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wots a qso card
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Jan 8, 2015 07:38
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rotor posted:wots a qso card a post card that has a photo on one side of your setup, and your station's callsign and the receiving station's on the reverse, perhaps signed with your callsign over hte photograph side usually of spectacular mountains you live on, or your huge antenna farm, or some other penus extending aspect of your surroundings
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Jan 8, 2015 07:47
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also i meant QSL card not QSO - QSO is the communication success QSL is the acknowledgement of communication e: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSL_card
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Jan 8, 2015 07:49
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yeah they're sending you electronic QSL's and the $2 is for return postage for you to mail a card back. musta been an address mixup somewhere. Back in the day they would have mailed you a card, and included a couple of "International Reply Coupons", these weird antiquated "this is good to send One Letter From Any Country To Any Country, Very Slowly" stamps, for the return card. Traditionally American hams instead included a couple of "green stamps" for return postage when sending overseas though. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 17:22
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time to make up some wacky fuckin cards
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Jan 8, 2015 19:07
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i want vaporwave style cards gotta get my call sign first I guess
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Jan 8, 2015 19:52
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i should go take the exam at some point. still.
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Jan 8, 2015 20:00
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wait too long and i will become a volunteer examiner and park my bus in front of ur driveway so you cant go to work till you pass lol
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Jan 8, 2015 20:04
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i dont drive to work and dont have a driveway. owned.
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Jan 8, 2015 20:16
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more radio hacking, replaced the shameful old uncompensated crystal with a modern TCXO, at 20 MHz nominal I measured 19.999'999'2 Mhz or around 0.04 ppm frequency error referenced to my old rubidium reference (which itself isn't calibrated well enough to accurately measure that precisely) stayed that stable for around 30 minutes too pretty drat impressed with these $30 TCXOs, will have to check in a year or so to see how badly they age, i was considering getting a OCXO eventually but if this keeps its accuracy there's no need also replaced the old gas discharge tube rated for 1kA and known for failing from normal static buildup on wire antennas with a Bourns 2049 series 250V/15kA rated one, should handle nearby lightning strikes far better than the old one running 100W into a tuned bit of wire and it didn't even glow
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Jan 8, 2015 20:17
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longview posted:more radio hacking, replaced the shameful old uncompensated crystal with a modern TCXO  I wonder if I can replace the crystals in the old fixed-channel AM/SSB marine HF transceiver I've got with one of these babies for amateur operation??
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Jan 8, 2015 21:39
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Jonny 290 posted:wait too long and i will become a volunteer examiner and park my bus in front of ur driveway so you cant go to work till you pass lol i'm studying for the general right now and according to the test i think you'll need at least two more VEs for that 
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Jan 8, 2015 21:44
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atomicthumbs posted:
i did that in my FT-747 for the main timebase, it improved accuracy a little bit but the trouble with older rigs is the main time base for tuning can be upgraded, but then you also have to upgrade the various beat oscillators used to receive/transmit SSB for the beat oscillator in SSB if the last IF is at 455 kHz (somewhat common in older radios) then USB reception will use a separate 455 kHz - 2.7 kHz oscillator, for LSB it's +2.7 kHz, exact frequencies depend on what kind of filter bandwidth is used in the TS-850 literally all the other frequencies used for tuning and beat frequencies is generated based on the one 20 MHz reference so updating that improves everything to answer your question properly, you'd have to build a frequency synthesizer that covers the frequency range you need (from the lowest frequency crystal to the highest frequency), a TCXO only runs at a single precise frequency and can't be meaningfully tuned except to make minute changes for calibration. they're also only available in standard frequencies like 10, 20, 12 MHz etc. that's a fairly tricky thing to do... if you want to test it quickly jonny has been working on some arduino controlled DDS based frequency generators you might be able to use as a replacement depending on the frequency range, so start by measuring the actual frequency of the crystals (it's not the transmit frequency) and comparing it to what channel it makes then program the generator to make that frequency and wire that signal to the output of the crystal oscillator circuit and see if it works
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Jan 8, 2015 21:56
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longview posted:a TCXO only runs at a single precise frequency and can't be meaningfully tuned except to make minute changes for calibration. so did this radio, so i might as well just choose some super cool calling freqs and call it a day
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Jan 8, 2015 22:53
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for crystal radios i think you can often hook a dds up to the crystal socket which then makes the rig frequency agile.
