Ham Radio

Field Day Logging Software For The Raspberry Pi

I have been searching for a Field Day logging program for a couple of years that works on a Raspberry Pi and also works with Winkeyer. A lot of people like CQRlog, but it doesn’t seem to have the “flow” for me when entering QSO’s during Field Day. Another logging program that is used with the Raspberry Pi, is HamRS. It looks like a good choice, however I like to run CW on Field Day and HamRS doesn’t have any support for CW, specifically macros, as well as sending them to Winkeyer.

Just after last year’s Field Day, I stumbled on to FieldDayLogger written by Mike Bridak, K6GTE. He also has a companion program, PyWinKeyer, that works with Winkeyer as well as the CW Macro’s that are part of FDlogger. So this year, I gave FieldDayLogger and PyWinKeyer a try on My Raspberry Pi based Go-Frame.

Field Day logging software for Raspberry Pi

The look and feel is similar to the infamous N3FJP Field Day software but with a different color scheme – its actually easier on the eyes, especially at night. The FieldDayLogger program uses the same keystrokes as the N3FJP software so if you are familiar with N3FJP’s Field Day logging program, the transition to FieldDayLlogger will be a snap. The one down side to the FieldDayLogger software is that it doesn’t support networking, which is fine for my 1E / single transmitter operation.

UPDATE: Michael Bridak has added Multi-station networking support. This is great news! I haven’t tried it, as I only run one transmitter. You can read more about it in his manual on github. Thanks for your hard work and great contribution Michael!

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ARRL Field Day – With A Real Grid Down Event Right Before

Grid Down Before Field Day

The past couple of years, my daughter, KC8GRS and myself, WB8ERJ have been doing Field Day from my home. We operate Field Day using the special event callsign N8A. Since my Amateur Radio station is off-grid, I am always ready for 1E operation, which is a home station with emergency power. Interestingly enough, two weeks before Field Day, two tornadoes went through our area and came within earshot of the home QTH. The neighbors heard the “freight train” twice! Silly me, I slept through both of them until the power line got ripped off the side of the house. Yeah that woke me up. Turns out the big Maple tree out by the road fell over and took out the power lines.

When it comes to Field Day, our primary concern is communication which is good, but in a real grid down situation there are several other life needs. I believe that we hams need to consider these as well. So here are a few things I will share from my pre-Field Day power outage.

As it turned out, I had no grid power for 4 days. Fortunately I have been through this several times. Each time I use it as a learning experience so I can go through a power outage better than before. Having my own well that requires electricity, the first thing I do is draw drinking water from the holding tank until there is no pressure left. Doing this simple thing gave me more than enough drinking and cooking water for the outage. I also collect rain water for watering my garden. Since I had no water pressure, I used this for flushing the toilet. In addition to my amateur radio station being off grid, I also have another solar panel system that powers a 12 volt backup sump pump and my refrigerator. This was a game changer, as the 12 volt sump pump ran the first night of the outage, and probably kept my basement from flooding, which is often a concern here in Ohio. With the fridge on this system as well also kept the food in the fridge from spoiling.

EMCOMM With Winlink

One thing I participate in is WinLink Wednesday. As it happens, Wednesday came and I still had no power. No problem – my station is off grid, so it was Winlink Wednesday as usual! And just for fun (OK I was bored…) I sent out a few additional emails to a couple of non-ham friends to demonstrate Amateur Radio’s off-grid capabilities.

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My Ham Radio Go-Box Build For Portable POTA Operations

Since getting into the Parks On The Air program a few years ago, it prompted me to build my own version of what is known in the world of Amateur Radio, a Go-Box. That is a radio station that you are able to quickly grab and go at a moment’s notice. Since Amateur Radio’s justification for our frequencies is emergency communications, or EMCOMM, it makes sense that all hams have some sort of Go-box.

There are all kinds of go-boxes out there on the internet. They all have their advantages based on the operator’s needs and requirements. Being one who likes to learn from others, I spent a lot of time searching and looking at other people’s go-boxes. I then chose various features I like and incorporated them into my own go-box.

Here is what I came up with

Go Box Requirements

Plug and Play – That is plug in power, antenna and go.
Operate on HF, VHF and UHF frequencies
Compact and reasonably light
100 watts on HF frequencies
Operate on SSB, CW and Digital modes
Computer built-in
Antenna tuner

Go Box Equipment

Yaesu FT-857D
LDG YT-100 Autotuner
Raspberry Pi Computer
Signalink Sound interface
K1EL WinKeyer
Powered USB hub
Powerwerx USBbuddy 12V to 5V converter
USB GPS Dongle for grid square / time sync

Here is a photo of my completed Go-Box:

As you can see, its not actually a Go-Box, but rather what I call a Go-Frame.

The photo above shows the Yaesu FT-857D and below it the LDG YT-100 autotuner. On the right side you can see the two antenna connections that come from the rear of the FT-857D.

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How To DIY A Shortened 20 thru 40 Meter Vertical For POTA

There is something exciting doing a POTA activation where you hike in with all your gear in a pack and activating a park running QRP power. Since my original post about my first QCX-mini QRP transceiver, I now have additional QCX-mini’s that allow me to work my POTA QRP activations on 40, 30, and 20 meters. This meant I needed to build a portable shortened vertical for these bands. This particular vertical antenna build is based on my original Shortened 40 Meter Vertical but with the addition of being able to short the loading coil at the proper tap point for resonance on the 30 and 20 meter bands.

