With Varying Frequency - Amateur Radio Ponderings

I had a long chat with Milt Cram, W8NUE at AmQRP’s NUE-PSK Booth. Though I received the NEU-PSK modem I ordered under the early-bird program a few weeks before Dayton, I had made less than 20 QSOs with the unit and was eager to learn more.

Presently there is a firmware update that Milt W8NUE offered to install if I had my unit with me. (I didn’t)   Future Firmware Updates are planned to expand the ability of the modem! 

Additional Modes and Logging Ability are high on the list.  Following the NUE-PSK reflector since Dayton some of these features are becoming reality, and again I need to get out the same interface I use with my Arduino boards to update firmware.

Fellow AmQRP team members were final assembling full kits for sale at the booth and demonstrating the modem to the gathered crowds of amateurs.

Not surprising that this excellent Modem Project has a personable and excellent team behind it!

Here are some of my previous articles on the NUE-PSK Modem:

AmQRP Releases a Significant Upgrade to the NUE-PSK Modem 

First QSO’s with NUE-PSK Digital Modem 

NUE-PSK Unit Arrives at K9ZW 

NUE-PSK - Huge Amateur Support for AmQRP PSK Project 

AmQRP NUE-PSK 

AmQRP’s “NUE-PSK Digital Modem” Reviewed in QST and QEX 

Field Portable PSK without a Computer - AmQRP’s NUE-PSK Digital Modem 

73

Steve
K9ZW

AmQRP has released a significant upgrade to the NUE-PSK

This is an easy upgrade, much along the likes of loading an Arduino or Boarduino with a program.

Here are the release notes:

===================
   v1.20 Release Notes 
       May 13, 2008
===================  

Bug fixes …

1) CwID is now working.

2) Some non-printable characters no longer print as “garbage” on display.

3) ”Right Half Of Display Blanking” has been fixed by adjusting the timing of the control sugnals to the LCD. 

4) Improved locking onto PSK signals on the spectrum.

5) Smoother interaction with the Tune encoder control, primarily with the menu slections under the Select pushbutton.

New Features …

1) F10 for TX Toggle … F10 is now used to switch between Tx and Rx modes. (F12 was previously used for this, but using F10 is much more convenient for operators using the popular “2366″ minikeyboards that require you to hold the Fn key to get to F11 and F12.)

2) Backspace … The backspace key now works as expected when recording macros or transmitting. It always worked as far as the outgoing signal was concerned, but the display did not show the cursor backing up by blanking the previously-typed character.

3) Ctrl-S (”Switch To Transmit”) … is now available for use as a special control character at the beginning of a macro. The control character is looked for when a macro button is pressed, even while in receive, If the character is found at the beginning of a macro, the modem will automatically switch to transmit, and continue to play the rest of the macro. This means that you can generate a macro for calling CQ that will switch the modem to transmit without having to use F10, call CQ and return to receive mode if the macro is ended with Ctrl-Q … all by using a single key press. This makes it possible to significantly reduce, or even eliminate, the need for pressing F10 when conducting a QSO.

4) Speed tuning … 1X, 2X, 5X and 10X step rates are now available for tuning using the keyboard keys:
     1X: left/right arrow keys
     2X: up/down arrow keys
     5X: Alt + left/right arrow keys
     10X: Alt +up/down arrow keys

5) Configuration Menu Improvements … we added several user interface improvements concerning the displaying, saving and loading of configurable modem settings.

     a) “Current setting display” – When you dial up a configurable menu (Mode, Squelch, CwID, Backlight, PGA), the current setting is now shown. (Previously, the display always showed the first choice, regardless of another choice already being in effect.) 

     b) “Save Configuration” … A new menu item is available, one-position counter-clockwise from exit, whereby you can save the current settings to nonvolatile memory. Thus whatever changes made to the configurable items (Mode, Squelch, CwID, Backlight, PGA) will be automatically restored upon the next power-up. 

     c) “Report Configuration” … F12 now toggles the display of the current configuration settings. Pressing F12 once shows the current settings, and pressing F12 again (or any other key) brings you back to normal modem operation. This is a convenient way to view at a glance the current settings in the modem.

6) Supply Voltage … is displayed in the splash screen on the display during power-up. Helpful when running on batteries to see the starting voltage level of the supply.

 

All the upgrades are well worth it - I plan to upgrade mine after the Dayton Hamvention when I have some more time.

Check out all the action at:  http://www.nue-psk.com/

73

Steve

It has been a few years since I’ve done any serious coding, to say the least.

From those heady days when I could move my programing off the Harris Mainframe and work right on a Columbia MPC Portable (really “luggable” as it was a beast) working at home at a cottage in the Penine Mountains using Turbo Pascal 1.0, Turbo C and Turbo Prolog I’ve only occasionally returned to program design, or to be honest mostly task-orientated scripting.

click on logo for link

Now that I have identified a handful of Shack Automation projects the decision as to what environment to code or script with has to addressed in the here & now.

