FT-2900 G4HFQ programming software plus 70cm dedicated rig - the Baofeng 888.

I guess you might say I "like a bargain". Or I am "a bit tight" might be another way of putting it.

It might appear that as I have a nice rig I must have money to spread around. Yes, I do quite well and I am thankful for that. I do not earn much of it. Instead I avoid spending on things that I think I can manage myself, and save the rest for nice things.

A bit of penny pinching brought the Yaesu FT-2900 into the shack. "Proper Yaesu. None of that Chinese junk" someone said. It says underneath it "Made in China". I hadn't the heart to tell him.

Why should I care which part of the world it comes from, so long as it works? Which it does after a fashion. I do not like it, I just cannot justify spending money on a squalk box which only serves to work three people.

I am not anti-social, there really are only three people who I can regularly work on 2m FM. Regularly means once a month. Hard as I try, three people worked each month is all 2m FM does for me.

Now discontinued, this model was one of those rigs with a huge heatsink built onto the back, in an attempt to avoid the expense of a fan (what, 50p?). "Does not need a fan as it has a large heatsink" the blurb said, but it does need a fan anyway. I should have known: my FT-1900 also used to run hot even though it had a lower maximum power.

I feel guilty that I sold that FT-1900 to someone and it blew up shortly afterwards.

It need not be so. My Anytone 888 has a passive heatsink and no fan but it runs dead cool. But of course it is none of your "Proper Yaesu". It is unashamed of being made in China.

So you can get the idea. I want it to work, and I am not so bothered about where it came from. Let us say that "value for money" has clearly been a big part in my buying decisions for FM rigs.

The biggest bugbear I have with the FT-2900, apart from the heat, is that it is utterly fiendish to progamme channels into it. It takes hours, and you are not very sure if what you have done is correct. And I had to use the "memory bank link scan" to do what I wanted to do and then if the scan stopped in one bank you could not tune to the other bank ... dreadful.

I set my heart on some programming software, but this ran up against my skinflint nature. Spend £50 to a certain company for their product! Shudder. Too much. So I struggled on until I could have no more of it. Well, I used the FT-817 on 2m FM for a while and it taught me that a proper progamming suite (in that case the ancient but free "817commander") was a big plus. I could organise leaving out my local repeater (3km away), install the one I use (30km away), screen out the ones I can hear every day (50 to 60km) and listen to the one I use as a propagation predictor (80km). And I can change them at any time. Simples.

So I bought a lead with a chip and USB plug on one end and a mic plug on the other. Yes, I could have made that myself but at £4.36, post paid, from Shenzen, why bother? Ordered on 25 August, it was due here on 12 September to 6 October. Nice wide range of delivery there then. It arrived, not with a Chinese but with a Netherlands stamp on it, on 10 September.

Next step, the free programming software CHIRP. I have used CHIRP successfully on several handhelds and it is great. It claimed that the latest version worked on the FT-2900. It didn't work, or more accurately I could not get it to work. It wouldn't read the data from the rig and I could not find out why. I chased all over the shop, trying drivers (but the lead seemed to work) fiddled with CHIRP settings, and got nowhere. I now think that I could not understand the way to set up the rig for cloning. But without that information I was lost.

There is also the issue that the well known company appear to be introducing leads which do not work with CHIRP, and software which only works with their leads. I have already bought a cheap lead, and this is amateur radio. We do not mind if somebody finds his own solution to part of the problem. Or we shouldn't mind.

At this stage I might have dipped into my wallet and paid £50 or so to get a nice bit of software and lead in a neat box. £50 because no local shop seemed to stock it and I would have had to order it from USA, from which the postage is half the cost of the kit. But no, I wanted my bargain.

So I decided to give G4HFQ a try. He sells programming software which does everything which CHIRP might do but it has comprehensive instructions and explanations, which seems to be missing from CHIRP.

G4HFQ allows you to download and try his software for 2 weeks in "download only" mode. You can use anybody's lead as he does not supply them. He explains how to build your own lead. Then if it works you can pay him for a full version of the software and he sends you a code to unlock the limitations.

This is more like it. Cheap lead and cheap software? Yes! I downloaded the 2900 software and it worked perfectly with the rig in download mode. After buying the licence it works perfectly in upload too. The instructions are crystal clear and go sequentially as you work through them.

You can find G4HFQ's programming software here: http://g4hfq.co.uk/index.html

On the PC it looks like most of them do, with various screens for different functions, and one large sheet for all the memory options ...

Now that I can see what I am doing I no longer need to use to cumbersome "Memory Bank Link Scan".

The total cost to me was £4.36 for the lead and £14.33 for the software licence. As G4HFQ's site is priced in dollars it would have been cheaper for me before the BREXIT vote. Ah well. Still, £18.69 is a much better price than £50 or so, plus I engaged a bit of brain power to get it to work.

