12 September 2021

This weekend has been a bit of a makey weekend. Saturday was spent 
making a coaxial dipole antenna for 2m and 40cms. This is a nice 
simple antenna design where there is a portion of coax with the shield 
removed, a portion of coax with the shield intact and then a choke 
made from coax coiled around a form. The antenna is meant to be 
constructed using a continuous length of coax. It is also known as a 
flower pot antenna as it can be constructed using pipe and then stuck 
into a flower pot. I have placed mine into the loft. It has been 
rather magnificent to be honest. I have received signals from 
Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and other 
such places. I had a play on FT8 and was heard in south London, some 
150 miles away. I think the FM reception limit is about 40 miles but 
not sure what I can manage on 10W. The performance on 40cms is a bit 
odd. I can hit the local repeater and get a clear signal but the 
waterfall is blank. Shall have to play some more. 

Today has been spent playing with computers.... Well.. I find I cannot 
run Chromium and WSJT-X at the same time on my main PC. Particularly 
using PSK reporter. So I started playing with a raspberry pi I had 
bought for digi-modes in the field. I had set it up earlier in the 
year to run headless but could I remember what I was doing? Nope. 
After faffing, I got the VNC server side to work. It was simpler than 
I was making it. Then I hit the second issue which lead me to start 
playing around with the Pi. The noise when connecting the ICOM IC-705 
to a PC with USB is outrageous on 20m. It is fine on 7m though. The 
issue remains with the pi too. I was using a cable with inductors 
fitted either end too. So this started me looking at running via wifi. 
After much searching I found myself hading to update the firmware of 
the radio. Well it was at version 1.11 and version 1.26 was recently 
released so I was a fair bit behind. Then I found I needed to use 
specific software from ICOM which was windows only. Cue more searching 
and suddenly I discover kappanhang. This wonderful software replicates 
the functionality of ICOM's windows only software. So it all works 
nicely. Then I got a clever idea to write a script to run kappanhang 
and WSJT-X with a single command. My shell scripting knowledge is 
mostly through searching snippets and adapting. I spent ages trying to 
work out why I couldn't open a terminal, chenge the folder and run the 
script. This took faaaaar longer than it should of. Turns out you need 
to use

terminal -e "PATH/SCRIPT_NAME -script variables"

I kept trying to do this with ./ at the start and other such nonsense 
which shows I was not thinking at all. Stupidity! Anyhow, the Pi part 
suddenly enables me to use my COM laptop for FT8 games in work. My 
main PC uses the monitor which I use for work and my sound issues with 
the COM laptop would have given me more headaches. However, Pi for 
WSJT-X running with COM laptop for VNC interfacing could work. The 
wifi interface means I can have the radio at one end of the desk with 
the ATU, antenna connection and power while keeping the rest of the 
desk clear for actual work stuff and the COM laptop. Almost ideal when 
procrastinating. 

Today is a good example of a day where I have started to do something 
to try and make life a little easier but got bogged down in daft 
issues. Suddenly the day has passed and I am listening to the delights 
of julius58's show on Anonradio. That means it is soon the end of the 
day and a return to work again. Sigh. Solving software issues often 
make me feel like I have wasted the day but then again, I always learn 
something and I often make my life easier a little bit. Just doesn't 
give something obvious to show for it which sounds interesting when 
people ask how the weekend was. Still, if I enjoy it then who cares. 
Right, today's show has got me wanting a drink seeing as the songs 
have all been about beer, whiskey and tequila.  Slainte mhath!