Radio and rails...

Well I passed the full licence exam a couple of weeks ago now. The RSGB were particularly quick with things as Ofcom knew the Tuesday after my Friday exam, meaning I could chose a callsign, and the pass certificate arrived from the RSGB in the post the next day. Here are a few notes while I remember in case they are useful to anyone. YMMV of course and different things work for different people, you need to do what works for you. As you should know by now you need two cameras, the one on the laptop (or attached to a PC if that’s what you use) showing your face, plus another off to the side looking across. I used a MacBook and an iPhone as second camera. Positioning the phone was something I had thought out but got wrong on the day. I borrowed a phone stand for this but it proved impossible to get the angle right. This second camera needs to look across at you and the keyboard and screen and I ended up propping the phone against the stand having placed the stand on its side. It only fell over once which made me jump as…

I had an idea that my RSP2 SDR could sit in the loft driven by a Pi in the shack. The Pi in question had DireWolf and a DVB-T stick watching APRS traffic. Ideal, I though. Hmmm. I really thought this would be easy and a web search suggested that it should all work, my plan being to use the Pi to serve the SDR remotely from one of the laptops.  My first attempt was to install a fresh Raspberry Pi OS and install SoapySDR and SoapySDRPlay. However, various bits of SoapySDR failed to compile due to some things not being found, even though I followed the instructions to the letter. A web search found only two identical but unanswered questions, so no help there. More searches. SDRPlay have a useful looking image for the Pi where it will run in a number of modes, including soapy remote. This seemed just what I wanted. It all went in and the Pi throws open port 1234 which web searches indicated as the right thing for it to do. However, SDRPlay refuses to play whatever I try. I have again followed what instructions I can find regarding remote operation, some of which…

In preparation for me receiving a full callsign (having just passed the full licence exam - yay!) I wanted to get the FT450D ready for 60m. Out of the box it comes with several pre-set frequencies that do not cover the available band slots and so the only recourse is to perform the MARS modification to the radio (aka ‘widebanding’). I uploaded the latest firmware first (v 244). Note that the firmware upload resets all the various settings so in my case I had to wind the power back down, set the CAT baud rate, and set the data type ('D Type') to USB. I found two different sets of instructions on the Web, one referring to jumper JP4002 but another had a different number. However, one page had photos as well which tied in with what I could see. The instructions there are clear and are what I followed, the URL is https://radioamateur.us/ft-450d-mars-mod/ Following those instructions I took photos of each stage and have added a few notes below. Note that you do any modifications at your own risk and very probably voiding any warranty - I believe Yaesu will carry this modification out for you but this is…

Well of course you need a soldering station that matches your desk tidy...

Yes I know it's not really cold here in the UK, especially having spent a few winters in Montreal. But it's damp... always damp. I had set up an electronics bench in the workshop but I was always conscious of the humidity. Recently it's been hovering above 80% and so I have finally given up the idea and moved the test gear inside. My original aim was to have the shack in the workshop but three things always stopped me: the fact that having a lot of relatively expensive gear in a wooden workshop in the garden is generally a bad idea; the humidity; and the fact that all my antennas are in the loft. So the radios stayed indoors, now joined by the test gear, which makes sense anyway. Plus there's more light 'up here' with a large south-facing window. So far, so good...