After visiting the website of the Radio Society of Great Britain for no particular reason the other day; I noticed that the results of the national survey of radio amateurs had been published.

After reading through these I was rather pleased to see they had used one of my responses on a slide relating to the RSGB website:
The website should be the first port-of-call for radio related information, news, projects etc. The site should aggregate articles from across the web and provide frequently updated RSS Feeds. Southgate ARC provides a very good news aggregation service which is superior to anything offered by the RSGB site. This is the wrong way around!
Amateur Radio Survey Questionnaire Analysis 2011, Page 22, Point 3

As a result, I wanted to expand on my impression of the Society's website.

News and Latest Information

On the home page of www.rsgb.org, news is awkwardly split-up into different sections: a scrolling ticker at the top, GB2RS News and RSGB Articles and Statements.

The first of these should be scrapped. Scrolling tickers are an annoyance. If I visited the site frequently, I would rarely sit and watch that ticker scroll through each of its items. Actually, even on rare visits do I do that.

The other two sections should be merged. Upgrading the news system to something more modern that supports tagging or categorisation would easily enough permit articles to be filtered, but on the home page the latest articles in chronological order should be visible in one obvious list.

Since the survey response, I've noticed that RSS feeds are available from news articles, but you have to visit the News section to find them. Really, if news is going to be on the home page, then a News section is unnecessary and the feed links should be placed on the home page.

For sharing, those news stories which are published by the RSGB do have links for the common social networks and email. This is good. There is no commenting however. Enabling this feature could be an interesting way to poll the opinions of the membership and radio amateurs at large.

About Us and Services

The Society has a section labelled About Us. As an RSGB member and licensed radio amateur I consider this to be of no relevance to me. However, clicking into that section I find information on various services offered such as the AV Library, the QSL Bureau, lists of affiliated societies etc. There is obviously a wealth of information here that could be missed simply because of a bad heading. Perhaps keeping the About section to 'About Amateur Radio' and 'About the Society' would be best, and creating a 'Services and Information' section would give those pages more prominence?

Style

I'm not going to make to many comments on the actual style of the site as this is personal preference - what I may like/dislike, another will probably think totally different to me. What I will say is that the style of the site should be consistent in all sections.

I have counted at least four different styles in use: That used in the home page and many other pages, that in the Tutors section, that in the Operating section and the RSGB shop. A common theme across all areas would aid navigation and enhance the appearance of the site.

Relevance

According to the copyright date of the page itself, the Links section doesn't appear to have been updated since 2006. A page of this type should be reviewed regularly to ensure that links still work and are still relevant. Whilst most do seem to work, I couldn't connect to "Marconicalling" (www.marconicalling.com) at the time of writing.

Whilst mentioning the Links section, there is no clear policy on how a site gets listed here, nor a form to request consideration.

Member's Area

First of all, a proper secure logon method would be nice as opposed to the popup box requesting a username and password.

Next, some sort of account management section would be very useful. RSGB members should be able to update callsigns, change passwords and amend their contact details. Some of this would save administrative time as at present these details have to be changed via email or by telephone.

While a number of issues of Radcom are available to view in PDF in the member's area, I would like to ability to download these PDFs for personal use. Currently, Flash is used to view these issues online and whilst this is fine for general viewing it seems impossible to search.

This would probably be a controversial suggestion from the society's point of view. They sell annual CDs containing PDFs. By offering these for download they'd potentially be losing out. However, I won't buy one of these CDs as I won't pay for a magazine a second time - well certainly not the cost that these discs are currently made available. I want to be able to keep copies of Radcom for future reference, but don't want to keep stacks of magazines in the shack. I also don't want a collection of CDs which, whilst better, still take up valuable space.

Summary

In conclusion, the RSGB site needs a thorough overhaul. It needs consistent styling across all sections and a review policy to ensure pages don't become out-of-date. Members need to have a proper area where they can manage their accounts as well as receive enhanced content and it would be nice to see PDF downloads of back-issues of Radcom.

All news articles should contain sharing links, and commenting facilities. Perhaps some sort of integration with social media could be helpful too.

The RSGB website is of prime importance for amateur radio in the UK. It needs to sell the hobby to all newcomers but in particular those at the younger end of the age spectrum. A modern well designed website will hopefully help grasp their attention and hopefully encourage take up of an interesting and diverse hobby.

To mark the wedding of HRH Prince William to Catherine Middleton; the RSGB has negotiated with Ofcom to permit UK licenced radio amateurs to run special callsigns based on their ordinary call following the successful application for a Notice of Variation (NoV).

This is a simple and fun way of radio operators getting involved with the celebrations, and perhaps generating a bit of international interest in the amateur radio community; not only in the wedding itself but with international operators logging contacts with British operators using the modified callsigns.

The modification is simple. The regional locator character changes to an R regardless of region. So, my M0GKY callsign would become MR0GKY; my 2E1IPA callsign would be 2R1IPA.

To apply for an NoV is simplicity itself. Applications are conducted through the RSGB website by completing a form which simply asks for the existing callsign and a valid email address. Once submitted, applications should take about 72 hours. If accepted, a PDF copy of the variation will be sent to the supplied email address.

