Pass Recorder 2.0 has been released for general availability, the following has changed:
You can download version 2.0 at https://www.2m0sql.com/pass-recorder/
The post Pass Recorder Version 2.0 Released appeared first on 2M0SQL.
Suspect it came as no surprise that I have been rubbish at getting shack reports written and skipped a month or two (oops) I guess one good thing is that I have been doing radio. I’m pleased to report I’m still alive, Molly (my 1 year and 10-month old toy Yorkie) & myself have been making the most of the summer weather and commercial works been ticking along nicely just the way I need it.
This month saw my birthday on the 5th of August when I turned 33 years old, I declared happily on Twitter that I had survived my body trying to kill me this long that I must be doing something right, I had a lovely quiet day doing some satellite passes and a dog walk.
Even though the weathers been nice, there hasn’t been much in the way of shack/antenna changes, although with the help of Dave M0GIW, I’m getting closer to getting on to QO-100 with all the cool kids. I have to admit, I’ve not rushed, because building the dual feed was a bit out of my comfort zone with health but also the fact it just seemed a bit too easy after setting it up.
That said with winter approaching, I thought it might be a good way to kill time at night or when the weathers so bad that I can’t move my LEO satellite antennas.
I planned to use a LimeSDR but that has now changed and I think I might just use a Pluto SDR as that seems to work better remotely with SDR Console.
I’m on the waiting list for a 13cm 10w PA that Arved M0KDS tweeted about, this should give me plenty of power for the narrowband transponder with a 1.2m dish.
This month, I launched a Patreon account this came about after a chat with Paul, M0TZO as I was trying to figure out the best way to perhaps be able to spend more time on things like Cloudlog during the working day – rather than evenings when healths poor usually.
After a 15mins we had a profile set up and after a couple of tweets, I had 5 supporters, its currently sitting at 13 now at only just over 2 weeks which is far more than I expected and is quite humbling.
As a Patreon you get a range of perks from mentions on open source product pages, personal thanks messages, weekly updates and the highest tier gets a fully hosted copy of Cloudlog. If Patreon turns out popular I’ll try to get some merch for some of the projects done.
On top of that, I’ve had several donations via PayPal and due to these combined, I can now spend a whole working day working on Cloudlog completely guilt-free.
Taking part in SARTG RTTY Contest wasn’t at all planned, it was during the 7 days my parents were down south visiting my sister so had the house to myself and not much else todo.
Rather than commit to doing an all band effort, I settled on doing a few hours on 40m, which actually turned out to be 2 hours 30mins of operating Saturday evening.
That said managed to work around Europe and 1 contact into the states
Since 2006 WhatsMyLocator has been providing the service of changing an address into grid square and then WAB Squares, of course during this time the web has evolved and the Google Maps API that we used came paid.
Sadly this is an issue due to the amount of traffic the website gets and I don’t want to plaster it in advertisements, the solution was to change WhatsMyLocator to OpenStreetMaps and a new Geocoder both which are free which means I sleep better not worrying that it will generate a huge bill at the end of the month.
The only difference users will see is the maps look a bit different and when you type an address it doesn’t automatically correct it, I’m hoping that feature will return in a future update.
Much to my surprise, I’ve already passed last years QSO total by 239 QSOs, I’m hoping this means that I’ll easily pass the 2500 contacts mark by the end of the year.
I need to put some more effort into trying to get on for HF Contests, which would boost the numbers a lot. I’m hoping to take part in CQWW RTTY which will probably be a single band effort for a few hours.
Some perhaps aren’t aware that for some time now I have been making my own logging application called Cloudlog, but instead of it running on the desktop it runs on a web server and you use it within the web browser. This is then supported by a number of desktop applications/scripts that do rig control.
Not a huge amount of new squares, but did snag some new DXCCs and also grid squares so that’s never bad, let’s delve into some of the more interesting bits.
Doug N6UA was roving on the 1st of August, on AO-7 at 18:10z managed to snag DN93, then on the 2nd managed DN75 on the same satellite at 17:11 these where both new squares and states South Dakota & Montana.
Tor DJ8MS has been roving (4th of August onwards) in Sweden and Norway this meant some new squares, JP61, JP62, JP52, JP73, JN84, JN85, JP95, JP96, KP06, JP97
Worked CY9C on the 5th of August at 14:08z via AO-91 on a two-degree elevation pass, this not only was a new grid square FN97 but also DXCC Saint Paul Island, was pleased to get this in my logbook, last QSO with CY9C was a few years back at the old QTH in Oxford, England.
