DF9CY Christoph Petermann - The Radio Site

70cm
27 September 2009: Strong signals from south-western England and northern France. Nothing new, no QSO. But I found my new pre-amp to be dead . I do not know why, as my sequencer seems to work correctly. I will add another koaxial relais and put in my backup amp.

40m Softrock
30 September 2009: I made my first 40m Softrock QSOs today in PSK31 mode. It works ! This was done with 500mW of output power.

WSPR
28 September 2009: WSPR ran on 40m, 30m and 17m for some nights receive-only. Very interesting at all !
22 September 2009: More Softrocking ... My signal was copied in New Zealand on 40m. Does it go any further ??
19 September 2009: Yesterday I modified the Softrock and I/Q is correct now for PowerSDR. Tonight I got it running with 1w and - unbelievable - it is heard in Australia ! That is thrilling.
18 September 2009: The rotator is still broken. It shall be replaced tomorrow. So I will not have fun with the tropo conditions on 2m and 70cm in these days. So I have experimented a little bit more with WSPR and had it running with my TT RX320D in receive mode only. It is very astonishing, of what this little box is capable to receive. I have modified my Softrock RXTX for operation with PowerSDR software, which is not able to swap the I/Q in- and outputs. I will try to get it running with transmitting in the next days.
5 September 2009: WSPR is running now on the Softrock 6.2 with Winrad and Virtual Cable. VK6BN received with it last evening !
1 September 2009: The receiver is ON ...

Posted by Christoph Petermann

It took me a while to get all the stuff for the Softrock transceiver running. No there was nothing wrong - it took me a while to understand, how all that software plays the game. Now I got it working fine. Screenshots of my setup for the Software Radio are HERE. Furthermore I have updated my Softrock page and the WSPR page.

The logger at WSPRnet.org and my spot of being heard in New Zealand.



Of course it was a weak signal, but it came through.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Today Thomas DJ5LY came here and we replaced the broken old rotator by a refurbished Hy-Gain Ham IV more rugged type. It is working perfectly now and hopefully does this in the future.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Since quite a while I am running a Softrock 6.1 RXTX on 40m in receive mode only. It works on 80m too, but I do not have an antenna. Now I want to get this little thing I have built more than two years ago transmitting too. I have the receiver it working fine with several programs (Winrad, KGKSDR, Rocky etc). With a so called Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) which simulates a soundcard, I can cascade two programs like Winrad and WSPR. This already works fine and is sensitive enough.
Using a IQ testsoftware from M0KGK I could already run it with about 31 dBm (1,3w) output on 40m.


This is my little Software Defined Radio, the Softrock 6.1. Output power is about 1,3 watts. I already received a 5 watts station from Australia with on 40m it and my low dipole for 40m.

I still have a kit for the SR6.1 RXTX 40m/30m version. But I do not think that I will finish it. If you are interested in the kit, ask me please. The German Funkamateur Magazine will publish a Kit with a tunable SDR RXTX. This sounds to be a very interesting for me and may be a next project for me.

Posted by Christoph Petermann

Yesterday evening after a very strong wind storm I realized that my very, very old CDE rotator is finally broken. It has to be replaced. I am looking for a replacement. BUT this incident prevents me from being QRV in the VHF IARU contest today .

Posted by Christoph Petermann

No, I am NOT a big collector of QSL cards, but some are a MUST. Now the cards from EA8AVI for my 3588km QSO on 2m is here and from last year's expedition to Sable Isl. CY0X on 6m dropped in too. Great stuff.

Posted by Christoph Petermann