Software Defined Ham Radio

PP0T Trinadade & Martin Vaz

2011-05-24T01:51:00.007-04:00

This morning I couldn't sleep so I decided to brave the static and flipped on the radio. The static was out of OK and AR this morning

I saw the expedition on Trinidade spotted on 40 and decided to give a listen.

He was in the mud until I got diversity adjusted and then he was Q5 but still with a lot of static and QSB typical of summer time conditions. He was working one-zeez and two-zeez up one mostly EU. Here are the stats and location for Trinadade

It's about 4700 miles SE. Here is a google shot of the island

The pics shot off and around the island are stunning and worth the google trip. A little after I worked him he QRT'd and I was hoping he might show up down on 80M so I hung around for a bit to write this blog post and see what might develop, but no such luck. Trinadade has an interesting history and you can read more on the PP0T web site

There is only one op on this expedition as his transport was a Brazilian Navy ship and it headed out at the end of April to return in June. Pretty exciting to contemplate operating from a place like this for a month or more

73

FJ/OH2YL

2011-04-25T23:02:00.009-04:00

I've been off the radio for a few weeks and flipped on 80M and there was FJ/OH2YL Anne is on DX pedition on St Barts operating 160-10 CW

She was an easy chip shot from FL

When I first heard her she was working the gray line across EU and Russia. According to the web site she is running a pair of phased HF-2V butternut verticals. She was probably beaming EU as her strength was such that I probably worked her off the side of her array

She was in direct competition with the storms over Louisiana. The storms are about -95dBm, summer time cdx are certainly here.

I flipped on diversity and was able to null the static down to about -102 dBm making the listening much more pleasant.

I listened to her knock off station after station as I wrote this post. She is one fine operator. Wish she would QSY to 40 :)

73

The Amazing World of Ham Radio

2011-04-10T07:30:00.009-04:00

So no sooner did I write about the "Knob Project" than did I start to receive email from others who have been involved in developing similar ideas.

James KS4JU editor of HamRadioScience wrote about development of computer cases with built in screens

His comment is that some of these cases also contain remote controllers

I can see the brain flashes going off all over radio land!!!

This morning before I even got my Latte I got a note from Tobias DH1TW about his project

This guy has developed a complete control surface for PSDR using a DJ console that is in Beta testing!!

I haven't had the chance to review either of these developments in detail, but I think its GREAT!! It shows the versitility of a plastic radio, that is a radio that can be molded by the user to fit the user's needs. In my case I wanted a radio station that was highly integrated. I wanted a radio station that would do my will and follow my needs without my having to do much in the way of knob twisting and button pushing. I wanted a radio station with a high degree of efficiency and I had a blast creating that all based around PSDR and DDUTIL. To acheive my goal I needed this

A 19 dollar board from Unified Microsystems and the support of K5FR and DDUTIL

I also wanted to try to bring to ham radio the promise of SO2R based in software as an extension of the automated station, and to a very large extent we have created this also using N1MM as the contest interface.

James is interested in a radio in a box kind of approach YET the radio looses none of its flexibility. It gives up nothing but gains in its individual expression of character. On the other end I have seen PSDR displayed on 40 inch TV screens at the Orlando hamfest

A few of us got together and built a Knob

as a foray into a different means of control for use in contesting and DXing, and the Knob was turned into a commercial product

And now other hams from around the world are revealing their own additions and variations and ingenuity!! What fun this hobby is!!

73

The Knob becomes a FlexControl

2011-04-08T11:10:00.003-04:00

Flex is announcing a commercial version of the Knob by K6TU and K6TD. Here is a recap on Stu's website regarding bringing this product to market

Contest Knob – Announcing the Product

I didn't really have anything to do with bringing this concept to market except for my input in helping design how the Knob does its "Control" thing, which I think it does VERY WELL. For $129.95 the "Flexibility" this device brings to the radio is well worth it. It is much much more than a contest controler, but makes a whole panoply of features readily available to the finger tips.

The argument has always been either/or. EITHER it's point and shoot OR it's a Knob that is needed. This device makes it BOTH/AND since it is seamlessly integrated into the operation of the radio. Its presence brings a whole new level of integration to managing the radio, and in my operation it has become indispensable. It was a lot of fun being involved in this project, and it shows once again the ingenuity of hams in solving their own problems and in coming together to devise a "corporate" solution. Corporate comes from the Latin: corporātus which means to "form into a body" and that is what happened. Many came together to create something useful for all involved.

I haven't had the chance to give the commercial version a whirl, but given what I know of the prototype, I would not hesitate for a second to recommend it to anyone who is interested.

73

More Knob

2011-03-29T17:06:00.005-04:00

Origins & Refinement of the Contest Knob - II

Stu continues with part 2 of his recap of the development of this fine contraption. Just for the record I am never satisfied but I am willing to be bounded :)

73

4K8M UN3F

2011-03-27T21:19:00.009-04:00

I was doing a little correspondence when UN3F in Kazakhstan popped up on 30M. Recently I have increased my 30M operating. I am usually on 40, 80 and 160 and had only worked about 100 countries on 30M till about a month ago, so I have been trying to pick things up on 30 since not too much new in the way of spots comes across the cluster for the other bands. I could do a lot more on 160 but my antennas are still down on that band.

Just as I tuned him in he was working a WB8 and I was getting set to work him and he seemed to disappear, probably going QRT. He was past his sunrise so he was probably heading out to work. At the same time I saw 4K8M in Azerbaijan spotted so I loaded up the memories and had at it, clicking back and forth.

Unfortunately UF3F was truly gone but I had 4k8M in the log first call.

I have 3 antennas available for 30M and none of them are great. I have a 135ft flat top at about 50 ft fed with open wire to a Johnson KW matchbox. That antenna has as pattern that looks like this on 30M (north is strait up)

This antenna was not a very good match for UN3F but a better match for 4K8M

The second antenna is my 65ft 80M vertical. On 30M this antenna approximates a 5/8 wave vertical. This antenna has an extensive radial system and exhibits a SWR of about 2:1 on 30M. I better match that with an Ameritron tuner. This is the antenna I use the most on 30M

Finally I have a 45 ft vertical wire out of a tree that has a MFJ 929 auto tuner at the base of the tree. It has a beautiful pattern:

unfortunately the ground system on this antenna is abysmal since I mostly use it as a RX probe antenna for diversity, so I don't transmit on it much. UN3F is on fairly often so I'm sure I will have another shot at him before summer

73

Filters

2011-03-26T17:32:00.012-04:00

My old buddy K3RR and I were corresponding and he mentioned the difference between his cascaded 250hz filters and my 12hz DSP filters. The theoretical difference is 10log 250/12 =13.2 dBm. I was sitting on 80M seeing if I could hear anything out of A52J:

(after all hope springs eternal) and since the band was so quiet I decided to measure the difference and make a little document.

Here is the radio with 12hz filters:

The RX2 receiver's vertical antenna has a little less output than the full size vertical on 80M connected to RX1. Best case today is in the -118dB range. For the 250hz case:

-107 dBm was the best I could do which is about 11 dBm difference. So the filter difference extends me another 11 dB into the noise floor. I decided to look at 500hz filters as well:

Predicted is 16.2 dBm and I got 14dBm difference, very consistent with the data point above. Some of the difference between predicted and measured could be due to AGC action since certainly by the time I get 16dB above the noise there is some AGC starting to flatten out the signal. I had "best" AGC-T (agc threshold, or the point at which the AGC just starts to reduce gain) set on the 12hz filters:

When I readjusted on the wider filters it didn't make any difference. The AGC-T adjustment is one of the best features of this radio. The AGC is designed to effectively turn down the sensitivity of the radio. If the AGC is not active the radio is most sensitive. By adjusting the AGC-T you can set the AGC to turn on at some point considerably higher than the band noise. This is a big deal when working DX since in most radios the AGC is already well engaged and turning down the sensitivity due to the band noise itself, so you are never really able to realize the full sensitivity of the radio or the full dynamic range. Since you don't need the radio to be more sensitive than band conditions allow by adjusting the AGC-T your chances of hearing someone right at the noise are improved.

Here is a shot at 500hz with the noise blankers turned off

-83dBm

and now at 500hz with the blankers turned on

Without the noise blankers, the AGC-T and the 12hz filters (and diversity) I basically would only be working G's, OK's and DL's on the bands.

Here is a shot of the radio on 10M with a resonant vertical attached

and here is a shot with no antenna connected to RX1

Still no Bhutan but VU4PB just showed up on 40 to tease me:

A nice European pile up and a K1 who is hearing him. It's the K1's gray line time so maybe tonight is the night:

73

Debut of the Knob

2011-03-24T20:18:00.006-04:00

This is a project that is coming to fruition. It started as the brain child of Stu K6TU. I'm going to spend some time on the history and development of this project because I think it is a very interesting story. What it shows is how some people who don't know each other or know each other loosely, and who are scattered across the USA can come together around an idea and make it into a reality. Its a story also about a company Flex Radio who allowed for its software to be modified through the exposure of new CAT commands in PSDR so that this Knob could come to fruition. I asked Stu for some background and he published:

Origins & Refinement of the Contest Knob – I

I will follow with some more of Stu's history as it is published. What you see pictured above is the end product of this project. Once Stu K6Tu and Kevin K6TD had a design it was forwarded to Steve K5FR. Steve made up 5 prototypes. It was about this time Steve and I were hot and heavy into creating the SO2R interface using N1MM. I was totally unaware of the Knob development. A bit later I received a copy from Steve. Steve wrote the interface which now appears in DDUTIL and it allows the Knob to control PSDR

Stu is a master of PIC micro-controller code. A PIC chip (short for Peripheral Interface Controller) is a device which can be programmed to read inputs from the world outside itself, do some processing on the data it receives, and then output the results of its processing. Here is a short tutorial on how a PIC works

What was created was a USB based Knob controler for PSDR that could send up and down signals to DDUTIL as it was turned. The Knob also has a switch connected to it, like a big push button. In addition 3 more switches and some LEDs were added to the mix. The PIC scans its inputs and looks for state changes for example a knob twist. The knob when its twisted causes a series of signals to be sent to the PIC like the dits of a Keyer. If you twist a lot you generate a bunch of "dits" if you twist only a tiny bit only one "dit" gets sent. The PIC can also tell direction If you twist CW the function being controlled goes up and if you twist CCW it goes down. The most obvious thing to control is a VFO but the knob can also control things like audio gain and RIT and XIT. The button on the knob can control various functions for example if you push once you can toggle between VFO A and VFO B.

Stu put in a feature that allows for the Knob button to control up to three functions and and to be able to toggle between 2 banks of functions The original code Knob code only had three functions for the buttons, but at my request Stu recoded the firmare to include 9 total functions for the 3 buttons. Here is a shot of the DDUTIL interface

The 6 boxes grouped together are Knob click controls. Off and Sgl-clk are a toggle pair short click once and VFO A switches to VFO B. Short click again and you're back at VFO A. If you double click you will turn on and off variable tuning which is an acceleration feature of the knob. If you twist fast the software recognizes that and will move faster in the direction of twist. This way you can cover a lot of ground with a twist. If you then light on a station where you want fine control the software automatically decelerates and you get very fine control.

One of the commands we had to be able to access was the ability to tune the TX VFO when in diversity mode

Bob K5KDN at Flex created for us a means in PSDR to do that using CAT commands

If I LONG click the knob the B row of functions is activated

and I can once again do the various toggles I described on a second bank of commands. Here is a drop down of some of the commands available on the Knob button

All button presses are not created equal however and Dbl-Clk has some unique choices

Now comes the 3 buttons on the top of the box.

As you can see each of these also have the ability to control 3 different commands

and the command choices is pretty extensive

We included up to 8 Macro commands so the real functionality extends to the entire CAT set of PSDR which is close to 150 commands. In addition you can do complex commands in the macros like one button press for diversity on or off.

Here is a shot of my macro file for the Knob macros:

What the first 3 macros do is address memory 2, memory 3, and memory 4 in CWX

This turns my knob into a memory keyer for working DX!! The first three buttons are now all I need to break pileups and work the DX! In addition the knob does NOT need to be in windows focus to work its magic!

CWX is in need of some serious redesign, but Flex did some improvements in the TX/RX turnaround time and it now works in a fashion capable of breaking a pileup. I now have a memory keyer with basic functionality and push-buttons instead of mouse clicks! I HOPE someday they will tie the speed control to the front panel speed control so you don't have to adjust 2 boxes to change speeds as often happens when there is low band static and the DX is having a bit of a hard time decoding your signal. I would also like at some point the typical functions of a contest keyer.

Since the Knob is independent of the Windows focus, I can be in a logging program or a contest program and still control PSDR from the knob.

The last 2 macros allow me to change step size between 1hz and 100hz. I use 1hz to fine tune in a DX station, and then I switch to VFO TX and use 100hz to quickly cruise up and down the pileup, and I can do all of this without PSDR or DDUTIL being in focus

If I get confused as to what click switch does what, Steve created a little sub window as a guide and it is always visible. (I can not tell you how responsive K5FR was to the development of this control device. The guy is simply amazing)

It shows what VFO bank is active

and it also can memorize a custom label, so W9OY is displayed in the first button instead of Macro M30

Here is what it looks like on my desktop

This project was a blast to participate in. Four guys widely separated across the country from California to Texas to Florida, with widely disparate skills, came together and made it happen. Basically I didn't know Stu or Kevin at all. I knew Steve from other projects we had worked on. I was a late comer to the party give credit to the others primarily, but I did have considerable input in the Knobs final behavior. Thanks also to Flex for exposing the CAT commands we needed to make it happen. The development is ongoing and I will update as time goes on and more becomes available.

This is the reason I wanted take a little time and look at all the means there are to control the Flex Radio. To recap we have all the internal means to control the radio. Then there is CAT as demonstrated through Skimmer. Then there is the effectiveness of this external control on the overall behavior of a radio station By judicious design you can make the F5K and DDUTIL control central for a very complex radio station yet make the station behaveior effortless to use. Then there is further integration with other programs There are improvements and streamlining that improves productivity. Finally there is the Knob, which is a piece of hardware controlled by firmware and provides a windows focus free means to manipulate PSDR. All of this is tied together by K5FR's mighty DDUTIL.

Frank AB2KT, the developer of DttSP used to talk about using a midi surface to control the radio. That concept never really appealed to me because of the ergonomics of a midi surface and a keyboard and a paddle and a mouse and a MIC all spread out over the operating table, but this little knob is totally functional and takes up little room and it is also totally plastic (in terms of being programmable). Change the firmware or the software and voila' new things can happen. Maybe if we do two button pushes together we could get another 9 functions.... Naw Steve and Stu would kill me....

73

Andaman II

2011-03-22T20:16:00.009-04:00

I emailed the link of yesterday's post to the man who collects the dough. Tonight Andaman was spotted on 160, 80 and 40 in the time frame consistent with the gray line propagation.

HURRAY!! I did not work them. I barely heard them, and of course I was greeted with a passel of US and especially EU stations calling the VU4 ON HIS FREQ, even though he was working stations up 1-2.

A few divined they worked him on his freq (like the WA5 seen on skimmer and a bunch of DL's OM's OK's etc) even though the real people working him were a khz higher. The 599's were popping up like crazy. Then after about a solid minute of UP UP UP UP by the cops and they decided to get off the DX and go UP but by then it was daylight on his end. I gotta give them credit for showing up!! I don't know if my rant had anything to do with it or if it was simply random, but it was good to finally have a shot.

It is so informative to have this technology. It completely takes the guess work and confusion out of analyzing a situation.

73

Andaman

2011-03-21T09:36:00.009-04:00

So far this DX pedition has proven to be a real disappointment. They have been foraging in large pileups on 17 and 20 but have barely taken the time to go lower, and when they do the US is largely in daylight.

Here is the 40M "attempt" this morning

They showed up on the band at 7:59 EDT when about 1/3 of the US was already in daylight and here is the resultant "pile up". I heard them for a few minutes before they faded in this opening. If they had been here 30 minutes earlier (as in sunset is approaching ) I may have actually heard them well enough to work them.

There is a LP opening starting around 19:30 EDT and proceeding for about an hour and most of the time (as I have chronicled in the past here and here) they don't stay on long enough to even make it to the gray line. One would think that some planning would have gone into gray line operations but apparently not. Its actually pretty simple: When sunrise is approaching, while still in darkness, you switch a couple of the stations down to 160, 80, and 40. When sunset is approaching, while still in daylight, you do the same thing. It's not rocket science.

The cost of the DX pdeition is about $35,000. If you go to their website the first thing you are greeted with is a pretty much in your face DONATE page. Most DX peditions don't open with a donate page, but its fair enough. The guy collecting the money lives in Ann Arbor, MI. Interesting it's not some guy in Germany or Japan, or India for that matter. You would think 11 guys who want their exotic vacation paid for by what it would seem is mostly US dollars, would plan a little better to entice those who they expect to pay for that exotic vacation.

73

ST2AR hotter n a pistol

2011-03-20T23:26:00.006-04:00

I was sitting here in the shack listening on YOUTUBE to Lee Ritenour and Pat Martino play a song Lee wrote for Les Paul RIP, and St2AR pops up on the cluster calling CQ.

I click the spot. Usually I would turn on diversity and set up the probe antenna and all that, but the guy is SO LOUD he's running as high as -75 dBm. I flip on the amp (instant on, no tune, solid state), the antenna is automatically switched from my 40M 1/2 wave vertical to my full size 1/4 wave on 80M and give him a call simplex. I'm the first one in line and in an instant he is in the log. Very good operator.

The guy is about 66hz higher than the spot and completely out of my pass band so I use the Knob to tune him in. I really like the addition of this accessory to my armamentarium.

In less than 15 minutes he was gone. He apparently had moved up to 40M. Ham radio blitzkrieg (German for lightning war) and a new one in the log on 80M.

I was reading a couple of old fuddy duddies on eham in the DX forum decrying all the new fangled gizmos bla bla bla old days bla bla bla ain't like it used to be bla bla bla. My first ham radio rig was a S-40B, a crystal controlled 6L6 and a knife switch to change between TX and RX. I had to turn down the RF gain switch the antenna and then turn on the transmitter before I could transmit, and then do the reverse to receive. In the old days I never would have heard this guy much less worked. 80M was about 1/2 inch long on the S-40B's dial.

Without the new days, I would have just finished listening to Lee and Pat play some bebop and headed off to bed, but then in the old days there wasn't any YOUTUBE. I got my license when I was 11 and I didn't have a clue who Lee and Pat were in those days, so I guess I would have just headed off to bed.

I like the new days much much better, and so does my logbook.

73

Russian DX

2011-03-19T10:11:00.015-04:00

I was fooling around this morning and 15M was HOT! It's the Russian DX contest. I'm not much into contesting but I decided what the heck. I loaded up my 135ft open wire dipole as my primary antenna (RX1), and my 43ft vertical (RX2), loaded up N1MM and set up the log

logged into the cluster that I use with N1MM (W9AZ) and I was ready for some radio sport! I normally run 2 clusters K3NC and DX Central but when I have N1MM going I switch to W9AZ in Kankakee in both N1MM and Spot Collector Too many active telnet ports really bogs down the CPU so I have found using only one source for both programs keeps the extra CPU % down to a dull roar.

I mostly am interested in increasing my countries total. I certainly do not have the kind of antenna system or the skill set to effectively run a contest like this. I'm more interested in developing the systems involved in building effective contest stations (like the SO2R set up Steve K5FR and I created) than I am in actually running contests. I have spent way too many months up all night in my medical practice to stay up all night voluntarily.

This is the business end of things PSDR and N1MM. It's a point and shoot operation. Click on the band map and bingo you are on freq, the call sign is pre-entered into N1MM and if you can hear him you click the callsign and he is loaded for the contact. For example you can see my mouse pointer pointing at EM0K in the band map and I click and its preloaded to the spot above the station entry window in N1MM. I click that preload and the station is then loaded, make the contact enter the exchange and hit "log it" and I'm off to the next station. You can also see if you look at skimmer EM0K is indicated next to the green arrow. If I were to notice someone in skimmer I wanted to work just clicking his freq would bring him up in the contest system. If he was not logged in the N1MM band map I would just enter him and the exchange "log it" and move on.

If I copy a signal off the air I just enter it after I work it and hit log it, and it is remembered in case of dupes The other aspect is Spot Collector

If I notice something I want to work coming across this screen, I just click it. Since my data source for both N1MM and Spot Collector is the same (W9AZ), when I click spot collector what ever station I click is also in N1MM and all the automatic stuff happens, the station is preloaded etc. Spot Collector also loads the station in my normal day to day logging program DXKeeper so I can log new countries in that log book while I progress through the contest. If I am a little off freq I have a new toy that helps that

This is a contest Knob that is the brain child of Stu K6TU, has been in development by K6TU, K6TD, K5FR, and myself for a period of time. The Knob will be the subject of a further blog post when the time comes (in the fairly near future) It's MAJOR feature in it can control 16 functions of PSDR, without PSDR holding the windows focus, so if I am using a 12hz filter (which is what I do all the time) and the stations is 50hz or 100hz off the freq reported on the cluster I can simply grab the knob and tune up or down and get him on freq. I do not have to click to PSDR which makes N1MM disappear, tune him in and try to get N1MM back in focus. It makes contesting effortless. (Actually the way I have the screens set up it's not a major effort to change focus BUT I love the knob)

Well back to the contest before 15 fades into the noon time dust and all the Russians mosey on down (up?) to 20M and 40M

73

No VU4 but Singapore

2011-03-17T19:34:00.004-04:00

VU4PB disappeared. S21YZ disappeared, BUT James 9V1YC decided to party.

