AmateurRadio.com

Introduction:

• Back from Dayton and ready to go.

Topics:

• Dayton Hamvention 2012
  • LHS had the same booth as last year at North Hall #131. Estimated attendance was 25,000 individuals. Russ recounts the experience. Thanks to Matt, KC8BEW, who stopped by and helped out at the booth. The LowSWR podcasters stopped by, too.
• FCC Dismisses Texas Ham’s Fourth Petition, Calls it “Repetitive”
  • Our hosts discuss.
• Contest logging for Linux.
  • Several people at Hamvention asked about contest logging software for Linux, but Russ was at a loss for a recommendation. Upon his return, he discovered…
  • SO2SDR Contest Logging Software
  • Stefano, IZ3NVR/KD2BGM was trying to get so2sdr to work under Linux Mint and while it would compile, it did not run, so Russ set about trying to get it going.
  • It’s not packaged for Debian or Fedora, so it must be built from source, available at the link above.
  • The program is written in Qt, so it can be run on devices which support that environment, including Linux and Windows. Of course, Qt must be installed in order to compile so2sdr.
  • Russ also had to install the following packages on his Linux Mint machine: portaudio19-dev (NOT libportaudio-dev; apparently, libportaudio-dev is too old), fftw3 and fftw3-dev
  • The compilation procedure consists of:

                  qmake
                  make
                  sudo make install

  • so2sdr compiled and ran fine. It did complain that it wanted a parallel port for switching between radios, but you can ignore that if you don’t need to do that.
  • Russ gives an overview of the features and capabilities.
  • There are a few drawbacks:
    • An apparent lack of SSB support? It seems to be CW-only.
    • Frequency input checking is broken.
    • Keystrokes are not intuitive, but are well-documented.
  • However, the built-in help file is quite useful.

Feedback:

• E-mail from Larry, KG4Q, extolling fldigi and JT65-HF. He wishes there was a version of JT65-HF for Linux. Well, Larry, there is! You can download the source here. Also, WSJT does JT65, too.
• Chris, K4FH, caught up with Russ at Hamvention and talked about his Linux in the Ham Shack presentation. He managed to put together a fine bunch of slides completely without our help. Sorry, Chris!

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 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Down Today” by Jonathan Coulton from the album “Artificial Heart”.
• “Sucker Punch” by Jonathan Coulton from the album “Artificial Heart”.

There re just a ton of data modes you can play with and this morning was the turn of JT65-HF to be on my screen. I’d installed it quite a while ago and not used it for some months but I thought I could do with giving it a quick run through to remind myself of the protocols in case we use it on the SOS radio week operations (as GB4LBC for St Bees lifeboat station).

Time is very important with JT65 and a few other modes and I’ve never been a big fan of windows time setting utility. It never seems to be right and there is always a problem with either this or that. I use Dimension 4 on XP machines and it works very well. Under Windows 7 you have to remember to run it as an administrator so I suspect the same will be true for Vista. there seemed to be a bit of a conflict going on on my puny little computer so I had to reinstall JT65-HF and only then did it start to decode the received signals.

I took the opportunity to use my stealth antenna (A Watson 80 plus 2 dipole – which is really only good for 20m here) and immediately got a contact with DG8RW & W3PV with 15 watts. I had a bit of trouble with the first contact as he couldn’t copy my signal report for a while and I had to resend it quite a few times before he got it. Eventually we got a QSO together and that was pretty pleasing.

So I’ve got my hands dirty again with JT65 and whilst its not the most interactive of modes it reinforces the fact that SSB is inefficient in comparison as I doubt I’d have got where I did with 15 watts and a loft mounted antenna. Still, it was a nice distraction from what I should have been doing. That was to be revising for an exam on Tuesday. Nothing exciting, a professional exam and much less enjoyable that playing with radios.

Promo:

• The 3rd annual Southeast Linuxfest is scheduled for June 10-12, 2011 in Spartanburg, SC.

Topic 1: JT65

• Richard enjoys the digital modes. Recently, he came across a signal he could not immediately identify, and found it was JT65.
• JT65 is one of the suite of programs in the WSJT package written by Joe, K1JT, and was originally developed for weak signal Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) contacts.
• It’s easier to install than WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter); simply download, extract, and go.
• Because the software is designed to achieve a weak signal contact, information is sent repeatedly. If everything is working well, a simple contact will take about 7 minutes.
• Like WSPR, stations transmit on a two-minute interval, so the computer clock must be accurate.
• One station will “transmit on the ones” meaning he is transmitting on the odd number minutes. Each transmission is usually about 50 seconds. Then, the other station sends on the even minutes.
• Typical contacts are callsign, signal report, and location.
• Signals sound a bit like weather fax, usually a bit above the PSK area on 20m.
• Richard was able to make 10 contacts in 15 minutes with 5 watts into his G5RV at 30 feet, on the 10m band, no less. He then made 5 contacts in 30 minutes on 15m, one of which was to South America.
• WSJT and WSPR are both developed by Joe, K1JT, a physicist and amateur radio operator.
• WSJT and WSPR can be found at http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/index.html.
• One of the best websites Richard found for learning to use JT65 on HF is “The Complete Bozo’s Guide to HF JT65A by Andy, K3UK”. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but is still a good resource.
• The manual included with the program is very good, too.
• Richard recommends using the second set of messages provided in the program, rather than the default set, as the default does not include a signal report.
• Richard has prepared an “Intro to JT65″ video, available at the RF Podcast website.

