|
The main radio is currently on:-
7.138.000
MHz*,
AM
last checked:
31Jul2010 06:58:17 British Summer Time
(If the timestamp is older than 4
minutes, I'm QRT) |
| | It is stated elsewhere on this site that I have got through a string of radios in an endeavour to find the right mix, the setup that I felt comfortable with and which
performs to my satisfaction; it is no secret that I am fussy! I also endorse the
cliché that 'One man's meat is another man's poison', it would not do for us all to be the same. This is the station I have ended up with. Below the photograph is a detailed run-down of my station's
principal equipment. The short-short version for those that don't want to see a wind-bag going on about his 'stuff' is as follows:-
Flex-5000a, Heil PR-40 studio mic, Heil Pro-Set Plus
(modified). SPE Expert 1K-FA solid-state KW
160m-6m linear with integral tuner. Kuhne TR70H 4m transverter, TE Systems 375w 4m PA, Yaesu FT-847 (significantly modified RX/TX, TCXO, 4m LNA etc). Station GPS locked to 10MHz frequency standard. Antennas;
[HF - Windom] @ 13m, horizontal. [20, 17, 15, 12, 10 - Cobwebb] @ 15m. [6m/4m/2m/70cm nested HB cubical quad], 4el 6m, 4el 4m, 8el 2m, 8el 70cm,
RH100 coax - same spec as Westflex 103.
**Sorry -
ropey picture I know, it was taken at 4am having given up trying
to sleep. . . More up to date pic to come
| |
Flex-5000a
 |
My main radio. Those who know me are aware of my
enthusiasm for the F5K and there is no shortage of positive comments
on this site in that respect. Also those who know me are aware
that I very reluctantly parted with my original Flex-5000a in April
2009 after a long battle with Vista x64 and some tertiary
applications, without which I could not effectively operate the
station to my satisfaction. So after much deliberation and knowing full-well that I
would regret the decision, we parted company, amicably. I replaced
it with an Icom IC-7600 (yeah, the new eye-candy from Icom).
In the ensuing 6 months I made 17
contacts. I must stress this has nothing to do with the Icom per se,
however since I knew in advance that there isn't a conventional amateur
radio on the planet which could compete with the Flex,
the bottom dropped out of my enthusiasm and I spent the time
tinkering with my new ABC application I had written and the
Quicksilver SDR.
Time it seems was not a great
healer for me and ultimately I've come full-circle and purchased
another Flex-5000, so I am firmly back to being a Flexer.
The Flex is in a league of its own.
It is ultimately limited by the computing power of a PC and by the
ingenuity of the SDR software authors. Since the signal processing
is entirely in software, all functions, abilities, controls and
quality is determined by a combination of (mostly) the software and
partly the human operator.
In essence it makes all other
amateur transceivers look like toys - including the very top end
7800's, FTDX's et al. | |
The Station Microphone: Heil PR40
Until the last couple of years I have
kicked against the tide of audiophiles. That's a strange statement
coming from an ex-semi-pro singer-songwriter. I spent thousands of
hours in the home studio tweaking our live and home studio sounds
when I was an active musician.
10 years ago I cringed at the guys
on 80m 'going on' about their sound. After living with the Flex-5000
for a year, I learned to appreciate what quality audio meant and
after changing to the IC-7600, despite modifying the ProSet, I was
not happy with the station's new audio, so action was needed. After
careful deliberation I chose this. Yes it's expensive but with Ham
gear, if it's not Home Brew, quality counts for a lot.
In the end, I could never achieve
anything close to a quality sound with the Icom so it had to go.
Now, the output from this Mic, goes directly into
the Flex, which has a 10 band TX graphic equaliser and a Downward
Expander (Hi-tec noise gate), negating the need for any outboard
equipment. |
Heil PR 40
 |
| G7CNF Frequency and Time Standard
 | Long have I operated on upper HF and VHF/UHF and longed for more accurate frequency tracking.
