A week later and there is something wrong

At the back end of last week I set Faros off and running to listen into the various NCDXF beacons.

All is not well

The set up of rig, Signalink, sound card (either as a usb or internal) is inconsistent at best and not hearing anything at all at worst. After a few days of twiddling and mucking about I am at a loss. I've never really got the thing going with my ft817 and frankly don't want to spend a whole heap of time trying to sort it out. Perhaps I'll go back to it once I've had a chance to think about it a bit more.

Here's what's stumping me:

Computer - More powerful than the one it used to run off 24/. Both internal and usb sound cards have failed to get any signals. in fact the usb sound card made the software act very oddly. Audio in directly from the rig...no difference. Adjusting the volume makes no observable difference.

Rig - CAT OK, timing OK, audio out OK

The software is reporting 100% QSB which I don't recall from the last set up so I can only surmise that it doesn't like the two options for the sound card. Time to take a break from it.

 

Beacon pages

The NCDXF beacon network may not be as popular now that WSPR has hit the mainstream but I think it still has a purpose.

For me, the benefit of programmes like Faros gives life to a receiver that wouldn't otherwise be used. Yes, you can do the same with WSPR but because it's a more robust system means that just because my pc can hear a station. Doesn't mean I can work them.

Beacons,on the other hand , give you a reason to listen out. For example, if I can't hear the Northern Ireland 2m beacon, GB3NGI on 144.482Mhz then chances are I will not be successful putting out a CQ call and expecting to get some DX (DX for me is probably a lot less in mileage terms than you might think at my QTH).

So I've resurrected the NCDXF beacon monitor and the results are on the Beacon pages. I hope they are still useful. Time will tell but it looks like the soundcard / rig combo isn't working too well as its reporting 100% QSB and nowhere near as many spots as I would expect it to. I remember the software being quite precise about the signal input and I spent many hours waiting then adjusting.

703 Gone

My trusty Icom 703 has been sold. Feels like I've lost a faithful friend. So there won't be any beacon monitoring or wspr'ing for a while. I'm looking to get a nice second hand ft817 and spotted one on eBay. I wasn't prepared to pay as much as the winner so he got it. Still no rush and it'll allow me to buy the bits I need to make up the portable cobwebb

Thinking of a new rig

I've spent the last 3 years collecting data from the NCDXF beacons to see if I can hear them using Faros. The results have been displayed on this site as a way of keeping a valid copy of the data away from the home pc's which seem to give up the ghost or lose data. Lately I've been really frustrated that I haven't really had a spot for a long time.

The rig is fine and the PC is getting the sound in, theres just no spots. So I'm thinking of a slight change of rig so that I can get a bit more out the set up. There are a few hams locally that use APRS and I'm wanting to get a bit more involved, so I'm thinking of putting the trusty and very reliable IC-703 onto Ebay so I can get hold of a FT-817 and a TNC to run APRS both out and about and in the car as well as switching over to WSPR instead of Faros.

I do go up to Scotland quite a lot and have found it would be nice to have something in the car on the way up there and whilst I'm there both on HF and VHF. So that only really leaves one sensible option. The FT-817, a cross country wireless APRS TNC and a mobile whip for the car and my Cobwebb for HF

Well I'm stumped

Three different antennas, two different rigs and not a spot on the hf beacons to speak of at all. One strange thing that did happen was that the laptop stopped picking up spots on WSPR as well whilst if was on 15m. AT least they looked like spots, matched the profile on the screen that they usually did. Just not decoded. I've noticed this before and assume that the problem was at this end with the desktop pc (which is a nettop thing) running windows 7 not picking up things as sometimes it has a mind of its own with the soundcard. I'm going to try and bring back the old laptop from the grave as today seems the most appropriate just to be absolutely sure.

