4 lines green

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024

Slightly random… I have a Cisco SPA504G VoIP phone which I acquired ages ago and connected to Hamshack Hotline back when the UK still got 5 digit numbers.

The phone isn a 4-line one and subsequently I got a Hams over IP number for line 2, then an extended freedom network number on line 3. After that the phone sat for ages with only the three lines in green, waiting for a fourth.

I did consider buying a VoIP service to transfer our POTS number to once we upgraded to FTTP and lost the copper line. But then, all we used the landline phone for was ignoring junk calls, only ever making calls using my mobile phone which has free minutes and SMS, or using WhatsApp. So the landline went.

And still that fourth line was dark, just sitting there.

Along came CNet. I have had an interest in all things telephony and telegraphy from an early age. I always wanted a small mechanical PABX – I still don’t have one but I do have an eye out for a couple of old dial phones from my childhood. And that’s where the interest in CNet came from. Having investigated further I realised I could use that fourth line for access, and so it happened.

4 lines green…

A photo of a Cisco 504G VoIP phone's line indicators, all are lit green.

A new clock plus 10MHz reference GPSDO

September 11, 2024

I built a thing! This is a GPSDO using a PCB and kit of parts supplied by G8CUL and a OXCO from G1OGY. It uses a Jupiter GPS module which provides the PPS signal and a 10kHz output and the completed module provides 2x 10MHz and 1x 1MHz outputs. Although there are a number of such designs this one is nice in that it also has a display and shows the current date and time as UTC.

A GPSDO system based on a GPS module and OXCO module.

This was, I think my third SMD construction and certainly the Mose SMD devices including multi-legged chips. No issues in construction especially given the quality of the PCB that G8CUL had made.

The display on the GPSDO module showing the number of satellites and quality of signal.

The display on the GPSDO module showing the current date and UTC.

The backup battery is a CR2 3.3V type and helps with warm starting. As the regulator gets hot I managed to fit a heatsink between it and the rear of the case and hopefully this will sort out heat transfer, otherwise I may need to bolt another heatsink on the rear. Construction in a die cast box would have been better maybe but the blue/white box fits in with others in the shack, plus I had it already! The bezel is cut down from a 3D printed one from Printables.com designed specifically for the 2×16 LCD displays. The button – which is not the best but I had one etc. – selects the various displays which include date and time, satellites seen, latitude, longitude, altitude and QRA locator.

Latest tooling addition

September 8, 2024

I had a number of Molex pins to wire up recently. To make things easier I decided to use some 4-core signal cable I had but found that the insulation is so poor at resisting heat that soldering the Molex pins was a non-starter as it always ended up with bare wires. Of course, Molex pins are designed to be crimped… so off to eBay.

The latest addition to my toolbox arrived in a couple of days and made the job a lot easier.

A ratchet crimping tool suitable for a variety of connectors including Molex pins.

Do I need two HF transceivers?

August 23, 2024

When I first got my foundation licence I was lucky in that a friend sold me a used FT450D at a seriously good price. Since then it has been in regular use. But now I also have the TS2000X I am somewhat torn. Currently the TS2000X is plugged into three antennas, the loft wire + tuner, and the loft 2m and 70cm big wheels. I had been using an FT817 for 2m and 70cm but that is now sat on the floor all disconnected. Poor thing.

But what to do with the FT450D… I do like the radio, it’s very easy to use, nice display etc. and quite compact. Ok, not compact like the ‘817 but it’s a 100W rig. But the TS2000X does everything I need in just one set, so do I sell the ‘450D? Decisions…

I mean, I don’t need both, I won’t use both together… or will I? Well, yes actually, I can run the ‘450D on HF and the ‘2000X on VHF, especially once I finally set up my external wire (the long one not the current short one). And the ‘450D is connected to the Linux box with the ‘2000X connected to Windows. So I can run both.

And I am reminded of those photos – you know the ones, someone in the US with a 100 foot workbench and several thousand transceivers (ok, a bit of an exaggeration there).

So I am keeping both. So there.