I've applied for my variation this evening, so with any luck I'll know if I've been accepted in a few days!

This weekend, I set myself a little project. Construct a dipole for use on 2m and an appropriate stand.

The project is pretty much complete apart from some minor adjustments and pictures are available on my Flickr page (see link in 'Related Links', or visit www.flickr.com/photos/m0gky/sets/72157625058766415/) showing the results.

The Aerial

The dipole, being a simple aerial, was very simple to construct. I decided to use my favourite of materials - 20mm PVC conduit tubing (available from B&Q), of which I had a number of offcuts from my Magnetic Loop project. All I needed for the dipole structure were two pieces of tubing, a T joint and a couple of straight-through joiners which I used to make the ends nice and tidy.

A BNC socket was fixed to the T joint allowing for the easy connection of RG58. To the BNC socket I soldered two lengths of wire, each a quarter-wavelength long (in approximation), resulting in a half-wavelength dipole. Once the soldering and drilling had been completed, it was simply a case of bolting the BNC socket in place, threading each wire into it's own piece of tubing and connecting the tubing to the T connector.

With the dipole constructed, I connected a length of RG58 between it and my 2m rig, balance the dipole between two curtain rails and gave it a try. Using an SWR meter and taking measurements at 144.025MHz, 145.000MHz and 145.975MHz I attempted to optimise the length of the dipole by trimming about 1cm of each piece of wire and then re-testing. I continued with this until I reached a SWR reading I was happy with.

The Mast and Stand

The next stage was to create a suitable stand permitting orientation of the dipole in either a horizontal or vertical polarisation and at any rotation I required. My solution was to create a small indoor mast with an H stand and guy strings.

The stand, like the dipole is constructed from 20mm PVC conduit tubing. Each leg has 1 meter of tubing, terminating in straight-through joiners with a hole drilled to accommodate the guy string. Half way along the leg, a T joiner is placed to allow a cross bar to be fixed, joining both legs together.

For the cross bar I used an offcut totalling about 40cm in length. Like the legs, this accommodates a T joiner at half it's length. This is where the central mast fits.

The mast is two pieces of tubing, each about 77cm long and connected with a straight through joiner. The split is so that the setup can be collapsed into a small easily portable package. At the top of the mast sits another joiner to which sits a short (20cm) piece of conduit with four holes drilled around it's circumference. This is where each of the four guy strings (one from each end of each leg) terminates. These guy strings are important to ensure the stability of the structure. 20mm tubing is not strong enough to support the aerial on it's own. It will bend out of shape without guys to keep it upright.

Next, the dipole can be connected directly to the mast using it's T joiner. This will allow it to be oriented in a horizontal polarisation only. Instead, I have attached a right-angle joiner. A very short piece of conduit extends horizontally from the joiner to which the dipole can then be connected. This allows orientation in either horizontal or vertical polarisation, but does put a bit of stress on the mast as it moves the centre of gravity. It's for this reason that the conduit extending between the right-angle joiner and the dipole must be as short as possible.

Still to do

The T joiner at the base of the mast, and the right-angle joiner both have removable covers. This means I can run a length of RG58 up through the centre of the mast and out of the top before connecting to the aerial. This will reduce strain on the mast as at the moment, the weight of the cable pulls down on the aerial which already moves the centre of gravity away from the mast as mentioned above. I need to order a BNC plug this run of cable but once that arrives, I can add this in.

As for the aerial, I'm considering the possibility of adding a director and/or reflector for improved directionality. I'm not sure if that will make it just too big for indoor use, but the advantage of using the tubing is that I can try it and if it doesn't work, I can just re-configure it back to a dipole.

Last Wednesday I added to my collection of computers by purchasing a Samsung N210 netbook - a small, low-power, long-life laptop computer.

My primary reason for purchasing such a machine was for a forthcoming holiday, allowing me to backup photographs, video footage, write a journal and connect to the internet. A standard laptop wouldn't fit the bill - the one available to me was just to big and heavy. My smartphone didn't have the connectivity or storage to allow me to get pictures off from SD cards.

So the netbook option seemed to be the logical choice, and after a lot of searching (it's a crowded marketplace), I settled on the Samsung.

This particular model has a white case, a 10.1" 1024x600 matt screen, 250GB hard drive, 1GB DDR2 RAM (expandable to 2GB), Bluetooth, wifi 802.11b/g/n, built-in webcam, SD card reader and 3x USB sockets. The processor is one of the newer Atom N450 1.66GHz models which features an Intel GMA350 graphics chip as well. This processor, compared to the older Atom N270, features significant power reduction meaning battery life is significantly better than the earlier model.

I had to spend a lot of time seriously considering my requirements and trawling through reviews. Quite early on, I settled for a machine with the N450 processor which fortunately narrowed my search. From here though, machines are very similar with little to tell between them.

What settled it for me was that this model had strong reviews and featured the newest WiFi standard. Although I don't operate a 802.11n network just yet, I'm planning an upgrade in the not-to-distant future and it made sense to future proof the machine as far as possible.

