It's been a while since my last post and since then there have been several changes to my shack and project updates.
Back in September my mic headset failed during a HF net, basically I had no speech. I replaced it with another multimedia type electret model. Several weeks later I discovered that I had bad RFI on 40m while transmitting, it occurred even while tuning. The most recent change to my shack was the addition of the new headset. I unplugged the headset and was able to tune with no problem. It seems that the cable for the new headset was picking up my transmissions on 40m and feeding that back to the mic. I wrapped the cable through a type 43 toroidal ferrite, problem solved.
In December I got my hands on a Timewave PK-232SC. This is an upgraded version of the PK-232MBX TNC with an internal sound card. Now both TNC and sound card digital modes are through one box instead of two, simplifying my station and some of the connections to my rig and PC. Soon I'll start looking for a new home for my RIGblaster Advantage and AEA PK-232MBX.
Also in December I added a Yaesu FT-817ND to my shack. I bought it used as I have for most of my equipment and it came with a variety of accessories. I haven't done much with it yet other than to hook it up and verify it worked properly. At a minimum I need to get a tuner for it, probably a LDG Z-817. It came with W4RT OBF (one board filters) not installed. At some point I'll get those installed and add DSP. I'm working on speech compression/processing for it also. W4RT sells a speech compression kit that is added to the mic but I don't want to be restricted to just using the hand mic. There used to be an inexpensive module that plugged in between the the mic and the radio but that is no longer made. There are several similar designs I've found on the internet and I intend to try to build one soon.
One of the included accessories with the FT-817 was a set of Peg Leg tilt stands. Despite warnings not to use too much force installing the legs I managed to strip one the screws installing them. The company that makes the stand was nice enough to offer to send me a slightly larger screw to fix the issue when I contacted them for help.
In January I finally got a hold of an IF SDR/DRM panadapter made to go into one of the filter slots on my FT-897. It will also work with the FT-817 or FT-857. I've only used it a little but so far it's not quite what I thought it would be. My understanding is that it doesn't have some of the front end filtering that other panadapters have, maybe I can add that at some point. Because of the lack of filtering I can hear signals many kHz away from where I'm tuned, regardless of what filters I've selected in the software. There is also a watery sounding background noise that I hear post processing through my computer that I've yet to find and eliminate.
WSPR is one of the digital modes I enjoy from time to time. At my old QTH I tried in vain several times to receive WSPR signals on 2200m and 630m with no success. In January I tried again and found I could receive several 630m WSPR stations quite well. That kicked off 6 weeks of interest and research into obtaining an experimental license and the equipment and antenna needed to get on the air on 630m. At last, just recently, I've decided that for the time being I'm not going to pursue this any further. Once I looked at the effort and financial expense required (which can vary depending on your current setup and how much you want to home-brew your own equipment) and then compared that to other ham projects I decided it wasn't the most important project I wanted to work on. I did learn a lot in the process and maybe one day I'll revive the idea, maybe also it will become one of our regular bands at that point.
With that in mind my current projects are to get a full emergency power setup for my shack and to get the Raspberry Pi I got for Christmas setup as my portable digital mode computer to go along with my FT-817. I also still need to get my VHF/UHF antennas up, a progressing project.
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