Category Archives: Software

Mac OSX Lion first impression

Posted on by
1

Yesterday I was waiting eagerly (like the rest of the world) for the new Mac OSX 10.7 Operating System to pop-up in the Mac App Store. I did seen some nice video’s on Apple site of the WWDC 2011 where Steve Jobs (among others) showed some new features of Lion. Around 14:30 local time Lion finally popped up in the MAS and I hit the download button.
As little as half an hour later I’m running the new OSX. First impression? Nice! Very nice!

Apple wrote another very nice piece of software for the “Back to the Mac”-program. It brings the Mac and the iOS-devices a little closer. Now I don’t have to navigate to the Applications folder to start a application, just hit the Launchpad and hit the app. Just like on my iPhone.
The new way of full screen displaying apps is extremely cool. Also the new “About this Mac”-screen is nice. More easy overview. Mission Control, finally a good overview that works. And in my opinion the most cool new feature: multi-gestures. Swipe your way through the OS. I definitley need a Magic Trackpad now!

According to Apple’s reports Lion downloads are going true the roof.

Would love to spend some more time getting to know this OS!

Computing things

Posted on by
Reply

Lot’s of stuff going on here at the PA1JIM Headquarters but surprisingly little radio stuff!
Since my encounter with Andrew Madson from Open Reel Softto get Aether working with my Kenwood TS-590 (Andrew is a really nice helpful and patience guy!), I’m all in C-programming. Final goal: writing my own apps for the iFamily (Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod). First learn to write a little C, then learning C-objective and finally get my drift in Xcode (the develop environment of Apple). ‘He’s taking the long path’ I hear you think… Yes, but I want my first app in stores by the end of this summer. Keep you guys and galls posted!

Today my new shiny iPhone4 will arrive. Then I can at least try out my own creations real time!

New hostingprovider

Posted on by
Reply

The last few years I could trust on the hosting expertise of one of my former colleagues. He supplied me with a nice virtual machine on one of his servers. Unfortunately he informed me he is not be able to supply me with this (free) hosting facility anymore. That is a bit of a bummer nevertheless I want to thank Thijs dearly for his excellent service the past years! Thijs, thanks mate!

So with that news I had to find me a new spot on the interwebs to host my sites. I really like Continue reading →

BARTG RTTY sprint contest

Posted on by
2

This weekend I participated in the RTTY sprint contest of the British Amateur Radio Teledata Group (BARTG). As a first timer I had to learn quickly about the integration of N1MM logger and MMTTY. When the contest started I discovered there are no default macro’s in MMTTY. So I had to write time along making QSO’s. It wasn’t the best preparation I ever did ;-)

The TS-590S did a great job at this contest! Sometimes I heard the blowers hit in to cool down a bit, but overall I didn’t notice anything weird during the contest. Filtering is great, also with RTTY! Results? 208 Q’s and a claimed score of 56.106 points. Not bad for a RTTY rookie!

New firmware 1.02 for TS-590

Posted on by
Reply

As a proud owner of the brand new Kenwood TS-590 of course I now have to follow the release of new firmware for this rig. This morning I noticed there is a new one out. It addresses at least one thing I noticed: an unstable USB-data connection when I switch between N1MM logger and Ham Radio Deluxe. Sometimes I have to turn the radio off and back on to get a connection with the other program. Other fixes according to Kenwood:

1. In [SSB-DATA] mode, Speech Processor might not be disabled internally.
2. At the end of TX tune mode, carrier output returns to normal mode level after a short delay.
3. When the TS-590S is turned ON, the USB port connection may be unstable.
4. When the built-in electronic keyer is set to Mode A, CW keying may not work properly.
5. TX rise time power spike activates some linear amplifiers’ input power protections.
(The firmware Ver.1.02 revises the ALC response characteristics to reduce the power spike.)
6. When a separate RX ANT is connected, TX output power may be fed back to the RX ANT connector and might affect internal circuits.
(The firmware Ver.1.02 deactivates (opens) RX ANT relay every time the radio transmits.)

Let’s upgrade here!

Ham Radio Deluxe update

Posted on by
Reply

According to the Ham Radio Deluxe website there is a new version of Ham Radio Deluxe 5: 2777.
Release notes say:
After a lot of hard work with incredible support from Terry G4POP and Chuck K7PT this beta is now available.
Logbook

* Country file upgraded with support for Unique Calls
* ALE window now correctly supports entries with a / in the callsign
* Award tracking rewritten and tested almost to extinction
* ALE custom field titles now user-definable

Ham Radio Deluxe

* Rigblaster support where RTS is toggled instead of sending a CAT command. See Options, COM Port TX.
* Initial support for TS-590S and FTDX-5000

Needless to say I’m cheering of joy because I love to see the award tracker updated. And of course since me catching the TS-590S-virus the initial support for the TS-590S makes me smile! Installing right now, maybe I can report on the changes later.

WordPress Plugin HRD Logbook Online

Posted on by
Reply

Some regular visitors of this blog know I’m working on a WordPress Plugin to show your HRD Logbook online. Finally version 1.0 is out now. A brand new page on this blog is dedicated to the plugin. It is a typical 1.0-version so no bells and whistles yet. Just put the php-file in your plugin dir and enable it on your pluginpage.

