/P with a difference

It's hard to see but there's a 9-band HF/VHF/UHF antenna tied to the back of the bike. In the end I didn't use this, just used a 2/70cm dual bander, that worked well too. Then on Sunday's ride we chained Ms B's bike onto a rail and then I realised I left the keys at home - 70 miles away. That was my day on the bank holiday Monday. 

Bulk update from this day

 Between early Sept and now I entered everything in one go, with appropriate dates...

Listening to ISS and astronauts

 So, today this happened.

We took the FT-818 up the hill next to the church and with the magmount and 2/70cm dual-band antenna on top of the car managed to catch the ISS part of this call for about 7 minutes, with M7 controlling the dial. It was very exciting!

Bicycle Wheel Mag Loop

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 the spokes were mainly OK so I removed those carefully, losing only a couple of spokes in the process, lots of spare parts were generated as a result which is good.

Then I cut the wheel into two using my little hacksaw. These two steps were the most time consuming parts. Using a wire brush I cleaned the inside of the wheel which was very dirty, and it was ready to be taken upstairs.

Since this was just a test, I didn't solder anything, in any case soldering a metal to such a large piece of metal definitely requires a blowtorch, you can't do this using a normal soldering iron so physical connections were done using screws. I put my capacitor that came out of an ECM into a box and created a dial using some cartoon out of an ice cream pack, linked that to the wheel using crocodile clips. It's not ideal but it's OK for a little QRP work around 1-5W.

Then I screwed the ground in the middle and created a gamma match as VK3YE described, built out of a spoke which was screwed back into the wheel.

Overall this gave a reasonable match. It was close but still needed an ATU on most frequencies. I could hear a lot of places but 28MHz and similar upper HF bands were dead so I left it like this. 

In this setup it is basically a folded very short dipole with a capacitor to make it in tune. It's efficiency is very low but works.

Later in the evening, I tried the "magnetic" part of the loop, which is actually caused by a magnetic coupling. I put a thick wire in place with the help of some wires and also created an ugly balun since I wasn't sure how balanced this thing was. Both helped and also 28MHz opened up.

So, in the end I managed start my longest-distance-ever QSO using this, into Brazil on 28MHz FT8! Just under 10k distance. I was calling the Brazilian op using this antenna, and then he didn't reply and continued working others so I gave up. Couple of minutes he replied! I was only using 2.5W on this so I didn't want to miss them, quickly checked the FT-847 which also could hear him, gave him a reply using the dipole hanging in the corridor using 10W and we managed to exchange signal reports and 73s. Very exciting!

On the other hand when I tried it on Monday, it wouldn't work. Hearing is fine but causes way too much RFI and the USB interface to FT-818 shuts down, which terminates the radio TX. I need to figure out why it's causing so much interference with anything over 0.5W - and with that no one can hear me.

Inflatable HF Antenna Update

 Better, first ever proper contact.

So, what's going on?

I finally plugged the antenna on 26 in the study to the FT-847. Good reception.

But no spots.

I struggled very badly, 20W, antenna nicely balanced, receives well, no signal

After three days I gave up and moved it to the other room where FT-818 is. It received somewhat better, but not stellar. Then suddenly I started to have "RF in the Shack" issues with the USB interfaces and the radio. I gave up.

Today after work I tried again, no luck.

Then it dawned on me, neither radio have a good earth. I did the worst possible earthing on the FT-818, replied a CQ message, and bang got a contact.

Since them I'm still struggling to make a contact, that's normal with QRP, but I am being spotted and I am hearing quite well as well.

Moral of the story? Earth matters.

Inflatable HF antenna

 So - we hit the buy button for an inflatable HF antenna. It arrived last Monday and I procrastinated for a week. Finally it's been inflated, hanging off a curtain rail.

I haven't really tried it with TX, I called a single stream of CQ into 14Mhz FT8 but didn't pursue, I had to get on with work.

It is receiving well enough:

HF bicycle mobile

 I'm going to take someone's eye out.

Seaside portable HF and bicycle mobile VHF work

We've been to Hayling Island, walked around, and then set up an HF station.

First I made the mistake of leaving the radio on USB instead of Digi. That wasted half an hour. 

Then we switched to the right setting and immediately did a QSO but our luck dried after that. We tried some FT4, no luck. Antenna tuned onto 17m band as well but it was empty. 

