Weblog

02 Jan 2008

Blogging has now moved to http://va3stl.wordpress.com.

16th July 2006

Catching-Up

Spring and Early Summer have so far been very busy, so now I am catching up with the logs on these web pages.

Some recent radio high-lights was organising the OVMRC's participation in the the Ontario QSO Party in April, the OVMRC's 2m Simplex contest (May) and Field Day (June - as always!). So between work, family and Club activities I have been busy and what available time I have had I have tried to get on the bands. From the logs you may notice I have been working on the CW.

The photograph above shows the various antennas used by the OVMRC during the Ontario QSO Party. The OVMRC's trailer is sited in the grounds of the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. The windmill that can be seen is one of the museum's exhibits. The photograph was taken by Larry Wilcox, VE3WEH.

26th March 2006

Transmitting with APRS

Finished my TNC kit on the weekend and had it on the air on Sunday evening. Xastir is running well and I have a couple of maps of the local area loaded. 5W is all I need to hit the local digipeater VE3WCC-1.

I can now VNC to the shack computer and view the local APRS activity, whilst working in the study.

4th March 2006

APRS project started

As a start in understanding and perhaps operating with Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS), I set-up Xastir on the shack computer. As I have no TNC, nor set up the soundcard as a modem yet, I was reading in and displaying data off the web using Xastir. Used the online Canadian topographical map, linked in Xastir, as well as an Ontario pocketAPRS map I found on the web.

• APRS information Information from the US Naval Academy about APRS.  

• Xastir homepage Xastir is free GPL software for many computer platforms, including Linux, MacOSX and Windows.  

Three way PSK QSO

Had an enjoyable three way QSO with Glenn, WB2LMV and Marcel, W1MDB on PSK31. It was good to be one of Marcel's first PSK contacts.

6th Feb. 2006

Updated my gMFSK version

Updated my gmfsk digitial mode software to gmfsk.hkj. This is a modified version of gmfsk 0.7. Thanks got to Dave, W1HKJ, for the software that adds some nice features to an already good piece of software. Dave, VE3IXI, should also be thanked for letting me know about this version.

• W1HKJ's gMFSK modifications For more information on gMFSK.hkj  

1st Feb. 2006

Ubuntu installed on the laptop

Put Ubuntu (Breezy Badger) on the old Gateway laptop. A straight forward install, but the sound does not work. Back to the old problem. As Breezy is using linux kernel 2.6, the modifications given below (11th Oct) do not work quite so well. I have a work around but it is not elegant. Still it gets gMFSK working. As for this version of Ubuntu, I like it a lot. Seems fast on the old PII laptop and everything works well, apart from the sound.

4th Dec. 2005

Extraordinary 80m Propagation

Propagation from Eastern N. America to Europe was excellent. With 4W and using PSK31 I worked Daniel, HB9TPL, in Switzerland (again) and Ludek, OK1VSL, in the Czech Republic. Thanks to Fran, K1BBJ, in Maine for the 'heads-up' on the band conditions.

19th Nov. 2005

NVIS antenna setup

Put up an 88ft doublet at about 9ft as a NVIS antenna. First observations are that signals are not quite as strong as on the G5RV (at about 30ft), however the noise is significantly reduced, making signals much clearer to hear. Not yet tested on transmit.

• KV5R's NVIS webpage For more information on NVIS  

3rd Nov. 2005

New State for WAS

Had a nice QSO with Larry in Vermont, so providing me with a contact in the 43rd state I need for WAS QRP PSK.

Velocity factor of 300 ohm ladder line

Measured the velocity factor (VF) of some 300 ohm ladder line I had bought at a hamfest. Used my antenna analyzer and the VF came in at 0.82. Of course the VF for any ladder line you have could be different to that.

31st Oct. 2005

Long distance QRP-QRP QSO on 80m

Had a QSO with Irvine, N5UNB, in Texas. A good distance for 80m espcially when both stations were QRP.

30th Oct. 2005

A not so 'Lazy-H' in Switzerland

Chatted with Daniel, HB9TPL, in Switzerland who was testing his newly erected Lazy-H antenna at his chalet 6,000ft up in the Alps. The signal from the new antenna was very strong here in Ontario.