In the hobby you can always get someone to pack things together into a neat bag and by paying them more you get some sort of guarantee that everything will work together. But I have saved enough money to do something else too, and the risk of it not working opens the door to me to do some more fiddling with chips and leads, which I love anyway. In some way buying bits which work together actually spoils the enjoyment of trying to solve the problems I expect to have. I suppose trying to get CHIRP to work with the 2900 did give me a bit of a brain-teaser.
====================
In a dark corner of the FVM shack lies the 70cm FM department. The re-emergence of the single band FT-2900 means that some other rig needs to be used to access our local 70cms repeater GB3BE. Not that anyone ever uses that repeater, but I am ready to pounce if anyone does.

The rig used for 70cms is now another of my cheese-paring specials. It is my trusty Baofeng 888, costing £8 from China on eBay. OK, it has no display, no VFO, and only 16 pre-installed channels. It cannot scan these channels, and it has no tone burst, though it can produce CTCSS tones. It runs about 5 watts on "UHF". I pre-programmed the channels using CHIRP, with the repeater, the 70cms calling frequency and a working channel.

It sits in a bit of a shelf next to a power supply unit, beside the phone and generally out of sight. I use a speaker mike, and I have never yet had a reason to change the channel. Antenna is the 1/2 wave on the FT-2900 which the 888 shares via a duplexer. On 70cms it is "a colinear" - gee, what sophistication.

I needed to use flash to take a picture down there of course, and it shows up the general starkness of the situation. Out of sight and often out of mind. But crucially it works.

If the FT-2900 had been a decent rig it would have 70cms on it. But I was saving cash when I bought it. So the combined cost of the 2900 and the 888 comes nowhere near the cost of a dual band FM mobile. I am a happy camper.

The only drawback of the 888 is that it does not have the 1750hz toneburst needed to open the BE repeater. BE may say it responds to CTCSS, but it doesn't. Not worth building a tone burst as no doubt as soon as I do BE will go over to CTCSS. So I recorded a 1750hz tone which I play through the 888's speaker mic. Tight? Me? Well, that is the secret to me being able to afford all the other stuff I have. And also how I can afford to go to Italy (on the train to keep it cheap of course).

I am ... careful with my money.

I propose a toast to the £8 ham radio. Long may cheapies keep us going. Bravo Chinese sites on eBay.

Hail to everyone who allows me to save on the run of the mill stuff and spend my savings on useful things.

73

Jim

Back again, PW 70MHz contest, and limited activity

Hello again.

I am back in the country again.

I have been in Italy. I travelled by train from Berwick upon Tweed to Bari for four days sightseeing and general diversion, with no radio. There should have been a photo now of me standing in front of a train as far South as it is possible to go by rail in South East Italy (Gagliano Leuca). However, thanks to the staggering inefficiency of the local railway company FSE, we only got as far as Gallipoli (note not Galipoli, which is in Turkey).

So we will have to settle for this one which shows me at Gallipoli. The train in the background is more typical of the FSE company's trains than the one in the foreground

I also made it on a different railway, narrow gauge this time, to Matera, which is famous for troglodytic dwellings. On the journey this rather unsteady photo was taken in the station bar in Altamura by my fellow traveller Norman.

The couple in the background seem to be having a better time than I was. As soon as we sat down, took that photo and started to plan where to go next, the barman shut the bar and threw us out (the closing time for Italian station bars appears to be 13:12). We had tried to take a photo on the platform instead, but the station master told us we needed authorisation to take pictures and threw us out of there too.

The return journey I did as one continuous trip, Bari - Milan - Paris - London - Berwick, using the overnight Thello train between Milan and Paris. In Sporadic E terms that is too far for a single hop anyway, being well over 2000km, though 4 hops were a bit exhausting.

As overnight trains are becoming increasingly rare it was nice to travel on my first "International" night train - or at least that is so provided you regard Scotland and England as one country. As I have heard is always the routine on any International night train, the Border Police arrived into the compartment at 03:25 to check us against our passports. And a warm welcome they received too.

Enough of this, as we are in a radio blog rather than a railway one.
===================
Yesterday, 25 September, was the date of the annual Practical Wireless 70MHz contest. I do read and occasionally contribute to PW. It is a venerable publication and deserves some support. So I usually wade into their 2m and 4m contests. Yesterday was beset with fairly dire conditions. Signals were masked by choppy QSB. I did not stay on for long, and no dramatic DX was worked.

I did hear one other station fairly strongly but I know from experience that if he is strength 5 he will not be able to hear me. He needs to be S8 for him to even copy my callsign. We both use similar power, or at least my power is similar to what he says he runs. Any more would be over the legal limit, so he can hardly be doing that, now can he?
====================
So far in September I have of course been away for quite a while when I would normally have been on the air. There was a good VHF Es opening on 10 September. This brought in a best DX of UX4UA at 2263km, but also nice contacts into DL, F, HB9, YO and HA. I even ventured onto 4m to work HA6ZB a nice 1767km away. This was a good reminder that Es is not just a May to August phenomenon. On 40m (yes, HF!) I worked PY8JL on my wire dipole which has the centre about 5m above ground (if even that). Over 8000km on a thrown together antenna. I must give 40m a bit more of a workout this autumn.
====================
While I was away the new mast for the 6m antenna has arrived. Much to my surprise, the existing lash-up did not blow down while I was away. All we need now is to get the brackets, mast and winches organised and installed.