As for my impressions now that I'm using the netbook, I'm very happy. The machine is slightly heavier than I anticipated but compared to an inexpensive laptop, it's certainly small and light. It fits in my backpack easily and I think it'll just fit in to my camera bag. The reduced resolution on the screen is noticeable - particularly in the vertical, but small tricks such as auto-hiding the taskbar and running a web browser full-screen offsets that limitation somewhat. Battery life is impressive and I estimate achieving anything between 5 - 7 hours of uptime depending of course on what it's used for. Admittedly this is short of the advertised 11 hours battery life, but still very good.

There's no doubt that the processor is limited, but day-to-day browsing feels sufficiently fast. Standard definition video files play okay from the hard-drive but I did struggle to use BBC iPlayer through Firefox on the supplied Windows 7 Starter. Video playback stuttered and full-screen use was out of the question.

I've configured my machine to dual-boot Windows 7 with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04. I've divided the disk into multiple partitions to accommodate the two operating systems, the restore partition and a shared data partition. I find myself booting more and more into Ubuntu. It feels snappy and iPlayer here is much more successful although full-screen playback is still a struggle.

There are a few niggles with the open source system - after installation there is no wireless connectivity until an update is done via wired ethernet, and some additional software needs to be installed to make some special keys e.g., brightness work. I've also noticed the wireless does not always resume when waking the machine from a sleep state although this is intermittent and a reboot easily fixes it. I also needed to enable multiple desktops using gconf-editor which I think is essential on a limited resolution screen. Now it's configured though, I think it's a very usable and snappy system.

The Windows installation needed some work too. As seems to be the case with bought computer systems, a lot of extra - unnecessary - software was pre-installed. It took some time to install this as part of the initial setup and then more time again to remove it. I'm talking about Microsoft Office 2007 (trial), Microsoft Works, various non-standard games, McAfee virus scanner - all applications that hog disk space and have the potential to slow down the machine. Fortunately once I'd cleared all this I was able to take a snapshot of the system with one of the useful pieces of software - Samsung Recovery Solution 4.

So all-in-all, I think this was a sound choice and I'm looking forward to putting it through it's paces. As well as the uses I mentioned earlier, I will also see how it performs next to my radio equipment - I wonder if it emits a large amount of RF? As it has a large battery life I'm considering how useful it could be for operating a portable PSK amateur radio station. I suspect that it will be like other laptops I've used - on battery it'll be fine. It'll be the mains adaptor that pollutes the spectrum.

At the time of writing, the Samsung N210 was available at Amazon UK for £278 (white model) or £333 (black model).

Today seems to be a day of negative digital radio news - and not necessarily entirely accurate news at that. Be warned, I'm going to ramble on for a bit. If you can't be bothered to read it all, I sum up my point at the end.

An Open Letter to Rt. Hon. Ed Vaizey MP

First I read an open letter from Rob Mannion, the editor of Practical Wireless Magazine, which was sent to the Telegraph newspaper aimed for the attention of Mr Ed Vaizey MP and reproduced here:

Dear Sirs: With the right Hon.Ed Vaisey about to make a statement regarding the imposition of DAB radio on Band II v.h.f. radio services, to replace the practical f.m. broadcasts, it is to be hoped that the new coalition government have listened clearly to all the criticisms regarding the impractical technology and the difficulties of receiving DAB radio services on portable equipment using simple antenna systems (a service the public has been used to for many years).

With the much mentioned huge spending cuts announced by the government, it will be unfortunate indeed if pensioners and those out of work should face the prospect of buying new equipment - all made in Far East - that would most likely provide inferior reception.

I implore Mr Vaisey to take the opportunity to repeal the legislation that will force listeners to buy equipment that's not necessary, and at the same time will also send money overseas to support another country's economy. Keep the money that would be spent in the UK, keep the service that works so well on simple portable receivers and enable as many people to carry on enjoying the essential broadcast radio services as before with simple to use receivers that don't require large amounts of power to operate them and work efficiently. With DAB radio on Band II that's certainly not possible.

Please Sir - Dump the DAB on Band II.

Rob Mannion

Editor Practical Wireless magazine
Broadstone
Dorset BH18 8PW

Whilst the theme of the letter may be sound, I find the arguments put forward here to be quite surprising particularly the mention of the source of DAB products - the Far East. I fail to see the issue with electronics being made in foreign countries. It is indeed the case that a significant majority of our products are manufactured outside of the UK and I daresay this is true for analogue radio products. Yes it would be nice for the UK to have a thriving manufacturing industry, but at the moment it simply is not the case. The sale of digital radio products will still occur on these shores however and that will generate revenue for the UK economy.

I also take issue with the inference to expensive digital radio sets. Prices are falling all the time, and a DAB radio receiver can now be had for £20.00. It wasn't so long ago that the lower price was £50.00 and when I first obtained a DAB receiver, it was £100.00. Switchover isn't happening this year or next - it's pencilled in for 2015. That's five years for prices to fall further and for people to gradually replace sets. I'm sure also that as technology improves, so will the power consumption.

