So a quick update, having received the 5M USB cable and cable ties, i then went on to test out the choke method to reduce/remove the inteference from the IC705 as shown by Temporarily Offline Ham Radio video included yesterday.
toride and USB cable wrapquite a few turnsNo interference on IC705
The RF Choke comes from here, as I dont suffer RF back into the shack thanks to the EFHW and RF Choke on the feedline, the PSU Choke was not being used. Winding the toride was made quite easy by the fact the choke can be opened up and wound up, once secured with a a couple of cable ties it was easier to put the turns into specifc locations, tighten the cable wraps up, then cut off the excess.
WSJTX in action – no sign of disconnects or loss of audio
I tested MMSTV and WSJTX into the 2M Comet Whip antenna, everything worked fine with no issue of disconnected audio or interference into the radio or the computer. I’m looking forward to taking the setup out and trying again with the Toybox whip antenna to see how it does this time out.
Testing the IC705 with the RF Choke USB cable and laptop with MMSTV and WSJTX
So having got everything ready and with the weather, whilst chilly, was ok to go and venture out with the radio. I scheduled on the POTA activation website, and headed off to the New Forest to Bolderwood.
The drive in the Hyundai i10 was fine after its recent service, and was good to stretch its legs on the lively A roads in the area. For a small car its got a decent enough poke to make the journey without issue, as I was just carrying my IC705 and a few drinks.. I did notice I had left my ‘large’ battery behind – so I would be running real QRP from the 705’s internal battery and limited to 5W – still, i was nearer bolderwood than I was home, so pressed on.
radials on the floorradial connection to toyboxSWR 2:1 without ATU
I de-tangled the the 30 meters of radials, this took me a little while, but nethertheless wasn’t too problematic, the ends of the radials have a nice round terminator which makes de-tangling more a case of pulling the cables thru, rather than unpicking a ‘rats nest’ of wire (plenty of experience with the DX Commander and radials there!!!) I used the rig expert on 17m got the SWR across the band down to 2.1:1, which for a compromise antenna was ok.
FT8 RX 100%TX = ooopspulsating TX
I hooked up the laptop via Wfview, Virtual Comport and WSJTX. Signals came in no problem at all, and decodes appearing in WSJTX without issue. I then tried to TX, the SWR measurement was the same as the Rig Expert, but oddly the TX ‘pulsated’ as if it was getting disconnected. I went thru and checked the settings once more, no difference between home and here, only delta was the antenna. I tried the USB cable I had packed away to remove wifi/wfview/audio port as an issue, but the noise level went thru the roof! So I went back to trying to get wfview to work, at least at home on 2M I did get out (suprisngly!).
it was not to be my day to make an activation….
As I continued to try to connect, I checked PSK report on my phone – not a single RX. I could only put this down to the combination of the antenna and using wfview, as with a magloop and 5W on an ipad, I would at least get out, and as other POTA activations showed, worked without issue.
With 0 contacts and a slight piece of rain, i forgo the activation and headed home determinted to find out what I could do to solve my WSJTX TX issue.
TX issues with the 705 and using the Toybox antenna
Once home I searched around youtube and found several useful videos and this one demonstrated exactly the issues I faced when using my USB cable.
USB = QRM
With that I searched around the house, the longest USB cable I had was 2M long, and wouldn’t take many wraps of the toroids I have, so have ordered a 5M USB cable and some cable ties from Amazon, hopefully they will be here tomorrow, then I can try USB with a nice toroid to see if that removes the QRM.
a variety of ham specific toroids
I also thought that I should of tried with the ATU between the radio and antenna, as I think that would of also acted as a ‘common mode’ choke, but will try the USB route first as that looks the most promising solution at the moment.
Until next time (which is hopefully early in the new year) 73’s !
With getting reading to go POTA next step was to check the PC hardware, I previously used an apple tablet for IC705 wireless connectivity, but this lacks SSTV which I like to use. First step was to get my very old HP Pavillion laptop up and working with the IC705 !