One problem I had with the original 40 meter vertical antenna, was that I used two 1/4 wave radials, which conventional wisdom says you should use with vertical antennas. On 40 meters, they are approximately 33 feet long. Which makes it more difficult to deploy the radials when in a heavily wooded POTA activation.

1/8 Wave Radials?

In doing some internet searches I discovered that it is possible to use radials that are 1/8 wavelength long — Yeah it sounds crazy to me too, but if its true, then it would greatly help the radial deployment issue on 40 meters. Granted at reduced efficiency, but I figured it was worth a shot. More on this later.

Since I already had a 20 foot collapsible fishing pole for my 40 meter shortened vertical, that is what I used for this multiband antenna. Since this was going to be for 3 bands, I wanted the loading coil low enough so that I could easily make a band change without lowering the vertical. Again, I went over to the coil shortened vertical antenna calculator page which gave me my starting points for the loading coil. Tuning this antenna for all 3 bands seemed trickier than normal. My guess is that I am using only two 1/8 wave radials.

The diagram below are my final dimensions. Your mileage may vary, but this is what I ended up with.

shortened 20 thru 40 meter vertical for pota sota activations WB8ERJ

For the loading coil form I decided to use an In Sink Tailpiece. My reasoning is this, typically people use standard PVC pipe for the coil form, which is fine, but the wall thickness of the pipe seems unnecessarily thick for my application. My main concern here was to put less stress on the wire that is the vertical part of the antenna. A toilet overflow tube is much thinner and lighter and works just fine. The outside diameter of my overflow tube is 1.5 inches. I am assuming that is a typical outside diameter. I cut the Sink Tailpiece 3 1/2 inches long, but 2 1/2″ would have worked just fine.

I used the coil shortened vertical antenna calculator based on where the coil is to be located in the above diagram and came up with a total number of turns of 33 with a tap at 13 turns from the top of the coil. If you have a different gage wire, put that in the coil shortened vertical antenna calculator instead.

Initially I built the loading coil with the calculated number of turns. As it turned out, I needed more inductance. In the photo on the next page you can see at the top of the last turn I added more wire. Lesson learned, wind more wire on to the coil than calculated.

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How To Install Equipment Into A 19 Inch Rack

I needed to install a transmitter into a 19″ equipment rack. Since it was heavy, and having installed heavy equipment into a rack I needed an easy way to do that. If you have ever installed something heavy in a 19 inch equipment rack, it is rather difficult. Even with two people. Sometimes three people are needed. This is what I came up with to make installing equipment into a rack a lot easier.

Since almost all 19” equipment racks use 10-32 screws in their side rails, get two of them and put two 10-32 nuts on the screw, and jam them together. Then clamp the whole thing in a vise.

Below is a photo of what I am talking about:

How to install equipment into a 19 inch rack

Once the screw is in the vise, take a hacksaw and cut off the head of the screw. Then cut a vertical slot with the hacksaw right where you cut off the head. The purpose of the vertical slot is so you can use a screwdriver on it. so make sure you cut the slot deep enough. You will need two of these for installing equipment into a 19 inch equipment rack.

To use them, you need to figure out which holes in the side rails you will be using for mounting your equipment in the rack. In the top most hole that you are going to use on each rail, simply screw in one these special screws.

Now its time to mount your equipment. All you do is slide your equipment’s top mounting holes on to the screws. This will properly align your holes, and all you have to do is push the bottom of your equipment up against the rack, and these two screws will hold the weight of your equipment for you. Just put in the two bottom screws first, then the rest of them into the rails of your equipment rack.

Here is a photo of one of the customized screws after the equipment is installed:

To finish the job, simply take a screwdriver and unscrew these two screws and replace them with the proper screws and you are done installing your equipment into the rack.

This article was originally posted on www.mikestechblog.com Any reproduction on any other site is prohibited and a violation of copyright laws.

Build A Shortened 40 Meter Vertical For POTA / SOTA Activations

Recently I went on vacation to Virginia and wanted to do some POTA activations using my new QCX-mini transceiver. On this trip I wanted to hike up to the summits of various mountains that are in various national parks. Since my QCX-mini is the 40 meter version, I obviously needed an antenna for it. My personal preference for portable antennas is to use vertical antennas as opposed to a dipole or other horizontally based antenna. Since my QCX-mini is 40 meters, a full sized vertical, being approximately 33 feet high, is a bit impractical.

UPDATE: I have built a new version of this antenna that covers 40 through 20 meters. If you are interested in building a 3 band version of this shortened vertical, click here.

I have seen others using collapsible fishing poles for antenna masts, so I figured I would give it a try. I found on Amazon.com a 20 ft. Crappie Fishing pole that collapses down to just 4 feet. I also found a web site that calculates what is needed for a coil shortened vertical antenna – perfect!

From what I have read, a base loaded vertical is less efficient than one that has the loading coil that is more near the top. The downside of placing the loading coil higher is that it needs to be larger, which will add to the weight, as well as additional stress on the pole in windy conditions. What I decided on was placing the loading coil slightly higher than the center of the vertical antenna.

Given my design constraints and using the coil shortened vertical antenna calculator, I settled on my shortened vertical antenna design. The diagram below is what I came up with:

build shortened 40 meter vertical antenna for pota sota acvitations

I used the coil shortened vertical antenna calculator based on where the coil is to be located in the above diagram and came up with 23 1/2 turns of # 24 enamel wire. I used 24 gage wire because I had it on hand. If you have a different gage wire, put that in the coil shortened vertical antenna calculator instead.

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