Geomagnetic conditions are disturbed and two coronal holes are approaching the right position to affect us. They are numbered 19 and 20 on this photo which I have copied from Solarham (Solarham is a great site and you will find a link to it on the sidebar on this site)

There are early signs of aurora. As usual we await developments.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

A good VHF August with added computerised logging.

Data entry and testing.

Data entry and testing.

When I worked for a large government agency in Edinburgh I had to do the accounts and run the personnel section. One group of staff were organising a new computer system which would save our bacon by reducing the staff numbers and save the money we would not have in future years.

All they did was sit in an office in front of screens. Their time sheets just said ...

Data entry and testing.

Every week. I just had to accept that this justified their salaries.

And so, since VQLog arrived at GM4FVM, all that I have been doing is ...

Data entry and testing.

What a boring job this turned out to be. I just hope I get as many efficiency benefits as my former colleagues used to promise.

All my 2m contacts from here are now in the log, apart from some rather tedious contest contacts. Almost no FM QSOs get logged here anyway. All the 4m contacts back to 2 October 2015 (don't ask) are also in plus all the new DXCC entities and squares back to 2009. All the 6m contacts go back to 1 April 2016, with all new countries as they arose, back to 2009. I have not yet formally organised 6m squares. And as for HF, just a few that caught my attention. It is not hard to see where my heart is. Many of the HF ones are interesting, but I have to set some priorities or this would go on forever. Also in are almost all the contacts confirmed by paper QSL cards.

What I really needed to do was get everything that mattered into VQLog, and the paper record will remain for the things I have not transferred in.

So most of August's contacts were entered live and it all went well except for one session.

Let us see what happened in August then.

Before the 14th there was a Sporadic E ("Es") opening from here almost every day, each of which was over 1000km, and on the day when there was no Es opening I worked into OZ on 4 metres meteor scatter. I would have to say that it really was very good stuff.

You can click on the images to enlarge if necessary.

VHF DX Squares Sporadic 1 - 13 August 2016

That includes new 4m squares provided by M0TBS/P and SP3RNZ/8, plus a new 6m country and square with C37MS in Andorra.  There were also some very nice long distance 6m QSOs to US0LW (2637km), SV3BSF (2638) and SV9CVY (3091). All in all a nice period after such a long drought on Es.

Then came 14 August when 6m opened again across the Atlantic. It was a good enough VHF day for me to do a proper map ..

Once again I stuck to JT65 and I lost one in QSB but still worked three

AB1NJ again (VT, FN34 4961km), NK1K (MA, FN42 4993) and WA1NPZ (NH, FN43 4914). The one that got away would have been quite nice DX - K8EB in MI, EN73, 5758km. We both stuck at it for quite a while but it just was not to be.

I was pleased that I was around for a second trans-Atlantic opening on 6m in 2016, and two new stations were worked as well. The repaired 6m linear worked well at 125 watts. I was in touch with AB1NJ who thought this was the best opening of the year from his end, but it was second best from here. Es is very selective.

Not only was 14 August the best opening of the month, but 14 August marked the decline in Es. After that there were 6 days of the month with nothing heard on Es at all. The openings which did occur were shorter and more limited in their scope.

VHF DX Squares Sporadic E 15 to 31 August 2016

Although the second half of the month was very nice, it is immediately apparent that the steam has gone out of Es for now. Not that this means the end of it. As I found out pursuing another question, I have worked more Es in January than in September, but it can happen anytime.

As the Es fades each year I tend to turn to meteor scatter. MS also worked quite well during August, with the Perseids shower doing very well for me. A new country on 4m was provided by the Andorra expedition C37MS, which I had worked earlier on 6m Es.

VHF Squares Meteor Scatter 1 to 31 August 2016

I do not turn to 2 metres too often, but in August I did. The 2m meteor scatter contacts to LY2AO (KO16, 1505km), SF3NR (JP92, 1396) SM1FMT (JO96, 1247)F4ARU (JN03 1398) LA8KV (JP52 1075) were all notable in their own ways, and not bad for 2m by any standard.

EI9E/P (IO44 560) was a new square on 4m even if was rather close. OH2BYJ (KP10, 1571) on 4m was best meteor scatter DX of the month, but I have worked him before.

IZ0MIT is showing up as a meter scatter QSO on 6m, but to be accurate it was really mostly Es with a bit of MS thrown in.

So that is it for the month of August. Sorry that shortage of time has force me to cover the whole month in one page. However, it shows what a difference there was between the first half and the second half of August. August started with Es every day, and ended with it tailing away. Good old reliable meteor scatter filled in the gaps.