First step was to retrack and setup the settings in the IC705, for this the first part of this video got the required settings. The app to control the radio here is Icom’s own, which I dont own a copy of, but it sets up the Wifi and necessary settings, also like that its a profile which can be easily loaded/unloaded.
setting up the IC705 for Wifi operation (first half applicable)
With the wifi setup correctly (I had to adjust the audio filter bandwidth and CI-V Echoback to OFF) I then set about setting up wfview, using this tutorial.
IC705, Wifi, VBAudio, Virtual COM port
This got me to the point whereby I could receive fine, but transmit didnt produce any audio, I rechecked the settings on the radio that Inputs/Connectors/Data MOD=WLAN and no issue there. I check wfview and the settings are correct, I did notice my version of wfview was 1.5, so check the forums, sure enough, others had the same problem and was fixed by an upgrade.
I downloaded the latest wfview and installed. I did notice this didnt overwrite the previous version, so I found the new version (C:\Program Files\wfview) and made a nice desktop shortcut, the registery settings had kept the config, so no need to re-enter all those thankfully.
I attached a Diamond RH770 2m/70cm antenna to the the 705 in the shack, just for something to transmit into, RX was flooded with QRM from all the computers and screens, but amazingly with 5W of power I was picked up by WESSEXSDR!
So.its now all looking good to use my oldlaptop with newer versions of wfview for at least WSJTX control. Hopefully just pointing MMSSTV and the virtual com port (10) and audio to VBAudio will get that working, but will wait until I have a HF antenna hooked up to test that ;o)
Its been quite some time since I’ve been out and done a Parks On the Air (POTA) activation, but with the year coming to an end and a bank holiday for a day off, it as good a time as any to get outside and get on the air !
The IC705, when used, has mostly be used in the shack. I tend to use it on the 6BTV antenna and keep the 7300 on the End-fed Half-Wave (EFHW) for SSTV and other digimodes.
At the moment my Mazda Bongo is awaiting a garage visit due to a poorly alternator (its 27 years old…) so I will be in the Hyundai i10 (to be my son’s car once he passes his test), hence I will be working /P !
Hyundai i10, compact and cheap to run!
I will be taking the IC705 in its LC192 bag, some may say that this is a branding gimmick, but this bag suits the 705 so well, its brilliant! I’m going to the extreme on portable option of using the Comet Toybox antenna. This antenna tends to get pretty slated, but when I’ve taken the time to set it up myself, found it works really well, even with QRP operation.
Toybox antenna
I’ve previously made a video of me using this from the QTH, showing how I tune and make a contact with it, but this will be my first time using it for a POTA activation.
IC705 and Toybox antenna in use
I’m getting all the parts together again, making sure that batterys and the mat705 ATU are good for operation.
MAT tuner charging via USBgigantic battery charging up
WX for around IO90
I’ll probably be heading for the New Forest, as there is plenty of places to park up and get the radio out, i’ll be logging old school pen and paper and using the upload feature once completed.
Hopefully the weather is kind to me and I get out, I have work to do on the eggbeaters still, and thats going well, but will put that in another post, for now, determined to get out with the radio and make some contacts!
Firstly Merry Christmas ! Its a relaxing day here and not the usual busyness for a Monday! Having an extra two days for the weekend has been really nice, I’ve done loads of other stuff and also playing with IC-9700 with the satellities, or attempting to, would be more accurate 🙂
So far I’ve heard zilch, as in nothing, not a tweet from a ‘bird’ I looked up Amsat’s tracking of sats other had heard, so would be confident that I should be able to hear them too, alas to no avail. I then tried FT8 on 2M, I was getting out just fine with the eggbeaters, but not hearing a thing, I did notice some very high peaks of QRM on the WSJT-X ‘scope’, so my first step was to move the antennas further from the house and a better line of sight of the sky to the horizion, which accomplished, well, nothing.