Cross-Platform Ability has become important with three operating systems in use in the K9ZW shack - Windows XP, Apple OS-X 10.5 and Linux.

After looking through various options - Tom KC9JGD’s Microsoft Visual Suite (purchased as part of a course he took) and others, I’m leaning towards PERL.

click on logo for link

As it says the the Perl Tutorial by Doug Sheppard:

“Perl is the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages: powerful and adaptable. It was first developed by Larry Wall, a linguist working as a systems administrator for NASA in the late 1980s, as a way to make report processing easier. Since then, it has moved into a large number of roles: automating system administration, acting as glue between different computer systems; and, of course, being one of the most popular languages for CGI programming on the Web.

Why did Perl become so popular when the Web came along? Two reasons: First, most of what is being done on the Web happens with text, and is best done with a language that’s designed for text processing. More importantly, Perl was appreciably better than the alternatives at the time when people needed something to use. C is complex and can produce security problems (especially with untrusted data), Tcl can be awkward and Python didn’t really have a foothold.

It also didn’t hurt that Perl is a friendly language. It plays well with your personal programming style. The Perl slogan is “There’s more than one way to do it,” and that lends itself well to large and small problems alike.”

and for the PERL FAQs:

“Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually all known and current Unix derivatives are supported (perl’s native platform), as are other systems like VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, QNX, BeOS, OS X, MPE/iX and the Amiga.”

So a quick dash to Amazon.com and I’ve got the benchmark standard PERL book on its way - “Programming Perl”

click on cover for link

Looks like this should be able to cover all the bases I want to cover at this time in my shack, and as OS-X has PERL included I’m ready to go.

I’ve some SQL database training coming up this month, and a series of lighter scripting projects to finish up (mostly either in the “File Maker” script environment or in “Crystal Writer” report designer.

Wish I had the same view of the low mountains, sheep & stone walls - complete with my old local pub - as when I earned part of my grad school costs coding & scripting. But today’s better tools are some consolation.

73

Steve

Far from a milestone - basically another “wallpaper award” - I noticed that I had qualified for the eQSL ePFX300 award.

click on award for a larger copy

73

Steve

Click on the logo for a link to Copperwood Press

Just arrive at K9ZW is my Lulu.com order for the final two volumes of the Carl & Jerry reprint series. 

 Again an outstanding read.  Great fun, easy reading and brings back memories!

W7JPD has arranged for a sample to be an easy download.  A sort of “try before you buy” plan!

Download a sample story as a pdf: “Dog teaches Boy“

You can click on the covers below for links to the books at Lulu.com:

I’ve covered more about this series at two previous posts:  Carl & Jerry - Reprinted Popular Electronics Series and What Are You Reading About Amateur Radio?

Hope you enjoy the series as much as I am! 

73

Steve

This is a follow up to Checking for Spots - Effective use of DX Clusters - Part I

So how to effectively use Spots?

The easiest use is to look at Spots to see in what directions other station near you are able to work various DX locations.

You can do this without getting into too much detail just by noticing that other stations in your area of the country are reporting (spotting) working stations from let’s say France and Germany. You may want to swing your antenna that direction, find a clear frequency and call CQ DX.

You can “Read & Jump” swinging your antenna and tuning your rig to match the spot and try to work the reported DX station. Many amateurs substitute “Read & Jump” for their own tuning & searching for DX.

You can use Spots to help a friendly DX station. It is usually good form to ask the DX station if they want to be spotted. Some absolutely don’t want to have the instant pile-up and will even react badly (refusing to exchange QSLs, holding return QSLs for a “punishment year” or even responding “Not in Log” to QSLs from stations who spot them when asked not to). Usually any confusion can be prevented by asking if they want you to spot them.

In contests, provided you are working in an “assisted” category during a contest that allows use of spots, you can use spots to search for multipliers.

You can also use a spot to tip off other amateurs of a special event, island activation or other opportunity to work an unusual station or QTH.

In general you should avoid spotting other domestic stations, unless propagation has been so poor as to make that an event, or a sign of the band opening, or it is a contest where others would appreciate a chance to work the spotted station.

Don’t forget that you will likely be spotted as well! Specially if you are calling CQ and are being received well in a DX location, they may spot you! Some of the DX Spot websites allow you to look at the whole world’s spots and you might just see yourself noted!

Remember spots are archived and used by some amateurs to do propagation analysis. They are also used by contest log checkers to clarify if the QSOs in a log are consistent with propagation at the time they were logged and to check if unassisted stations were really running unassisted.

73

Steve