pa0r

We are all ready for the reliability test. Today I have built the client into the camper, and did the first tests. This was quite satisfactory. I think we have a useable system.

Pity that the K2 died in the process... I must have put too much voltage on the PTT in. Now the front panel is dead. Not the display, I can still set the output power with the potentiometer on the front. But with the exception of the on/off switch nothing works, and the display is frozen at 10.148.

Fortunately I still have the old FT757. I had lend it to PA0IB who wanted to use it for trimming his magnetic loops, and I managed to get it back for the trip. The FT757 works fine with PSK63... Just connect the auxiliary in/output to the sound card and off she goes... I can run up to 50 Watts, and that's more than enough for this mode. The only problem is the frequency stability, the rig can QRI as much as 100 Hz during a session (only when it has to do a lot of transmitting).

The results were as expected. The distance is only 20 km and the signals on both sides very strong.
The photo shows how a PACTOR 1 station which came on frequency during a download session gave up....

Throughput is what you can expect from a 150 Hz bandwidth system. 5 cps max., 4.7 cps average, depending on whether you send a lot of capitals (Capitals have an everage Baud rate of 63, lower case make 100 Bd average).

I don't think we can expect more. I did write a HTML filter, as many emails contain html these days, with a lot of markup using lots of UNNECESSARY CAPITALS. The server now throws all HTML code away. ASCII text only for now.

Tomorrow we start our trip to Friedrichshafen, which gives us a 500 km distance to the server. Stay tuned....

Since last night we have a bi-directional, working PSKmail prototype. It consists of a server at PI4TUE (PSK63, 10.148 kHz) and a simple client, both written in PERL and based upon the ARQ protocol proposed by K9PS.

The software is modular to enable easy extension and consists of:

arq.pm
Module containing the basic arq send and receive functions for the server and the client

ARQserver.pl
Program running the ARQ Server Protocol, the Mailbox interface, the POP3 interface to the internet and the SMTP interface to the internet.
The server also has a DB module serving records for every user containing Call, POP host, POP Id, POP password, SMTP relay, mail return address and the name of the mbox file containing the downloaded mail.

ARQclient.pl
Program running the client arq protocol.

PSKmail.pl
Primitive text based mailbox client with the following functions:
Quit - Connect - Send - Newmail- Read x - Delete x - View mail - eXit
The mail client can use any editor (vi is default).

The user interface is separate to enable later substitution by a GUI (already existing for the non-arq version of the mail system).

I plan to test this setup during my next camping trip to the south of Germany (Hopefully I will be able to demonstrate the system to the visitors of the Ham Radio Show in Friedrichshafen, June 24-26th, we will be camping in the parking area of the Exhibition). You can reach our mobile home under camper@online.ms

I expect there will be bugs to be ironed out, but it looks like the system will be ready for release by the end of July!!

Todo:
Clean the code for release
Write configuration files
Write the documentation
Publish the stuff under GPL

Relax a bit

Make the system fully compliant to the proposed arq protocol:
use other port numbers (now fixed)
use the protocol byte
implement a 'connection refused' function

Implement adaptive block size control

Extend the system to cover other applications
ftp
sms, cluster output (udp)
aprs
data base access
etc...

I had promised to attend the fieldday camping, which in our club (the Eindhoven VERON div.) is more a social event than anything else. I had tried to raise som activity on hf a few years ago, but most of the time I was the only contester we ended 3rd place that time :).
So this year I decided someone else would do the organization. There was no activity in the hf contest.
PA3GFE worked in te VHF/UHF section and made some 30 contacts.

The barbequeue was nice, the company also. Summing up, it was a nice event.

A quarter of an hour before I left on friday evening I got an email from OH6KHL that tlf was not scoring correctly for the fieldday. Tlf did not double the points for portable stations. I had the source on the laptop, so I took 30 minutes to write the proper routine, upload it to CVS and include the new rules file as well.

As I have not heard anything since I guess it worked o.k.

The WPX 2005 CW was a great experience this time. We made just short of 2500 qso's and a score ofalmost 4 Million points, embedded in a tlf testing orgy. Of course I used the event as a beta test for tlf... the last time we used it for the wpx was the 2004 SSB contest (version 0.9.16), and I expected version 0.9.23 to be more stable.

Some obeservations were quite interesting...

This was the first time this group of operators was confronted with tlf. Detlef, DK3QZ had experience with TRlog, the others (Marcus DL1EKC and Ralph, DL4YD) had used CT. Although nobody had had the time to look extensively at tlf before the contest, after a short run with the simulator we had no problems with operating.

The QTH

The fieldday site of DARC dept L03 is in Schermbeck on a 60 mtr high hill looking over corn fields. Antennas available ude a 3-el cubical quad for 10-15-20 and a TR33. Plus a dipole for 40-80 and a 160 wire antenna. We put up a vertical for 40 mtrs (a GFK pole with a piece of wire). With the exception of the 80 mtrs dipole all antennas worked well. The 80 mtrs dipole is too low for dx.

