Category Archives: Amateur Radio

Compiling WSPR for Linux (Ubuntu 8.10)

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Here the steps that lead to successfully starting WSPR 1.1 on my Ubuntu 8.10 system:

From OH2GQC i got the information how to checkout the sources (You need SVN installed before):

mkdir src
cd src
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/wsjt
cd wsjt/branches/wspr

now you need a couple of packages necessary to compile/run WSPR. The list can be found at WSPRNET.org

python2.5-dev
python-numpy 1.1.1 (no problems with this version here yet)
python-imaging tk
python-pmw
libportaudio2
libportaudio-dev
portaudio19-dev
libsamplerate0-dev
subversion
subversion tools (I may have thrown this in for good luck)
python-svn

In addition the gfortran compiler seems not valid for WSPR. Download the g95 debian package and install it. This compiler will work.

When i tested the revision of the trunk of the WSJT tree was something 11xx. There i got several error messages after typing make. Therefore i reverted the directory of WSPR back to r1045 which was said to be ok. I did this in the WSPR directory with the command:

svn up -r 1045

After that a ./configure should work and after that make should do all the compile stuff.

After that start WSPR with the command:

python wspr.py

VNWA completed

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Today i finished the work on my DG8SAQ VNWA and did some experiments measuring filters and antennas i already had reference results for. The results are really good for such a simple hardware.

DG8SAQ VNWA

DG8SAQ VNWA

The next picture shows a screenshot of the UHF part of my homemade diplex filter.

UHF part of diplexer

UHF part of diplexer

Building up DG8SAQ VNWA

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Beginning this week i received my DG8SAQ Vector Network Analyzer kit. I used some of the rare time this week to start the assembly of the kit. Until now i finished the assembly and testing of the power supply section and the both DDS sections. Mounting the DDS IC’s was a little bit difficult even with a stereo microscope and hot air station. The PCB i got was gold plated without tin. For the first DDS i tried to solder the pins first and then i tried to get the solder tin through the open vias at the bottomof the PCB to the  top side. My fear was that there might be no connection beween ground and the exposed pad of the DDS. So i removed the chip again. I saw that my fear was not confirmed. The exposed pad was clearly soldered before. Cleaning the pads and soldering the chip a second time was really tougth job …

Two sections of the circuits still to do. Lets see !

DG8SAQ VNWA partly assembled

DG8SAQ VNWA partly assembled

V-/U-/SHF Contest from JO60OM

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Last weekend i participated the first V-/U-/SHF contest this year. I was part of the DM7A
team which operated from the oremountains in JO60OM (Hirtstein). We faced problems with
icy antennas which made operation with yagies almost impossible. The 2m band was running with
a omnidirectional antenna over the whole night. On 70cm we lost one of the PA systems. In addition
one antenna system was out of order because of a defect preamplifier. Also 23cm appeared to have low output power. Let´s be excited for the May contest…

Whispers at shortwave…

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Usually shortwave is not my favourite area of amateur radio. But inspired by an article from Eike-DM3ML i did some experiments
with WSPR (weak signal propagation reporting). It is a automatic beaconing network invented by K1JD. It is really exciting to see
low power stations appear at the display even with a really small receiver antenna. In addition i wrote some software for my
Atmel microcontroller that controlls a small DDS signal generator circuit. With this simple setup it is possible to transmit WSPR beacons
at 5dBm output power. Unfortunately 5dBm are not enougth to be heard by anyone with my small indoor antenna. Maybe i should
build an amplifier ;)

WSPR at 80m in JO61

WSPR at 80m in JO61

KISS for AVR

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These days i wrote some code to dig into packet radio. I started with some coding to implement KISS (keep it simple and stupid) that was invented in 1987 by KA9Q and K3MC. It is a small protocoll that is similar to the Serial Line Internet Protocoll. It is used to transfer HDLC data over a asyncronous serial interface. KISS adds some capabilities to control some radio parameters for wireless transmissions. At the picture you see the result so far. Data can be received via the serial line. The SLIP decoding is done (removing FEND´s), control parameters are extracted. In addition the path in the header of the transferred AX25 frame is decoded and printed to the display (which is just for understanding all the stuff).
My goal is to design a small KISS/SMACK terminal node controller that can interface a HDLC modem or even do the AX25 frame generation on its own.
Most probably it would be necessary to add some more RAM in order to get enougth frames buffered for transmission. Currently i use a Atmega644 with 4kByte of SRAM. I plan to add external memory to a Atmega8515 but maybe it is cheaper to use one of those new XMEGA´s with 16kByte…
For sure, just for doing some APRS stuff less memory would be sufficient.

KISS for AVR

KISS for AVR

New Version of GPS2LCD Software (V1.0)

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I continued to hack my AVR software that displays GPS data on a 4×27 character LCD.
Now the software converts all the data into number format and uses this data to write to the display.
The advantage is that you might do some calculations with this data.
I wrote a routine that calculates the Maidenhead locator. This is now printed to the display as well
including the extended subfield. If Pin PD2 is pulled up the firmware prints all the received data
out to the UART again. For that it is possible to give the data to a existing APRS tracker or to the PC.
So far i saw no data loss at a speed of 4800 baud.
See a picture and find the archive below…
gps2lcd_10

GPS2LCD Version 1.0

GPS2LCD Version 1.0