Topic 2: Codec2

• Bruce, VE9QRP, back in January, suggested we talk about Codec2.
• From the Codec2 website:
  “Codec2 is an Open Source and patent-free audio codec, currently in alpha testing. It provides good voice rendition at 2550 bits per second, and we expect that its bandwidth will be reduced with continuing development. Its voice quality and latency are an improvement over Speex, when Speex is run at a similarly low bandwidth rate. The original motivation for its development was to provide a completely open codec to replace AMBE+, MELP, and other proprietary codecs for use in Amateur (“Ham”) Radio communications. However, the codec is potentially useful for commercial two-way radio, telephony, and other applications.”
• Russ plays some audio samples, and our hosts discuss how this might be used in ham radio applications.
• The resulting file is in a .wav container and thus can be played by any program that plays .wav files. While the result is adequate for voice, it’s not suitable for music.
• More links:
  • History of the project
  • More background and some how-to information from the author.
  • A PowerPoint presentation by the author.

Feedback:

• We received donations from Dan W., Matt M., Andrew H., and Paul G. Thank you!
• LHS will be at the Dayton Hamvention, in the North Hall, booth 131. We hope to see you there!
• Jim, N2ENN, linked to us on his blog site. Thanks, Jim.
• The Panhandle ARES group linked to LHS on their website. Thanks, guys.
• regexorcist of The Daemon and Penguin Oggcast linked to LHS. Thank you.
• Gary, KE2YK, has syndicated the LHS RSS feed on his eHamStore.net site. Thanks, Gary.
• Burt, K1OIK, thought the clip art of the foo dog (episode 55) looked like Russ.
• B.B., sent a long email, which we’ll discuss in an upcoming episode.
• Danny asked about the podcast that Gene has about Apple. That’s the Tech Night Owl Live program with Gene Steinberg.
• Dave, KI6ZHD, just found the LHS podcast website. Dave has written some documentation for various Linux topics and is a recent ham. His distro of choice is CentOS. He has been documenting his adventures at his blog and thought our listeners might be interested. He asked if we talked about TrustedQSL on Linux, and we did in episodes 43 and 46.
• Leif, KC8RWR, commented about dual-booting a computer with Windows if Linux has already been installed. He suggests using gparted to shrink the Linux partition, creating a Windows partition in the free space, and then installing Windows. Of course, it’s best to just use a spare computer or another hard drive. (We talked about all this in episode 56.)
• Richard points out that version 1.0 of CQRLog has been released.
• Jim, N2ENN, just installed straight Debianand offers a few hints:
  • Extra repositories: In the system/administration tab, there’s a package called software sources. Check them all and click close.
  • Flash vs gnash: don’t worry about gnash. Once the nonfree repositories are selected, open the Synaptic package manager and install flashplugin-nonfree, or from a terminal, type “apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree”.
  • Regarding codecs: all the codecs are already installed, or should be. If not, again in Synaptic, tick good, bad and ugly plugin modules, along with the base plugin.
• Russ received this from a radio club: Steve, N1NXU, wrote that he had a Tripp-Lite power supply that needed repair and he asked them for a schematic. They declined to provide one, so he recommends Astron power supplies, as schematics are included. These are available a most of the ham radio stores.
• John, KF6EFG, attended Indiana LinuxFest and asked Russ for a copy of his presentation from that event. Look for that information on the LHS website in the near future.

Announcements:

• Some listeners have requested a calendar of upcoming LHS events. So, if you have a calendar program that uses ICS calendar feeds, go to the LHS site and on the right side, look for the ‘Follow Us’ heading. Click at the third icon that looks like a calendar. Or, to see the information in your browser, click this https://zmx.bcef.info/service/user/[email protected]/LHS-Podcast.html.
• Again, LHS will be at the Dayton Hamvention on May 20-22. We’ll be giving away a computer, so drop by the booth and say hello. Please donate at the website to help defray the costs. Thanks.

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.
• LHS merchandise is available at the SHOP! link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• To be added.

Hello, faithful listeners and newcomers alike. A couple of big events are coming up. The first is the Dayton Hamvention, this weekend from May 20th through the 22nd. The other is the Southeast Linux Fest, from June 10th through the 12th. Linux in the Ham Shack will have a presence at both events and we hope to see everyone there. We will be having raffles for “quite good” prizes so you don’t want to miss that either.

In this episode of our show, we catch up on almost all of our (very old) feedback and even manage to discuss a couple of items which may interest ham radio and Linux enthusiasts alike: JT65, a weak-signal digital mode, and codec2, a new audio codec designed for low bandwidth, telephone quality, error correction and to be free of patents or encumbrances of any kind. Enjoy.

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.