I envy the people who can use this qth regularly. I had NEVER, NOWHERE, heard 9+40 signals coming out of complete silence. On 160 mtrs!!!

Radio gear


This was an excellent opportunity to compare the K2 receiver to the TS 850. I always liked the 850 very much, I think it has one of the best receivers Kenwood ever produced. But in the harsh contest environment the K2 runs circles around it. Especially on 40, where you have a run frequency about every 100 Hz during the big contests. Only my ORION equals this. Next time I will bring the Timewave DSP filter.

Rig control

Hardware setup of the 2-node system was 2 old 166 MHz Dell desktops. I had put all the new software on at home and build the system up and tested it. Everything worked. I switched the 1 monitor available from 1 node to the other and everything appeared to work fine.
The plan was that one of the other crew members would provide the other monitor. When the system was built up in the contest shack I could choose between 3 monitors, all from the good old DOS days. They were not capable to run graphics. So I had to use one of the systems with a linux text console. No problem, only that somehow the text console started in some strange mode accepting only CAPITALS, and of course my root password was in non-capitals... After playing some (undocumented) tricks I got it running. Everything seemed o.k. Packet, rig control and CW output worked like a charm....

The contest

Marcus and Detlef had volunteered to take the first 6 hour shift starting at 2 o'clock in the morning local time, so we left the system running, waiting for the first qso. I went to bed, as I had the 8 AM shift.

At 01:45 somebody knocked on the door of the camper. "Houston, we have a problem...". So I dressed and went to the shack. And indeed, there was a LAN problem preventing the qso's from the run station to log on the multiplier station. I tried to fix it (ping worked) but I could not get into a root terminal. So I decided to quickly substitute my UBUNTU laptop for the faulty desktop. This took 45 minutes including configuration etc. The laptop communicated with the LAN through wifi, which was a bonus. Everything o.k., and the qso's came rolling in!!

At 02:30. "Knock knock" - "Sorry to wake you but unfortunately your laptop is switching itself off..". I decided to get out of bed and babysit the system for the rest of the shift...
Hardware error again. The laptop had overheated and switched itself off. I provided a small fan and made sure the machine could get enough air.... Mind you, the stuff going in was 35 degrees C, and the machine is missing 2 of its small feet.

Happiness prevails

The rest is history. Happiness 'till the break of dawn... Almost 2500 qso's and 3.880.000 points.
And when we looked at the condx values this morning it turned out the K value had risen to 6 during the last hours of the contest....

The lesson learned is that I have to provide a TEST PLAN for the next occasion. We took too much for granted. And start tlf in VERBOSE mode the first time. The debug messages were quite explicit in this case...

Other minor things I noticed:
- the 'needed' display is quite useless for the wpx, needs some work
- I had forgotten to set the SERIAL_EXCHANGE variable to lock the qso number (corrected during the contest)
- Tlf needs a better "this is a mult you should/can work" indication

A plea to the CQ Contest Comittee:
CAN WE PLEASE SHIFT THE STARTING TIME OF THE CONTESTS TO 8:00 UTC !!!
I think this would be fair after all these years...

We had hell of a time... Thank you L03 - We will be back!!

P.S.: On another foot: I wonder if there is a linux driver to send console data to BRAILLE output devices? Marvin, DL2VD, the 'white sticker' chairman of L03, uses TRlog with a BRAILLE device, and cannot use any non-DOS program. I am not aware of anything similar for LINUX. Any ideas?

We are preparing for the WPX contest next weekend. The contest location is the fieldday ground of the DARC L03 club, near Duisburg (see location on the APRS map). Crew are DL4YR,DL1EKC and DK3QZ. The latter two were ops of CT9L in 2002 and 2004 resp.

Equipment will be 2 Elecraft K2's, 2 linears, a cubical quad, a 3-band TH33 and some dipoles.
We are going to use TLF of course, and this morning I prepared the computers for the wpx.
They had not been updated since last year's wpx so it needed the latest versions of Ncurses (5.4), cwdaemon (0.9), hamlib (1.2.3) and tlf (0.9.23).

If you do the upgrade in this sequence you will be o.k. (don't forget ldconfig after installing the libraries, and make clean before making tlf!!). Under Morphix cwdaemon is copied to /usr/local/bin, which is not in the PATH. We will have a network (Wifi compatible) with 4 nodes, with cluster data, rig control for the K2's and cw via the cwdaemon.

The photo shows how you can use a pool table for contest preparation (notice how the K2 is dwarfed by the computers... is this radio?)

The weather forecast is fantastic, the CONDX forecast is MISERABLE!! So we will have plenty of time for the social aspects of this event....