Transcript - Episode 123 - Jim Veatch - WA2EUJ
Eric 4Z1UG:
QSO Today episode 123, Jim Veatch WA2EUJ.
Welcome to the QSO Today Podcast. I'm Eric Guth 4Z1UG, your host. For many of us ham radio operators, homebrewing our own gizmos and gear is a key part of our enjoyment of the amateur radio hobby. My QSO today is with Jim Veatch WA2EUJ, three time winner of the ARRL Homebrew Challenge, and who has just finished a recent Kickstarter campaign to raise money to manufacture a multi-band SDR HF transceiver called the RS-HFIQ. We get into Jim's ham radio life in this episode of QSO Today.
WA2EUJ. This is Eric 4Z1UG. Are you there, Jim?
Yes, Eric.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Jim, thanks for joining me on QSO Today. Can we start at the very beginning of your ham radio story? When and how did it start for you?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, my grandfather was a ham radio operator, and had been since 1920. His call sign was the W4CJJ, and W4XE later. As a little kid, I can remember going and seeing his ham radio set up. Eventually when I got old enough, he wasn't really close enough to be a big factor in actually getting my license. I was living in New York City, and took a ham radio class at the Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club in Queens. That's what got me my first ticket.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What year was that?
Jim WA2EUJ:
1976.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Your first call sign?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Was WN2EUJ. When I upgraded to, I guess, technician, they changed it to WA2EUJ. I have never changed it.
Eric 4Z1UG:
How old were you when you first got your first license?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I was 12 years old. I was so excited when the envelope came that I couldn't figure out what my call sign was, I couldn't find it on the paper.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Did you have a rig ready at that time?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I didn't have a rig ready and waiting. I had a Hallicrafters S38C receiver that I was listening to things on. Living in New York City in the 70's, radio row was still just ... it was just on its way out. I mean it doesn't exist today, and it certainly wasn't in its heyday. I could go buy things in lower Manhattan that were radio parts. I ended up getting a Heathkit HW7, and put that together, and that was my first official ham radio.
Eric 4Z1UG:
The HW7, as I recall, was a QRP radio, was it not?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. Morse code only, 40 meters, 20 meters and 15. I think it cost 74.99, which was a lot more money back then. It put out about a watt and a half. It certainly taught you how to operate. I'm a big fan of people learning how to operate by using QRP, because it teaches you patience and to listen.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Also, I've had other QSO Today guests who've said that while they love QRP, and they only operate QRP now, they think for the newbie, for the new ham, that that actually might be too difficult. What do you think about that?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, I haven't gone that route. It may have been initially frustrating, I can see that, because you don't tune-up on a clear frequency and send CQ and hope someone comes back. The skills it gives you for listening for someone else who's sending CQ, and coming back to them or listening to someone who's finishing up a QSO, I think that's a very valuable habit to be in, listen for a while before you start transmitting. I could see how for new hams that maybe a little bit of power might get you started, get your feet wet a little bit better.
Eric 4Z1UG:
That would be the biggest take away from that experience is listening first, listing for the CQ?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah, and you get a real feel for what's going to work, right? I mean, HF, it's kind of like fishing. There's lots of different aspects. There's the fish, the people you want to talk to, and there's the currents, which is the band you're trying to operate in, and there's distractions, the other things that are going along. Learning all of the different aspects of the medium that you're trying to use, QRP definitely puts you in touch with it.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Now, you mentioned that your grandfather was W4XE was your first Elmer.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Definitely. He showed me the ham radio hobby, and I was definitely bitten from a very young age.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Did you have any other Elmer's or mentors that helped you along?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. I moved out of New York to upstate New York, and WA2PVV, Bill Roth had a repeater up in the Albany area and provided me with some really useful guidance. Then, there was a club, a local club, that lots of the members used to drag me to. I got really involved there. They gave me a Golden Screwdriver Award because they said I would always take things apart and could never get them back together.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Little did they know.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, years later, I think that's how it starts.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You're right, exactly. What was the name of that club?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Maybe it was the Sullivan County Amateur Radio Club. That might've been it. It's been a long time.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What was the city that was near, or were you on the country?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. It was pretty much out in the country. I was living in Ellenville, New York at the time, which is a very small town. It seems like people gathered up and traveled quite a distance to go to the club meetings. Maybe Liberty, New York is where the club met.
