Equipment | N4BC

“Interference”

I’ve been going crazy trying to track down an interfering signal that showed up recently on my FLDIGI waterfall.

Finally, I connected the RSP1A to the antenna and lo and behold, there was nothing there! It had to be something with the radio. Not only that, but it was there when changing the frequency and band … never moving on the display.

What could it be? DING DING DING !!!!! Operator ERROR!

Somehow I had fat-fingered the Notch on the IC-7300. Don’t remember doing it, but I sure did! Deselect the Notch and back to normal..

73 de Dick N4BC

Mea Culpa

I used to think that people that complained about the fan being annoyingly noisy in the Icom IC-7300 were real whiners. I never found it very noticeable.

My apologies to anyone who I thought poorly of … since I got hearing aids and now have my higher audio frequencies back, I can see what you mean. It’s really LOUD, isn’t it?

But still … it is what it is. Some smart engineer decided this was the best fan for trouble-free operation, so I’ll defer to him (or her). You DO learn to tolerate it.

AND … you SHOULD be wearing headphones anyway, shouldn’t you, to keep out distracting noises?

p.s. I still LOVE my IC-7300 and wouldn’t give it up for anything (except maybe an IC-7600! HA HA!!

73 de Dick N4BC

Getting My ALC Under Control

I’ve been doing a lot of digital operations, as I remarked earlier. I haven’t done any PSK-31 QSOs yet. I thought I had everything set up, but found that the IC-7300 was hitting the ALC pretty hard … too hard for my preferences.

I started digging with good ol’ Google, and found several solutions, but the best (for me) that I found was this page by K0PIR . There’s a balancing act, and it took me a bit of back and forth to reach a compromise for WSJT-X and FLDIGI. I think I’ve got it now, though.I show NO ALC using WSJT-X and about 50% of the “safe” ALC zone of the ALC meter.

73 de Dick N4BC

PARC Repeaters

Finally! We’ve got some serious action going on for our two repeaters – W4MT VHF and UHF (145.23.& 442.9 MHz). We have secured permission to use the site of old Fire Station 3. There is a 140-foot free-standing tower there, and an equipment room with power and environmental control.

We’ve been searching for a few years now (ever since we lost our last site), and all other prospects have fallen through. This one is a firm offer, though. Antennas should be going up soon!

73 de Dick N4BC

Again!

I had my IC-7300 reset again in the middle of a QSO. Irritating, to say the least. I thought I had the problem solved, but evidently not.

The Samlex power supply output terminals require that you insert the power wires into them and then tighten setscrews to secure the wires and make good electrical contact. A wiggle of the wires showed that there was nothing secure about the connection, even though the screws were tight.

I did some reading, and found that the power supply manual stated that the wires inserted into the terminals should be soldered. If not, the individual strands could distort and present a reduced cross-section and thus, a reduced current-carrying capacity.

I applied solder to the power cable ends, bonding all the wires together, and then reconnected them to the power supply. I put the system through the ringer … key down, max current draw, and no reset was noted. Problem solved … I hope!

73 de N4BC Dick