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  • Yaesu Interfaces

    Audio board
    Audio board
    OM Doug Defty ZS1DUG from the Cape asked me what software and hardware I use to interface my Yaesu FT-857D and this is the reply I sent him:

    Hello Doug, hows the Cape!

    Lets tackle the software first: I started using Ham Radio Deluxe as my main package this past weekend. The main reason is the handling of the logbook. I want to start collecting some awards, and it feels like HRD is going to do it for me. However I played with many packages before making a decision: fldigi, DXLab and a few others. To be honest, I’m keeping all of them on my laptop because each one does something special that I like. What I am saying is, my contest logbook is from now on going to be on HRD. The rest is for playing. DXLab had a very easy way to monitor HF beacons, which I loved. fldigi on the other hand was great to sort out my cables with and watch the waterfall display. There are other nice programs too, you should try them all and keep the one that works for you.

    The hardware followed an equally diverse route. I have two radios (FT-857D and FT-840) and thus I needed two setups. Eventually I realised it was over the top to build so many cables, but I like experimenting. Now, you need two cables per radio: 1= audio, 2=radio control.

    (1) The audio to and from the radio into your PC can easily become contaminated with RF and hum loops, therefore you need to isolate the signals with small audio transformers. I bought one board from Jaco ZS6PX and it was almost identical to the one I bought from Phillip ZS6PVT, Essentially it is a matchbox-sized device with two isolation transformers and a capacitor/resistor or two. The transformers we buy from Communica for a few rands, see my picture attached. This one also has a PTT circuit onboard, but of course the Yaesu can PTT through the CAT cable and I don’t use the PTT on my radio. Total cost for an audio interface is R50 or so if you build it yourself.

    (2) The radio-control cable (CAT in Yaesu language) is a little more complicated, although not terribly so. I am going to include a HRD manual for your perusal that I found on the internet and it has a few diagrams. You have to do level-shifting from 0-5volt to +/- 12volt. The hardest part is finding a board to simplify your construction. Basically there are 2 ways to interface: you either use a MAX232 chip, or you use a few transistors. I’ve tried both and they work. I even built the “tini-cat” circuit diagram that I found on the internet. Notice though the generous use of little ferrite rings everywhere to kill RF interference. The photo shows the board I purchased from Jaco ZS6PX (transistors) and Phillip ZS6PVT makes a chip one. Both work very well. Built-up they can cost you a little bit, but if you are handy with a soldering iron you can do it yourself. My first one I built for nothing, stripping an old CB radio for parts!

    RS232 board
    RS232 board

    NB NOTE: Just remember, the boards you build yourself are Serial (RS232) interfaces. Modern computers don’t have serial ports any more, so you should have an additional USB-to-Serial converter cable handy. This adds around R100 to your budget if you have to buy it.

    (3) While we are on the topic of expanding your radio, I want to mention that I also built an external S-Meter for my 857, the hardest part was to print the new scale to stick onto the existing dial.

    (4) My final add-on is a small board that I bought from Vivian ZS6VD. You plug it into your mic cable, and you use a PC Headset as a mic-and-headset combination. Quality very good and it took me an hour to build. Now I can operate silently at night while the family is asleep..

    Doug, I was ecstatic when I was first able to control my rig from my PC, and so I wish you luck with your project. Don’t hesitate to contact me for more info. I’m putting this email on my website also.

  • Ham Radio Maps of ITU and CQ Regions

    Ham Radio Maps
    Ham Radio Maps
    I found these really useful maps of the world showing ITU and CQ regions on the website of EI8IC [click here].

    They will make a nice poster on your wall and helps to identify those hard to remember zones.

    Do you have other maps or charts you might want to tell us about?

  • First PSK31 Contact in 2013

    Digital Test
    Digital Test
    Wow what an exciting weekend! Greatly inspired by Noel Hammond (ZR6DX) during his talk at the West Rand Amateur Radio Club, I put together a few items that have been gathering dust in my junkbox. Being late in the day I didn’t expect anybody to be around, so I sneaked a quick CQ on what I thought was an empty piece on the 20m band just to see if everything was working and if there is something going out on the wires.

    Well, you can imagine my excitement when ZR6AOC (David Cloete from just up the road in Weltevreden Park) replied. My hands were shaking, I didn’t have any macros loaded to assist me, and I didn’t even know how many watts or splattering I was emitting! But I couldn’t resist and I replied.

    To my horror David came back! He wasn’t joking! Its working! We had a nice if short QSO, he even gave me a good 599 report. I think I forgot to breathe. The result is that I am hooked on digital. As you can see from the photo the electronics wasn’t built into a case yet, but shortly afterwards they were all neatly tucked into a box and by the end of the weekend I made 10 contacts and 6 countries. Awesome stuff!

    BTW I’m setting up the Yaesu FT-840 permanently as a digital station so I don’t have to swop cables, and it is going out on a Broadgun Travelling Wave antenna (from Webb Industries, a multiband inverted Vee wire). All my contacts so far have been around 50 watts.

    Don’t hesitate to give me a call sometime, I would love to make contact with you!