Eric 4Z1UG:
The rigs that you were operating, did they evolve over time?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. I got a Hallicrafters cyclone, which had 400 watts, which was a lot easier to use. When I went off to college, I sort of lost the ability to have my own station. I used some club stations. I went to George Washington University in Washington DC, and they had a ham radio station that I could use. I didn't have my own rig till actually many years later, after college.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Okay. What is your current rig?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I have lots of Elecraft equipment. I have a K2, a KX3, and I have a whole bunch of vintage Cubic equipment. The reason for that is I worked with the Cubic folks to install some professional HF gear. I sort of really got an affinity for their equipment. I don't use that all that much. Most of the time when I operate, it's the other.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I've never heard of Cubic equipment. Is that equipment mostly for ships and boats, HF equipment?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, no. It was Swan turned into Cubic. They made a couple of all solid-state transceivers. One of them was really impressive. It had twin VFO's built-in. It was a very interesting piece of gear. Of course, they did graduate to making pretty much all commercial equipment and stopped their amateur line.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Weren't there some engineers from Swan that also went and started Atlas, the Atlas Radio Company?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. The Atlas Radios, right, were another one that were in that line. I'm not sure ... I think they broke off, and some of the equipment actually still said Swan on it, but was being manufactured by Cubic. Then, finally Cubic started to put their name on some of the equipment, and then went out of business.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What's your favorite operating mode?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I love HF. I love to work pileups in sideband, and do some rag chewing on CW.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Do you operate in the digital modes?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I've dabbled in it a little bit. It's never really caught on with me. Then again, I don't do too much of the digital modes in other modes either. I don't text that there as an immediate communication mode. Those modes are interesting, and I certainly do appreciate things like the Whisper, where they're communicating with incredibly low power, but I've never been a strong operator.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Now you say you've got an Elecraft KX3. Does that still make you a QRP operator?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I will operate at QRP occasionally, especially if I travel with it. Obviously, I have a variety of Hardrock-50 amplifiers that plug into it. That's what my normal operation is. I have some homebrew amplifiers that'll take it up to five or 600 watts if I feel like I need a little extra power.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Did ham radio play a part in the choices that you made for your education and career?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I'm not 100% sure whether it did. I've known that I was going to be an electrical engineer since I was like three years old. From all the other people I've met, I'm fairly unique in that Ham radio was just one of the steps that went along with it. I was fortunate in being able to get a job at Aeronautical Radio Incorporated, which provides HF communications for air ground, air traffic control and long-distance operational control. I was as close as I could get to being a professional ham radio operator. Set up HF stations in all seven continents and above the Arctic Circle, and below the Antarctic Circle, and got to really use that as my hobby. I believe they still do the majority of air traffic control in oceanic areas on HF voice.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You went to George Washington University to finish your degree?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. I got a two-year degree from a community college in electronic technology, and then used that to get a job and went to school in the evenings to get my bachelor of science degree.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Now, it's my understanding, from what I read anyway, that you're a tinker and homebrewer, and have been forever. How did that start out for you? What were your first projects? The golden screwdriver, I guess we can go back there.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. People would bring me things and I would either take them apart and see if I could make them do something else, or if I could fix them sometimes. I used to get the ARRL handbook. I was just amazed that you could build yourself your own radio, and I would try to duplicate things in there. Then, I would see people who had designed their own things, and I think the progression goes where you ... You start off either taking things apart with the idea of making it work differently, and you get better and better at that, and then duplicating other people's designs with mixed results at first, but you generally can get pretty proficient at that. Then, coming up with ideas of how to test your own designs.
I've really, really liked microprocessors as well. I think that the ability to bring a microprocessor to a project really gives you the flexibility to customize it the way you want it to be, and control things that can be very difficult if you have to do them manually.
Eric 4Z1UG:
If you have a choice now in projects to choose a microprocessor, what do you choose?