Chris VO2AC in FO-93 via AO-91 on the 14th August
Oliver F5RRO/P in JN23 via AO-91 on the 20th August
Club station DK0BT in JN59 via AO-91 on the 25th August
Andy DL6AP/P in JO54, JO64, JO54 (New Square), JO63 (New Square) via AO-92 on the 26th August.
Gareth CT7/G0MFR in IM56 via AO-92 on the 26th August
Joe KE9AJ in EM59 via AO-7 on the 28th August
Jerome F4DXV has been roving while on holiday and this meant picking up some new squares CT7/F4DXV in IN60, IM58, IM59 and EA/F4DXV in IN82
Chris VO2AC/1 in GN27 on AO-91 on the 29th August
Dana VE1VOX in FN85 on AO-91 on the 27th then again on AO-92 on the 29th August
FO-99’s Linear transponder was once again activated on the 24th of August for one orbit over Europe, this was per the teams released schedule on Twitter.
I made sure that I reminded everyone to maximise QSOs and it worked at 10:14z it came up over the horizon and I worked G0IIQ, PE1NIL, EA5TT, IU2EFA and IW3HRT.
It’s disappointing that the satellite isn’t on more but the team have said on Twitter that they hope to release it again on some orbits in September and October fingers crossed!
Audio: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ape44qp3KTXP3D_yAJnWV8I2JsXg?e=sPZeey
Much to my surprise FO-99 transponder was on again on the 31st of August, Dave G0IIQ sent me a message on WhatsApp and we had a qso on the 12:22z pass, it was low at 8 degrees elevation for me and 2 degrees for Dave but we both reported hearing each other at well over S5.
The post August Shack Report appeared first on 2M0SQL.
I have decided to get back into the flow of writing monthly reports so hopefully, March gets things going, it’s been a rough month, I’ve had quite a few health issues coming down with flu then glandular fever, which on top of all the problems knocked me a bit.
However works been going well, with a couple of new clients wanting up to date business looking websites and another wanting a web application so that’s been keeping me on my toes but also resulting in radio time being pushed quite hard. You’ll find out though it’s been a good month for new satellite contacts.
This month I added a 20 turn helix from Wimo, with a stated gain of 13dB it should, in theory, be decent, it’s wired back to the shack with a 20m length of LMR400.
What has surprised me is the limited number of people who seem to use AO-92 L/V so far only working G0IIQ, OH5LK and PE1JPD.
It is working well as I can activate the AO-92 repeater with just 2 watts from the radio but 10 watts from the ICOM IC-910 does give good results.
However have to look at the long term, this will be useful once ESEOs FM Repeater gets activated and I suspect we might see further satellites use 23cms uplink to spread some of the congestion seen on 2m and 70cm.
Some perhaps aren’t aware that for some time now I have been making my own logging application called Cloudlog, but instead of it running on the desktop it runs on a web server and you use it within the web browser. This is then supported by a number of desktop applications/scripts that do rig control.
March saw quite a reasonable amount of work on it, as you can expect there’s a fair amount of legacy code and one of the biggest issues was the frontend was using a very old version of Bootstrap which is a user interface framework so my focus has been moving to the latest version and trying to give Cloudlog a more modern feel.
Of course, being the fact its open source its freely available for anyone to use at no cost and quite a few users contribute changes and fix bugs which are always appreciated.
For those who don’t want to set it up themselves via my company magicbug, I offer hosted instances for £3 a month which covers hosting and they update once a month
W5PFG in FN57, FN67 on the 2nd of March via FO-29 this was thanks to a tip-off from Dave KB1PVH.
Joe KE9AJ provided me with DN70MD on the 5th of March, then EM19 on the 13th, both via AO-7.
Gabe AL6D has been in Europe from the 2nd till the 13th of March operating as LY/AL6D (KO16) Lithuania, YL/AL6D (KO26) Latvia, RA/AL6D (JO94) Kaliningrad, OH0/AL6D (JP90) Aland Islands, OH/AL6D (KP20) Finland. This provided me with a couple of new DXCCs & squares, but importantly confirmations on ARRLs LoTW system.
LO-87 has to be one of the most underused satellites due to it only being activated over Madrid I believe it’s also quite noisy and you need to run a bit more power than usual, but managed to work G0IIQ and DJ8MS for arranged contacts
The 16th of March was a good day working IU1LBM in JN43 via XW-2D for a new square, then E74KM appeared on a SO-50 pass on the 16th of April in JN85 Bosnia-Herzegovina, this was a nice surprise as not only was it a new country for myself, it was his first satellite contact I later found out via email.
