Ripples in the Ether

WSPR-EEE Python GUI

Like I don’t have enough ham radio interests to keep me busy, but sometimes I have the attention span of a hummingbird and want to try new things that catch my eye. Such was the case when I saw VK2TPM’s blog post about getting WSPR up and running on his Ubuntu Intrepid box (thanks for the tip of the hat on the other post, Peter!). I’ve heard quite a bit of rumbling about this MEPT stuff on the ham blogsphere, so seeing Peter’s instructions finally pushed me over the egde to try it. After a few false starts due to unresolved dependancies (I guess you could call it the Linux version of DLL Hell), I was off and running with the WSPR Python GUI. It seemed to work FB once I got it to execute, but I was having a real hard time reading the font in the widgets that showed the stations spotted. No big deal, since I could open the ALL_MEPT.TXT logfile to read them. I also can’t seem to get the spots to automatically upload to the spotting web page, but I am able to send the ALL_MEPT.TXT file manually.

WSPR Spots - 2322UTC 26 Oct 2008

Since the audio and PTT interfaces to the IC-718 were already in place, it was simple to start transmitting my own beacon packets as well. I set my power for approximately +30 dBm (1 watt) and let the program do its thing while I did other chores around the house. I came back a while later, and lo-and-behold, people were hearing me! I never crossed the pond, but did get across the continent (as you can see to the right). Not bad for a first try, but I’m hoping to haul my signal across the ocean for some DX. I’ll keep running the beacon for the next few hours to wait for the terminator to cross over me. I’m guessing I’ll have a better chance of getting my 1 watt heard in distant lands when I have the gray line working for me. Fun stuff, and easy to do if you already are set up for working digimodes.

Code Practice Oscillator Schematic

Here’s quick update to post the schematic of the code practice oscillator that I mentioned previously. As you can see, I just paired a twin-T sine wave oscillator with a buffer amp that feeds directly into headphones. The twin-T provides plenty of voltage, so the buffer is all we need to provide enough current to drive headphones. You can also download a PDF file of the schematic here.

Thanks to a suggestion from David KB0ZKE, I’ve decided to rework the layout to fit in an Altoids tin (an excellent idea!). I’m also going to try to come up with an easily reproduced straight key made from a paper clip, knob, wooden base, and wood screws. This idea was inspired by KE6GS, who has a great example of such a key right here next to his Willamette. I’ll try to get the layout changes finished real soon. The detailed documentation will have to wait until after I finish the Willamette documentation (but I have started on it again, so it will come in the near future).

In one of his recent blog posts, Dan KB6NU, asks why ham radio has no presence at the Maker Faire. You may have heard of Make Magazine from Bill at SolderSmoke or other places on the web. Dan writes:

About a week ago, I got an e-mail from a ham down in Texas who had attended the Maker Faire. “Makers” are people who love to tinker and make things. They even have their own magazine, Make.

He was amazed at the lack of any amateur radio content.

This ties in with the “Ham Spaces” e-mail that I wrote on qrp-l.org a few weeks ago. I’m not going to argue that ham radio is dying, but there’s no doubt that we need new blood in the hobby. With the resurgence of interest in building your own electronics, now is the perfect time to get ourselves out there.

Ham radio needs to be at these events and get plugged into the “maker community.” The Faire has not yet released attendance figures for this particular Faire, but more than 65,000 people attended the Faire held in May 2008. Dayton, with its attendance of about 20,000, looks anemic by comparison.

Quite a stark contrast, especially given the reports that attendance at Dayton falls nearly every year. Surely, there’s a large untapped potential to recruit Makers into the ham radio fold.

I blogged about this back in May. One of the things I suggested then is moving Dayton to some place like Austin. Seriously, if you were a new, young ham, where would you rather go, Dayton, OH or Austin, TX? Let’s be real here.

And can there be a worse place for an event than Hara Arena? The parking lot, where they hold the flea market looks like a mine field, and it usually rains, making the flea market a wet, unpleasant experience. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer vendors choose to haul stuff out there? Some of us older hams might fondly reminisce about the bargain we found while traipsing around wearing a trash-bag poncho, but a story like that is not going to resonate with new hams.

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to badmouth the Dayton Amateur Radio Association or the Hamvention. I actually think that they do a great job, all things considered. I’m just pointing out that if ham radio wants to again be part of the mainstream, we have to get with the program. Unfortunately, that program probably won’t be at the Hara Arena.

I’ve never been to Dayton, but these stories about the quality of the venue are well-known. It’s not going to be easy to get younger folks (especially females) interested in the hobby if they are immediately turned off by the whole environment. Like it or not, image is important these days. We’re going to have to clean up and reform ourselves just a bit if we want the opportunity to pass our hobby down to a new generation.

