I always see more people out and about when I exercise during lockdown. Lots more (walking) pedestrians.

I think people must feel like ensuring they make use of what little time out they’re allowed while their freedoms are curtailed, but why not consistently go for a lunch time wander?

The Morse key on the front of last month’s RadCom ( https://rsgb.org/main/blog/news/rsgb-notices/2020/12/19/gota4c-charity-auction-raises-fantastic-amount/) was made by a member of my local club, Roy G0VFS talked about the build back in June and you can see the video here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f8-i4yva8mI87XVa6GGBu0FVeegVEmCb/view

WSJT-X 2.3.0-rc3 is out

This fixes some regressions and bugs “defects” and crashes and adds an improved FST4W decoder.

Release notes at: https://physics.princeton.edu//pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt

Announcement at:

https://sourceforge.net/p/wsjt/mailman/message/37190747/

#hamradio #wsjt

I realised I had missed out on following a load of cool people, so just went through the profile directory and added almost everyone on this server.

Until there’s a way to auto-follow everyone it’s worth keeping an eye on the “Local” page as well as “Home” so you don’t miss out.

Helping Dad get LoTW working (again!) with the QRZ Logbook.

It turned out he had applied for new certs and was still using the old ones in the QRZ log, and it was only possible to see the export was failing via the low site.

While I really appreciate the nerdery that went into the design of the LOTW system it could definitely be a bit more user-friendly.

Also the QRZ logbook seems a lot less fully featured than most other logging software I’ve looked at, and that’s all been free.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the CentOS project when it’s a RHEL upstream. I can see the advantages (mainly to RedHat) but it remains to be seen if it’s as stable as we currently expect. , also it definitely feels like a breach of trust.

Here’s LWN’s write-up: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/839523/c3a0c4f074799116/

#linux #centos

I’ve neglected my WSJT-X announcement duty!

WSJT-X 2.3.0-rc2 was released on 2020-11-15.

Release notes at: http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt

Mailing list message at: https://sourceforge.net/p/wsjt/mailman/message/37152287/

I don’t think there are any obviously visible changes here. I’m hoping it will work properly on a Pi, which the previous rc didn’t.

#hamradio #wsjt

Etherify: This is a really cool hack which uses ethtool to transmit morse which is then picked up by an SDR.

https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Nov/4

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueC4SLPrtNg

#hamradio

The first release candidate for WSJT-X 2.3.0 is out.

This release adds two new modes for LF/MF, called FST4 and FST4W.

I had heard some rumours about this but not looked into them!

Release notes at:

http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt

Mailing list message at:

https://sourceforge.net/p/wsjt/mailman/message/37117193/

#hamradio #wsjt

I’ve not managed to install this on my Pi, despite it running the Buster version of Rasbpian, there’s no version of libgfortran that’s new enough.

But considering I’m not on 2200 and 630 m that’s no great loss!

Ahh, the deps are wrong, expecting an updated package at some point.

These new(ish) RX-888 SDRs look interesting:

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/nils-reviews-the-rx-888-a-sub-200-16-bit-32-mhz-bandwidth-sdr/

and

https://dk8ok.org/2020/09/04/rx-888-32-mhz-16bit-200-us-pricks-up-your-ears/

1 to 32 MHz via direct sampling, and streamed over USB. Nice!