Jim WA2EUJ:
It's got to be the Arduino. Every other microprocessor I've ever used from the very beginning, it takes such an effort just to get everything lined up, the oscillator set up, the code running, everything configured. The interface that the Arduino has and the ability to break the thing out of the package, plug it into a USB port, and having the blink example, blinking the LED in under 10 minutes, has really done wonders for expanding the range of people who will approach a project with a microprocessor.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Right. The early success up front kind of helps you keep an interest and not throw it on to the back shelf.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah, that and just the range of libraries. I've wanted to use silicon labs, SI5351. There's already an Arduino library for it, so you don't have to worry about figuring out what goes into each register. I just simply tell the library function what frequency I want, and it works perfectly. That's just one example. There's library functions for LCD displays. You don't have to get down into the minutia of operating the individual pixels on the display. You can work from a much higher level, and get results very quickly.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What was your first Arduino project?
Jim WA2EUJ:
First Arduino project? I think it was the watt meter. A lot of people use the analog devices, 8307 little chip that turns RF into a digital signal fairly accurately. My first project was to put that on a little board and make an Arduino-based watt meter.
Eric 4Z1UG:
How did that work for you?
Jim WA2EUJ:
It worked great. We've turned it into a project. Lots of hams can use it for monitoring. It's so inexpensive, you can monitor just about everything you want in your whole signal chain with that and use very interesting computer displays.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I see. How do you change power ranges?
Jim WA2EUJ:
The devices have 50 DB of dynamic range. Generally, that's way more than the range I'm interested in seeing. If it's scaled properly with attenuators, the meter itself can display 30, 40 DB. If you're talking about a 20 watt full-scale, it'll still give you useful information down at two miliwatts.
Eric 4Z1UG:
That's interesting. If you're working on QRP transmitters, for example, then you could build a watt meter that'll let you look down in the miliwatts range?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. You don't really lose that much by adding another 10 DB, so up to 200 watts. Now, you could see 20 miliwatts. 2,000 watts, now you can see 200 miliwatts. The devices that they have now are quite useful for measuring power over a wide range.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I would say that you're probably relatively famous in the ham radio circles for building projects and winning the ARRL Homebrew Challenges. I think there's been ... what ... three so far?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You've been a winner in all three?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Can you describe a little bit about the contest, what the contest is in terms of how thematically, it's set up, in terms of what they're looking for? Describe a little bit about the contest, and then your approach to entering.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. The ARRL would publish a set of requirements for each of the three Homebrew Challenges. They would give some operating specifications. The first one was a 40 meter transceiver that had to make at least, I believe, it was five watts, had to work CW and voice. It didn't specify which mode voice, could be AM or ... They generally have constraints of the cost. The first one, you had to build a transceiver that the bill of materials couldn't exceed $50. The second one was a 50 watt amplifier for that 40 meters only ... A 50 watt amplifier that designed to be used with the transceiver from the first project. That one, they had two categories. The lowest price, and the one with the most features under a certain amount. Then the third one they branched out. They wanted to have a high frequency or higher frequency, six and/or 10 meters, because the sunspots were coming back at the time of the challenge. They had a $200 limit on that one.
They actually had quite some technical specifications on that one. They specified the noise figure. They specified the bandwidth that you had to have. That was indeed challenging. I'm not sure that it qualifies as a win if you're the only entry.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You were the only entry?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. There was another fellow who built a surprisingly, almost exactly the same architecture, that my entry had, but his bill of materials was like four times the limit. He got an honorable mention, but wasn't technically even allowed to compete.
Eric 4Z1UG:
His project was actually, it appeared to me, had a much larger footprint as well than yours.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. They wanted you to include some kind of enclosure with all of them in your budget. You weren't supposed to use flea market specials, which is kind of artificial, because that was the ... I mean, the very first thing you did when you were going to do a ... Growing up, whenever I wanted to do a project, I would head to a ham fest and see what I could find and sort of design the project around that. I understand for something that they want repeatable, they want to have a good solid bill of materials that people can buy. Yes, his case was a military surplus, or something, that he built it in.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I see. That's what you mean by flea market special is you go find the chassis of some kind of device. Sometimes, it could even be a test equipment device, right? You bring home and you rip it all apart and use what you can.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. I mean, it doesn't even have to stop there. It can even be some of the circuitry. I mean, if you want to build a two meter FM transceiver, you might find an old one and take the power amp out of it, or something. It's not just the boxes, there's lots of building to be done with components of various things.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What you're talking about is your 2012 winner, that was the DSP610 transceiver?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Are there some unique features that you included in the design of this that were not part of the specification that you thought would be really amazing to have in this transceiver?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. I'm always looking for the operating experience, right? A lot of the QRP projects and homebrew things, you're not operating it the same way as you would a commercial piece of equipment. Sometimes they don't have automatic gain control. Sometimes they don't have memory functions for the VFO. That makes the operating ... diminishes your operating experiences. Especially with QRP, it's great to be able to store ... something to come back to later.
