PA1JIM

Kenwood TS-870S

PA1JIM — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:08:41 +0000

We did need a new transceiver for the club. After looking around we’ve found a good one: a Kenwood TS-870S in mind condition. In comparison to the new rigs it’s a real muscle radio for not too much money. It came with speaker SP-31. Very nice sound IMHO. I put it on top of my TS-850S. It’s receiving capabilities are alike but the 870 has a little more bass. Of course the digital filters are awesome and 2 antenna connections are very convenient.
Now I’ve to do the wide transmit modification to let it work on the new upper piece of the 40 meter band. I think I’ll ship it tomorrow evening to it’s new destination, the shack in the club building!

Cobwebb version 0.1

PA1JIM — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:01:15 +0000

After studying several articles on the webs I tried to figure out a concept construction for my first Cobwebb antenna. An awful lot of tie wraps, a few fishing rods and a almost 50 meters of electrical wire. A few hours DIY in the rain and you see the result beneath. First test results: even at only 2,5 meter height very nice reception! In comparison to my end fed wire it’s a lot less noisy and picks up even very weak signals. Last night I was even listening to local QSO’s of amateurs in North America on 20m! Transmitting is another story on this height of course. No one heard me since, but almost all dipoles are resonant in the band and SWR is good. I think it will be even better when it’s on good operating height of 10 meters. I’m planning to put it on a pole on the roof, then it will be 14 meters high and more ore less 360 degrees free around.
The construction is of course just for testing purposes only. I need to construct another feed point which is waterproof. I’m not satisfied with the tie wrap solution to attach the wires to the spreaders. I think it’s not UV-proof too. I’m thinking about drilling little holes in the spreader to put little screws in them. And the end of the dipole wires I want some elastic pieces in. Then the wires will be tight all the time. Just haven’t figure out what to use for the elastic material yet.
And the baseplate needs some adjustment too, no possibility to attach a vertical pole in it now and the spreaders are not properly aligned. So need to do some rework… Then again, it’s only version 0.1!

HRD and MySQL

PA1JIM — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:47:19 +0000

Reading this article of KB3LMC got my mind spinning. I hate the fact that HRD puts it database on my local computer. I switch computers a lot and it would be great if I could use some sort of central database for all my HRD instances.
Second thing is: I really would love to be able to show my log realtime here on my blog. I use Hamlog.eu for that now, but I don’t like it. I’ve to upload my logbook to that site from time to time and that is to much hassle. It would be perfect to let the webserver read the online database so I never have to upload anything.

The database is already up and running (took me only a half hour or so) and the HRD instances are talking to it (at least one for now). So that’s cool. Now I have to write a plugin for Wordpress to be able to show the log online. It would also be handy if the plugin lets the visitor of my site search the database for his/her call. Hmmm, no experience with writing Wordpress plugins….. Gonna be interesting.

Signalink USB

PA1JIM — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:01:08 +0000

Ever since my friend Fred, PA3YH has got his Signalink, I’m thinking about getting one too. I never participate in any digital modus simply because I have never been able to get the setup right. This Signalink is pretty much a plug and play device and it looks nice too. But hey, it’s a whopping 150 euro’s (with cable and delivery costs). So I’d not feel the urge that much to be in digital modus

But the other day as I was over at Fred’s place and was toying around with Ham Radio Deluxe and his Icom-Signalink integration, it pushed me over the edge. I need to get this! But still there was the money thing. So I put out a Google Alert on Signalink USB. This morning it went off. On Marktplaats (the local eBay) someone offered a Signalink USB. A reasonable price, only it had the wrong cable (Yeasu FT-817). Since my Yeasu still is broken, I need a Kenwood cable for my TS-850. But nevermind, I bought the Signalink. Fred called me to congratulate me with my new toy. He offered me to buy me a Kenwood cable and trade it for my Yeasu cable. That is a nice deal! You see, that’s what friends are for

First run with the new Signalink where pretty disappointing. I’ve got a lot of RFI in the shack, mainly because the shack is practically near the end fed wire antenna. The Signalink only makes it worse. I really need to make a good earth to be able to feed away all the nasty stuff. I think that is gonna be the next bg thing. Or will it be the Cobwebb?

Anyway, the Signalink performed very well as voicekeyer interface between the transceiver and N1MM-logger. I’ve used it constant to give CQ’s. Only need to get rid of the RFI in the shack so I can use it at home too.

PACC 2010 experience

PA1JIM — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:00:41 +0000

Whow, PACC 2010 was a awesome experience! 12:00 UTC I went off for as much as qso’s as possible in 24 hours at the club. My strategy was to work the high bands early and slowly go down towards 80 and 160. I went into the night with 233 qso’s and stuck on 80 meters. Then the really hard time was there. Along the night I only made 50 qso’s on 80 and 160 meter.
It was a pretty cool experience to witness the 20 meter band opening up in the morning. First I could work all Dutch stations and a half hour later I worked the whole world again.

The HF beam (10, 15 and 20) was working great. Only on 15 I had a little feedback when I pointed it towards east. The 80m and 40m open dipole wires also worked great! I’m convinced that we have to have more mono band dipoles with bandfilters, so we will be able to work contests with more people with the club call.