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Jan 8, 2015 23:26
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Crankit posted:for crystal radios i think you can often hook a dds up to the crystal socket which then makes the rig frequency agile. yeah this, the only real challenge is level matching, which isn't much of a challenge if you have a scope and some trim pots with that done the next step is hooking up an optical encoder and possibly replacing the beat frequency oscillators to also use DDS, but that's completely optional wrt. using the radio without crystals do you have schematics for the radio I can look at?
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Jan 9, 2015 15:50
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Pham Nuwen posted:i'm studying for the general right now and according to the test i think you'll need at least two more VEs for that ill take things i forgot about 5 minutes after taking the exam for $500 bob
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Jan 9, 2015 16:00
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Adding to wishlist: http://www.tnc-x.com/TNCPi.htm kit price is unbeatable and that's like a leisurely 42 minute solder session
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Jan 9, 2015 18:12
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my latest wish list addition is a GPS disciplined oscillator, the uncanny accuracy of that TCXO has left me wondering how good the cal is in the rubidium standard might be able to check it against a cesium standard in a while though
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Jan 9, 2015 18:15
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Jonny 290 posted:Adding to wishlist: the kit price doesn't seem too bad but what does it do, is it an fsk tnc for tx and rx
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Jan 9, 2015 19:24
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i saw a bunch of those cards on the wall when i visited the ham radio station @ the diefenbunker (VE3CWM)
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Jan 9, 2015 19:38
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Crankit posted:the kit price doesn't seem too bad but what does it do, is it an fsk tnc for tx and rx yeah afsk, bell 202. it could be homebrewed but i make the cost of it in an hour, it's not worth DIYing such a commodity type item. i've been hating softmodems lately.
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Jan 9, 2015 19:43
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can it do psk or qam, i'd be very interested if it did them
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Jan 9, 2015 19:48
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longview posted:my latest wish list addition is a GPS disciplined oscillator, the uncanny accuracy of that TCXO has left me wondering how good the cal is in the rubidium standard http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/crystals-and-oscillators/oscillators/852334?k=atomic 
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Jan 9, 2015 20:04
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naw it's just a little basic 202 modem. howevvvvver I did see some modem chips that did 202, 103, and PSK. i will see if i can find them again
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Jan 9, 2015 20:09
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Bloody posted:http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/crystals-and-oscillators/oscillators/852334?k=atomic that's pretty amazing that they got a rubidium oscillator down to that size, i picked up a FE-5680A when they were still dirt cheap and modded it with a TTL converter using a super fast comparator and buffer, but that's around the size of my frequency counter the advantage of a GPSDO is that it won't ever require calibration since the GPS network will always keep time on average, but i'd expect it to require at least a few days to settle properly so hardly a practical choice for quick measurements someone actually makes a 10 MHz converter module for the TS-850S that takes a 10 MHz signal in instead of 20, i could have the most accurate ham station on the air e: just ordered a cheap 10 MHz OCXO for my frequency counter so i don't need the 5680 every time i need to make a decent measurement, only trouble is i got a 5V oscillator and it turns out the OCXO option originally used a separate winding at 24V to supply the heater also it actually runs off 1 MHz internally so i'll need a scaler and a buck converter for this to work eh, should be a fun job to make this work longview fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jan 9, 2015 |
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Jan 9, 2015 20:33
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what's the diff between a tcxo and an ocxo
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Jan 9, 2015 21:30
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one is temperature-compensated while the other maintains a regulated temperature
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Jan 9, 2015 21:31
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Crankit posted:what's the diff between a tcxo and an ocxo tcxo = temperature compensated crystal oscillator oxco = oven controlled crystal oscillator basically the oxco is a crystal in a literal miniature oven that is set to an exact temperature becauise the temperature is always constant the crystal is very precise
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Jan 9, 2015 21:37
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Crankit posted:what's the diff between a tcxo and an ocxo they're both ways to reduce the temperature effect on crystal oscillators, the frequency is effectively set by the dimensions of a crystal, thermal expansion is the most significant effect on their accuracy, i've seen circuits that even use them as temperature sensors by measuring the frequency oscillators can be trimmed electrically by varying a load capacitance on the output, but only over a small range a temperature compensated oscillator (TCXO) uses a temperature sensor and either an analog circuit or a micro controller to change the capacitance seen by the crystal to reduce the effect of temperature, a modern one can keep extremely good time, typical spec over temperature is +-2 ppm or less compared to a 100-20 ppm uncompensated crystal oscillator an oven controlled oscillator heats up the crystal to a stable temperature, it's then calibrated and only operated at that temperature, effectively eliminating any temperature effects, they can usually achieve around 0.01 ppm or better fake e: beaten, oh well