The Flex has a dedicated External Reference input which allows me to
use the Frequency Standard component of this device pictured, left. I still have my
Racal 1998 counter and Anritsu MT8802A communications analyser which
also accept references. I originally decided it was time to plumb the station together
in 2008 soon after I had the Flex, so I built a Jupiter GPS disciplined time and frequency standard with a 4 way distribution amp. Now test gear are accurate to 1 x 10-12 approximately; 1 x 10-9 from a cold start if necessary. Acquisition
(AOS) is typically less than 60s which then disciplines the TCXO. Left on, the figures
build to a whopping 1.5 x 10-14 accuracy which is plenty enough for my needs! Turns out the
original Flex was a whopping 7Hz off at 10MHz!
The new Flex is less than 1Hz off after warm-up, before using the
reference (so it's not really needed LOL). | | I just couldn't help myself; when I saw the reviews on eHam, 150 reviews, 4.9 rating and the reviewers simply buzzing with the kind of enthusiasm you just don't see any more. Jerry was kind enough to shave a bit off the postage as he was shocked at how much it was going to cost to send this to the UK. Take my word for it - it's heavy! The whole thing is solid brass and it feels - SEXY. In his email he said that making them was a labour of love, and when you think how little he charges for them you can see. Hand made keys don't get better than this. :o) | K8RA P2 Iambic paddle  |
|
The Quicksilver QS1R VERB
|
The Quicksilver QS1R VERB
Very quickly, after parting with the
Flex early in 2009 I went into SDR withdrawal. If you've never owned an
SDR it is difficult to explain the allure; it's kind of like having a
spectrum analyser which can receive SSB, CW and data. Anyway, into
withdrawal I went and I spent a couple of weeks looking into the various
SDR projects lurking around cyberspace.
One of those projects was Phil
Covington's QS1R. I've come across Phil in other aspects of amateur
radio and this immediately caught my eye. Reading into the project and
the accompanying Yahoo Group I automatically knew this was the one for
me. At the time of purchase, the UK>US exchange rate was about as bad as
it got but I went ahead anyway.
The QS1R is the most advanced
open source
digital down conversion (DDC)
board on the market and this clearly shows through in operation. In
standard configuration it is a 15KHz to 62MHz Software Defined Receiver
but with minor adjustments and suitable front end filtering it can go to
500MHz. Some receiver test results here.
The QS1R is USB 2.0 based so it will
work concurrently with the Flex (which is FireWire) so long as the PC is
up to it (fortunately mine is).
The software component is named
SDRMaxII and is also open source so will benefit from the advancements
made by people who really care - the informed users!
Where this radio comes into its own is
unlike ANY other currently available SDR, it is possible to concurrently
run up to 8 receivers from the one device. I don't mean it can in some
way control 7 other QS1R's, NO! I mean it is individually capable of
operating 8 receivers. This has been put to good use by Alex (VE3NEA,
Mr. CW Skimmer man) who has released a program available to existing CW
Skimmer customers called "Skimmer
Server" which can effectively operate 7 x 192KHz receivers in one
QS1R and output the decoded calls to Telnet. | |
To complement the radio, which has effective bass and treble for both receive and transmit, I have the Proset Plus. This
contains both the HC4 and the HC5 elements with a switch which allowes one to move from a pleasant full-range ragchewing tone to a more punchy DX.