23rd Oct. 2005

My furthest 80m contact?

Perhaps had my furthest distance contact on 80m, just under 2000 miles. Luis' station in Puerto Rico was working very well and his signal was coming in very strong.

17th Oct. 2005

Had a QSO with Skip Teller one of the co-designers of Digipan the PSK software for Windows.

16th Oct. 2005

10m open

10m was open today! Had a QSO with an Italian station on that band. Also saw a South African station on PSK, but could not make contact.

Had a chat with Dave, VE3IXI whom I had last contacted in May. Good QSO.

14th Oct. 2005

More on the Linux Laptop Install

Now have Mepis configured (including sound). With Windowmaker loaded for a fast desktop.

My initial enthusiasm for Mepis has waned a little as I upgraded packages with at least one Debian repository access and it upgraded many packages. The upshot was a broken x-server (I could not get a graphical display - like being stuck in DOS). Likely I replied incorrectly to a question during the upgrade, but I have not had that problem with Ubuntu.

11th Oct. 2005

Audible Success!

Solved the sound problem. The main information for the solution was on the web here. My sound chip on the Gateway 5150 Solo is the ess1879. Tip if you have the same problem: check your bios setting for the sound before configuring, as the settings could be different. For me the io address was 0x240, for example. Make sure you are using OSS sound module (not ALSA) on your desktop and of course you need to make the changes as root.

It is great to hear that 'welcome' sound on start-up. I am really starting to warm to Mepis. I like the easy install of ati and nvidia video drivers, realplayer is bundled.

Next is to speed things up with adding a lite desktop like windowmaker.

10th Oct. 2005

SimplyMepis installed but not solved the sound problem yet.

9th Oct. 2005

Breaking what was not broken

A few days ago some extra memory arrived for my old laptop (Gateway 5150 Solo). After doubling the memory to a heady 128MB I decided to update the linux OS on it, which was currently Mandrake 9.2 with a nice WindowMaker desktop. Mandrake (now Mandriva) is at version 10.1 with a new release imminent so I figured it was time to upgrade. I planned to use Kubuntu (Breezy pre-release) but after the install I was not too struck by Kynaptic (the package manager GUI) and the power manager was a little confused - it gave a warning and dropped out to the login screen after a couple of minutes after the AC power had been disconnected on a fully charged battery. Although I could no doubt install Synaptic for package management and find the problem with the power manager, I thought I would look at different distros. My main station computer is running Ubuntu (Hoary) and that works well on that machine (an old Compaq PII), so using Ubuntu seems a natural alternative to Kubuntu, although the two distributions are effectively the same different desktop (KDE for Kubuntu and gnome for Ubuntu). Before that change I thought I would have a quick look at the alternatives, especially the lite versions that offer speed benefits on old machines.

Fortunately many Linux distributions now have live CDs so you can test drive before you install on a hard drive. I tried

• Knoppix 3.7- loaded worked out of the box except for sound.
• Beatrix 2005.1 - loaded but did not detect my USB ethernet interface.
• Puppy Linux 1.0.4 - loaded, again ethernet interface not detect 'out of the box'. I disliked the window manager, fvwm95, with its Windows 95 feel. Seemed a very fast system though.
• Buffalo Linux - Seemed to take a while to load and again did not detect my USB ethernet interface.

All the linux distros I used could not detect my sound system on install. I do know a work around with a using OSS and a careful 'modeprobe', so that should be solvable. With my previous working system 'sndconfig' solved the problems.

If you want more information about Linux and amateur radio see my Linux webpage.  

I am really wanting a Debian based system as there is an amateur radio section in its package management system, which makes installing ham software a breeze. So I tried SimplyMepis 3.3.1-1. Which impressed me. It detected the interface, is Debian based and feels nice to use. I decided to install after test driving but on the second power up the OS dropped out a couple of times. I suspect the CD drive which had been working hard and so will try the install another day.

Noted that Ubuntu (Breezy Badger) is released on the 13th Oct. If all goes badly with Mepis that will be the likely next install.

Must admit I have been wondering why did I wipe the working Mandrake 9.2 install?

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Last modified 02/01/2008