If you are a Hallicrafters fan here is a video from WWII promoting their contribution to the war effort. I noted in a previous post that listening to my Uncle’s Hallicrafters S-38 is what got me interested in Amateur Radio. My next project is going to be restoring that old S-38 in his memory.
Thanks to http://www.archive.org. You can view a lot more videos, audio and texts at their website.
The “Widow Maker” step. No I am kidding about that, but their are a lot of components to install in this phase and placement is critical. NØJRJ has a video up on it and he had to remove and reinstall a whole line of capacitors. Luckily I headed his warning and triple checked my placement.
After I completed the first part of this phase, I went to do the testing of IC2B and ran into problems. I ended up wasting half a day on a silly mistake. You see I started this back in January and got busy and set it aside. Well there is a mod that you have to do on the 160m band pass filter on this version of the board. You cut a trace and then solder in a jumper. All well and good, but I cut the trace back in January and didn’t solder on the jumper. This gave some weird voltage readings, but with the help of Bruce KF1Z I as able to find the mode and put the jumper on and all is well.
G59 MK2 Phase 7
Then I went on to solder the inductors and capacitors in. Again make sure to check the BOM for all the components. there are a couple of capacitors not listed on the pictures on the website. I am missing one capacitor for the 80m band pass filter, but I was assured by Bruce that I could continue on until I got the part.
So until Phase 8 here’s to happy soldering!
I have been working on the Genesis G59 build for a little over a week again. One of the new skills I have had to try and master is soldering SMD parts to the circuit board. I have gotten a lot better, but like everything it takes practice, practice and more practice.
Soldering
When started to solder the microscopic capacitors, I found the most of the time I would lay them on the board and hit them with a little solder and they would stand up vertically. So after a little research here is what I am doing.
I will put a small dab of solder on one of the pads and the use a pair of angled needle nose pliers and hold the capacitor to the of the pad. Then I will heat the solder back up and slide the capacitor into the solder. Remove the heat and let the solder cool. Then solder the other side.
It works with surface mount IC’s also. It gives you a chance to position the IC so it is lined up correctly. Then heat the pad and melt the solder and let it flow under the pin of the device.
Sparkfun has a SMD soldering tutorial here that you can watch.
Happy soldering!
KF5JSJ has created a new app for the Android. This is a project for an Android phone that takes pictures and broadcasts the phone GPS coordinates using the amateur radioAPRS infrastructure. 
He is using it as a backup tracker for a high altitude balloon project but it can be used for a couple things such as setting in one place and storing time lapse photos, or keeping track of where the phone is graphically on a map.
Take a look at his project here
This is my new favorite new tool I use in the Ham Shack. Good close up vision left me behind a few years ago. So now when I am try to read those small capacitors or check on my poor soldering work I need help.
I have one of those Jeweler monocles and a lighted bench magnifying glass, but I found this works best. I picked it up at Radio Shack, but I am sure you can get them at Walmart or the big box stores.
I like the fact that this one has a light built into it. I need to upgrade the lighting in my office/shack, too many shadows.
I saw a link somewhere, I don’t remember where for sure that lead me to the Museum of Radio & Technology, Inc. I took a look and it really looks interesting.
They have a whole section on Amateur Radio. You can take an online tour. My family is really big 
into History and Museums. I am not sure I could talk them into a radio museum, but if I am ever in the West Virginia area, I am going to be sure to make a trip.
I think it is important for us to preserve our history. Besides, if you are like me, all of those tubes glowing makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
If you are like me, your ham shack isn’t the biggest area in the house. I work out of a home office and my office serves as a business office, exercise room and ham shack.
Wall space is at a premium and I haven’t been able to display any QSL Cards or rewards. Not to 
mention any of my club certificates.
I know I am not the first genius to think of this, but I thought I would share it anyway. I was at a local Target this weekend and came upon one of those new fangled digital photo frames that was on clearance. So I thought hey, I can upload all my QSL cards/ham promotional stuff to it and it will take less than a square foot on my wall.
