Category: Yleinen

CW Training

Phew. I have started the CW training (morse). I really feel that it is something that is definitely needed for serious DXing and especially in the interesting world of QRP working. I ran trough few applications for Windows, Mac and iOS devices together with Android, but find no good apps for my training…untill I found the marvellous multiplatform capable Learn CW Online -web site! It sure works nicely and enables the Koch Method and all. Very interesting and nice way to practice the code. The morse player there is Flash based, but one can change the player from the prefecences to be HTML5 … so it works with iOS devices also. Really cool. The service also has some community features to compare your progress to others and discuss about some morse issues on-site.

If you are interested on learning morse code, just log on to lcwo.net and start training. You can find me there as OH6FXL (my profile). Hope my motivation lasts long enough…learning morse is not easy, but it opens a whole new world in HAM bands when mastered. Looking forward on that. 🙂

Beautiful antenna, ugly balun #hamr

I finally made it. I raised the HF antenna of mine to new heights. Or atleast a bit higher than the previous installation. I managed to get the antenna high up to the top of the tree with my new (EVO3) version of the antenna launcher. It sure is more powerful than the old slingshot (picture below)

    

New (EVO3 version)                                                                               Old (EVO2) version

The first picture in this post is a picture of my Ugly Balun – an air wound choke, that I made for my Windom (OCF) dipole to eliminate the RF in the shack (actually I converted my antenna to “Carolina Windom” -like antenna”. As the antenna project is still ongoing I haven’t been able to test that balun yet. I let you know how it works. The antenna project is still ongoing because I encountered new tree branches in our yard when rising the antenna higher. Yep, they weren’t there before… 🙂 as the antenna was couple of meters lower.. Anyway, I hope to test the antenna and the balun soon. I’m looking forward to get rid of the annoying RF interference by this. The other thing I need to do is to shovel up few meters (abt. 50m) of ditch for my grounding cable, but that’s another story..but it affects to that RF too, so that needs to be done.

QSL Cards and Shack Update

I finally got my QSL cards from the printing house few days (week) ago. QSO’s have been “piling up” meanwhile waiting the cards, so I have approximately 200 QSL’s to send out… So you will have yours after a while. As I’m the member of the Finnish radio amateur league (SRAL) I will be posting the QSL’s via the bureau. Hopefully that method will reach you all. 

I have also been switching between computer platforms in the Shack. As you might remember I started out with my Mac and MacLogger DX together with CocoaModem for digimodes. After a while I changed the CocoaModem to fldigi. Not long ago I completely transferred my Shack computer to Linux platform and started using CQRLOG instead of MacLogger DX. After all that platform hassle I managed to keep my log up-to-date… at least almost. I think I lost one QSO from the log, but that was user error, not related to platform change. I try to figure out what QSO is missing. It was a G something, so from England. Hopefully I will find it somewhere. But all in all I’m quite happy with CQRLOG together with fldigi. I managed to get all CAT and digi interface features working too. The only hassle I have at the moment is related to dual monitors in my computer…but that is not HAM related, it is Ubuntu / Linux X-window ‘feature’…

Flu, 1st of May and painting

It is the 1st of May (Wappu in Finnish). I’m still recovering from the flu, but quite ok now. I’ve been working some PSK31 in the Shack and painting some serious wood! Yep. We are about to build a new terrace for our house within next weekend, so I just need to get all the wood painted before that…what a rush! There is couple of hundred meters of it, but it is good excercise 🙂

During the “drying time” when waiting the next painting turn I have been working with some other issues…like PSK31 on 20 meters again, what a joy it is..and then playing some drums. I also managed to get my shack WLAN antenna finally working (see picture below). I actually needed to lower it a bit in the mast to get it working better for the wlan from the house. It is a directional antenna pointing towards our house to get the wlan signal from there. The antenna is then conected to a acces point which is acting just as a wlan client and bridge to provide the TCP/IP connection for the shack computer(s). It’s working ok at the moment. Hope it will continue working also tomorrow 🙂 It has been a bit flacky recently..

Summer is coming finally. It just is great. Hope to hear you in the bands. I’m currently working quite a bit the PSK31 on 20 meters as I have also been building my remote setup for that lately. Just to mention.. It is nice to work around the world from the couch, with iPad for example 🙂 Yep. Need to post you a video abt that setup later… I always keep on promising those videos, but just wait…I will. When the worst rush of work has passed by and I have some time 🙂

Building a mic adapter…

I’m currently building a microphone adapter for my Yaesu FT-450 and for my studio mic. Adapter is based on the original one made by a fellow ham OH6HZH. I have been testing his adapter for couple of days now and it just works like a charm with my rig and mic. I’m using my AKG C2000B condencer microphone together with ART Tube MP microphone amplifier in this setup.