Ham radio has got to figure out how to latch onto the Maker phenomenon. At the very least, the ARRL should have a booth at the next one, and in addition to all the books and t-shirts, they need to come up with some kind of demo or display to attract makers into ham radio. I don’t know what exactly, but I’m willing to start talking about it.

I agree that the ARRL is missing a huge opportunity here. Their public outreach programs, while well-intentioned, seem a bit anemic and off the mark. They’ve got to start recruiting some new, younger blood into the HQ (W1KRB was a great example, but it appears that she’s gone now) and start making the rounds to these new DIY events. It also wouldn’t hurt to integrate more fully into the social networking sites (I know that there is some effort by private hams in this area, but we’ve got a long way to go to catch up to the Makers).

This phenomenon might also be a boon for clubs who hold hamfests. Just as the computer craze turned ham swaps into ham and computer swaps in the 80s, perhaps ham clubs could turn their hamfests into a combination hamfest and Maker Faire in their communities.

As I said earlier, Makers are exactly the kind of people we want in ham radio. Let’s go out and get them.

Indeed! We need to start building these bridges if we want the hobby to gain some new vitality. Otherwise, I expect ham radio may get pushed further out onto the edges. Meanwhile, with the continued explosion of wireless consumer products, there’s plenty of interests who would love a chance to get their hands on our spectrum. There’s no reason for this to happen, as we have a ready-made pool of new potential hams to recruit from!

Got home from work and had an itch to try a bit of PSK31 this morning. 80 and 40 seemed pretty dead at sunrise, but 20 meters was already hopping with signals. I was wondering if I would ever catch the EU stations from the new and improved QTH, and I finally got my answer this morning. All kinds of different European prefixes were streaming across my PSK monitor window, which was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t have much luck trying to work a GM0 or ON8, but did manage to finally snag a quick QSO with Peter, DL3APM. I was running the IC-718 at about 20 watts into the 70-foot random wire. There was a fair bit of QSB, but copy was good enough to allow a good contact on the first try. I know that most of you are probably yawning about a QSO to Germany, but this was kind of exciting to me since I haven’t had a EU QSO since I don’t know when. WIIGII!

I know that the blog updates have been a bit light over the last week or so. Although we have been in our new house for three weeks now, it seems like the chores just keep piling up. However, I have done a little bit of work in the homebrewing department. Inspired by messages from WB9VTB and KB9BVN, I decided it might be nice to create a simple code practice oscillator based on the twin-T sidetone oscillator from the Willamette. The discrete component CPO published by the ARRL is really neat because it is very simple and has a unique build method. However, the circuit is your traditional astable multivibrator, which produces a near-square wave. I guess I’m spoiled, but I like listening to a clean sine wave. It certainly doesn’t take any more components to build a twin-T compared to an astable multivibrator.

I experimented with a few different ideas for simple, discrete component audio amplifiers to pair with the oscillator, but settled on perhaps the simplest of all: an emitter follower. The twin-T oscillator puts out a waveform with a fairly large voltage, so all I really needed to do was tack on an emitter follower to provide some high impedance buffering for the oscillator. The entire circuit is extremely simple and produces a pleasant tone at 600 Hz, which you can sample here. The circuit can easily drive low impedance headphones, but if you wanted to listen on a speaker, you would need more amplification. An easy solution would be to plug in a set of amplified speakers, but it wouldn’t be hard to add another stage of amplification.

I’ve created a Manhattan layout for the circuit, and I think that I would like to develop a complete kit with full build instructions at some time in the future. Something that would make it easy for the complete homebrewing novice to successfully build. I know that CPOs are a dime-a-dozen, but I think that the simplicity of this design (2 NPN transistors, handful of resistors and caps, a few 1/8″ phone jacks) is a bit unique.

A few quick updates to the avs3a software that I’ve writting for the Avnet Spartan-3A Eval Kit (as mentioned in a previous post). First, many thanks to George Gallant from the Avnet Spartan-3A Eval Kit mailing list for rewriting the code to fix the horrible configuration time, as well as for the many error checking and usability improvements. Secondly, I’ve taken the latest version of George’s code revision and uploaded it to a new Google Code site, where it will now be hosted. Go there for the latest download of the project tarball or to check out your own copy from Subversion.

Shack in Progress

On Friday, I noticed that this weekend was the monthly SKCC Weekend Sprint-a-thon. Since I’m a straight key guy, I figured this would be a good way to get in some of the CW practice that I desperately need. The event runs from 0000 to 2359 UTC on Saturday, but I didn’t get on the air at any point on Saturday local time. I missed the initial rush of the opening of the contest, but I still had time to catch the second half of the event this morning.

