ND2E's Blog

Since we moved here I have wanted to make the station or at least the radio, solar powered. I have been collecting the bits and pieces since we moved here. Originally I had been using a 7 AH gel battery to float across the 12 volt bus but it was charged by the Kenwood 25 amp power supply that I generally use for the radios. I contemplated eventually buying one of the little 1 or 2 watt solar chargers to keep the battery topped up but never seemed to get around to it.

Last winter, Harbor Freight had their 5 Watt solar module on sale. I jumped at it since it was relatively inexpensive … made in China! They captioned it as a battery charger but I suspect that it is too big for my 7 AH battery since the rule of thumb is 3.5 Watts of solar power for each 100 AH of battery. The 5 Watt solar charger definitely would be overkill for a 7 AH battery.

Over last summer I went searching for a small charge controller since the charger was too big for most any battery I would likely buy, I found a small 3A solar controller at All Electronics. It was cheap enough and it would ease my mind about overcharging a small battery.

In the mean time the 7 AH battery died as did my 3.5 AH battery so I had an unmounted solar charger and no batteries to charge.

Last week, I decided to just do it and went on line to see what batteries were available. I had in mind a gel battery of about 15 AH. After looking through pages and pages of battery specs and costs I went to Batteries Plus and looked at their stock. I found a AGM battery 35 AH for a reasonable price. My math indicates that I should meet my objectives of 2 hours per day running 25 Watts PEP as in PSK. That means roughly 2 amps during transmit and .84 amps during receive. Using these figures I believe the weighted agerage is somewhere around 1 amp assuming 40 minutes of receive for every 20 minutes of transmit. At 1 amp / hour, I need 2 AH of battery for my nightly session. In fact, it should be sufficient for running all day and night during an emergency or for Field Day.

I did not find this solar system calculator until after I had purchased everything. It shows that I am not in good shape on the solar side of the power system. To recharge the battery in one day I need to replace almost 25 Watt Hours of energy. At 15 Watt Hours per day during the winter (3 good sun hours at 5 Watts or some combination of sun equaling 15 Watts) I can expect to recharge the battery in a little less than a day and a half. To recharge the system in one day, I will need roughly two 5 Watt solar panel or one 10 Watt array. So when I find a sale on a 15 or 30 watt arrays I will look into upgrading the solar side of the system otherwise for each day I use the system I need to recharge using the Kenwood power supply and can only expect the solar charger to work as a float charger on the days I do not ue the radio. Evidently the 3.5 watts per 100AH of battery is for float service only; We will see what happens. I have the battery on the solar charger now and am waiting to see how long it takes to bring it up to 13.2 volts, my estimate of the float voltage. I had it on the float charger last night but it never came up to 13.2 Volts … so we will see what happens.

Well, I managed to finally complete my Digital Worked All States award. With the help of a couple of hams in Rhode Island I was able to use JT-65 to complete my quest for Digital WAS. Next, I see that I am a couple of states short for the 20Meter PSK31 WAS so that is where I will aim.

Thanks to WB4SON and KE1AF for their help with RI JT and PSK.

For months now I have been stymied in completing my Digital Modes Worked All States award. There are five states missing and I just am not hearing many PSK stations from the missing states. I have been studying CW and completed the KE1L WKUSB keyer so I can do conventional CW rather than using DM780′s MCW mode. The addition of CW allows yet another digital mode for me to search for the missing five states. Unfortunately DM780 requires a really clean signal to decode the Morse code and I am not proficient at Morse (yet.)

I read that JT65 was an extremely useful weak signal mode. I installed JT5-HF software and set it up to work with Ham Radio Delux. Although it was a simple install there was a lot of interesting reading material before I felt comfortable going on the air.

Once I had JT65-HF set to what I thought was the correct settings I needed to test the PTT interface and the TX level. Luckily the Elecraft K3 has a test mode that allows you to check PTT and transmit levels without actually radiating. I could have done the same thing by reducing the power level and running the transmitter output to a dummy load. Either way will work but it was quick to just go to test mode.

I did a quick Google search for operation information and found an Italian site that had some really good information. The info was very helpful as was the setup instructions included with JT65-HF.

The good news is that on 5 watts you can message the world. The bad is it is slower than watching grass grow. I tried working on 10 meters (28.076 MHz). There were literally dozens of signals during the day and early evening. Japan was present but I had no luck in making a QSO. I did several but it is slow roughly five minutes per QSO. This is definitely not a mode you want to use during primetime on Field day … but I bet it might be worthwhile overnight when there are few new stations to log.

Hopefully I will be able to pick up the missing states using this mode…I did see several stations on PSKReporter running JT65-HF in several of the missing states.

JT65-HF can send signal reports to both PSKReporter and to the Reverse Beaconwebsite.

Back in September I ordered a PIC El III from Kanga. I finally started on the assembly a couple of days ago. Finished it this afternoon. Did the basic tests and it seems to be working. The first PIC project will be a recording voltmeter that I need for a solar charger project for the station battery and for a solar heat controller I have promised to build for a friend.

I would change the order of assembly slightly so that the resistors are installed first so that there are scrap leads available for the test points. I would also be careful when installing U1, it is quite close to one of the R1 pads and could be a problem.

I recently finished redoing the ham shack so I now have a permanent workbench for electronic projects. I salvaged a bit of anti-static mat from on of my previous employers when they were redoing their rework center. The bench is L-shaped and has storage for parts and tools. So far I don’t have any bench test equipment but I hope to finish the function generator I started back in the 80s. I thought ahead and put plenty of power outlets in the area as well as a Cat 6 drop. Once I started working on the circuit board I soon learned that my old eyes needed more light. I installed a 4 foot three element track light overhead. Power is controlled using an X10 wireless switch that was leftover from the house in Wylie TX. It still needs more light but it will work for the moment.

My E-Bench in use

Messy Workbench

Workbench - another view

I have wanted to run APRS for a long time now. I built a KISS TNC so I could interface to a 2M radio. I even bought a stand-alone GPS head. But, I never got around to putting everything together because I found that the radio in my car is operationally deficient. It insist on transmitting APRS data on what ever frequency is active – not a very nice thing to bleep everyone on the repeater with an APRS data burst. I am too forgetful to remember to change back to the aprs frequency.

I recently I went looking for a new VHF radio with GPS so I could do APRS without having to worry about my current radio’s problems. I was shocked to see what a new APRS-capable radio costs. There had to be a better/cheaper/simpler way.

I Googled APRS and followed a bunch of rabbit trails until I found a neat Android application…APRSdroid. APRSdroid is a free app that allows a ham to set up his Android phone to send APRS packets via the Internet (APRS-IS).

Setup is not exactly logical but it works. The first item that needs to be taken care of is to request a passcode. After 3 or 4 days you should have the passcode that will allow you to send APRS data using the app. At this point you can set up the rest of the items:
• Callsign
• Passcode
• SSID
• APRS symbol
• Status message
• Minimum update time
• Minimum update distance
• Await speed & bearing
• Use network location
• Neighborhood radius
• Connection protocol
• Server

Each of these items has a short explanation but so far there is no user documentation. The Wiki has a bit of info such as the map display does not show other stations in the neighborhood unless you are using TCP.

I have been playing with the app and have been able to send position reports and on occasion been able to see myself on the map display but have not been able to try all functions. Since the app is still in Beta things are fluid and what I comment on today may or may not work tomorrow. Hopefully this app will be fully functional and robust in the near future. I plan to use this in lieu of radio transmitted APRS until I can replace the radio in my car or when I am traveling in a vehicle without an APRS setup.

Look for ND2E-10 using FINDU or APRS.fi.