  • Measurements Abound

    Major_MTD72
    Major_MTD72
    My radio and antenna collection is finally getting some rest, and my focus for this month has been power. Yes, getting enough 12 volts into all the boxes. My original Yaesu FP-707 Power Supply (the one that originally came with my FT-707) went Missing-In-Action (yup we live in South Africa) during the moves from my old house to my new house, and all I could find to use temporally was a FP-12 – a nice but slightly underpowered 12 Amp power supply.

    Now “underpowered” is an interesting statement, as I didn’t have any way to actually measure the current and voltage outputs of my power supplies. Initially, while I was fixing old radios and pulling wire antennas around, it didn’t really matter if I was slightly subjective about my power and a few amps here or there wasn’t enough to worry about. Even a standard hobby multi-meter (DMM) can read 10 Amps and that was good enough, initially.

    But gradually the need arose for more accurate measurements. Reading voltage was easy on the DMM, but reading up to 10 Amps for short bursts with the same DMM was just not good enough. So I shopped around and I came across the most useful little meter by the Major-Tech brand [click here] which reads out a digital 0-20 Amps with the relative ease of plugging in a fuse. Yup, as you can see from the picture it has a dongle the size of a screw driver handle with a nice digital read-out, connected to a measuring pad with a short wire. Now, this little beauty (an adapter for easy current measurement on blade type fuse connectors for cars) plugs into any blade-type fuse holder. Imagine that – I could actually see how much current I was pulling from my car battery without making any cuts or connections to the wiring AT ALL! All I did was find the cigarette lighter fuse, pull out the fuse and plug in this little monster – and there I had a direct, real time read-out of current.

    Major_MTD72
    Major_MTD72
    While it is a little pricey off the bat, this became less of an issue as its usefulness was soon expanded to do duty into other territories. Firstly, the adapter clips open to reveal a sense wire of about 3cm long. If you want to read higher ranges, just solder your sense wires a little bit closer to each other on this sense wire, and obviously re-calibrate (display is fixed at 0 – 20 whatevers). I’ve set mine now to read 0-40 Amps, but understand in my case I have to double the reading, so if I read 8 Amps I know it is 16 Amps.

    The second change is to solder two connecting wires to the two measuring spades (see first photo). I use heavy duty chocolate strip connectors for making temporary connections around the shack, and so now I can insert this baby in line with any power line for an extended period of time if I wish, making lots of measurements. A hobbyist’s dream tool!

    I bought mine from Mica but I’m sure any Major-Tech supplier can order one for you, or you can buy on-line. Enjooy!

  • Oscar Bravo DX Group

    44OB003 Certificate OB
    44OB003-Certificate-OB
    It is wonderful the many ways our roads cross, and how we meet people that will play a role in our lives.

    So I met Jaco le Roux ZS6PX from Vereeniging who makes little programmer boards to connect a PC / Laptop to a Yaesu or Kenwood or ICOM radio. Nifty little PC Board (some info here). Sometimes it is also called a CAT cable although I’m sure that could be a trademarked name. Nevertheless he shows me his shack and mentions that his dad, Hennie ZS6HLR is a big CB fan and an active SWL listener. His callsign for the 11 meters band is 44OB001. At first I recognised the 44 as a type of division number, having Googled some previous comments by other people. Immediately I was interested in knowing more.

    Now I must say that “freebanding” is only discussed in the most disparaging way by “real” hams. I don’t agree with some of their harsh opinions, and I notice that it is only “real” hams that have this sense of self-appointed self-importance because they managed to achieve something 30 years ago and which they want to hang onto for dear life. Perhaps we should ask for a re-test every five years and see how much they remember of todays rules. But that is a discussion for another day.

    Having met a “real” “freebander” was something I’ve always wanted to do. This is so cool. Anyways it resulted in me applying for a callsign 44OB003. Now I can get some more real information from the websites. I guess Freebanding is illegal in South Africa and transmitting on those illegal frequencies without a proper RSA license are not advised, but there is nothing stopping you from listening legally to the regular shortwave bands?

    Happy listening!

  • TopTV and DSTV

    TopTV Dish
    TopTV Dish
    Picture of Thulani on the roof again. Useful to have a spannerboy when things drop to the ground. Anyways, to his left (picture right) is my newly installed, rusted and bent, 90cm dish pointing to SES-5 (also known as the TopTV satellite).

    What a mission to get it going! No, not the holes in the chimney – Thulani took care of that. Not the 5th cable into the ceiling either. No, the frustration to get the dish aligned. I align my caravan-portable 35cm dish to DSTV in seconds, I’ve done it successfully many times over. I’ll write more about it in a follow-up, but here are some gentle pointers for TopTV (pun intended):

    (1) The signal peak is going to be much sharper thank you think, and much sharper than DSTV. Yup, a single bump on the side of the dish will go from full signal lock to pie-in-the-sky nothingness. Make very small adjustments to the dish, otherwise you will miss it. DSTV is broad, man.

    (2) The direction (azimuth) is slightly more to my left (from behind the dish; west) than what I though. I spent many hours with Google Earth and other spotter websites to get the exact direction, but they were slightly wrong by about 4 degrees or so. It might be the way my house lies on the stand, I don’t know. But keep on sweeping and you will find it. Elevation in my case was slightly more critical than azimuth.

