Endeavouring to learn CW
Was overdue for a post on this site. So here is a quick overview of current setup I use.
The above MMDVM PiStar radio is used with the 2 radios and the Pager below.
So short update, and yes mainly photos, but was about time and will try to update more regularly.
I am going to upgrade my broadband with VirginMedia soon, and tonight I spent a few hours setting up using the SuperHub and retiring my old Fon 2.0n router.
This of course caused some issues on my network, but was to expected. Most was sorted by setting the Wifi SSID and Password the same as old router.
The more taxing issue was sorting my 3 Raspberry Pi (Original Pi B, Pi 2 and a Pi 3). They all have static IP address.
Basically I had to change the IP range the Superhub as using from default. Then as the SuperHub had a different DNS address, I decided after some research on how to update the Raspberry Pi to use OpenDNS on them.
Editing with “sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf” the DNS line was amended as follows:
static domain_name_servers=208.67.222.222Â 208.67.220.220Â 208.67.222.220Â 208.67.220.222
I finished of the evening updating all 3 Raspberry Pis and wrote this short post.
On a side note, we’re paying around £80 for Phone & Broadband, plus whatever Sky costs. I’m going to use VirginMedia again for all 3 services and even with added movie channels will only be paying around £65 and increased Broadband speed (from about 20Mbps (tested speed) to 200Mbps hopefully on new contract. Sometimes it pays to shop around.
So I won’t go into what happened, but my computer logbooks for M0TZO got a little lost. I’ve started to rebuild from various online logbooks and what local logbooks I could find, but software for Amateur Radio logging (at least that I’ve found) isn’t up to merging properly.
So I discovered ADIF to EXCEL http://dl1hw.darc.de/adif_en.html by Harald, DL1HW. I’m slowly making a descent rebuild of a logbook and will use CloudLog ( https://github.com/magicbug/CloudLog) by Peter 2E0SQL for future contacts.
Can’t sleep, but done some Ham Radio stuff recently so about time for a brief update.
This is a screenshot from my Raspberry Pi 2 (B) running VNC on my Android phone. This Raspberry Pi runs my Flightradar24 software using a cheap USB TV stick and my Ham Radio Digital Voice Access Point (DVAP) Dongle (70cm).
I’ve recently upgraded the Raspberry Pi (& others I have) to the new Raspbian with Pixel desktop and the G4KLX D-Star software was checked for updates which runs the DVAP mentioned above.
I’ve also setup on my iPad and Android phone is the ircDDB remote software. It makes switching reflectors so much easier than programming on the handheld.
The above screenshot was taken while connected to the International D-Star net run weekly on Monday 1am local UK time, Sunday 19:00 (CDT), Sunday 00:00 (UTC). This week I didn’t check in, but heard stations from USA, Japan and Australia.
I’ve finally sorted out a setup so I can operate from home. I know it’s been a while, 18 months from my reckoning.
On Sunday after returning from a nice coffee locally I thought was time to sort my antenna and radio out.
I collected from the garage my MFJ 1788x and the speaker stand I have for it and setup in the bedroom.
I soon had it setup and decided that between my Yaesu FT-897D and FT-817ND the latter would be better due to space issues on desk for now.
After much cursing I gave up on HF, and setup my small 2/70cm antenna and was working a couple of stations through a local repeater GB3NS about 7 miles North of me. Thanks to M3NLN and G6LTT.
The HF tuning issue I’ll look into tonight, but I suspect I had the old curse of the 2 antenna sockets to blame and believe I was on the front socket in error. I’ll hopefully know this evening.