Bellringers Around W4BXI

Birmingham at the Center - 200 Mile Increments

Radius Maps

The Valley Video

2009-12-24 Christmas Eve at The Cottage

Christmas Eve Dinner at The Cottage

Ginger Bread House Construction at The Cottage

Turn Off Windows XP

Mentone Weather 0800 Dec 12, 2009

KB4PYR

W4BXI with Yasue

Yaesu Straight Key Audio

Yaesu Keyer Audio

After the Rain

Store Room Shelving

Making cuts accurate to 1/32" or less. 

Sunday Sunrise 11-29-2009

The morning's view to the Northwest shows morning sunlight creeping across the valley below.
The cloud cover this morning added a little dramatic lighting!

Tuscaloosa Tall Tower

Open Feedline to Coax

KB4XX IC-703 Plus Keying

The following key waveforms were recorded 11-25-2009. 
Click on the text to hear the audio.  Click on the images to enlarge.

Semi-Breakin

Full-Breakin

W4BXI

Sunset at The Cottage

The Cottage 11-11-09

Progress at The Cottage. The walls and ceiling are going up.

2009-11-06

Rat's Nest

Lumber in the Living Room

This is actually progress! Wall and ceiling lumber is now tempering in the living room! Hope to have this "in place" by the end of the week! Closing in on completion!

Remote to Mentone from TCL

 

October 29, 2009 Update and Retrospective

Color on the Mountain

 

DTS-4 on the Screen

 

LDG DTS-4 VB Switching App

A quick test of a VB switching application. 

Please forgive the REALLY crude video.  Just a quick demo.  I cycle through the radio buttons selecting each of the antennas.

LDG DTS-4 Commands

Page 9 of the LDG DTS-4 documentation states

"Under PC control, the PC program you write would take the place of the remote (DTS-4R).  Simply open the port, send the appropriate two-byte command, receive and process the two-byte reply as desired.  Note there is no space between the letter prefix (M or R) and the code.

"Example: to select antenna 1, your program would send the characters "R2" to the switch via the serial connection."

Unfortunately this is not exactly right.

The command stream is two-bytes long.  The first byte is an ASCII "R" which has a hex value of 52.  The second byte is sent not as an ASCII "2" (hex 32).  The second byte to select antenna 1 would be a hex 02.  This makes the two-byte command hex 52 02 not hex 52 32 as given in the documentation.

The following command table will work:

Antenna     Two-Byte Command
      1                   hex 52 02
      2                   hex 52 03
      3                   hex 52 04
      4                   hex 52 05

Virtual Com Ports

Can we retransmit an HF QSO?

Retransmitting Signals of Other Stations

Q: May my station retransmit the signals emanating from other amateur stations?

Yes, generally. Section 97.113, however, requires that the control operator of your station manually cause the retransmission because the radio signals of other amateur stations must not be automatically retransmitted.

Q: What do the words "manually" and "automatically" imply?

"Manually" means the retransmission is caused by some immediate physical action, e.g.,activating a push-to-talk key, voice-actuated-switch or similar action, by the control operator. "Automatically" means the retransmission is accomplished by some other means, such as a device which determines that a specific reaction is called for and then causes it to occur.

Q: Are there exceptions where my amateur station may automatically retransmit the radio signals of other amateur stations?

Yes. The Rules provide such accommodation for three types of operation. Section 97.201 accommodates auxiliary stations, Section 97.205 accommodates repeater stations and Section 97.207 accommodates space stations.

Q: May my station retransmit the programs or signals emanating from any other type of radio station?

Section 97.113 provides two exceptions for retransmissions that are for the exclusive use of amateur operators. Your amateur station may retransmit occasionally as an incident of normal amateur radio communications, but not on a regular basis:

Propagation and weather forecast information intended for use by the general public and originated from United States Government stations; and

Communications, including incidental music, originating on United States Government frequencies between a space shuttle and its associated Earth stations. You must, however, obtain prior approval for shuttle retransmissions from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

See FCC site.

CTS-4 Cable by Holland

2009-10-16

Remote Ops

 

A little church history....

USB to TTL Cable

Thanks to WA5MLF here is a possible solution to DTS-4 interface.