Overdriving the rigs ALC and producing spatter

On data modes it is very easy to overdrive the rig audio input causing the rigs ALC circuit to kick in. The result of this is to cause spatter either side of your actual transmission frequency.

When you see this on a waterfall display it looks like a ghost image of the transmission a few 100 Hz up or down.

The yellow coloured PSK-31 images are the same
transmission. The main one is centred at 1760 Hz and the spatter is around 750Hz

You will then get other hams shouting at you in CAPITAL LETTERS telling you to turn the gain down and look at your ALC meter. You can turn the gain down on your computer by simply decreasing the slider. In DM780 it is the TX slider shown below.

Transmit volume slider on Digital Master 780

ON the Yaesu FT-450D follow what I do - link here

Do yourself a favour and clean up your signal. Other hams with thank you for it.

Monitoring transmissions using a SDR receiver

When using digimodes you have to rely upon another amateur who can tell you if you signal is being over-modulated. Or, as per my previous blog entry, look at the ALC meter on the rig.
Another way of doing it is by using another computer in the shack (everybody has an old one!) and logging onto a Web SDR receiver somewhere on the internet.

There are many now and a quick search on Google reveals where they are.

Install Ham Radio Deluxe onto the old PC and set it in demo mode so you are only controlling a demo radio.
I found a piece of shareware software called Virtual Audio Cable that runs in demo mode.
Download it from here

Install it and launch the Audio Repeater part of it.
Set this to take the output of your audio card and feed it to the Virtual Audio Cable 1 as per this picture

Adjusting ALC on the FT-450D

The ALC meter on the FT-450D is a little confusing. The manual is not much help either. However I think I have worked out how to set the levels with an soundcard connected to the digital data socket on the rear.

Your setting will be different than mine but here is how I set mine.

I am using the DM780 module of Ham Radio Deluxe to operated the digimodes. The output of a cheap sound card is connected to the rig via a dedicated data lead.

• Set the rig at 35 watts power output
• set the rig to D TYPE
• Set this to USER-U and exit
• Tune the rig up to a digimodes frequency (21.070 MHz for instance) on USB Data

• Press the F key for more than one second to enter MENU mode
• Rotate the DSP/SEL knob until D TYPE appears
• Press the DSP/SEL button

DM780 on 10m

DM780 is the audio module part of Ham Radio Deluxe. It decodes digital modes and morse. It also is used to transmit too. I was playing around with it on 10 metres yesterday and the FT-450D rig was not showing anything on the S meter. I also was listening on the audio feed and couldn't really discern anything. However DM780 was displaying loads of stations on the PSK-31 section of the band around 28.120 MHz

The computer display was showing South American stations (28/04/2015) at around 15:20 UTC. The 10m band was open,
I managed to work a few stations in Argentina and Brazil around 7000 miles away using just 25 Watts into my end fed dipole.

I think this software is astonishing.

EchoLink on IOS

It must be user error on my behalf but when trying to connect to a local VHF repeater in Malta using EchoLink over the internet I can do it from my iPod (yes the music player) but not from an iPad Air. The same version of IOS the same version of app.

More reading of the non existent manual I think or the FAQs on the Echolink website.

Digimodes on the Yaesu FT-450D

This is how the rig is connected to the computer:

• The rear panel has a 6 pin data socket that I have connected to the PC using a custom cable. The cable has 2x 3.5mm jacks and a USB connector (this has a serial port inside) - COM3 but this is not used to control PTT in this implementation. HRD does all the PTT switching via the CAT connector below
• The rear panel also has an RS232 connector for the CAT control (including PTT) that I connected to the PC using another custom cable. This one just has a USB connector with another serial port inside - COM5
• The jacks are fed into a USB sound card. - The transmit I have labelled in Windows as "TX to FT-450D" and receive is labelled "RX from FT-450D"
• I fed the output from the front of the rig (headphone connector) into another sound card using a 3.5mm jack to jack cable - this time a video capture card with audio inputs.

FT-450D set in datamode on 20m ready for PSK-31

1st QSO on PSK-31 using Yaesu FT-450D

I've had Ham Radio Deluxe for a while now and decided to give PSK-31 a tryout.
My HF rig, the Yaesu FT-450D has a data port on the rear. This is connected using a bought cable to a USB sound card. There is also another cable used to connect the CAT interface to the computer via a USB COM port. It sounds complicated but it's not and I will write something about the connections in a later post.
After much configuration I still couldn't get the rig to transmit the audio is was being fed. I listened to output of the sound module to make sure that audio was coming out - it was.
Then I got out my very old FRG-7 receiver and tuned to the 20m frequency I was supposed to be transmitting on.

When transmitting the rig was putting out about 5 watts as I thought on upper side band but it also had a carrier wave that I could distinctly hear. I put out a number of CQs with no response. The waterfall of DM-780 sound module of Ham Radio Deluxe showed the correct waveform. I was mystified.

So I resorted to reading the Yaesu FT-450D manual - we all do that when something doesn't work don't we? Anyway I found the problem. You first of all have to set the rig into a "User Mode". Essentially this instructs the rig what to do when put into datamode. In my case I wanted to transmit audio through the rear socket in upper side band. You have to go into the rig menu by pressing F for 1 second then follow the next sequence:

• rotate the DSP/SEL knob until D Type appears (this is Data Type)
• press the DSP/SEL knob - then menu text flashes and RTTY will probably be selected (it was on mine)
• rotate the DSP/SEL knob until USER-U is selected
• press the DSP/SEL knob -the menu text stops flashing
• press the F key for longer than one second
• Next select the mode you want (USB Data mode) using the mode up or down buttons
• Select the frequency of transmission - in my case 14.070.00 MHz on the 20m band

Then you are all set for transmitting data.

When you set the mode to data mode the rig only takes audio from the data socket and the microphone PTT switch is disabled. The microphone is also disabled so you don't run the risk of transmitting expletives along with the data whilst transmitting - it happens apparently when things get heated in the shack during data transmission mode.

What a fantastic rig the Yaesu FT-450D is - once you have read the manual!

I called CQ again and after 2 minutes my first contact was with a station in Konetspol, Ukraine followed by another station in Lyon, France - 1486 miles m and 588 miles away from G8YPH respectably. Not bad from 5 watts into a long wire partially running through the shack!