Great excitement as the Elecraft KX3s are starting to ship. The first one, ordered on December 27, has left the building.
I got my order confirmation early on December 28 but from what I can tell from the newsgroup, that means I might have thousands of orders in front of mine.
By all accounts this rig seems like a very modern, power efficient, technically advanced HF transceiver that is set to replace the FT-817 around here.
Elecraft has slipped a bit but their communication has been first class and customers like me feel informed and respectful of the quality job they have done bringing a complex new product to market under the bright lights of the internet.
At the meeting on Sunday at Dural, I proposed a construction challenge for the Home Brew Group: To build an AM transmitter for 40m, specifically 7.125MHz.
As in past years, these challenges are not a competition, although we do get together to compare what everyone came up with.
My reasons for suggesting this project are:
7.125 is very active with AM activity here in NSW
AM sounds lovely on air
There are quite a few ways to generate AM
Crystals are available for 7.122 from Expanded Spectrum Systems for $2.55 ($2.15 in lots of 10). I used a technique suggested by Peter, VK3YE, to pull the crystal to 7.124 - which is near enough for AM.
Note that I couldn't get Peter's design to oscillate (I had substituted a 2N2222a I had at hand) but values from this page worked fine.
Ways to make AM
Series modulation, either with a modulation transformer or heising modulation which passes the audio through an RF choke.
Make DSB and re-insert the carrier - there's a bit on this in EMRFD.
Cameron McKay, VK2CKP, was kind enough to give an excellent presentation at today's ARNSW Home Brew Group meeting at Dural NSW. I've broken it in to two parts and posted them on YouTube.
I like the AppleTV. It's tiny, runs cool, has AirPlay and the remote is very simple. As soon as the HD version was announced I ordered online. Weeks later it had not arrived. I followed the status on TNT Express.
The "Card Left Not Home" is untrue. I was here and there was no card left.
When I rang to ask to see the "Proof of Delivery Image" they admitted that it was not any kind of proof of delivery signature.
Turns out when Apple has a major bump in shipping TNT outsource deliveries and they lose real tracking.
In the end they admitted that my package had been lost. Apple was advised. Rather than risk another lost shipment I cancelled the order, was credited, and I dropped down to the local Domayne and bought one off the shelf.
The user interface is 1080p and looks great. Although it came out before this new hardware, the updated software seems a bit of a step backwards to me. I find it hard to see which tile is currently highlighted, the indication is a thin blue glow line.
Last night we hired a movie in HD. Normally when we hire a movie they are ready to play within a few seconds, this one took over an hour. The status showing how long until it can play seems worse than it was in the old version and the estimated time jumped up and down alarmingly.
Compared to other TV boxes we have here, a Boxee, a WD TV Live, and a few no-brand gadgets, the AppleTV is certainly the best but not up to the standard I expect from Apple.
The hardware is great, I just hope the software gets some love soon.
It should get easier to receive high quality short wave digital radio mondiale from April 1, 2012.
"RA will commence a DRM schedule from its main Pacific station at Shepparton, Victoria, from 1 April 2012. Average power is 40 kW from a Continental 418G transmitter. Reception reports welcome especially notifying interference to the RA transmissions.
Broadcasts to central Pacific may also be audible in North America; broadcasts to the south-west Pacific and PNG
may also be audible in eastern Australia. Broadcasts to south-east Asia may be audible in Europe."
It's great to see DRM starting to get some traction. The combination of All India Radio, Radio New Zealand International and Radio Australia means that there will be plenty to tune in to. The AIR DRM schedule is here.
Now we need a new generation of low cost, low power consumption receivers to make it take off.
Update
Bad news I'm afraid. It looks like management have decided not to go ahead with the DRM transmissions from Shepparton at this stage. Very sad.
The WSPRnet map is great but it hasn't been updated to Google Maps v3 so I've started working on my own version here.
Currently I'm scraping the spots from the WSPRnet database display page every ten minutes but I'd love to work with whoever is responsible to make this a bit more efficient.
I've done more work on the map and now it emulates the official map in that you can click on a marker to see who they're hearing and who's hearing them.
There's been a lot of talk about the inadequacy of 16/44.1 compressed tracks recently. The thing that makes a big difference is the bit rate of the compressed files and one of the side-effects of the iCloud music storage system is that it matches your low bit rate tracks and lets you "upgrade" them to 256kbps.
Good instructions on how to go about the upgrade are here. Basically you sign up to iCloud match (just do it in iTunes), submit your collection, then delete all the matched tracks with a bit rate under 256kbps. Finally you re-download them.
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of matches I got. The vast majority of my music is ripped from CDs I own but there are a few others in there that were happily matched.