On the wish list:

- adding visitors interaction with selecting periods, search for call etc.
- adding admin-panel to alter layout and columns;
- adding a log-entry on admin-panel for web entry of qso’s;
- adding the plugin to the central WP-plugin directory.

If you have feature requests, please post them as a comment or mail me from the contactpage. I promise I’ll take a look at it and see if I be able to integrate it in the code.

HRD on a Mac

Posted on by
Reply

Last evening I was thinking about buying a copy of VMware Fusion. I’ve used VMware Fusion trial to create a vm for hacking the bootROM of a Sun Cobalt RaQ550 three weeks ago. When I was using VMware Fusion I noticed it had seen my Boot Camp partition on my Mac with Windows XP for ham software that only runs on Windows. I enjoyed the fact that I was able to boot my Boot Camp partition in a virtual machine. But I still had to switch to my vm to use Ham Radio Deluxe.
Last week my VMware Fusion was running out of trial and I got the option to buy the software. But 80 euro’s was a little overpriced for me. So I waited. And the waiting did pay off, because yesterday I got the offer to buy the soft for 49 euro’s!
But the best has yet to come: when I entered the bought serial, I got also a new option: Unity. When I started the Boot Camp vm, I start HRD and click on Unity. Now HRD appears in my Mac desktop as a normal application! Absolutely awesome! This is what I wanted! Thank you guys of VMware, you make great software!

Filter cluster spots on region

Posted on by
Reply

Ham Radio Deluxe has a pretty cool feature where you can logon to a DX-cluster and the spots from the cluster are presented on a band scale just beside your logbook. This way you can see in one glans what stations are on the band. If you click on the call in the scale, your radio automatically tunes to that frequency and if you have your add-screen open, the call will be polled from QRZ.com.
Very handy indeed! But I missed out on something. Before I became using the telnetcluster option in HRD I always had DXwatch open to look for good DX-stations (and sometimes I still have to see the overall activity on the HF-bands). A really neath feature of DXwatch is you can filter on spotters. For instance: it’s not really handy to be informed about a contact between a amateur in the US and an amateur in Japan when you’re located in Europe (like I am). Little change I’ll be able to hear both/one of these stations. On the other hand: I would really want to know about all the qso’s between amateurs in my region (region 14) and anyone outside that region. On DXwatch you simply make a filter to only show spotters from region 14 and voila! You’ve a pretty good change to hear all the stations who are spotted!
I really missed that feature in HRD so I went asking around. Nobody really had a clue how to do this. One colleague-amateur advised me to install VE7CC-1 CC Cluster software. This program connects to the telnetcluster and HRD connects to the program. I’ve tried it, incredible complicated, didn’t make any sense to me, couldn’t even get it running. I think it’s a little overblown for only filter spotters.
Then I started to read about telnetcluster software. I know little to nothing about these services but maybe it is possible to fix something there. And what turned out? It’s possible! Just hit the [Show] button in the DX Cluster window in HRD Logbook when you’re logged in a telnetcluster and hit [Console]. Now you can enter commands to the cluster. Just enter: “accept/spots by_zone 14″ and hit enter. Now this filter will be saved on that particular telnetcluster for you. If you login next time, the filter still wil be active. If you want to know what filter is in use, just enter: “sh/filter’ and hit enter. The cluster will tell you what filters are active.

Another great link is this one.

I hope I helped more amateurs out there with this, don’t think I’m the only newbie with telnet clusters. At least I didn’t found a lot of hints and tricks on Google…

Ham Radio Deluxe issues

Posted on by
Reply

More and more I become a happy HRD-user. I’m using HRD v5.0 build 2494 at the moment. One thing I absolutely love is the logbook functionality. When I’m DX-ing I want to add the QSO’s to my log asap with as much additional information as possible. Of course HRD already adds all data from the radio to the log but I also want all available QRZ.com information added. HRD is able to grab all available info from QRZ.com with different methods. It’s possible true WWW and true XML. True WWW is slow but free of charge, to use XML you need a subscription for the feed at QRZ.com. In my case it so bad if I hear a station I want to work, but the link to QRZ.com doesn’t work, I won’t grab the mike. Last weeks QRZ.com seems to have some problems with the WWW connections of HRD. So in a blink of an eye I bought a XML-subscription for a year! I can report: works flawlessly!

But the other day some weird bug pops up in my HRD: I use the alarm functionality in Logbook. I wanted to have all unworked DX-countries put in my alarms so I got a mail when a unworked DX-station is spotted on the telnetcluster. I bumped into a limitation of HRD: there is a maximum number of alarms you can define. I think it’s around 60 alarms or so. Okay, no problem: I started whit the A-calls and I have to delete the entries when I worked the countries before I can add new ones. Acceptable workaround! Last weekend I worked Cuba and Argentina for the first time. So I wanted to delete those from my alarms to add two new DX-countries. And now something weird happens. I deleted both countries, they are gone from the list. When I close the alarm list with the [Ok]-button and I open the list again, both entries are back! Same thing for changing the properties for each entries. When I save the entry and open it up again, gone is my change! At first I thought maybe it’s because I’ve reached the maximum number of entries (like a full harddisk) but when I wanted to delete some to check, they also don’t disappear.

I’ve signed up for the HRD forum to add this bug (or is it a feature ;-) ) but I’m still waiting for moderation of my account before I can post. Hopefully this thing can be fixed…