Combined with the Flex's 10 band EQ, I still have
that big sound when the PR 40 isn't being used. The headphones have acoustically tuned speaker enclosures and the set is very comfortable. I have on occasion worn these for 18 hours with only occasional pit stops! ;o) | Heil Proset Plus!  | | Yaesu FT-847 (modified)   | I also keep an FT-847 handy, which is modified with a G4FUF internal LNA (preamp) for 4m to overcome the 15dB or so of deafness that all FT-847's have on 4m. The LNA is switched in only on 4m and does not interfere with operations on any other band. For the most part, the 847 is used for 4m vertically polarised reception (and transmission) and as a SO2R radio for HF and 6m. I have also modified the PA to improve 4m efficiency and spurious emissions, slightly at the cost of 6m efficiency but all spurious emissions are at least -55dB down on both bands. The 847 is normally set to scan the beacons and certain other "tell-tale" frequencies on 4m with the squelch set such that it only trips on signals better than around S2 (noise floor S0). This gives me an early warning system for any 4m DX activity. I also use it with the VHF Quads, in which case the Flex-5000 is set to scan 4m instead (paranoid??? ;o) | | For a number of years I have operated on 70MHz with all sorts of equipment, Pye, Philips, Simoco, FT-847's, H/B, Spectrum Communications , the "OZ" transverter and who knows what else! After I accidentally blew up my SpecCom Xvrtr by inadvertently shoving 100w of 6m up it, I thought it was time to change approach! The only thing I could improve upon in my 4m station was the 'front end' so I went the whole hog and bought this baby from the microwave specialists, Kuhne. Yes it's damned expensive - it is also damned good; with a single-stage LNA rated at 0.3dB noise figure, this is as good as it gets. ...I just need a new low noise QTH now...:-S | DB6NT (Kuhne Electronic) 4m Transverter with 28MHz I.F.  |
| SPE 1K-FA Linear Amplifier for HF and 6m  | Until April 2008 I had a dual band GS31 amp for 6m and 4m. As I never actually used the amp on 4m
(I couldn't keep the output below legal limit very easily) and my health has impeded access to the shack so much, having to frequently turn on and off a dedicated tube 6m linear seemed a waste of a good amp.
I had been tempted by the 1K-FA for a while but on two other occasions, the sole UK distributor had sold out, so when the Series 3 1K-FA was announced, I put down a deposit to be certain! This amp is capable of 1KW @ HF, 700w on 6m and has its own built-in auto-ATU. I can be sure it will loaf-along at UK limits
and never fear the degradation typical of ageing tubes.
The amp connects to both radios, each with
their own dedicated CAT control, ALC, ATU memories and so-on. I'd be
lost without it now and never need to wait for it to warm up. | | For a long while on 4m I used a Spectrum Communications 55w linear amp (assembled here), incorporating it into various project boxes. When I became keenly interested in 4m MS, I wanted something that could give me full legal power without needing to push it too hard. I am a firm believer in using linear devices conservatively to limit potential distortion. Again, this was a hefty bump to the bank balance but well worth it; the 0652g runs very nicely at 160w full carrier or JT6m/FSK and other high duty modes. With a couple of small 12v PC cooling fans fitted to the back to drive air over the cooling fins, I can key this amp down at 200w into a dummy load ad-infinitum and it runs at or below body temperature! | TE Systems 0652G 70MHz   | | 50 Amp Linear PSU  |
This is the heaviest piece of kit in the shack (not including myself :-S ) weighing in at nearly 27Kg! This fully protected DC regulated Linear PSU delivers a whopping 50 amps constant. In the past I have run a transceiver, transverter and the 0652g above - the transverter at near full output pulls about 7A, the transceiver at around 8A and the 0652g almost 30A and with all this the voltage drop was almost imperceptible! | | My current upper HF antenna is the humble Cobwebb. (20/17/15/12/10m) If you aren't familiar with this then very shortly I will have a page up dedicated to it. Why? Many years ago I built something almost identical, from fishing rods and speaker wire. It was mounted at 25 feet. The bulk of my contacts gave me higher reports than I was giving them. Indeed many North American stations with their big mono-banders and 1.5KW were giving me genuine reciprocal reports. These reports were carefully solicited from ragchews rather than those awful "59 thanks,
next!" contacts that so many give these days... In the end it was destroyed in a mast collapse due to incredible winds one day. This one is the genuine article from Steve Webb as I was too unwell to construct another. | G3TPW Cobwebb
 |
| Homebrew Nested Cubical Quads
I may not be the biggest signal around any more but at least I'm happy and not stressed about the weather! |
The pair of antennas covered in greater detail elsewhere on this site; 6 + 7 element mono-banders for 6m and 4m have been taken down. Despite investing considerable time and resources into them, yet again fate had other ideas. I seem to be in just the right location with the right mix of topography to suffer far more than my fair share of micro-bursts. This time the rotator was the casualty and quite frankly I am fed up with the time and pain I keep investing in antennas, only to have the antenna system ravaged often more than once per year by extreme but very short-lived high energy wind events.
