Category Archives: Gear

FLEX6600M Springs back to life

Posted on May 4, 2020 by robert

Late last year, I purchased a FlexRadio 6600M along with its companion “Maestro” remote head.  I had the radio installed in my basement shack (I call it the Wombat Room, but everyone else calls it the furnace room), and I … Continue reading →

Posted in FlexRadio, Gear | Leave a comment

Leo Bodnar mini GPS Reference Clock

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Bob Beatty

I finally powered up my Leo Bodnar mini-GPS Reference Clock yesterday.  It took only a few seconds to achieve lock and within 15 minutes it was stabilize to within 1 milliHertz.  I’m told by the factory that within a few … Continue reading →

Posted in FMT, Gear, IC-9700 | 8 Comments

Using a TYT MD-430 with a pi-star Gateway

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Bob Beatty

*** Updated 19:15 UTC Jan 21 *** My thanks to KB1YSK, Stan, who was the first station that I heard on NA TalkGroup 93.  We had a nice contact, confirming that my first guess at a CodePlug for the MD-430 … Continue reading →

Posted in DMR, Gear | Tagged | 5 Comments

Where we wound up: ID-5100 Programming for the Blind

Posted on January 15, 2020 by robert

Over the past few days I’ve put in about 18 hours trying various methods of programming the ID-5100 so it would be useful for a blind ham.  I’ve discussed the problems with the radio and its very limited speech synthesizer … Continue reading →

Posted in D-Star, From the OM, Gear, Sightless Hams | Leave a comment

A Plea to Amateur Radio Gear Designers

Posted on January 13, 2020 by robert

I’ve commented a few times about a young ham that I spent about 18 months getting ready for his Technician License.  This was a bit more difficult journey due to Ryan being blind.  After a year of being on the … Continue reading →

Posted in D-Star, From the OM, Gear, Sightless Hams | Leave a comment

Siglent SDG 2042X Stability Test

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Bob Beatty

I want to replace my dead HP 3335A with a new Siglent SDG 2042X.  After all, the latter is 40 years newer, 20 pounds lighter, and maybe 1/8 the volume.  It is also silent as a church mouse (the HP’s … Continue reading →

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Elecraft K3s DDS/PLL Induced Drift

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Bob Beatty

I wasn’t very clear when I was posting about my pre-FMT calibration.  But I did describe that the K3s was not a particularly effective rig to use for a FMT.  This is because of how the digital synthesizer was implemented.  … Continue reading →

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Rig Instability and Calibrating for FMT

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Bob Beatty

Back in the day, a superhet receiver, employed several mixer stages, requiring various oscillators, and a sometimes sketchy VFO (Anybody remember the Swan 753 — lovingly referred to as the Seven Drifty Three?).  That made for a real challenge when … Continue reading →

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Having a Blast on Satellites

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Bob Beatty

There are so many aspects of Amateur Radio that capture my attention. Satellite operation is one of them.  There are more than a dozen satellites “birds” in orbit now and you can pretty much fill an entire day working through … Continue reading →

Posted in AMSAT, Gear, Satellite | Leave a comment

Fumbling through ZumSpot setup and DMR

Posted on December 24, 2018 by robert

So the next step was to enable DMR services on the ZumSpot.  That was easy, but several more menu items relating to DMR popped up.  Suspecting that I didn’t want to be linked to Europe, I changed over to some … Continue reading →

Posted in DJ-MD5, DMR, Gear | Leave a comment