ND2E's Blog

Last year when I lost my big Dimension 8400 to a series of power faults, I started using my old Dell 900MHz laptop. It was horribly slow and was really limping when running the Ham Radio Deluxe V4 package. To fix the problem I bought an older 2.2 GHz Pentium 4 Dell GX270 figuring that it would be much faster than the Dell laptop. Since is was supposed to be so much faster I upgraded to the latest HRD V5 Beta package expecting blindingly fast operation. I was disappointed and started looking for the reason. I somehow got the machine into a state where it was so slow that it took 20 minutes to boot. I finally fixed that problem so I was back to the original complaint that when running HRD it would slow to a stop  for several seconds. I couldn’t run another background tasks without significantly impacting the QSO.

I have spent several hours off and on looking for the cause of the slowdown. I have finally located one of the reasons slowing my computer when using Ham Radio Deluxe.

According to the info on the HRD website, HRD is a very light load on the computer. I concur that it is a very small load but whenever I ran HRD/DM780/HRDlog my computer bogged down. I spent several hours tracking down what was causing the slowdown. Finally, I noticed that the System process was consuming valuable realtime. I searched the web for System process information and came across several articles that indicated USB-connected peripherals such as USB-Serial adapters can cause the System process to balloon.

I changed the interface point to my only serial port and the load presented by the System process dropped from 50-70% to 0-5%.  That is a really significant change that may allow the HRD package to run without hesitation or slowdown that have plagued me since I brought the Dell GX270 on line.

Hopefully this info will be of use to others.

73 de ND2E

The Signalink USB came in the mail yesterday so I took it and a couple of other soundcard interfaces to the Kingsport club meeting where I was giving a presentation on Digital Modes in ham radio. The presentation went well until I got to the keying schematic where I had an error in the grounds. I will work on that later today so the presentation is corrected.

Today I installed the Signalink … no problems were experienced, I followed their directions for jumpering. Nothing unusual there. Neat thing is each radio cable comes with a jumper diagram so you don’t have to look it up on the web. The box also had the hex key that is neeed to disassemble the box so you can install the jumpers. That is a nice touch.

I put it on the air after a couple of adjustment in HRD/DM780 v5 Beta and to the computer. You need to assign the new interface in HRD and make sure that Microsoft hasn’t assigned the new soundcard as the default soundcard.

PTT setting is straight forward. adjust the HRD soundcard TX level until the Signalink keys then, adjust the Tx level adjustment on the Signalink for proper ALC action, (Don’t forget to make sure the SWR is low so as not to affect the ALC.)

After two QSOs into Arizona with good quality comments I shut down for lunch and updates to the blog and web site.

So at this point I think the Signalink USB is a quality unit and can see why many of my friends have bought it.

Cio/73 de ND2E, Joe

The other day I was in a QSO when the other operator mentioned seeing what he called hum bars on my transmission. It seemed stranged at the time but I did back off on the Tx audio a bit and he said it was better.

A couple of days later I was trying to work to the North East and the FT-857 would not key. (I was running digital VOX.) Knowing that I had not changed the Tx Audio levels since the previous session, I started testing. The radio would key when I changed the PTT logic to the CAT but it was extremely insensitive when set to digital VOX. That seemed a bit strange so I pulled the Tx audio connector and plugged in my headset. What to my wondering ears did appear but a harsh low pitched growl when I started to transmit.

I switched DM780 to the internal soundcard to verify that it was a soundcard problem not a computer problem. It was the external soundcard so I am now off the air waiting for my new Signalink USB to arrive.Hopefully it will be here Thursday of Friday so I can get back on the air this weekend.

Late last summer when I was having computer and radio problems, a station in South Carolina mentioned that I was driving the Tx audio a bit hard because he could see distortion on the waterfall. There was a noticeable but faint set of tracks … not nearly as bad as some of the Cuban stations but still noticeable. At that time I dialed back on the audio going to the TS-2000 and he said it cleared up – Mostly. At that time I did not recognize a sound card problem…I monitored the audio with my headset but did not notice any distortion. I my mind the external soundcard I have used for several years was degraded and continuing to fail but I did not notice it.

So now I wonder how is the best way to actually monitor the output signal of the soundcard – really, how to monitor the IMD of the radio/souncard combo. I am open to suggestions, not all Digital Mode software supports IMD measurement and in most instances it really is only a measure of the Rx audio path from the receiver to the waterfall and is subject to significant overdrive in the audio and DSP chain.

If anyone has a good recommendation – I am willing to try it.

73 de ND2E/Joe

I will be giving a presentation on the basics of Digital Modes at the Kingsport Amateur Radio Club Meeting in February. I will post the power point on  my web site shortly before the meeting. There is a slight hope that we can do a live demo but I doubt that we can because the antenna system here at ND2E does not go to 40 or 80 meters. That being said we will check during the presentation and if we can work a station we will demo the activity.

I will also run HRD/DM780 in Demo Mode so folks can see what it looks like.

If you are interested in the basics of digital modes, you are invited to join us at the meeting.