AmateurRadio.com

Interesting thread on the softrock40 email list about how easy it is these days to get a good sense of how well your station and the ionosphere are performing in an almost ‘hands-free’ way.

Increasingly modes like WSPR and tools like SDR have enabled us to let the radio do its thing and in a short amount of time access detailed logs of our successes – where we were heard. The softrock40ers were using this approach to compare their SDR rigs performance to other sets.

Rob KL7NA joined in the conversation. He pointed to his recent paper on what he calls ‘Robotic radio‘ that he presented to the DCC meeting in Vancouver WA recently.

Your radio is doing what the operator used to do automatically, and as you have been finding out, it is really fun to horse race different software demodulators, receivers and antennas, and radio locations this way.  I am trying to promote it as a way for our youth to get into amateur radio.  They seem to be very enamored by robotics.

Rob’s paper is full of interesting ideas and he lists the building blocks of Robotic radio… hardware, software and networks. He introduces his open source project CW Robot which is still in alpha and explains the thinking behind it.

This looks like a very rewarding place to play and discover – and there’s already a road map.

Amateur Radio magazine for October 2010

Highlights from this month’s edition of Amateur Radio, published by the Wireless Institute of Australia include:

Commentary from WIA President Michael Owen VK3KI on the crucial role of the ITU, the global agency that sets the framework – regulations and frequency allocations – for hams wherever they live.

“Simply, it will not happen, whether it is good or bad, unless it happens first at the ITU.”

That simple proposition drives the whole four year planning process that culminates in a four week meeting in Geneva – WRC-12. Michael details the complex rounds of regional meetings and negotiations that lead up to that meeting.

“…this now never-ending series of meetings… Represents the focus of the protection and advancement of the interests of amateurs that face national societies like the WIA.”

The WIA's 'Tune-in to the World' logo

There’s also detail of the inaugural national day of amateur radio promotion aka the WIA National Field Day scheduled for Saturday 23 October. Professional marketing strategy has arrived to help lift public awareness of ham radio and recruitment to new levels. The article describes a range of merchandise related to the event as well as pointers to files to be used to print professionally designed signage for the day.

WIA clothing for the first National Field Day

There’s a report of the breaking of the national record for 47 GHz – 58 km. A wok lid held up one end of the successful attempt!

Paul McMahon VK3DIP presents the second part of his ‘Generic PC interface for the amateur experimenter’ with the focus on how to use the unit. This project was described in an earlier post.

There are reports and photos from the recent ILLW and an update on the growing amateur activity in Australia on 137 kHz and 500 kHz and info about this month’s JOTA, Jamboree of the Air 15-17 October.

Great news for owners of Apple portable devices who want to access Fabian Kurz DJ1YFK’s brilliant lcwo.net site on the move. LCWO stands for “Learning CW Online”. If you don’t know the site and you want to learn morse code or improve your code skills, this is one of the best destinations available – and it’s totally free.

Since May Fabian has been working on alternative ways to deliver the material, using HTML5 as an alternative to Flash.

As of Tuesday this week, Fabian has enabled the HTML5 player option to work with Apple Safari so it can handle mp3 files. And now at last iPhone and iPad owners can use the site as it was intended. Now I have no excuse for not getting my CW into shape.

Another cause for celebration is that today the lcwo.net site welcomed its 20,000th visitor. As Fabian says on the site “The reports of CW’s death are greatly exaggerated.”

Recent posts on this blog mentioning the Chinese DIY scene and the explosion of offerings have prompted a very interesting exchange of views and reflections on how best to nurture this business and make it accessible to the global ham market.

Most recently Sivan Toledo has posted thoughtful comments drawing possible inspiration for the emergent Chinese DIY industry from successful amateur kit operations like Tony Parks’ Softrock. And the secret appears to be finding the right balance between the great product and crowdsourcing the support and handholding that is as much part of the product and building experience as the device itself.