14MHz was VERY busy and we really couldn't cut through with 2.5W so I brought the big battery from the car and still with 5W we suffered. We could see that we were being heard on the PSK Reporter but no one was answering. People don't want to work with low signals, which is weird since FT8 is inherently a weak signal mode. We should seek for those with lower signal values. 

Regardless, we had fun. Finally we were too cold so we packed up.

Then I switched to pushbike mobile. That's a very cheap 2/70cm antenna attached to the bike. I cycled around and tried to have contacts back to the car. The FT65 couldn't make a contact with the rubber duck clearly but with this it was crystal clear. Still the other end did suffer so we should have switched antennas at the top of the car but giving instructions over the bad link was too cumbersome so I cycled back.

This is the antenna, 14MHz end-fed with a 49:1 UnUn. Works very well.

Sheeps try out the satellite mode.

We didn't hear anything but the woods was perfect.

I think the sheep were operating the radio & the antenna incorrectly.

A wild predator haunting its prey

FT8 UHF contest

It was fun. I did 6 contacts and M7 did one. We used the FT-818 and the cheap Nagoya 2/70cm clone next to the potted plants in front of the window, vertically and we still made some contacts.

I also tried the 70cm ZL Special inside but that didn't work well.

Fiber poles 3-decade apart

On the left, the 6-piece fibre pole I had purchased from a ham rally early 2000s, on the right the fibre pole I purchased this year. 

 

They are for different purposes, the one on the left can carry a massive, heavy 10+ element 2m yagi antenna w/o a big deal, the one on the right is can cope with carrying small wire antennas or flags but it's significantly lighter and dead easy to use too.

EFHW antenna and the dodgy 49:1 Unun

You might remember the 49:1 UnUn I had built on a small cardboard box. (Actually I might not have blogged about that, I'll do a post later).

Successfully tested on Saturday. Two contacts under 10 mins, then we got cold and walked back home.

9m pole, 10m of thin wire, couple of metres of counter-poise, SWR was 1:1.5 or better at 14MHz. 2.5W to it and we bagged two contacts right away.

Remote operation with FT-847

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.

It's been a while... Summary of the last 4 weeks

 Well...

Things did go wrong, things did go right.

I built a kit. This is a 100W linear amplifier, but I haven't plugged it in yet. I have a radiator block for it, but I haven't drilled any holes yet. I picked up a beautiful manual hand drill from a Freecycler and I'll be drilling it today, I hope. 

Then I managed to compile WSJTX, JS8Call and JTDX on my Arm laptop and made it work. This was a big step. 

There is a problem with the WiFi chip, i.e., it doesn't work because the kernel is a custom kernel by some guy w/o very good build steps so I can't compile it again easily, and the modules I can strip out of elsewhere cannot be loaded in. It's a bit crap tbh, but it does work with a USB network cable. I have a Dell dock station which functions but then it has only two USB ports. As I type this it is running almost the latest source of WSJTX on 20m, capturing things. I've managed to make more than a handful of contacts on it.

After that I started to build a Raspberry Pi station with software I'd need so that I can plug it into the FT-847 and work on it remotely from the couch. Ouch.

Totally borked...

... Some cursing and soldering later...

  

So this is how it started to look next to my couch - no place to put any snacks or coffeeeeeeeee...

When the weather got better, we started to have portable work, as a part of the exercise. 

"It's cosy here"

We met a lot of friends on the way.

I also dug out my 70cm ZL Special yagi array out of its hiding hole and finally wired it up. This is before, and there's no after picture. I made a mistake and the cross wires were a bit too short so SWR is high but still usable, I will re-do it if I find the courage because it was a very fiddly and frustrating work. I cannot believe the instructions on how to wire on the net don't exist as a nice little picture. Words don't work when you're dealing with this kind of crap. It was frustrating. I had other problems as well, when I was doing a little kit soldering and it drove me completely nuts. After that I didn't touch the radios for a couple of days because I was so frustrated. 

Meanwhile I plugged the tuner back onto the FT-847, and ordered a nice little QRP manual tuner from China - it has arrived now but I'm simply afraid of starting the kit. 

10m is dead, Jim.

Then the company gave me a gift, which was turned into Amazon vouchers, which turned into this little neat thing. It was slightly more expensive from elsewhere but it was the easiest way of getting via the vouchers and as such gifts are, free money, wasted away! It works very well with the FT-818.

I also got myself a fishing backpack based on some ideas from a fellow amateur on Facebook. Now I had used this on my previous hike with the MFJ, but this time I took the LDG tuner and everything fitted in perfectly. The below is with the Watson 9-bander antenna with a single wire working as the counterpoise, and the ground is simply lousy - but it worked! We also managed to make a 2M FT8 contact using the rubber-duck which was amazing.