Now… the ‘2000X does FM on 2m and 70cm so another question is do I sell the FTM100DE? I mean, I rarely use C4FM. Nah, who started this selling question anyway?!

Moving stuff about

August 21, 2024

I am surprised that I actually managed to do something useful today. For a while now I have been meaning to put a Cross Country Wireless HF/VHF/UHF antenna splitter to use and today was the day. It is now sat upside down on the top shelf above the radios, fed from the discone in the loft and feeding two little LoRa modules, one for TinyGS and one receiving radiosondes. The TinyGS receiver had been running for some time sat in the loft and was previously the only thing connected to the discone. The radiosonde receiver had a 70cm ground plane in the shack and never received anything. Since reorganising the feed it has burst into life, rather surprisingly finding a balloon quite close to this QTH which was apparently launched from somewhere to the west of the Lake District but the data does not show the launch site. Looking at the altitude figure in the data I suspect it is already sat on the ground. Pity I cannot go out right now to see if I can find it.

Now, the cabling is RG58 and so not particularly good at UHF. The next step is to put a pre-amp next to the discone, and then to run some Ultraflex 10 instead of RG58. It’s only a few metres but every little helps.

TinyGS info can be found at https://tinygs.com

The software on the radiosonde receiver is rdzTTGOsonde and information can be found at https://sondehub.org/

Co-ax time

August 14, 2024

Time to replace several lengths of coax and run new… 100m ought to do it!

100m drum of Messi and Paolini Ultraflex 10 coax cable

Short-ish long wire

August 12, 2024August 13, 2024

I finally got some wire in the air. Well, not very much and not very high, but at least it is outside. One end is attached to an eye bolt outside the shack window positioned so I can reach it with the window open wide. From there the wire runs down to the workshop. I am not exactly sure of the length, Google Maps suggests just short of 30 feet. So pretty short! But it works, and the FT450D internal tuner can cope with it from 30m to 6m, except for 12m. Anything lower than 30m has SWR approaching 3 but otherwise it seems to be ok. Pity the sun is being naughty right now but it gets a good spread across much of Europe on 20m.

The wire feeds a 9:1 (I think!) unun and a 1:1 choke, then RG58 (*) to the patch panel. The cable needs to be routed yet as it is currently just running through the open window.

Signals received are definitely stronger than with the loft wire and Z11 tuner but it is hard to say exactly how much because of the time taken to swap leads, disable or enable the internal tuner, and tune the wire during which time the watched FT8 QSOs have ended and moved etc. However, with the TS2000X on and connected to the loft wire a random Italian FT8 signal was -17 on the TS2000X + loft wire and -9 on the FT450D + new external wire. Plus the waterfall on the two rigs definitely shows the advantage of the external wire. In fact, the wire length is probably similar to the existing loft wire.

So now I really must get round to running a wire up the garden which will be a lot longer.

(* Typical. I put RB58 instead of RG58, didn’t proof read, turned everything off for work and just got back to edit it now!)

New arrival…

August 8, 2024

New (to me) arrival in the shack… something I’ve been toying with getting for some time now. This is a TS2000X and has the 1296MHz option installed. It will take me a little while to get acquainted with it but it brings more capability on 2m and 70cm and adds 1296. I’ve been using an FT817 on VHF for FT8 etc. up until now and generally running it at 2.5W – fun, but I wanted a bit more juice up there.

The Signalink from the ‘817 is ready to go, just waiting for a CAT cable and some coax plugs as I’ve used all the ones I need. That will at least give me time to read about the rig before playing…

DMR relaunched

August 5, 2024

I dug my poor dusty MD380 out yesterday and charged it up. For a while now I have had Fusion and POCSAG on the pi-star but I rarely use the FT2D and when I do it’s only for APRS. So I thought why not get DMR back into the pi-star. I have a dual DVMEGA HAT with pi-star set to duplex from when I was fiddling with the new HAT.

Anyway, since I last used the MD380 I changed the rx and tx frequencies in pi-star to the ‘designated’ hotspot frequencies so the MD380 needed reprogramming.

