buy a wire antenna and there are others that will build one. He thinks it’s the same thing with operating systems. Would you want a radio you couldn’t open? Our hosts discuss.
• We received a donation from Charles to help send Linux in the Ham Shack to the 2011 Dayton Hamvention. Thank you, Charles!
• Joe, K1RBY, recently discovered the podcast and is catching up, but is having a problem using gpodder to retrieve episodes. Yes, Joe, there is a bug in one of the WordPress plugins on the web site that contributed to the problem (see lhspodcast.info for a description of the problem.) It has been corrected.
• John, K7JM, also had the problem with gpodder and sends his appreciation for the fix.
• Richard, KJ4VGV, tells us that he is a new amateur radio operator since May and has published an article: Antenna Restrictions: Are They a Catastrophe Waiting to Happen? Good job, Richard!
• James, N2ENN, comments about our episode 52 when we discussed Unity, and offers his thoughts on Wayland, Debian and Ubuntu. Our hosts discuss, and digress to a discussion of browsers, plugins, drivers, ALSA and PulseAudio on Debian vs. LinuxMint Debian Edition. They also commment on Bill Meara’s (of SolderSmoke fame) efforts to get WSPR running under WINE in Ubuntu.
• Paul, KE5WMA, writes “PIC micro controllers are getting more popular in HAM projects. Any suggestions on programming software and boards?” Well, Paul, Linux does still support serial ports, but this may be a good topic for another show. You might find something useful in the many hits returned by a Google search on “Linux PIC programmer”.
• B.B., KC5PIY, asks for help with getting Windows programs for programming radios, such as the Icom IC-2820H and IC-706 MkIIg, running under Linux. He’d also like an APRS client. Richard recommends UIView as an APRS client for Windows, and Xastir for Linux. Russ suggests that most of the radio programming applications will run under WINE in Linux. Also, check out CHIRP, free Linux software for programming a variety of D-STAR radios. You may also want to explore the D-RATS mailing list. It’s not likely you’ll be able to dual-boot Windows and Linux on that netbook, but you can install Ubuntu Linux using WUBI, which would allow you to run Linux within Windows, or install Linux to a USB flash drive using Pen Drive Linux.
• Craig, KB5UEJ, writes about learning IPv6: “I went through the Hurricane Electric certification program and really learned lots about IPv6. I’m now running IPv6 on my home using HEs IPv6 tunnelbroker service. It’s no longer the big bad scary thing that it used to be.” Russ also talked about IPv6 on episode 6 of his QSK podcast.
• Matt shares his thoughts about building “simple” projects from junk box parts and the similarity to running Linux.

Contact Info:

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• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Balboa” by Ness from the album Fiesta, courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Crawling Back In” by Deathalizer from the album It Dwells Within, courtesy of Jamendo.

A blog post by Roger, G3XBM, about how far he was able to be received running 5mW of WSPR on 80m using a lash-up antenna prompted me to give QRPP WSPR a try. But before I could start, I needed to make an attenuator. The lowest power my K3 or K2 will go down to is 100mW, but not with very much accuracy. I decided to make a 20dB attenuator which would divide my power by 100, so I could run 1W and get 10mW output.

There are numerous websites that will design an attenuator for you given the working impedance and amount of attenuation required. I was not looking for precision – I would be surprised if the output of either of my radios was within 10% of the selected power anyway – and moreover I wanted to build it now using parts from my junk box not have to send off for some exact values and wait for several days for them to arrive.  My attenuator was built as shown above and gave a 1.2:1 SWR over the HF range which was good enough for my purposes.

I started yesterday evening running 10mW on 80m into my end loaded attic dipole. I received no spots at all initially. I was puzzled as to why I could hear the WSPR audio using the K3 monitor even though the extension speakers I use with the K3 were switched off. I was about to compose an email to Elecraft enquiring whether the last firmware update had the effect of routing the monitor audio to the internal speaker even when an external speaker is connected when I realized the sound was coming from the computer speakers! Windows had decided to renumber the sound cards since I last used WSPR and although the receive channel was still the same and spots were being decoded the transmit audio wasn’t going to the radio. Doh!

Some time after I began transmitting I received a couple of spots from G3XLW 478km away in the south of the country. But that was all. I decided to leave it running overnight and received spots from David off and on throughout the night. These were augmented in the morning after 0800z by three spots from M0DDT at a distance of 355km to the south east. Not as impressive as Roger’s results. I guess my attic dipole, being very low for an 80m antenna, is a cloud-warmer and sends most of the RF straight up. Roger was loading the feeder of his 10m halo which doesn’t sound like much of an 80m antenna but in effect he had a top loaded vertical which probably has more lower angle radiation. That’s my theory, anyway.

It was an interesting test and I shall try very low power WSPR again on other bands. However I don’t agree with the extremist view held in some circles that people should only use WSPR with such low powers. It’s certainly interesting to discover if you can get to the end of the street on 10uW but higher powers of a few watts will reveal propagation to places lower powers won’t, information that is likely to be more useful when applied to making contacts using other modes.