The one aspect where I did not get on with VQLog was in the RSGB 4m UKAC contest on 30 August. I only had ten contacts, but keeping track of the serial numbers when I heard stations but did not work them was tricky. I need a good record of who I have worked already. No doubt VQLog can help me, it can certainly do sequential serial numbers, but I am not sure I want that type of help. Maybe contests are just better done on paper, for me anyway. 

Or maybe I just do not love contests, although I see their benefits and I do come on the bands specifically for them.

We shall see as time goes on.

Right, I am off to do some more ...

Data entry and testing.

73

Jim

GM4FVM

Does my spellchecker know something I don't ????

VQ Log, Junk Sale Hi&Low, plus TE 0552 Amp again.

It had to happen.

Someone who built radios at age ten, learned computer coding at 18, has built his own computers for 25 years, computer controls his rotator, runs a radio blog and even sometimes solders things together cannot continue to use a paper log book.

It finally became painfully obvious that things could not carry on last month. A couple of years ago I wrote a database program to keep track of my countries and squares worked. This was fine until I came to extend it to 6 metres. The process involved ploughing through log books, working out which contact was important, and entering details. Then it occurred to me that his was a waste of effort. If I had a system that included all the likely contacts then I would not need to do double entries, and it could work out what was important based on filters I entered myself.

Plus my memory is not what it was. For example, I discovered that I am capable of forgetting entire VHF openings, and for that I blame the fact that there are more and more openings to recall as "Time Marches On". My memory must have some finite limit. And the ultimate issue - this is a hobby. It should be as simple as it can be. Trying to store information on bits of paper and remembering specific openings is not a good use of my organic storage.

I could not ignore another great pointer either. I became self-employed in 1999 when my employer kicked me out on account of my failing health (I suspect their pension scheme did not expect me to be alive and kicking for so long). I took a spreadsheet which I had used to keep track of my non-employment earnings and expended it to cover the increasingly complex ways I earned my keep. Between 1999 and 2016 this grew and grew in complexity. But it was a product of its era. In 1999 I wrote it in Lotus 123. The fact that Lotus 123 still runs on Windows 10 is a bit of a surprise (the associated database stopped working years ago). But I had to admit that 123 no longer meets my needs, or at least the 1999 version doesn't. So, regretfully, I re-wrote it in a more modern format. Last week I did my 2015-2016 tax returns which are the last based on  accounts held in 123. Anyway, now that I am more retired than working my accounts are simpler.

Flags at half mast, end of an era. I just have to accept that MSDOS is dead. If only RTTY would go the same way.

So I have all the proof I need to show I have to move with the times. VQLog seemed the obvious solution as EA6VQ already provides my lifeline with DXMaps. Also, the great and the good of the VHF world already use VQLog. You can find VQLog if you follow the link on the sidebar to DXMaps and click on "Software" and then it appears on a drop down menu. I tried out the sampler version for 6 days before buying the supported version.

Unfortunately VQLog does not seem to do tax returns as well.

There are lots of things you can do with VQLog that I do not need. With five rigs turned on around me I cannot use the software to set or record my working frequency. At the moment it is 28.1261 (or 24.92461), 50.276, 70.230, 70.450 and 145.7625, and I am transmitting on two of those from time to time. Neither can it turn my rotator as I have two rotators. So I can leave those features out. It is the storage, sorting and mapping features I can make use of.

So more of that later but it has taken AGES to capture all the contacts I feel I need into the software.

D'oh. Maybe I should have changed years ago. But would I just have written my own log software in Lotus, or Quicken, or Scribe, or some now entirely defunct package? Probably.

At least now I am able to use logs from WSJT-X and HRD-Log to fill some of the gaps. Also, I can use my existing database information to identify the key contacts I need to enter. There are just too many of them. I am only covering my period at this QTH, about 8 years, as I re-set my logging clock when I moved here from G-land.
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Well that is why I have been fairly silent on the blog lately. I have been too busy pressing keys.

I did find time to visit the Cockenzie and Port Seaton Club "Junk Night".

They really need a better name for it. I have seen it called a "mini-rally" which describes it better.

Anyway, the highs of Cockenzie are always the people you meet there. You always encounter like-minded individuals, people you knew from years ago, and others you just bump into. Then there are long conversations about common interests and radio problems you share. Usually there is a bit of belly-aching from me about the world in general. Actually buying and selling things comes last for most people.

I was surprised to be approached by Jim, GM4DHJ. Surprised because he reads this blog. How he recognised me is a bit of a mystery, but he did. We had a good blether about lots of things and it was great to meet him and his XYL. I did rather take over their stall, but then maybe selling things was not the only purpose they had either.

It says a lot about the spirit of these events that you can go along with nothing particular in mind, then meet people who you can talk to for ages.

