W0̷JLT

I recently got a Raspberry Pi and a few accessories to try digital modes with.  So far, it has been an early success.  I had played around with Arduinos before and had a lot of fun.  I got the Pi 3 Model B and so far it has blown Arduino out of the water.  I was able to install Raspbian onto an SD card easily and get it up and running.

The other accessories I got included a 7-inch touchscreen and a case.  My goal is to be able to do digital modes while camping/mobile and running off of a battery.  The biggest pain was hauling a laptop around to accomplish this, and being limited to the lifespan of the laptop’s battery.  With the Pi, I will need to plug it into the same battery I’m transmitting from, so I’ll need to factor that in.  However, to be able to do this from a small device will be perfect.

A test on FT8 was a moderate success.  When the bands were on the slower side it kept right up and I was able to make a successful contact.  However when there were multiple signals it had trouble decoding fast enough.   If the band was crowded, it would take about 3-4 seconds into the next cycle before fully decoding.  I’d imagine there’s a fix to this that some google-ing will solve.  I’ll post more when I figure it out.

I’m also going to try getting a RTL-SDR setup, and try out some other modes as well.  More to come.

I recently started toying with the idea of operating mobile.  After doing a lot of research online it seems the absolute best way to do this is to drill a hole and have a NMO mount installed.  Knowing this I started thinking about buying a 2nd vehicle just for this purpose.  The car I have now I purchased new at the end of 2012 and it didn’t seem right to do this as I was concerned with water leaks or rusting.  It turns out that a couple of shops around me that specialize in 2-way radio will install a NMO mount for reasonable price.  Where I’m not willing to try on my own, I am willing to defer to the experts.  I decided having a shop that specializes in this would be the way to go.

Before doing this however I decided it would be a good idea to do a prototype and see how things worked. Before committing to drilling a hole in my car I wanted to know it would be worthwhile. I bought a 5-inch mag mount and several of the MFJ hamsticks.  W5TOM’s website was extremely helpful in understanding what would work for this.  I put a the 20 meter antenna on the mag mount and hooked it up to my analyzer. (Keep in mind I was operating parked.  I do not recommend a hamstick on a mag-mount while driving!) With nothing grounded but the mag mount it was resonant around 13.5 MHz, and at 14.074 it was in the 3.5:1 range for SWR.   I hooked up my tuner and very crudely hooked up a ground strap.  It was placed between a piece of plastic and the metal hook that the back hatch latches to.  The plastic held it in place.  With the tuner I was able to get everything in tune, and I hooked up my rig and my laptop to try some FT8.

What happened next blew my mind.  I was at a local park where there isn’t any electricity and so there wouldn’t be the high noise floor I’m used to.  I figured I would probably need to adjust the antenna since it had such a high SWR and mag mount and all that, but I figured let’s see what happens first.  There was no noise floor, and before I knew it I had over 20 contacts and had added 3 countries to my list (Brazil, Argentina, and the Canary Islands).  This blew my mind, I have a park not far from my place that I can get to most of the year, and with a far less than ideal antenna setup I just worked the world.  The only limiting factor was my laptop and gel batteries, but I got over 2 hours of non-stop FT8.

Knowing this, the NMO mount is happening.  I am going to contact a couple of shops around the Twin Cities and see what prices are.  I’ve been looking at what mounting options to use and I’m excited to get it installed.  I can’t wait to have a permanent install in my car.

Up until not very long ago I didn’t use any logging software.   My log consisted of hand-written notes for SSB, and the log files from WSJT-X for digital.  I then posted the contacts on here to keep track.  It worked fine at first, but eventually I realized I had too many contacts to keep track of.  On top of that I was using a spreadsheet to manage QSL cards.  It worked, but it was very cumbersome to keep everything up to date.

Last week I started looking for electronic logging programs.  I wanted something to use with Linux if at all possible, and I found CQRLOG.  It took quite a while to get all my contacts loaded into the software but it was worth the time.  Once I got everything entered, I quickly saw the advantage.  I realized I’ve already had 160 contacts. Whoa.  When I started looking at some of the stats, I realized I had already contacted 10 countries.   Suddenly tracking QSL cards was way easier.

While I never used LOTW I decided this would be a good time.  LOTW in Ubuntu was not easy to setup.  The TQSL package in Ubuntu’s repositories for 16.04 were a joke, several versions out of date, and it crashed when attempting to update the configuration file to V11. My compiling skills are pretty much non-existent, and I ran into dependency errors that I have no clue how to resolve.   I found some luck installing the Windows version of TQSL with Wine, however that would mean CQRLOG wouldn’t be able to find TQSL and I’d have to deal with manually moving files around.  I finally found a compiled package, thanks to Kamal Mostafa’s launchpad (links at the end of this post).  I added that PPA and quickly had TQSL up and running.

Once I had certificates figured out I started uploading to LOTW.  I wasn’t expecting much based on the reviews I had read online, but out of the 160 contacts I have, 100+ were confirmed with LOTW in a matter of seconds.  Compare that to 60 contacts that were confirmed via QSL.  That also translated to 4 additional countries confirmed that I haven’t been able to confirm via QSL cards, getting my total confirmed countries up to 8.

Here are a few links that I found helpful:
CQRLOG
Kamal Mostafa’s PPA for TQSL

I’ll be heading on vacation around the 4th here soon and I’ll be bringing my radio with, so I figured why not get a few new gadgets.

