Category Archives: Technical
Kenwood TS-890 Now Available
The Kenwood TS-890 is now for sale. Here is a recent YouTube video by a new owner. This radio is a down conversion superhet, with some amazing specs. The bad news is the initial price is over $4K. But it out performs many more expensive radios, at least in close-in dynamic range numbers.
Troubleshooting a FT-1000MP Loss of Receive Problem
A YouTube Channel I watch regularly. This is a good example of one of his typical videos. He is German, speaking in English, and it is a bit slow moving at times. I usually speed it up to 1.25 X normal speed. This is an excellent example of his methodical troubleshooting techniques to narrow down the problem – even on a modern type radio. No real special equipment used in this video. A multimeter is the main tool, but a signal generator is used, and a scope briefly, but really not necessary.
Maybe you might find it interesting.
FT8
You might have read about a new digital mode in QST this month. Apparently it was part of a pre-release version of WSJT-X, but it is already in wide use. If you saw our program on JT65 last fall, or have used JT65, this is very similar. In JT65 each exchange is 1 minute, and a full QSO takes 5 minutes. In FT8, an exchange is 15 seconds, and a QSO takes about 1 minute and 15 seconds or 1 1/2 minutes.
JT65 obviously allows contacts with weaker stations, but FT8 is substantially quicker to complete a QSO.
Because of the minimal time allowed between decoding a transmission a the start of the next one (2 seconds), FT8 usually requires auto-sequencing of the standard exchanges. This makes the QSO almost automated (except for choosing the station to contact or calling CQ).
This might make FT8 more fun, or less fun, depending on your point-of-view.
If JT65 was boring for you because of the length of each transmission, FT8 is a mode you might want to try.
Search WSJT-X, and download the latest version (currently a version 1.8 Release candidate. The released version doesn’t have FT8)
YouTube Channels for Radio/Electronics Repair
Here are some of my favorite channels:
Mr. Carlson is VE7ZWZ. He has an amazing shop full of test equipment. It seems like his videos are intended for a wide audience, so depending on your point of view, it may be too basic or too advanced. But most people will probably learn something.
Terry Dayton N6TLU specializes in tube equipment, either vintage guitar amplifiers or ham equipment. Good info on restoring and troubleshooting.
I’m s sorry I don’t know who this is. His videos are mostly repair of ham radio gear. He sounds German, or from that area of Europe. His English is very good. The videos are fairly slow paced but quite thorough. His explanations of his troubleshooting strategies is excellent.
A wide variety of topics. Repair, tutorials, test equipment. Some great stuff.
Another channel with a bunch of ham radio repair videos.
Not really any ham radio content, but vintage electronics stuff. Mostly guitar and audio tube amplifiers.
Lots of general electronics stuff for a hobbyist.
All About Solder
Who knew there was so much to know about solder?
SignaLink and Other USB Digital Interfaces – Huge Bug + Fix for Amateur Radio Digital Modes
I’m not sure how huge a bug this is, as people are successfully having digital QSOs, but thought it might be worth linking to. I’m going to check mine setup –
Arduino Based Transceiver Kickstarter Campaign
This looks interesting. 2m, 220, and 440 capability.
Weather at K2AS
I’ve had a personal weather station running at my QTH for about 6 years. For the last 5 or so it has been feeding the data to a Linux PC running various version of Ubuntu, and using a software package “Wview” to process the information. It created HTML pages, FTP’ed the files to my website, submitted data to the CWOP “Citizen Weather Observer Program”, and also submitted info the Weather Underground. A few of years ago I added a webcam to the system.