This year we wanted to seriously compete in CQWW CW from the ED1R contest station. While the station is equipped reasonably on all bands with Yagis and verticals, there were no dedicated receiving antennas available - yet. Out of my former contest participation from other stations, I know that when it comes down to winning a CQWW, dedicated receiving antennas are a must-have. Beverages provide great directivity and reduce the EU clutter significantly.
At the end of last year, I announced the “proof” that Software Defined Radios also can have buttons and knobs. At that stage, the software was still a prototype and not ready for a public release. In the meantime, I was working hard to eliminate bugs and implement further improvements. By today I’m happy to announce the release of the PowerSDR-UI beta. This is a call for beta testing. Please feel free to download the software and participate in the beta testing phase!
In this article, we will investigate how various Contest programs (Win-Test, N1MM, and CW-Skimmer) communicate with the FT1000MP shortwave transceiver over the serial port. We will see what happens when multiple programs try to talk to the transceiver at the same time, what problems appear and how we can successfully monitor and debug them.
Today, I could measure the performance of the well-known ICE bandpass filters. Read more about the measurement results.
Lately, I needed a 3dB splitter for an HF (1…30MHz) measurement project. Instead of buying myself a splitter, I decided to build it on my own. After measuring the performance I am satisfied with the result.
