Well, not bad. I put an ethernet cable around the study reaching out to the radio, plonked a cheap USB sound card and the Pi, with my old USB to Serial adapter into it and voila, it works with VNC quite well, CAT and the lot. There are future experiments to be made, like using something faster than VNC but it works, apart from 6m. At 6m the cables are getting interference and the TX'ed signal is horrible. Needs more investigation. Other thing to look into is the audio cables, right now they are electrically connected. That needs to go, all of that cable stuff needs to be replaced with the audio/TTL connection kit I'm working on. That'd give me both octo-couplers for the serial side and also audio transformers on the other side. Anyway, we'll get there.
A while back I stumbled upon VK3YE 's excellent video about building a mag loop antenna out of a bicycle wheel. Building some type of loop like this has been in my mind for a long time so I shopped for variable capacitors that could handle this on eBay and got some junk. They weren't cheap. Overall I spent way too much money on this antenna compared to something off the shelf like a number of Am-Pro sticks could have been bought but that's not the fun (or frustration) part of it. I have had some MTB wheels in the garage for years, collected from bikes that have gone to the Rust section of the Silicon Heaven. So finally this Saturday I got off the couch and wandered down to the garage. After checking out the two front and two back spares, I picked the one that's in worst shape, a front wheel with scored rims which came out of an old Raleigh bike i had picked up from Freecycle which was beyond any meaningful repair. The rim was in a relatively good rust-free shape and t...
Today I might have destroyed my feet, but it was a nice day out. Ms. B and I went for a long walk, 14km, 8h walk up the Brecon mountains on very rocky paths. I had a massive 10kg+ backpack with all radio equipment, water and food. It was one of the hottest days of the year, literally in the middle of a heath wave. I love this view I also had brand new walking boots which literally destroyed my feet. After 7w they're still just healing and as I walk it hurts very badly. Another sheep wants to become a Radio Sheep, very interested in our equipment. We set up for picnic at 1 after 3h of climbing and walking. We played with the radio for an hour, made some 6m FT8 work, I yelled for CQ on 2m FM but didn't hear anyone replying although I could hear the occasional contact someone else was making. As we walked around the mountain ridge then we realised how long our path is. As we came down I realised we weren't anywhere near the end of the path but at the middle yet, and we had ru...