Macro Heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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