His sunrise and my sunset perfect timing excellent signal

and in the log in less than 5 minutes

The bands are heating up.

73

VU4PB S21YZ

2011-03-17T16:32:00.013-04:00

I got up this morning hoping the VU4 was on 40M. He was on 15M. I have the slightest chance to work him in the morning on 40M

As you can see he still has 15 to 30 min of daylight when it's my sunrise but at least this morning NO GO. I'm off this week so I have the time to try and listen at sunrise. I am usually starting my first case at the surgery center by 7:30 so I'm out the door.

Its about 4:30 EDT now and I have the freq in my sites on 40M I can see the EU pile up building. The pile up looks to be about 5 khz wide from 7005 up to 7010 and I can tune around using the watch receiver to listen to the pile while still keeping both RX1 and RX2 synced in diversity mode

By listening to the pileup I can tell who is hearing the VU4 and by watching the S meter I can easily see how conditions are building. It makes for a very handy setup.

I still have about 2.5 hours of daylight before I have even the slightest chance of hearing him, hopefully he will still be on 40M by then

There is also a S21YZ in Bangladesh happeing up on 30M There is a pretty good EU pileup on him as well:

As you can see by comparing the plots below the S21 and the VU4 are on the exact beam heading so if they are still there I have a chance of working either or both just around my sunset and through the hour of shared darkness until their sunrise

It was kind of them to go on DX pedition together in different spots along the same path :)

73

Nite cap A92IO

2011-03-14T23:48:00.004-04:00

Before heading off to bed I checked the band and A92IO was spotted on 30M

So I swung up and gave a listen. I set up diversity and there he was lots of QSB but Q5 most the time. 30M is a weird band the station can be far into daylight and I can still hear him pretty well as is the case with the A92. The next trick was figuring out where he was listening. He was moving up and down between 10112 and about 10113 Finally I caught a 599 and called him and he came right back. Another one bites the dust

73

So who was there?

2011-03-14T19:41:00.002-04:00

No VU4PB No UK8 and No JT1 But

9V1YC was there Q5

VU4PB was spotted on 80M but I couldn't hear him and no one else was either

Here is the world map for gray line reference, its 19:50 EDT

Oh Well he is there till the 31st

73

Setting up for Andaman VU4, JT1 and UK8

2011-03-14T16:33:00.022-04:00

Andaman is on the air! I just saw him spotted on 40M. My best shot is 40M at sundown. It's 16:30 eastern here and sundown is scheduled for 19:28 tonight so sundown is 3 hours away but I'm getting ready in the mean time. My noise level is down around -120dBm tonight with the noise blankers on, a good sign. No storm static to be heard.

That means I resonate the diversity antenna for 40M and set up diversity and I set up the split freq.

The everything is ready except he is 3 hours away from QSO time. I use the memory feature of DDUTIL to memorize the setup and enter vu4pb into the field so I know what is in this memory. I just hit save and he is in the memory. I double click the frequency box and a dialogue pops up so I can recall who this freq belongs to, and I enter VU4PB in the box and click OK

Here is the finished product Note the title bar

There is also JT1DA on the air so I decide to enter him in the memory as well.

He will be hitting my darkness just about the time I am hitting his sunrise so there is some chance of a QSO and it costs nothing to set this up in memory

and voila'

Wait UK8GH in Uzbekistan just came up on 7010.8

Into the memory he goes.

Now I can rapidly switch between these 3 frequencies checking if the station is there to be worked. If one is building while another is peaking I can rapidly switch between stations basically trying to work all three within seconds of each other. LP distance on JT1 and UK8 are both 17800 miles while the VU4 is only 15000 miles so both the UK8 and the JT1 should peak about the same instant as my darkness starts. The VU4 will be in the window for a while longer as his sunrise will be ah hour or more into my darkness. So we will see what we can hear and what we can work, if any of them are even still on the air. Any way you cut it we are loaded for bear.

I am just starting to see the European part of the VU4 pile up start to appear on the panadapter up near the yellow cross hairs. I can see several stations that come on in unison and go off in unison and they are spread out over several kHz. This is about the time I can usually start working EU on 40M. About 1800 EST I should start to hear the northeast USA start calling if my predictions are correct.

There is also a pretty good European pileup building on the UK8

I can't tell what the hell is going on with the JT1 as there is some wide band local noise covering up his freq

I immediately switch to a different probe antenna and use diversity to null the noise

This gives me an additional 15 dB of signal to noise and brings the noise floor down to -115 dBm. There is no pileup on the JT1 and he is spotted as "cq-ing alone"

What I can do with this radio is way too much fun!! I can actually watch pile ups build from 4000 miles away

COME ON TERMINATOR!!

73

T30RH It's always something

2011-03-13T08:22:00.004-04:00

This morning I was doing some web surfing and had the radio on and T30RH cam up on 80M

He was Q5 with QSB but after I got him in my diversity sights he was eminently workable

The pileup was small indicating not may were hearing him. He was an hour and a half into my sunrise

Unfortunately I didn't make it Pretty soon he faded into the noise But still its amazing that I could hear him on 80M in the middle of March this far into the sunrise

73

Mo' better Skimmer

2011-03-12T20:13:00.009-05:00

We made some changes to the Skimmer set up in DDUTIL that gives finer control over the water fall clicking behavior for various modes. Mack W4AX came up with the nidas of the idea, I expanded the idea to cover the various modes including diversity and that computer genius Steve K5FR made it so.

Here is the truth table

If different controls in PSDR are active how CWS controls each VFO is a bit different, but it is totally logical and transparent in its implementation.

In the case where RX 1 is active and split is off the waterfall in CWS controls VFO A

Notice split is off and VFO B is dark

If you have RX1 AND split turned on the waterfall controls VFO B, which in this case is the transmit VFO

Notice Split is on and VFO B is lighted Also notice in skimmer that VFO B has changed to the same freq I clicked 7016

If you have RX1 and RX 2 but no split and no VFO sync then skimmer waterfall controls VFO A

Note I clicked 7017 on the waterfall and VFO A changed to 7017

With RX1 RX2 on and VFO sync on both VFO A and B follow the click choice on the waterfall

Note VFO A is synced with VFO B and both VFO's are tuned by clicking the waterfall. This is diversity mode. You will transmit on the VFO A freq.

Finally if you have the above but you add split, the TX VFO becomes active and clicking around on the waterfall causes this VFO to change

This set up allows you to change from CWS controlling the receive VFO (normally VFO A) when split is not active (transceive mode) to controlling the TX VFO (either VFO B or VFO TX) when split is active. It means you do not need 2 lines coming from CWS anymore, only one line. Clicking split in PSDR does the magic from changing between VFO A and VFO B

Perfect for pileups OR just casual clicking and no having to dig into menus on CWS to choose radio 1 or radio 2.

Here is a quote from Mack:

"This is perfect! I've already busted two pile ups with it."

The quote just drips with ham radio pleasure!

This new feature is available in the latest download of DDUTIL 2.0.1.37

Here is a shot of me using the new setup in the K8LEE/CY0 pileup on 160 this evening

73

Flow Diagram

2011-03-08T09:34:00.026-05:00

I got a lovely note from a flex 5K owner yesterday. He was a newer ham and was just starting to delve into customizing his radio to make it work the way he wants, a very cool thing. He was a bit confused on how to get band/freq/mode data into DX Keeper which is the logbook part of the DX lab suite. I figured if he was confused there are probably others who are confused as well.

I normally have 4 programs active PSDR DXlab suite CW Skimmer and DDUTIL

You can see that DX lab has several active sub programs Commander, which is the I/O control program, DXView and DXView Map which shows a lot of data about a given callsign and prefix, including things like location short and long path distance and beam headings etc. The map is populated by stations heard by the cluster client Spot collector. Below PSDR I have several windows open The first is the logbook DX Keeper entry window If I click an entry on Spot Collector that callsign and country information as well. If you look at the pic you will see I clicked 9M2TO who was spotted on 30M. You can see the freq and mode was entered into commander and this was transmitted to my radio which switched to 30M, the 9M2TO was entered into the log book entry window, in DX view you see all the relevant data about West Malaysia. You can see I've worked 9M2 on 160 but I do not have them on 30M You can see the path both short and long on the Map and you can see the terminator. My antenna also switched to 30M and I am ready to call him except I don't hear diddly.

Next to the log book entry screen is a mini-window view of DDUTIL. DDUTIL has a memory feature Steve and I designed a while ago that I use all the time. It allows you to memorize up to 5 freqs including mode data filters etc It also has a feature that allows you to annotate the station associated with that freq

Voila'

Note the 9M2TO in the title bar. With this feature I can store up to 5 pile ups and as things wax and wane I can immediately switch between pileups and I can know what pileup I am listening to. Last night I worked FR5ZL on Reunion and he was puny weak, but the terminator was heading his way and I knew he was going to peak soon so I worked another 5 or so DX stations with his freq loaded into memory, checking back every few minutes to monitor the situation. He was working simplex and no pileup because hardly anyone was hearing him. Finally as the terminator flew over his head he peaked and he was in my log. I next switched to 3B8CF on Mauritius who was also in my memory a little farther down the band and worked him

The 3B8 was a LOT stronger than the FR5 station I also access many of my Macros from this screen. It is how I one touch turn diversity on and off and once touch tune up my diversity antenna etc. Below that is a window that is connected to a new device that is a tuning knob for the Flex series of radios

I'm not quite ready to blog about this but soon. It allows control of the VFO's in the radio and up to 9 different functions in the radio, AND IS INDEPENDENT OF SCREEN FOCUS. This means I can be in another program, like a browser and control the volume in the Flex. It also means I can call up the memories in CWX the keyer applet and actually use it as a memory keyer without having to click all over the damn screen. Excellent for DXing. As you can see I have my callsign 5NN and TU programmed, pretty much all you need. There are many other features and when I am ready I will give a full account.

Finally I have Skimmer open with its new TX freq control!!

During contests I use N1MM and generally turn Skimmer and parts of DX lab suite like spot collector off. I keep the log book DX Keeper turned on in case I work a new one

I don't use MIXw at all but I included that so one can see how extra programs can be included in the mix.

Steve K5FR generously makes VSPmanager available to hams who need virtual serial ports. He bought the license for us. Just one of the many things Steve has done to change the face of ham radio. There are other virtual port programs but we have available THE BEST in my opinion thanks to Steve

Here is a shot of how I do VSPmanager

I have 4 physical ports enumerated on my computer. These are on the motherboard or exist as part of a USB to serial port. For example my WinKey USB enumerates as com 3 and I use a USB to serial port (com 5) as the means to get data from my keyers output into PSDR. This allows me to control winkey from programs like N1MM and WinWarbler and allows my keyer to cause the radio to transmit. I also use a USB to serial to get VFO changing data into N1MM when running SO2R. There are other ways to do this, but in my setup this works best for me. I have a second paddle connected to the radios internal keyer so changing keyers for me is a matter of moving my hand from one paddle to the other.

My virtual port setup looks like this

I use pairs that are enumerated in a +10 format, s0 pairs look like 6-16, 7-17, 8-18 etc. Since I have a physical port 9 I do not have a virtual pair 9-19. Some programs like N1MM and DX Lab only allow certain pairs to be used. N1MM can go up to 8

Commander can to up to 16

WinWarbler only allows 16

Skimmer is more liberal and allows up to 20

PSDR and DDUTIL allow anything

The reason I use the +10 method is because I can choose the lower number on virtually any program and then connect it to DDUTIL. If I used serial numbers like 6-7, 7-8 etc I would soon run out of numbers to use. Also it's easy to remember.

Each line between DDUTIL and a program or between PSDR and WinWarbler represents one of these virtual serial ports. I have to use a line between WW and PSDR to control the PTT and switch TX/RX otherwise all the traffic flows through DDUTIL.

All of the programs in the DX lab suite are controlled by commander (except for that PTT) So once you get data into commander it will distribute it as needed for example it will load band freq and callsign data from Spot Collector into DX Keeper and commander and commander will then load band freq and mode data to DDUTIL which will then distribute it to PSDR and Skimmer and what ever else you have running It all works very well.

In keeping with our discussion of Freq Entry, here is how N1MM acts as a method of freq entry

N1MM has its own cluster client built in and will populate a "band map" with call signs on what ever band is selected in VFO's A and B. With the F5K and both receivers active I can therefore work SO2R even though its only one radio. To change freq all I have to do is click either band map and the freq of the corresponding VFO will change. It will also change the transmitter to that VFO so you are then ready to make a contact once again all point and shoot and automatic. The antennas and amp will follow the transmitter so everything will be ready at the touch of a mouse.

Also lets look at WinWarbler

As you can see PSDR is in DIGIU mode and has a wide bandwidth (3750 hz) filter selected. Win Warbler works by switching a narrow bandwidth filter up and down within this 3750 hz window. By moving this filter around in the 3750hz bandwidth you are effectively tuning the radio in a virtual kind of way. As you can see WW will allow you to have 3 separate filters tuning around the bandwidth so you can listen and work up to 3 stations simultaneously.

Actually you can listen to up to 47 QSO using a Stations Heard screen and a channel monitor screen which decodes all the activity in the 3750hz window

This thing really gets hopping when the band is open!! I'm not a big user of digital modes but for those of you who enjoy or would like to experiment this set up works great. It gives you a tone of modes to use as well not just PSK31

It also has a digital voice keyer built in but I have never played with that. I'm a CW guy.

73

CY0 continues

2011-03-08T09:24:00.003-05:00

These guys are really smokin the pileups:

This island is active pretty often so I am surprised at the size of the pile. Every time I tune by they are hip deep in contacts. This is 40M I don't have them on 160 and I tried to work them on 160 with my pip squeak 100W and 43 foot vertical but breaking through the howitzers on 160 with my BB gun proved impossible. I NEED to get my 160 antenna BACK UP!!

73

Skimmer Dope Continued CY0 Sable Island

2011-03-06T08:24:00.010-05:00

Sable Island seen from the Space Shuttle

Sable Island is a little island off the coast of Canada and belongs to the province of Nova Scotia. First discovered in the mid 1500's it has been home to shipwreck survivors and convicts. Today the permanent population is 5. It is known for its feral horses

Presently there is a DX pedition up on Sable. I happened across the cluster spots last night. There were three stations on three bands simultaneously 80, 40, 30. I was playing around writing some macro's for WinWarbler, the digital client in the DX Lab suite In order to use WW with PSDR I have to completely reconfigure the virtual audio cable arrangement from the way it normally is set up for CW skimmer.

I wrote a macro called WWon which sets the correct VAC pair, shuts off the raw I/Q feed in setup, sets the mode to DIGIU sets the filter to 3700hz and I'm ready to go. To go back to my regular configuration I have WWoff which returns me to the correct VAC pair for CWskimmer, turns on the raw I/Q feed and puts me back in CW. So I can go from one to the other in a single button click.

The 3 CY0's came up on the cluster almost simultaneously Here is a shot of the path

Only 1500 miles at 41 degrees. The signals were strong but the pileup was actually moderately large. Larger than I would have anticipated. I decided to see how fast I could work all three stations as a test of my new Skimmer setup. So I clicked WWoff since I was still in the DIGI mode and clicked the 80M CY0 station in SpotCollector and immediately I was on freq. I determined he was listening up about 2, turned on the amp (solid state, no tune, instant on, auto band switching) and gave him a call and he was in the log.

Next I clicked the 40M station in SpotCollector and was immediately on freq for the 40M station. The software automatically set my amp to 40M and then chose my 40M antenna, so I was ready to rock and roll! This pileup was more formidable. The DX op had scattered the pileup out so it covered about 10khz. Since the phone contest was going on 40M wasn't all that busy but there were several clusters of stations calling every 1.5 khz up the band so where do I go? I listened for the pattern. He was on 7023 and he seemed to be alternating between 7025.5 and 7030 plus or minus a little. I clicked on Skimmer and that set my transmitter to 7025.5 and commenced to calling. In the next minute he was in the log.

I next clicked on the 30M station and once again my amp and antenna clicked to 30. I turned off the amp to keep it legal and set about trying to figure out the pattern. The pileup is harder to figure out on 30 since I can't see all the players on Skimmer. I listened to the CY0 and in his CQ he was sending UP 2 so I decided to take him at his word and clicked Skimmer up 2 No luck. He was strong so I knew I would likely also be strong in his receiver. His freq was something like 10.1077 which was a bit odd so instead of transmitting on 1.0097 I tried 10.1095 and he came right back. Total time 11 minutes to break 3 pileups

I clicked WWon and was immediately back to playing around with WW and PSK31 decoding all the brag tapes

Here is a practical example of the power of the external freq entry system in PSDR and DDUTIL. Sometime people say this level of automation takes all the fun out of it, but for me it puts the fun into it. The radio station in some respects has become an extension of my will. In the old days I had to spend my attention fiddling with it to make it do what I wanted now it simply does what I want. I still had to fiddle with it. I still had to set up all the macros, and I still had to do all the control design and systems design. I still had to build the hardware to make it all play, but that is the reason it is fun because in doing all that it now responds to me exactly the way I want, and because of that I can break 3 DX pileups on three bands in 11 minutes and I find that quite satisfying, since being able to do that is the fruit of my labor. The labor of designing my radio station to be an extension of my will.

It is a very different experience than with a "normal" radio where you become an extension of and bounded by that radios design constraints. In this system since its basically software, the design constraints are soft. The boundaries are soft. You can do something this month that would have been entirely impossible last month because things are soft. If you need some function exposed in PSDR, Flex has been very willing to help you out and expose that function. If you need something massaged to make it work like the diversity stuff or Skimmer stuff K5FR has been very amenable to help make that happen in DDUTIL. It has been an amazing ride.

It is there for you also because the pieces to make it happen have all been modularized and made readily accessible and readily configurable. Except for a custom modification I did to my antenna switch controller the other things needed to make this thing go has been designed using off the shelf components, and done in as cheaply a way as possible. Life is good!

73

CAT primer Skimmer dope

2011-03-04T08:53:00.041-05:00

Last time we looked at the various ways freq data is entered into the radio from things like a mouse or keyboard. Today we will look at how other programs enter data into PSDR. Enter the CAT command! CAT commands are bits of data that come in over a serial port and tell the radio what to do. As well the radio can tell other programs what to do by answering queries. Other programs can also just query the radio to see what it's state is. The CAT command set for Flex has grown rapidly over the past years. Initially Flex used the Kenwood set of commands but Flex soon outgrew that set and has evolved from the oriional 16 commands to nearly 150 commands

The most recent command list is here

Note: all the following is done using version 2.0.19RC1 of PSDR. Newer or older versions may or may not work as described due to changes in CAT data but the format will be the same

You can execute CAT commands in PSDR by using the test feature. Open Setup and go to the CAT TAB. You will see a button called TEST, press that, and this screen will pop up

Here is a pic of the CAT entry for the command ZZAC; (note the ; its important)

ZZAC; is the command changes the frequency step of the VFO's If you put ZZAC; in the above test form and hit execute,

PSDR returns ZZAC00; If you look at the above table you see 00 corresponds to a 1hz freq step

If you look at the above table 00 corresponds to a 1hz freq step as displayed on my VFO

If I enter ZZAC03; and execute

I get

I chose this as a test because it has many arguments to play with to get a feel for the test form and how CAT works. Now you may say whoop de doo, I can change the freq step!! But there are nearly 150 things you can change using CAT commands in PSDR. It is a means to set up your radio for example. To set up diversity I have 3 macros in DDUTIL 2 that turn diversity on, and one that turns diversity off. These commands also configure my antennas to the normal pair I use for diversity reception

The macros are enumerated here

M4 Diversity1 ZZRS1;ZZSP0;ZZSY1;DDDV1;ZZOA2;ZZOB1;ZZOC2;ZZDF1;ZZDE1;

M5 Diversity2 ZZRS1;ZZDF1;ZZDE1;ZZSP1;ZZSY1;DDDV1;ZZOA2;ZZOB1;ZZOC2;DDVA;

M6 DiversityOff ZZDE0;ZZDF0;DDDV0;ZZSP0;ZZSY0;ZZRS0;

and these macros corrospond to these keyboard F keys

I include the above so you can merely cut and past the commands into DDUTIL and make your radio turn diversity off and on if you have the second receiver installed.

Here is what these lines of code do to the radio

Diversity Off

This is the standard no diversity radio In this example I have various antennas chosen and RX 2 is in LSB with a filter of 2.4khz chosen

Diversity1 does this to my radio

Notice how the antennas are now 2,1,2 This is my preferred diversity antenna set up and notice how RX 2 is now in CWL and the 12hz filter is chosen This is my preferred setup all using CAT commands all with one click. Flex does not have a command that sets RX1'as mode to RX2 or sets RX1 and RX2's filters to be equal so DDUTIL has its own CAT command set Using this command set you can include commands in your Macro that do things PSDR can not do. The command for setting these 2 parameters = to each other is DDDV1; and to turn that off is DDDV0;

Diversity2 takes things one step further and is what I turn on when I want to work diversity split

In this case SPLIT is engaged and the freq data in VFO A is placed in VFO TX. Normally WHen VFO TX is energized it comes up at a default 7.00000 MHZ and is a PITA to set. My antennas are automatically set as well as my amp, BUT the band they are set to is controlled by the VFO that I am transmitting on so even though I may be listening to 80M if my TX is set to 40M my 40M antennas are energized. This is another DDUTIL CAT function called DDVA. It takes the data from VFO A and shoves it into VFO TX and saves me all the hassle of setting up VFO TX I LOVE THIS FUNCTION!!