This is all packed status, perfect although there's only a small amount of space left for a sandwich. One bottle of drink allowed on the side pocket. I am thinking of carrying a spare bag - I have an old gas-mask bag and there are some lovely ex-mil bread bags on Ebay which should be perfect for a sandwich + snack.

Once the restrictions started to allow recreational outings, we could also find a bench and do some FT8 work for slightly longer periods. I spent close to an hour here doing a handful of contacts. It's early days yet, I yet to optimise everything.

Unfortunately the bag has a tendency of toppling over because it had become a bit top heavy, but the Sheep comes to the rescue!

Overall it was one of the best weekend days I had this month.

Also lately I started to cycle because it's feeling warm enough, although no HF work. Only to the shops and back - and the sun still sets quite early, the below is from a cycle back from the shops and it was quite dark now. Also my bicycles don't have any lights - I've ordered some from Ebay, yet to arrive.

This is the Peugeot Pantera bike I have, converted to a straight handlebar because I can't cope with all that bending. I'm still heavy as fuck but I love cycling, even though I can't do even simple inclines right now. As can be seen I had the Baefong with me during the cycles but this was not optimal.

So attached the shopping basket which had been sitting idle in the garage for four years onto it. It doesn't look cool but much more functional. Now I can do both shopping and radio stuff on the move.

Overall March wasn't a very good month for me. Stress levels over the top, and I felt depressed quite a lot. It's been exactly a year since we've got COVID and recovered, and over 3 months my weight loss has stalled and I gained a couple of kgs back and it does feel like it. 

I spent a fortune on my teeth, dentists are way too expensive in this country, plus the gadgets. I've been spending a lot on Ebay buying connectors, cables etc., for various projects but the projects don't move forward. Overall I'm in a bad mood because the life, universe and everything.

The April should be much better. At least my sheep were a big help. Here they are rushing me to help me with a bad time.

Arm, ex-Chromebooks and me

 So, my sister had an Arm-powered Asus C201 Chromebook. This recently got de-supported by Google, it's no longer receiving any updates. It's light, the battery lasts 10h+ and still quite reasonably fast so it's a rubbish decision by Google.

Soooo, I've installed PrawnOS on an SD card. PrawnOS is a distribution for this hardware, runs on Debian 11 but it's got a custom kernel. The graphics card is well supported and works fast enough, (unlike some other Arm Debian distro I had tried) but the Wifi is an utter failure. The maintainer refuses to support the binary blob required. 

An old USB Dell docking station was borrowed from the office IT guy so that I can at least update and work on the thing. So far I've managed to get QSSTV and FLDigi working on it. FLDigi actually works quite well - all of this is plugged into the FT-818 via ttyUSB0 and a small £4 USB Soundcard that actually works very well. 

But JS8Call and WSJT-X refuse to detect any sound card, nor they print out a meaningful output. I haven't figured out how to put them into debug mode yet. I used to compile WSJT-X from scratch so I cloned the JS8Call repo and will check if I can build the thing with Pulse/alsa support. The problem is as follows.

Both packages are compiled for Linux, but no repository is available (which is a very weird choice in 2021). There are Intel 32 and 64 bit packages for Debian, and a pair of RaspPi OS ARM binaries. So I used the ARM binaries, but no. I'm confused because even on Raspberry Pi you'd need a USB sound card, so I'd expect that to work. I cannot figure out why else they are refusing to work. I've spent approx 30 mins on it so I guess I need to retry tomorrow.

Other than that, I managed to get FT-818 and FT-847 to talk to each other. There's something wrong with FT-847's data in/out - or my old cable is rubbish.I managed to dig out my old cables, and after much testing and frustration I managed to get the FT-847 work through the mic input and the headphone output. Not ideal, but it works. Then I dug out my USB to RS232 adapter, and also found a long RS232 cable, and started to use CAT w/o a fuss.

The audio side was a bit more interesting. Double-checking with an SDR, I can clearly see something is wrong with my audio when I'm using the mic input. When I was using the data input, the power level was completely inoperative, but from the mic input the power is effective. I've double-checked the manual and this doesn't make sense. 

