“D-STAR continues to grow in popularity with over one thousand interconnected gateways and over twenty-five thousand registered users. The last year has seen new hardware and software offerings that continue to expand the capabilities of this already feature rich protocol. The speakers for this forum will review the things you might have missed in the last year and announce some exciting new hardware and software.”

A large portion of those 25.000 users doesn’t use airwaves at all, but use a (cheaper) dongle instead. Personally I would not hesitate to take dongle users out of the equation, but let’s not be too picky today.

Time to put all of this into perspective. There are now an estimated 3.2 million licensed ham radio operators in the world (source: IARU). This translates into 0.78% of them using D-Star. That isn’t much.

So, is D-Star still marginal? Apparently so. However, acceptance of new technologies always takes time. Some potential users couldn’t care less about digital modes, some don’t like the hefty price tag. Then there’s competition in the form of cheap (sometimes really cheap!) DMR radios. Digital is here to stay.

I’m waiting for someone to link all popular digital technologies and make them available to anyone with (for example) an Echolink account. Now that would be cool.

Tokyo Hy-Power XT-751

Tokyo Hy-Power hopes to have this radio in production mid 2014.

Click for larger image

]]> http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/live-picture-from-dayton-2013-yaesu-ftdx-1200/feed/ 0 Hans ftdx-1200-dayton http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/iss-dumps-windows-into-the-vacuum-of-space/ http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/iss-dumps-windows-into-the-vacuum-of-space/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 18:32:14 +0000 Hans http://hamgear.wordpress.com/?p=3048 ]]> Laptop computers essential to the day-to-day operations of the International Space Station (ISS) crew will be switching operating systems from Windows XP to Linux, according to published reports.

The laptops, which are on the space station’s “opsLAN” network, are used by astronauts to interface with onboard cameras and complete several other routine tasks, Joel Gunter of The Telegraph explained on Friday. While Linux had already been used to run several systems on board the ISS, this means it will now be the exclusive OS used onboard the orbiting laboratory, he added.

“We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust or adapt, we could,” Keith Chuvala of the United Space Alliance, the organization that operates opsLAN for NASA, told Gunter.

Getting rid of viruses
Dropping Windows in favor of the Unix-like, open-source operating system is “probably a good idea,” according to Jamie Condliffe of Gizmodo.

“Back in 2008, a Russian cosmonaut managed to take a laptop to the ISS that spread the W32.Gammima.AG worm to all the other laptops aboard the station. Using Linux would make that impossible,” Condliffe said. “The only hitch might be switching all the current, Windows-based software – for everything from viewing stock inventory to carrying out experiments – to Linux.

Let’s hope they don’t use WINE.

FTdx-1200 Band Pass Filters

FTdx-1200 RF Amplifier

FTdx-1200 Roofing Filters

FTdx-1200 1st Mixer

FTdx-1200 DSP

FTdx-1200 Final Amp

FTdx-1200 ATU

(*) So we have to buy a $220 interface if we want to update the firmware?

Yaesu FTdx-1200 Back Panel

Yaesu FTdx-1200 Specifications. Click for larger image.

Download FTDX-1200 Brochure (PDF)

Just a small piece of text describing the basics of manually programming the Baofeng UV-5R. Read over 63,000 times, 239 comments (and counting).

Special WOM (Write Only Memory) versions, for storing information you never want to see ever again, will be available later this year. Final prices yet to be established.

With capacities up to 1 TB, the LSB Flash Drive beats any existing storage device.

The first thing you would normally do is check the VCO voltage and make adjustments if needed. Well, you can, but only for VHF. The UHF VCO is a closed metal box, and both schematics and service manual reveal that inside this box there’s nothing you can adjust. Apparently many things are derived from the VHF circuitry, and UHF frequencies seem to be generated by a tripler. I’m not 100% sure about all of this yet, I have to look into this more closely.

What I did so far is replacing a few usual suspects – mainly old electrolytic capacitors – and performed an official Icom mod to improve UHF sensitivity. The latter works like a charm and only involves the replacement of one capacitor and the addition of a resistor.

Modification Area

Change C71 to 470 pF, connect 1K resistor between top of coil and top of adjacent resistor

This particular radio might seem a far cry from today’s modern radios, but the receiver is superior to everything else on the market. Old fashioned band filters keep out all the crap, and selectivity is second to none. Let’s see if I can make the current owner happy; until now the locking problem persists.