So why all the long winded bla bla bla about CAT and macros? Well it is through CAT in the same fashion that programs talk to PSDR through DDUTIL

Here is a dump from a port monitoring program that is monitoring output from Skimmer

In this dump you will see out to the side length 3 FA; and a little later Length 14 FA0003500000;

FA; is one of the original Kenwood CAT commands and it is being I/O on Radio 1 of Skimmer

A little later you see FB; and a response of FB 0000350100; This is an example of my radio talking to skimmer and here is the display on my radio.

As you can see VFO A = 00003500000 and VFO B = 00003501000

I noticed Skimmer has 2 Radio ports in its set up menu.

I reasoned if I could address 2 ports I could make the output from each do different things. What I wanted was a way to make Skimmer control the TRANSMIT freq instead of the RX freq.

the virtual com port system allows you to set up virtual serial port connections between 2 programs. On Radio 1, Skimmer connects to DDUTIL over the pair 9-19

On radio 2 Skimmer connects Radio 2 to DDUTIL using the pair 6-16

Here are the DDUTIL connections

But wait the 6-16 Radio 2 pair is connected to a port called CWS (CWskimmer)

The reason for this is port CWS does some magic. If I am using radio 1 and I click the skimmer waterfall it sets the VFO A freq

Note how VFO A changes from 3500 to 3503.980

This is normal behavior for Skimmer BUT by changing to the Radio 2 6-16 pair I can control my transmit VFO

In this case when I click Skimmer my transmit VFO (VFO B) changes freq. from 3501 to 3504

Imagine you are in a pile up and want to change the transmitter freq all over the pileup as you see different stations working the DX. You merely click the waterfall and there you are transmitting on the freq of your desire, and there is NO CHANGE in the RX freq.

But what about diversity? Diversity has that pesky VFO TX. Well through more magic you can make skimmer control VFO TX in a pileup and VFO A and VFO B stay linked and do not change freq

A VFO TX freq of 3500 becomes 3505 when I click 3505 on Skimmer's waterfall

This is done through the magic of CAT commands and some data manipulation in DDUTIL which is why there is a special port for CWS!

If I want to change the RX freq using Skimmer as the freq controller all I have to do is turn off split and then click around on the skimmer waterfall and the RX freq changes. Then if I turn split back on the TX freq changes again. I can also change everything using the mouse in PSDR or by direct entry.

Also the ability to enter data into the RX VFO from Spot Collector (my DX cluster program) is intact when this transmit clicking oin skimmer is active

Note the change in RX freq when I click SpotCollector

To set the TX VFO I merely click skimmer

So basically the whole operation is becoming one button and point and shoot!!! The more I customize the behavior of my radio the more I love to operate it.

I did a lot of the concept design for this aspect of the radio and of course my buddy K5FR did the coding. I would also like to thank Bob K5KDN the keeper of the CAT commands at Flex, and I would like to thank the people at Flex. Because Flex is open to ideas from operators they have been very responsive to Steve and me when we get a wild haired idea. I think they trust something cool will come out of the experience. Bob has also been crucial to exposing the CAT commands at our request We could have not done the SO2R project and this project without him. The commands we needed to get the job done did not exist even one month ago.

I hope I laid this out clearly enough so you can copy how to make your radio behave like mine if you are interested, and with enough inside baseball that you get some idea of what is happening when you click this or click that. I don't know of any other radio that gives you such exquisite control of functionality and I don't know of another radio company that is so interested in making the radio work better.

Sorry for the length of the post

73

The Amazing Web and thank God for Firefighters

2011-03-03T08:40:00.016-05:00

During the recent fire scare we of course turned on the TV and found it useless for information. When the news finally came on they would show a weather map and a bunch of arrows showing wind direction and the smoke plume which of course covered about 4 counties and was NO indication of where the hell the fire was so whats a mother to do?

RadioReference.com is a websitre local radio feeds across the country. The feeds are not always active but in my case the feed was active and I was able to listen to the fire and rescue traffic in real time, not through some blow dryed dork on TV waving his arms and saying words with no content

I live about half a mile from I-95 out in the forest. I live on the East side of 95. On the east side its fairly well populated with farms and orange groves and in a couple of miles you run into the intra coastal water way. Beyond that is the blue Atlantic and nothing till the coast of Africa. To the west its soon becomes just acres and acres of uninhabited forest to the St Johns River.

As you can see I live just east of the start of a double bend in I-95 so if I can find I-95 on a map I can find my house.

The biggest problem I had was trying to figure out where the fire was. I live in north Brevard county and just north is Volusia county The counties share a boarder all the way to the St Johns River It turns out the fire was as much west of me as north so it was converging from 2 directions

The green dot at the bottom is my place. This map was not available till today so to try and figure out where the fire was I found this resource

Noaa firedetect

This satellite measures smoke plumes updated every 3 hours and it allows you to see where the fire is. I was able to drill down to a 10 sq mile area. I didn't save a screen shot of the fire but basically I could see every source within the map above. There were about 25 individual sources in the fire zone. This Map was invaluable to me, as there are really only 2 roads out of my QTH and with this data I was able to make a plan and a back up plan about which way to go if the need arose.

Another invaluable resource was the traffic cam network on trafficland There are a number of web cam networks, another is 511 but with this I was able to monitor the fire visually. There are cameras every mile and I could see if fire was on both sides of the interstate of on just one and how far north and south was the fire

By knowing where my little jog in the road was I could call up cams up and down the road and see what was happening

I could also monitor US 1 SR46 intersection and see if traffic was being diverted, a sure sign things were getting worse

In 1998 there was much worse wild fire than this. In that year there was close to a million acres of FL that was on fire. In that fire I had burned spots in my yard and a pumper truck next to my house protecting me., We had a local radio station a 5kw daytimer that stayed on throughout the fire and people called in and gave reports so we knew what was happening. This year the station was off the air and all I got on AM radio was reruns of Michael Savage BLEH!!! BUT with the advent of all this information I was able to a very large extent to be apprised of what was going on around me all the time. I was able to call up my neighbors and discuss evac contingencies etc and have some idea of how bad things really were. If all I had was the blow dryed dork on channel 35 to rely on I would have been sunk

73

Missing the Bullet and Frequency Entry

2011-03-02T11:11:00.019-05:00

This is what it looked like out my bedroom window Monday night

Well ARS W9OY is still standing. As of 2 days ago I was not sure if it was going to stand or be burnt to the ground. My property was in the area of the recent "Iron Horse" fire in central FL. The fire burned to within about a mile of my property. The fire all told burned about 16K acres and at present is only 25% under control, fortunately I live in that 25%. I pre-evacuated all my records and important stuff and had the family down to a 5 minute evacuation but fortunately I didn't have to pull the trigger. I've been in a couple of these types of fire and basically the fire can be viewed as a huge mass of thermal energy that moves with the speed of the wind, and no pip squeak with a garden hose is going to do anything to combat the thermal mass. The thermal mass is essentially a chunky gas, and as such its temperature is unlimited on the upside. Point being when the call comes LEAVE.

I'm going to start a series on frequency entry for Flex radios. You may say "well that's pretty obvious just point and shoot" and for sure that is one method to get frequency data into the radio, but the radio is far more powerful than that.

Today there are a host of programs that interface with the Flex. At my station I always have DX lab suite and CW Skimmer loaded. I am a 99% CW op so I virtually never use point and shoot to enter freq data. I enter freq data from Skimmer. The reason being Skimmer centers my CW signals exactly to coincide with my side tone, and I use very narrow 12hz filters ALL THE TIME. Occasionally I will use a digital program like Ham Radio Deluxe or WinWarbler as the thing that controls my radio's frequency. If I am contesting I typically use the band map in N1MM to control my search and pounce operations. Part of what has been missing is the ability to control other functions of PSDR beside the frequency while PSDR is out of focus and another program window is in focus. To address that issue there has been under development for about 2 years a piece of hardware that lets you address up to 15 commands in PSDR and communicates with PSDR via DDUTIL.

This piece of hardware has a multi-function Knob which has its own switch, and 3 other switches. The switches can address up to 9 functions and the knob can address up to 6 functions. It is in my mind a tremendous advancement in the ergonomics of the radio, and it is the fulfillment of the promise that the radio is amenable to other people developing useful products to improve the radio's performance. I will get into the Knob and its development in a future blog post, as it is quite extensive in its capabilities. The reason I include it under frequency entry is it most definitely is a welcome hardware addition to the available modes of frequency entry.

Also working with Steve we have refined the usability of CW Skimmer in a pile up. Skimmer has the ability to I/O on two different serial ports called Radio 1 and Radio 2. What we did was develop a way so that VFO A data comes I/O on the Radio 1 port and VBO B or VFO TX data comes I/O on the Radio 2 port. What this means is you can use Skimmer to control your transmit VFO when you are in a pileup simply by clicking around on the Skimmer waterfall. I have found this to be an EXTREMELY effective way to work DX, and I will go through a tutorial on how to set this up as well.

First an overview of the native way to get frequency data into PSDR:

Here is a shot of the PSDR console I use every day

There normal methods to change freq are to "grab" the panadapter:

To get the little hand make sure the cursors are off, and left click the mouse. Moving the mouse left and right moves the freq down and up.

Next is the vaunted Point and Shoot method

to get here you first right click the panadapter to bring up the yellow cross hairs, and then move the cross hairs to the freq you desire to occupy and left click the mouse. BAM you are on Freq

Note the change in VFO A's freq

To change the transmit freq in cursor mode you right click again and red cursors pop up

Left click and VFO B (typically your transmit VFO when you are split) and shades of Emeril (BAM that is) VFO B is on a new freq. This is very useful for moving around in pileups especially if you don't use other software to control freq.

Another method is to use the mouse wheel like a tuning knob. When used in conjunction with the Freq Steps in the VFO area of the console

If you click the - or + it changes the freq step from 1hz to 10mhz in 14 step size variations

In addition you can highlight one or the other of the VFO's and either use the mouse to raise and lower and digit or you can keyboard entry the freq directly.

In Diversity mode the display looks like this

Notice a new display is under VFO A. I call this VFO TX . In this mode there are three independent processes that are active Receiver 1 is in the VFO A slot, Receiver B is in the VFO B slot, and TX is in VFO TX slot. In the case of the diversity mode VFO A and VFO B are slaved. The yellow cursor changes both receive VFO's and

note 14.013 goes to 14.009

The red cursor changes VFO TX

If VFO A and B are not synced then the yellow cursor in the correct panadapter field will independently change VFO A or B

In the next installment I will look at CAT commands and Frequency control. CAT commands are the heart of remotely controlling PSDR. Over the course of the last decade the CAT command set has grown from a very basic Kenwood set to a highly specialized set of extremely powerful commands.

I'm going to label these posts "frequency entry" for easy cataloging of this series

73

DU1IST

2011-02-27T06:04:00.005-05:00

A couple of days ago I was complaining about the Japanese wall of RF and today it's just the opposite. I flipped on the radio after brewing my Latte and there was DU1IST extremely loud on 40 M

I tried to hit the screen capture at the peak of his signal strength but after about 5 tries I settled. He was peaking a true S9 (-73 dBm) on my meter and my noise was down around -118 dBm this morning, meaning he was a 45 dB out of my noise!! Wow! Most state side KW stations are in this strength category. He was working people on freq as opposed to split. I gave him 2 calls and he was in the log. Here is a shot of the path:

9200 miles. This was not a terminator shot like with the XU station the other day. We are both still in darkness. His signal was so good I didn't even bother with diversity mode. I just saw XU7ACY spotted on 80M so I'm going to set up on 80 and wait for the gray line again and we will see

73

DX frustration

2011-02-25T06:59:00.004-05:00

What's wrong with this picture? This morning I have a late start at my surgery center, but I'm a creature of habit. I rolled out of bed made my Latte and arrived at the operating position here at W9OY at the usual time. Generally I have to leave for work before the gray line hits, but today I was able to catch the gray line.

I checked Spot collector (my DX cluster program), double clicked XU7ACY and in 1 second I was listening to XU7ACY on 40M. I hit F4 on my keyboard and BINGO I was in diversity mode. I hit F1 and my RX2 diversity antenna automatically tuned itself to 40M thanks to the Macro, look Ma no hands. I set the yellow dot on the big green bulls eye for best signal to noise. My line noise was gone this morning. The noise gods had smiled and relented. My noise level was down around -120dBm, no noise blankers needed. The XU was 8 or 10 dB out of the noise, weak but Q5. The AGC-T was set so the AGC was not taking down the XU's signal. The amp was fired up, idling, waiting for the command to turn 2500W of raw AC into 1500W of pure RF delight and fling it into the ionosphere. Ready to crack that XU7 with a bolt right between the ears. I'm poised, my new N3ZN paddle ready to rock and roll between my finger tips. The new supercharged CW engine in PSDR is tuned to a gnat hair of perfection. The terminator is flying over my head and he is peaking!! he is peaking!! Just as I'm about to bag him, I listen one last instant to the pileup

WHAT?????

He's running JA's

73

One down One to go

2011-02-24T23:06:00.004-05:00

This is a picture taken in my back yard 27 miles down range, speed 2900 mph. It was 2 seconds from being canceled.

73

Macro-me

2011-02-24T17:47:00.008-05:00

I know, I know, its supposed to be macrame but this is all about making my radio reflect ME and my operating habits.

Hot off the presses (many thanks to Bob K5KDN and Steve K5FR) I was delivered a new psdr.exe and a new DDUTIL with a couple of new CAT commands exposed and developed in each. I can now turn on and turn off 2 different versions of Diversity with a push of a single button.

The above set up is how I normally run diversity. Here is the sequence to go from a normal one receiver console to dual diversity split operation

Turn on RX2
Sync VFO
Turn on split
Set TX vfo freq to the correct freq and band (done either with a red cross hairs or by the mouse in the TX vfo window)
Call up the Diversity form (green bullseye)
Enable diversity
Make sure my antennas are set to RX1=ant 2, RX2=ant1, and TX=ant 2.
Make sure that the filters are set to the same bandwidth
Make sure Noise blankers are turned on or off according to the noise situation (some times I got it sometimes I don't)
Make sure the preamp in both RX's are the same (diversity works best with antennas that have similar outputs. My antennas are similiar, but I could also use the preamp to balance 2 antennas of dissimilar outputs like a small loop and a big vertical.)

If by then the DX is still on the band, proceed to try and make a contact.

Today I just hit F4 on my keyboard and fine tune the exact TX freq I want to transmit on and go.

To go back to a one receiver setup requires:

Click off the green bullseye
click off split
click off VFO sync
click off RX2

Today I just hit F5 on the keyboard and voila'

I also have a macro that turns on diversity without the split function activated (F3) I choose this when the DX is on the same freq as my transmit freq.

Here are the sequences that I include in the macro field of DDUTIL to do this magic

(note DDUTIL has to be the window in focus for the macros to work from the keyboard. You can also make them work by pushing the button in the macro tab in ddutil with the mouse or by clicking the correct button in the mini-window)
(note the semicolon at the end of the command if you don't add the semicolon the command won't be processed)

ZZRS1; turns on RX2 ZZRS0; turns off RX2
ZZSP1; turns on split ZZSP0; turns off split
ZZDF1; turns on the diversity green bullseye ZZDF0; turns it off
ZZDE1; enables diversity ZZDE0; disables diversity (this allows you to make a macro that turns diversity off and on without loosing the bullseye or the position you have tuned on the bullseye)
ZZSY1; turns on VFO sync ZZSY0; turns it off
DDDV1; syncs mode and filter bandwidth DDDV0; removes this (this is a command internal to DDUTIL instead of a PSDR CAT command)
ZZOA 0,1,2,3,4 sets various antennas on RX1 eg ZZOA2; sets RX1 to ant 2
ZZOB 0,1,5,6 various ants to RX2 0=n/c 1=ant 1 5= RX2, 6=rx1tap ZZOB1; means RX2= ant 1
ZZOC 1,2,3 sets the transmitter output antenna ZZOC2; is ant2 on transamit
DDVA; is a DDUTIL macro that sets the contents of VFOa into the TX VFO
DDVB; sets VFOb into the TX VFO register

So here are the final macros I now use

F3=Diversity1 ZZRS1;ZZSP0;ZZSY1;DDDV1;ZZOA2;ZZOB1;ZZOC2;ZZDF1;ZZDE1;
this one does not split the TX vfo

F4=Diversity 2 ZZRS1;ZZDF1;ZZDE1;ZZSP1;ZZSY1;DDDV1;ZZOA2;ZZOB1;ZZOC2;DDVA;
this one does split the TX vfo and loads VFOA into TX VFO

F5=Diversity Off ZZDE0;ZZDF0;DDDV0;ZZSP0;ZZSY0;ZZRS0;
This one shuts things down but leaves the antennas connected in diversity mode

One thing to watch is to have filters of the same bandwidth in the same grid positions in both receivers. RX2 has only 7 filter positions beside the variables and the radio needs both filters to be in the same topology Look at the picture for the 12hz filter in each receiver and this will make sense.

This is a shot of my DDUTIL macro tab containing the above sequences. It is extremely easy to make these macros work and do extensive changes to the radio. For example I could have added a command to turn on amp relay #2 to the macro to energize my linear amp that resides in the antenna 2 line and turn off the amp relay on ant 1 to make sure I don't blow out the 200W remote tuner in the antenna 1 line, or I could add a macro command that would set the power to the amp on antenna 2, if I was using an amp that requires less than full output drive. You can also set up VHF UHF macros etc. etc. I haven't seen the macro that brews the Latte yet but I know its there somewhere.

This version of PSDR I am using is not yet released but I presume these commands will be in the next version of PSDR and DDUTIL for general consumption

It works great. There are some issues with command sequencing that you have to play with, but this sequence works for Macro-ME

I wanted to give a second shot at some kind of macro tutorial, and I think this is complicated enough to show the power of macros yet easy enough to follow.

In addition Bob K5KDN brought out some commands that turn on and off the noise blankers and preamp in RX2 so you can have one touch NB or one touch preamp off and on. The preamp issue actually does enter into the diversity arena since diversity works best with antennas that have similar outputs. So if you have a dipole and a crummy loop you can turn off the preamp to the RX connected to the dipole and turn on the preamp to the RX connected to the crummy loop and try to balance things.

The PSDR cat command dictionary is here but this was last revised on Feb 8 2011 so a couple commands are missing but is to be updated soon

The DDUTIL internal macro command page is here

This radio is WAY too much fun

Stay "tuned" for even more new developments!!!

73

CW!!!

2011-02-22T20:03:00.004-05:00

I've been playing with the new 2.0.19RC1 PSDR release candidate from Flex. On the CW front it is fantastic, and if you have any interest in CW I hope you download it and give it a whirl. On its surface it looks like any other version of PSDR but underneath the hood, the CW code was completely ripped out of the radio, and at each stage from the keyjack to RF out it was optimized. Some aspects were moved into firmware. I don't know the exact details, but whatever they did I like!! I normally use and external keyer which is inputed into the radio over a serial port in the computer, but in the original version I tested (2.0.18) this mode of input was broken so I was forced to use the internal keyer. The keying of the internal keyer was fabulous. I was able to take the TR turnaround to less than 5 ms

There have been several knocks to PSDR over the years as a CW radio. If you used the internal keyer there was variability of timing on some of the elements, there were pops and clicks, and there were first dits being cut off, and above all there were complaints of lag. When I first bought a SDR-1000 it was almost unusable as a CW radio for DXing because of the lag. All of that has been eliminated in this version. In addition the radio can do QSK up to about 39 wpm. At 40 wpm it automatically switches to semi-breakin. I ran the radio down to 5ms TR turnaround. The relays are rated to 4ms.

Here is an audio recording of some of what 2.0.19 sounds like. When I set the TR turn around to 5 ms if you listen closely to the background you can hear the relay switching with each character transmitted. This relay sound is NOT part of the audio or RF, but is due to my recording technique which uses a microphone. The set up is a pair of headphones placed on top of an Elecraft K-1 which I use as an external off the air receiver. The K-1 has no antenna. I set the K-1 so the agc was not hard limiting by running 4 watts. You can hear receiver noise in the background. I set PSDR to worse case lag, 48khz audio bandwidth with 512 buffers. CW in DSP was set to 4096 on CW RX and 512 on CW TX. With these settings the filters are at their sharpest but if there is lag to be heard it is also at its worst.