    (3) Make sure your LNB is 10700 or 10600 and set your alignment tool and decoder to that. It doesn’t work otherwise.

    (4) The dish is going to point *MUCH* higher than you think is possible, and much higher than DSTV. I must have spent an hour on the roof pushing the poor dish completely out of shape getting nothing, nada, nilsch. Then I looked at the mounting bracket and it had an adjustment hole for higher elevations. First sweep and I had signal lock. It looks far too high on the photo but it works very well.

    (5) Remember to turn your LNB to the new rotation, I left mine at 7 o’clock for SES-5 and it gives good results. DSTV is at 4 o’clock.

    (6) A proper tool is worth every penny. Buy one, borrow one, whatever. You are NOT going to get it aligned without a proper meter. See 7 below.

    (7) With DSTV the 22KHz signal is off and you can hear the buzzer quite loudly. That’s how the little DSTV buzzer works. It doesn’t work on other satellites or on TopTV. Nope, I tried it, don’t bother. Besides, the beam is so narrow you are unlikely to hear the blip anyway.

    Having said all of that I am now the proud owner of two dishes watching TV on two monitors. Its going to give me a headache soon but it was fun while it lasted. My next venture is to watch some FTA (Free To Air) channels with my Strong FTA Decoder. If you have favourites – come-on … share please!

  • Ry-hier RaDAR says my mom

    ry-daar
    ry-daar
    I remember as a young boy when we went somewhere my mother used to give my dad, who was struggling with the old Plymouth’s various idiosyncrasies, instructions (in Afrikaans) Ry-hier! Ry-daar!

    So, when I got back into the hobby after my long absence, I noticed this new thing on the SARL website called RaDAR. Since there was a lot for me to do to catch-up I left it alone for a few months, but eventually I decided to take a deeper look. My father-in-law (SK ZR6CY) used to be a member of Hamnet and the SAPS Reserves so he was always out with some mobile event. I have fond memories of the Total Rally in Swaziland. In those days of course it meant 12 volt car generators who blew up at the slightest provocation but we still managed to work a few networks.

    Seems like RaDAR is right up my alley. While I don’t mind ragchewing from time to time, I also feel that a bit of stress adds to the interest, and mobile operating within some restraints or constraints can be interesting. I just want to mention the frequencies used as published by ZS6BNE on his website click here

    See you down the log! 73s de ZS6ALU

  • Sounds Better

    bhi NEDSP1062-KBDa
    bhi NEDSP1062-KBDa
    Comparing my two rigs, I was under the impression that my older Yaesu FT-840 had much better sounding audio than the new Yaesu FT-857D. This is strange for me, and counter-intuitive, as I thought the newer radio would perform better. I also have to mention that I have a selecion of antennas to choose from, and one antenna might sound slightly better than the other.

    But the basic root-problem remained a high frequency noise on the audio, especially on 40m, that made it very unpleasant, difficult and tiring to listen to.

    I invested in a MFJ-784B Tunable DSP Filter to see if it made any difference. It was nice to play with and I will write more about it later, but sufficient to say it doesn’t get rid of my problem. It improved the average sound but the high frequency annoying fuzz was still there.

    So yesterday I bought a dhi DSP Amplified Module (NEDSP-1062 KBD) and rushed home, prepared to be dissappointed again. I rigged up a lid from an old CB radio and tagged and taped everything together to try it out before deciding on a more permanent installation (remember, it might not work). Well, 4 hours later and many delightful QSO’s in the log I can honestly say: “It works!”. You can believe everything they say on their websites, and all the audio clips they give are exactly as I experienced it on my bench.

    Essentially the kit I have (there are others too) sits in the speaker line. The 1062 is an amplified unit that takes speaker output, processes it and throws it at your new external speaker. It has multiple levels of processing and I found myself settling (after much playing) on number 5 (16dB tone reduction and 17dB white noise reduction), but I can imagine with other radios and speakers and setups the ability to easily choose more or less processing is going to be a big help.

    Certainly a must-have on the Yaesu FT-857D and one that I cannot operate without. I see they make a specific one that can be mounted inside the case of the FT-857 with the buttons easily accessible on the top. I like that. I might even sell this one and buy that one. The processor is identical, it is just the mounting thats going to be easier.

    Verdict? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best, I will give it 11 because it has consistently surprised me.

  • World Map

    Visitors

  • The Missing Q Codes

    We use so few Q-codes nowadays! QTH, QRM, QSL, and thats about it. While there is an official list, some very useful Q signals have never made it to the ARRL’s and Amateur’s official list. I came across this very useful list. Only use in appropriate situations. As with regular Q signals, each can be a statement or a question, depending on whether a question mark follows it.

    QBS – It’s getting deep in here.
    QBS? – Did I tell you about the one that got away?
    QLF – I am sending with my left foot.
    QLF? – Are you sending with your left foot?
    QNO – I am sending through a non-standard orifice.
    QNO? – Are you sending through a non-standard orifice?

    The complete list can be viewed [click here]