[Note: lay off the beans...]Frankly the money pot isn't endless either and my health certainly isn't up re-manufacturing antennas bi-annually so I sat down with EZNEC and designed a set of nested cubical quads for 6m, 4m, 2m, and 70cm, based on materials from Cubex. I have ended up with a 2m boom, 4 el 6m, 4 el 4m, 8 el 2m and 8 el 70cm array which has significantly lower wind-load. Already the array has survived 2 incidents which surely would have destroyed large yagis. | | For many years prior to April 1st (not a fools joke) 2007, I used a Yaesu G-600RC rotator which alas, was destroyed in the Tennamast collapse (see below). Following a successful claim against the manufacturer's insurers, I was able to get this G-1000DXC which was the nearest replacement I could find, currently stocked by any retailer in the UK. At the time of replacement there was a sudden shortage of rotators in the country and I was luck to get this (so I am told). Prior to the microburst in 2008, this unit was turning a TGM MQ-36SR, HB YU7EF EF0606 (6m, 6el 7m boom) and an HB EF0407 (4m 7el 6.5m boom) now it just turns the TGM, the Duo and a 4m 1/2W vertical. |  |
| Tennamast Standard Plus 12  | The mast I have at this location was purchased from Tennamast. This company has a huge reputation in the British Isles for quality and customer care. I must say that when the collapse occurred they were second-to-none in their handling of the affair. It is a pity that such a nicely engineered piece of kit had to be spoiled by a faulty batch of steel winch cable,
which I might add was NOT Tennamast's fault. To my knowledge only two customers suffered a critical failure, myself included and the cable manufacturer denied all liability. I will get around to posting the pictures on this site in due course but it is clear from these pictures that the cable's condition was not comparable other steel cables I have, for the duration it has been here. I cannot recommend
Tennamast highly enough and I would certainly use them again, I will not let one QA issue with a third-party supplier alter my perception of
the company. The shack is sited almost directly underneath the mast. To reduce the potential for RF feedback, the shack was turned into a
kind of faraday cage; heavy gauge aluminium foil was used to line the interior of the wooden shack, prior to insulation with glass-fibre and boarding out. Multiple points of electrical continuity were made and then the cage was brought out to a dedicated earth, independent of the shack's electrical system.
Of course it offers no protection from magnetic components but as the
shack is outside the near-field of most frequencies I use, the principal
field is electrical and thus shielded. | | When I originally ordered the Tennamast, my rotator was in use elsewhere and the funds at the time didn't stretch to another. The used market was also bereft of any useful parts. As the early use of the mast was with verticals and fixed arrays I elected NOT to have the rotator cage. With hindsight I realise now this was a foolish decision but has been offset by discovering a really useful
and rugged bit of kit from a company called Barenco. The platform can be purchased for a reasonable sum, with holes to match common rotator types. The rotator then sits on the platform, offset from the mast. If like me ones intends to use quite a lot of hardware up in the air then getting the thrust bearing platform and appropriate bearing is wise. This arrangement has stood up to anything a rotator cage would have.