It also may be the case that people may choose not to replace some sets. With many digital radio stations broadcasting via digital television some may find that all the radio they need is already available to them in a post TV switchover country. Let's also not discount online radio.

Lastly in respect of this letter, if you're going to emplore a minister to listen to your viewpoint and in an open letter at that, it's probably worth at least spelling his name correctly!

The Daily Mail Jumps On The Bandwagon

The second source of negative reporting comes from that bastion of quality news(!) The Daily Mail.

The news report itself is linked to via Related Links on this entry, but the key points are thus:

• Motorists face a bill of £300 to install digital radios,

• the government is pushing ahead with plans to switch of AM and FM broadcasting,

• 100 million analogue radios will be redundant following switchoff in 2015

• New car head units cost £300; conversion kits cost £100

• Most ordinary homes have 2 or 3 radios

In typical sensationalist journalism, the body of the story contradicts the headline as can be seen in the points above. The headline that motorists will have to pay £300 to replace their radios simply is not true. Let's do some research:

I conducted a quick search through Google UK found a JVC DAB head unit for £148.99 - half the price quoted by the paper. Unfortunately, for a quick search, that was about the only result but one result at half the price is still not £300.00 in my book.

The Mail does mention conversion kits and acknowledges that these are cheaper than head units (there's the contradiction). More research again:

A search for the Pure Highway DAB receiver, which mounts on the windscreen and re-broadcasts a digital station on an FM frequency that any plain old car radio from the last 20 years can receiver, resulted in a number of hits. The cheapest source for this product (from a major known retailer) was Amazon UK at £68.00 - a whole 32% less than the cost of a conversion kit quoted by the Mail.

So we can clearly see that The Daily Mail is simply wrong with it's figures. It's also wrong stating that a switch-off of the analogue bands will happen in 2015 but this is more forgiveable. Major national and local stations are intended to be moved from FM to DAB by 2015. The resulting space on the FM band is earmarked for community stations. A similar prospect is on the cards for AM, but there is an intention to close this by moving community stations found here to FM.

As can be seen from the above paragraph, with FM being used for community stations it does not mean that all analogue radios will become redundant although it's true that the requirement for them will be reduced. There's no reason to fear that these will end up simply trashed though - old radios could be recycled and sent abroad to countries where digital radio has not become established.

So let's take a final look at costs. The article states that most homes have two or three radios (although a later quote mentions four or five, we'll go with the Mail for the purpose of this bit of maths). Let's say that all of these radios are replaced with digital sets. At the cheapest cost of £20.00, that's a replacement cost of £60.00. Adding on a new car head unit at £148.00 results in a total replacement cost of £208.00. Okay, it's still not cheap but that's every radio replaced for less than the cost stated for motorists only.

Going back to my earlier point about other sources of digital radio, we could perhaps assume that only two radios will be needed - one for the kitchen and one for the bedroom with the living room being served by digital television. Take £20.00 off the above total, that's £188.00.

There's five years remaining to replace these radios, so no immediate rush. The cheaper sets could be replaced over the next two years - easy enough by saving £1.70 per month. Then there's a further three years to save for that more expensive car head unit - £4.11 per month assuming prices don't fall.

What's My Point?

Digital radio is here and it's going to stay. I don't think there's any two ways about it, and at the moment 2015 is earmarked as the date when we should be using some form of digital radio as our primary method of receiving radio broadcasts.

DAB has its problems. At the moment, coverage is less than FM and there are issues around audio quality. Yes, receivers currently use more power than FM and yes, they do cost more.

All I ask for though is some perspective. There's five years for problems to be ironed out. Coverage can be improved, power consumption can be improved. Audio quality is subjective but there are solutions to that too (increased bitrates, codec changes), and a good quality DAB signal does provide generally better audio than a poor quality FM signal.

Whilst DAB is digital radio, digital radio is not just DAB. Satellite, cable and online services all provide digital radio and in many cases the audio quality is excellent.

It also occurs to me that perhaps there is some hate for DAB simply because it's not analogue.

I know I'm asking to much of our press, but let's look at the both the pro's and con's of digital radio compared with analogue radio and have a balanced report written in light of the situation we're in now - not as though switch-over is taking place next week and we're all being conned out of our hard earned cash.

I've made some slight changes to my magnetic loop aerial. Nothing major, but useful none-the-less.

The original design, as copied from G4ILO, featured a T shaped mast with hooks on the left and right of the top bar to support a loop of RG-213 coax. The biggest problem I found with this was establishing the correct loop shape to create a good match. It was easy to squash or expand the loop which could destroy a previously good match.

To overcome this, I've redesigned the mast to a + shape. The same coax is used for the loop but it is now much more rigid than before meaning if I collapse the aerial and re-assemble it later, I am more likely to maintain a good SWR reading.

Other than that, I've now got a large run of RG58 coax to connect the rig to the aerial meaning positioning is much easier. I've also obtained a better fitting knob for the tuning capacitor. The one I was using was too big for the shaft making it off-centre, wobbly and more difficult to tune.

