AmateurRadio.com

This is a short introduction to Linux for Amateur Radio Operators showing a few things that are available for Amateur Radio.

Announcements:

• Thanks, again, to Gamma Leonis for the opening and closing music for the show.
• LHS Merchandise is available at PrintFection and Cafe Press. LHS items make great Christmas gifts! Or, make a donation by clicking the Donate link on the website. Donations cover such things as the telephone lines, server fees, and more. Thank you!

Topics:

• Articles seem to be popping up at www.amateurradio.com designed to get us talking about Linux and Amateur Radio. The latest one is by Anthony, K3NG, self-proclaimed radio artisan. Our hosts discuss his assertions that:
  • Ham Radio Deluxe, DXLab, and N1MM software all beat any Linux offerings. (Note: Russ has found that both Ham Radio Deluxe and N1MM logger will run under WINE in Linux. DXLab, on the other hand, will not.)
  • There is more amateur radio software available for Windows than Linux.
  • CQRLOG is an adequate Linux program for casual logging, but not great for contesters.
  • “Quite simply, if one intends on using Linux exclusively in the hamshack they have to lower their expectations and requirements for logging and are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to contesting.”
  • He does praise fldigi, but still claims Windows software is better.
  • In summary, he thinks hard-core contesters may wish to stay with Windows. Our suggestion: run Linux and write a program that works better!
• Russ talks about his success with WSPR and Echolink.
• He found that instead of using “dpkg -i” to install the latest Debian WSPR package, use “dpkg -x”. You’ll extract the files to the current directory. You then run the program from a terminal session in your home directory using “./wspr”. If you run it that way, instead of letting it install, it seems to work a lot better. The Gnome launcher doesn’t seem to work with that sort of installation, but running it from a terminal works well.
• Russ has Echolink running under WINE v1.13. This version of WINE was chosen for it’s native support of PulseAudio, which made configuring EchoLink much easier. Russ’ node is on 146.225MHz simplex, Echolink node 54711.
• Russ then tells us why Echolink and IRLP are different and why IRLP might be “better.” (Hint: Echolink may not have an amateur radio anywhere in the link, while IRLP definitely uses a radio somewhere in the link.)

Feedback:

• Scott, HL2/AD7MI, sends his appreciation for the discussion in Episode 50 of his blog entry about his Ubuntu installation, and adds a note about problems with running CQRLOG under 64-bit Linux. He says you can install CQRLOG on a 64-bit machine, but it will only work with the 32-bit version of hamlib. Unfortunately, that breaks 64-bit fldigi, which expects the 64-bit version of hamlib. This issue has been reported on both the linuxham Yahoo group and the CQRLOG forum. Scott has also successfully installed Xastir, and is looking forward to receiving a MicroHAM III interface.
• Matt, KC8BEW, asks “What is a good and easy Linux distribution for a web server?” Russ recommends a plain vanilla installation of Debian server, without the X-windows environment, and either Apache or nginx (a light-weight web server).
• Dave, M0DCM, tells us of his success running fldigi and CQRLOG under Ubuntu 9.10 on an Acer Aspire A0751h netbook. Well done, Dave!

Donations:

• A very generous donation was received from Gerrit R. Thanks, Gerrit!

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 417-200-4811, or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Steel Concrete” by Mad Mav from the album “Black Sheep II”, courtesy of Jamendo.

Two exciting new possibilities for portable HF have become available.

Steve Weber KD1JV's ATS-4

A few hours ago Steve Weber KD1JV announced that the ATS-4 kit was available again. These apparently sell out very quickly – so if you’re interested, act now!

Many people hanging around the AT_Sprint Yahoo group have been waiting patiently for many weeks for this morning’s announcement.

The ATS-4 is a “miniature 5 band CW rig with digital mode capabilities” designed for 80, 40, 30, 20 and 17 or 15 meter operation in the field. The AT stands for Appalachian Trail. It’s tiny – according to the KD1JV site, about 1/3 larger than an Altoids tin – the universal QRP standard of enclosure measurement – at 4.9″ wide, 2.7″ deep and 1″ tall.

ATS-4 features include a built-in Iambic A or B mode keyer with three message memories. The rig can convert Morse input via paddle to transmit as PSK31. And PSK31 and RTTY are possible using Pocketdigi software on a PC, laptop, netbook or PDA.

The other exciting portable possibility – which was designed to be independent of this kind of hardware – is the SDR Cube. George Heron, N2APB and Juha Niinikoski, OH2NLT developed this self-contained and portable SDR Transceiver using a Softrock front end and embedded Digital Signal Processing. One of the features of this design is that no PC is required. This follows naturally from George N2APB’s work developing the NUE-PSK modem which liberates portable PSK31 & RTTY ops from lugging along a laptop.

The SDR Cube

The SDR Cube is still available for ‘early-bird’ special prices, so again, not one to put off considering for too long. It’s also available in a range of different forms, from bare PC boards through to kits and assembled and tested. The design is deliberately open and flexible to accommodate experimentation. As the comprehensive SDR Cube site explains

The SDR Cube is a totally self-contained, embedded SDR transceiver for CW & SSB using a Softrock for the RF front end and a pc board implementation of an HF modem.  A PC is not needed for using the SDR Cube, as all DSP processing is accomplished by an embedded DSP processor on the three internal pc boards.  The Cube is designed to fit into an optional 4” x 4” x 4” pre-cut black powder-coated aluminum enclosure containing all controls, a blue graphic display showing the transceiver settings and an exciting 8 kHz-wide band scope of spectrum signals, and the popular Softrock RXTX v6.3 board.

Full ordering details for the SDR Cube can be found here.

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.

Other than working ZL2PW on 40m during a bout of insomnia in the wee hours the other night, I’ve mostly been QRT all week. However, I left the K3 tuned to 7035 as I usually do just to see what might have been. I wish I hadn’t looked.