Ron AD0DX/VE3 was active on the 28th of March on the 17:57 AO-7 pass in EN95, FN05.
Gabe AL6D after his European trip went out in his plane on the 29th of March and activated BO69 which was a new square, also missed another square due to AO-7 flipping modes which
On the 30th I got called by N0KK in EN35HA which was a new square on AO-7 along with the usual gang from North America (K8YSE, VA3ECO, K3SZH)
CT7/EA5GX was on from IN50 on the 31st March, which if confirmed on LoTW will be a new square for awards worked on AO-91 and SO-50
Later on, that day also worked KE9AJ in EN53 for a new grid square and also Wisconsin state.
These are of course only the contacts which stood out and was a part of many contacts over the month, it was good to hear new UK / French stations on FM passes and now as we’re in spring I hope this will only increase although passes might become a bit congested.
During the weekend of the 23 to 24th of March, the operator of Diwata-2 released a schedule for the satellite to enable the FM Transponder which is U/V.
On the 23rd I was able to open the satellite and put some calls through it, one thing I did notice was that it needed a bit more power at around 20w and I lost access at 10 degrees and below on elevation.
On the 24th I had arranged to have
It was back on during the 30th of March and worked G0ABI, DK3WN and EA5TT on the 14:13z pass sadly doesn’t seem to be getting much use but maybe people not aware of its temporary scheduling.
Since moving into the current house, all the cable runs have just run across the garden with the hope everyone will stand over them, which is fine, but as runs increase its become a bit of a pain, so I took the decision to purchase some PVC pipe from the local hardware store and have fed all the runs down two sets of pipes to the house.
This comes up a post where I’m going to terminate anything that doesn’t need to come inside, or adding surge protectors to coax, the next steps getting a more permanent hole in the side of the house for bringing cables in.
The post March Shack Report appeared first on 2M0SQL.
The shack reports have been a bit thin on the ground for nearly a year, no justifications, it’s been a fun packed 12 months with an award, new ideas and my sister getting married and even went up to the IO77,IO78,IO87,IO88 grid line with Iain M0PCB.
Es’Hail-2 now designated QO-100 is now available for use with both its wideband and narrow band transponders, with plenty chatter on newsgroups and social media.
Most would have been surprised I wasn’t on from the start, I decided to hold back and just see what was going to happen before investing, however I have now got my channel master 1.2m offset dish mounted on a 6ft steel pole & concreted in the ground during the nice period of weather we experienced in Scotland.
I have this connected to an SDRPlay in the shed and have been listening to the downlink with great success, now once the weather improves more I’ll work on the transmit side.
Plenty of good DX has been worked on the low earth orbit satellites, guess moving did have one bonus that VUCC/DXCC started again.
Sorry for the rushed report, I promise Aprils shack update will be much better as there’s lots to report including antenna work and interesting DX in the log.
The post February Shack Report appeared first on 2M0SQL.
Preface: I wrote this post nearly 2 years ago with the idea of posting it but decided to hold off, but I think I should post it as HamTests played a pivotal part in my life.
HamTests fully closed in August 2018 with the question pool released to the community to use in anyway they liked.
Most of my close friends will remember that around 2 years ago, I announced I was stepping aside from helping run HamTests which at the time was probably the UK’s biggest website todo with amateur radio training, the site first started when I was at university after some discussions with Paul, then over time grew from 100 users to over 15,000.
It gave me a chance to learn how to run large scale online learning environments, although HamTests was largely about mock exams we did have many other resources on the site and it went from some rather crappy code I’d written on my 6am commutes to university to using Moodle.
We always kept the service free and it was largely funded at first by donations, advertising from Google AdSense or from our own back pockets.
It was a great way to interact with people who sometimes were just coming into the hobby and supporting them as they developed their knowledge and it was a great way making friendships.
But at the same
However after helping developed the site into its current form I decided to step aside at the time there was lots of hearsay regarding the reasons, but it ultimately came down to a couple of things these mostly being health and lack of time with focus needing to be on running my company magicbug.
During the early years I was juggling finishing university (first class degree non the less) to switching to running a company which was developing large VLEs for companies and local government based off the back of a website a made with a friend for fun.