So here it is with about 400 eQsl cards loaded on it.
Have you ever had one of those days? Well I have been having one of those weeks. I posted an article a couple of weeks ago about building a new Frontend for our Mythtv system we have in the house.
We wanted a smaller foot print PC that wouldn’t take up so much room in our living room. So I did a little research and settled on a Shuttle XS35GT with 2gb of RAM, a 500gb hard drive and based the ION2 chip set. I found one online in the $350.00 to $380.00 price range. It took about a week to arrive and I set about getting Mythbuntu installed and configured to work with our backend server.
First I have to comment on the construction of the XS35GT. This is a neat little package that really impresses with it’s construction and compactness. It uses fan-less construction which makes for a extremely quit operation. The power supply is an external brick the is about 3″ by 2″. I have the one the came with a built in DVD. There is just one screw that you have to remove to open the case and everything seems to be easy to get to. It comes with a stand to sit it up vertically, which you have to use so that it can keep the unit cool. You can also purchase and optional mount that allows you to attach it to the back of most LCD/LED TV’s.
I also purchased and Windows Media Center clone infrared remote control to work with the unit. It comes with a usb receiver that you just plug into one of the USB ports on the computer.
Of course I couldn’t find the original CD that I used to install Ubuntu, so I had to download a new copy which you can find here http://www.mythbuntu.org/downloads. I went ahead and downloaded version 10.10 and since the ION2 is a 64bit processor, I went ahead and got the 64bit version and burned the CD.
It took about 15-20 minutes to install Mythbuntu on the machine and every thing went well. I rebooted the machine and waited for it to come up. That was the end of easy street. As soon as it came up to the Mythbuntu control center I had problems. It turns out that on the old system I had was version 10.04. The new version 10.10 usees protocol 23056 and 10.04 uses protocol 56 and they are incompatible. I could have upgraded my backend server, but then it would have broke the software I have loaded on several PC’s in the house called Myth Player. It allows you to view recorded shows on a laptop or pc running windows and has a better picture than the web browser version of Mythtv.
No problem, I just went back and downloaded the 64bit version of Mythbuntu 10.04 and reinstalled. This would be the first in about a half dozen times that I would try a reinstall. Well now I could get into the backend and view recorded programs without any problems. So next on the list was to get the wireless card in the XS35GT working. Ubuntu has a program called Network-Manager that is supposed to make configuring network connections easy. The problem was, it couldn’t see any wireless access points in my area. Even if I had it 2 feet from the access point.
So I spent the next couple of days googling solutions and trying this and that to get it to work. I would reinstall after awhile trying to keep the config clean and also so I could document here the steps needed to make it work. The XS35GT has a Realtek rtl8192SE wireless card in it. It has been known to be a difficult install on Linux, but they seemed to have it figured out from what I could tell.
Anyway this is what got the Wireless working. It seems the released version of the bios for the XS335GT is 1.08. I did look at the wireless settings in the bios and the were something like AP managed and Off or along those lines. It seems that the power is shut off to the wireless card until in Windows you run a utility and turn the card on. There is no external button on the unit to turn it on like there is with a laptop.
At some point, Shuttle put out a bios upgrade version 1.09 that allows you to go into bios and change the power on the wireless card to always on. From what I can glean, they took it off of their website for some reason and you have to email their tech support to get it. A quick search of google will give you a couple of links to download it. It was scary to try, but I had spent two and a half days on it, so what the heck. I had to make a bootable usb stick. A good resource for some of this can be found at http://breden.org.uk/2011/01/15/shuttle-xs35gt-installing-xbmc-10-0-live-dharma/#fixhdmiaudio it’s for another program, but a lot of it applies to Mythbuntu.