Even with the minimum power, from a couple of metres away I could receive all sorts of digital mods w/o a problem. FLDigi works like a dream, QSSTV - not so much. I guess I should actually read the manual but I'm pretty sure I had solid QSSTV apps a decade ago, and I cannot figure out why I cannot find them anymore anywhere. Everyone goes "Oh, SSTV? Then QSSTV is the one".  if you ask me, it's overrated.

Anyway, I'll be making some new cables when the parts arrives, and by the time they are shipped and travelled from China to here I don't forget what the project was, I'm going to build a series of audio interfaces. I've ordered

• USB to RS232 chips
• octocouplers
• audio transformer couplers - already have them
• soldering platforms - got them
• 2.5mm and 3.5mm audio sockets with multiple poles - got them but might have to order some more.
• mic input socket for C5800

So, I'm thinking of making audio interfaces with RS232 PTT support using RTS for

• A pair of FT-65s
• Baefong UV-5R
• Standard C5800
• FT-847

Alright!

Wsprry on Pi and a filter.

 So...

This was supposed to be a low-pass filter for 14MHz. It's not working well - or too well since no one can hear me!

I set up one of my Pi machines with the latest WsprryPi. I had used this successfully in the past, around 2014-2015. It does a square wave so needs filtering, done the filter above. It has a 49:1 UnUn built in so that I can plug it straight into a long wire antenna going around the study walls. Not perfect but it should radiate something.

Anyway, I can hear my signal on the FT-818, not very strong but audible and stable. It does definitely filter out at VHF, but I can still hear a meaningful signal on 29MHz, I guess it is attenuated enough so that it's not causing issues. I hate winding cores. It is stressful and not being able to measure them straight away is frustrating.

On the other hand, no one else hears me! I've been transmitting for a couple of days now, but not a single spot on the WSPR net DB. I have checked my frequency - it is OK, but PSK Reporter site only shows a handful of people listening on 20m. That is a problem. I guess most have moved away from WSPR to FT8 or others. I wonder what I can do to create such a beacon that can run on a headless system. Oh well, it was worth a try.

Nice backpack for QRP work!

 

Only the Friday evening I was talking to my wife, telling her about the backpack my Grandpa gave me in early 80s.

I was around 8-10y old, and my uncle in Belfast had gifted me his ZX Spectrum 48 because he had upgraded, with a bunch of game cassettes. This had to be carried around so Grandpa probably took me to a shop in Dundrum (Newcastle NI), they used to live in a nature reserve near the village. 

It was one of those shops in small villages where they sell everything. So he gave me a small fishing tackle bag, including the waterproof removable bait bits. It was perfect for the ZX, power supply, games and a tape for loading the games + jacks. It just fitted everything nice and tight. For the next number of years I used to pack the ZX and go to friends to play games. It was simply brilliant.

Many moons later, I found it also perfect for carrying books around - and I used to be a massive reader of SF until COVID-19 made me too nervous to concentrate more than 15 seconds.

The bag still kicks around, about 35 years later, but it has worn off badly, and both of my NI grandparents are gone for more than 20 years now.

So, I was telling my wife about this bag, and maybe I should check fishing shop sites for something similar.

Then on an amateur radio group in Facebook I noticed another amateur showing off his wonderful QRP hiking setup. A fishing bag, with a perfect place to hang an antenna, and enough space for a radio, tuner and power supply plus other bits and bobs + and a sandwich and drinks.

And it was relatively cheap, around £27. So I ordered one.

It's perfect. I love it!

Side effect of all this is I've been thinking about my grandparents a lot. My last remaining grandparent, my Granny on my father's side had died last month and I still haven't fully appreciated the loss - with the lockdowns and everything I haven't been able to go to the funeral, it was in another country in any case and with my parents' ages and past illnesses it'd be stupid to risk it. 

Motorbike Mobile

 

So,  finally I had a day off.

I had a fake Nagoya RB-46 off China in late December. So I finally mounted it on the bike and took my Watson MultiRanger 9 and another fake Nagoya antenna out on my LT.

Then I had my MFJ tuner and the FT-818 on a padded bicycle bag, and the microphone plugged on a 2m-long cable. I dropped the mic at some point (and straight into the mud!) but at least I didn't break a thing this time. I grounded the antenna and the radio to the bike - but couldn't put a stake for additional grounding. I hope that will happen the next time.

  

Not bad? I put the UV-5R and the FT-65R into one of the glove boxes and took it out for a ride, aprox 30 miles in total. The antenna held just fine. Let's see how it works in the long run. Also it worked and tuned great in 40 and 20m. Next time I'll also try 6m.