That’s where it all started to go south…

First off, since I rebuilt the Windows PC I did not, for some reason copy across the MD380 programming software. Ok, found it on the web and installed it. Can it see the TYT programming lead? Nah. This particular lead is basically a wire, it does not have a chip built in apparently and so needs a specific driver. Oh yes, Windows will see the lead and knows what the device is but has no clue about the driver.

Ok. Found a driver. Installed it – apparently – it does not give an error but the rapidly disappearing screen on installation did not fill me with confidence. And no, it doesn’t work.

Tried another programming software suite called editcp (https://www.farnsworth.org/dale/codeplug/editcp/) in case that included the driver. Nope. The disk that came with the MD380, which took some searching as it is one of those small CDs and has nothing at all written on to indicate it is from TYT, also has the driver but it would not install either.

Right. Over to Linux. It saw the device and lsusb shows a reasonable text string. The same editcp software has a Linux version. And, typical of Linux it just works. It read the radio, allowed me change the frequencies and programmed the radio again, no issues (*). I did have to remember just how to set up the codeplug as I wanted to use both TS1 and TS2… that took a bit of head scratching as it’s been years since I fiddled with this. But a couple of useful websites (there are many others) helped sort my brain out and I now have pi-star and the MD380 set up for TS1 and TS2 with different talkgroups on each via the Brandmeister self service.

(* OK I’ll admit it took me five attempts to program the frequencies as I kept reading it wrong! FOUR times entered wrong before I got it typed in correctly)

Meshcom 4.0

July 25, 2024July 27, 2024

(edited 27/7/24 15:34)

I recently came across Meshcom (https://icssw.org/en/meshcom/) which broadly speaking is an amateur radio off grid messaging network like Meshtastic.

I had a 433MHz Heltec V3 with Meshtastic installed but as there is no 433MHz activity nearby it has just been sat in the abandoned project pile aka the corner of the desk. So, I thought, here is an interesting use even if there are no nodes nearby… yeah, that’s always a bad start.

Anyway, as yet the instructions are not as polished as those for Meshtastic and I struggled to get anywhere, routinely managing to lock Windows up completely when using the esptool. When I finally got the thing to look like it had connected the downloader instantly gave an error and packed up. It was then I noticed there is a web flasher (url) so I tried that.

Off to a bad start, the flasher reported that the serial port (the device is directly USB connected) was not ready, and no amount of whinging and gnashing of teeth fixed it. Unplugging and re-plugging the Heltec in made no difference. Three times, same thing. I connected it to the Mac and checked that the esptool.py there could see the board in case I had killed it. It found it and gave the correct output. Back to Windows and the web flasher, and on the fourth failure I pressed the reset button on the Heltec and then the installation succeeded. 5th time lucky. [Subsequently I flashed a TBeam device first time and with no issues, so the Heltec may be a bit odd]

Some configuration is needed which can be done by commands typed in via the web flasher which also has a console function. After setting the location and wifi access the node appeared on the home LAN and also announced itself to the world via the dashboard at https://srv08.oevsv.at/meshcom/# and after a while it sent all the location information etc via the Internet.

The Heltect only has its tiny spring antenna right now as the 433MHz collinear has and rx LoRa APRS gateway connected. As this is really just yet another experiment it may get repurposed again anyway, but it is an interesting project. Time to read.

27/7/24 I repurposed the TBeam unit that was my LoRa APRS rx gate and was basically doing nothing. Meshcom uses the same spot frequency of 439.9125MHz so it needed to go. This has GPS built in and appears to be communicating – it has its location and altitude etc. plus time The node will go back in the oft on a collinear but once there I have no way to communicate with it because for some reason the onboard web server will not work and the Meshcom iPhone app is beta and on Testdrive which I do not want to install on my phone. I may need to run a USB lead down to one of the Pi systems assuming I have serial comms enabled on it. [15:34 rebooting fixed this – I was sure it had rebooted since I set some parameters but rebooting via –reboot cured the missing web server!]

Mike Zero Romeo Victor Bravo

Rails and radio

Category: Amateur radio