The whole thing doesn't make sense to me

Beacon station

I'm begining to think that something is quite wrong with the beacon monitoring station. So much so that this week I'll be using it for WSPR just to do some checks. Its been hooked up to the Hustler 6-BTV and will also be TX'ing as well on the 15m band as a compromise.
The idea is to get a feel for wether there is a problem with the receiver or that there is something wrong in the set up as there are so few spots coming through especially as the activity seems to be on the increase

Are we at the bottom yet?

The beacon station still going strong but no propagation to speak of. I keep checking the site during the day to see how the 4UN1UN beacon is and I can safely say that it's getting weaker and weaker. With few or no spots at all in many of the days. It makes you think that there is something wrong with your equipment.

Hopefully this long trough will start to pick up so I have a chance to pull together a secret mast for my 6m beam before the XYL finds out  what I've done just in time for the Es season! I know she doesn't read this blog too often so I'm sure she'll not find out what I'm planning.

I still need to do some fault finding with my Softrock and / or build the second kit. I really enjoyed the first one I bought the second one to try and practice a bit more with the SMD soldering, but unfortunately things conspired against me.

Antenna replacement

Having run the active antenna for a month or so it seems fairly obvious that it's just not pulling in the signals. I've swapped it for a wire antenna with a 1:1 balun. The wire is approximately 25m long with a 10m coax feeder. It'll be positioned in a suitable spot in the garden. From early results it's head and shoulders above the active and electrically small loft one.

Playing with different antennas

After having a week off work to do some heavy work in the garden I punctuated the soaking I got by playing about with some antennas.

As the radio hase been relocted away from the other PC the connection to the loft has been lost which is both good and bad. I get to regain my 2m antenna without having to change things around but teh diamond compact Vee (HFV-5) thats I've been using has had to be retired. Partly due to excessive corrosion and partly duy to not being able to find a new space for it. So I'm trying out some new antennas whilst the set up os being fiddled with.

1. Sony AN-1 - Active antenna

My first active antenna, bought in 1989 and not used much except with my Sony ICF-2001D when that was my only radio. Its powered by batteries and is essentially a long whip antenna with a pre-amp attached.

2. Home made loop

Just something that interested me so?I decided on making a relatively large loop (1.5m diameter) out of co-ax and other bits lying aorund the garage.

3. Long wire

I 'own' approximately 35m of fence which could be used for a long wire antenna. A small connection through the garage wall would give acces to the fence and although at least 4m is close to the house the remainder is moving away and the last 15 m at a?right angle couldn't be further from the house. At 1.8m high it should give some interesting alternative results from the other options.

I'll be sapping round these atennas over the next few weeks to compare the results and to?see?if there really is an opportunity to increase the results I get from the beacon monitoring programmme.

Away again

I'm away again for a few days so the beacon station has come with me in case the opportunity to have some QSO's comes my way......here's hoping

If I can get at least one 6m QSO I'll over the moon

Beacon station back up and running

Another brief few days away with my trusty IC-703 meant that there were no results for last week. things are now back and running again so the resutls should be coming through nicely

Data being recorded but not uploaded

I'm having yet more trouble with my netwrok with data being recorded but no ability to upload. I'll attempt to solve it quickly

Back from holidays

The station is back up and running and the results should be coming through some time today. The old laptop is looking even more shakey now and it may fall over at any time so if it does, bear with me until another solution can be found.

Apart from that I hope you enjoy the results

Beacon station goes on holiday

The beacon station is packing upit's bags and going on holiday for a week or so. The station will be inactive from 13th June to 22nd June although I will be operating QRP when time permits from a little bit lower down the country so it'll be nice to see if the conditions are better than they are here. Currently that couldn't be too difficult!

Hopefully that'll be a bit of advanced notice just in case theres a sudden upturn in the (space) weather.

Station open for business

a proud day, I've spent quite a few man hours getting this site up and running as well as a reasonably reliable Beacon Monitoring station. Name up in lights at NCDXF website and the sucessful pages displaying the rather shady results I'm getting here in the bleak part of Cumbrian winter.

