Hermes-Lite 2beta3 Update

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

I've been transmitting and receiving WSPR today with my HL2beta3. Everything is working well. During TX, the heating is comparable to my beta2 now that it is in an enclosure and our heat wave is over. Attached are SA plots at max power on 20M with and without filters. You can see that filter losses are ~1dB. I am confident of these power numbers as I double checked with scope readings. I am using these filters inline to properly suppress TX harmonics. I change the filters manually but it at least allows me to operate.

I tried the new FT8 mode. See this link too. This is like other JT modes but runs in 15 second windows for fast QSOs. Since there is less than 2 seconds to decode and respond to a QSO, either I and/or my computer are too slow as I respond too late. Has anyone had success with this new mode?

I had to install Quisk on a new machine. TX wasn't working when I was trying to use spot. It turned out I did not have digital audio input/output devices setup yet. This has confused me before.

Once or twice the temperature and current updates have stopped. It required a cold reboot of the HL2beta3 to start those again. There are probably some occasional error conditions that I need to handle in the firmware.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Daniel Estévez]

El 12/08/17 a las 23:58, Steve Haynal escribió:

> I tried the new FT8

> <http://qrznow.com/new-digital-mode-from-k1jt-ft8/> mode. See this link
> <http://www.arrl.org/news/ft8-mode-is-latest-bright-shiny-object-in-amateur-radio-digital-world> too.

> This is like other JT modes but runs in 15 second windows for fast QSOs.
> Since there is less than 2 seconds to decode and respond to a QSO,
> either I and/or my computer are too slow as I respond too late. Has
> anyone had success with this new mode?

Hi Steve,

I've been using FT8 lately and I've managed a handful of QSOs in this
mode. You can use the "Auto seq" option, which will arrange the correct
reply automatically for you.

73,

Dani.

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Dani,

Thanks. I watched a few YouTube videos on FT8 also. Given that there is less than 2 seconds to decode and respond, my 10 year old computer just wasn't able to do things fast enough even with auto sequence on. This is a good reason to upgrade! I did install all the software on my newer work laptop and made a few QSOs. With slight variations in system clocks for those using internet time, plus latencies for SDR processing, and overheads for decoding, 2 seconds is pretty tight!

73,

Steve

KF7O