PSK31

SO I been messing around with fldigi on linux most of the day/night. kinda interesting. I am one thats not big on the whole hooking pc to rig guys but at night when everyone is asleep and I am awake (hey im nocturnal) i tend to get yelled at if I listen to my normal cw or ssb stuff so I figured what the hell ill play with this digital stuff.

Now to give some info on what I am using.. FT-847 hooked to a broken homemade 220Mhz ground plane (ain't been able to get my HF stuff up due to weather) but even as horrid of a missmatched antenna it does pull in signals. matter of fact in the last 20 mins I have copied about 7 dif countries on 20m

So now I am going to have to brew up a interface and a cat control. maybe get my indoor 20m dipole back up in here again as well.

or my other option is sound proofing this room......

You can brew beer but you have to assemble an interface. BTW I hooked the rig up directly to the sound card and it worked well. Then there is cat control, ask anyone who ever had one, you can't control a cat. Your best bet is soundproofing the room, or try going to bed like normal people.

Sick humor mode... off.
Good luck with the digital modes, better weather is coming. I hope it is, cabin fever is driving me NORMAL!

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Originally Posted by kb2vxa

You can brew beer but you have to assemble an interface. BTW I hooked the rig up directly to the sound card and it worked well. Then there is cat control, ask anyone who ever had one, you can't control a cat. Your best bet is soundproofing the room, or try going to bed like normal people.

Sick humor mode... off.
Good luck with the digital modes, better weather is coming. I hope it is, cabin fever is driving me NORMAL!

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lol. I got right now ext spk out going into mic in on the pc. it works. and pretty amazed what I am picking up since I am using a broken down brewed 220 GP to listen on. I think the indoor 20m dipole is going to come back here real soon.

as for better weather.. im not holding my breath.. NWS IND says decent chance Mar-May is going to be below normal temps and above avg precip. so maybe in July it will be better

I also got this sending to the pskreporter.info site. http://pskreporter.info/pskmap?W2IBC
Not sure why it shows me unknown but I am on 20M

I really wouldn't bother with the rig control (unless of course you want to) since PSK activity basically only happens on one spot on each band.

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Originally Posted by n0iu

I really wouldn't bother with the rig control (unless of course you want to) since PSK activity basically only happens on one spot on each band.

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I will prob do it just to experiment with it. since fldigi does do more then just psk31. we was playing with cw up on 2m last night for a bit.

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Originally Posted by W2IBC

we was playing with cw up on 2m last night for a bit.

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But I thought 2m was just for EMCOMM whackers?

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Originally Posted by n0iu

But I thought 2m was just for EMCOMM whackers?

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for the most part it is. then you have people like me who dont buy into that crap and use a radio to actually talk about things.

"I got right now ext spk out going into mic in on the pc. it works."
It works better if you feed the line input on the sound card. That way you can increase the radio volume giving you better level control and better S/N ratio.

"I think the indoor 20m dipole is going to come back here real soon."
A taste of honey, now you want the whole jar. Go for it.

2M FM is for EMCOMM whackers, repeater cliques and 2M CBers, the bottom of the band is where the CW and SSB real hams are. Maybe by now they've figured out that digital modes work just as well on VHF.

yeah Ill switch it tonight to line in. rigs volume control is very twitchy.

as for 2m.... 440 is better.....

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Originally Posted by W2IBC

yeah Ill switch it tonight to line in. rigs volume control is very twitchy.

as for 2m.... 440 is better.....

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To help your twitchy audio, put a voltage isolation diode between the hot and ground of the audio in line.

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Originally Posted by KC2UGV

To help your twitchy audio, put a voltage isolation diode between the hot and ground of the audio in line.

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twitchy audio is something in the rig (prob knob dirty). you can go from whisper quiet to LOUD with a bump of the vol knob. and it can go back to whisper quiet without touching it..

just never got around to taking it apart to see what. when I make up the interface I will use the rx aud/tx aud port on the back.

for now I am just playing with it. on a crappy antenna to see what I can pick up.

pretty impressive really

I finally made a top 20 list. but anyway this is really kinda getting at me to get back on HF

Twitchy audio means just look sideways at the volume control and the level the software sees changes drastically. The mic input has way too much gain! It belongs plugged into the line input where the change in volume control setting won't produce such a drastic change in the level the software sees so adjustment is broader and finding the correct level is much easier. I made the mistake of using the mic input and quickly learned I'd done something wrong. Don't get confused, transmit audio goes in the rig's mic input through a simple resistive voltage divider. The mic input usually is 600 ohms so the load resistor to ground is also 600 ohms and the series resistor selected for proper attenuation experimentally, 1K is a good place to start and usually goes up from there.

Isolation may be required if RF feedback is encountered, a couple of small 1:1 transformers. Usually a parts supplier has them marked as 600:600 ohms BUT it ain't necessarily so. The input impedance depends on the load impedance. A transformer transforms impedance so one may be used to transform one impedance to another as a matching transformer and one with a 1:1 turns ratio simply isolates input AC from output AC. Math starts getting complicated and I don't speak Greek so here I leave well enough alone, no sense in information overload when I've said enough.

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Originally Posted by kb2vxa

Twitchy audio means just look sideways at the volume control and the level the software sees changes drastically. The mic input has way too much gain! It belongs plugged into the line input where the change in volume control setting won't produce such a drastic change in the level the software sees so adjustment is broader and finding the correct level is much easier. I made the mistake of using the mic input and quickly learned I'd done something wrong. Don't get confused, transmit audio goes in the rig's mic input through a simple resistive voltage divider. The mic input usually is 600 ohms so the load resistor to ground is also 600 ohms and the series resistor selected for proper attenuation experimentally, 1K is a good place to start and usually goes up from there.

Isolation may be required if RF feedback is encountered, a couple of small 1:1 transformers. Usually a parts supplier has them marked as 600:600 ohms BUT it ain't necessarily so. The input impedance depends on the load impedance. A transformer transforms impedance so one may be used to transform one impedance to another as a matching transformer and one with a 1:1 turns ratio simply isolates input AC from output AC. Math starts getting complicated and I don't speak Greek so here I leave well enough alone, no sense in information overload when I've said enough.

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I cured the twitchy vol knob.. ( i said knob ) this am I made up a cable that uses the data in/out jack on the back of the ft-847 so the twitchy vol knob isnt an issue anymore. I also got my 20m dipole built. its hanging above my head. ( still need to get the 259 from a bud and check it out. ) but I got pretty close it looks. but with it in here I RFI my realtek usb wifi card. so Fri it looks like im heading up on the roof to hang the dipole outside.

and for the tx aud. yep I WILL have to isolate it. it didn't play nice kinda figured it wouldn't but I had to at least test it. also have to wait for my female db9's to come in so I can build my cat control cable. but hey maybe Fri I will at least be able to get on 20m SSB

as for now I just have fldigi running. reporting back to pskreporter what I hear (504 reports, 28 countries last week)

well I did manage to get my 20m dipole outside today.. signals improved a bit. but I can tell its still off on the tuning.. waiting for someone to bring me the damn 259 so I can check the damn thing..

sad part. I still wipe out the reltek usb wifi card. so even though I can get it in tune with the tuner.. no TX for me until I can find a way to stop the RF from pissing off the wifi card.