I usually add it in a list of things that I would like to see any of the projects have. The DSP610 was a good example. It was my first attempt to use actual DSP demodulation of the signal. Clearly at the $200 limit, if you looked at the filtering requirements, it had to be no more than 500 hertz wide on CW, and no more than 2.4 kilohertz wide on sideband, that if you had to achieve that through results other than DSP, that you probably would spend more money than the entire radio was allowed to cost in the two filters. Moving to DSP was almost a given.
Then, having microprocessor control gives you the ability to add features in that don't cost any money. Even switches and pots and stuff can be multi-tasked, so you can add in direct frequency entry, memory functions on the VFO, storing the different modes in the different memory locations. Lots of things that anyone who bought a radio would expect it to have, and that you should be able to put in that radio that you built.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Based on your design, then you could continually modify the features set as you think of something new and add it to the code?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Absolutely. Some of the things that I think were less important that you had to do a couple keystrokes to get to, might be more important to a different operator. He would want to put them so that they were right up there on the front panel. That's one of the great things about homebrewing.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Have you had anybody either build the DSP610 from your Google site? Have you seen any more clones of the radio show up out there in the ham radio ether?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I've worked closely with a couple builders. I think that there have been several successes. It's definitely quite an undertaking. It's going to take many hours. Yes, I do know of a couple folks who have contacted me while building it, between emails. We've, I think, mostly gotten them working.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You came to my attention during my interview in episode 120 with Jim Stafford W4Q0 because of a Kickstarter project that have up right now, to build an SDR transceiver. Even before the Kickstarter campaign, you co-founded a company called "Hobby PC." Can you give us a little bit of a story on your company before we start talking about the Kickstarter?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. That goes back to the second Homebrew Challenge, by far the most popular one. That was the 50-watt amplifier. My entry was a multi-band amplifier. It turned out that that was so popular. I was doing what I called "Group buys," which is I would buy lots of the components and make kits, and make a circuit board, and would sort of pre-sell them, have people sort of sign up who wanted one. I would make 100 kits. Curtis Pope and Mike Loeb from HobbyPCB ... It existed before I even got there ... called me up and said, "Hey, we'd like to make printed circuit boards for you. The next time you do a run, let us know and we'll quote it."
We did that. Then, we decided to look into what it would take to make an entire kit. Then, as soon as we did that, it became obvious that the kit needed to be type-accepted. We looked into what it would take to do that, and got that taken care of. Then it sort of taken on a life of its own. Being a very small company, and geographically distributed, we were not trying to make products that really directly compete with anything else that's on the market. What we're trying to find is, what I call the sweet spot, something that can provide a good portion of the functionality, but cost significantly less. Like our 50 watt amplifier. I like to say that the ... 100 watt amplifier offerings from Ten-Tec and Elecraft and some other places, that our 50 watt amplifier is literally half of it. It's half the size, half the weight, half the power, and about half the price, and about half an SU. It really is a nice place to operate in.
We've also had some sort of requests from people who say, "We would really like to see this. Can you guys make us that?" We try to respond to those as we can.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I saw a YouTube video. You've had a built-in antenna tuner in that 50-watt amplifier. You were using a KX3. You had an antenna load, or a dummy load that you could change the resistance on so that it would obviously change the SWR that the amplifier was seeing. Could you talk a little bit about your antenna tuner? Is there something unique about the way that you've constructed that antenna tuner to be able to solve the problem of high SWR on the antenna's side?
