RR9O back on the air

ChangeDetection sent me an alert that the International Beacon Project web page has changed. The Hawaii beacon KH6WO has gone off the air.

The Russian beacon RR9O is still shown as off the air but I noticed today that Faros has recorded several spots of this beacon on the 17m and 12m bands. Other amateur beacon monitor sites have recorded it as well. I have updated the beacons.txt file for VOAProp with both changes.

SDR-Radio and Omni-Rig

Yesterday I thought I would set up my Cross Country Wireless SDR-4+ receiver to use for IBP beacon monitoring using Faros. The purpose of this was mainly to reduce the wear and tear on my Elecraft K3 which otherise would have to be on 24 hours a day.

I established that Simon Brown's SDR-Radio software supported external program control by emulating a Kenwood transceiver. I therefore needed to see if SDR-Radio could be controlled using Omni-Rig, the control mechanism used by Faros.

SDR-Radio supports CAT control using a virtual serial port.

I created a linked pair of virtual serial ports, COM8 and COM9, using VSPE, a virtual serial port emulator. Using the serial ports option of SDR-Radio, I assigned the control port to COM8. Then I used a serial port emulator connected to COM9 (I use RealTerm) to verify that SDR-Radio 'spoke' Kenwood. It did. In fact it emulated the Kenwood protocol well enough to fool KComm into thinking it was talking to an Elecraft K2. So far so good.

Now to see if Omni-Rig could control SDR-Radio. Omni-Rig uses "rig files" to define the command set of different radios and it includes one for generic Kenwood. Unfortunately it did not work with SDR-Radio: the receiver indicator of Faros turned red to indicate a fault.

I downloaded the rig file documentation and debug tools from Omni-Rig's site and tried hacking the Kenwood rig file to get it to work with Omni-Rig by trial and error. But no luck. Whatever I did, the program reported an error with the inscrutable message: "RIG1 Status commands already in queue".

Error messages reported by Omni-Rig

So it looks as if I've hit a brick wall. Clearly there is something in SDR-Radio's emulation of the Kenwood protocol that Omni-Rig doesn't like. If anyone else would like to have a go solving this problem, be my guest.

What's up with CS3B?

Looking at my IBP beacon monitor pages over the last couple of days I have noticed an odd thing. I am not receiving the Madeira beacon CS3B on 17m at all.

Extract from G4ILO beacon observations

Either my multiband dipole has a very sharp null in that direction (which I think is unlikely as an indoor antenna probably receives enough reflections not to have any sharp nulls) or the beacon isn't transmitting any signal on that frequency.

A quick check around other beacon monitor pages and I can't see any spots of CS3B on 17m at all. Should I tell someone?

Beacon monitor failure

After wasting most of the weekend trying to get it to work I have abandoned the idea of monitoring the IBP beacons using Faros. Although I did have it working with my Elecraft K3 I did not want to tie up this expensive transceiver on such a task. But my efforts to get my FT-817 working with this software came to nothing.

The first problem was getting Faros to control the FT-817. It uses a program called Omni-Rig to do this. The solution - no thanks to the developer who has still not replied to my plea for help - turned out to be a bad FT-817.ini file installed with Omni-Rig. I tried other programs to verify that my FT-817 CAT interface was working properly. I even ran the same developer's CW Skimmer software which also uses Omni-Rig, and which controlled the FT-817 just fine. The idea of looking to see if there was a different FT-817.ini file was just a flash of inspiration.

Having got Faros controlling the radio the second and final problem was getting it and the Yaesu talking to the same sound card. This did work if I used the computer's built-in sound card, but that is normally used by my K3. I have several radios in my shack, most of which are connected to the shack PC and all of the others use various USB sound devices. Whilst all of my other software - including my own program KComm - produce a drop-down list showing distinguishable names of all these devices, Faros displays a list showing three lines that all say "USB Sound Device." I tried selecting each one of them in turn, but I could not get Faros to talk to the sound device that was actually connected to the FT-817.

If it was confusing for me trying to choose from identically named devices, it also seemed to confuse Windows, which ended up sending PSK31 audio out of the PC speaker instead of to my K3! I had to reboot the computer to get sound using the correct devices again. At this point I threw in the towel and admitted defeat. Some things just aren't worth the hassle.

So endeth my attempt at beacon monitoring.

A radio on every port

I left Faros running overnight. I needn't have bothered: Nothing whatever was heard on the bands 14 - 28MHz from 1730 yesterday until 0730 this morning. Even now, the Finland beacon OH2B is the only one making much of a showing on the lower 3 bands, though there is a flicker of a signal from VK6RBP on 15m. I haven't interrupted beacon monitoring to take a listen on 10m yet but prospects for the ARRL 10m contest don't look very good.

I am going to have to interrupt beacon monitoring some time soon. I need to yank the shack computer out to install a spare 2-port RS232 board to give me two more real serial ports. I should have left it in instead of replacing it with the 4-port board whose four serial ports are now all used up (K2, K3, TM-D710 TNC for 2m APRS and TM-D710 Echolink control, since you ask.) I want to use my FT-817 for beacon monitoring as it is a bit of overkill to use my K3 for this, and the FT-817 CAT cable I have has a DB-9 for a real serial port. I could always use a USB to serial adapter of which I have three, or even make up a USB cable using a wire-ended USB-to-serial plug. But USB ports are in equally short supply, as you might imagine. Whilst the cover is off the computer I will take the opportunity to hoover out the inside which has an amazing ability to attract dust!