Me, Jim GM4DHJ and Jim's XYL

It is a casual get together with some trade stands, a raffle and a very fine array of snacks and filled rolls. It is clear to see that the average age of the amateur in South East Scotland is getting higher. They are also getting heavier. At least the Cockenzie and Port Seaton club takes a sensible approach to training new amateurs of all weights. If only my local club would do the same.

I looked long and hard at two second hand (used) VHF rigs. One was a pretty ancient 2m one, and the other a more modern synthesised one which included 70cms. OK, the old one will be deaf by modern standards but I have a nice pre-amp. It is a pity that dedicated VHF rigs are no longer made by the main producers. I understand the economic arguments that brought this about, but from a technical point of view surely a single band rig must be capable of being better on a specific band than a multi-band one. Which I guess is why so many VHF enthusiasts use transverters. Anyway, I did not buy either of them.

Those were the highs. Now for the lows. What could offend me about this item for sale for £15?

It is a controller for a Yaesu G-600 rotator. The RC version, just the like the broken one I have.

Well, as I went into in some detail earlier in the blog, when my controller packed in I thought it was be impossible to replace. I bought an EA4TX ARS-USB controller, and very fine it is. But the computer controller was over £200. I feel pretty sure that I would have gone for this one had I known it was around. Bah. I could have spent the £185 on any number of things.

Not really a junk sale when it has useful things like this in it. I didn't buy it!

I didn't buy anything. For the first time in years, I left Cockenzie empty handed.
================================
My TE Systems 0552G 6 metre band linear has been back under the soldering iron.

As was discussed earlier down this blog, I repaired a break in the switching circuits, or rather duplicated the 13.8V line to the switching panel, bypassing a break in some unknown place buried under the circuit board.

This was not quite prefect. The switches were not working correctly - the amplifier switch worked the preamp, the preamp switch did nothing. The whole thing could not be switched off using the switches. I had routed my extra wiring round the side of the board, thinking that the original path under the board might have been to avoid RF pickup.

Sure enough, it was picking up RF. This was not a problem with data modes, but with SSB it was showing a little bit of distortion and making a very odd noise. So I sidelined it.

At this stage I must admit to a habit of not going back into something after I have worked on it. I find it very hard to re-open things and go back over something I have done before. So the 0552G sat in the corner of the shack for several weeks until I found the energy to fix it.

I had two plans. Either, Plan A, I could find a way to insert the 13.8V more directly onto the board and cut out the long wire I had installed before. Then, Plan B was to replace my long bridging wire with screened cable. Plan B was a bit of a shambles but if it worked then it would do. Plan A was the one to go for, and maybe I could find the right track on the circuit board and get the switches working properly.

Once inside, it turned out that a variant on Plan A would work. There is a track on the board taking the 13.8V from the main "amplifier in" switch to the RJ socket in the back. It passes right past the main 13.8V input. So I used just a couple of centimetres of wire to bridge onto that track and, wow, the RF pickup stopped. No need for Plan B, which might not have worked anyway.

I forgot to take a photo and I am not about to open it all up again to take one now.

So my additional wiring is now about 450mm shorter than it was, giving less scope to pick up RF. Maybe that is why the original track was under the board. Anyway, the switches still don't work properly, but the way they work has changed. The preamp switch now works the preamp! Hooray. The "amplifier in" switch also works the pre-amp, but does not turn the whole amp on or off as it is supposed to. That is because I have wired the supply to the "wrong" side of it. But that is better than it was before and I can turn it off entirely by just cutting the DC supply from the power supply.

Speaking of the power supply, it turned out that it was making some of the odd noises I had blamed on the TE Amp. It is a "MyDEL MP-50SWIII", stated spec 50 Amp 13.8v PSU. They are available under many names all over the world. Mine creaks as you draw current from it.

It seems to work perfectly well. The odd thing was that it added noises to the clicking made by the 0552G. So now that the linear is fixed and silent, I can hear the creaks from the PSU.

I'll just ignore them.

These odd noises do not help my paranoia. Maybe the KGB have put a bug in it, so that is why it creaks. They want to know why I have a 70MHz meteor scatter QSO with the same station in Denmark every week.

Come to think about it, that is a odd behaviour.

================================
I will keep working on the logging and maybe I will be able to review August soon. It has been an interesting "Month On The Air". But if there is an aurora on Monday expect me to be even more delayed.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

Analysis of a good day's radio

First of all, a credit to the female side of the operation who keep everything running ...

Mrs FVM and Katy are doing a bit of surfing on the net together, no doubt looking for things I never noticed we had run out of. This pair keep me in line and sometimes allow me a full day off to concentrate on radio. I owe it all to them.
 
If you ever come here expecting to be fed, you are taking a risk.

The FVM household is meat-less (except Katy who, despite being given meat, also catches her own supply).

