Radio and rails...

Been rearranging the workshop today because I ended up spreading stuff about rather illogically. I also wanted to add some boards to the roof joists to stop leaves blowing in - the eaves are open and the shed is not insulated. It's surprising how difficult it is to manoeuvre and fit an 8'x4' foot plywood sheet into an 8'2" x 4'6" space on your own! Anyway, the aim of todays mudding was to prepare for getting all the components and bits and bobs over to one side and to extend the 'projects waiting to be started' shelf which was full! All the woodwork is done now and just needs some shelves and boxing to sort out. Oh yes and there is still the matter of running some SWA Cat6 cable out from the garage which involves lifting flags, digging a trench and other adventures. This work is partly in preparation for Project QO100 as well as the model railway which will go where the components are now. Any heavy work is now all at one end and all electronics and servicing type stuff at the other, roughly 50/50. Pics will follow once I can actually see the benches and it…

I have been looking for a frequency counter for some time now and split between buying a kit that goes well into microwaves or seeing what comes on eBay. Finally a decent range one was advertised and I won it; it arrived today. This guy counts from 10Hz to 2.7Ghz and the reason I got something with this range is it will hopefully prove that I am at least outputting something from the Pluto when I finally get round to setting up my QO100 station. Otherwise it is generally useful. It has a 10MHz internal clock running from an oven-ready crystal (sorry, a crystal in an oven!) so there is scope for feeding in a GPSDO signal if needed, although for my purposes that is probably not a requirement. Thus far, for a quick check it reads test transmissions on 2m and 70cm from a handheld accurately. I have a digital oscilloscope on order (and will then sell my two CRT based 'scopes), I have power supplies (only to 30V DC though), so I just need a waveform generator for general messing about. Not sure I need any RF source as I can use the Pluto.

The Unión de Radioaficionados Españoles (URE) ran an event to commemorate the 95th anniversary of the IARU with was founded on 18th April 1925 - 18th April is also World Amateur Radio Day each year. It ran from the 15th to 30th April. I had to have a go! There were 10 callsigns of the form AMxWARD and 9 bands in use, from 160m thru 6m. And as you might imagine there are quite a few pileups. I only used FT8 with the occasional FT4 but the stations were active on SSB, CW and digi-modes (I spotted them on RTTY, PSK31, FT4 and FT8). After I made sufficient contacts for the Silver award I was going to stop, but after a short breather decided to go for Gold, finally making that on the penultimate day. I made myself a personal target of at least one contact on all the bands I can operate on, so 40m thru 6m, but I never managed 12m due to pileups. I also never managed to get the 10th station - pskreporter showed that they were receiving  me but again, the pileups. While I came nowhere really on the ‘score board’ (apparently 251st in the…

This was awkward. I found some info on the Web where someone had used a USB to Ethernet adapter and a Y-splitter cable to connect their Pluto to their LAN. So I got the exact same bits off eBay. Nope, no go. I resorted to asking on the very helpful Facebook group and tried all the advice, for example powering it via the separate USB power socket, but still no go. So, a process of elimination - the USB adapter worked fine on the Mac so no issues there, nor with the CAT5 cabling in use. But I did not have a separate mini-USB to USB socket cable, only the splitter cable. Back to eBay... A cable arrived today and the Pluto appears on the LAN just fine. So it's the Y-splitter cable that is at fault. Not tested it yet but it's only a couple of quid so no biggie. Serves me right for not keeping things simple and using a splitter. Anyway, one step closer to my QO100 project! All I need now is a decent way to get Ethernet out to the workshop. I do need a LAN out there anyway, not just the house wifi, so…

So the Ethernet interface on the shack PC decided not to work at all today. It's managed by the network-manager stuff so no ideas why it had decided to go funny. Actually, it has been off colour for a few weeks now as at boot it does not see the Internet i.e. it fails to find a route but does see locally. Anyway, I've never liked network-manger, I would far rather get control of it all myself. I realise it's there for a reason but I favour a more handraulic approach. After battling it into submission and removing it from the startup scripts editing /etc/networks/interfaces has cured its tantrum. For now anyway! But I am wondering what is up with the PC now as USB failures yesterday and then a collapse of networking today... everything important is backed up so no worries there. However, I am not of the camp that these things fail slowly as I have had PCs running for years and years before. I may well use this as an excuse to get a midi-tower system I can dual boot (Windows and Linux) and get a couple of PCI cards into.