Jim WA2EUJ:
When I decided that an antenna tuner was something we needed to be able to add to that amplifier due to a lot of people asking for them, I did research. I looked at who else had made automatic antenna tuners, and I looked at existing automatic antenna tuners that were available on the market. Pretty much, they're all the same design. They've got a step of some number of capacitors that can be switched in sort of digitally, and a step of receiver or inductors that you can switch in. Then, you have the ability to make an L with the capacitor on the input of the inductor, or on the output of the inductor.
The architecture of the actual matching network, it is absolutely the same between every single commercial antenna tuner that I could find that doesn't actually have roller inductors and mechanical motors to turn the actual components like a manual tuner. Most of the ones that are digital are just an L-match, that the range of the matching is going to be determined by how many steps of inductance and how many steps of capacitors you have.
The tricky bit of an antenna tuner is the algorithm it uses to tune the antenna, and coming up with where the best place in the solution space of 127 different capacitor settings, and 127 different inductor settings. In some cases, some of them are very, very bad. You want to avoid them. If you're trying to tune an antenna on six meters, you don't want it switching in the very largest of your capacitors and inductors, because that can put a very excessive load on the transmitter. Coming up with the algorithm is, I think, where the secret sauce in all the tuner's there.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You found that secret algorithm?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I think I got lucky with the algorithm we found. What it does is the first thing you have to figure out is whether you want the capacitor on the input and the output. Based on the frequency it's operating in, it samples four different possible sort of tuner combinations of L's and C's with it on the input, and then switches around on the output and does the same four. From there, it decides where the lowest point is and puts the tuner into that configurations. If you're matching a high impedance load, or a low impedance load, it makes that decision first.
Then it sort of does what a ham radio operator would do is, it looks at the lowest of the four that it found, and then tries adjusting the inductor, or tries inducting the inductor for the lowest SWR, then the capacitor for the lowest SWR, and then goes back and does the inductor again. The act of sort of doing is working the tuner the same way an operator would, and putting that in a computer algorithm, is sort of the key to making it all go.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You can match ... what ... 20 to one, or better?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Again, it depends. Right in the middle of its range on 20 meters and 17 meters, it'll tune just about anything, right down to nothing. Down at 160 meters, its range is much narrower because the range of capacitors isn't as good. Up on six meters, it's starting to have some internal reactive things which are limiting its range.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Is the antenna tuner sold separately, or is it just part of the amplifier?
Jim WA2EUJ:
It's an option for the amplifier. I don't think we've ever sold one to anyone who didn't have an amplifier. It's not really part of our model of being in the sweet spot. The price of it is probably very comparable to other similar tuners on the market. The one thing that's unique is that it goes inside the case of the amplifier and doesn't increase the amplifier's footprint at all. If you want a compact package, that's where its value is.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Is HobbyPCB a full-time job for you now, or is it still a hobby?
Jim WA2EUJ:
No. It's a long way from being able to make a living out of. It's still just a ...
Eric 4Z1UG:
A labor of love.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. Curtis, Mike and I do it. I think pretty much the engineering is at zero cost.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Sometimes, that's the best way, but you're ahead of the curve with the devices that you're putting out. That leads me to the Kickstarter campaign itself. Right now you have a Kickstarter campaign for a new SDR transceiver called the RS-HFIQ. Does this new SDR HF transistor have any unique design features that'll make it stand apart from the other SDR-like radios that are out there?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, it's a knockoff of the SoftRock. The SoftRock transceiver is a wonderfully powerful little device for an incredible credible price point to get you up and running on a HF. Tony Parks did a great job. What we did with the RS-HFIQ was sort of look at the SoftRock and say, "What would make it better?" The idea of having it cover 80 to 10 meters, and put out five watts was sort of the driving focus behind it. When we made our Hardrock amplifier, we really wanted to target the SoftRock crowd because there's so many of them, and we wanted to have an amplifier for it, but SoftRock only puts out about a watt, so it even has trouble driving our amplifiers. You have to put another stage of amplification in between the two to get there.
The other thing that limits the audience of the SoftRock is that you have to build it. A lot of the components are Surface Mount components. Our new transceiver will come as an assembled and tested board, so that the folks who don't feel comfortable working with Surface Mount components can purchase it and connect it to their computer or sound card and be up and running as easily as you could with just about any radio on the market.
