Ham radio – Page 21 – AB4UG Radioblog

Getting a Canadian amateur radio certificate

At the ARRL Centennial convention, Connie pointed me toward the Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) table after she spent some time talking to them. I spoke to George/VE3YV about RAC and amateur radio in Canada, and in the process learned that because I’m still a Canadian citizen and not a US citizen, reciprocity doesn’t apply to me so I can’t play radio while I’m in Canada.

We talked about me getting a Canadian amateur radio certificate (it’s not a license anymore) while I’m back home in Edmonton in September. Certification exams are given by Designated Examiners (DEs) and if I can find one while I’m home, I should be able to take the test.

Canadian amateur radio certificates come in two flavours: Basic and Advanced. The Basic test is 100 questions with a pass mark of 70%. If you get over 80%, you’re awarded a Basic with Honours (or Basic Plus) certificate. The Advanced test is 50 questions with a pass mark of 70% and gives you the full privileges.

Like the VEC program in the US, Industry Canada publishes the question pool for both tests so preparing for the tests would be a matter of collecting the appropriate materials and reviewing them and the questions.

I’ve had a very quick look at a few of the questions in both pools, and it seems to me the level of knowledge required for the Basic certificate is about the same or maybe a little bit more than the General class license in the US, while getting an Advanced certificate requires a little more electrical and radio theory than the Amateur Extra class.

I’ve got a couple of months to study and get ready. Piece of cake.

Connecting the microphone

It took a little bit of work and puzzling out wires, but I managed to get the microphone (temporarily) wired up to the radio. In the process, I learned a few things.

If you look up the pin numbering for the RJ45 connector (apparently the corrent term is 8P8C), most diagrams have pin 1 on the left side and pin 8 on the right side.
Kenwood numbers the modular connector used for the microphone on the TS-480SAT with pin 1 on the right side and pin 8 on the left side.
The white and green wires in the Astatic 877L are connected to the PTT switch, but not to anything else. Posts on internet forums say that with Astatic microphones, the white wire is usually the MIC AUDIO line. In the case of this microphone, that’s not true. The only wires that count are the red, black and ground/shield wires.
Ignore the Internet and stick to the microphone wiring label.

I had a short piece of CAT6 ethernet cable on hand, so I cut that in two pieces, stripped the ends and used some jumper wires to connect the microphone to the appropriate wires on the ethernet cable.

Microphone wire	CAT 6 wire	Function	Pin (Kenwood)	Pin (RJ45)
Shield	Green/white stripe	GND	3	6
Black	Blue/white stripe	MIC GND	5	4
Red	White/blue stripe	PTT	4	5
Red	White/green stripe	MIC	6	3

Wired up like this, the microphone seems to work. With TX monitoring on the radio turned on, I can hear myself pretty nicely through the speaker. The meters on the radio move when I talk. I wasn’t able to make any contacts on the radio to get any kind of signal report though.

With only three connections to make, it should be pretty simple to replace the existing microphone cord with my length of CAT6 cable. The only thing I don’t like about this wiring scheme is that it puts mic audio on the radio’s PTT line. Although the radio didn’t seem to protest during my testing, I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

I think I’ll test out this alternative wiring as well

Microphone wire	CAT6 wire	Function	Pin (Kenwood)	Pin (RJ45)
Shield/Green (F)	Green/white stripe	GND	3	6
White (E)	White/blue stripe	PTT	4	5
Black (A)	Blue/white stripe	MIC GND	5	4
Red (C)	White/green stripe	MIC	6	3

This will separate the mic audio and the PTT lines which, from the radio’s perspective, seems to make more sense.

I wonder if I’ve got a rocker switch in the junk box that I could connect the UP/DOWN lines to. I think there’s enough room in the mic base where I could make an opening and add it in.

Pondering microphone connection options

Starting to ponder ways to connect the desk mic (an Astatic 877L) we picked up last month to the radio. Right now the mic has an XLR female connector on the end, while the radio uses an RJ-45 modular connector for the microphone input. I figure I have a few options:

Replace the existing cord on the microphone with some Cat5 that already has an RJ-45 connector on one end.
Make a pig tail with an XLR male connector and some Cat5 with an RJ-45 connector
Cut the XLR connector off and splice on a length of Cat5 with an RJ-45 connector

Fortunately, the bottom of the microphone has this handy wiring label. There aren’t very many wires to connect up to the radio.

Having a look inside the base of the microphone, everything looks to be wired up as shown on the label. It looks like if I choose to replace the cable with a length of Cat5, it will be a little bit of work, but shouldn’t be too bad.

From the Kenwood TS-480 manual, the pin-out for the microphone connector is

1 – UP
2 – +8V
3 – GND
4 – PTT
5 – MIC GND
6 – MIC
7 – N/C
8 – DOWN

Looks like red (XLR pin 2) would go to PTT (4) and black (XLR pin 3) I think would go to MIC GND (5). Not sure where the white wire should be connected to, but it currently goes to pin 1 on the XLR connector. The green wire in the mic doesn’t appear to be connected to anything.

The downside to replacing the mic cable with Cat5 is that the wires are quite a bit thinner, so I”ll have to give extra thought to strain relief at the microphone base.

Field Day 2014

Another Field Day has come and gone. I was able to get the laptops set up and networked just in time for the action to start.

This year, the 2PM start didn’t sound quite as chaotic or noisy as it did the last couple of years. I’m either getting used to listening through the noise, or it just wasn’t as busy this year, or both. I’ve seen other people mention that band conditions weren’t all that great.

I spent the first couple hours logging and keeping tabs on the network connection between the two laptops. Got in a bit of operating before the skies broke open and the torrential rain started. It was bad enough that we had to break down both stations and get them inside out of the rain.

Rain kept us off the air for a couple hours as more rain passed on through, but later in the evening the rain cleared out and we were able to set up one of the stations again.

I headed back home around 8PM and got back to the ship the next day for the last couple hours of Field Day. Weather was much nicer, and band conditions seemed to be better. I got in an hour of operating and was able to make 10m and 15m contacts into the northeast and northwest.

Looking at the counts in N1MM, we made somewhere between 600-800 contacts. Because of the wifi dropping out and having to break everything down for the rain, the logs on the two laptops got out of sync. Some operators also didn’t want to computer log, so there are some paper logs to add in as well. I think next year one of the things I’ll have to do is send out some instructions on how to do the logging, and make a cheat sheet available at each station.

Had lots of fun again this year, and looking forward to next year’s Field Day.

Field Day 2014!

Another Field Day is coming up in a couple of weeks and once again I’ll be playing radio with fellow WA4USN club members on the USS Yorktown with CARS. I hope to spend a little more time operating this year.

I’ll also be paying closer attention to the generator and battery hook ups to learn how to set up the rig in the shack on portable power. Hopefully the weather is nice and the propagation is good.

ARRL Field day logo