Mrs FVM does not eat meat. I cannot eat high-iron food (at the extreme end of the scale - black pudding [blood pudding]), so I avoid red meat anyway. For different reasons I have to avoid dairy too, meaning no milk or cheese. I can manage a small amount each day which I reserve for a little ice cream or chocolate on special occasions. Most seafood is out for me. Highly acidic foods also cause me problems. Fish is pretty popular.

I am not a vegetarian although I do not generally eat meat here except on rare occasions, and then it would usually be chicken or turkey.

All this complex stuff caused my sister to ask a tricky questions "So, what do you eat?". I'll leave you to sort that out for yourselves. But in the days when I used to go to a radio club I used to be asked the question - "So what do you do on radio". In a similar sense, many amateurs who know I do mostly VHF cannot really conceive how I put the day in. They think I listen to scratchy FM stations, I suspect.

I thought that if they need an answer to that question and I no longer go to their meetings, I will try to explain it here instead.

A day in the life of Amateur Radio Station GM4FVM (9 August 2016 to be exact).

Firstly we note the date, late in the Es season here and in the general zone of the Perseids Meteor Shower. August 2016 is around the time of the first "spotless days" of the current Solar cycle. However, it turned out that 9 August 2016 was not spotless and the Solar Flux Index was 92 - quite good though I regard 100 as the trigger point for action on HF.

Secondly, I had more or less cleared the decks and this was a radio day. No interruptions were expected and I was in the house on my own.

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I only worked on 3 bands at once. 10m, 6m and 4m. I did have some conversations on 2m FM but those don't count as proper amateur activity. I did keep a watch on 2m proper but nothing exciting happened, or I didn't see it, which amounts to the same thing.

All this scene setting is very good, but what about the actual radio?

On 10m, as usual I was using WSPR. As the sunspot activity is not great I have also been watching 12m using WSPR's band hopping settings. Here is the 12m result for the day:-

The pleasantly high solar flux index (well, for this point in the cycle) made the 10m activity look a lot more interesting than recently:-

Of course this is not the way I use these results. I do not wait until the end of the day and see what I have collected. I use WSPR dynamically to let me know where the Sporadic E openings are occurring. Once I get a picture from 10m I can go onto 6m and look there.

When thinking about what the day might bring I look at the geomagnetic sites to work out if a solar storm is underway and there might be some enhanced propagation. On this day there was some, but not enough to cause an aurora. However, therefore I could expect there to be enhanced Sporadic Es.

Looking at the air pressure charts suggested low pressure and no prospect of tropospheric enhancement.

So it seemed that, in the absence of Es, meteor scatter would be the way to go. I listened around the often used frequencies 50.230, 70.230 and 144.370. There were a couple of interesting stations spotted, but none could be worked.

Fiddling about on 6m I heard IS0AWZ (JM48ng 2024km) at 12:51. He was very strong and I quickly called him. He came back, first still calling CQ, and then he went back to a Scandinavian station. OK, I though I might just listen for a while. IS0AWZ had cleverly worked out that this was Es rather than meteor scatter. Therefore, when he did not get a reply from the other station he called me. We completed a very quick QSO which would have been 599++ using conventional reporting.

I was very pleased to work Sardinia on 6m at a great signal strength. This proves that there is always the chance of an Es contact while you are waiting for meteor scatter. Although the contact took place on JT6M meteor scatter mode, that mode works well on Es and is quicker than JT65 to complete a QSO. There was no other Es noted and the propagation quickly faded. I emailed Sergio to thank him for his quick wits and he wished me all the best for the Perseids meteor shower.

And that was it for the entire morning and afternoon from 10:00 to after 17:00. Yes, there are long pauses and times when conditions can suddenly recover ... or not.

After 17:00 10m WSPR started to pick up, with stations in HB9 and OE appearing. That got me calling on 6m and at 17:19 I worked Italy on 6m (IZ6FXP JN62 1841km). Signal strengths were good at -05 dB. That sends me scuttling for 4m to find some OIRT broadcast stations. Maybe I should point East.

At 17:50 there was a 20 minute opening to the East on 4m. I worked SP6MLK (JO80 1387), OM5KM (JN98 1612), OK2BRD (JN99 1524) and SP2MKO (JO93 1345). Mostly S9 and easy to work. That is how Es usually is, first nothing, then suddenly strong signals, then nothing again.

This time, although the pace lessened, I kept hopping up and down between 4m and 6m, picking off interesting contacts. First at 18:22 was HA5CD (KN07 1838) on 6m JT65. Then back to 4m SSB for SP7BUZ (KO00 1600) at 18:28. 19:10 found me back on 6m working EA4GPZ (IN80 1706). All 57 to 59 reports.

Back to 6m at 19:34 to try IZ2DMV but the propagation was unstable and he disappeared. I always give two or three more calls in case it is QSB, but in reality at this time of night it is probably the band beginning to close.

I know that there can often be a DX opportunity just as the bands are closing. As the ionisation fades there are often DX paths which become workable - briefly. Es (and all ionisation really) is at its best in DX terms when it is weakest in strength terms.