The last aspect I would point out is that it actually uses, for control, an Arduino Nano. You can reprogram its firmware. You can make it do whatever you want. You can tailor it. You can upload it with no additional cost, other than a USB cable.
Eric 4Z1UG:
The Arduino Nano is ... what ... the $5 board itself? I mean, it's like the cheapest ...
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yeah. It's got the exact same functionality as an Arduino Uno. It's much smaller. It's about the size of a 40 pin dip, but it provides USB connectivity, and it works with their IDE that allows you to download programs to it and make modifications where you use it.
Eric 4Z1UG:
How has your Kickstarter campaign gone so far?
Jim WA2EUJ:
It's funded at two times the level that we were going for. With a small company, sometimes it's hard to raise enough capital to do a good-sized production run. The idea of the Kickstarter is to sort of get commitments so that we can do a fairly substantial production run of the boards, and hopefully ... well, definitely we'll build more than the required for the Kickstarter so we'll have them again in our store. We built 50 earlier this year. That was a bit of a stretch. Fortunately, we sold them very quickly. We've gotten some good feedback from our first 50 customers on things that they'd like to see. They've helped us a lot get the bugs worked out of the software, and the step-by-step instructions.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Is 50 a large enough run to do pick and place on Surface Mount?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. The boards are assembled at a contract manufacturer in China. Even at the 50 level, they will program up a machine to place all the parts in and run it through the reflow of it.
Eric 4Z1UG:
For hams that may want to do their own Kickstarter campaign to fund their project, do you have any advice based on your Kickstarter experience?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, I might be more of an authority after it's over. I guess we're successful since we're funded. We didn't set up-
Eric 4Z1UG:
You're funded like $20,000 more than you were originally asking for?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. Now we're scratching our head and saying, "Perhaps we set the funding goal too low." Getting the word out is probably the key, and knowing that ... being confident in your design that you're going to be able to achieve what you say you're going to achieve. If your Kickstarter campaign can reflect that level of confidence, I think it makes it easier to get backers.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Well, I think one of the things that what impressed me about your Kickstarter campaign was just the amount of information, of people who were asking questions, you had the answers all the way down the page. If you get below the, what they call the fold, right, you had five or six pages of information and the video to explain what it was. I thought, from the standpoint of communicating the value of this campaign, it was all there.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Thank you.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Nice infographics, too.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Actually, some of that was professionally done. Curtis has a friend who sort of gives everything the same sort of look to it, which makes it look very professional.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Now, it's very possible that by the time this episode goes out, your December 2nd campaign has ended. For any of the listeners that may still be interested ... I can't imagine why some of them wouldn't be ... that are still interested in the RS-HFIQ, what can they do to still show support and interest?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, we will have them available at the HobbyPCB website, which is hobbyPCB.com. We don't like to put them in the store ... I believe it actually has a product page. It'll be listed as out of stock until we start to get the production units in, which would be actually early next year. You'll be able to purchase one. I don't think the price is going to be any higher than the Kickstarter campaign. I think we had some early bird specials, but the price that they'll be in the Kickstarter is what they'll be in the store.
Participating by buying one is certainly good. We're also working with some folks, Dave Miller up in Canada, who makes the STM32 SDR that used to use a SoftRock as sort of the RF front end. He's got a Motorola chip, and a touchscreen, and a real snazzy interface. He's redesigning that to work with the RS-HFIQ. That should be ready about the same time. If you're not interested in a radio that has to be plugged into a computer to make it do anything, we're working on a solution for that as well.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What software do you use to run with this, or is it something that you've created yourself?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Oh my goodness. You can't even begin to list the different packages. We have a standard configuration, which is the one that we guarantee to support, which means if you buy a radio from us, we're going to work with you to get step-by-step to get HD SDR, which is a piece of freeware up and running. The low-level radio controls comes from a utility called "Omnirig." It runs on a Windows PC. That's what we guarantee to work with you. That is only at the very tip of the software that's out there. We have so many packages that run under Linux, from Gnu Radio, to [Qwest 00:42:18]. There's Power SDR.
We don't have a configuration specifically for a Mac yet, but we're working with one of our beta testers to sort of hash out and get maybe some of the Linux applications running on the Mac, but there's tons of software you can use.
