Radio and rails...

I received a few reasonable images early this morning between 5 and 6am. Hopefully later passes will yield better images. These were received on a 2m FM set with a loft mounted collinear, and decoded by qsstv on Linux.

So... having an Allstar node I wanted to configure it for Echolink. It seemed this was just a matter of editing the pre-prepared configuration file echolink.xxx and renaming it to echolink.conf. Edits in place, this I did. Oh yes, and I set our broadband router up to forward the relevant ports to the hub. On restarting asterisk it gave numerous errors of the form 'Error in parsing header on servers.echolink.org'. Hmmm. Ok, scratching around the web I found that Echolink has a firewall test service at https://secure.echolink.org/pingTest.jsp. It failed. Ugh. Then it dawned on me (meaning I read the documentation a little better!). I had set a callsign with '-L' at the end which appeared to be the way to go. But this needed separate validation! Once that was done it all sprang into life. Simple, and also obvious when I realised. Old age? http://km6uso.net/index.php/2021/02/27/adding-echolink-to-your-allstar-hub/ is an excellent guide - there are others of course but this one pointed out clearly the need to register the -L or -R callsign.

Up until now I've used generic QSL cards rather than an actual design. These served well as an M6 and a 2E but I always planned to design a card once I passed the full exam. So, one year on (no sense in rushing!) here it is: The basic design was done by one of my boys with the final layout and production carried out by fdsQSL who also produced my previous generic cards. The photo is my own, the logo as explained previously was basically why I chose RVB because the Morse fits the wheels. The rear has all the usual stuff including an area for 'Via' above the target callsign, both top right to hopefully make it easy for the bureau. I have only just got these and have yet to try one in the laser printer - which would make filling the details in easier. But given I hardly send any cards that is a lot of faff when a pen does just as well!

I only managed one almost decent image from the 1st December ISS SSTV event, the others being partial or very noisy. I am not bothering with the diplomas this time. When I checked most of them use a Google form that required me to log in (twice in one case), failed to submit and, in one case set 40 (!) cookies for the trouble.

Slowly coming together. Yesterday I decided to attack the front panel with a drill and mount the rotary encoder, switches and the little Arduino board which I programmed earlier. This is for tuning the Langstone. For some reason my drill press insists on making triangular holes - if I wanted a triangular hole I'd never manage of course. So I've resorted to making a smaller hole and using a round file. Anyway, everything went into place, although the Arduino board has no mounting holes so I've tie-wrapped a piece of plastic under it as an insulator and used a decent (hopefully!) sticky pad to secure the board inside the front panel. So far, so good. Here it is receiving the Allstar microHub... I need to sort the microphone out. The USB audio dongles seem to be constructed for stereo input so I wired the same to the front panel. Plugging the headset in gives no audio, presumably its all shorting out. I can make it work by 'adjusting' the plug (pulling it out until it works!) so I need to re-wire or make a little adapter. There are a couple of fans in the case and so far it seems…