Elecraft clearly enjoy the best in solid detailed step-by-step documentation (reminiscent of Heathkit) and they have the added advantage of an amazing online community dedicated to solving any problems, assisted by the designers and principals of the company. Part of the success of their online presence is a well moderated space and volunteer heroes like Don Wilhelm W3FPR who don’t appear to need sleep!

Doug Hendricks’ QRP Kits shows you can fill a niche and still keep your day job. While many of Doug’s star attractions are designed by Steve Weber KD1JV, Steve has his own website which I visit frequently to see whether a new batch of ATS-4 Miniature 5 band CW / digital mode HF transceivers are available or not, knowing they’ll probably sell out in a matter of hours. Users of this and its predecessors rave about them. Steve WG0AT took an ATS3 on his latest adventure with Rooster and Peanut.

Dave Benson, K1SWL’s Small Wonder Labs also offers quality kits at really good prices and a very efficient service. (My SW-40+ arrived in Sydney in record time.) Hunt around his site for a minute and you’ll discover how how the SWLabs fit into his lifestyle on 4+ acres near Newport “(we get a lot of winter here)” NH.

K1SWL’s approach to support includes email – “If you run into trouble during alignment and test, I’ll guide you through the troubleshoot process as far as we can get by e-mail. If that doesn’t do the trick, my repair person offers prompt and reasonably-priced service- he’ll troubleshoot and repair the unit and let you know what he found.” And you have a fair sense of what Dave means by ‘reasonable’.

It’s not unlike the successful formula for a restaurant or café – to offer the number of dishes it can do consistently well rather than attempt to cater to everyone’s tastes.

Tony Parks KB9YIG seems to have achieved production numbers of SoftRock kits that would appeal to any business backer, even if they are only made available in batches of 20 or so depending on availability of components and time. The very reasonable prices charged – including international shipping – play a part in this success by attracting a broad base of committed supporters keen to share experiences and grow the platform and everyone’s skills.

And today I noticed Julian G4ILO wrote about a range of kits from Fox Delta Amateur Radio Projects and Kits in India. They have the advantage over Chinese offerings of the English language and they accept PayPal. The range of kits on offer is impressive. Julian had ordered a APRS Tracker Module.

And of course Australia has its own GenesisRadio with its amazing line of SDR Kits such as the G59.

What an amazingly exciting time to be involved in ham radio!

Speaking of global reach, a prominent link currently on eHam.net has helped boost traffic to this site as well! (Welcome to all new visitors to the blog! I hope you find something interesting here.)

News via the NUE-PSK email list that over the weekend George N2APB presented and demonstrated a prototype of the SDR Cube project at the TAPR Digital Communications Conference in Vancouver, WA near Portland, Oregon.

The SRD Cube’s formal title is “A Portable Software Defined Radio Utilizing An Embedded DSP Engine for Quadrature Sampling Transceivers” and it was devised by George Heron, N2APB and Juha Niinikoski, OH2NLT.

N2APB's SDR Cube

A companion to his NUE-PSK modem, it’s designed to provide “a standalone SDR transceiver (no PC required) that is quite portable and trail friendly”.

“So far the most attention has come from the SDR Cube’s “live bandscope” showing a +/- 4 kHz spectrograph of band activity along the top of the graphic display.  Some preliminary pics are on the start of the website … http://www.sdr-cube.com“.

From his earlier 11 September email where the SDR Cube was first announced:

“a totally self-contained embedded SDR transceiver using a Softrock for the RF front end and a pc board implementation of an HF modem that couples tightly with the NUE-PSK Digital Modem.  The Cube is designed to fit into a 4” x 4” x 4” pre-cut black powder-coated aluminum enclosure containing all controls, blue graphic display showing the familiar band scope of spectrum signals, and the popular Softrock RXTX v6.3 board.”

The latest update this morning from George is that the pricing “is not yet established … but soon will be.  I think the cost of the parts and pcbs is around $100, so you can guess what the corresponding price might be.”

