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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

Today is the wspr 10m band 500mW ‘event’. I’ve switched over the IC703 to the band and will see what I can spot and see of anyone can actually spot me. I’m not particularly hopeful but we’ll see if the Es gods are favourable today.

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Whilst the sun seems to be a bit quiet again and the beacons seem to be a long way off I’ve put WSPR on again. Any of the spots will be on the usual WSPRnet.org map. I’m planning on a little trip out on my bike later and will take my 2m hand held with me. I’ll see if I can actually get a QSO with its mini antenna

Seeing as the amount of spots on the beacons page was at about minimal. I thought I’d switch over to WSPR to see what kind of activity there was. I set the rig up last night and went off for a few lengths in the local pool. By the time I cam back I had a nice surprise K1JT spotted on 30m.

I’ve left it running and here’s the latest from a few minutes ago

WSPR = Whisper

Joe Taylor and people like him never cease to amaze me. Without trying to state the obvious he really is a clever bloke. I’ve used WSJT a few times, mostly for receiving but on a couple of occasions I’ve done a small amount of transmitting. I’d seen WSPR on his website and if the truth be told I had too much on my plate to think about using it. Now I’ve got some semblance of normality back and the sporadic E season starts to wane. I was thinking of my long ‘un’established sdr beacon receiver then the idea struck me. 

WSPR + Softrock HF Lite + Atom motherboard = WSPR receiver

Why change from Faros. We’ll its no change for the long term but I’ve still not been able to find a way to use the HF lite with Faros for all the IARU HF beacons. Something that it really frustrating. If only I had the ability to write software!

So the possible change in direction needs a bit of thought. Is it worth while? I’m running it for a few days to see what it gives me. Sounds like the project could be something big if enough get involved.