Posts Tagged ‘WSPR’

Digi-modes bonanza weekend

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Posted 11 Oct 2011 — by Alex
Category Radio

Ok maybe I’ve made this sound more exciting than it actually was.

I got a loan PC from the club (MX0WRC of the recent MS0WRC DXpedition to Tiree fame) for the purpose of loading up some software for a presentation/ demonstration that I am planning on doing on some of the digi modes (mainly PSK31) for some of the club members who don’t have much experience in it. The laptop needed a little love and attention and after 2 hours of defuzzing the thing I managed to get it connected to my home wifi and downloaded HRD and JT65 as well as WSPR software. Just out of interest I connected up the FT817 to the ‘puter and left JT65 running in receive mode overnight. Low and behold >350 callsigns logged in 36 countries. All from a loft wire antenna.

These modes continue to astound me, partly because I am always a bit uncertain as to exactly how they manage it. I almost expect someone to pop their head round the corner saying ‘ didn’t you know…..?’.

Time to re-establish a working relationship with the laptop my wife has borrowed off me and get the FT817 to good use

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Cobwebb hits VK

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Posted 20 May 2011 — by Alex
Category Radio

I’ve given the FT817 a task. See how good my cobwebb is compared to my dipole in the loft. Most of the activity seems to be around 20m so I plonked the rig on the right frequency and went for 24 hours of normal family life.

So after the 24 hours there were the usual EU calls and some west coast us stations and nestled in amongst them was a VK. The first one heard from the rf hole that is my QTH. The best homebrew so far.

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Thinking of a new rig

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Posted 03 Nov 2010 — by Alex
Category Radio

I’ve spent the last 3 years collecting data from the NCDXF beacons to see if I can hear them using Faros. The results have been displayed on this site as a way of keeping a valid copy of the data away from the home pc’s which seem to give up the ghost or lose data. Lately I’ve been really frustrated that I haven’t really had a spot for a long time.

The rig is fine and the PC is getting the sound in, theres just no spots. So I’m thinking of a slight change of rig so that I can get a bit more out the set up. There are a few hams locally that use APRS and I’m wanting to get a bit more involved, so I’m thinking of putting the trusty and very reliable IC-703 onto Ebay so I can get hold of a FT-817 and a TNC to run APRS both out and about and in the car as well as switching over to WSPR instead of Faros.

I do go up to Scotland quite a lot and have found it would be nice to have something in the car on the way up there and whilst I’m there both on HF and VHF. So that only really leaves one sensible option. The FT-817, a cross country wireless APRS TNC and a mobile whip for the car and my Cobwebb for HF

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1w to VK and others

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Posted 03 Oct 2010 — by Alex
Category Radio

Whilst mucking a out making the cobwebb I left to rig running WSPR. Not expecting much I was pleasantly surprised to see a few exotic spots on the wspr map.

Not only were these spots ones that I heard they also heard me. Including a few in VK land. Now I don’t know what their set up’s are but its nice too see that with a single watt of power I can get so far. Ok so its machine to machine and very little human interaction is needed but these distances are one of the things that keep me hooked on ham radio.

The people who work out how to do these things need medals!

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WSPR Not quite working on Windows 7

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Posted 23 Sep 2010 — by Alex
Category Radio

I recently purchased a usb sound card. Thinking I was doing the right thing I spent some time googling about and finally settled on the M-Audio Transit. Some favourable reports and some that were neither one way or the other. The reason behind the purchase was a recommendation after suffering with my Softrock HF lite receiver not doing what it should.

So the story continues. I’ve been away for the last week or so and whilst I had a lovely time its back to ham radio business. This week I have been playing with WSPR to try and decide if I want to switch from beacon monitoring to straight WSPR’ing. Let me tell you that its not all been plain sailing. The IC-703 that lives in the ‘monitoring room’ (garage) is used primarily as the travel rig / monitoring station, seems to be playing strange games. Some of the menus are not coming up and the signalink SL+ is also suffering with gremlins and will not TX through VOX. Anyway I’m digressing. The main rig has been todays focus and I just simply cannot get reliable decoding from WSPR with the USB soundcard and Windows 7. Plenty of lines to see and it says its decoding but quite frankly its doing the square root of nothing.

Some head scratching in order I think

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