With the PACC 2010 coming up, I’m getting all jumpy to get my “ultimate contest setup” complete. My plans are to participate in the PACC this year from our club location NERA. Last year I’ve take a look and made a few QSO’s from that location and it is fantastic to operate from there. Far from the inhabited world there is zero QRM. Very nice when you sometimes have to pick up weak signals.
The idea now is to setup my Kenwood TS-850SAT at this location. The TS-850 has a build in voice keyer, but this keyer is not able to repeat the message with an adjustable delay. So I’ll use my own homebrew voice keyer. I already tested with success my headset. It works fine, so now I only have to find a decent foot pedal to switch between receiving and transmitting. Of course I can buy a foot pedal in an instrument shop or something like that. But that is expensive and less fun. So I searching for a solution for that.
Then I’ve hands free for logging. I think I bring my MSI netbook with me for logging. Only thing is I have to find a good contestlogging program. My main rig controller is Ham Radio Deluxe, but that is not quite feasible for contest logging. N1MM makes Windows crashing when it interacts thru the Keyspan USA-19H USB-RS232-adapter to my rig. So that doesn’t seem a solution. I already take a look at many logging programs, but they are all so old and ugly and don’t do rig control (which I want for logging the complete QSO). So I didn’t figure out that one yet.
If you have any good suggestions, please send me a message!
Icom IC-756PRO-3, Signalink & Ham Radio Deluxe
Last weekend I offered a friend of mine, Fred PA3YH, some help with his shack setup. He owns a Icom IC-756PRO-3 radio. Since a few months he bought a Signalink USB and works all different digital modes with it. Actually this combination works really well! He is doing great in QSO’s! The only thing missing was a good logbook. He did connect the rig via the Signalink to his laptop, but didn’t yet use rig control (Cat-V).
So these two things I want to help him with. First, rig control. Fred did already bought a cable for rig control. It is a USB – ACC-connector cable. After installing the driver for the cable, the laptop did see an extra com-port. Now download and fire up the latest copy of Ham Radio Deluxe. No problems so far. Imported his logbook from LogPA (his current log program). Also no problems. What surprised me was the super duper integration of HRD with the radio. I myself do not yet have a Signalink, but men what cool features do you have then! You are able to record sound of the rig, almost all options are controllable from the program.
Also figure out for him how to let Windows use the internal sound card and let the HAM-programs use the Signalink. I wasn’t able to fully test his new setup because he pushed me out of the way, that enthusiastic he was! 😉
The cool thing about this new setup for Fred is that he makes enough time to investigate all the options and tricks. Hopefully I can benefit too from his investigation 😉
Installing TCXO-SO-2 in Kenwood TS-850
Some time ago I’ve bought the TCXO-SO-2 option (Temperature Compensated X-tal Oscillator) from Joerg, DL6IB. Although I was very pleased to have the option, I postponed the installing because I wanted to figure out a way to measure the stability improvement before and after installing. Since I don’t own (yet) a frequency counter, I didn’t know a way to check.
A few days ago Joerg again send me a message asking me if I already installed the option in my Kenwood TS-850. I was a little ashamed to reply I didn’t. Promised him and myself to do this as quickly as possible. At this new years day I’m a little tired anyway, didn’t feel like anymore work around the house. So I sat down and opened my TS-850. Before I started with installing, I googled around to find a story of installing this option. Didn’t find anything. Okay, it is a pretty simple install but it gives me confidences to read about it. Seems I have to post the first story about installing this option… Continue reading