Extra class

Passed my Extra today. w00t.

Back in college, the extra was a written exam that was slightly easier than the Advanced class exam, plus a 20 wpm code test. I passed the extra written once, but could never get the 20 wpm code, so I gave up on that. Now that they've gotten rid of the code requirements, the extra written is a little tougher than before (since it has some of the Advanced stuff, I think). I tried a couple weeks ago to pass it without any study, but that didn't go well. Since then, I've taken practice exams on the AA9PW exam page, and every question I got wrong I took the opportunity to learn something new. Some of the questions were formula based. For that, the W5JCK site's cheat sheets were invaluable. After taking enough practice exams, I felt confident enough to try again.

One suggestion: you'll want a scientific calculator for the test, but you don't want one that is "too smart" - particularly a programable one, since the VEs may disallow its use if they have any concerns that it is may have answers or formulas or anything like that programmed in. So for the test, I went to Walgreens and bought a cheap $8 sharp calculator. You want one that has trig, inverse trig (preferably in degrees), square root and 10^x. That's all you'll need.

I don't really care all that much about the extra 200 kHz or so of HF spectrum. This was really all about checking off another box on the life experience list, I guess. That, and now I can be a full fledged VE if I want to.

WAS... not... :(

I went through all my old QSL cards this evening. Alas, I can no longer claim WAS (worked all states) 20 meter AMTOR. I actually am 11 states short of that, though for 9 of those states I have QSL cards for other bands or modes. Somehow, however, I don't have a card for Rhode Island or West Virginia.

The WAS rules state that you must work all states from either one QTH or if from multiple QTHs, none can be more than 50 miles away from any other (fancy way of saying that you have to have done it inside of a 50 mile diameter circle). Fortunately, the old QTH in Stockton is just barely less than 50 miles away from the current QTH. Barely.

So now I must somehow manage (while we're in the ass end of the solar cycle) to find a band open to RI and WV and have a QSO and get a QSL card. That'll be a challenge.

Amateur PSK31 and Mac

I've been a dormant ham for a while now, but with some encouragement from my wife, I've recently got back on the air. Back in the day, I managed to work all the states on 20 meter AMTOR. Since then, the new AMTOR is a mode called PSK31. It's a digital mode optimized for keyboard-to-keyboard QSOs.

You have to use computer software to work PSK31. It converts your typing into audio, then converts the tones it hears from your transceiver back into text. It does the latter by listening for signals throughout the audio passband of your rig, showing them all in a waterfall display that you click on to choose either a blank spot to call CQ or on a signal to decode it and set up your transmitter to reply to.

So to make it work, you need to do three things:

1. Get the receiver's audio into the computer
2. Get the program's transmit audio into your transceiver
3. Allow the program to control your radio's PTT button

The grand plan was to buy a TigerTronics SignalLink USB. It looks to me to be the best possible solution. It connects to your computer only via a USB cable. It has an internal USB audio device and the signal isolation transformers necessary to keep the two apart. It uses VOX to key the radio (that is, when audio comes out of the audio device, it keys the radio automatically). All in all, it seems ideal. Unfortunately, however, they're 4-6 weeks backordered, since it appears that I'm not the only one who thinks it's an ideal solution.

The next best thing is a RigBlaster Plug-n-Play. It makes 3 connections to your computer - audio in, audio out and a USB connection. The USB connection is for a USB-to-serial adapter that is used for PTT and for an (optional) radio control serial port interface. The port's RTS line is connected directly to the radio's PTT actuator. There is a software download on West Mountain Radio's site that contains an unsupported MacOS X driver. From what I can tell, it works just fine.

On the software end, there is a program called MultiMode, but the interface seems awfully primitive to me. Plus it costs almost $90. Instead, I went with cocoaModem. It has an auxiliary helper program called cocoaPTT that will do the serial port RTS for PTT thing on behalf of cocoaModem. You just have to make sure that the rigBlaster is plugged in, then start cocoaPTT, then start cocoaModem.