Tag Archives: ham radio

Unboxing a Forty One year old Ham Radio

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Figure 1: Unboxing another Alda 103

Another Alda?  I’ll admit to having an affinity for them.  The one I already have is the 80-40-15 tribander (the 103A) – and the one I’m unboxing is the 80-40-20 tribander (the 103).  The package came in a solid little Home Depot box, and no shaking or rattling could be heard during a shake-test next to my ear.  The question on my mind?  Would I hear more from the speaker of the actual 103 when I finished opening the package and plugging the little gem-from-the-past into my supply?

 
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Ham Radio on a Pi2

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quiskplussdrhardwareplusraspberry-1Figure 1: Quisk running on the second “homemade” tablet, which use a Pi2 SoC SBC board. (Click to enlarge).

Some of the other posts on this site refer to my “homemade” tablet, which I subsequently outfitted with components for ham radio usage.  I recently built another “homemade” tablet, this time using a Raspberry Pi2 board for the computing power.

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Note: This author is not affiliated with the Raspberry Pi/Pi2. For information about those projects visit http://www.raspberrypi.org. “Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.  Figure 1 contains elements of a desktop system and associated programs that have been released under a free software license (Copyright: LXDE team: http://lxde.org). As a derivative work, the respective part of the screenshot in Figure 2 falls under that same license. The full text of the licences may be found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.en.html.  Fig1 contains another program that has been released under a free software license (Quisk). As a derivative work of that program, the respective part of the screenshot in Figure 1 falls under the same license (GNU GPL). This site/author has no affiliation with the author of the Quisk program. The code and full text license for Quisk may be found at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/quisk/.

SoC/SBC Boards for Ham Radio

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audio-gameplan4

Figure 1: Various combinations that have, thus far been considered for ham radio audio duty (see text for explanation).

For the past couple years, I have been attempting to determine what might be the best platform for ham radio and other communications related applications, with a bias projected towards looking at mobile platforms. The graphic (above) shows a few options that I have seriously considered, and a couple for which I have built prototypes to aid in the testing process. The graphic is not intended to imply any capability or lack of capability with respect to the hardware, the SoC chip based SBC boards, or the operating systems. The selection only implies what I have made as a personal preference, for reasons that (shortly) – I’ll enumerate. In other words, the Raspberry Pi may use USB Audio, but I would prefer I2S if I can make it work.  Many alternate combinations are possible, and I have refined a list of preferences for the audio configurations I’ll use.  I have more info about this subject at:

https://programmingmiscellany.wordpress.com
(The link goes to another of my blogs)

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New (For Me) Omni-A (Analog)

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newomni-a-rig

I have always been a Ten Tec fan. As a kid I dreamed about the PM-1, but had to settle for home brew and (eventually) an old (even then) DX-40 transmitter / Lafayette-HA350 RX combo. When I was older, I purchased a Triton 4, and fell in love with the quietness of its noise blanker assisted audio, its filters, and its fabulous QSK. Some time ago, I decided to find another Triton (I’ve had and subsequently sold several, when I wish I’d kept them all!) The prices have crept up, as the numbers dwindle, and Ebay resellers have ascertained that hams will give blood for these units. They are made primarily of discrete transistors, with a smattering of commodity ICs, and so are relatively easy to fix in a pinch.

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