As time went on ideas flowed and we set up a separate forum called HamRadioForum which grew and again needed time to maintain and support.
HRF has its referred to is still run on my company servers and I support Paul with keeping it online.
In 2017 it hit the point that change needed to happen, HamTests was taking a heavy backseat in my life while I was either sat in the hospital in A&E or in clinics while they tried to diagnose more issues from heart problems to epileptic seizures which brings us up till now 2019. Nearly a two year after standing down, although I’m still around to offer Paul as much technical support I can it’s down to less than an hour every couple of months and I guess that will completely dry up.
While I stood down from HamTests I’m of course still running my company still maintaining VLEs and now building websites for local small businesses up to large corporates my minds of course still into Ham Radio with things I want to do.
Biggest thing I’ve been working on is my own web based logging app called Cloudlog, while not hugely popular it was purely built for my own enjoyment.
This has never been made to be a product and I honestly don’t think it ever will be, I’m building it purely to suit my interest in the hobby.
However a few people do pay a small amount to have it hosted on my company servers and I deal with keeping it updated.
I’ve also recently been getting far more involved in the Amsat community and I hope that long continues, however the lurking hunger for HF pile ups still exists and I hope to get back into contesting more from Scotland in the coming months.
Will I ever go back to running large free Ham Radio websites in the near future, I suspect not, but you might find small tools popping up.
You can still do the mock tests at a site called RadioTutor.
The post Leaving HamTests, Refocusing appeared first on 2M0SQL.
Uplink is on the 10m PSK frequency of 28.120 USB and it downlinks on 435.350 FM (PSK31), the satellite builders recommend using up to 75w into an omnidirectional antenna on 10m.
In my own experience of using NO-84, I was using a 10m dipole which worked reasonably well, but I found the best antenna for myself was a 10m GP this was easy to build with a small fibreglass fishing rod, wire and a dipole centre I made one for less than £10 (Bargain!)
I found with this setup I was able to activate the transponder with as little as 10w, however, of course, increasing the power made sure that NO-84 could hear my signal a lot more.
Of course, with this satellite doppler is a consideration and although you can use a standard PSK31 application for transmitting and receive you’ll see your signal has the Doppler curve on it, however, K0SM has produced a simple application called DopplerPSK
Setting this up is simple, you download the application which is Java and launch it and then set some parameters. In Station -> Edit Station Information you specify your location like you would with any other tracking application. You then select the satellite you want to use by going to Satellite -> Choose Satellite and select NO-84.
It’s worth noting you’ll need to manually update the TLEs, these are stored in the /tle/ subdirectory. I’d recommend using the https://www.amsat.org/tle/current/nasabare.txt once you have updated the TLEs relaunch the application.
Select the output soundcard by clicking on Audio Device in the menu and selecting the correct one, remember this is the audio going to your radio.
On the main screen of DopplerPSK you’ll notice you have some tracking information and boxes update the MyCall with your own callsign and press update. Notice below that there are prepopulated text inputs and radio buttons to represent the one that has been selected for now use CQ.
Its generally recommended you transmit the whole time NO-84 is passing over. The other station will be on a different frequency to yourself, update their callsign in DXCall and the exchange and hit the Update button, again then select the message you want to send till the contacts complete. Then go back to CQ or reply to someone else if their calling CQ, this method seems to work well.
To decode the signals, I personally recommend using a PSK application that supports multi decoding, for instance, FL-Digi, you can watch all the stations on the passband and your own and carry out your contact with ease.
Remember that if NO-84 doesn’t hear a PSK31 signal on 28.120 the transponder will not turn on unless it is sending its beacon signal.
Hopefully, this gives you some idea how to setup DopplerPSK to complete a NO-84 PSK QSO. It’s worth keeping in mind that activity can be low, so do not be scared to ask for prearranged contact.
The post Using the NO-84 (PSAT) PSK Transponder appeared first on 2M0SQL.
Sadly the NOAA Weather Satellite imaging facility is offline, back on 19th Sept 2018, had a stormy day that caused some damage and bought the pole that supported it down and damaged the HF antennas on the same mast. It’s still my intentions to get this backup and running however it needs to be relocated.
I’m hoping this will be in the next couple of weeks, but probably in a much lower location as winter is rapidly approaching and things won’t get any better.
I can report however that the Airspy HF+ SDR along with wxtoimg and virtual audio cable has been working excellent up till then, I’m expecting the next version will switch the decoding system off a Windows computer and onto something Linux based with a low-cost ARM board and look forward to documenting that.
