Digital Modes (PSK31, etc) done on KG-UVD1P

Posted on 2011-03-10 by James

For anyone interested in a decent hand-held transceiver in the $100 range, the Wouxun KG-UVD1P is an excellent start! I bought two units a couple of months ago and I quite enjoy listening to the local repeater traffic, and participating in the odd net.

Being that I am an experimenter at heart, I wanted to know if the HF digital modes would work well on these hand-held units. In order to feed the speaker output to my computer, I hacked an ear-piece that I bought with the radios. The speaker output for these radios is a 2.5mm jack and computers typically have a 3.5mm jack. The ear-piece / PTT that I bought has the required 2.5mm and 3.5mm jacks in a nice package, so it was natural to reuse that portion.

After some cutting and soldering, I make a very basic “straight thru” cable with no isolation. This is not recommended as you have no electrical isolation between the computer and the radio. A well designed TNC does this for you (along with AX.25 decoding, etc). I plan to make a simple optically isolated connection cable.

So I fired up one radio as the receiver and the other as my transmitter. Using low power on 145.590MHz I sent myself a message consisting of :

TEST TEST TEST de VE3BUX VE3BUX VE3BUX

Lo and behold, the PSK31 transmission was easily decoded at the receiver. I tried various other modes including: PSK500, MFSK8-16-32, RTTY45 & 50 and some others. All modes worked just fine.

My next step will be to design a simple opto-isolator board that will trigger the PTT when the right-channel audio is detected. (Fldigi offers a mode where a steady tone is output on the right channel to function as a PTT trigger). I’ll do the layout in Eagle CAD and breadboard the design prior to having a PCB made. If it works, I’ll release the design with a parts-list for all to use.

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Snow (Radio) Day at the Museum

Posted on 2011-03-10 by James

Today I stopped by the club station to play radio with Mike (VE3LTN). The conditions were much like they have been in months past – a few openings here and there, but the bulk of the traffic appeared to be on 20m.

It was nice to have a chance to work with Mike again – he is a very personable guy and is super easy to get along with. Together, we spoke with many members of the public – young and old, about amateur radio. It was great to have so many people come by and ask questions.

As the afternoon approached, the bands started to close up and the museum became quiet so I ducked out a little earlier than usual. Tonight I am going to meet Robert (VE2AGE) to pick up a nice FT-101E that I am buying from him. I hope to put that radio to good use on the HF bands in the very near future.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you at the museum some time!

James

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OVMRC – Week 21 – The final session

Posted on 2011-03-01 by James

Well this is it. The course is finished and all of the scheduled exams are written.

Congrats to all who passed their respective examinations! Ken and Kirk wrote the advanced exam and passed, so they join the fraternity of advanced licensees. And Ean met his objective of passing the Basic exam with honours!

I’d like to take a moment and thank the club and all those individuals who made this year’s session such a great experience:

  • Our fearless leader, Ernie (VE3EJJ) whose wisdom and patience has no bounds. This man is truly dedicated to the hobby and offers an incredible wealth of information. Every week I would look forward to spending an evening with Ernie, and I would relish the opportunity to chat with him after the class.
  • Darin (VE3OIJ) whose humour and technical sophistication are a perfect match for the format of the course. I was really pleased to see a familiar face when I showed up to the first lecture, and truthfully a bit sad to see that Darin wasn’t a “full time” instructor for the course. I hope that in the future he might consider wearing the instructor’s cap – he’d do a great job of it.
  • Bob (VE3SUY) is a gentleman and a scholar who lends his unique expertise in electronics to the course in a fantastic manner. There were many times when Bob would offer up a subtle snippet of wisdom that would be easily lost in the complexity of his profound understanding of the material. I often kept my pen ready for these hidden gems.
  • Michael (VE3QMC) whose expert discussion of the regulatory material made 25% of the Basic exam more accessible to the radio amateur neophyte. Michel would come prepared to answer some tough questions and was always willing to offer multiple explanations of his answers.
  • Ralph (VE3BBM) provided us an insight into the nature of EMC and interference issues, helping to underscore the importance of understanding this often confusing topic. It was very nice to have such expertise on-hand to speak with us.
  • Michel (VE3EMB) who taught us the basics of digital communication modes in amateur radio. This topic was of particular interest to me because of my love of computers, and so it was nice to have an expert in the field give such a great lecture.

Now that the course is finished, I will not know what to do with myself on Tuesday nights. For months now, I had the radio course to look forward to! I suppose it is now time to look for something to fill that void. Its sad really. I think that I’ll ask about auditing next year’s course – I really am that big a nerd!

73 to all, and thanks for reading!

James

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Decent HF DX Today

Posted on 2011-02-27 by James

So I was at the OVMRC Club Station VE3JW today and managed to make 14 contacts on HF and 3 contacts via satellite. Between contacts, I enjoyed chatting with the museum patrons – of which were were a great deal today.

At around 14:00 Robert (VA2AGE) and Ernie (VE3EJJ) showed up. Today was my first chance to speak with Robert (a fellow club member, whom I may in fact purchase my first HF rig from). Robert is a really great guy who is very personable and we share a variety of similar interests. This seems to be a common theme amongst club members which is great!

Robert spent the afternoon becoming more familiar with the club’s newly acquired Kenwood TS-590S and told me of a Maritime net that he checks into on occasion. Ernie was patiently working the various satellites as they came overhead throughout the afternoon.

One notable visitor was a Scouts Canada leader for 11th Ottawa who was interested in getting members of his group on the air to chat with other Scouts for a badge. I explained the technical and logical challenges that the endeavour would propose, and directed the leader to contact Darin (VE3OIJ) who is the station manager.

At one point, Ernie said he heard what he thought were voices on AO-7 (one of the oldest satellites still in orbit) whereas I had heard nothing from the bird earlier. He passed me the head-set and sure enough it sounded like voices far off in the noise. Moments later we heard the distinctive sound of someone calling CQ in Morse Code.

We weren’t able to resolve the amateur’s call sign because the signal faded rather quickly and would come back in at the point where they were calling CQ. At first I thought it was operator error (me) but it appears that the satellite tumbling was more to blame as I had managed to maintain the same rate of change on the VFO through the silence and “recapture” the Morse tone at nearly the same frequency each time.

All in all it was another nice day at the club station. I really do appreciate having access to such great equipment! I really am blown away by how great the OVMRC and the Museum are!

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