So what do I have still to do? Well G4ILO's design features an inbuilt SWR indicator which I might incorporate although it's not essential for me at the moment.

I'm still thinking about remote motorised control as well although gears seem to be more complicated than I thought. It is only the gears which are the problem though. The capacitor housing is large enough for a motor which will be connected to a long cable run (as long as the RG58) terminating in a small control box which can set next to the radio. All it needs to incorporate is a momentary push button control to activate the motor and perhaps a variable resistor to control the motor speed.

On 1 April 2010, Ordnance Survey opened up a lot of it's data including a cut-down version of Code-Point - a database of UK postcodes.

Since this data is available free of charge, and has a licence aligned to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence; I decided to download the data and incorporate it into an SQL table for use on this website.

I've now completed the import of the data (1,696,088 records not including code definitions) and have created a webpage which can be used to query this information. A user can input a postcode and have all open data which I have available displayed.

Not only that, but I have also been learning about converting geographical data in to different systems. The Code-Point data provides co-ordinates in the British Coordinate System of six-figure eastings and northings. My new page converts this data into latitude/longitude, National Grid Reference, Worked All Britain (WAB) square and Maidenhead Grid Locator. By having latitude/longitude data, a Google Map can also display a marker showing where a postcode is.

Now I've got a bit of a grasp on how to convert data, I hope to extend the page to accept input of other forms of geographic data and have it convert in the same way. For now though, I'll leave it at postcode only.

There's nothing particularly unique about this. Many sites across the internet allow postcode searches and data conversion. This was essentially a two day project which I decided to do simply because it costs nothing but server space (over 150MiB), I fancied doing some coding and I find this information useful from time-to-time as part of my amateur radio hobby. If anyone else finds this information useful then that is a bonus.

Find the link in the navigation menu, above.

I've been further testing my magnetic loop aerial over the last 24 hours, but haven't made any changes to the setup as such.

I did find out why, just before writing my blog yesterday, I couldn't get a good SWR reading despite doing so the day before. Rather foolishly I'd let the bare braid from one end of the RG-213 loop touch the outer contact of the phono plug to which the coupling loop connects to. Whoops! Once I'd realised that, getting a match didn't prove to difficult.

In actual fact, I think I may be getting used to tuning the aerial. I'm having very few problems setting up for 14.070MHz for PSK31 use. 7.035 doesn't match quite as well, but I can still get about 1.75:1 I'm hoping it's possible to get this better by tweaking that coupling loop - either fine tuning it's length or adjusting the shape.

Disappointingly though, I still haven't managed to make any contacts. I've been calling CQ using PSK31 on 20m and 40m, and also using SSB on 40m but to no avail. I'll keep trying but I'm not entirely sure how well my signal is getting out. The only indications I've had that I am transmitting are the appearance of markers on the PSKReporter map which indicate that a monitoring station has heard me. This has happened three times - in Sweden, Germany and Italy.

It does sound promising, but until I exchange some reports I'm really just speculating as to how well this aerial is working for transmission work.

About 6 months ago, I visited the website of Julian, G4ILO who had detailed how to build what he has called a 'Wonder Loop' - a small indoor magnetic loop aerial. Following this visit I was inspired to build one myself.

As is my way, I've taken a little while to get around to building this but I have now completed my first build with moderate success.

I've used a 30-310pf (approx) tuning capacitor which I found on eBay for a few pounds, a loop made of RG-213 coax cable and a coupling loop made from some high current cable.

The capacitor is housed in a rather large plastic box (again an eBay purchase) using a couple of screws and a couple of cable ties to hold it in place. The terminals of the capacitor run to two terminal posts to which I can connect the main loop. The coupling loop is connected to a Phono socket, which runs directly to a BNC socket on the rear of the box. From this socket runs a patch lead to the transceiver.

I haven't been particularly precise in the construction - so imprecise in fact that when drilling holes for screws to secure the capacitor, I managed to mis-judge where on of the holes went. I ordered 2m of RG-213 for the main loop, and initially I used the entirety of this, only trimming it slightly during first tests. The coupling loop was one fifth of the size of the main loop, but since the trimming this is now slightly out of proportion.

The assembly of the aerial was completed yesterday after various trips to Maplin and B&Q to get parts, and initial tests are promising. As a receiving aerial I'm really quite happy. Sitting in the flat, it out performs my whip aerial when tuned correctly. Transmitting is a slightly different matter. Yesterday I managed to get a good match with SWR readings of around 1.5:1 or better on 40m and 20m and the PSKReporter website showed my CQ calls on PSK31 being received in Italy with 10w of power. Unfortunately today so far I can't seem to get a match on either band.

I'm experiencing an issue with the sharp tuning of the capacitor. I don't have a reduction drive so I'm having to be extremely precise with the tuning knob - possibly more precise than I am able to control. Another issue is the effect my hand has on the SWR reading. I've notice today that when tuning I can perhaps get a lowish reading but when moving my hand away, the reading worsens. Strangely I didn't notice this yesterday. I can't think of how to overcome this unless I can motorise the control. I'm not sure how possible that is.