Being able to use the 817 for beacon monitoring won't solve the conflict between monitoring and operating as I still have only one suitable antenna for both tasks. But it will allow me to give the K3 a rest!

Beacon monitor back online

For the time being I have put my IBP Beacon Monitor page back online. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is really something that needs to run 24/7 to be of most value. I note that I am not the only beacon monitor who states that monitoring runs only when not otherwise using the radio and antenna. So perhaps I will manage to keep it going for a bit longer than previously.

I updated the list of other beacon monitoring stations at the bottom of the page, deleting those that did not appear to be active. The official NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Project beacon monitors page has a lot of dead links on it.

It's interesting to take a look and see what propagation is like in other parts of the world. It's a pity there aren't more beacon monitors in the USA. And is propagation really that good in VK-land?

I like the additions F4CWH has made to his beacon monitor pages. I wonder if he would share with me how he has done it? I would particularly like to indicate which beacons are off the air. Three of them. including the one on the east coast of the USA (New York) are not operating at the moment.

Beacon update

I have updated the beacon data file for VOAProp today. The NCDXF/IARU beacons in Kenya (5Z4B) and Argentina (LU4AA) are back on the air after a long absence.

The thought crossed my mind: Now we have WSPR and remote beacon skimmers covering all bands, does anyone use these beacons any more?

Beacon failure

ChangeDetection.com once again alerted me to a change in the NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Project status page so that I can manually update the beacon status file for VOAProp. I think it is worth a comment on the fact that 7 out of the 18 beacons appear currently to be off the air. This is the most I can recall being off at the same time. Some have been off for months. If you rely on the beacons to see whether a band is open, you may think conditions are worse than they really are. I hope all the beacons are soon restored to full operation.

Death of 20m incorrectly reported

It's a good job I looked at the beacon reports this morning or I wouldn't have noticed that there were no reception reports for the 20m band. The problem was that I had visited 20m yesterday and put the K3 into data mode. An annoying feature of the K3 is that when you change bands it restores the mode you last used on that band. It does that even if the band change is being made under software control, even if the mode it is restoring is inappropriate for the frequency you are changing to under the band plan. This is totally bonkers logic because no computer program worth its salt should make assumptions about the state of the radio so when changing the frequency it should also set the mode. Unfortunately if it sets the mode too quickly, or before the frequency change is sent, the K3 "feature" overrides the mode set by the software. Consequently the option in Faros to "force CW mode" doesn't work on the K3 and you are left in the mode you last used on that band.

Faros is not alone in experiencing this problem. Complaints have been frequent on the Elecraft reflector that when clicking on DX cluster spots in various programs the radio changes to the right frequency but is in the wrong mode. One of the reasons I wrote KComm specifically for the Elecraft radios was that I could make it work the way the radios work instead of being stuck with some generic logic. But there is nothing I can do about programs I didn't write. I wish that more ham radio applications were open source so you could fix problems like this yourself instead of having to ask a developer to make the necessary changes (and very often getting nowhere.)

Beacon monitoring with Faros

Alex, G7KSE wrote recently about monitoring the International Beacon Project beacons on 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 metres, which gave me the idea to try it again for myself. I did try the Faros beacon monitoring software by VE3NEA a few years ago but being a tightwad I never registered it so the trial came to an end after 30 days. I was also less than enthusiastic about leaving the computer and radio running every day 24/7. Work out the power consumption and it can add a significant amount to the quarterly bill which is unlikely to go unnoticed by the chancellor of the exchequer (the XYL.)

These days the computer is usually running from when I get up (or after breakfast) until when I go to bed in order to run my HF and VHF APRS gateways so it is no extra trouble to do some beacon monitoring as well. I don't have a spare radio or antenna so I will have to use my main radio (my K3) and antenna for the beacon monitor. This means that if I want to go on the air the beacon monitoring will stop. Currently my enthusiasm for actually making contacts is at a very low ebb so this is not much of a problem. I shall still shut down at night and restart in the morning, at least during the winter months when there is no night time propagation on 20m and up. Apart from the pointless waste of joules, the loud click from the K3 each time Faros changes bands will be a disturbance as the shack is only just across the landing from our bedroom.

The antenna I am using is the short multiband 80plus2 dipole bent to fit into the roof space, with additional 10m and 6m elements. It works fine on 20, 15, 12 and 10m. On 17m I can get a good SWR with the aid of the K3's built-in tuner (which is the source of the loud clicks) but performance is noticeably down on the magnetic loop. However, the magnetic loop is used by my K2 for the HF APRS gateway so it is not available.

VE3SUN has written a very good article explaining how to set up a system to display the beacon reception charts created by Faros on a web page. It looked easy so I went ahead and set up an IBP Beacon Reception page on G4ILO's Shack. I found that the WinSCP software that VE3SUN recommends to automate the uploading of the reception charts to the website popped up annoying windows whenever it updates so I used SyncBack SE instead. Unlike WinSCP it isn't free, but I had purchased a license a few years ago and the code still worked with the latest version.

I converted the JavaScript in VE3SUN's example page to PHP. This means that I can test for the existence of the beacon monitor graphics and display a friendly message rather than have the browser display a "missing picture" graphic if the monitor has not been running and that day's GIF image doesn't exist.

I have added to the page a short list of currently active beacon monitors to make it easy to compare my reception reports with other people's. It would be nice if, instead of each beacon monitor having his own results on his own web site, there was a central site that collated all the IBP reception reports and displayed them on a map, like WSPR does. Perhaps that would rejuvenate interest in the IBP which seems to have been overshadowed in recent years by WSPR and reverse beacons.