Eric 4Z1UG:
These software packages control the transmit side as well?
Jim WA2EUJ:
There are some receive-only ones. There's one called Rocky. I think it only transmits CW, and receives, but HD SDR certainly transmits, and Power SDR, and Gnu Radio can transmit, as well.
Eric 4Z1UG:
As you're looking for a future project, what's beyond this rig? What would you do next?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I'm trying to decide. I've been playing with a variant of the Arduino called the "Teensy." It's got a 96 megahertz arm with a floating-point processor on, and it comes with an audio card. I'd built sort of a standalone radio with this thing, which could be very, very small, and is very flexible. They're tools set for setting up the DSP processing means. I almost had zero programming to get it up and running. They've got FIR filters, and multiplies, and all kinds of things that you need it to process the data stream.
We might do something there. Then, we might do something like an RS-HFIQ stretch, which is just the next size up in the case, but add in six meters and 160 meters, and some of the features that people are already wondering why we left out.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Now, other than designing and building these radios, are you operating some of these radios in the field yourself?
Jim WA2EUJ:
I do not get a chance to operate as much as I like to. I'm going to set up as RS-HFIQ, just sort of, at the very least, as a test bed. I do like to I get on and work some DX. I have antennas up. I have an 82.10 meter dipole from Alpha Delta, and I have some VHF stuff up, so if I ever get some spare time, I will.
I'd like to demonstrate it for kids. I have a daughter who's 12 years old. When kids come through, the HD SDR is something that they understand almost instantly, a lot more than they understand looking at something like a KX3.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Because of the screen ...
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes, the screen.
Eric 4Z1UG:
... and the waterfall display and stuff like that.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Right. With the spectrum display, as soon as they realize what, in 40 meters, a lower sideband signal looks like, then they can say, "There's a whole bunch of those. Let's see what this guy's talking about. Let's see what this guy's talking about." Usually, 40 meters is pretty safe with kids to be able to hear the conversations. I'm not sure about 75.
Eric 4Z1UG:
This actually could be one of the hooks to get the 12-year-olds, who've been born with an iPad or an iPhone in their hands, interested in ham radio?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Certainly. I mean, the future of ham radio homebrewing is not screwing tube sockets into a chassis and hooking resistor legs through them and soldering them. It wasn't the future in 1970, and it certainly isn't now. The future is a Hackaday project, or an Instructables project where you buy your Arduino or your interface board, and you download your library, and you get it up and running. Then, the wheels turn in your brain, and you figure out what's next.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Well, having said that, and mentioning your daughter, what kind of impact has amateur radio had on your family life?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, it when I worked for Aeronautical Radio, I used to go travel all over the world. It was interesting to be able to ... None of them are licensed hams, but they could certainly listen to me on the equipment when I did an installation job in McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and would work the ham station there, and would call them up on the phone and say, "Hey, can you hear me?" It was very interesting for them to be able to know that they were in touch with me.
When I was building amplifiers, once you get into building power amplifiers, there's going to be smoke sooner or later. My daughter, who I think was five or six at that time, could walk into the house and say, "Dad's been testing amplifiers again." My wife is very tolerant of antenna structures. She clearly would rather not see them, or have them up, but she adopts an attitude while they're a necessary evil.
Eric 4Z1UG:
She's been able to explain to the neighbors exactly what you're doing, and why it's so important?
Jim WA2EUJ:
It's a little bit easier. We used to live in a row house in Baltimore City. The things on the roof of the Row house caused lots of speculation. There's a lot more neighbors in a very short area. We've since moved to a house in much less dense population, and we're much more in touch with the neighbors who are sort of ... They haven't speculated, they simply ask, and I tell them.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What excites you the most about what's happening in amateur radio now?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Just the proliferation of digital applications. I mean, things like I have a ham radio buddy who does EME. That really was just out of the range of the normal ham before we had some of the digital modes of communication. You had to have such a big antenna in such high power that it was a significant investment. Now, with just monist equipment, the digital signal processing allows you to do that. The HF digital modes that are either automatic do a lot of the legwork for you in determining which communications pass are the best to use. The fact that the ham radio community has really stepped up and made all this stuff available at no cost to other amateurs, I think that's the mechanism through which ham radio will continue to be a hobby that attracts people.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I was saying one of my ham friends said to me the other day that he was sending CQ on 40 meters, no one's coming back to him, but he goes over to CW skimmer or to one of these sites that lets him know if he's being heard around the world, and of course he is being heard around the world, there's just nobody coming back to him. That's quite amazing that you can kind of combine these modes with the Internet, and be able to at least have that feedback from some other part of the planet.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. Connected items and, actually, some of the interesting new services where you are subscribe and can operate ham stations and not have any equipment yourself are pretty interesting sort of aspect to the hobby that has cropped up over the last couple of years.