My next steps I think are to look at the dimensions of the loop, and perhaps shorten it a bit. I will also try re-creating the coupling loop ensuring it is one fifth of the size of the main loop. I'd like to investigate the possibility of creating a reduction drive to allow for fine control but I need to source cogs and rods and figure out how to fit them into the existing design. If any readers have ideas of where to get such parts, please do leave a comment below.

Despite these initial set-backs, it's been fun to create what is my first home built aerial and to have it work albeit temporarily. Credit of course goes to G4ILO for his design, which I have pretty much copied, and write-up which was very helpful in aiding construction.

A new digital mode is on the scene called ROS - a spread spectrum mode ideal for weak signal/QRP use.

The mode can operate at two symbol rates - 1 and 16 baud; the former is ideal for very weak signals with the user guide stating transmissions can be decoded with at up to -35dB S/N. Unlike WSPR (another weak signal mode), this is a 'live chat' mode allowing users to converse in a way not dissimilar to PSK31 (at 16 baud anyway).

I'm keen to have a go. I'm quite fond of digital modes, and anything that means my disadvantage with aerials is not so much of a problem is certainly welcome. Unfortunately though, the software is Windows only.

I know using Linux is my choice, and with that choice comes the expectation that some software will be out-of-reach. I do think that this should not apply to amateur radio software though. In the spirit of the hobby, such software should be portable. It could be just that the source is published so that others can port the software, but however it is done, those that do not use the popular OS should not be left out.

WINE (the Windows compatibility layer) could be a quick option, but a quick attempt has not been successful. I will put some more effort in to getting it going but there's no guarantee of success.

Fortunately the author has promised to release the source once the application is finished. When that will be however, is anyones guess and until that happens, us Linux (and presumably Mac users too) are left high and dry.

I know I said I wouldn't do anymore serious testing until I'd built a new PC, but I just couldn't help myself. Over the last few days I have been active on 20m with reasonable success.

After experimenting with different settings on the computer soundcard and the audio levels on my interface, I came to the conclusion that running the sound output from the PC at 100% for both the master volume and PCM volume was a bad idea.

I can't say why this didn't occur to me before especially considering I'd noticed audio distortion on other computers when listening to music with the levels at 100% - I'd always reduce them slightly with significant improvement. So it was, that after various tests I came to settle on the master volume at 90% and the PCM fader at approximately 50-60%. Further adjustments would then be made at the soundcard interface.

The other conclusion I came to - and this is almost certainly ludicrously obvious to all seasoned PSK operators out there - is that adjustments to the audio level need to be made after each change in frequency made on the computer. The higher the audio tones (higher frequencies) the louder the audio going in to the radio needs to be. When changing to lower frequencies, the audio volume needs to be reduced to maintain the same power level.

Now I've made these discoveries, I've had a lot more fun! Since I had today to myself, I decided to make it a radio day and have been pretty much stuck to the keyboard calling CQ and answering the calls of others. I'm still limited to around 10w of power since higher levels continue to interfere with the keyboard; but - and here is another revelation that will be obvious to the old-timers - power isn't everything.

To give an example of the success I have had today, I have made contacts with operators in Spain, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and Russia. Perhaps that doesn't sound too remarkable, but considering my balcony mounted whip aerial I'm very pleased. To top it off though, according to the PSKReporter map, which I monitored throughout the day, my signal was reported as being heard in Canada! That is something I'm really pleased about.

What I do find strange though is this keyboard interference. All day I have been transmitting with 10w of power - sometimes creeping up to 14w. The keyboard has been fine. A key may occasionally not respond but it was easily workable. However, about half an hour ago when working RX6BH in Russia, the keys became very unresponsive making typing during transmission a nightmare - it was slower than transmission rate of PSK31! I'm not sure why this would be. Nothing had changed. The power level was peaking at 10w initially, and I even reduced it slightly to no effect.

Actually, I'm wrong. Something had changed. I'd switched on the lights in the flat. Could that be what makes a difference?

Over the last month, I've been preparing my station to operate on digital modes by building a radio to soundcard interface. After various hurdles I finally got the device working and conducted my first on air test yesterday, using PSK31.

Unfortunately it wasn't overly successful. I can only get the radio to output around 10-12W maximum before the ALC kicks in causing horrendous noise on the signal. I also have some interference problems with my keyboard which makes operating difficult. It was originally the case that only a couple of watts of power would cause the keyboard to lock up (and the mouse too after a bit more power). Now I've enclosed my cheap USB hub and slack cable into a metal case to improve shielding. I've also added ferrite beads to the keyboard cable, mouse cable and the USB hub cable. Although it's improved the situation significantly, when the power level gets over about 8w, some keypresses are missed resulting in "wods tped ike is" (words typed like this).

Despite these problems, I did spend a good while calling CQ and had a very brief QSO with Cris, YO5OAW in Romania. We exchanged reports and location information but due to a fading signal and the problems typing I decided not to stop and chat. PSKReporter also showed my signals being received in Portugal and Rome.