I then tried SSTV via a my hand held units into the IC9700 and MMSTV, this worked fine, so the 2M antenna was at least receiving and transmitting. I went to 70cm and found a clear frequncy and gave the same SSTV test, this worked fine… so what was going on ? Ok simple test, lets swap antennas between the Diamon X3000 which goes into the Kenwood, put that onto the 9700. Again,
WSJTX FT8 2M
No problem getting out with FT8 and no problem on SSTV. I tried WSPR with 5 watts on all three antennas, the egg beater 2M worked fine.
WSPR on 2M
I then checked thru the IC9700 settings, all good there and used the manual ATT/P.AMP switch on the front of the radio it self, what I noticed was that the internal preamp did increase the signal, but with the external pre-amp there seemed no increase in performance.
What I suspect is happening is that my mast-head pre-amp is designed for a single feed of coax into it, then into a single verticle antenna, where as I have splitters each end for taking the coax and seperating out the 2M and 70cm bands. By the reckoning I can hear local 2m fine (including MB7IPD) on the egg beater, I suspect that the 70cm RX is doing nothing, although the antennas resonent for TX, I think the multiplexer and multiband masthead are not working together correctly.
As its getting dark now, and have the luxury of another day off tomorrow, I will research which sat’s are most common and which band the RX is the most common, then I will setup a single feed for that antenna into the mast-head amp, and run two feeds from the egg beaters, then I should be able to find out if its the egg-beaters/coax/multiplexer causing the lack of ‘ears’.
With no rain and getting the other radios on the air, it was time to tackle the errant SWR on the eggbeater antennas. I lowered the antenna on the tiltbase and with the rigexpert started going thru each connection on the antennas – there are quite a few with the single feedline solution going into the mast head amp, so there is plenty of possiblity for them not to be perfectly coupled/screwed together.
I started with directly connected to the 2m and 70cm eggbeaters, no issue there, SWR was spot on both, almost 1:1 on 2m and around 1.4 on 70cm. I then connected the mast-head triplexer and read the readouts from there, whilst this took some ‘wiggling’ it resulted in getting like-for-like direct readings. I then connected triplexer into the amp and read the output of the amp, the SWR here was higher, but not what i had seen previously, regardless, I re-tighetented all the connectors, this brought the output from the mast head down to the same results as from the output of the triplexer. I then reconnected the feedline from the transceiver back into the amplifier and measured from the far end, again good results. So the issue here was either a single or multiple loose connections. I suspect the the connection between the triplexer and the amp which is a double-barrel male N connector.
I put the title base back up and screwed all the bolts back into the base, feeling my age I was keen to get back into the warmth of the shack !
70cm2m
I measured the SWR from the feedline back into the rigexpert, again good results, so I went ahead and connected another triplexer to split the frequencies out into the 9700 2m and 70cm inputs.
triplexer with feedline2m with triplexer70cm with triplexer
With the results coming from the triplexer looking good i went about reconnecting to the IC-9700. The book-shelf rack proving useful again in getting the coax into the radio easily just by rotating the whole bookcase.
2m SWR Test70cm SWR Test
Both 2m and 70cm transmissions from the IC-9700 are looking spot-on – next I will try out getting the amp configured from the 9700 and start testing with some satellities !
Having had a very nice holiday at the start of the month in Montreux Switzerland I had disconnected all my antennas to ensure no damage to equipment whilst away. With a busy schedule its taken several weeks to get the antennas hooked back up again, but I’m glad to be back on 2m/70cm and HF.
Thanks to the book-shelf shack rack, the anteannas were easy to reconnect for the 7300, Kenwood TM-V71 and CRT6900. I was back on the air monitoring SSTV in no time at all and had a good QSO with OE6XFX on 20m with a good signal report (595) on our transmissions. The 20M SSTV was busy as ever for a Saturday afternoon!
seasonal SSTV pictures on 14.230USB
I monitored the Southampton repeater on 70cm and 2M Poole gateway and plenty of activity, was nice to hear some good technical discussions goin on the 70cm repeater in Southampton, was nice to listen in.
I’m hoping for more good weather over the weekend so I can continue work on the eggbeater antennas and looking forward to getting those going on the 9700.