So now the big download is taking place here. Looks like it will take a day or so to complete. I'm getting 900 KB/sec from iCloud at times which is pretty snappy.
The new collection will be quite a lot larger than before but with the price of disks these days I don't see it as an issue.
Apple's recent announcement about "Mastered for iTunes" and the future prospect of upgrading to uncompressed tracks shows the way forward.
All this is more reason why we need faster broadband now and in the future when we want to listen to our collection streamed live from the cloud.
Update
Over night my library finished re-downloading all the matched tracks. My iTunes folder was 85GB before, now it's 98GB.
My iPhone 4 is starting to lose battery capacity. Apple says that after 400 cycles the battery loses 20%. I charge each night and recently I've been getting warnings in the early evening. There are kits on eBay that give you a battery and the tools you need. I purchased one for $8.95 with free postage. It came next day.
It's curious that the QR code is defaced. I wonder why. The screen suction cup wasn't needed and I soon had the battery replaced.
It was nice to remove a bit of pocket fluff that had crept in too.
Instructions on how to replace your battery are widely available on YouTube. I watched this one.
It remains to be seen what effect this has (the battery came virtually discharged). It was an easy and cheap process.
Update
I'm very happy with the new battery. At the end of of a day of normal use I was getting the 20% warning, today (after a full charge over night) I'm still at 89%. It's like having a new phone again for $9.
Tuning a radio by pressing keys or even mouse movement doesn't quite have the familiar feel of an actual knob. Griffin makes a nice knob called the PowerMate and I've now hooked one up to PowerSDR and it works well. Here's a demo.
While setting it up I learned of a great collection of keyboard shortcuts available in PowerSDR. I set the knob to send 100kHz up and down keys but in time I'll probably add accelerator modifiers for quicker tuning when needed.
There is a delay in the decode audio so you can't really spin the dial the way you would on an analog radio but perhaps a faster computer and lower latency audio driver will improve this.
We're having widespread rain in NSW at the moment, so much so that the Warragamba is overflowing for the first time since 1998. It's interesting how much havoc widespread sustained rain causes compared to a local intense storm.
We live near the Terry Hills BOM Radar which is great because I can watch the radar to choose when to go for a walk or when to bring in the washing.
The animation above is captured from the BOM site with a cron job that runs every 5 minutes and runs this script:
Here's some video impressions of the Wyong field day:
The numbers were clearly up this year, probably a combination of good weather, well organised parking and the success of last year.
I bought a mysterious 250W HF linear amplifier for $25, enjoyed the usual displays from the Home Brew group, Historical Radio Society and the various vendors.
Thanks to the organisers for another fine day out.
Our old HP Laserjet 1022n has run for many years but since about the time of Leopard a bug appeared in the driver, that still hasn't been fixed, where it will not print every other page sometimes. This drives me nuts.
For $80, at Officeworks, I purchased an HP Laserjet P1102w and after some messing about it's working really well.
First, there is a firmware update that you must install via USB. Second, the wireless setup, which you need to do via a web page configuration while connected on USB is a little non-obvious - particularly the bit where you click a double arrow button move your wireless network over to the left from the scan list.
An HP employee has put a video on Youtube demonstrating this.
Once on Wifi there is a blue wireless light that should be steady.
Now the printer works great on Lion and finds it's own driver. On Leopard I had to install the driver. Best of all I can print from iOS.
As with many printers these days, a toner cartridge costs more than the printer itself.
Important tip - use a static IP address
The printer goes to sleep quite quickly, which is good, but we've had a frequent problem of computers not being able to connect to the printer. What happens is that the printer's DHCP lease expires and presumably because it's asleep, the computers can't find it until you wake it up.
The fix is to allocate a fixed IP address for the printer. Much better now.
I've enjoyed the Ensemble RXTX kit build but I'm having a devil of a time with audio under Windows XP. There's not a lot of ham radio software for MacOS but there is an SDR program called "DSP Radio" from Sebastian Mrozek, who has been very helpful in getting me past some problems I ran into.
The instructions with the software are a little brief and so I wanted to capture my working configuration here for future reference.
I'm using a MacBook Air with an Edirol USB audio device for sending and receiving I/Q signals from the Ensemble RXTX. USB control is via TODO which links to DSP Radio.
Plug in the external audio device. Then run the Apple "Audio MIDI Setup" utility (in the utilities folder). Create a new Aggregate Device and add the external USB device and your built-in audio (for your headphones and microphone).
Make sure to set all the devices to the same sample rate.
Set the external USB audio device as the clock source in the popup.
Turn on the Drift Correction checkboxes (called Resample under 10.6) for the built-in microphone and built-in output.
Open the Audio devices window in DSP Radio.
Select the Aggregate Device as both Input and Output.
