3rd Nov 2013 Sunday

VK1WJ Waldis Almost burnt a line in my monitor with this burn .

Conditions very low ZHR but there must have been some troppo along the coast

Because I cannot really hear VK4LHD Robert but today great signal and even a backscatter ping as below

Using DJ5HG's MSRX parallel with WSJT

I thought I would try DJ5HG's MSRX software.

How many times do you go trolling through the waterfall on wsjt looking for a callsign / report.
Well now this software has the option of looking for patterns and then highlights that pattern as below.
The funny little quirk with this is that you have to click on file to scroll through the options. If you are going to give it try it takes a while for it to decode but be patient. Also remember to have save all on in wsjt.
And also remember this is not a live decode it opens a saved .WAV file from your RX.WAV directory
so it has to wait for wsjt to close the file before it can open it to decode it if you have every period selected that is.

And then there is the repetition that highlights in red

Below is VK5PJ'S ZINGER it was late in the session on Saturday 26th of  October 2013

Below is the comparison between MSRX and WSJT they both decoded OK

But MSRX has that highlight option which I like.

You can clearly see PJ's report to Wayne VK2XN 

Also great to see VK5PJ he must be the only VK5 using M/s Digital on 2m 

70cm Meteor scatter using JTMS

This is a burn/ping on 432.230 from VK3AMZ 

on Saturday morning 3-8-2013.

Mode used was JTMS.

July 6th 2013

Well Saturday the 6th July 2013

Conditions where good before the M/S session the Hepburn chart,

indicated maybe a path along the coast north of me.

Frank VK4FLR was on the logger so I called CQ in CW 

using Fldigi of course, well when Frank came back to me my headphones jumped of my head.

So a good CW contact was made then we tried just for fun MT63-500

and we made a perfect copy contact using that mode also should try it again soon with Frank.

Conditions are on the up again with quite a few stations being heard 

cannot wait till new tower is installed and pre-amp fitted to my 2x9 element DL6WU's

Below is a screenshot of VK4UH KJ  with the usual AE flutter, but with a 

lovely back ping or reverse ping how ever you would describe it 

Below is a screenshot of VK3HY and VK3AMZ in the same period

Showing that 2 stations in the same area came through on different pings

Saturday May 18th 2013 JTMS

Whilst I was just listening on 144.330 I heard a cq from Waldis VK1WJ

as per screenshot below once again showing the software giving the average decode

The spike and junk just prior is someone turning on a light or something

Some people say that they just get junk well you do sometimes but JTMS will dig around

and find something worth averaging and I bet FSK would have trouble decoding like JTMS has below 

Below a good decode from Waldis VK1WJ again giving a report to John VK4JMC

yes it showing some junk decodes from the but it didn't try to make anything out of it

just the average decode from Waldis

And look what it pulled out of my powerline noise that comes in waves here

Just how good is that below

VK1KW Calling cq yes some junk but the averaging function worked well again

Meteor Scatter help

Meteor scatter  is a really interesting mode of propagation not only for digital comms but also voice.
As I discovered during the peak of the ETA-Aquarids with contacts made with VK3's and copied VK5's Adrian VK4OX is the expert with this . There is http://www.dl1dbc.net/Meteorscatter/ which is a great help just enter your callsign and your locator the help section is a great read . Change west to be on left side of great circle and click antenna azimuth and your all set what it doe's have is a link to the international meteor organization which has a meteor shower calendar.

Equipment requirements

1. Radio SSB
2. 144Mhz
3. power 50w will do but 100w better
4. computer pretty much what you are using now
5. software WSJT just google it
6. Sound card the on board one or a $2 usb dongle type
7. antenna 6 Element to 13 Element horizontal
8. Pre-amp if you must all Images shown on my blog from 11 and 12th of may are without a pre-amp 
9. Radio to computer interface there are hundreds on the net ready made or roll your own

My station

1. Radio Flex-1500 SDR with Elecraft xv144 
2. Amp DSE 100w kit amp
3. Antenna 2 home brew 9 element DL6WU'S stacked at 5m "soon to be on my new 9m tower"
4. Computer core duo something I picked mine up second hand for 100 dollars
5. Coax ldf450 20m run but lmr400 just as good make sure you use good coax you are cheating yourself with anything else rg213 maybe :(

Unlocking JTMS and DIANA modes in ver 9.3 Wsjt

Unlocking the hide file extension option in windows I will use 7 as the walk through.

First go control panel  then change the view to small icons

like so

Select folder options it should be in the first column 4th or 5th down

Now untick the hide extensions for known files

Open notepad and create a file called experimental and save it do not put anything in the file

just create one and save it as experimental

Oh and save in the WSJT directory you will find this under program files

if you are using windows 7 64 bit it will be in program files(x86)

You will see that experimental has .txt extension now

just right click on the experimental file and select rename

and just delete the .txt off the end

Windows have a warning just click yes it won't break anything

No open WSJT click on modes JTMS and Diana will be on the bottom of the menu enjoy

Sunday 12th May Morning M/S Session

Sunday screenshots

The Sunday session got under way well with John VK4JMC getting the first contacts Ping rate was average  the ZHR was reported to be around 20 and it was making for some fast contacts Waldis VK1WJ made a few quick contacts as well as VK3AMZ Arie on FSK441 144.230Mhz.

Underdense meteor in 20:12:00 exactly what the text books say it should look like.

VK3AMZ Arie giving reports to Mick VK4NE and Mark VK2AMS

Some AE from VK4UH Kevin

As you see above in 21:07:00 the first burn is a overdense meteor as depicted by oscillations

and the second one is an underdense with high peak and then tapering off 

And Arie VK3AMZ Giving reports again

love the way JTMS decodes and displays the average the "*" indicates Average decode very neat

Saturday 11-May-2013 JTMS trials

Well Saturday was humming away nicely with the tail end of the ETA Aquarids. The usual suspects where on

VK3AMZ  The VK3 FSK beacon was strong but had a some stiff competition from VK3II.

I was seeing a lot of aircraft enhanced signals from Kevin VK4UH and also VK4LHD Robert

After a while we moved from 144.230 FSK441 to 144.330 to try JTMS well this mode is very good on both short pings and very loud and long burns as per screenshot of Arie VK3AMZ

As you can see all nicely spaced mind you it was 2 pings if you look at the T column

next screenshot is of a massive burn that was almost half the 30 Second period

So JTMS on 144mhz appears to work well more test's to but I feel that we need to keep this mode on a different Freq than FSK-441 just like we do with JT65 but we will sort it out as we go

Above is this an overdense or underdense ?



   

Some people say they get a lot of rubbish decodes from JTMS maybe by bringing the 

S value higher may help eliminate some of these rubbish decodes. But more test and trials

over the next few weekends maybe this will open up to 2 morning sessions one for FSK441 

on 144.230 from 18:00 and then from 20:00 on 144.330 JTMS 

And now VK4UH  with some Aircraft Enhancment on FSK441

will have to try a microwave didgtal  mode contact with KJ one day

Not bad considering that KJ is 129 Klm South of me

and @ 173 Deg and I was pointing 190 Deg

The choppy bits are AE but I wonder if the 5.5 Second burn is back scatter from a meteor ??