The bios fix enabled me to turn the power on to the wireless card and it worked for a little bit with Network-Manager. Then I rebooted and couldn’t get it to work. So I went to the Realtek site and downloaded the latest rtl8192SE drivers and compiled/installed them. I also uninstalled Network-Manager and installed wicd. What do you know, I could then scan for and connect to my wireless access point. So now it was time to try out play back with the wireless. It worked, but apparently I am too far away from the AP or there is still some tweaking to do to get the wireless to work without dropping too many packets. So after about 3 days, I am back on the wire. I will try to work with the wireless later, but I have other projects to get to.
In the meantime I had tried to play a DVD from the frontend. Didn’t work. It would show the FBI warning and then go to a white screen with some design on it and then lock up. I spent 2-3 hours tweaking and trying to get VLC to work in Mythtv to no avail. Finally I grabbed a different DVD after doing a clean install and what do you know. It popped right up and played. Asked the family and sure enough they had some problems playing the first one I tried in the DVD player. There is a lesson in that, I will let you figure it out.
So finally, I needed to take it to the living room and try it out. Hook it up and use the HDMI cable for the first time. One problem I have to fix is that with wicd controlling the network cards, it doesn’t initialize the eth0 interface before Mythtv starts. So it can’t connect to the backend and you have to exit out of Mythtv and go back in to make it work. I will fix that by setting the network up to use a static IP address.
The final problem is that I don’t get any audio using the HDMI cable. I have tried a few things that I have found on google, but at 1:30am last night I decided to give it a rest. I will get it working this weekend and post my findings.
Final conclusions on the hardware. The X35GT is a neat little package. I was half tempted to just install Windows on it and use the Mtyh Player. I think the hardware is a nice piece of engineering. I don’t know if I would do it, if I had to do it over again. I was hoping to just have a 30 minute install. But I have learned a few things along the way and if you read this, maybe I can save you some steps.
PS, now you know why I haven’t posted anything for a few days 🙂
I have been using a Droid for a little over a year now. So I have accumulated a few android apps. The following is a list that I have loaded for Ham Radio use and a few that I haven’t tried yet.
Callsign DB – Looks up call signs
EchoLink – Let’s you connect to Echo Link on your Droid
ElectroDroid– Very similar to Electronics Assistant only for your Droid
Ham – Call sign lookup and Solar Conditions
HFBeacon – Informs user which HF Propagation beacon is transmitting at the present time
IRLP Finder – Locate the nearest IRLP node to near your location
Scanner Radio – Listen to online radios, including ham repeaters using your Droid.
Signals – Reference for 10 signals, Q-Signals, Morse Code, etc.
Ham Radio Study Guide – Amateur Radio Question Pool
HamSatDroid – Amateur Radio satellite pass prediction
Amateur Radio Call Log – Basic Ham Radio Call Log
EchoLink Finder – Find the nearest EchoLink Node
QTH Locator – Calculates and displays your current QTH Locator
Morse Trainer Light – Learn or improve morse code
Grid Locator – Locate Maidenhead Grid Location
NCDXF Beacon – Monitor NCDXF beacons
PalmVE – Take sample Amateur Radio exams and locate VE testing sessions
QSL Mobile Ham Radio – Functions include GeoLocation, Call Sign searches, etc.
HamLog – another logging program
DX Cluster – Live DX spots on your Droid
AE Morse Code Tutor – Learn Morse Code
QTH Locator – Displays current QTH using google maps
APRSdroid – Allows reporting of your position to APRS-IS networks
There are more available, just do a search for Ham Radio in the Android Market and you can download most of these for free.
Leo I. Meyerson WØASQ who was a native of Omaha and founder of World Radio Laboratories past away this last week. I am always interested in the history of anybody in Amateur Radio, but especially people from the plains and midwest states. So many of our rural communities have lost population, I look fondly back at past innovators from this area for inspiration.
You can read more about Leo on the Omaha World Herald.
I wish I would have had the chance to meet him.