Although no longer in use, I have often been asked about them so
they are included here in case you know someone who needs such an
arrangement and had not seen this kit before. [When I elected to replace the Duo with the two 9m boomed mono's, I felt it was prudent to install a proper cage, as it gets VERY windy here; the cage is visible on the antenna picture above] |  In the summere of 2008 after the large mono-banders had to be taken down, these platforms were replaced with a rotator cage from Tennamast. | | Anritsu MT8802A Radio Communication Analyser  |
I this had shipped in from Hong Kong. Basically it function is aimed at GSM repair (I wish I had one of these when I was a GSM phone technician...!) It is a 0.1MHz - 3GHz signal generator and thermocouple power meter, 3GHZ counter, 10MHz-3GHz spectrum analyser, audio oscillator/ deviation meter and phase / SINAD / adjacent power / noise generator. It is primarily aimed at IS-95, GSM/DCS1800/PCS1900, IS-136A, AMPS/NAMPS, PDC and PHS. It doesn't make any tea :o( | | Until quite recently I have been using an MRS miniVNA for basic network analysis and antenna building / resonating. Prior to that I had an MFJ antenna analyser. I moved across to the miniVNA soon after it came out and enjoyed the charting capability which came with it; it enabled me to look in much greater detail at the antennas' behaviour or filter or whatever I was working on which needed such sorcery. More recently I have seen some pretty damning reports from sources I trust about the accuracy of the miniVNA, which somewhat reflected my suspicions about the device but I had no easy way to check it and of course the miniVNA has no calibration routine from which to base its measurements on. After long deliberation, over Christmas 2008 I elected to buy an AEA Via Echo. Not that I needed another spectrum analyser (I already have 3) but the FDR was very tempting. I placed the order and when the pro-forma invoice was emailed back from the company I elected to deal with, there was more than £1000 added to the price. That's not in the spirit of things so I cancelled. Further investigation revealed another UK company selling for a more reasonable price however the exchange rate had bitten and all the prices were quite elevated. After another deliberation I eventually settled for the Bravo II, with S11 & S21 capability but a 200MHz cap. £1600 was far more tempting than £3k for an Echo. | AEA VIA Bravo II S21 Vector Network Analyser
 | |
Thurlby Thandar PSA1301T Hand-Held 1300MHz Spectrum Analyser
 | Against the backdrop of my return to amateur radio after an enforced absence, and the prevailing noise floor of S5-S9, I did not relish the thought of lugging the larger spectrum analysers up to and around, the house. After talking it over with the XYL
I invested into one of these beauties for the convenience and
portability; my walking ability degenerated quickly in recent years. You would be forgiven for thinking it is a bit 'gimmicky' but I can tell you that it is now singly the most used piece of test kit I have. Checked for accuracy against my calibrated MT8802a and AEA Bravo, I was astounded at just how accurate it is, and very little sign of ghosts too!
PSA1301T - 1.3 GHz RF Spectrum Analyzer
 150kHz to 1300MHz frequency range Resolution bandwidths of 280kHz or 15kHz, sweep width 380KHz-1300MHz + 0 span -96dBm typical noise floor at -20dBm reference level Sweep modes of normal, single, peak hold and average Zero span mode with AM and FM audio demodulation Twin markers with readout of absolute & difference values Smart marker movement with selectable peak tracking Amplitude limit lines with full limit line editor Unlimited storage for waveforms, set-ups and screens
Data transfer to PC for analysis, documentation & printing More than 4 hours continuous operation from a charge Smaller and lighter than any other spectrum analyzer Handheld computer based facilities including word processing, spreadsheets, appointments, picture and video viewing, MP3, plus Web and Email via WiFi and Bluetooth It is based on the Palm T¦X which I confess I personally hate and would have much preferred PPC. In fairness though, for use as a spectrum analyser I have no complaints at all. On the WIFI front, I have sent a scan from the PSA1301 in the shack up to the laptop in the house, 50m away. |
|
Now on to the computer gear... Rebuilt
September 2009, again. . . | |
In late March 2009 the PSU died
dramatically with some collateral damage. A rebuild was necessary
and as I have been actively transcoding all my DVD's (well over
1000) and Blu-Rays (too many) I wanted a PC which stand the pace. I
elected on an i7 architecture after looking at the comparative
performance. Looking at the
X58 chipsets available and bearing in mind the prices of things I
elected for the P6T, pictured right.
