The AA5FR Equipment List

Equipment

• Yaesu FT-897D and Yaesu FT-857D – Both are great little rigs that, while they don’t do it all, do a LOT in an amazingly small space for the 897 and an incredibility tiny space for the 857. There are several sites with excellent pages on these little radios. Stay tuned for a separate page where I will give the links.

• Antennae – This part is so convoluted, that it has its own main page – along with separate pages for the AA5FR El Cheapo AZ-EL Satellite Antenna and the Yaesu ATAS-120 Mobile / Portable Antenna.

• SignaLink Model USB With Integrated Sound Card – radio interface for digital communications…a superbly engineered $90 gizmo that will get you quickly on PSK-31, RTTY, Packet, SSTV and other digital modes WITHOUT the need to buy a TNC or use your computer’s sound card. Also, no power cord or audio cables required…just the USB cable to the computer and the radio cable to the err radio. Highly recommended.

• Timewave ANC-4- I use two Timewave ANC-4 for noise control. It is an amazing device worth its weight in DXCC certificates. Since I live in a high rise condo, the RF noise is immense at most times. The Timewave ANC-4 Noise Canceller does an excellent job of eliminating this noise. Generally, it will take a S-7 noise floor and reduce it to zero. BUT you do need the right kind of noise antenna. I plan on adding a new page here at my site for the Timewave ANC-4 that will discuss the device and its set up in more detail. Stay tuned!

  Note: One of my ANC-4 nose cancellers just died. I sent it back to Timewave for repair for a flat $50 cost that they said will cover any repairs that are needed to bring the unit back to spec. I am very pleased to say that they were successful. Apparently, the eBay owner who had this unit before me had performed some very poorly done mods to the unit that allowed RF to burn up several components since he had hampered the RF sensing circuit. In spite of all of that, Timewave spent considerable time and effort, replaced a dozen parts and returned the unit to me. It is now performing flawlessly. Bravo to Timewave!

• Four computers – with the main one being a 2.67 GHz Quad Core HP d5000t with six gigs of RAM and three TB of hard drive space. Also using four 19″ LCD screens, plus two notebook screens and especially love the main monitor – a 37″ 1080p Sharp Aquos hi def computer monitor (it’s also a TV!) on my U-shaped desk that surrounds me (I need this many for my businesses). The Aquos makes such a great monitor that so greatly enhances my work productivity that I rarely use it to watch TV…instead, I use Media Center windows on other computer screens to watch TV (mostly tuned to CNBC and CNN during the day.) I run three of the computers in dual screen mode which successfully adds to my information overload! Photos will be forthcoming.

  Also have a cable modem to the wired outside world, an obscene 8.2 TB (8,200 Gigabytes) of hard drive space, Slingbox Pro (which is amazing), Edirol UA-25, several Audio-Technica microphones and a JK Audio Innkeeper 1X digital hybrid telephone interface (for my radio interviews, teleseminars, and web audio), yada, yada, yada. These computers, etc. are just the ones sitting on, or under, my desk in my office and doesn’t count the other three throughout the house!

  I am a management consultant for start up companies with virtually all my clients worldwide coming to me via the Web and with my office either in our beachfront home or our mountain top home…hence, the need for so many computers. That, and being a TOTAL geek at heart!)

Software

• Ham Radio Deluxe with Digital Master 780 – absolutely amazing software – and it is free – and newly upgraded with even MORE great features! A genuine standing-ovation and heartfelt thanks to Simon Brown, HB9DRV. Bravo Simon! It is THE best ham software I have seen in my 45 yeas of being licensed and is probably as good at what it is suppose to do as just about ANY commercial software that I have used. This is such a full featured piece of software, you almost (ALMOST) don’t need anything else: Cat, logging, satellites, DX clusters – and the PSK31 program, with its Super Browser, is the best I have seen for this digital mode (MixW is still better for virtually ALL the other digital modes.)

• FTBasicMMO – As great as HRD is, it only does memory management for the FT-817 and not the FT-857D and FT-897D. As a result, I bought FTBasicMMO from G4HFQ Software. After getting Simon’s fantastic software for free, I was somewhat miffed to have to pay JUST for memory management. However, for $18.50, it is a steal. It is worth every penny, or farthing, for what it does. The cherry-on-top for me is that it also throws in memory management for my Kenwood TH-F6A! This one program will let me mix and match between all three radios I own along with checking for dupes and sorting the data about any way I want and does a great job of importing and exporting CVS files.

• Satscape – freeware satellite tracking software that does a good job of tracking all the AMSAT, and other, birds. Occasional crashes but worth every penny. Note: I just discovered the exceptionally GREAT satellite tracking inside of Ham Radio Deluxe and am now solely using it. Once again, Simon has proven himself to be a software god.

• Various other packet, PSK-31, etc. software. This list will expand as I test more the huge number of ham related software packages.

PSK-31

When I was active before, I was successful in obtaining Worked All States – Packet #3…the third person to ever get WAS solely operating packet radio and the first to get WAS packet for a single band (20 Meters). Since that time, things have changed digitally with the advent of PSK-31. It seems to be an amazing mode and I suspect that you will most often find me on the standard PSK-31 channels…especially since I am usually operating QRP or close to it.

By comparing the small bandwidth of PSK31 and measuring its gain against a CW filter of 500 Hz; quickly reveals that a CW transmitter must put out 15 to 18 times more power than a PSK31 transmitter, just to achieve the same signal to noise ratio at the receiving station. In fact, you can have 60 PSK-31 stations in QSO at the same time using the same bandwidth as ONE SSB QSO!

This is the reason the PSK31 operating mode has gained so much popularity in such a very short period. The end result is that a PSK31 station can operate with reduced power and smaller antenna installations.