Way back on April 20th late in the afternoon, I checked my go-to DX cluster DX heat to see what was happening on the bands. I saw VU2TMP from India spotted and I have seen this station in the past but never heard him just the pileup. 

This time he was spotted on 15m and out my way in the afternoon 15m can do some very surprising things. I flipped on the Icom 7610 and spun over to 21.001 CW and low and behold there was VU2TMP at about S5! I put the radio in split and Dual receive and to my surprise there was not much action happening. I dropped my call a few times but he went back to other stations I could not hear most in Europe. I thought to myself the only time I hear him he can’t hear me, but I am only running 100 watts into a Hustler 4BTV. 

I dropped my call again a few times and low and behold I hear “VE9?” now I am thinking it’s one of my fellow VE9’s also calling him. I tried again and heard “VE9K?” well know things are getting serious and to top it off he is now fading!! I sent “VE9KK…KK…KK” and his reply was “VE9KK 5NN” Well hot dog I am in the log. I sent my exchange and all was good.

 TX Relay, Power and TX REQ IN

Wiring the Break Out Box and TX-REQ-IN

So I used my last spare plastic project box, some female phono jacks and found a push-button that I'd cut off of some other project in my junk box and went to work.

I used some shrink wrap for the momentary switch for the TX-REQ-IN pin.

I wired up 3 phono jacks... One for the TX relay, another for the +12v out, and one for the ALC control in case I ever do get an amp.  I safed the other wires for future use inside the project box.

Partial Success

Unfortunately, the TX-REQ-IN does NOT do what it does with other Yaesu transceivers.  Pressing the button grounds the TX-REQ-IN - the radio does transmit a carrier in any mode (here I tested with LSB) but rather than transmitted a reduced power carrier as it's supposed to, it just transmits at whatever wattage the mode is currently set to.  In this case I had the power set to 50w into a dummy load and it transmitted the full 50w rather than a reduced power 10w or 20w carrier for tuning.  See the power out on the radio's display

April 29 at our Training Site

5746 142 Street, Surrey

Surrey Amateur Radio Communications will be holding a parking lot sale next Saturday April 29th (weather permitting) to dispose of a large quantity of surplus ham equipment. 

Lots to choose from!

 
Items for sale include HF and mobile transmitters, receivers, transceivers, antennas, rotators, test instruments, coax and other cable, swr and power meters, power supplies, tuners, scopes, dummy loads, misc. accessories etc. We also have a utility trailer for sale. 
 
The sale is at our Ops & Training Centre 5756 142 St. Surrey, BC. from 11 am to 2 pm.  No early birds please (Map link: : https://what3words.com/daunted.rarity.parrot)

 
SARC/SEPAR members and non-members are also invited to set up a table or sell personal items from their vehicles. There is no charge for this.
 
Before the event, you may also wish to join us for our club breakfast at Denny’s Restaurant 6850 King George Blvd between 7:30 and 9:00 am.
 
Questions? [email protected]

Here is a partial list

See you there.

 

~

In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and in the episode's feature is MFJ8504 Review and Understanding HF Controls.

We would like to thank Paul Coppin (M0YMJ) and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

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 The warmth from the North welcomes all to the Norbreck rally tomorrow.

Further detail click NARSA

HamClock

A number of years ago I purchased a Raspberry Pi intending to do something with it. Well, it sat for many years with me now and then taking a look at it and thinking someday I will explore the Pi. A few weeks ago for some reason, I Googled Raspberry Pi regarding weather programs. 

My thought at the time was to get live local weather reports via the Pi. Also, it had been about 3 years since I had seen my Raspberry Pi and was not sure if I had thrown it out during one of my spur-of-the-moment clean-up binges. I eventually came across it after searching everywhere. "I put it where for sure I would know where it was". That did not work so well BUT I have learned that once I do find something I always place it back in the spot where I first looked for it. I degrees.....

My Pi

The box the Pi was in was complete with a power supply, protective case, HDMI cable, micro SD card and a cooling fan. I plugged in the Pi and powered it up with the micro SD card in place, a monitor, mouse and keyboard. Well a red LED light came on but that was it the monitor was blank, and well actually had a floating message "No device connected". I was sure I had downloaded a Pi OS onto the SD card years ago. I did a fast Google search and found out if you have only a red light and no green light (besides the red light) then most likely your SD is either blank, not in properly or defective. 

It was off to the Raspberry Pi site to download the latest and greatest OS and in my case that was bullseye. I did check the SD card and it was blank so I was hoping after the OS was installed and put back into the Pi things would come to life...and they did. I also found out that my Pi was a Pi3 (not Pi3B) the latest and greatest is the Pi4 B. The Pi3 will do me just fine and I am finally going to be using it. 

As stated I wanted to use it for local weather and I ended up finding something better! Local weather, space weather, UTC clock, contest calendar, VOCAP, a world map that has a host of configurations and more. The software is called HamClock by WB0OEW. This package runs very smoothly on my Pi3 and will auto-update, which I have experienced once already. 

And so it begins

Now Raspberry Pi is all new to me and I am learning about Sudo, the command line and what to enter into the command line. At this point, in time I have just cut and pasted commands from websites (such as HamClock) to install the program. The installation process for HamClock can be found under the "Desktop" tab on the HamClock site.
I am just starting my Pi learning curve and would appreciate any advice and program suggestions to run.