After some in house testing of the system??I thought I'd give a little insight as to what I've been doing and why. So, the background is that the station consists of an IC-703 and and old laptop connected by a CT17. The laptop is running Faros quite effectively but the ftp synchronisation was a bit of a headache as was the choice of antenna.
FTP synchronisation.
The recommendation is to use Win SCP as a tool to synchronise the gif files between the local hard disk and the website. After diligently following all the instructions I found that it was dropping the connection regularly and failing to upload the gifs. basically the software was not reliable. perhaps some setting were incorrect but essentially it wasn't performing correctly. I found another utility call FTP synchronizer that looked a lot simpler to set up. I was right, so much easier to use, however it didn't have a scheduled sync setting so it had to be done manually. I contacted the developer who has agreed to look into it but as he (or she) is not currently developing the software it may not go any further. So the search for a reliable piece of software thats simple to set up and use is still on.
Antenna
My QTH has a hustler 6-BTV set up in the garden, however living by the sea it has been very windy. The poor antenna is getting a beating from the salty air and the wind so it came down and a temporary diamond portable antenna is installed. As expected the results are much worse with the smaller antenna. I am investigating if it is possible to use my HFV-5 that has had a years beating on my old QTH's roof and was badly corroded. I'll clean it up and carry on testing.
The upshot is that the testing shall continue for another week or so
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI also had similar problems with WinSCP and in the end gave up.
I am using a freware utility called Save2FTP which I have found to be very reliable and has been running now for over two months without re-start. If problems occur and the upload cannot be made, it simply does it on the next scheduled time, or the next, etc. It uses the archive bit for detection of files to upload.
If you still have not anything suitable, I could send you a copy next week, as I will be away over the weekend.
73,
Mike, VK3AVV
I've been searching for a relaible tool for a long time, I thought I had it with AutoFTP (http://www.glenn.delahoy.com/software/index.shtml) but this seems to crash every few days now.
ReplyDeleteI'd appreciate a link or a copy Mike, at least then I can pull together a decent list for the 'How it worked for me' that I'm putting together