I run first the external keyer (K1EL winkey USB) into PSDR via a usb to serial port converter. I use RTS and as a buffer I use a 2n3904 PNP transistor. The transistor is driven through a several hundred ohm resistor on the base. I have found this to be the cheapest and most effective way to get a CW signal into the radio over the years. I normally work semi-breakin with the TR turnaround set to 60ms. This is how the radio is set up during the first part of the test. Next I switch to the internal keyer, and its behavior is virtually identical to my K1EL keyer. I play the sidetone from the radio then add the received signal from the K1. The K1 is the higher pitched tone. Next is the internal keyer at 60ms TR turnaound. Next I set the radio to 5 ms turnaround and go back and forth between external and internal keyers increasing the speed on each keyer My K1EL is set for a top speed of 45 wpm the internal keyer can go to 60 wpm

2.0.19 audio

I also created an example of how the radio sounds when transmitting on top of a station to simulate QSK. For this demonstration no animals were killed and QRM was caused. I merely set the radio to zero watts output and transmitted over another station on 40M I sent random characters over the other station and my sidetone is slightly louder and slightly lower in pitch than the CW station. If you listen closely to the background you can hear the relay but this is not part of the audio just my recording technique.

2.0.19qsk demo

The release candidate is downloadable on the Flex website down the page to the left.

So there ya go!! Hope you have some fun with the new CW aspect of the radio. I certainly am having a blast..

73

Macro Heaven

2011-02-15T15:40:00.011-05:00

I always wanted some kind of minor programming language to go along with PSDR. I lobbied Flex but to no avail. Steve K5FR had a Macro interface in DDUTIL that went on steroids when we started working on SO2R. The CAT command set was expanded dramatically and the boys at Flex. who were committed to the SO2R project added new commands as our needs grew.

Today there is a very robust CAT command set, and a command parser available in DDUTIL. You can find the CAT command set here Recently I was talking to Steve and he said a user was interested in automatically turning on diversity one touch. Since I do a lot with diversity he wanted my input before he wrote the macro. I had never really considered that. To turn on diversity you have to hit a bunch of switches

Here is a shot of the radio in standard mode

To turn on diversity at my QTH you need to hit the VFO sync button up by the VFO's, Turn on RX 2, set the modes in both RX's to equal, set the filters in both RX's equal, and set up the antennas to the correct RX1, RX2, TX choices. In addition I usually turn on split and set the TX VFO to the correct freq. I generally use Diversity for DX split operation.

My RX 2 antenna is generally my 43 ft end fed vertical wire out in the front yard. The antenna has a MFJ 929 auto tuner at the base, and as I band change I have to retune this antenna usually with just a few watts. To do that, I have to set the transmit antenna to ant 1, set the XIT up the band usually about 1500hz so I don't transmit on the DX hit tune, let the tuner do its thing, then turn off tune, reset the transmit antenna back to ant 2 (my multiband vertical) and turn off XIT I routinely forget to turn off XIT so when I try and move around the pile up I am 1500hz higher than I think I am. Frustrating to say the least. It is a lot to setup for diversity operation at my QTH given the way I have things configured. Enter bright idea, why not automate these steps as much as possible. I have added macro's that do the 43 ft vertical tune, then undo all I have to do for that. Steve K5FR created a macro for DDUTIL that turns on Diversity. Note position M4 in the table below

M4 is connected to F4 on the keyboard or on the buttons on the screen. If I hit this button the radio configures itself from above to what is seen below, all with the press of one button:

But wait a minute the antennas are not right, but that is easy to change, after all this is software:

I merely add some macro code that causes the antennas to be correctly configured Here is the result, one button Diversity

This is one of the versions of how I like my diversity set up.

I generally use Diversity for weak signal DXing on 160, 80, and 40, so I wanted to work split. So I set up a macro called Diversity1 to do that for me.

I made 2 more macros so I can tune the 43 foot antenna M1 sets the transmit antenna to ant 1, sets the tune power to 12w, sets the XIT to +1500hz, turns off split, turns on XIT and turns on tune.

M2 turns off tune sets the transmit antenna to ant 2, sets the XIT to 0hz, and and turns off XIT and sets split. Now all I have to do is insert the TX freq and do a ctl-alt-R to bring up the diversity screen

We hope in a future version of PSDR to have CAT commands to bring up the diversity control screen and turn it on so there would be true one touch diversity. With the addition of these 4 macros what was once a bit of a chore is a snap, and no more forgetting XIT!

This is a long winded way to demonstrate the power of the macro language in DDUTIL. If you are interested in digital there are macros that can automate your digital station coming up exactly as you like it. There are macros that change VAC from RX1 to RX2. All kinds of complex customized criteria can be encoded to put the radio into a specific state, and then you can use a macro to back you out to a "normal" state, so like me you don't forget to turn off the friggin XIT!!

Check out the CAT command dictionay to get some idea of the possibilities. The latest CATS including diversity commands are in V 2.0.18 of PSDR and the latest version 2.0.1.14 of DDUTIL. I'm not sure of how widely available this version is, but I know a final release is just around the corner and I'm sure all of that will be included in that upcoming version.

73

TJ9PF on 80

2011-02-12T22:03:00.005-05:00

Quick shot of the pileup on 80

This guy was remarkably hard to work. I can usually knock off a station like this in 2 or 3 calls. I think he might not be hearing all that well because the rate was slow. He was all over the pileup one minute at the top the next at the bottom and you never quite knew which way he was going to go. Tailending was absolutely worthless. Eventually I just placed myself in a quiet spot of the pandadapter about 1.5 khz about where he was last sited and hoped. My hope was answered, so now I have them on 30, 40, and 80. I hope to get my 160 antenna back up maybe tomorrow so with any luck I will snag them on that band too. He is very loud and has been building throughout the evening

Here is a shot of the path

about 6200 miles from my QTH. Presently he is well over S9 on the F5K. I'm using diversity with the 66ft vertical in once RX and the 43 ft vertical tuned for 80M at the base into the other RX

Here is the latest shot of the pileup on skimmer

I love this stuff!!

73

Orlando Hamcation 2011

2011-02-12T18:10:00.031-05:00

Flex 1500 on a BIG display

Hit the hamfest today. Got a bit of a late start which was my intention. The early hours on Saturday are always hectic and I wanted leisure today. I live out in the sticks on the east coast Florida about a mile inland from the ocean and about ten miles north of the Kennedy space center. Orlando is about 30 miles to the west. The hamfest is at the Central Florida Fairgrounds, which is a BIG complex. The hamfest occupies 3 large buildings and a couple smaller buildings one of which is used for forums. There is an outside flee market that goes on for miles and plenty of parking for campers out in the flee area. Orlando is the biggest hamfest I have been to next to Dayton. Everybody comes, all the major distributors and tons of minor distributors and parts and junk dealers from all over the east coast descend on the hamcation every year. Orlando is a great destination and part of the reason I chose to live where I live is because of the airport. You can get here from anywhere, AND that means you can get to anywhere from here. I've gotten cranky enough about travel in my old age, and the demise of our air transpation system, that if you can't fly direct I pretty much don't go. My point is if you ever decide to try a hamfest out of your local area, first there is Dayton but next there is Orlando.

I took a few shots of some of the vendors and some of their wares to share. There are enough vendors to fill ten blog posts so I will share a few. I did make it to Tony N3ZN's booth and I did pick up a new paddle:

ZN-SLR in brass

Tony and I collaborated on the very first version of this paddle a few years ago. It was called the SL1 and I have serial number 1. This was the original design:

Origonal SL-1

The paddle is smooth as silk but it was built on a smaller lighter base and I always wanted something heftier. Tony originally thought I was a bit daft at wanting a single lever paddle built like this, but the customer is always right so he built it for me anyway. Little did he know I was about to hook him. He now uses the single lever of our design as his own choice in paddles, and it has caught on to be a big seller for him. All I know is the speed demons I know all use single lever paddles. Iambics are too prone to mistakes and unnatural at QRQ. I know I am a happy owner. I was going to get the bronze version but wound up with the brass version because he was having a hamfest special on the price and I could take it home with me. Color me ecstatic and Serial Number one is going in the box as a collectors' item

Here is a shot of several of Tony's paddles on the table:

And a picture of the maestro himself:

He and his wife are good people.

I saw Scott W4PA and his new venture

He had about 100 lbs of chromium out on his table.:

I knew Scott from his days at Ten Tec.

I stopped by the Alpha booth and was treated to tables full of horsepower and a light show:

And the guts of their 6M amp. Moon bounce anyone?

I took a couple shots of the competition's displays at the hamfest

W4MPE calls these a "TANK RADIO"

K3 and it's dinky little panadapter

Here is the K3 it's dinky little panadapter and it's dinky little amplifier. It puts out 500W availability around April

This one puts out 600W and will completely band follow any Flex radio and is available today

And this one puts out 1300-1500 W and will completely band follow any Flex radio (this is the amp I just used to work TJ9PF on 80M, while writing this blog entry)

I stopped by and said HI to my friend Rich W2VU editor of CQ

I look forward every year to seeing him at the fest

I finally made it over to the Flex booth They have a pretty massive display, one of the larger displays at the show. Who might I meet?

Greg W5GJ He is standing next to the F3000 display! Nothing dinky about this sucker! It was good to see Greg and the boys and get filled in on the travails for the year.

Here is a pile of bricks:

Steve from down east microwave stopped by the booth and said almost all of the users of his transverters are using Flex 1500's as IF strips. At the show these were flying off the shelf.

Here is a cool shot of the F3K with the Oscope running Note the CW waveform

Greg is smart and he knows how to sell radios

The booth was busy so I wasn't able to get a shot of the Flex 5000 side of the booth. The boys had 3 of these monitors scattered across the tables, one for each radio. The monitors are quite a show stopper. I like to hang around the booth and talk to other hams. Since I have considerable experience with diversity people with questions about how that works often get shuttled to me, and its a great joy just to fellowship with brother hams. I don't have anything to do with the sales, so I don't have a dog in the hunt. It's just good fun.

Overall I talked to the vendors and the good news is ham radio is starting to revive from the recession. Orders are coming in, not flowing in but good and steady. From what the guys say the show was busier this year than last, so all of that bodes well.

I didn't hit the flee market this year, I guess I'm just getting old and when you've seen one TS 830 in a dingy pile of CB microphones, you've seen them all. I need to be throwing stuff out not buying new.

Hamfests make you hungry, and while there are the requisite number of greasy spoon vans on site, all with very good hamfest fair, I chose to wait for lunch. On my way out of town I stopped by my favorite hot dog stand:

If you ever wondered where Heaven is, here is the place. This place serves the best damn Chicago Dog south of Chicago!! Pure bliss. If you come to Orlando and stop by the AES store, Heaven is about a mile or two east of AES on Colonial Avenue.

It was a good day. If you get the chance Orlando Hamcation is a good one. If your just here by chance stop by the AES store and then get ya a dog!!

73

Cameroon, West Kiribati and bears OH MY

2011-02-11T22:59:00.005-05:00

TJ9PF 160 pileup

A lot of DX has been happening around here. I've been off the bands starting a new business, and finally found some time to get back to ham radio. I know I've missed A LOT. Tonight I worked the Cameroon DX pedition on 40 and 30. The 40M pileup was totally out of control with cops and tuner uppers etc, and the DX was flying all over about 5khz of pileup looking for contacts. If I didn't have my trusty Flex I'm not sure I would have known where to transmit.

The above shot is of the 160M pileup. I'm listening to the Cameroon station on my 43ft wire vertical with 3 radials in the front yard and he is Q5, but the pileups are very unruly. This OP is probably the same OP from 40M. If you look at the distributions of 599's you can see he is flying all over the pileup. Fortunately the 160 crowd is much more well behaved as far as cops and kooks go. Unfortunately my 160 antenna is on the ground at the moment so my chances of working him are virtually zero on this antenna, but I hope to rectify that this weekend as the Orlando Hamcation is in progress. I need some dacron rope to get things back on the skyhooks. I have been using an inv-L but I am going to modify to a vertical T configuration this time. I have made contacts all over Europe using this 43 ft antenna and 100W on 160, but no way am I going to crack this pileup.

I will stop by the Flex booth and say HI to the guys and see what happening. It's always a great time seeing them. If there is any news I will bring it back here. I'm also in the market for one of these

I have serial #1 of the ZN-SL1 series, but I want something with a heavier base and this sucker is heavy. I love the action of this key. I have a couple of Begalli keys and a Kent and a N2DAN Mercury and a few others and this key bar none is the best. If you are ever in the market for a single lever paddle this is the one to get. I have tried all the others on the market and this one wins hands down. Beyond that I will pick up a few nicks and nacks for the antenna project and hopefully eyeballs some old friends.

Hope you are all working your fill of the DX because it is thick right now!

73

Winter My Favorite Time

2010-12-17T04:43:00.003-05:00

Its been a while since I checked in here. My schedule has changed and we are in the process of getting a new practice off the ground so I have not been as devoted to my hamming as I was in the past. I was awakened by some alarm in my house probably my kids clock or something. It was going off every 10 minutes so I got up to investigate. Of course as soon as I got up it never happened again, but it did get me into the shack.

This morning as I was tuning 40M, I realized the whole world seemed to be open I was hearing the terminator come across EU as those folks were waking up, and I was equally hearing Asia as those folks were heading into the dark. I was also hearing South America and Russia. In fact it was interesting as some of the EU stations were calling CQ directly on top of some of the Asian stations,. Eventually some of them hooked up. My line noise has finally disappeared and I was able to hear all this with my noise blankers turned off for once. The ambient noise is higher than I am used to by an S unit, but virtually no static was to be heard. The F5K has a very quiet receiver and is easy on the ears for extended periods of listening to the band noise trying to dig out those coherent beeps.

This is the time of year I like best for hamming. It reminds me of days gone by when its cold outside. The sky is very dark and the heavens are full of stars bright. I would come flip on the radio and hear what I could hear slowly tuning from bottom and up. The bands are quiet but unfortunately not too many stations are out there it seems

As you can see skimmer is virtually empty. I didn't hear anything exotic but I just had a good time beating the bushes. I think there are probably more of us just waiting to pounce than calling CQ. Stations heard ZL VK SM F UA BA JA HK BY KP4 SM SP G EI Like I said the whole world

If I don't get back to this before Christmas I want to wish each and every one of you Merry Christmas and good DX from W9OY

73

How my station works

2010-10-15T03:12:00.016-04:00

I was up early again. I've been having some trouble with shoulder impingement syndrome and the pain sometimes wakes me up. It's hell to get old but it can help the DXCC situation. This morning I was knocking off some of the PJ- stations on different bands. Displayed is my setup on PJ6A. I received an email yesterday from Jeremy KB7QOA who wondered a little about my setup. I realized I haven't spoken much about that lately and I probably have some new readers who are interested. Jeremy has a good old FT-857 now but is interested in SDR, so I thought I might showcase how my SDR setup works for him and for other readers

My station consists of a F5K, a F3K, a ALS-1300 solid state amp and several verticals that are fed from an Ameritron RCS-4 antenna switch which I have modified for automatic antenna selection, a horizontal flat top openwire fed on 80-6M, and two other verticals that are on independent coaxs, one that auto switches between 80 and 40 and one that is a base tuned 45ft wire vertical. You can look at my antenna selection on the above links

The F5K has many antenna ports.

I brought out Ant 1,2,3 and RX1 and RX2 to SO239 barrell connectors on a patch panel, and I can hook up any of my antennas to any of the various ports simply by plugging into the patch panel This allows me for example to quickly set up various antenna combinations for SO2R operation or for diversity reception, or unplug all antennas when a thunder storm is lurking. The antennas are chosen by software i PowerSDR

Here I have the high performance multiband vertical connected to Ant 2 and the 45ft vert to Ant 1. I can remote tune the 45ft vert simply by switching the transmit ant to 1 and sending 10w down the line

This is how I tune this antenna which I primarily use for diversity reception.

My ALS-1300 and modified RCS-4 are connected to my system through this $19 board

from United Microsystems

This allows my amp and antenna to automatically band follow my transceiver. In addition I use the DXlab suite of software and I use CW skimmer.

These programs are all joined together by the mack daddy of utility programs DDUTIL

and by a couple of programs that allow for I/O of audio called Virtual Audio Cable (VAC)

virtual serial port (VSP)

With these programs I can run a PSK31 program for example win warbler directly control my transceiver with out any kind of "wires" between the PSK31 software and the PowerSDR software which is the heart of the Flex radio The above VAC and VSP allow direct control between the 2 programs

I can also run a direct I/Q stream out of PowerSDR using VAC to CW skimmer which is why I have such wide bandwidth in Skimmer. VSP gives frequency control between the 2 programs

So back to the above picture of my station and PJ6A. What I do is click on the station of interest in this case PJ6A in my DX cluster client called Spot Collector on the lower left side of the screen. This loads the callsign into DX view (upper left) which gives the pertinent stats about this station and this region. For example I see PJ6 short path is 1354 miles on a 120 degree path, and the station is marked both short path and long path on the world map from my FL QTH. I can see the terminator and whether its daylight or darkness between us etc.

As you can see I've worked PJ6 on both 80 and 40

In addition PJ6A is loaded into the capture screen of my logbook

with some standard RST numbers If the exchange is not 599 I simply enter the correct exchange before I log the contact I can store other info like name etc and this will come up if I work the station more than once so I can call the fellow by his name

In addition when I hit the callsign my transceiver moves to the correct band and freq, as do my amp and antenna The split is set and I am ready to transmit

If you look at the skimmer part of this picture

There are 2 ways to determine where the DX is listening BEFORE you transmit. One is to copy the callsign if the station he is calling and look for that station in the list. The other is to look for the red 599 If you study these clues you can tell if the DX station is moving up or down the pileup or staying on the same freq. You can immediately tell if he jumps from the top to the bottom of the pileup. You can tell if he is working stations 2 khz ABOVE the main body of the pileup and all the other tricks DX stations do to spread things out and make sense of the mayhem, and you can do this without transmitting. When you do transmit you can target where you will have the highest likelyhood of paydirt. Sometimes this does not work and you just have to bang away with the rest of the crowd but most times you can limit your calls to a very low number of tries and bingo he is in the log.

This is what fascinates me the most about SDR, how it orders the chaos by providing a new depth of information. I call this information 3 dimensional as compared to the old one dimensional method of previous radios. Old radios use first in first out linear tuning PSDR uses point and shoot. You can precisely point your signal where you want it in the band and you don't have to bother tuning up and down. The panadapter is 2 dimensional as opposed to a knob which is one dimensional. The third dimension to making sense of the chaos is the ability to quickly decode the data contained in the pileup as a whole This dimension is the dimension of knowledge. It is a quantum that allows you to place yourself in the chaos based on a high degree of probability and not just blind randomness or guessing

The ibuprophen is finally kicking in so I'm going to try to grab another couple hours sleep Hope you enjoyed a foray into my ham radio world

73

The bands are jumpin

2010-10-13T22:13:00.002-04:00

Above is the 80M pile up on the 5V7TT Togo DX-pedition I managed to work them on 40 and 80 tonight along with a bunch of those new PJ- stations and 7Z1HL and RI1FJ in Franz Joseph land all in the space of about 45 minutes

I've been busy with life and haven't had much time for hamming lately Hopefully things will settle down The other good thing is the miners are all rescued. This was a flawless and amazing feat I think and it makes me want to become DX in Chile. Our prez could take a lesson from Sebastian Pinera on how to lead I think, and the currency is strong Wonder how the propagation is from Chile?

My 160M ant is down so I need to repair that. I have been thinking of making it a T instead of an inv-L, maybe this weekend Otherwise no real changes to the station I have been testing out some new hardware from flex. It is still in the alpha stages so I won't get into it but it should make SO2R contesting a snap. We have been working on getting the bugs out of the N1MM interface and the behavior of that has improved. There are still a few changes to be made to PSDR to get that running

Get on the bands they are hotter n a pistol

73

Lag

2010-08-14T07:12:00.005-04:00

I was up early and tuning the band and heard HL0NHQ on 40. It was perfect gray line time but the storm QRM kind of precluded my contact. I was able to hear him but he was dish water weak so I decided to make a blog entry

I got into a recent pissing contest over on EHAM with old Stan K9IUQ regarding the "lag" of the CW side tone. A fellow was interested in the F3K and wondered about the "lag". Stan is a bit of a misanthrope who likes to knock the F5K all the while claiming to be objective, so I decided true objectivity could be had by publishing an audio clip the demonstrated how the F5K actually sounds

The reason the Flex radio can do so many amazing thing is because after the signal hits the antenna there is a whole lot of computer processing going on before the audio hits your tympanic membrane and courses into your metenchephalon headed for your consciousness. In the old SDR-1000 days the lag was substantial. There was virtually no way you could use the sidetone in the radio to send code because what you heard in your headphones was "lagged" by at least the length of a dah. It was maddening. What I did to over come in in those days was to have the Flex audio mixed with the sidetone output of my keyer on a 3 channel stereo mixer so I could hear the radio and hear the sidetone from the keyer in the same headphones. That is basically all over, at least to my ear.

After all the kvetching from Stan I decided to make a recording of what my radio sounds like so people can listen for themselves and make a judgment. My keyer is set for 32 wpm

Sidetoneplus.mp3

What you hear is a mic recording of the sidetone of my keyer (the 500hz note) and the 350hz note of the side tone in my F5K I have my F5K set for

Audio buffers of 512 and panadapter bandwidth of 96K My DSP transmit buffers are set at 512 and my receive buffers at 4096

I have my transmit delay set to 60ms and you can hear the transmit relay clicking in the background as I send test. This gives you an idea of what hearing between words means, as you can hear the relay drop between words and letter sequences. With the relay set to this delay My rig is semi-breakin and I can hear between words in a normal 25+ wpm qso. The keyer is my USB winkey and I send the transmit signal into PSDR over a serial port into the computer. I do this so I can have 2 paddles attached to the radio, one to the keyer and one to the back of the radio. This has been my keying methodology since the SDR-1000 days.

