The Blogging Protagonist

W4DFU Gator Seen in Canada

Scott — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:29:29 +0000

I don’t have long, but the picture speaks for itself. Sent from Florida to Canada. I used VE1VDM’s “Big Ears Grabber” in Canada.

Scott — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:58:26 +0000

I’ve been exchanging emails with Lubnaan Shaikhto for a little while regarding a project involving a realtime spectrograph controlled by a microcontroller (ATTiny2313). He had a few questions, I had a few recommendations, and several weeks went by and I heard nothing… until today when I saw this awesome youtube video of his incredible success! The guy built his own USB AVR programmer just for this project too. Double score! Way to go Lubnaan!

QRSS VD version 1.04 Released!

Scott — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:52:21 +0000

I’m proud to announce that my first public version of QRSS VD has been released!

>>>Join the QRSS VD User Group

>>>Visit the QRSS VD Webpage

How to Destroy a Radio Operator

Scott — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:09:35 +0000

After priding myself on my ingenuity a few weeks ago for documenting my homemade stealth indoor apartment antenna for 40m and 20m, it seems that the green movement has contrived a plan to cripple my successes. So far I’ve made a few dozen contacts in Morse code with my humble little setup (~20 watts of power, direct conversion receiver, indoor homemade antenna). The photo shows some QSL cards I’ve gotten. Anyhow, my apartment manager decided that my apartment needed to have solar panels added to it. It’s too early to tell for sure, but spinning the dial a few times and hearing *nothing* makes me think that it dramatically impacted my reception (and likely transmission) in a dramatic way.

A few days ago…

yesterday…

today

R.I.P. AJ4VD station… [sigh]

Overseas QRP Transmission

Scott — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:01:16 +0000

While working on the spectrograph software I’m so psychotic about completing this spring break, I happened to capture a cool signal from Italy. IW4DXW was sending some cool signals that I captured around 10.140 MHz. See how his callsign is written “visually” on the spectrogram? I thought I’d post it because it’s an encouraging sign that my software is going in the right direction. Also note the numerous QRSS FSK signals around it! So cool.

UPDATE! The guy emailed me his station information.

Hi Scott! Thank you so much for nice report. This is a short description of my homebrew beacon. The audio source is a normal MP3/WAV player. The file (.WAV) of my hell message (8×8 char) is generated using Chirphel (program by DF6NM) with a fmax~=800Hz and BW=5Hz, and processed with Csound to obtain the phase relation R = L + 90� between channels (hilbert function). A 10.140MHz oven xtal oscillator (adjusted for +880Hz) is a PLL reference used to obtain a x4 frequency. This clock with the 2 audio channels are applied to a �Softrock style� SSB phasing modulator (double H-mixer with 74HC4053 ic).

The LSB output signal (10.140,080MHz @ ~ -3dBm) is amplified by a 2N2222 (driver stage) and a 2SC2314 (linear PA stage ~1W P.E.P. max, but 100 � 200 mW of average power). I�m using a 30m dipole (inverted vee @ about 50 feet). 30 meters looks good today! My signal heard in VK2 too�

Greetings from north Italy, dear Scott!
73
Riccardo, IW4DXW

Holy… 200mW? That’s so awesome. Maybe one day I’ll build something equally as cool and epically useless =oD I will now return to my psychotic programming project what has been eating-up my spring break. [boom] I just snapped a screenshot for the future memory of this break. Yes, I’m on a XP machine. I’m at the W4DFU radio club station (they have nicer computers than I do!)