| The current digital-modes log from MixW | Older digital-modes log from MixW | |||
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A number of folks have complimented me for putting my logs up here in
near-real-time (less than 1 minute away from real time, to be exact);
I am grateful to them. Every one has asked how I did it. My webserver is a FreeBSD box with the SMBFS (Samba FileSystem) code installed; this lets it mount a directory on the box on which I run MixW, through my home network (10 machines, two printers, and growing all the time, and yes, I do this for a living, too). I told the MixW box to share the logfile's directory, so that it would be accessible on the home net, then coded up a cron job on the FreeBSD box to process the logfile from that directory into the webserver's data directory once a minute. At Wireless-G speeds, it's an unnoticeable blip on the network and in the CPU load of either of the boxes. The logfile processing extracts various fields from the input log file, converts them into an HTML table, colors the data according to its origin (CONUS, US but not CONUS, Canada, and DX (all others)), and accumulates counts of each category as it runs. The cronjob runs every minute, so that the processed copy of the live log is usually within a minute of the live log, and never more than two away from it. I considered using rsync, but just plain old cp(1) is plenty good enough, and nothing fancier is required at this time. It just took an idea, a little "How can I do that?" thought, installing smbfs, sharing the directory, and building a Perl script to write the HTML into a web page. The Perl code is very little more than a simple exercise in pattern recognition. Click HERE to see the code that processes a MixW2 log and produces the log page. |
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Amateur Radio Stations W5EGO and W5DNA.
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Click here for a Google Maps aerial view of the QTH | |||
| Have you ever been annoyed because your sound card levels were so high that you had to set the control sliders way down at the bottom? I certainly have, and then had a rush of brains to the head: if the levels are too high, then there's signal that can be thrown away. So I built a stereo attenuator for TX and for RX, both in the same box, using almost entirely junkbox parts. It's in a small Radio Shack project box, using point-to-point wiring. |
Front view. It's simple: TX has one stereo input, a 10K pot across each channel (L and R), and two stereo outputs in parallel. RX is just like TX. |
Inside, it's all sloppy point-to-point wiring. The hardest part was determining which pins on the 6-terminal stereo pots were connected where. Next time, I won't use the expensive silver-plated Teflon-insulated wire: it's really hard to strip. |
The schematic shows single-signal jacks and separate pots; I actually used stereo jacks and ganged pots from a dead audio mixer. |
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| There are four shelves in our station, as follows: | ||||
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Shelf 4 (counting from the bottom) | ||||
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Interstate Electronics F74 20 MHz sweep function generator |
MFJ 4225MV switching power supply: up to 14 V DC, up to 25 A |
Vibroplex J-36 ("Lightning Bug") speed key, vintage 1942, given me by my uncle Stuart when I was first licensed as an amateur radio operator, in 1962 |
Speakers | |
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Samlex RPS1205HQ 12V power supply, 5A |
Samlex SEC1223 12V power supply, 25A |
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Shelf 3 (counting from the bottom) | ||||
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HP-8640B, options 001, 002, and 003 |
Plastic box of audio, computer, and RF adapters |
Large blue permanent-bound logbook |
Triplett model 726 meter, 1mA full scale, used as S-meter in Receive and SWR meter in Transmit | |
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Radio Shack rotator control for 6-meter Yagi/Uda and 2-meter Moxon |
Yaesu FT-897D microphone |
Headphones |
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Shelf 2 (counting from the bottom) | ||||
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2-meter tuner and SWR bridge (MFJ 921) |
6-meter tuner and SWR bridge (MFJ 945D)(hidden by flat-panel monitor) |
HF auto tuner (LDG Z100)(hidden by flat-panel monitor) |
Digital data interface (RigBlaster Pro)(hidden by flat-panel monitor) | |
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Yaesu FT-897D transceiver, 160 meters through 70 centimeters | ||||
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Bottom shelf | ||||
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Flat panel monitor |
MFJ iambic paddles |
Homebrew variable resistive attenuator box to control tone levels between RigBlaster Pro and computer sound card |
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Not Shown | ||||
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RFSpace, Inc. SDR-IQ Software-Defined Receiver (10 Hz to 29.999999 MHz) |
Icom PCR-1000 receiver (10 Hz to 1.3 GHz) |
Homebrew 2.6GHz Intel-CPU computer running Windows XP Professional |
Collins R-390 receiver | |
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Two R-390A receivers |
DEBEG E-2000 HF receiver |
ITT-Mackay 3020E HF receiver |
RACAL 6217E HF receiver | |
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R-1051-B and R-1051H receivers |
Tektronix 465BM 100MHz oscilloscope with built-in meter |
Philips PM3055 computerized 100MHz oscilloscope |
Stridsberg 1-to-8 active HF multicoupler |
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