So now you can put to rest all the opinions from the know it alls and make your own decision regarding the lag issue and the Flex line of radios I have no problem using the sidetone in the radio to send code up to 60 wpm which is the upper limit of my keyer not to mention my addled old brain and my creaky old joints. You can also hear that I have none of the so called "squelch tail" problem with these settings. The audio is clean with no pops added. I don't have a very fancy computer nor do I bother with worrying about latency. My computer is a shuttle core 2 quad and 3 gigs of memory

73

So where do we go from here

2010-08-07T08:32:00.009-04:00

Sorry I haven been absent for the past 6 months. My professional life has been basically sucking the breath out of my hobby time and I haven't had much time or energy to devote to my ham radio and blogging duties. Hopefully things are slowing down to enough of a dull roar that I can allow my ADD to take over and start to populate this blog with some new information.

Since my last post Flex has released the F1500.

I don't have one yet but hope to obtain one in the near future. I got to play with a prototype at Orlando earlier this year, and if you are interested in learning something about SDR but don't want to invest a lot of money this is the way to go. For $649 you will have a fully functional SDR QRP rig with all the bells and whistles of PowerSDR. More to follow on this little beauty

They also have the UHF/VHF module for the F5K. Above is a picture of this transverter board installed inside the F5K. This module has a VHF UHF transverter of 60 watts each and allows full duplex and crossband operation in all modes supported including satellite, repeaters etc. PowerSDR is already fully complaint with all transverters. I used a TenTec transverter with my SDR-1000 set up and it worked great for SSB and CW

Here is a shot of the transverter set up screen in PSDR

In this shot I have highlighted 5 transverters. Note you can adjust virtually every parameter necessary to get a transverter working LO freq direction of VFO such that a LO that tunes from low to high or high to low will cause the readouts on PSDR to be correct. It controls any preamps and the IF gain of those as well as power output on a per band basis so you don't fry your transverter

Here is a shot of the normal PSDR band switch

Note the VHF+ button in the lower left Here is what you get when have set up the transverter form such as I did above and you tick this button

Pushbutton access to all of your transverters automatically configured.

Here is a shot of PSDR with the 2M button pressed

I do not have my 2 meter transverter hooked up at present so this is a bit of a mock up but as you can see all of the PSDR horsepower is ready to go.

On the other fronts, we continue to work on improving the SO2R nature of the radio and work out a few bugs. Steve K5FR is redesigning DDUTIL's contesting engine into a server client model which should substantially speed up things in the CAT channel and improve responsiveness. We are looking at designing a contest interface that mates specifically with PSDR so with a contest front end and a well honed DDUTIL back end things are getting interesting. More to follow as things progress

73

Flex 5000 filters

2010-03-21T20:22:00.004-04:00

A new video demonstrating the Filters of the FLex 5000A The filters are all user customizable and all according to mode. I have my 10 CW filters set from 1.2khz down to 13hz My normal CW listening is at 25hz

This is in CWL mode Notice how CWU has a completely different lineup

and notice how LSB has its own lineup of completely customizable filters. In fact each mode has its own filters that are completely customizable

Here is a video I shot demonstrating the filters on CWL

73

Flex 5000 Antenna switch

2010-03-19T23:56:00.003-04:00

I know this is a really mundane kind of topic, but the antenna switch on the F5K is something that gives it immense power. I also have a F3K, which has no extra I/O save one BNC port and as soon as I fire that great little radio up I miss the heck out of all those ports and all the flexibility that implies.

73

God loves me

2010-03-19T06:32:00.002-04:00

Here is a shot of my 160M noise level this morning diversity mode -123 on RX1 and -124 on RX2

73

3B9WR 80M CW video

2010-03-18T22:51:00.004-04:00

I made a contact with 3B9WR on 80M and decided to make a video of the pileup on him and how I normally have my station configured for DX. I use CW Skimmer and diversity and describe how a typical DX contact proceeds.

If you remember the old Gotham vertical adds:

FLASH JUST SWITCHED TO 40 AND GOT HIM ON THE SECOND CALL He was about an hour into his daylight. The bands are good for this late in the season

73

YouTubin' diversity

2010-03-17T09:12:00.001-04:00

My first attempt at You Tube Best viewed full screen

73

F5K Noise Abatement E71A, TM27CC

2010-03-13T00:39:00.011-05:00

Above is a shot of the 5275 mile path between me and E71A in Bosnia

I've been playing around with a new video screen capture program. This morning I was listening to E71A on 80CW and decided to make a recording of him vs my noise, to demonstrate how well the F5K does at reducing the noise. I used to have a very low noise floor at this QTH but over the course of the last 9 months or so things have gone from good to bad. If it weren't for the capabilities of the F5K I would be sunk.

The station starts out in a 250hz bandwidth and I add noise blanking and go to 25 hz, then add the second receiver in diversity mode then go to diversity plus mode using the phase gain pad (the green bulls-eye)

There are thunder storms out in the ocean and up in NC and SC.

You can hear the difference for yourself. (If you are using firefox, you can increase the size of this video by holding down CLT and using the mouse wheel to increase the size and if you look closely you can see the mouse cursor flying around the screen changing different settings)

E71A 80M CW, 2 verticals about 3/4 wavelength apart

You can hear E71A and I also note when I peak the station he is talking to (lower left corner) I open up the noise again and then turn every thing back on, note the increase is SNR near the end of the video when I enable the "plus" feature. My antennas for this band are 2 verticals separated by about 3/4 wavelength I made the contact and on my 43ft vertical at 100W I was 559 and on my 66ft vertical at 1500W I was 599. I was about an hour into his daylight.

I next switched to 160M, tuned up my diversity antenna, and heard some early risers in EU. G3JMJ was booming in but went QRT before I could record him. I next heard TM7CC in France
a 4500 mile path, and made a recording of him.

This was just after the terminator flew over his head. In this video you can see the storm static is considerable. On 160 the antennas are only 3/8 wave separated so you can see a much greater beam steering interaction between antennas when using the plus mode. He came back first call and gave me 599. Again I go through all the noise abatement features except NR. NR does help some on static noise but I find the improvement is nothing like the improvement from the noise blankers and the filters and diversity and the beam steering that the plus feature offers

TM7CC 160M CW 2 resonant verticals about 3/8 wavelength apart

I belong to the Florida Contest Group and on their reflector (private reflector) there has been a discussion regarding how some fellow wants to configure the K-3 he intends to purchase. Most of the discussion revolves around a 400hz roofing filter followed by a second 400hz IF filter. Given my noise situation, my noise floor on 160M is at best -100dBm at 400hz and it drops down to -115dBm at 25hz. Just one pair of 400hz filters adds $260 bux to the cost of the radio. Its like I now live on a different planet. I can't even imagine living with something as pedestrian as a 400hz bandwidth

The software is called Debut video capture software and I am using the free version. Thus far its the best package I have found and the audio is very good. To make the thing track audio and video I had to reduce the frame rate in Debut to 15fps and I increased the frame rate in PSDR to 30fps

73

Notes From SDR

2010-02-28T13:17:00.002-05:00

I tend to always head down the Flex path with SDR, but Jim W4GB sent me a link that is worth looking at. It is a compilation of articles regarding the theory of SDR. I covered a lot of this early in my blog, but after close to 50,000 page hits it is worthwhile .

http://members.cox.net/k9ivb/Tech%20Links.htm

If you really want to understand the heart of SDR I suggest starting with Dan Tayloe's article

http://www.norcalqrp.org/files/Tayloe_mixer_x3a.pdf

Just perusing the articles you can tell what is important in the SDR arena. Things like oscillator jitter and low low noise amplifiers

The other thing that is most important is to understand that SDR is done with DSP digital signal processing. This means the processing is going on in virtual time, not real time. The simplest analogue radio is a crystal radio aka a diode detector. A signal hits the antenna, hits the diode and audio is immediately produced. This is real time. In a commercial ham receiver you add amplifiers and detectors and filters and blankers into the signal path stretches things out a little bit between antenna and ear, but the signal is processed in virtual time with the SDR and that means you can manipulate it much more dramatically (aka mathematically) with far fewer components.

Much good stuff to consider on these pages and thanks to Jim for pointing this site out.

73

Memories

2010-02-27T15:52:00.008-05:00

Steve K5FR has been up to it again!! Steve of course is the author of the fine DDUTIL utility. He has added a memory feature to DDUTIL that expands the memory capability of the radio.

At the bottom of the form are the V<>M Recall, Save, Load and Clear buttons, and some boxes that readout freq mode and memory number. The memory system revolves around 5 tunable scrolling memory slots and a way to get in and out of the memory stack using the V<>M button, and I think this is one of the best features of this applet.

You save memories simply by tuning your VFO to what ever freq you want to save, and hit save, for example

I'm on 7020.308 CWL at 25hz band width all I do is hit save and this is memorized including VFO B data into the next available memory in this case memory 1. The memories are volatile and first in first out, with the idea that you only want to scratch pad the data, not remember it forever, and the oldest data is the least desirable. If you want a more permanent memory you can use the system that already exists in PSDR I can return to this memory at any time simply by queuing up memory 1 by hitting recall to scroll me through the 5 memories and then hitting load to send the chosen memory into the Flex radio. If for example you are listening to a pileup but the pileup is too big, or the propagation still needs to build, you can set up your station, mode filter offset and all that and simply memorize it. You can then continue to tune the band. If you hear another pile up you can memorize that one also and toggle between the 2 memories.

Here is the nice feature, you can also toggle in and out of the VFO. To enter the memory stack you hit the V<>M button. When you do that your current VFO freq is memorized into a hidden 6th scratchpad memory, and the last memory slot you used is then loaded into the Flex radio. This means you can continue to tune up the band, or tune another band and keep checking back on your pileup with just one button click. If you are not ready to pounce on your prey, you simply hit V<>M again and you are placed exactly where you started before you entered the memory stack. Mode and filter etc is memorized so you can be listening to a SSB QSO up the band and instantly check your pile up with a single button click VERY COOL

Here I am listening to a SSB QSO on 7238 listening to some guy give bad advice on antennas

I hit the V<>M button and I am immediately transported to 7.020.308 CWL, the contents of memory 1.

Notice how 7.238 is now displayed in the window next to V<>M which has turned yellow. This informs you that you have entered the memory stack. If you hit the V<>M button again you are back at 7.238 ready to tune up the band some more.

Slicker 'n ______ (you fill in the blank)

73

ARRL CW

2010-02-21T10:38:00.008-05:00

I decided to crank the F5K up in the ARRL CW contest this weekend. I am by no means a die hard contester. In fact I was on call Friday and I was up all night in the operating room and not on 40M. I have spent so much of my life awake all night that the idea of doing it on purpose just to work a bunch of EA's and LZ's going 50wpm no longer appeals to me.

There is a lot of FUD broadcasted regarding the F5K's contesting capability. This is a FINE contest radio, in fact better than my Orion was

Here is the setup at W9OY

I'm using the latest PB-PAL code and drivers, DDUTIL, CW skimmer, and N1MM. I use CW skimmer for the spotting function, and this is the first time I have tried this particular setup. Skimmer can act as a Telnet server and it serves up what it copies to the N1MM band map, so all those stations in the band map were populated in the map by skimmer. You can also have your band map populated by a DX cluster if you like, and this is the way I have run the station in the past. One thing to be sure you HAVE to copy the station before you enter the callsign into the log entry screen in N1MM. Skimmer just decodes what ever it hears, and what it hears could be the other side of a DX contact. For example if UT9DX was on 14.020 and was being called by K3RR you may just as easily have K3RR in your band map as UT9DX, so this is assisted, but not very assisted. What it does do is give you a clear picture of what is on the band at any given time. One thing N1MM does is keep you abreast of new multipliers and that is a good feature especially for SnP and SO2R operations. I decided to run this contest at 100W instead of full power. I don't have great antennas. I have a 43ft vertical to use on the high bands 20, 15 and 10, and I have a 135ft open wire dipole to use on those bands as well, and a 160M 80M, 40M and 20M dedicated verticals. On 20 the flat top is almost always better than the verticals, so I figured running this contest with this antenna compliment and 100W would be a challenge and would be a good example of what the average guy could do with simple antennas.

I ran all bands from 160 to 10, but I only put in about 3 hours total doing SnP. The radio performed flawlessly. Here are some shots of the band noise

Here is 15M

and here is 20M

This is about what my band noise runs on 20M contest or not. There was not ONE beep or boop in the RX passband that I did not expect to hear (as in overload) even though the band was chock full of super strong stations.

Later in the contest I decided to switch from Skimmer feeding my band map in N1MM to the W9AZ DX cluster server. I think over all I prefer the DX cluster feeding the band map and Skimmer over to the side doing its own thing. With the cluster feeding the band map it was super easy to just go down the list one after another picking up multipliers. Using DDUTIL there was no problem controlling the rig either from N1MM or from Skimmer so I just hit the call I wanted to work and BAM I was on freq. For my keyer I used my K1EL USB version, but I ran it from push buttons instead of N1MM

I later switched to the F3K using a laptop, and my 43ft vertical on 20M and used N1MM and skimmer to do the duties. I had this radio set up on a separate power supply as well essentially a completely separate station. Running the 3K single band was basically just like running the 5K except I didn't have all the auto band switching of antennas set up on the 3K like I have for the 5K. My 43ft vertical has a MFJ auto tuner set up at the base of the vertical so I just tune that on any band I want to work.

The F3K however does have the capability to seamlessly integrate completely into my auto band switching station. All I would have to do to integrate it is go unplug the F5K, plug in the F3K into my station computer, change RF output cable on my patch panel from F5K to F3K and plug in some headphones to the F3K For the average guy the 3K is a very good choice for a contest radio as well and would be a good choice to throw in the bag and take on an island DX pedition. The receiver in that radio is superb.

I was only able to operate a scattered 3 hours 10 minutes total time during the contest but it was a lot of fun. It was great to see activity on 10 and 15. There was an amazing number of 160 and 80M stalwarts holding the fort and 40 and 20 were just nuts

73 W9OY

Orlando Hamcation 2010 plus F3K post script

2010-02-16T16:22:00.013-05:00

I attended the Hamcation this past weekend and had a great time. The attendance seemed a bit down, but I was speaking with some vendors who said business was pretty good so maybe that's a good sign for the economy. Everyone of course was there with their version of some kind of SDR

Yaesu was there with its latest 5000 radio, my impression HO HUM

Elecraft had their little answer to the pan adapter, what a joke. It was a little screen maybe 9" and made the radio look like a toy. The quality of the display was horrible.

I swung by the Flex booth and met Greg Jurrens and Steve Hicks and they had the Flex radios set up on 40" 1080p monitors, one on the F5K and one on the F3K and it totally cracked me up to see the difference in performance. The displays were beautiful (of course no prejudice here :)

They also had the F-1500 on display. Man what a cute little bugger. It was a little bigger than I anticipated but still quite small. I think this radio will definitely be a winner. I'm not a big QRP kind of guy but I still can't wait to get one and give her a try. This will make a very nice TINY little rig to hop on a plane and use for a contest. You can see the block diagram of the radio here

When I got home from the hamfest I was thinking about the contest aspect of the Flex line and decided to see how small a set up I could come up with. I took my F3K out of the shack and grabbed a Samlex 25 amp switching supply I had in the drawer and unplugged my Begalli Graciella paddle a mic and some headphones, and decided to set up a radio station.

I set up the F3K on a couple of hook up wire spools to get it off the ground.; For an antenna I used my 45ft end fed wire vertical I had hanging out of a tree in my front yard

You can see the ATU sitting at the base, here is a closer shot

In the Ammo can is a MFJ-929 auto antenna tuner. I run power to the tuner over the coax and I initiate a tune by applying 10 watts to the tuner from in the shack. The tuner will tune this wire from 160-6 meters and I have made contacts on all the bands (except 60M, NO CW). I turn down the power some on 160 because you can generate a LOT of reactive voltage at 100W, but I have run 100 W with this setup on 160 with no problem. This could easily be an antenna you could take out to the field or on a DX pedition

For a computer I used my kids Lenovo R61i laptop. I bought it from NewEgg a couple years ago for $450. It is a 1.7ghz dual core mobile computer with 1mb L2 cache and 1gB of memory with a 15" screen. Their computer was virginal as far as SDR software is concerned and I wanted to see how hard it would be to get this system running.

First was the .Net frameworks that had to be installed. I googled .Net 1.1 and and .Net 3.5 and installed both and the SP updates. Next I downloaded the latest driver, F3K firmware and Release version of PowerSDR from the Flex download page. I decided to time how long it would take to set up the radio, from driver, firmware, PSDR, to first contact. I started the setup at 18:15. I loaded the driver, which required a reboot. I next powered up the radio and the computer recognized the F3K and intalled the usual 3 parts of the driver. Once I was talking to the radio I updated the firmware, and then installed PSDR. Once installed I went to setup and setup my usual preferences. I often download the alpha code which sometimes requires a new database so I don't have a lot of customization in setup, but I do like to optimize CW so I set the audio buffer to 48khz and 512, and the DSP buffers to 4096 and 512. I measured the DPC latency at about 200 for this computer. After I closed setup I turned on the radio and switched to 40M and heard EA6UN on the Balearic Islands calling CQ. I worked him first call with a 599, 100W to my trusty wire vertical. He was in the log by 18:29 14 minutes from setup to completed contact. Not too shabby.

The radio prompted me to do a re-calibration after the new firmware install, so I did a CTL-SHFT-P and brought up the calibration screen. I put a dummy on the antenna, checked off the recal tests I wanted to do and, hit the start button and went and got a coke. In about 20 minutes I had everything recalibrated and all screens were green and the new data was saved in the EPROM.

With my newly calibrated radio I next set up SSB using the metering choices provided. I set up the mic gain to 0dB and set up the EQ and the EQ gain, checked the leveler and the ALC and set up the compander to +3. I looked at the waveform on the scope and found it to be acceptable and listened to the audio in the headphones. I switched up to the phone band on 40M and there was YU7ZEX over in Serbia. He had a little pileup going, and I gave him a call. He came right back and gave me a 59 and good report on the audio. I next switched to 80M and worked US7WW on CW, 559 both ways. By now it was closing on 19:00, so in 45 minutes I had 3 DX contacts in the log basically starting from nothing except having the .Netframework already loaded.

I next installed VAC (virtual audio cable) and VSP (virtual serial port) and configured these and linked them to PowerSDR. I next installed DDUTIL, CW skimmer and the entire DX lab suite. I setup winwarbler and made a PSK31 contact. Instructions for setting up winwarbler with PSDR are here in the Flex knowledge base Note that there are no added physical modules, weird little panadapter boxes or extra cables to get all this going. It's all done in software.

I found that as I added software my CPU usage started to climb. It was around 15-20%, went up into the 30% with Skimmer and went up into the 60's with DX lab with SpotCollector running and around this level is where you start getting dropouts. So my kids little $450 computer does have its limits. I did nothing to optimize this computer just loaded the software and hit start so I could probably get some improved performance by shutting unneeded stuff off, but since this is my kids school computer and they use it online for classes I decided to leave well enough alone. With the addition of DDUTIL this radio becomes frequency agile and you could use the LPT port to drive antenna switches and Steppir antennas and amplifiers to automatically band follow you as you change freq. The receive quality was marvelous, basically as good as my F5K in this environment. There has been a lot of improvement in CW switching as well. The weight of the entire station comes in under 20lbs excluding coax and the ammo can. If I was taking this station to field day or something I would simply wrap the tuner in plastic and save the weight, but I have found the ammo can to be basically indestructible and bone dry even in the wildest FL deluge so it has worked out to be a good choice

For fun I decided to see how the station would look with the radio in the cabinet next to the desk. I occasionally see people requesting info on a small radio they could use in the office for example, HERE YA GO high performance radio with virtually no footprint

73

End of an Era

2010-02-08T09:46:00.006-05:00

This entry is not about ham radio. I live and work in a town that is scattered with remembrances of manned space flight. One of the local high schools has a 2 stage rocket in front of it. The other high school is named "Astronaut". Many of the grade schools hold names like Apollo or Challenger. We have parks with monuments to Mercury and Gemini.

If you look across the river from the hospital I work in, you can see the VAB the vehicle assembly building, where the shuttle is readied for launch.

The VAB is 525 ft tall. The Statue of Liberty is 305. The volume of the VAB is 129,428,000 cub ft. The volume of the Pentagon is 77,025,000 cu ft. The VAB equals 3.5 Empire State Buildings. It covers 8 acres. To paint the flag on the building required 6,000 gallons of paint. It is hardened to beyond a cat 4 hurricane, something greater than 140mph sustained winds

The Space center sits on a little jut of land called Merritt Island that sits next to the Atlantic:

You can see launch pad A and B next to the ocean I live out in the sticks in the upper left corner of this picture in a place called Turnbull and I work in Titusville a few miles south.