Intel LGA1366 Platform
Intel®X58 chipset
Triple-channel DDR3
2000(O.C.)/1866(O.C.)/1800(O.C.)/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 Memory
True16+2 phase Power Design
ASUS OC Palm
ASUS TurboV
ASUS EPU
ASUS Express Gate SSD
SAS Onboard
SLI and CrosFireX on Demand
|
Asus P6T Deluxe OC Palm (LGA1366)
 |
 | CPU -
Intel Core i7 920 I
wanted fast, so I got fast... At the time of writing, there was a
huge benefit to be had from changing from the Core2Quad 9450 to the
current i7. On the face of it it might not sound like a rational
transaction, especially considering I went for the slowest 920
(2.66GHz) version. When you compare the versions available, 920,
940, 965 etc, the performance differential was remarkably small. The
stock 920 compares fairly equally with the high end Core2's - that
is until you overclock it. . .
At the time of writing, I have
overclocked this thing from 2.66GHz to over 4GHz on air cooling and
by gods is it fast!! Previous DVD's were transcoding around 50
frames /s, so far the peak has been nearly 250... wow... Gud enuf
fer me ;o) Product information
- 2.93 GHz and 2.66 GHz core speed
- 8 processing threads with Intel® HT technology
- 8 MB of Intel® Smart Cache
- 3 Channels of DDR3 1066 MHz memory
Windows Experience
Index (W7x64) 7.5 | | Memory:
12GB OCZ 6gb (3x2GB) DDR3
1600MHz/PC3-12800 Gold XTC PC3-12800 (1600MHz)
CL8 ( 8-8-8-24 ) 1.6v They are currently running at 1803MHz and stable, they ran to 1900MHz before getting a bit 'choppy'.
Windows Experience Index (W7x64) 7.8
|
 |
 | Hard Disk:
OCZ Solid Series
SATA II 2.5" SSD Capacity:
120GB Interface: SATAii
(RAID 0)
I wanted to max out the performance
for the station PC, and as the prices of SSD's were falling, I opted
for this. It trashes any hard disk competitor for access time and is
plenty fast enough on transfers too. The boot up time is much lower
now, as is application launch.
This also removes the need for "ReadyBoost"
in Vista (not that I am sure it is much benefit anyway).
Windows Experience
Index (W7x64) 7.4 | | Video cards : NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra - Product Description XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra - graphics adapter - GF 8800 Ultra
- Device Type Graphics Adapter
- Enclosure Type Plug-in card
- Interface Type PCI Express x16
- Graphics Processor / Vendor NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra
- Video Memory Installed ( Max ) 768 MB - GDDR3 SDRAM RAMDAC
- Speed 400 MHz
- API Support OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 10
- Highlighted Features Dual DVI Out , HDCP Ready , HDTV ready , TV Out , Vista , SLI ready , RoHS
- Clock rate 650 MHz
- Shader Clock 1500 MHz
- Stream Processors 128
- Memory Bandwidth 103.7 GB/sec
- Fill Rate 39.2 billion/sec
- Video Output 2560 x 1600
- Max Monitors Supported 2
As seen from the main station photo, I now operate a
4 monitor system: I have two LG Flatron L1730's (17", 4:3) (numbers
4 and 1 in the picture below), an LG W2252 22" 19:9 HD (number
2) and an Acer X233H 23" 16:9 HD monitor (number 3). The previous fourth monitor (ONN TV/PC monitor) had to be abandoned due to the altered layout of the station, and subsequent discovery of EMI on the middle HF bands which I had not used since installing the monitor. Although the 8800's could be operated in SLI, this would defeat the object of greater desktop real-estate, so the link visible in the picture
(between the 2 cards) is not installed. The cards although not groundbreaking by today's standards (2009) are still excellent performers. As I do not play any computer games, the 3D
graphics capability is not of huge concern to me which is a waste I guess, but since the cards are no longer marketed on their 2D performance, the argument is mute... To the right is the current layout of the monitors and my preferred assignments.
Since I do not use the 3D aspects of
the cards, I give over the parallel stream processors to Stanford
University's distributed computing program (Folding@Home)
where the
CUDA
acceleration allows me to process around 5000 iterations per second
per graphics card for their protein folding project to help cure
various diseases.
Windows Experience Index (W7x64) 7.5
| NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra x 2 cards
 | | My underpants come from Asda and are blue, LOL 'nuff said...  (\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") | | |
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