iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

I purchased the kit from a German retailer when it went out, irrc it was qrp-projects, but I think it doesn't exist anymore.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Well I was a little bit too busy to work on the QMX these days, so I decided to indulge myself with a new rig. My KX1 would like to welcome X6100 in the family !

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Cette cavité vous permet de trafiquer sur 144.8MHz en réduisant les qrm qui pourraient provenir d'émetteurs proches et atténuera l'harmonique 3 du tx (144.8x3=434.4) qui pourrait par exemple vous gêner si vous avez du matériel LoRa sur 433.7MHz 😉

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Cette perte d'insertion est indiquée comme un gain négatif, ce sont les pertes que va subir le signal en traversant la cavité : pratiquement rien à 144.8 mais déjà 16dB à 146MHz si vous tracez S21 entre 140 et 450MHz vous verez que la perte sera très importante plus on s'éloigne de 144.8MHz.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Parfait ! Les valeurs importantes sont le swr minimum (ou le RL, c'est pareil), ça se mesure avec la trace S11. Là, c'est très correct je trouve 1:1.121 de SWR. La courbe S21 vous indique la perte d'insertion de la cavité, 0.7 dB c'est très bien.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

A new fork from aprsdroid with interesting features (mic-e, igate, digi, BLE, etc...) is showing up, it's based on OSM. Check it out : #aprs youtu.be/X1g7xctMJqY

youtu.be

NA7Q's APRS Droid with new features!

YouTube video by KM6LYW Radio

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Tracer la perte d'insertion (RL) au lieu du SWR donne une trace plus détaillée du comportement je trouve, mais cela n'engage que moi, HI ! Il suffit de mémoriser qu'une perte de 14dB correspond à un SWR de 1:1.5 pour avoir une idée du comportement.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Pour avoir une bonne idée du comportement de cette cavité, vous pourriez afficher la traces logmag S11 qui vous donnera le gain de la puissance réfléchie (RL) avec plus de détails et la trace logmag S21 qui vous donnera le gain de la puissance transmise. www.amphenolrf.com/vswr-convers...

amphenolrf.com

Return Loss to VSWR Conversion Chart

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

While waiting for the news psu boards to arrive, I'm working on my #CW with Vband and a BH8DZE usb interface for the paddle. I had to remap the buttons 2 and 3 for it to work. On Arch linux it's done with : xinput set-button-map 13 1 3 2 4 5 6 7 Where 13 is the Vband interface number.

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Reposted by Tom aka F8COD

Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Back in the days of punch cards, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and a software patch meant a piece of tape...🦖

Photo shows an old punch card computer program in which coding errors have been patched over with tape.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

As suspected, not only D108 but D106 died too. I ordered two sets of boards, but now I have to figure out WHY these two died. #QMX

Picture of Qmx pcb1 board with arrows showing D106 and D108

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

I looked for info on the net, it seems that a 5.6V zener diode failed shorted. I'll have to check it out. I like how clever this little thing is but come on, hardware failure by just pulling the plug ? For a rig meant to be used outside ? 😬

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Hmmm... I feel like a love/hate relationship building up with the QMX. Just after flashing it for the first time and exploring the menus, I accidentally pulled the power plug and the qmx crashed. I can acces the terminal to get a diagnostic screen but that's all. apparently I killed the 5V board.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Et encore, tu as eu une antenne calée dans les 400MHz, l'en ai eu qui étaient au dessus de 915MHz avec du matos en 433. A ce stade autant qu'ils nous filent une sma male toute seule et on se démerdera 🤣

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

I recently had to unsolder some pcb connectors and melted some old hard rosin on unsoldering braid. Damn, it works better than my copper braid, it literally sucks the solder in the braid.

Picture of unsoldering braid soaked with hard rosin

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

I've heard on the excellent podcast #hamradioworkbench that KR6ZY from electronics.halibut.com/product/kv4p... is doing a V2 because there was some points to be optimized rf wisely :-)

electronics.halibut.com

KV4P-HT v2 – Halibut Electronics

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Reposted by Tom aka F8COD

Nicolas Cadène @ncadene.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

On attend toujours une réponse équivalente de l’Union européenne et de ses États membres … :

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Merci Yannick ! J'ai hâte de le terminer pour voir ce que ça donne.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Not easy to fit the toroids and evenly spread the wire on the QMX, it's tight !

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

The unsigned.io firmware has a limitation on TX power at 17dBm even on hardware able to tx more, looking at the source it's in sx127x.cpp line 342? Now the issue is , 've found how to recompile it with arduino-cli but can't upload it, it needs a stk500 programmer.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Allez c'est parti pour l'assemblage du QMX !

Picture of qrplabs QMX pcboard on the workbench

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Thanks for reminding me this, I wanted to go back on this daily challenge, here we go !

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Happy new year ! What is this display above your monitor ?

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

You may want to filter the output, have a look here : andydoz.blogspot.com/2022/11/alie... About what next, what about a linbpq node/bbs lora packet radio ? 😀

andydoz.blogspot.com

Aliexpress LoRa Amplifier AB-IOT-433

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Pas de raquettes sans raclette ? 😁

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

And I got to say a big THANK YOU to F1OYP for the customized linbpq config file, it saved me a big lot of time to have an operational node.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Let's do some old tech packet radio with new tech lora t-beam. Unsigned.io rnode firmware on a ttgo lora32in tnc mode with linbpq bbs software on the node, T-beam as a kiss AX25 tnc on the client laptop. It's gonna be fun. #lora #hamradio #bpq32

Screenshot of ax25 terminal connected to F8COD-2 node via lora

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Ça y est ça marche en utilisant le t-beam sur un port usb. J'ai pu lancer linbpq avec le fichier de config de F1OYP sur mon pc node, j'ai configuré un autre t-beam sur mon pc client en ax25 et ca connecte en lora 😊

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Je crois qu'on ne peut l'utiliser qu'en mode serie ou bluetooth, je suis en train d'essayer de comprendre comment ca marche avec tncattach.

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Oui, je suis en train de faire des essais en utilisant du matos lora et le firmware rnode de unsigned.io, mais je n'ai pas encore réussi à tout faire fonctionner. J'y travaille 😁

unsigned.io

The home page of unsigned.io

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

"Prenez à droite juste avant l'impasse Émile Louis"...

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Anyone else see this goatee giving us a finger or is it just me?

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Keep in mind that the small antenna delivered with the lora hardware is... Pure crap 😁 most of them aren't even tuned to 433mhz. So get rid of it and get a handheld ant or even better an external ant (or make one 😉)

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

With any sdr software, a right way to set the gain is to tune to any sig at low gain then crank it up until the sig doesn't increase anymore but the noise is starting to rise. Nice to have snr indicator at least 🙂

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

"vivants", Hmmm... "sains d'esprit", nnnnnope. 😁🐙

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

You just have to gather two or three ham friends and create a purchase cover group. When you buy new stuff keep your friends updated and tell your wife you didn't buy it, Jim lent you it for some time. When Jim will buy something, you'll do the same for him. 😉

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

I plan on installing linbpq too. We'll be able to do some tests, my igate is in your heard list (f8cod-10) 😁

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Mademoiselle Hurtigarouuuuuuu ! 😂

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Tom aka F8COD @tomtheguyonwheels.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

It would be fun to do more of these bbs in Lora, not in the widely adopted 300bps mode of course, let's crank up the speed. The hardware is really cheap, it would make fun little projects for radioclubs.

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