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The ultimatic mode is an alternative to the iambic mode for sending Morse code from a dual lever paddle. When pressing both paddles the last one to be pressed takes control, rather than the alternating dit-dah or dah-dit of the iambic mode.

In the K1EL Winkeyers there are actually three ultimatic priority modes. This is shown in the table below that comes from page 9 in the specification for the command for setting the PINCFG Register. (K1EL CW Keyer IC for Windows Winkeyer2 v23 10/5/2010). This is a de facto standard for interfacing to and controlling a keyer, as an example it is used in the K3NG Arduino Open Source Morse keyer.

K1EL has defined bits 6 and 7 for setting this up by remote command. I propose that the last possibility, ’11’, presently undefined and unused, be used for a new mode. This mode is “First paddle priority” meaning that the last paddle which is pressed is ignored. It can also be interpreted as an emulation of a single-lever paddle. I and others have found that helpful in eliminating errors when keying. See for instance “Single Paddle operation with Iambic paddles” by Larry Winslow, W0NFU, in QST, October 2009 and the Iambic to Single Paddle kit from WB9KZY or my earlier blog post “Single-lever and ultimatic adapter“.

My proposal is that the bits for the ultimatic mode be used like this:

• 00 – Last paddle priority, i.e normal ultimatic
• 01 – Dah priority
• 10 – Dit priority
• 11 – First paddle priority or Single Paddle Emulation (New)

German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and some Spanish characters in the display are now supported by the K3NG Arduino Open Source Morse keyer. I have worked with OZ1JHM, Hjalmar and K3NG, Anthony, in order to implement this using the 8 custom-designed characters of the LCD display (based on the Hitachi HD44780). This should satisfy the call I had for such support here on this blog last year: Which non-English Morse characters are the most important ones?

Here are examples using the phonetic alphabets of these languages.

1. For Norwegians and Danes – Æ, Ø, Å:

Norwegian: Ærlig Østen Åse

Danish: Ægir Ødis Åse

2. For Swedes and Finns. But if you are not, then perhaps you still need to send your shopping list of IKEA products in Morse? – Å, Ä, Ö

Swedish: Åke Ärlig Östen

Finnish: Åke Äiti Öljy

3. For Germans – Ä, Ö, Ü:

German: Ärger Ökonom Übermut

In addition, Ü, Ñ, Å are always supported. This makes it possible to write the following without changing language, so Spanish speakers should also be satisfied:

España

The most likely combinations of characters are:

• Æ, Ø, Å, Ü, Ñ for Danish/Norwegian.
• Ä, Ö, Å, Ü, Ñ for German/Swedish/Finnish.

It should be noted that Ö=Ø and Ä=Æ when it comes to Morse code (and meaning).

It is also possible to support the CH which has its own Morse code (—-), but so far I haven’t been able to find a symbol that represents this letter. Neither should it be much of a problem to support other letters also, such as French accents and the C cedilla (À, È, É, Ç). All it takes is to generate a bit pattern using an editor such as the one provided here and replace some of the above characters.

I am very happy for the collaboration that took place to make this possible and not the least to Anthony, K3NG for making his work available and his willingness to accept ideas for changes and improvements. For the time being, this feature is in the beta version, but hopefully it will eventually find its way into the official version. It can be enabled by uncommenting:

• #define OPTION_NON_ENGLISH_EXTENSIONS
• #define OPTION_DISPLAY_NON_ENGLISH_EXTENSIONS

I first learnt about these tins from the 4 State QRP Group. They advertised them as “Clear Top Enclosure – An Altoids On Steroids. Do you need an enclosure slightly larger than an Altoids tin? Would you like to see your project after building it, instead of hiding it? If so, this enclosure is for you!”

The rectangular hinged tins are no longer sold by the 4 State QRP Group, but I was able to buy them from Specialty Bottle via a friend of mine in the US (their minimum order for export was too high for me).

My projects from left to right and top to bottom are:

• Component tester (transistors, capacitors, resistors, inductors, equivalent series resistance) from Ebay based on this open source design.
• Direct digital synthesis (DDS) generator that generates RF from 0 to 20 MHz
• Ultimate2 QRSS kit transmitter from G0UPL
• 3.5 MHz Pixie transceiver
• AVR Butterfly Morse keyer from KD1JV
• Softrock Lite 6.2 SDR (Software Defined Receiver) in an enclosure which originally housed a 4.5″ USB flash disk.

