pa0r

Antenna day. I had bought a 2m/70cm whip for the camper, and today was one of those tropical days where you cannot do anything proper anyway. My son helped me to install the whip on the roof of the camper with an Aluminium bracket. I soldered the connector to the cable, and managed to short circuit it in the process. So I had to go back to the shack to get my reading glasses, get the connector off, and on again. This time it measured open circuit. I can now (just) work the local repeaters on 2mtrs and on 70 cm with the FT897. Neat.

Next was the 80 meter NVIS antenna. Our last trip to the boat has been succesfull as far as the PSKmail tests were  concerned. Of the 10 days we were in the north, we could sail only 2 days... the rest of the time we had to wait in harbor for a new cooling water pump for the diesel engine. Enough time to prepare a 20 meters long, horizontal antenna for the boat. It worked very well. Feed point is on the bow of the boat, where we have a ground connection to the hull (5 tons of steel). From there the antenna wire goes up to the top of the mast (8 meters high, wood) and then down to the stern. It is linear-loaded to resonate on 3595 kHz. With this antenna I could bridge the 162 km distance 24/24 hrs on 80 meters. Cool.

So I wanted this to work on the camper as well. Problem is, the camper is 3 meters shorter (it is only 6.2 meters long), and it has no convenient mast right in the middle. The fishing rod antenna at the rear works fb for dx, but does not do anything but catch wind on the shorter distances.

I took the same 20 meters of wire and folded the wire back to the mast at the rear. This way it looks a bit like a half-size end fed inverted vee. It does load up fine on 80, but we could not test it properly as it became dark. So we have to put off the tests for the day after tomorrow, as tomorrow the camper needs its yearly checkup by the government (some sort of extra tax you have to pay every year..., whilst making sure your garage gets a chance to keep its turnover at a proper level).

Just testing the email update facility via PSKmail....

All information about PSKmail has been transferred to the PSKmail WIKI. There you can follow the rest of the adventure.I am quite enthousiastic about it, as it brings all information together in 1 place.

We are now doing a test installation on a virgin Mandrake system in Sweden, which is giving exremely helpful information. If you have any remarks, comments, wishes, or just want to gab, please use the WIKI for that, it has a communication channel dedicated to PSK63, PSKmail and other digital modes, and there is lots of space for users to exchange information.

The WIKI also allows other people to work with it, it has taken me a lot of time to come this far, and I need time for the background here, and I must go back to TLF for a maintenance round. Maybe I should also make a WIKI for Tlf?

This afternoon I will go shopping with the XYL....

I wanted to play with antennas, but it rained all day. So I finished the GUI for PSKmail. The menu system works now like I need it. I also upgraded the 'NEW' window, so you can now write the whole email without going into 'gedit'. Neat.

It was not easy, GTK2 is not documented well. I spent hours on the net looking around for a method to read the text from a GTK::TextView widget into a string. I do have the FAQ online, but that did not do a good job of typing the parameters to call. And the man page you will find on Google is from Hong Kong (1000 x) and only tells 5% of the story.

Anyway, I did it. I added capability in the menu to save the mailfile and the send file for the next session. And yes, you can now view the readme from within the client....

I also got first contacts for server deployment. Nice. If you need help, you can try to message me at pa0r@jabber.ccc.de, we can always use world-convers (channel 4791) afterwards. Of course jabber also supports chat..

I wondered how the news got around so quickly, but then I found an email from pe1icq who daid he had added PSKmail to the LINUX HAM list.

My son says, if I don't stop messing with it, PSKmail will soon include emacs.

Come to think of it...

I have improved the special gMFSK-0.6 version today. Until now I needed separate versions for client and server use. Moreover I did not like the way I prevented the server from wandering around the band....

Now gMFSK-for-servers does the following:

For the client:

• Send a file gmfsk_autofile if it finds one in your home directory. You can test it with: echo "test" > gmfsk_autofile.

For the server:

• Send a file gmfsk_autofile if it finds one in your home directory. You can test it with: echo "test" > gmfsk_autofile.
  
• Before sending anything, reset the waterfall frequency to 1000 Hz, as to make sure the server stays put.
• Limit AFC to work between 985 Hz and 1015 Hz. This window has been defined experimentally. The 30 Hz window is small enough to enable immedite signal acquisition (lock) when using PSK63, while allowing the client enough freedom to remain in lock during a frame.

You can switch between the 3 modes:

• For client operation: put a file PSKmailclient into your home directory
• For server operation put a file PSKmailserver into your home directory
• For normal, keyboard-to-keyboard operation make sure above files are absent :)

The new binary is at: http://sharon.esrac.ele.tue.nl/~pa0r/pskmail/gmfsk

You can now use gMFSK to build your own servers... 

I will now go back to ham radio for a while. We will experiment with PSKmail and NVIS. As you have noticed from earlier posts here I have problems to reach the server from the vehicles with distances between 30 km and 500 km. That means inventing an 160m/80m/40m NVIS antenna for the camper and the boat before the winter season starts (although I don't expect problems from EA7....). At least I am now sure the software works as I want it to. And I have seen enough to be sure that if there is a path, there is email :) One of the services I am implementing is a daily foF2 bulletin (for every hour of the day, the straight up stuff). I have read most of the information on the internet. That says, I just have to 'erect' a dipole of 2x20 meters 12 meters high.

These people have never been on a boat 9 meters long, or for that matter, a camper with a roof of 6 x 2.5 meters.

Back to the old drawing board....

O.k., the stuff is out for beta.... Both the server and the client software is available from the web sites:

http://sharon.esrac.ele.tue.nl/~pa0r/pskmail/ for the description...

http://sharon.esrac.ele.tue.nl/~pa0r/pskmail/client for the client programs...

http://sharon.esrac.ele.tue.nl/~pa0r/pskmail/server for the server programs...

http://sharon.esrac.ele.tue.nl/pub/linux/ham/pskmail for the archives....

Please try this stuff and report what you find to PA0R at EUDXF.ORG . Keep the bug reports coming!!!!