Charlie M0PZT did suggest that using a laptop could be the cause of some problems due to its unshielded nature compared to a desktop PC. I think that's quite likely considering the monitor also receives interference which disappeared when testing with a desktop machine.

So before I try another serious attempt, I think I'll replace the laptop. I'll be building a cheap PC which I reckon can be done for less than £140.00 while still being a machine of fairly modern specification (Intel Celeron Dual Core 2.2GHz, 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM, 80GB SATA HDD, Wireless LAN, onboard Realtek 5.1Ch audio, onboard Intel graphics) with room for expansion should I need it.

Just a quick note to say I visited the National Hamfest in Newark along with Charlie, M0PZT yesterday. It was quite a long trip - about 2.5 hours to get up there, but good fun.

I'd gone with a small shopping list in mind - nothing big, but some bits and pieces that I would find useful. Coming back with 6 out of 7 items suggests it was quite successful.

My haul included a book on HF aerials, a microphone/earpiece for my handheld, a new mag-mount for my 2m/70cm aerial, 2 variable capacitors, two 3.5mm stereo plug > 3.5mm stereo plug cables and a small 4-port USB hub. The only thing I couldn't find (and didn't really expect to find) was a USB to Serial adaptor.

The variable capacitors are needed for my next project which I'll be starting once I'm happy with my soundcard interface which I've been building over the last couple of weeks. I intend to build a small magnetic loop aerial - it'll be the first aerial I've constructed and hopefully will be quite useful in my limited space QTH.

I haven't mentioned the soundcard interface on this blog yet (although it's come up once or twice on Identica/Twitter). Once it's finished I'll do a write up with some photographs. My main stumbling block at the moment is the USB to Serial Port adaptor - the laptop I'm using for radio doesn't have a built in serial port. Curses to progress!

My friend Charlie, M0PZT has taken the time to write a piece of software which provides quick and easy access to the DX Cluster via the internet (telnet). ClusterClient, as it's known, recently received some good comments on the ICQPodcast and I decided to give it a try myself. The only issue being, I run Linux and the software is written for Windows.

Not to worry though. I spent some time last night figuring out if I could make it run and the short answer is yes I can. Thanks to this guide, now so can you!

It's actually very straight forward to get the software going in Linux, and it may well be much simpler than the guide tells you. I'm assuming that the computer being used does not have a copy of WINE installed, nor the appropriate DLL files. I should also mention that I have tested this in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackelope).

1. First we need to get a copy of the software. This is available from Charlie's site (see ClusterClient link, in Related Links below) - just scroll down the page until the Download link is visible. Download ZIP file and open it.

2. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a suitable place on your computer. I've put it in /home/ben/ClusterClient/ but it doesn't really matter as long as you have full permissions to the folder.

3. Use the Applications > Accessories menu to access the terminal. Don't be scared of the terminal if you haven't used it before. It really is quite straight-forward.

4. In the terminal window, change to the directory containing ClusterClient. In my case I'd type the following code. Replace the directory structure with wherever you saved your copy of ClusterClient (remember it is case sensitive):

   cd /home/ben/ClusterClient

5. Again in the terminal window, type (or copy) this command to install WINE (the Microsoft Windows compatability layer) and cabextract:

   sudo apt-get install wine cabextract

   You will probably be asked for your password. This is normal and is required to confirm that you wish to make changes to your system i.e., install an application. After entering your password, if you are prompted to confirm installation, press Y

6. Once WINE is installed, we need to get a couple more files required by ClusterClient. These aren't available through the repository.

7. Still within the terminal window, type (or copy) the following command:

   wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

   A few additional files will be placed in the currently selected folder; the ClusterClient folder if you followed Step 2 above.

8. The package downloaded will enable us to get those missing files, so type in the following command:

   sh winetricks comctl32.ocx vb6run

   When asked to confirm if you would like to the Visual Basic 6.0 Run Time files, click on Yes.

9. With any luck, that should now be it. Attempt to run ClusterClient from the terminal with this command:

   wine ClusterClient.exe

   After a few moments, the window should appear.

That's all there is to it. ClusterClient can now be run from the terminal at any time by opening the terminal window, changing to the ClusterClient directory and running the command above.

But that's not the easiest way to launch it. Follow these additional steps to add a launcher to the desktop:

1. Right-click on a blank area of the desktop to display the context menu

2. Choose 'Create Launcher...'

3. A window will appear. Complete the following details (remember, the directory in Command will need to be whatever is applicable in your case):
   Type: Application
   Name: ClusterClient
   Command: wine /home/ben/ClusterClient/ClusterClient.exe
   Comment: ClusterClient by Charlie, M0PZT

4. Click OK

5. An icon will now be on your desktop. Just double-click to launch ClusterClient

Simples!

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been racing along with the development of my amateur radio station. Starting off with the purchase of a HF/6m whip aerial, through to buying my first HF transceiver (Yaesu FT-450) to setting up the IT side of things. It is here that I have hit a snag.

The modern radio shack isn't complete without a computer. Whether it is used for logging, decoding digital signals or just looking up callsigns; it must be said that it is a pretty indispensable piece of equipment. Because my setup is in the living room of my flat, I needed a solution that was low profile and quiet.