As I was buying some components for the adapter project yesterday, I also found the nice foot pedal (black box in the picture) from the local electronic shop. I installed it as foot PTT for this setup and it works like a charm. I have been running it with the “6HZH adapter”. It just is a simple micro controller with nice plastic pedal… 🙂 Looking forward of having my own adapter ready in the upcoming days. More about it later…

Nice APRS Tracker project

Just stumbled on this very interesting APRS tracker project one day when thinking about the APRS setup in my own car. At the moment I only have one real APRS device. It is my Yaesu VX-8D. I call it real APRS  because it transmit on real radio frequency (144.800MHz in EU). In addition to that I have also some “fake” ones… like those in my phone and in my iPad. I call them fake, because they are not transmitting on that real radio frequency, but they are just talking to APRS-IS in internet via GPRS data link.

BTW: I have also been working on my HF microphone setup lately, which I will tell you later. Maybe with a video … hi hi…

Working digitally (and remotely)

As I mentioned before, I have been working to get my digital mode setup working in my hamshack. Few days back I finally made it. Actually I’m not 100% sure what I did wrong in the first place, but who cares…now it works 🙂 I also managed to get rid of the bugging RF interference too. I just added some ferrite modules to my cables in the shack (audio card and digimode/cat interface) and that was all. Now everything seems to be working A-OK, which is nice.

First I started working the PSK31 with CocoaModem. I made good contacts with it, but was looking forward for better macros and integration to pskreporter.info site. I also had problems in CocoaModem to get the table mode (simultaneously decoding all streams within the audio spectrum heard) and I needed to look for another software to use. The answer to those requirements within Macintosh environment is fldigi. I looked into that and got it working too (as you can see from the picture above). In addition to nice user interface and efficient usage it also is able to report heard (and worked) stations to pskreporter.info service, which is really nice thing. From that data you can easily see how well your antenna is working on certain bands. PSK31 mode is nice as it happens basically always within one frequency per band. Therefore you can hear loads of different countries and stations with it. For example I was monitoring only 20m band (14.070 KHz) for couple of days and got 405 reports / stations from 36 countries during that time. Interesting data about the frequency, antenna and all. Also interesting was to see from the same service how far my own transmission went. I’m using only 50w from my 100w transceiver power for PSK. With that power I was able to be heard all the way to USA. And as you can see from the picture above I have been also able to hear USA and Canada…so I just need to be with my radio on right time to make that connection to happen..hi hi.

Speaking of which… I also managed to get my remote working setup up and running. I had my radio gear on with my computer in the shack and worked my PSK31 from the comfort of the living room couch…with another computer or with my iPad .. or even with my Android phone. I’m running TeamViewer for that purpose and it just works great. It enables remote working where ever I have an internet connection. That is btw one benefit also on working the digital mode..no need for mic or CW paddle for that matter. 🙂

Maybe I should provide a video about all that, but let’s save that for later.

And yes…Once again..comments are welcome .. as always.

Antennianalyysi (Lafayette MV-2000) [Finnish]

Antennisaaga Lafayette MV-2000 antennini ympärillä sai tänään mielenkiintoisen päätöksen. Mittasimme OH6VM ja OH8JGQ:n kanssa antennin oheisen kuvasarjan mukaisesti OH6VM:n hienolla RigExpert -antennianalysaattorilla. Napsin kuvia mittaustuloksista muistilapuiksi. Kuvista on selvästi nähtävissä, että antenni ei ole vireessä suomen 2m, 70cm ja 6m bandeilla. Antennissa ei ole säätöä sen virittämiseksi. 6m maatasossa (pisin maataso) on joku kuusiokoloruuvi, jolla maatason pituutta voisi tiettävästi säätää, mutta sitä ei ole säädetty tätä mittausta tehtäessä. Ohjekirjassa ei myöskään mainita mitään tälläisestä säätötarpeesta. Ohjekirjassa (A4) ei myöskään ilmoiteta antennin referenssipisteitä, eikä SWR -kuvaajia…mutta tässähän ne tuli selvitettyä 🙂

Antennini lähtee huomenna takaisin myyjälle ja toivottavasti saisin vaihdossa TOIMIVAN antennin. Esimerkiksi Diamondin. Myyjän puolesta vaihto on ollut koko ajan ok, aikataulujeni tähden pääsen vaihtamaan antennin vasta nyt. Puhtaasta kiinnostuksesta ja radioamatöörikokeilun takia selvitimme antennin viretilanteen. SUURET kiitokset vielä Harrille (6VM) antennianalyysistä ja Tuomakselle (8JGQ) mastomiehen vaativan tehtävän hoitamisesta. Ilman teitä tämä vaativa toimenpide ei olisi ollut mahdollinen. 🙂

PSK31 reporter

While trying to get my digital mode setup working, I encountered a nice PSK reporter service. Briefly put it is a web service that puts PSK31 traffic on to Google Maps. To get your PSK into the map you need to have certain digimode software. Most popular software like Digital Master 780 for Windows and fldigi for multiplatform are able to report into this system.

This really is an interesting experiment and nice way to spot how far your CQ for example is going. You can check the map via this link. More information from here.