Amateur radio ⁽²⁵⁶⁾

SDRplay's SDRConnect was released as a preview a couple of days ago ( https://www.sdrplay.com/sdrconnect/ ). Like many others I expect I had been waiting a while for this, having heard about it maybe a year ago. So of course, new shiny... I had to install it. It failed to run on my Linux box but, being a fiddler that is probably down to my own config. So I installed it on a Pi 4B with a 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS (SDRConnect needs a 64-bit OS). I had a quick fiddle but running headless via VNC was too painful and I had lots of house stuff to do so too little time to trim things. Regrouping, SDRplay publish video guides on how to set things up. I prefer just textual documentation but their videos are generally good. I installed the s/w on my Mac mini and ran it up on the Pi as a server (--server flag) and it runs nicely with no GUI and just a textual status output. The software has a good look and feel and I can see me buying at least one other SDRplay device to add to my somewhat old now RSP2 as…

While the house is more empty than usual I am getting on with numerous essential DIY tasks - pointing, plastering, boxing pipes in, fixing leaky radiator valves, installing LDF4-50A... the usual stuff.

I've pondered getting one of these for a while... finally got around to it.

Well it was only an experiment... I managed to get to a park today to try a POTA activation. First off, parking. I was warned that the car park I was aiming at was a no-go so stayed in another, smaller car park, still in the park though. Surrounded by trees I was not expecting much of my 2.5W but I did managed to have 5 QSOs accepted by the POTA.app. Not sure how many will actually count yet. Although a minimum of 10 QSOs are needed for an activation it was only an experiment due to our current location being only 20 miles from the park in question an having some spare time today. Lessons learned include: I shall return, wiser! There is one other downside of our trip though. I had also planned a bit of /A from the hotel room but no matter what I try the bands are all completely dead. I reckon there is too much steel and the glass is metallised. On the positive side of things the LiFePO4 battery I bought works really well and managed the full hour plus as well as experiments in the hotel room with very little drop. It…

Success. After my failed first attempt I untangled all the leads, ditched the USB hub and tried a 1:1 unun. With the FT818 set to 2.5W I managed a QSO with a DK at about -13. The wifi was struggling for the Mac to load pskreporter so had to try that once back in the house, but it shows it is getting out ok. Not too bad for 2.5W into a Diamond HF40CL on the car roof parked next to the house. Hopefully this bodes well for an excursion and possible attempt at activating a POTA. No ferrites on the antenna lead plus one on each USB lead. I did not take those off to experiment as they are not in the way anyway.