Eric 4Z1UG:
You know, one of the things I thought about when I was looking at your Kickstarter campaign and the transceiver that you're building, the RS-HFIQ, is just how difficult that might be, or maybe not difficult at all, to actually put that transceiver package out on a remote site. For many of us who live in a more high density area where electronic noise is just over the top, whether or not it would be relatively easy to put that package out in the field.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. If you're using an entire computer-based solution, there really is no direct controls that you use on the transceiver itself. It has no knobs. It has no buttons. Everything comes from the computer. It's trivial to remote a computer via the Internet so that you can operate it from someplace completely different. It's a little bit more difficult to add in peripherals like antenna rotators and stuff, but it certainly isn't unsurmountable.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I got it. The device itself is, the radio itself, is being controlled from the USB port on the computer?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Absolutely. Everything goes through the USB port.
Eric 4Z1UG:
I see. Then you could use a small computer, maybe not a raspberry pie yet, although why not, and put that out on the far end.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yes. We've got folks who are looking at raspberry pie solutions. We're trying desperately to come up with a sort of standard raspberry pie configuration, so you can get yourself a pie, a touchscreen, one of these radios and plug in an SD card, and be up and running in no time. Yes. You could certainly remote that via the Internet to anywhere that you wanted to do that.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Right. For the folks listening, you could use your ham net packet link on two gigahertz or five gigahertz or three and a half gigahertz to get your signal out to the field and operate HF from a quiet location.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Yup.
Eric 4Z1UG:
The wheels are turning already.
Jim WA2EUJ:
That's good. That's what we like to hear.
Eric 4Z1UG:
What advice would you give to newer returning hams?
Jim WA2EUJ:
Well, the basic essence of ham radio is communicating, talking to people. In general, it's about making connections between people who share sort of a common interest in the equipment. I would recommend that new hams approach ham radio with the open-mindedness that there's a whole lot of different things that you could do with ham radio, but in the end, you're going to talk to somebody else. That's going to be sort of the end result of a ham radio communications path is a person-to-person contact. It's very valuable to be able to have that mechanism that spans country borders, all sorts of economic borders with just two people and two radios.
Eric 4Z1UG:
Right. That's always been the amazing thing, right, about ham radio, is that the goal is to make that communication somehow, and that your project, if you're a homebrewer, or any other kind ham radio project is actually just to make that communication somehow.
Jim WA2EUJ:
Right. That's what you're going for when you build it. Okay, you build it. Okay, you test it with your test equipment, but when it makes that connection and someone comes back and says, "Yeah, I hear you." That's what it's for.
Eric 4Z1UG:
That's what it's for. Well, Jim, I've really appreciated having this conversation with you and hearing about your Kickstarter project and the projects that you've made. I'm really a guy that appreciates homebrew projects. I do a few myself, but not to your level. I appreciate them when I see them. With that, I want to wish you 73. Thank you so much for joining me on the QSO Today Podcast.
Jim WA2EUJ:
It was great to be here, Eric. Thanks for having me.
Eric 4Z1UG:
That concludes this episode of QSO Today. I hope that you enjoyed this QSO with Jim. Please be sure to check out the show notes that include links and information about the topics that we discussed. Go to www.qsotoday.com, and put in WA2EUJ in the search box at the top of the page. If you'd like to sponsor the transcription of this episode, or any of the previous QSO Today episodes into written text, the cost is 67 US dollars. There is a button on the right side of the show notes page to start this process.
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Until next time, this is Eric 4Z1UG, 73.
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