Digital Dabbling
A Sunday Evening Excursion.
Vowing not to mix computers and radio.. But hey, how long was that going to last.. Blame it on 24 or perhaps Heineken Export ? Well who knows, so lets give digital a go.
Downloaded Hamscope and Digipan, both installed very easily (on XP) just a simple connection from the PC mic jack to the Midney headphone socket. (No TX Yet!! First build the ATU and get a decent Ant!!!).
Fired up Digipan. The "Waterfall" display came up at once, Well the connections must be basically ok!! It quickly became apparent that finding the PSK31 "centre of activity" with only felt tip pen frequency marks (!) was tricky. Time to switch to Hamscope and try some CW decoding.
More luck here! a CW QSO between a station in Devon G4PMB and Spain EA1ARW then various QSO's between him and other Europen stations. Hamscope made a surprisingly good job of this, as the rhythm of CW starting tapping its way across the screen. Homing in on signals proved tricky though as there was no audio! But everything considered, it worked well.
Next stop a frequency counter