So I hung on just to see. I was calling on 70.230 on meteor scatter when I noticed something on the display of the IC-7300. I could see some CW which appeared to be on 70.200. So I moved down but by the time I got there I could just hear some very fast weak CW. I decided to take a chance - just sending a question mark and my callsign - once. I heard more of the fast CW and thought that it had nothing to do with me. Then I picked out my callsign, my report (559) and what appeared to be Ivan (S51DI's) callsign. So I felt that I had no option but to go back on CW, but at my standard 10 wpm plodding speed. Ivan just pressed on at his speed, no doubt knowing that the band was about to close. I was stuck with it. I just had to go on and try to keep up. Anyway, I completed the QSO on CW into square JN76 at 1618km.

I was a bit shaken by my first CW QSO for ages, and an unexpected one too. I knew that once 4m closes, 6m often has a bit to go. This last gasp can also be the best DX of the day. Right at the end of the day is my favourite DX window. Well, first thing  could be too, but I am asleep then. DX is important but not worth getting out of bed for. Anyway, after 21:30 local time in August is time for a CW on 6m JT65.

First I worked SV3BSF in Patras (KM08 2640) at 20:32 and a new square. Then even better was SV9CVY in Rethymno (KM25 3092) at 20:46, bringing a new DXCC and a new square. 3000+km on VHF is not a bad result, especially as I finished just short of 22:00 local time (and local midnight at his end). I gave them -05 and -01 signal reports, so good signals even then.

So what do we draw from all this? For anyone wondering what I do on VHF, this day's diary shows that although I was sitting here all day, I only worked one station until 17:00. Meteor scatter, right in the Perseids season, produced nothing at all. Every QSO was on Es. Every QSO has good signals. There was no scratching about in the noise. After a very long wait, there was plenty of action when the band did open.

Key points:-
1) I would suggest you don't take up VHF unless you are ready to wait for ages between openings
2) When the openings come they can be fast and furious
3) 12 QSOs, 6 DXCC on 6m (Sardinia, Italy, Hungary, Spain Greece, Crete), 4 DXCC on 4m (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia)
4) Best DX 3092km - average 1852km
5) Still going at 21:50 local time
6) Everyone was good signal strength
7) All the 10m operation was WSPR, all the 6m operation was JT65 or JT6M, and all the 4m operation was SSB or CW. That is my system of working on three bands. If I had a microphone for each band I would keep pressing the wrong buttons. This way one produces a map, one produces a readout and the other one makes a noise, so I can distinguish which one is which.

Not bad compared to what I might have done on 40m or 80m in 4 hours of operation. I had to wait all day for it, and it might not have happened at all. Then again, that is the joy of it for me.

I do not have a fancy station, no "competition grade" rigs, no kilowatt linears, and on 10m it is a simple vertical. On 6m just two elements. So I am pleased with that for a day's radio.

So that bring us a bit nearer the answer as to "what do I do on the radio". As to "what do I eat", well I manage to eat enough to be a bit overweight.

As I write this the Perseids meteor shower is doing fairly well so I hope to have something to report on that soon.

73

Jim
GM4FVM

All those USBs, Mixed Sporadic E and a 10 hour QSO.

I have spoken before about all the USB sockets and plugs in the back of my computer.

I happened to read this blog
http://www.the-amateur-amateur.com/
the day after I had tried to sort out similar problems myself (it is his August 2016 posting).

Like Gary I also have had problems with an add-on USB-3 card failing to recognise USB connections. This seemed to happen a random and resulted in various crashes and sometimes damaged discs when the whole thing ground to a halt in an uncontrolled way.

A bit more investigation revealed that one PCI-E USB-3 extender was causing the problem. In fact, when I thought about it, I have similar problems with several USB-3 expansion boards over the years in various computers. As this PC is from the USB-2 era, the only way to get a USB-3 socket is to use one of these boards and I need USB-3 to do my backups in a timely fashion.

So I bulked up my USB plugs as best I could onto the existing USB-2 board and the motherboard sockets. That still left a need for a USB-3 extender. This sometimes failed to be recognise plugs. I tried to put things on it which did not matter so much. these could wait until they decided to join us, maybe a few minutes after booting up, or sometimes not at all. But there are only so many sockets, and one of the rigs or data cards could not be left off for a time, nor the keyboard, mouse etc. Eventually the pitfall of this system was the EA4TX rotator controller. I could hardly operate without turning the antenna sometimes. There was no other free socket to use.

Now we get into the nitty-gritty. This "low profile" computer (called, imaginatively "Office") has only one PCI slot and two PCI-E slots. The PCI slot has a 5 socket USB-2 card in it and it works 100% fine. The USB-3 card is in one of the PCI-E sockets and a Sound Blaster board is in the other one. I need to keep the USB-3 one just for the backup disc. So I need to sacrifice the Blaster board for more USB sockets, but I cannot trust the PCI-E extension cards. I have had three and they all failed to recognise the sockets at some time of other, often with nasty results.