The first is a tuner (MFJ-902B).  For some reason when I got my general I thought tuners were pointless, so instead when I was outside I would raise and lower the Buddipole about 15 times to get it just right with an analyzer.  My hopes are I can get the Buddipole close, and use the tuner to fine-tine it.  If I can set it up and turn a few knobs instead I’m interested.

Next I got a battery booster (MFJ-4416C).  When I get outside I use a deep-cycle SLA gel battery and I’ve heard good reports here that this device can help keep the voltage up as the battery is getting lower.  Honestly I have no idea how this works (like how does 11 volts suddenly get changed to 13.8?) but if it can keep my rig inside operating voltages the whole time it should help.  I’ve heard these can destroy batteries if they are discharged too far, however my battery is a deep cycle battery that can stand being fully discharged up to 300 times, so I’m curious how far I can push it.

I also got the counterpoise wire assembly from Buddipole, I want to get serious about the vertical setup for 20 meters and lower as the bands have been crap lately.

Once I try all this out I will have some updates, and hopefully more contacts.

I finally got around to ordering some QSL cards and they showed up today!  I’ve dropped some in the mail to respond to ones I’ve received, plus now I’m going back and sending out some of my own for contacts from the last year.  Plus with warmer weather, I should be on HF voice again soon

I’ve had a lot of success on JT65 on both 20 and 40 meters.  Even when band conditions are not favorable, which seems to be quite a bit lately, I’ve had a lot of contacts and hits on pskreporter.info/pskmap.html. In the last 2 days I’ve had a total of 20 contacts, and according to pskreporter, my signal was picked up in in Alaska, Europe, South America and Antarctica.  I wasn’t picking up anything from that station but it’s crazy to think I got a signal that far from an indoor antenna.  I was using the MFJ loop antenna I have, and had my rig hooked up to the gel battery.  I can’t wait for it to be summer again so I can operate outdoors, but in the meantime this will keep me entertained.

I bought a couple of new items lately so I can operate indoors through these cold Minnesota winters.  I love getting outdoors when it is nice out and operating from campsites and parks, but not so much once we get some snow and it is below freezing.

The first thing I bought was the MFJ-933 loop tuner, and the MFJ-58B kit to go with it.  My impressions on the tuner itself are great, I find it very easy to get the antenna tuned and get on the air. The instructions say to use the radio to tune, however I’ve used my antenna analyzer instead.  Since this is a loop antenna the bandwidth is very low, so you’ve got to tune it to a frequency and stick very close to it.  When you are outside of that resonant spot, the SWR is around 20:1-30:1.  I don’t want the finals in my rig to deal with that, I’ll let the analyzer take that instead.   The instructions tell you exactly what to do (minus using the analyzer).

Now the antenna kit itself (MFJ-58B)- don’t get me wrong it works, but I feel like it is something I would buy at a flea market.  The only valuable part here are the wires themselves, the rest of the kit is crap you could find anywhere.  The PVC pipe is clearly surplus PVC, it has adhesive from torn off labels and has scratches everywhere.  The longest wire for 40-60 meters is too big for the PVC, so the kit includes what it calls “Loop wire clips” to hang it on curtains/bookselves/etc.  These “clips” are simply clothespins.  Don’t get me wrong, this all works functionally well, but for $50 I expect a little bit more of quality and little bit less crap you could buy anywhere.

For me this setup works very well.  I made my first voice contact on 10 meters, first contact to Mexico, and made a number of voice contacts on 20 meters as well.  This is much easier than setting up the Buddipole inside as my apartment isn’t big enough for it to fit in one room.  It also brings down some of the electrical interference that makes using the Buddipole inside my apartment less practical (unless the power is out).

I also bought a Signalink USB and tried JT65.  This was my first attempt at digital communications and it worked very well.  I made my first 40-meter contact and my first digital contact at the same time.  I found the Signalink very easy to setup and interface with my radio.  Once I was up and running I found the https://www.pskreporter.info/ website and was thrilled to see my signal making it out and to so many places.

I’m so glad I got into this activity.  It is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and now that I finally can, it has been a blast.

A random power outage in my apartment allowed me to attempt HF from indoors.  When I have setup previously I can get my antenna (Buddipole) to tune just fine, but there is way too much interference for me to hear anything.  When the power in my area suddenly went out I quickly setup my rig and found out there was no noise floor, and I could easily get my signal out.  I made a few contacts before the power returned, and a power outage has never been so exciting.  If only this happened more often, I will likely be looking into a loop antenna to use from my apartment in the winter, I can get signals out no problem it seems.  It’s just hearing other people that is the problem.

I also went camping in one of my usual spots, Great River Bluffs State Park.  I’ve had plenty of luck on 17-meters there, but since propagation was poor on 17 I tried 20 instead.  I tried the Buddipole both horizontal and vertical and had luck with both configurations.

It was on 20 that I had two of the most unique contacts I’ve had so far.  First I chatted with W8GWP, Shane, who was flying a plane about 8 miles in the air and using the HF radio in the plane over Kansas.  I’ve never had an airborne contact before.   Then I chatted with W3FF, Budd, who had a tricycle-mounted rig with an amp on the trailer from Redding, California.  His signal was booming to me at the state park with this setup.  He’s got a picture of it on his QRZ page.

Two local events I just found:

KC9BQA – Weekly 2 meter USB net on Wednesdays – check the link for more information.   I will try to call in on tonights (8:00 PM central time)

2 Meter Sprint – Sept 19 –  While not exclusive to SSB – I will be calling out around 9:15-11:00 local time on SSB to see what contacts I can make