Score for this PACC: 435 qso’s, 50.025 claimed points.
Very exciting about my first pileup, my first pileup hijack, first 24 hour nonstop contest and so on. I think I’m officially Rookie off

PACC 2010 coming up

PA1JIM — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:55:36 +0000

With the PACC 2010 coming up, I’m getting all jumpy to get my “ultimate contest setup” complete. My plans are to participate in the PACC this year from our club location NERA. Last year I’ve take a look and made a few QSO’s from that location and it is fantastic to operate from there. Far from the inhabited world there is zero QRM. Very nice when you sometimes have to pick up weak signals.
The idea now is to setup my Kenwood TS-850SAT at this location. The TS-850 has a build in voice keyer, but this keyer is not able to repeat the message with an adjustable delay. So I’ll use my own homebrew voice keyer. I already tested with success my headset. It works fine, so now I only have to find a decent foot pedal to switch between receiving and transmitting. Of course I can buy a foot pedal in an instrument shop or something like that. But that is expensive and less fun. So I searching for a solution for that.
Then I’ve hands free for logging. I think I bring my MSI netbook with me for logging. Only thing is I have to find a good contestlogging program. My main rig controller is Ham Radio Deluxe, but that is not quite feasible for contest logging. N1MM makes Windows crashing when it interacts thru the Keyspan USA-19H USB-RS232-adapter to my rig. So that doesn’t seem a solution. I already take a look at many logging programs, but they are all so old and ugly and don’t do rig control (which I want for logging the complete QSO). So I didn’t figure out that one yet.
If you have any good suggestions, please send me a message!

Icom IC-756PRO-3, Signalink & Ham Radio Deluxe

PA1JIM — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:30:01 +0000

Last weekend I offered a friend of mine, Fred PA3YH, some help with his shack setup. He owns a Icom IC-756PRO-3 radio. Since a few months he bought a Signalink USB and works all different digital modes with it. Actually this combination works really well! He is doing great in QSO’s! The only thing missing was a good logbook. He did connect the rig via the Signalink to his laptop, but didn’t yet use rig control (Cat-V).

So these two things I want to help him with. First, rig control. Fred did already bought a cable for rig control. It is a USB – ACC-connector cable. After installing the driver for the cable, the laptop did see an extra com-port. Now download and fire up the latest copy of Ham Radio Deluxe. No problems so far. Imported his logbook from LogPA (his current log program). Also no problems. What surprised me was the super duper integration of HRD with the radio. I myself do not yet have a Signalink, but men what cool features do you have then! You are able to record sound of the rig, almost all options are controllable from the program.
Also figure out for him how to let Windows use the internal sound card and let the HAM-programs use the Signalink. I wasn’t able to fully test his new setup because he pushed me out of the way, that enthusiastic he was!
The cool thing about this new setup for Fred is that he makes enough time to investigate all the options and tricks. Hopefully I can benefit too from his investigation

Installing TCXO-SO-2 in Kenwood TS-850

PA1JIM — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:49:06 +0000

Some time ago I’ve bought the TCXO-SO-2 option (Temperature Compensated X-tal Oscillator) from Joerg, DL6IB. Although I was very pleased to have the option, I postponed the installing because I wanted to figure out a way to measure the stability improvement before and after installing. Since I don’t own (yet) a frequency counter, I didn’t know a way to check.
A few days ago Joerg again send me a message asking me if I already installed the option in my Kenwood TS-850. I was a little ashamed to reply I didn’t. Promised him and myself to do this as quickly as possible. At this new years day I’m a little tired anyway, didn’t feel like anymore work around the house. So I sat down and opened my TS-850. Before I started with installing, I googled around to find a story of installing this option. Didn’t find anything. Okay, it is a pretty simple install but it gives me confidences to read about it. Seems I have to post the first story about installing this option…

To install the option you need two things: a Kenwood TS-850 (or other Kenwood, but this article is about the 850) and this little ‘bug’ TCXO-SO-2.

First unbox the little bug and read the manual on how to install.

Then open your rig upper cover, be careful to disconnect the speaker cable as soon as you lift the upper cover. The speaker cable isn’t that long.

Unscrew the screws around the CAR-board on the left (enjoy my revised CAR-board

Lift up the CAR-board with the metal plate underneath. Now you’re in the oscillator department of your rig. Disconnect all cables from the oscillatorboard en unscrew. You can lift out the oscillatorboard.

Now gently solder the SO-2 into place and brake both jumpercables W1 and W2.

Your SO-2 is installed! Now build everything in as it came out and you can test your new installed option. Joerg supplied me with a neath little trick to check if the oscillator frequency is okay without a counter: tune on 10 or on 15 MHz. You can hear a signal. When you switch between USB and LSB the tone height must be the same on both USB and LSB. When it’s not you have to adjust the SO-2. You can do this adjustment by breaking the label on the SO-2. Right underneath the “K” from Kenwood there is hidden a little screw. With this screw you can adjust the bug.

After installing the tone height on mine sounded pretty okay to me. Listen for yourself, the file contains a one minute sound. Recorded on 15 MHz. Switching between USB and LSB every 5 seconds starting with USB.

If you want to build in this option, it is a piece of cake. Only the building out and building in of the oscillatorboard is taking the most of your time. Enjoy and good luck!

Happy New Year!

PA1JIM — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:36:20 +0000

To all readers of this website: all the best for 2010 for you and your family. I hope I’ll be able to keep you interested with new articles on this blog in the next year and years to come. Of course I hope to hear you on the airwaves someday

DARES

PA1JIM — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:36:27 +0000

A few weeks ago I decided to join DARES (Dutch Amateur Radio Emergency Services). I always liked the idea of doing something very useful with our hobby. Last 14th of november was my first meeting with the crew. After driving around for a while to find the address I met the guys from DARES.

I must say, I’m impressed how well they are organized! All the new member did get a pager so the board can reach us anytime. Also we’ve got two portables (2m and 70cm) which we can use for peer communication when we are practicing or in case of a real emergency.

This meeting was about getting to know each other and getting the right mindset. I’m looking forward to the next exercise!