Open the Configuration window in DSP Radio. (If there is an existing audio configuration there, just leave it and make a new one, then go back later and delete it). Add a new audio configuration.
First make a receive (Rx) configuration. Unfortunately the name of the devices within the aggregate are simply numbered: Input 0, input 1, input 2, input 3; so you need to play around to figure out which is which. I did this by choosing inputs and whistling until I saw my trace on the waterfall - that meant I'd found the microphone.
In my case I/Q from the radio was Input 0 and Input 1 but it may come up differently for you. Play with the Output popups until you get audio through your speaker. For me it was Output 2 and Output 3. Don't worry that the heading says "Output I and Q", that's for transmit. In the receive context it's just audio out to your speaker.
Note that the audio level was very low for me and I had to increase output gain to hear radio signals.
Here's a screen shot with everything working. The second audio configuration line is for transmit.
Transmit configuration is similar. Make a new configuration. Select Tx. Choose the inputs from the microphone channels in your aggregate device. Choose the Output I & Q for the external USB outputs to the radio.
Frequency & TX control via USB
Andrew Nilsson has contributed SoftRock-USB-Controller-v1.2.zip which talks to the Ensemble RXTX and also links to DSP Radio so that changing the frequency in DSP radio updates the Ensemble. (The file is hosted in a Yahoo group under VK6JBL - you have to join the group to access it unfortunately).
The transmit button in DSP Radio also sets transmit in the radio. Great stuff.
First QSO using PowerSDR under Windows 7
Most of my problems have been sound related under Windows XP so I switched to a laptop running Windows 7 and had much more success. Here's my first contact with VK2HLG - thanks Dave for taking the call.
Sorry about the low receive audio on this one, I'll try to get a better recording next time.
I'm pleased to report that the build of the Ensemble RXTX kit is complete and I've hacked it into a box.
While there is a purpose built box available, I found something off the shelf that is the perfect width although deeper than really required.
Maybe I could fit rechargeable batteries in there?
I built to cover 20, 30 and 40m and reception is working really well. There is lots of software around but my favourite at the moment is PowerSDR IQ. Note that you need to set the audio jumpers to straight through for this software as it has no reverse I/Q setting.
So far I haven't got transmitting going, partially due to the mystery, to me, of how to control it over USB. As you can see I'm fitting a hardware transmit switch for cases where the software doesn't support TX control over USB.
If I inject a tone into the audio input socket and enable transmit in the test utility I can see that it puts out just under 1W, but for some reason the Transmit button in Rocky 3.7 is dim for me:
Update: Duh, OK, figured this out. Rocky only transmits in CW mode.
I would like to thanks WB5RVZ for the fantastic build notes. These really helped me through the process and covered great detail where it is needed.
A few of the transformers were pretty tight by the time I put the bifilar and secondary windings in them but otherwise all went pretty smoothly. I didn't solder any surface mount devices in backwards on this occasion!
My kit was short 1 10K resister - no big deal (or most likely I've put one in the wrong place...). As the construction notes say: Even Leonardo DaVinci would have used an ohmmeter on these had he had one! Those reds and browns are really close.
We mostly use Apple Macs here (except for a Windows XP netbook for some ham radio software). We love Apple's iWork suite but my wife is required to work on documents in Microsoft Word.
She runs Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 on Lion. We have the latest updates of both but her day to day experience is very poor.
The documents she works on are large, hundreds of pages, with track changes enabled and showing lots of history.
Every day, every few hours, Word hangs in some way. Sometimes it shows a black window or a blank dialog box. Mostly we can't quit the program nicely - we must force quit to get out of it.
Word does recover the file without losing too much but it can be distressing for her when deadlines are approaching.
Microsoft do acknowledge quite a few "known issues" but no crashes in Word (only Excel).
This morning, just before heading out the door, we were unable to copy a PowerPoint presentation to a USB key. I know from past experience that Office holds files open even though the window is closed for some reason (no idea if this is still the case but it used to be). We tried to quit all the Office apps, they did appear to exit but when we tried a restart it was prevented by Word.
This software has been around for a long time. People rely on it. I'm embarrassed on behalf of the industry that a user can have such a bad experience every day. LibreOffice is looking very tempting again.
I'm all for going paperless and have switched to paperless notifications of most things, (although I do find myself printing a lot out to hand to my accountant at the end of the year which rather makes me feel like a distributed printing service).
A few Westfield shares means that I get notifications such as the one shown here that just came in.
I noticed that it took rather a long time for my email client to download the email and the "hero" image of "Westfield Sydney City - Feb 12" rendered progressively.
It turns out that the image they embedded in the email, from an email & SMS marketing service called Vision6, is a 6MB image which measures 3495 x 2713 pixels!
It's a lovely image but really, this is abuse of my inbox. Please don't do that.
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