My first couple of QSOs were not very pleasant, since it’s one thing to copy CW at 15 WPM from a practice MP3 but quite another to do it under real-world conditions. However, once I loosened up, the CW ability started to come back to me more naturally. Since I still have a touch of the key fright, I was OK with S&P QSOs, but didn’t work up the nerve to snag any contacts with a CQ of my own. I set myself a modest goal of 10 contest QSOs, but I didn’t really sit down at the shack and make a serious effort at it. The bands weren’t very good today, and there were long dry spells where I didn’t hear any SKCC members calling CQ. In between stints at the key, I tried to get caught up answering e-mail and took care of some of the endless chores that need to be done around the house. I also have to admit that I didn’t run QRP, but was at about 20 watts for the event. I guess going with higher power is a crutch carried over from my old QTH, but I think I could have used 5 watts or less just fine. No one seemed to have any real trouble hearing me (as long as the QSB didn’t get me).

After all was said and done, I didn’t quite hit my goal, but I did have an enjoyable time. I only managed to complete six QSOs in the event, altough I did work club call K9SKC in the old 40 meter novice band for extra points. If I did my calculations right, I got 80 points. Not very impressive, but I wasn’t trying to be competative. I’m glad I took the time to try the event, since it got me some much-needed practice, as well as a handful of contacts towards my Centurion award. I had also heard that the organizers wanted 100 submissions for this WES, so I’m doing my part. Overall, an enjoyable way to spend some weekend time and a confidence booster as well.

DDS-60 Controlled by BCD Swtiches

A blog that I follow on a regular basis is from Aussie ham Peter Marks, VK2TPM. He posts from the perspective of an experienced ham who is really starting to get bitten by the homebrewing bug, so it’s a real pleasure to see him discover some of the things which make that aspect of the hobby fun. In his latest post, he introduces us to his DDS-60 controlled by a bank of BCD switches. The whole shebang is tied together with an ATmega32 using C code compiled by the avr-gcc toolchain (my favorite).

I love this for a couple of reasons. First off, it reminds me of the first major homebrewing project that I attempted, the W8DIZ MultiPig. One of my favorite aspects of it was the PLL controlled by BCD switches exactly like this. As a side note, I never did successfully complete the MultiPig. Not for lack of effort (or ability, I think), but because I went and made some stupid life choices. However, I’m happy to say that I was able to cannibalize the remnants of my MultiPig for many successful homebrew projects later on. The second reason is just the cool factor. I guess it’s the retro, 70s look and feel of the swtiches, but there’s something alluring about the whole tactile experience of using BCD switches. FB job Peter!

No, you got your ham shack in my Linux!

I’ve been grumbling to myself about the lack of active ham radio podcasts (sorry but the usual generic ham radio news shows don’t count as podcasts in my book). Lo and behold, I see that KB5JBV and K5TUX have just launched a new podcast, Linux in the HAM Shack. This is right up my alley! The first episode just dropped tonight and I’m exicted to see where the podcast goes in future episodes. This first one is mostly an introduction, so there’s not a lot of meat in it, but I’m sure that will be remedied by episode 2. If you run a Linux box in the shack, or even use open source software like Firefox, I recommend that you subscribe to the podcast feed. Let’s support these guys in a worthwhile effort!

I'm innocent!

Tonight I fired up the 718 again to see if last night’s performance wasn’t a fluke and I could snag a few more QSOs. Eighty meters PSK31 was a bust, so I moved up to 40 and called CQ. Right off of the bat, I got an answer from KD7MTI, who is only about 10 miles away from me. It took me a minute to realize it, but Robert is a gentleman who I’ve had contact with before, via the pQRP reflector. He is currently in Portland until the end of the year, when he then heads back to Israel. Robert was using 5 watts into a end-fed antenna and was doing great into Beaverton. I was a bit surprised to see that we had such a solid connection, as I assumed that we were too distant for ground wave. I guess not, since we had a solid Q5 conversation. He also told me that we was nearly done with his 20 meter Rockmite, so maybe there’s a chance I can catch him on 20 groundwave once he’s done with the kit. Anyway, I was just getting warmed up for a nice ragchew, when I heard a loud crash from the living room next door. Baxter had been sleeping in “his” chair when I went into the shack, but obviously he had woke up and went directly into his “hellion” mode. I had to leave in the middle of Robert’s transmission to see just what had happened.

The Victim

Stupidly, we had left a large framed art print leaned up against the wall. As I came out of the shack, I could see it knocked over face-down on the ground. As I tipped it back up, I could see that, sure enough, he had broken the glass in the frame. I guess ol’ Baxter wasn’t feeling the love and wanted to make sure that I knew that he was a bit lonely. Serves me right for leaving something breakable within his reach, but sometime I have the delusional thought that he’s grown out of his puppy stage. Once again he proves me wrong!

Oh well, hopefully I’ll be able to catch Robert on the air again before he departs Portland. It’s always neat to meet like-minded hams in the local area.