Softrock still works!
[ No Comments ] Posted on 07.08.10 in Amateur Radio, SoftRock
I pulled the old softrock rxtx v6.3 out of storage last night and managed to get it working with a string antenna. This thing still amazes me on how sensitive it can be considering I was just using a few feet of random wire inside at ground level. I used Sebastian Mrozek’s software DSP Radio on my mac which is pretty slick but underdeveloped. It has a lot of potential but I haven’t seen an update for a while and I start to doubt it will be. I also found that the audio quality was much better when using my EMU 0202 USB sound card.
I didn’t try transmitting since I don’t have a decent antenna system and don’t want to hurt the PA circuit. I might have to try and construct some sort of simple wire dipole inside my lair. Alas I am without a windows machine so no Rocky for me (Rocky is a pretty ice simple piece of software to run a softrock with, but it doesn’t work under wine) so I can’t use PSK and my morse code is not up to scratch for a QSO so I dunno who I would talk to anyway. Plus, I am waiting on a keyer from MJF which they seem to be taking forever to supply.
OK – enough rambling…
Field Day 2010
[ No Comments ] Posted on 07.02.10 in Amateur Radio, CW Morse Code
Already another year down with field day 2010 behind us.
This year I hooked up with the Harvard Wireless Club (W1AF) and the MIT Amateur Radio Club (W1MX) for a joint field day effort. Here we are, after pulling down our antennas:
For me, this was a great year. I worked quite a few stations and built the confidence required to call CQ, work through noise and generally find a rhythm. I’d really like to work CW next year, but from what I could tell, most CW operators are going at 20+ wpm, way out of my range.
I was told about a program called morse runner, which I am running under wine on my Mac – it works very well and is a lot of fun. It basically simulates a competition like environment where you have to exchange signal report and a logging number with a computer simulated ham. I think its helping me listen to code in a “real” environment. If you are learning code (and already have a good grasp of it, its not for beginners) then definitely give this a shot.
I’d also like to try PSK31 next year. I heard quite a lot of it during FD and at twice the points, I wonder if its worth it.