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Jan 9, 2015 21:37
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i love that people are falling over themselves to explain how oscillators are temperature corrected a rubidium frequency standard (a very precise oscillator is usually called a standard since you can calibrate other test equipment based on them) is more like an atomic clock (cesium standard) than a crystal oscillator, here's a video from eevblog that made me buy one back then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I55uLRRvLCU tl:dw, it relies on the physics of rubidium which has a resonance at around 6 GHz when at the right temperature, iirc it emits light or something when the exact frequency is found, a VCO generates that frequency, and a complicated circuit tunes the frequency over a tiny range to produce the most amount of light, at that peak the frequency is exactly the transition frequency (a known and drat near immovable quantity) and it's considered locked the VCO output is then scaled to make whatever frequency you need, usually 10 MHz, sometimes these are also locked to GPS oscillators to correct for long term drift it's easy to see when it's locked in when i measure something on a frequency counter based on that reference because the 10 MHz reference slowly sweeps between the edge frequencies looking for a resonance, then when it's warm it quickly changes to somewhere around the middle of that range and stays there
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Jan 9, 2015 21:49
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Those rubidium frequency standards are like $100 used on eBay. I've been kicking around a the idea of making my own atomic alarm clock with one, but $$$ and effort.
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Jan 10, 2015 00:02
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What a weird time to get into all of this. how active is digital radio right now? there's no good SDR that can hit digital yet so I can't eavesdrop on the olds to get an idea.
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Jan 10, 2015 04:20
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digital audio is still very new and is actually pretty much dominated by D-STAR (for icom nerds) and P25 (for motorola surplus nerds), both of which are only on 2m or higher, local stuff. I think that an open codec would be smarter to do but the fact remains that d-star is a very competent solution with good products. its just vendor lockin. Digital data modes (without even being pedantic as counting Morse as a data mode, which it is) are incredibly popular. a bidirectional radio to sound card interface lets you communicate on practically any widely-used mode (and a lot of barely-used ones) with even an old lovely laptop. you dont even need a 'real radio'. an exercise for the reader is to get an SDR stick sending audio via some sort of soundflower/virtual audio cable to a program like DSD+ or maybe a pager decoder (note that this may be illegal) or a ham radio packet decoder. also you should be able to pick up APRS traffic on the 2 meter band, US is 144.390 MHz FM, 1200 baud packet, I think Europe might be 144.8, I dunno about anywhere else
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Jan 10, 2015 04:28
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i might just bite the bullet and pick up an SDR finally and see whats buzzing on 144.390 around here. i'm positive that theres a couple people around here using digital radios because they keep talking (bragging?) about it on the local repeater. at this point theres literally no excuse for me to not have my license at this point so maybe i'll get to play around with a digital radio at the next meeting when i go to take my test or something
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Jan 10, 2015 05:06
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DSD+ works with an rtlsdr for p much everything digital voice but D-STAR. also if you have an upconverter or direct sample you can get some DRM or codec2 stuff happening on 20 meters. I tried using virtual audio cable but it's loving something up because nothing digital will decode even though the waterfalls all look fine, but slow scan signals are decoded like this  signal from the same call sign 2 minutes later after selecting the real sound card  maybe its dropping samples or something? idk
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Jan 10, 2015 05:17
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i'll let him formally announce but yospos has a new ham
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Jan 10, 2015 19:15
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Jonny 290 posted:i'll let him formally announce but yospos has a new ham good to hear hausbus made it all the way to he driveway
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Jan 10, 2015 19:17
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not rly ham related i guess but my lil el cheapo chinese shortwave radio is in my mailman's possession. usually comes by around 3. childe's classmate has to go to a birthday party at 4. ugh.
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Jan 10, 2015 19:18
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here are the magic settings to make all of the greybeard and russian software happy (in my case at least), ignore my flows i hadn't pressed the reset counter button since starting to mess with it, there were no overflows with those settings. also 14.230 is very active today i should probably find out where to take the technician exam, i've taken a fake one on qrz a few times and got passing scores all of the times
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Jan 10, 2015 20:48
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