Unchained Preppers
Communications => Radio => Topic started by: JohnyMac on April 06, 2018, 07:45:31 AM
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To make a L.O.N.G. story short, my county is one of the last counties in the North East that does not have an EOC (Emergency Operations Center) overseen by those lovely folks at FEMA. Well as of April 1, 2018, we now have a EOC coordinator. He has asked a few of us hams in the county to volunteer to operate the ham shack at the EOC which is being built as I type. Well yours-truly was asked and I accepted.
I accepted as I want to keep my enemies VERY close and maybe I would learn some stuff. My one condition was I was not going to leave my EDC in the truck while at the EOC (A lot of acronyms here ;-) ) which was okayed at least as of this week. Anyway to get to the point of this post - I have to learn to TX (Transmit) and RX (Receive) messages electronically.
As I have written in a past post, I downloaded FLDIGI, FLarg, and FLmsg which works fine with my internal sound card on my Kenwood 590S (http://www.kenwood.com/usa/com/amateur/ts-590s/) (6-160 meters) but I needed something else for the VHF/UHF frequencies so I had to purchase a Signalink USB (http://www.tigertronics.com/slusbmain.htm) modem.
My Signalink arrived Wednesday and today will be the first opportunity I have had to set it up and try it out.
My plan is to use it with my Yaesu 817nd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaesu_FT-817) for the VHF/UHF portion of my digital needs to be one with the EOC & FEMA overlords.
I will post my trials and tribulations as I drag my butt into the 21st century here.
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Looking forward to reading more on this and thanks for posting this JohnyMac!
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Bradford?
Nemo
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I use the signalink all the time with my 817/857. HF and VHF too. If you want to do VHF, remember to put the radio in PKT mode, NOT DIG like you use for HF. Not really sure why this is, but that's how it works. Took me a while to figure out why it wasn't working properly. Great system when you get it running right.
Please keep us updated!
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Thanks folks.
Well I have progressed where I can receive on FM but I can not send. I know I have just missed a 'click or unclick' along the way somewhere.
The folks I am communicating with are using:
> FM mode and
> PSK125RC5 as the 'op mode.'
Again, no issues getting their transmission just getting out is an issue.
As Kbop writes, "Murphy was an optimist."
Peace!
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please forgive me if this was covered - im in a hurry today.
do you have offset freqs 'duplex'?
do you have your BFO set to the correct freq.
are you using the correct PSK constellation?
are your rx and tx settings the same for the op?
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if any of these are off you could rx but not tx.
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have you checked your vswr? do you have tight RF connections on the tx line?
if you have a bad vswr - caused by a loose connection, for instance - you can capacitively couple rx but the high power tx will 'leak' all your energy away.
if your antenna is directional - do you have it oriented correctly?
do you have a second radio you can put 100 feet away or so to verify if you have any tx?
if you are under 5W how is your grounding for the TX?