Norway has had its fair share of precipitation this winter. Along the coast most of it has been in the form of rain. But that is different in the mountains. Our cabin at 800 m above sea level is now about to disappear in the snow and we can hardly see out of the windows anymore. This is a result of having had to shovel the snow off the roof three times so far this winter. And there is yet more to come.

They say that one has to go back to the winter of 1958 for more snow than we have had this winter, and we are still only in February. The snow has also given us an unexpected problem. Our digital TV signal is now gone.

The TV transmitter is at Mount Gaustadtoppen at 1883 m ASL which is about 10 km to the North and with almost free line of sight. It used to be possible to receive the signals from the national TV provider (Riks-TV) with just a simple indoor dipole, i.e. two wires each of length 13-14 cm connected to a coaxial cable. But not so anymore after all the snow has accumulated outside the windows.

Therefore I had to find a good Yagi-antenna calculator and make a better antenna. I put it on a cardboard of length 45 cm and used the antenna calculator of K7MEM (Martin Meserve). It is a little hard to figure out the exact frequency as there are 5 multiplexes in the TV system and for that particular transmitter they range from 506 to 620 MHz (http://www.finnsenderen.no/finnsender). I therefore just designed the antenna for the multiplex in the middle, 563 MHz. The wavelength is 53.3 cm and typical antenna element length is half of that.

The antenna calculator gave me a design with one reflector behind the receiver element, and four directors in front of it. In the picture, the reflector is to the left and the antenna points to the transmitter to the right.

I made the elements from thick wire, and just taped them to the cardboard. The connector to the coaxial cable is under the cardboard and attached to the center of element two from the left – the one which is split into two.

The Yagi antenna was first described by H. Yagi in the paper “Beam Transmission of Ultra Short Waves“, (Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 1928). But as the contribution from his colleague Uda was at least as great as Yagi’s, the antenna should really be called the Yagi-Uda antenna. I seem to remember that Uda could not write English (both of them were Japanese), so the article was written in the name of Yagi only.

But what about my Yagi, eh Yagi-Uda antenna, did it work? Yes, actually it did! With digital signals there is a threshold effect and above a certain signal level the signal quality quickly goes to 100% with a low BER (bit error rate) and with this antenna I came above that threshold. The gain of this antenna is in the order of 8 dB or about 6 dB more than the old single element antenna. Luckily, that was enough to compensate for the attenuation through the snow pile. And as you can see, one doesn’t need aluminium to make a working TV antenna.

[In Norwegian:  Verste snøvinter i manns minne og en innendørs TV-antenne]

I’m a great fan of Hans Summers (G0UPL) and his effort in launching kits for various slow speed modes. In fact I have all three generations of the Ultimate QRSS kits up and running. That includes the original single-band kit (30 m in my case, bottom in picture), as well as number 2 and 3, the multi-band kits.

The latest version, in the middle of the picture, has a nicer two line display, and it can also be fitted with a relay board. It makes it possible to jump between up to 6 different bands.

I have used them exclusively in the WSPR mode so far. For time synchronization with the first and last version I have used an EM-406 GPS module which also provides the required pulse-per-second output. My Ultimate 2 has a too early software revision to work with the GPS, so it is on my list for a firmware upgrade.

I have a lot more experimentation to do before I know these kits and their capabilities, but I have at least gotten some experience with how far 150 mW of WSPR can take you, and that was to Australia on 30 m in my case. This is really amazing.

I would recommend the latest kit to anyone who is interested in experimentation with digital modes and who wants to compare e.g. antennas or just observe how propagation varies. The price is reasonable also, starting at GBP £17.50.

The challenge for me has been to find suitable enclosures for the two last kits. I hope to be able to make something from plexiglass for the last one. But I am still looking for that great idea for how to do that.

The last 24 hours on 10 m with a horizontal loop antenna, 80 m long, has caused my tiny signal to be decoded in the US several times as shown below.

See also “My first 24 hours on WSPR” and the G0UPL pages.