At a little past 4 this morning I witnessed the letter perfect liftoff of the last night launch of a manned space craft this country will likely ever perform, and it made me feel very very sad. The temperature was about about 45 F and 63 seconds after the candle was light, the tremendous wave of noise that is put off by the explosive power of such a device hit my house. Because of the cool temp the air was particularly dense and the rumble was very loud, and in that instant I realized I would hear that rumble only a couple more times until it would go silent likely forever. (63 sec*1100 ft per second at sea level =13 miles = the distance between me and the candle)

What started with Kennedy will end with Obama because there will be no political will to start up the program once it has closed. The energy barrier to reignite manned space flight will be too high. The thousands of trained technicians will disperse into the world, perhaps to places like China and India and Russia to man their space programs. The engineers and scientists will disperse as well and the whole superstructure of human capital will be laid to waste, and the expenditure of energy required to reignite manned space flight will never be expended. Other countries will take up the gauntlet, and other countries will reap the rewards, and yet another thing in which we presently lead the world will be no more. I think it's very short sighted.

73

CW WW 160M CW SO2R

2010-01-30T23:16:00.008-05:00

I spent some time with the new SO2R setup on 160m this weekend. You may ask how can you runs SO2R on the same band? The answer is two receivers. With DDUTIL set up like this:

Note the 160M entries

I'm using the same amp and the same antenna for both VFO's. In order to get this to work I needed to parallel the AmpKey outputs from the F5K into my amp. All of AmpKey ports come out to a patch panel, and all the Key ports from my amps come out to the same panel, so it was a simple matter to parallel a 2 into 1 cable made with 1/4" phone jacks to get the amp to key on either VFO. As you can see the way I have it set up I have the "RUN" station set up on VFO B (the upper N1MM screen) and I have the Search and Pounce station set up on VFO A. VFO A is controlled by Skimmer and N1MM and is the lower N1MM screen. This way I can be calling CQ and click either the band map or Skimmer and the radio switches to VFO A.

Presently the N1MM band map data is being fed from data decoded by Skimmer over the local host telnet connection 127.0.0.1:7300

I can also feed the band map in N1MM from the telnet connection I have to the W9AZ DX cluster connection, but I wanted to see how well the Skimmer:N1MM pair would work. The advantage is if you click the band map in N1MM, what ever call sign you click is cued up and that call is entered into a precontact area on the N1MM data entry port (in this case LZ2UZ)

once you grab the contact you simply click the call sign:

and you are ready to plug the data into the log book and immediately click back to the RUN VFO to continue CQ-ing

I have the audio for both VFO's in the head phones

Running this mode is not quite second nature yet, but I can nearly do two things at once. THe disadvantage of Skimmer is that it is not 100% perfect in its deciphering of CW so you can't just blindly click the button You have to make sure what you are logging is accurate, but you have to do that anyway in a contest. It's a very slick little interface even when looking for multipliers while running the CQ machine, and you can get 1500W on the wire all over the band. The rules for single op assisted class state:

Only one transmitted signal is
allowed at any moment in time. Maximum power is 1500 watts
total output or the output power allowed by your country,
whichever is less.

Passive spotting is allowed.
Passive Spotting is defined as (but not limited to):
DX spotting nets or QSO alerting assistance of any kind.
Over-the-air nets or stations that provide frequency and station
information.
Any device or person that provides frequency and callsign
information of any station during the contest period. This includes
band skimmers or similar devices. Passive spotting does NOT
include band scopes, SDR receivers, or the like, which provide
no information about the signal other than its presence, which
is allowed in all categories.

I'm just playing with this contest to see how the SO2R system works in real contest conditions. For this contest you do NOT need a freq agile amp of freq agile band switches since everything is taking place on the same band. You don't even need 2 amps. What you get are more contacts and more multipliers in the log since you can effectively be 2 places at once

My impression?

WORKS GOOD!!

73

Flex Radio SO2R is on the air!!!

2010-01-12T18:59:00.030-05:00

Tonight I have a completed Flex 5000 SO2R radio on the air!!! To run SO2R requires the second receiver installed in the F5K

Here is a screen shot of my screen real estate:

What you see is PowerSDR, CW SKimmer, DX Lab, DDUTIL, and N1MM all interconnected.

I am running 5 antennas. The CQ (run) station is on 40M and is controlled by VFO B. When VFO B is active power is directed out of Antenna port 1, into my AL80B and then into my Johnson Matchbox to a 130Ft flat top at 55ft.

VFO A controls the Search and Pounce station. When VFO A is active power is directed out Ant port 2 on the F5K to my Ameritron ALS-1300 amp which then goes to an Ameritron RCS-4 antenna switch. To this antenna switch is connected 4 antennas that cover 5 bands 160, 80, 40, 30, and 20. I modified the controller for this switch such that it band follows to whatever band VFO A is on. The ALS-1300 also band follows via Ameritrons ARI-500. BCD data is taken off a LPT printer port to control the band following feature.

For a contest interface I am using the formidible N1MM contest software. N1MM allows VFO focus to be shifted between VFO A or VFO B either by clicking on the band map, or by a keyboard combination (CTL <--- or--->) Which makes it very convenient to change from CQing on 40M to search and pounce on any of the other 5 bands. I am able to CQ and Search and Pounce on 40M using both antennas on that band, but I can't transmit simultaneously, but then contest rules usually forbid simultaneous transmission in a single OP station anyway to this set up by its definition complies with the rules.

To get this to work I needed to add one $19 BCD decoder board from Unified Microsystems, and add some hardware to my RCD-4 to make it auto switching, using s few micro relays I had in the junk box, and a couple trips to Radio Shack to get a 25 pin and a 9 pin sub D. Basically the cost of building this therefore is the cost of the F5K plus receiver, plus $19 bux.

All of the programs interact via the magic of DDUTIL. Steve K5FR the author of DDUTIL and I have spent the past 4 weeks wringing this out. It has been an enjoyable collaboration. Here is a screen shot of the DDUTIL SO2R screen

The program allows up to two banks of 10 antennas to be independently addressed by VFO A and VFO B. In addition if you had 2 frequency agile amps, for example if you had 2 ALS-1300's and 2 freq agile antenna switches (like my modified RCS-4) both amps and antennas would be automatically and fully controlled by the setting of VFO A or VFO B.

My ALS-1300 will make 1200W with far less than the 100W of drive available from the F5K so DDUTIL will set the power automatically to what ever you want. As you can see I have variable drive levels set up under VFO A. 20M has a high SWR probably due to the cold snap so I have the drive reduced to keep the amp within its operating characteristic. I can turn on what ever bands I want for each VFO, using the check box. Bands not used even if they are accidently chosen form the radio have their power setting set to zero output if the box is not checked. I have the 3's and 4's in the boxes so I can watch the numbers change as I run through the band settings for testing. But even if I tried to transmit the radio would put out zero watts as a safety feature.

You can see that two LPT ports can be addressed and two band data cards can be addressed. In addition Steve has added a Foot Switch, that operates over a serial port. If you short pins 4 and 8 together with a switch on a DB9 the VFO's will switch focus no matter what windows program you have in focus.

The R1-TX R2-TX fields allow you to choose the antenna ports on the F5K you wish to use. In my case VFO A is connected to port 2 for both TX and RX and VFO B is connected to port 1. If I wanted to use a specific 160M RX antenna that was connected to antenna port 3 for example I would just substitute a 3 for the 2 in the VFO A 160 line of the program and my R1 antenna would then be port 3 and I would TX on port 2. All antenna ports on the F5K that are normally accessible (123 RX1 RX2 RXtap etc) are accessible from this matrix. There is also an AmpKey line choice available. The F5K allows for up to 3 amps to be independently switched via 3 jacks on the back of the radio. This field allows you to choose which amp keys with a given VFO.

We had to kludge the interface a bit to make N1MM work. We are using the K3 interface in N1MM which is sub optimal but it is the only one that we could get to work without doing a ton of programming gymnastics. I hope we can get a Flex specific interface for that program, which would cut down on the overhead and improve on the functionality.

Freq can be chosen in the following manner from PSDR You will note that when the red TX box is chosen below VFO A the correct antennas are chosen in R1 and TX

Switching to VFO B the correct antannas are once again chosen for R2 and TX

In N1MM you can chose the CQ freq in VFO B and be working a run on VFO B by choosing the little green RU icon on the far left upper data entry screen of N1MM

In this shot I am working K5FR on the 40M CQ freq and ready to log him. Note the log is visible just above the top data entry screen. The VFO focus is VFO B (note the red TX box under VFO B in PSDR) and I notice that VQ0LA is in the VFO A band map.

I log K5FR (note he is in the log for 40M) and I click VQ0LA in the VFO A band map. The VFO focus automatically changes the antennas change to the correct path and I am ready to work VQ0LA

Once he is in the log I switch back to the 40M run freq for the next contact. (Check the log and check the red TX box under VFO B, once again I am on 40M ready to rock and roll)

I can monitor SpotCollector and see there is one on 160 UY0ZG I could use

I double click that line in SpotCollector

and VFO A is changed to 160, my amp changes to 160, my 160M antenna is chosen, and UY0ZG is loaded into the data collector for VFO A in N1MM

I work him and he's in the log and I switch back to 40 M to continue the run

I notice WA3CKA on Skimmer and decide to work him Search and Pounce so I click skimmer and my VFO A switches to 40M my amp follows to 40M and my antenna switch selects my 40M vertical. Note my 40M run station has not changed I now have both the SnP AND the run station on 40M, but on different freqs

I enter WA3CKA in the data box for VFO A, work him and log him and switch back to VFO B ready to CQ once again

So there you have it!! This is not a robot. It is very skill driven. But instead of spending your time switching antennas and such you spend your time searching out QSO and multipliers.

The F5K has built in the requisite audio management so you can listen to R1 and R2 across the stereo spectrum

Using PAN and the two RX volume controls you can make thing show up in your ears the way you like it. There is also a mute control that will allow you to mute RX2 when working a SnP with RX1 if you find that aids in reducing confusion. The keyer and Mic automatically follows VFO focus as does any voice keyer you might be using.

So that's where we stand today. Of course this is the first iteration and like any system it bears honing. There are some things to add like better communication between N1MM and DDUTIL and perhaps some additional controls. For example N1MM allows XIT and RIT and some variation in filter selection, which we presently can not access given the way we have the interface set up. The K3 interface is a highly modified dialect of Kenwood, and Flex also has a highly modified dialect. The Kenwood CAT command set was developed 15 years ago and contains not that many commands where as PSDR has close to 150 CAT commands available, so it would be nice to integrate more completely with a native interface instead of a kludey hack.

There will be more to follow. We need to document better how to set these features up in DDUTIL, but if I can do it, it's not that difficult. We will try to get all that out there before the ARRL tests in Feb

Note you do NOT need to have frequency agile amps to run this setup. You can set this up for example for 2 bands lets say 40M run and 20M SnP with regular amps and it will work fine. You do not even need two amps, but you do need at least 2 antennas. The point is you can start small and this interface will allow you to grow your station over the years a little at a time, and allow you to hone your contest skills and make yourself into the best op you can be. Above all its all about radio fun. The interface is very versitile, and can be set up multiple ways. This is the way I decided to set it up for the equipment I own and my skill level.

I basically wrote this piece to show off the interface. I don't mean to get into the politics of contest purity at all. If you think a contest is all about a 75A4, a pair of 4-1000's and a Bug then have at it

73

What's new in the New Year?

2010-01-07T21:30:00.006-05:00

Just a Quick update

Steve K5FR and I are working on developing a full fledged SO2R interface for the F5K. It's not quite ready for beta release but we are working through the bugs and its really taking shape

This is a screen shot of the DDUTIL interface. It will allow 2 separate paths of RF with 2 separate amps to be controlled and up to 20 antennas

Here is a logic diagram of the system

The system will allow very complicated stations to be constructed or very uncomplicated stations to be devised. It also can use a foot switch to change from the Run station to the Search and Pounce station. We are presently trying to interface N1MM as the contest interface

N1MM is nice because it has a lot of the SO2R logic already built in.

My present station consists of a F5K, an Ameritron ALS-1300 with a ARI-500 which allows me to change bands automatically using BCD data from DDUTIL, and a modified Ameritron antenna switch that can switch my antennas by BCD data from DDUTIL I call the ability to band follow antennas and amps "frequency agility" Presently that is working with the new interface. This half of the station will be the Search and Pounce "station". For the RUN station I can use one of my other amps. Since the run station doesn't change bands very often, there is no pressing need for that amp or even that antenna to be freq agile. To change bands you just hit the foot switch or hit a keyboard key combo and you toggle between search and pounce on one band and run on another band. N1MM allows you to import data from the cluster into the program and automatically stores the correct band mode call time date and exchange data for each band and does the dupe for you. You don't need freq agile equipment to use this interface. This interface is designed so that you can build a contest station over time, adding functionality.. You can start small but the sky (and your budget) is the limit.

We are also woring on including the ability to control other relays that will be able for example to add inductance to the base of a short 80M or 160M vertical thereby making that antenna broad banded, kind of a poor man's Steppir. Those relays would be controlled by freq so you would not have to manually choose the relays, the computer would do it

Further info will become available as we continue. There is a mountain of stuff to document, but we hope to be ready to go by the ARRL contest coming up on Feb 22. NO GUARANTEE we will get there but so far it looks promising but there are still challenges.

I have published extensively about the components needed. This mostly consists of one or two $19 decoder boards and the LPT port on the computer and a foot switch or push button switch. There is no requirement however to make everything automatic to use this set up. A couple of SB-220's and a few antennas like an 80, 40 and a tribander could be made to work, which was our goal. As time goes on you can add components and without a lot of rewiring keep honing the functionality of the station.

I thought I would put this out a little early so people could be thinking about how to set up their stations, and get their ham radio juices flowing, if they are interested. I think we can get this to the point where the F5K and a couple of decoder boards can replace a couple transceivers and the entire station management hardware that most SO2R operations require.

Steve Nance has written the code for this and I've added in some design and direction in terms of the system design. Steve has done a masterful job on this software. We have tried to make this all at once simple yet extremely powerful and expandable. This project points out the true power of SDR, SO2R for half the money

More to follow

73

SO2V/R A little more in depth on construction and setup

2010-01-04T09:57:00.045-05:00

The Flex 5K was designed to operate as a virtual SO2R radio. SO2R stands for single operator twoi radios. Typically how a SO2R station works is you have 2 rigs that are joined together by some sequencing hardware and software. Usually the sequencing hardware switches the RX audio between rigs as well as telling the Key or the PTT which radio to transmit from. Most SO2R stations have multiple amps and multiple antennas as well. You set up radio A with Amp A and antenna A and radio B with Amp B and antenna B. Today there are frequency agile amps and freqency agile antenna switches, so you can technically just push the band switch to lets say 40M and your amp will switch to 40M and your antenna's coax switch will switch to 40M automatically. If you have 2 frequency agile amps and switches, you can technically have every thing set up automatically for the 2 radios in a SO2R station. Of course if you can push the band switch then you can have a program (like N1MM) push the band switch for you while you are logging contacts.

Here is a diagram of a typical SO2R setup:

The purpose of SO2R is to increase QSO rate in a contest You can be lining up a multiplier or a search and pounce QSO on one band while sending CQ on another. Here are the rules from the ARRL CW DX contest for single operator entries.

1 2.1.Single Operator: One person performs all transmitting, receiving, and logging functions as well as equipment and antenna adjustments.

1. 2.1.1.Use of spotting assistance or nets (operating arrangements involving other individuals, DX-alerting nets, packet, Internet, multi-channel decoders such as CW Skimmer, etc) is not permitted.
2. 2.1.2.Single-Operator stations are allowed only one transmitted signal at any given time.
3. 2.1.3.Single Operators may be divided into subcategories based on power output:
  1. 2.1.3.1.QRP: 5-W PEP output or less.
  2. 2.1.3.2.Low Power: 150-W PEP output or less.
  3. 2.1.3.3.High Power: More than 150-W PEP output (see rule 1.3).
2.2.Single Operator Unlimited: One person performs all transmitting, receiving, and logging functions as well as equipment and antenna adjustments. (Note: See rule 2.3.1.1)
1. 2.2.1.Use of spotting assistance or nets (operating arrangements involving other individuals, DX-alerting nets, packet, multi-channel decoders such as CW Skimmer, etc) not physically located at the station is permitted.
  (Exception: spotting information obtained from any source outside the station boundary via a closed or dedicated communication link may not be used.)
2. 2.2.2.Single Operator Assisted stations are allowed only one transmitted signal at any given time, not including transmissions on a spotting net.

Notice I emboldened a relevant rule, only one transmitted signal at a time, so you can not be CQing on 2 bands at once, but you can alternately CQ on 2 bands. The F5K was designed to do exactly this as long as you have the second receiver installed. The F5K has 3 VFO's. One for receiver 1 (VFO A) one for receiver 2 (VFO B) and one for the transmitter (VFO TX). The F5K is unique since it has all three processes RX1, RX2, and TX running all the time. What this allows us to do is pair the VFO's.

You can pair the RX 1 like this (VFO A/VFO TX) or you can pair RX2 like this (VFO B/VFO TX). In PowerSDR there is a little box at the bottom of each VFO that is called TX. When TX is red in VFO A you are operating the (VFO A/VFO TX) pair. Note at the top of this shot you can see the antenna selector displayed. The antennas associated with this VFO pair R1-TX is 2,2. R2 is connected to antenna port 1

If you click the red box under VFO B you will be transmitting on the VFO B/VFO TX pair. If you click split, all three VFO's become independent and you can technically receive on two separate bands and transmit on a third.

Since the Flex has 2 VFO pairs but it is not truly 2 radios. Following the N1MM convention we will call this kind of operation SO2V for single op 2 VFO pairs. I chose this moniker because it is the convention used in the N1MM contesting software, and I think therefore its less confusing to maintain a consistent vocabulary. SO2V requires only one serial port connection to the radio whereas SO2R requires 2 serial ports so I think this is the best terminology. Because of the way Flex has implemented its radio, you can do everything you need to do on one serial port.

The second aspect of the Flex radio that allows SO2V operation is in the power of the antenna switch in the F5K. All three VFO's can address the antenna switch independently, or in pairs. That is you can have VFO A/TX pair set up for RX1=1,TX=1 and have VFO B/TX pair Set RX2=2/TX=2. This is the second thing needed to emulate SO2R, 2 virtually independent RF paths. When VFO A is chosen (click the little red box under VFO A) and RX1=1, TX=1 RF will flow out antenna port 1 to amp 1 and ant 1. When VFO B is chosen (click the little red box under VFO B) RF will flow out ant port 2 to AMP 2 and ANT 2. This allows you to operate 2 bands at once and is the second thing necessary to do SO2R type operation.

Here is a shot displaying some of the choices available in the antenna selector

Finally the Flex 5K automatically routes the audio into the headphones or speakers such that RX1 and RX2 mix in the stereo panorama. This allows you to hear RX1 in one ear and RX2 in the other or to place these signals across the stereo panorama.

The Fk5 also automatically switches on the correct amp depending on what antenna port has been chosen. The F5K also automatically shifts the focus of the keyer and other peripherals like the mic or digital input etc between the 2 VFO's These are the requisite components necessary to accomplish SO2V.

Here is a shot of the back of the F5K. From this shot you can see the complexity and possibilities of the antenna switching in the F5K and its AmpKeying (AMPRLY). I don't really include this in the write up but you can also include such things as pre-amps and band pass filters in the setup. There is a loop in the R1 line that can be broken for these items to be inserted (RX1 in RX1 out). If you had for example a bandpass filter that was controlled by BCD data the hardware design below will accommodate that addition.

One more thing is necessary, a program to tie all this together.

K5FR has a program called DDUTIL. This program acts kind of like the swiss army knife for PowerSDR. It allows multiple external programs to connect to the F5K's single serial port, and it also has provision to automatically control frequency agile amps and frequency agile coax antenna switches. Steve also included a means to to switch VFO's using a foot switch.

This is a copy of how I have DDUTIL configured at my station

The form is set up so that each VFO controls peripheral connections and how the Flex's antenna switch and AmpKey line behave. The first thing you notice is from this form DDUTIL can control 2 LPT ports. On a LPT port there are 8 pins available for parallel control signals. The pins are 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. These signals are returned on pins 18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25) This makes an 8 bit word. an 8 bit word can control a huge number of things (256) one at a time. There is little use to control so many things from a ham radio point of view, so we divided the 8 bit word into 2 four bit words. This allows us to control up to 15 things but you can control 2 things at a time. For example you can control an amp and an antenna switch using these 2 four bit words. So you see the headings Da, and Aa in the table above under VFO A, and Db and Ab under VFO B. We went with this format for maximum flexibility. This way if your amp uses a different code than "Yaesu BCD" you can just plug it in the matrix and make it work.

Yaesu BCD is the format that Yaesu uses in its Quadra amp, and is kind of a Ham radio standard. Yaesu BCD states the table below

band 1=160M=0001, band 2=80M=0010, band 3=40M=0011 band 4=30M=0100 band 5=20M=0101 band 6=17M=0110 band 7=15M=0111 band 8=12M=1000 and band 9=10M=1001. There is a slot for 6M as well.

