PSK with no Interface

Perhaps you have heard about PSK31 and the many other digital modes available to today’s ham radio operators.

You have gone the next step and know you need to, somehow, connect your computer soundcard with your radio’s speaker and microphone.

Many devices exist to help you do just that including US Interface, BuxComm, SignaLink, etc. I have my eyes set on the US Interface Navigator product to be my sound interface plus mop up a WinKey CW Keyer and rig control (CAT) in one box entirely powered by the USB port. Nice.

However, I am enjoying the digital modes today with absolutely no interface. How?

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Turning AGC Off Helps Kenwood TS-2000 CW

A ham on the local Sunday Night Tech Net reported a technique that improved the reception of CW measurably.

He has a Kenwood TS-2000 transceiver. As time went by he used various adjustments while listening to CW. He was never quite satisfied with the noise levels that came in along with the desire CW signals. Variables adjusted include the RF Gain and AGC response time.

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CW Common Abbreviations

As you begin your adventure sending and receiving Morse code on the HF bands you will almost instantly hear a variety of short hand abbreviations. Many are obvious while others aren’t.

CW works well with these abbreviations and may even lend themselves to cell phone text messaging since both systems benefit from sending fewer characters.

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Why QSO Contest Logging and Paper don’t mix

Field Day 2008 was great for us. Our wide area wireless network worked pretty well and every station could monitor progress of the whole group.

This year we extensively used the “operator initials” field in the N3FJP Field Day Network 2.8 logging software package. Operators used their call-sign as their ‘initials’ while honored guests used their actual initials.

The site-wide log offered many great analysis possibilities. One particularly interesting metric we tracked this year was QSO rates. We generated graphs of QSO totals vs. Time Between QSOs. Here is an example of the entire log…

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