985 Workbench Net - 2024-03-18

This Week in Ham Radio

  • I keep tweaking the outside 2m dipole
    • I got it a little higher
    • It tests different day to night
    • Signal is good then gone every so many seconds
    • Checked it for loose connections in the wind. It seems fine.
  • I’ve been learning to configure fldigi more
  • BARTG RTTY contest over the weekend
    • I finally successfully ran the frequency for a bit calling cq and getting responses
    • I stuck to the 5W QRP class
  • I’m scanning more frequencies for satellite repeaters
  • Weather is nicer, so I got out on my bicycle. It’s time to activate some parks (on the bike?). The Tram mirror mount for vertical antenna might clamp nicely to the bag rack.
w3gms  985  workbench  net  rtty  pota 

21 Tech Net - 2024-03-17

This Week in Ham Radio

  • Tried a couple RTTY sprints
    • tough to get configured in 30 minutes
    • had to fix up logs
  • BARTG (British Amateur) RTTY Contest
    • I’m getting more advanced on my fldigi setup
    • 27 contacts
    • 5W to qualify QRP class
  • The Quansheng charging on its base causes a mess of interference for 40m on my X6100
  • I chatted with Tom (KA3TKW) the other day and added a few satellites to scan on my Quansheng for random repeater traffic
  • egzumer firmware scans very fast
  • I’m looking forward to some POTA now that weather’s getting better.
  • I’ve been using the same antenna for too long.
net  ka3tkw  21  tech  rtty  bartg 

RTTY Round-Up

I participated in the RTTY Round-Up.

Trouble with fldigi/R1CBU

I screwed around lots trying to get fldigi talking to the radio. R1CBU software works great with wsjt-x, but fldigi and flrig completely failed to connect. It wouldn’t key the radio. Switching back to stock software on the radio worked fine with flrig, but where’s the fun in that.

For flrig, I could tell it that it was an older version of the radio (X5105?), and it would key and set frequency, but flrig wouldn’t read back the frequency when updated at the radio.

I ultimately got fldigi talking to R1CBU by using flcat with an xml file for G106.

Then I could “tune” power output following instructions in fldigi manual.

Working!

I started making some contacts on 10M and 15M. It’s much more like voice contacts: yelling back and forth on the same channel. I’m using macros and sticking to those for the contest. They’re on the 3rd page of macros in fldigi.

I’ve made at least a few contacts, so I’ll submit them to the contest

rtty  hf  arrl  contest  r1cbu  flrig  fldigi 

Busy 40m

I used the fully-extended, large dipole kit and the RTL-SDR to successfully receive lots of 40m signals. It may have been especially busy, since it was Labor Day in the US and Canada. I found FT8 (40m and elsewhere) signals from St Lucia, Slovinia, South America, Cuba, and a little FT4 (40m).

I also found some BPSK31, RTTY/45, and still unidentified digital signals.

HF  FT8  FT4  SDR  rtty  PSK31  DX  digital