The Yaesu format is this format that is read by our Unified Microsystems decoder board, as well as the Yaesu Quadra and the ALS-1300 and others. If your station conforms entirely to the Yaesu protocol then there are some hardwiring shortcuts you can use, but if you want max flexibility then using both the pin 2345 and pin 6789 data words give you that. I will show a couple different hardware set ups, one for each possibility

The zero's and ones are what show up on the LPT pins when a given band is chosen. Da (decoder VFO A) is defined as pins 2345, and Aa (Amp VFO A) are pins 6789.

You simply run 4 wires and a return to the decoder board, and run 4 wires and a return to the amp and fill in the blanks in the above matrix and you are in business.

Da, Aa, Db, Ab, are all in hex not decimal Hex has 16 characters instead of the 10 we are used to. In other words decimal is 0123456789. Hex is 0123456789abcdef. An equivalency table is below

Decimal Hex Binary
0..............0....0000
1..............1....0001
2..............2....0010
3..............3....0011
4..............4....0100
5..............5....0101
6..............6....0110
7..............7....0111
8..............8....1000
9..............9....1001
10...........A....1010
11............B....1011
12............C....1100
13............D....1101
14............E....1110
15............F....1111

So the values you enter into Da, Aa, Db, Ab are hex 123456789abcdef. This is important if you want to turn on all pins you enter F in the column not 15.

The next columns are the antenna selector columns R1TX and R2TX

The possibilities are

Receiver 1

0 = No Connection
1 = Ant 1
2 = Ant 2
3 = Ant 3
4 = Rx1 In

Receiver 2

0 = No Connection
1 = Ant 1
5 = Rx2 In
6 = Rx1 Tap

Transmit

1 = Ant 1
2 = Ant 2
3 = Ant 3

Under RX 1 and TX you set up your choice under VFO A, and under RX2 and TX you set up under VFO B.

The way the F5K antenna switch is designed we have to use a little trick to make RX2 follow correctly. Under R2 (VFO B) we insert a 6, and this will choose "RX1Tap" in the R2 selection. R2 will then follow what ever choice you have made for the TX under VFO B. This is due to the way the antenna switch is wired in the F5K, and it gives max flexibility to R2 (VFO B) Confusing ain't it? A couple pictures may help

In this shot you will notice under VFO B the R2,TX choice is 6 1, and the antenna choice in the antenna selector is 1 RX1tap 1. This means I will receive on port 1 and through the RX1 tap that signal will go to RX2, and I will transmit on port 1 when VFO B is chosen.

In this shot TX has been switched to port 3, and when I switch to VFO B the antenna selector sets the R port to three and delivers the signal to R2 via the RX1 tap, and transmits on port 3 when VFO B is chosen.

In this case port 2 in TX has been chosen only on 40M, so the antenna on 40M is now the 2 port under VFO B. This gives a lot of flexibility in how you set up your station but for the most part the 6,1 combo works for me. If you have a couple antennas you can play around with this in a pair of ports and see how it works.

The adapter allows 2 LPT ports to be accessed, one for VFO A and one for VFO B. VFO A in my example is connected to LPT port 888. VFO B is connected to LPT port 632. So fill in the address for the port you intend to use. You can get that information from the device manager in windows.

We went with this format so that if you had only one agile amp and one agile antenna switch you would need only one decoder board to get your station up and running. A more complicated station topology would require the second port and a second decoder board. You can see how things are wired in the example below.

The foot switch (called TX switch) goes in on a com port of your choice. I use com 3. To use this you can have a momentary pedal or you can have a push on push off arrangement. When pins 8 and 4 of a 9 pin serial port are shorted VFO B is chosen and if they are open VFO A is chosen.

The AmpKey is one of the three ports that control the AmpKey line coming out of the back of the F5K. You can assign any amp key line to either VFO, so if one goes out on you in the middle of a contest you can change them on the fly. The other two check boxes turn SO2R off and on, and there is a choice for a single amp and antenna switch to be controlled off both VFO's. In other words you can run both the CQ portion of the station and the Search and Pounce part of the station off one amp/switch combo.

To wire this up I decided to use a prototype board from Radio Shack.
The reason I chose this board is that it gives one an easy way to add things and make changes as time goes on and as your station grows. Here is a shot of how things can be wired NOTE the wires actually reside on the other side of this board, and are fed through the holes and are soldered on this side of the board

As you can see you can easily parallel additional devices (like a BCD switched band pass filter or pre-amp) off of the prototype board simply by soldering to the empty holes. This is the reason I went to the extra work of using this board, because it allows for very clean expansion in the future, as well as a strait forward way to trouble shoot and analyze signal path, plus its easily reproducible for the average ham. In addition I added 12V distribution from this board. The band decoder boards require a 12V input. I added a phono connector and a DB9 connector to use as a foot switch. The wires on the right side of the screen connect to the DB25 connectors that plug into the LPT ports on the computer. Note that the "Common" on the DB25 side of the board goes to pins 18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25 on the DB25. I just laid a wire across these pins and soldered them all together to create the common. Overall this makes a nice central way to add modules to this project without disturbing what is already there if you don't want to build the full blown interface from the start.

If you use only the Yaesu protocol in your station you can just parallel the amps and the decoders off the lines connected to pins 2345 of the LPT. I presently am doing that with my antenna switch and ALS-1300. I wired that up to make sure it would work and it works fine. If you elect for this design you do give up some flexibility, for example with the full interface you can make the program choose the same relay if you happen to run a tri-bander off one coax, while choosing different bands on the amp with the separate connection of the full blown interface. In fact I implemented both full blown and modified on the same board to test out how the modified board would work.

The decoder boards and this board all go in the same box. For I/O, between the amps and the antenna switches I use CAT5 cable I just cut a male-male piece with RJ45's on each end in half in half and wire that to the coax switch or what ever. I use RJ45 F to F inline couplers , and this allows me to use what ever length of CAT5 cable I need between switches amps etc. If I move things around and need a longer cable I just grab another longer CAT5 cable, plug it in and I'm on the air.

Below is a typical usage of the Unified Microsystems board for a typical ham station. This example has a 80M and 40M antenna and a tribander. Note the tribander requires only one position on the antenna switch box. The same position is chosen for 20,15 and 10 using diode steering. Using the DDUTIL matrix you can accomplish the same thing by just using a "5" in the 20, 15 and 10 slots on the matrix. This will turn on the 20M relay for each of band of the triband beam. If you had a Steppir for example you would just use a "5" under the Da column for 20,17,15,12,10,6.

I use this feature with my antenna switch since I use the 80M vertical as my 30M antenna as well

This is a shot of my "ports" screen on the hardware manager of my computer

As you can see I have 3 real serial ports, I have 2 LPT ports and a whole slew of virtual serial ports. The virtual ports are provided by VSP. VSP or virtual serial port can be downloaded from the DDUTIL web site. Install according to the directions and then make some ports

Here is a shot of my VSP manager

I use port pair 13:23 between DDUTIL:PowerSDR (called Radio Cat in DDUTIL), 10:20 between Commander:DDUTIL (the first RCP in DDUTIL), 11:21 between Skimmer:DDUTIL and 8:18 between N1MM:DDUTIL (both in the second RCP screen). N1MM only has 8 serial ports available so you have to put that in your plan when you configure ports. Here are a few shots of how I have DDUTIL confgured

There is a hidden window in DDUTIL called "sleep". This window has some effect on traffic flow in the CAT pipe. To acces double click the background in the "Other" tab in DDUTIL and set the value to zero and double click the background again

Here is a shot of the overall control and RF flow of the integrated system.
Finally DDUTIL has to connect to other programs. Here are some screen shots of config screens of the various programs I have connected to DDUTIL

DX lab commander

CW Skimmer

And N1MM

This should be more than enough information for you to set up your own SO2R/V contest station using a Flex based radio system. Some of this could be used to set up a Flex 3K in SO1V as a contest station. DDUTIL has the capability and will easily allow for the F3K to run in a frequency agile mode.

Here is a shot of one of the interfaces wired with 2 Band decoder cards ready to mount in a box

There is work to be done for sure. Due to the limitations of VAC at the present it would be difficult to implement SO2R in the digital arena. The F5K works fine as a SO1V digital entrant so there is radio fun to be had in that arena.

The rest is up to you and your ingenuity.

73

Proof is in the puddin' JD1BLY

2009-12-28T06:20:00.002-05:00

Decided to give my new set up a workout. When I left the rig last night I was on 40M. This morning I cam in the shack and jiggled the mouse to wake up the computer and checked out SpotCollector to see what was red. Stations I need for a given band are displayed in red. I saw JD1BLY displayed on 80M. I already have Ogasawara on some other bands but not on 80. I double clicked JD1BLY on the Spot Collector callsign data field and my rig and antenna immediately switched to the correct freq. I determined that I could hear him, he was working simplex on 3504.5. I flipped on the diversity function of the F5K and peaked the SNR on JD1BLY. Simultaneously I flipped on the ALS-1300. The amp takes about 3-4 seconds to go through a step start procedure, and I heard the bandswitch in the amp automatically click to 80. I set my keyer speed to match the DX and fired off two quick W9OY's. He comes back immediately and in less than 30 seconds he is in the log.

I sit and listen for a couple minutes as I start to write my experience here and then he is gone. If I had been 2 minutes later, (like waiting for the Acom or the Alpha to warm up) I would have missed him. This is how man was meant to live!

73

Nirvana

2009-12-27T00:17:00.004-05:00

My ALS-1300 solid state amp came in a couple days before Christmas. I was unable to get to it for all my duties. I unpacked it on Christmas Eve and heard something rattling around in the power supply so I had to crack that open an take a look. A screw and washer had come loose from a standoff, and with 50V at many amps in this box I decided to give a tighten to every screw and nut I could see.

Next on the agenda was to install the 12-10M band pass filter so I could run the thing on those bands. The band pass kit is a purchased item, and you have to send the seller a copy of your license to get the thing. No problem I just burned a copy in a .jpeg and sent it in its electronic way. You can see where the filter goes in the above pic. It goes next to the wire coil board (no toriods) and is secured to the main circuit board by 5 screws. It is trivial install and it took longer to get the lid off the amp than it did to install the filter.

I also installed the ARI-500. This is part of the key to Nirvana. The ARI-500 is a little device that reads band data in from a radio either a Yaesu, an Icom, a Kenwood or a K-3, and turns the ALS-1300 into a frequency agile band following amp. All you have to do to install this device is to plug it into the amp, and plug the "radio" (in this case some BCD data from the LPT port) and you're good to go.

I recently modified my RCS-4 to be band following using the UMS band decoder board and the USB2LPT port that I have described previously. Since the present iteration of DDUTIL basically drives just one LPT port, and both the UMS board and the Amertion amp follow the Yaesu BCD band data, I just paralleled the two data streams from each component to the single LPT port. The result is I now have a 1200 W transceiver, with auto switching antennas. I click 160 and I get 1200 W out on 160. I click 80 or 40 or 20 and all I have to do is hit the key and I get 1200W out of this little bugger on any band. Way cool. The F5K is set up so it remembers the drive level on a per band basis as well as antenna port and amp relay port so, everything just automatically follows.

I use SpotCollector from the DX lab suite as my DX cluster client. All I have to do is click a station and everything is on freq to make the QSO.

Thus far the ALS-1300 seems to be a very credible amp. It will do more than 1200W, but I am running it within spec. Its a little noiser than I like compared to my AL-80B but it is about as noisy as my Alpha 78 so not bad at all. It is basically instant on, it takes about 4 seconds for all the relays and power to boot up when you hit the ON switch but after that the thing is ready to rock and roll. Drive for 1200W is about 75 watts or so on each band with a little variation. THe amp sits on the top shelf of my station out of the way. I just turn it on and let the automation do the rest.

The key to this whole thing is Steve Nance's DDUTIL. It's from his software that the band following data is generated and it is through his program the LPT data is delivered into BCD format capable of running amplifiers and switch drivers that speak Yaesu. It took a little futzing around getting a cable made to match my LPT pin out but the modification was easy and an enjoyable little project. This is literally a 1200W radio station you could hide in the closet. THe F5K can be remoted, the RCS-4 can be stuck out of the way and now the amp can be stuck out of the way. All you need on the desk is a monitor, a keyboard, mouse, mic, head phones and a paddle and you're good to go.

More to follow as I wring this thing out, but so far it works great!!!. I expect to be using this as one half of a SO2R setup. If I had a beam or more antennas it would be easy to turn this into a 10 band extravaganza (including 60M)

73

Wacky Bands

2009-12-20T05:58:00.006-05:00

I got up early this morning to snack on a New Zealand apple (even my food reeks of DX) and to listen to the bands. The bands are very noisy down here in FL today likely due to many heaters being turned on. Down here most people heat their palaces with heat pumps and resistive loads placed in the air handler so even though its only in the 40's lots of noise generators get turned on.

Propadex has been negative for days and is just now turning back green. The first green shoot poked its head out of the red just as I plopped down in front of the radio and now I have 3 greenies to brag about. I've been trying to discern the usefulness of this indicator for a low band DX kind of guy and it seems this kind of pattern is when this index is most useful. If the thing is red not much happening. If the thing is all green the result is variable but if the thing shifts from red to green it seems the bands perk up

My first contact was an OA4 on 160. He was truly loud a good -80 dBm. Nice copy. After I worked him I played with the diversity on him and was able to tame a good deal of the noise using that feature. There always seems to be a sweet spot where the signal sort of "jumps" out of the noise. Only a few south Americans trying to get a rise out of Asia on 160 so I flipped on 80 and heard JT1CO in Mongolia working simplex. I could get him to about 439 in his readability but the noise was pretty bad on 80 as well, but he was definitely copyable. I didn't get into the fray as I find working a DX pileup head to head on a simplex freq tiring to say the least. I heard a VK2 work the JT1 and the VK2 was -70dBm a true S9 now that's what I call a signal!

That's the kind of stuff I hear when propadex goes red to green, VK's S9 on 80M and the terminator is still a couple hours out to sea.

You know it's going to be a good day when you hear Mongolia on 80M

73

eznec maps

2009-12-17T15:20:00.019-05:00

I'm in the process of brainstorming some antenna changes. Given my lot size I can do 2 x 77 ft verticals spaced 85 ft apart with the axis parallel to the road I live on. The road I live on is at a 15 deg offset south of E-W, so I wanted to be able to see where I would cover on each band 160 80 and 40.

I have a multiband 2 el phasing harness from Array Solutions.

This is a clever solution by W9AD that allows phasing by switching in various coaxial delay lines and a lumped 180 deg element. By judicious choice of line length you can acheive all kinds of possibilities. Here are the possibilities for my proposed 160 80 40 array:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

40M 77ft vert 85ft separation zero deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm Road 5.2 dB gain

This is a Map centered on my QTH to help judge coverage:

40M 77ft vert 85 ft sep 180 deg phase 15deg offset

These are the only 2 useful choices for 40M

80M 77ft vert 85ft sep 0 phase 15 deg offset for burkholm

80M 77ft vert 85ft sep 180 deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm

80M 77ft vert 85ft sep 90 deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm

80M 77ft vert 85ft sep 270 deg phase 15deg offset for Burkholm

These are the only useful modes for 80M

160M 77ft vert, 85ft sep 0 deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm

160M 77ft vert 85ft sep 180 deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm

160M 77ft vert 85ft sep 135 deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm

160M 77ft vert 85 ft sep 225 deg phase 15 deg offset for Burkholm

Good F/B and a little to a lot of gain depending on solution. I should be able to make this array band following. Not as good as dedicated 4 squares but my property is just not big enough for that

73

F5K meet automatic RCS-4 antenna switch

2009-12-16T04:11:00.006-05:00

I modified my Ameritron RCS-4 a few years ago to try and make it auto band switching. I've described the RCS-4 before. It is a cleaver antenna switch that uses 4 states to switch 4 antennas using only the coax as a signal line to the remote switch. What gets sent down the coax is the RF plus +12V -12V 12V AC and no volts. Each of those 4 signals tells what relays to turn on in the switch.

I modified the switch to use with my Orion and had mixed results. Most of the switch combinations would work fine, like going from 160 to 40, but there were some combinations that would blow the fuse. I had a similar experience using the X2 port with my SDR-1000. I was able to defeat this flaw by turning off the power to the control head, do the band switching then power back up so I knew there was a way to make this work using a 555 one shot.

This morning I couldn't sleep. I get some arthritis pain in my hands sometimes and it gets bad enough I have to get up. I recently got the USB2LTP port running on my F5K and I wired up the UMS band decoder board to my shiny new LPT port and did some ohm meter checks using the F5K through DDUTIL as the switching device. No problem. I can easily decode BCD data from DDUTIL and I now have up to 11 possible antennas I can control based on freq i.e up to 11 band following antennas. DDUTIL has another feature that is quite nice. It has a way to manually generate the BCD by clicking a little software switch. What that means is I can auto band follow OR I can choose a particular antenna all the time so for example I can load up my 20M vert when I am on 17M using a tuner by manually choosing the 20M setting on my antenna switch even though my F5K is on 17M. Very handy!!

I tell you what, that Steve K5FR thinks of just about everything!

Now came the acid test. Since I couldn't sleep I reverted to form and decided to see if I could blow some fuses. I have a hand full of 1 amp fuses in the drawer for just such an occasion. I opened up the RCS-4 control box and traced out my modification (I couldn't remember exactly how I wired it) and then hooked up about half a dozen clip leads between the UMS board and the RCS-4 control head.

With the distant relay box disconnected from the control head I was able to band follow perfectly using the F5K. Now came the moment of truth because it was when I connected the remote switch that I would blow them damn fuses. The bands switch and NO fuses blow. No timer needed.

So what is the point of all this? I have an auto band switching radio now, but more importantly we now have a reliable cheap way to get band data OUT of the F5K using DDUTIL, the LPT port and the UMS board, and it works perfectly, and it can be remoted. No need to wait for Flex wire to be developed. Flex wire has many more potential features but for now all I want to do is get some band data out of the radio and this setup does the trick in spades for cheap. Maybe in some future life I will worry about Flex wire rotor controllers. For me now DDUTIL is the nuts. It totally makes my station get up and do the boogaloo.

This will also work with the F3K and any other PSDR radio that works with DDUTIL.

So if you want to let the XYL know what you want for Christmas tell her to get you a USB2LPT port and a UMS band decoder board, and go have a blast automating your station

We are in the process to see if we can get this to become a full fledged SO2R set up that will be able to switch up to 2 banks of 11 antennas, set power, set rotor use band following amps etc etc. There has to be some mods done to PSDR to get that job done but hopefully we can move forward on this and make this radio into the contest, DXing machine it is destined to be. I presently have the hardware working for 2 x 11 antennas, but some software needs to be massaged to get the radio to see eye to eye with my needs.

More to follow

73

USB 2 LPT update

2009-12-14T12:21:00.010-05:00

I bought some of the USB to LPT converter cables. I bought first a kit, which has a very fine pitch leadless IC

I've built many surface mount projects and this particular IC proved to be beyond my capability from both an equipment and expertise prespective. I just don't have fine enough equipment and good enough eyes anymore to solder this chip by hand. Fortunately I know someone who does possess such skills so my investment is saved. My strong suggestion is if you purchase this device buy one already built unless you are a SMD expert. I bought the 1.7 revision, but the 1.6 revision is probably adequate for this purpose and is a lot cheaper either built or in kit form. The kit form looks to be perfectly do-able for the average SMD builder. Here is a shot of the ver 1.6

It has as far reduced part count and the main chip is easily hand solder-able but it does not have USB 2.0 speed. Probably that is not relevant for this application.

The reason I was interested in this cable is because my new computer does not have any hardware for LPT. As far as I can tell this is the ONLY true USB to LPT cable out there. There are a lot pf printing cables but that is a different animal from a true USB to LPT. To get the fully built cable to work was merely a plug and play operation. I just plugged in installed the drivers and put the correctly emulated LPT information into DDUTIL and I was sending out properly coded BCD that follows the Yaesu standard band plan.

It works perfectly with my F5K/DDUTIL set up. I added this board:

from Unified Microsystems, and I now have the capability of having band following antennas. What that means is if I click 40M the 40M antenna is automatically connected, or if I click 80M I immediately switch to 80M. Here is a typical set up using a LPT port and the UMS controller board:

Notice you can run 2 UMS cards off a single LPT port aka 20 antennas. One card is connected to Data 0123 and the second to Data 4567. (In fact the USB2LPT driver can be configured to give up to 20 I/O lines but DDUTIL won't address that many)

for 3 antennas, 80M 40M and a tribander the connections are as follows:

Note how one relay is chosen for each band of the tribander. You could do this as well for some of the 5 band beam antennas or for a Steppir. Soon I hope to be able to switch 2 sets of antennas using 2 of the Unified Micro boards on the same LPT port giving the ability of switching up to 20 antennas in a band follwing format. That will require some diddling with the software but it should be do-able.

