Ramblings by K6RJ

The Soft66ADD in it's case

I recently sent payment for a SOFT66ADD direct conversion software defined receiver that I am anxious to arrive and get to play with.  The SOFT66ADD covers .5MHz to 30MHz  and is supposed to be compatible with Rocky , SDRadio and WinRad software.  It is controlled from the PC via a USB port.  I plan to set it up to operate remotely from work so that I can monitor DX activity without having to power up my SDR-1000 or FT-450.

I will give an update later as to how easy it is to install and update as well as how well it does or doesn’t work.

The National Scout Jamboree takes place July 26-August 4 at Fort AP Hill, Caroline County, Virginia.  Just like the National Scout Jamborees in 1973, 1981, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2005, the 2010 event will feature Amateur Radio.  A team of 17 Scouters and two Scouts will activate K2BSA as a demonstration station at the Jamboree.  You can read more here.  If you support the Boy Scouts, be sure to get on the air and give them a few Qs.

It is again that time of the year to ramp up for Field Day.  This year Field Day is June 26-27, 2010, the last full weekend of June.

ARRL Field Day is the largest on-the-air operating event in Amateur Radio. It draws tens of thousands to the airwaves each year, bringing new and experienced hams together for a weekend of fun!  You can find answers to all your questions and get supplies for Field Day at the ARRL Web Site.

I found this troubling article on the MSNBC Technology & Science page today.   Of particular interest was the prediction at the end of the article by David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center:

“Hathaway predicts that cycle 24 should reach its peak in mid-2013 at about half the size of the last three cycles.”

If this is true, it doesn’t bode well for hams.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed his prediction is wrong.

As you know, I am into Software Defined Radio (SDR).  I own a Flexradio SDR-1000 and hope to upgrade to a Flex-3000 within the next year.  However, I also own a Yaesu FT-450 which I am quite taken with.  For the small price this really is a lot of radio. I find myself using it more and more.

You might imagine, then, how excited I was when I learned that Boris Njegic, 9A5ATY in Croatia has successfully interfaced the FT-450 with PowerSDR software by extracting the 24 KHz IF and bringing it to the PC sound card where all the DSP and filtering is done in the software.  This allows the FT-450 to have  24 KHz panaromic and waterfall displays as well as all the filtering and DSP provided by the software.

Needless to say, I am excited about experimenting with the FT-450 and SDR.  If you are interested, Boris has created a web page to document his experiments.  This could get real interesting, real fast!

ARMAD is an annual NON-POLITICAL Amateur Radio Public Service project that stands for Amateur Radio Military Appreciation Day.  We work with National Military Appreciation Month during the Month of May.  We also provide other events, and work with other groups as requested during the year.  We ask Amateur Radio Operators from around the world to team up during this effort to allow the people from our communities to gather at public locations such as shopping centers, parks, VA hospitals, and sporting events to express verbal positive support “LIVE” over two way radio for members of the Military, Veterans, Reserves, National Guard, Retired, Coalition Forces, First Responders, and Military Support Groups.  Many of us have friends, relatives, and neighbors that are active duty, and past members of the armed forces.  ARMAD gives us the chance to support one another, and to express our thanks and appreciation to those that sacrifice and serve in the Armed Forces.

To learn more, you can visit the ARMAD web site.  The Epoch Times also has a good article about the 2008 Amateur Radio Military Appreciation Day.  Let’s support our brave men and women in the military by giving ARMAD our full support and participation!

As promised, here is an update on my remote operations experiment from San Francisco.  From the lobby of my hotel I was able to get free Wi-Fi and was able to connect to my Yaesu FT-450 remotely using Ham Radio Deluxe software.  I was able to make a couple of CW contacts but the noise in the lobby prevented me from doing anything more.  It turns out my SDR-1000 was not connected to it’s power supply due to an oversight of mine, so I was unable to play with that rig.

Later, I reestablished the connection using the free Wi-Fi hotspots at the Moscone Center where things were a good bit quieter.  Again, I was able to make a couple of CW QSOs with good results.  I also attempted to make a couple of SSB contacts but received bad audio reports.  Both reports seemed to indicate that I has some RF on my audio.  Hopefully, that will not be difficult to resolve.  The received audio quality was pretty good but slowly the latency time began to increase to the point where frequency changes and other control functions began to take 2-3 seconds.  This became problematic to the point where I would miss portions of exchanges.

Overall, I have to consider my experiment a success.  I was able to remotely control my rig and make some contacts on CW and Phone.  Of course, I have some issues to resolve with RF getting into the audio chain.  I am hoping that the latency issues was simply because there was too much traffic on the Wi-Fi node at the convention center.  There were a lot of people connected from a number of hot spots around the Moscone Center.  Only further tests will tell …

It's not so beautiful in the pouring rain!

In a previous post I mentioned that this week I would be on a business trip to northern California and that I was looking forward to remotely operating my SDR-1000 and my FT-450 from San Francisco.  While it is a distance of just over 400 miles, as the crow flies, previously I had only operated remotely from my office which is only about 30 miles from home.  I knew that I would have significant free time in the evenings and was looking forward to the operating time!

I was and still am really curious to see what level of success I would have from a much greater distance.  Would I have significant latency problems, how would sound quality be affected, etc?  While I am staying at one of the nicer hotels in SF, I find that they charge steeply for internet access.  Not willing to pay the nearly $60 for 1 week of access I bit the bullet and paid $15 for 1 day’s access.  I didn’t want this exercise to be a complete flop after all.

Unfortunately, the WIFI signal in my room was of such poor signal strength and speed that I had to request a refund of my $15.  So, I was nixed operating from the comfort of my room.  I still have some options to a least get in a test of remote ops from this distance.  There is free WIFI in the lobby and the signal strength should be good from there.  Of course, the lobby is noisy and busy and I won’t want to do more than a quick test there.

My other option is to connect using the free WIFI at the convention center during a break.  Of course, it will be busy and noisy there as well but I should be able to connect and make a QSO or two.  I won’t be too disappointed as long as I am able to prove my setup will work well at greater distances.

Of course, I could always find an internet cafe and pay for access there but I was hoping to find something to occupy some of my free time in the comfort of my room without it costing me and arm and a leg.  Plus it is raining like cats and dogs and would prefer to stay out of the weather, if I can.  I will update later on my successes or failures.

Ham Shack of Andrew Albinson, VK6IA (click for larger image)

If you haven’t yet noticed, the thing that strikes ham shack envy most for me is not necessarily the gear but the furniture and organization of the shack.  Now, I envy those with top end gear just as much as the next guy but when you have a shack like VK6IA, Andrew Albinson of Ballajura, Western Australia,  you can see what I mean.  Even if he had old, beat up gear his shack would still be beautiful because of the effort put into the planning and construction.  Very nice job, Andrew!  Congratulations!

National Public Radio (NPR) had an interesting item a couple of days ago about the growth of amateur radio in spite of the current age of such social networking technologies like Facebook, Myspace,Twitter,cell phones and more. In fact, it states that the number of ham licensees in the US has increased to nearly 700,000, up 60% since 1981.

Should we really be surprised by this?  If you think about it, wasn’t ham radio is one of the first social networking technologies?  It just makes sense that interest in ham radio would rise as interest in social networking rises.   So, who says ham radio is dying?  You can read the whole article here.