{"id":81,"date":"2015-05-25T20:10:19","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T20:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/?p=81"},"modified":"2021-01-26T23:12:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T23:12:06","slug":"going-digital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/2015\/05\/25\/going-digital\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Digital"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.n2lrb.com\/images\/uploads\/2015-04-20-191732.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"266\" \/>May 26, 2015 &#8211; This past April I took the plunge and tried my hand at working some of the digital modes on HF and VHF.\u00a0 But first I had to purchase an external sound card like device that would work with one of my HF radios.\u00a0 I found that the SignLink USB the best priced option. When ordering the device on the phone I found that the pin set up would be the same for all of my Yaesu Radios, my FT-950, FT-857D, FT-897D.\u00a0 So I could use it with either. I only purchased one cable so I will have to move that cable from rig to rig if I want to use one of the other radios.<\/p>\n<p>The SignaLink arrived on the 20th of April and I opened it up and inserted the pre-wired wire box.\u00a0 The SignaLink has two cables that go into it.\u00a0 One goes to the radio and the other goes into my computer\u2019s USB port.\u00a0 I guess it gets it power from the computer USB port. I then read the instructions and set my FT-950 up to work digital. The funny thing is that one has to set it to Upper Sideband to work digital. Who Knew?!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.n2lrb.com\/images\/uploads\/2015-04-21-114201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"266\" \/>I fired up my computer, and it automatically added the correct USB drivers. I then opened up fldigi and started to try to listen in on BPSK-31 on 14.070 Mhz. I was surprised by the amount of activity on that mode.\u00a0 FLdigi picked up about 8 BPSK-31 QSOs. I responded to a QSO and was working N8XAH at 4\/22\/2015 00:24Z. I was a nice experience!<\/p>\n<p>I have since been modifying the macros so as to have better and more natural responses when in contact with a station.\u00a0 I do find that I can not always contact someone even if they hit me with a strong signal.<\/p>\n<p>I have also played with WSPR and have been seen by stations around the world. It is a little more difficult than BPSK-31, but it is nice to see how far a 5 watt signal can travel.\u00a0 I did try WSPR on 2M and 70CM. There just were no stations close enough to hear me. There were only three on the air at the time I made the VHF attempt. And none on the air when I made my UHF attempt.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.n2lrb.com\/images\/uploads\/2015-05-03-084011.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"266\" \/>I was able to work BPSK-31 during the 5 Boro Bike Tour. I took my Yaesu FT-897D and used it to work the Bike Tour and to talk on HF, Digital and 2 meter ssb. For some reason there were a bunch of stations parked on 144.205 the morning of the race. I heard them the whole time I was there. One BPSK-31 contact was all I made as my Lenovo laptop ran out of power. This suprised me because I had recharge the batter for a half a day (just in case) to ensure that it was fully powered. I later learned that working digital modes uses more power and that my Lenovo\u2019s battery is only good for about 2 hours at most. I need to get a tablet or something longer lasting if I am to do digital modes while in portable modes. ARECS wanted us to try BPSK-31 during the race in case some child got lost and we could upload the photo to all the hams working the race.<\/p>\n<p>All in all digital is a pretty good mode to work, especially portable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 26, 2015 &#8211; This past April I took the plunge and tried my hand at working some of the digital modes on HF and VHF.\u00a0 But first I had &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.n2lrb.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}