WDØDXD

A little background information here.  My primary HF antenna is a 220′ horizontal loop that I feed with a dual pair of RG-6 coax.  The shields on each coax are bonded together and then each center wire of the coax are connected to one end of the loop.

I then feed it down to a MFJ-962D manual Tuner.  The setup works really great.  I can tune 80-6m pretty easily.

In a previous post I mentioned that I am playing with remote operation using logmein remote.  That works fine, but when I get a chance, I want to try it from somewhere outside of the house.  So I have a brand new LDG AT-1000 pro tuner that I would like to use.  So now I have to figure out a Balun to work with the RG-6 coax.  The two of them together gives me about 150 ohms.

So while I research the issue, if anyone out there has some experience in balun design, I would love to hear from you.

Last night I got to thinking that the ability to remotely control my rig would be nice.  I have looked at this in the past, but setting up skype and hrd, etc. seemed like more than I wanted to mess with at the time.

In our Managed Service Business we use a version of Logmein remote to do about 90% of our work.  So last night I signed up for their free account and installed it on one of my Ham pc’s.  I have been running HRD and just installed JT65-HF on it the previous day.

It worked great.  I went up to our bedroom and logged in with my laptop and ran JT65 for about 2 hours last night.  I made 4-5 contacts that way on 20m.

The free version of logmein will work great on digital modes.  It won’t send sounds from the remote computer, so if you want to run voice, you will have to pony up for the paid version.  For more info go to http://www.logmein.com

This past weekend I made several short PSK contacts with Amateur’s in Japan.  JM1VWQ, JM7OLW and JH7VHZ.  All three of them were very gracious and I appreciated their taking the time to reply to my call.  They all thanked their contacts for their thoughts and prayers.  I know I have found a new level of respect for our fellow Ham’s in Japan, I can’t imagine what they are going through.  It makes me think twice about complaining about the trivial problems I encounter every day.

I have always wondered about something.  After being the only country to have an atomic bomb used in war on their soil, how were they able to clean up the radioactivity.  Seeing what they are going through now, I finally decided to do a little research on the internet to find out this weekend.  Pretty interesting.  If anyone out there has any first hand info, I would be interested in hearing about it.

In the meantime, I and my family’s thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan.  Here’s hoping that we have many fine QSO’s in the future.

Tried a new mode today.  I downloaded JT65-HF and installed it.  After getting it set right to work with my Signal Link USB sound card, I was off and running.  I have it controlling my ICOM-746Pro using HRD.  Found that I could export the logs and import them into HRD Logbook, so far it seems to work seamlessly.

ARAN finally moved our IRLP Node from a simplex transceiver over to our 443.200 uhf repeater.  We are using a CAT400 controller.  For anyone who is trying to make a cable for this, here is the pin out:

CAT RX Audio Port#X pin 5 -> Sound Card Line Audio Out
CAT TX Audio Port#X pin 4-> Sound Card Line Audio In and IRLP Card pin 8

CAT Port#X pin 9 -> 10k resistor -> Port#X pin3
CAT Port#X pin 9 -> 10k resistor -> Port#X pin1

CAT Port#X PTT pin3 -> IRLP Card pin 7 COR In Control
CAT Port#X CORT pin1 -> IRLP CARD pin 2 PTT OUT Control
Cat Port#X Ground pin 8 -> IRLP Card pin 6 Ground

Tip and middle ring on the sound card jacks got tied together and I tied the grounds together (bottom ring) and connected them to Cat Port#X Ground pin 8.

Substitute your CAT port number on the controller for “X”.

Then set COR LOW on the CAT Port (dip switch 4 on in our case since we are using port 3) and make sure COR is low on the IRLP controller board.

Then  you good to go.  I just need to figure out how to disable port 3 on the CAT if port 2 is active and vice-versa.  I will explain the reasons why later.

Things have been kind of crazy around here and I have neglected the blog.  I am kind of getting things turned around, so I plan on posting more often.

I have 3 projects that I am or have completed lately, so I will post more on them.  The first is moving the local IRLP node to a repeater.  The second is finishing the Sienna and lastly I have started a Genesis G59 SDR project.

More on those in the coming days.