Author: Eugene

Reworking the sound card interface

Now that the sound card interface finally seems to be working ok, I’m contemplating the merits of tearing it apart and playing with the component layout to make things more compact. It’s not exactly sprawling across the perfboard, but the component spacing can be reduced and there are a few places where I see that I can compress things a little more by changing the arrangement of some of the components. It’s certainly functional the way it is, but the mildly obssessive tweaker in me wants to keep optimizing the component placement for minimum size.

I should probably spend some more time playing with it before I take it apart.

Sound card interface success!

After some troubleshooting and help from Jason/NT7S and Robert/AK6L, the problem turned out to be the transformers. Apparently they were step up/step down transformers and not the 1:1 transformers I really needed. Ordered some new transformers from Mouser and put them on when they arrived.

Still ran into problems getting the radio to transmit a signal, but after a closer examination of the board, I discovered I had connected one of my ground wires to the wrong spot so the audio signal to the radio ended up going to ground instead of the radio. Duh.

Fixed that, connected everything up and was able to make my first digimode QSO using the new interface with KC8MGD up in Michigan. From where he was, I had a good signal and wasn’t splattering across the band, so that’s a good sign.

So excited that I got this working! Now I can work on either coming up with an enclosure for this prototype board or build v0.3 and try to make it more compact. I have two more transformers that I can use to build a second interface, which I might save for later once I’m finished messing with this prototype board. I think I’ll try to find some PS2/mini-DIN6 sockets so that I can plug/unplug cables to it and get a little more flexibility about what I can plug into the board.

Ham radio goal list progress

Let’s see what I’ve managed to get done on my ham radio goal list from January

  • Get the shack up and running

Shack is up!

One of them is built, still need to get around to building the RXTX kit.

OpenBeacon is reprogrammed and works. It’s just not on the air full time.

I need to put in an order for one to build.

  • Earn skill levels in CW

Progress is slow. I need to devote more time to this.

  • Build Moxon antennas for 6 and 10m
  • Experiment with making antennas

Antenna building has kind of taken a back seat to building up the workbench, improving my soldering skills and assembling things.

  • Try some digital modes

Got to play a little more digital during the ARRL RTTY Rookie Roundup over the summer. Waiting on some new transformers to finish off the sound card interface.

CQWW 2013

Just wrapped up what’s been the longest stretch of ham radio contesting I’ve done so far with the 2013 CQ WW. Started with a few hours on Friday night when the madness started and continued with Saturday morning, most of Saturday evening and the final 5 hours or so today. According to my log, it looks like I was at the radio for around 20 hours or so out of the 48 hour contest.

Thanks to some amazing propagation on 10m nearly half of all my contacts were made on 10m during Saturday morning/early afternoon. There was contest activity across an entire 1 MHz of the 10m band, which is pretty amazing. Normally I have a hard time hearing anything on 10m, but this past weekend making contacts was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of my 10m contacts were across the Atlantic to Europe, a handful of stations in Africa and later some South American stations.

I spent most of Saturday evening on 15m and a little bit on 20m, getting most of my contacts from South America and Canada there. Europe was a little harder to work on 20 and 40m.

Highlights of the weekend:

  • Z68BH (Kosovo)
  • KL7KY (Alaska)
  • NH7A (Hawaii)
  • XP1A (Greenland)
  • TF3CW (Iceland)
  • Hearing NH2T in Guam. They faded away before I could get them though. It’s a long way for my 100W to go too.
  • Hearing a JA5 station. I don’t think they were able to hear me though.

Didn’t spend a whole lot of time operating on 40m. All the interference from neighbouring stations makes it hard to hear all but the loudest stations, and it’s pretty hard on the ears and brain. One of the things I found helpful was to use a narrower DSP filter to cut down some of the interfering noise and make it easier to hear the station I was tuned to. Helped some on 40m, but not a whole lot since in a lot of cases, those stations were just 1 or 2 kHz away from what I was trying to listen to.

According to N1MM, this is how my contacts broke down by band.

 Band    QSOs    Pts  ZN    Cty
     7      16      43    8   15
    14      49     117   16   24
    21      40     103   16   24
    28      81     238    8   31
 Total     186     501   48   94
Score: 71,142

Overall, it was a pretty good weekend of radio contesting and I had a lot of fun playing.

#WATwitter 2013

Thanksgiving (US) is coming up in a few weeks and we all know what that means (besides stuffing ourselves with turkey).

It’s the weekend for the 3rd annual Worked All Twitter!

Take a break from the food during the week(end) of Thanksgiving (Nov 27-Dec 1) to get on the radio and work all your ham friends on Twitter. Get those last few QSOs you need for WAS. Take a break from the lightning exchanges during the fall ham radio contest season for some nice leisurely rag chewing over the air. Share those Thanksgiving dinner stories/disasters/successes instead of the regular OM stories we always hear on the air.

As usual, all bands and all modes. For maximum participation, make use of the parts of the HF bands that are available to the most people.

Spot yourself on Twitter using the #WATwitter and #hamradio hashtags.

Have fun, get on the air and make those contacts!