I hope you find them useful, leave a comment or make a suggestion if the data isn't as you'd like it. Tell your friends and I hope to see you on the Hf bands on PSK31 or SSB when the wind drops and I can raise the antenna

If anyone is interested in how I managed to sort this out for myself then I'll be putting together a short HOWTO that will compliment the existing ones that I used.

73's

G7KSE

More beacon station news

unfortuantely the ftp upload saga continues with unreliable transfers, crashing ftp programmes all compounding the local broadband issues which I can happily say are now significantly reduced.

So far I have tried the following programmes and so far I have not found one that is truely reliable all the time

1. WinSCP - A very versatile programme but.....Refused to synchronise and hung during transfers

2. FTP synchronizer - Nice and simple but manual only, needed a button press to upload but altogether very reliable. i contacted the developers but not luck

3. AutoFTP - A freeware application that is again nice and simple but suffers from the 'AutoCrash' feature so it's nearly there but not quite robust enough

4. Carbon FTP - Does it all manually but not a hoot when it comes to scheduling unless you are using a different tool to schedule

5. Auto FTP Manager - Not freeware, in fact it's $40 but if it works in the long run then I'm sure it'll be worth it. I've not tried this for long enough but it seems to be working well.

6. FTP Sync Pro - Again not freeware and uses command line and windows task scheduler, massively gums up the task bar when running every hour so not a runner really. Although having said that it didn't ever miss a synchronisation when it was running.

Not tried...yet

Peter's Updater - looks from the description that it may work, but I think I've been here before

Save2FTP - Recommended by Mike, VK3AVV in a previous comment. Not freeware but it looks and sounds like a good option and it has a 30 day trials so nothing to lose really.

Beacon monitoring testing update

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

Beacon station active in testing

I've started up my beacon monitoring project with my 'spare' IC-703 connected to a portable antenna. Unfortunatley I have had some real problems with the computer side of the hardware with one motherboard fizzing into oblivion over christmas.

I'm still having problems with the automatic update so a tempoary page with the current data is here

Beacon monitoring - station update

There have been a number of issues that have been resolved over the last few weeks, only to be replaced with new ones and I have to say that it revolves round the IT aspects more than anything else....

My router decided to reset tself and not allow any wireless connections which don't really help, the CF card decided not to boot up without doing a ctrl, alt delete when it beeps, absolutley no idea what on earth is going on there and to top it all off the wind off the sea has been so strong over the last few days i took down the antenna and put it in the nice warm garage...lastly the roof started leaking through a vent that the builders couldn't be bother to connect up properly so I'll be drying out and repainting the bathroom ceiling shortly as well.

??All in all not a great week for progress, but with a fair wind the monitoring can be started in the new year fully with the time off I have planned.

Software Defined Radio (SDR) Beacon Monitoring

Earlier this week I got in touch with Steve Ireland (VK6VZ) after reading his column in Radcom to see if I could get some guidance as to if there were any SDR products that he knew of to be used as a beacon monitoring station. My little project will hopefully be able to use an SDR of some sort coupled together with a small form factor PC such as a mini-itx and the Faros program to monitor beacons and provide real time data to this site across all the bands.

??Steve suggested that I contacted Alex (VE3NEA) the author of Faros to see if he'd got any information and it looks like there may be a partial success with a Softrock kit or if?? am patient there is a project which is currently as a prototype board call Mercury that looks like a real prospect. So a summary so far is:

Softrock 40 - Cheap, Can be used on 14Mhz apparently, Single band only

Mercury - Large bandwidth (192KHz - These can be allocated either as one lump or as 5 off 1 Khz segments to cover all beacon frequencis according to Alex).

??So not quite an off the self solution available but I'll keep on updating when I get some news. Altough it does look like a softrock 40 needs to be purchased in order to have a good look at this as an option.