Why 20 antennas? Actually what I am interested in is 2 banks of 10 antennas. This will bring out the functionality needed for SO2R. This, plus a couple other software tricks will allow full expression of SO2R using the Flex 5K as the foundation and DDUTIL as the Swiss army knife that hooks everything together. I should be able to rig up any number of up to 20 total antennas to any of the three F5K antenna outputs and have up to 3 amps controlled by DDUTIL, so you merely change the band and the appropriate amp/antenna will be chosen including being able to chose RX antennas on either receiver all automatically according to a predefined look-up table. I'm also hoping to be able to do other band following tasks like automatically adding inductance to a vertical based on its freq. For example if the radio is set to 1800 inductance might be added to the 160M vertical but when the radio passes 1900 the inductance would be switched out. This would be kind of like having a poor man's Steppir. You could do the same with those short 80 and 40M beams to toggle between ends of the bands etc. The hardware is there, and the software is almost there, and you should be able to build this for well under 100 bux per board set to control 20 antennas.

I'm still working on making my RCS-4 antenna switch band following but I think the end for that is in sight as well. I have the controlling relay boards built so there is only a little more twiddling needed. I will publish more on that as it comes to fruition.

I also just bought one of these:

Which can be made band following from DDUTIL using the Yaesu BCD data. More to follow

73

SO2R part 2

2009-12-10T06:13:00.008-05:00

So what about split?

I described the SO2R behavior, as most SO2R is done in the last post, with stations on the same freq. How does the F5K do split?

The F5K is full triplex, that means all three processes, RX1, RX2, and TX are active all the time. It is not like a transcever that is half duplex. To illustrate this I included a shot of the transceiver on 3 different bands at once:

If you look at the VFO the red box has now turned into a freq readout. This is accomplished by turning on "split" in the VFO control area of the console. MY transceiver is now set up to listen on 40M, listen on 20M and transmit on 80M. As you recall ANT 2 is my 80M antenna and the antenna switch follows my transmitter. If I touch my key now, 1500W gets spewed out on 80M. The antenna screen however allows me to choose other antennas

So I can choose antenna 1 for 40M and another antenna on RX2 for 20M and my transmitter set to antenna 2 for 80M. When would I ever do this? How about if I had a satellite set up that had the upband receiver on one converter, the down band receiver on another converter and the transmitter on a third converter all with different IF frequencies. The point is all three processes can be addressed independently.

So how do I work split in a pileup on 2 bands?

Here I switch on split and set my cursor to red by right clicking. The red cursor allows me to set my transmit freq. Note that the antennas have followed me and I am now ready to transmit a 40M split to work a pile up. Here is how I set up for a 20M pile up. I simply move my red cursor down to the 2nd RX window and click

and I'm ready to let fly 1500W on a 20M pileup. Just one click is all it tick (took)

I can also use the RIT and XIT to offset:

I often use the XIT to send my transmitter off the DX frequency if I want to tune up my amp before commencing in a pile up, or I use the RIT to send VFO 1 off frequency when I am trying to listen only to VFO 2. You can accomplish this with mute as well in some cases

It's this area of freq control and the area of audio management as well as VAC management between the 2 RX's and the TX in terms of digital modes etc. This area is the most rudimentary and ripe for improvements. What I would like to see is some kind of XML parser where you could store prepared files of how you would like these raw variables to behave in different situations. Then I would like to see this turned loose out in the ham community so that people who are SO2R experts could add their 2 cents and people who are nuts over VHF/UHF could all their 2 cents etc etc on how to further expand the interface.

These criticisms are for the most part just quibbles and not criticism of the general system or the hardware. It takes some planning and a little brain work to get all the ducks lined up in a row, but that is part of the fun. When you add the complexity of full triplex to the mix, its like moving from 2 dimensional chess to three dimensional chess, there is a lot more to consider, and as such many economies to be discovered and implemented.

I think, as you think about the power of the system I described its flexibility will become apparent. It is very easy to use. There is a little bit of a learning curve to set it up, but not too much of an energy barrier to get it running. The raw parts are there just waiting to be exploited. While the boys over at Elecraft are all pooping in their boots over their roofing filters and that silly little panadapter screen they came out with, you can see what the awesome power of a true SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO is all about.

When the F5K was being designed I had some input into this aspect of the radio. Of course the major designer was Gerald, and as you can see from this post on the Flex website he is still interested in providing the best possible radio experience possible to his customers:

Re: [Flexradio] More Flex in contesting

Gerald Youngblood
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:41:24 -0800

A logical block diagram of what needs to be integrated would be of great
help.  From that we can look at the best way to accomplish the desired
outcome.  Input is welcomed.

Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR
President
FlexRadio Systems

This pretty well sums up where Flex is at with designing this system. He is inviting the expert user to help shape their radio experience. He is inviting the expert contester to provide him with the insight needed to improve the radio. They are not especially interested in spoon feeding you crap like roofing filters and silly little me too panadapter screens. (My panadapter is on a 23 inch monitor) they are interested in selling you the ham radio experience that will rock your world. This is why this radio rocks my world

73 W9OY

SO2R

2009-12-09T21:55:00.020-05:00

There has been a discussion on the Flex list about using the F5K in SO2R configuration

Listed here is some of the built in capability for SO2R. To do SO2R the second receiver must be present. Here is a screen shot of the radio on 40M in the first receiver, and the antenna setup for 40M

Note the red square at the base of VFO A, and note that the antenna selector is in expert mode. With this setup my radio will receive on RX1 and transmit on the freq displayed in VFO A. The antenna will be ANT 1 on both receive and transmit.

My station is designed using a patch panel. Presently my patch panel has all 3 outputs from the F5K, the RX1 input and the RX2 input. Any of these 5 ports can be patched to any of my 4 antennas. As well I have 4 amplifiers presently coming out to the patch panel and any of the 4 amplifiers can be patched into the line of any of the 3 outputs of the F5K. Also I have a seperate little patch panel that allows me to hook up any of the 3 TX outputs of the radio to any of the 4 amps. So for example on 40 M I can select my Alpha 78 and put that is antenna line 1 and hook up TX 1 to the Alpha. I then hook the 40M 1/2 wave end fed vertical to the Alpha.

So the hookup is F5K ant1-->Alpha 78---> LP-100 watt meter--> 40M half wave vert

If I hit the code key I will get 1500 watts out on 40M

My patch panel also has output from my Flex 3K my SDR-1000 and one of my antenna tuners that has 3 outputs. I use the coax from my Johnson match box as one of the antennas since that is always connected to the open wire line and is not patch into anything so it basically is one of the antennas. I used to use switches to try and do all this but it is far too complex and the patch panel is MUCH more configurable and I highly recommend it as a solution. For a contest you would simply set up the station before hand how ever you like and forget it.

Here is the shot when I want to transmit on 80

On 80M note the red box is now on VFO B. To get to 80M I simply click this box. The 80M antenna is on F5K antenna line 2. To that line I have connected my Amp supply LK800 TNY. To that amp I have connected an 80M 1/4 wave vertical on another part of the property and the TNY is hooked up to TX 2. The signal path is

F5K ant 2 --> TNY --> a second LP-100 watt meter --> 80M 1/4 wave vertical.

When I switch to this band I have the audio set up in RX2 such that the audio in RX 1 is largely muted. This is done by adjusting the pan control in RX 2 and the relative volumes in each RX. I hear 40M in both ears and 80M in my right ear (mostly)

When I hit the code key 1500W of RF is pumped into ant 2 signal path and out the 80M vertical.

Note all I did to switch from 40 to 80 is click the box under VFO B

If I had a tribander I would click on 20M for example and here is what I would see:

Note the antenna is now on F5K ant 3 and TX 3 line. To this antenna line I would add my ACOM 2000a since it is frequency agile and I would hook up the tribander. Then when I hit the key the ACOM would auto tune to the band I was on and send out 1500W to the antenna of choice. Note to switch to 20M all I did was click on 20M and the system is all set to transmit

This is how the I would set up 20, 15 and 10 in the antenna box of PSDR

DDUTIL has the ability to direct several amps that are frequency agile including the Quadra the Acom the PW-1` and the SPE

Also if I had 3 mono band beams like 20 15 and 10 I could use the LPT port of my computer and this board to direct antenna traffic between beams.

This $19 board from Unified Microsystems turns BCD band data into discrete antenna outputs to run relay boxes. It also links from DDUTIL

If I had a Steppir I could use DDUTIL to run that antenna freq agile

This screen also allows you to use the Microham station control boards using the repeater function displayed here

Of course DDUTIL allows also several programs to talk to PSDR at one time

In addition DDUTIL can limit power on a given band so If I am running the Alpha on 40M and I need 70W to drive 1500 I can set that up in DDUTIL, and if I need 50 W on 20, 60W on 15, and 55 W on 10 with the Acom I can set that up.

So SO2R is already pretty advanced in the F5K and its attendant Swiss army knife DDUTIL. There is much more you can do. DDUTIL allows macro functions to control several things at once, for exaple you could use the some pins on the LPT to control a 4 square or something like that. Presently LPT will run up to 2 of the relay boards. There are a few things that need some refinement like outputting both receivers into a VAC configuration and it might be nice to add XIT and RIT to the second RX and maybe some other muting options but that is just fine tuning

I use this kind of set up often to be able to DX on 2 bands at once, or be in a SSB ragchew on 75 while working DX on 40 or 160

Pretty powerful stuff, and I haven't scratched the surface of what could be possible

73

ARRL 160 test

2009-12-05T23:47:00.005-05:00

Here is a shot of the ARRL 160 test. Some people think this test is the most brutal of all tests. Except for all the dang key clix I have never found it so, at least since I aquired my flex stuff. The band noise tonight was in the -117dB range, fairly quiet. The weather has finally cleared after over 24 hours of solid rain and there is a bad moon on the rise. There are a few pockets of thunder storms left but they are about 1000 miles off shore. Earlier a Delta rocket blasted off from the Cape 13 miles to my southeast attesting to the weather clearing. It was a beautiful night launch.

I spent a good deal of time listening to K1LT, W8JI, and K9DX's freq to try and hear what they were hearing and quickly trying to adjust diversity to see how well I could do. The band was not in very good shape this evening, but I could hear a great deal of what was coming through for them with my diversity setup. I caught a shot of W8JI and notice his signal is a lot like many on the band these days

Not sure what transmitter he is running but there are several on that have exactly the same signature

Very interesting as always

73

Interesting band cdx

2009-12-02T00:15:00.006-05:00

I was on 40M this evening fooling around with my Alpha 78 amp. I usually run my AL-80B, but the Alpha has a feature that is very nice. It has some broad band output networks so all you do is switch the band switch and if your antenna is half way decent as far as a load, you are tuned. Its a little like my Acom 2K, but manual instead of automatic.

The Acom is finicky about line voltage, and I am out in the country and the line voltage is all over the place especially at night. If my line gets to 248V fergitaboutit as far as the Acom is concerned. The Alpha is not so finicky except for grid current. The grids in these 8874's are gold plated and if you run high grid current even for a few seconds you boil off the gold and you are in the market for new tubes, so you have to be anal, but being anal is my middle name so not a big deal. I work as an anesthesiologist so my anality comes naturally.

Any way the band was basically dead, so I was playing around with this amp checking the drive level sending an occasional dit and adjusting up the drive while hawkishly viweing the grid current and was called by Peter ZS1JX. I was floored. He was a good S9 or a little more the first time he called me and he is probably 2 1/2 hours into his daylight. We had a nice little QSO You can see the condition of the band for yourself by viewing the panadapter and Skimmer

This is why I was floored. No other signals to be seen. Here is a shot of the signal path between me and Peter on my DX view World Map

As the QSO continued Peter started to get watery and decrease in strength but still Q5

SFI was 72 A was 0 and K was 0 and the Propadex was -36 and there was quite a bit of noise coming out of the Gulf of Mexico tonight

I was able to maximize the SNR by adjusting the AGC-T in the RX, and using the diversity setup in the F5K. I now have 4 antennas that are full time hooked up to the F5K, and I can pick and choose virtually any pair just by changing my settings on the console. You can see my antenna choices in the above pic. This choice is my 40M half wave vertical, which was also my transmitting antenna, and a 1/4 wave 40M vertical about 100ft to the east. I don't have a great investment is stack matchers or fancy antenna systems and all that. I basically have 3 verticals and one horizontal, all of which can be made resonant, or are resonant on the bands I like to operate. 4 coaxes to the F5K and so much control through PSDR

It is mind blowing where ham radio has come in my lifetime. All of the information available like the propagation sites and the weather sites and the ability to steer your antenna like some kind of digital beam, adjusting not for peak signal on minimal noise, but with the ability to actually tune the signal to noise. Who knows where we go from hear.

You often read about the death of ham radio. In my mind it's more alive than ever!!

73

Sometimes it's what you can't hear that's important

2009-11-29T15:48:00.005-05:00

When I get bored with contesting I often try to find "feats of radio magic". I try to find situations that are almost untenable to work in. One year in a 160 contest with my SDR-1000 I was able to separate 2 DX stations into single signals. The DX stations were in different parts of the world both being called by US stations. I worked each station as a single signal and the stations were only 40HZ apart!! 20 is often considered a band that separates the men from the boys. Lots of big signals big beams and high power bullys. I was tuning 20M this afternoon, and here is one I found:

If you look closely at this pic you will see super contest station W0AIH, a little below is LU8YE, a little below that is the green arrow of where my RX"s are tuned and a little below that is W1EM working K2TV, The signal you see is W1EM. The band width is about 1khz total and notice the clickiness of the 2 US stations. The effective band width between W0AIH and W1EM is about 600hz and between LU8YE and W0AIH is less than 100hz. In fact sometimes Lu8YE was inside of W0AIH's bandwidth

Note the S meter readings on both of my receivers. RX 1 is connected to a 55ft high 136ft long flat top fed with open wire and a Johnson KW Matchbox. RX 2 is fed with a resonant 5/8 wave 20M vertical about 150ft south of the flat top. I made a recording of what this sounded like when this picture was being shot

Green Arrow

What you hear is basically nothing, except a tiny bit of backgroud noise. No beeps no boops no clix. My noise floor is -119 dBm on RX1 (flat top) and -125dBm on RX2 (vert)

Next I tuned to LU8YE and made a recording of his signal between these two loud clicky stations.

LU8YE

You easily copy the Argentinian station Q5 as a single signal even with the very loud W0 super contest station blasting along less than 100hz above.

All of this with dozens of other loud US stations all around.

Once again it becomes so obvious how well this RX performs.

73

More Diversity

2009-11-28T17:09:00.005-05:00

Here is P49V in the contest:

Note I have some local broadband noise on the low end of 20. You can see it on Skimmer. It looks like P49V and the rest are in a snow storm. Down in FL we have a phenomena that I haven't seen any where else. It can literally rain across the street (300ft or so away) and not be raining where you are standing. If you look at the top of the skimmer screem you can almost see this phenomena HK3UA is in the clear. With the present version of the diversity control you can null out the noise and usually find a spot that peaks the signal at the same time. Here is a shot of the noise nulled out:

If you look at the top panadapter you can see I gain a good 15dBm of signal to noise. I didn't notch for max signal to noise, I notched for best signal to noise while improving P49V's relative signal strength in my headphones.

Here is an audio clip of what this all sounds like. The signal starts out in the noise then I switch diversity on then off then on

P49V

I have more fun that should be allowed with this radio

73

I never get on 10M

2009-11-28T16:29:00.003-05:00

I haven't been on 10M in years. With the contest I decided to see what I could see. I don't have a beam, but I do have 136ft of open wire fed dipole up about 55 ft and I loaded that up with the Johnson Matchbox. Imagine my surprise at a band full of DX. Imagine my surprise also at my band noise, -142dBm Amazing

73 W9OY

Band O' RF

2009-11-27T22:42:00.003-05:00

I was playing around in CQWW. I thought it might be interesting to see why contests are so challenging to a receiver. I turned off the click filter in Skimmer so you can see the wall of crap that is being generated

It is often "presumed" by the K3 crowd that the Flex radios can't possibly stand up to this, that some how the RX will fold. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this sea of high power and clix my noise level is about -116 tonight and I have no trouble hearing stations at the noise. No beeps no boops no overload, just good clean CW. I'll let them have their delusion and instead I'll just work the DX

Back to the war

73

Betty meet Diversity...Diversity....Betty

2009-11-25T06:27:00.011-05:00

Flex has been hard at implementing something called PAL or platform abstraction layer into PowerSDR. This is a step toward making the software platform (as in operating system) independent. What that means is that the software can be configured to work on MAC and Linux and other O/S's besides Windows. I have not really been involved in this aspect of the development until last night. Last night I updated my program to work with the PAL subversion. I downloaded the files from one of Bob N4HY's folders on the Flex sub-versioning (SVN) server. The SVN is where many different versions of the software reside as they are being developed. I opened up the version contained in this folder and here is the console that greeted me

This is the new "Pretty Betty" console. At present there are 11 different console variations living in this sub-version that I can choose from. This one is called "default". Various aspects of this console are also adjustable so you can further modify the appearance in literally hundreds of ways. In my operation I tend to upgrade things a lot and I want to spend as little time as possible customizing things since it doesn't really matter to me, but for a guy say with color blindness or in need of high contrast in visual perspectives, this would be a Godsend, PLUS it just looks cool!!

I was yanking around on Betty and hit ALt-Ctl-R and up popped my old friend Diversity

Many of the bugs of the early alpha version of the code have been squished and the console now allows diversity to be easily integrated into the operations. This is a shot of A31A on 40M this morning. He was zero copy without diversity. My night time/early morning noise has lately become horrible. There is something in the neighborhood that has arrived to screw up my ham radio fun. It adds about 15 or 20 dB to my noise floor. I may have to go around and shoot out all the street lights since it seems to adhere to this kind of timing pattern. In the mean time diversity may assist me in my woe.

There are still some bugs to squish, so its time to get out the hammer and see how many ways I can break the software, but that's what I do best :) If you have an interest I suggest you give Betty and Diversity a whirl they are becoming the premier pair.

To run this you need the latest driver

FLEX-Firewire_Driver_v3.5.0.7171.exe

and the latest firmware

FLEX_Firmware_20091105.exe

from the Flex website download page and the SVN address for the relaease is

svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_windows/PowerSDR/branches/n4hy/pb-pal_10_19/bin/Release

PLUS PLUS PLUS add this .dll file into the folder where you copy the above files

new-pal-dll-v3.5.0.7171.zip

HOT DOG I got Diversity back just in time for CQWW CW!!!!!! And Betty is easy on the eyes!

You see it's proof: God loves me and He wants me to be happy :)

For grins I heard 3V3S in Tunsia on 30M so I fired up diversity and bagged him in 3 calls

73

VK9XX

2009-11-23T16:37:00.011-05:00

Just nailed VK9XX on Christmas Island on 40 AND 80. I've been listening to him build on 40 for an hour and even turned on the Acom 2000A to get that last couple of dB. If you look at the pileup on the panadapter it shows a pretty remarkable splotch of RF. He was tuning all over the pileup and I basically put myself in his path based on the last 599 on skimmer and my perceived sense of his next direction. This radio is so much fun to DX with. It seems Skimmer is catching on with the DX crowd as I could see the pileup build around the last 599 as he moved up and down the pile. The NAY sayers complain and bitch about skimmer, but I bet every one of them that can run skimmer IS running skimmer because of the advantage it gives you in pileup analysis. The days of Bob Locker W9KNI and his starting at the bottom of the band and tuning to the top are history as far as I'm concerned.

Here is a shot of the path from FL this time of day. Note I am still in daylight and his daylight is still approaching:

I've been struggling lately with excess noise in my neighborhood as well as some lightning problems especially out in Texas and the Atlantic. Usually by now lightening has quieted down enough to become a non problem but not this year. Even so the bands have been remarkable with all the DX available this year especially on 80 and 40M

I no sooner got him in the log on 40 and started this blog entry than he came up on 80:

I switched the antenna to 80 and touched the paddle and the ACOM tune immediately to 80. There were almost no stations calling at this point so I had to figure out the split. It was a little under 2khz A couple calls and he was in the log on 80 as well. Here was the path at QSO time

The perfect gray line shot!!

My other project lately is to rebuild the control head of my Ameritron RCS4 antenna switch so it can become a random access remote control antenna switch run by my F5K using DDUTIL. The RCS4 is a cleaver switch that sends control voltages down the coax so you don't have to run extra control cables. It has 4 positions that are controlled with a + voltage, a - voltage, an AC voltage, and no voltage. The problem is the voltages can not be effectively managed randomly they have to be chosen in a sequential fashion or the PS shorts out and blows the fuse. I figured out a way to make this work and now its time to get some hardware to bring my idea to fruition.

DDUTIL has all the band following capability I need in a BCD format that is displayed on a LPT port. Now the rub. My new computer has NO LPT port and no header or any hardware on the MB. What's a mother to do?

I thought I would just be able to use a USB to "LPT" adapter but in fact those ports enumerate as LPT under Ports in windows but as "windows printing" under USB. Fortunately Joe Levy turned me on to this site:

http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~heha/bastelecke/Rund%20um%20den%20PC/USB2LPT/index.html.en

and I ordered a couple of the V 1.7 kits to give this device a whirl. When the kits arrives I will see how they performs and let you all know. It looks very interesting as it is made to allow up to a 20 pin I/O device. I'm going to try and work with Steve K5FR the creator of DDUTIL and see if I can get this bugger working as it would be a nice addition to the Swiss army knife of a program called DDUTIL

Finally here is a shot of the VK9XX pileup on Christmas and the 9V1YC pileup in Singapore just above:

How much fun can you have?

Stay Tuned :)

73