They’re aiming for the range of offerings (bare PCB, kit, assembled & tested etc) to be available in about six weeks. As well the plan is for there to be a direct digital connection between the SDR Cube and the NUE-PSK by the shipping date. In the meantime check out the pics at http://www.sdr-cube.com. Also brief mention on WETNET.

UPDATE: George N2APB has posted some videos of the SDR Cube in action. There’s a 25′ overview and five shorter clips.

The sdr-cube.com website now (30 Sept 10) has much more information about the rig including hardware and software architecture diagrams, a photo gallery, a very detailed 26 page pdf of the TAPR DCC conference presentation (7.5MB) and this feature list.

• Standalone SDR transceiver … no PC, portable, compact
• Self-contained single band … based on the I/Q RF front end
• Softrock-compatible … designed to interface with SR v6.3 RXTX, etc.
• Low Power … 90ma (Cube), plus 100 ma (Softrock Rx) or 300 ma (Software Tx
• Add-on RF Amp & Attenuator … good control of incoming RF, optimize some SR features.
• Quadrature Sampling Clocking options … DDS, Si570, or I2C to target Softrock
• Built-in Keyer … 1-50 wpm, Iambic A, B, or straight key
• Popular HF modes … SSB, CW, AM, Digital (with special interface to NUE-PSK)
• Special interface to NUE-PSK Modem … digital interface provides best quality
• Graphic LCD Display … Provides clear indications of the many status and options
• Bandscope … provides +/- 4 kHz spectrum visibility for Rx, signal monitor for Tx
• Audio filtering … low corner 200Hz, high corners 700, 1500, 2400 or 3600Hz
• Audio Output … Headphones or amplified speaker, Binaural Audio
• Beeper … User interface clicks, code practice oscillator, and more
• Frequency agility … Fast/Med/Slo tune, dual VFOs, memories, RIT/XIT
• Menus … Calibration, all settings, system gain, sidetone frequency, etc
• Software Upgradeable … Bootloader enables user to load new software versions
• Open Source & Hardware

A new Yahoo Group has also been set up and info can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sdr-cube/.

LATER UPDATE: 14 Oct 2010 – Tobias DH1TW has posted a 75 minute interview with George N2APB on his website – complete with comprehensive ‘shownotes’.

Julian G4ILO has an interesting post about using W6CQZ’s JT65-HF software.

“One of the features of JT65-HF is that it automatically links in to the PSK Reporter network so you can see all the stations you heard on a map and, even more interestingly, all those that heard you.”

In 20 minutes on 20m at 5W he managed to be heard twice on the west coast of N America under S9 noise condx. Julian says he can understand “why the mode is so popular, even addictive”.

More info on JT65 from HFLINK. “JT65A is a weak signal digital QSO mode.
JT65A is normally used on HF and 6 meter bands.” Also not to be missed are The Complete Bozo’s Guide to HF JT65A (a work in progress) by Andy K3UK and the ‘smart person’s guide’ to the mother mode WSJT.

Interesting update on IK1ZYW Labs on project to achieve remote control of the FT817. Also a pointer to an interesting page on FT817 Accessories, the external keypad project (circuit, manual & firmware available as well as various configurations of components including reprogrammed and tested chip ATtiny2313-20PU, xtal and 4×4 keypad) and the remote display project (pages under construction).

From the external keyboard info:

“…are you tired of hunting needed functions through F+Sel+A/B/C combinations? Do you want to improve your on-the-air proficiency? You can’t help but always press more keys at a time? Or always retouch the frequency when pushing the F button? An external keypad will let you re-discover the joy of QRPing with the FT-817(ND).

The IK1ZYW Keypad for FT-817(ND) is a wired partial remote control for the little Yaesu transceiver. It was conceived during a 6-hour field session at 2700 m.a.s.l. for a VHF contest in August 2008…”