I’m seriously considering the SDRPlay RSPDuo and splitting the QFH across the two receivers so that I can decode two passes at once if there’s a pass clash, something to consider.
The post NOAA Weather Satellite Images Offline appeared first on 2M0SQL.
G3AAJ Trophy
This weekend I was honoured to be awarded the G3AAJ Trophy by AMSAT-UK during their gala dinner at the recent AMSAT-UK Colloquium. This is awarded annually, to the individual (or group of individuals) who have given outstanding service to the amateur radio satellite service.
It was a shame to not be able to attend the event due to poor health, but Peter G0ABI accepted it on my behalf.
The post Awarded the G3AAJ Trophy by AMSAT-UK appeared first on 2M0SQL.
Those which follow me on social media might have noticed at the start of the month I launched a small desktop application called Pass Recorder, it was built purely as I wanted a tool to sit in the background when I was operating on satellite passes recording what I was hearing in case I needed to double check a callsign or share the audio with a friend.
Pass Recorder interfaces with SatPC32 via its DDE interface and automatically records a pass if its above 0 degrees to a high-quality wav format, this audio quality does, however, generate slightly larger files with an average pass being about 60mb, but AO-7 passes are more in the range of a 100mb.
However, for a proof of concept it’s working well and I’m planning to make some improvements and allow dropping the audio quality which will reduce the size for those who want that, I’ve also had some requests to support other applications, which I have no objection to, the next supported application will be WXTrack by David, GM8ARV.
You can grab the application by going to https://www.2m0sql.com/pass-recorder/ the tool is free but donations are appreciated.
The post Pass Recorder Launched appeared first on 2M0SQL.
Satellite tracking applications play an important part in using the transponders available to radio amateurs, of course, experiences of them all vary and are very subjective however we are going to explore what is available on the Android platform.
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.me.g4dpz.HamSatDroid
AMSATDroid Free has been the staple choice for most keen AMSAT operators, created by David G4DPZ and provided free to the community it allows you to see the next passes for individual satellites for a period of time when you select a pass it gives you a graphical display of the pass on a compass style view or a map view which includes the track of where it’s going to be.
The application hasn’t received many updates but recently got made open source and is available on Github https://github.com/g4dpz/AmsatDroidFree
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.heavens_above.viewer_pro
Heavens-Above Pro has been my favourite satellite tracking app when on the move, its amateur radio features allow you to search for an amateur satellite you’re after, it then gives you passes for the next couple of days along with pass times and a rough guide for the uplink and downlink.
On selecting the pass of interest you get a compass view which updates in real time showing where the satellite is, it also gives a detailed break down of a pass from the start (AOS) to the end (LOS) including the time the satellite is at its maximum elevation.
A useful function in Heavens-Above is that it allows you to create calendar entries for the pass, thus helping you plan your trip. Within the settings, you can also define some of the options like the minimum elevation so if you can’t work below 10 degrees elevation you can set that.
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.runar.issdetector
ISS Detector has become the most popular application for satellite tracking in recent months with its huge range of features it offers, although you have to buy the Amateur Radio Extensions which cost around £1.09 via an in-app purchase it’s well worth it.
Once you have purchased the addon you can create a filter to include the active ham radio satellites that you are interested in and set a minimum elevation plus whether you want ISS Detector to popup a notification when the pass is due within 5 minutes which is useful.
Returning to the main screen you a full list of next passes based on your filters these are in chronological order. When you select the pass you get a wealth of information displayed in the RADAR tab you get a compass view of the pass you help you with antenna pointing, selecting the details tab gives you a finer display of the pass times and its elevations along with a live Google Map of the satellites current position.
The interesting part of this tab is when you scroll down it gives you doppler information, for a linear satellite you get doppler corrections for the top and bottom edges of the transponder, on FM passes you get the uplink and downlink, this can be a useful guide on where you should be listening and transmitting.
Within the satellite view, you also have the option to create a calendar entry if you’re planning a day trip or even share the pass with friends.
As with any application, there’s a huge selection of settings options to go through and adjust to your liking but once you have it set up it’s straightforward to use.
Hopefully, this gave an insight into some of the options available, I’ve not been paid to recommend any of them and paid apps were bought with my own money, I will say that ISS Detector is my main go-to application for planning passes whether at home or even portable the notifications, calendar and filters just make it simple.
The post Android Satellite Tracking Applications appeared first on 2M0SQL.
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