Fortunately, I had access to an old laptop (IBM Thinkpad R50e) which has a broken LCD screen. Perfect I thought. Connect up an LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse and there's my solution. I've attached some brackets to my desk so that the machine is out of the way and today I connected up the peripherals.

Being quite sure the machine worked, I wasn't to worried about the big switch on but I do have a record of things dieing at this point so I was pleased to see it all spring to life even just running off the battery which hadn't been charged for a while. I did of course connect the mains adaptor too.

And it is this that is the problem. When connecting the mains adaptor to the laptop, it wipes out my radio with +20dB of noise making most (if not all) signals unreadable. To confirm it was the power supply; I unplugged it (after which the signal meter fell to a much more reasonable S3), tuned about on 20m until I found a signal and then plugged it back in again. Lo-and-behold, the noise floor rose and the signal dissappeared.

So now I'm on the search for a solution that doesn't involve me giving up on the laptop and putting in a desktop computer. I can charge the laptop battery when not using the radio and then unplug it when I'm operating but that's a little inconvenient.

I did get to wondering whether the laptop would run from my DC power supply at 13.8V. I checked the laptop's power block which is rated at 16V 4.5A. No problem providing the amps, but I'm a little short on the volts. However, the battery is rated at 10v. I'm thinking that perhaps running without a battery, I could get away with it. However, I'm also wondering if there is a chance of damage to the laptop or power supply.

I'm going to have to do some more research.

Just been having a tune around the 2m amateur radio band, and stumbled across a new repeater that started operation today.

GB3EA, operated by the South Anglia Repeater Group, is based in Wickhambrook, Suffolk and is intended to cover much of Suffolk and the surrounding counties. According to the coverage projection map, a good signal should be receivable from Kings Lynn in the North of it's coverage down to Braintree in the South with decreasing coverage to the North and South of those areas.

Here in ###########, the repeater is end stop on the signal meter although I haven't tried to access it yet. I dare say I'll give it a go at sometime in the near future. For reference here are the details needed to access it:

• Input: 145.0875MHz

• Output: 145.6875MHz

• CTCSS: 110.9Hz

A blog is available with articles on setting up this repeater which should be a good read for those interested in this sort of thing.

Thanks to the January sales, and my aim to get more involved in HF radio, I purchased a portable receiver this month; the Eton E5.

This is a small radio, measuring around the same size as a paperback book. Despite this however it includes full coverage of the Long Wave, Medium Wave and Short Wave bands (that's full coverage as in 150KHz - 29999KHz without gaps) receiving both AM and SSB transmissions, as well as the FM broadcast band (87.5MHz - 108MHz). This makes it great for travel, allowing one to keep up with events at home through Short Wave broadcasts whilst listening to local news and music on FM.

Powered by only 4 AA batteries, the unit is easily kept powered. It also comes with a small power adaptor, although battery power seems more than adequate having run it for nearly one week without any sign of power drain. The radio features a charging circuit allowing rechargeable batteries to be replenished should this be required.

Tuning is a breeze thanks to the tuning knob on the right side of the unit. Frequencies can also be entered directly using the keypad, shortwave bands can be selected through the Meterband button and the most common broadcast short wave bands are available on the 7 function buttons just below the screen. Direct key entry makes this easy to use for amateur radio reception since only a few button presses are required to select the frequency band wanted. SSB reception is selected by a push of another key which selects between AM and SSB.

Although SSB is provided, there is no button to choose between upper and lower sidebands (USB/LSB), so it is simply a case of fine tuning the frequency until voices become legible or tone becomes a pleasant pitch. A fine tuning control is provided to make this as easy as possible, although there is no visual indication of any effect as the on-screen frequency display is only good to 1KHz.

A sign that this is primarly designed for travel, is the built in clock featuring world time adjustment and alarm. The time is constantly displayed except when changing volume when a number indicating loudness is displayed instead. The addition of a permanent clock is a nice feature for logging, and I will personally be leaving this set to UTC/GMT.

As far as the build of the unit is concerned, it feels solid and like it good take being thrown about a fair bit. The radio does come with a thin carry pouch which will certainly protect it from scratches and bumps, but probably not anything too severe. A carry strap is provided pre-attached to the radio. It's not clear how strong this is, but it should help to prevent accidental drops.

The weakest part of the build will be the aerial. It's a long telescopic aerial and when fully extended does feel a bit weak and wobbly at the top. It could easily be bent or snapped without due care being taken over it.

Overall, I like my new radio. Being portable, it will be a take anywhere device that has opened the door to HF radio for me. Using only the telescopic aerial, I have managed to receive amateur radio transmissions from England, France, Spain, Italy, Serbia and the Ukraine quite easily. There could be further destinations, but I can't yet decode all the morse code transmissions I have heard. Performance will no doubt be even better with an external antenna.

At £61.99 (at the time of purchase) from Maplin, this was a bargain, but even at the usual price of £89.99 this still seems to be a good value receiver.