Radio, railways, stuff...

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 UK) this event was a lot of fun, if actually quite hard at times. My bit of wet string in the loft clearly lets me down but then again I did see some relatively decent spots of my calls via pskreporter, just not quite when and where I needed them. I did also manage a couple of contacts with another Spanish special event station as well as one contact with GB2ARD (just a few miles away), both operating for World Amateur Radio Day. Of course, during all of this I was struggling with my possessed PC which almost floored my final contact for the Gold award, but after beating it into submission and leaving everything turned on for 3 days it worked out. Time to rip it apart.

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 either a cable or a wireless bridge.