So I went back to the drawing board. Why have I got to install a board with circuitry, driver and the potential to go wrong when we used to do this more sensibly? So I bought a dumb set of USB sockets from Amazon for £3.53.

I like solutions like this. The fancy PCI-E boards may be very good but they are complex and evidently often fail to work reliably. This device is just a pair of plugs, some wire and a pair of double sockets. It plugs directly into the motherboard. You can also get USB-3 versions too, but my Office motherboard does not have the right sockets. And I not only save some power drain and a thing to go wrong, I save another oscillator circuit to make noise.

I have used the two socket versions of these adaptors in many computers over the years but it had not dawned on me that I could use one now. What might seem old-fashioned may also work. They have proven to be completely reliable for me so far over years of use.

All you have to check, and this important, is that your motherboard has the right sockets. Certainly my two Asus boards do, and my Gigabyte whizzo fast machine has USB-3 equivalents.

OK, I still had to lose the Blaster sound board as I need to mount the sockets where that would normally be. However, all my rigs now connect by USB (hence the need for the sockets in the first place) and not by analogue audio connections. The IC7100 and the 7300 create their own virtual audio ports. The FT-450 and 817 connect via the ZLP interface which does the same. So all I need to do "audio-wise" is to find a home for the 3.5mm audio jack for the PC audio - and a cheap USB card does that. It uses one socket, and the items moved from the USB-3 board fill the rest. There we go - 4 sockets on the motherboard, four on the PCE card and four on this adaptor. Plus a USB-3 socket on the unreliable PCI-E board.

Everything is now running smoothly.

Amazon said when I ordered the sockets (25 July) that they would arrive - from China - between 3 and 23 August. That did not inspire confidence. They arrived on 2 August.

Low tech solutions often work. This one does. My rotator now works as soon as I boot up, as do the printer and scanner, which previously were unknown quantities depending on whether the USB-3 board would remember to connect them. And the USB-3 board - well it can join us now when it likes.

By the way, here is an image of my first computer (well, first if you ignore Sinclair ZX-81s and ICL main frames) ...

Minus the cat of course. This was sold to me around 1990 by a notable radio amateur. I pointed out to him recently that it has since failed. Mind you, it did have a 7.16 MHz processor and 384Kb of memory. It came with one 5.25" internal floppy disk drives. This current "Office" computer has a processor running at 4.2 GHz and 8Gb of RAM and it is in fact the lowest spec of my three desktops. And it does not have a floppy disc drive. But then the Tandy had no USBs, which had not been invented then. Maybe I have to accept that the Tandy is past its expected useful lifespan.
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The geomagnetic storm produced by the recent coronal hole has continued for three days, producing good Es every day (usual space here for derogatory comment about Es predictions based on jet streams). This is what this coronal hole looks like.

So far we are into the fourth day of high speed solar wind and raised X-ray levels.

Day 1 I have already reported on. Day 2 created a large Es opening over most of Europe but I only had one contact (and an unfinished one - see later). Day 3 was very nice and I am writing this in Day 4.

Day 3 was pretty good here with Italy, Solvenia, Germany, Poland, Switz, Dodecanese, Spain, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Austria all worked on 6m.

On 4m I worked Czech, Croatia, Poland and Hungary. Despite the total I reckoned that signal strengths on 4m were lower than I expected. At one stage I had to go out to see the doctor and I decided to leave the mast cranked up. I usually crank it down if I go out, but this was short visit so I reckoned I could leave it up. Later on that night I went out to lower the mast only to discover that it had been down all day. Lowered both when I was working 4 countries and also while I was at the doctor.

No wonder I was not getting anywhere on meteor scatter. My antenna was pointing straight at the wall of next door's house.

The 6m antenna is on a different mast so it was not affected.

Grrr. I suppose we all make mistakes ....
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On Day 2 the Es kept 6m open until 22:00 and only then did I work one station. A second station called me on JT65. I replied with a report and he called me again. I sent his report, and he called me again. This went on for about ten minutes. I sent his report but he just kept calling me. He did not send a report. So I sent messages in the 12 character space left for use in JT65. "U JUST CALL ME" and "MY RST PSE". But he just kept calling me. I then sent nothing and he called me again. So I turned off and went to bed. Returning the next day, I called and the same station returned with a report (note, not a call so, it was the same QSO) and we conducted a QSO, exchanged reports and then some friendly comments.

The whole QSO took 10 hours 49 minutes to complete. I cannot count it as breaking my longest QSO (3 hours) as my transmission was not continuous. But as he came straight back with a report, do you think that he was there for the whole night, calling me? Maybe.
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The solar wind and Bz factor are all still high enough for an aurora, though we have just had excellent Es. There have been a few auroral contacts, but none here so far. I am still hoping that it might tip over into an aurora at some stage over the next few days.

73

Jim
GM4FVM