Radio and rails...

Having finished a major bit of academic work I treated myself to a relatively short trip down south to the National Hamfest yesterday (Friday). This is my first trip to such a thing since the radio rallies of the 1980's and I had no idea what to expect but I can say it was worth the trip, if only to see what I can't afford to buy! I didn't come away with much - I grabbed a pair of Nagoya NA-771 aerials, one for the UV5R and one for the MD380 (different antenna connectors of course!) and one of QRP Labs excellent 5W single band transceiver kits for 40m. The manual (PDF) is a work of art giving detailed instructions of every step of the way including photographs to show what things should look like. This is waiting until I pass the Intermediate exam. Oh yes and an SDRplay RSP2 followed me home too. Unfortunately the SDRuno software is Windows only but CubicSDR works fine on the MacBook and with very little fiddling I'm listening to SSB on 20m. I've used CubicSDR on the Linux box before so not too steep a learning curve. The RSP2 has two antenna inputs…

I had WSJT-X running just in case I had time to make a few QSOs while writing. There was plenty of activity and numerous decodes but I'd not had time to play. Then there was a cryptic decode at 16:09 UTC which just said 'SOLAR FLARE'. The timing and frequency suggest it was someone a few squares away. And sure enough, no more decodes. At all. I switched to WSPR and recorded a couple of stations that way, and was recorded by a couple too, but it's very dead. I wish I was watching the waterfall when it actually died off... anyway, not long after it seems to have recovered as I can see traces again and it's decoding.

No, I'm not taking about clock synchronisation issues and digital modes in WSJT-X, though it has to be said that my PC clock is regularly synchronised via NTP and time.is always says it is 'exact' with some very small fraction of a second deviation. Bad timing in my case is the number of times I manage to find a good bit of DX, usually FT8 as I am concentrating on this right now, only to make contact but not complete because the band dies off from underneath my poor little bit of wet string in the loft. I had a US contact last night who gave up after 6 valiant attempts to exchange signal strengths. Oh well.

Interesting event yesterday caught me out. I'd been using the FT450D on 6m FM and had programmed and then selected a memory channel for the local repeater. But when I turned the PC on and ran WSJT-X it gave an error controlling the rig. So I killed WSJT-X and loaded flrig - it too could not control the rig. Then I noticed the rig said M-TUNE (memory tuning). One VFO was still set that way and I presume the program swapped VFOs then lost control and gave the error. I got it out of that and back in to VFO but still no CAT access. Something in the driver (Linux - dunno which driver, probably generic) had got screwed because rebooting the PC cured it all (thinking about it unloading and reloading the driver would probably have worked but by then I'd got into power-cycling mode). This dual VFO business has caught me out before when I had one set to AM and the other SSB. When WSJT-X loaded it switched VFOs but that remained set to AM. Not the programs fault of course but is something to remember. Not a fault of the rig either, just the operator!

They do say 'read the manual'... I had tried before to get into the local 6m FM repeater and failed. I tried again today, I'm sure the settings on the FT450D were all the same but I can now get in fine. Had a nice chat with someone too. I can also get into the co-located 70cm DMR repeater on the MD380. These are very roughly south from my QTH and a clear view - well there would be if the house next doors wasn't there.